The Magic Cottage

MOTION PICTURE

I DIDN'T GET back to Gramarye until late Thursday afternoon. The recording session had been fantastic—Collins had to be one of the most professional musician/singers in the business, and one of the easiest to get along with (so long as you were doing your job right) and he made Bob's and my song sound a hundred times better than it really was. I'd stayed on through the day (Wednesday), invited to work on another couple of tracks for the album, and had loved every relaxed, jokey moment. I hadn't realized how much I'd been missing the scene until then, and it was great to catch up on all the news with Bob and one or two of the other musos afterward in the nearest bar.

I began by going steady with the booze, but I was on a high and easily led. Relieved, too, that my hand hadn't let me down (I'd spent the previous two days with my guitars, working out the slight stiffness left in my fingers—which could have been due to the long lay-off anyway). The buzz I felt took over all sensibilities and I was soon knocking them back like a man out on parole.

Bob didn't believe in the seriousness of my accident at all, insisting that I must have moved back faster than I'd thought, getting scalded a bit but not badly, and making my usual namby-pamby fuss. Sure, my hand and arm were more pinkish than normal, and there were a few nasty splodges on my face, but the damage could only have been superficial. I told him about the Synergists and Mycroft's trick with the colored liquid. Fucking crazy, was Bob's comment.

He suggested I stay the night at his place and I had to admit the thought of driving all the way back to Hampshire, loaded as I was, didn't appeal. I found a phone and rang Midge.

She agreed it would be senseless to drive that far so late and told me to stay with Bob and enjoy myself. Watch yourself, though, she warned, and I knew exactly what she meant: Bob could be a great junkhead at times.

After getting excited over my day, Midge informed me she'd spent her time painting, enjoying the solitary confinement, but naturally missing me a lot. How much? How high the mountains, how deep the sea . . .?

I told her she'd pay for her mockery when I got home, and then we both got mawkishly serious, telling each other we really hated not being together, even for a day, that being apart didn't feel natural, that love was a hurting thing—you know the stuff. Cliché endearments, maybe, but we meant them. There were watery blobs in my eyes when I returned to Bob and the others.

Still, I managed to have a good time. We went for a meal from there and ended up back at Bob's place, a Victorian terraced house in Fulham, about one in the morning. By then, we were feeling no pain. His latest lady (Bob had been married twice and was now legally separated from the second wife) was in bed and she flatly refused (a bit disgruntledly, I felt) to join our party. We played hard rock on the stereo until thumps on the wall indicated that the neighbors weren't in a partying mood either. Our pals left shortly after, and Bob and I carried on with reminiscences of great old times together—gigs, scrapes, practical jokes and women just about covered the field—breaking open fresh cans of beer and suffering bouts of girlish giggling. It was a good night, a night for talking, and I was glad my friend needed no other stimulants than the beer we were drinking and our own conversation. I've no idea what time we both finally crashed out.

I awoke around noon, stretched out on a sofa, shoes removed and a dressing gown tossed over me. Bob had (surprisingly) been up before ten and had gone off to "put a deal together," as he would say; his girlfriend, Kiwi (I still don't know to this day what her real name was, or why she was called Kiwi), informed me of this as she handed me a huge Peter Rabbit mug of strong black coffee. I sat there like a zombie, drinking coffee and nursing my head, and after a while (when she started up the Hoover within three feet of me, in fact) I guessed it was time to leave.

Kiwi was pleased enough to switch off her turbopower machine for a moment when I told her I'd be on my way, and she smiled prettily. "Look forward to Saturday," she said. "Saturday?" I asked. "Bob told me before he left that you'd asked us down to dinner," she trilled. "Oh yeah," I said, remembering vaguely. "Yeah, see you then," I added. "Look forward to it," she repeated. The resumed Hoovering quickly sent me on my way.

I stopped on the way back to Hampshire for a light snack and a hair-of-the-dog, also taking the opportunity to ring Midge to inform her of the hero's return. There was no reply from Gramarye, so I assumed she'd gone for a walk although for once the weather wasn't terrific—not raining, but overcast. She couldn't have gone shopping, because I had the car.

I was soon on my way again and the throbbing in my head eventually started to ebb. By the time I reached the Hampshire border I was feeling pretty good again, although looking forward to an hour or so in my own bed to clear away the last dregs of the hangover.

And you know, the closer I drew to home the happier I became: I'd cut loose for a while and had a great time, enjoyed fast company and working again with professionals; but that one day and night had been enough—at least enough to last me quite some time. Great feeling, that. And new to me.

At last I reached Cantrip and drove through the high street, catching sight of the Reverend Sixsmythe on his bike ahead. Still angry at him for upsetting Midge (not to mention me) with his gruesome recount of Ma Chaldean's death, I was tempted to thump my horn as I drew level to make him wobble, but I resisted.

Out of the village, then into the lanes, the forest closing in on either side. Light raindrops speckled the Passat's windshield.

