Chestnut Street (41 page)

But they had forgotten about the Glastonbury Festival.

Melly went to that every year of her life. She was desperately sorry. She would try to donate something to the Kosovan children but not her time.

This festival was the center of her year.

“Do you think you could possibly find anyone else, Melly?” Nan Ryan in Number 14 begged. “You see, we don’t know any other artistic people like you.”

Melly was pleased to be called artistic. She did know a girl who read palms but she took it quite seriously. She would be insulted to do something just for fun.

It was not going to be as easy as people thought.

And
she needed to let her house for the week she would be in Glastonbury. So many things to worry about.

Then it came, the phone call from Agnes!

Agnes had been living in a commune in New Mexico. It had all gone very wrong as everything Agnes attempted would go very wrong. That would be too harsh but she always happened to be at the heart of it, all the same.

This time she was looking for a bed, a place to crash for two or three weeks until she got her head together again. Agnes said that sadly she didn’t have any real money or anything because communes worked out much more expensive than they led you to believe, but of course she would
do
anything, weed gardens, make bread, mind children, dogs.
Anything
.

“Can you tell fortunes?” Melly asked her. And Agnes said she’d give it a bash.

Agnes arrived a week before the fete.

She settled happily into Number 26.

“Bricks and mortar,” she said, stroking the walls sensuously. “What wonderful things they are, Melly. You must never underestimate them.”

“Whatever happened to ‘property is theft’?” Melly remarked.

As a slogan it had been misunderstood, Agnes thought. She said she loved Chestnut Street and asked all about the neighbors.

She didn’t want to go out and meet them or anything. She had this unexplained bruise on her face. She would wait until she looked more presentable.

Melly hesitated before telling Agnes about the square, middle-of-the-road people who lived in the thirty houses of the horseshoe.

It was all so different from the “alternative lifestyle” that Agnes and Melly had lived. Surely Agnes would be very scornful of such a settled area.

But no, it appeared that she was interested and asked a lot of questions about people’s lives.

Melly chatted on about Mrs. Ryan in Number 14, who had fallen in love with the builder who came to do up the house next door and how they were married to each other. She heard about Kevin, who took care of his wife, Phyllis; about Lilian, the hairdresser in Number 5, who looked after her mother and father and was married to a frugal man; about Liam and Brigid Kenny, who had their house papered with holy pictures and statues of every known saint on every available surface; about Mitzi and Philip in Number 22, who worshipped their new conservatory as if it were a religious altar; about Dolly in Number 18, who was a really nice kid but with such an unusual mother.

Agnes nodded and sympathized. She had got much easier to
live with, Melly decided, calmer, certainly, and noticeably less frantic and mad.

She said she would manage fine on lentil soup, she’d make her own bread and Melly was not to leave any food for her, but if there
was
a book about the stars or birth signs or something, that would be great.

Melly was now ready to go off to Glastonbury, happy and contented her house would be looked after. There would be a fortune-teller at the fete. Agnes was going to call herself Madame Magic and turn up at 3 p.m.

“You won’t frighten them or anything, will you?” Melly said just before she left.

“Go, Melly,” Agnes begged, and studied that people born under the sign of Libra were meant to be balanced and level-headed.

Glastonbury was wonderful, as usual. Such great music, such marvelous people.

Once or twice Melly wondered was there a possibility she might just be getting slightly too old for the festival?

It was just that everyone else looked younger somehow, but was it just that the rain was wetter, the fields more muddy, the lines waiting for fast food or slow toilets longer?

Once or twice Melly half wished that she was back in staid old Chestnut Street going to the fete.

Then she began to worry about Agnes.

Had she done something totally madcap, like the old days?

It seemed a long time before she would be back there to find out how it all went.

She noticed that her house was still standing at Number 26. So far, so good.

Melly let herself in. There was a wonderful smell of curry and a note on the table.

Melly felt her heart sink.

Why was it wiser somehow that she should not be known to be a friend of Agnes?

What did she mean Mr. O’Brien was a sweetie? He was a nightmare.

Dolly coming to learn how to make bread? In
this
house?

Had Agnes gone totally mad?

She must stay calm and find out what the situation was.

There would be no flying off the handle.

No matter how insane and confused Agnes might turn out to be, Melly would stay calm.

Agnes came back carrying shortbread. “Miss Mack insisted you have some—you see, she thinks we don’t know each other and wants me to make a good impression on you.”

“And what does she think you’re doing living in my house if we do not know each other?” Melly spoke each word like a very short burst of gunfire.

“She thinks we met through an ad. Everyone sort of thinks that.”

“Why do they think that?” Melly was keeping calm but her voice sounded like a robot, a Dalek.

“Well, because the Madame Magic thing went so well, really. Honestly, Melly, you wouldn’t believe this but they were coming round again and again for more details. And, you see, I didn’t
want to tell them that I was a bit of a fraud … that
you
told me all their secrets.”

