Science Fiction Originals Vol 3 Part 38

"She doesn't like me," Pauline told me.

"She doesn't know you yet," I said. "When she does, she'll probably hate you."

She narrowed her eyes. "Have you been crying?"

I shook my head. "Too much smoke in here."

She frowned at me. "I'm going to need some help getting Harvey into the Range Rover in a while."

I looked across the bar, but there were still too many people between the bar and Harvey's favourite corner, and I couldn't see him. "Are you sure about marrying him?"

Pauline smiled. "You were right, you know? He really does have a good heart. He's a nice man, he's just a long long way from home. He's very sweet."

"And very wealthy."

"That comment," she said, accepting her pint of bitter, "doesn't do you credit."

Betty snorted and went out into the bar to collect gla.s.ses.

"I told you she didn't like me," Pauline said.

I lit another cigar. "Will you carry on working?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Is this the prelude to another insult?"

"It just occurred to me that you won't have to worry about your editor any more."

"I know." Her face seemed to light up with joy. "You have no idea how that feels."

"I think I can guess."

Domino came up to the bar. "Harvey wants to go home," he told us. He glanced at the clock over the fireplace. "And I have to go soon as well, or I'll turn into a pumpkin."

"That's not a joke you want to make around here," Pauline said. She looked at me. "Come on, Geoff. Let's get His Lords.h.i.+p in the car."

As we were getting him to his feet, Harvey opened his eyes and gazed blearily about the bar. "Where'd everyone go?" he asked.

"Home," I said.

He looked at me. "Hey, fella," he murmured, grinning. "Baxter's Garage."

"That's me," I said, putting my shoulder under his armpit to support his weight. "Baxter's Garage."

"I'm going to buy your house," he said.

"That's very nice," I told him as we got him half-walking, half-stumbling towards the door. The few drinkerswho remained raised their gla.s.ses to us as we went by.

"My people," Harvey said, waving to them. "Jesus, now I know why King George fought so hard to hang on to the Colonies. He just hated to see all those serfs going off on their own." He frowned. "Is it serfs or serves?"

"Are you going to do this all the time?" Pauline asked him.

He turned his head and looked at her. "Do what? Drink?" He looked thoughtful. "Guess not." He looked at me again. "Yeah. Your house. Going to buy it. You can come stay at the House with me and Pauline. I got plans." He nodded. "Good plans."

"I'm afraid to ask," I said, but I didn't have to because he had half dozed-off again.

Pauline went ahead of us and opened the doors and we followed her out into the car park. Moonlight shone on the roofs and bonnets of all the vehicles crammed in around the pub. Domino looked up at the Moon and scratched his head with his free hand.

There were some moments of low comedy while Pauline searched through Harvey's pockets for his car keys. Then we manhandled Harvey into the back seat of the Range Rover and covered him with a travelling rug. He turned over on his side and started to snore. Pauline closed the door and looked at us.

"Are you going to be all right?" she asked me.

"I expect so," I said.

"Harvey was serious about you coming to live at the House with us," she said.

"I know," I said. "I'll think about it."

"You'll still be able to visit her."

"I said I'll think about it."

"Okay." She hugged me and Domino, got into the Range Rover, and drove off into the night with her fiance.

"Well," Domino said as we watched the car's rear lights vanish around the bend in the road at the end of the village, "that was an interesting evening."

"What were you two talking about?"

"Oh, this and that. She's very bright, you know."

"She's very bright and she's marrying Harvey?"

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. "Let's get you home."

These days, Seldon never really slept. There were always news crews wandering about, on the lookout for some new phenomenon. Tonight there were little groups of revellers as well, most of them staggering goodnaturedly homeward, some of them just staggering. They were being filmed by the CNN crew, who seemed to require neither sleep nor sustenance. In a couple of hours, the celebrations of the Fourteenth Earl Seldon's engagement would be on television screens in hotels in Dubai and duplexes in Waukesha, Wisconsin and flats in Sydney. I made sure Domino was walking between me and the cameras.

We reached the bottom of my street, turned the corner, and started to walk up towards my house. The lights were still on the Prentice Sisters' houses. I couldn't work out what ninety-seven-year-olds found to do so late at night.

As I opened the front door, I heard the end-t.i.tle music of Prisoner: Cell Block H from the living room.

"We're back," I called.

Domino walked down the hall and put his head round the door. "h.e.l.lo, Karen."

"Hi, Domino," she said. "How was the evening?"

"Harvey had a lot to drink."

"What about Geoff?"

"Actually, Geoff didn't have that much to drink."

I heard Karen sigh. "He will."

I stepped into the living room. All the lights were off. The only illumination came from the television, and it threw odd shadows across the walls and furniture.

"Hi," I said to one of the shadows.

"Could you change the channel?" she asked. "They Think It's All Over's on BBC1 in a minute."

I picked up the remote control from the coffee table. "It's a repeat, isn't it?"

"I know," she said. "But I missed it the first time around because I was dead."

"Right." I changed the channel for her and put the remote back on the table. "I'll just see Domino out and I'll come back."

"Okay," she said. "Goodnight, Domino."

"See you soon, Karen."

He followed me through the kitchen. I unlocked the back door and we went out into the garden.

"Are you going to sell the garage to Harvey?" Domino asked as we walked along the path.