A few turns and God bless her, there she was, a splash of white in the distance. I was grinning all over my face when I pulled onto the grassy shoulder at the side of Gramarye's garden. Now I did toot the horn, just to let Midge know I was back. Opening the hatchback, I hauled out my two guitar cases and rested them on the ground while I closed up again. Guitars in either hand, I stepped over the fence rather than walk around to the gate, and trudged through the flowerbeds to the path, expecting to see Midge's happy pixie face peering from the doorway at any moment. I was disappointed, though. Midge either hadn't heard my arrival, or she hadn't yet returned from her walk. But surely she couldn't have been out all this time, particularly as the weather wasn't up to much? Perhaps she was asleep, or in the bath: either one would suit my purposes admirably.

I glanced at the upstairs windows, and they were dark and lifeless.

A small scratching noise, and my attention went back to the front door. There was Rumbo, gnawing at the paintwork. He turned and his expression seemed to say, "So where the hell have you been?"

I chuckled and he joined in. Bob had scoffed when I'd told him about the cottage in our boozy state—about the animals and birds who came every day, the wild growth of beautiful flowers, the atmosphere itself—demanding to know what kind of "weed" was I growing down here and could he order a caseload? I hadn't risen to the bait, because even I felt much of what I said was exaggeration now that I was back in this real world of cynics and grafters. But you had to be in Gramarye to know; logic took over once outside.

"Come on, Rumbo, let a man get inside his own home," I said to the squirrel, gently easing him aside with one foot. He found my shoelace tasty.

I reached for my key, but decided to test the door first. As I'd half expected, Midge hadn't locked up after her despite my warnings. We were no longer in the big bad city, she always rebuked me.

I pushed open the door and Rumbo scampered in before me. It was very gloomy inside and I had a nasty vision of a rotting corpse sitting at the kitchen table swinging around to greet me with a lipless grin. Oh Stringer, you've gotta forget the vicar's little tale!

"Midge! You around?" I dumped the guitar cases on the floor and went to the foot of the stairs. "Midge? The hunk's home!"

She was definitely out. The place was so quiet it was loud.

Disappointed, I went through to the adjoining room and filled the kettle. Rumbo had preceded me and was darting backward and forward along the top of the old iron range.

"Don't go up that chimney," I advised him. "You'll come down so black your own family wouldn't recognize you. And I hear you red squirrels have had enough trouble from the grays—so imagine what would happen if a black squirrel showed up in the neighborhood."

Rumbo looked up into what must have been to him the equivalent of a lift shaft, and accepted my advice (maybe he knew something about racialism), hopping off the range, then over to the fridge-freezer, leaping onto its top. From there, he gnashed his tiny teeth at me.

"Okay, feller, I know what you're after." Reaching up to a shelf behind me, I took down the biscuit jar and unscrewed the lid. "One for you, one for me." I tossed over a piece which he deftly caught in his paws and immediately munched into. Mine was gone in two bites, but his took considerably longer; he daintily gnawed around the edge, turning the shrinking biscuit in his paws and occasionally glancing my way, presumably to check if any more were in the offing. He was a fascinating little tyke all right, lovably cheeky (we'd once found him snugly asleep in our bed, burrowed down beneath the sheets) although sometimes irascible (he'd thrown bacon rind down at my head one morning from the top of the sideboard after I'd scolded him for running across the kitchen table and knocking over the sugar bowl). A month or so ago I would never have believed an animal could be so tame—at least, not a wild squirrel—or so smart (he always knew when breakfast or lunch was about to be served, rarely failing to make an appearance at those times—he enjoyed our scraps more than regular squirrel food, I think).

Steam billowed from the kettle and I spooned instant coffee into a cup, adding one sugar, and milk this time. Pouring the boiling water made me nervous and, not for the first time since Sunday, perplexed. You were lucky, is all, I told myself, lucky your arm got dipped in the Synergists' own special brand of Fairy Liquid so soon after the accident. They could market the formula for a million. No, several millions. But they'd have to cut out the holding-hands-voodoo bit if they wanted to be taken seriously.

Antiseptic only—huh! Who did Kinsella think he was kidding?

I sipped coffee, burning my lips. Maybe they already did market the green curative, only in discreet quantities—under the counter, as it were. That would explain how they could afford such a large estate as Croughton Hall. Their secretiveness didn't make much sense, but then if they were some kind of nutty religious sect, it didn't need to. Interesting, though.

I left the kitchen, taking the cup of coffee with me, Rumbo racing ahead up the stairs, the last of the biscuit hastily devoured. The whole place was unusually dull and gray, the sun's absence making quite a contrasting impression on the atmosphere of the place. Long, rainy winter days were obviously going to prove a trial for both of us. Still, weren't they always, wherever you lived? I went straight from the hall into the bedroom—did I mention we'd moved into the bigger room by now, the one that had had the crack in the wall repaired and painted over?—-just in case Midge had fallen asleep in there. I ordered Rumbo off the empty-of-Midge bed where he was having a fine time tangled up in the top sheet, and went through to the round room. Even in here, with the three large windows, it was gloomy. The smell of paint hung in the air and, because it was a familiar scent and one I associated with my live-in partner, it wasn't unpleasant. Her drawing board was sloped at an acute angle, and I remembered she had told me she'd spent yesterday painting. Now, every new illustration from Midge was a delight to me (not to mention to all her fans, young and old) and I lost no time in getting across the room to see.

