The Magic Cottage

A VISITOR

WE RELAXED in the round room that evening, Midge lying on the carpet, her head propped up by cushions, me on the sofa with a guitar—a concert Spanish—tucked into my lap, wine bottle and glass on an occasional table by my side. The hurt thrush was downstairs in the kitchen, resting in a cardboard box lined with soft material, and looking pretty snug if a little mournful. Midge had coaxed a small amount of milk-dipped bread into its beak, and had laid out the broken wing as carefully and as comfortably as she could. Now it was up to the bird itself to pull through.

The sun was almost lost behind the trees and the room was bathed in that rich warm light as before, but this time more mellow, somehow deeply soothing. I touched the soft strings of the guitar, and the notes resonated against the curved walls, filling the room with lovely sounds. Midge didn't just look impressed as I moved into a piece I'd had difficulty with for some time, Paganini's Grand Sonata in A (oh yeah, I'm not only a rock-'n'-roller)—she looked positively entranced. As I was too, with my own music. No part was hesitated over, nowhere did my fingers stumble. I was overjoyed with my own dexterity, my hands confident and strong, the intricacy and the length of the composition never daunting (it always had been in the past). I made mistakes, of course, but they were lost in the flow of bright music, and when I'd finished, I think even old Segovia himself might have given me the nod. As it was, the wonder on Midge's face was enough.

She crawled over and rested an arm across my knees. "That was . . ." she gave a quick shake of her head ". . . brilliant."

I held up my hands, palms facing me, and looked at them as though they belonged to someone else. "Yeah," I agreed breathlessly. "I was good, wasn't I? Jesus, I was incredible."

"More," she urged. "Play some more."

But I laid the guitar down. "I don't think so, Midge. It's odd, but I don't think I've got any more left in me tonight. Or maybe I don't want to spoil anything—quit while I'm ahead, right?" That was partly the truth—I didn't want to fail with something else—yet there was another reason: I was exhausted. Whatever it had taken to play like that had also drained me of energy, physically and mentally. I slumped back into the sofa, eyes closed and smiling. Oh, that had felt good! Midge snuck up beside me and rested her head against my chest.

"There's magic in Gramarye, Mike, and it's working on us both."

She'd said the words very quietly and I wasn't sure I'd heard them correctly. I reached for the glass of wine and sipped, content to just sit there, with Midge close and the world—if there really was a world out there—peaceful and still.

By this time, of course, I'd dismissed the lurking figure in the woods as imaginary, my own rationality dulling the memory: why should anyone hide once I'd spotted them, and how could they have disappeared so quickly anyway?

Besides, another event had distracted my mind shortly after, when we reached the cottage itself: the kitchen window had been left open and we discovered Gramarye had a visitor.

The red squirrel was perched on the table finishing off pastie crumbs left on our plates from lunchtime. I'd swung the door open so that Midge could enter carrying the injured thrush, and the squirrel's head had snapped up, then looked in our direction. It saw her first and if animals can smile, this one certainly did. There was no fear in this little beggar at all and it didn't appear to be in any hurry to leave. Our intruder resumed nibbling the crumbs.

Only when I approached the table did the squirrel become skittish. It took one look at me and jumped onto the nearby sideboard, causing the hanging cups and mugs to rattle against each other. I held up a hand in a gesture of peace, but the universal sign meant nothing to the departing animal. It skipped onto the windowsill and with a last cheeky look here, there and everywhere, leapt out into the garden and was gone.

Midge and I laughed delightedly and she said, "D'you suppose all the red squirrels in this part of the world are that bold?"

I remembered the one we'd come across in the road on our first visit to the cottage. "Could be," I replied, "unless that's the same guy as before."

Her mouth dropped open as if she were really considering the possibility, then she said, "We're lucky to see any at all. They were almost wiped out by an epidemic some years ago and I know not many survived in this area. The grays rather took over their territories."

"We'd better make sure the windows are closed next time we go out, otherwise we might come back one day and find we've been invaded."

"Now that would be nice."

"Not if it were by rats or mice."

"Trust you to look on the dark side."

For a moment I was serious, although I meant no jibe. "One of us has to keep their feet on the ground."

She regarded me quizzically, then became aware that she still cradled the injured thrush in her hands.

