by Tom Holt
“Thank you,” said the voice, “that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me. What are you gibbering on about?”
“About the Cirencester Group,” said Danny, trying to sound cool and failing. “About your being a member of it.”
There was another pause. A long one, this time. “So?” said the voice. “What of it?”
“I was thinking,” Danny said, “just now, when you were trying to muzzle me. I thought, why is this man trying to muzzle me? Then it hit me, right between the eyes. Cirencester. It’s not you that’s trying to muzzle me, it’s the whole bloody lot of you. The Group.”
“What possible connection is there between a select private literary society and you not making very silly documentaries?”
“I like that,” Danny said. “Select private literary society. On that scale of values, the Third Reich was a bowls club. I know what you lot get up to in that neo-Georgian manor house on the Tetbury road.”
It must be pointed out at this juncture that Danny hadn’t the faintest idea what went on there, although this was not for want of very strenuous trying. But the silence at the other end of the wire made it obvious that he had hit on something here. The effect of his previous threat had been pleasant, but this was incomparably better.
“What was it you said you wanted?” asked the-voice.
“A helicopter.”
“Any particular make?”
Danny was taken aback. “How do you mean?” he asked.
“Gazelle? Lynx? Sea King? I believe Sea Kings are very comfortable.”
“That sounds fine,” said Danny. “So I can hire one then, can I?”
“Wouldn’t hear of it,” said the voice. “I’ll order you one myself. Much quicker that way.”
“Oh.” Danny frowned with surprise. “That’s very kind of you.”
“Not at all,” said the voice, “no trouble whatsoever. What’s the use of having a desk with six phones if you never use them? Where do you want to be picked up from?”
“Wherever suits you,” Danny said, not to be outdone. “I don’t know where the nearest airfield is, but…”
“Airfields!” said the voice, forcefully, “who needs them? Go down to the beach and I’ll get someone to pick you up there. Give me half an hour.”
The line went dead. Danny pocketed his remaining change and went to the bar for a drink, just as the towels went back over the pump-handles.
♦
Cornelius and Sebastian rowed Jane ashore in the skiff. They had to land her at a rather remote spot for fear of making themselves conspicuous, and the walk to the road over rocky, and troublesome country was not to Jane’s liking, since she was feeling tired enough already. She had packed quite a lot into this one day already without gratuitous exercise.
It was all very well saying she would find Montalban, as if all she had to do was look him up in Thompson’s Local under Alchemists. It was all very well saying that once she had found him she would pass on Vanderdecker’s message. The reality might be somewhat trickier. And was he back from Geneva yet?
As she finally joined the road, she was nearly blown off it by the downblast of the blades of an enormous helicopter that roared by apparently only inches over her head. She said something very unladylike to it as it went past, but it was very unlikely that it heard her, what with the noise of the rotor blades and all. Probably just as well.
After a long walk she reached West Bay, unlocked her car and took her shoes off. Then she wrote down Vanderdecker’s message on the back of an envelope, just to make sure she didn’t forget it. Montalban. Who did she know who might know where to find him?
Oddly enough, it was just conceivable that Peter might know. There was not a lot, when all was said and done, that Peter did know. He wasn’t particularly well up in female psychology, that was certain, and she had her doubts if he had a firm grasp of the basics of tying his own shoelaces, but he was a scientist. Scientist. He lived in a little white box in north central Oxford and did research into semiconductors, whatever they were. All she knew about them was that they had nothing to do with buses or orchestras.
That seemed to be a likely place to start off her enquiries, then. All she needed to do now—was to locate his telephone number. This should be marginally easier than finding the source of the Nile, always supposing that she had remembered to bring her address book.
She found a telephone box and tried Directory Enquiries instead. Then she called Peter’s number, which was engaged. Enough of this, she said to herself. Food.
