Enchanted Glass (25 page)

“Need any help?” he asked as he approached.

“No thanks. I think I’ve fixed it for the moment,” Andrew said. He was feeling strange. Nothing he had done in his life had been like this.

Mr Stock surveyed the heaving trees. He nodded. “Trying to take over again, wasn’t he?” he said. “Old Mr Brandon warned me he might. They need a lesson, to my mind. I’ll think of something after the Fête. Let’s make what you did stick for now.” He went to the edge of the wood and drove the spade into the earth, so that it stood upright. “Iron,” he said. “That should hold them for a day or so.”

They went back to Melstone House. There, Andrew sat rather limply in a chair in the kitchen, while Stashe attended to Aidan’s blisters.

“Honestly, Aidan,” she said, “you should have mentioned these before. They deserve to be in the
Guinness Book of Records.
I’ve never seen any so big.”

Aidan agreed with her. He was feeling very smug and cared for, with Stashe’s shining fair head bent over him, smelling of clean hair mixed with wafts of disinfectant, and Stashe’s face turning up to him and smiling every so often. Rolf groaned enviously. He was lying where he was most
in the way, stiff all over from the fight, waiting for Aidan to notice him.

Mrs Stock sniffed as she got ready to go home. She still had not forgiven Andrew. “You’ll be lucky to get to the Fete, any of you,” she said as she opened the back door. “Cauliflower cheese in the oven, Professor. If there
is
a Fête to go to,” she added, looking up at the sky. “It feels like thunder out here. At least if they do have to cancel the Fête we’ll be spared Trixie’s dreadful sideshow. Look on the bright side.” She shut the back door behind her with a snap.

“I can’t
wait
to see what Trixie’s doing,” Aidan said. “I hope it doesn’t rain.”

“It does feel like thunder,” Stashe agreed.

It did feel that way, although the sky was clear. Andrew knew it was the storm of magic he had raised. It had sunk to a sort of uneasiness at the back of things by then, and there it stayed all evening. It was still there late that night, after Tarquin had fetched Stashe home and Aidan had gone to bed, when Andrew let Rolf out for Rolf to hobble about on the lawn squirting half-heartedly at thistles. I wish my grandfather had told me how you stopped such a thing, Andrew thought, watching Rolf limp upstairs to share Aidan’s bed. But I don’t think he ever did. Andrew locked the front door and went into the kitchen to make sure the back door was locked too.

Moonlight was blazing in slantwise through the coloured glass, casting misty squares of colour on the floor, faint purple, pale, pale green and red that was hardly more than a smear. Andrew looked at the glass itself and found himself jumping, with surprise that was almost fear. The faces there were so clear and so easy to recognise. Pulled by the strength of the magic coming in with the moonlight, Andrew went up to the glass and stared through the panes.

The magic blasted in at him, icy but not cold.

He could feel it now, coming in from vast distances, and he knew it was age-old, as old as gravity, older than earth. As a boy, he had always wondered why his grandfather called magic “the fifth power” and then grumbled at the stupidity of scientists for not recognising it. He could almost feel his grandfather, here in the kitchen behind him, urging and imploring him to understand. And Andrew did understand. In a shuddering leap, rather like the strange moment when he had understood all about History, he knew that magic was one of the great forces of the universe, that had come into being right at the beginning, along with gravity and the force that held atoms together, as strong, or stronger, than any force there. Stronger, definitely. At need, magic could dissolve atoms and reassemble them, as it did when Rolf changed from dog to child. It was a great power, to be used with great care.

Now that he understood, Andrew could feel magic pouring in, homing in on Melstone from light years away. It was being
collected
here. Someone, long ago, had set up the two sets of enchanted glass, the one here in the kitchen and the one in the roof of the shed, to act like the two poles of an enormous horseshoe magnet, pulling magic into the field-of-care. The Brandons’ main task was to protect this glass. They were supposed to use it for the good of the earth. But as soon as he knew this, Andrew could feel that at least half the magic was being drawn off into the Manor, where Mr Brown lived, feeding on the field-of-care like a slug on a lettuce.

