A Spell in the Country Read online

  Caroline, dressed in ballbuster black, entered at half eight, expecting to find Bowman and a drink waiting for her at the bar. Instead, there was no Bowman and the barman, who she knew by sight but not by name, nodded to her and passed over a slip of paper.

  SOMETHING’S COME UP. BACK SOON AS. DOUG.

  “Bugger,” said Caroline.

  “He got a phone call,” said the barman. “Sounded important.”

  “Better have been,” she muttered.

  Caroline hadn’t brought either cash or cards with her to the pub – she never did – but she had been looking forward to an evening during which she didn’t have to make even the smallest effort to get a drink. Oh, well…

  She scanned the pub and then went over to a scruffy twenty-something drinking alone in a booth. With a subtle, accompanying flick of her wrist, she said, “You’d like to buy me a drink.”

  “I would like to buy you a drink,” he said.

  “A pint of something European.”

  “A pint of something European?”

  While the cute but crusty zombie went to fetch her drink, Caroline sat down and nosed through the open satchel he’d left on the seat. Glossy pamphlets, a roll of stickers and a fat clipboard of filled-in forms. The guy was either a chugger or had robbed one at knifepoint. Caroline suspected the latter.

  “A pint of something European,” said the young man.

  “Thank you.” Normally, this was the cue for her to take both her drink and her leave but she was intrigued. “What’s this stuff?” she asked.

  “You’ve been going through my things—”

  A curt gesture. “But you don’t mind.”

  “—But I don’t mind.” He half smiled. “It’s the day job. Street surveys. Recruiting people for a three week self-improvement course.”

  “Is this like some Scientology, culty thing?” she asked.

  “Lord, no!”

  “I just wondered, what with your hat being on fire and all. Thought it might be something religious.”

  “You can see it?” he asked, pointing at his flaming headwear.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Because it’s on fire.”

  “Maybe you’d like to take the survey too,” he suggested.

  “You said it was the day job. It’s night now.”

  “But I’m below quota. Today’s the last day. I did a couple of the suburbs this morning, and the city centre this afternoon, but I’ve still got spaces to fill.”

  “Last day? Does your mother ship leave tomorrow?”

  “It’s not a cult. It’s a free three week course at a lovely old house in the country.”

  “Three weeks? As in residential?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s free?”

  “Yes.”

  Caroline sipped at her pint. She liked free things. “This survey. Are there a lot of personal questions on it?”

  “A few,” he admitted. “Some.”

  “Sounds fun,” she said.

  Saturday morning arrived with sunlight far too bright for Caroline’s eyes, and a side order of knocking at the door. She sat up in bed, groaning. The lump beside her stirred. She placed a hand on the cute but crusty lump. His name was Madison Fray, not that she intended to commit it to memory. “You want to get up, make me a coffee and then leave.”

  There were mumbles from beneath the sheet that sounded close to agreement. The lump began to move.

  Caroline climbed out of bed, pulled on a T-shirt that wasn’t hers and knickers that were, and went to the door. Doug Bowman stood on the fourth floor walkway overlooking Sherlock Street and the crappier end of the Gay Village.

  “Where the hell were you last night—?” she demanded, immediately following with, “What the hell happened to your face?”

  Bowman looked like he’d taken part in a consumer product test in which he’d washed the left side of his face with ordinary soap and the right side with bleach. The skin was raw and waxy.

  “Work,” he said. She could see him trying not to wince as he talked.

  “And this is the job you thought would suit me.”

  “It pays well.”

  “It ought to. I’ve got something for your face.”

  “I put something on it.”

  “I’ve got something better.”

  She fetched a tub of perfectly ordinary moisturiser from her make-up bag and brought it to Bowman, waiting in the hallway. She dabbed it on his cheek, whispering a cantrip under her breath.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Just a saying from the Old Country,” said Caroline.

  “Didn’t know you were Irish.”

  “Only on St Patrick’s Day.”

  The spell should have worked, but she could see it wasn’t. And that meant the burn, or whatever it was on his face, had been caused by magic. “What have you been up to?”

  “I said. Work. And I could really use your help.”

  “And the nature of this work?”

  “It’s—”

  “Complicated. Right.”

  “Um,” muttered Bowman. He was looking at the naked man holding out a cup of coffee to Caroline. She took it without a word. Madison Fray made for the front door.

  “You need to get dressed before you leave,” Caroline told him.

  “I need to get dressed before I leave,” said Madison, returning to the bedroom.

  “I can see you’re busy,” said Bowman. He grinned, immediately regretting the pain it caused. “But give me a call when you’re free. I could really use your help.”

  A phoned buzzed in his pocket. He answered like it truly mattered. “Yes … You do? … And you have an address? … Pine Walk. I know it…”

  He ended the call. The look on his face hinted things had turned in his favour: there was a vindictive glint in his eye.

  “Call me,” he told her. He gestured at the flat with his phone. “You’re better than waiting tables and this.”

  Caroline shut the door behind him and sipped her coffee. Madison came up behind her and began to pull up her T-shirt.

  She laughed in surprise. “What are you doing?”

