Fairies At The Bottom Of The Garden

2

Fairies At The Bottom Of The Garden

    Ben’s sister chopped spinach viciously. “Don’t laugh,” she warned.

    “No,” he agreed meekly. “I won’t. Go on, sis: what’s up?’

    “It's Damian,” she said grimly. “He’s convinced there’s a fairy at the bottom of our garden!”

    Ben gulped but managed, albeit weakly: “He is only four, Jessica.”

    “Did you believe in fairies when you were four?” she demanded fiercely.

    “Uh—well, I can’t say as I recall ever believing in—”

    “There you are, then!” she cried, pointing the knife at him.

    Ben backed off slightly. “Uh—yeah. Look, I wouldn’t worry, it’ll be a stage. And—uh—” What the Hell could you say? It was a stage: all kids went through crazy stages, look at his friends Tom and Joelene’s kid, he’d put out milk and cookies for Santa Claus until he was seven! Well, sure he had the fixed notion that Santa looked like Tim Allen, but in a way that proved it, didn’t it? The media encouraged kids to take these goddamn fantasies seriously: was it any wonder they ended up believing the crap? “Uh—he’ll grow out of it, I’m sure. Well, uh, surely the other kids at nursery school don’t all believe in fairies; he must be getting some sort of—uh—a reality check, surely?”

    “No!” she cried. “That stupid woman that runs it encourages them to believe all that nonsense!”

    “Jessica, have you read up about it?” he said cautiously. “Don’t the gurus reckon that a fantasy life is a healthy thing in kids, means they're using their imaginations creatively or, uh—something,” he ended on a weak note.

    “The belief these days is,” she said grimly, chopping the discarded spinach stalks—what he had thought were the discarded stalks—very, very fine, “that even if they maintain the fantasy is real, they in fact distinguish very well between fantasy and reality!”

    “Well, uh, that’s okay, then,” he fumbled.

    “No! You don’t understand!” she wailed.

    Okay, he didn’t understand. Resignedly Ben let her tell him as she mangled the spinach pie. Okay, spanakopita, if you say so, Jessica. He wasn’t a child psychologist, he didn’t even live here, he was over here this Christmas on a kind of working holiday—well, combining business with pleasure, sort of thing. The New York merchant bank that employed him had decided, since he’d found these prospects in Britain and Europe, that he’d better get on over here and check them out in person. Not that they were positively opposed to putting capital into foreign enterprises, but not at long range. “Suss them out but good, fella,” was how Jim Stapleton, who was the hearty senior exec at Fluss, Evert, Maze, had put it. “Make sure they’re sound and that any proposals they put forward are economically viable,” was how John Murtrey, who was the cool and calculating senior exec, had put it—he was head of the Venture Capital division, that Ben was in. The Chairman of the Board of Directors, Old Man Maze, had of course not spoken to his lowly self. And the CEO, Kingston Senior—it was many a long year since there’d been any Flusses or Everts in the firm—didn’t have much to do with their division these days, though they saw him regularly at things like the annual Christmas party. Which, thank God, Ben was missing this year. His immediate boss, Kingston Junior, had of course gone over all the paperwork with a fine-tooth comb before sticking his neck out and agreeing that these might be prospects. Well, venture capital was risky anywhere, in the wake of the global recession, and watch it, Germany was putting too much into the goddamn European Union these days—but yeah, this German firm did look okay. And the Danish one could be a goer, but not if they looked like cowboys, Ben! Ben wasn’t in the habit of risking the firm’s money, not to say his Christmas bonus, with cowboys, but he’d nodded meekly. James Kingston had then added cheerily that he could stay with his sister, wasn’t she in London? Save the bank the hotel bill! Yeah, well, that was Fluss, Evert, Maze for you. Better than chucking it away with both fists—true.

    —“Business with pleasure,” he reflected glumly as Jessica raved on and on, was a misnomer, if ever there was one. “Business with torture” would be more like it. Jessica’s English husband, Bob Masters, could be irritating, true, but he was a rational man, and their pleasant house in Hampstead, an extremely desirable London suburb, was very comfortable and for an English house, very warm, and little Damian was real cute and very pleased to have his Uncle Ben staying—but Jesus! The kid was four, could it matter if he really believed in fairies or not? And to hear her tell it they didn’t really believe it anyroad, no matter how firmly they maintained the fantasy was real, so what was she on about? Jesus!

