Enchanted Glass

“What’s it say?” Aidan asked, while Mrs Stock pushed Shaun out of the way as if he were some of the living room furniture and started to clear the table.

“First,” Andrew read out in a slightly strangled voice, “Shaun’s Triumph—”

“I never!” Mrs Stock exclaimed, in the middle of putting on bright pink rubber gloves.

“Second,” Andrew read on, “Perfect Secretary, and third, Monopod. Third place means something with one leg. If you take that to mean Tarquin O’Connor, it all sounds surprisingly apt. I’m driving into Melford this morning, Mrs Stock. Can you write me a grocery list?”

Shaun cleared his throat anxiously. “What do I do, Professor Hope?”

Andrew had no idea of what Shaun should do, or could do. He toyed with the notion of getting Stashe to find work for Shaun when she arrived, but decided that this was not fair on either of them. He thought quickly. Where could Shaun do no harm? “Er — um. The old shed in the yard needs clearing out, Shaun. Think you can do that?”

Shaun beamed eagerly and made an effort to look clever. “Oh, yes, Professor. I can do that.”

“Come with me then,” Andrew said. Thinking that Aidan might have better ideas about what Shaun could do, he asked Aidan, “Like to come too?” Aidan nodded. Mrs Stock was going round the kitchen like a whirlwind, making him feel very uncomfortable.

The three of them went outside into a light drizzle of rain. They were just crossing the front of the house to get to the yard when a small car came hurtling up the drive and stopped, in a scatter of wet gravel. It was Tarquin’s specially adapted car, with Tarquin driving it. The passenger door opened and Stashe leaped out. Andrew stared a little. Stashe had chosen to dress like an official secretary today. Gone were yesterday’s wellies and body warmer. She was wearing a neat white shirt with a short dark skirt and high-heeled shoes. Andrew had to admit she looked pretty fabulous, particularly about the legs. Pity she was crazy.

“I’ll get straight on with sorting that computer, shall I, Professor?” she called out, and went dashing through the rain and in through the front door before Andrew could answer.

Tarquin, meanwhile, was levering himself out of the driver’s seat and assembling his crutches. “Can I have a short word with you, Professor, when you’ve a moment?” he said. “Short but important.”

“Certainly,” Andrew replied. The word would be something on the lines of Don’t-you-go-messing-about-with-my-daughter, he thought. Understandable. It must be worrying having a beautiful, mad daughter. “Wait for me in the living room, if you would. I won’t be a minute. I have to set Shaun to work.”

Tarquin nodded and crutched himself to the front door. Andrew, Aidan and Shaun went on round to the yard where the broken-down old shed stood. Andrew always wondered what it had been built for. An artist’s studio perhaps? It was old, built of bricks of a small, dark red kind that you hardly ever saw nowadays, with its roof in one slope. Someone had, long ago, given these bricks a thin coat of whitewash, which had largely worn off. The shed would have been big enough — just — for a stable or a coach house, except that it had no windows and only one small, quaintly arched door. Its roof leaked. Someone, long ago, had draped several layers of tarpaulins across the tiles to keep the wet out. Nettles grew in clumps against its walls.

Andrew forced the stiff door open on to a dimness stacked with bags of cement (When had his grandfather needed cement? Andrew wondered) pots of paint (Or those either?) and old garden seats. In the middle stood the huge old rusty motor mower that only Mr Stock had the knack of starting.

Shaun stumbled against the mower and barked his plump shin. “Ow,” he said plaintively. “Dark in here. Can’t see.”

“One moment.” Andrew went outside again, where he stood on tiptoe among the nettles and just managed to reach the corner of one of the tarpaulins. He dragged. The whole lot came down on his head in a shower of plaster bits, twigs and nameless rubbish.

Inside the shed, Aidan exclaimed and Shaun stood with his mouth open. There was a window there, slanting with the roof. It was made of squares of coloured glass, just like the top half of the kitchen door and obviously just as old. Unlike the glass of the back door, though, these panes were crusted with ancient dirt and cracked in places. Spiderwebs hung from them in strands and thick bundles, swaying in the breeze from the door. But it still let in a flood of coloured light. In the light, Aidan saw that the walls of the shed were lined with wood, old, pale wood, carved into dozens of fantastic shapes, but so dusty that it was hard to make out what the shapes were. He took his glasses off to investigate.

Outside the shed, Andrew trampled his way out from the tarpaulins and they fell to pieces under his feet. He took off his glasses to clean them, ruefully realising that he had just destroyed quite a large number of his grandfather’s spells. Or his great-grandfather’s. Possibly his great-greatgrandfather’s spells too.

“Come and look!” Aidan shouted from inside.

Andrew went in and looked. Oak, he thought. He patted the nearest panel. Solid oak, carved into patterns and flowers and figures. Old oak. The brick walls outside were just a disguise for a place of power. “My goodness!” he said.

“Cool, isn’t it?” Aidan said.

Shaun, who had eyes only for the motor mower, said, “Church, this is.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Andrew, “but I know what you mean.”

“Professor,” Shaun said urgently, “I can mend this mower. Make it work. Honest. Can I do that?”

“Um,” said Andrew. He thought of how jealously Mr Stock guarded his knack with this mower. But he had not the heart to disappoint Shaun. The lad was looking at him so eagerly and so desperately trying to seem cleverer than he was. “Oh, very well,” he said. He sighed. This probably meant sixty-two cabbages tomorrow, but what did that matter? “Mend the mower, Shaun. And — listen carefully — after that, your work will be to clean up this place properly. Do it very gently and carefully and make sure you don’t break anything, particularly that window up there. You can take days and days if you want. Just get it how it should be. OK?”

