Unlike Mrs Frith, Miss Murajee needed no proof that the curse had been lifted. She took one look at Nicholas standing on her doorstep and her face broadened into a huge smile.
‘Well, well, well!’ she boomed, as she ushered him inside. ‘Congratulations! When did it happen?’ She led him through to the kitchen, sat him down and listened with the greatest interest to his story.
‘That was Toribio all right,’ she said as Nicholas described the man at the table with the green stone round his neck. ‘Or a part of him at least.’
‘But I thought he was dead?’
‘Only his body. The rest of him sounds healthy enough.’
Nicholas had brought some raspberries from his garden as a thank-you present, and Miss Murajee spooned them into a couple of bowls and poured cream over the top.
‘I have to tell you I’m impressed. That was a powerful piece of magic. Not easy to throw off at all. You did well!’
‘Thank you,’ said Nicholas. ‘There was a question I wanted to ask, if that’s all right?’
‘Fire ahead,’ Miss Murajee picked up a spoon.
Nicholas hesitated. The question he wanted to ask was something he had been thinking about, on and off, ever since he had broken free from the curse, but he wasn’t entirely sure how to phrase it.
‘I know,’ he said, eventually, ‘that telling myself I was lucky all those hundreds of times meant that I broke the spell, but does it mean that I really am going to be lucky from now on? Am I going to be as lucky as I was unlucky, or will I just go back to being like I was before?’
‘Ah,’ Miss Murajee said, smiling at him over the top of her glasses, ‘that depends. Do you believe you’re going to be lucky?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nicholas. ‘That’s why I was asking you.’
‘Well.’ Miss Murajee was still smiling. ‘Like I said… it depends.’
Mrs Frith decided to have a party.
‘We need to say thank you,’ she told Nicholas, ‘to all the people who helped us get through this. We’d never have done it without them.’
The date she chose was the first Saturday after the end of term, and Fiona and Mr Gibbon came over in the morning to help get everything ready. The weather that day was so warm that Mrs Frith decided to move everything out of doors, and the children helped her carry the dining table out into the garden to a patch of shade under a large ash tree.
Mr Gibbon helped Mrs Frith prepare the food in the kitchen, while Fiona and Nicholas spent the day making decorations, hanging lanterns and coloured lights among the trees, blowing up balloons and setting out the chairs.
At six o’clock, the first guests to arrive were Mr Fender and Mr Daimon, who brought with them a dozen bottles of champagne in a tin bath full of ice. They were carrying it round to the back of the house as Mr Ryder appeared with a huge box of fireworks, accompanied by Miss Murajee, dressed in a bright red sari with gold edging. She gave Nicholas a small silver disc with symbols etched on both sides that she said might be useful as a charm when he went to see his father in America.
Free of the curse, Nicholas had accepted the invitation to spend part of his summer holiday in Cedar Falls and was flying to Des Moines in Iowa in four days’ time. It was a prospect that made him very excited, if a little nervous.
‘No need to be nervous,’ said Miss Murajee, her eyes twinkling. ‘I’ve been looking into my crystal ball, and it all goes brilliantly. You have a wonderful time there. In fact you both do. You and Fiona.’
‘But I’m not going with Fiona,’ said Nicholas. ‘I’m going on my own.’
Miss Murajee looked puzzled for a moment, but then her face cleared.
‘Quite right. So you are. It’s next year you go together, isn’t it. Your mother takes over as manager of the Royal, Mr Gibbon gets a job there playing the piano, and you two go off to America.’ She gave a throaty chuckle. ‘My goodness, but you have some adventures, I can tell you!’
Nicholas would have liked to ask her what the adventures were, but at that moment the last of the guests arrived. It was Señor Herez, the man who had helped save Nicholas’s life in Spain nearly two years before.
Señor Herez had heard from Mrs Frith that Nicholas had broken free from the curse and had written to say he was coming to England in two weeks’ time on business, and could he call in to congratulate them in person. He had driven down from Heathrow that afternoon and brought with him not only his grandmother, Donna Alena, looking smaller and frailer than ever, but Miguel, the man who had driven the taxi on that fateful journey into the mountains. He said he hoped Mrs Frith wouldn’t mind the extra visitors, but both of them had wanted to see Nicholas and hear his story for themselves.
Miguel produced a bag of presents he had brought from the farmhouse in Spain – rounds of cheese, a leg of ham, some figs and a bottle of apricot brandy – and Donna Alena produced a photograph of the grave of Toribio, which she wanted to show Nicholas. With Señor Herez translating her words into English, she explained that the grave had been repaired and was now surrounded, as he could see, by a metal fence and a warning sign in seven languages advising people to stay away.