By far the best way to get something to eat in West Bay is to go to Bridport, where they will gladly sell you a sandwich if you show them enough respect. Jane discovered this eventually, and over her sandwich and a cup of pale brown oil in the Cherry Tree café she considered her next move. Phone Peter, get Montalban’s co-ordinates, go there, see him, deliver the message, be back home in time for the afternoon repeat of “Neighbours”. It could be that simple. On the other hand, it might be a lot harder, and it would be wise to give some thought to possible complications. But Jane’s mind was starting to wander, and she found herself thinking about something quite other.
What would it have been like to spend four hundred years on a boat? The same boat? The same small, rather uncomfortable and inconvenient boat? Would she have liked it? A lot would depend, she decided, on the company. It was hard to imagine anyone, however brilliantly entertaining, that you could cheerfully spend the post-Renaissance era cooped up on a boat with without going stark raving mad, but from what little she had seen of the Flying Dutchman’s crew, it wasn’t very likely that they had helped much in keeping Vanderdecker from losing his grip on sanity. And yet he had managed it, somehow. Remarkable, in itself. A fairly remarkable person, in a woolly, harassed sort of way. Or had he done something rather similar to what she and everyone else did in order to keep themselves going through a generally dull and bleak existence? Accountancy, in a way, is rather like sailing endlessly round the world, in that it offers few bright spots and those widely separated by broad, blue expanses of tedium. In order to get across those, you try not to think about them. You think about the weekend instead. Now in Vanderdecker’s case, the bright spots came once every seven years rather than seven days, but once one had got used to it the principle was probably the same. Jane shuddered. It was depressingly similar to he own situation, only worse.
At least all Vanderdecker had to do was find Montalban, reverse the alchemical process and render himself marginally less smelly, and he would be fine. In order for her to get out of her own vicious circle, she was going to have to do something immeasurably more clever, like win on the Premium Bonds or marry a millionaire. Vanderdecker, once he was adequately sanitised and had come to a grown-up understanding with the House of Fugger, would be able to live out the rest of Time in peace and luxury. She hadn’t even got around to organising her pension scheme yet. Some people, she said to herself, have all the luck. And if I had been able to persuade him to come to that grown-up understanding with the Sock, perhaps I’d be out of it and free too. But she let that thought go. If the Flying Dutchman did decide to cash in his policy, then good luck to him. He’d earned it, in a way, and she wasn’t going to be the one to bounce him into anything.
Jane dragged her mind back from its reverie and considered the crust of the sandwich and the gritty residue of her cup of coffee. That more or less wrapped up the nutritional side of things for the time being. It was time to try phoning Peter again.
“Hello, Peter,” Jane said. “Where can I find Professor Montalban?”
“Hello, Jane” said a rather surprised voice; rather as one would expect Rip Van Winkle to sound if someone had woken him up in the early 1830s and asked him the time of the next bus to San Bernardino. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” said Jane. “Montalban. Where?”
“Professor Montalban?”
“No, Archbishop Montalban. Where can I find him?”
“It’s been ages since I
heard from you,” Peter said. “How have you been keeping, anyway?”
Jane wanted to scream, but it was one of those phone-boxes that aren’t closed in. “I’ve been keeping nicely, thank you Peter. I put it down to the formaldehyde face-packs. Professor Montalban. What’s his address? Where does he live? You do know, don’t you?”
“No.”
Then why the hell didn’t you say so, you furry-brained clown? “You don’t?”
“No,” Peter said. “Sorry.”
“That’s a pity, Peter, really it is. You have no idea how great a pity that is.”
“I could always look it up, I suppose.”
“Could you?”
“Oh yes.”
Give me strength, dear God. Not the strength to move mountains, perhaps; just enough to see me through the rest of this telephone call. “What in, Peter?”
“Well, the faculty directory, of course.”
Of course. How silly of me not to have known. That sound you can hear is me slapping my wrist. “And do you have a copy of it handy, Peter?”
“Naturally.” Peter sounded a trifle offended. “It’s right here on my desk now.”
“That’s good, Peter, I think we’re getting somewhere at last. How would it be if you opened it at the letter M.” She counted five under her breath, to give him time. “You there yet, Peter?”
