Expecting Someone Taller (19 page)

‘I'll tell you, shall I?' continued Flosshilde. ‘She was there trying to get the Ring-Bearer to give her our Ring, which you should have given back to us a thousand years ago. So will you please tell her to stop it and go away?'

The Norn covered her eyes again, but she need not have bothered. Wotan simply looked away and threw a piece of cheese to the small dragon, which had curled up on his lap.

‘If you don't,' said Flosshilde, clear without being shrill, ‘we'll tell him who she is. Are you listening?'

There was a terrible silence. Never before had anyone, mortal or immortal, dared to threaten the Lord of Tempests in the Hall of his stronghold. Even the rock-troll held his breath, and the beating of his basalt heart was the only audible sound in the whole assembly. Wotan sat motionless for a moment, then rose sharply to his feet, sending the small dragon scampering for the safety of a coffee-table. He looked the Rhinedaughter in the eye, and the Norn held her breath. Then Wotan shook his head in disbelief, and marched out of the Hall.

‘
Not
across the floor I've spent all morning polishing,' wailed the Valkyrie Gerhilde, but her father took no notice. The meeting broke up in disorder, and the troll and the Norn hurried off to the Mortals' Bar for a much-needed drink.

‘I dunno,' said the rock-troll. ‘I've never seen the like.'

‘He just sat there,' said the Norn.

‘Who did?'

‘Wotan. When Flossie turned that paper into a dragon. It's Kew Gardens for her, I thought, but he just sat there. Didn't do a thing.'

‘I didn't mean that,' said the rock-troll. ‘I meant the other thing.'

The Norn wasn't listening. ‘What I want to know is,' she continued, ‘who is bluffing who? Is it the Girls bluffing Wotan, or Wotan bluffing the Girls, or are they all at it?'

The troll frowned and scratched his head, producing a sound like two millstones. ‘What are you on about?' he asked.

‘You
are
a slowcoach, aren't you? If the Girls wanted to stop Ortlinde from nobbling the Ring-Bearer, why didn't they just tell him who she was, instead of coming here and making threats to Wotan?'

The troll thought about this for a moment, then nodded his head. He was not so grey as he was granite-looking, and he could see that there was indeed an inconsistency.

‘What I think,' said the Norn excitedly, ‘is that the Ring-Bearer already knows who Ortlinde is, and he couldn't care less. They've tried telling him, and he doesn't want to know.'

‘How do you make that out?' asked the troll.

‘Simple,' said the Norn, smugly. ‘They've tried telling him, like I said, and he isn't interested. But they know that Wotan doesn't know that the Ring-Bearer knows who Ortlinde really is. So they threaten to tell the Ring-Bearer, hoping that the threat will make Wotan tell Ortlinde to chuck it and come home.'

The troll stared at the bottom of his glass, trying to unravel the Norn's sentence. The Norn took this silence to mean that the troll was not yet convinced, and elaborated her point.

‘You see, if Wotan doesn't know that the Ring-Bearer knows, then he'll be afraid in case the Girls tell the Ring-Bearer, and the Girls will try and get him to make some sort of a deal. The Girls can't make the Ring-Bearer chuck Ortlinde, because the Ring-Bearer presumably knows already - I mean he must know, mustn't he? But they can get Wotan to tell Ortlinde to chuck it if they can make him think that the Ring-Bearer doesn't know. Do you see what I mean?'

‘Did you think all that up for yourself?' said the troll, full of admiration. The Norn blushed.

‘That's very clever, that is,' said the troll. ‘But what about the other thing?'

‘What other thing?'

‘You know.' The troll made a vague gesture with his huge paw. ‘The other thing. I smelt it when the Girls walked in.'

It was the Norn's turn to look puzzled. The troll made a great effort and thought hard.

‘Why was it,' he said at last, ‘that old Wotan didn't turn the Girls into something when they gave him all that lip? You answer me that.'

‘He tried to,' said the Norn. ‘Just before he stomped off.'

‘Exactly,' said the troll. ‘He tried to, but he couldn't. There was something stopping him.'