    Rave, rave... God, she sounded like Tracy at her worst!

    Ben blinked, and pulled his thoughts up short. Tracy Inglis, his very nearly almost fiancée, was suitable in every way. For a start, she was one of the Inglises—Worth, Inglis: them. True, she didn’t work for the family firm, but never mind, she was connected, and after he’d brought her to the bank’s Christmas party a few years back Old Man Maze himself had said: “Very suitable, Anderson,” and Kingston Senior had said: “Well done, Anderson. Let’s hope it won’t be long before we hear the patter of little feet!” and taken him to lunch at his club! And you never got invited there unless one of the bosses wanted to signal extreme approval.

    Ben and Tracy had been together for nearly five years now, the last nearly three of them in his apartment. Which now contained none of the stuff that he’d originally put in it—admittedly dreck—and a great deal of stuff approved, chosen and beaten-down-in-price (unless it had absolutely had to be had) by Tracy. And Tracy was now making noises—no, had been making noises for some time—along the lines of “Do you really want to turn sixty before your eldest child’s twenty-one, Ben?” and “Don’t want to be fifty before your eldest child’s ten, Ben,” and “Forty-five by the time your eldest child’s ten, Ben.” Like that. Ben was now thirty-three—work it out. Also noises about putting names down for the right schools in good time—like that. He couldn’t actually imagine turning sixty at all, but he hadn’t said that. Or anything, much.

    Tracy had therefore decided unilaterally that they should get engaged very soon: after all it had been five years, now; they knew they were compatible and it was time they started taking some life decisions. While her birthstone was the ruby, diamonds were always wearable, weren’t they? And more flexible, if you wanted a matched set of engagement, wedding and eternity rings. And red wasn’t really her colour, with her fair skin. –At this point Ben had bitten his tongue in order not to say if she went back to her natural hair colour, maybe it would be. Tracy was determinedly blonde. She had been blonde all her life and had the fuzzy Polaroids to prove it. Little Tracy at Cape Cod with “Granda” and “Grandy-Pop”, kind of thing. Little Tracy with Uncle Norbert in the Adirondacks, wearing his great big shooting-jacket, kind of thing. Not to mention much bigger Tracy at Bryn Mawr in designer jeans. That kind of thing, too. However, Ben knew for a fact, because she’d had a bad bout of flu and been unable to get to the hairdresser for a month, not very long after she’d moved into the apartment—well, on a permanent basis, she’d pretty well been there from the word “go”—that these days the hair was kind of a mousy colour. A characterless shade, really, you couldn’t blame the girl for wanting to go blonde, but claiming she had a blonde’s fair skin was a bit on the nose. Lots of little kids with very fair hair darkened in later life, why couldn’t she admit it, at least in private?

    Ben couldn’t work up much enthusiasm about marrying Tracy but he couldn't think of any good reasons why not, either. She was a super-efficient housekeeper, and—not a good cook, no—an efficient cook with a thorough knowledge of dietetics. Well, the kids would be healthy, that was for sure, even if they’d never know the taste of Hershey Bars, M&Ms, or Coke, and would grow up believing firmly that “McDonald’s” was a dirty word. Which talking of which, she’d already installed a filter on his computer and was making noises about efficient filters for television sets... Far’s he could see they'd end up watching PBS, period. He hadn’t said so: there was no point whatsoever in pointing things out to Tracy when she had the bit between her teeth.

    Oddly, in spite of senior management’s approval of his girlfriend, it now occurred uneasily to Ben, as his sister mixed cream cheese fiercely into the spinach—or maybe it was cottage cheese, it looked crumbly, or maybe that feta stuff, he sure loathed that—oddly, James Kingston—Junior, that was—had hauled him off to a bar, uh, woulda been about two years into the Tracy thing—and gotten very drunk, well, they both had, and said earnestly: “Ben, guy, that girl’s a ballbreaker that’sh on courshe to rule your life. Don’ do ib, par’n me. Ib. Regrerr ib all your li’, uh, share a taxi, huh?” He lived way out on Long Island but Ben hadn’t been so drunk as to just pour him into the taxi: he’d taken him all the way there, the driver periodically looking over his shoulder and threatening to throw them both out if the guy threw up in his cab. And seen him safely up his steps, and rung the doorbell for him, since he seemed to have lost his keys, then beating a hasty retreat as the porch light came on, the door opened and a soprano voice shrieked: “You’re DRUNK! I knew it!” The cabbie took him all the way home—at tremendous expense, of course, in fact getting a hundred bucks out of him before he’d take off again—and when they got there enquired amiably: “She gonna shriek ‘You’re drunk, I knew it,’ too?” To which Ben had replied morosely: “I hope you don’t think that’s a joke.” And given him the rest of what was in his wallet before the guy could even draw breath to ask for it.

