“No. Now!” Andrew yelled. “Leave the piano! For once and for all, I forbid you to move the damned piano! Coffee, please. Now!”
There was a stunned silence from the distance.
Andrew shut the door and came back to Aidan, muttering, “I’d get it myself, only she makes such a fuss if I disarrange her kitchen.”
Aidan stared at Andrew with his glasses in his hand. Seen by his naked eyes, this man was not really mild and sheeplike at all. He had power, great and kindly power. Aidan saw it blazing around him. Perhaps he could be some help after all.
Andrew tipped two computer manuals and a shower of history pamphlets off another chair and pulled it around to face Aidan. “Now,” he said as he sat down, “what did your grandmother say?”
Aidan sniffed and then swallowed, firmly. He was determined not to break down again. “She — she told me,” he said, “that if I was ever in trouble after she died, I was to go to Mr Jocelyn Brandon in Melstone. She showed me Melstone on the map. She kept telling me.”
“Ah. I see,” Andrew said. “So you came here and found he was dead. Now there’s only me. I’m sorry about that. Was your grandmother a great friend of my grandfather’s?”
“She talked about him a lot,” Aidan said. “She said his field-of-care was much more important than hers and she always took his advice. They wrote to each other. She even phoned him once, when there was a crisis about a human sacrifice two streets away, and he told her exactly what to do. She was really grateful.”
Andrew frowned. He remembered, when he was here as a boy, his grandfather giving advice to magic users from all over the country. There was a distraught Scottish Wise Woman, who turned up once at the back door. Jocelyn sent her away smiling. But there was also a mad-looking, bearded Man of Power, who had frightened Andrew half to death by leering in at him through the purple pane at breakfast time. Old Jocelyn had been very angry with that man. “Refuses to hand his field-of-care on to someone sane!” Andrew remembered his grandfather saying. “What does he expect, for God’s sake?” Andrew had forgotten about these people. They had been mysterious and scary interruptions to his blissful holidays.
Wondering if any of them had been this grandmother of Aidan’s, he asked, “Who was your grandmother? What was her name?”
“Adela Cain,” Aidan said. “She used to be a singer—”
“No! Really?” Andrew’s face lit up. “I’d no idea she had a field-of-care! When I was about fifteen, I used to collect all her records. She was a wonderful singer — and wonderful-looking too!”
“She didn’t do much singing when I was with her,” Aidan said. “She gave it up after my mum died and I had to come to live with her. She said my mother’s death had hit her too hard.”
“Your mother was a Mrs Cain too?” Andrew asked.
Aidan found himself a little confused here. “I don’t know if either of them were a Mrs,” he explained. “Gran didn’t like to be tied down. But she never stopped complaining about my mum. She said my dad was chancy folk and Mum should have known better than to take up with someone so well known to be married. That’s all I know really.”
“Ah,” said Andrew. He felt he had put his foot in it and changed the subject quickly. “So you were left all alone in the world when your grandmother died?”
“Last week. Yes,” said Aidan. “The social workers kept asking if I had any other family, and so did the Arkwrights — they were the foster family I was put with. But the — the real reason I came here was the Stalkers—”
Aidan was forced to break off here. He was not sorry. The Stalkers had been the final awful touch to the worst week of his life. Mrs Stock caused the interruption by kicking the door open and rotating into the room carrying a large tray.
“Well, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this!” she was saying as she came face forward again. “It’s a regular invasion. First that boy. Now there’s Mr Stock and this one-legged jockey with that stuck-up daughter of his come to see you. And no sign of our Shaun.”
Mrs Stock did not seem to care that all the people she was talking about could hear what she said. As she dumped the tray across the books piled on the nearest table, the three others followed her into the study. Aidan winced, knowing that Mrs Stock thought he was an intruder, and sat back against the wall, watching quietly.
Mr Stock came first, in his hat as usual. Aidan was fascinated by Mr Stock’s hat. Perhaps it had once been a trilby sort of thing. It may once have even been a definite colour. Now it was more like something that had grown — like a fungus — on Mr Stock’s head, so mashed and used and rammed down by earthy hands that you could have thought it was a mushroom that had accidentally grown into a sort of gnome-hat. It had a slightly domed top and a floppy edge. And a definite smell.
