The Magic Cottage (19 page)

Nobody seemed to want to break the silence between us for a while and I noticed it was becoming quite dark in the kitchen. The evening had taken on a chill, too.

Midge picked up the Coke bottle to drink from it, her eyes never leaving Kinsella. ‘Are there . . . are there many of you at the grey house?’ she asked before touching the bottle to her lips.

‘Between forty and fifty, I guess. We call the place our sanctuary, by the way; it’s our retreat as well as our temple. And we’re growing in numbers all the time.’ He leaned his elbows on the table, his head jutting forward. ‘You know, you two should come over and see us, I really think you’d find it an interesting experience.’

I spoke up before Midge could say anything. ‘We’re still pretty busy around the place . . .’

He laughed and reached forward to pat my arm. ‘Don’t get nervous, Mike, we won’t try to convert you. No, that’s not the way we operate at all.’

I remembered Hoggs’ words in the village that morning indicating otherwise.

‘You’d meet some very interesting people,’ Kinsella continued heartily, ‘and from many different parts of the world. You’d maybe get the chance to meet Mycroft, too.’

Some of my wine spilt as I picked up the glass. ‘Mycroft?’

‘Uh-huh. Eldrich P. Mycroft, our founder, and a
very
unique man.’ Kinsella had hardly touched his wine, but now he took a large swallow. ‘This is good stuff, huh? We make a little money from selling this juice. Never ask for donations, y’see, we always sell our homemade goods.’

‘Does that bring in enough to keep the organization running?’ asked Midge.

‘The Temple, Midge, we call it the Temple. The answer to your question is no, not really. We do have private funds, though. It’s turned a little cold, don’t you think?’ This time he rubbed briskly at both upper arms. Oddly, there was perspiration on his brow. ‘Yeah, it’s turned cold.’ He drank wine again, his eyes roving around the room.

‘Perhaps I should close the door,’ suggested Midge, already beginning to rise.

‘No, it’s okay,’ he quickly said, looking over at the open doorway. ‘Uh, it’s nice to take in all those wonderful scents from the garden. The flowers out there are a real joy, Midge. Yeah, Mike, you were great helping out the girls like that today. Everything okay in the cottage? No big problems yet? Apart from the bats. You still worried over those bats, Mike?’

Midge and I exchanged glances. Was this guy getting drunk on one glass of wine?

‘They haven’t bothered us yet,’ I replied. I tasted my drink again and it didn’t seem that powerful to me.

‘You can always count on us to help in any way, you know that.’ His fingers twisted his glass around on the table top. ‘Gets dark early in this neck of the woods,’ he said, then laughed, the sound sharp against the stillness of the evening.

‘Feels like a storm’s brewing,’ I remarked.

‘A storm? Yeah, that’s it, there’s a storm coming.’ Kinsella was still wearing that inane smile, but somehow he looked uncomfortable – almost trapped. He was beginning to make me jumpy.

I think Midge was trying to calm him when she enquired, ‘Are all the people at the Temple around your age, Hub?’

‘Oh no. No, we’re all age groups. As a matter of fact, even one or two of our fosterlings are in their sixties. That’s what we call the followers, y’know – Fosterlings.’

Jesus, I thought. ‘Is that what you are?’

‘No, Mike, I’m a first officer.’

‘Sounds big stuff.’

‘Well, it’s a high number in the Temple, carries a lotta weight. Hope it’s not going to be a bad storm out there. Can you feel the thunder in the air?’

I could. It was almost tangible. I felt that if I snapped my fingers, they’d spark.

Kinsella gulped down the last of his wine and I raised the bottle towards him. He waved it away. ‘I really oughta be going, it’s getting late.’

‘One for the road?’ I said.

‘Thanks anyway, but I should make a start before the storm breaks, huh?’

He stood, his chair scraping noisily against the floor tiles. Midge and I rose with him, but he was by the door before we were properly on our feet.

‘You remember what I told you.’ The left side of his smile had developed a twitch. ‘Call in on us any time, we’ll give you a big welcome.’