    Tracy hadn’t shrieked, she’d taken one look at him and said coldly: “You’re in a disgusting state, I hope you’re ashamed of yourself. You can sleep on the couch.”

    “Huh?” he said now, jumping. “Uh—speak to him?” Hell, now she looked as if she was gonna cry. “Okay, Jessica, sure I’ll speak to him, if you really want—” She really wanted him to. Yes, even though he knew nothing about little kids.

    Ben went morosely into the sitting-room of the very pleasant two-storeyed Hampstead house, where little Damian was quietly playing with his blocks, and said morosely: “Hey, fella. Whatcha building there?”

    “It’s a castle, Uncle Ben!” he piped in his little English voice.

    “A castle, huh? Good shuh—”

    “A fairy castle!” he beamed.

    Ouch. Ben squatted down beside him and said: “You do know—um, thanks,” as he was handed a plastic knight on horseback. “Uh, you do know—Huh? What?”

    “He comes up the drawbridge, Uncle Ben!”

    Drawbridge, eh? That was pretty good for a kid of four! What in Hell was the woman worrying about? She was paranoid!

    “Trot,” said Damian severely.

    “Uh—sure.” Ben endeavoured to trot a small, rigid, plastic horseman.

    “Trot, trot, trot,” said Damian in explanatory tones.

    “Uh—Oh! I geddit, guy! Trot, trot, trot!” chirped Ben, trotting the mounted knight up to the uh, well, imaginary drawbridge, okay, why not? He, Ben Anderson, had once had a purely imaginary station to his train set, until good old Uncle Chas—gee, he hadn’t thought of Uncle Chas in years, drowned at sea in a yachting accident when he, Ben, was only about twelve and Jessica woulda been fourteenish.—Until good old Uncle Chas had built him one! Gee, wonder what did happen to that train set— By Jesus, if goddamn Tracy’s thrown it out I’ll kill the bitch!

    “What? Oh—yeah, sorry Damian. Trot, trot, trot. Does he hail the castle now?”

    “Yeah, ’course.”

    Help, how did a plastic Mediaeval knight hail a pile of plastic blocks, beg pardon, castle? “Hoy the castle!” he hooted, that went down good, phew!

    After the knight had successfully assailed the castle, had a fight with a small plastic rhinoceros that was pretending to be another knight, soundly beaten it, pardon, him, and thrown all the castle’s inhabitants into the moat, splash, splash!—imaginary, the carpet wasn’t at risk—they planted his imaginary banner upon the battlements. Okay, Damian, rampars, if you say so. ...Oh, yeah. Ramparts. Right. Goddit.

    At which point Damian’s mother appeared in the doorway, saying in threatening tones: “Well?”

    Ben gulped. “Working up to it,” he bleated feebly.

    “Just do it!” she warned, disappearing again.

    Yeah. Uh, it was cold out—real cold—but not raining or sleeting. “Hey, Damian, what say we go in the yard, I mean back garden?” he suggested feebly.

    Damian brightened and scrambled up. “Yes! Guess what, Uncle Ben! There’s a fairy at the bottom of our garden!”

    Yo, boy. There it was. Ben contemplated it as it shimmered there, all shiny, new and horrible. What in Hell was he gonna say?

    “Y—uh— Guy, you do know there’s no such thing as fairies, do ya?” he croaked.

    “Yes, there are, Uncle Ben. Isabella, she’s a fairy, see?” he replied calmly.

    Ben gulped. A loud contradiction, even an hysterical contradiction, he felt he could have coped with—well, he had known Damian’s mother all his life. But the kid was completely calm, like he was offering him a plate of those English-style sandwiches or some such. Unmoved. Almost stolid. Like it was an everyday thing, a—a given!

    He took a very deep breath. “Damian, have you ever seen this Isabella?”

    Wrong tack to take entirely.

