Wizard for Hire

It was the end of 2017 that my life fell apart. Up until that time my life was quite good, ordinary you could say, but good. I lived in a three bedroomed house with my then girlfriend of seven years. We met the first week at the University of Bath and been going out, without a hitch ever since. Perhaps I had got lazy, inattentive, or plain boring. The later is 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 great deal that her employers trusted her to help open a new branch in Cancun, Mexico. However, when not two weeks went by without so much as a phone call, I started to worry. My concerns were confirmed after a month of no contact, when she rang quite out the blue to tell me she had met someone else and wanted to split. 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 which migrated to her after we split. Like a divorce settlement, I kept the house for three months, 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 bedroomed 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, that:

“life throws us curveballs because we all have to experience a love lost and its 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.”

Now for an even more ordinary person, it was the most profound thing he ever said. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but it rings true weeks later.

In 2015 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 arrange a time to go round. In their home, I then demonstrate the shutters and attempt to make a sale there and then. I take a 10% cut of the sale + my standard wage. Out of team of fifteen, I am neither the best nor the worst.

I was commuting in from Essex because after University, Ginny wanted to be close to family. So to cut that excruciating daily commute out now that I was free to move as I pleased. I took the decision to move to London. Most of my remaining friends (two, maybe three), lived in Islington, Clapham and Hammersmith. Now, what with being quite depressed at the situation of finding myself alone, my work ethic had rather dropped, leading to little sales. Thus, I found myself in a monetary quandary, the only money I had was from the deposit from my previous three bedroomed house, a little over £600. This made my choice for renting quite narrow. Renting an entire place in London is next to impossible, unless you are an oligarchs heir, a talented banker or a some other rich so-and-so. What I am trying to get at, is 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.

So, rather dejectedly, so I felt, I resigned myself to taking this room no matter the state of it. I did, however, come to regret this cavalier attidtude when I pulled up outside it.

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 taken all my sickness for the year already due to Ginny.

Rising reluctantly I got ready, showering for the first time in the bathroom, shaving and dressing. I went to the kitchen for coffee, and found it 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. And 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 at my changed route and rude wizard in my car, out on the Mini. I continued.

“It’s got more rust than an iron works, the headlamps are smashed and look at all those scratches, 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 skeptically 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 child birth, or broken legs, 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 peoples 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.”

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 foxy eyes narrowed on me, it felt like a full frontal attack. “How much do you have saved 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 2 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 the top it all off you took a room in a house with no picture to view 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, its 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, not just for 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 about 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. Taking for the middle of the three, he stepped inside and picked up a 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; 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 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. Where on earth had the wizard gone? And why he forgotten his wand?

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