I found a cardboard box and lined it with an old sweater of mine and a scarf of Midge's; she laid the bird inside and placed the box in a corner by the sideboard. After that, she attempted feeding the thrush, giving up after a while to try again later, this time with a degree of success. What was left of the afternoon—which wasn't much—was spent sorting out clothes and ornaments, finding a more permanent home for tools, equipment and various household items, hanging pictures, sweeping and cleaning, and generally bringing things together a bit more. O'Malley and his men had done a fine job on the cottage, fixing, painting, and pulling the building into shape. Even the cupboard doors everywhere fitted snugly and I assumed they had been planed down before being repainted. Some of the floorboards still creaked here and there, but there was no sagging and I could find no serious cracks in the wood.

After dinner, a stroganoff which Midge had prepared with much care and devotion because it was to be our first "proper" dinner at Gramarye, we adjourned upstairs to the round room. I tried the TV but the picture was annoyingly snowy and as neither of us was really interested anyway, I soon switched off. I resolved to do something about the aerials for the set and the radio next day. We relaxed to some vintage Schmilson for a while and I was relieved that at least the stereo wasn't dogged by interference. We both felt at peace that evening, no sad memories marring the contentment for Midge and no reservations about the move nagging at me. When the album was finished, she asked me to play for her, something I often did during the evenings she had to work at her drawing board or those times we merely felt in the mood. I went to fetch the guitar while Midge opened a bottle of wine for me.

Now I was slumped back in the sofa, fingertips of both hands still tingling from their contact with the guitar strings, Midge's head resting against my chest, and it wasn't long before our mutual warmth turned into mutual desire.

Unlike that morning's gloriously frenzied lovemaking, this time it was languid and exquisite, every movement and every moment savored and lingered over, all fervency contained yet still indulged in to the full. As the sensuality built in our bodies, so the room seemed to spin and weave around us, the last fading rays of the sun becoming a spectrum of colors, although always influenced by the sanguine flush that stained the walls.

The love act between us slowly became something more. It became a great expansion of emotion that went far beyond our physical bodies, that did not so much explode within our spirits, as erupt in a leisurely-spreading shower of energies. Imagine a slow-motion film of glass shattering into thousands—millions— of fragments, every single part caught by the light, each tiny piece reflecting its own entity, its own being: that might represent a physical equivalent to the sensory response aroused in us, although the comparison is far from accurate, because such a brittle splintering is the very antithesis of the soft starbursts we both experienced. We joined together, fusing not just with each other but with the air around us, with the walls, with every living organism contained therein. In some way we had reached another level, one that perhaps we all glimpse from time to time, but are always on the periphery of, always just at the edge, knowing dimly of its existence, but never able to perceive it clearly, our minds always defeated by their own limiting truth.

Heavy stuff, right? But in my own inept way I'm trying to give you a glimmer of what happened to us that evening in Gramarye. And maybe put it into some kind of perspective for myself.

There was more. We sensed the aura of Gramarye, a spirit that had nothing to do with Flora Chaldean or all those others who had occupied the cottage before her, but was the essence of that place itself. Its own nature, if you like. In the structure, the grounds, the atmosphere around, there was immense goodness, an outflowing of earth purity.

And as every positive has its negative, there was also a dark, lurking badness. But that was on the fringes, a shadow that could not be defined, a power that was dormant, having little strength. Yet it existed.

We experienced these things, but they were not sharp in our minds, and the perception was soon gone, fading swiftly with the subsiding of our physical pleasure, the sensations, the essential primal urge, which had led us to that recognition carrying the awareness away from us in its own ebbing. Only now, after so much has happened, can what occurred to us that evening be remembered and partially explained. Even so, everything is just my interpretation, and long after the event at that.

I was the first to speak—Midge was still too bewildered or exhausted, or both. "Did you lace the stroganoff with something?" It was meant as a joke, a glib aside while I got my head together, but she wasn't laughing. "Midge, you okay?"

She looked my way, but didn't quite see me; sleepy wonderment was still glowing in her eyes.

"Midge?"

She drew in a long, deep breath, her shoulders and chest rising, then let the air go just as slowly. Finally she said, "What happened?" The question was to herself as much as to me.

I smiled lazily. "We made love." The phenomenon was already leaving me, material reality asserting its steadying influence the way it does when waking from a dream.

Midge ran both hands over her eyes and when she looked up again it was as if she'd wiped away the wonderment. Then she yawned and my own jaw was quickly infected, because I yawned too. I helped her with her clothes—she was fumbling at buttons like a weary child, her mind distracted, coordination all but gone.

"I don't understand," she mumbled. "I can't think straight, Mike . . ."