    “Yes, ’course,” he replied cheerfully, heading for the hallway. “Come on, Uncle Ben, you have to put your anorak on!”

    “Windcheater,” translated Ben morosely to himself, trudging in his wake. And his muffler—right, Damian. Not those shoes, he’d better wear Dad’s Wellingtons!

    Ben tried to smile. “Gee, it’s just like that poem we read the other night, huh? ‘John had great big Wellington boots on.’”

    “‘John had a gray big waterproof hat,’” he agreed, handing him one.

    It was not raining; it wasn’t even a windy day— Ben put the hat on.

    Then they went out. Ben did contemplate saying: “Damian, we are not going to see a fairy,” but what was the point?

    The garden was very attractive, or certainly would be in summer. Quite private: a high brick wall separated it from its semi-detached suburban neighbours on the one side, and another high brick wall on the other side, plus and behind that, an even higher, fiercely clipped evergreen hedge: those neighbours kept themselves to themselves. Lots of shrubs, a good stretch of lawn, nothing much in the flowerbeds at this time of year but some scraggy chrysanthemums, a length of trellis veiling Bob’s kitchen garden, the dreaded cabbages visible through the latticework, and at the back more shrubs, a little crazy-paved track through them, and Bob’s leafless espaliered apple and pear trees against another brick wall. And, on top of this wall—

    “Hullo, Isabella!” squeaked Damian, jumping with excitement.

    “Hullo, Damian!” she cried.

    Ben gulped. What dummy had told the kid she was a fairy? She was a very attractive girl, quite young, he’d have said early twenties, with a pale skin, delicately flushed pink cheeks, and a great soft cloud of curly black hair. She was wearing pretty much what you’d expect any fairy sitting on your back wall to be wearing in England in December, a long woollen coat in a soft blue-grey wool, and over that a pretty shawl, more soft blues with touches of lilac and cream. Paisley? Something like that. Fringed, too. And, just visible below the hem of the skirt—she had her knees drawn up—the cutest little blue boots he’d ever seen. Yeah, well, boots were in, or possibly back, he did know that: Tracy had three new pair, two of which she could barely walk in, they had two-inch soles and six-inch heels. One pair bright red and one pair bright tan. The third pair was black patent, lots of punching and lacing. They were all quite short, little more than ankle-length. Same like this girl’s, he saw as she moved and her boot was seen to end about three inches above the ankles, with a glimpse of lilac tights. Unlike Tracy’s efforts, however, this girl’s boots had ordinary soles and moderate heels.

    In short, she was a very pretty girl, but she was not a fairy!

    Damian, still jumping, was now squeaking: “This is Uncle Ben!”

    “Ben Anderson,” said Ben mildly, coming up to her. “Good to meet you, Isabella. I hear you’re a fairy.”

    She smiled, revealing beautifully straight, small, pearly teeth—very unlike Tracy’s large, expensively whitened choppers—and replied: “Damian believes I am.”

    “Yes, ’cos she is!” beamed Damian.

    “There you are,” said Isabella, smiling at the both of them impartially.

    Ben took a deep breath. “Look, couldn’t you tell him you’re not?”

    “It wouldn’t do any good, he wouldn’t believe me,” she replied tranquilly.

    He took another deep breath. “Could you do me—and his mother—the great favour of telling him so?”

    “Everyone’s tried. Well, okay, if you like,” she said, smiling again. “Damian, what would you say if I said ‘I’m not a fairy’?”

    Damian broke down in giggles immediately. “Silly! You are!” he squeaked.

    Isabella raised her delicate eyebrows at Ben.

    “Yeah, okay; I see,” he said heavily. “Well, wait until he grows out of it, huh? I have tried telling Jessica that.”

    “Everybody has,” she agreed tranquilly.

    “Uh-huh. –Hey, Damian, if she’s a fairy, where are her wings?” he asked cunningly.

    Damian looked scornful. “She’s a’track’ed them, silly!”

    “Yuh—uh— Oh. Retracted,” he recognised glumly. “Okay. –She looks like a girl to me,” he offered without hope.

    Sure enough, Damian replied: “She’s a girl fairy, see? Her brother, Robin, he's a boy fairy. And Dan, he used to be a boy fairy, he's grown up now.”

    “My other brother,” said Isabella, smiling seraphically at Ben.

