The Drowning of Arthur Braxton. Caroline Smailes

of the month Madame Pythia gets to be ill for three whole days.

      Every third weekend of the month sees The Oracle shut down to darkness. Locals know not to attempt an appointment. Anyone who approaches the bathhouse during those days is said to bring about a curse and ‘the death of a loved one will be inevitable’. There’s even a sign saying just that that’s pinned to each of the three wooden doors for those three days. Silver told me that it was known, that it had once happened to the great-grandfather of Edna Williams. And that’s why for those three days of every month Martin Savage and Silver get to escape to their own lives, they’re free to be and do whatever they wish. It’s not like that for me. It’s in my job description that I’m to stay over in The Oracle for them days to nurse Madame Pythia back to her proper strength.

      Yesterday, Madame Pythia said, ‘My three-day illness is my penance for the spilling of secrets and my absorbing it through my healing hands.’ That’s when she raised her palms up towards the ceiling and I sort of nodded, not really sure what she was going on about. She was using words like ‘cleansed’ and ‘purged’ and I didn’t have a clue what she was meaning. That’s the problem with working here, it’s sometimes like they’re talking foreign and I’m not sure what the right response should be. Madame Pythia’s told me not to worry about anything and that everything I see and hear is perfectly natural, that everything happens as it should. She says that all the healing and the taking on of other people’s problems has to come out of her in one way or another.

      But now I’m here, in The Oracle with her and I’m freaking out. The thing is, I’m now the person who has to watch her floating naked in the Males 1st Class pool, making sure that she doesn’t drown. The responsibility’s doing my head in. What if I go for a wee and that’s when she drowns? And I’m not sure how I feel about watching her floating about in the pool with her titties out. She’s not like my mum, she doesn’t have no saggy belly and her titties point up to the ceiling even when she’s lying down.

      Mum says that Madame Pythia is off her head and it’s pretty obvious that she suffers from migraines when it’s her lady time of the month. ’Course I don’t say anything like that to Madame Pythia, I mean, that woman’s probably the scariest person in the world.

      So instead I’m stuck here, in The Oracle, for the next three days, cleaning up sick from the pool and trying not to hurl my guts up. For the next three days I’ll be trapped in the dark and Silver’s told me that I’m not to be making any noise and not to even say one word out loud. He reckons that even the smallest noise will set Madame Pythia off into a bad place. Silver said that the more Madame Pythia floats undisturbed, then the less cleaning up I’d have to do. He’s said I should try and sleep on the wooden folding seats in the changing cubicles by the pool, but maybe keep the stripy curtains open. He’s said that at some point Madame Pythia’ll climb out and lie on the mosaic tiles and that’s when I should try and catch myself an hour’s rest. But what if I sleep too much and she rolls in the pool and drowns and everyone says I killed her and they put me in one of them women’s prisons? I’m going to try not to sleep for three days. I got myself some ProPlus.

      The job itself, the working in The Oracle, hasn’t interfered much with my schoolwork. But today, ’cause I’m having to be here all day, Mum’s phoned the school and said that I’m sick. I get paid for every hour I’m here. Mum cares more about the money I’m paid than my schoolwork, and the school don’t care because they expect it of my sort. Me, well I want an easy life, but mainly I’m hoping that I can get into college and prove them all wrong. I want to learn more about English, ’cause I have all these thousands of stories running around my head and I’ve been writing them down in a pink notebook that Silver bought me last week. Most girls my age are all about Sugar and Just 17, but I’m not. I’m not wanting to marry Mark Owen and I’m not interested in his favourite colour. I’m all about books that have stories that have been here forever, I’m all about words and fainting women. Madame Pythia has a million books upstairs in her flat. She’s said that I can borrow them whenever I want. Mum doesn’t get me, probably because she has my brothers to look after and they’re right little buggers and Mum had left school by the time she was my age. I mean she’s not that old now, she’s only twenty-nine, but you’d never think it looking at her. I think that ’cause my mum’d been pregnant with me and had to drop out of school, well I guess it was my fault that Mum’s turned out like she has. I mean she could have killed me in her belly or given me away, but she didn’t. Mum gave up everything just for me.

      So, I do what I have to do to make her happy. And that’s why I’m here cleaning up sick and trying not to hurl and that’s why I’m letting my mum have every penny that I earn.

       Madame Pythia and Ada Harvey:

      As the weeks go by I’m starting to get into a routine, knowing who to expect on what days and having my favourite clients, clients I proper look forward to seeing. There’s this woman who comes here to The Oracle every Monday evening. She has a block booking of the six o’clock slot to see Madame Pythia. She’s called Ada Harvey. She’s probably thirty but she’s got what Mum would call ‘an old face’. I think that’s because she was ill a few years ago and is still recovering. Ada knows my name and she’s really kind. If she’s baked on the Sunday afternoon, she’ll bring me a scone or a fairy bun wrapped in a piece of kitchen roll, with a bit of sellotape wrapped around it to keep it fresh and clean. Sometimes she asks me to go in with her when she sees Madame Pythia, but Madame Pythia won’t let me. She says it’s no good for me to learn the ways of the water-healers. She says that I don’t have no gift and that I won’t be around long enough to care how it works. That’s fine with me, I mean I’m getting a bit fed up of all the flashes of titties and willies I get to see around here. I think it’s put me off for life.

      Ada Harvey’s just come in.

      ‘Laurel, you know how I’ve been having trouble with the hubbie since that last family heal?’ she says.

      I nod but I didn’t know, not really.

      ‘Well I was making my scones and I ended up flabbergasted,’ she says and hands me a scone wrapped in kitchen roll with pictures of cats on skateboards on it. I look from the cartoon images, up to her. She continues, ‘He’s only gone and suggested that we should come to The Oracle as a couple, try again. I think he’s intrigued.’

      ‘A lot of people are,’ I say. ‘Thanks for my scone,’ I say.

      ‘To be honest, I think he’s worried that he could have done more to save his mam. She died from breast cancer fifteen years ago,’ Ada Harvey says.

      Then the door to the Males 1st Class pool swings open. Mrs Winter comes out. She’s sobbing. She doesn’t even look at us, she just carries on sobbing and walking proper slowly out through the main entrance and down the steps to the seafront.

      ‘Looks like she had a good session,’ Ada Harvey says, pointing after Mrs Winter. ‘You know we had that family healing a while back?’ Ada asks. I shake my head. ‘Must have been before your time.’

      ‘Was it all that you expected it to be?’ I ask, not really knowing the right words to use.

      ‘Oh Laurel, it went okay, just okay. The hubbie was a little disappointed. I think he expected to see some phenomenon, like Madame Pythia walking on water or something,’ Ada Harvey says and then laughs. I laugh too. ‘Do you know how it all works?’ Ada Harvey asks. I shake my head. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘we all sat around the pool, with our feet in the water, while Madame Pythia chatted. She assured him that his mam was always with him, that she was no longer in pain and that she was clutching her right breast. She tried to explain that at his mam’s level of purification, that she can be in seven places at once. At this the hubbie laughed. So, Madame Pythia told him how recently he’d had trouble with the volume on his car stereo. She told him that it was his mam who’d turned it down. The hubbie went rather pale. I remembered as well how the volume of music in his car kept reducing, to a normal