Perhaps he was crazy. Just my luck, move into a house with a noisy nut-job upstairs. They don’t tell you that on the advert.
Felix said in the most un-interested voice. “So what do you do?”
“I work in sales,” I said to a glazed expression. “But I want to be an author.”
Felix’s eyes suddenly lit up, like a fire that burst to life with the addition of petrol. “Do you really? Well that is interesting.” He stood up from his book. “Would you care for a cup of tea?”
“Er, it’s bit late.”
He ignored me, pulled the stick out of its velvet lined box and pointed it towards a tea pot sitting on a gas ring. A few seconds later steam arose from the spout. “I’ve seen them,” I said, pointing to his stick. “You can buy them most places now. They control the TV, but they’re shaped like a wand. But I didn’t know they could work kettles too?”
Felix fixed me with a long stare. “You really do have a tiny mind, don’t you Norton?” Felix sat down on the edge of his bed. “Please, have a seat on my chesterfield.”
I don’t think it was a chesterfield but didn’t want to split hairs. Then, I watched as a quite incredible thing happened... the teapot poured itself in mid-air. Yes, you heard me correctly and no, I was not dreaming. I know the flipping difference. It poured itself into two cups nearby then sat itself back down, as if being poured by an invisible hand.
“Milk?” said Felix.
“Please,” I said dreamily.
A small jug lifted into the air and dropped a splash into each mug which then lifted into the air and sailed across the room, one straight into my outstretched hand, the other to Felix.
I looked at the contents… it was definitely tea-hot, milky, brown tea. Felix was watching me expectantly. “How the fu—”
“I told you. I am a wizard.”
“But they don’t exist?”
Felix made a bored face, like he had heard this protestation a thousand times. “You’ve just seen proof with your own eyes. You saw that tea make itself. True or false?”
“True. But it could have been a trick.”
Felix sat down on the edge of his bed facing me. His looks were as idiosyncratic as his so called profession. His face, staring at me intently, had the eyes of a fox- untrustworthy, cunning, unpredictable. His nose was narrow and hooked like the beak of a hawk. Mousy brown hair fell just above his shoulders, tucked behind the ears. I suspected out of laziness to get it cut. Age was hard to guess, but if you made me, I would say early thirties. So skinny did he look you could be forgiven for thinking he had an eating disorder.
He dressed well, with a fine pressed, white collarless shirt, buttoned to the throat. Over this a fur lined undertakers coat, skinny black jeans and well worn Dr Marten boots. Now, what you make of those details is up to you, my powers of cold-reading are limited.
He continued to stare at me with his cunning, cold eyes. To say I felt comfortable in his presence would be a lie. I would have a cup of tea, be friendly and endeavour to get him to agree to make less noise, before I left.
A cone shaped device in the corner that was dripping hot water into a container, all of a sudden, stopped whirring. I looked closer, recognising the instrument.
“Is that a water distiller?” Felix nodded. “But why do you need one of those, unless for scientific experiments?”
“You expect me to use tap water for my potions?” He jumped up—cup of tea floating in the air behind him—before he grabbed the two litre glass flask of water, corked it, and put it away on a shelf. “So…” he said. “Why have you moved here?”
I took a deep breath. “I er—”
“Aha! So you’ve split up with your long term girlfriend.”
“Yes, how did you—”
“People always take a deep breath before they say something psychologically painful. Add to that, you hold yourself in a dejected manner which means you’ve recently been rejected. Let me guess, you look to be around twenty-eight. You were together what, seven years?”
I felt one of those smiles hit my face, that only a magician can do when they show you a trick and you don’t understand how they did. “You looked me up on Facebook, that’s all you did. Ms McCall told you my name and you searched me.”
“Sure I did tiny-mind,” he said refilling the water distiller at a small sink. “Now you feel lost and lonely, but you’re also, deep down, a little bit glad because you weren’t sure if she was right for you anyway, and she was ruling the roost so to speak and taking over your life.”
“How the fuc—”
“Your aura is easier to read than a child's,” he waved, then under his breath, “You wanted me to read it, you want sympathy.”
“Bollocks!” I laughed. It was incredulous that this stranger knew more about me and how I thought than my closest friends. “How do you know all that?”
“It matters not how I know, only that I do. Can you pass me that jug next to the chair?” I did so. He pressed a button, the distiller whirred to life. “So tell me more about wanting to be an author…”
That was my first meeting with the man that boldly called himself a real wizard. Were it not for my own eyes, I would have regarded the meeting with this man the same as I would with any nutter in an institution—very little. However, the third floor of a two story house, the tea that poured itself and the way the wizard seemed to know more about me than I did, all made for a rather fascinating entry into the world of the magical. I went to bed that night, thinking for once, not of my ex-girlfriend, but of Felix the wizard, who lived upstairs.
