Expecting Someone Taller Tom Holt

by Expecting Someone Taller (lit)

  That was not how he had meant to suggest that she should have dinner with him. He had wanted to suggest it casually. He had wanted many things in his life, and got very few of them. But the girl did not seem to mind. She said, "Are you sure that's all right?" and Malcolm felt a tiny flicker of impatience within his raging heart, but it passed very quickly.

  "It must be nice having a cook," she said.

  Malcolm felt the need to define himself against a charge of hedonism. "I'm afraid I'm a dreadful cook," he said, "And she sort of came with the place."

  The girl said nothing, and Malcolm forced some more words into his mouth, grabbing the first ones that came to hand.

  "You know how it is," he burbled, "these great big houses."

  Utter drivel of course, but she seemed not to notice. "Yes," she said, "we used to live in a huge old house. It was dreadfully difficult to keep it clean and warm."

  She seemed unwilling to expand on this point, and they walked on in silence. Malcolm had no idea where they were going, but that did not seem to matter very much.

  "Was it as big as this? Your house, I mean." Any more of this, Malcolm thought, and I shall bite my tongue off.

  "Yes," said the girl. "It kept me and my sisters very busy."

  "You've got sisters, then?" he went on, as if that were the most remarkable thing that he had ever heard.

  "Eight," said the girl. "It's a large family. Are you sure it's all right me staying to dinner? I mean, you haven't got people coming or anything?"

  "No," Malcolm said, "really. Shall we go and sit in the drawing-room?"

  The girl was silent, as if thinking this over very carefully. "Yes," she said at last.

  It was at this point that it occurred to Malcolm that he hadn't read her thoughts, to see if by any chance they resembled his, no matter how remotely. But he found that he didn't want to. It seemed somehow indecent, for she was not a God or a Rhinedaughter, but a human being. Besides, if she wasn't thinking along the same lines as he was, he really didn't want to know.

  "You speak English very well," she said, as Malcolm eventually found the drawing-room.

  "Thank you," Malcolm said, deeply touched, and only just managed to stop himself from returning the compliment. "I went to school in England," he said, truthfully. "Can I get you a drink?"

  "No, thank you," said the girl, looking down at her feet.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Well, if you're sure..."

  Malcolm was sure, but he felt it would be superfluous to say so. "What can I get you?" he asked.

  "A small sherry, please."

  Malcolm poured out a small sherry—very small, as it turned out, for he did not want her to think he was trying to get her drunk. "Is that enough?" he asked.

  "That's fine." Another smile, this time a "We can't go on like this, you know" smile.

  "So how long have you been cataloguing?"

  "About two years," said the girl. That seemed to put the seal on that particular subject.

  "I suppose it's like being a librarian," Malcolm went on, and he reckoned that digging peat was probably easier work than making conversation under these circumstances. The girl agreed that it was very like being a librarian.

  "How long have you lived here?" she asked, and Malcolm found that he could not remember. He had to think hard before he replied. Afterwards, there was a long silence, during which the girl drank a quarter of her small sherry. The temptation to read her thoughts was very strong, but Malcolm resisted it. It wouldn't be fair.

  "So how do you set about cataloguing a library?" he asked. The girl told him, and that took up at least three minutes, during which Malcolm was able to collect what remained of his thoughts. Summoning up all his powers of imagination, he compiled a list of questions and topics which might, with a great deal of luck, get them through dinner.

  In the event, they nearly did, although Malcolm had to use a great deal of ingenuity. Why did he find it so easy to talk to Flosshilde, who was only a friend, and so difficult to keep a conversation going with the most wonderful person in the world? There was only one topic that he couldn't mention; on the other hand, it was the one topic he did want to discuss with her. Instead, they mostly seemed to talk about libraries, a subject that Malcolm had never given much consideration to in the past. At about half-past nine, even this theme collapsed into silence, and Malcolm resigned himself to yet another disappointment. The girl was obviously nervous and ill at ease; scarcely to be wondered at. She had come here to do a straightforward job of work, the job she had trained to do and at which she was no doubt highly competent, and instead of being allowed to go to a comfortable hotel where she could take her shoes off and read a good book she had been compelled to listen to his inane ramblings. She must think he was mad. Certainly, she wouldn't be there in the morning. At first light, she would unlock her door and make a run for it, or climb out of the window down a rope of sheets. It was all unbearably sad, and as a human being he was a complete and utter failure. He had made the mistake of treating a normal, grown-up woman from the twentieth century as if she was something out of a romantic story, and he deserved all the heartbreak he was undoubtedly going to get.