    Wasn’t she sweet? Bit the Andie MacDowell type, really. Ben was a great fan but Tracy claimed she couldn’t act and wouldn’t watch any of her movies and in particular hated Four Weddings and a Funeral, it was “too self-consciously English” and really hated Groundhog Day, she loathed Bill Murray. She hadn’t yet chucked out his DVDs of these epics but he wasn’t taking any bets—she’d certainly chucked out all his kick-boxing DVDs, in fact anything with Claude Van Damme in it. Ben rather liked good old Van Damme, though he wouldn’t have maintained the guy could act, but he’d discovered that not only his movies drove Tracy rabid, him calling him “Jumper Van Damme” also did. It was a joke he and his friend Tom had made up, and okay, it was feeble, but Tom’s wife Joelene at least had the sense, not to say the milk of human kindness, to merely smile tolerantly at them, why couldn’t Tracy?

    “Dan likes kick-boxing, too,” murmured Isabella.

    Ben jumped. What? Had he actually said— “What did you say?” he croaked.

    “Dan’s my older brother. He’s been here for a while,” she said, smiling that seraphic smile.

    “Oh,” said Ben limply. He must be losing it. Well, what with fairies at the bottom of the garden and Jessica’s raging, make that raving and raging paranoia, and the fact that Isabella was so very, very pretty she’d bowl over any average red-blooded male between the ages of—well, realistically, judging by Damian’s very pink cheeks, not due to the nip in the December air, of any age—

    “So how did the castle go, Damian?” she smiled.

    “Good!” He plunged into it. Ben didn’t listen. He just tried not to think about how cold his toes were in the Wellington boots or whether Tracy’s threat to come on over from New York for Christmas would be carried out; and wondered where that old train set was and, supposing it could be found, whether he could ever get it over here for Damian in time for Christmas Day. Sure, good old Tom would package it up and send it by courier for him, no sweat, but would Tracy even let him into the apartment and, again, would she already have thrown it out?

    After a while he became aware that his toes were no longer cold, in fact his feet were surprisingly warm. But this could well be due to the fact that Isabella was smiling that smile at him again: wasn’t she adorably sweet?

    “I’d better let you go,” she said, smiling into his eyes. “Damian mustn’t get cold.”

    “I’m not cold, Uncle Ben! Isabella always keeps you warm!” he cried.

    Ye-ah. Something like that! Ben smiled weakly at Isabella. “Yeah, sure, guy, but your mom doesn’t like you to stand around on a winter’s day, does she?”

    “You said ‘your mom’ again,” he pointed out, without apparent animus.

    “Did I? Sorry. Your mum. I think we better go inside again. It looks like it’s starting in to snow,” he lied, eyeing the sky.

    Damian was just objecting that it wasn’t when a few lacy flakes drifted down and decorated his nose and eyelashes and Isabella’s lovely dark cloud of hair. Wow! Frosted with it!

    Like—all Ben could compare it to was Mom’s Devil’s Food cake’s chocolate frosting, huge great whorls and piles of it, which she had a trick of sprinkling very, very lightly with icing sugar, and one year, possibly it had been Aunty Sue’s birthday, she loved that cake, too, she’d found some tiny spangles and popped them on it, too. Just like that!

    “In we go, Jack Frost’s about!” said Isabella with a laugh. “Lovely to meet you at last, Ben!” With this she jumped down off the wall and was lost to view.

    Ben grabbed his nephew’s hand and hurried him back indoors, ignoring the burble to the effect that he’d seen Jack Frost, he wasn’t as blue as that silly one in that movie, and he wasn’t a bad fairy at all! –Actually, if he’d do them all the favour of killing off Bob’s goddamn cabbages he’d not only agree he wasn’t a bad fairy, he’d give him a medal!

    It was now time for Damian’s programme. Ben had tried on an earlier occasion, but he couldn’t take it: some sickening BBC kids’ thing. There was a word for it. A very English word. Uh....

    “Twee!” he remembered, going into the kitchen.

    “Oh, God, is he watching it?” groaned Jessica.

    “Yeah. Ooh, great, are you making a cake?”

    “Yeah, and if we don’t tell Bob it’s out of a packet he’ll never know, will he, Ben?”

    “My lips are sealed.”

    Jessica mixed cake-mix carefully by hand. “Well?”