‘Since you left,’ Señor Herez explained, ‘we have tried to make sure that the same thing does not happen to anyone else.’
It was a magical party. Whether it was Mr Ryder’s champagne, or the food, or simply the unexpected warmth of an English summer evening, Nicholas never knew, but it was one of those special times that people remember for years afterwards and can’t help smiling about when they do.
The food was wonderful. There were great rounds of home-made pizza, slices of cold meats, barbecued sausages, curried chicken, loaves of warm garlic bread, pastries, sauces and bowls of a dozen different sorts of salad. While they ate, Mr Ryder kept pouring the champagne and they sat round the table under the ash tree in the light of the setting sun, and talked.
Most of the talk was about Nicholas and how he had managed to break free from the spell. It was a long story, and with everyone describing their own part in it, and Señor Herez translating everything into Spanish for his grandmother and Miguel to understand, it took even longer to tell. But nobody seemed to mind. It was, they all agreed, a most astonishing tale, and they might still have been discussing it at midnight if Nicholas had not reminded his mother that there were puddings indoors and if she wanted anyone to eat them it might be a good idea to bring them out.
The sun was going down and, while the children cleared the table and Mr Fender lit the candles on sticks that were supposed to keep away the midges and mosquitoes, Mr Ryder went down to the bottom of the garden and set off a thunderous volley of rockets that showered golden sparks all over the night sky. Then everyone helped themselves to slices of gateau and tart and bowls of fruit salad and cream that Mrs Frith had provided and, when they had eaten far more than was good for them, they sat back in their chairs and listened to Mr Gibbon, who was indoors playing the piano.
It was a perfect summer’s night. The air was still and warm, and the sky was a deep velvet blue in which the stars shone with an astonishing clarity. The Milky Way blazed in the great arc that spanned a hundred thousand light years and on either side the constellations wheeled their stately dance round the pole star. Sitting back in his chair and staring up into the night, Nicholas thought he had never felt happier in his life.
Around him, the air was filled with the quiet murmur of conversation. Señor Herez and Mr Ryder were deep in a discussion about olive farming; Donna Alena and Miss Murajee were discussing magic in Latin, the only language they had in common; and Mr Daimon was telling Mrs Frith about the problems he had had with his father. Indoors, Mr Gibbon could still be heard playing softly on the piano, and Fiona was looking after Miguel who had got cramp in his right calf muscle. Straighten knee, flex foot to stretch calf muscle, massage affected area.
Nicholas watched her admiringly. It didn’t matter if it was a scratch or a major injury, Fiona always knew how to deal with it. He remembered that
first morning when she had dealt with Mr Daimon’s head wound after he had fallen down the stairs and thought, not for the first time, how lucky he was to have found her as a friend.
And it wasn’t just Fiona. Every one of the people around him had helped him in some way through the events of the last two years. Every one of them had offered support at a time when it would have been much safer simply to walk away. If Miguel had not driven off to get help in the taxi that day in the mountains, or if Señor Herez had not been willing to come out when he was asked, or there had been no Donna Alena to weave her protective spell, he might not be alive today. And what would have happened to him if Mr Fender had not decided to make the changes in his school that meant Nicholas could stay? Or if he had not gone to the trouble of tracking down Miss Murajee? Looking round the table, he could not help thinking he had been very lucky.
Yes. That was it. Lucky…
In a way, you could say he had been lucky right from the start. Lucky on the mountainside in Spain to have found people who knew what to do to help. Lucky in England to have found a friend like Fiona, or a woman as clever as Miss Murajee. He had been lucky to find all these people who had wanted to help, or known how to help, or who had stood by him whether they could help or not…
He looked up, suddenly aware that everyone else at the table was looking at him expectantly. As if someone had asked him a question and the others were all waiting for him to answer.
‘Nicholas!’ Fiona was tugging at his sleeve. ‘She’s talking to you!’
‘Who?’
‘I was saying,’ said Miss Murajee, ‘that, yes, you are right. And that I think you have answered your question.’
‘But the rest of us don’t know what she’s talking about,’ said Fiona, ‘because we don’t know what you were thinking.’
Nicholas looked round the table. At his mother, looking at him a little anxiously in case something was wrong. At big, gruff Mr Ryder. At Mr Fender, who had drunk rather a lot of champagne and quietly fallen asleep. At Mr Daimon, looking remarkably relaxed and jolly. At Mr Gibbon, still indoors, his fingers splashing gently over the keyboard. At the three Spaniards, who had travelled hundreds of miles just to congratulate him. At Miss Murajee. And at Fiona, sitting beside him, waiting for an answer.
‘It wasn’t anything really,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking how lucky I was.’
And he has been lucky from that day to this.
The Unluckiest Boy in the World Page 10