by Tom Holt
“Rat.”
“Precisely, my dear fellow, as a rat. Hurry back!”
“I might just do that,” Vanderdecker said, and he ran off into the gardens again.
♦
Some time later a car—more than a car; the biggest Mercedes you ever saw—pulled up outside the front door. It was full of accountants.
Mr Gleeson got out. He rang the doorbell. After a long, long time a drunken man in a kilt answered it. In the background, someone was playing “My Very Good Friend The Milkman Says” on the harpsichord.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Miss Doland,” said Mr Gleeson.
The man in the kilt sniggered. “You’re not the only one,” he said. He was slurring his words slightly.
“Just get her,” said Mr Gleeson. As befits a high-rolling accountant, Mr Gleeson had authority and presence. He was used to being obeyed.
“Piss off,” said the man in the kilt, and slammed the door. Mr Gleeson was surprised. According to the latest charging-rate guidelines, it costs at least fifteen pounds plus VAT to slam a door in the face of an accountant of partner status. He rang the bell again.
“I said piss off,” said a voice through the letter-box.
Mr Gleeson muttered something in a low voice, and two other accountants rang the doorbell for him. This is known as the art of delegation.
Eventually the door opened again.
“Sorry about that. Can I help you?”
This time it was a man in a kilt with a beard. He seemed rational enough, and Mr Gleeson stepped forward. Far away in the distance, a nightingale sang.
“My name’s Gleeson,” he said. “Moss Berwick, accountants. Where’s Miss Doland?”
“She’s inside,” said the man with the beard, “but you don’t want to see her. You want to see me. My name’s Vanderdecker.”
For a moment, Mr Gleeson simply stood and stared. Then he pulled himself together. “We have to talk,” he said.
Vanderdecker shook his head. “Perhaps you may have to talk, I don’t know,” he said. “If it’s some sort of obsession you have, maybe a psychiatrist could help. I knew a man once…”
“Please,” said Mr Gleeson. “This is no time for flippancy. Have you any idea what is happening on the markets?”
“Heavy falls in jute futures?”
“We must talk,” said Mr Gleeson.
“We are talking,” Vanderdecker replied. Gleeson drew in a deep breath and started to walk past Vanderdecker into the house. But the Flying Dutchman put the palm of his hand on Mr Gleeson’s shirt front and shoved. There was a ripple of amazement among the other accountants. Vanderdecker smiled. “So what’s happening on the markets?” he said.
“Massive rises,” said Gleeson. “The situation has got completely out of hand. It is imperative that we…”
“Hold on a minute,” Vanderdecker said, and he stepped back into the hallway, called out, “Sebastian! Make him stop that bloody row, will you?” and turned to face Mr Gleeson again. Muted grumbling in the background, and the harpsichord music ceased.
“Sorry about that,” said the Flying Dutchman, “but I think you’ll find everything will be back to normal on your beloved markets in a few minutes. The Professor’s got completely ratted and he’s started playing things on the harpsichord, forgetting that it’s a computer too. You don’t understand a word of that, but what the hell, you’re only a glorified book-keeper. Clerks, we called them in my day. Used to shave the tops of their heads and talk Latin at you. I see you shave your head too, or is that just premature hair loss?”
“All right,” said Mr Gleeson, “that’s enough from you. Where is Miss…”
But before he could say any more, Vanderdecker had grabbed him by various parts of his clothing, lifted him off the ground and tossed him into a flower-bed.
“Now listen,” Vanderdecker said, “the lot of you. The phrase “under new management” springs immediately to mind; also, “the King is dead; long live the King.” If in future you wish to see Miss Doland, you will have to make an appointment. Miss Doland has left the accountancy profession and has gone into banking. She is now the proprietor of the First Lombard Bank.”
There was a very long silence—if the accountants had had their stopwatches running, about twelve hundred pounds worth, plus VAT—and then Mr Gleeson said, “You what?”
