Читать книгу Adults - Emma Jane Unsworth - Страница 12

We were at the Mind Body Spirit show at the Birmingham NEC. I stood behind the partition wall, watching her doing her thing on stage – plucking people from the audience and giving them messages from beyond. I was drinking a cup of lemonade. She was grandstanding. She was majestic.

She says she’ll see you for the dancing, pet, can you accept that?

She said you were there by her side the whole time, and your love let her know she could go. Can you accept that, my love? You can. Thank you. Bless you …

When she’d finished, the applause was deafening. The crowd demanded an encore. At one point she looked to the side and winked at me and I got a thrill so electrifying it made me judder. I blew bubbles into my lemonade. Lemonade spilled over the rim of my cup, onto the grey top of the temporary stage block. The stage manager told me off and sent someone for a cloth, but I didn’t care, I was too busy watching my mother, in mid-flow, bowing and smiling and saying thank you, soaking it all up. I wanted to capture that sight of her, preserve it forever, that scene. I remember thinking that sentence to myself: You are mine, all mine.

When she got off stage, we walked around the festival together. It was a goblin market. We stopped at a stall called ‘The Horned Goddess’ selling dream-catchers, angel cards and gemstones. It stank of joss sticks. My mother was wearing her full regalia. A child jumped away from her. ‘Mummy, that lady’s scaring me!’

My mother affected a look of horror. ‘I’m not a lady!’

We stopped by a small gypsy caravan. MADAME AURACLE: AURA READINGS AND MORE it said on the side.

‘Do you want your aura reading?’ my mother asked.

‘If it’s all right I’d rather have a jacket potato with coleslaw,’ I said.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘After this.’

In the caravan there was a photo studio of sorts set up in the lounge: a Polaroid camera on a tripod. A sectioned-off area under a curtain.

The madame was sitting on a tasselled stool. She was as wide as she was high, and dripping in turquoise. ‘I am Madame Auracle,’ she said.

I sat in the electric chair, awaiting my execution. The assistant was wearing a baggy olive-green T-shirt. She instructed me to place my hands on the metal plates either side of the chair. I obeyed her because she looked like Christina Ricci, and I would have done anything for Christina Ricci. She stood in front of me with the camera. ‘Smile!’ I obliged.

A few seconds later, the photo chugged out of the camera. I peered at the picture. I looked startled and stern, like a constipated headmistress in an Adidas T-shirt who had farted a rainbow.

‘Now for the reading.’ Madame Auracle took the photo in her hand and raised her eyebrows. ‘Lots of red … You are an enthusiastic and energetic individual, forever on the lookout for new adventures. You are quick to anger and can lose your temper over the smallest thing. You are generous with your time and energy when called upon for help. You are easily bored.’

‘She won’t even sit still to watch a film,’ my mother said.

Madame Auracle continued. ‘And so now we come to the other side of your personality – we have lots of yellow here. The yellow part of your aura represents the highly critical part of you. But those who have high standards, that exacting voice inside that is so harsh on the world and others, that same voice is even harsher when it turns on you, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ my mother said, ‘definitely. She has VERY high standards.’

I nodded.

‘And if you were easier on yourself, then you might find it easier to allow others to love you for who you are.’

‘Too true,’ my mother said.

Madame Auracle nodded sagely. ‘Your main fault is that you can be overly analytical. And this creates a fear that makes you unable to communicate openly and freely.’

I said, ‘Sounds like a lot of people I know, to be honest.’

Madame coughed. ‘That concludes the reading. Most auras stretch three feet around the physical body; however, if you’re a trauma survivor your aura stretches fifty feet around you – which means people around you on the bus will be sitting in it. Your mother will be sitting in it. We’ll all be sitting in it, right now. Your aura mess. I can clean it up for you for an extra £5.99.’

I shook my head.

‘You should have a quick clean,’ my mother said.

‘I’m not traumatised.’