The Magic Cottage (5 page)

The rest of the cottage was somewhat of an anticlimax. We found a long jagged crack that ran from floor to ceiling in the more conventional room next-door, and mould on the walls in the one next-door to that. The tiny bathroom was at best functional, with dark stains discolouring the bath itself. The staircase led up to what were no more than attic rooms, oddly shaped because they were built into the roof, with small windows providing inadequate daylight. The ceilings were squared off, though, and a trapdoor led into the loft area. I’d have needed a chair or a stepladder to climb up and take a look, so I didn’t bother, but I imagined there were quite a few gaps open to the skies judging by the amount of tiles lying scattered on the ground outside. We poked around on levels two and three, finding rotting windowframes, warped cupboard doors that wouldn’t close, more damp and more cracks in the walls, though the latter were less serious than the floor-to-ceiling one. Even the stairs protested against our weight and one board bent so badly I quickly hopped off, fearing it would collapse. Naturally, there was a fine layer of dust everywhere.

I don’t know why, but we deliberately avoided entering the round room again – possibly we subconsciously felt its effect was too much to take twice in one day, or maybe we just wanted to remain more objective after having inspected the rest of the cottage. I had no trouble in turning the key when I locked the front door behind us, and we walked back down the path more slowly than we had walked up it.

Beyond the gate, Midge and I turned and leaned against the bonnet of the Passat, my arm around her shoulders, both of us lost in our own thoughts for a while. The ragged state of the garden and the generally poor condition of the cottage itself seemed to be impressing themselves on me in a strong way, and when I looked at Midge I was sure I detected the merest flicker of doubt in her eyes, too.

I was disturbed by the waxing and waning of my own enthusiasm and had sought reassurance from her. Her own uncertainty was the last thing I’d expected.

Glancing at my wristwatch, I said, ‘Let’s discuss things over a beer and a sandwich.’

Her eyes never left Gramarye as she climbed into the car, and she craned her neck to watch through the rear window while I drove away. I didn’t turn the car around but headed in the same direction as when we’d been searching for the cottage, remembering that we hadn’t passed a pub during the journey from Cantrip. A good ten minutes later I found what I was looking for and the sight cheered me considerably. Stout oak timbers and gleaming white paintwork; even a shaggy thatched roof. Rough wooden tables and bench seats in the front garden with no bright brandname umbrellas to spoil the rural charm. The Forest Inn was my kind of watering hole.

The interior wasn’t a disappointment either: low beams, horsebrasses and thick leather belts mounted on the walls, huge inglenook fireplace big enough to roast a pig in, and the cigarette machine discreetly tucked away in a darkened corner. No jukebox, no Space Invaders. Not even a microwave oven on the bar, although a chalked menu advertising hot snacks was set in the wall to one side. The inn was nicely crowded without being full and I ordered a pint of bitter for myself and an orange juice for Midge from a thickset barman with mauve-veined cheeks and long thin strands of hair flattened sideways over an otherwise bald scalp. He had the bearing and authority of a landlord.

‘Passing through?’ he enquired without any curiosity at all as he filled the glass jug.

I’d been studying the food list and replied abstractedly, ‘Sort of.’ Then, realizing he might venture some information about the locale, if not the cottage itself, I added: ‘We’ve been looking at a place for sale not far from here.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Old Flora Chaldean’s place, is it?’ There was the faintest burr in his accent.

I nodded. ‘Yeah, Gramarye.’

He chuckled before turning to reach for a small bottle of orange, and Midge and I exchanged surprised glances.

‘Nice little place,’ I prompted as he poured the orange juice, ‘the cottage.’

He looked up, first at me, then at Midge, still pouring and still grinning, but all he told us was the price of the drinks.

Now Midge is usually quite reserved, not to say shy at times, not to say
timid
, so I was somewhat shocked when she said clearly and coldly: ‘Is there something funny in that?’

The barman reappraised her and I could see that, like many others before him, he was not totally unmoved by her appealing good looks. For myself, a slab of concrete had gone to rest somewhere in the lower regions of my gut: like I said, he was thickset, and perhaps I should have mentioned that his bare forearms, now resting on the bar top, appeared solid enough to grind wheat by themselves. I swallowed beer as he leaned forward.

‘Sorry about that, Miss,’ he apologized. ‘Didn’t mean to be rude.’ And then he strolled to the other end of the bar to serve another customer.

Just watch it next time, I said to his back and silently to myself, of course. ‘The idea, Midge,’ I said patiently, ‘is to get on with the natives. We didn’t even order any food.’

‘I’m not so hungry any more. Can we sit outside?’

Only a few tables were occupied in the garden area and we sat at one that was some distance away from those. I placed our drinks on the rough-hewn surface, then slid onto a bench on the opposite side to Midge (we always enjoyed eye contact). I could tell she was still miffed at the barman, so I squeezed her hand and grinned.

‘It’s just the locals’ way of keeping visitors in their place, letting on they know a bit more than we do,’ I said.

‘What? Oh, him. No, he doesn’t bother me. Flora Chaldean was probably the token eccentric hereabouts, someone they could all have a chuckle over because she was different from them. She was probably just a lonely old woman with no family, who kept very much to herself. No, I was thinking of Gramarye itself.’ She sipped her orange juice.

‘You’re not so keen now?’

She looked startled. ‘Oh, I’m more than keen. It’s just that there seem to be conflicting elements in the cottage.’

My turn to be startled. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The peculiar emptiness of the place . . .’

‘It’s been unoccupied for a long time.’

‘Yes, but didn’t you notice? There were no spiders or their webs, no insects of any kind in there. No signs of mice even. There weren’t any birds nesting in the eaves of the roof, and the cottage is surrounded by woodland. Gramarye is just an empty shell.’

