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Dear all signs

Elaine Benbury used the pen-name “Mysterious Maggie” when she started writing horoscopes for a popular women’s magazine in the spring of 1972. The magazine, which had a small but loyal readership, was called “Women – hey!” and was filled with cookery tips, interior design techniques, fashion and some real life stories of hope. For almost forty years Mysterious Maggie contributed to the star sign page, and she never once failed to file her work before, or on the deadline of each issue.

For her first three horoscopes of 1972, she wrote mostly vague predictions which gained little or no attention from the readers of “Women – hey!”

Dear Capricorns,

This month something interesting will happen to you at work, something nice will happen in your social life and something else will happen at home.

Elaine had wandered into fortune telling unexpectedly and at first she felt a little uneasy in the world of tarot, palm reading and crystal balls. Elaine tried several occupations before the world of the semi-occult enchanted her, including tele-sales, marketing, child minding and nude portrait modeling. But none of them provided her with the satisfaction of deciding people’s futures for them. It was like playing with dolls, with lots and plenty of tiny little dolls, and Elaine had always loved playing with dolls when she was a little girl.

After her vague predictions of spring and summer ’72 Elaine started to discover that she could actually predict the future for strangers. When close friends asked her if she could actually see into the future, she would reply “probably” because the real mystery of it all was that she actually didn’t know herself. She knew from the fan mail from her loyal base that she was right at least 50% of the time, and to Elaine Benbury, this signified success. What she knew for certain was that every morning she got up, put on the radio and waited for a sentence or two to come into her mind. Once it came, she grabbed it, recorded it, wrote it down and kept it and that would be the prediction for that particular sign that month. Close friends would also beg her to tell their fortunes at dinners or other social occasions, but the fact of the matter was, she couldn’t do it live. She could only write it down.

At first she felt a little ashamed and thought that she ought to read up or study palm reading, tarot, shamanism or crystal ball reading. But no sooner had she put pen to paper than she realised that she could actually do this work without training or experience, and this pleased her no end.

Elaine went through many phases during her almost 40 years of predicting, eventually winning “Horoscope writer of the year award” for ten consecutive seasons, from 2001 – until 2011.

However she wasn’t always as successful. Her initial vague period of early 1972 was replaced by a floaty period which was met with very little interest from the readers of “Women – hey!”

Dear Aries,

There will be lively green seas surrounding your aura this month and like a gentle bull, you will need to pull away from the softness carefully.

This so-called floaty period, was replaced by an unwise Shakespearan era, which lasted until the autumn of 1982.

Dear Taurus,

Thou doth knoweth in thine heart, oh beloved Taurus that the future is like a sea unknown by all men, and their women folk neither. Hark, who cometh? Wait, oh prey that my love and your love endeth this night. Blessed be this night.

Elaine enjoyed an interest in horticulture, which also showed its face on her pages during issues in the late 80s.

Dear Leos,

You are a rose, and like all roses, tulips and daffodils, you are a delight. You grow Leo, tall and strong and regal and proper. Let those roots of yours stay as firm as they can be and let your soil feed your own energy and love feed your core.

Elaine also went through a cynical and bitter period during the summer of 1986 when her lover and best friend, the Slovak graphic designer Olga, left her.

Dear Sagittarii

Never trust a Sagittarian! You fucking two faced hypocritical sign from hell. Why don’t you just throw yourselves off a platform into an oncoming train? Hey? Just like Ana fucking Karenina, another two timing fucking whore.

Which was itself replaced by a mellow, yet existential phase until the early 90s

Hey Geminis,

There’s no point to it all really is there? Not when you think about it rationally.  So why don’t you just leave your job, tell your lover your moving to Reno, and forget to feed the cat, I mean who would really care anyway.

But after several meetings with the editor of “Women, hey!” Elaine finally found her form in early 91 and wrote consistently to all her ladies from there on inwards. Women liked her tone and her humour and they felt, they really did feel, that she was writing to them and to them alone.

Dear Mysterious Maggie,

Last month you told me that there were waves of great change about to lap through my life and only last weekend I met a man who loves to surf!!! Imagine! You are a miracle and a wonder and I love you.

(name and address with held).

But then without warning or mention to her editor of 40 years, Elaine filed her last predictions recently in January 2015, with just one last future intention for all her readers.

