by Tom Holt
the kerb, trembling, and clutched a lamp post to keep himself upright. On the other hand, he thought, it’s not like I’m doing anything this evening, and this Gilbert and Sullivan crap is supposed to be really good. (At least, he remembered, his aunt Patricia was dead keen on it, though that wasn’t the kind of endorsement he usually put much stock in.) If that’s what it takes to get me out of here in one piece, then why not? The worst that can happen is, I’ll wake up in the interval with a cricked neck.
So, like a schoolboy unwillingly to school, he walked slowly towards the concrete façade. There were loads of the pink flyers pinned to the noticeboard outside, and the door was open. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with the frozen pizza, but he felt curiously unwilling to relinquish it, even though it was arguably the root cause of all his misfortunes. (And then he thought: Where in the Bible does it say, “Don’t go buying pizzas you can’t afford, or Gilbert and Sullivan will come and get you?”) He stuffed it under his coat, and advanced into the stream of yellow light leaking through the doorway.
And then someone walked towards him, and by that yellow glow he saw who it was. She saw him a fraction of a second later and quickened her step, trying to get past him before he noticed her, but it was too late for that.
“Hello?” Paul said.
“Hello,” the thin girl replied. “What are you doing here?”
“I—” Truth is a luxury, rather like pepperoni pizza; those who can afford it insist on nothing else, while the rest of us just have to make do. “I was visiting my second cousin,” he said. “But he’s out.”
“Oh.” She looked at him. “Why are you carrying a soggy cardboard box?” she asked.
“It’s a pizza,” he replied. “I brought it along for my cousin.” The lights of a passing car raked her face, and to his amazement he saw that she’d been crying; the puffy red eyes, the tear spoor, distinctive as the silver slimetrail of a slug. “How about you?” he asked.
“Me?” she said, as if she couldn’t think of a more bizarre subject of conversation. “Oh, I was just—” She stopped, and for the first time looked at him as if he wasn’t the back end of a maggot she’d just noticed in her half-eaten apple. A tiny voice in the back of Paul’s mind assured him that he was going to regret this, but he refused to listen. “Nothing,” she said.
Ten doors down lay a pub, and Paul remembered he had a five-pound note in his shirt pocket. “Come and have a drink,” he said.
No, thanks, she should have said. Instead, she said, “What about your pizza?”
“What?”
“If it defrosts it’ll go all soggy.”
“Actually,” Paul said, “I’m not hungry.” He stooped down and propped the box carefully against the wall of the Highgate Community Arts Centre, like a druid making an offering of mistletoe. “Come on,” he said.
And, amazingly, she muttered, “All right,” and nodded.
The pub was horribly full. They had to turn side-on to get through the crush round the door, and the bar was lost to sight behind the press of flesh. From somewhere out back came the unique collage of strange noises that only a British pub jazz band can make. Paul snarled helplessly; this wasn’t at all what he’d had in mind. Then, to his great surprise, he saw an empty table, tucked away in a corner next to the toilet door. He nodded at it, and the thin girl nodded back and headed for it. Fine, Paul thought, and started threading his way through to the bar.
All the time he was waiting to get served, and all the weary way back, clutching a pint of Guinness in a straight glass and a small Britvic orange, he was sure she’d be gone by the time he reached the far-flung table. When the shoulders and elbows parted and he saw her
still there, picking at her nose with a scrap of shredded Kleenex, he could have shouted for joy. He slid into his seat, put down the Guinness in front of her, and said, “That’s right, isn’t it?”
She looked at him. “Yes,” she said.
“It’s what you had in that pub after the interview,” he explained.
“Oh,” she said.
“Well, cheers,” he suggested. He sipped a tiny drop of orange juice, while she nibbled at the froth of her beer. The jazz band made a noise like a circular saw cutting aluminium sheet. A fat man pushed past on his way to the Gents. Once again, Paul had a strong feeling that he was being closely observed by an invisible peanut gallery, who were going to start slow-handclapping unless he got the show on the road. (But what show, and what road? The unseen watchers presumably knew, but he didn’t.)
