Verdigris Deep

by Hardinge, Frances

  Donna did not phone Josh’s parents after the library incident. Instead she turned up on his family’s doorstep that evening, and was invited in. The conversations that followed went so badly that it was two days before Ryan and Chelle heard from Josh. During this time, Ryan was haunted by the uncomfortable sense of being watched with increasing impatience, the same tingle he felt when a teacher lurked behind him to watch him write. Ever since the day his reflection had become a stranger to him he had regarded it with suspicion and fear. Once as he was hurrying down the street he thought for a tiny second that he glimpsed it in a shop window, standing stock still, water damping the lashes of its closed eyes and leaving glistening snails’ trails down its cheeks. He became nervous of crossing puddles, afraid of the other Ryan that walked inverted below him, touching its soles to his and watching him with upside-down eyes.

  He was on the point of sharing these fears with Chelle when word from Josh finally arrived. To their great surprise, it took the form of an invitation to tea at Merrybells.

  ‘It looks like Josh’s handwriting, but it doesn’t sound like him,’ Chelle said on the phone. ‘Maybe it’s a trap . . .’ Not for the first time, Ryan was glad of Chelle’s habit of speaking all his most shadowy thoughts aloud so he could hear how silly they were.

  They both accepted, of course. They were planless without Josh. Ryan’s warts had stopped subsiding and were keeping him awake again. And besides, neither of them had been to Merrybells before.

  This time they approached The Haven by the black wrought-iron front gates. A gardener led them past the big house where Josh usually lived with his parents. They followed him down a crisp gravel path, which weaved past two totem poles carved from red wood.

  At the end of the gravel path they found that a table had been set up outside Merrybells. Around it stood six chairs in one of which sat Josh, hunched with a knee drawn up to his chin. He showed no sign of noticing Chelle and Ryan, but as they approached an elderly woman in a pale grey woollen jumper hurried out to meet them. Her eyebrows were drawn in with pencil, and there was a necklace of knobbly amber beads around her neck.

  ‘You must be Ryan and Michelle. Do come and join Joshua, he’s been so looking forward to your visit. We made a little bargain – he could invite friends over for tea if he planted out all the winter vegetables and removed the dead heads from the flowering hedges.’

  Ryan peered at Josh in an agony of sympathy, not unmixed with perplexity. What was the Merrybells spell that turned the ever-rebellious Josh into a flower-plucker and jam-maker?

  ‘Now, do help yourselves,’ the Aunt continued. ‘The sandwiches are cucumber, and the sausages with the little forks in them can be dipped in the satay sauce. The saucer there is for the forks – I’m trying to keep the set together.’

  Chelle and Ryan each obediently picked up a sausage, and waited while the Aunt disappeared into the cottage.

  ‘Who’s the sixth chair for?’ Although there were a hundred things Ryan wanted to ask, somehow this question found its way out first. The excess of chairs made the whole thing even more like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party than it was already.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Josh said grimly. He was using his fingernail to scratch spirals into the tablecloth.

  ‘If you’re in Merrybells, Josh, does that mean . . .’ Chelle glanced furtively at the cottage, ‘does that mean you’re being punished for something?’

  ‘Donna Leas came to talk to Mr and Mrs Lattimer-Stone.’ It always made Ryan’s blood run cold when Josh stopped talking about them as his parents. ‘They brought me into the Indigo Room with her there, smiling, while they repeated all the things she’d been telling them. She lies – she just makes stuff up.’

  ‘But . . . didn’t they believe you when you told them that?’ Chelle had forgotten to chew her sausage.

  Josh continued slowly drawing his nail across the cloth. You didn’t tell them, thought Ryan. I bet you just sat there making spirals like that.

  ‘Oh no, it’s horrible that everybody always believes her. Did they yell at you lots?’ Chelle looked distressed.

  ‘They told me I’d be in Merrybells for three days. They told the toad-woman they were very sorry and told me that I had to apologize to her. And then the lights went out. All over the house. Fuses blown. Both circuits.