  "I expect you're very tired," he said abruptly, "after the journey and a hard day's work. I'll show you to your room."

  They tracked up the stairs in silence. It was still light outside, but she could read a book or something until it was time to go to sleep. At least he wasn't sending her to bed without any supper.

  "Good night, then," she said, and she smiled at him for the last time that day. It was a smile you could take a photograph by, and it said, "I like you very much and it's a pity you think I'm so boring, but there we go." The door closed in front of the embers of it, and Malcolm stood in the hall opening and shutting his eyes. To hell with being fair. He located her thoughts and read them. Then he read them again, just to be sure. Then he read them again, because he liked them so much.

  "Well I'm damned," he said slowly to himself. "Well I never."

  Then he went to bed.

  * * *

  The two ravens floated down and perched on the roof of the Mercedes. Wotan put his head out of the window and said "Well?"

  "They've gone to bed," said Thought.

  "Separately," said Memory.

  "But not to worry," said Thought. "She's doing all right."

  Wotan frowned. "But he can read her thoughts," said Wotan. "He'll just look into her mind and then it'll be all over. He'll chuck her out so fast she'll bounce all the way down the drive."

  Memory chuckled. "I wouldn't worry on that score," he croaked. "He's dead meat. Head over heels."

  "And even if he does," said his partner, "he'll only make things worse for himself. I had a quick look myself."

  "Oh." Wotan was baffled. "You can't mean she fancies him?"

  "Something rotten," said Thought. "You wouldn't read about it."

  "Oh, that's marvellous," Wotan said, disgusted. "Now I'll never get the perishing thing back."

  "Relax," said Memory. "You know her. Duty must come first, even if it means betraying the man she truly loves."

  "Especially if it means betraying the man she loves," said Thought. "She's a real chip off the old block, that girl."

  Wotan was forced to agree. Of all his eight surviving daughters, the Valkyrie Ortlinde most resembled her father in her capacity for self-torture. She would revel in it. Most of all, she would enjoy blaming him afterwards.

  "We've cracked it," said Wotan.

  10.

  ALBERICH LOATHED TRAVELLING by air. This was partly the natural prejudice of one who had lived most of his life underground, partly because the food that they serve you on little plastic trays with hollow mouldings to hold the ketchup gave him violent indigestion. But he was a businessman, and businessmen have to travel on aircraft. Since there seemed to be no prospect of progress in his quest for the Ring, he had thought it would be as well if he went back to Germany for a week to see what sort of a mess
his partners were making of his mining consultancy. He had no interest in the work itself, but it provided his bread and butter; if it did not exactly keep the wolf from the door, it had enabled him to have a wolf-flap fitted so that the beast could come in and out without disturbing people.

  As luck would have it, he had been given a seat by the window, and he looked aimlessly out over the world that by rights should have been his. If he had had any say in its running, there would have been fewer cities and more forests. He let his attention wander for a moment.

  Something was tapping on the window. He looked round, and saw a slightly bedraggled raven pecking at the thick Perspex with its beak. A second raven was beating the air furiously with its wings, trying to hover and fly at the speed of sound at the same time.

  "What do you want?" he mouthed through the window.

  The raven pecked away vigorously, and Alberich felt slightly nervous. If the stupid bird contrived to break the window, he would be sucked out into space. "Go away," he mouthed, and made shooing gestures with his fingers.

  "Forget it," Memory shrieked through the rushing wind. "He can't hear a word you're saying."