    He took one of those deep breaths. By the end of this combined-business-and-pleasure thing he was gonna have the chest expansion of a Charles Atlas or an Arnie Schwarzenegger. That or he was gonna be down with asthma; one or the other. “I met her—yeah.”

    “See?” said Damian’s mother in tones of despair.

    “I see that you didn’t tell me there was a real girl involved, Jessica!” he replied in pardonable annoyance.

    “I didn’t want to prejudice you. I just thought, if you had a completely open mind... The maddening thing is,” she burst out, “that if only he’d drop this fairy crap, she’d be the ideal sitter for him!”

    Ouch, what happened to the perfect Whatsername? “What happened to the other sitter?”

    “Marianne. She’s gone to Canada with the boyfriend—don’t ask why Canada!”

    Ben wouldn’t have dreamed of it. “Goddit. I can’t see why Isabella couldn’t do it, Jessica: if he saw more of her in an ordinary setting”—like, not perched on a garden wall looking like something out of a fairy tale—“the fairy nonsense would probably just die a natural death.”

    “He has! She’s Dan Prince’s sister, he and Margot had us over for lunch just recently—the people in back of us!” she said crossly to his blank face—“and he got worse! Their kids are older than him and he could see perfectly well there’s nothing fairylike about them, in fact their Ronny’s quite a little bruiser, but he’s at the age where he’s into stupid magic tricks, and that just set the seal on it! –You know, those stupid Chinese rings and crap!” she said impatiently. “You’ve always been able to buy magic sets for the kids, and the Harry Potter garbage has made it miles worse! All the stores are crammed with wands and stuff!”

    “Uh—if you give a kid a good look at those Chinese rings—”

    “Not just that, he’s got a trick hat and he made little Petunia’s white mouse disappear. Damian was completely convinced. He went right up to the table and looked in the hat—picked it up and shook it, you see.”

    “Oh,” said Ben limply. “Yeah, well, he is only four, Jessica... Petunia?”

     Jessica had to swallow. “Margot is a bit like that. Flights of fancy. The other girl’s Honeysuckle. The house is all floral wallpapers and matching linen upholstery and that sorta stuff, y’know? Sets of flower prints on the walls. Each bedroom’s got a different flower theme. Pretty, I guess, but way over the top! –Five bedrooms, it’s a bigger house than ours, he’s very well off.”

    “Uh-huh.”

    “That’s not all,” she admitted, suddenly sitting down on a kitchen chair.

    Silently Ben went over to the bench and began making coffee.

    “Isabella came with us to the park one day—just a couple of weeks back, this was,” she said heavily. “You know that Tim Allen movie?”

    “Which one?”

    “The Christmas one, of course.”

    “Yuh—uh, the one where he’s Santa Claus or the one where he's the grinch that decides not to have Christmas this year and then they have to have it after all and the poor wife goes crazy trying to find a special ham? Jamie Lee Curtis, she was good, mind you, but it was a waste of her boo—”

    “All right!”

    “Well, it was. –Was it?”

    “No, it was that Christmas one where he turns into Santa Claus and goes to the park.”

    Ben had sat through innumerable Tim Allen movies where he turned into Santa Claus—talking of grinches, rather a grumpy Santa, he’d always thought—but he couldn’t recall any specific park incident. He hadn’t been had up for molesting little kids, he’d have remembered that. “And?”

    “He just sits down on a park bench—he’s wearing one of those fancy Christmas knit sweaters, I think. Uh, the zippered one—was it?”—God, their minds! Ben rolled his eyes but just got on with the coffee, keeping his mouth, talking of which, zippered.—“And this little girl comes and sits beside him, kind of edging closer and closer”—Jeez, why hadn't he been had up for molestation?—“and when the ex-wife arrives to collect the little boy, there’s a whole queue of little kids wanting to sit on Santa’s knee and tell him what they want for Christmas!”

    Zat so? Fascinating. Whole queue, huh? Yeah, if you believed this fat guy—had he had the beard at that point? She hadn’t said.—If you believed this fat guy in a zippered Christmas sweater was Santa Claus and you were under the age of five you probably would go up and—

    “Shit,” he said numbly, turning to stare at her.

    “Yes,” said Jessica dully. “It was terrible, Ben! Damian was just playing nicely and Isabella and I were chatting, and then that goddamn pest of a junk food vendor turned up. So I gave in and said I’d get him something, and of course he knows most of the kids that go to the park, and when I came back she was surrounded by them!”