After that hat, Aidan was astonished all over again at the little man with one leg, who energetically heaved himself into the room with his crutches. He should have had the hat, Aidan thought. He was surely a gnome, beard and all. But his greying head was bare and slightly bald.
“You know my brother-in-law, Tarquin O’Connor,” Mr Stock announced.
Ah, no. He’s Irish. He’s a leprechaun, Aidan thought.
“I’ve heard of you. I’m very pleased to meet you,” Andrew said, and he hurried to tip things off another chair so that Tarquin could sit down, which Tarquin did, very deftly, swinging his stump of leg up and his crutches around, and giving Andrew a smile of thanks as he sat.
“Tark used to be a jockey,” Mr Stock told Andrew. “Won the Derby. And he’s brought his daughter, my niece Stashe, for you to interview.”
Aidan was astonished a third time by Tarquin O’Connor’s daughter. She was beautiful. She had one of those faces with delicate high cheekbones and slightly slanting eyes that he had only seen before on the covers of glossy magazines. Her eyes were green too, like someone in a fairy story, and she really was as slender as a wand. Aidan wondered how someone as gnomelike as Tarquin could be the father of a lady so lovely. The only family likeness was that they were both small.
Stashe came striding in with her fair hair flopping on her shoulders and a smile for everyone — even for Aidan and Mrs Stock — and a look at her father that said, “Are you all right in that chair, Dad?” She seemed to bring with her all the feelings that had to do with being human and warm-blooded. Her character was clearly not at all fairylike. She was in jeans and a body warmer and wellies. No, not a fairy-tale person, Aidan thought.
Mrs Stock glowered at her. Tarquin gave her a “Don’t fuss me!” look. Andrew was as astonished as Aidan. He wondered what this good-looking young lady was doing here. He moved over to her, tipping another chair free of papers as he went, and shook the hand she was holding out to him.
“Stashe?” he asked her.
“Short for Eustacia.” Stashe twisted her mouth sideways to show what she thought of the name. “Blame my parents.”
“Blame your mother,” Tarquin told her. “Her favourite name. Not mine.”
“What am I supposed to interview you about?” Andrew asked, in the special, bewildered way he often found very useful.
“I’ve suggested her for your new secretary,” Mr Stock announced. “Part time I suppose. I’ll leave you to get on with it, shall I?” And he marched out of the room, pushing Mrs Stock out in front of him.
Mrs Stock, as she left, turned her head to say, “I’m bringing Shaun for you as soon as he turns up.” It sounded like a threat.
Andrew grew very busy giving everyone coffee and some of the fat, soft, uneven biscuits Mrs Stock always made. He needed time to think about all this. “I have to deal with this young lady first,” he said apologetically to Aidan. “But we’ll talk later.”
He treats me like a grown-up! Aidan thought. Then he had to balance his coffee on the bureau beside him in order to take his glasses off and blink back more tears. Everyone had treated him like a child, and a small one at that, after Gran died, the Arkwrights most of all. “Come and give me a cu
ddle like the nice little fellow you are,” had been Mrs Arkwright’s favourite saying. Her other one was, “Now don’t you bother your little head with that, dear.” They were very kind — so kind they were appalling. Aidan hurt all over inside just thinking about them.
Meanwhile, Andrew was saying to Tarquin, “You live in that cottage with all the roses, don’t you?” Tarquin, giving him a wry, considering look, nodded. “I admire them every time I pass,” Andrew went on, sounding desperate to say something polite. Tarquin nodded again, and smiled.
“Oh, you don’t have to do the polite,” Stashe protested. “Let’s get on and talk business — or don’t you approve after all, Dad?”
“Oh, I like him well enough,” Tarquin said. “But I don’t think the professor quite wants us. Bit of a recluse, aren’t you?” he said to Andrew.
“Yes,” said Andrew, taken aback.
Aidan hooked his glasses across one knee, drank his coffee and stared, fascinated. To his naked eyes, here were three strongly magical people. He had been right to think leprechaun about the brave, shrewd little man with one leg. He almost was one. He was full of gifts. But quite what that made Stashe into, Aidan could not tell. She was so warm. And direct as a sunray.
