The Portable Door (1987)

by Tom Holt

  He scuttled on, but now he was starting to get worried. As far as he could remember, he’d only run a few yards before colliding with the unseen obstacle and falling over. He’d come much further than that; surely he ought to be able to see the door by now, if only by the light streaming through it. Had he come the wrong way in the dark? Highly possible—he had no illusions about his sense of direction. His kingdom for a torch, or a lighter, or a box of matches.

  (And anyhow, he thought; even if this is a nameless void down the back of the sofa of space and time, and he was doomed to wander here for ever and ever, shuffling along in the dark like a disembodied mole, it still had to be a million times better than a lifetime of pure joy and bliss with Mr Tanner’s mother. Absolutely. No possible doubt whatever. It had been a close-run thing, but thanks to his resourcefulness and native cunning, he’d got away with it. Even so, it’d be nice to find the way out—)

  He lunged forward, and his head connected with something. A voice squeaked.

  He knew that voice.

  More to the point, he knew the name that went with it. “Sophie?” he said.

  “Paul?”

  “Sophie? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “You’d gone, I came to look for you. Somebody hit me, and—”

  A very unpleasant thought snuck into Paul’s mind. “Hold on,” he said. “You woke up and came looking for me. Through a funny-looking door in the side of the train.”

  “That’s right. Look—”

  “The door,” Paul said quietly. “Wedged open with a handbag, right?”

  “So it was, yes. Look—”

  Paul took a deep breath. “You didn’t by any chance,” he asked, “close the door behind you?”

  “I may have done. Why, is it important?”

  Then all the lights suddenly came on.

  THIRTEEN

  Paul knew where he was. He was home. Sort of.

  It wasn’t his room. Well, it was the same room he lived in, because there was the fireplace, there was the window and there was the bed, there was the table, there was the damp patch on the wall that looked like a map of Turkey drawn by Salvador Dali. But it wasn’t his room. It was the way the room he lived in would probably have looked a hundred or so years ago.

  Been here before, of course

  Nice enough room, in its way. A merry blaze in the fireplace, same as last time he’d been there. But it still didn’t have a door.

  “Hello,” said a voice behind him. He spun round, and saw two young men in Victorian clothes, standing in the corner by the wardrobe. One had thick, curly hair. The other one, he seemed to remember, was called Pip, and it was he who said, “It’s all right.”

  “Oh, good,” Paul said. “What’s all right?”

  Pip grinned (not that sort of grin) and pointed. On the floor next to the bed lay a goblin. It wasn’t moving, though whether it was asleep, stunned or dead wasn’t immediately apparent.

  “She tripped over the fireguard, would you believe,” Pip continued, “bumped her head on the mantelpiece. Only a little bump, she’ll be right as rain directly. So,” he went on, “where is it?”

  Before Paul could say anything, Sophie pushed past him. “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. “And where is this?”

  The two young men didn’t reply. They’d taken one look at Sophie and immediately looked away. The curly-haired specimen had gone red as a beetroot. A moment of baffled silence; then Paul realised what it was. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Quick, get behind me.”

  She looked at him. “Why? Are they dangerous?”

  “Just do it, all right?”

  It must’ve been his tone of voice, because with only a very slight hesitation she did as she’d been told. Paul cleared his throat self-consciously, and said, “Actually, that’s how women dress when I come from.”

  The man called Pip looked shocked and fascinated at the same time. “You don’t say?”

  Paul nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Good Lord. You mean, that’s normal?” He was now several shades redder than his colleague. “Um, knees and things?”

  “Absolutely,” Paul said. “In fact, what the, er, young lady’s got on is sort of like formal wear. You know, for work. In the office.”

  Pip was staring at him now. “They work? In offices?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dressed like that?”

  “Hey,” Sophie growled, shoving Paul out of the way. “What the bloody hell—?”

  “It’s OK,” Paul said quickly, “you don’t understand. These people—gentlemen,” he amended quickly (so many people to offend, so little time), “they’re sort of from the past. Victorians,” he added.

  “Oh.” From the look on Sophie’s face, Paul might as well have said they were Martians, though probably she’d have preferred Martians as being less alien. “Oh, I see—”

  The curly-haired man coughed obtrusively. “Perhaps you’d care to introduce us to the, urn, young lady,” he said.

  “What? Oh, right.” Paul grinned feebly. “This is Sophie Pettingell—she works with me. I’m sorry,” he went on, “but I still haven’t got a clue who you are.”

  The two young men nodded politely to Sophie. She stared at them with a look of fascinated horror on her face. Paul noticed she was keeping perfectly still, as if she expected them to attack at any moment. “My name,” said curly-head’s friend, “is Philip Catherwood, though most people call me Pip. This is my friend and colleague, Arthur Tanner.”

  Tanner, Paul thought; and then, Philip Catherwood—he’d seen that name before, on all those passbooks and share certificates and deeds and stuff, in the strongroom. “Um, hello,” he said. “Pleased to meet you,” he added, hoping that was the right thing to say. “Oh,” he added, “and I’m Paul. Paul Carpenter.”

  “Well, yes,” Pip replied, frowning slightly. “We know that. We’ve met before.”

