The Magic Cottage

surround. She leaned an elbow on the narrow mantelpiece and grinned at me, her eyes sparking with merriment.

'Puts a different complexion on things, doesn't it?' she said.

It did. It certainly did. There was a glow to this room that I realized was due to the sun's unhindered rays reflecting off the round walls; yet contained therein was something more, a liveliness, a vitality, something intangible but nevertheless very real. You have to be open to it, though, a tiny voice at the back of my mind whispered. You have to want to feel it. Cynic at times I may be, but I had finer feelings too and the atmosphere of the room itself (coupled, I'm sure, with Midge's enthusiasm) was somehow unleashing these feelings. God, yes, I did want to feel it, I did want this place. Despite that, the other side of me asked whether it would be the same in winter when the rain clouds hid the sun. Would this energy inside be lost? Would the magic— there, the word had sprung into my mind for the first time, although I hadn't realized its significance—be gone? But at the moment, I didn't care. The present, and the yearning so suddenly induced, was all that mattered.

I walked over to Midge and held her so tight she gasped. 'Y'know, it's beginning to work on me,' I told her without really comprehending.

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 mold on the walls in the one next door to that. The tiny bathroom was at best functional, with dark stains discoloring 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 hood 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 brand-name umbrellas to spoil the rural charm. The Forest Inn was my kind of watering hole.

The interior wasn't a disappointment either: low beams, horse brasses 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 inquired 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 slub 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 toward 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.'