“Fancy bumping into each other like this,” he said. The invisible audience didn’t think much of that; neither did the thin girl, and neither did he. He tried again. “Is this your neck of the woods, then?” he asked.
“No,” she answered, and she’d have been perfectly within her rights to leave it at that; it was a feckless piece of cross-examination, and even the lowliest junior barrister would’ve laughed in his face. But, quite unexpectedly, she went on, “Actually, I live in Wimbledon. I came to see my boyfriend in a play.”
The world tightened around Paul’s head like a drillchuck. “Oh,” he said.
She looked at him, and grinned sadly. “If you must know,” she said, “we’ve just broken up.”
“Oh,” said Paul. “I’m sorry,” he lied through his teeth.
“That’s why I’ve been crying.”
“Ah, right.”
She sighed, and looked past him, as if he wasn’t there. “I came all this way just to see him in his stupid musical, because he kept on and on at me about it, and then when I got here I thought, What’s the point? And so—”
“Just a moment,” Paul interrupted. “By ‘musical’, do you mean Gilbert and Sullivan?”
She gave him a look you could’ve skewered kebabs on. “All right, not musical, operetta. Do you like that stuff?”
“No.”
She nodded very slightly, as if forced to concede he’d given the right answer. “So I went round backstage and told him,” she said. “I said, there’s just no point in us going on any more, is there? And he said he didn’t know what I meant, I said, well, exactly, and that’s why it’s pretty pointless us just dragging along any longer, because we were both just lying to ourselves, there just wasn’t any—”
“Point?”
She nodded. “And then I gave him back the CD he gave me last Christmas and the pen he’d lent me four months ago when we went to the Earls Court Bike Show, and I walked out.”
“I see,” Paul said. “So, he’s pretty keen on Gilbert and Sullivan, this bloke?”
She scowled at him, then shrugged. “He never used to be,” she said. “All he ever used to care about was motorbikes and animal rights and the fight against global warming. Then, quite suddenly, about a month ago, he seemed to go all strange. Like, he started wearing straw hats and blazers and stupid embroidered waistcoats, and he told me he’d joined this amateur operatic thing and he was going to be the star in this stupid opera they were doing. It was like he’d turned into somebody else, just like that, without any warning.”
Paul thought for a moment, though at something of a tangent to what she’d just said. Rather than tell her what was on his mind, however, he said, “Sounds to me like he’s met someone else.”
She sighed. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “Only I don’t think so; like, he was always dead keen for me to go and see him at rehearsals or listen to him saying his stupid lines. I told him to get stuffed, of course, but he went on asking; so I don’t think he’s got another girl or anything.” She frowned. “And when I told him we were finished, he looked really surprised, like it was a total shock. If he’d found someone else, he should’ve been happy for me to break it off, wouldn’t you say?”
“I guess so,” Paul replied; and then it struck him, as though he were Sir Isaac Newton and he’d just been hit on the head by a huge, scrummy toffee apple. Yes, until fairly recently she’d had a boyfriend; but the boyfriend was just down the road in t
he Highgate Community Arts Centre, warbling away like a demented nightingale, while he was in this pub, with her. Furthermore, there was the timing of the thing to be considered. In her darkest hour, when what she most desperately needed was someone to talk to, Destiny had chivvied him up here from Kentish Town and put him in exactly the right place at precisely the right time. Suddenly, it all made sense, apart from the rather bewildering fact that Destiny had felt obliged to disguise herself as two dead purveyors of nineteenth-century popular culture; and if that was what lit Destiny’s candle for her, he wasn’t about to criticise. Each to his own, he reckoned, and it could’ve been a whole lot worse. “I’m really sorry,” he said, with all the sincerity he could muster. “You must be feeling awful.”