Andrew smiled then and thought of Mr Stock. Mr Stock was paranoid about slugs.

He went on staring at the glass for a long time, drenched in moonlit magic, wondering what to do about Mr Brown, wondering about the various uses of the colours that the glass split the magic into. He had inklings about that, but he knew it would take months or maybe years of study to use the colours accurately. No, to get rid of Mr Brown he would have to use the purple pane, the powerful glass that brought in all the others. How to do it without harming Aidan was the problem…

“Fête today,” Aidan said to Rolf as he looked into the fridge that Saturday morning. Rolf groaned with his chin on his paws. “All that shape-changing was bad for him,” Aidan explained to Andrew. “He’s bruised all over. Can I give this cauliflower cheese to Groil?”

“If you like,” Andrew said, yawning. The magic-filled night had left him feeling bloated and slow.

Aidan whistled as he took the cauliflower cheese to the larder and put the bowl of it into the box he had carefully labelled “GROILFOOD”. He was coming to dislike cauliflower cheese almost as much as Andrew did. “And I know what,” he said, coming out of the larder, “I can go down to the shop and get you a paper.”

“Only if you’re wearing the silver charm,” Andrew said, sleepily making coffee. “Tell Rosie to put the paper on my account.”

“Wearing it,” Aidan said, jingling the charm on its chain. He had become fond of the way it lay warm against his collarbone. He swallowed a bowl of cereal and said, “Coming, Rolf?” Rolf groaned again, mightily. No. Aidan set off cheerfully on his own to see what was going on in the village.

Aidan was not disappointed. Much was going on. Mr Stock rumbled across Aidan’s path trundling a wheelbarrow in which reposed the mighty zeppelin
marrow, a green and yellow monster of a marrow carefully packed around with turf to prevent it from bruising. At the end of the lane, Aidan met Mrs Stock pushing an old pram piled high with old clothes for her traditional stall.

“Doing this early,” she explained to Aidan. “I have to get back and make my cake for the Best Sponge competition. Tell the professor that Shaun’s on his way. He’s just finishing his Best Robot.”

And so it went on, all the way to the shop. Aidan passed person after person with barrows or old pushchairs, or carrying mysterious tins or packages, each of them making for the competition tent in the football field. In the shop, Rosie Stock was cursing. Her Best Sponge had gone flat as a pancake, she said, and she was having to make do with Best Rock Cakes instead.

Aidan bought the paper and slipped off back to Melstone House. Shaun was just arriving. “My robot’s the greatest!” he told Aidan, waving his arms and starfishing his fingers. “Does things you’d never believe. Make sure you see it.” And he put a copy of the same paper on the kitchen table.

“Curses!” Aidan said. “Shall I take my paper back?”

“You don’t need an excuse to snoop round the village surely?” Andrew said, opening Shaun’s paper and looking for the racing results. “We can always use newspaper.”

Aidan laughed and darted off again, to spend a happy morning watching the roundabout being powered up and coloured rolls of plastic being delivered and pumped into a bouncy castle. Shaun took himself off to the shed, saying wistfully over his shoulder that they always said he was too big for the bouncy castle. “But I bounce real careful, Professor. It’s not fair!”

“Shame,” Andrew agreed without listening. He was puzzling at the result from yesterday’s first race at Goodwood. Rich Ronnie had won it, followed by Takeover Brown and Freeforall. “Now what is
that
supposed to mean?” he was saying to himself when Stashe breezed in, carrying a third copy of the same paper. Andrew laughed. So did Stashe.

“Three times is the charm,” she said, giving Andrew a swift kiss. “Sorry. The paper was just my excuse to get out of the house. Dad’s got ten Best Roses and six rose holders and he can’t make up his mind which to enter. He’s cooking rock cakes and sponges and trying to ice his Best Iced Cake while he dithers, and he’s still got Best Bunch of Roses and Best Vase of Flowers to do. I tell you, it’s bedlam in there!”

“I can see it is,” Andrew said, still laughing. It was wonderful how Stashe and laughter seemed to go together. “But what do you make of this result?”

