The Fortune Tellers

by Maggie Mason

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

THE BRAND-NEW WARTIME SAGA SERIES BY MAGGIE MASON, MUCH-LOVED AUTHOR OF THE HALFPENNY GIRLS

Troubles lie ahead - will friendship see them through?

BLACKPOOL, 1918.
Martha is seventeen and alone in the world. Of Irish descent, her flashing green eyes see into your soul. Foretelling the future is a gift passed down by her late grandmother and is how she earns her living on Blackpool Promenade. Though she spends hours in a little tent, waiting and hoping for a customer.

Trisha is Martha's neighbour and quickly becomes her dearest friend, but she is pregnant and married to a brutal man. And when tragedy strikes, she finds herself alone, her future uncertain.

Together, on one of the poorest streets in Blackpool, the girls face poverty, as is their lot, but they're determined to help each other any way they can, and they never stop dreaming of a brighter future.

Will a chance encounter on the promenade change their fortunes?

The first in a brand-new heart-warming family saga series from Maggie Mason. Perfect for fans of Val Wood, Kitty Neale and Rosie Goodwin. And don't miss the next book - The Fortune Tellers' Secret.

Readers LOVE Maggie Mason's Blackpool sagas:

'5 stars - I wish I could give it more. Wonderful read.'

'Another must read book'

'What a brilliant book. I couldn't put it down!'

'I was hooked from the first page . . . this author is a must read'

'A totally absorbing read'

Release date: August 31, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 80000

Sample

‘Whist, woman, a man can’t hear himself think!’

Martha cringed. She hated to hear her pappy angry and wished her granny would stop nagging him. She’d seen Mammy tense as she stood at the sink drying the dinner pots, her back to them as they sat around the kitchen table.

This room, their living-kitchen, in a small farm cottage outside Dublin, was a place Martha loved. It was bright and welcoming with its constantly roaring fire flickering behind the thick iron and glass door of the stove – the beating heart of their home, kept so by her pappy’s long treks to Kilbarrack to find driftwood, and on to the bogs to bring home peat to make briquettes.

The fire not only served to keep them warm but heated the hotplate for cooking and kept the kettle boiling for the umpteen cups of tea the family drank. Then, once a week, Mammy would boil the washing in a huge tub of water on its almost white-hot plate, before filling the tin bath for their weekly ritual.

Martha sighed as she looked around her. To her, the walls were pitted with the memories of happy, funny times, and dark times too, when Pappy was in drink. For then his mood could swing from dancing around the table to throwing things at anything and anyone.

His anger always centred on the British and their treatment of them and their fellow Irishman. Today, he hadn’t taken a drink, but was tense like a coiled spring.

‘It is that I see a bad outcome, Michael, and want you to be calling off the rising.’

‘I can’t, Mammy. For the love of God, will you listen to yourself? It is time, Mammy. We must get rid of the British pigs and be regaining what is ours.’

Granny sighed.

Martha loved her granny. At sixteen years of age, she took after her with her hair a vibrant red – the colour Granny’s used to be. And the same flashing green eyes – all-seeing eyes, people said.

This was true of Granny as she saw things before they happened and could tell anyone’s fortune.

‘I’ll not be quietened, Michael, for I know it won’t go well.’ Granny shivered. Turning to Martha, she said, ‘It is for being true what I say, isn’t it, me wee child?’

The thump on the table made them all jump.

Mammy dropped her tea towel and came over to Pappy. She patted his shoulder gently. ‘Sure, it is that your mammy knows, Michael. Will you listen to her?’

Martha felt her granny’s eyes burning into her. A shiver slithered down her back. She didn’t want to see the vision that was trying to come to her. Pappy’s angry voice broke the spell. ‘I’ll not be standing for her filling our daughter with her witchcraft nonsense. Martha, away to your room.’

Martha couldn’t move. She stared into the leaping flames of the fire.

‘Close your eyes, Martha. Be telling us what it is that you see.’ Granny’s voice, gentle and yet compelling, became a surreal echoey presence. Martha closed her eyes. Visions flashed, like an incomplete jigsaw. Everything glowed red. Faces, dripping with blood. Burning buildings … and her pappy and mammy standing holding hands. Their clothes scorched, their faces a fleshy mass of torn skin. They stared ahead. Gunshots rang out. They dropped to the floor.