I hadn’t noticed, but she was right. It should have been a haven for creepy-crawlies and nesting birds.

‘Yet,’ she continued, ‘the round room was so vibrant. You felt it; something happened to you in there.’

‘Sure, I felt dizzy for a moment, that was all. Probably hunger.’ I looked longingly back towards the inn.

‘No more than that?’

I didn’t want to get into this. ‘Like what? If you must know, I think the sun hit me hard when I came up those stairs. The glare disrupted signals going to my brain.’

She studied me for a second or two, then said, ‘Okay.’ Simple as that. No arguments, no further discussion. She’d either accepted what I’d told her, or accepted that I didn’t want to delve further. That’s what made Midge easy to live with.

I drained half of the bitter and Midge watched me. Tilted eyes, dark-haired, and delicate little pointed chin. Yeah, that’s why sometimes I called her Pixie.

‘So where do we go from here?’ I asked, wiping the back of my hand across my lips. ‘You know I’m worried about how much it’s gonna cost to put the place right.’

‘But you like the cottage, don’t you?’ She leaned across the table and her words were almost a conspiratorial whisper. And she was fixing me with that smile again. ‘Don’t you think the location is ideal? Imagine the work we’ll do there. My paintings, your music. Mike, you’ll do so much, I just know it. And maybe you’ll finally get around to writing those children’s stories for me to illustrate. We’ll make a wonderful team!’

I mulled it over. Sometimes Midge escaped into a world of her own, on a plane far removed from choking cities and avaricious mortals, and she had the ability to draw others into it, too – that is, if she
wanted
them along. I had to remain the pragmatist most of the time, although it never ceased to amaze me how down-to-earth practical she could become when the occasion truly demanded.

‘Look, I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ I said. ‘We’ll go back to the agent and lay our cards on the table. We’ll point out all the faults, major and minor, and put in a lower bid to cover our costs. If Bickleshift goes for it, all well and good; if not – well, we’ll have to face up to the facts of life.’

She could hardly argue with that, but I couldn’t help disliking myself for putting anxiety behind her eyes.

So that was what we did. We finished our drinks and drove back to Cantrip, me with a grumbling stomach and Midge in a moody silence. When we passed Gramarye, her eyes locked onto the cottage and once more she craned her neck until it was out of sight.

It was well after lunchtime when we reached the village and we found Bickleshift wondering how to occupy the rest of his day. I explained our position, telling him we loved the cottage, were extremely keen to buy, but that there were certain nasty faults that needed attention and these would burn a sizeable hole in our finances. How about knocking off at least four thousand from the bidding price?

He sympathized. He understood perfectly. But he said No.

The ad had mentioned that Gramarye would require some renovation, and quite possibly the costs would be high. But he did not have the authority to accept our lower offer, nor, he had to admit, the professional inclination to do so. It
was
a ‘desirable property’ in an extremely ‘desirable’ part of the world, after all.

I could feel Midge’s spirits slump, and mine also took a nosedive. Although I had mixed feelings about the place, learning we couldn’t afford it anyway left me more frustrated than I thought possible. I tried three thousand.

Bickleshift sat firm, explaining that the executors of Flora Chaldean’s Will had set a minimum price, apart from which we were only the first in a line of others wishing to view the property. He was very friendly when he told us this, but estate agents aren’t renowned for having generous natures.

Our problem was that not only would we have to live in Gramarye, but we’d have to work there too, so conditions had to be reasonable for both of us. Also, I’d wanted to build some kind of mini recording studio for myself; nothing fancy, you understand, but the bare essentials would require a certain amount of ready cash. It was no good, useless to try and kid ourselves. Nice idea, but impractical. Bye-bye our cosy love-nest in the country.

We left with lead-weight hearts and Bickleshift’s promise to be in touch if there were any further developments. Midge was silent all the way back to Big Met., and I could say nothing to console her.

That night she wept in her sleep.

Three Scores

There’s an old Chinese proverb I’ve just invented that goes: ‘
When luck is on your side, numbers don’t come into it.
’

The doorbell woke us around 8.30 next morning. That kind of hour is rarely even mentionable to me, so it was Midge who had to crawl out of bed to answer it. With one open eye, I noticed her face was still puffy and her eyelids red-rimmed from salty tears as she pulled on her nightshirt and left the bedroom. I groaned and pushed my head further into the pillow when she opened the front door of our apartment and I heard a familiar growly ‘Good morning’. Val Harradine, her agent, had heralded in the dawn.

Their voices wandered off into the kitchen, Midge’s barely audible and Big Val’s grinding on like an asthmatic cement mixer. Actually Val was okay, although a bit dykey of the
bullish
kind; what irritated me was the way she sometimes tried to force work onto Midge that Midge didn’t want. When I learned of her mission that morning, I could have kissed her big head, moustache and all.

Midge came flying back into the bedroom and leapt onto the bed, her milky thighs straddling my tummy and her hands shaking my shoulder. I yelped and tried to shift her weight.

‘You’ll never guess!’ she cried, pinning me there and laughing.

‘C’mon, Midge, it’s too early,’ I protested.

‘Valerie tried to reach me all day yesterday—’

‘That’s wonderful news. Will you get off me?’

‘She couldn’t, because we were out, weren’t we? She couldn’t phone last night because she was out herself.’

‘This is fascin—’

‘Listen! She had a meeting with the art buyer at Gross and Newby yesterday morning.’

‘That’s the agency you don’t like.’

‘I love ’em. They’ve got a huge presentation to make next week and the account’s art director wants to use my style of illustration for posters. They want
three
, Mike, and they’re willing to pay a heavy price.’

Now unlike book and magazine publishers, advertising agencies are astonishingly high payers where artwork is concerned – usually client’s money, you see – so £-signs flashed through my head and cleared the last dregs of sleep.