  “Look.” Unmistakable sound of Sophie rapidly approaching the end of her rope. “If someone doesn’t hurry up and tell me what the fuck is going on—”

  It was almost worth the whole thing just to see the expression on the young men’s faces. Paul felt like he ought to explain (“‘That’s another thing they do nowadays, besides working and wearing short skirts…”) But on balance he reckoned it’d be better to leave it to context, and let them sort out the culture shock for themselves. “Actually,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind an explanation myself, if that’s all right with you.”

  Pip nodded feebly, as if he still hadn’t recovered. “What would you like me to explain?” he said.

  For some reason, that made Paul feel angry. “Oh, this and that,” he said. “Some of it I’ve sort of figured out for myself, like why you freak out when you see a girl’s knees but a goblin’s something you can take in your stride. But when the hell is this? And is this place 36 Coronation Terrace, and if so, what are you doing in my flat, and where in God’s name is the door? And why is there a bloody great sword in a stone in the middle of my—of our floor? And what the bloody hell,” he added, with a degree of vehemence he wouldn’t have believed himself capable, “have Gilbert and Sullivan got to do with all this?”

  The other one, Arthur Tanner, looked at him. “What does freak out mean?” he asked.

  “Be quiet, Arthur,” Pip said. Then he looked at Paul thoughtfully. “You don’t know, do you?” he said. “Nobody’s told you.”

  “No,” Paul said. “They haven’t.”

  “Ah. In that case,” Pip said, “I think we’d all better sit down. This may take some time.”

  It was back in seventy-seven (“Pip said”) that it all started.

  Oh, perhaps I should say eighteen seventy-seven. What year is it where you come from, by the way? Really?

  Good Lord.

  Anyway, as I was saying. Back in seventy-seven, Arthur here and I were young clerks, freshly out of our indentures with the well-respected City firm of sorcerers, J.W. Wells & Co.

  One Mo
nday morning, Mr John Wells, the senior partner, called us both into his office. He told us that he wanted us to look after something for him. He sounded fearfully mysterious about it, but of course we were used to that by then, after two years with the firm. You do know about J.W. Wells & Co., don’t you, what it is they actually do? Ah, capital.

  Naturally, we didn’t like to ask John Wellington—that’s what we called him in the office, though never to his face, needless to say—what it was all about. That wouldn’t have done at all. But, greatly to our surprise, the old man proceeded to tell us anyway, and shocking stuff it was, too.

  He said that he’d recently found out that his nephew, young Mr Humphrey Wells, was plotting with a couple of the other partners to get rid of him; apparently, Mr Humphrey was fed up with waiting for the old devil to retire—he’d been talking about giving up for the last two hundred years, but nothing had ever come of it—and had decided to do something about it himself. But old John Wellington never had any intention of giving up, mostly because he couldn’t abide the thought of Mr Humphrey getting his hands on the business. To be honest with you, we weren’t in the least surprised about that. We’d known for some time that there was bad blood between them, because John Wellington didn’t like the sort of thing Mr Humphrey got up to; he reckoned it was unethical, if not downright dishonest and wicked, and I have to say that we agreed with him entirely.

  But to get back to what I was saying. The reason he’d sent for us, John Wellington said, was to entrust to us a certain very powerful sorcerous item, which we were to keep safe at all costs; because if, as JW suspected, Mr Humphrey were ever to do something dreadful to him (such as turn him into a frog, or imprison him in a glass mountain), the only magic strong enough to be sure of rescuing him and setting him free again was this same object; a talisman, if you care to think of it like that, though John Wellington used some other word to describe it, which slips my mind for the present.

  In any case, he gave this thing to us, and we made very sure that one or other of us kept it with him at all times. It was very small and light, you see, small enough to be carried in a waistcoat pocket, or hung on a watch-chain.

  It was shortly after that meeting that old Mr John Wellington disappeared. The story that we were told in the office was that something had gone horribly wrong with a job he’d been doing for some clients down in the West Country, something to do with a love philtre, and the only way in which the mess could be put right was for JW himself to be sacrificed to the Evil One—who’d duly turned up, we were told, and carried the poor old boy away to a Very Bad Place.

  Of course, Arthur and I weren’t taken in by this at all, not after what JW had told us. We knew that the only Evil One involved was Mr Humphrey, who’d clearly been and done something frightful to the old boy; furthermore, it was up to us to find out what it was, and put matters straight.

  But before we could set about it, we were told to see Mr Humphrey in his office, late one Friday afternoon. We didn’t like the sound of that, as you can imagine, but we had no choice in the matter, so off we went.

  Mr Humphrey didn’t mince his words. He knew that the old man had given us the talisman, and he wanted it. He began by offering us money, then promotion, then partnerships in the firm; but we’d have none of it, it goes without saying. That made him very angry, and he threatened us with all manner of dire consequences; but, strangely enough, after a while he told us to get out of his sight, and there the matter seemed to rest. We thought this rather extraordinary, since of course he could have used spells of compulsion to force us to hand the thing over, or even blasted us into ashes with lightning, if he’d wanted to. But instead, he simply told us to get out, and let us go.