The scream filled the space around her. Martha knew it had come from her. It rasped her throat and stretched her mouth wide.

Arms grabbed her, held her. But they couldn’t stop her mind shutting down or her knees sagging as she sank into the terrifying blackness that consumed her.

When she came to, she was lying on her bed. Granny sat on the wooden chair next to her and Mammy lay on the bed with her, still holding her as she had done before the dark place had claimed her.

Unsure of what had happened, Martha could only stare up at the ceiling, wanting the blankness of the whitewash that covered it to be all she saw.

‘To be sure, it is that you’re all right, me wee darling. It is the gift that your granny always knew you were for having.’ Granny took hold of her hand. ‘It’s a curse the women of me family are clothed in. Use it for the good of folk, Martha. Then it will be for being a blessing. That is, if they have a mind to listen to the sense you try to tell them.’

Mammy sighed. ‘We have to be doing what is right for our family and for our fellow countrymen, Mammy.’ The strength of this conviction told Martha that the doubt Mammy had expressed to Pappy was gone without trace. ‘The British are weakened by their fighting in France, and now is the best time for us to rise up.’

Martha looked at her mammy. Slender and dainty, her dark hair held off her face in a bun at her neck, her vibrant beauty in her sculptured face showing nothing but love. How could she speak such words of hate – even think of killing others, or of holding a gun in her delicate hands?

‘When?’ Granny’s voice sounded resigned. Martha didn’t want her to give in.

‘You will die, Mammy, please don’t do this. Do as Granny says: let us all leave tonight on the ferry for England. Granny is for knowing of a lovely seaside town – Blackpool. She has heard that the streets are lined with gold … Please, Mammy.’

Mammy’s gentle stroking of her hair didn’t soothe Martha. She didn’t know how she knew, or why the horrific pictures had come to her and given her an insight into the future, but she believed what she’d seen in the vision, and was desperate to stop it happening.

‘England is at war, me wee darling. None of their streets are lined with gold, only poverty and dilapidation. They are a nation of suppressors, they are for taking all we have – our farms, our food. Our own have been dying of the hunger at times and no mercy was shown. Mammy and Pappy must be taking up the fight for a better Ireland for you and all the folk of our Emerald Isle.’

Martha lay her head on her mammy’s breast. Her heart was heavy with the knowledge that soon she would lose her, and the thought was unbearable. And yet, there was truth in what Mammy was saying. ‘The Cause’ was a worthy one. But that didn’t help to alleviate her fear.

How she wished for everything to be normal. But then, what was normal? Living in a cottage and her father working his fingers to the bone on what used to be his father’s land but was now owned by a rich English family – the same family that she worked for, helping the upstairs maid?

Martha shuddered as she thought of how her many duties included the emptying and cleaning of the pots from under the beds – a stinking job she hated. Her favourite was helping to keep the clothes of all the ladies of the house clean and in good repair. She loved sewing and was exceptional at it, often chosen to carry out any delicate stitching on a special frock that had a tear in it.

Granny interrupted these thoughts. ‘Martha, me lovely, it is the gift that you have that is telling you the future. But I want you always to remember that people’s destiny is their own. You can try to help them to change it, but you cannot change it for them.’

‘Oh, Granny, I’m not wanting to see the happenings of the future.’

‘I understand.’

Tears filled Granny’s eyes. Martha felt lost between the world she lived in – a sometimes troubled, but happy world, as though poor and downtrodden, the folk pulled together – and the life that was to come that she felt helpless to do anything about.

Two days later, Martha stood on the deck peering down into the depths of the Irish Sea as it lashed the side of the boat seeming to angrily mock her. For her granny’s sake she’d agreed to go with her and live in Blackpool until it was safe to return home.

It seemed to her that life had suddenly been turned upside down. Her heart was heavy with fear and sadness.

An urge took her to jump into the Irish Sea and let the swirling water win her soul and tear her body to shreds.

Looking heavenward, she called on whatever God ruled those like her – for surely it could not be the good, loving God that the priest told her of? He wouldn’t give this cursed power to her … Maybe it was the devil? Was she a daughter of the devil himself?

‘Come away from the railings, Martha. I fear a sudden lurch will take you.’

