A Spell in the Country

by Heide Goody

  Norma leaned forward and slapped him on the check. “Vulgar!”

  “—And spontaneous,” he added, entirely unfazed. “I’m sure that has got you into trouble more than once.” He tapped the card. “But there is resurrection, a chance for rebirth and renewal, my foxy one.”

  He looked at Jenny. To Caroline’s eyes, Jenny seemed nervous.

  “Secrets to hide, Jenny?” she said.

  Zoffner turned over her card. A tower split by a violent lightning bolt with a person falling from it. “Oh, you are a fiery one,” he said. “That’s all fab and groovy. It can mean a violent change in you, or in your life. It can also mean a more physical kind of destruction. I’d keep my eye on where the fire exits are if I were you.”

  “Now, it’s me!” said Shazam. “What can you tell me?”

  He smiled at her and maybe, for a moment, there was a bit of a Santa Clause twinkle about him. “Oh, I can tell you’re a person with a deep interest in the occult.”

  “I am! I am!”

  “And you just want to immerse yourself in all things magical.”

  “I do! I do!”

  Jenny gave Shazam’s many and visible One Stop Sorcery carrier bags a meaningful tap with her toe.

  “Okay, fiery one,” conceded Zoffner the Astute. “Let’s see…” He turned over Shazam’s card. It was the Fool, chased off a cliff by a dog.

  “The Fool,” said Jenny neutrally.

  “There’s a cute doggy,” said Shazam.

  “Danger surrounds you but you do not know it,” said Zoffner.

  “Ooh. I got a shiver up my spine. Did anyone else?”

  “You have recently had a very narrow escape from a fate worse than death.”

  “Have I?”

  “But you were entirely oblivious to it.”

  “It’ll be that tractor on the main road,” suggested Jenny. “I told you it was very close.”

  “And another has suffered the fate you escaped,” said Zoffner.

  “Who?” asked Caroline.

  “Poppycock,” said Norma.

  “The cards speak true, foxy lady.”

  “I don’t think we should trust a grown man who spends his days in a cardboard cave.”

  “You think truth needs to be dressed up in finery and luxury?”

  “The man’s a fraud,” Norma insisted.

  Zoffner the astute flipped the final card to an image of a venerable cloaked figure. “I’m a magician.”

  “A mountebank!”

  “I’m more of a beachcomber on the shores of reality.” He picked up Shazam’s fool card. “I will tell you this truth: you are about to have a terrible shock that will cause you great upset.”

  “Am I?” said Shazam.

  “And the only guidance I can give is to look within.”

  “Within what?”

  “Exactly.”

  “He’s definitely got that mystical hippy thing going on,” Caroline said approvingly.

  “Tie-dye t-shirts and John Lennon glasses do not a mystic make,” snorted Norma.

  “Where’s your cat, Shazam?” asked Jenny.

  Shazam’s hand flew to her neck. “Mr Beetlebane!”

  Everyone looked on the floor but it wasn’t easy, or indeed possible, to discern a black cat on the dimly lit floor of a black-painted room.

  “He was there a minute ago!” panicked Shazam.

  “Well, he can’t have gone far,” said Jenny.

  “Oh, he’s run away. He’s not been himself since the sauna!”

  “We’ll find him, Cobwebs,” Caroline assured her.

  “But what if he’s run off? What if he’s got on the rollercoaster?”

  “Cats are not well known for enjoying white-knuckle rides,” said Jenny.

  “Or if he got in the gears of some ride! Or… or…”

  Caroline put her arm across Shazam’s broad shoulders. “Let’s go look. We’ll all help.”

  Caroline guided the trembling, purple-clad witch out towards the daylight. Jenny followed, laden with Shazam’s shopping and the over-sized monkey.

  “See what you did!” Caroline heard Norma snap at the fortune-teller. “You’ve upset that poor gullible idiot of a woman.”

  “What did I do but tell her the truth?” Zoffner replied calmly.

  “Truth! You know nothing of augury and soothsaying!”

  “Are you doubting my methods?”

  “You have no method!”

  Missing cat or not, Caroline was glad to be out of there.