  ‘And when they got the fuses changed they’d forgotten about me saying sorry, because Donna was talking about feng shui, and how important it was to get everything all lined up with natural energies because otherwise things broke down and bits fell off people’s souls and lots of rubbish like that. And they bought it. Now they’re paying Holistic stinking Soul Repair to feng shui the grounds, and that cow is going to be around all the time.’ Josh emptied the cucumber out of his sandwich, spooned the satay sauce into it, then closed and bit it.

  ‘That’s really tough.’ Ryan tried not to imagine how he would feel about Donna Leas stalking around his own garden. ‘Only . . . it does mean we can get closer to her, doesn’t it? So we can do this wish thing.’

  ‘You think I’m going to grant her wish?’ Josh looked up fiercely. ‘Whatever it is, it came out of her foul mind and I’m not touching it.’

  ‘Oh, but we know what her wish is, don’t we?’ Chelle leaned dangerously across the table for another sausage. ‘I mean . . . don’t we? She was looking at two horoscopes. And everyone knows what that means.’ She sat back triumphant, apparently unaware of her companions’ expressions of bewilderment. ‘My sister Caroline only ever looks up two horoscopes when she’s got a crush on somebody. I think it’s the kind of thing you can’t help doing when you’re in love.’

  ‘Who . . . oh.’ The answer dropped into Ryan’s head before he could even finish the question.

  ‘And her thoughts were all like, I hope Mr Punzell doesn’t see my blonde roots, and won’t he be pleased to see I’ve done his filing for him, and doesn’t he have piercing eyes . . .’ Chelle carefully threw her fork at the saucer and missed it completely.

  ‘Oh no.’ Ryan thought of the spiteful, green-rimmed stare in the library. ‘We can’t! Nobody deserves that!’

  ‘You haven’t met him,’ Josh said with feeling.

  A second Aunt tottered out of the cottage with a tray, on which a tea set shook and rattled with every step. This Aunt had a long face with deep lines running between the nose and mouth, and a side-parted bob that made her look oddly little-girly. She set the tray down in front of Chelle.

  ‘Since you’re the lady, I shall make you an honorary daughter and you can be mother,’ the Aunt said, in a breathless, hollow sort of voice. Chelle’s face was a picture of bewilderment as the second Aunt walked back into the cottage.

  ‘Pour the tea,’ Josh muttered, by way of explanation.

  While Chelle was trying to manage the heavy pot, the mystery of the sixth chair was answered. Ryan became aware that a man was walking along the gravel path towards them. He wore a white shirt with full sleeves that made him look a bit piratical and a dark blue waistcoat with silver buttons. It was unmistakably the dragon-belted man they had encountered at the intercom a few days before.

  As they watched he halted, held up something that looked a bit like a spirit level and peered down it towards the totem poles.

  ‘Mr Punzell! Mr Punzell!’ The Aunts had magically materialized at the door. ‘Tea, or perhaps some sparkling wine, Mr Punzell? We have some chilling.’ Josh had gone back to making spirals, but the buzz of a distant lawnmower turned guttural for a moment, then lost power with a groan.

  The way Jeremiah Punzell walked across the grass towards them reminded Ryan of seeing the lead actor in a play walk on stage. Nobody told him to put his forks in the saucer.

  ‘You are both to be congratulated,’ he told the Aunts, fixing one then the other with an intense but friendly stare. ‘You do realize, of course, that your vegetable garden and rose walk are perfectly and auspiciously aligned?’

  The Aunts looked delighted. Chelle looked less happy, since she was
still holding a hot and heavy pot and waiting to find out if he wanted tea.

  ‘Well . . .’ The Aunt with the bob exchanged a glance with the Aunt in the amber necklace. ‘I do not think we ever spoke of it in such terms when we arranged the garden, did we, Sophia, but I am sure that we both felt . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, I think so,’ the other Aunt agreed quickly, placing a glass of fizzing wine by Mr Punzell’s plate.

  ‘Do you know how rare that is?’ continued Mr Punzell, looking from one Aunt to the other as if they were the most interesting people he had ever met. ‘Though I’m afraid I have often wished that my sense of the energies were less acute. Sometimes it is almost painful.’

  Ryan put down his sandwich, and quietly slid his hands under the table where they could not be seen. Perhaps this was all rubbish, just as Josh had hinted, but . . . what if it wasn’t? If spirits lived in wells and posters could talk, maybe this man really did have some kind of psychic power. And if he could sense malign energies, then perhaps he could also sense the new strangeness of the children around him.

