My aura was blue this morning, that means a good day ahead. I love the blue days, I can feel the cosmic energy forces surging through and I know I can do anything - washing, making the beds - anything. I’m a blue-aura person. I dread the pink days when you feel like going back to bed by eleven and it’s all downhill from there on. On my last pink day even Simba, my beloved Persian, deserted me. Where are you Simba? It’s a blue day today, a fish and cream day. Please come back.
Ever since I was a little girl I’ve received messages from beyond the veil. I can still remember the very first time. I woke up in the middle of the night and heard my first noises from the spirit world, although I didn’t recognise it at the time. There was a sort of rhythmic squeaking, like the sound you got when my brother swung backwards and forwards on the gate, only faster. Is there anybody there? I called out - the proper form of words just comes to you when you have the gift - and all of a sudden there was silence. After a moment, muffled voices as if coming from far, far away. I kept listening and every now and again the voices would come back and, after a while, the squeaking again. There was a kind of low, moaning noise and the sound of someone crying out in pain. I thought of our religion lessons at school, of tormented souls screaming in hell. I was frightened and called out at the top of my voice. More mysterious muffled voices, then the sound of a door opening.
A moment later my mother came in and I ran to her, sobbing. She seemed distracted and that made me cry even more. She glanced back out of my bedroom door, then pulled it shut and sat with me on the bed. There couldn’t have been voices, she said. Daddy was away at sea and we were all alone in the house. I must have been dreaming. But I knew that wasn’t true. Then I heard something that sounded just like the creak of a stair. Mummy said she couldn’t hear anything, but she went to check, just in case. Nobody there at all, she said, but she stood at my door for a while, and as she closed it I heard the sound of a second door closing at almost the same instant.
There were no more sounds from beyond that night. Mummy had explained to me that some lucky people could hear things that nobody else could. Not ghosts exactly, but sounds of kind and happy spirits who had loved this house and were still living here. It wouldn’t be a good idea to tell Daddy about my special abilities, she said. Men didn’t understand these things and he’d just tease me. I didn’t want that, so I kept the power to myself, a habit I found very useful in later life since there are a lot of people who like nothing more than to mock the gifted.
Today I really am going to get on with the washing. Even clairvoyants have to take care of the household chores. And I’ll find out where the funny smell in the kitchen is coming from. I expect it’s the drains.
One day I did tell Daddy about the spirits, hoping he would understand. That night I heard lots of very loud voices and screams, but they weren’t from the spirit world. Not long afterwards Daddy went away and didn’t come back any more. Then the nightly spirit voices became more frequent, the noises louder, as if the spirits no longer felt it necessary to keep themselves hidden from me. One day I asked Mummy about them again. She went to the drawer and took out a bottle of brownish liquid. Here are your spirit voices, she said. Put enough of this spirit into a man and he’ll make a lot more than voices.
She cackled, but I couldn’t see anything funny. I took some to school and persuaded one of the boys to drink it, to see if he would make spirit voices. He threw up and I was in big trouble when his parents told my mother about it.
Looking back on it, I’m fairly sure that Mummy heard some of the sounds too. Everybody is psychic to some extent, but often they just won’t admit it, even to themselves. Like the man who came to read my meter last week. I could see straight away he had mystical eyes, so I put him to the test. When he asked where the meter was, I pretended I didn’t know. He went straight to it - opened the cupboard under the stairs, and there it was. You must be psychic, I told him. He laughed and said all the houses in the street were built the same, so it was a pretty safe bet the meters would all be in the same place. I knew there was more to it than that, but when he saw I was serious he became uncomfortable and anxious to leave. People don’t like to be confronted with their own powers. It’s too much of a responsibility, it frightens them off. I’ve frightened off a lot of men in my time.
He, the meter man, asked me if I’d come in to clean up for an elderly person. I told him I lived here, and that my mother had died here. Smells like it, he said. How rude! I could see at once I’d been mistaken about his eyes. They weren’t a bit mystical.