2
On Seeing the Miraculous
It was the end of 2017, when my life fell apart. Up until that time, my life was quite good. Ordinary, you could say, but good. I lived in a three bedroom house with my, then, girlfriend of seven years. We met the first week at the University of Bath and had been going out without a hitch ever since, or so I thought. Possibly I had become lazy, inattentive, or just plain boring (the latter being the most likely), for my loving, kind, and beautiful girlfriend took a job abroad for three months. She had always wanted to travel, so I encouraged it, believing it to be a good thing that her employers trusted her to help open a new branch in Cancun. I began to worry, however, when two weeks passed without so much as a phone call. My fears solidified as a month went by with no contact. Then one day, quite out of the blue, she finally rang. Sadly, it was only to tell me she had met someone else in Mexico and wanted to make our split official. Though I had suspected this, the pain was like a swift, hard punch to the gut.
My experience in romance was limited, to say the least, but finally I understood why there were so many songs of love and heartbreak. Listening to them afresh finally made sense as I sat alone in our house, knotted up with jealous, lonely frustration. We had mutual friends, all of whom migrated to her after our split. Like a divorce settlement, I kept the house, she kept the friends.
It’s odd how something like this can change your life so irrevocably and thrust you forthwith into the wilderness. Up until that time I was comfortable. Perhaps, too comfortable. Living alone in that big, three bedroom house in Essex, I had plenty of time to feel sorry for myself and wonder how life could have treated me better. My friend said to me, over his pint in the Hamilton Hall at Liverpool Street Station: “Life throws us curve balls because we all have to experience a love lost, and it’s the ones that never do, who are cheating themselves of the life lessons… you and Ginny had your time. Now you can find someone who really suits you.”
I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but it rang true weeks later.
Three years ago, I took a job in London. That great sprawling metropolis that seems to attract the wide-eyed, world beating ambitious, and turn them into the robotic, bleary eyed, world weary I see everyday on the tube. The job itself, you could say, is a good one. The office is in Aldgate, with great panoramic views. My job is to call people who have expressed an interest in blinds or shutters for their home and ar
range a time to go round. In their home, I demonstrate the shutters and attempt to make a sale there and then. I receive 10% cut of any sale on top of a basic wage of £12,000 per year. Out of our team of fifteen, I am neither the best nor the worst.
I took the decision to move to London so as to cut my previous awful daily commute from Essex to Central London, which used to involve one bus and two train journeys totalling an hour and a half. Also, my three remaining friends lived in London: Islington, Clapham and Hammersmith respectively.
What with being quite depressed at the situation of finding myself alone, my work ethic had rather dropped, leading to very few sales. Thus, I found myself in a monetary quandary. The only money I had was the deposit I got back from the previous three bedroomed house, a little over £600. This made my choices for renting quite narrow. Renting an entire place in London is next to impossible, unless you are an oligarch’s heir, a talented banker or some other rich so-and-so. What I am trying to get at is that a room in a shared house was all I could afford. And I just so happened to find one, on a website called Spareroom; it had no picture of the room, but it was cheap, at £390 a month, all bills included. This was more than half the normal rent you’d expect to pay in London for a room.
So, rather dejectedly, I resigned myself to taking this room no matter the state of it. I did, however, come to regret this cavalier attitude when I pulled up outside it.
But back to the exciting story and how I got embroiled in the world of wizards, magic and crime…
My alarm went off several times before I stirred, such was the deep sleep I was having. I sat sharply up. A few seconds went by where I did not know where I was until I realised the surroundings of my new abode. Grogginess enveloped me, the warm bed calling me back. I could call in sick? No, I had used all my sick days for the year already due to Ginny.
Rising reluctantly, I got ready: showering, shaving and dressing. I went to the kitchen for coffee. The kitchen was empty, thank goodness. Meeting new housemates this early, before work, was never a good thing.
I didn’t give much thought to what went on the night before, until I was sitting with my coffee at the kitchen table, and in he walked. Fresh as a daisy by all accounts, not a sign of tiredness upon him. He was dressed in exactly the same clothes as he was in last night. Leaning in the doorway, he said, “I need a lift to Langham Place, near Tottenham Court Road on your way into work.”
I struggled for a reply. To me, a friendship has to be built to a certain level before a lift can be asked for. Raising an objection that it was too far out of my way, he waved my protestation away with “twenty minutes max, if we leave now it will give us plenty of time.”
So, somehow, I found myself obliging. He was in my car, rifling through the glove box before I had locked the front door! When I got inside and turned on the engine, he had already put on my leather gloves and looked to be all for keeping them. He had chewed his way through three sticks of gum and tuned the radio to TalkSport. Still, nothing rose in me to correct him, however much it burdened my nerves.
Someone had parked an ancient Mini Cooper so close to the front of my car that it took some wangling to get mine out. “Look how close it’s parked to me. Heap of junk!” I exclaimed, perhaps taking my frustration with my changed route and rude wizard in my car out on the Mini.
“It’s got more rust than an iron works, the headlamps are smashed and look at all those scratches. It looks like it’s been used in the banger racing!”
“Have you quite finished?” said Felix adjusting the fingers on the leather gloves. “That car happens to be mine.”
“If that car is yours,” I said skeptical thinking perhaps he was being funny, “then why don’t you drive yourself?”
I pulled away from Fox Close, following Google Maps. Felix took his seat belt off and started to adjust his jacket. “Doesn’t work. Can’t afford a new one. Sentimental value,” he said, answering most of my arising thoughts.
