Earth, Air, Fire & Custard Tom Holt

by Earth, Air, Fire

  For a moment, Paul felt like he was going to be sick. He shut his eyes; and when he opened them again, there was Mr Laertides, offering him a glass of water.

  'Sorry,' he said. 'I didn't want to have to upset you like that. But you're going to have to trust me, that's all.'

  Paul sipped the water and pulled himself together. 'If you say so,' he said.

  'I do say so. And now.' Mr Laertides sat down in his chair, stuck out his feet, put his hands behind his head. 'Let's clear the air and take our minds off all this unpleasantness by doing a little bit of actual paid work for a change. Someone's got to bring in the pennies, you know.'

  There's nothing I can do, Paul thought. I've walked into something nasty, I can't get out, I don't even know what it is. And - the one constant in an infinitely changing universe - there's bugger all I can do about it.

  Mr Laertides looked up. 'Well?'

  'Sure,' Paul said. 'What do you want me to do?'

  Working for Mr Laertides was rather different from what Paul had become used to over the last nine months.

  Hitherto, to be sure, most of the time he hadn't understood what he was doing, or known what it was for or how the partners translated it into money; but at least it had felt reassuringly like work. Work isn't hard to recognise: it's boring, difficult, the antithesis of fun. (Because if it wasn't, it wouldn't be work at all. The universe is built up of polarities; it deals in such opposites as day and night, light and dark, good and evil, dead and alive, false and real, work and fun. Everything that isn't one is the other; the categories are separate and exclusive. If it's fun it can't be work, and vice versa.) But the tasks he had to perform for Mr Laertides, though hardly fun, didn't have that gritty, dry work texture about them. They were neither one thing nor the other; a third category, a hitherto undiscovered element, a pocket dimension.

  Paul's first job had been to think of a flower. He had to sit still, eyes shut, hands on the arms of the chair, and think of a flower. It could be any shape or colour he liked, didn't have to be a real flower, it could be completely imaginary, just so long as it was a flower. Screw this, Paul thought, and sat still and quiet for a moment before saying, 'Right, done that.' But Mr Laertides said, 'No you haven't,' in a grim voice; so Paul admitted defeat and thought of a geranium. At least, he thought it was a geranium, but it could just as easily have been a dahlia or a chrysanthemum. Paul knew very little about flowers, and cared less.

  'Excellent,' he heard Mr Laertides say, 'although if we're going to be annoyingly pedantic about things, that's actually a foxglove. Doesn't matter, though, and you're doing just fine. Now - you can open your eyes, by the way - I'd like you to describe for me the taste of an onion.'

  Paul sat up. 'You what?'

  'You heard me. Imagine I've never eaten an onion. What do they taste like?'

  Paul frowned. 'No offence,' he said, 'but how exactly is this paying work? I thought you, well, sort of wrote speeches for people and worked out what their colours are and stuff.'

  'That's right,' said Mr Laertides, 'up to a point. And that's why I need you to tell me what an onion tastes like.'

  Fine, Paul thought, just checking. 'Well,' he said, 'it's sort of sharp and sour and a bit yuck, really, but it's also crunchy and a bit refreshing. That's when it's raw, of course. Cooked-'

  'No, that's fine.' Mr Laertides stopped him with a wave of his hand. 'That's exactly what I needed, thank you. Now, would you mind telling me about the sexiest pair of wrists you ever saw?'

  Paul just looked at him for a moment. 'Wrists,' he said.

  'Wrists,' repeated Mr Laertides, with a hint of impatience. 'You know, the bit that joins the hands to the arms. Come on, you've spent your entire adult life gawping at girls. What constitutes a really cute wrist?'

  After a long, long silence, Paul said, 'Absence of thick, curly hair is all that springs to mind. I'm sorry.'

  'No, that's fine. You're doing really well, I promise you. Now, I suggest you have lunch early, because this afternoon I need you to nip down to Swindon and look at a tree.'

  So Paul nipped. The tree was exactly where Mr Laertides said it would be, on the corner of Dunkeswell Street and Arundel Drive. It was slightly shorter than the other eleven trees in the row, and local government had splurged on a stake for it to lean on but not the little strap to tie it thereto. 'Look at it,' Mr Laertides had said, and beyond that he'd refused to be drawn, so Paul looked at it, carefully, for five minutes. It's a tree, he eventually decided. So fucking what? Then he went home.

