Aurelius and I (3 page)

“Oh, I have no doubt that you will be,” Aurelius replied, a smile of encouragement upon his lips. “I’m glad you like animals Charlie, because, you see, not everybody does. I’m afraid some people like to hurt animals, Charlie, and that’s why I need your help today.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It’s probably best if I show you,” Aurelius replied walking around the small green sofa to a desk I had barely registered on my initial perusal the cottage.

The desk was large and wooden, and was filled with all sorts of test tubes of varying sizes, each filled with liquids of widely varying colours. Against the wall was a row of jars of murky, green water with indiscernible items floating around in them. They reminded me of the pickled eggs at the fish and chip shop. At the forefront of the desk, hidden under a tea towel, stood a small cage, which Aurelius gingerly began to open.

“Now, stand back a bit there, Charlie, if you don’t mind. Just while we get him out. I’m afraid he’s a little wary of people right now.”

I did as I was told and took a step back to watch a small, grey squirrel drag itself from inside the cage. As soon as it had fully emerged it became clear that one of its back legs was broken.

“Say hello to Winston,” said Aurelius.

“What happened to him?” I asked, trying to be brave and not cry at the sight of an animal in pain, just as my father had said I would have to learn to do if I really wanted to become a vet.

“I found him hanging upside down from a tree, his leg caught in a trap.”

“Who would do something like that?” I asked in disbelief.

“I don’t know, Charlie, I really don’t. I guess some people just don’t care about animals the way we do.”

“You can fix it though, right?”

“I’m afraid not, Heaven knows I’ve tried, but it’s just too badly broken.”

“So shouldn’t we take him to the vet?” I almost yelled, angry with desperation.

“I’m afraid they won’t be able to do anything either.”

“So he’s just going to die?” I asked, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat and let the tears which had formed in my eyes roll down my cheeks.

“Well, that’s up to you, Charlie.”

“Me?” I repeated incredulously, the question catching me so by surprise that my upset was temporarily forgotten. “What can I do?”

“I think you know what you can do, Charlie. I think you’ve done it before.”

For a moment I simply stared at Aurelius blankly, genuinely unaware of what he was talking about, concern for the oddly-dressed stranger’s sanity once again entering my mind. And then, just as I was beginning to wonder if Baskerville and I shouldn’t make a run for it, it came to me...

Two years before, just after my sixth birthday, my mother had taken me shopping to spend the last of my birthday money. It had been a very enjoyable afternoon for the both of us and I had managed to eek out my money so successfully that I was returning home with a model aeroplane, two jigsaw puzzles, and three colouring books, and had even had enough money left over to treat us both to an ice cream. We were almost home, and had been rushing to finish our cornets before our return so that my father would not complain at his missing out, when we had seen a cat carrying a small sparrow in its mouth. Dropping my ice cream instantly, I chased the cat into a narrow gap between some garages where, after much yelling, it dropped the bird. I picked up the tiny animal and took it to my mother. It had been quite badly injured, with blood covering its wing and chest, and although my mother agreed to drive me to the vet with it, she made it clear that the little bird was unlikely to survive its injuries and that I shouldn’t expect any miracles. She told me that it was unlikely that the vet would be able to do any more than put it out of its misery.

I held the sparrow (who I had named Matilda, after a character in a book I had been reading) tightly in my hands the whole way to the vet’s, desperately hoping that it would live, while knowing it may well not. But then, on our arrival at the vetinary surgery, the strangest thing happened. I was walking across the car park, still holding Matilda, and willing her to be okay in my mind when I felt a sudden shock in my fingers. It is hard to describe how it felt. It was almost like the shock of static electricity, mixed with a pins-and-needles type feeling, mixed with an itch. It caused me to feel momentarily as if I were detached from my own fingers. The feeling was so unexpected that I let go of Matilda with the shock, instantly looking to the floor expecting to see her hit the ground and hurt herself further, but, to my surprise, she hadn’t fallen. Instead she had flown off across the car park and into a nearby tree where she proceeded to sing her little heart out.

“It’s a miracle,” I said to my mother.

“There’s no such thing as miracles, Charlie” she insisted. “She must not have been as badly hurt as we thought, that’s all.”

“But, mum,” I protested. “You saw her, her wing was broken. How could...”

“I don’t know, Charlie,” my mother interrupted crossly. “Now, let’s just be glad she’s okay and get ourselves home. This dinner won’t cook itself you know.”

“But...”

“I don’t want to speak about this again, Charlie,” she snapped, her eyes filled with a mixture of anger and fear. And we never did. In time I simply forgot all about it, the memory lying dormant somewhere at the back of my mind ready to be awoken by a strange man and an injured squirrel.

But that couldn’t be what he was talking about, could it? How could Aurelius, who until seven days before had been a total stranger to me, possibly have known about that? I had never told anybody about what had happened. And yet, at the same time, I could think of nothing else to which he could be referring.

Without either one of us saying a word, I took a step toward the wounded squirrel. Cautiouslyly, with fingers trembling from the fear of being bitten, I reached out and touched the wounded leg.

“It’s okay,” I whispered soothingly, as much to calm myself as the injured rodent. “It’s all going to be ok.”

And then I just thought. Hard. I tried to just will the leg to fix itself. For a long time nothing happened. The squirrel began to grow restless and wriggle around. I was becoming angry. At one moment, angry with myself that I was doing something wrong, the next with Aurelius for making me believe that I had the ability to do anything at all. I remember thinking
why won’t you just work damn it? Matilda got better, why won’t you?