  We heard no more about it for several weeks, and that seemed to be the end of it. Then, one day, Mr Suslowicz—you know him? Splendid—he sent for us, and told us he’d be obliged if we’d spend a day or so clearing out the strongroom and putting the securities and so forth in order, as the place was rather a mess. So we set to, and a fair old job it turned out to be, as you might imagine. On the last day, when the work was nearly done, Mr Humphrey’s secretary (Miss Julia—ah, you know her, too) came down to the strongroom with a box of bits and pieces to be put away with the rest. Among them, we found a most curious thing; a cardboard tube, containing an india-rubber mat, in the shape of a door. But, of course, you know all about that.

  Well, as you can imagine better than most, after we’d read the instructions that came with it, we were quite fascinated by this curiosity, and couldn’t resist the temptation of trying it out. We spread it out against the strongroom wall, and when the door appeared, we opened it, wedged it ajar with a heavy book, and went in. Being somewhat cautious, we commanded it to take us no further than our own lodgings; and sure enough, as we stepped through the doorway, that was where we found ourselves—except that of our own door, I mean the real door that connected our rooms to the rest of the building, there was no sign.

  Scarcely had we made this discovery when we became aware of a man standing in the doorway—the magical doorway, I mean, the one we’d put up against the strongroom wall. To our horror, we saw that it was Mr Humphrey Wells, and he was grinning at us with a most devilish expression on his face. His exact words escape me, but he told us that since we wouldn’t give him the talisman, and since in any case we knew far more about his business than was good for us, it would be as well if we were, as he put it, got out of harm’s way for good. Then, before we could protest or do anything about it, he slammed the door in our faces, and it vanished without trace, leaving us, I need hardly tell you, in a room with no door.

  And here (“Pip said”) we’ve been ever since.

  §

  Silence. Then Paul heard himself say, “You mean here? In this room? For the best part of a hundred and thirty—”

  Pip nodded.

  “Just you and him? The two of you?”

  Not tactful. A scowl flitted across Pip’s face before he replied. “I must confess it’s been something of a strain on our friendship,” he said. “In fact, there have been times when I felt I could strangle poor Arthur with my bare hands. Indeed, I have, several times, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. Neither,” he added with a slight shudder, “does stabbing, beating him over the head with a poker or drowning him in the washbasin, so after a while I gave it up as a bad job. Nowadays we mostly play chess instead; or dominoes, or nomination whist. It helps relieve the tension, but without the bad feeling afterwards.”

  Paul’s jaw dropped, and he made no effort to close it. “Of course,” the other one put in, “we had no idea it was so long. For all we knew until you showed up, we might only have been here a day or so, but with time seeming to pass terribly slowly. It felt like a hundred years, right enough, but so did going to tea with my Aunt Elizabeth when I was a boy. A hundred years,” he repeated. “I suppose things have changed rather.”

  Paul nodded. “A bit,” he said.

  “Well, obviously,” Pip said, pointedly not looking at Sophie’s knees. “Um, ladies’ clothing, for one thing. I don’t imagine we’d feel very much at home in your time,” he added thoughtfully.

  All this time, Sophie had been standing very still with a worried look on her face. Now she interrupted, “Doesn’t make any difference, does it? You’re not coming back with us.”

  The two clerks looked at her. So did Paul.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, “haven’t you figured it out yet? None of us is going back, or going anywhere, or anywhen. We’re stuck here. There’s no fucking door.”

  Maybe it hit the two clerks hardest. Maybe not.

  “And I’ll say it before any of you do,” Sophie went on.

  “There’s no door, and it’s all my fault, because I closed it. So if we’re stranded here for infinity, I’m the one who’s to blame. Right?”

  Long, awkward pause.

  “Easy enough mistake to make,” Paul mumbled. “I mean, you weren’t to know.”

>   “Actually—” Arthur started to say, but then he must have caught sight of Paul’s face, because he went on, “Absolutely. Could’ve happened to anybody.”

  That just seemed to make Sophie angry. “Screw you,” she shouted, “the lot of you. I mean, we’re marooned in this horrible little room, and all you lot can do is stand there being bloody chivalrous. Isn’t anybody ever going to take anything seriously?”

  “With respect,” Pip said quietly, “I don’t see how falling out with each other is going to help. Besides, as Carpenter here’s just pointed out, you had no way of knowing—”

  “Shut up,” Sophie shouted. “When I say it’s all my stupid fault, why the hell won’t anybody believe me? None of this’d have happened if I hadn’t put that stupid philtre in his tea—”

  “You did what?” Paul said.

  “Oh.”

  Paul was scowling horribly. “You put that stuff in my tea? For crying out loud, what did you want to go and do that for? I know you aren’t interested in me, but why in God’s name did you want me to go falling in love with that bloody goblin?”

  Sophie gave him a look you could have stored main-moths in. “What goblin?” she said.

  And then Paul figured it out.

  Oh, he thought; and then, oh shit, because—And, just to add the whipped cream and the glacé cherry on top, he had a sneaking feeling that it was no coincidence, Arthur’s second name being Tanner. “You know,” he said, “her. The one I told you about. The receptionist.”