“Miss Doland,” Vanderdecker said, “has exchanged entitlements as sole beneficiary by assignment of what I believe you meatheads call the Vanderdecker Policy for a fifty-one per cent shareholding in Quicksilver Limited, which is—I hope I’m getting all this right, it’s not exactly my field, you know—which I believe is the holding company which owns the First Lombard Bank, Lombard Assurance, Lombard Unit Trusts plc, and all sorts of other money sort of things with the word Lombard in them. The remaining forty-nine per cent goes to me. We’ve just had a very pleasant half-hour with the previous owner signing stock transfer forms while drinking apple brandy and singing “Lilliburlero” in Dutch. If any of you people fancy dropping by at about eleven-thirty tomorrow morning, you can help out with the Capital Gains Tax. For now, though, you will kindly shove off before I set the cat on you. Goodnight.”
The door slammed again, and there was the sound of a chain going on. Mr Gleeson picked himself up, brushed leaf-mould off his trousers and lifted the flap of the letterbox.
“Doland,” he shouted, “you’re fired!” Then he got into the car and drove off.
As the receding-Mercedes noises faded away, the door opened again, just a crack.
“Has he gone?” said a small female voice.
“Yes,” Vanderdecker said.
“Really?”
“Really and truly.”
Vanderdecker closed the door. “But it beats me,” he said, “why you’re afraid of him. Them, come to that. Glorified, over-fed book-keepers.”
“I don’t know,” Jane replied. “Habit, probably. You know, I used to have these daydreams. The letter would come saying that my long-lost aunt in Australia had died leaving me a million pounds, and then I’d go into Mr Peters” office and say, “Peters, you’re a jerk, you can stick your job…” But even if she had…
“Who?”
“My aunt in Australia.”
“You have an aunt in Australia?”
“No.”
“Sorry,” Vanderdecker said, “forget it, carry on with what you were saying.”
“Even,” Jane said, “if I’d had one and she had, I still wouldn’t have.”
“Because of habit?”
“Habit of mind,” Jane replied. “Subservience, innate atavistic feudal mentality. You don’t go telling your liege-lord he can stick his job even if you’re leaving to join the Second Crusade. Purely theoretical, anyway.”
“Not now,” Vanderdecker said. “You are in exactly that position, thanks to my foresight in taking out life insurance all those years ago—my mother wouldn’t half be surprised, by the way, she always said I was a fool when it came to money—and yet you denied yourself a moment’s extreme pleasure because of habit of mind. Strange behaviour.”
“Oh, I’m just chicken,” Jane said. “Anyway, thanks for dealing with it for me. You did it very well.”
“Did I?” Vanderdecker said. “Call it beginner’s luck.”
They were standing in the hall. From the drawing-room came drinking noises. “Well, then…” Jane said.
“Well what?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Julius…”
“Do you know,” Vanderdecker said. “I can’t get used to people calling me that again. That Bennett bloke keeps calling me Julius, and I don’t know what to make of it. Only person ever called me Julius was my mother. Dad called me son, my master when I was a prentice used to refer to me as “hey, you”, and then I was captain or skipper for the next four hundred odd years. Being Julius again is a bit unsettling, really. I never liked the name, anyway.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No.”
> “Do you have another name? A second name, or something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Albert.”
That seemed to kill the conversation for a moment. Then Vanderdecker said, “You don’t like the name Albert, do you?”
“Well,” Jane said, “not really.”
“Nor me. Good old Dutch name, of course, been in my family for generations. I think it means Elf-beard, which is quite incredibly helpful. Well, too late to do anything about it now, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
There was nothing in particular keeping them in the hall, but neither of them moved. Eventually Jane asked: “So what are you going to do next?”
Vanderdecker raised an eyebrow. “Next?”
“Well, yes, I mean, you aren’t going to stay here drinking with Professor Montalban for the rest of time, now are you?”
Vanderdecker considered. “Probably not,” he said. “On the other hand, I feel like a bit of a holiday.”
“A holiday from what?”
“From whatever I’ve got to do next, I suppose.”