Dear all signs,

You are about to loose a presence in your life that is similar to a mother, teacher, secret friend or nurse. Don’t be sad or concerned. Just try now to find your own unique answers to your own imaginative questions. The journey is long and you have to find your own way of reading the map, I could only ever help turn the style. Remember that the butterfly, who sits on the nose of a crocodile, is never in danger. And remember too, that I love you with the whole of my heart, and I always will.

Mysterious Maggie.

The January issue of “Women – hey” is said to be a collectors’ item already within the small community of Maggie fans, and a commemorative copy is available online.

If I were the woman, who lives down the hall from me, I would wear ostrich-skin, calf-length, cowboy boots in alligator colours.  I would drape a pashmina shawl over my shoulders and I would eat coconut ice-cream daily.  I would hire the greatest of Czech musicians and a troupe of Shakespearan actors to play and entertain me on Sunday evenings. And if I were the woman, who lives down the hall from me, I would keep kittens.

If I were the woman, who lives down the hall from me, I would make roller-skating compulsory, apple orchards a necessity and car alarms obsolete.  I would banish the rain.

I would make a Chinese lantern and let it float silently, way above St. Xavier’s church towards the Gobi.  There it would watch yaks on the steppe, camels walking by, wolves waking at sunset.  The desert winds would shake it sideways, but it would love watching herders’ families moving nearer to fresh grass and it would see the new horizon.  It would be its own collapsible integrity, a letter in calligraphy, rice paper and bamboo.  It would banish the rain.

The framed black and white photograph of their wedding day had been a gift from Hayat’s father.  He insisted.  He paid for the feast, for the lace for her dress, for the gold rings and for the flowers throughout the celebration.  The picture hung in her room for the whole of her life, and while she got older and older, the photo of her young self moved further and further away.

The beginning of the wedding day had not gone so well.

Hayat remembered an anxious morning with her sisters and her female cousins fussing around her, painting her face and hands, curling her hair and giggling.  And she remembered a sense of doubt.  What if she didn’t love Abdul in the way that she should or in the way that others told her she would in time?  What if she didn’t even like him?

The wedding party finally left the house for the ceremony, and she and her mother were the last ones to leave.  She hated seeing that room for one last time as a single girl, knowing she would only ever visit it again as a married woman.  And when Hayat’s mother started crying, it did nothing to ease the uncertainty.

“Why are you crying mother?” she asked, but her mother didn’t reply.

When the ceremony finally started, she could see that Abdul looked as scared as she was and this, strangely, helped her to relax and enjoy the attention of the day.  If he was nervous too, then at least they had one thing in common.  It turned out that the feast was delicious.  Everyone complimented her on the lace of her dress and both the quality and variety of the flowers.  Especially the yellow roses, everyone loved the yellow roses.  And by the time the sun set on the wedding party, she was laughing and dancing and happy.

Hayat and Abdul lived.  They saved money.  They had children who were taught well, and they danced at other people’s weddings.  Everyone complimented Hayat because her oldest son completed university, and they said that Abdul’s shop was the best in the village.  Sometimes, if he had time and a little extra money, Abdul would buy yellow flowers for his wife.  Not always roses, if they couldn’t be found in the market, but yellow ones all the same.

Hayat looked forward to her son’s wedding day, although she also feared it might never happen.  Lorni had made so many new friends at the university, and now that he worked in the city, his parents hardly ever saw him at all. When he did come back to the village, he brought Hayat items that she didn’t need for the kitchen, and spoke confidently about politics in his new found accent.  Lorni disagreed with his father’s ideas and Hayat was starting to feel that they, how could she put this, that they were starting to embarrass their eldest son.

He visited less and less now and she noticed it more and more.  Hayat worried about all of her children, but it was Lorni she feared for most of all.  He was never going to be happy, she knew that about her son.  He was never going to be at peace.  He had no sense of acceptance, that this life was the way life should be.  And his search would only yield rotten fruit.  Lorni’s modern ideas didn’t frighten her at all, she wasn’t as provincial as her eldest son believed, but it was his sadness that concerned her.  He never showed joy, only anger and dissatisfaction and cynicism.  Abdul worried about his son too, but Hayat fretted.

