Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

by Tom Holt

  They held. Bless them, Paul thought. Bless whoever made them, whoever specified and ordered them, packed them, fitted them, because they’d done a good job in a world far more dangerous than they could ever begin to imagine. And the least he could do was try and give them a little bit of support. Gingerly, as though touching a hot pan-handle, he reached out and slid the top bolt home again. It didn’t burn, bite or struggle, so he slammed back the rest of the bolts; and when the next thump came, the door didn’t flex at all. Next he hooked up the chains, and mercifully they stayed put. The next assault cracked the plaster round the edge of the door frame, but nothing budged; and unless Paul was kidding himself, it wasn’t quite as ferocious as the previous one, or the one before that. Was it possible that the thing on the other side was getting tired, running out of steam? He watched as the bolts quivered a little but didn’t move. One more thump, but it was more a venting of frustrated anger. Then nothing.

  At this point, Paul realised that he’d been neglecting his breathing, and caught up. A few deep breaths and he was thinking better; in particular, he was remembering something a little voice had said to him about getting out of there, and now he came to think of it that wasn’t a bad idea. First, however, he tapped the sword-hilt sideways with the palm of his hand, till the weapon came free and toppled over onto the floor. Pushing it out of the way with the side of his foot, he grabbed the big, heavy filing cabinet that stood beside the door (there was a cake box, of all things, on top of it, but he chucked that on the floor) and hauled it down onto its side; then he shoved, heaved and manhandled it up tight against the door. It wasn’t much, but it was something; and besides, it wasn’t his fault or his choice that he was in the position of defending the land of the living against invaders from the other side, with no resources at his disposal apart from office furniture. He knelt down, grabbed the sword and ran out of the office, slamming the door behind him. In the corridor, he paused, swore out loud, went back in, snatched the files he’d been sent to collect off the desk, and withdrew once more. This time, he didn’t stop running till he was back in the passage outside Mr Laertides’s office. He knocked and went in.

  ‘What kept you?’

  ‘Well, there was this—’ Paul stopped, and stared. The man sitting behind the desk wasn’t the round-headed Mr Porphyrothingummy. Instead, Mr Laertides was lounging in his usual slightly exaggerated manner, hands behind his head. ‘When did you get back?’

  Mr Laertides frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, when did you get back?’

  ‘I’ve been here all morning, as well you know. Look, have you got those files or not, because I’ve got a lot to get done before—’

  ‘No, you haven’t,’ Paul said grimly. ‘I got in at twenty past nine and you weren’t here. There was this other bloke, Mr Por—’ Screw it, he couldn’t remember the name. ‘This other bloke. Short, tubby, round head like a football.’

  Both of Mr Laertides’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Are you feeling all right?’ he said. ‘I was here at half-eight this morning, and I’ve been here ever since.You were your usual punctual self; three minutes past nine.’

  ‘Balls,’ Paul said. ‘You weren’t here. Roundhead Guy was sitting there, right where you are. He sent me to get these files.’

  Mr Laertides stretched forward - it was as though his upper torso was plasticene - and peered at the files in Paul’s arms. ‘Those are the files, all right. You found them on Benny Shumway’s desk, yes?’

  ‘Yes, that’s - how did you know that?’

  ‘Because I asked you to get them for me. Twenty minutes ago, actually, but you’re here now, so—’

  He reached out for the files, but Paul stepped back. Instinctively, he raised the sword a little. Mr Laertides couldn’t have noticed it before; when he saw it, he went suddenly very still and quiet. ‘What are you waving that thing around for?’ he said in a flat, soft voice.

  ‘I got here late,’ Paul said. ‘I had a hangover - I missed my bus. When I got in there was nobody about; nobody on reception, the front office was empty, nobody in the corridors or anything. You weren’t here, but this round bloke was. He said you were away today, he was minding the store for you. He sent me to get these files—’

  There was a knock on the door. Mr Laertides scowled, called out, ‘Yes, come in’, and Mr Tanner walked in. ‘You got the Amalgamated Mouldings file?’ he asked.