“Yes.”
“Montalban, Peter. At a guess I’d say it was somewhere between Mellish and Moore. Any luck?”
“Hold on, I’ve dropped it. Ah yes, here we are. Montalban. You want his address, you said?”
“That’s right,” Jane said cheerfully. “You must be a mind reader.”
“Well,” Peter said, “It’s…”
“Hold on,” Jane squawked. “I’ve got to get a pencil.”
The pips went. Just in time, Jane crammed a pound coin into the slot, then unearthed a pencil and the back of an envelope. “Ready,” she said. “Fire away.”
“It’s Greathead Manor, High Norton, near Cirencester.”
“Thank you.”
“Gloucestershire.”
“Oh, that Cirencester. Do you know if he’s back from Geneva? He is? Well, thanks a lot, Peter. How’s the thesis coming along, then?”
“Not very well, I’m afraid,” Peter said. “I keep having to go back and change the beginning.”
“Very difficult things, beginnings,” Jane said. “Almost as difficult as middles and ends, in my experience. Stay with it, Peter. Remember Robert the Bruce and the spider. It’s been lovely talking to you, must dash, bye.”
She retrieved her car, adjusted the rear-view mirror, put on her seat-belt and pulled out the choke. According to her AA book, you could get to Cirencester by way of the M4 and a number of other reputable main roads, and although it was her experience that road-maps generally tend to speak with forked tongue, particularly when dealing with the location of motorway service stations, it was certainly worth a try. As she turned the ignition key, something moved her to look out of the window and take one last glance at the little town of Bridport, where so much of such consequence had happened; the initial discovery at the bank, the visitor’s book in the hotel, the curious ruined cottage, culminating in the dramatic meeting outside the boatyard and her irrational, as yet undissected decision to involve herself deeper still in this improbable but magnetic adventure. The sun gleamed on the windows of the Town Hall, and the traffic lights seemed to wink at her like old friends. Perhaps she would come back again one day, perhaps not. Perhaps she would never pass this way again, and this was to be the last time.
“Yippee!” she said aloud, and let out the clutch.
♦
The cat woke up, uncurled its tail, and decided it would be nice to go for a walk. It got about three feet and discovered there were bars in the way.
Pleasant enough bars, as bars go. Quite probably there for its own good, to keep it from wandering too far and falling the short distance to the floor. If there were wolves about, it might keep them out for at least thirty seconds, provided they were not too hungry. The cat considered all these possibilities and rejected them. It yowled.
At the other end of the room, a man was playing a tall, elegant musical instrument, something halfway between a spinet and a harpsichord. It must be noted that he was doing so absolutely soundlessly, unless you counted the clattering of the keys under his rapidly-moving fingertips.
Hearing the yowl, he lifted his head and looked at the cage. He put down the lid of the musical instrument and walked across the room, stopping about halfway to pick up a dead mouse by the tail from a cardboard box of the kind that cream cakes come in.
“Here, pussy,” he said, in a rather embarrassed voice, for he was not used to addressing cats, small children or any of the other forms of sentient life who have to be spoken to in a silly voice. In truth, he wasn’t accustomed to talking to anyone who didn’t have a first-class honours degree, and it showed. “Pretty pussy like a nice mouse, then?”
Pretty pussy yowled, and the man dropped the mouse down through the bars of the cage. The cat ducked and thereby avoided being hit on the head; it didn’t look particularly grateful for the kind thought either. The man made a selection of cooing noises and poked a finger at the cat, apparently by way of a friendly gesture. The cat appreciated that all right; it bit it, hard. The man winced slightly and withdrew the finger. It was undamaged. Heartened by this minor reprisal, the cat ate the mouse. The man stepped back and looked at his watch. Five minutes later, he stepped out of the room and called up the elegant Queen Anne staircase.
“Mrs Carmody!” he said. “Could you come through into the study for a moment?”
