Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

by Tom Holt

  Paul frowned. His mother was trying to get the lid off the little box; either she was going to scatter him in the Garden of Remembrance or use him as an ashtray. The lid popped off unexpectedly, fine wisps of grey powder went everywhere, and his mum sneezed.

  ‘Figures,’ Paul said. ‘When I was alive she always said I got right up her nose sometimes. I’m pleased to see dying hasn’t changed that.’

  ‘It’s good that you can make jokes about it,’ Mr Laertides said indulgently. ‘In case you were wondering, by the way, what’s inside that little box is the ashes of two hunded copies of the Financial Times, glamourised to pass for your mortal remains. A suitably ephemeral note, I thought. So, have you seen enough already, or are you dead set on hanging on for the reception?’

  Paul shrugged his shoulders. Thanks to the strong magic he’d learned over the last few days, he had something to shrug with, for a change. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I get the general idea.’

  He turned his back on them and headed for the car park. So far, he had to admit, the great make-over of his existence hadn’t gone precisely as he’d hoped. The biggest disappointment, of course, was that Sophie hadn’t bothered to show up, but probably that was for the best too. Either she’d have been genuinely upset, which would’ve made him feel bad, or she wouldn’t, which would’ve been worse. Maybe she couldn’t get the time off work, he told himself. That would be JWW all over. Only twelve, though; that wasn’t good. Even Uncle Ken was missing, he noticed; Uncle Ken had always remembered Paul’s birthday, but apparently couldn’t be bothered to make an effort for his death. It was enough to make him wish he’d made a will so he could have left nothing to any of them, except that there hadn’t been anything to leave, apart from dirty laundry, inchoate washing-up and a few tins of baked beans.

  ‘I’ll miss the flat, though,’ he said aloud. ‘What’s going to happen to all my stuff?’

  ‘Sold,’ Mr Laertides replied. ‘The whole lot’ll just about fetch enough to pay off the outstanding week’s rent.’ He grinned. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve seen to it. A friend of mine does house clearances, he bought the lot, you can owe it to me until you start work again and get your first pay cheque. While we’re on the subject, I went and saw your landlord. Said my nephew was moving to London, and I heard there was a flat going. My friend’s got all your stuff in cardboard boxes at his lock-up, and he’ll put it back this afternoon. All right?’

  ‘Oh,’ Paul said. ‘Thanks,’ he added. ‘I mean, it’s only junk, but—’ He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t want to have to say that everything his life had amounted to was there, so little of it, so worthless, just things, but it was all he’d got. ‘Thanks,’ he repeated. ‘You’ve been to a lot of trouble.’

  ‘It was my idea,’ Mr Laertides replied. ‘It’s up to me to keep the inconvenience down to a minimum. Now, I don’t know about you but I could do with some lunch.’ He yawned. ‘Ricky Wurmtoter didn’t make it down, I noticed. I thought you and he got along all right. You saved his life or something.’

  Paul shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I helped him get shot of Countess Judy, but that didn’t make us best buddies. Besides, he was probably off on business and couldn’t get away.’

  Mr Laertides got in the car. He had a huge open green Bentley, conspicuous as an exploding gas main. ‘She wasn’t there either,’ he said. ‘You’re upset about that, I can see. Maybe she just couldn’t face it.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Paul didn’t want to talk about that. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t care less, actually. I’d have missed my CD collection, but I can do without Sophie Pettingell. Or any of them,’ he added, with a shrug. ‘Which is just as well, really.’

  ‘That’s the spirit. What we need,’ Mr Laertides said, starting the engine, ‘is comfort food; which boils down to a simple choice, pizza or pie and chips. Your choice.’

  ‘Pizza,’ Paul replied. ‘See?’ he added. ‘Decisive. I’m improving, aren’t I?’

  ‘Bloody, bold and resolute,’ Mr Laertides replied gravely. ‘I ought to point out that I detest pizza and it gives me wind, but this is your special day. My treat,’ he added.

  Paul looked round at him and thought, Why’s he doing this? for the seventy-fifth time that day. He knew the answer in general terms, of course. Mr Laertides wanted something from him, something only he could do or get or be, in connection with some JWW-type scheme. There would be a great deal of money in it for him, none of which was likely to come Paul’s way. It would almost certainly end in tears, and only a complete and utter idiot would’ve got involved in it in the first place. On the other hand - he happened to catch a glimpse of his new face in the wing mirror of Mr Laertides’s beautiful car. That’s me, he thought in wonder. And, since everything he’d ever done had always gone wrong anyway, and Man is born to sorrow as the toast falls buttered-side downwards, why the hell not?