  Mr Laertides nodded. ‘Just beside you, look, on top of the filing cabinet.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Mr Tanner moved to get the file and caught sight of the sword in Paul’s hand; maybe he did a very slight double take, or maybe not. Then he left, closing the door behind him.

  Mr Laertides smiled. ‘I think you’d just got to the bit where the building was completely deserted,’ he said.

  ‘It was,’ Paul said resolutely. ‘All right, I didn’t search the place from top to bottom, but—’

  Another knock. This time it was Cas Suslowicz, wanting to borrow Mr Laertides’s twelve-dimensional calculator.

  ‘But,’ Paul went on, ‘I came all the way here from the front office, then from here up to Benny’s, and there was nobody about, and it was dead quiet.’

  Mr Laertides shrugged. ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘So you got the files. Why the cold steel, by the way? You got a really stroppy letter to open, or something?’

  ‘I found—’ Paul hesitated. He had no idea why, but he was sure that it wouldn’t be a good idea to tell Mr Laertides about the connecting door trying to open itself. ‘I found it in Benny’s room, but actually it’s mine. I, um, left it there a while back, so while I was passing I thought I’d bring it along.’

  Mr Laertides’s smile widened, like the gap in the ozone layer. ‘And why not?’ he said. ‘Do it now, I always say: if you leave it till later you’ll forget all about it. Anyway,’ he went on, yawning hugely, ‘you’ve got the files I need, and you’ve got your sword back, so we’re all happy, aren’t we? And now, if it’s all the same to you, perhaps we can get on and do some paying work.’

  I could refuse, Paul thought. I could refuse to give him these files unless he tells me what the hell’s going on. But—He remembered, for some reason, a history lesson at junior school, horrible batty old Miss Hook telling them the story of King Canute and the sea. Precisely; he could stand there and command the waves to go back, he could shout and wave his arms about and threaten to resign and anything else that occurred to him on the spur of the moment, but he was still going to end up with wet shoes and soggy socks. ‘Here you are,’ he said quietly, handing over the files. ‘Anything you want me to do?’

  Mr Laertides frowned, then shrugged. ‘Can’t think of anything offhand - no, wait a second, there is one thing you could do for me. Just nip across the road to Waterpebbles, see if the book I ordered last week’s arrived yet.’ He scribbled a few words on the back of a petty-cash slip. ‘It’s all paid for, you just need to pick it up.’

  Paul nodded and left without a word. In the corridor, just past the closed-file store, he nearly bumped into Sophie, who was coming out of the stationery cupboard with a large box of paper clips. She mumbled a greeting and scuttled past, her gaze fixed on the carpet. As if that wasn’t enough adventure for one day, a few yards further on he came face to face with Theo Van Spee himself.

  ‘Mr—’ Van Spee narrowed his eyes. ‘You are Mr Marlow,’ he said, but without his usual ring of absolute conviction. ‘You work with Mr Laertides, and you’re just going to collect a book for him. They have it in stock, but Mr Laertides has in fact not yet paid for it. You will give them a cheque, and Mr Laertides will reimburse you in cash. His favourite colour is grey. You are fond of crème brûlée and zabaglione, but you have never been to Toronto. The key to the problem that has been disturbing you for some time was until recently under your bed; now, however—’ He hesitated and frowned a little; his lips moved but no words came out. Then he asked, ‘Excuse me, but haven’t we met before?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Paul replied.
/>   ‘Really? For a moment I was sure—’ The professor closed his eyes just for a second. When he opened them again, he seemed much more composed. ‘Your father loves you very deeply, unlike your mother. You should in future avoid strong drink whenever possible, and the alarm clock on your bedside table is four minutes slow. Quite soon you will cause the death of one of your colleagues, but not two. Something you are relying on is actually worthless and false, but this is no bad thing. You are standing on my left foot.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Paul said, and shifted slightly.

  ‘It is of no consequence,’ the professor replied, lifting his foot and wincing slightly. ‘One of them loves you—’ He scowled and shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true. That is, one of them does indeed love you, but not the one I thought it was or in the way I had anticipated. The fridge is, to a certain extent, the key, but first you must understand properly why you couldn’t fix it. You are far less than you used to be, but will be far more in due course. I suggest that you glance at the book before you give it to Mr Laertides, and your worst nightmare will show you the way. Do you happen to have the right time? I fancy my watch is running fast.’