A tall, grey-haired woman appeared in the doorway. She was wearing an apron over a fiendishly expensive Ralph Lauren original, and her hands were covered in flour.
“Well?” she said.
“Mrs Carmody,” asked the man. “Does that cat smell?”
The woman sniffed carefully. “No,” she said. “Should it?”
“No,” said the man. “Thank you, you’ve been most helpful.”
The cat looked at them both in astonishment, but they took no notice. The woman asked when she should expect the guests.
“I think they said about half-past six,” said the man.
“Then they’ll have to wait,” the woman said firmly. “You can’t expect me to produce malt loaf out of thin air, you know.”
The man bowed his head, acknowledging his fault, then turned and sat down again at the spinet and began to play, as quietly as before. After about ten minutes, the telephone rang and someone read out the results of an experiment involving platinum isotopes. The man thanked him, said goodbye and put the receiver down.
Half an hour later, the man summoned Mrs Carmody again.
“Now does it smell?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Excellent,” said the man. “You don’t mind helping me like this, do you?”
Mrs Carmody thought for a moment. “No,” she said. Then the man thanked her again and she left.
What the cat thought about all this is neither here nor there.
♦
“Excuse me,” Danny asked, “but aren’t we going the wrong way?” The pilot leaned back and grinned reassuringly. Obviously he couldn’t her a word, what with the roar of the engines and the earphones he was wearing. But he was going the wrong way.
“You see,” Danny shouted, “we’re going inland, and we should be going out to sea.”
The pilot removed on earphone. “You what?” he shouted.
“Inland!” Danny shouted. The pilot nodded.
“Yes!” he shouted back.
“No!” Danny replied. “Wrong way. Should be going out to sea.”
The pilot shook his head firmly. “No,” he replied. “Inland. Much better. Right way.”
All right, Danny muttered under his breath, even if you’re hell-bent on going the wrong way there’s no need to talk like a Red Indian
. He shook his own head equally firmly and shrieked back, “No. Wrong way. We want to go out there!”
He pointed at the English Channel but the pilot didn’t even bother to look. He had put his earphone back on and was busily flying the helicopter. Danny tapped him on the shoulder.
“What is it?” shouted the pilot, irritably, like a man who can take a joke if necessary but who’d really rather not have to prove it every five minutes. “You’ll have to speak up,” he added.
“We are going the wrong way,” Danny yelled slowly—it’s not easy yelling slowly, but Danny managed it somehow—“we should be going out to sea.”
Equally slowly, the pilot yelled back, “No we shouldn’t. Please sit down and stop talking.”
Then he leaned forward and switched on the wireless set; full volume, so that it would be audible above the ear-splitting noise.
“The Financial Times One Hundred Share index,” said the wireless, “closed at nine hundred and seventy-six point eight; that’s a slight fall of two points on yesterday’s close. Government stocks were also down on the day, following a late flurry of activity shortly before the close of trading. The Dow Jones…”
The pilot grunted happily, switched off the wireless and leaned back. For the first time, Danny noticed that he was wearing rather a natty lightweight grey suit and a shirt with a button-down collar under his flying jacket. “Now,” he said, “what were you saying?”
“Nothing,” Danny replied, “nothing at all.” He sat down, looked out of the window and tried to remember the little geography he had learned at school.
♦
Leigh Delamere service station is unquestionably the Xanadu of the M4. Bring us, it seems to say, your weary and oppressed, your travel-sick children, your knackered and your bored stiff, and we will make them a strong cup of tea and a plate of scrambled eggs. If only it had a cinema and some rudimentary form of democratic government, no-one with any sense would ever want to leave.
As she felt the vigour of the tea flowing through her bloodstream like fire, Jane began to take stock of her situation. It was all very well saying “I will arise and go now and deliver Vanderdecker’s message to Professor Montalban,” but there were imponderables. He might not be in. He might not wish to see her. She might not be able to find High Norton, let alone Greathead Manor. There might be danger, or at least profound embarrassment. In other words, she summed up, why am I doing this?