“Look,” Jane said sharply, “you haven’t got to do anything next. Or ever.” But Vanderdecker shook his head.
“It’s not as easy as that,” he said. “I really wish it was, but it isn’t. It’s them.” He nodded his head towards the drawing-room door. Jane stared at him for a moment.
“What, them?” she said. “Johannes and Antonius and Sebastian and…”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“But what have they got to do with it?”
Vanderdecker smiled, but not for the reasons that usually make people smile. “I’m their captain,” he said. “I’m responsible for them.”
Jane stared. “You’re joking,” she said. “I thought you couldn’t stand the sight of each other. I thought that after all those years cooped up on that little ship…”
“Yes,” Vanderdecker replied, “and no. Yes, we get on each other’s nerves to a quite extraordinary extent, and we can’t even relieve the tension with murder or other forms of violence. On the other hand, I’m their captain. I do all the thinking for them. I’ve had to, for the last four centuries. They’ve completely forgotten how to do it for themselves. So, okay, maybe we don’t have to go back on that boring bloody ship ever again; but I can’t leave them. It’d be impossible.”
“Why?”
Vanderdecker was silent for what seemed like an immensely long time, then turned to Jane, looked her in the eye and said, “Habit.”
“I see.”
“Set in our ways,” Vanderdecker amplified. “Old dogs and new tricks.”
“Fine,” Jane replied. “Well, it was very nice meeting you.”
“Likewise.”
“Perhaps we’ll bump into each other again one day.”
“Bound to,” Vanderdecker said. “Board meetings, that sort of thing. So what are you going to do now?”
Jane shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think I’ll have a holiday too. Only…” Only it won’t be the same, not now. You see, Mr Vanderdecker, this freedom you’ve given me is a fraud. Maybe now I’m free of Mr Gleeson and accountancy and all that horrible nonsense, but I can’t be free of you, not ever. Every man I see in the street, I’ll look twice at him to see if it’s you. But she smiled instead, and left the sentence unfinished.
“Actually,” Vanderdecker said, “I’d had this idea of getting a new ship.”
“What?”
“A new ship,” Vanderdecker repeated. “Only not called the Verdomde this time. Something a bit more cheerful. And big. Huge. One of those oil tankers, maybe, or a second-hand aircraft carrier. Only we’d have the whole thing gutted and we’d fit it out like an enormous floating country-club. A separate floor for each of us, with automated and computerised everything. Complete luxury. We could just sail around, landing where we like and when we like, just generally having a good time. I mean,” Vanderdecker’s voice sounded a trifle strained, “I think we’re all a bit too old to settle down now. Don’t you think?”
“You know best,” Jane said. “Well, I think that’s a splendid idea. I really do. Have you put it to them yet?”
“No, not yet. I thought I’d like your opinion first.”
“Yes, you do that,” Jane said. “And now let’s have a drink, shall we?”
They went into the drawing room. The first thing they saw was Professor Montalban, lying on the sofa fast asleep. Snoring.
“Had a drop too much,” Sebastian explained unnecessarily. “Not used to it.”
“Fair enough,” Vanderdecker said. “Now listen, you lot. I’ve been thinking…”
And he explained the idea of the oil-tanker. It was well-received, particularly by Antonius, who had been wondering what was going to happen next. They all had a drink to celebrate. They drank the whisky, the wine, the gin, the brandy, the cherry brandy, the rest of the apple brandy and the sherry. At this point, Danny and the camera crew passed out, leaving Jane, the Flying Dutchman and the crew to drink the vermouth, the Tia Maria, the ouzo, the port, the bourbon, the vodka, the bacardi, the schnapps and the ginger-beer shandy.
“That seems to be the lot,” Vanderdecker said, disappointed. “And not a drop of beer in the whole place.”
“What’s this, Skip?” Antonius asked, holding up a cut-glass decanter. There was no label on it, but it was a pleasant dark golden colour.
“Where did you find that, Antonius?” Vanderdecker asked.
“In this little cabinet thing.”
