Enchanted Glass

Andrew was anxious to question Aidan further, but he had to leave that until the evening when Mr and Mrs Stock had left. Aidan fell into an exhausted sleep anyway, as soon as Mrs Stock had shown him to the spare room.

Downstairs, things were very unrestful. Mr Stock was enraged at the way Mrs Stock had thrust Shaun into the household. Mrs Stock could not forgive Mr Stock for producing Stashe. She was fairly annoyed with Andrew too. “I do think,” she told her sister, “that with all I have to do, he didn’t ought to have taken in that boy. I’ve no notion how long he’ll be staying either. World of his own, that man!”

As always when she was annoyed, she made cauliflower cheese.

“I’ll eat it,” Aidan said, when Andrew was about to throw it away.

Andrew paused, with the dish above the waste-pail. “Not pizza?” he asked, in some surprise.

“I can eat that too,” Aidan said.

Andrew, as he put the offending cauliflower back in the oven, had a sudden almost overwhelming memory of how much he had needed to eat when he was Aidan’s age. This brought with it a flood of much vaguer memories, of things old Jocelyn had said and done, and of how much he had learned from the old man. But he was unable to pin them down. Pity, he thought. He was fairly sure a lot of these things were important, both for himself and for Aidan.

After supper, he took Aidan into the living room and began to ask him questions. He started, tactfully, with harmless enquiries about school and friends. Aidan, after he had looked round the room and realised, with regret, that Andrew did not have a television, was quite ready to answer. He had plenty of friends, he told Andrew, and quite enjoyed school, but he had had to give all that up when the social workers had whisked him off to the Arkwrights, who lived somewhere out in the suburbs of London.

“But it was nearly the end of term anyway,” Aidan said consolingly. He thought Andrew was probably worried about his education, being a professor.

Andrew secretly made a note of the Arkwrights’ address. They were surely worrying. Then he went on to questions about Aidan’s grandmother. Aidan was even readier to answer these. He talked happily about her. It did not take Andrew long to build up a picture of a splendidly quirky, loving, elderly lady, who had brought Aidan up very well indeed. It was also clear that Aidan had loved her very much. Andrew began to think that Adela Cain had been as wonderful as he had thought she was himself, in the days when he collected all her records.

Now came the difficult part. Andrew looked around the long, peaceful room, where the French windows were open on the evening sunlight. A fine, sweet scent flowed in with the sunset, probably from the few flowers Mr Stock had spared time to plant. Or was it? Aidan had taken his glasses off and looked warily at the open windows, as if there might be a threat out there, and then looked relieved, as if the scent was a safe one. Now Andrew remembered that there was always that same sweet smell in here, whenever the windows were open.

He was annoyed. His memory seemed to be so bad that he needed Aidan to remind him of things he ought to have known. He decided to treat himself to a small drink. It was so very small, and in such a small glass, that Aidan stared. Surely there was no way such a little sip of a drink could have any effect at all? But then, he thought, you did take medicine by the spoonful, and some of that was quite strong.

“Now,” Andrew said, settling himself in the comfortable chair again, “I think I must ask you about those shadowy pursuers you mentioned.”

“Didn’t you believe me?” Aidan asked sadly. Just like the social workers and the police, he thought. They hadn’t believed a word.

“Of course I believe you,” Andrew assured him. He knew he would get nothing out of Aidan unless he said this. “Don’t forget that my grandfather was a powerful magician. He and I saw many strange things together.” They had too, Andrew realised, though he couldn’t for the life of him think what they had seen. “When did you first see these creatures?”

“The night Gran died,” Aidan said. “The first lot came and stood packed into our back yard. They were sort of tall and kingly. And they called my name. At least, I thought they were calling me, but they were really calling out ‘Adam’—”

“They got your name wrong?” Andrew said.

“I don’t know. A lot of people get it wrong,” Aidan said. “The social workers thought my name was Adam too. And I went charging off to Gran’s bedroom to tell her about the Stalkers and—” He had to stop and gulp here. “That’s how I found she was dead.”

“What did you do?” Andrew asked.

“Dialled 999,” Aidan said desolately. “That’s all I could think of. The Stalkers vanished away when the ambulance arrived. I didn’t see them again until they turned up outside the Arkwrights’, with the other two lots that fought one another. That was two nights later. I suppose I’d mostly been sitting in that office, while people phoned about what to do with me, until then, and they couldn’t get at me. They don’t come indoors, you know.”

“I know. You have to invite them in,” Andrew said. “Or they try to call you out. And you weren’t fool enough to listen to them.”

“I was too scared,” Aidan said. He added miserably, “The other two lots got my name wrong too. They called out ‘Alan’ and ‘Ethan’. And the Arkwrights got it wrong too. They kept calling me ‘Adrian’ and telling me to forget all about Gran.”

What a strange and unhappy time Aidan must have had of it, Andrew thought, full of strangers who couldn’t even get his name right. And it did not sound as if Aidan had been given any time for grief, or even been invited to his grandmother’s funeral. People needed to grieve. “Can you describe any of these Stalkers in more detail?” he asked.