She shrugged. “A bit,” she said. “I mean, yes, I did like him, quite a lot at one point, but I always got the feeling that when we were together I wasn’t really being me, if you follow me; I mean, I wasn’t being the me I wanted to be, I was being the me he wanted me to be, or at least the me he thought I wanted to be; and I was trying to want to be the me he thought I wanted to be, for his sake, and neither of us was being ourselves, so we could never really be us, in a together sort of a way, and so it was all really pretty pointless, for me and for him. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes,” Paul lied. “It must’ve been pretty miserable for you.”
“And for him, I suppose.”
“I guess. Actually,” he admitted, though he couldn’t for the life of him think why, “I’ve never broken up with anybody, so I wouldn’t really know.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’re in a long-term relationship, then.”
“No.”
She considered that as if it was a complex piece of mental arithmetic. “You’ve never had a girlfriend, then.”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Not,” he added, “for want of trying. But everyone I ever liked told me to get lost.”
She looked at him over the rim of her glass. She had a foam moustache, which quite suited her. “Really?”
He shrugged. “Not that it matters,” he said. “I’m just saying, it’s better to have loved and lost, and all that stuff.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Isn’t it? Well, I expect you’re right. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, I don’t really know how bad you’re feeling, but I expect it’s pretty bad, though I don’t suppose you want sympathy either, so I’ll just shut up now. That’s about it, really.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Though it’s probably just as well. I’m not a very nice person, I’m afraid.”
Oh, for crying out loud, Paul thought. “You’re nicer than Mr Tanner,” he said. “I bumped into him this afternoon, in Tesco’s.”
She opened her eyes wide. “In Tesco’s?”
“Just what I thought,” he replied, “though really, I don’t see why it should seem so odd. I mean, even unmitigated bastards have to shop occasionally.”
She frowned. “I’d have thought he’d have made his wife do all the shopping,” she said.
“Me too. But apparently not. He had a little list, and he was crossing things off as he went along.”
She very nearly smiled. “Did he see you?”
Paul nodded. “I walked straight into him, and he was on to me before I could get away.” Like you and me just now, he didn’t add. “He laughed at my pizza,” he said.
“Bastard.”
“I thought so.”
She wrinkled her top lip into a sneer. “I expect his wife does Delia Smith recipes,” she said. “Or fancy readymeals from Marks and Spencer.”
“Actually, they’re having rissoles. He told me.”
“Rissoles.”
Paul nodded. “It only goes to show, there is some justice in the world, after all. You go around being a right bastard for forty-odd years, sooner or later you’re going to get rissoles. Serves him right, I reckon.”
That little crackle of fire, from fingertip to fingertip; actually, nothing as energetic as fire, nothing so showy or conspicuous. But a little warmth, on a cold, wet night—no nightingales in Berkeley Square, just the muffled roar of the jazz band (half of whom appeared to be playing ‘Darktown Strutters Ball’, while a rival faction were blasting out ‘Hello Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz’ with every fibre of their being; they were fighting a losing battle and they probably knew it, but nobody could accuse them of being quitters; meanwhile the pub jukebox was pumping out the current number one, in happy cybernetic oblivion). It was odd that such a rowdy, untidy moment could be so perfect, but it was; because this time she did smile, though it was only a flicker, brief and unusual as a shooting star.
“I’d better go,” she said.
Oh, Paul thought, and the perfect moment evaporated like blowtorched snow. “Well,” he said, “nice bumping into you. And really, I’m sorry about—”
She shrugged. “Actually,” she said, “it’s not so bad.” Hesitation; Paul could almost see the roulette wheel going round, with the little white ball skittering about on it. “See you Monday, then,” she said; and in the back bar, bang on time and clear as a bell, the jazz band launched into ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’. It wasn’t what she’d said, it was the way she’d said it.
“Right,” he replied, in a voice quiet with awe. “See you Monday.”
At the door of the pub, he turned right and she turned left. The rain was cold and hard, and he no longer had enough for the bus fare, but that didn’t matter, and neither did the hole in his shoe.