“Oh, do cut the cackle, both of you!” she was saying now. “I’d make you a good secretary, Professor Hope. I’ve every possible qualification, including magical. Dad’s taught me magic. He’s quite a power, is Dad. Why don’t you take me on for a week’s trial, no strings, no bad feelings if we don’t suit?”
“I — er…” said Andrew. “I suppose I hesitate because I already have two strong-minded employees. And there’s money—”
Stashe put her head back and laughed at the ceiling beams. “Those Stocks,” she said. “Don’t like change, either of them. They’ll come round. Meanwhile, say yes or no, do. I’ve told you how much I’d charge. If you can’t afford it, say no; if you can, say yes. I think you’ll find I’m worth it. And then you can get back to this poor kid sitting here eating his heart out with worry.”
All three turned to look at Aidan.
Tarquin, who had evidently been watching Aidan all along without seeming to look, said, “In several kinds of trouble, aren’t you, sonny?” Stashe gave Aidan a blinding smile, and Andrew shot Aidan a startled look that said, “Oh dear. As bad as that.” Tarquin added, “Who’s chasing you, as of now?”
“Social workers, I suppose. They may have brought the police in by now,” Aidan found himself answering. The little man was really powerful. Aidan had meant to stop there, but he seemed compelled to go on. “And at least three lots of Stalkers. Two lots of them had some kind of fight in the foster family’s garden the night before last. The Arkwrights called the police, but the sergeant said it was probably cats. It wasn’t though. We all saw shadowy sort of — people. They disappear by daylight. That’s why I ran away at sunrise this morning.”
There was a short silence, then Andrew said, “Aidan’s grandmother died last week and told him before she died to come to Jocelyn Brandon if he was in trouble. And of course my grandfather is dead too.”
After another short silence, Stashe said, “Have some more coffee.”
“And give him another biscuit,” Tarquin added. “Had any breakfast, did you?”
Aidan thought he was going to cry again. He managed to stop himself by saying, “I had money for a bacon sandwich.”
“Good,” said Tarquin. “These Stalkers. Haunts, were they? That sort of thing?”
Aidan nodded. “Three kinds. They seemed to know exactly where I was.”
“Difficult,” said Tarquin. “You can’t really expect the police to be much help there. You need to hide, sonny, to my mind. My house has not got as much protection as this one has, but you’d be welcome to stay with me. I could use the help.”
Before Aidan could say anything, Stashe gave her father a scornful look and bounced out of her chair. “Yes, Dad,” she said. “I can just see you trying to fight a bunch of haunts by waving one crutch at them! We need a proper decision here. There must be a way to keep the kid safe. Is that today’s paper I see there?”
Andrew, who was holding the biscuits out to Aidan and slowly coming to his own decision, looked vaguely round and said, “Mrs Stock did bring the paper in here I think.”
Stashe was already pulling the newspaper out from under the tray. She tossed most of it impatiently on the floor among the history pamphlets and took out the sports section, which she spread out. “Where do they put the racing results in this rag? Oh, here, right at the end. Let’s see. Kempton, Warwick, Lingfield, Leicester — lots to choose from. What won the first race at Kempton then? I always go to the first one they give.”
Aidan and Andrew both stared at her. “Why do you want to know?” they said, almost together.
“Advice,” said Stashe. “Predictions. I always use the racing results as an oracle. I do first race and last in the first track on the list, and then the last race in the last one.”
“You can’t be serious!” said Aidan.
“Works for her,” Tarquin said, perfectly seriously. “I’ve never known her fail.”
“Oh, look here!” Andrew said. “A horse that won yesterday, far away from here, can’t have anything to do with—”
He stopped as Stashe read out, “The two-oh-five at Kempton: first, Dark Menace, second, Runaway, third, Sanctuary. That seems to outline the situation pretty well, doesn’t it? Last race now. First, Aidan’s Hope, second, Hideaway, third, The Professor. I think that settles it. Professor Hope, he has to stay here with you.”
Andrew was sure that Stashe was making the names up. “I don’t believe this!” he said and took the paper off her. But they were all there, in print, just as she had read them out.
