A Sudden Wild Magic

That left the inner three. Damn it, he simply did not want to take his briefcase full of trouble to the old woman. He and she thought along such different lines. But he tried to leave his personal feelings out of it and consider them each dispassionately. Young Maureen? He smiled. Personal feelings were very much there. Every time he thought of her, he remembered the exact, scented, animal smell of her and the long-legged shape of her sharing that bed with him in Somerset. That had been some night! It had almost made up for Zillah. But he still felt Maureen was too — flimsy? flighty? There was no exact word for what he knew of her. It just meant he was not, after all, going to consult Maureen first. He needed a steady mind, and a keen one. Amanda? She had a mind, all right — too bloody right she had! He found himself wincing at the mere thought of her curiously luminous dark eyes. Oddly enough, at forty she was still considerably better-looking than Maureen and could pass for almost the same age. Mark was scared to death of her (in his secret soul where he hoped nobody knew), and he knew she would either reject his fears out of hand or pat him kindly on the head and take charge. So…

“The old woman then,” he muttered, and with resignation, got up and bought a ticket to Hereford.

3

It was a muddled old farmhouse with a verandah on the front of it that somehow melted into a porch with a green door. A garden spread from it in successive waves of overgrowth — grass first, then longer grass containing leaves of long dead daffodils, then bushes, then higher bushes, several waves of those, including laurels — and finally a row of trees that generally flowered in spring, but were liable to be untidily in bloom most of the year. The house was quite hidden from the road. On the other hand, if you knew where to position yourself in the garden, you could have an excellent view of the road without anyone knowing you were there.

The old woman knew exactly where. She had been sitting there all morning, at various tasks, with Jimbo scratching diligently beside her and the cats stalking hither and yon in her orbit. Around her, the muddled house seemed to have spread into the grass, manifesting as flowerpots, tipped-over mugs of coffee, cane chairs, a basket or so, a colander, a kettle, a few cushions. All the day’s work, the old woman thought, shunting a row of peas with her broad thumb along their pod and into the colander.

A car engine caught her ears. “Ah,” she said. “At last!” And she raised her head to watch the local taxi decant a passenger at her decrepit gate. Her squabby eyebrows rose at the sight of the pale young man in the sober gray suit who climbed out and turned to pay the driver. “It’s him!” she remarked to Jimbo. “And here was I expecting someone about that poor girl! Must have got my wires crossed. Do people like me get their wires crossed, Jimbo? Well, there’s a first time for everything, they say. And whatever he wants, it’s trouble. The poor boy looks all in.”

She watched him wait for the taxi to drive away and turn to the gate, carrying that absurd hat he affected. She watched him have the usual problems people had with her gate. She grinned when it finally fell down flat in the mud and he had to pick it up and prop it on the bushes. But the look on his face sobered her as he came on up the path, still carrying that hat and an expensive briefcase with it. She quietly replaced the gate behind him and waited for him to get to the place where visitors usually found they could see her.

“Hallo, Mark,” she said. “Important, is it?”

“Yes,” he said. “Very.” He stood and surveyed her, a fat and freckled old woman wearing a red dress and pink ankle socks, squashily embedded in a floral plastic garden chair and busy shelling peas or something. Her hair had been dyed a faded orange and fussily curled. Her cheeks hung around her lax mouth, white where they were not freckled, and her garden was strewn with objects and aswarm with cats. As usual. He had forgotten all those cats. The place reeked of cat. His foot pushed aside a saucer of cat food lurking in the grass, and he was unable to avoid fanning at the smell with his hat. And on top of all this, her name was Gladys. It was hard to believe she was any good. “Expecting me, were you?”

Gladys looked up. Until you saw her eyes, Mark emended. Her eyes knew most things. “Expecting someone,” she said. “I’ve been waiting out here all morning. It’s been trying to rain. Nuisance.” As if to prove this, a few warm drops fell from the overcast sky, splashing his hat and pinging on the colander. Gladys looked skyward and frowned. The drops instantly ceased. “A real nuisance,” she said, and possibly grinned briefly. “What’s the matter, Mark? You look like death. Take a seat before you fall down.”