  “I’ve never seen the sea before,” said Kay.

  Dee had taken her pink plimsolls off and was scrunching her toes in the sand. The sun was out and she’d unfastened two of the buttons on her cardigan. “Is it what you expected it to be?” she asked.

  Kay made the audible equivalent of a smile. “It is and it isn’t. It’s so—”

  “Large?”

  “So—”

  “Mysterious?”

  “Brown.”

  “Ah.”

  “I thought the sea was meant to be blue.”

  “I’m sure it is, somewhere,” said Dee. “Here – well, it’s not quite estuary, but all the muck flows out of the Humber and… It’s not pollution, just good, honest, healthy brown.”

  “Surely, people don’t swim in it,” said Kay doubtfully.

  Dee looked around at the English holidaying public arrayed across the beach, baking their skin to an alarming pink, flicking their cigarette butts into sand where their kids played, chugging down cans of Liquid Lightning or Special Export lager and eating trays of deep fried something-or-other.

  “I don’t think we can apply conventional standards of … health and safety or common sense to the holidaying Brit,” said Dee, trying to be charitable. “Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that.”

  “And you keep donkeys on the beach?” said Kay. “I thought I saw donkeys in those badger insides.”

  “And a cat and a monkey, as I remember.”

  “I thought, why would I see a vision of donkeys, and here they are.” Kay looked at Dee. “Why are there donkeys at the seaside?”

  “Oh, everyone likes donkeys,” said Dee, automatically drifting towards them.

  “I like donkeys – I grew up with donkeys – but I don’t expect to see them by the sea.”

  “They always look so sad, don’t you think?” said Dee. “They were always a favourite at the Shelter for Unloved Animals.”

  Kay pointed at a toddler being lifted into a saddle. The toddler shook the reins. “Children ride them? You have rollercoasters and spinning rides, yet people choose to ride on donkeys?”

  “I suppose it’s a tradition. Ah, who’s a handsome boy, yes, he is!”

  This last was directed at a grizzle-chopped donkey whose collar declared him to be called Little Jimmy.

  “Four pound a go,” said the dead-eyed youth tending to the dozen or so beasts.

  “I don’t think I want to ride him, poppet,” she said with a smile. “I’m a bit too big.”

  “S’all right,” said the youth. “They can cope. They love it. Had a bloke here yesterday. Twenty stone easy. Rode Donny here up and down, up and down. He coped. He loved it.”

  Dee looked at the indicated donkey. She made a near invisible gesture of spellcasting. “Did you enjoy carrying the fat man around, my sweetness?” Dee asked the fuzzy quadruped.

  The donkey shook its head and snorted.

  “It doesn’t understand English,” said the youth, bored now. “It’s four pound a go.”

  “Donny did not enjoy carrying the fat man around,” said Dee.

  Another donkey, further back, snorted too.

  “And Merrill says you sometimes let two people ride at once.” The donkey snorted again. “And do you own an electric shock collar?” said Dee, her voice rising with her anger.

  “A shock collar?” said Kay. “Like ‘Zap! Zap! Bad dog!’? That’s terrible.”

  A third donkey brayed.

  “And Marie says that you
fed them rotten carrots yesterday,” said Dee. “Although I would argue that’s less serious than the shock collar thing. Sorry, Marie.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the youth.

  “You need to treat these donkeys better,” she said, as calmly as she could.

  “Shove off, woman. Some of us have to make a living.”

  “These donkeys deserve better!”

  The youth brought his face close. “I said, shove off,” he whispered unpleasantly.

  Dee did not do anger well. She had the general temperament of a loving lap dog: a Yorkshire terrier perhaps, or maybe a King Charles spaniel; and she knew quite well she struggled to express any kind of fury or indignation without sounding ridiculously hysterical. Men simply ignored her or, worse, patronised her.

  Sometimes, actions spoke louder than words.

  Donny was the nearest. Dee reached out her hand. All at once the stitching on his bridle and harness came apart. Strips of leather and pieces of metal fell to the beach.

  “What the frick?” said the youth.

