The magic of a man out of time

by

CJ Stone

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In Memory of Joe Fenlon, who passed away Tuesday 27th January 2026.

From The Guardian Weekend, November 5th 1994

He’s like some half-tamed elf-thing with the breath of the woods about him. He’d spent half the time engrossed in magical processes with the back door wide open blowing in wildlife; the other half strutting about the countryside searching for ley-lines…

FEN IS homeless. Which is why my maisonette smells of patchouli oil. Actually “smells” isn’t quite the right word. The stuff is so dense it lurks. It lumbers. It cleaves to things like a drunken Sloth. Even now, weeks later, you catch a blast of it from some hidey-hole, the patchouli-monster, still there, still lurking.

I was going away on holiday and Fen had agreed to stay at my place. I left him with a few quid and my dog to look after. When I got back the same washing up was still in the bowl, festering. The place was crawling with dog hairs. There was a cricket dozing under the cooker which hopped out in a startled frenzy when I inadvertently squirted it with bleach. And a beetle or two meandering about the kitchen floor looking lost, and a few new spiders to stalk them. The place had become an extension of the fields. But my dog adored him. He’s like some half-tamed elf-thing with the breath of the woods about him. He’d spent half the time engrossed in magical processes with the back door wide open blowing in wildlife; the other half strutting about the countryside searching for ley-lines, with the dog trotting loyally beside him. She thought she was in heaven.

Fen was born on Housing Benefit Hill, and spent the first two years of his life up here. After that the family moved to a little rural estate out of town. It was an idyllic place, like an imaginary picture of an old-fashioned England. Their lives were poor but dignified. The kids played in the fields and woods round about. Everyone was Mom. Fen’s Grandma was everyone’s Grandma: even the adults called her that. It was here that Fen discovered magic. An old woman who lived in a house called “Aquarius” would point out features in the landscape and give them names. “There’s the Giant’s Coffin,” she said. “There’s his head, his chest, his feet.” She claimed to be the reincarnation of an Egyptian Princess. Fen didn’t even know what “reincarnation” meant. Later he discovered that the estate was situated on a ley-line and that the “Giant’s Coffin” was in fact a tumulus.

The reason Fen is homeless is that he is having death-threats made against him. Someone wants to break his ribs, one by one. They’ve already smashed his arms. Now they want to finish him off.

He’d just moved into a council house with his girlfriend and a harmless mental defective called Jeremy. (Fen is well known for looking after people with problems.) His new neighbours were drug-associates from way-back. One of them offered a house-swap and Jeremy piped-up in his sing-song voice: “I’ll take it.” Fen spoke to him afterwards. “Jeremy, you can’t afford to take the house. You can’t claim Housing Benefit. How will you live?” Jeremy is incapable of making rational decisions having had his brains fried by years of chemical abuse in psychiatric care. He thinks he is an alien. But the neighbours didn’t care about this. Jeremy had agreed to move in and they wanted money. Jeremy ran away, and Fen was left to face the consequences. The consequences were a number of blows to the head with a plumber’s wrench so huge it took two arms to wield it. Fen lifted his arm to defend himself, ducking away as he did so. The arm shattered with one blow. And all this for fifty quid.

The wrench-wielding maniac is now on the run for attempted murder. One of the policemen dealing with the case said he’d had dealings with the family before. He called them “throwbacks”. Now Fen is plagued by death-threats and public taunts. People slow down as they pass and, winding down the car-windows, make shooting gestures at his head. Kids scream at him in the town: “He’s a wrong’un, he’s a grass.” Or someone corners Fen’s brother in the pub with such lurid descriptions of what they intend to do that it leaves him nauseous and shaken. But Fen is philosophical. He’s not going to let them drive him from the town. All his life he’s refrained from violence, and feared it. Now nothing scares him.

*

AT THE same time all this was going on there was yet another problem. His girlfriend, Olga, was pregnant. This wouldn’t have been a problem – Fen very much wanted a family – except that Olga’s parents loathed him. They considered him trash and thought that he was bringing their daughter down. Her Mother had even broken down once and, in a fit of hysterical sobs, told her she thought she was living in Hades. That’s the word she used: “Hades”.

I remember the first time I met Olga. Her complexion is so perfect it seems she is wearing a mask. But she has a wayward smile and a mischievous, sidelong glance full of grace and intelligent humour. I liked her. I felt that Fen and she were well matched. But Fen is a working class dosser with no prospects beyond a certain capacity to generate adventure and a nice line in grand Aquarian speculation, while Olga’s parents are rich. Exceedingly rich, in fact. Repulsively rich.