  ‘Um,’ Paul said; then he looked at the clock on the wall just behind the professor’s head, and told him it was a quarter past ten.

  ‘Thank you,’ the professor said. ‘I am very sorry to have met you. Good day.’

  It took Paul several minutes to recover from all that. Working at JWW, however, had given him the knack of burying his head so deep in the sand that he could practically smell magma, and by the time he passed the front desk - Mr Tanner’s mum was back on form again, a slim, curly-haired redhead with freckled shoulders and misty green eyes, but she ignored him completely - he was mostly wondering whether he dared make the most of his trip out of the office and stop off somewhere for a coffee and a snack.

  As he crossed the road it occurred to him that Mr Laertides hadn’t specified which branch of Waterpebbles. He took out the note he’d been given, and saw that the address was written down there, along with the right department to ask at, and which floor it was on, and of course the title of the book: The Garden of Chivalry. Whatever.

  ‘The garden of what?’ asked the girl behind the counter.

  ‘Chivalry,’ Paul replied. ‘Or I suppose it could be cavalry.’

  ‘You sure you don’t mean Landscaping Your Window Box With Alan Titchmarsh?’

  Paul thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Absolutely sure.’

  ‘Oh. Or Alan Titchmarsh’s Big Book of Compost?’

  ‘Still sure, thanks.’

  ‘Or An Introduction By Alan Titchmarsh With A Book By Somebody Or Other?’

  ‘Not even that,’ Paul said. ‘Sorry.’

  The girl shrugged. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ she said, with the air of a doctor prescribing aspirin for a bad case of death. ‘But it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing we usually sell.’

  Paul nodded. ‘Not by Alan Titchmarsh, you mean?’

  The girl seemed offended. ‘We’ve got books by other people as well, you know. Baby Spice, Scary Spice—’

  ‘Old Spice?’

  She ignored that. ‘Desmond Lynam,’ she went on, ‘Delia Smith, Trinny and Susannah, Jamie whatsisname with the hair, that bloke who does the weather on BBC2. We’ve got loads of books, actually.’

  ‘Great,’ Paul said. ‘Do you think you could go and have a look for this one?’

  She sighed. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Wait there.’

  Ten minutes later she came back, holding a book and wearing a slightly stunned expression. ‘This what you were after?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Paul replied. ‘Can I have a look at it?’

  ‘What? Oh, I suppose so.’ She put it down on the desk and wiped her hands on her jeans. ‘The Garden of Chivalry: Illuminated Manuscripts from Fourteenth-Century Saskatchewan, by Jean-Paul de Saussignac.’ She shook her head. ‘You sure you want that?’

  Paul smiled. ‘It’s for a friend,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, right.’ That, apparently, explained everything. ‘That’ll be thirty-nine ninety-nine, then.’

  There followed a circular and rather dreary little discussion about whether or not the book had been paid for in advance; then Paul wrote out a cheque, was issued with the book and a receipt, and left the shop before the girl could change her mind. Out in the fresh air, he caught a hefty reprise of his hangover. Coffee, he thought, and a snack. Fortunately, there was a Starbucksy sort of place a few yards down the street. He bought a cup of coffee and a custard slice and, not because Professor Van Spee had told him to, oh dear no, but because he had nothing else to beguile his mind with, opened Mr Laertides’s book and started to read.