Stashe took up one of the extra papers and examined the
racing page. “What this means,” she said, “is that you’re not as good at this as I am. What were you trying to find out?”

“Whether it’s safe for Aidan to go to the Fête,” Andrew said. “After all, Brown’s going to be there and Takeover Brown came second—”

“To Rich Ronnie and Ronnie Stock’s going to open it,” Stashe said. “That looks like the main event and it’s got nothing to do with Aidan. Let’s see what it says won the last race at Lingfield then.” She read out, “Thunderstorm came first and Gigantic and Rain of Fire tied for second. Honestly, Andrew, all I can see there is bad weather. And seeing that this was the last race, we can hope that it holds off until later. Oh, let him go, Andrew. He’ll go mad if you tell him he can’t, and he’d probably sneak off there anyway.”

Andrew sighed. He had hoped to be spared the boredom of the Fête.

He spent most of the morning watching the weather. In this he was not alone. Everyone in Melstone watched the sky and muttered that it felt like thunder. There were clouds, true, but high up, with hazy silver edges. The air felt hot and thick. But no rain came. By two o’clock, when the procession started, Andrew was resigned to the fact that the Fete would go ahead. He and Stashe went with Aidan
to the end of the lane to watch the procession go by.

People carrying banners came first. Naturally there was a Best Banner competition. Aidan was a little pitying here. He had seen much better ones a couple of years back, when Gran took him to Notting Hill to watch the Carnival there. But he did concede that the billowing red dragon with MELSTONE on its side, which took four men to carry it, was probably quite good. Andrew preferred the stark black and white one that unfolded to show FETE in white letters on the black parts. “Huh!” Stashe said and laughed with delight at the motorbike disguised as an elephant, on which rode no-good boy Arnie Stock dressed as an Indian rajah. He was encased in a sort of cage with MELSTONE RULES on it in curly letters. The rest of Melstone agreed with Stashe. There were cheers and yells of, “Nice one, Arnie!” up and down the hedges from people walking in the road to watch.

The yells and whistles were almost drowned out by the band, who came next, marching quite smartly and playing the traditional Melstone Dance tune. It was a strange tune, jolly and sad at once. Stashe told Aidan that folklorists were always on about it. Aidan would have asked more, but he was distracted by seeing his football friend, Jimmy Stock, in a big and baggy uniform, playing the cornet in the band. Jimmy shot him a look as he
marched past that said, “Don’t you dare laugh!” and Aidan had to turn away or he would have started to giggle. He was quite glad when the band thumped onwards and was followed by the morris men, striding jingling after. They were to give a display of dancing once Ronnie Stock had opened the Fête.

The procession was surprisingly long. Beautifully groomed ponies came next, whose small, solemn riders looked thoroughly nervous at the thought of the competitions they were entered for. They were followed by equally tense people with dogs on leads who were entered for the Obedience and Obstacle Course. None of the dogs looked nervous or anything like obedient. They kept trying to fight each other.

Aidan thought of Rolf, left lying groaning on the living-room floor. He wondered if it would be cheating to enter Rolf for the competitions next year. Probably. He couldn’t see Andrew letting him or Rolf get away with it. Pity. They were bound to win.

Meanwhile, the Children’s Fancy Dress entrants were coming by, marching, shuffling and —in the case of the kid disguised as a tube of toothpaste —tottering past. There were enormous numbers of them. If he craned to look, Aidan could see them winding away into the distance, filling the road.

“What happens if a car or a lorry wants to come past?” he asked.

“Oh, they have police on duty to hold up the traffic,” Stashe said. She craned out too. “I can just see a policewoman down the end there, I think.”

At this, Andrew craned to look as well. There
was
a dim figure in the distance, who seemed to be holding up a few cars, but although he took his glasses off and put them on again, he simply could not tell whether it was a real policewoman or Mabel Brown pretending to be one. He checked that Aidan was still wearing his silver charm and, just to be on the safe side, he said, “I vote we all walk up and watch everyone arriving at the Fête.”