My movements were slow too, and more awkward than I cared for, but I was filled with warmth, my senses now pleasurably dulled. And I couldn't stop smiling. "I think we've just passed through some kind of ecstasy barrier, Midge. I think the earth really did move for us. Jesus, I never imagined such a thing was possible." (See how the human brain works, how it tries to rationalize the irrational for its own sanity? I was putting it down to romance, for Chrissake!)

Midge wasn't that easily persuaded, though. "No, Mike, it was something more . . ."

I stopped her with a kiss. "We're both tired, Pixie. Like you said, the country air does something to you. Why don't you get yourself into bed while I lock up?"

"I need a bath . . ."

"No you don't."

"Brush my teeth . . ."

"That'll take you half a minute. I'll join you before your head hits the pillow."

"All right, Mike. Mike . . . ?"

"Yeah?"

"You love me, don't you?"

"You know it."

I lifted her to her feet and she swayed against me.

"God," she murmured. "I didn't realize how tired I was. I feel as if I'm drunk."

"How could you know? Come on, I'll take you through."

I did more than that: I picked Midge up and carried her into the bedroom, her slight weight no burden at all. Lowering her onto the bed, I remained leaning over her.

"Think you can manage the rest by yourself while I see to the doors and windows?"

She nodded, then teased, "Still nervous of the countryside, Mike?"

"It's all them wolves and bears out there."

"And the wood demons. Don't forget the wood demons." Her words were almost slurred as sleep stole in.

"I wish you hadn't mentioned the wood demons." I bent lower to kiss her forehead, then straightened. Midge's eyes had already closed when I looked down on her.

Quietly leaving the bedroom, I went out to the small hallway over the stairs and bolted the door there, then descended to the kitchen. Ridiculously, I had made myself jittery with talk of wolves and bears, not that I imagined for one moment that there were any such animals out there, but because now that the sun had sunk completely and it was pitch black outside, I had begun to appreciate how isolated the cottage was. Talk of wood demons hadn't helped either.

I bolted the downstairs door, then went to the open window, sticking my head out to feel a cool breeze against my skin. I could hardly see a thing, only the vague shapes of the nearest trees. Clouds must have hurriedly covered the stars as they'd switched on after sunset, and there was no moon to outline even the rolling edges of those clouds.

Even more uneasy, I ducked my head back inside, closing the window and setting the catch after me. I stood watching my own ghost reflection in the glass for a little while, then shivered.

"Dumb bastard," I called myself and went back upstairs whistling a less than happy tune.

I woke suddenly, as I had the night before. Only this time I was immediately alert and apprehensive. I could hear Midge breathing evenly beside me, still lost in sleep.

My whole body was tensed as I lay there wondering what had roused me, only the luminous digits of the alarm clock and dim outlines of furniture giving relief to the oppressive darkness.

I thought of nudging Midge awake, but that would have been unkind as well as cowardly. When I'd returned to the bedroom earlier that night her clothes were in a heap on the floor and she was beneath the blankets, sound asleep. There was no smell of toothpaste when I kissed her lips. The move and the frantic weeks leading up to it had caught up with a vengeance, I remember thinking.

Noises. From above. And familiar.

I nudged Midge, but she didn't stir.

I looked up at the dark mass that was the ceiling. Someone was creeping around up there!

Still craning my neck back, I raised myself onto my elbows, unsure if the room was cold or the goose-bumps on my skin were caused by something else. The sounds were muffled and I realized they were not coming from the room directly above, but were from the loft. My sigh of relief was cut off halfway. Surely birds would not be moving about in the middle of the night? Then what the hell was up there? My pernicious mind immediately suggested rats and I sank back into the bed, pulling the covers up to my chest. Maybe mice? I wished I could convince myself, but mice would never make that much noise.

Forget about the hero who leaves his bed in the dead of night to investigate mysterious noises, that guy who mounts the creaky stairs up to the attic, flashlight or candle lighting the way and, if he's a movie star, creepy music keeping him company. He's a figment of some idiot's imagination: I'm me, and I was bora with a modicum of sense.

There was no way I was going to leave that cozy bed to look in the loft. No way. It could wait until tomorrow.

The strange thing is that I didn't stay awake for much longer. I listened for a while, my heart jolting with every fresh sound—and I'd become aware of plenty of other creaks and groans around that place, although I told myself these were merely the settling of old timbers after a warm day—but soon tiredness overcame even fear.

I sank away, fingers crossed so the boogeyman wouldn't get me.