Book: Redemption - Part XXIII - Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Expectations Part 2

July to August 1999

Thursday July 1^st proved to be my busiest day since the school holiday period began. Several messages awaited me on my arrival and the phone rang incessantly through the day. One caller was devastated to learn there was no one but me. She was in dreadful pain and needed an appointment that very day. I told her I would ring Roberta to see if she could come in at the end of her hospital shift, but before I could do so, I had to take two more calls. Both callers decided to wait until Annette was back. Seconds after I spoke to Roberta the woman rang back to tell me not to bother for she managed to get an appointment elsewhere. I told her that was a pity because Roberta was willing to see her at 12.15pm. She seized it.

Friday was the polar opposite so I busied myself vacuuming floors and cleaning windows. Kristen rang to see if I was going to Jason’s shop in the morning. I told her wasn’t. I had better things to do on a Saturday than stand in a cold windy street for hours on end. I could tell she wanted to go because she reminded me what other people in the queue had said. The readings did happen. Sometimes, even Jason did them. Yes, I thought, that’s why people came, and from all over the city. There was always the chance, remote though it be, that Jason would do their reading one day. I couldn’t blame them, but his signature phrases: If you’re meant to be here, you will be … And … Energy flows where attention goes … were lost on me at that point.

In the morning, I woke to the feeling I should go so I got up to consult my cards. Since I started reading the Tarot, no card had ever flown out of the deck like the Death card did that morning. They had flipped over. They had fallen down. But they had never leapt out as if by flung by an unseen hand. But then, nothing about that day was ordinary. It was Ann Ann who had told me Death represented a negative answer to a Yes or No question, but she stressed the question must be unambiguously framed. Mine was. It was only due to my own bias and ignorance that I didn’t consider the card’s other interpretations. Besides, I had an email booking at Chermside library at 12pm and I wanted to keep it. I did. Just.

On Sunday, the awful reality of what had transpired started to sink in. Everything about that day was weird. A mere fifteen minutes after we arrived, to find the queue so long it snaked down the street and up the other side, we were amazed to see it start moving, and quickly. By the time it was half as long another fifty or so people had joined it. If Jason hadn’t come out at that moment carrying that token chair we would not have been there to see what happened next. As we got closer to our goal we understood why. The shop was filled to capacity with people, tables and chairs. At each table, people leaned toward their reader, each straining to hear what the other was saying. No one cared about privacy. Jason must have called in every reader he knew. When it was my turn, my heart leapt with joy to see Jason signalling me to his table. Minutes later I knew that was no accident. You can run, but you can’t hide.

“When are you going to start doing this work?” I told him what I had told myself countless time before. “I’m not ready”.

 “You’ve been ready for over a year.” His words cut through me like cold steel. “You can’t keep hiding behind your fears” I told him I wasn’t. I still had so much to learn. Every new Tarot book I read convinced me of that.

“This is what you have come here to do.” He continued. “You owe it to yourself.” He then stood up, and with a wave of his hand to indicate those in the room, and those still waiting outside, he said: “You can help me with all this?”

It was surreal. Steve tried his best to convince me I shouldn’t give it another thought, primarily because he didn’t like or trust Jason. I saw Jason in a different light. If he thought I was ready, then I must be ready. Yet, by day’s end I still could not make a decision. That was how I knew Jason was right. I was hiding behind my fears. But why? What was I so afraid of?

On Tuesday, I arrived at work at my usual time to see Roberta had a full day ahead of her, but one cancelled and then another. Annette told me to ring her and ask her to come in later. By the time she did arrive, she was down to one patient so we spent the afternoon talking. “Do it!” Roberta said on learning what happened. “What have you got to lose?” Another day passed before I found the courage to ring Jason’s number, but all I got for my trouble was a recorded message. The temptation to hang up was overwhelming, but I did manage to leave a clearly-worded message along with my contact details.

The first thing Val said when she returned my call was to ask when I wanted to make an appointment and if I was aware there was a three month wait. On hearing my explanation she paused before saying: “I don’t know anything about that. He didn’t tell me…..Umm. I don’t…..Very well. I will have to talk with him about it. What was your name again?” How she kept her job was beyond me.

That evening, Tamara came home to tell me about a vacancy at the Aspley branch of the State Development Department she felt would suit me. It seemed like a lifetime ago she went there for the interview that changed the course of her life. She helped me with the selection criteria questions and lodged the application for me. Two weeks later, a woman called asking if I could come in for an interview. It went well, and I was encouraged by the fact they were willing to work with Annette. My previous government experience was apparently the reason, even if it was thirty years ago. By late July, I was still waiting to hear something. I was told at the interview it could take awhile because they wouldn’t be making the decision; they could only make a recommendation. It was a tense time for everyone concerned. Annette was initially upset, but when she learned they would work around her, she gave me her blessing. Vicky was the problem. One afternoon she pressed me about covering her for two days in August. I told her I couldn’t commit to anything until I knew about the job. She acted like she didn’t hear me. She was right in my face, like a schoolyard bully. Roberta was horrified and when Vicky walked away she said: “If you get offered a job, any job, take it!”