Martha glanced over her shoulder at her granny, saw the fear in her face – had she seen that happening? Shaking herself mentally, she told herself that this new part of her was possessing her and she mustn’t let it. Older folk were wary of anything happening to those they loved; that’s all this was. But she moved away, suddenly fearing that she might be swept away, as now she didn’t want to be.

‘Come and sit with your granny and keep me warm.’

Sitting huddled into her granny’s soft body, she asked, ‘Granny, is it that I can rid meself of this curse?’

‘No, child. It is with you till you die. But it won’t always be present. You’re not seeing anything this good while, until now, are you?’

‘No, Granny.’

‘No. Everything must be in its place. When you had your vision, you were open to it. You were imagining what it was that your mammy and pappy proposed to do. This left your spirit guide a clear path and she was after taking her chance. She gave you the future of the two people who you were focusing on.’

Granny had told her about her spirit guide many times. Martha hadn’t really understood, but now she did. ‘So, if I want to see something, I have to concentrate on the person it is that I want to read the future for?’

‘That’s right, but suddenly, at times, it can happen when you’re not asking for it to. Me own granny told me that those times are for when it’s important for you to be having a message.’

But for the vision happening, Martha wasn’t sure she believed all her granny told her. It sounded like a lot of mumbo jumbo. Often Martha heard her pappy say, ‘Mammy, it is that you think you are like your gypsy forebears, but you’re not, for didn’t you up and leave the clan? No true gypsy would be for doing that.’

A week later when they came out of the boarding house where they had been staying in Liverpool, a man called her name. ‘Martha! Will you be Martha O’Hara then?’

Granny’s face turned deathly white. Martha felt her grip on her arm as if it was a vice.

‘She is, and I am her granny. What is it you want, Eamon Finlay?’

‘You’re remembering me then, Mrs O’Hara?’

‘You’ll not be forgotten, Eamon. Wasn’t it you who always took the coward’s way out and that is why you’re here now and not fighting alongside your fellow men?’

‘Not the coward’s way, it is wrong that you are. But come, I have news, and this is not the place.’

Martha wanted to yell at the man. Tell him that she didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but in the depths of her heart, she was already grieving as she knew her vision had come true.

A strange howling noise came from her. She had no control over it. It sprang from her deep shock and despair.

‘Will you come with me now? It is that the young lady has guessed me mission and it isn’t good for us to draw the attention of others to us.’

They learned that everything had happened as Martha had known it would. Her lovely mammy and pappy had been killed in what amounted to an execution in broad daylight.

The following weeks were a blur of pain and misery for Martha. Granny kept herself together and had somehow managed to find them a terraced house in Blackpool to rent, even though Martha knew her hurt was just as deep as her own. And now, they were on their way to take up their new residence.

The train would take them to Preston and from there they had to catch another to Blackpool.

Villages whizzed by the carriage window. None of them registered with Martha.

The only thing she noticed was that there wasn’t the destruction Mammy had spoken of. No sign of poverty, only a noticeable number of young men in uniform to give any hint of this country being at war. The everyday folk she saw seemed to be going about their business as if life was the same as it had always been.

The names of the villages declared proudly on signs on each station platform as they either stopped or passed through sounded strange to her – Wigan was one and Leyland another. They seemed to mark in her that this had truly happened, and she was being taken further and further away from all she’d ever known.

At last, they reached Blackpool. The hurry and scurry of people, either alighting from or boarding trains, zinged an excitement through the air. How different from any station atmosphere she’d ever known as everyone lugged cases and excited children were shouted after to bring them to order.

Though tired and hungry, this all lifted Martha for a while, but her spirits plummeted when she saw that they were a long way back in the queue for a cab. She felt drained, but Granny still looked strong and fresh. ‘Nearly there, me wee darling. Our new home and a new beginning.’

Martha didn’t want a new beginning. She wanted to go back to the only home she’d ever known. To have her mammy hold her and her pappy call her his wee Irish colleen.

She swallowed back the tears. Tears didn’t help, they only made her feel wretched.

She didn’t stay this way for long. Swept away by all around her as the horse and cart taking them to their new house swayed and bobbed down the promenade, she felt as though life had burst into being. The noise of the waves breaking on the beach a backdrop to the vendors calling out their wares from gaily coloured tent-like constructions. The people, some strolling, some sitting on the promenade wall, giving off a happy, relaxed feeling and yet an air of anticipation.