  ‘So that’s you fixed up,’ Mr Laertides was saying. ‘You’ve got somewhere to live, a job to go to in the morning, and you look the way a Hollywood star thinks he looks when he checks himself out in the mirror.’ He paused, stamping down on the accelerator to overtake a milk float. ‘All you need now,’ he said, ‘is a name.’

  ‘Philip Marlow,’ Paul said, smiling. ‘Mr Tanner should be expecting me. I’m the new assistant.’

  The woman behind the desk scowled at him through her half-inch-thick glasses. ‘I’ll let him know you’re here,’ she said. ‘Take a seat, he won’t be long.’

  No gorgeous blonde, sultry redhead, stunning brunette or lotus-eyed Oriental beauty on reception today; instead, a massive fifty-something with hair like steel wool stretched back in a bun, and a wart on her chin. It took Paul fifteen seconds to figure out that this was Mr Tanner’s mum’s equivalent of full mourning. He was touched, but obviously couldn’t show it. He nodded politely, sat down and picked up a two-year-old colour supplement from the pile on the table.

  Philip Marlow hadn’t been his idea, not really. All through lunch he’d dithered, rejecting Mr Laertides’s suggestions and making none of his own, until Mr Laertides had asked him, in an apparent change of subject, if he liked old black-and-white thrillers. He’d been unwise enough to say yes, he didn’t mind them occasionally, and now here he was. At least it ought to be easy to remember—

  ‘Mr Tanner’s ready for you now,’ said Mr Tanner’s mum. He thanked her and set off towards the fire door that separated the front office from the rest of the building, only remembering as his hand made contact with the handle that he wasn’t supposed to know the way. ‘Can you tell me . . . ?’ he began; Mr Tanner’s mum nodded and reeled off a set of directions which would, he reckoned, leave him stranded in the third floor ladies’ toilet. ‘Got that?’ she said.

  Paul nodded. ‘I’ll find it,’ he said, and set off up the stairs without looking back.

  Things, he couldn’t help thinking, were starting to look up already. For the first time since he’d joined the firm, he hadn’t had the embarrassment of fighting off Mr Tanner’s mum’s extra-goblin brand of mild flirtation as he ran the gauntlet of the front office. He’d been a bit worried about that. She’d fancied him rotten when he was Paul The Mess Carpenter. Given her readily admitted weakness for cute humans, Paul had wondered how the hell Philip Marlow was going to get out of reception with a shred of clothing left on him. Apparently, though, she wasn’t in the mood this morning; a blessing, Paul decided, as long as it lasted.

  A minute or so later he was knocking on Mr Tanner’s door. The first time he’d been in this room, he remembered as he picked his way across the file-strewn floor between the door and the desk, the general ambience of intimidating weirdness had struck him incoherent, and he’d gawped and gabbled like a clown with toothache. Now, being used to it all, he could move through the cigar-smoke fog and under the rows of neatly mounted razor-edged tomahawks that lined every wall without a second look. If he didn’t know better, he’d have believed that Mr Tanner was impressed by such a
display of insouciance; because instead of scowling at him and grunting, Mr Tanner stood up and held out his hand, like a real human being.

  ‘Dennis Tanner,’ he said, ‘commodities and mineral rights. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?’

  ‘Thanks,’ Paul replied, and sat down. Of course, he now knew all about Mr Tanner’s office chair, and lowered himself into it carefully and with precision. (‘Don’t let it sense you’re afraid of it,’ Benny Shumway had advised him once. ‘Be afraid of it by all means, just don’t let it know.’) While he did this Mr Tanner buzzed for Christine and placed the coffee order.

  ‘Well,’ Mr Tanner went on, looking at him warily through his round, practically lidless eyes. ‘Frank Laertides seems to think very highly of you.’

  One of the many things that Philip Marlow could do and Paul Carpenter couldn’t was fluent body language. A very slight dip of the head put across exactly the right blend of familiarity and respect. ‘I’ve been lucky enough to work with him before, as you know,’ Paul said. ‘He reckons we make a good team.’ A faint flicker of a deprecating smile. God, Paul couldn’t help thinking, communication was really piss-easy when you didn’t have to blunder about using stupid old words.