I was so tired on Friday July 30^th I went to bed early only to be woken hours later by a strange female voice. She was talking to Steve and Che. I looked at the time and wondered what was going on. The voice belonged to a girl named Jenny. She proudly told me Che had come to the defence of her friends and she wanted to thank him and make sure he was alright. Alright? Why? Then I saw his face. He was at the railway station when he came across some men harassing the girls so he intervened. His left eye was shockingly swollen and his eye completely closed. The right eye wasn’t much better. He had a split lip, a loose and broken tooth and a damaged tongue he had involuntarily bitten when he was king hit. On top of that, chunks of his beautiful long hair were missing. Jenny glowed as she went on about him being a hero, but in the next breath she admonished him for not going to her party. “If you had, this wouldn’t have happened.” Just as well I managed to get a few hours sleep beforehand because I got none afterwards.

As the days passed Che steadily improved and could finally open his eye. It must have been very painful, but he cared more about his mobile phone getting broken. But that was Che, incomprehensible. Around this time Kristen left the café she was working at because it was soul destroying. Just how much came to light when she was summoned for jury duty. On several occasions she was threatened with the sack, despite that being illegal. It was like a game of Russian roulette to the woman who owned the business. Will this be the day I fire you? It took courage, but she took the ‘gun’ out her hand by resigning. It was sad because she was my hairdresser’s sister. Julia was such a beautiful, generous soul it was hard to imagine she could have a sister like that.

On Saturday August 7^th, I went to see Kristen after emailing Liz. I gave her my wedding ring to see what she could pick up from it after she told me she had been doing psychometry. The first thing she commented on was my energy. She said it was very powerful and the ring got extremely hot in her hands. She rolled it around and around for some time before saying my feet and hands get cold and I have belly trouble. No surprises there. But when she said she saw Che with a child, I was surprised. I had been told that before but I never mentioned it to her. I couldn’t picture Che’s girlfriend pregnant, not with her job as a stripper and nude model! In spite of that, I quite liked Dzintra and often wondered what was beneath the metal, tattoos and gothic black.

Carolyn said she had had a sad life. Of that I was certain. Tamara saw her as a bad influence on Che, especially where drugs were concerned. I knew he was no innocent in that department. At least he showed no interest in getting a motorbike. The man who foretold Che’s bashing thirteen months before it happened told me he must have four wheels, not two. I fondly remember the day Dzintra came to see him and he wasn’t home. Instead of leaving she asked me to play “that song”. She didn’t need to say more. I knew it was Clannad’s I Will Find You. If it was playing whenever she walked to or from Che’s room she’d pause to listen. It didn’t seem like her kind of music, but I guess the hauntingly beautiful voice of Marie Brennan took her to a place long ago and far away.

Just after 5pm, Tamara came home from wherever she’d been and flashed two framed pictures in front of me. I was getting tea ready at the time “They’re nice”, I said. ‘Where did you get them?” She had bought them at a psychic fair she went to, a psychic fair she hadn’t bothered to tell me about. She didn’t want me “cramping her style”. Before I could say another word she handed me a pamphlet, saying it was on again the next day. For some reason I knew I just had to go, but I also knew I couldn’t afford to. Steve surprised me by suggesting I use my tax refund. After all, he said, it was my money. And so it was that on Sunday August 8^th I boarded a train for the city. I might have known Steve for three decades but I would never figure him out. The man was a walking, talking, living, breathing paradox.

At previous psychic fairs I always chose the wrong reader because I thought about it too much when reading up about them. On the train going in, I asked my guides for assistance in selecting the right reader. The fair was held at the city hall so when I walked through the Ann Street entrance I joined a woman standing at the lift. No lift came so she said we’d have to take the stairs. She seemed familiar with the place so I asked her if she worked there. When she said she did I asked her in what capacity. I didn’t know why. Making conversation, I thought. I expected her to tell me she was a secretary or something, but when she said she was one of the readers I nearly fell over. I didn’t need to be hit around the head anymore so I booked my reading with her without even glancing at the board.