8am London traffic has to be among the worst experiences anyone should go through. Never mind broken bones, this was far more excruciating.
Felix, after sorting through my bags of sales kit on the back seat, mumbling to himself and tutting, had calmed. “Why do you drive in London?” he said.
“Because I have to drive to people’s houses and do sales appointments.”
“I know. I was just pretending to be like a normal person for a moment. Except I already know the answers,” he said puffing himself up with a self satisfied smile. Like a child who got a question right and was told what a clever boy he was.
Letting the silence fall, I felt the need to make small talk. Asking him where he was going this morning, he replied “to meet a man about a dog.”
We rumbled and stumbled through the heavy traffic to Central London. “What is your job?” I said.
“Job?” he replied as if the notion was a foreign concept. “Job to me is an anagram. J.O.B, which equals… Just Over Broke. I made it up myself.”
He persisted in a passionate way. “Look at you, like a good little slave, driving through hell and high water to make it to a place that will replace you within a week if you die. Where you make the owner of the business all the profits, and he gives you a 10% slice, for doing all the work!”
“But it’s a good job,” I protested.
“Ahh,” he cooed like talking to a baby. “Tiny-mind Norton at it again.”
I felt aggrieved; here I was doing this man a favour and all he did was insult me. I think he sensed it for his tone softened. “You hate your job right?”
I pretended to think about it for a second. “I suppose I-”
“Yes or no?”
“-Yes.”
“Then quit!” he said punching the dashboard and giving me a fright.
After calming, I laughed. “I can’t just quit! I’ve got bills to pay, rent, what will I do instead?”
Felix’s fox-like eyes narrowed on me; it felt like a full frontal attack. “How much do you have saved in your bank?”
There was no way I was going to tell him that. He might be childly charismatic, but he could be a scammer. He might be able to magic it out of my account or something. “I don’t see why that is any-”
Felix wound himself up. “Well, seeing as you’ve just split from your girlfriend around two months ago. I guess you’ve had time off work, and the time you have had at work has not been fruitful, so you’ve made the minimum and covered your bills. You look like a careful man, but you were up early and ready for work with just a few hours sleep. And to top it all off you took a room in a house without seeing any pictures of it online, just because the rent was 25% lower than anywhere else. So you are either frugal, or broke. I imagine the only money you have left is from, say, the deposit on your previous house, which on a three bedroomed house in Essex probably amounts to around £1200, halved is £600. That’s how much you have?”
I was lost for words, but only for a minute. “You are the sneakiest little snake I’ve ever—you looked at my phone, at my online banking didn’t you?”
“£600 is enough for 4 weeks rent, including food and living costs. Quit your job, it’s pointless anyway.”
“Quit? And do what?”
“You want to write a book,” he said plainly.
“Yeah but… I don’t even know what to write about!”
He looked at me pityingly and said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “Me of course.”
At that moment, I pulled onto Tottenham Court Road. Felix directed me to Langham Place and forced me to pull into the bus lane. So busy was it, that I thought I could have a panic attack at any moment. It wasn’t just pulling into a busy bus lane, or contravening most traffic laws on this road, but also because the wizard was taking his time upon leaving.
Then he was off, leaping out the seat, pulling his coat on. “I thought about it last night…” he shouted, holding the door open and leaning in, oblivious to the maddening crowd. “I am a wizard. People love books a
bout wizards, and real wizards, well—” he pointed at himself and pulled a face. “You, Will Norton could be the next JK Rawlings.”
“You mean, Rowling?”
The door slammed, and he was gone, thank goodness! I drove nervously out a small way. A foot-long wooden stick rolled forwards from under the passenger seat.
The wizard had forgotten his wand! Cursing the time, for I was going to be late for work. I pulled left into a small private road between All Souls, Langham Place, which if you don’t know it is a tall ornate, stone church right outside the front of the BBC studios and Pizza Express. Grabbing the wand up I got out the car to shout for Felix, but found myself watching him marching quickly to a set of three red phone boxes. Heading for the middle of the three, he stepped inside and picked up the receiver. I strained to see as a double decker bus went past. When it did, it revealed the telephone box to be empty. The only sign that someone had been there was the phone receiver hanging to the ground swinging softly.
What on earth had happened to the wizard? He had not left the box; the time of the bus passing was merely a few seconds. I would have seen him leave the box. A man cannot just vanish into thin air. No, it couldn’t be right, I thought. There had to be a reasonable explanation. He was a trickster, that was all. That’s how he knew how much money I had and all those other parlour tricks last night.
What I had not spotted when I parked up in the road marked PRIVATE, was a well placed Traffic Officer, who proceeded to slap a ticket on my car. I sent a curse up to the sky, that £600 had just become £500.
But more important to me right now was: where on earth had the wizard gone? And why had he forgotten his wand?
3
The Meaning of the Odd Word: SPOPE
It would be so much easier to travel by train or underground, I thought, as I pulled into a parking space in the corporate underground car park. I could change jobs, so that I wouldn’t have to drive through London everyday. The wizards voice echoed through my mind “Just quit!”
Wizard for Hire Page 2