It was not going to be as easy as people thought.
And she needed to let her house for the week she would be in Glastonbury. So many things to worry about.
Then it came, the phone call from Agnes!
Agnes had been living in a commune in New Mexico. It had all gone very wrong as everything Agnes attempted would go very wrong. That would be too harsh but she always happened to be at the heart of it, all the same.
This time she was looking for a bed, a place to crash for two or three weeks until she got her head together again. Agnes said that sadly she didn’t have any real money or anything because communes worked out much more expensive than they led you to believe, but of course she would do anything, weed gardens, make bread, mind children, dogs. Anything.
“Can you tell fortunes?” Melly asked her. And Agnes said she’d give it a bash.
Agnes arrived a week before the fete.
She settled happily into Number 26.
“Bricks and mortar,” she said, stroking the walls sensuously. “What wonderful things they are, Melly. You must never underestimate them.”
“Whatever happened to ‘property is theft’?” Melly remarked.
As a slogan it had been misunderstood, Agnes thought. She said she loved Chestnut Street and asked all about the neighbors.
She didn’t want to go out and meet them or anything. She had this unexplained bruise on her face. She would wait until she looked more presentable.
Melly hesitated before telling Agnes about the square, middle-of-the-road people who lived in the thirty houses of the horseshoe.
It was all so different from the “alternative lifestyle” that Agnes and Melly had lived. Surely Agnes would be very scornful of such a settled area.
But no, it appeared that she was interested and asked a lot of questions about people’s lives.
Melly chatted on about Mrs. Ryan in Number 14, who had fallen in love with the builder who came to do up the house next door and how they were married to each other. She heard about Kevin, who took care of his wife, Phyllis; about Lilian, the hairdresser in Number 5, who looked after her mother and father and was married to a frugal man; about Liam and Brigid Kenny, who had their house papered with holy pictures and statues of every known saint on every available surface; about Mitzi and Philip in Number 22, who worshipped their new conservatory as if it were a religious altar; about Dolly in Number 18, who was a really nice kid but with such an unusual mother.
Agnes nodded and sympathized. She had got much easier to live with, Melly decided, calmer, certainly, and noticeably less frantic and mad.
She said she would manage fine on lentil soup, she’d make her own bread and Melly was not to leave any food for her, but if there was a book about the stars or birth signs or something, that would be great.
Melly was now ready to go off to Glastonbury, happy and contented her house would be looked after. There would be a fortune-teller at the fete. Agnes was going to call herself Madame Magic and turn up at 3 p.m.
“You won’t frighten them or anything, will you?” Melly said just before she left.
“Go, Melly,” Agnes begged, and studied that people born under the sign of Libra were meant to be balanced and level-headed.
Glastonbury was wonderful, as usual. Such great music, such marvelous people.
Once or twice Melly wondered was there a possibility she might just be getting slightly too old for the festival?
It was just that everyone else looked younger somehow, but was it just that the rain was wetter, the fields more muddy, the lines waiting for fast food or slow toilets longer?
Once or twice Melly half wished that she was back in staid old Chestnut Street going to the fete.
Then she began to worry about Agnes.
Had she done something totally madcap, like the old days?
It seemed a long time before she would be back there to find out how it all went.
She noticed that her house was still standing at Number 26. So far, so good.
Melly let herself in. There was a wonderful smell of curry and a note on the table.
Welcome home, Melly.
Dinner’s on me. That wonderful Mr. O’Brien in Number 28 gave me a basket full of vegetables—he really is such a sweetie. Dolly will be in later, I’m teaching her to make bread. I’m across the road reading psychic tales to Miss Mack just now. Back at seven. Oh, by the way, I decided to tell people that we didn’t know each other—it seemed wiser somehow.
Love, Agnes
Melly felt her heart sink.
Why was it wiser somehow that she should not be known to be a friend of Agnes?
What did she mean Mr. O’Brien was a sweetie? He was a nightmare.
Dolly coming to learn how to make bread? In this house?
Had Agnes gone totally mad?
She must stay calm and find out what the situation was.
There would be no flying off the handle.
No matter how insane and confused Agnes might turn out to be, Melly would stay calm.
Agnes came back carrying shortbread. “Miss Mack insisted you have some—you see, she thinks we don’t know each other and wants me to make a good impression on you.”
“And what does she think you’re doing living in my house if we do not know each other?” Melly spoke each word like a very short burst of gunfire.
“She thinks we met through an ad. Everyone sort of thinks that.”
“Why do they think that?” Melly was keeping calm but her voice sounded like a robot, a Dalek.
“Well, because the Madame Magic thing went so well, really. Honestly, Melly, you wouldn’t believe this but they were coming round again and again for more details. And, you see, I didn’t want to tell them that I was a bit of a fraud … that you told me all their secrets.”
“But I didn’t tell you all their secrets. I don’t know their secrets,” poor Melly said, horrified.