  But Thought was nothing if not persistent. With his beak, he pecked a series of little marks onto the Perspex. When he was finished, Alberich was able to make out the words, "Wotan says stay out of England," written back to front on the pane. He nodded to the ravens to acknowledge the message, and they wheeled away exhausted. Alberich pondered this warning for a moment, then looked at his watch. They were due to land in Frankfurt in half an hour.

  At Frankfurt Airport, he telephoned his partner.

  "Dietrich?" he said. "It's Hans. Look, I'm at Frankfurt now, but I've got to go back to England right away. There's a flight in three hours. Can you bring me some clean shirts and the papers on the Nigerian project?"

  "What have you got to go back for?"

  "What's that? Oh, would you believe I left my briefcase behind? With all the things I need for the Trade Fair?"

  "Can't they send it on?"

  "It'd take too long. I'm going back."

  "Fancy forgetting your briefcase."

  "I'm only human," Alberich lied. "Don't forget the shirts."

  * * *

  To his surprise, Malcolm had managed to get some sleep, but he was awake by six. He went through the events of the previous day in his mind, trying to reassure himself that it had all happened. Something inside him told him that this strange happiness was bound to end in tears, but he put that down to his natural pessimism. Besides, there was one sure way of knowing whether things were all right or not.

  He tuned his mind in to the early morning news and was reassured. No disasters had afflicted the world during the last day, although there had been one strange occurrence. A farmer from the small village of Combe in Somerset had been out shooting rabbits at a quarter to ten last night, and had seen his ten-acre field of wheat change before his eyes into ten acres of roses, peonies, narcissi, daffodils and tulips. The farmer, a Mr. William Ayres of Combe Hill Farm, attributed this extraordinary mutation to a leak from the nearby Hinckley Point nuclear power station, although no such leak had as yet been confirmed by the CEGB...

  Malcolm blinked, and for a moment was concerned. But Mr. Ayres was bound to be insured, and even if he wasn't, he could pick the flowers and use them to decorate the church for his daughter's wedding. Malcolm laughed. He bore the Ayres family, both its present and prospective members, no ill will at all, and that was surely a good thing for the world.

  It occurred to him that he had forgotten to tell the girl when breakfast would be ready. He jumped out of bed, thought up a light blue shirt and a pair of cream corduroy trousers, and transported himself across the house. As he passed the library, he heard cataloguing noises. Although it was only half-past six, the girl was working already. He listened carefully for her thoughts, and a tender smile hitched up the ends of his mouth. She was throwing herself into her work to take her mind off the sad feelings of longing in her heart. A soppy girl, Malcolm could not help thinking, but none the worse for that. He opened the library door and went in.

  "You're up early," he said.

  "I hope I didn't disturb you," said the girl anxiously.

  "Not at all," Malcolm replied. "I'm usually awake by this time. Would you like some breakfast?"

  After the inevitable, "If you're sure" ritual, she agreed to have a cup of coffee and a slice of toast, and Malcolm hurried down to the kitchen. The coffee machine seemed to take for ever, as did the toaster, but eventually he got what he wanted out of both of them and carried the tray up to the library. In his mind he tried to rehearse some way of bringing the conversation round to the issues he wanted to raise, but he had to give up the attempt. He would think of something when the time came, and he did not want to rush something as important as this, even if the result was a foregone conclusion.

  Let other pens dwell on joy and happiness. It is enough to record that Malcolm hijacked a discussion on card-indexes and used it to convey his message. Although he could read the girl's thoughts and so avoid all misunderstandings, he still found it heavy going, and heard himself using words and phrases that would have seemed excessively sentimental in True Love magazine; but everyone has a right to make fools of themselves once in their lives. The main thing was that everything was going to be all right now, and he had managed to persuade her of this. She had seemed rather diffident at first, but he had got so used to her saying, "Are you sure you don't mind?" and, "If you're sure it's no trouble," that he took no notice of her words and simply watched her thoughts going round, like the figures on a petrol pump. When the appropriate reading came up, he took her hand and squeezed it gently. Through the snowstorm of emotions that raged around him, he heard a tinkling sound, like a coin dropping on the floor. Suddenly this seemed very important, and he looked down. On the polished wooden floor he saw the Ring, which had somehow slipped off his finger. He felt a sudden urge to give it to her; for what better gift could there be than the whole world?