I sat down on the garden seat. "Do I have a choice?" "You'll be lucky to get a better offer," he said, taking off his s.h.i.+rt and straightening up.

I looked at him. Standing upright, he was nearly seven feet tall. His breastbone bulged out like the keel of a rowing-boat. He flexed the ma.s.sive muscular hump of his shoulders and jammed his fists into the small of his back to ease the cramp he was always getting because he went around hunched-over as part of his disguise. I'd told him I thought it was a pretty stupid disguise, but he wouldn't listen.

"What about the house?" he asked.

I took out a panatella and lit it. "I said I'd think about it, Domino."

"There's no need to shout at me."

"I wasn't shouting."

He sucked his teeth. "Well, don't think too long. Harvey might change his mind." He bent down and took off his trainers and socks. He balled up the socks and put them both in one trainer.

"Harvey never changes his mind once he's decided he wants something. You know what he's like."

"Hm." He undid his belt and took off his jeans and walked out into the middle of the lawn. Without clothes, he looked thin and light enough to blow away on a breeze.

"What about his job offer?" I asked.

"It's an interesting idea," he admitted. "But you'll still need help if he wants you to carry on running the garage, won't you?"

Behind me in the rhododenrons, something rattled. Wood sprites, I thought. Or a Green Man, perhaps.

Once upon a time it would have been squirrels or a fox; now you just couldn't be sure.

I said, "If you did want to go off and work for Harvey, I wouldn't stop you."

There was a wet smacking sound, and the great hump on Domino's back opened in a pair of fat fleshy leaves. Two huge damp flags of gauzy tissue tumbled out and hung from his shoulders.

"Don't be n.o.ble, Geoff," he said, starting to flap his arms up and down to pump fluid into the banners of skin. He looked, it had to be said, completely ridiculous. "It doesn't suit you."

"Thanks."

"Besides, how did you plan to stop me?"

Good point. "Did you tell Pauline about... um...?" I gestured at him.

"She worked quite a lot of it out herself, actually," he said, still flapping his arms. "As I said, she's very bright. I think it's going to be a lot of fun having her around."

I sat quietly smoking my cigar and watching Domino's pantomime. It was a lovely evening. A large lens-shaped object, glowing a soft blue, drifted slowly over the house and out of sight beyond the trees. Out on the High Street, someone on their way home from the pub launched into a loud, spirited and almost entirely off-key rendition of "New York, New York." I sighed.

"Anyway," said Domino, "it's going to take a couple of weeks for Harvey's solicitors to sort out the paperwork on the garage and the house, so we may as well just carry on as normal until then."

"Yes." I got up from the garden seat and picked up his s.h.i.+rt and his trousers and his shoes. "I suppose we can try that."

"So." He spread his great b.u.t.terfly wings and smiled down at me. "I'll see you at work tomorrow." And he flew off into the moonlit sky.

I stood for a long time watching him fly away, until he was just a tiny speck, and then I looked away for a moment and he was gone. From inside the house, I heard Karen laughing at something someone had said on television.

There didn't seem to be anything else to do, so I went back into the house to have a drink.

I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling. I fidgeted a bit. It seemed that I hadn't noticed before just how uncomfortable the bed was.

After fifteen or twenty minutes, I got up and got dressed and went downstairs. As I walked along the hall, I heard a man's voice say, "To jest poczta."

Karen said, "To jest poczta."

She was following the BBC's early-morning language cla.s.ses. First it had been Spanish, then Italian, then German, then I had lost track. I was going to wind up with the world's only disembodied voice that spoke eight or nine languages.

"Geoff?" she called as I went past the door of the living room.

"Can't sleep," I said. I opened the front door and stepped outside.

I stood at the garden gate and took big breaths of cool fresh air. The lights were still on in the Prentice Sisters' houses.

I walked down to the corner and onto the High Street. Down by the little Argos car park a small group of people were crouching over something in a pool of bright camera-light. I couldn't see what it was. I walked off in the opposite direction.

At the garage, I unlocked the office and switched on the lights and sat down at my desk. I unlocked thebottom drawer and took out the office vodka and a gla.s.s. I put the bottle on the desk and sat back and looked at it. I'd had that bottle for five years and I'd never opened it. I made it a rule never to drink in the office, on the grounds that there had to be somewhere I didn't drink. I opened the bottle, half-filled the gla.s.s, and drained it in one go. I poured myself another and sat back in my chair and looked at the light fitting.

I thought about six years of struggle and worry. I thought about Karen. I thought about Harvey riding to the rescue and just suddenly making it all right again. I took a big drink of vodka and s.h.i.+vered. I filled the gla.s.s right up to the top. I picked it up carefully and managed to drink most of it in a single swallow without spilling a drop. I wondered if Harvey would make me wear some kind of period costume when I was running his garage.

I got up and went outside into the yard. I unlocked the door to one of the sheds and stood looking at my car, the Peugeot Karen and I had driven down here in six years ago. Apart from routine maintenance and the odd trip back up to London over the years, it had been in the shed ever since, courtesy of Laura Gibbs.

I spent twenty minutes trying to find a length of hose that would fit over the Peugeot's exhaust, and when I did find some it wasn't long enough to go through any of the windows, which seemed to sum up Baxter's Garage quite neatly. I gave up and settled for closing the shed door and stuffing an old tarpaulin into the gap along the bottom.