“But you did, Melly. You told me all about Kevin and Phyllis, and all about Dolly’s mother and the Kennys’ being religious maniacs …”
Melly’s face was red and angry. “I told you these things as a friend in confidence. I didn’t expect you to go blabbing them everywhere.” Her voice sounded very far away in her own head.
“But I didn’t blab. I was much more diplomatic than you were—I was much more sensitive.”
“Oh, really.”
“Yes really. They loved it all, Melly, honestly they did, and I bet I did them a lot of good pointing things out, you know, where they needed to be pointed out.”
“Agnes! You point things out to people?”
“Well I tell you this: Dolly’s mother is being a bit more careful about things since I told her I saw a great shadowy figure approaching her door. Came back to me three times, she did.”
“I don’t believe this.” Melly felt faint.
“And that Mitzi woman from Number Twenty-two, she’s going to stop worshipping her conservatory from now on. I told her about flesh and blood being more important than status, and that she should send an e-mail to her sons every week. She was mad about me.”
“I’m sure!”
“No she was, Melly, and Mr. O’Brien thinks that his cat, Rupert, believes that he is too gossipy, so he is going to be more discreet. And as for Lilian! Remember all you told me about how people walked on her. I don’t think they will anymore.”
“You told her to get up off the ground and stop being a doormat?”
“No, I told all the others in that household that she might walk out unless she was properly cherished. I said I saw a figure with long red hair leaving the house silently by cover of darkness. They all thought it was Lilian and that softened their cough, let me tell you.”
Melly listened, stunned.
“And did you make any money for Kosovo, Agnes?” she asked eventually.
“Loads. I was by far the most popular draw on Sunday. Some people came by three times. And, by the way, I’ve been seeing people on a proper fee-paying
basis here since. I hope you don’t mind.”
This was it.
All pretense at calm was now over.
“No, Agnes, no. This time someone has to speak to you before things go wrong. I will not have you pretending to know the future to a lot of decent people, taking money under false pretenses from my house. When the law comes, as come it will, I will not stand up for you and say we met through some advertisement. You will not deceive people in this way.”
Agnes was calm. “I’m not pretending anything; I’m very interested in them and I want to help them.”
“By taking their money and feeding them lies.”
“There are no lies. I’m only feeding them the truth. They loved it—they keep coming back for more. I’m good at this. I’ve never been good at anything before.”
Before anyone could say anything else there was a knock on the door.
It was Dolly and her mother.
“I told Mam I was learning to make bread and she wondered if she could come and watch?” Dolly asked.
“Well, it’s really up to Melly—this is her house,” Agnes said politely.
“Do you two get on together now you’ve met?” Dolly asked, interested.
“Um, yes,” they both said at the same time.
“Please stay,” Melly agreed.
“She’s a genius,” Dolly’s mother whispered to Melly. “She told me some of the most important things I’ve ever heard in my life. It was Fate that brought her here, Melly, believe me.”
“Yes, yes.”
“You do like her, don’t you, Melly? It would be great to have someone as wise as that living in the street.”
“Living?” Melly gulped.
“Well, staying, working, whatever.”
“Oh, yes, certainly.”
And as she heard them all slapping the dough, an oddly comforting sound, Melly sat and thought about it. It would be nice to have half the rent, of course, and the company.
And Agnes did seem much more normal than before.
But she must be practical.
It wouldn’t work out well in the end; nothing ever did for Agnes.
But then they were growing a little older, possibly even mature.
And there was something settling about Chestnut Street.
Melly felt her shoulders relax.
It was much nicer coming home from Glastonbury to this house of bread-making and a nice curry made from Mr. O’Brien’s vegetables than it had been coming back to an empty house last year.
Madame Magic could easily begin to live up to her name.
Nuala did not like her daughter’s fiancé, Tom. He was always talking about the fast lane and anxious to live in it. But Nuala’s friends said that whatever she said … she was to say nothing.
It was hard to say nothing. Very hard. But when she was young, some friend of her mother’s had said that it was nearly always the wisest course.
Nuala had wanted the very best for Katie, her only child. Katie, who had been ten when her father had left their home on Chestnut Street.
“Why doesn’t he love us anymore?” Katie had asked her mother over and over.
Nuala had gritted her teeth and said over and over that of course Daddy loved them both greatly; it was just better for him to leave.
There had been the weekly visit when Michael would take his daughter to the zoo, to the ice rink or to a theater matinee. Over the ten years he introduced Katie to three different “special friends.”
Each of them ladies who, at the time, were significant in his life.
At first Katie would prattle on about Daddy’s new friend.
Nuala wondered would her teeth wear down since she was gritting them so hard.
But by the time Katie was sixteen she had stopped talking about them; possibly something in her mother’s fixed, polite smile of assumed interest rang false.
“How was Dad?”
“Oh he’s okay,” Katie would say with a shrug.
No information, no detail and slightly less interest.
