Cherry picked up a cake knife. She didn’t exactly wave it threateningly in my direction, but the potential was definitely there. “Tom, you can’t back out now. The bishop is here.”
“I know. His opening address was very inspirational. Or so I’ve heard. But what the bloody hell’s that got to do with the price of fish? What’s he gonna do—excommunicate me?”
“You’re my brother. How’s it going to look if you embarrass everyone like this?”
“Oh, I like that. It’s fine for me to make a giant tit of myself doing something I never even agreed to in the first place, but perish the thought anyone else might be mildly inconvenienced!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Stop making such a drama out of it. We all have to do things we don’t want to.” Cherry looked daggers—or at least pastry knives—at yet another sticky-fingered tot. “If you’re not going to buy it, please don’t touch. Just look at it as a promotional opportunity for your business.”
Me and the kiddie exchanged confused glances as we tried to work out which bits of all that were meant for who. Then while the tot handed over a grubby fifty-pence piece, I grabbed up a fayre programme Cherry had shoved under a plate of shortbread. I flicked past all the local tradesmen’s ads (actually, come to think of it, why hadn’t I got an ad in there? That was the sort of promo opportunity I wouldn’t mind getting behind) to the middle. “Three o’clock . . . Psychic demonstration. Great. It hasn’t even got my name in. What sort of bloody promo is that?”
Phil huffed a laugh down my collar, and I turned to glare at him. “What’s so bloody funny?”
“What were you expecting—The Great Paretski? You’d have been well pissed off if she’d put that in there.”
“That’s not the point,” I muttered, narked at him for being right. “What the hell am I supposed to do? They’re going to be expecting some stage magician with a load of patter and tricks like Derren Brown. I can’t do any of that crap!”
Phil shrugged. “Just give ’em some guff about the dowsing side. Tell ’em water divining is an ancient and honourable art. All that bollocks. Then give ’em a quick demo and call it a day.”
“A demo? Just how am I supposed to do that? Get someone to bury a bottle of Evian?”
“You can’t go round digging up the playing fields,” Cherry put in earnestly. “The parish councillors would be furious. No, fifty pence each. Thank you.”
“We could get someone to hide something somewhere on the field, but not too far from the arena,” Phil suggested. “It’d have to be someone above suspicion of collusion.”
“Right, Cherry’d better go sweet-talk the bish, then.” I gave her a significant look.
Sis reddened. “I’m really not sure he’d think it was theologically sound. And Gregory and you are too closely connected,” she added, heading me off at the pass.
I sighed. “Bloody marvellous. All right, how about your dear chum Amelia, then? Seeing as all this was her idea in the first place?”
“I can’t ask her,” Cherry complained. “Who’d look after the cake stall?”
“Phil can do it,” I said with a smile. “He won’t mind.”
“He won’t, will he not?” Phil asked. “And what are you going to be doing while all this is going on?”
“Me? I’m going to be on my phone. Trying to memorise the Wikipedia article on bloody dowsing.”
Despite throwing me a clear do I have to? face, Sis agreed to sort something out with Mrs. F-M. and headed off. “And make sure she steers clear of the hook-a-duck pool,” I shouted after her, garnering a few odd looks from passersby.
All right, it was only a kiddies’ paddling pool filled with water and some faded plastic ducks, but it could still mess with the vibes.
I grabbed a cupcake and headed round the back of the tent to do my homework.
Come half past two, I’d crammed in enough info about dowsing to bore the pants off anyone daft enough to turn up to my so-called psychic demonstration. I was certainly falling asleep, although the pint that’d turned up courtesy of someone I’d never seen before (Phil showing his talent for delegation, I reckoned) and the warm sun were probably at least partly responsible.
And I know what you’re thinking, all right?
You’re thinking, how come I didn’t know all this stuff already? How come I hadn’t already tried to find out all I could about my so-called gift?
Thing is . . . Thing is, I did, all right? Once. It was just after I’d got back on my feet after my little disagreement with a four-by-four when I was seventeen . . . Actually, it must have been a fair bit later than that, seeing as I’d already started my City and Guilds at the local college. S’pose I was in the studying mode. Thought it’d help me in my chosen career, whatever. Can’t honestly remember now. What I do remember is finding out about a local group of dowsers and deciding on the spur of the moment to go along on a Saturday afternoon and give ’em a try.
It was a total, cringe-making nightmare. For a start, they were all at least three decades older than I was. Most of ’em had beards. Some of the women, even. And this was back in the early 2000s, so beards? Not cool.
But I reckoned, seeing as I was there, I might as well give it a go. See if I could learn something from them. I mean, they were all so much older than me. Surely they had to know something I didn’t?
Did they bollocks. It turned out their brains were as woolly as their chins. They all just kept rambling on about mystical crap, and it didn’t sound anything like the way my spidey-senses worked.
