But the problem of convincing her didn’t need to be faced just yet.
George wrote out a purchase order for the coils. When they were delivered, Tess, poor dear, would have a most extraordinary experience. Oblivious to her future, she sat in her cage delousing her mate and rolling her lips back. If George worked at it, he could probably get Techtronics to deliver before noon today. They had trucks up to the college all the time.
Dear little Tess. Not a big rhesus, not a scared rhesus. Not yet.
Chapter 4
Mandy didn’t need a map to find her way to the Collier estate.
It took up the whole southwestern comer of the Maywell township and went beyond. The lands of the original grant included Stone and Storm mountains and the valley between them, an area of eighty thousand acres in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Mandy drove down Bridge Street toward the entrance to the estate.
A stillness filled the morning air. Red and yellow and orange trees overhung the old brick street. Here and there children dawdled past on their way to school. Beside Bridge Street and sometimes beneath it Maywell Brook shimmered in the sunlight. Autumn was the slow season for water, and the brook sighed along its gouged, muddy bed. It was all so familiar, so peaceful, as if she had left only a few hours ago. But the years had changed the familiarity of Maywell. Once this place had been, simply, life. Now it hurt to be here.
Mandy glanced at her watch. 9:20. She was due to meet the great lady in ten minutes. The great and dangerous lady. As a child Mandy had been cautioned never to speak to Constance Collier—not that she ever had. Except for her occasional forbidden intrusions onto the estate with other kids to watch witch rituals, she had only once or twice glimpsed the legendary figure sitting regally in the back of her enormous old Cadillac limousine, driven to some local function by one of her earnest acolytes.
On one memorable occasion she and Constance had locked gazes, as the old lady was driven slowly down Maple in her big black car. That was when life at the Walker house was entering the deepest level of hell. A quart bottle of gin went into the garbage every two days, and the arguments made Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf sound like a Marx Brothers film.
High up in her maple, Mandy had observed the car. It was moving very slowly. As it drew near she realized that the old woman was watching her carefully.
Sometimes she dreamed of that car, coming unlit down the night street, and sometimes of the old lady drifting out of it like mist which would slip across the lawn, beneath the shadow of the maple tree… and then she would see the tall, severe shadow in the hall, or feel a bony hand on her forehead…
Once she heard her father screaming in the basement, and there was a low, sharp voice between the screams, and little Mandy had thought. She’s in the house. Constance Collier is in the house.
In the morning she had decided that it had to have been a dream.
In those days Constance had seemed frightening. Now the fact that she was a witch was a matter of indifference to Mandy. What she was interested in was this illustration assignment. There was no reason Amanda Walker couldn’t become the next Michael Hague or even the next Arthur Rackham. Beyond that, though, illustrating a Grimm’s offered her a chance to express her craft to the fullest.
Mandy was convinced that her visions of the fairy tales were original and powerful and new. Surely they would stun die art world if they were ever painted.
All that stood between her and success was this final interview. It promised to be hard. How had Will described Constance Collier? Quixotic. Rude. Imperious. And you were never late to an appointment with her. Not ever was the way he had put it. From her own past, Mandy could easily imagine Miss Collier to be even harder to deal with than Will had said.
Soon the forbidding brick wall that marked the townside edge of the estate appeared out the
George wrote out a purchase order for the coils. When they were delivered, Tess, poor dear, would have a most extraordinary experience. Oblivious to her future, she sat in her cage delousing her mate and rolling her lips back. If George worked at it, he could probably get Techtronics to deliver before noon today. They had trucks up to the college all the time.
Dear little Tess. Not a big rhesus, not a scared rhesus. Not yet.
Chapter 4
Mandy didn’t need a map to find her way to the Collier estate.
It took up the whole southwestern comer of the Maywell township and went beyond. The lands of the original grant included Stone and Storm mountains and the valley between them, an area of eighty thousand acres in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Mandy drove down Bridge Street toward the entrance to the estate.
A stillness filled the morning air. Red and yellow and orange trees overhung the old brick street. Here and there children dawdled past on their way to school. Beside Bridge Street and sometimes beneath it Maywell Brook shimmered in the sunlight. Autumn was the slow season for water, and the brook sighed along its gouged, muddy bed. It was all so familiar, so peaceful, as if she had left only a few hours ago. But the years had changed the familiarity of Maywell. Once this place had been, simply, life. Now it hurt to be here.
Mandy glanced at her watch. 9:20. She was due to meet the great lady in ten minutes. The great and dangerous lady. As a child Mandy had been cautioned never to speak to Constance Collier—not that she ever had. Except for her occasional forbidden intrusions onto the estate with other kids to watch witch rituals, she had only once or twice glimpsed the legendary figure sitting regally in the back of her enormous old Cadillac limousine, driven to some local function by one of her earnest acolytes.
On one memorable occasion she and Constance had locked gazes, as the old lady was driven slowly down Maple in her big black car. That was when life at the Walker house was entering the deepest level of hell. A quart bottle of gin went into the garbage every two days, and the arguments made Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf sound like a Marx Brothers film.
High up in her maple, Mandy had observed the car. It was moving very slowly. As it drew near she realized that the old woman was watching her carefully.
Sometimes she dreamed of that car, coming unlit down the night street, and sometimes of the old lady drifting out of it like mist which would slip across the lawn, beneath the shadow of the maple tree… and then she would see the tall, severe shadow in the hall, or feel a bony hand on her forehead…
Once she heard her father screaming in the basement, and there was a low, sharp voice between the screams, and little Mandy had thought. She’s in the house. Constance Collier is in the house.
In the morning she had decided that it had to have been a dream.
In those days Constance had seemed frightening. Now the fact that she was a witch was a matter of indifference to Mandy. What she was interested in was this illustration assignment. There was no reason Amanda Walker couldn’t become the next Michael Hague or even the next Arthur Rackham. Beyond that, though, illustrating a Grimm’s offered her a chance to express her craft to the fullest.
Mandy was convinced that her visions of the fairy tales were original and powerful and new. Surely they would stun die art world if they were ever painted.
All that stood between her and success was this final interview. It promised to be hard. How had Will described Constance Collier? Quixotic. Rude. Imperious. And you were never late to an appointment with her. Not ever was the way he had put it. From her own past, Mandy could easily imagine Miss Collier to be even harder to deal with than Will had said.
Soon the forbidding brick wall that marked the townside edge of the estate appeared out the
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