Lorni had been an unhappy baby.  Hayat remembered that he didn’t like to be held, he preferred to lie on the bed un-cradled and un-soothed.  She and Abdul, like all first time parents, followed the commands and instructions of all other parents before them, but nothing ever worked for Lorni.  He simply cried.  In the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening, but especially during the night-time, he cried.  The more they tried to comfort him the more distressed he became.  Hayat could still see the unsatisfied baby in her fully grown man child, and she worried all the more for him.  She worried, in particular, that she would never dance at his wedding or buy a black and white framed photograph of his wedding day.  She worried that he would never find anyone, to buy yellow flowers for.

Joyce Fisher had known that the girls from the office were planning a surprise retirement party since she overheard them talking about it in the kitchen one day when she joined them for lunch un-expectantly.  Usually she went to the local café for her sandwich and earl grey tea with milk.  But one day she decided to venture upstairs and join the others for a chat.  They were all so surprised to see her there that they stopped their conversation immediately.  In particular, young Caitlin put away her notebook, which Joyce assumed, could have only contained some or all of the details for the party.

As it turned out, lunch that day didn’t go so well.  Joyce didn’t really understand a lot of the conversation, jokes or references and it seemed, from time to time, that the girls might have even been making fun of her. Usually she liked to keep herself separate from them in order to keep a professional distance.  After all, she was the office manager of O’Sullivan and Sons and perhaps lunch was too intimate after all. Actually, young Caitlin wasn’t the worst of them.  But even she had a sly smile on occasions and had a habit of saying “I’ll try to get to that today” when Joyce gave her an instruction.  Caitlin had an unbearable habit of going swimming before work on Tuesdays and Thursdays and would arrive at the office with her hair still wet and placed in a messy knot on top of her head, like an ice-cream about to fall over.  Joyce had mentioned it once or twice to Mr O’Sullivan, but he had barely acknowledged the comment and nothing was done about her concerns.

Mr O’Sullivan, or Dan as everyone else called him, was young, bright and handsome and ran the office with a casualness that his father, Mr O’Sullivan senior, would never have approved of.  Mr O’Sullivan senior, had been an aloof, distant and robust boss who was firm but fair.  He was proper and professional and Joyce missed him every day.  She had started working with him in the summer of ‘66 and had fallen in love with him immediately.  The affair only lasted that first summer, but even afterwards she respected him.  She respected him for the gentlemanly way he had ended the relationship and yet managed to keep a decent working relationship with her, until his death in 1984. But as soon as Dan took over things changed.  Out went the old typewriters and dictaphones and in came open plan office space, plants and computers.  She had seen so many changes over the years.

But she had decided that she would attend the surprise retirement party.  She would be gracious for the gifts, the speeches, the flowers and then head home early leaving the youngsters to go off dancing or whatever it was they did with their work nights out when she wasn’t around. On her last day, a Thursday, she decided to wear something a little less formal than her suits and chose a yellow dress she had worn to her god son’s wedding two years earlier.  She came into the office and was met by Caitlin, fresh in from her swim.

“Morning Joyce, ah you look lovely today, what a gorgeous dress”.

“Thank you Caitlin – now if you come to me at 9.15am and we can go through Mr O’Sullivan’s diary for next month.  There are a few things we need to discuss by close of business today”.

“No worries.  I’ll come to your office in five”.

Joyce didn’t actually have an office, not since the refurbishment.  But everyone called her desk, which was surrounded like a fort by the photocopier and filing cupboards, her office.  Caitlin came to her, with a cup of tea in her china cup and saucer, and they began to discuss Dan’s diary for April.  Caitlin wasn’t paying as much attention to the diary as Joyce would have liked. In fact, she was hardly writing anything down at all and when Joyce questioned her about it, she simply said “a lot of this stuff is in the CAB”

“The CAB?”

“Central appointments bookings”

“Of course”. About half way through the meeting, Caitlin said “Sorry Joyce, I really have to run now.  I have a 10.00am with Dan, so we’re going to have to leave it there.  I guess you can spend the rest of the day with your feet up?”

“With my feet up, certainly not” said Joyce.

Joyce spent the rest of the morning responding to emails, sending personal farewells to old time clients and clearing her desk of personal items.  A few photos of the god son, her own personal stationery, and her china cup and saucer needed to be taken home.   How odd it would be to not come into number 28 Baggot Street every morning.  She wasn’t afraid of retiring.  She had many hobbies including her garden, chess, and book club of course.  But it would be strange not to be in work every day, to be suddenly so dispensable. How the office had changed since ‘66.  Back in the day you could smoke in the office, make jokes that wouldn’t offend anyone, and people wore suits with polished shoes.

