‘Just after ten.’
‘Wrong! It’s black magic time. Pass me the sandwich box.’ He took out a comb and dipped it in the grease lying at the bottom of the Tupperware container, and then combed his hair, leaning sideways to check it in the rear-view mirror. After that he took out a bottle of perfume from the seat pocket and sprayed it on liberally. ‘This stuff’s really good, it’s got a special ingredient from a place called Provence, that’s in France. They know how to charm the ladies over there. Ooh la la! and that, I’ve been reading about it.’
It was the sort of cottage where they kept a cage in the back room with a boy called Hansel in it, sticking gnawed chicken bones through the bars every time the woman went to check. The roof was slate that gleamed with damp, even though the heatwave continued unabated; houses like this have their own micro-climate of grey mist that hangs permanently above the roof. A blackbird in the undergrowth a few feet away stopped hunting for a grub and looked up. He followed us with his cold dark eyes, scrutinising us with the intensity of the inhabitants of Mexican border towns peering at strangers riding into town in the spaghetti westerns.
‘Cooey!’ shouted Meici. ‘Mrs Eglwys Fach! Are you there?’
Mrs Eglwys Fach came out of the front door and did a little pantomime of surprise and joy commingled, ending in her two hands coming together in front of her face, as if the Lord had answered her prayers, even though she should take the lion’s share of the credit since it was her, and not the Lord, who made the phone call to Meici. She was bent forward slightly at the waist, wore a black wool cardigan over a drab grey skirt that reached to the ground. Her hair was tucked into a white bonnet and she had the sort of sweet and spite-free face that belonged on the lid of a confectionery box. Some people wear a lifetime’s accumulated care and resentment when they get old but Mrs Eglwys Fach was clearly one of those who maintained the belief that for all the bad things life was still a gift for which she gave thanks every day. Meici introduced us and she clasped her hands even tighter at the unexpected treat, since now she would be given the opportunity to make four cups of tea instead of two. She hobbled up to Calamity and peered at her in wonder. ‘What a sweet little girl!’ she cried. In this remote dingle on the dark side of Talybont you could be forgiven for thinking she was sizing Calamity up for the cauldron, but with Mrs Eglwys Fach you could tell it was the simple goodness of her heart pouring out even if it was guaranteed to infuriate any self-respecting teenager. Calamity bore it with the patient restraint of a policeman’s horse being offered sugar lumps while on duty.
Mrs Eglwys Fach led us into the kitchen. It was the same room I had sat in the previous evening looking at the stamps. Meici walked over to the wall and dragged the spinning wheel out.
‘I just don’t understand it,’ said Mrs Eglwys Fach. ‘It was working fine on Saturday and then this morning when I tried it, it just sort of seized up. Jammed it was, the beggar!’
Meici gave the wheel a gentle push with his index finger, but it didn’t move. He put on an expression of deep concern. ‘Ooh, dear, dear!’ he said. ‘Dear oh dear. Doesn’t look good.’
Mrs Eglwys Fach bit her lip.
‘You haven’t spilled any glue on it or anything, have you?’ said Meici.
‘Ooh no,’ she said. ‘I would never do that.’
Meici probed and checked and tapped and accompanied it all with strange unvocalised noises, grunts from the time before man invented speech but which communicated in a language available to us all that Mrs Eglwys Fach’s spinning wheel was buggered. He stood up wearily, rubbing the small of his back with one hand, and returned to the table with a look of grave sorrow on his face.
‘I’m not sure what’s made it stop like that,’ he began. ‘But it looks to me like you’ll need a new wheel.’
‘Rhun says it might just be swollen because of the damp.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Meici with barely concealed contempt for the opinions of a layman. ‘It’s not water in the wheel. In fact, it doesn’t look mechanical at all. Could someone have put a spell on you?’
Mrs Eglwys Fach put her hand to her mouth and considered the suggestion. ‘Of course it’s possible, but I’m usually very careful – I’ve always made a point of putting a little protective spell on all my wheels.’
‘Is there someone who might know the structure of the spell? They’re easy enough to crack if someone knows the structure.’
‘I don’t see how they can know, I make all my own charms. And I don’t let anyone watch.’
‘What about the birds? Do you trust them? They can spy through the window, you know. There’s no point going to all the trouble of making new charms if the birds are snitching on you.’
‘The wrens and the thrushes are OK, but I will admit I’ve had one or two problems with the blackbirds—’
There was a sharp fluttering at the window; we all turned and saw a whirl of feathers and flash of hastily departing bird.
‘Caught in the act,’ said Meici with the air of one having his professional diagnosis confirmed by events.
‘Oh dearie me,’ said Mrs Eglwys Fach feeling betrayed. ‘They are beggars, those birds. Last week they stole some things from Arianwen’s dressing table.’
‘You need to teach them a lesson,’ said Meici. ‘What you have to do is find the nest, and then when the bird is not looking you swap her eggs for turtle eggs.’
‘Where would I get turtle eggs from?’
‘Exchange & Mart,’ said Meici.
‘Does it stop them stealing?’ said Mrs Eglwys Fach.
‘Not exactly, but you get a bird who spends a month hatching her eggs and a turtle comes out; you never get any more trouble out of her after that.’
‘It sounds a bit mean,’ said Mrs Eglwys Fach.
‘And stealing things from your dressing table and snitching on you to the witches isn’t?’ said Meici. ‘Point is, some of these new wheels are a lot more resistant to the old ways. These new carbon fibre ones, for example, you’d have a hell of a job putting a spell on one of those.’
‘Are they expensive?’
‘In the long run, if you factor in the cost of the days lost to bad spells and stuff, they can work out cheaper.’ Meici took out a pocket calculator and started punching in random figures. Mrs Eglwys Fach watched, fascinated. Meici murmured to himself with evident satisfaction, the figures were looking good. He stopped and looked up, shoving the calculator over towards her. ‘There you go. That’s five grand I’ve saved you.’
She took out her reading specs and bent over the calculator. She leant back and said, ‘My, my!’ And then a thought clouded her brow. ‘But they have fewer spokes those carbon-fibre ones, don’t they?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Meici. ‘Stronger material, greater rigidity, fewer spokes—’
‘Hmm, but does that mean you don’t get that wagon-wheel effect you see in the old westerns where the wheels seem to be spinning backwards? I like that bit.’