It all served to transport Martha from her doom and gloom to a place of hope, and she had the feeling that this was where she was destined to be.

She looked at her granny and smiled. Slipping her hand into Granny’s gnarled one, she told her, ‘Sure, it is that everything’s going to be all right, Granny. I’m going to look after you.’

Granny grinned a one-tooth grin. ‘It is, me wee darling. I can see it in me mind. Beidh an ghrian ag rís ar maidin.’

With these words, Martha felt even safer and more settled in her heart as Granny had said, ‘The sun will rise on the morrow’ – words she always spoke to combat sadness. And Martha knew that her granny could always make happiness happen.

Trisha stroked her ma’s bird-like hand.

It will happen today, the doctor had said as he’d left an hour ago.

‘Oh, Ma, I don’t want you to leave me.’

Ma made no sign of hearing her. Not because of the noise of the train rattling by on the railway lines opposite, something they were used to in Enfield Road, Blackpool, but because she was in a deep, last sleep, as the doctor had called her ma’s state.

Ma lay on the bed they’d brought downstairs for her that used to be Trisha’s until she and Bobby had married – a shotgun wedding, last December.

Everyone said they were too young – she was only sixteen and Bobby seventeen. Most said that it wouldn’t last, but they were doing all right – or had been until Ma took ill not long after the wedding.

Now, she knew she’d been foolish. She’d been besotted by Bobby with his black, curly hair and the makings of a handsome moustache from the moment she’d met him on the tram going to Fleetwood. She had been going shopping and he’d been going to work on one of the fishing trawlers.

Always rebellious since her da had been killed by a run-away horse and carriage, she’d disobeyed her ma on many occasions to be able to wait on the port in Fleetwood for the boat to come in.

When Bobby received a good share-out, he asked her to go to the King Edward picture house with him to see a Charlie Chaplin film. They didn’t see much of the film as they sat in the back row snogging all through it. She hadn’t stopped Bobby’s hand wandering and had loved the feelings his touch had given her.

Once outside, they’d snuggled together in a doorway in a quiet alley, and she’d let him go all the way after he’d told her he loved her and wanted to marry her. She’d loved what he’d done to her, screaming out when he’d entered her – not because it had hurt, but because an exquisite feeling had gripped her, making her forget everything but her love for Bobby and her need to have more of the same.

Many lovemaking sessions followed this first time and last summer became a haze of clandestine meetings whenever they could manage them. Looking back on it now, she felt ashamed of all she’d brought down on her ma. The scandal had been such that they’d almost been hounded out of the street. But then came the wedding and everyone got as drunk as skunks, and she was forgiven.

Life after that hadn’t been all she’d wanted it to be. Bobby had become sullen and bad-tempered. Ma said it was the responsibility. That he was too young to take on the thought of becoming a dad and she was to be patient with him.

She didn’t feel very patient when he punched her, as he had a few times in the privacy of their bedroom – the one they’d taken over from her ma. Always over nothing – or so she thought, but he didn’t.

Like the other night when the boat had had a good haul and he didn’t come home but had gone drinking with his mates. She’d told him she’d been worried about him, and he’d grabbed her neck and threw her backwards onto the bed. He’d punched her arm – he knew no one would see the bruise – and then had done to her what she thought rape must feel like. Hurting her and the little one in her belly.

Thinking of this, Trisha touched her bump. A small movement reassured her. She loved the child inside her so much it made her heart ache for the birth so she could hold her – she always thought of her baby as being a little girl.

A knock on the door brought her out of her thoughts. Father O’Leary stepped inside.

‘Me heart goes out to you, Patricia. It is that the Good Lord is calling your mother and she will need me blessings to help her on her way.’

Trisha knew the doctor would have sent him and that he meant to give her ma the last rites – a ritual of the Catholic Church. A sacrament, they said it was. And anyone who received it went straight to heaven. She wanted that for her ma.

‘Now, let me be getting what I need out of me bag, while you say your confession to me so that you can take the holy communion and offer it up for the soul of your mother.’