    Ben swallowed: he was gonna laugh, this was ridiculous! She was making mountains out of molehills.

    “He’d got them all convinced she really was a fairy!” Jessica finished bitterly. “And don’t dare to laugh!”

    “No,” he agreed limply.

    She scrabbled in her apron pocket, produced a crumpled Kleenex, and blew her nose fiercely. “Every time he sees her it gets worse! –So what happened this afternoon?”

    “Well, uh, nothing, honest! She tried telling him she wasn’t a fairy and he only laughed and said of course she is, words to that effect. I tried asking where her wings were—“

    “Been there, done that,” said Jessica dully.

    “Retracted, huh?”

    “Yeah.”

    He sighed. “Look, all I can say is, he’ll grow out of it. It’ll be painful while it lasts but you’ll just have to ride it out. And don’t they start school in England around five? That'll distract him, and you can be sure none of the other kids—”

    “That’s what I thought about nursery school, and he’s got them all believing it, and that stupid woman there’s making it wuh-worse!” she wailed.

    Sighing again, Ben came to pat her shoulder and administer a handful of paper towels, since he couldn’t see any Kleenex. Eventually she calmed down enough to sip her coffee.

    “Little Jennifer Winters is the worst,” she said dully. “She’s a lovely little girl, and I said we could take her for the day, Sarah Winters had to go see her grandmother—Alzheimer’s, she’s past recognising anyone but the doc wanted to see her, so— And I’d planned to have Isabella over, at that stage I thought like you, that he just needed to see more of her in his day-to-day setting. Well, I was in the kitchen fixing lunch when I heard the little girl give a wail, and of course I shot out, and they were all in the hall and, believe me or believe me not, Damian burst out with: ‘Jennifer fell down the stairs and guess what? Isabella flew down and catched her!’”

    “What had happened?” returned Ben cautiously.

    “She had tripped, but that was all. He kept trying to tell me that Isabella had flown, I think he meant down from the landing—I mean, it was ridiculous! Jennifer was perfectly all right, Isabella was cuddling her, but the thing is, then she informed me that Isabella was a fairy and she could fly!”

    Ben had to cough suddenly. “How old is this Jennifer?”

    Jessica looked defiant. “About three, but—”

    Alas, Ben had broken down in helpless sniggers.

    “It’s not funny!” she snapped.

    “Sorry!” he gasped. He mopped his eyes. And drank some coffee to give him strength. “What does Bob think?” he added cautiously.

    Okay, Bob was a broken reed, ’nuff said.

    “I called Mom,” she said dully.

    Ben winced. “Uh-huh?”

    “He’ll grow out of it, just enjoy it while it lasts, and would I like her to send over all our old fairy books?” reported his sister dully.

    ’Bout what he’d thought, then. “Yeah, well, she always was keen on fairy tales and so forth. Talking of Mom, this gonna be an Angel’s Food cake?”

    Jessica came to. “Gee, what am I— I don’t think it’s ruined,” she decided, peering into the bowl. “Yes, well, Angel’s Food was the only packet left—I have to hide them from Mr ‘Mother always made her cakes from scratch’, you see. But I could do a chocolate frosting, if you like.”

    “Yeah, great; why not?” he said with a laugh. “Thanks, sis!”

    Jessica finished the cake quickly and put it in the oven—it was on, gee, how much power had she wasted? He didn’t ask, Bob could afford it. He could afford it even more if he didn’t make all those international calls to bloody “Mother” who, be it noted, lived in a fancy villa on Ibiza and never did a hand’s turn for herself these days, let alone baking cakes! Still, at least she was far enough away not to be an active thorn in poor old Jessica’s side.

    The oven, according to his sister, would ping when the cake was ready to come out, so they ventured cautiously into the sitting-room. It was over, thank Christ! Damian had his big scrapbook out and was drawing. Ben came to look. Green scribbles, blue scribbles.

    “Very nice, Damian. What is it?”

    Ouch! The blue scribble was Isabella, flying, and the green was her brother Robin, also flying.

    “Thought her brother’s name was Dan?” he drawled, aware of Jessica’s eyes on him.

    “No, he’s her big brother. Robin, he’s her little brother.” He eyed him consideringly. “He's quite big, maybe as big as you, but Isabella says he isn’t grown up yet.”