(Stupid, he thought; because he hadn’t established anything, hadn’t come away with a signed contract or something he could take to the bank. A slight thaw, maybe, an IOU for a few friendly words or a smile, redeemable at an unspecified future date, written on rice paper in invisible ink. Some people—most people, for all he knew—did this sort of thing every day; made friends, established goodwill, maybe planted the seed of affection, without even trying or knowing they were doing it. Some people, most people, but not him, he thought; in this regard, he’d always been the threadbare Russian peasant watching the fine gentlemen go by in their gilded carriages, knowing that whatever he might get his hands on in this life, it wouldn’t be that. But now, who knew? Something very odd was going on, but he didn’t mind a bit.)
From Highgate Village to Kentish Town was hardly far enough for savouring such thoughts as these, even with the rain in his eyes and a soggy left sock. Somewhere in the great darkness of London, Mr Tanner was slowly eating his rissoles, the ex-boyfriend was capering and warbling his hour upon the stage (and if his heart was broken—well, it had to be somebody else’s turn, sooner or later) and the thin girl was back home, towelling off her wet hair and either explaining or refusing to explain why she was back so early from the theatre. As he fumbled in his pocket for the front-door key, Paul could almost see them, each in a separate window on his mental desktop; never before had he felt such a strong sense of so many things going on at once all around him, from sunrise in Tasmania to sunset in Tashkent—and the strangest notion that somehow he was in the middle of it all, that everything led to him the way all roads converge on London. Which was crazy; just because a man’s hounded across the city by Gilbert and Sullivan right into the arms of the girl of his dreams, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s important. Maybe everybody in the world’s allowed one half-hour of supernatural intervention, one statutory wish from a National Health genie to give them their shot at happiness, and the only thing that was at all special about him was that he was one of the one per cent who actually noticed.
Or something like that. He closed the front door behind him and squelched up the stairs. Cheese on toast, he thought, and a cup of black tea. Ah well.
As Paul stepped out onto the landing, he saw that the door of his bedsit was open. That wasn’t wonderfully good, because as it happened he could distinctly remember the click of the bolt as he’d closed it behind him, when he’d left earlier. Not that he had anything at all worth s
tealing, unless a mad collector of 1980s electronics wanted exactly his model of radio⁄cassette player to complete his collection, or the Victoria & Albert Museum had heard about his black-and-white portable and sent a snatch squad. Even so—He pushed the door with his toe and it swung in. The light was on (he remembered turning it off). He counted to ten, added two for luck, and went in.
It wasn’t the God-awful mess that caught his eye, because Paul wasn’t the tidiest person who ever saved a milk-bottle top, and it’d have taken some time and thought to differentiate between the havoc wrought by the intruder and his normal habitat. It wasn’t the absence of key possessions, though on subsequent inspection he discovered that his tin-opener had gone, and also his ironing-board cover, three odd socks and his library book. What he noticed at once as he walked in, and couldn’t have helped noticing unless he’d been blind, was the very large block of stone resting halfway between the washbasin and the bed, and the very large, shiny double-handed sword that was stuck in it.
FOUR
On Sunday morning, when Paul woke up, it was still there. Pity, he thought.
He’d divided the previous night between tidying up the mess (his own, as well as the intruder’s; there was now so little space left in his cramped bedsit, thanks to the Thing, that he couldn’t afford the luxury) and staring at It, wondering what the hell it meant and what he was supposed to do about it. He’d fallen asleep looking at it. Now, as he opened his eyes and saw the silhouette of the hilt against the drawn, glowing curtains, he felt more irritation than wonder or fear. Bloody thing, he thought; bulky, and sharp, too, as the plaster on his right forefinger testified. Far too heavy for him to move on his own (how had they got it up the stairs, for crying out loud? Something that size, you’d need a fork-lift, scaffolding, winches) and placed exactly where it would cause the maximum disruption and inconvenience.
He swung his legs off the bed and stood up, wondering whether a night’s sleep had produced anything resembling a rational explanation. Unfortunately not. Not a practical joke by his friends, not a rare species of fungus that just happened to look like a sword in masonry, not even an unwanted free gift from the Book Club. It hadn’t dropped off a passing airliner, because there wasn’t a corresponding hole in the roof. He got dressed, gave it one last long stare, and crossed the landing.
