The Portable Door (1987)

by Tom Holt

  “No.”

  “Me neither. But if you want to know, look in the drawer of that desk over there, and you’ll find a copy of the collected works of Gilbert and Sullivan. From memory, I think you’ll find what you’re after on page 556. It’s probably bookmarked. You’ll see why.”

  The book was exactly where Mr Tanner had said it would be. Page 556 turned out to be a scene from something called The Sorcerer (which, according to the introduction at the front, was first performed on 17 November 1877).

  The song that Mr Tanner probably had in mind went:

  My name is John Wellington Wells;

  I’m a dealer in magic and spells,

  In blessings and curses

  And ever-filled purses,

  In prophecies, witches and knells.

  If you want a proud foe to make tracks,

  If you’d melt a rich uncle in wax,

  You’ve but to look in

  On the resident djinn—

  Number Seventy, St Mary Axe…

  Not much happened after that; except that Paul and Sophie, thrown out of the office because it was well past five-thirty, wandered around for a while, talking of this and that; and then Sophie explained, with unusual tact, that although she loved him very much she was also dead on her feet after a long and eventful day, and they still had to be in the office next morning at nine sharp. So he left her and wandered about on his own for a bit, and eventually wound up back at his flat.

  Two things caught his attention as he opened the door. The first was that the sword in the stone wasn’t there any more, but he remembered why. The second was that Sophie rushed across the room to meet him, and flung herself into his arms like a soft cannon-ball.

  The kiss was wonderful, of course, but even so Paul found himself thinking, This is odd. First, she didn’t seem in the least bit tired. Second, how had she managed to get in? Third, no embarrassing collision of front teeth or protest of, “Ouch, you’re hurting my neck.” He pushed her gently away, and said, “Hang on.”

  She fended his hand away, but he stepped back. Then she grinned.

  “Oh,” Paul said. “You.”

  She sighed; then she turned back into Mr Tanner’s mum. “You guessed,” she said.

  “It wasn’t difficult,” Paul replied irritably.

  “Bugger. Still, you can’t blame a girl for trying.”

  “I can, actually. What about what’s-his-name?” he said. “Arthur,” he remembered. “I thought you two were—”

  “Oh, we are,” Mr Tanner’s mum replied, yawning. “But then, he’s only human, he fell asleep. And I wasn’t tired, so I thought, why not? After all,” she went on, as Paul scowled at her, “what’s the point of being a goblin if you can’t be all shallow and one-track-minded? It’s what goblins do. Ghouls just wanna have fun, and all that.”

  Paul went and stood by the door. “Goodbye,” he said. “I won’t mention this to your son, not this time.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him, then sat down in the armchair. “You know what,” she said, “you’re about as much fun as a boil on the bum. God only knows what I see in you.”

  “Good,” Paul said. “Please go away.”

  “In a second,” said Mr Tanner’s mum; then from thin air she produced the little glass ball. “Or don’t you want to see if it all works out for you, or if the first thing she says to you tomorrow morning is, April fool, just kidding?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Paul said, “no, I don’t.”

  She laughed. “Scared?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I just believe in her rather more than I do in you, that’s all.”

  She didn’t like that. “Tough,” she said, “you’re going to find out anyway. And I hope she—Oh.” Mr Tanner’s mum put the glass ball down on the table. “Bugger,” she said.

  Paul’s curiosity got the better of him, and he peered down at it. Then he jumped back, grabbed a disused shirt off the back of the sofa, and covered the ball with it.

  “Spoilsport,” said Mr Tanner’s mum, grinning ferociously. “I was enjoying that.”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “And proud of it.” She tried to pull the shirt away, but he grabbed her hand. “I’ll say this for you,” she went on, “if that’s anything to go by, you’re a quick learner. I’m not sure I’ve ever tried that one myself.”

  “Get out,” Paul mumbled.

  “Looked a bit dodgy to me. You’d do your back, for one thing.”

  “Out!”

  “All right,” Mr Tanner’s mum sighed, as she stood up and dropped the glass ball in her bag. “You win, for now, anyway. I’m patient,” she added, “I can wait. I’ll get there in the end, you know, I generally do.”

  Paul shook his head. “Not this time.”

  “Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” That grin again. “And for crying out loud, lighten up a bit, will you? Looks like you get your happy ending, after all.”

  “Yes,” said Paul firmly.

  “If you can call it that,” said Mr Tanner’s mum. “Because, you know what’ll happen, don’t you? Ten years from now, fifteen, even twenty, you’ll think back to today and you’ll wish you’d had more bloody sense. Oh, I can see you then, don’t need a crystal ball for that; there’s you, getting thick round the middle, thin on top; there’s her, starting to sag and pucker; there’s the two of you, bickering about money or the kids or having to visit her mum when you’ve got a whole load of work you’ve brought home with you. Twenty years of that? You get less for armed robbery, plus time off for good behaviour. You can have your happy ending, sunbeam. You deserve it.”