  The teapot rattled, and Ryan glanced at Chelle, wondering if she felt the same worry, but her hands were just shaking under its weight.

  ‘Forgive me!’ Mr Punzell noticed Chelle at last and stood to help her pour tea into his cup, then set the pot down on the cloth. ‘You are very kind,’ he said, half bowing a little theatrically. Now Chelle suddenly seemed to be the most interesting person he had ever met. Perhaps he looked at everybody that way. Or perhaps he had seen something odd about her. Ryan squirmed.

  ‘Wow – I love all your rings,’ Chelle exploded, her voice shrill and sudden. ‘Are any of them wedding rings?’

  ‘No, as it happens.’ Mr Punzell looked a little surprised.

  ‘Good!’ exclaimed Chelle, and then went bright crimson.

  Mr Punzell blinked a few times, and then looked amused and flattered. ‘I can show you what each of these rings is though. Now this one, shaped like a twining silver snake, is an old symbol for wisdom . . .’

  Ryan was wondering if the Holistic Soul Repair man could say anything without making it sound as if he was telling someone something terribly wise and important that might save their life some day. Oh God, he thought, he thinks that Chelle’s got a crush on him. He thinks people get crushes on him as soon as they meet him, and he just laps it up.

  The Aunts really did seem to be hanging on his every word. Oh Chelle, Chelle . . . Ryan thought in sudden dismay, don’t be like them, don’t start gushing or going all round-eyed. Bracing himself, he stole a glance at her face.

  Chelle could no more control her expression than she could her speech. She was looking up at Mr Punzell with incredulous and fascinated dislike. Ryan could have hugged her. The ‘psychic’, however, did not seem to have noticed this at all.

  He can’t be all that psychic then, thought Ryan and risked reaching for another sandwich.

  Aunt Sophia clearly felt that Chelle had hijacked the conversation, and she started to talk loudly about the party that Josh’s parents were to hold the next day.

  ‘It is so kind of you to agree to perform palm readings for all the guests, Mr Punzell. I know that you find it so draining. Josh, perhaps you and your friends could bring the bowls in ready for the charlotte russe?’

  All three children hurried with alacrity into the sunless kitchen, which was full of great hanging twists of onions and garlic cloves and the smell of hot strawberries.

  ‘See?’ hissed Josh, pulling off his sunglasses.

  ‘Yeeeurrgh!’ Chelle scrunched up her face. ‘He’s so . . .’

  ‘Yeah! Isn’t he?’

  ‘He thinks you’re off home to check his star sign, Chelle. He thinks you’re his latest groupie . . .’

  ‘Yuck! Stop it! Yuck!’

  ‘He’s . . .’ Ryan hesitated, still groping to understand why the ‘psychic’ was so annoying. ‘He’s probably not bad. He’s just . . . awful.’ All three grinned at each other, with the delight of complete agreement.

  ‘Yeah. And my parents let him go everywhere. I can’t get away from him. He came in my room and took measurements.’

  ‘You know it has to happen, don’t you?’ Ryan said as calmly as he could, then started to giggle in spite of himself. The hideousness of the thought was like laughing gas. ‘Mr and Mrs Punzell . . .’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Josh shoved a parsley-strewn chopping board out of the way, and swung himself up to sit on the sideboard. ‘Oh, now that would be vengeance . . . on both of them.’

  That one irresistible idea caught them like a wave and bore them sniggering out to sea. Usually it would have been Ryan’s job to point out the difficulties of matchmaking two grown adults, one of whom would distrust anything they said. But at this moment Ryan, like the others, felt that they really could do this.

  ‘So . . . how?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, she’s his secretary, isn’t she?’ said Chelle. ‘I mean, maybe she could do that thing? You know, that thing, with all the . . .’ She paused, raised her hands to pull off imaginary glasses and then tipped her head back, shaking out her hair. For a moment she looked most un-Chelle-like, quite a lot older and more confident. ‘Type of thing,’ she added, dropping back into her usual expression again.

  Josh tipped over with laughing and nearly put his elbow in one of the puddings.

  ‘Joshua!’ There was a call from outside.