“But I didn’t tell you all their secrets. I don’t know their secrets,” poor Melly said, horrified.

“But you did, Melly. You told me all about Kevin and Phyllis, and all about Dolly’s mother and the Kennys’ being religious maniacs …”

Melly’s face was red and angry. “I told you these things as a friend in confidence. I didn’t expect you to go blabbing them everywhere.” Her voice sounded very far away in her own head.

“But I didn’t blab. I was much more diplomatic than you were—I was much more sensitive.”

“Oh, really.”

“
Yes
really. They loved it all, Melly, honestly they did, and I bet I did them a lot of good pointing things out, you know, where they needed to be pointed out.”

“Agnes!
You
point things out to people?”

“Well I tell you this: Dolly’s mother is being a bit more careful about things since I told her I saw a great shadowy figure approaching her door. Came back to me three times, she did.”

“I don’t believe this.” Melly felt faint.

“And that Mitzi woman from Number Twenty-two, she’s going to stop worshipping her conservatory from now on. I told her about flesh and blood being more important than status, and that she should send an e-mail to her sons every week. She was mad about me.”

“I’m sure!”

“No she
was
, Melly, and Mr. O’Brien thinks that his cat, Rupert, believes that he is too gossipy, so he is going to be more discreet. And as for Lilian! Remember all you told me about how people walked on her. I don’t think they will anymore.”

“You told her to get up off the ground and stop being a doormat?”

“No, I told all the others in that household that she might
walk out unless she was properly cherished. I said I saw a figure with long red hair leaving the house silently by cover of darkness. They all thought it was Lilian and that softened their cough, let me tell you.”

Melly listened, stunned.

“And did you make any money for Kosovo, Agnes?” she asked eventually.

“Loads. I was by far the most popular draw on Sunday. Some people came by three times. And, by the way, I’ve been seeing people on a proper fee-paying basis here since. I hope you don’t mind.”

This was it.

All pretense at calm was now over.

“
No
, Agnes,
no
. This time someone has to speak to you before things go wrong. I will
not
have you pretending to know the future to a lot of decent people, taking money under false pretenses from
my
house. When the law comes, as come it will, I will not stand up for you and say we met through some advertisement. You will not deceive people in this way.”

Agnes was calm. “I’m not pretending anything; I’m very interested in them and I want to help them.”

“By taking their money and feeding them lies.”

“There are no lies. I’m only feeding them the truth. They loved it—they keep coming back for more. I’m good at this. I’ve never been good at anything before.”

Before anyone could say anything else there was a knock on the door.

It was Dolly and her mother.

“I told Mam I was learning to make bread and she wondered if she could come and watch?” Dolly asked.

“Well, it’s really up to Melly—this is her house,” Agnes said politely.

“Do you two get on together now you’ve met?” Dolly asked, interested.

“Um, yes,” they both said at the same time.

“Please stay,” Melly agreed.

“She’s a genius,” Dolly’s mother whispered to Melly. “She told me some of the most important things I’ve ever heard in my life. It was Fate that brought her here, Melly, believe me.”

“Yes, yes.”

“You
do
like her, don’t you, Melly? It would be great to have someone as wise as that living in the street.”

“Living?” Melly gulped.

“Well, staying, working, whatever.”

“Oh, yes, certainly.”

And as she heard them all slapping the dough, an oddly comforting sound, Melly sat and thought about it. It would be nice to have half the rent, of course, and the company.

And Agnes
did
seem much more normal than before.

But she must be practical.

It wouldn’t work out well in the end; nothing ever did for Agnes.

But then they were growing a little older, possibly even mature.

And there was something settling about Chestnut Street.

Melly felt her shoulders relax.

It was much nicer coming home from Glastonbury to this house of bread-making and a nice curry made from Mr. O’Brien’s vegetables than it had been coming back to an empty house last year.

Madame Magic could easily begin to live up to her name.

Nuala did not like her daughter’s fiancé, Tom. He was always talking about the fast lane and anxious to live in it. But Nuala’s friends said that whatever she said … she was to say nothing.

It was hard to say nothing. Very hard. But when she was young, some friend of her mother’s had said that it was nearly always the wisest course.

Nuala had wanted the very best for Katie, her only child. Katie, who had been ten when her father had left their home on Chestnut Street.

“Why doesn’t he love us anymore?” Katie had asked her mother over and over.

Nuala had gritted her teeth and said over and over that of course Daddy loved them both greatly; it was just better for him to leave.

There had been the weekly visit when Michael would take his daughter to the zoo, to the ice rink or to a theater matinee. Over the ten years he introduced Katie to three different “special friends.”

Each of them ladies who, at the time, were significant in his life.

At first Katie would prattle on about Daddy’s new friend.

Nuala wondered would her teeth wear down since she was gritting them so hard.