Nowadays the entire staff had MBAs and were constantly attending training sessions to “up-skill”.  Joyce had attended a training session once and was horrified to find a twenty year old in jeans and a logo t.shirt write-up a selection of words on flip-chart paper and expect it to mean something.  At the end of the day the participants had to write one word on the paper to express how they felt.  Joyce had written the word “exasperated”. At 4.45pm Joyce went to the bathroom and applied some pink lipstick, she brushed her hair and sprayed a little perfume.  Usually she didn’t like the other girls using the bathroom as a changing room, but this was an exception.  This was her surprise retirement party and she had decided to breathe a little easier.  Actually, she felt quite brazen during the mini-pampering she gave herself while the others were working outside.

But when she came back into the main office her heart sank.

All of the girls, including Caitlin, were getting ready to leave and were talking about “Happy Hour” in the bar across the street.  Happy Hour!  Two for the price of one!  Surely they didn’t expect her to sit on a high stool with her feet dangling, sipping a brightly coloured drink from a straw.  Thankfully, they weren’t expecting anything of her at all. As they continued to put on their coats and cheap jackets, they stared saying things to her like “all the best now Joyce” or “take it easy” or even “fair play to you Joyce” and they left the office without her.  Not a bunch of flowers or a card, not even a gift voucher to say goodbye.  And Dan himself, the handsome clever son of Mr O’Sullivan senior, wasn’t even there.  She wanted to cry but decided not to.  She gathered the last of her personal items from her desk.  She turned out the office lights and locked the door and walked along the street alone.

I’m going to keep swimming in the salty cerulean sea of Gomera. Stepping over the calm waves and wading in gently. Watching the sun setting while Atlantic breezes whisper past me and nudge me towards happiness. I’m going to keep a plate of fish next to me and give thanks for the bread which accompanies it, made soft with island butter and warm hands. I’m going to keep the quiet sleep for evenings, when rested after a day’s contentment, the nightmares cease to be, and even the crisp white sheets look rested early the next morning.
Go away then sad anger, which like a devil, appears without invitation and outstays its welcome. May you be lost to me, lost at sea, drowned like the crew of a doomed wooden vessel. Captain and all. Go away then idle gossip, may you fly away on a sea breeze, to unmapped, undiscovered, distant lands.  And go away moons of madness, those pale white shadows from tomorrow which ruin today, when they settle. I want no more of you. I loose you and ignore you, leave and abandon you and wish to see no more of you.

The Bishops came from a long line of circus performers, and like so many families before them, had lost several relatives to tragedy many times.  A trapeze calamity here, a fire-eating accident there; uncles, cousins and aunts had died during their last performances, but none was remembered as fondly or talked about as often as Vincent Bishop, the tightrope walker.

Vincent Bishop, handsome, fearless and strong, was very popular in Asia, in particular by the Janbaz Circus people of Pakistan and the Tirana group of Albania.  In his publicity photographs he looked more like a 1950s movie star than a man who lived in a tent, and girls, and women and young men adored him.

His brother, David Bishop, was a tall man, so genetics cheated him out of the family business of tightrope walking, yet, saved him from the pre-mature and violent death of his twin brother, Vincent.  Vincent was always the more spectacular of the twins, and even in death people preferred him.  They constantly talked about the day when Vincent set-out on his final walk in Uzbekistan.  No one ever really knew what happened on that fateful day, that clear blue sky morning, and no one ever would.

“Simply wasn’t his day” was all his sister Edith said afterwards.  And she knew a thing or two about it not being your day.

Edith Bishop was one of those unfortunate women who were almost too beautiful in their youth to invest time or energy into cultivating a replacement for the day that that beauty would leave her.  Her entire act, as the woman men threw knives at, was based on her innocence, slight frame and peculiar exquisiteness.  When these attributes abandoned her, like a surprise breeze in July, she was older than she should have been, potentially homeless and unemployed.

But her father, Mr Bishop, never let old performers sit-out in the rain, and so he kept her on to sew costumes, make tea, sell tickets for the show and keep her surviving brother company.  The others referred to her as “old Edith” when she was just 37.