Shaun said, “Yes, Professor. Thank you, Professor.” Andrew wondered if he had listened, let alone understood. But there was no doubt that Shaun was pleased. When he was pleased, he waved his hands about like a baby, with his fat fingers spread out in several directions, and beamed.

“Can I help him?” Aidan asked. He wanted to know what this shed really was.

“For ten minutes,” Andrew said. “We’re going into Melton to buy you some clothes, remember.”

He left Shaun and Aidan to it. Beating dust and old spells out of his hair and slapping them out of his jeans as he walked, he went to the house to receive Tarquin’s lecture.

Tarquin was sitting in a straight-backed chair with the stump of his leg propped across the piano stool. That stump, Andrew thought, must hurt him quite a lot.

“No, it doesn’t,” Tarquin said, just as if Andrew had spoken. “At least, the half that’s still with me doesn’t hurt at all. It’s the missing half that gives me gyp. Most of the time it’s pins and needles from the lost knee down. Just now, it’s giving me cramp in the calf that isn’t there. I can’t seem to convince it that there’s nothing there to give me cramp with. Stashe keeps telling me I ought to try hypnotism, but I don’t like the idea of someone getting into my head and giving me, like, secret orders. The idea doesn’t appeal at all, so it doesn’t.”

“No, I wouldn’t like that either,” Andrew agreed. He felt he could almost see the sinewy missing half of Tarquin’s leg, spread out across the piano stool with its calf muscles in a tight, aching ball. Quite a telepathist, Tarquin. “What did you want to speak to me about?”

“Ah. That.” Tarquin suddenly looked embarrassed. “Stockie and Stashe both seem to think I’m the best person to speak to you, the Lord knows why, and I thought I’d better do it before I lost my nerve for it. Forgive me for asking. Were you actually here when your grandfather died?”

Not what I expected! Andrew thought. “No,” he said. “I was driving along a road quite near, not knowing he was dead, and I saw his ghost. Then I drove straight here.”

Tarquin gave him an intent look. “And how did he seem — his ghost?”

“Rather urgent,” Andrew said. “He was trying to give me a paper of some kind, with a big seal on it, but when I tried to take it, my hand went right through it. I thought it was his will, but that was quite a different shape when the lawyer produced it.”

“Ah,” said Tarquin. “We thought as much. You don’t know. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll start looking for that document right now. It must be his field-of-care he was trying to hand on to you. It will tell you clearer than I can what you ought to do.”

“What I ought to do about what?” Andrew asked.

Tarquin looked embarrassed again and wriggled on his chair. “That’s what I don’t truly know,” he admitted. “I’m not a magician like Jocelyn Brandon was. I just have unofficial knacks, you might say — growing roses and knowing horses and such — but he was the real thing, Jocelyn, so he was, even if he had got old and a bit past it by the time I moved here. What I do know is that all round here, in a radius of ten miles or more, is strange. And special. And Jocelyn was in charge of it. And he was trying to hand the responsibility on to you.”

“But I’m not a magician, any more than you are!” Andrew protested.

“But you could be,” Tarquin said. “It seems to me that you could train yourself a little. You have the gift. And you need to find that document. I’ll tell Stashe to help you look for it when she’s sorted that computer. And you can count on me for any help you need — explaining or advising, or whatever. I’d be grateful to help, to tell the truth. I need my mind taken off my lost career sometimes, something cruel.”

Tarquin meant this, Andrew could see. Though the life of a jockey was something Andrew could barely imagine himself, he could tell it had been as thrilling and absorbing as his own work on his book. And he wondered how he would feel if he had somehow lost both hands and couldn’t write that book, or any other books, ever. “Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” said Tarquin. “Now I’d better be going.” He looked suddenly relieved. “Cramp’s gone!” he said. “Virtual cramp, I should say. Cleared off like magic. So I’ll be off now, but feel free to ask me anything about Melstone that you think I’ll know.”

Chapter Four (#ulink_11712cf6-1b19-58c9-bcdb-f46ded21f294)

Andrew drove off to Melton with his mind full of what Tarquin had told him. Beside him, Aidan, who was not used to cars, was having trouble with his seat belt.

“Push until you hear it click,” Andrew told him.

This added Aidan to his thoughts. And these Stalkers Aidan told him about. Andrew supposed he could protect Aidan from them and give him a holiday until the social workers arrived. Otherwise he was not sure what could be done. And meanwhile it seemed Andrew was supposed to be looking after his grandfather’s field-of-care. Now he came to think of it, although he had always known there was such a thing, he had very little idea what a field-of-care was. He had never understood quite what it was that his grandfather did. Probably that document his grandfather’s ghost had tried to give him would make all that clear. But where was the wretched thing? He had never set eyes on it while Jocelyn was alive. He would have to hunt for it, and it was going to interrupt the work on his book. Everything was going to interrupt him. Andrew’s heart ached with his need to write his book. This was, after all, why he was employing Stashe.

And that brought his thoughts around to money. He was now employing two extra people and buying Aidan clothes, among other things. Luckily — and not entirely thanks to Mr Stock — Melstone House produced a lot of its own food; but that was a drop in the ocean, really, at the rate Aidan ate… Andrew began to wonder how soon he was going to be bankrupt.

Brooding on these things, Andrew drove past the new houses at the end of the village and past the football field, and on into the countryside. A couple of miles further on, there came the familiar little jolt, as if the car had for a second caught on some elastic. Aidan jumped.

“What was that?”