The Fairy Godmother Part 50

A quick wave of my wand had taken me to the hotel that I had ended up at after sorting out the problems for the shoemaker.

“They said I could have a holiday here anytime I wanted,” I reminded myself. “This is as good a time as any.” But looking round the place didn’t look in anyway ready for holiday makers, if anything it looked worse than it had done before. The half hearted efforts to get the grounds in order and the scattering of garden tools, which looked as if they had been thrown, did nothing to help the look of the place.

I walked towards the hotel with the hope of finding some answers in the reception. The door opened when I pushed it, creaked and then fell off, making me jump, but no one came to see what was going on, so after a couple of minutes I headed into the hotel to see what I could find out. What I found was that there was no one there, the bar was littered with empty bottles, may of which lay smashed around the room as if there had been some sort of bottle hurling contest or a fight. I decided to see if anyone nearby knew what had gone on and walked back out through the broken door.

“Are you going to leave that like that?” asked Enid standing just outside the hotel.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, standing the door up and pulling my God-knows-how-many-in-one tool from my pocket along with a bag containing various screws, nuts, bolts and nails and set about securing the door.

“I suppose that’s better than it was,” said Enid after I’d spent about ten minutes working on it. “Though, as it opened when you pushed it and then fell to the ground, that isn’t saying a lot.”

“If you have any suggestions on how to improve it,” I replied waving towards the door.

“No,” said Enid. “It’s not my place to tell you what to do.”

“That’s never stopped you before,” I said. “And that reminds me, you still haven’t told me what you are doing here.”

“Do I need a reason to visit my own daughter?” asked Enid.

“When it has taken you this long to admit that I’m your daughter, yes I think you do need a reason,” I replied. “And I’d like to know how you knew where I was.”

“Violet said that you’d decided to take a holiday whilst you thought about what you wanted to do next,” said Enid. “Personally I don’t approve of all this thinking, you are a Fairy Godmother, there is work for you to do, you get the next assignment and get on with it. I don’t think it was necessary for Violet to give you time off.”

“You agreed to keep your nose out of Fairy Godmother business,” I reminded her. “And if you don’t approve of taking time out occasionally, what are you doing here?”

“The Fairy Council said that I was having problems getting used to the death of my sister, like they’d have any idea as to what I think,” snapped Enid.

“So they’ve given you some time off?” I asked.

“I don’t need time off,” snapped Enid. “It isn’t as if we were close or anything. What I need is to get on with some work, it isn’t as if there wasn’t plenty to do.”

“I presume you told them that,” I said.

“At the top of my voice, but they still wouldn’t listen,” Enid replied.

“The more you shout, the less they hear,” I replied.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Enid. “They just wouldn’t let me finish a single sentence.”

“So you shouted and that is when you lost the argument,” I replied.

“You may be right at that,” sighed Enid. “Anyway, they told me to take some time out to sort out my head.”

“So you came to pester me,” I added.

“Can’t a Mother go to her daughter when she’s at a low ebb?” asked Enid.

Bit of a hard one to reply to that.

“You put me in the nursery to be brought up by strangers,” I reminded her. “And it is only now, when you want me, that you admit to being my Mother.”

“You wouldn’t hold that against me, would you?” she asked.

“I would, but I have better things to do,” I snapped.

“What could be better than helping your Mum?” asked Enid.

“I brought two people here, one owned the place and wanted to do it up, the other was going to work here,” I replied.

“So?” asked Enid.

“Something went wrong,” I replied.

“Humans, they have good intentions, but things get in the way,” said Enid.

“I should have been here to make sure they got started,” I replied. “But you threw a bucket of ice cubes over me and dragged me back to the Fairy Council to answer for my crimes.”

“I think you are being a bit over dramatic there,” said Enid as I headed off down the driveway in an attempt to find someone who might know what had gone on there and where the two men where. My idea of a nice relaxing holiday had gone up in smoke and being followed around by Enid wasn’t doing anything to improve my mood.

“We could sort this out together,” said Enid. “We work well as a team.”

“Really,” I muttered.

“All those problems we’ve sorted out recently,” Enid said, flying along beside me.

“That I was supposed to be solving and you were supposed to be observing,” I reminded her.

“We had good results,” said Enid, ignoring my comments. “I’m sure we can get this done and then we could have a holiday together,” she added as we arrived in front of what looked to be a gate house.

I knocked on the door and it was opened by the doorman, the one I had last seen at the hotel.

“I was just coming to find out what happened to you and the other man, the one who owned the hotel,” I stuttered, names do have a bad habit of eluding me at times of stress.

“His names Derek,” said the doorman. “And mine is Jim.”

“Hello Jim,” said Enid smiling. “I’m Enid, I may as well introduce myself as my daughter doesn’t look like she’s going to.”

“I remember,” said Jim. “It’s part of being good doorman, people like it when you remember their names.

“Well, now that has all the introductions done,” said Enid.

“But it isn’t,” said Jim, smiling at me. “I know you are someone’s Fairy Godmother, but I don’t know whose, or what your name is?”

“I just get called the Fairy Godmother,” I replied trying to remember my name, I should know what it is, but I don’t remember being called anything.

“Can’t remember your own name,” laughed Enid. “She is so forgetful,” she added looking at Jim.

“Well, you gave it to me, you tell us what it is,” I smiled at her.

“Myrtle,” Enid replied. “It’s a very pretty flower,” she added defensively.

“Myrtle! No wonder I never got called by it,” I replied trying not to laugh.

“Myrtle!” said Jim. “You don’t look like a Myrtle to me, but what I can say is that that sky looks like rain and when it rains here, you don’t want to be outside, would you like to come in and we can talk about Derek and the hotel and hopefully we can sort this out between us.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said, my words nearly drowned out by the crash of thunder as the sky opened up and drenched us before we got the two steps needed to get into the house.

By Janice Nye © 2020