    “Yeah, right; you’ve met this Robin, then?”

    “Yes.” He searched earnestly amongst his crayons. “He’s got a brown cap. It’s a acorn cap.” He drew carefully. Okay, now that green splodge had a brown splodge on top of it that with a great stretch of the imagination—

    “Jessica, it’s a stage, hon’. Just let it flow over you,” he sighed. “Look, siddown, I’ll get you a drink.” He investigated their liquor cabinet. “Bacardi? A veddy English gin and tonic?”

    “As a matter of fact I’d love a G&T!” she admitted.

    “Why not?” He made her a G&T, considerately nipping out to the kitchen for some ice, he didn’t think she’d gone over entirely to the Limey side. And a Johnnie Walker Black Label for him. Straight up. He needed it.

    It did take two G&Ts—was that the plural? Sounded real weird, specially on top of six fingers at a conservative estimate of Bob’s Scotch—but she at last admitted: “I guess we will just have to ride it out. All you can do.”

    “Yep, that’s right. –Gee, that’s real pretty, Damian! King of the fairies, huh? Oh, Dan’s dad? Zat so? So who’s this—Dan Prince with his wings on, huh?” –Yeah, well, if the guy was a Prince his dad would be the King, right!

    “Hey, he’s worked out the logic of it, all right, Jessica, I don’t think you need have any worries about his cognitive abilities,” he said kindly.

    “Logic!”

    Ben winked at her. “Dan Prince—right?”

    After a few moments it sank in and she gulped. But admitted: “Yes, I guess that is logical.”

    “Sure it is! He’s all right! Hey, remember that T,R,A,I,N  S,E,T of mine?”

    “Yes. You had to imagine a station: it drove—” She broke off, looking sheepish. “It drove Dad crazy,” she admitted.

    “Mom always did say you were his daughter!” returned Ben with a laugh. “Yeah, that’s the one. Then Uncle Chas built me a real one.”

    “Of course! Dear old Uncle Chas—well, I guess he wasn’t all that old, but he seemed old as the hills to me! Oh, dear: wasn’t that sad?”

    “Yeah, but he had a real good time of it when he was alive, reading between the lines of what the adults carefully didn’t tell us, Jessica!”

    “Mm,” she admitted, biting her lip and trying not to laugh.

    “So, I was thinking, if Tom can find it for me, what say I get it over here?”

    “Just the station?”

    “No, the lot.” He eyed his nephew cautiously, but he was busy with his crayons again. “Might be a distraction.”

    “Ben!” she gasped. “It’d be the very thing!”

    “Yeah, well, might work. And listen, if good old Tom can’t find it or if the B,I,T,C,H of the Western World has thrown it out, I’ll go to Harrods! I'm sure they have decent ones!”

    “Yes, they’ve got everything... Ben, have you and Tracy had a row?”

    “Not as such. But I am fed up with her trying to run my life for me. She’s thrown out my old videotapes—all my good old SF movies!”

    “What, the classic ones?”

    Ben grinned sheepishly. “Them as well. No, well, what particularly rankles is Ghostbusters: I just suddenly felt like watching it, last week. She can’t stand any of the actors.”

    “I’d have thought she’d like Sigourney Weaver, she’s rather like her,” replied his sister. “Not so much in that thing, more like she was in Alien— No! I know!” she gasped, bolt upright. “In Working Girl! –Help, she’s just like her,” she discovered, her eyes very round.

    “Jessica, you purblind idiot, that was Melanie Griffith, blonde and luscious! She’s nothing like her! –Well, Ms Griffith may not be a genuine blonde either, but with that pearly skin of hers I’d doubt that very much.”

    “No, you dope! The toothed vagina!” she cried, forgetting their company. “The boss lady, that had her hooks into Harrison Ford and broke her leg!”

    “Omigod.”

    The pleasant Hampstead sitting-room rang with silence—apart from Damian’s stertorous breathing as he crawled round his drawing. Part of Jessica’s was probably due to the guilty realisation of what she’d just said in front of the offspring, true.

    “You are so right,” concluded Ben in awe. “Why did I never see it? My God, she’s Tracy to the life!”

    Why, indeed? Some sort of mental block? wondered his sister. Had he really woken up to the full loathsomeness of Tracy Meredith Inglis at last? Fingers crossed!

Next chapter:

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