  Mostly it was just pictures; a book of pictures of pictures in books, which struck Paul as faintly incestuous. As pictures, they were all right if you liked that sort of thing: knights in armour and droopy-looking women in blue holding flowers, in the margins of columns of strange-looking writing; Latin, he guessed, or possibly Klingon. Attractive in a wishy-washy sort of a way, but rather monotonous after a while; also, whoever had drawn them had a rotten eye for perspective. Here, for instance, was a picture of two men bashing each other up with sharp weapons on a tiny island the size of a rubber dinghy surrounded by unconvincing-looking water. On the opposite page there was a castle; but the men standing outside it shooting arrows and throwing rocks were almost as tall as the walls, and the people inside the castle were just as big, which meant there was only room for four of them. On the next page, a man with a curly beard and two extremely ugly women with wings were hovering in mid-air over the heads of some kneeling people, all of them face-on and looking hopelessly constipated. Facing that was a sort of cartoon strip: the same people appeared in each of the dozen small pictures, and one of them looked like he was carrying a building balanced on his right hand, like a waiter carrying a tray. Not, Paul decided, his cup of tea, particularly when his head felt more than a touch fragile. Silly, most of it, and the rest was just plain dull. Bet you don’t get rubbish like that in an Alan Titchmarsh book.

  ‘You want another coffee?’ asked a voice behind his head. Conscious that he’d been sitting there with an empty cup for some time, taking up floor space that could have been earning revenue, he nodded several times and said, ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Coming right up. You like the cake?’

  ‘Mmm. Yes, fantastic, thanks.’

  ‘You want another slice?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Just the coffee.’

  Paul caught sight of his watch. He’d been there half an hour. ‘Actually.’ He stood up and closed the book with a snap. ‘I have to go now. Thanks all the same.’

  ‘Oh. You don’t want the coffee?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is poured now already. You take. On the house.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Paul said, turning round to face the speaker, ‘it’s just that I lost track of the time and I’m going to be late, so—’

  His mouth might have carried on moving for a split second or so, like the proverbial headless chicken running round the yard, but no words came out. The man who’d spoken to him was half-hidden behind the counter, but Paul could plainly see his round, perfectly circular bald head, balanced on top of a similarly spherical body, like a snowman. At the same moment he remembered a name he’d been groping for at some point in the recent past. Mr Palaeologus, the toothbrush-and-antique-prints man.

  ‘You take,’ the round man repeated, his tone of voice making it clear that this was an order rather than a suggestion. ‘No money. Present.’ He tipped coffee from a mug into a styrofoam cup, and pressed on a lid. ‘Also more cake,’ he added. ‘Custard slice, is very popular. Many women in love with bad men come here to eat, makes them fat but happy.’ He fished a slice off the tray with a big pair of steel tongs, dumped it in an open-ended cardboard box, and slid the box into a paper bag. ‘Enjoy. You are in love too, maybe. Take mind off.’

&nb
sp; Well, Paul thought, why not? He didn’t wait for a reply, probably because, if it was at all accurate, it’d take way too long. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Welcome.’

  ‘Um.’ There was no point asking, and he had more chance of getting a straight answer out of a Cabinet minister, but even so. ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘You do now. Before—’ The man shrugged. ‘Is possible. I been here many years, many years.’

  ‘You don’t sort of run a map-and-toothbrush shop, in your spare time?’

  The man looked at Paul as if he was drooling down his lapels. That was presumably a No.

  ‘You don’t have a twin brother or anything?’

  The man shook his head. ‘I come here from the old country twenty-seven years ago. No brother, no sister, not even aunt or second cousin.’

  ‘Ah, right.’ One last try, and then he’d done his duty to Curiosity, and could leave. ‘The old country,’ Paul said. ‘Where would that be, exactly?’

  ‘Manitoba,’ the man replied. ‘In the old days, before the war, we are dukes and counts and princes; much land, much money, we live in great palace. Then the war come and pfft! Is very sad, but—’ The man shrugged. ‘Is very bad, but we come here, we make new life. Is not like old country. Is shit compared to old country, but what you do? Now you take coffee, you take cake, have nice day. Goodbye.’

  Manitoba, Paul thought as the door swung shut behind him. It’s all Miss Hook’s fault; because if she hadn’t been so horrible and so boring, maybe I’d have learned some geography and history and stuff back when I was eleven, and then I’d know where the hell Manitoba is. Counts and dukes and princes; that sounded sort of eastern European, and of course they were always having wars out that way.

  As he started to walk down the street, the book slipped out of its carrier bag and fell on the pavement. He stooped to pick it up; there was a dusty mark on the jacket and one corner was bruised; also, he’d contrived to drop a splodge of custard on the flyleaf. Wonderful.