One thing I did before peeking, though, was to lay down my coffee on the small table beside the swivel-board where she kept her paints, brushes, and bits and pieces. Our rule was that I never went near her artwork—nor was anyone else allowed to—with dangerous substances in my hand. I made the mistake once, when we were only just getting to know one another, of opening a can of beer while admiring her work at close range; you can guess where the spray went. Midge had taken it well, but I resolved "never again."

Only when the cup was safely out of my hands did I turn and look. And was instantly lost in pure, worshipful awe of her talent.

The painting, in her favorite medium of designer's gouache, was of Gramarye itself.

She had obviously worked from the grass shoulder outside the garden gate, using her small easel to support the artboard, because the cottage was viewed from there, the garden, with its wild patterns of colors, in the foreground. The forest behind provided a strangely brooding backdrop, albeit insignificant against the exuberance of Gramarye itself, the walls brilliantly white, yet detailed, marked where the real walls were marked, worn where the real brickwork was worn. The colors may have been exaggerated—no roof could ever be quite that shade of rusty red, the grass and nearest trees could never be that vividly green—yet they conveyed the true vibrancy of our home and its surroundings, the invigorating quality we had both felt when we first moved in, but which only Midge, with her unique and skillful, child's-view artistry could express. You know, my knees actually went weak as I took it all in.

But that was nothing compared with what was to come.

Outside, the sun broke through the clouds, washing the room with a sudden brilliant warmth, striking those lucid colors before me so that they dazzled and surged, yes, surged, with sparkling energy, the brightness striking into me, deep into me, and reproducing—not just duplicating— the image inside my head, as if it had solidified in there, was as real as the original.

Remember that first day Midge and I had come to look at the cottage, when I thought I'd gone into some kind of delayed drug excursion? Well, this was it again. Either I started swaying or the artboard started moving, because the picture kept dancing in and out of focus.

The sun behind me blazed on my shoulders and the top of my head felt so hot I wondered if it were on fire. I could feel myself going, my knees sagging, the picture captured inside my head swelling, becoming too immense to contain, threatening to expand through my brain and push against the inner walls of my skull. The pressure was almost unbearable.

In some kind of fantastic and frightening way, I became part of Midge's picture, living and breathing in it just as surely as if I were outside standing before the garden gate; only whether I was truly inside the picture or the picture was inside me, I had no way of knowing. The smell of fresh paint was slight, but the smell of flowers, of grass, offence, of road—of sky!—was intoxicating. I was hallucinating and I was totally aware that I was doing so. But nothing, no effort of will could bring me back. I'm sure I cried out, because I was scared, Jesus, I was so scared!

Everything was a chromatic replica, an illustration, but it was all real—the sky was real, the forest was real, and Gramarye, stylized, the colors too fresh, too synthetically manufactured—too bloody fairy-story!—was real. And the clouds moved, and there were birds lazily arcing in the sky. It was alive and it existed. But it was only paint! Moving, breathing, paint! And I was part of it!

And there was the path, the flowers on either side dipping with the easy breeze. And of course the path led up to the cottage door. Which was open. And the cool darkness inside was inviting me in, an alluring emptiness, but an emptiness that really wasn't empty, because although I couldn't see into the darkness there was something, there was someone, there. Someone sitting at the kitchen table. Someone who was really a something. And that something was beginning to move, beginning to rise from the table on which stood a cup filled with moldering tea, undrunk and festering with all kinds of minute, crawling life.

And the someone who was now only something was a darker shadow moving among other shadows, shuffling rather than walking, coming to the open door, coming to greet me, coming to encourage me forward, raising a hand—I could see that hand rising, see the fingers that were no more than bones with thin lumps of rotted flesh still clinging.

And that something was nearly at the door, almost in the light. But it lingered there, because light revealed too much, light was unnatural for a thing such as this. I could see what was left of the finger curling inward, gesturing, beckoning me, telling me to come closer, wanting me.

And I found myself opening the gate, setting foot on the path, walking forward, confused and wondering why I didn't resist, the flowers beginning to wilt now, starting to crumble, the petals' edges turning brown, dying, and the door was open to me, a darkness waiting and something waiting in the darkness.

And daylight was fading—the cottage walls were gray, the windows black, and the roof had become muddy dark, and there were black pits where tiles had fallen through, and as the light dimmed, the sun swallowed whole by painted ebony storm clouds, creatures fluttered out from those pits, wheeling in the heavy, murky air, screeching their welcome, circling above the cottage, occasionally diving erratically, but never approaching me, content to wait until I was inside. Only then would they return . . .

I was near the doorway, and I was trying to hold myself back, my footsteps weighty, cumbrous, my shoulders almost leaning backward. But still I continued that sluggish journey, impelled by what I knew was just inside that door, watching me and waiting patiently.

And my foot was on the step. And she was coming forward. And even in the gloom I could see she was almost faceless. And when both her rotted hands reached for me I opened my mouth in a silent scream . . .

. . . And a voice called me back . . .