  Dee stepped towards Merrill and his saddle and bridle also fell away. Dee made sure she stepped firmly on the collar of fiddly looking electronics as she moved through the herd. The youth dashed to a pile of chairs, buckets and other equipment and drew out some rope.

  “Hey,” said Kay. “I think there’s a big sack of carrots waaay over there.”

  She touched the noses of the freed donkeys and a faint cloud of sparkles appeared over their heads. Donny gave a joyful hee-haw and set off at a gentle donkey trot along the beach. Dee watched Merrill, Marie and Little Jimmy follow him.

  “What’s going on?” the distraught youth yelled. “What you doing?”

  Dee smiled sweetly at him and magically dismantled the remaining donkeys’ saddlery. She lifted the only donkey rider out of her saddle and passed the toddler to her father, moments before Wayne donkey’s harness simply fell off.

  “Nasty accident waiting to happen,” said Dee. She gave Wayne’s rump an affectionate pat as he ran off in search of imaginary carrots. The youth ran off after them, but with one length of rope and more than a dozen donkeys to catch, there wasn’t much he could do.

  Kay grinned at Dee. “That was fun,” she said. “What next?”

  “Stop, stop, stop!” Caroline held out hands to restrain her friends. They came to a halt by a donut stand between the dodgems and the Rock and Rollercoaster ride.

  “Have you seen him?” asked Shazam. She had settled into a low-level state of panic: a permanent tiz.

  “Just stop,” said Caroline. “Let’s just think for a minute. Think where Mr Beetlebane might be.”

  “Where would a cat go in a funfair?” said Jenny.

  “A cat that, as far as I’m aware, has barely enough energy to crawl from Shazam’s shoulder to her lap and back. He can’t have come this far.”

  “Oh, he has a playful side, too,” Shazam argued. “He’s not on the dodgems,” she added.

  “Of course, he’s not,” said Jenny. “He’s a cat. He wouldn’t be able to reach the pedals and steer at— Shazam, what happened to your arm?”

  Shazam’s arm, from shoulder to fingers was wrapped in a cloud of candyfloss.

  “I thought to myself, where would Mr Beetlebane hide? He does like his comfort. And I thought, he’ll just want to curl up somewhere warm and snuggly. And I saw the big pot of candyfloss.”

  “Going round and round?” said Caroline.

  “I just panicked and reached in,” said Shazam.

  “I bet the stall owner wasn’t happy.”

  “She charged me a fiver.” Shazam angled her head round and took a big bite from her upper arm. “Stress eating,” she explained.

  Norma Looney was furious. For a start, the charlatan Zoffner the allegedly Astute refused to admit that his fortune-telling act was simply that: an act. Additionally, the man remained entirely unruffled by her clear, precise and pointed arguments. In a manner that defied logical expression, Norma believed anyone she chose to have an argument with should at least have the common decency to get angry, burst into tears, or plead for forgiveness. Being all polite and calm and reasonable at her was … well, it was just rude.

  “But your tarot deck…” she said.

  “What of it?” asked Zoffner.

  “It’s not even a proper deck. You’ve mixed Waite-Smith cards in with cards from the Crowley Thoth deck and— What’s this? A business card for a taxi company!”

  “Sometimes, our future has a taxi in it.”

  “But it’s just so unprofessional.”

  “It’s what the customer wants.”

  “But it’s people like you who give real and genuine practitioners a bad name!”

  “Oh.” He smiled, not condescendingly but with interest. “And you are a genuine practitioner?”

  “As it happens,” she sniffed, “yes.”

  “Then you’ll know, foxy lady, that it doesn’t matter what tools I use. A great psychic needs nothing more than—” he closed his eyes as though dredging up the words from the depths of his mind “—than their wits and intuition. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Flimflammery and chicanery,” she said, even as she recognised the words as her own.

  “Why,” said Zoffner softly, taking her hand in his, “I could divine your entire future from nothing but the lines of your hand.” His fingertips brushed lightly across the back of her hand.

  She snatched her hand away. “But you can’t!”

  “That’s just negativity,” he said.

  “You’re a man!”

  “Thank you for noticing.”

  “You shouldn’t be able to do any kind of magic.”

  “Magic, is it?” he smiled.

  “Well, what do you call it?”