  Paul thought about what she’d said; then he grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and marched her to the door. “Really?” he said, and smiled happily. “Thank you.” Then he threw her out.

  §

  “There’s just one thing,” Paul said.

  It was four days later, and still she hadn’t changed her mind. It was their first Saturday together, and it had all turned out to be quite different from what he’d expected. Different, but better. But there was just one thing.

  “What?” Sophie asked.

  He hesitated. He didn’t really need to ask this question; in all probability, it’d be better if he didn’t. It wasn’t something he actually needed to know, and the mere act of asking was something of a betrayal of trust. Anybody with half a brain and slightly more tact than a bomb would forget about it, or at the very least leave well alone. But.

  “What’s-his-name,” Paul said. “Shaz, the ceramic artist. What happened?”

  She looked at him.

  “It’s all right,” he said quickly, “I shouldn’t—”

  “No,” she said, “that’s okay. It’s just a bit embarrassing, that’s all. You see—well, you know the table top in the boardroom, the one that shows things the way they really are?”

  Paul nodded. “Imp-reflecting mirror, Mr Wurmtoter called it.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Well, it doesn’t have to be a mirror. Or a table top.” She frowned. “Apparently, you can get the same effect with a bit of ordinary tinfoil.”

  Paul looked puzzled. “Tinfoil?”

  “Yes, you know. What you cook the Christmas turkey in. Only,” she went on, looking past him, “someone got into Shaz’s bus and stuck a sheet of it up on the ceiling, right over the bed.”

  For a moment, Paul didn’t quite follow. Then he said, “Oh.”

  “Yes.”

  “Imp-reflecting tinfoil?”

  She scowled. “It works just like the table top did,” she said. “Later, when he came round after I’d bashed him on the head with a saucepan, he told me who he really was.”

  Paul didn’t ask, but after a long pause she went on:

  “I’m not quite sure how these things go, but I think he’s Mr Tanner’s second cousin, or else his first cousin once removed. Anyhow, his name was George, and he reckoned that—that Mr Tanner’s mother put him up to it, to keep us apart so she cou
ld get you, and there was like nothing personal. But—”

  “Mr Tanner’s cousin. You mean a gob—”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” Just for a moment, Paul thought about the portable door; a quick dash back into the recent past, say five seconds before he’d asked the bloody stupid question that’d prompted all this. But he decided not to. It’d be cheating, and he was through with all that. “Um,” he said, “do you know who put it there? The tinfoil, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “Not for certain,” she said grimly. “But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it was stapled to the ceiling, rather than glued or sellotaped.”

  “Right,” Paul said thoughtfully. “But listen; if he hadn’t been a g—Mr Tanner’s cousin; what I mean is, you chose him rather than me, and that’s fine, I guess, because it turned out all right in the end. But I can’t help wondering; did you drink any of that philtre stuff? By accident or whatever, before you put it in my tea on the train? Only, I can remember buying that bottle of champagne in the pub, to put the stuff in so that horrible woman would fall in love with the film bloke, Ashford Clent. And I can remember they gave us two glasses, and I put the stuff in one glass, and then you said you really needed a drink, because it was so nerve-racking; and I can remember it crossing my mind to tell you I’d laced one of the glasses, so you wouldn’t put any of the stuff in the other one as well, but I’m not absolutely certain I did warn you, and—”

  “Paul.”

  “Yes?”

  Sophie was looking at him, with an expression such as might be found on the face of a large but compassionate paratrooper when informed in a public house by a small, elderly drunk that only poofters wear little purple berets. “Do you really want me to tell you?”

  Paul thought about it for a little while. “Yes,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  So she told him; and then she looked at him again, and said, “Do you believe me?” And Paul thought for another little while, and looked away, and said, “Yes.”

  “Fine.” She folded her arms. “I was right, wasn’t I? You didn’t really want me to tell you.”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “I did warn you.”

  “Yes, you did. I thought I wanted to know.” He shrugged. “It occurs to me,” he said, “that unless I get elected prime minister or assassinate the Pope or something, I’m always going to be my own worst enemy. Comes of being stupid, I suppose.”

  “Probably.” She scowled at him, and then the smile gradually morphed into a grin. “Bet you wished you’d never raised the subject in the first place.”

  “Yes,” said Paul.

  “Bet you wish you could go back in time to the moment before you raised the subject, and then something’d happen that would drive the whole thing out of your mind. As if,” she added, “by magic.”

  A tiny light flickered behind Paul’s eyes, as he reached into his inside coat pocket. “Wouldn’t that be something?” he said, taking the top off the cardboard tube that contained the portable door.

  EOF