  His voice was toneless. “I need to get dressed before I leave.”

  She put the coffee on the window ledge and let him strip his T-shirt from her. “Stop,” she commanded before he put it on himself.

  She slid her hands down to his naked waist. Automatically, he put his hands over hers. He was a skinny lad – clearly the cannabis and alcohol diet worked wonders. Not necessarily her type, but he was young and affable and, most conveniently, here.

  “Tell me about this three week residential thing,” she said. “Is it a genuine offer? No catches?”

  “No catches,” he said.

  “And it starts today?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “I do.”

  “And when do I need to be there by?”

  “It doesn’t start until this evening.”

  “Oh, then we’ve got time.”

  “Time?”

  She drummed her fingers on his chest. “Go clean your teeth. I expect you back in bed in five minutes. And today’s Word of the Day is ‘imaginative.’ Go.”

  The Wicked Witch of the West Midlands

  Jenny Knott was a wicked witch. She didn’t have any choice in the matter; it was the hand fate had dealt her. She wasn’t a wicked person – she went to great efforts to not be – but she was undoubtedly and involuntarily a wicked witch. She had an imp to prove it.

  It was easy to keep most of the wicked witchiness under wraps. She didn’t have a hooked nose or a jutting chin; her nose was quite attractive, and if she did have a horsey set to her jaw that was down to some distant aristocratic genes and nothing more. She didn’t have green skin; only witches in MGM musicals suffered with that. The inevitable warts were infrequent and easily tackled with liquid nitrogen. And she didn’t wear black; she had made a conscious decision to ban it from her wardrobe.


  In fact, Kevin Carter-King commented on her clothing choice when they met for Friday lunch at Angelo’s in the city centre.

  “You’re like a summer’s day,” he said.

  “That’s cheesy,” she replied.

  It had been more than fifteen years since they’d shared university digs together but they had managed to keep a gentle friendship simmering all that time. Kevin had parlayed his fifteen years into a thriving freight and haulage company, a big house on the Warwickshire border and an acceptably expanded waistline. Jenny’s fifteen years had seen a string of personal failures and an on-going battle with her sorcerous dark side.

  “Me or the three cheese salad?” he said.

  She rolled her eyes and raised a hand to draw the attention of the dark-haired waitress. She was one of those who pouted all day long and acted as though doing her actual job was a rude interruption to her busy schedule. She glared at Jenny.

  “Do you have any non-metallic cutlery?” asked Jenny.

  “I’m sorry?” sneered the waitress.

  “I just wondered if you had some non-metallic cutlery.”

  “Non-metallic,” repeated the waitress.

  “Maybe plastic,” Jenny explained. “I have this allergy thing with iron.”

  She gestured at her meal. Kevin smiled sympathetically. Jenny had used the ‘iron allergy’ line all her adult life and he had heard it plenty of times.

  “I’ll go check,” huffed the waitress and slunk off into the kitchen.

  The touch of cold iron was one of the few things Jenny could do nothing about. There were several simple but effective wards against wicked witches and the presence of iron was one. Whether it was horseshoes, fridge doors or stainless steel salad forks, Jenny couldn’t abide them.

  The two other wickedly witchy aspects that she had little control over were her imp and the effect that—

  There was a crash of breaking crockery from the kitchen. An ironic cheer went up from a couple of tables and a toddler across the way burst into tears. Jenny looked around for her imp, peering under the table.

  “Lost something?” said Kevin.

  “I wish,” said Jenny to herself.

  The waitress came huffing back, put a child’s plastic fork down by Jenny’s plate, and huffed off again.

  “Charming service in this place,” said Jenny.

  “It’s close to my office,” said Kevin. “That’s about all there is to recommend it.”

  The kitchen door swung open and Jizzimus sauntered through, chewing on a wedge of crockery as though it were a slice of pizza. A hairy homunculus with the feet and ears of a cow, Jizzimus had a wide mouth full of needle teeth and little nubby horns on the top of his head. He was also a mere twelve inches tall and, as a rule, invisible to all.

  “You ’ear that?” he said. “That strumpet called you Magneto. S’an ice-cream, innit? What she wanna do that for, eh?”

  Jenny ignored Jizzimus with ease. She found that chatting to invisible magic folk in public tended to generate the wrong kind of attention.

  “How’s the job?” Kevin asked.

  “I’m between jobs,” she admitted.

  “What happened to the last one?”

  “The place had trouble with shoplifters.”

  “They accused you?” said Kevin.

  “Oh, no. I caught them in the act. A pair of teenagers.”

  “Bravo.”

  “And then there was an altercation. It got violent. A broken arm.”

  Kevin shook his head in dismay. “No one should have to suffer assaults in the workplace.”

  “It wasn’t my arm,” said Jenny.

  “Oh.”

  “Classic rumble,” said Jizzimus. “Don’ forget to mention how I pinned ’im down while you bit ’is fingers.” He lay on the floor under a table, hands on his belly, staring up a woman’s long skirts as she tried to soothe her crying toddler.

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” said Kevin. “Work can sometimes heap the worst kind of crap on your plate.”

