Reading Madame Bovary Read Free

see the water rise up on all sides above the height of the fence.
    â€˜I’ll be back,’ I say to the beast. ‘I will return later.’
    I go inside and say to the others: ‘Am I imagining this or are there monstrous fish out there in that pool?’ They seem unmoved.
    I wake.
    Fate
    Diana is superstitious. She consults astrologers and clairvoyants. I find this surprising in someone whose IT skills are in advance of just about anyone I know (barring experts). Boolean logic isn’t everything, she says.
    Diana makes raids into the outer suburbs, looking for clues. Once, when the kids were interstate with my parents and Frank was at a conference in Adelaide, we spent an hysterical weekend together. On the Saturday afternoon we drove out west to see Diana’s latest discovery, a woman with second sight. Diana believes there are wise women in unlikely places and this one was a Mrs. Cluny who lived out in the sticks at Bankstown. Diana had rung and made an appointment for three o’clock and when we finally managed to locate the street we were surprised to find a small weatherboard cottage built in the ’ 30 s with a rickety fence and bare, scrubby garden. We walked to the back of the house, as instructed, where there was a shabby grey veranda and a white sulphur-crested cockatoo in an iron cage that looked at us and said nothing.
    Diana knocked on the door.
    No-one came.
    She knocked again, and after a minute the door opened a foot or so and the grey head of a woman in her early sixties appeared and said abruptly: ‘You’re early. I’ve got someone with me. Wait on the veranda.’ And the door was closed again.
    After ten minutes a middle-aged man, dressed like a businessman, opened the door, nodded to us and headed down the pathway towards the gate. Diana looked at me knowingly. ‘Probably came to ask about his shares,’ she said. With a wave of her hand Mrs. Cluny beckoned us in. She was a short, fat woman who seemed to float about in a cloud of flesh. In her movements there was a certain refinement, delicacy even, though she was blunt in her speech and drab in her dress. In her mouth was a cigarette that gave off a strong, acrid smell.
    We followed her into a kind of musty parlour at the front where she indicated a fraying couch opposite her own armchair. On the small wooden coffee table between us was a chipped saucer full of ash and cigarette butts, and next to that a packet of Woodbines.
    So this is a psychic, I thought. Where is the velvet turban with the crescent moon? The fringed shawl? The Turkish slippers?
    Mrs. Cluny asked for a personal object and Diana unbuckled her watch and handed it over. The woman closed her eyes, adjusted her wide bottom in the chair and began to rub the leather band of the watch between her thumb and forefinger, up and down, up and down, mesmerically, as if it were Aladdin’s lamp.
    â€˜If I see anything dark, do you want to know?’ she asked.
    â€˜Dark?’
    â€˜Yeah, dark. Like death.’ This was followed by a long drag on the cigarette.
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜Make up your mind.’
    â€˜Um … yes. Yes, okay. But I’ve come about something in particular.’ I looked at Diana and realised how nervous she was. This was serious. ‘Can I ask questions?’
    Mrs. Cluny nodded.
    â€˜I keep having this dream, a recurring dream about a baby.’ And she gave Mrs. Cluny a semi-coherent account of what seemed to me a cluster of mundane events made significant only by the appearance of a baby surrounded by a white light.
    For a long time Mrs. Cluny said nothing, just kept rubbing the watchband, up and down, up and down. Then she said, still with her eyes closed, still fingering the fine strap of leather: ‘You’re not dreaming about babies, you’re dreaming about your spirit self.’
    â€˜What’s that? You mean, like the soul?’
    â€˜Whatever you like to call