  'It was about eight feet tall,' he started to say, first thing next morning. 'Sort of greenish leaves, I don't-'

  But Mr Laertides held up his hand, as though conducting traffic. 'I said look at it,' he said, 'I don't need a description. Well done, though, we're making good progress so far. Which reminds me, here's a flyer, just pop down to Aldgate and buy me a toothbrush.'

  It was five minutes past nine; way, way too early in the morning for that sort of thing. 'Aldgate,' Paul said. 'But that's half an hour's walk, and there's a Boots just round the-'

  'Aldgate,' Mr Laertides insisted. 'It's got to be Aldgate, all right? Blue if there's a choice, if not whatever they've got. Take a cab, the firm's paying.'

  So Paul took a taxi to Aldgate and spent half an hour traipsing up and down, looking in vain for a shop that sold toothbrushes. Anything else, apparently, he could've had his pick of, from microchips to elephants. If he wanted a toothbrush, however, the consensus was that he should nip round the corner, a hundred yards or so, to the chemist in the Arcade, where they'd be overjoyed to sell him the toothbrush of his dreams. He thanked them all, said he'd do that, and carried on down the street to the next remote possibility. He was just about to pack it in and go back when he saw a little tiny shop shoe-horned in between an airline and a bookstore-

  Demetrius Palaeologus (est: 1954)

  Antiques - Rare Books - Prints - - Maps - - Vintage Scientific

  Instruments - Toothbrushes

  Mr Palaeologus, or his duly appointed representative, was a short, cheerful-looking man with a completely spherical bald head, round glasses and chins like a concertina; the face and the shape were more than a little familiar, something to do with coffee and cake, but Paul couldn't quite place it. Mr Palaeologus had a toothbrush for sale; he even had a blue toothbrush, though he admitted that he couldn't personally endorse that particular model, whereas the green one with the textured handle- No? The blue one, then. Fine.

  'And you'd like that gift-wrapped,' the man said; a statement, not a question.

  'Well, not really,' Paul said, but the man wasn't there any more; he'd darted into the back room, taking the toothbrush, and Mr Laertides's flyer, with him.

  Paul settled down to wait. There wasn't a great deal in the shop to interest him; apart from the toothbrushes, distinctly separate in a perspex display of their very own on the far wall, it was just a few bits of tatty old furniture, some framed maps and a shelf of big, fat leather-bound books. After ten minutes of standing around, Paul pulled out one of the books and glanced at it, but the title page was in Latin and the rest of it was just a load of old-fashioned maps of (apparently) Nova Scotia, with a few line drawings of fallen-down old castles and the like. Eventually, the man came out holding a parcel the size of a shoebox, covered in bright red paper and festooned with curly ribbon. Biting back the truth, Paul thanked him, said it was very nice and left quickly. There were no taxis to be had, so he went back to the office on the bus. People stared at him all the way.

  'This is stupid,' he complained, dumping the loathsome parcel down on Mr Laertides's desk. 'All right, the flower stuff was harmless and it wasn't bad getting out of the office to look at that tree, but-'

  'Get a grip,' Mr Laertides said. 'Just imagine, it could've been pink.'

  'It's not far off pink,' Paul maintained bitterly. 'Well, aren't you going to open the bloody thing, after I've been to all that trouble?'

  Mr Laertides shook his head. 'That's all right,' he sai
d, 'I trust you to know a blue toothbrush when you see one. Now-'

  'Aren't you going to explain? Please?' Paul said hopefully. 'Just a hint'd do.'

  'Sorry, not possible. Now, I want you to look through that big cardboard box over in the corner there, and choose the eight CDs you'd least like to be stranded on a desert island with.'

  And so it went on, day after day. Carefully examine these seven identical steel washers and say which you think is the shiniest. If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, which would you choose, rice pudding or Rich Tea biscuits? Who do you think looks better in a hat, Robin Cook or Severiano Ballesteros? Imagine a goldfish, a claw hammer, a mountain, a pile of tins of grapefruit, a shoe, dawn over the Nile delta in February. If toothache had a colour, would it be red, black or yellow? Go to a suburban road in Dunstable and count the number of blue cars parked on the south-facing kerb.