Not long after the first spirit voices incident, I started to notice people’s auras. For a while, as my powers developed, people’s faces had become softer and less defined, and now their oulines became fuzzy and merged into a sort of halo. My mother’s aura was a brownish red most of the time, it matched the colour of her hair. I tried to see my own in the mirror, and after a while found the trick was to stand far enough back so that my face went soft and lost its detail. My aura was blue most of the time, but on bad days, when my Auntie met me from school and I had to stay the night with her, it was pink. So was her wallpaper, a very unhealthy sign. I liked blue wallpaper like we had at home. It’s funny that people very often choose wallpaper to match their auras, yet more evidence that psychic powers are much more common than most people will admit.
When I was ten I discovered something that has shaped my life ever since. The ordinary people know about us and they’ll do anything they can to take our powers away. At school I had an eye test and they gave me glasses to wear. They said I should have had them long ago. At first I liked them, I could see all kinds of detail that I had never been aware of before, and it was easy as pie to find your pencil if you dropped it on the floor. But I soon discovered that when I wore them I couldn’t see people’s auras any more. I hadn’t lost my powers, without the glasses I could see as well as ever, but as soon as they went back on, no more auras. Then I realised what was happening. The authorities knew about psychics, and they feared us. They were putting things in the glass to cut out auras. They thought they could take away our powers, hoping we’d like the new sharp vision so much we’d give up seeing what was really there. I wasn’t having any of it. I wouldn’t wear them any more. My mother was furious, but the other girls in my class understood. Never again did they jeer at me and call me four-eyes.
Somebody has just come to visit. I thought at first she was one of my ladies come for a reading, which I was quite pleased about because hardly anybody comes these days. But I could sense at once she wasn’t the type. She thrust some papers at me and said she was from the council and had to look around the house. I told her it wasn’t a council house, but she insisted. I expect she’s come to assess me for poll tax, or whatever it’s called these days. I can’t read the papers she gave me, but their aura is grey - the worst of all. It might not be such a blue day after all.
I didn’t like it at school and left as soon as I could. A lot of the girls got jobs in the tile factory, a few went to college to learn typing, and some got jobs on the till at Tesco. I tried for all of them myself, but at every interview they sensed my psychic powers and it frightened them. The college said I should come back when my eyesight was corrected, but I could already see all I ever wanted to.
Then, at a church fete, I met somebody who changed my life. There was a little tent and, when I got up close, I could make out the words ‘Madame Esmarelda, Clairvoyant’ written in felt-tip on a large piece of white cardboard. I couldn’t resist peeking in, and Madam Esmarelda, far from being annoyed at the intrusion, invited me to come in and sit down. My heart was pounding. In the dim light I could make out a circular table covered in a cloth with all kinds of mystical symbols on it. In the centre of the table was a glass ball on a stand. A crystal ball, Madam corrected me. She would look into it and tell me my future!
I could see madame was a gypsy by her headscarf and shawl. I wished I could wear an outfit like hers and tell people all their secrets. Cross my palm with silver, she said, holding out her hand. I didn’t understand at first, but she explained that her psychic powers only worked when her palm had felt the touch of silver coins. I sorted through the money I had, looking for silver, and after a while she reached out and selected a fifty pence piece from my hand. That will do, dear, she said. I was a little sad to have spoiled the ritual, I wanted to place coins right across her palm to bring out the full force of her powers, but they seemed quite strong enough anyway. She told me that one day soon I would meet a man with mystical eyes who would fall madly in love with me. There would be travel to distant lands. She saw wealth and happiness for me. She saw a Persian cat who would be my constant companion. I was enchanted.
I’ve often thought back on it since, although none of it has yet come true, but for the cat I bought as soon as I could to help the rest of it along. I know that to psychics the word ‘soon’ has a different meaning than for ordinary people. What’s thirty years when you have eternity in your compass? Of course, Simba isn’t the cat I bought at the time. He’s, let me see now, my fifth, and also my favourite. And I do miss him.