After the evening shows, Edith and David spent their time re-visiting Vincent’s short life through their shoe box of carefully cut paper clippings, publicity shots and postcards.

“Here’s one of him in Moscow” said Edith as if it were the first time she had ever seen it.  “So fearless, so brave” and she petted the side of the photograph as you would a small cat.  “Ah look at him in Pakistan” David echoed.  “So unique, so handsome, so concentrated.”

David Bishop still had the physique and awkwardness of a pre-adolescent boy even in his 50s, and he also had a slight stammer, which kept him away from strangers and new friends.  He tried several circus skills in his career, such as juggling, clowning and uni-cycling but he wasn’t funny, courageous or sad in the ring, so his father put him backstage early in life.  In her youth, Edith ignored this brother, but time and traveling and remembering Vincent brought them closer, and she loved him very dearly now.

One night after a particularly slow show when both the performers and audience seemed equally neglectful, Edith and David opened the shoe box carefully and began their ritual of photo gazing.

“Ah, look at Vincent here when he was so young” cooed Edith in an almost maternal voice.  “That was the winter we went to Michigan, Vincent loved going ice-fishing, do you remember that David?  Do you?”

David smiled and nodded, as he did every time she asked and he dutifully began the story.

“Yes, Edith of course I do.  That was the winter of ’63 when we spent some time near Lake Saint Claire” he said.  “We were resting after a summer of record sales and Vincent was practising his balance on the ice.  He loved it”.  David took a short break to roll a cigarette and to pour some tea.  Edith’s silence suggested he should continue and so he did.

“Vincent was so young that winter” said David.  “He loved having the evenings to play with instead of waiting for the curtain to come-up and his favourite game of all was to throw rocks over the ice, to see how far they would fly.  He loved the twilight and would play for hours until someone would go and find him, to bring him home for tea and to get him into bed.  He talked of nothing else for months and months other than the sound of skimming stones on the ice on Lake Saint Claire, and how wonderful he felt there”.

Edith smiled, David put out the fire, and the two went to bed and to sleep.

 

Claudia lived in and for the hospital, which was a small concrete building up the narrow muddy lane, opposite the convent.  Pregnant women arrived by motorbike taxis or pick-up trucks and Claudia and her team would deliver the new babies.  The hospital had no glass in the windows, reliable electricity or computers, but it did have Claudia.  And while her main work at the hospital was to look after the new-borns, she dealt with other sicknesses as they occurred and turned no one away.  We met her on a Thursday when the first volunteer in our group became sick.  We had thought it was merely some travellers’ sickness or food poisoning at most, but when Claudia tested his blood and his temperature she was able to confirm that yes, he had malaria.

She was cross with us at first.

“Why does he have malaria?” she asked us as if we were to blame.

“Is he one of the young people who sit outside after dark in short trousers and t.shirts?”  We promised her that he wasn’t.

“Did he take his anti-malarial tablets?”  We promised her that he did.

“Well he has 4 parasites in his blood which is very serious” she told us as she wrote-up her notes in a school copy book.  “He must drink a lot of water, take these tablets, and rest for some days. And he must not sit outside after dark with his short trousers on”.  We promised her, that as team leaders, we would ensure that he would follow all of these commands, and we left the hospital sheepishly.

The second time we visited her, she was angry again but the more frequently we saw her the less she frowned and we became like friends.

Claudia liked to peel oranges, she said that bananas were her favourite fruit, but I never saw her eat.  She ran the hospital, delivered the babies and healed the sick daily.  She was always either at the hospital, or on call and when I asked her if she minded not having private time or free days or evenings, she simply replied “this is my duty”.

Patients came from all parts of Morogoro for her care.  Everyone wanted healing from the good doctor with the kind smile and she did what she could with her ever growing waiting room and tired staff.  She was always available to us for our dilemmas, despite knowing that we had more in our travel first aid kits than she had in her dispensary.  Only one time could she not come to our beckoning and that was the day she had to deal with the man after the road traffic accident, the man with the burns.

But at all other times she was there for us.  She waved at us when she saw us getting on the bus to go on safari and she laughed at us when she saw us getting ready to go out dancing.  She smiled at us when she heard us trying to speak Swahili and she was pleased with us when we told her that we thought the project was a success.  “That is good news” she said when we told her how many computers we had brought over with us and how many lessons in English we thought had gone well.