‘What?' cried the Norn, enthralled.

‘I dunno, do I? But they brought it in with them. I smelt it. There was something looking after them, or at least it was looking after Miss Flosshilde. Didn't you smell it too?'

‘I'm no good at smells,' confessed the Norn, who lived on a bleak, wet fell and had a permanent cold as a result. ‘Was it some sort of Power, do you think?'

The troll had done enough thinking for one day. His mind was made of sandstone and, besides, he had other things on it. He looked at the Norn for a moment and for the first time in his life attempted a smile.

‘You're very clever, you are,' he said. ‘Do you come here often?'

The Norn blushed prettily. She noticed that the troll had very nice eyes, and if one of them happened to be in the middle of his forehead, who cared? The conversation veered away from the Ring-Bearer and the strange-smelling Power, which was ironic in a way; for the change of subject and the emotions that had prompted it were largely due to their influence.

The Norn had been right up to a point. Malcolm had discovered who the girl he loved really was, but not from the Rhinedaughters, or even Alberich, who had rushed back from Germany to tell him. He had heard and finally believed the news only when a sparrow had perched on his shoulder in Bond Street and chirped the information into his ear. By that time, of course, Malcolm was engaged to the girl, which made things all the more difficult . . .

 

It had only taken thirty-six hours for Malcolm and the girl who had come to catalogue his library to become engaged to be married. Malcolm was not quite sure why he had felt such an urgent need to get official recognition for this strange and unexpected outbreak of love in Middle Somerset. But it seemed the right thing to do, like getting a contract or a receipt. To his utter astonishment, his proposal had been accepted. The girl had simply looked at her shoes for a moment, smiled at him sadly, and said, ‘If you're sure . . .' Malcolm had said that he was sure, and the girl had said something along the lines of Yes.

One is meant to do something wildly demonstrative on such occasions, but Malcolm felt too drained to waste energy in running about or shouting. In fact, he realised, he felt rather depressed, although he could not imagine why. For her part, the girl was even more taciturn than usual. The pretty scene had taken place beside the river in the grounds of the Hall, and they had sat in total silence for a while before getting to their feet and walking back to the house. At the door, the girl turned and looked at him for a moment, then muttered something about getting on with the catalogue.

‘Catalogue?' Was she thinking about wedding presents already? ‘What catalogue?'

‘Of the library.'

‘You don't want to bother with that, surely? I mean . . .'

‘Oh, but I must.' The girl looked at him again, not as one would expect a girl to look at her future husband. Nor was it an ‘Oh God what have I gone and done' look; just a look, that was all. Then she went up to the library.

Malcolm sat down on the stairs and put his hands over his ears. He felt confused, and no thoughts would come into his mind. With a tremendous effort, he called up the aspects of the situation that required his immediate attention, and tried to review them in the detail that they seemed to warrant.

Unlikely as it seemed, he had just succeeded in getting himself organised for perhaps the first time in his life. He had fallen in love, and for a change the girl at the other end felt the same way. Instead of letting this chance slip through his fingers, he had got everything sorted out, and that was all there was to it. There was no earthly reason why he shouldn't get married; he had a house and money, which was what a married man was supposed to need, along with a wife. If there had been anything wrong with
the idea, then the girl wouldn't have said Yes. She was obviously happy with the arrangement, and it went without saying that it was what he wanted most of all in the whole wide world. Was it? Yes, he concluded, it probably was. Mind you, it did seem a terribly grown-up thing to be doing, but then again, it would be, wouldn't it? So far as he could see, he was Happy. He lacked nothing, and had all sorts of nice things to look forward to.

Malcolm leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. It occurred to him that he had only known this girl for about a day and a half, and that he was being a bit hasty. He dismissed this thought, which was simply cowardice. The trouble was, he reckoned, he was probably afraid of being happy, of having what he really wanted. For some reason or other, which he could not be bothered to work out.

He got to his feet and walked slowly to the library. The girl was sitting at a table with a pile of books on it, writing something in what looked like a ledger. She did not hear him come in, and he stood looking at her for a moment. Life, he realised, was a fragile thing, and time and opportunity should not be wasted.