  ‘If Frank wants you on board, that’s good enough for us,’ Mr Tanner was saying, in a tone of voice Paul had never heard before; practically ingratiating, almost as though Mr Tanner was glad he was here . . . A strange and sudden thought struck him. This was what it felt like, he realised, to get off on the right foot, make a good first impression. ‘It was a stroke of luck you being available at precisely this moment,’ Mr Tanner went on, ‘since we’ve suddenly found ourselves short-staffed - I don’t know if Frank’s filled you in on the background, or—’ Paul nodded, and Mr Tanner relaxed a little, clearly grateful not to have to go through a long and dreary story. ‘I’m hoping you don’t mind jumping right in at the deep end; it’d be a great help to all of us if you could see your way to starting right away, though if that’s not convenient—’

  ‘No problem,’ Paul said. (Confident, decisive, short and to the point; everything Paul Carpenter had never been. Why, why the fuck did a slight rearrangement of his facial geography make such a vast difference?) ‘I have the feeling that it won’t take me very long at all to get settled in here. If I may say so, Mr Tanner, you run a tight ship.’

  (What did that mean, exactly? A ship that never bought a round? A ship that kept getting wedged in the entrances to small harbours?) ‘We do our best,’ Mr Tanner replied, and Paul could actually see him swelling, froglike, just a tiny bit. ‘We try and make it a happy ship too, of course. We’ve always found that just sort of comes along once you’ve got everything running as smoothly as you can. Anyhow,’ he went on, ‘according to Frank you know the work inside out; anything else you want any help with, just give me a shout and we’ll get you fixed up in no time. Meanwhile, all I’ve got left to say is, welcome aboard.’

  So much maritime imagery, Paul wouldn’t have been surprised if Mr Tanner had hopped up onto his desk and started dancing a hornpipe. And the hypocrisy of it all; run a tight ship, indeed. Paul Carpenter could never have got away with any of that kind of twaddle in a million years. Was it really just because his nose was a bit straighter, his ears a tad less elephantine? Not that it mattered. He’d read somewhere that scientists had conclusively proved that the difference between drop-dead gorgeous and back-end-of-a-bus ugly was usually no more than twenty-five thousandths of an inch . . . He surfaced from his reflections in time to hear Mr Tanner buzzing someone else. ‘I’ve asked Vicky to join us,’ he was saying. ‘She’ll show you round, tell you where everything is. She’ll be doing your general typing and filing. We’ve only just promoted her out of the typing pool, but she seems like a bright enough girl.’

  Dear God, Paul thought, they’re giving me a secretary. Somehow it struck him as bizarre, faintly barbaric, like an arranged marriage, or sacrificing a chicken to the gods. But that’ll mean giving orders, telling someone what to do; I can’t do that. Correction: Paul Carpenter couldn’t have done that. But Paul’s not here any more, is he?

  ‘And if there’s anything you need help with,’ Mr Tanner was saying, ‘there’s always Sophie Pettingell, the junior clerk.’ Mr Tanner paused, frowned. ‘Her manner takes a bit of getting used to,’ he went on, as though he was trying to sell Paul a semi-derelict second-hand car, ‘but she’s a good little worker when she sets her mind to it.’

  Paul felt his right hand clench into a fist; but no, bashing Mr Tanner’s face in wouldn’t be a good idea, not even for popular, likeable Phil Marlow. Besides, he reminded himself, this is Mr Tanner, you know he’s an arsehole, so what do you expect? A fundamental rule of life had just, he realised, become relevant to him for the first time ever: just because someone likes you, it’s not obligatory to like them back.

  ‘Sorry,’ Paul said, ‘what was that name again? Sophie—’

  ‘Pettingell,’ Mr Tanner repeated. ‘I expect you’ll run into her sooner or later. At the moment she’s been drafted in to work with Theo van Spee.’ Pause, and Mr Tanner looked at him; you don’t need me to explain why, his expression was saying, gratefully. Clearly the death of Paul Carpenter was something nobody wanted to talk about. Fine by me, Paul thought.