Olga had been brought up with everything that money could buy. They lived in a place that Fen describes as “Millionaire’s Row”, surrounded by Opera singers and Captains of Industry and acres of unspoiled woodland. Olga never knew what her father did for a living, except that he was born in Sicily, that he flew around the world once or twice a week, and that their wardrobes were always packed with Gucci and their drive with countless cars. Olga had been brought up to respect his every wish.

This was her second pregnancy by Fen. On the first occasion there had been a dreadful confrontation at her parents house, Olga screaming, her Mother wailing, her Father bellowing at Fen: “This is not a baby, this is a wank.” He’d picked Fen up bodily and thrown him down the stairs. Then he’d booted him out the house and slammed the door. Fen, barefoot on the gravel in the pouring rain, turned round to see the door open and his boots come flying out. Seconds later he heard screams and the door burst open again and it was Olga carrying his coat and running. She grabbed him, and then they were racing into the woods – Fen half-running, half-hopping, still trying to pull on his boots – pounding through the undergrowth, breathless and terrified. They ran for a couple of miles, Olga sobbing continuously, and accompanied by the flap-flap-squelch of Fen’s swiftly deteriorating boots, before they felt safe enough to stop. They flopped down on the sodden ground and shared a damp cigarette. It was like a scene from Romeo and Juliet. It must be the Sicilian blood.

But it mustn’t be thought that their lives were all like scenes from an Elizabethan drama. Most of the time they were just engrossed in each other, as lovers are: hardly moving from their bed, coming down to watch the Soaps occasionally, hand-in-hand on the settee, rarely going out, making love as often as possible. And during this sweet, inconsequential time Fen forgot about the countryside. He forgot about the Giant’s Coffin. He forgot about the power of the wind and the sky and the ripples of subtle energy that shimmied through the Earth. He became a town-bound being immersed in the simple pleasures of the day-to-day. The only thing that distinguished Fen’s flat from any other was the sight of a weird little pixie hunched up in the corner meditating on a shifting mandalic array of silver toffee wrappers: Jeremy. And things went on like this till they got evicted.

Afterwards Olga went on an extended holiday to Greece with her parents while Fen tried to find them somewhere else to live. He managed to secure a maisonette on Housing Benefit Hill on the back of Jeremy’s disability. Jeremy spent five whole days face down in the field at the back with his arms outstretched. But there had been some administrative error and they had to move again. That’s how they ended up next door to Mr. Plumber’s Wrench. The new place was poky and dire and miles out of town on a run-down estate where people have nothing better to do than to spy on each other and make trouble. They were still without furniture or electricity when Olga returned.

*

SO THERE she is, tanned and relaxed from a money’s-no-object, sun-drenched holiday in paradise, standing at the door of their new home. She took one look at the place and announced she was leaving again. Fen managed to persuade her to stay on the understanding that they would move as soon as humanly possible. And a few days later he was being chased around the estate, one arm dangling, while some bone-head with a plumber’s wrench lumbered along behind shouting out his name: “Fen… Fen… Fen…” And so now they were homeless and on the run and Olga had just found out she was pregnant again. And it’s no wonder she left him really.

All that was months ago. They puttered on for a while, hiding out at Fen’s brother’s place. And then they squabbled about Olga’s continuing reliance on her Father’s money, and Fen said: “It’s either your parents or me.” And, unconsciously or otherwise, she chose her parents. As far as Fen knows they’ve since moved to Denmark.

Meanwhile Fen has lost everything. He has no home, no girlfriend, no family. Even Jeremy has deserted him. He wanders round from house to house with a rucksack full of her discarded clothes and a box of books about magic, staying with whoever will have him and his pet patchouli-monster. But at least he’s back in the countryside, clambering through the trees to his beloved Giant’s Coffin where he meditates on the meaning of all this. And it was on the way there one day that he saw the ground staked out at the base of the tumulus and he realised that they were about to build a road. So he says that it must have been the Land that broke up his relationship so he’d know.

In Fen’s world everything is magic.

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Joe Fenlon (“Fen Lander”) on HubPages: https://hubpages.com/@fen-lander

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About CJ Stone

CJ Stone is an author, columnist and feature writer. He has written seven books, and columns and articles for many newspapers and magazines.

Read more of CJ Stone’s work here, here and here.

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