Episode 30: The Fortune Teller

Season 1: The World Unseen

Brighton, Sussex

June 1900

Rhiannon Jones woke with a start. Her first impressions were of stifling warmth, stale air, and pungent bodies. One of the bodies was hers, but there were three others in the caravan. On the truckle bed across from hers, Ben Grundy lay sleeping, snoring, and sweating. Above him in one of the bunks was his younger brother, Charlie. Above Rhiannon, in the other bunk, was Ben’s little sister, Kezia. The four of them slept each night in the same caravan, one of seven caravans that housed and transported the entire Grundy clan — and Rhiannon.

What had woken her so suddenly? It certainly wasn’t Ben’s snoring. Thunderous though it was, she was used to it. She searched her woolly, half-asleep mind for some fragment of a dream or a vision or something else. A fish, was it? Yes, a silver fish with sharp teeth. A little fish too, though how she knew it was little, she couldn’t tell. Swimming slowly through dark, weedy water. And then another image came into her mind. A boy, a young boy, with fair hair and indistinct features. But he was smiling, she knew that.

She had been sensing for weeks now that some turning point in her life, some fork in the path, was approaching. Was this dream connected to that? She didn’t know what it meant and there was no point in forcing a meaning on it. Everything would become clear in its own sweet time. All she could do was be alert for other signs and resonances.

She shifted under the thin blanket and tried to ignore the full bladder that was nagging for release. Using the chamber pot would wake Ben up, and then he would insist on helping her. It was awkward in that confined space, with her legs so useless, to manoeuvre herself over the pot. It distressed her to have to be helped by him. Though Ben didn’t mind. He enjoyed helping her. He enjoyed her dependency.

But she wanted to savour a few more of the early-morning moments when she was free from the attention of Ben and the rest of the Grundy clan.

Ben’s mother, Rose, had told her a few days before that he was going to ask her to marry him. Rose had mixed feelings about this plan.

‘I can see it’s a good match for you. But for Ben? He doesn’t mind waiting on a cripple now, when you’re young and attractive, but I wonder how he’ll feel in twenty years’ time. Still, you’ll always be a good earner, what with your gifts and all. But can you give him children, in your condition?’

‘I bleed every month, so I suppose so,’ Rhiannon said.

‘Hmmm.. and you’ll have to drop that superior attitude you have, thinking you’re better than us just because you have the second sight. Your mother was the same. Really thought she was something special, that one. Much good it did her.’

Rose considered this last remark with a satisfied expression, then went on. ‘Much good it did you, come to think of it.’ She glanced at Rhiannon’s thin, twisted legs. ‘How you didn’t see that coming, I’ll never know.’

Rhiannon felt a surge of rage rising in her, but shut it down, closing the lid on the furnace.

She didn’t want to marry Ben Grundy, but somehow it had become accepted by everyone that this would happen. The family had adopted her after the death of her mother, and Ben had been her carer and companion. He helped her with her wheelchair, helped her wash and dress, helped her with the everyday tasks that gave her so much trouble. And helped her too with the tasks she could do perfectly well herself.

‘You’re like a sister to me,’ he had said to her in the early days of their companionship. When had she stopped being a sister and become something else? Oh, but she knew. She could read Ben, like she could read most people.

Two years ago, they pitched camp in Dorset, on their way to the fairground at Weymouth. None of them had washed for days, so the Grundy men brought back pails of water from a well on a nearby farm. Ben poured some of the water in a tin bowl for her and pretended to look away as she washed herself in the shadow of their caravan.

Rhiannon didn’t need to look at him to know he was watching her as she took off her blouse and vest. It was only recently that he had taken an interest in her as anything other than an object of suspicion, like the other Grundys. They pitied her condition, her useless legs, but they were wary of her second sight. And Rhiannon, following her mother’s guidance, had been careful to deceive them about the extent of it. To them, she was a talented fortune teller and medium, gifted but not exceptional. They did not regard her as malevolent, but as a child — and a broken thing.

She washed her arms, her shoulders, her breasts, her belly, and then waited for the inevitable —

‘I’ll do your back.’

Ben stepped forward and took the flannel from her. She crossed her arms over her chest and leant forward. She tensed as he soaped her back and then rinsed it off. He was gentle, but she would have preferred it if he was rough and uncaring.

Then suddenly he was pushing her arms away from her chest and rubbing her breasts with the flannel.

‘Stop it, Ben, I’ve done those,’ she said.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought —’

She knew what he was thinking, and it was repulsive

‘No,’ she said.

It was impossible to avoid Ben, but from that day she closed herself to his thoughts.

Rhiannon heard Kezia giggle in her sleep. She dipped into the girl’s dream and saw that she was playing with a cat-like creature with blue fur. They were tumbling in a wildflower meadow and then the sky darkened. The creature screamed —

‘You awake, Rhi?’ Ben said drowsily.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going outside for a piss. I can take you if —’

‘Yes, I need to go.’

It was chilly outside, and the sky was a mass of grey cloud. Gulls shrieked and wheeled overhead. Ben carried Rhiannon across the dew-soaked grass to a clump of trees and then held her while she pulled her nightdress up and pissed onto the damp leaf mould.

