Recovery and the Return of Ethan Hart by Stephen Benatar Page A

she’d wish, I suppose there’s not much else that he can do.
    â€œOh, pooh!” says Trixie. “At the seaside! It’ll be like August Bank Holiday! Like how it used to be. Course she’ll be open. Everywhere will.”
    â€œMadam Trix…!” says Walt, proudly, even proprietorially. And indeed she turns out to be right—if ‘everywhere’ doesn’t include places like the ironmongery in the High Street, over which Madam Sonia has her premises.
    â€œAnd what about us?” asks Matt. “Rosalind, would you like to have your fortune told?”
    â€œI don’t know. Do you think she might come up with a tall dark stranger and travels to a distant shore?”
    â€œBound to.”
    â€œWell, I don’t mind lashing out five bob for that. What I couldn’t stand is spending hard-earned cash and having to listen to the truth.”
    It’s providential that when we get there Madam Sonia doesn’t have a client. She suggests she see Trixie first, that Walt sit in the waiting room, and that Matt and I come back in an hour.
    So we again go searching for presents for the children and this time we’re lucky: we find wonderfully right Dinky Toy models of a red double-decker bus, a tram and a taxi. “And God forbid anyone should mention,” smiles Matt, “that on V-E Day there wasn’t so much as a single cab allowed out on the streets of London!” He attempts to pay for these three purchases himself—I don’t see why he should pay for even one—but eventually settles for our going halves. Then we saunter back through the town, which probably has never known a Wednesday quite like this. But from a distance we see that the pier is even more crowded. (Red, white and blue are still the colours of the day.) It’s not an especially appealing pier; in fact we both think that Southwold deserves better. Leaning against some railings for a while, we study the coastline, which is a lot more rewarding, despite the quantities of barbed wire.
    We arrive at the fortune-teller’s only a minute after Trixie and Walt have left. There’s a message to meet them at the tearooms.
    Madam Sonia looks about thirty. Apart from her shawl and earrings and allegedly Gypsy dress, the two most striking things are her voice and the flawlessness of her complexion. Her voice is loud yet melodious, each word so carefully enunciated you might think her a pupil of Professor Higgins.
    I go in first and—when she’s finished with me—sit waiting for Matt while abstractedly gazing at the sentimental picture of a pre-Raphaelite beauty bending over her image in a lake. It’s called ‘Fair Reflections’. I rather wish someone would come along and give her a hearty shove.
    But perhaps this has less to do with her reflections—no matter how complacent—than with the practically unbearable nature of my own.
    Later, en route to the tearooms, we compare notes.
    I remark as cheerfully as I can: “She isn’t bad, is she?”
    â€œWhy? What did she tell you?” Am I imagining it or is he as well—now that our two days of diversion are nearly at an end—experiencing a growing weight of depression?
    â€œWell, I have to admit, not enough about tall dark strangers or trips to foreign shores. The future got short shrift. But she was fairly good about the present and the past.”
    â€œSame here…but we already know about the present and the past.”
    â€œFor instance, she told me I was working on the land, which, if it was a guess, was reasonably inspired. There isn’t any straw behind my ears, is there? You can break it to me gently.”
    â€œNot behind yours,” he answers. “I don’t know about Trixie’s.”
    â€œWell, that’s a point, of course. But then she spoke about my home situation. Was there a stranger in the house? Was one of my parents dead? It struck me that she