This shocked Trisha. She didn’t think she would be part of the ceremony. She didn’t want to confess to a man who wouldn’t even carry out her marriage service as she wouldn’t make a full confession of her sin of already having had ‘marital relations’, as he called it – Bobby had called it sex – before the sacrament of marriage had taken place.

Bobby was having none of it. He didn’t want a church wedding and so she’d brought more shame on her ma by marrying in a register office.

‘Come on, now. It is that you must tell me all. Then we can tell your mother that you will come to the church and say your vows before God.’

Thinking he might not bless her ma if she didn’t, Trisha knelt on what used to be a beautiful green rug with a pattern of flowers woven into it but was now so threadbare that it felt no different to kneeling on the stone floor, which she did often to scrub it.

‘I confess to all me sins, Father. Amen.’

‘That won’t do. Was Bobby after touching you here?’

His hand squeezed her breast. Shock sent her bending backwards, causing a terrible pain in her back. She stared up at him. His face showed his desire. Her eyes went to the bulge in his trousers. Twisting herself, she scrambled onto all fours and crawled away from him till she was under the table.

He sighed. ‘Don’t you be getting silly ideas now, Patricia. The Good Lord directed me to help you to tell your sins so that you can be forgiven. Come away out of there and let me be helping you some more.’

‘Go away! I’ll scream!’

‘So, you’ll put the final nail into your poor mother’s coffin, will you? For isn’t it you and your sinful ways that has caused her to be dying?’

The pain of these words made Trisha gasp. These thoughts had visited her, but now Father O’Leary was making them the truth … Oh, Ma, Ma, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

‘And now it is you that will be sending her to hell, for without me blessing, it is doubtful she will get through the pearly gates … Maybe, as it is a good woman that she is, she’ll make it to purgatory, but there she’ll feel deep unhappiness until the time the gates are open to her, which could be a thousand years from now, we are not for knowing. And yet, you can be making a difference to that, Patricia. Is it that you will do that for your mother?’

He knelt in front of her. ‘Come on now, isn’t this what you like?’ His hand came out again, aiming for her breast once more. Trisha cringed away from him.

‘Go away! You’re a beast – the devil!’

The door opened. Edna from two doors away popped her head around, took one look and stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

A formidable woman, Edna glared at Father O’Leary as she crossed her arms over her ample bosom. ‘By, you’re up to your old tricks again, I see, Father. Well, you knaw what happened last time, man. You were told that if you did it again, we’d go to the bishop!’

Though he looked shocked, Trisha was surprised to see how composed the priest was as he straightened himself, stood up, and pulled his coat around him. Not that he had anything to hide now as being caught out had visibly put paid to the desire that had bulged his trousers.

He coughed. ‘Mrs Wright, this isn’t what it looks. I – I was after coming in to find Patricia where she is now. She’d dropped something and has the cramp. Wasn’t I just about to help her out?’ He bent down; Trisha saw a glare in his eyes as if he could see into her soul. ‘Now, give me your hand, Patricia, so I can help you, and then I’ll be after helping your mother on her way. Mrs Wright can help with her prayers too.’ His voice seemed to take on a threatening note as he said, ‘It is what you want for your dear mother, is it not?’

Trisha nodded. To her, he was saying that if she came out and didn’t make a fuss, then he would see her ma off to heaven. This was her dearest wish. Taking his hand, she let him help her out.

Edna stepped closer. ‘Eeh, lass, are you all right?’ Almost shoving the priest, she told him, ‘You get out of the way, Father. Let me help her. Come on, Trisha, lass, hold on to me.’

When she stood, Trisha was grateful for the strong, supportive hold Edna had on her and then felt comforted as Edna put her arms around her. ‘There. This ain’t a good day for you, is it, lass? … Aw, me love, don’t cry. You’ve been brave up till now. Let’s do this for your ma, eh?’

Trisha could only manage a nod. Her body trembled and she felt sick to her stomach, but yes, she would do this for her lovely ma.

When the ritual was over, Ma’s face took on a different appearance. Every part of it relaxed. Her mouth dropped open. A loud breath left her body, never to be drawn in again.

‘There, it is that she is with the Good Lord. Just look how peaceful she is for being … Well, I’ll be off. I’ll be sending the doctor along to write the certificate … Oh, and Patricia, I’m sorry for your loss, so I am. I’ll be seeing you at mass no doubt, as is tradition on the first Sunday after death? Then it is that we will talk about the funeral … I’ll be booking Monday afternoon for the requiem, so you can be making all the other arrangements for then. God bless you both.’

