Enchanted Glass (7 page)

“Gran gave it me,” Aidan said. “Last week, a couple of days before she — she died. She said I might as well have it, because it was the only thing my dad had ever given my mum — apart from me, of course.”

“And when did your mother die?” Andrew asked, slowly passing the miraculous wallet back.

“When I was two — ten years ago,” said Aidan. “Gran said that my dad had vanished off the face of the Earth before I was even born.” He took the wallet back and removed his glasses again to count the money.

“So would you say,” Andrew asked, thinking about it, “that the wallet fills with money when you need it?”

“Um.” Aidan looked up, surprised. “Yes. I suppose. I know it was empty when Gran gave it me. But it had my trainfare in it the night before I came here. And then the taxi money. Bother. I lost count.” He went back to counting twenty-pound notes.

“Then it looks as if you’re required to buy your own clothes,” Andrew said, in some relief. “Tell me, do you always take your glasses off to count money?”

Aidan lost count again. “No,” he said irritably.
Must
Andrew keep interrupting? “Only to see if something’s real — or magical — or real
and
magical. Or to keep it there if it’s only magical. You
must
know how it works. I’ve seen you do it too.”

“I don’t think I— How do you mean?” Andrew asked, startled.

“When you’re working with magic,” Aidan explained. “You take your glasses off and clean them when you want people to do what you say.”

“Oh.” Andrew sat back and let Aidan get on with counting. The boy was right. Times out of mind, he remembered himself cleaning his glasses while he forced that Research Assistant to do what she was told for once. He had got treats out of his parents the same way. And — he could not help grinning — he had once passed a French oral exam by cleaning his glasses at a particularly terrifying examiner. He supposed that was cheating really. But the man
had
frightened him into forgetting English as well as French. The real question was, how did it
work
?

Thinking about how, Andrew took a trolley and went into the supermarket with Mrs Stock’s list, in that state of mind that caused Mrs Stock to say, “Professors! World of his own!” Aidan also took a trolley and went to the other end of the store where the clothes were.

Aidan was expecting to have the time of his life. He had never bought clothes on his own before. He had never had this much money before. He was all prepared to lash out. But, to his surprise, he found himself almost passionately spending the money as economically as he could. He
hunted for bargains and things that said “Two for the price of one”. He did sums frantically in his head as he went round the racks and shelves (it did not help that most things were So Many Pounds, ninety-nine pence). He saw the perfect pair of trainers and he painfully did not buy them because they cost too much of his money. He took ages. He put things in his trolley and then took them out again when he found something cheaper. He almost forgot pyjamas. He had to go back for some, because he knew he would need them when he sneaked outside tonight to see what it was that ate the vegetables. He bought a fleece to go over the pyjamas and a zip-up waterproof for warmth. He nearly forgot socks. He ended up with a high-piled trolley and just two pence left in the wallet. Relief! He had got his sums right. Pity about those perfect trainers though.

It was just as well he took so long. Andrew took longer. He spent much of the time standing in front of shelves of bacon or sugar, either staring into space, or taking his glasses off and putting them on again to see if the bacon or sugar looked any different. They looked blurred, but that was all. But whoever heard of enchanted bacon anyway? So how did it work? Was it, Andrew mused, that bacon to the naked eye had the
possibility
of being enchanted? Would this make it the real world? Then when you put
your glasses back on, maybe you could see more clearly, but the glasses blocked out the reality. Was that it? Or was it something else entirely?

By the time Andrew had finally managed to put all the things Mrs Stock needed into his trolley and then pay for them, Aidan was waiting outside in the drizzle, wondering if he had found the right car.

The drizzle stopped while they drove back to Melstone, but Andrew was still more than usually absent-minded. He really
was
a professor, Aidan thought, looking across at Andrew’s creased forehead and intent stare. He hoped they didn’t hit anything.

They turned into the driveway of Melstone House and nearly hit Shaun.

Shaun was standing just beyond the bushes, doing his baby arm-waving thing, with his fingers out like two starfish. Shaun probably never realised how near he came to death. Andrew slammed on his brakes so hard and so quickly that Aidan looked at him with respect.

“What is it, Shaun?” Andrew asked, calmly leaning out of his window.

“I did it, Professor! I
did
it!” Shaun said. “She sings. She sings sweet. Come and see!” He was red in the face with pride and excitement.