He was edging out of the door even as we approached.

‘You stay put,’ he said hastily. ‘Don’t come out to the gate, you might get wet when the rain comes.’

Although it was quite dark by now, I could see his skin was damp with perspiration; yet he shuddered as though a cold draught had tickled his spine.

Then he was gone, hurrying down the path as if he had an urgent appointment elsewhere. Midge and I looked at each other in astonishment.

‘Do you think he’s all right?’ said Midge, genuinely concerned.

‘Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it was something we said.’

She shivered, victim of the same draught no doubt. ‘Weird, Mike.
Weird
. You’d better go after him, make sure he’s okay to drive.’

I saluted and went outside in time to see our swift-departing guest climbing into the Escort, leaving the garden gate open behind.

‘Hey, Hub!’ I called, but he couldn’t have heard me; the car must have left deep ruts in the grass verge, so quickly did it speed away. I strolled to the gate, and by the time I got there the Escort had disappeared from view. ‘Have a nice day,’ I said to the empty road.

Closing the gate, I turned back towards Gramarye and now I noticed that any storm clouds had moved on. But then I stopped. There were dark clouds on the horizon, obscuring the last rays of the fading sun, their tops tinged red, but the sky above was relatively free of any heavy clouds. A breeze rumpled the flowerbeds and colours softened by twilight bobbed in smooth rhythm. A small black shape flittered from the roof of the cottage, a bat on its evening’s forage, and I stood in the garden, metaphorically scratching my head, wondering why we had all thought a storm was looming.

And then that cold draught touched me.

I shivered and my shoulders hunched. Something beyond the garden drew my eyes towards it. Nothing that moved. Nothing that made any sound. Just the figure again, now standing before the edge of the forest, the face no more than a dim blur.

But I knew it was watching me. And I knew it was waiting.

The figure moved forward, just one step. And I fled inside the cottage.

Sixsmythe

You may have guessed by now that I’m not one of the world’s greatest heroes, and you’d be right. But I do have my moments; it so happens that the evening of Kinsella’s visit was not one of them.

I didn’t mention what I’d seen to Midge, not wanting to alarm her unduly and feeling slightly ashamed that I hadn’t gone over to investigate anyway. Once inside the cottage, I’d run upstairs and peered out of a window in the round room; although the light was murky, I could see the figure had gone. It certainly hadn’t had time to cross the clearing to the cottage, so it could only have moved back inside the cover of the trees. When Midge had asked me what I was looking for, I told her I thought I’d spotted one of the famous New Forest deer, which was a mistake because she became excited and I had to dissuade her from going outside to look for it. Too dark, I’d told her, and the animal was probably well inside the forest by now.

She’d reluctantly agreed and wistfully watched the clearing until night fell completely (I watched her, but apprehensively).

I was very much on edge when we turned in later, even though I’d done my best to rationalize matters throughout the rest of the evening. The scuffle earlier in the day, the peculiar change in Kinsella while we drank wine, the expected storm that hadn’t materialized: I reasoned that all these things had strung me out, making me a little overwrought. I never doubted I’d seen someone watching from the woods, but the preceding events had made me nervous, and that nervousness had become exaggerated on seeing the mystery watcher once again. You might have felt the same under the circumstances.

I slept badly, waking often to listen to night noises, imagining prowlers trying the windows downstairs, testing the doors. Creaks were footsteps, and soft taps were fingernails on glass.

It was a relief when morning finally broke.

I’d just finished cutting the grass at the back of the house and was cleaning mulch from the mower blades when the Rev. Sixsmythe arrived. Midge, in shorts and T-shirt, had been busy in the front garden when the vicar had called hello over the fence. She’d been caught unawares (I’d neglected to inform her of his proposed visit), but naturally had welcomed him graciously. She brought him around the side of the cottage to where I was working, pulling a face at me that he was unable to see.