  She was still holding his hand, tightly and trustingly, so that it would be incredibly churlish of him to do anything except sit absolutely still and be loved. There was also a particularly fine smile going on, and he let the Ring lie there until it was over. Just to be sure, however, he covered the Ring with his foot.

  Everything that needed saying had now been said, and it was obviously the time for action: a kiss, or something of that sort. But Malcolm could not bring himself to initiate such a move, although he could not imagine why. "One thing at a time," whispered a voice in his brain. "Let's not get carried away." So he contented himself with putting his arm tenderly round her shoulders, and suggesting that they go for a walk in the garden. For once, the girl did not ask him if he was sure that would be no bother, and they stood up, still entwined.

  "Just a moment," Malcolm said. "Don't go away."

  He stooped down swiftly and picked up the Ring. After a moment's hesitation, he pushed it back on his finger. It felt loose and uncomfortable.

  * * *

  "So how did you get her to agree to it?" Loge said. "It must have been difficult."

  "Not really," said Wotan. "There was one of those grim silences we know so well in our family, then she said "If you insist," and there we were. I was amazed, as you can imagine. I'd thought up all sorts of arguments—you always said you wanted to work in the family business, it'll get you out of the house, a change is as good as a rest, that sort of thing—and I didn't have to use any of them. Women are strange creatures."

  "Are you sure she's up to it?"

  "Positive. You've only seen her in the domestic mode, nagging and persecuting."

  "Which one was it again?"

  "Ortlinde. She's the best-looking, and the droopiest. Mind you, with eight of them, I tend to get them mixed up. Maybe I should get them wearing numbers on their backs like footballers. I think Ortlinde's the second from youngest. Fancy another?"

  "No, thanks, I'm driving." />
  "So am I, but who cares? This is something to celebrate." Wotan pulled open the drinks cabinet behind the front seat and took out a bottle of schnapps. "Here's to two birds with one stone. I get control of the Ring and shot of a dopey daughter at the same time."

  "I hate to say this..." said Loge.

  "I know, I know, it didn't work before and all the rest of it. But that was different."

  "Not so different." Loge knew he was pushing his luck, but it had to be said. Besides, if it all went wrong, Wotan would be so furious that he would be lucky to get away with being turned into a trout hatchery. "After all, Siegfried was roughly the same sort of proposition. He'd never had a girl before, either."

  "Siegfried wasn't a drip," said Wotan crisply. "This one is. So's she. She's so wet you could grow cress on her."

  "She didn't strike me as wet the other morning."

  "Ah," said Wotan, "that's different. That's her complicated little psyche belting away, that is. You see, my daughters are all the same. The way they see it, I've ruined their lives for them by making them stay at home in that bloody great house, stunting their emotional growth and all the rest of it, when they should have gone out into the world and had a good time. And you can see their point, I suppose. That house is a liability." Wotan scowled at the very thought of it, and the first drops of rain started to fall. "It's difficult to explain my family to a normal, sane person, but I think it goes something like this. They've been cooped up in Valhalla ever since their mother left, with nothing to do but be resentful and tell themselves how inadequate and unlovable they are, and how nobody could ever be interested in them because of their stunted personalities (stunted by me, it goes without saying). And they take all this out on their poor old dad by making his life almost as miserable as their own, in the tried and tested way you saw the other day."

  Loge had been nodding his head and making sympathetic noises until he felt quite dizzy. He didn't want to hear any of this, but Wotan seemed determined to tell him. A combination of schnapps and relief was making him unwind, although whether he would be any safer to be employed by unwound than tensed up remained to be seen. Rattlesnakes, Loge remembered, usually unwind just before they bite.