It was a quarter to twelve when Melanie walked out into the sunlit length of Brooke Street. A quarter of an hour to get to Bayswater. Ample, surely she thought, as she paused in the doorway of a taxi, searching in her bag for the sheet of paper across which had been scrawled in purple lipstick “Armantine, 56d, Severn Street.” She had been given the address a week back at a dance. “Darling, you must go to her—the perfect fortune teller,” she had been told. “She’s an absolute marvel. She told me. . . but I can’t tell you that. It would be telling you too much. But it was simply uncanny: the things she knew about my past. And most of what she told me about the future’s come true. You simply must go there.”
So the address had been scrawled on the back of an envelope in lipstick. And the next morning she had rung up, giving her friend’s name as a reference, to be told that Madame Armantine could not possibly see her for a week. She had pleaded, she had cajoled, she had threatened. But the voice had remained suavely unaccommodating. It was useless to argue. Madame Armantine, the voice maintained, was extremely busy; it was impossible to arrange anything for a week. So an appointment had been made, and here she was, eight days later, being rushed through London, a little thrilled, a little nervous.
It was the first time she had ever been to a fortune teller. The prelude to it was disappointing. She had expected that it would be more dramatic: more melodramatic. She had pictured fortune-telling in terms of crystals and darkened rooms and mirrors. She had not expected to arrive at an ordinary block of flats; to be transported by an ordinary lift to an ordinary fourth floor; to have an ordinary door opened for her by an ordinary servant: to be shown into a large clean bare-walled sparsely furnished room that gave the impression of never having been lived in and would have looked like a dentist’s waiting-room had there been copies of the Sketch and Bystander on the central table. And the slim dark-skinned woman who rose to greet her was conventionally clothed in a fawn-coloured coat and skirt.
It was not until Madame Armantine began to speak that Melanie became conscious of drama. Madame Armantine spoke in a quick precise voice, sitting forward on the extreme edge of an arm-chair, her back to the light, drawing with the third finger of her right hand straight lines along the blue upholstery.
“You were born in October 1911, but you are an old soul,” she said. “You are an old soul, seeing new things. You want excitement, you want movement; you want new things, new faces. You are so anxious for these new things, that you are selfish. Excuse me. You will grow out of that selfishness. You are generous. You hurt people, but you do not mean to hurt them.”
That’s true, thought Melanie. I am selfish, I suppose. Life’s so full of so many things, I don’t want to miss any of them. And when people seem to be standing in my way. . . but I don’t mean to hurt them. When they are hurt it’s usually their own fault. How could one help hurting people like the lad? They hurt themselves. She didn’t ask them to fall in love with her. I’m not a flirt, she thought. I like them, I like going about with them. Why can’t they be content with that? Why must they spoil things? This woman understands that. She’s marvellous. I am glad I came.
“You must be careful, my child,” the voice continued. “You are experimenting. You don’t know what you want, you are asking life to teach you. But that is dangerous. You must be on your guard. You might make mistakes that cannot be remedied.”
The voice for all that it was precise and quick, had a numbing, hypnotic quality. It was lovely sitting there, listening. She was marvellous, this woman; she understood you, was kind to you. There was nothing you could not say to her, nothing you could not tell her.
“You are going to have difficulties, my child,” the voice was saying, “with one of your relations, a parent, no not a parent, with a cousin, an aunt, a sister. With a sister, yes, an elder sister. And you must be patient because there are things in your sister’s life which you do not know about that are making her behave like that.”
Melanie had started at the word sister; Julia; her outburst last night and her anxiety that morning. How incredible that this woman should have known that; that she should even have known she had a sister. If only she would tell her more like that, more of what was to happen to her: when she would marry: when she would fall in love: whether she had already met the person she was to fall in love with. There was so much she would like to know: about that man Druce Mander whom she had seen last in the Vienna. What was he going to mean to her, was he going to mean anything? She wished she could ask the woman. But that would be scarcely fair. Anyone could tell fortunes if you gave them the facts to guess from. Those things had to be ferreted out for themselves. That was the marvellous thing about this woman, she did ferret them out.
“There are people in love with you; several people in love with you. There will be more.
Quickly the flow of words continued, pausing only after the occasional “Excuse me,” with which Madame Armantine would follow a piece of criticism. In a kind of doze Melanie listened. She scarcely heard what was being said to her.
When she came out again into the sunlight she shook herself. It had been marvellous. It had been worth much more than the guinea she had paid for it. She would go again. Certainly she would go again; never had she felt herself so understood before. All that had been said to her had been so true. And there was so much of it that she had forgotten. So little, when it came to that, that she could remember. What was it that she had said, that dark-skinned, quick-voiced woman? Something about hurting people and about not meaning to. Something about Julia: a quarrel with her: and having to be patient with her, dear silly Julia, because there were things in Julia’s life that she knew nothing of; though what could there be to worry Julia she did not see: Julia who had her own flat and could do what she liked, when she liked. And what else was it she had said? About her not knowing what she wanted. Melanie laughed at that. Not know what she wanted. Why, surely that was the one thing she did know. It was life she wanted—life. And as for her future, wouldn’t it just be a turning to where life was keenest.
Lightheartedly she waved her hand towards a taxi. It was nearly lunch time. She was feeling hungry.
“Albemarle Street—the Six Hundred Club,” she said.