  “I know,” said Jenny.

  “There are bits of my work I really don’t enjoy,” Kevin admitted.

  “I thought you were doing well.”

  “I am. But it’s a new Europe out there. The industry’s changed. You can’t just operate inside your comfort bubble anymore.”

  “You could always give it up,” said Jenny. “Start afresh.”

  “I could,” he smiled. “Unfortunately, I’m addicted to earning huge piles of cash.”

  “I’ve imagine you’ve got a swimming pool at home full of gold doubloons. Swim in it like Scrooge McDuck.”

  “Shockingly close to the truth, Jen.”

  “I’m sure it provides some small consolation in those moments of self-doubt.”

  “It does help,” he agreed. “But we were talking about you. Maybe it’s you who needs to start afresh.”

  “No. I need to stop starting afresh and actually stick at something for a while.”

  “I could always find you a job in our office.”

  “I don’t need charity. I need a new direction in life.”

  “Then retrain,” he suggested.

  “As what?”

  “I don’t know. Teacher?”

  “I don’t like children,” said Jenny automatically.

  “What you talkin’ about?” said Jizzimus. “You love the li’l bleeders. You’d love ’em even more if you actually cooked ’em first.”

  Jenny put in an earbud as they walked towards the bus stop. Pretending to be on a phone call was the easiest way of talking to Jizzimus in public. She sometimes wondered how many delusional people went unnoticed now it was okay to talk to oneself in public.

  “For once, it would be nice to go on a lunch date without you in tow,” she told her imp.

  “You know it don’ work like that, guv,” said Jizzimus. “Was it a date?”

  “Not like that. Kevin Carter-King is an old friend.”

  “Fat friend. ’As ’e really got a swimmin’ pool full of gold?”

  “No.”

  “I could fill ’is pool wiv gold if ’e likes.” Jizzimus widdled on the pavement. He always tried to spell his name but he was only a little imp and rarely got past the third letter.

  Kevin had given her his business card before she left, just in case she did want to take him up on a job offer, but Jenny knew that would be a mistake: a holding pattern rather than a solution.

  “I need chocolate,” she said. “Lots of chocolate. That child in the café. It cried and cried and—”

  “I know a really good way to make ’em shut up.”

  “Making you shut up. That would be a good trick.”

  “Bloody cheek,” said Jizzimus.

  Jenny went into a newsagent and came out with a half-pound bar of Dairy Milk. “Three pound fifty,” she muttered in disgust.

  “Children are free,” Jizzimus pointed out.

  “Leave me alone.” She unwrapped the purple foil. “Look, go torment a chugger. You like that.”

  Jizzimus giggled and, with a clippety-clop, scampered away. New Street, the pedestrianised heart of the city, was the hunting ground of various religious evangelists, buskers and charity muggers. One had to slalom to avoid God, contemporary world music and direct debits for charities which clearly spent their money on hiring high street bullies and wheedlers. Actually, Jenny had no problem with the buskers but the rest could take a jump in a ditch.

  She took a big bite of chocolate. It tasted good, just not quite good enough. It was the methadone of wicked witches. Delicious but just not quite delicious enough to destroy her other cravings—

  “Excuse me.”

  She turned. It was a chugger with a clipboard, a badly-executed beard and unusual headwear.

  “I already gave at the office.”

  “That’s nice to know,” he said. “I’m doing a survey.”

  “Does the survey end with me donating to your charity?”

  “No, I—”

/>   “Or buying something from you?”

  “No—”

  “Or God?”

  “Um. I don’t think so. Not unless God’s running a three week self-improvement course.”

  Jenny thought about that. “Could be.” She tried to draw Jizzimus’s attention but he was too busying humping the leg of a Cancer Research chugger.

  “Go on then,” she sighed. “But I am going to stuff chocolate in my face while we do this.”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  He took her name and a contact number before launching into a baffling array of questions. He showed her pictures of cows and asked her to pick the ‘best’ one. He showed her black and white photographs of women in Victorian dresses and asked her to rank them in order on no particular scale. He invited her to think of a number between one and a hundred and then asked her to do the same three more times. He showed her woodcut images: a jester, a cat, a leafless tree and a tower, and asked her to match them to famous celebrities. He showed her photographs of several green leaves and asked her to select non-green colours to accompany each. He asked about her sleeping habits, her parents and then asked her to describe her favourite cloud. He seemed pleased with all her answers. Jenny couldn’t see why.

  By the time he had finished, so was her chocolate bar. Jizzimus had stolen a tabla drum from a street music group and was going bongotastic at the feet of a hellfire preacher.

  “All done,” said the weird survey man. “I just need to ask, do you have any questions?”

  “One, I suppose,” said Jenny. “Why is your hat on fire?”

  “Excellent,” said the man. He put a tick on his paperwork, and gave Jenny a brochure with a number stamped on the top.

  “Eastville Hall?” she read.

  “A lovely old house in the Fens.”

  “Do I now get to buy a remarkably cheap timeshare?”

  “No. That’s where the self-improvement course is being held. Your answers match our criteria perfectly and I am delighted to say we can offer you a place.”