  Still, it was better than work; and Paul was getting out of the office quite regularly, and nobody seemed to notice or mind if he dawdled on his way back. The extra money was nice, too, as were the friendly smiles of the partners as he passed them in the corridors, and the general sense of not being a quarry species at a predators' convention. Mr Tanner's mum was back to her normal flamboyant self at the front desk, but so far she was leaving him well alone; he missed being able to talk to her, but he had other people to chat with now, and besides, he was busy, no time for idle banter . . . Actually, he realised, the being busy all the time was maybe the greatest improvement of all in his quality of life. Paul Carpenter had been able to shut out the weirdness, and even turn a blind eye to much of the sheer horror and fear, but the one thing he'd never figured out how to cope with was the boredom of hours sitting in his office with nothing to do. Popular Phil Marlow, on the other hand, might spend his working day carrying out one set of unfathomably bizarre orders after another, but at least he was kept occupied. And if the work he was doing seemed pointless, ridiculous and a total waste of time and effort, how was that different from the working lives of millions of his fellow citizens? The tasks that Mr Laertides set him were no more fatuous than the job descriptions of any number of civil servants, local government officers, Revenue officials and duly accredited inspectors of this and that; and unlike them, he wasn't doing anybody any harm, so what was there to complain about?

  'Good work,' Mr Laertides said enthusiastically, as Paul reported back after a morning spent playing Death Throes 2005 on the office computer. 'Thanks for that, I do believe we're beginning to make some progress at last. Now-'

  Paul shut his eyes, but only for a moment.

  'I want you,' Mr Laertides went on, 'to nip down to Trafalgar Square and feed the pigeons.'

  Paul looked at him. 'Sorry?'

  'Trafalgar Square,' Mr Laertides repeated, slowly and clearly. 'Pigeons.'

  'There aren't any.'

  Mr Laertides frowned. 'How do you mean?'

  'There aren't any pigeons in Trafalgar Square these days,' Paul said. 'The government had them all gassed or something. It was on the news at the time.'

  'Oh.' Mr Laertides shrugged. 'In that case, I want you to go to St James's Park and feed the ducks.' He paused. 'There are still ducks in St James's Park?'

  'I think so.'

  'They haven't all been lined up against the wall with little duck-sized blindfolds on or anything?'

  'I don't think so.'

  'Fine. In that case, here's a kilo and a half of birdseed,' he added, pointing to a fat paper bag on the desk. 'You'll need to take someone with you, give you a hand.'

  'Just a moment,' Paul objected. Freedom of speech wasn't an issue with Mr Laertides, he could say pretty much what he liked, raise objections, ask questions, whatever. Of course, his questions weren't answered and his objections were ignored, but it was the principle of the thing. 'How could feeding the birds, tuppence a bag, possibly need two people?'

  'You could take that secretary of yours,' Mr Laertides continued, with a grin, 'give the poor kid something to do for a change. She must be bored silly, waiting around for you to give her some typing or filing to do. What did you say her name was, again?'

  Paul shook his head. 'I'd rather not, thanks,' he said. 'Look, is it extremely heavy birdseed or something? Or does one of us chuck it around while the other one takes notes?'

  'Or,' Mr Laertides said, his face suddenly blank, 'you could ask her to help you.'

  Sophie's name hadn't been mentioned in Mr Laertides's room before, but even so there was no need to ask who her was. Paul opened his mouth to refuse, then shut it again.

  'And it'll take you a while,' Mr Laertides went on, 'and there's no point you both trudging back to the office at one o'clock and then back again at five past two, so you might as well have lunch out somewhere. Together,' he added.

  Whenever Mr Laertides dropped hints, it made Paul think of some US Air Force bunker a mile under the roots of the Rocky Mountains, and frantic missile technicians trying to shoot the hint down with tactical nukes before it collided with Earth and started a new ice age. Nevertheless. He hadn't actually seen Sophie to talk to since Phil Marlow's first day; and a shared cappuccino and sandwich couldn't do any lasting harm, surely. 'All right,' he said. 'Should I-?'