‘Blow that,' he said, and the girl started. ‘Let's go and buy a ring.'

His words had broken a deep silence, and silence followed them, so that Malcolm had the feeling that he was talking to himself. This would never do.

‘Come on,' he pleaded. ‘You don't have to do that now. Everything's going to be all right now.'

Oddly enough, the girl seemed to understand what he meant by that, which was more than he did himself. She smiled (why did she always smile and never laugh?) and said Yes, she would like that. So they went downstairs and Malcolm walked out to the garage to get the car.

Alberich was sitting on the bonnet, eating a ham roll.

‘This is my lunch, you realise,' said the Nibelung. ‘About the worst thing I could possibly have, barring lobster.'

‘What are you doing here?' Malcolm asked.

‘I came straight back from Germany,' continued Alberich. ‘I saw the two of you together just now, and I knew in a minute what had happened.'

‘Thank you.'

You know who she is, don't you?'

Malcolm stared at him. ‘Of course I do,' he said. ‘Do you?'

‘Well, of course.'

Malcolm frowned. How in God's name did Alberich know who she was? Did he have a library too? Malcolm suddenly felt that he didn't want to know.

‘I know all about her,' he said. ‘And we've just got engaged. We're going to London to buy a ring.'

‘
Buy
a ring?' said Alberich, genuinely surprised. ‘I'd have thought that was unnecessary.'

Malcolm did not understand this remark, so he assumed it must be a joke. Perhaps in the back of his mind he had an idea that Alberich was trying to tell him something very important, but if that was the case he managed to ignore it. He squeezed a polite laugh out of his lungs, and unlocked the car.

‘Hang on, though,' said Alberich.

‘Sorry, I haven't got time,' said Malcolm. ‘I think we should get it in Bond Street. That's where all the jewellers' shops are, aren't they?'

‘Why not Amsterdam? Or Johannesburg?' asked Alberich quietly.

‘She wouldn't understand about the Tarnhelm,' Malcolm said. ‘It might frighten her.'

‘Most unlikely. Are you sure you know . . .?'

Malcolm started the engine and pressed the accelerator hard. Perhaps Alberich was saying something tremendously important; if he was, he couldn't hear a word of it. The Prince of the Nibelungs hopped off the bonnet and banged on the window. Malcolm wound it down and shouted, ‘I'll see you when we get back. The housekeeper will make you a cup of tea, I expect.' Then he let in the clutch and drove furiously out of the garage.

Alberich stood for a moment and scratched his head. Then it occurred to him that he had been wasting his time. He picked up a spanner which was lying on the floor of the garage and hurled it at the wall.

 

Malcolm deliberately parked on a double yellow line in the middle of Bond Street. It was that sort of a day. If a traffic warden came and wrote him a ticket, he could tell her that he was engaged to be married to the most wonderful girl in the world. He wanted to tell people that, if only to hear himself say it. Anyway, he was feeling much better now, if a trifle hysterical.

The girl seemed to have cheered up, too. Almost for the first time since he had known her, she had laughed properly, and that was a wonderful sound to be anywhere near. In fact, Malcolm was at a loss to know what had got into her, for she behaved very childishly in all the jeweller's shops they went into. She insisted on trying on all the rings they saw, taking them to the window to see what they looked like in the light, and then saying that they wouldn't do. The stones were the wrong colour, or too small, or too big, or the settings were the wrong shape. It almost seemed as if she wasn't taking this business seriously.

They had tried six shops, and it was nearly half-past five.

‘It's no good,' said the girl. ‘I don't like any of the ones we've seen. And I'm the one who's going to be wearing it; For ever and ever,' she added, tenderly. For some reason, this remark struck Malcolm as being rather out of character, but he put it down to excitement.

‘We can try that one over there, if we're quick,' he suggested.

‘No,' said the girl, ‘I know the ring I want.' And she told him. As she did so, it began to rain.

The two sparrows that had been eating crumbs outside the largest of the jeweller's shops looked at each other.