It wasn’t long before Katie had other things to do with her time on Saturdays. Better things.
Like going out with her own friends. There were apologetic phone calls or texts to her father.
Always some very vague excuse or even “Sorry, Dad, tied up tomorrow,” which made him realize that she no longer cared about meeting him.
He visited Nuala at work.
Nuala was a nurse in a nearby hospital. It didn’t suit her to have visitors while she was on duty.
“Five minutes,” he begged.
“I’ll take a break,” she said wearily.
She took him to the end of the corridor, where there were some chairs.
“I see you’ve managed to turn her against me,” he said bitterly.
“No, Michael, I said nothing to her,” Nuala said quietly.
“Why else would she refuse to meet me? Don’t fool me, Nuala—I know the way you go on.”
“I don’t go on, actually, Michael. I agree I did when you left first, but now …”
“Now what?”
“Now it doesn’t matter what you do, honestly. It used to matter, but now I just wish you well and I don’t think about you at all.”
She spoke calmly; he seemed to believe her.
“So why then does she want to go off with her friends instead of meeting her father?” He was genuinely bewildered.
“Because she’s seventeen,” Nuala said.
“And you’re happy with this?” He had a concerned-parent face that annoyed Nuala greatly but she managed not to show any sign of it.
“I’m happy she has friends, yes.”
“I asked Katie to meet me on some other day in the week and she said she was busy with homework.” He was most aggrieved.
“Yes, she does study a lot during the week, which is why she appreciates the freedom of her weekends.” Nuala sounded mild and accepting.
“Do you have another partner, Nuala?” he asked suddenly.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re different somehow—you don’t cluck cluck cluck like a hen.”
“Oh, that’s good. Sorry, Michael, I have to go back to the ward.”
“What am I to do?” he asked.
She remembered that little-boy-lost look too.
“Lord, I have no idea,” she said and walked down the corridor.
“I saw your dad today,” Nuala said that evening.
“Oh, yeah?” Katie didn’t even look up from the magazine she was reading.
“He thinks I’m stopping you from seeing him.”
“Typical,” Katie said.
Nuala said nothing.
“I suppose you’re going to be on my case now, asking me to see him.”
“No, indeed. You’re seventeen—you decide what to do and who to see.” Nuala sounded bright and cheerful.
Suddenly Katie got up from her chair and embraced her.
“You are the best mother in the world. Sit down and I’ll make the supper.”
Nuala smiled to herself. Whoever had advised her somewhere along the line to say nothing had been so right.
Katie studied hard and was accepted in a teacher’s training college. She had a life crowded with friends and more study and practice-teaching.
She saw her father one weekend in four for ever-shorter times. She still lived at home with Nuala.
On the night of Katie’s graduation, she met Tom, and everything changed.
Tom was very charming: Nuala would admit that much.
He was good-looking too, and good company.
But her own husband, Michael, had been all these things once.
Katie was very taken with him. Soon after she met him, she explained that she would be getting her own flat. All this was said without any reference to Tom being on the scene. But it was as clear as day that Katie was in love, and that this was her chosen man.
Nuala knew that Katie had to leave home sometime but she didn’t want it to be
with Tom.
She wondered why exactly she didn’t like him, didn’t entirely trust him. He seemed to be deeply smitten by Katie. He didn’t seem to flirt with other girls, and they had been together for months and they had never had a quarrel. He might well be a faithful husband or partner. Why did she think that he was not good enough for her daughter?
The night that Katie and Tom came in to tell her they were engaged was the night Nuala realized why she didn’t think he was the right man for Katie to marry. He was a man possessed by money and success and being in the fast lane. This was a dangerous road for her only daughter to go down.
Katie would spend a lifetime worrying and being anxious, waking up at night to wonder if this investment was safe or if that project was doomed.
Nuala had seen people like this over the years, people worried sick by money at risk, anxious about overinvesting, buying second homes.
It did seem the right thing to do; property would never lose its value. A lot of the nurses had bought very expensive homes and were paying huge mortgages. It would be well worth it in the end, they said; they would have something to leave their children.
Sometimes they tried to persuade Nuala to get herself a bigger place in a smarter part of town. It was so easy these days to get a loan from the banks; they were leaping over the counter trying to get you to take their money.
But Nuala had refused. She saved something every week but it was in a nice, safe deposit account.
She had little time for Tom’s schemes, all of which involved borrowing money to set up his own consultancy. There were so many people these days who needed advice, he said, and it would be a runaway success. Katie would leave her teaching job and help him in the office; it would be much more tax-efficient. They were putting a deposit on a really nice place—it was the bargain of a lifetime.
They were dying to show it to her. It was rather far away but then distances were nothing these days in a fast car. And they had a fast car.
The only thing, the only little thing, was that they needed a little help with the deposit on the house. All the money they had borrowed from the bank was geared for the consultancy. Tom explained it ruefully. He simply could not ask his own parents for any more help. They had already given so much.