Chapter Five
It’s Hagrid. Right out of Hogwarts School of Magic. Walking in a halo of rain and mist.
I shake my head and hope that when he gets closer he’d resolve into a normal man. But no, the closer he gets the more Hagrid he becomes. By the time he’s level with my window, he’s twelve feet tall, complete with bushy long hair and bushy long beard that covers his face.
When I just stare, he knocks on my window and mimes winding down with his hand. A normal human hand, not a gorilla’s.
I press the button to lower the window.
“Are you lost?” he speaks English.
But so does Hagrid.
“Er…yes.”
He bends down so his face is level with mine. Among all the hair, his eyes are surprisingly clear, and at the risk of sounding like my mother, he reminds me of a young Jude Law. The same grey-green eyes, the colour of pale sage leaves.
“What are you looking for?”
“Llancaradoc village.”
He looks a bit surprised at my answer. “You’re a couple of miles away from it. There’s only farms here. Llancaradoc’s on the other side of that hill.” He points up the track behind me.
I turn to see where he pointed but all the hills look the same from here. My expression must tell him something, or at least the way I continue to stare at the rainy countryside without putting my car into gear.
“I can show you if you like.” He glances at my passenger seat, then at me. “I…I can walk up and you can drive behind me.”
Something about this, his awareness that I might not trust a gorilla-man in my car, his willingness to put himself out to help me, makes me feel ashamed of my unkind thoughts.
“Get in.”
He hesitates, so I lean over and open the door.
He walks round to the passenger side and slips off his coat. “Don’t want to get your seat wet.”
Under the coat, he’s in a baggy jumper the same colour as his beard, so it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. In his favour, I can now revise my estimate of his height to a more normal six feet, or thereabouts. A good thing, or he’d never have been able to fold himself into my little Fiat.
He guides me back to the same crossroads where my phone went offline, then he points down a different road.
“No.” I pause, with my foot on the brake. “That’s going to Croeso.” I point to the sign.
Hagrid rubs a hand over his moustache and nose. It takes me a second to realise he’s hiding a smile.
“Croeso means welcome in Welsh.” He pronounces the word like croy-so. “The sign should have said Welcome to Llancaradoc, but it’s been vandalised. Oh—” He suddenly leans forward to read the other signs. “You followed that one, didn’t you?” He indicates the one that says to turn right. “That’s why you ended down there among the farms.”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head. “Bloody kids. The Welsh part actually says Llancaradoc trowch i'r chwith which means you should turn left. They love nothing better than to cause mischief and mislead visitors.”
There’s no mistaking the Welsh lilt in his own voice. Not strong, but definitely there. It somehow softens him, makes him more musical, less gorilla.
So, we drive down the other side of the hill and sure enough, there’s that view from my Google search. A small village squeezed between the hills. Pastel coloured houses clustered up north and south from a central green and a church. This is where my biological father lives.
My heart begins to jump inside my chest.
Which house is his? Will he be in or is he a go out for a walk in the rain kind of man? There aren’t many people on the street, three women and a tall, stooping old man.
“Anywhere specific you need?” Welsh Hagrid asks.
I peer to left and to right. But most houses seem to have numbers not names. “I’m looking for Kendric House.”
“You’re going to Kendric House?” He sounds incredulous.
“What’s wrong with that?”
He studies my face for a moment, as if assessing me for lunacy. “For a start, it’s not in Llancaradoc.”
Oh God, no. Suddenly I feel utterly defeated. I’m cold, wet and hungry. And now it seems, in the wrong part of the country. That’s what I mean, despite my best efforts to plan, be organised and self-reliant, circumstances conspire to make me need rescuing.
“Where is it then?” I ask, trying to stay positive.
“In Kendric Park,” he says this like it’s obvious, like he’s making a joke.
I let my baffled expression speak for me.
He smiles. “Sorry. It’s a couple of miles over the next hill.”
Of course it is. Everything in this part of the country seems to involve hills.
“Come on, drive. I’ll show you,” he says sounding very much like a rescuer.
“Isn’t this taking you far out of your way? I can ask someone for directions.”
“You want to risk that? On a Saturday?”
“What’s wrong with Saturdays?”
“Kids not at school.”
Ah. “Kids who take pleasure in writing misleading directions on the road signs.”
“The very same,” he says this as if naughty kids are a fact of life that he’s made his peace with.
I drive. Through and out of the village and up towards a big hill that obscures the view of anything behind it. Welsh Hagrid, next to me, is silent. The car heater is starting to warm up his rain damp coat and makes him smell of wet wool. And faintly, of aftershave. Can you wear aftershave without actually shaving? He looks like he hasn’t seen a razor in years. Whatever, it’s a surprisingly clean detail in a man who looks like a prehistoric creature.
My mother wouldn’t even allow such a man into her car – she wouldn’t be on the same street! To her, beauty is a privilege to be cherished and celebrated. And protected. A quick glance at my fingers on the steering wheel. In all the upset in the last week, I’d forgotten my nails.
I don’t agree with this whole beauty supremacy religion my mother follows, but after twenty-eight years, some of her teaching has stuck. Missing a pedicure feels like going out without knickers. There’s even a chip in the sheer nude polish on my thumb. Mum would be horrified if she saw it.
“Can you see it?” Welsh Hagrid asks suddenly making me fold my hand on the wheel to hide my nails.
He’s not looking at my fingers at all but straight ahead. Down in the valley there’s a large…pink building.
I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s a stately home, I guess, but what an unusual shape. From up here, it looks like a letter X but with the middle bit stretched wide. Half of it is built from the usual light grey stones, but the rest is a…I don’t know what. Stones that look a little pink.
The house is enormous. And strange. And…Now I understand why Hagrid looked at me as if I was insane.
“Does anyone live there? It looks derelict.”
“It is derelict.” He lifts his eyebrows in a you’re-crazy-to-come-here expression. “Has been for decades. But in the last year the new owner has tried to fix it up, very slowly. I think they have a few rooms cleaned up.”
“Who is the new owner?” I ask not daring to think it might be my father.
“Evan Kendric. He’s the heir to the old family that used to live here. He turned up last Christmas and started cleaning and renovating. They’ve even got a couple of tenants.”
“Do you know if one of the tenants is Professor William Jones?”
But Hagrid shakes his head even before I’ve finished my question. “Don’t know anything about them.” He sends me a speculative look. “Is this who you’ve come to see?”
“Yes.” I gulp suddenly unsure.
When I thought he lived in an ordinary village house, I’d somehow imagined something warm and cosy, a middle-aged family man. This bizarre manor with acres of wild overgrown bushes around it like something out of Sleeping Beauty, it’s quite unnerving.
“Okay, all you do is turn into that little road.” Welsh Hagrid points to where the main road forks into a narrower lane. “Should take you to the front door.” He unclips his seat belt.
“You’re getting out?” I ask almost alarmed that he’s leaving me here.
He starts to open the car door. “I was on my way to the Kotts farm when I saw you. So, I’d better be on my way before they sell out of chickens.”
“I can drive you there.” Even if he cuts directly across the fields instead of down through the village, it’s still a couple of miles to where I’d first met him. “I mean, you can’t walk in the rain.”
He chuckles behind his moustache. “If I was bothered by a little rain, I’d never get anything done.”
And that’s it. He’s out of the car, pulling on his coat and heading back the way we came.
Alone inside the car, I watch him in my rear-view mirror as he walks with long strides, rain falling on him. There’s nothing left of him in the car except faint smell of his clothes.
When he’s disappeared from view, I turn my gaze towards the half-grey half-pink Kendric House.
Deep breath. Car into gear. Foot off the brake. Here we go.