Her name was Pani and she came from the Gold Coast. She read my palms, gave me a reading with some Egyptian cards, and asked me to choose a stone tablet from a bag before having me read what it meant from a book. Not knowing any different, I assumed they were Runes. I would soon come to learn they weren’t because Runes don’t have a symbol shaped like a pyramid. The message was basically about following my soul’s direction. I am where I need to be when I need to be there to meet those I need to meet. Nothing could be truer. Pani and her stone tablets left an indelible impression on me.

For the next few hours I walked around, exploring the various stalls and buying things I was drawn to, whether I needed them or not. When I had seen all there was to see I looked at my watch only to discover I had missed a train. Oh, well, I thought. Better to spend the time there than at Central Station. So I did another round of the stalls only to stop to watch an artist at work. The strange thing is, I couldn’t recall seeing him earlier. At that moment the man looked at me and said: “You can do this.” I looked around. “Yes. You. There’s no one else there. Come over here.” His name was Peter Harvoe. He called his drawings Channelled Visions.

He was doing an ethereal seascape in yellows. It was so beautiful, how could I not have seen him? I was drawn to all forms of art, especially the kind he was doing. He took my hand and held it for what seemed like a very long time before saying I had a powerful energy. He then proceeded to ask me questions I had no answer for. I tried to put him off and turned to leave, but he begged me to stay a while longer. He gave me a sheet of A4 pastel paper and some pastels. It was all so very strange. He asked me to draw something there and then. I tried to get out of it but he wouldn’t have it. I was shaking so much I could barely hold a pastel, let alone draw with one. He urged me to relax, and take some deep breaths, and then close my eyes. “Run the pastel over the paper for a few seconds. When you open your eyes, look at the squiggles and draw the first thing you see in them. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

What I drew was a woman wearing a strange-looking headdress. From my perspective, it was terrible art, but he clearly saw something more because he took my hand and gently dragged me thirty metres or so to another artist’s stall where he proceeded to rummage through boxes under her table. She just looked at him. She didn’t say a word or get upset in any way. A few minutes later, with great fanfare, he presented a drawing of a strong-featured woman in a headdress remarkably similar to the one I had drawn, only much better.

 

Rough first sketch

By then I was not only confused, I was frightened. On the way back to his stall I asked him how he knew it was there, and more importantly, how and why it happened. “Because I saw it yesterday”, he said. That wasn’t what I wanted to know and he knew it so he added: “Because you can do this work. You took the information from my aura. Now, I want you to do another one. But first, go to the ladies room, over there. Take some deep breaths. Wash your hands, and clear your energy field.”

I was too shaken to do much of anything else so I did as I was told. When I came back several people were standing around his stall. His earlier antics saw to that. One lady even walked up to me and starting putting her fingers all over my face saying: “Yes. Unexpressed creativity. Lots of unexpressed creativity.” She said she was a clairvoyant and gave me her name, but I can’t remember it now. Whoever she was, she created such a spectacle just about everyone left in the place came over to see what was going on.

When Peter gave me a new piece of paper I just froze. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me. I don’t think I have ever felt so scared or out of my depth. Finally, somehow, someway, I was able to move enough to run the pastel over the paper. But when I opened my eyes all I saw was scribble.

The seconds ticked by ever so slowly. I could feel the eyes of everyone boring into me. I had to do something. I couldn’t just stand there looking like an idiot. In that moment, I saw a dog’s head in profile emerge from the jumble of lines so I went with that. I honestly don’t know when it changed to a sphinx, but it did. I then found myself drawing a pyramid with a red sphere within a vortex in the far left corner of its base, and then a diagonal line through it from right to left. Finally, a giant wave, that seemed to come from the feet of the sphinx, hovered menacingly over the pyramid. It was a jumble of rough images on blue paper but, ecstatic beyond belief, he started rummaging through his own boxes. One by one, he pulled out a drawing of the sphinx and the pyramid, a drawing of the pyramid and the wave, a drawing of the pyramid with a red sphere at its base, and a drawing of the pyramid with a diagonal line in it from right to left. When finished, he said with great passion: “Now, tell me you can’t do this work!”

Rough second sketch

I had no answer, but even if I did I was too shocked and scared to say anything. He allowed me a few minutes to come to terms with what just happened and then he asked me who I was. I told him my name. “No”, he said. “Who are you?” I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. He kept repeating the question over and over again until I started to cry. Ever so gently, he then took my hand in his and said: “I have them, but all are in separate drawings. What you drew…..you have them all together…. You must have more knowledge than me. Who are you? You must remember who you are.”

How could I remember? I had no way of knowing that any more than I could answer the questions he asked me earlier. “This red sphere,” he said, “What do you think this is?” I said I didn’t know. “It’s the great crystal of Atlantis. You were in the temples, as was I, but you were a High Priestess, maybe the highest of the high. I was just a lowly priest, a servant. I have knowledge. It’s imprinted on my soul memory, as it is with you, but not all the knowledge.”