With this he was gone. Edna snorted but didn’t speak.

Trisha felt as if her heart had turned to stone. She stared at her ma.

‘Aw, lass. Go and hold your ma. Her soul is still in the room.’ Edna shook her head. ‘Eeh, there were never a nicer lass on this earth than Joan.’

As she took a step closer to the bed, Trisha knew her head was shaking a denial, then suddenly on a moan came the words, ‘Naw, naw, I don’t want her to leave me. Eeh, Ma, Ma!’

Edna’s hand patted her back. ‘Let her go, lass. Let her go.’

With this, Trisha knew her ma needed her to do that for her. She took her ma’s hand. ‘Eeh, Ma. I love you. Ta for all the love you gave me.’ A sob caught deep in her throat. ‘And … and I’m sorry, so sorry … I did sommat bad, didn’t I, Ma? I’m sorry.’

The patting on her back started again. ‘Now, now, lass. Don’t be taking this on your own shoulders. Your ma was taken by the cancer ravaging her body. Nothing you did accounted for that. Anyroad, you ain’t the first and won’t be the last. Half the women in this street had a young ’un early. Ha, you’ve never known so many premature births in your life as happened down here. Then they had the bloody cheek to hound you as if you were a sinner. Bloody hypocrites, the lot of them.’

The urge to giggle took Trisha. It was funny to hear, but not only that, it was as if a huge weight had lifted off her shoulders. ‘Ma will go to heaven, won’t she, Edna?’

‘If she doesn’t, then God ain’t all He’s cracked up to be … Don’t you worry, lass. Now, say your goodbyes, and she can get on with her journey. Tell her you’ll be all right.’

Trisha turned back to her ma. She bent and kissed her still-warm cheek. ‘I love you, Ma. Go to your rest. You’re out of pain now and that’s all I want for you. I’ll be fine. I’ll look after your grandchild like you looked after me. And she’ll always knaw you, Ma. And she’ll love you like I do. You knaw that, don’t you?’

The tears were streaming down Trisha’s face as she crossed her ma’s arms across her breast.

‘There.’ Edna nodded her head as she touched one of Ma’s hands. ‘She looks lovely. Like you say, her pain has gone.’ To Ma, Edna said, ‘You rest in peace, lass. You’ve a good girl here, who’ll carry on as you taught her.’ With this, Edna bent and kissed Ma. When she straightened, her face was wet with tears. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, love. You go upstairs and get your ma’s Sunday-best frock, and after we’ve had our tea, we’ll give her a good wash and lay her out. She’ll want to look nice for your da who’ll be waiting for her. And to see that Saint Peter an’ all. By, he’ll not be able to resist letting her in the pearly gates. He’ll knaw what a beautiful person she allus was.’ As Edna went towards the kitchen, Trisha heard a sob. She turned towards the door that led to the stairs, at peace with herself now, and glad to have something to do for her ma.

Choosing the right frock was easy. The light grey cotton one that Da had loved Ma to wear. She hadn’t worn it since Da had died, but now, if it was true what Edna had said, that Da would be waiting for her, then Trisha knew this was the frock she’d want to be wearing as she went to him.

Ankle-length, with a bell-shaped skirt and a neckline that, but for the lace inset, would show just a little cleavage, the frock had a fitted bodice and long sleeves.

As Trisha gazed at it, she could see her ma coming through the door clutching her purchases from the spring jumble sale, excited to show Da the frock. He’d loved it and had taken her to the pub for a drink that night to proudly show her off wearing it. Their giggles when they came home echoed around Trisha. She smiled as she knew in her heart that what Edna said was true. Once Ma was ready, she’d go to Da, and she’d giggle all the way.

Trisha hadn’t realised she was crying, but now had to sniff as she became aware of her nose running. Gathering the frock, she went downstairs.

Edna had the teapot at the ready and poured two steaming mugs of tea as soon as Trisha appeared.

‘There, now, let’s sit a moment and have this, lass. I’ve some news for you.’

Trisha waited.

‘Well, I’ve two bits as it happens. One led to the other.’ She took a sip of her tea. T. . .