It wasn’t going to work though. I was so upset I felt as if I would surely punch Aurelius, or just burst into tears, or possibly both. I could feel my emotions building and building inside of me as if I was about to explode. And then it happened.

Suddenly, all the pent up aggression and frustration seemed to release itself through my fingertips. I felt a strange tingling sensation coming up from my feet, along my spine, and out through my arms and my nostrils became filled with an inexplicable yet undeniable scent of cherry blossom. It was just like I had felt before. Only stronger, much stronger. Until the feeling abruptly disappeared and I felt myself falling to the floor and pulling Aurelius down with me as I grabbed hold of a velvet sleeve to try to help myself balance.

I sat there on the rug in a state of shock, unable to move for what seemed like hours, but was probably only moments. Everything was still. I felt like I was in a sort of waking coma, one that the world had fallen into it with me. What brought me out of it was movement. And that movement came from the little squirrel with the broken leg. A little squirrel who was now running across the cottage floor and out of the window.

Allow me be honest with you, dear reader. Whilst it is true that I was greatly surprised by the miraculous recovery of my furry friend at my own hands, the event was not nearly as shocking to me as it may have been to other people. Indeed, there was a part of me that openly accepted the fact that events occurred on a daily basis which could not be conventionally explained. In order for me to explain myself a little better, I think it’s time I told you about my grandmother.

Every child should have a grandmother. Unfortunately not all are so lucky. I greatly pity such children. In my experience, grandmothers are a crucial part of childhood. On the one hand, they love you and care for your welfare, always ensuring that no harm comes to you. On the other, they are less concerned about the stuff you really shouldn’t do, but that is unlikely to kill you, such as burping and farting in polite company or drinking too much cherryade. Or at least mine wasn’t.

Grandmothers have a refreshing honesty about them which is brought on by the wisdom of experience combined with a more relaxed attitude to life that seems to accompany old age. As a result, they are quite happy to tell you things that your parents would really rather you didn’t know about. These most usually consist of embarrassing tales of the time your father wet his pants in front of everyone in the school nativity play, or when your mother went on her first date with her dress tucked into her knickers. Occasionally however, they may consist of more useful practical knowledge about how the world works - knowledge that is usually kept secret from young ears. Such wisdom may include the fact that
everybody
always leaves it until the last possible moment before doing their homework (with varying levels of success, I feel I must stress), and that nobody in the history of the world has ever gotten square eyes from sitting too close to the television. For me though, the secrets revealed to me by my grandmother were not of the usual variety – they were far more important. My grandmother taught me about magic.

The existence of magic had not been revealed to me as a greatly shocking revelation. Indeed, I cannot even remember the first time I had heard my grandmother mention the subject. She had simply always spoken of it, ever since I was born and almost certainly before. To my Grandmother, magic was simply fact. She believed in its existence in the same way other people believe in the existence of physics (which, incidentally, she was oddly suspicious of).

You see, my grandmother was a Romany gypsy. You are probably wondering what exactly that means, well, so was I, so I’ll tell you what she told me. Apparently, the Romany are a group of people from Eastern Europe who travel around together, visiting many places without ever stopping somewhere to make their home (“Home is where the heart is, Charlie,” my grandmother would often tell me). Well, many years ago some very evil people invaded lots of the countries of which my grandmother had grown up in and had tried to murder all of the Romany gypsies (for what reason is something which I, to this day, have never been able to discern). In any case, without going into too much horrific detail and spoiling what has up until now been a relatively cheery tale, many of the Romany people were forced to flee and make their homes in new countries. My grandmother had come to England and, as much as she would hate to admit it, was surprised to discover that she preferred a more stationary, settled lifestyle where she could really get to know a place, and make friendships that lasted. She did, however, insist upon sticking to her Romany roots wherever possible; in fact she still lived in a caravan, although it was a modern one with running water, and a toilet and a TV, not one of those pretty wooden, horse-drawn ones you see on television. “You never know when you might need to take your home somewhere else, Charlie,” she would tell me. I never had the heart to point out that her caravan had no wheels, and that, in any case, she owned no car with which to tow it.

Another, more important element of my grandmother’s Romany roots was the fact that she thought of herself as a very spiritual person. As such, she felt herself to be very in touch with the earth, or so she told me. In truth I never really understood what she meant by such things, except that it seemed to necessitate that she believed in almost all forms of myth and magic and was a very superstitious person in general. It should come as no surprise then that she was the first (and, until now, only) person I told about my bizarre experience with Aurelius and the squirrel.

“And what did you do next?” she asked me once I had recited to her all that I told you in the previous two chapters, almost without taking a breath.

“I ran,” I replied sheepishly. By now a day had passed, and in the safe, comfortable surroundings of my grandmother’s caravan’s tiny living room, faced with so many unanswered questions, I was beginning to regret my decision to flee.

“Probably a good idea,” she assured me in her unusual, yet comfortably familiar accent which hinted subtly at an exotic past. “And have you told your parents about what happened?”

“No. I didn’t think they’d understand.”

“Probably not, Charlie. Probably not,” the old woman agreed. “Nevertheless, you must be aware that there may well come a point when they shall have to be told – this Aurelius character isn’t just going to disappear you know, not after going to such trouble to find you.”

“But he didn’t find me,” I protested. “We just sort of ran into one another. Both times.”

It was only as the words left my mouth that I realised how silly they sounded, evidently so did my grandmother.

“So you honestly think this all just happened randomly do you? Come on, Charlie, wake up and smell the cocoa. You have lived in one small town all your life and you have never once so much as noticed this tall, loud, man who dresses as though he were part of the circus, and then you just happen to run into him. Twice! In the space of just one week! I don’t think so.”