On the last day we went to see Claudia, to say goodbye and to pay our hospital bill and she handed us a hand-written note for a few thousand shillings or 30 euro in another tongue.  We thought she had made a mistake, that this was for one visit only or one set of painkillers, but she assured us that this was the total bill and she wanted no more.  So we paid our bill and we left.  Madam Leemo and Sister Salome also wished us safe travels on the bus that would take us back to Dar-es-Salam and the Indian Ocean, and we well-fed worms went home.

Madam Leemo did it differently.  She protected us with her paper-work, ink stamps, and permission letters and without her we couldn’t have been in Tanzania at all.

One afternoon she took us to her office and gave us coffee and mandeza with bananas and said “you are very welcome to Tanzania, thank you for coming all this way with the new computers”.  We told her that the pleasure was all ours and we smiled while the wooden fan dragged some air around the ceiling.

Her office overlooked the movements in Morogoro and she had been watching from the hillside since the 70s.  She had been a teacher herself at one time, and while she loved her country she told us that she worried about the schools, the books and the students.  She told us how important it was for the teachers to learn how to use computers, so that they could then teach their pupils.  And even though so many schools didn’t have electricity, this was bound to change sooner than later.  Computers were the future, ICT training the way forward, and Tanzanian teachers were ready for tuition.

She took us to the balcony where the Germans had once looked out for enemies “but I look out for friends” she said and smiled.  Then she gave us tourist advice about walks in the mountains, the best places for the best views and how to look after our belongings in the market.  She was also concerned about the sickness in our team and asked “is it true you now have two people in your group with malaria?” and she shook her head.  The afternoon ended with the start of the sunset, so we left her on her balcony and returned down the hill.

They day before we left she said “please come back next year with more volunteers, more computers, more time” and I think she believed we would.  We didn’t even take new computers to her teachers and her schools, but second-hand old ones we were throwing out anyway.  She may have suspected that we weren’t really aid workers, but holiday makers with a bit of tame guilt, but like Sister Salome she didn’t breathe a word of it.

This was very un-like Claudia.  Claudia was the doctor at the hospital we visited and she did it differently again.  Not with paper-work, food or a soft place to sleep but with medical training and a prescription for thoughts.

.

Madam Leemo and Sister Salome both claimed they’d seen me before, but as last summer was my first time in Tanzania, that couldn’t have been the case.  They told me they were sure they had met me in summers gone by and I assured them I’d never spent evenings under the shadow of the Uluguru Mountains until then.  They had mistaken me for another one.  That was all.

We were in the middle of Tanzania working and teaching and living.  Days began with the sound of the monkeys jumping onto the iron rooftops joined with the voices of the nuns singing.  The smell of the incense coming out from the small church melted with the fog snailing down the mountain to come and greet us.  There was time to wait to heat up the milk for the morning coffee and time to breathe in deeply.  Days would end with the smell of the red caked soil in between tired toes and the touch of overly washed bed sheets, hand- knitted blankets and old mosquito nets with too many holes in them.   There were 24 of us in our group, and we lived there.

The first time I met Sister Salome she asked me if I were Catholic, married or a mother and when I told her I was none of these things she sighed.  The first time she saw me smoking in the garden she shook her head and said “my dear me, you are a troublesome one” but her smile had no anger.  I enjoyed our chats in the garden at the start and at the end of days and I missed her when she had to stay in bed because of typhoid.  When she recovered she told me that typhoid was a nuisance for her and her work.  A nuisance.

When people in our group became sick it was a nuisance for them and for our work.  The first one got sick on a Thursday and we went to the hospital nearby where he was diagnosed with malaria and told to take tablets from a plain brown envelope with no instructions or packaging.  When Sister Salome heard about the malaria she said “what a shame” she said to me “you come all this way and you work with us and you get sick.  Of course malaria is normal for us, but for you it is very sad”.

Like the others before us, we went to Morogoro with our plans, cameras and bicycle helmets and insisted on helping those there by sharing our skills and changing their lives.  While the sister just simply fed, protected and restored us when we weren’t looking and smiled slowly while the month moved by.  She did it differently to Madam Leemo, but the upshot was the same, in their unique ways they both looked after us…