Realising that Shaun must be talking about the motor
mower, Andrew said, “Move out of the way then, and I’ll park the car.”

Shaun obediently backed into the bushes and then ran after the car. As soon as Andrew and Aidan had climbed out, he led them at a trot to the strange shed. Inside it, the motor mower was standing under the coloured window in a ring of rust. Shaun seemed to have polished it.

“Pull the starter. Hear her sing,” Shaun pleaded.

Dubiously, Andrew bent and took hold of the handle on the end of the starter wire. Normally, this felt as if you were trying to pull a handle embedded in primordial granite. On a good day, you could pull the handle out about an inch, with a strong graunching noise. On a bad day, the handle would not move however hard you pulled. On both good and bad days, nothing else happened at all. But now Andrew felt the wire humming out sweetly in his hand. When it reached the critical length, the engine coughed, caught and broke out into a chugging roar. The mower shook all over, filling the shed with blue smoke. Shaun had worked a miracle. Andrew felt total dismay. He knew Mr Stock would be furious.

“Well
done
, Shaun,” he said heartily, and tried to calculate how long it would be until Mr Stock felt moved to mow the lawns. “Er…” he bellowed above the noise of
the mower, “how long is it until the Melstone Summer Fete? How do I turn this thing off?”

Shaun reached forward and deftly twitched the right lever. “Two weeks,” he said in the resounding silence. “Not for two weeks. I thought everyone knew that.”

“Then we should be safe from the Wrath of Stock until then,” Andrew murmured. “Good work, Shaun. Now you can get on and clean this shed up.”

“Can’t I mow the grass?” Shaun pleaded.

“No,” Andrew said. “That would be most unwise.”

Shaun and Aidan were both disappointed. Aidan had thought that taking turns with Shaun at chugging about with the mower would have been fun. Shaun looked sadly around the rubbish in the shed. “What do I do with the cement bags?” he said.

The cement bags had been there so long that they had set like a row of hard paper-covered boulders. “Better bury them,” Andrew said over his shoulder as he pushed Aidan out of the shed. “Come on, Aidan. We have to unload the car.”

As they crossed the front lawn to the car, Aidan looked meaningly at the grass. It was all tufts and clumps. It had a fine crop of daisies, buttercups and dandelions, and several mighty upstanding thistles. If ever a lawn needed mowing…

“Don’t ask,” Andrew said. “Mr Stock will be busy full
time until the Fete, stretching beans and pumping up potatoes. He collects First Prizes. He also prides himself on being the only one who can start that mower. I hope, by the time the Fête’s over, that the mower will have reverted to its old form. Otherwise I shall get mountains of dead lettuce.”

“I understand,” said Aidan. “I think.”

“And yard-long carrots,” Andrew said bitterly.

They unloaded the groceries and took them to the kitchen. Then Aidan went back for his own bulging bags. While he was hauling them up to his room, he heard a noise that sounded like the mower. Shaun must have disobeyed Andrew, he thought, looking out of the landing window. But the noise turned out to be Tarquin O’Connor’s adapted car arriving to take Stashe home for lunch. Good! Aidan thought. There was a huge electric torch on the windowsill of Andrew’s study. Once Stashe was out of the way, Aidan intended to go in and borrow it. He was going to need it for tonight.

Aidan liked the room he had been given. He liked its size and its low ceiling and its long, low window that showed that the walls were three feet thick. He wondered if that window had at one time been several arrow slits. Melstone House was certainly old enough. Above all, Aidan was charmed by the way the creaky wooden floor
ran downhill to all four walls. If he put the marble he happened to have in his pocket down in the middle of the room, it rolled away to any one of the walls, depending how he dropped it.

To his dismay, Mrs Stock was in the room, tidying repressively. Being forbidden to move the living room furniture, Mrs Stock was taking out her feelings on the spare room. She glowered at Aidan and his carrier bags.

“Moving in for a long stay, are you?” she said. “You’ve got enough for a lifetime there. I hope you’re grateful to Professor Hope. He isn’t made of money, you know.”