I can’t think what that council woman thinks she’s doing. She’s just gone down the road to the telephone. She says she’s found something nasty in the cupboard. Saw something nasty in the woodshed, I said, remembering a line from a book my mother used to read to me. What? she said. Oh yes, she said. Back soon, she said. I wish she’d go away and leave me alone.
Some weeks after the fete I saw Madam Esmarelda in the High Street hand in hand with a man, probably Mister Esmerelda. She was wearing ordinary clothes and didn’t seem to recognise me until I reminded her. I begged her to teach me the secret of her powers. She laughed and said you needed a few props, the right atmosphere, and you told people what they wanted to hear. I was shocked until I realised she, like me, had learned not to reveal her powers in front of the ordinary people. Mr. Esmereda was not one of us, and probably knew nothing about what went on in her tent. I gave her a secret nod and a smile to show I understood. As I walked away I thought I heard them laughing, but I must have been mistaken.
Not long afterwards I stumbled upon a crystal ball in the window of a junk shop. I was almost breathless with excitement, and burst in to find out how much it was. I begged the shopkeeper to hold it for me until I could save or borrow the five pounds. There’s no rush, the shopkeeper reassured me, it’s been there for years. That couldn’t possibly be true. Who could resist a ball for seeeing the future? Then I had a suspicion. I went outside where a shabbily dressed man was peering in to the window. Excuse me, Sir, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but can you see anything special in the window? He looked me up and down, spat at my feet and shuffled away. Then I knew I was right. Nobody else could see the crystal ball - it was there just for me! It was my destiny, and a few days later, that being the time it took to persude my mother to lend me the money, it was mine. Now all I had to do was learn to use it.
The council woman’s back, and by the sound of it she’s got other people with her. I can hear voices and footsteps downstairs. They’re calling for me, but I’m staying in here with the door locked. If they want me, they’ll have to break the door down. They are breaking the door down. Simba, please come back and save me. I’m frightened. I’m screaming. What else can I do?
The crystal ball never worked properly, although it did have an aura all of its own. In the end I just kept it on the table for show. When my mother became ill and could no longer move from her bed, I did the front room out to look like what I remembered of Madame Esmarelda’s tent. I hung canvas from the ceiling and nailed more to the walls. I took the door off and replaced it with a canvas flap. I tried covering the floor with turf, but it went mushy and stuck to my shoes, so in the end I settled for a green carpet. In the centre I placed my table and its cloth with mystical symbols done by Mexicans. I put my crystal ball on top and opened the doors to the public.
For a while I became quite notorious and was even written up in the local paper. They said I was eccentric, which I think is a posh word for psychic, but whatever it was it attracted lots of customers who all complemented me on the decor. But after a while people seemed to lose interest and I was left all alone, but for my faithful Simba.
Maybe this is turning out a blue day after all. I’ve been on a journey, so that’s one thing to cross off my Esmerelda list. Everybody here has mystical eyes and I had two proposals of marriage within an hour of arriving. I think I might be home at last!
The meter man put them on to me. They say I shut Simba in the kitchen cupboard and he starved to death. They say I was living in such squalor that it was a risk to public health. They say... well, it doesn’t matter what they say. None of it’s true, of course. They have to make things up for the ordinary folk who would be so envious if they ever found out there’s a special place for people like me. Like us. Like my new friend Mike, for instance, who has a supreme psychic gift. He sees people that even I find it hard to make out, and he talks to them all day long. Sometimes I think I can perceive their shape and try to join in the conversation, but he gets very jealous and stands between us with his back to me. I don’t mind. After medication he says he loves me, and that makes things all right. Some of my new friends are deep in trance, in constant contact with the other side. Some shuffle around, staring at their feet so their visions are not interrupted by everyday things. I love it here.
Today I saw one of the home’s psychics. They call them psychiatrists here, I don’t know why. He asked me how I was getting along, and I told him I was overjoyed to be here. I wished they’d found me years ago. The only thing bothering me, I wondered how Simba would find his way here. Your cat? said the psychic. They tell me he’s dead. Well they would, wouldn’t they? I said, giving him the secret smile to show I understood. I think you’ll be with us a long time, he told me. I was so pleased.