  Zoffner the Astute shrugged, his rainbow tie-dye shirt rippling across his pot belly. “I simply open my mind to the realm of what might be. And I listen. That’s an undervalued skill in this day and age. Listening. The cosmos sings, you know.”

  “Sings?” Norma scoffed.

  He shifted his chair closer. “It does.”

  Before Norma knew it, he had hold of her hand again.

  “Listen,” he said and cocked an ear.

  She held back her considerable – and entirely justified – annoyance and, with a loud huff, also cocked her ear to listen. She heard the intermittent shrieks and cackles from the ghost train. She heard the shouts of impolite teenagers and ineffective parents. She heard, faintly, the caw of seagulls, the bray of donkeys and the distant voice of a man yelling, “Jimmy! Donny! Come back!” She heard the clack-clack-clack of a rollercoaster climbing its ramp.

  “Go out for dinner with me,” whispered Zoffner the Astute.

  She recoiled and considered punching the man. “What did you say?”

  “Me?” said Zoffner. “Nothing, foxy lady. That was the cosmos talking.”

  “You asked me to go out for dinner.”

  “Oh,” he nodded, embarrassed. “That’s the cosmos. It’s always trying to set me up on dates.” He shook a fist at the sky. “Leave me alone, cosmos! I’m happy being a single – recently divorced but not bitter – financially solvent, surprisingly bendy middle-aged man with his own house and a two-for-one meal deal voucher for the local Harvest Fayre pub!” He returned his attention to Norma. “I mean I’m flattered, but I don’t think you’re my type.”

  “Well, quite!” she said. “And, um, why am I not your type?”

  He spread his hands. “It’s your mind. It’s too closed. Unwilling to plumb the mystical depths of the universe.”

  “That’s not true,” she said. “I plumb the mystical depths of the universe all the time. But at least I do it with some rigour and degree of professionalism.”

  “Is that so?”

  Zoffner gathered the tarot cards into a single pile, cut and riffled them together. “Then let’s see which of us is the better mystical depths plumber.”

  Jenny led th
e way into the First Plaice restaurant bar.

  “What are we doing in here?” asked Shazam.

  “Getting fish and chips,” said Caroline.

  “Mr Beetlebane’s not in here!”

  “I’m going to get us a table,” said Jenny. Jizzimus had raced ahead and was mucking about at the cutlery and condiments table, unscrewing but not removing the lids of the salt and pepper dispensers.

  “We can’t rest until we find him!” insisted Shazam.

  Caroline squeezed Shazam’s arm – the normal one, not the one covered in candyfloss. “I’m sorry to have to do this,” she said.

  “Do what?” said Shazam.

  Caroline gave a near imperceptible flick of her wrist. “Mr Beetlebane is fine.”

  “Mr Beetlebane is fine,” Shazam repeated.

  “He’s just having a nap somewhere.”

  “He’s just having a nap somewhere.”

  “Now, have a sit down and I’ll get you some grub.”

  “I will have a sit down and you will get me some grub.”

  “Excellent,” said Caroline.

  Jenny had dumped the shopping bags and the surprisingly weighty monkey on a long seat. Shazam sat down next to them.

  Jenny gave Caroline an amused look of appraisal. “You’d never use that hypnotism shtick on me, would you?”

  “Heaven forfend!” said Caroline, unconvincingly. “Fish and chips all round, yeah?”

  “I fancy ’avin’ some of those Jedi mind trick skills,” said Jizzimus as Caroline went to the chippy counter. “I’d be ’avin’ some balls-deep fun wiv that.” He jumped onto the table and intoned deeply, “Look at my swinging dong. You are gettin’ ’orny. Very … very … ’orny.”

  First Plaice occupied a unit in the arcade of shops, fast food joints and amusements that encircled the funfair. One set of windows overlooked the runaway train and teacups of the funfair; on the opposite side, they looked out on the sandy beach and the end of Skegness Pier. The best thing about First Plaice, as far as Jenny was concerned, was it was all but empty and there was wasn’t a single stinking child in sight.

  “I’m hungry,” she admitted.

  “I’m so-so,” said Shazam.