Aidan opened his mouth to tell her he had bought the clothes himself. And shut it again. Andrew didn’t like cauliflower cheese. If he annoyed Mrs Stock, she would make cauliflower cheese for supper and that would annoy Andrew. Aidan most desperately needed
not
to have Andrew annoyed, in case Andrew sent him back to the Arkwrights. Aidan was not sure he could bear that.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “Very grateful.” He went over to the window and unloaded the packages of clothing on to the three-foot-wide sill.

“Those go in the chest-of-drawers,” Mrs Stock pointed out.

“I want to put some of them on now,” Aidan said
meekly. “Did you know Shaun worked a miracle on the lawnmower?”

“And bring all that plastic down to the bin—
Did
he now?” Mrs Stock said.

“Yes. Professor Hope was really amazed,” Aidan said artfully — and just about truthfully. “Mr Stock can mow the lawn now.”

Mrs Stock’s glower phased into a malicious smile. “Ho ho,
can
he?” she said. “It’s about time that veggie-freak did some of the work he’s paid to do! Good for our Shaun!” She was so pleased at the thought of Mr Stock being dragged away from his Prize Vegetables, that she rushed off to find Shaun, only saying over her shoulder as she scooted off, “Lunch on the dining room table in half an hour. Plastic in the bin.”

Aidan whoofed out an enormous breath of relief.

Downstairs, Andrew put his face round his study door to tell Stashe that her father had arrived. Stashe looked round at him from a screenful of hurrying letters, signs and figures. “Tell Dad I’ll be another half hour,” she said. “I have to leave this so that I know where I am with it. What did you
do
to this machine? Put Dad somewhere where he won’t be in your way. He won’t mind. He’s used to waiting around for important horse people.” She backed up this command with a dazzling smile.

Andrew retreated from his study feeling as if that smile had shot him in the chest. Though Stashe didn’t strike him as quite so mad today, he was still not sure he liked her. She was, as Mrs Stock said, bossy. And Tarquin might be used to waiting around, but Andrew was not an important horse person and he was
blowed
if he was going to dump Tarquin in a corner somewhere.

He found Tarquin balancing on his crutches in the hallway. The missing leg was cramping again, he could see. “Stashe says she’ll be another half hour,” Andrew said. “Come into the living room and make yourself comfortable.”

“Hit a snag or three in the computer, has she?” Tarquin commented, swinging himself along after Andrew. When he had got himself into the living room and was arranging himself and his stump along a sofa, he said, with a bit of a gasp, “Leg’s always worse in wet weather. Pay no attention.”

“Is that what stops you having a false leg — prosthetic, or whatever it’s called?” Andrew asked.

“Something to do with the nerves, so it is,” Tarquin agreed, “but I never understood what. It was all doctor-talk. I’m used to it now.”

Tarquin’s small, bearded face looked to Andrew to be showing agony. But he reminded himself that the man had
been a jockey and that jockeys were used to pain. To take both their minds off it, he said, “About this field-of-care. You implied it was roughly circular and maybe twenty miles across, but I don’t think it’s that big or that regular—”

“No, more like a ragged egg-shape,” Tarquin agreed. “I think you need to make sure of the boundaries.”

“I will,” Andrew said. “I’ve discovered that young Aidan can feel the boundaries almost as well as I can, so I’m going to take him with me and walk all round them. But what I really want to know is what happens
inside
these boundaries. What makes it different? What happens in Melstone that doesn’t happen in Melford, for instance?”

“Well, as to
that
,” Tarquin said eagerly, “I have my own theories. Have you noticed yet that every person living in Melstone has a knack of some kind? Stockie grows vegetables. Trixie Appleby — Mrs Stock’s sister, that is — does hair better than any London hairdresser, they say. There’s five boys and two girls up the road shaping to be football stars, and one of those boys plays the cornet like an angel. Rosie Stock up at the shop bakes cakes to die for. And so on. Probably even Trixie’s Shaun has a knack if only he could find it—”

“Oh, I think he has,” Andrew said, amused. He could hardly take his eyes off Tarquin’s missing leg, lying throbbing along the sofa. It was awful. And so unfair.

“And I myself discovered I could grow roses as soon as I came to live here,” Tarquin went on. “Not to speak of cook, and I’d never had much talent that way before. It strikes me that this area is further into the occult than most other places. Stuff comes welling up — or out — from somewhere, so it does, and it was Jocelyn Brandon’s job to cherish it and keep it clean, so that it does no harm. Mind you, it may be more complicated than that—”