Palming It Off...

Radio Record, 19 August 1938, Page 11

Palming It Off...

Mother Meddles with the Mysteries of Psychic Science

bY

ANNE

HOPE

Y mother has been for years a firm believer in card-reading, palmistry, pschiatry, clairvoyance, telepathy, television, technicolour and everything else she cannot understand. Her faith dated from the afternoon tea party, where a tea-cup-reading friend prophesied for her "disappointment, very close, connected with something yellow." Mother went home to find her bed of yellow tulips specially imported from Holland were perversely budding into scarlet. From that moment, psychically speaking, she never looked back! She often quotes, as further evidence of unseen powers, the Case of the Astrological Handbook. It appears she had been vainly searching drapery shops for weeks in order to find matching material for a blouse for her new blue skirt. Then, one day, long after she had given up iv disgust, she was making a dozen pounds of chutney in the kitchen and idly going through the eook’s store of light literature at the back of the cutlery drawer. There she came upon the Handbook, and, naturally, turned up her own birthday to see what the stars had to say about her. TO her delight, the stars had been more than obliging and had mapped out her whole year’s work for her, explaining clearly at what dates to-buy and sell, and plant and transplant, and sew and take a holiday. Moreover, it so happened that this very day was specially j; =

mentioned as "propitious for shopping!" My mother wasted no time. She turned the gas low uuder the chutney, pulled on a hat and hurried down the street. In

-her own words: "It was . remarkable. In the very first shop I came to I saw the exact stuff I had been wanting! So there must be something in it!" . When I pointed out the pleasure of finding a yard or so of material for a blouse was hardly sufficient compengation for the loss of twelve pounds of chutney-which had burnt to solid charcoal in her absence-my mother waved me airily aside. "It was my own fault," she confessed. "The Handbook distinctly says for that day, ‘any creative work unlikely to be successful.’ " And from that day forward, the hopeful woman has been guided by the Handbook in her housekeeping. Fortunately, she has an incorrigible habit of losing things which often robs her of it for days on,end, and leaves her to her own initiative. NEVERTHELESS, I will say it for mother that she is not in the least bigoted in her psychical inquiries. She never cares: what star she hitches, so long as it is mystic. When. she visited me last week, and forgot her Handpook, she soon consoled herself for the bereavement . by

making an appointment with a clairvoyant card-and-palm-reader in a suitably murky street. IT had to take her to the house. She was dressed weirdly in her oldest clothes ("you don’t want to make it too easy for them"), but spent the walk in clearing her mind ("it’s no use if you are not in sympathy with ‘ them’). . ‘Wait outside, Anne. Don’t let them see you," she hissed excitedly, and I peeped from a hedge to see her taken into a dark and grimy house by an old, bent man with a beard.

ACCORDING to mother, the fortune-teller was wonderful. She told mother everything, from "all the illness and doubts she had suffered: in youth to the colour of: her seven children’s eves. "Wxact~

ly" exclaimed mother jubilantly. ."She even knew aboui Joe’s squint." . "Did she say he wore spectacles?" I asked. "As g matter of fact, she thought Mary had the squint," replied mother casually. "But don’t you think it's wonderful how they see it, Anne?. She couldn’t possibly have known who I was!" 2 I brought out my usual‘complaint that ‘mother at the fortune-teller’s is a mass of leading answers. "Oh no," she said eagerly, coming over all cunning, "T was careful not to give away a thing. She tried to find -out if I was 2 widow, but I gould see she was digging for something, so I just said ‘N-no,’ reluctantly like that, without any elaboration at all. She said then she could see a separation, she thought, and it might be divorce possibly." * "What did you do?’ . "Naturally, I was a little annoyed," admitted mother. "and I told her it was absurd." "Was she knocked back?" "Not a bit. She had a closer look at my hand then, (Continued on page 67.),

} N the fourth of. a series, Anne Hope describes the spiritual nature of her ancestry and some meanderings into posterity . . «

Palming It Off

(Continued from page 11.) and she found it was not a. separtion by -divorce but by death. I really do feel nervous about your father, Anne. He has been having those coughs lately. The fortune-teller says that is where the danger lies, but it could be averted by a protective garment. She couldn’t see clearly what sort of garment. She thought it was something to do with the upper part of the body. A muffler, I’m certain, so I’m going to knit cne at once." ND mother was as good as her word. She bought a pinkish wool with green flecks and knitted an enormous scarf. Father, of course, for all her nagging, flatly refused to wear it. THD climax came one day when father was building a hide-out for the younger children halfway up a gum tree at the back of the house. He was making it from a corrugated iron tank he had bought impetuously at an auction sale, and several lengths of railway line he had at some time purloined from the Government. Father has a genius for putting ancient and unpromising material to the most incredible uses-generally in the face of terrific family disapproval. ‘On this occasion he had attempted a little more than even he could manage. There was a, high wind biowing and it was really as much as he could do to hold the corrugated iron still, let alone nail it. Bach time he brought down the hammer, the iron would flap upwards with a hollow clang and he would smite at his thumb or his knee or his elbow. He kept shouting: "Get one of those kids to come up and hold this -- tin!" , Young Michael, too young to climb, was the only one who had stayed within earshot. ‘"They’re out, Favver!" he piped up, again and again, but Father never heard him, on account of. the iron, and continued to bellow. In the éud Michael fetched: Mather, who ren ouf with the pink searf call- . feos ' he tet Charlie! you shouldn’* }oovp in sbet wind with your throat open. Come down and get your scarf!" _

"Get those -- kids,’ shouted father. When he at last understood about the scarf, his face, which was already purple with fury and perspiration, went darker _ still. His curses ‘brought three more of the family and Tim the terrier to the scene. "THEY all tilted their heads at the gum-tree and entered into the argument. "Come up here you -- kids and hold this tin!’ bellowed father. "Why don’t you wait till the wind dies?" pealed Janet,

Richard, for whom it was all being built, yelled: "We don’t want a treehouse, anyway." "Come down, Charlie," cried mother. "Get your father down, Janet! Here’s your scarf, Charlie!" A gust of. wind caught father, and he swayed so alarmingly in the gum that Michael took fright and burst out crying. Tim sat on his haunches and howled. Above the new din, Marjorie screamed at mother: "How can he wear a scarf when he’s working?" "You don’t understand how susceptible your father is,’? shouted mother. "Do come down, Charlie?" "Favver! Favyver!’? sobbed Michael, and Richard yelled again: "I . don’t want the ruddy tree-house." In the midst of it all, father’s great voice came booming on the wind: "____." he said, "---! You can do it yourself! --- --." And he started to climb down the tree. J UST as he reached the trunk there Was a rending crash. The corrugated iron he had been holding flapped for the last time, rose bodily in the air and sailed away over the house to a destination unknown, "Gracious!" said mother, "what a wind !" Then she gave .a_ tortured cry, "Tim!!? For Tim-and Michael were playfully unravelling father’s new pink scarf! . Richard made a grab and caught the last of it. He said ruefully, "That’s a shame! I’m terribly sorry, mum." UT it wag as if mother’s face were transfigured by 4 strange light. "So that’s what the fortune-teller meant," she breathed reverently. "Your father would have been killed with the iron if he hadn’t come down to get his scarf!" ov ra