  Mr Laertides shook his head. 'I'll send Theo a memo asking if we can borrow her,' he replied; and just then there was a knock at the door, and Sophie came in.

  Paul's first instinct was to look away, but he batted it aside like an over-persistent moth. She paused just inside the room, smiled at him, then handed Mr Laertides an envelope. He opened it, read the single sheet of paper inside it, smiled and handed it to Paul.

  From: Theodorus Van Spee

  To: Frank Laertides

  You will wish to borrow Ms Pettingell to help with your current project. I can spare her until 3.45. She will wish to order a banana milk shake, but should be dissuaded from doing so as bananas bring her out in unsightly facial blemishes, a fact which her liking for bananas has led her to ignore.

  Cordially

  TVS

  Paul straitjacketed his facial muscles, nodded and handed it back. 'That seems to be in order,' he said, and Mr Laertides inclined his head gravely. A few minutes later, Paul and Sophie were out in the open air, armed with birdseed and heading for St James's Park in a taxi.

  'So,' Paul said after a long silence, during which Sophie had smiled at him at least three times. 'How's it going?'

  'Don't ask.' She made a pantomime of rolling her eyes. 'Honestly, Van Spee can be absolutely bloody insufferable sometimes.' Pause, frown. 'Have you come across him yet?' she asked. 'Tall, thin bloke, white beard, cross between Mycroft Holmes and the Wizard of Oz.'

  Paul shook his head. 'Haven't had that pleasure,' he replied. 'You're in his department, right?'

  'Worse luck. Actually,' she added, 'it's not so bad; I mean, there's no goblins or demons or dragons or anything, you know, yetch. And he doesn't throw tantrums or shout or try and look down the front of my blouse or anything. It's just-'

  'Weird,' Paul supplied.

  'Weird,' she repeated. 'Absolutely and completely weird. Like, yesterday he had me colouring in a kid's colouring book all afternoon. And we spent three hours this morning playing chess.'

  'Really? Who won?'

  'I did,' Sophie replied, with a slight frown. 'Which is odd, because I'm rubbish and you'd have thought a bloke like that'd be brilliant at chess. But no, I beat him six times and drew twice.'

  'Go you,' Paul said approvingly. 'But that's not the point, is it?'

  She nodded briskly. 'Not the point at all. It's weird, and it's starting to freak me out. I mean, the filing and the photocopying and looking things up in books and traipsing up and down stairs carrying messages, it was boring and miserable but at least-' She shook her head. 'If it carries on like this, I'm going to go to Tanner and ask to be transferred. Talking of which,' she added, and maybe she'd got something in her eye, 'do you need any help in your department? Only it's always interested me a lot, pu
blic relations and media and, um, whatever.'

  Paul grinned. 'Actually,' he said, 'I'm not sure you'd want to. For instance,' he went on before she could object, 'did anyone tell you what we're going to be doing?'

  'Well, no,' Sophie replied. 'Van Spee just looked up at me suddenly from the papers he was reading, handed me that envelope - it was there on his desk all morning, ready - and told me to go and see you. Well, you plural,' she added in a hurry. 'So, what exactly are we doing?'

  'Feeding the ducks in St James's Park,' Paul said. 'As witness, one paper bag full of birdseed.'

  'Feeding the ducks? Why?'

  Paul shrugged. 'Because he likes birds, or-' He couldn't think of a reason. 'Truth is, most of the stuff we do in PR and Media is like that. Bizarre and incomprehensible.'

  Sophie paused and looked at him curiously. 'Bizarre and incomprehensible to the outside observer,' she said, 'but of course you know exactly what it's all in aid of, because it's your speciality. Yes?'

  'Yes. Well,' Paul admitted, 'actually, no. Actually, I haven't got a clue. I just do as I'm told, and at the end of the month I get paid money. Presumably there's a point to it all, but-' He checked himself. He was sounding a little bit too much like Paul Carpenter back from the dead, and if anyone around JWW was likely to notice, it'd be Sophie. 'It's like when they were building the pyramids, or the great cathedrals,' he said, smiling cheerfully. 'Frank Laertides is the architect, I just haul on a rope and assume that he knows what he's doing. It's a very complicated branch of the trade,' he added grandly, 'takes a lifetime to learn, and even then you've got to have the gift or you'll never get anywhere.'