The Man Whose Dream Came True by Julian Symons Read Free Book Online Page B

changed in the two years since he had last seen her. The ash was long on the cigarette that stuck out of the corner of her mouth, and she sat at one side of a table in her private parlour with cards in front of her and a woman on the other side of the table. The woman was perhaps fifty, certainly younger than Widgey, and her fingers were crusted with jewels. She nervously twisted a gold bracelet on her left arm.
    ‘A black ace, a red ten, a black queen. Not the queen of spades, that’s something,’ Widgey was saying as he opened the door. She said hallo to Tony without surprise, holding up her face so that he could kiss her cheek. Ash dropped on the table and she brushed it away. ‘That explains part of it.’
    ‘What does it explain?’ The woman opposite panted like a Pekinese.
    ‘Ace of clubs, ten of diamonds, queen of clubs. Means an unexpected visitor. I thought it would be for you, but it’s for me. My nephew Tony. This is Mrs Harrington.’
    ‘But it’s my future you were reading.’
    ‘You just can’t tell, dear. Come for a visit? You can have your old room, thirteen.’
    ‘You mean to say you don’t mind?’ Bulbous Pekinese eyes rolled at Tony.
    ‘Course he doesn’t, he’s not superstitious any more than I am. He doesn’t believe the cards and I don’t really.’ Widgey re-shuffled expertly, stubbed out her cigarette, rolled another with paper and tobacco from an old metal case. ‘Just they seem to come true, that’s all.’
    ‘Why are you starting again?’
    ‘He disturbed the flow, and anyway when one thing’s happened you always want to shuffle again, gets confused otherwise. Let’s see now, two of diamonds, eight of spades, jack of hearts, not very exciting. See you later,’ she called to Tony.
    Room thirteen was an attic, from which across the roofs of houses you could glimpse the sea. As he looked round at the cracked wash basin, the rose-patterned paper which didn’t quite cover the whole wall because Widgey had bought a discontinued line and there had not been enough of it, at the painted chest of drawers scarred by cigarette burns and the disproportionately large mahogany tallboy which she had bought with him at a sale for thirty shillings, he felt a sensation of relief. He threw himself on the bed, which was placed so that you were likely to strike your head on the coved ceiling if you got up from it hurriedly, then after a few minutes began to unpack his things. The painted chest was still uncertainly balanced because one leg was shorter than the other three and the little piece of cork under it became displaced as soon as anything was put inside. And, yes, the top drawer still contained ‘The Bible For Commercial Travellers’, bound in red leather with the editorial injunction on the opening page: ‘Read this book and it will bring you comfort.’ He turned to the back flyleaf and saw that the old message was still there, written in a flowing commercial traveller’s hand:
    ‘If no comfort obtained try ringing Anna,’ followed by what was presumably Anna’s telephone number. He had come home.
    He had first visited the Seven Seas Hotel when he was five years old, brought down by his father and mother to see ‘the place where Belle’s set up to poison people’, as his father put it. That was during the war. There was barbed wire along the sea front, they had to bring ration cards, and his father complained that they did not get enough food to fill a gnat’s belly. Mrs Widgeon – her name was Arabella and she was his mother’s sister – was the wife of a heroic fighter pilot who had been wounded, discharged from the service, and was in the process of dying quietly. His father was of the opinion that Alec had opted for a quiet life and that there was not much wrong with him, and he did not really change this view even after Alec had proved his case by dying just after the war ended. For years they had taken their family holiday at the Seven Seas, but his father had never