I couldn’t explain why, but I found myself telling him about the Eye of Horus and how I came to learn its connection to my lifelong doodle. I also told him my feelings about the man who led me to this truth and how I knew it was the truth, despite the fact that he was manipulator of minds. “Because it’s in your soul’s memory,” he explained so matter-of-factly. “Some things we know are truths, despite logic telling us otherwise.”

Before I left that day, three trains after the one I missed, I had given him my phone number and my promise that I would have a go at doing some “Spiritual” or “Psychic” art. “They’re not the same, you know.” 

I did try. But I had grown up with pencil and charcoal, watercolours, acrylics and oils. I found pastels such a difficult medium to work with so I made the only decision I could. I looked for, and found, a pastel art class. When he rang me I told him I had started by enrolling in a pastel class. He fell silent and I never heard from him again. I didn’t stay in the class long. The teacher was so full of himself it was embarrassing.

I had so much to tell Roberta the following Tuesday I was nearly bursting, but she was too busy so it had to wait. On Wednesday morning, I woke from a dream I knew was a message from my mother. On a sheet of paper, broken into categories, I saw references to recent events in my life, starting with the psychic fair in the first category. Underneath the heading “Psychic Expo” I saw the numbers eight and thirty-five. Sunday was August 8^th and the cost of my reading with Pani was $35.00. On waking, I realised three and five added together made eight, too. In the second category, sub-titled “Soul Cleansing” I tried to read what was written but I couldn’t. All the words ran together. In the dream, I asked Mum to show me the message again because I was getting new glasses. I actually did have an appointment scheduled for August 16^th.  Was it a warning?

On Thursday morning, I woke from another odd dream. I was at a Grange newsagency waiting to be served. Just as it was my turn, a woman rushed in demanding attention. One of the three women behind the counter became distracted and got upset with her co-workers. When she turned to serve me I forgot why I was there. A man behind me asked for a Powerball Quick Pick so I asked for one too. As I was leaving a staff member gave me a bag of “goodies” to thank me for being so patient. I was walking out of the newsagency when I heard Steve call my name. I then realised I was supposed to be at work and had forgotten to lock the door. I panicked and ran back to work hoping the money was still there. When I did go to work that day, after stopping to buy a Powerball Quick Pick - just in case, I learned there had been a break in during the night. Whoever it was knew exactly where Annette hid the money. I couldn’t help but wonder if the police found that a mite interesting, too.

At my eye test I was told my eyesight had actually improved in the previous two years, but because my lenses were no longer correct, they were hurting my eyes. Could it be true? I had worn glasses since I was seven years old and my eyes had never improved before. Was my mother trying to warn me this was not true, or was she telling me it was? When I saw Roberta again she said she was heading down to the snowfields at the end of the month with a new beau she met through her rowing club. She was happy. It was nice to see. On Wednesday evening, Tamara started a six-week palmistry course at Soul Living, a Natural Therapy Centre at nearby Virginia. I found palmistry fascinating, but because of something that happened long ago, I was wary of it. Then I saw Pani. I was about twelve when my father told me he had his palms read at a fair of some sort. He was told he would live a long life because of the length of his life line. He didn’t make his fifty-third birthday. Pani told me the length of a person’s lifeline has nothing to do with how long they will live. She said mine indicated my life will become less cluttered as I get older, less restrictive, and that these restrictions are often self-imposed.

I got an early start on Thursday August 19^th because I had to take Steve to hospital before going to work. He was having an operation, something to do with his parotid gland. His surgery was scheduled for 8am, but when I rang at lunchtime I was told he was still in surgery. He hadn’t gone in until noon. When I rang back at 4.30pm, he was sleeping. I was told I could see him anytime after 5.30pm. I found him awake, but groggy. There had been some excitement during the procedure, a nurse told me. His blood pressure plummeted and his pulse became erratic. But all was well now, she assured me. During my reading with Pani I asked about this. She said his recovery would take longer than anticipated. She was right. He was discharged on Sunday and told not to work for five weeks. For Steve, that was an eternity. He was a terrible patient.

On Monday, Annette told me Vicky would be away until the following Friday and asked if I could work? Did I have a choice? Not really. That much I knew. But we did need the money. I had heard nothing about the State Development job so I assumed I had missed out, not that that was a surprise. It would have been a surprise if I had got it. The week brought mixed blessings for Annette. I couldn’t help but feel for her. Still, she did make some strange decisions, especially with the amount of time she had off because of her daughter’s sporting accomplishments. I accepted the girl had a right to participate in state trials, but if you depend on your business staying afloat you make certain sacrifices.