  A knock at the door. Paul had his back to it, and so he heard the voice before he saw the face. By then, Mr Tanner was doing introductions: ‘Vicky, this is Philip Marlow, who you’re going to be working with.’ She said how nice, or words to that effect; he knew her voice instantly, which was probably just as well. He wasn’t sure he’d have recognised her without her tail.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, and smiled; and Paul thought, Thank God for Mr Laertides and the medicine, without which—Actually, he’d been completely wrong about one thing. He’d have recognised her straight away in any context, because of that hair; bright, soft auburn with gold streaks so light they could almost be silver. Only just promoted her out of the typing pool, Mr Tanner had said; that should’ve put him on notice, only he hadn’t been paying attention. Must stop that. Too slack, too Paul Carpenter. Talking of which - he did a quick systems analysis, hoping he wasn’t being too obvious about it, and was vastly relieved to find that, despite the hair and the voice and the smile, the medicine did appear to be working. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said brightly.

  The next half-hour was awkward, to say the least. Vicky led him down the corridors and up the stairs, into offices and interview rooms and closed-file stores and kitchens; it was all completely familiar, of course, but also somehow strange, not because it had changed, but because he had - it was as though Robinson Crusoe had returned to his island incognito on a package tour and the guide had shown him his cave, his lookout, the beach where he’d seen the footprint. ‘And this is the junior clerks’ office,’ she was saying, as she knocked on the door and Sophie’s voice, typically petulant, called out ‘Come in.’

  She was sitting at the desk, and all Paul could see of her was the crown of her head, poking out over the top of a huge mound of Mortensen printouts. Then she disappeared completely for a moment, and emerged a second later round the side of the great pile. Her eyes had the dead look of the long-term paper-shuffler, and she looked at them both blankly without saying anything.

  ‘This is Philip Marlow,’ Vicky said, her cheerful tone faltering slightly in the face of Sophie’s vacant stare. ‘He’s joined us as Mr Laertides’s assistant. Phil,’ (at what point had he become Phil? Not that he minded, he just couldn’t remember), ‘this is Sophie Pettingell, the junior clerk.’

  ‘Hi,’ Sophie said.

  Which was odd. Sophie didn’t say ‘Hi’, in roughly the same way that she didn’t run singing through meadows full of spring flowers while wearing floral-print dresses. Nor did she smile at people she’d never met before. For a split second he assumed that she was pleased to see Vicky, but apparently not; in fact, if she’d registered Vicky’s existence at all it could only have been for an instant and then she’d dismisse
d it as irrelevant and unnecessary, possibly even unwelcome. No; she was smiling at him, and saying ‘Hi’ and—

  Blushing?

  Water doesn’t flow uphill, the sun doesn’t rise in the west, lead weights don’t hover in mid-air when you drop them, and Sophie Pettingell never, ever blushed. It was just one of those things, a given, Scotty looking sad and moaning, ‘I canna change the laws o’ physics, cap’n.’ But her dark eyes were wide, and she was looking at him the way—He fumbled around in his memory and found what he was searching for. She was looking at him the way Paul Carpenter used to look at girls, at least until they noticed and asked him not to.

  The same Paul Carpenter would’ve said ‘Um’ at this point, or something equally brilliant. But he was in his little box now, ashes to ashes. ‘My God,’ Paul said, ‘you look busy. Is it always as bad as this around here?’

  Sophie laughed, or rather simpered (and E announced that it had had enough of equalling mc2, and was planning to start a new life in Patagonia with the square on the hypotenuse). ‘Not usually,’ she said. ‘But it’s been really, like, hectic since Paul - he was the other junior clerk, but he—’ She stopped dead and shook herself like a wet dog. ‘It’s just me now, and so I’ve got to do all his work as well.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ Paul said, and she nodded three times very quickly. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she said bravely. ‘So, you’re working with Mr Laertides, then.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I haven’t actually met him yet, myself,’ Sophie said. ‘But I’m really, really interested in that side of the business.’ She hesitated, and in one of those rare, brief flashes of insight that you get sometimes when you least expect them, Paul realised that she didn’t actually know what Mr Laertides did. ‘So maybe—’

  ‘It’s a fascinating area, media and public relations,’ Paul said rapidly. ‘And Frank’s quite possibly the best there is, so if you do get a chance to sit in with us, you couldn’t hope for a better start.’ He smiled encouragingly, just in case there was the slightest possible ambiguity, and a sort of stuffed expression covered Sophie’s face, one which was immediately familiar to Paul from a long succession of mirrors. ‘So,’ he said, ‘who are you with right now?’