“Read out the last race at Leicester now,” Tarquin said to him. “She uses that as the clincher.”
Andrew moved the paper along and his eyes widened. He read out, in a fading, astonished voice, “First, Real Danger, second, Flight to Hope, third, Eustacia’s Way. Look here,” he said, “most horses have names like Bahajan King, or Lord Hannibal, or something in Arabic. What do you do when one of those comes up?”
“Oh, that’s simple,” Stashe said sunnily. “Depending if one of those without meaning comes first, second or third, they give you a question mark to the prophecy or advice. They say, ‘This might work’ or ‘This is the best I can tell you’ — things like that.”
This girl is mad, Andrew thought. Barking. But I do need help with the computer.
“She’s quite sane,” Tarquin put in helpfully.
Andrew’s mouth opened to contradict this. But at that moment Mrs Stock put her face round the door. “Here’s our Shaun,” she announced. “And you’re employing him as handyman here. If you don’t and you hire that Stashe instead, I’m leaving and you can just find yourself another housekeeper!”
Everyone stared at her. Trying not to laugh, Andrew took his glasses off and slowly cleaned them with his handkerchief. “Don’t tempt me, Mrs Stock,” he said. “Don’t tempt me.”
Mrs Stock bridled. “Is that a jo —?” she began. Then it dawned on her that it might not be a joke. She gave Andrew a slanting, upwards look. “Well, anyway,” she said, “this is our Shaun.” She pushed a bulky young man into the room.
Shaun was probably about eighteen. It took Andrew — and Aidan too — only a glance to see that Shaun was what people in Melstone called “a bit in the head” or, Aidan thought, what the Arkwrights would call “mentally challenged”. His face and body were fat in that way that showed that his body was trying to make up for his brain. His eyes looked tight round the edges. He stood there, perplexed and embarrassed at the way everyone was looking at him, and twisted his plump thumbs in his T-shirt, ashamed.
“He can do most things,” Mrs Stock asserted, pushing her way in after Shaun. “Provided you explain them to him first.”
Mr Stock had been prudently lurking outside the study windows to see how Stashe got on.
Now he stuck his face, and his hat, through the nearest opening. “I am not,” he said, “having that lummock-de-troll glunching about this place! Trod on all my tomatoes he did, last year.”
And suddenly everyone was shouting at one another.
Shaun gave vent to a great tenor bellow. “Was not my fault, so!” Stashe shouted at her uncle to keep his nose out of things, and then turned and shouted at Mrs Stock. Mrs Stock shouted back, shriller and shriller, defending Shaun and telling Stashe to keep her bossy, managing face out of Professor Hope’s business. Tarquin bounced in his chair and yelled that he was not going to sit there to hear his daughter insulted, while Mr Stock kept up a rolling boom, like a big bass drum, and seemed to be insulting everyone.
Aidan had never heard anything like this. He sat back in his hard chair and kept his mouth shut. Andrew rolled his eyes. Finally, he put his glasses back on and marched to his desk where he found his long, round, old-fashioned ruler, swung it back and banged it violently against the side of his computer. CLANG!
The shouting stopped. Andrew took his glasses off again, in order not to see the incredulous way they all looked at him.
“Thank you,” Andrew said. “If you’ve all quite finished arranging my affairs for me, I shall now tell you what I have decided. Shaun, you can work here for a week’s trial.” He was sorry for Shaun and he thought a week wouldn’t hurt anyone. “That suit you?” he asked. Shaun gave him a relieved, eager nod. “And you, Stashe,” Andrew went on, “since you know your way around computers, you can come for a month’s trial. I need a database set up and a lot of documents tapped in and something’s gone wrong with this computer.” Probably a lot more, he thought, now that he had hit the thing. “Is that OK?”
Mrs Stock glowered. Stashe, looking perky and triumphant, said, “I can do Tuesdays, Fridays and Mondays. When do I start?”
“She works down the Stables on the other days,” Tarquin explained.
“Then start tomorrow,” Andrew said. “Nine-thirty.”
Aidan was greatly relieved. Up to now he had thought Andrew was the kind of person that everyone pushed about.