  ‘Bowls!’ hissed Josh. By the time Aunt Sophia reached the door, three children were filing out with a little crystal bowl in each hand, faces red with smothered hilarity. Perhaps it was the Alice-in-Wonderland effect of the tea party, but they all seemed to have gone a little mad.

  In particular Chelle, who was usually extremely timid when meeting new people, wriggled gleefully into her seat, then jumped up again when the charlotte russe was brought out.

  ‘Mr Punzell, you must let me give you some!’ The Aunts watched aghast as Chelle carved enthusiastically into the pudding, heaping Mr Punzell’s bowl until it seemed to defy gravity. ‘It’s so nice to meet you. I knew you had to be lovely, because Donna is working for you and Donna always gets everything right, you see . . .’

  ‘You . . . you know Donna . . . ?’

  ‘Yes!’ Chelle gave him a big, bright, mad smile. ‘She came and helped with our school ages ago, and she was really, really . . . everybody really . . . liked her, particularly us. Because she’s wonderful.’

  Ryan had to put his hand over his face as a dribble of cream escaped from the corner of his mouth. He nodded vigorously.

  ‘Yes,’ choked Josh. ‘Yes . . . she’s really great . . .’

  ‘Yes, and my parents always say: I wonder what happened to that nice girl Donna? And I told them, now she’s working for a real psychic, and they said, wow, I bet that’s really interesting . . .’ Chelle was trying to pour cream on top of Punzell’s charlotte russe, and little rivulets were escaping over the brim of the bowl. ‘I expect she’s coming to the party tomorrow, isn’t she? I wish I was coming because she was really really great . . .’

  ‘I am not sure if Donna is coming. She has a very busy schedule . . .’

  Ryan saw Mr Punzell’s eyes flicker slightly as he spoke. I bet he never even considered asking her, thought Ryan. But now he’s wondering about it because if there are lots of parents at the party that like her, she might persuade them to give him lots of money for feng shui like Mr and Mrs Lattimer-Stone.

  ‘. . . but if she can, I will have a talk with Mr Lattimer-Stone, and see if your families can be added to the invitation list as well.’ He performed the same old-fashioned bow to Chelle.

  Ryan listened to this with a mixture of hilarity and misgiving. Was this good? Was this bad? It did not seem to matter. They had no plan, but there the three of them were, trusting themselves to impulse, surfing down the snow slope on a cello case.

  12

  The Collectors

  Ryan’s mum said that she thought the last-minute invitation from the Lattimer-Stones was very
rude.

  ‘They might just as well have said, “Somebody we really wanted to come has just pulled out, and so we’re inviting you to fill the holes.”’

  ‘I agree,’ said Ryan’s dad. ‘Let’s phone back and say we can’t come.’

  ‘I’ve half a mind to do just that,’ said Ryan’s mother, dropping to her knees in front of the wine rack, and pulling out bottle after bottle with a harassed air. ‘I knew we should have saved some of the San-Luisha-whatever-it-was-called. We can’t take any of these to the party.’

  ‘You clearly don’t want to go, Anne. I’ll call back and cancel.’ Despite these words, Ryan noticed that his father was setting up the video machine to tape his favourite programme for that evening.

  ‘Well, I would.’ Ryan’s mum pushed her hair back from her face. ‘Only . . . I thought that feng-shui man sounded interesting.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You thought that the Lattimer-Stones would invite lots of famous people, some of whom might not realize that the world desperately needed to know their deepest secrets. But since we’re clearly going to suffer this party, I’ll go and track down some wine and find some small gift from the Cobbled Market that won’t embarrass you.’

  ‘Angel. Could you?’ Ryan’s mother looked up at his father with a dishevelled little smile that made her look young and worried. Ryan’s dad touched the tip of one of her ears, smiled briefly and left. Ryan went with him to get out of his mum’s hair.

  Now that the tea-party madness was wearing off, hosts of problems were clearing their throats and waiting for his attention. Yes, this evening Chelle, Josh and himself would be in the same house as Donna and Mr Punzell . . . but he no longer felt entirely confident about engineering true love now that all three of them would have their parents in tow.

  While his father was in the off-licence Ryan noticed a familiar cover in a magazine stand on the street. It was a new issue of the motorbike magazine Silverwing.