Vanderdecker sniffed it. “Smells like rum,” he said. “Anyone fancy a drop of rum?”
Everyone, it transpired, fancied a drop of rum. It must have been good rum, because it made them all feel very sleepy.
When they woke up, everyone had headaches, Jane included. From the kitchen came the smell of frying bacon, which made them all feel sick. Slowly, Vanderdecker lifted himself to his feet, looked around to see if he could see where he’d left his head the previous evening, and went into the kitchen to kill whoever was making that horrible smell.
It was Montalban, wearing a striped pinny, frying bacon. He had also made a big pot of coffee, of which Vanderdecker consumed a large quantity straight from the spout.
“Why aren’t you as ill as the rest of us?” he asked the Professor.
“I never get hangovers,” said the Professor.
Vanderdecker scowled. “Clean living, huh?”
“No,” the Professor replied. “I have a little recipe.”
“Gimme.”
The Professor grinned and pointed to a half-full jug on the worktop. “There’s tomato juice and raw egg,” he said, “and mercury and nitric acid and white lead and heavy water. And Worcester sauce,” he added, “to taste.”
Vanderdecker had some and felt much better. “Thanks,” he said. “It was the rum that did it.”
“Rum?”
“Vicious stuff, rum,” Vanderdecker said. “Does horrible things to you.”
“I haven’t got any rum,” Montalban said.
“Not now you haven’t.”
Montalban was looking at him. “No, I never keep any in the house,” he said. “Are you sure it was rum?”
“Well,” Vanderdecker said, “there wasn’t a label on the decanter but it tasted like rum. I think.”
“Which decanter?”
“In a little glass-fronted cabinet thing, by the telephone table,” Vanderdecker said. “Maybe it was calvados, come to think of it, except calvados always gives me heartburn and heartburn was about the only thing I wasn’t suffering from when I woke up just now.”
Montalban was staring now, but not at the bacon, which was burning. “Large cut-glass decanter in a small glass-fronted cabinet,” he said.
“That’s right. Sorry, was it special or something? We just weren’t noticing…”
“That wasn’t rum, I’m afraid,” Montalban said. “That was elixir.”
Vanderdecker’s eyes grew very ro
und and his hands fell to his sides. “You what?” he said.
“Elixir,” Montalban said.
“Oh SHIT,” Vanderdecker replied. “Not again.”
“I’m afraid so,” said the Professor, “yes.”
Vanderdecker’s spine seemed to melt, and he slithered against the worktop, knocking over a glass jar of pearl barley. “You stupid…”
“It’s not my fault,” Montalban protested nervously. “For Heaven’s sake, I’d have thought you and your friends would have learned your lesson by now, really…”
Vanderdecker straightened up, turned his head to the wall and started to bang it furiously on the corner of some shelf units. “Not you,” he said, “me. Antonius. No, me. Oh hell!”
“It’s not,” Montalban said, “exactly the same elixir as well, as last time.”
Vanderdecker stopped pounding his head against the shelves and looked at him. “It isn’t?”
“Well,” said the Professor, “it’s basically the same, but I did make certain changes to the molecular…”
He stopped short, because Vanderdecker’s hands round his windpipe made talking difficult. “Does it make you smell?” Vanderdecker snarled. Montalban said nothing in reply—not for want of trying—but his lips made the necessary movements to shape “No”.
“You sure?” Montalban nodded vigorously, and Vanderdecker let him go.
“But,” he added, as soon as he had breath enough to do so, “it does have side-effects.”
“It does?”
“I fear so.”
Vanderdecker groaned. “Go on,” he said, “tell me.”
“You understand,” Montalban said, first making sure that he had the bulk of a chest freezer between himself and his interlocutor, “that my data is based on necessarily perfunctory and in-complete tests, confined entirely to non-human animal subjects, and that what I say is on a completely without prejudice basis?”
“Tell me.”
“You really must understand that none of this has been proved to the high standards…”
“Tell me,” Vanderdecker said.
“It makes you go bright green.”
“Green?”