Mean Spirit

She looked around. Suddenly the British countryside seemed an awful lot bigger.

The garage guy stood over the mangled exhaust system, doing all those garage-guy things — the head- shaking, the grimaces. Showing her how the pipe had apparently been attached to the underside of the car at one end by a length of fence wire. Fence wire?

Grayle said, ‘Couldn’t you just like patch it up and kind of … shove it back on?’

The garage guy found this richly amusing. Wasn’t that odd: the world over, garage guys having the same sense of humour?

It began to rain. Because her mobile was out of signal, she’d walked over a mile to a callbox, where she’d found the number of the local car repairer on a card taped to the backboard. Then walked all the way back to the Mini and waited another half-hour for this guy to arrive like some kind of knight in greasy armour.

‘Problem is …’ he kicked the pipe ‘… it’s not gonner be too easy finding one like this.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

She stared at him. Was this not the most famous British car there ever was? A classic car? This was what the second-hand dealer had told her when she bought it — quiet-voiced middle-aged guy in a dark suit, not slick, not pushy. Marcus had been furious when he heard how much she had paid, but the car had run fine, until now.

‘As you say — was. Not any more, my sweet.’ The garage guy took off his baseball cap, scratched his head, replaced the cap, all the time grinning through his moustache at the dumb American broad. ‘How long you been over here?’

‘Oh … quite a while.’

‘This car of yours …’ The guy gesturing with a contemptuous foot. ‘Got to be well over twenty years old. Maybe twenty-five.’

He went silent, looked her all over, with that fixed grin. Over his shoulder she could see a copse of leafless trees and some serious clouds: the English countryside in March.

‘OK,’ she sighed. ‘What do you have in mind?’

Anything. She was at his mercy. She should have been there by now. No matter how you felt about the practice of mediumship, you did not turn up hours late for an interview with somebody as notoriously prickly as Persephone Callard.

The garage guy leaned on his white truck, pursed his mouth, sniffed meditatively. ‘Tow it in. I reckon. I could ring round a few of my mates in the trade. See what I can come up with.’

‘Right.’ She nodded. ‘OK.’ He had her. He was going to take several hours and then come up with something which, due to being a rare antique component, was going to cost-

‘Where you got to be, my sweet?’

‘Huh?’

‘Where you heading?’

‘Oh. Uh … it’s a place … couple miles out of Stroud. Mysleton?’

He considered this. ‘Ain’t much at Mysleton. ‘Cept for Mysleton House.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘That’s the place.’

‘Sir Stephen Callard?’

‘You know him?’

‘I know his place.’ He wiped his hands on his overalled thighs. ‘I could take you there, if you like.’

‘Is it far from your workshop?’

‘Few miles. I could take you over there, then pick you up afterwards when we find an exhaust system.’

At some kind of price, she supposed. Or maybe he truly was a helpful person.

Whatever, was she going to get a better offer?

‘That would be most kind,’ Grayle said, collecting her purse from the passenger seat, tucking hair behind an ear, figuring to come over a little more English and refined.

They went first of all to the garage, which was not at all what she was expecting.

It was on the edge of this very cute Cotswold village: dreamy church, old cottages built from stone like mellow cheese-crust. Then you came to a newish housing estate created out of fake Cotswold stone, designed to maintain the golden glow all the way to the boundary.

But the garage made no compromise. It was hidden behind a bunch of fast-growing conifers close to the housing estate. It was not golden, never had been.

She saw a grey concrete forecourt, decorated with a couple of wrecked cars and two old gas pumps which had clocks with hands to measure the fuel throughput. The black rubber hoses were so withered it must have been years since any fuel passed their way.

The place was deserted and looked long dead. Either the other mechanics were out to lunch or this was a one-man outfit.

The guy — his name was Justin — unhooked the tow rope and left the Mini standing on the spider-cracked forecourt. Grayle surreptitiously gave the car a reassuring pat, making it clear she planned to return — if she was a car brought here she would figure it to be some kind of sad ante-room to the breaker’s yard.

Maybe it was the dereliction of the garage behind the beautiful facade of the village, but as they drove away in the pick-up she felt suddenly desolate.

It should be possible — like with the cottages — for age to confer beauty, for people to become golden with kindness and wisdom. How come they always ended up cold and grey and drab and flaking, like this garage?

Grayle had been in Britain over a year in total. Twenty-nine when she first arrived, now she was thirty-one, a mature woman who’d seen some death.

‘You a friend of Sir Stephen’s then?’ Justin asked. Curious, as well he might be — how many friends of Sir Stephen Callard, retired diplomat, would be driving around in a 25-year-old Austin Mini, the exhaust held in place by fence wire?

‘Uh … his daughter,’ she said.

Regretting it immediately. This was not for broadcast, Marcus had warned; the woman didn’t want it known she was down here.

‘You what?’

Justin had turned his head and was staring at her. Without the baseball cap, he didn’t look as old as she’d first figured. Maybe forty-five. His hair was still mostly black and curly, quite long. He had a gold earring, bigger than it needed to be.

‘No, uh … I’m not his daughter, I’m just here to see his daughter, but I would be grateful if … Jesus, look where you’re-!’

Justin glanced at the road as a big hedge came up fast in the windshield, dead ahead. The road was about as wide as a garden path. Driving with two fingers crooked around the wheel, Justin spun around the bend, then turned back on Grayle.

‘Seffi Callard, eh?’

Grayle sat up hard, pulling her flimsy black raincoat together across her thighs, dragging her purse on to her lap.

‘Relax, my sweet. I’ve travelled this ole road about a million times.’ Justin swivelled his gaze lazily back to the windshield. ‘I know every little bend, every pothole.’ He smiled, his big moustache spreading. ‘Every little hump.’

Hump? She closed her eyes briefly. Another goddamned ladies’ man. Kind of guy who’d just realized he wasn’t going to have too many more years of scoring chicks below a certain age threshold, not even puny, nervous, 31-year-old blondes. Grayle coughed, tucking flyaway hair into her coat collar.

‘So she’s staying with her old man.’ Justin was now using one crooked forefinger to control the throbbing wheel. ‘Paper said she’d gone abroad.’

‘Well, just don’t spread it around.’ Grayle was annoyed with herself for saying too much.

‘Who would I tell?’

‘She’ll like, uh, probably be going abroad tomorrow.’

‘Close friend of yours, then, Miz Callard?’

‘Not awful close.’

‘Quite a girl in her time.’ He glanced at Grayle again and winked. She noticed his overall had become