* * *

The attractions of the Grundy Travelling Fair included a galloper, swing boats, a helter-skelter, a coconut shy, hoopla, and a shooting range. The machinery, equipment, tents, and booths were transported in eight enormous carts. These, combined with the seven caravans, comprised an impressive convoy when the Grundys were on the road.

Peggy was the fair’s fortune teller, a position inherited from her mother. She did not know exactly when Glenda Jones had taken up with the Grundys, but it must have been early in her life. She had no memories of anything other than the two of them being on the road with the clan.

When Glenda knew she was dying, she made Frank and Rose Grundy swear to treat her daughter as one of their own and look after her. And so they had. Rhiannon had no complaints on that score. She had never been beaten any more than the Grundy children, never been fed any less, or worked any harder.

Rhiannon often wondered how much of her future her mother had foreseen. Not much, she usually concluded. People thought psychics should be able to see the future as clearly as they see down a street on a sunny day. But the future isn’t like that. It isn’t fixed.

As she prepared for the first day’s work in Brighton, Rhiannon thought again about the silver fish and the blond boy in her dream. What did they mean, and how would she know when she reached the fork in the path?

Rose was right. Rhiannon hadn’t seen the last turning point coming. She was eight years old, playing hide-and-seek with two of the Grundy children. It was the day before the fair opened in Chepstow and the adults were occupied with setting up the machinery and the booths. She had crawled under a caravan to hide. One of the children had spotted her and cried out. Rhiannon, breathless with the excitement of being chased, tried to crawl out the other side.

Moments before, Frank Grundy had hitched up one of the horses to the caravan to move it. Rhiannon was almost out from under it when one of the back wheels went slowly over her legs. The pain was so intense and the shock so sudden that she couldn’t even cry out. But her mother sensed her distress and came running…

And now Ben pushed her wheelchair to the red and white stripped tent with the painted sign above its entry flap. ‘Rhiannon Jones, Fortune Teller’. The sign had been her mother’s. Ben had painted over the name ‘Glenda’ and replaced it with her own one frosty February morning.

He bent over her, as if to kiss her cheek, squeezed her hand instead, and then went off to help the others with the steam rides.

The interior of the tent was hung with thick black curtains to prevent any light from getting in through the canvas. In the centre was a table with three chairs around it. Rhiannon opened her carpet bag and took out a candlestick, a candle, a crystal ball, and a deck of tarot cards.

She put on the scarlet and gold turban that had belonged to her mother and was now hers. Another tool of the trade, splendid and exotic. It had been too big for her girlish head and she had taken it in. She cherished the turban and loved wearing it because she felt closer to her mother when she did.

Then she lit the candle and fixed it on the stick. It was almost ten o’clock and they would all work through until nine o’clock that evening, taking short breaks for food, drink, and the rest.

While she waited for her first client of the day, she thought about the silver fish in her dream-vision and was still thinking about it ten minutes later when the tent flap was moved aside and a female voice said, ‘Hullo?’

‘Come in,’ Rhiannon said.

A young woman ducked in under the canvas. As she straightened up, Rhiannon could see she was a little older than her, and taller, her thick brown hair arranged with sculptural finesse high on her head.

‘It must get hot in here,’ she said, looking around the tent.

The accent was Irish, and the tone was friendly.

‘It does, but I’d rather that than be cold. You can take off your hat and coat if you want.’

‘Yes, I will, if you don’t mind.’

‘And change the sign outside to “Busy” while you’re at it.’

As the young woman removed her coat, Rhiannon saw she was clad in a dress of black crêpe and wondered who she was mourning.

‘Please take a set and tell me what I can do for you,’ she said. The young woman had large brown eyes which met hers briefly before she looked down at the crystal ball.

‘I’d like my fortune told,’ she said hesitantly. ‘‘What is your name?’

‘Peggy Lock.’

‘And have you had your fortune told before, Peggy Lock?’

‘No.’

‘And do you have a question you want answered?’

‘Yes. I —’

‘Wait. Don’t tell me yet. Show me your money first.’

Peggy took a sixpence from her purse and put it down between them.

Rhiannon pocketed the coin and said, ‘Now put your hands on the table, palms up.’

Peggy did as she was told.

‘Now, take your gloves off,’ said Rhiannon. ‘I’m going to put the crystal ball in your hands. I want you to put one hand on top and one below. Then I want you to close your eyes and think of your question. I will tell you when to open them again.’

Rhiannon watched her closely as she held the ball and concentrated. She liked her face: it was open and honest. She wondered what question would bring a young woman like this early to the fair on a Saturday morning.

‘Good,’ Rhiannon said. ‘Now, open your eyes. Here, I’ll take the ball from you.’ She put it back on its stand. It was a stage prop, nothing more, but it gave the client confidence and helped to create a mood.

‘Now, give me your hands.’

Peggy hesitated, then held out her hands across the table. Rhiannon took them, turned them so the palms were facing up again, and held them from beneath.

Something stirred within her as she touched Peggy’s warm, dry skin.

‘Now ask me your question.’

Then she knew. This Peggy Lock has the gift. Undeveloped, perhaps even stunted, but she has it.

Peggy and took a breath and said, ‘I want to know if your psychic powers are real or if you’re just running a fairground attraction to take money from gullible people. Because if they are real, I have to tell you, you are in great danger.’