But this Aidan found very hard to do. It wasn’t just that they always appeared by dark, he explained. He just couldn’t find words for how strange they were. “I suppose,” he said, after several failed attempts, “I could try drawing them for you.”

Andrew found himself glancing out of the windows at the red sunset. He had a very strong feeling that drawing the creatures was a bad idea. “No,” he said. “I think that could be a way of calling them to you again. My grandfather kept his lands pretty safe, but I don’t think we should take any chances.” He put his tiny glass down and stood up. “Let’s drop the subject until daylight now. Come and help me get rid of Mr Stock’s punishment while we can still see.” He led the way back to the kitchen.

Aidan could not really believe that vegetables might be a punishment, until Andrew led him to the pantry and pointed to the boxes. Then he believed all right.

“I’ve never seen so many radishes together in my life!” he said.

“Yes, several hundreds, all with holes in,” Andrew said. “You carry them and I’ll take the swedes and cabbages.”

“Where are we taking them?” Aidan wanted to know, as they each heaved up a box.

“Round to the woodshed roof. It’s too high for Mr Stock to see,” Andrew explained. “I never ask what it is that comes and eats them.”

“Must be a vegetarian — a dedicated vegetarian,” Aidan panted. Radishes in such bulk were heavy. Then, as he staggered round the corner to the blank side of the house and saw the woodshed, a high and ramshackle lean-to, he added, “A tall, dedicated vegetarian.”

“Yup,” said Andrew, dumping his box on the ground. “But, as my grandfather always said, you really don’t want to know.”

But Aidan did want to know. While Andrew fetched the usual kitchen chair and stood on it on tiptoe to roll cabbages on to the woodshed roof, and then handfuls of radishes that came, many of them, pattering straight down on to the grass, Aidan felt quite scornful of someone who refused to find out about something as odd as this. Could the vegetarian be something that flew? No, because what Aidan could see of the grass, as he collected fallen radishes, was quite trampled here. A giraffe? Something like that. Andrew at full skinny stretch on the chair, with one arm up planting a swede up there, must measure a good fifteen feet. Or three metres, say.

“Where did your grandfather say this eating-creature came from?” he asked.

Andrew swung round and pointed with the big purple swede. “From over Mel Tump,” he said. “Pass me the rest of the radishes now, will you?”

Aidan turned round. The garden petered out here, into a low hedge with wire in the gaps. Beyond were red-lit meadows, several of them, that stretched all the way to a sunset-pink hill about a mile away. The hill was all bristly with bushes and little stunted trees. Full of hiding places, Aidan thought, scooping up radishes. Didn’t the professor ever go and look? Curiosity ran about inside him, like an itch. Aidan swore to himself that he would look, would solve this mystery. Find out. But not tonight. He was still dead tired.

He was so tired, in fact, that he went off to bed as soon as they were back indoors. The last thing Aidan remembered as he went up the dark, creaking stairs was Andrew saying from the hall, “I suppose we’ll have to get you a few more clothes.”

It was almost the first thing Andrew said the next morning too, when Aidan had sleepily found his way down to the kitchen where Andrew was eating toast.

“I need to go into Melton anyway,” Andrew said. “You could do with something to keep the rain off at least.”

Aidan looked to see if it was actually raining. And he saw, really saw for the first time, the coloured panes in the back door. While Andrew was putting more bread in the toaster and politely finding Aidan some cereal, Aidan took his glasses off and stared at the window. He had never seen anything so obviously magical in his life. He was sure that each different-coloured pane of glass was designed to do something different, but he could not see what. But the whole window did something else too. He itched with curiosity almost as strongly as he had last night. He wanted to know what it all did.

Andrew noticed Aidan taking his glasses off. He intended to ask Aidan about that. While they were having breakfast, Andrew wondered what magical talents Aidan had, and how strong these were, and how to put the question to Aidan in a way that was not nosy or offensive.

But just then he had to throw the cereal packet down on the table and rush to the door as Mr Stock’s hatted outline appeared behind the coloured glass.

Mr Stock had thought carefully. He was still very angry with Mrs Stock and he wanted to annoy her by not producing any vegetables at all today. On the other hand, he was pleased with Andrew for giving Stashe a job — though why Andrew had to take in this runaway kid as well Mr Stock could not see. What the racing results suggested were just Stashe’s nonsense to his mind.

So that morning, he marched into the kitchen without a word, nodded to Andrew, but not to Aidan, and slapped down a very small baby’s shoebox beside the cereal. The box contained a tiny bunch of parsley.

Andrew shut the door behind Mr Stock and burst out laughing. Aidan thought of all those radishes last night and got the giggles. They were still laughing on and off when Mrs Stock arrived, bringing the day’s paper and carefully pushing Shaun in front of her.

“You have to explain to him carefully, mind,” she said.

“Fine,” said Andrew. “Just a moment. I want to look at today’s racing results.”

“I don’t approve of betting,” Mrs Stock said, taking off her coat and getting out her crisp blue overall.

“Wasn’t that stuff about racing results all nonsense?” Aidan asked.

“Probably,” Andrew said as he opened the paper. “But I want to test it out. Let’s see. First race at Catterick—” He stopped and stared.