‘Good morning, Mr Stringer,’ he said cheerily, striding forward to pump my hand. Today he wore a brown trilby, which only served to make him look like a kid dressed in Dad’s clothes because it was a size too big for him. ‘Good to see you hard at work. Mowing twice a week, I hope?’

‘Three times. The grass is over-healthy here.’

He looked around appraisingly. ‘Ah yes, you’ll find plant and animal life extremely abundant in this area. I believe Flora Chaldean had quite a job keeping it all under control. I haven’t come at a bad time, have I? We did agree yesterday.’

‘No, I was about to grab a break,’ I replied.

‘Me, too,’ said Midge. ‘Would you like some tea, coffee? Or lemonade?’

‘A lemonade would be super, Mrs – ah, Miss . . .’

‘Gudgeon,’ she finished for him.

‘Gudgeon,’ he repeated. ‘Now that name rings a bell . . .

‘Margaret Gudgeon,’ I told him. ‘Children’s books?’

‘Why of course, yes indeed!’ He positively bristled with the thrill of it. ‘Let me welcome you to our parish, Miss Gudgeon. My goodness, I’m very familiar with your work having three young sprogs of my own. My eldest daughter is only just going on to other things, but she still keeps her collection of your books. How marvellous that you should choose to make your home here. And, of course, in this particular cottage! You are aware, I take it, of Gramarye’s meaning?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It means Magic.’

I looked at her in surprise. She’d never told me that.

‘How appropriate,’ Sixsmythe prattled. ‘How very appropriate. Isn’t Magic what many of your stories are about?’

‘I only illustrate the books.’

‘Yes, but the pictures
are
the stories, aren’t they? The words are really there to serve your pictures, Miss Gudgeon. Now, may I call you Margaret? And it’s Mike, isn’t it? Surnames are so formal, and we’re all friends here.’

I wondered if I should call him Pete.

‘Lemonade for you, Mike?’ Midge was smiling at me and she also passed on a secret look that said,
who is this guy?

‘Terrific.’ I grinned back.

We’d bought a small garden table and a couple of cheap chairs from the village and arranged them around the old bench; I waved a hand towards them and the vicar sat in one, taking off his hat and placing it on the table top. I sat opposite him on the bench. From that position I could see the forest behind him and, not for the first time that morning, I scanned its fringes, searching for you-know-what.

‘I must apologize for what happened in the village yesterday,’ said Sixsmythe, wiping his brow with a red handkerchief. ‘I suppose there has to be an unruly element in any community, and unfortunately you bumped into the worst of ours. They’re not bad lads really, just at odds with themselves and at loose ends with the world itself.’

‘I’d almost forgotten about it,’ I lied (funny how you tend to lie more to men of the cloth, assuming a kind of false piety). ‘No real harm done anyway.’

‘Good of you to take it that way. We’re usually a peaceful community, Mike, and perhaps we have too gentle a lifestyle in some respects for this day and age. However, it suits most people hereabouts and I can’t imagine any drastic changes taking place over the next decade or so. Unless they decide to build a motorway through our part of the forest, that is, but I don’t think it’s very likely.’

He gave a short laugh, but I had the uncomfortable feeling he was watching me closely. I fervently hoped he was not going to suffer from the same hysteria as our friend Kinsella had yesterday.

We discussed the weather, the countryside, and briefly touched on the state of the nation, and I had the impression that he was awaiting Midge’s return before going on to more personal topics.

Return she did, and not before time (I’m not very good at small talk), carrying a tray of glasses and iced lemonade. I took pleasure in the distraction of her slim legs, now lightly tanned and, as ever, velvety smooth from top to toe. I caught Sixsmythe having a sneaky look too, but then he was only flesh and blood despite the sweat-smudged white collar.

Midge sat next to me on the bench and poured lemonade from the jug. It was another glorious day – that summer had to hold some kind of record for continuous sunshine – and the very pleasantness of my surroundings allayed my nervousness from the night before. Almost. There was still that niggling unease at the back of my brain, a disquiet that couldn’t be sensibly clarified. I sipped lemonade and tried to keep my attention on the cleric, and not on the woods behind him.