The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (20 page)

The possible significance of this suddenly struck him, and he hurried through to the kitchen. Many of his assorted kitchen implements had clearly gone. The rack of largely unused Sabatier knives, the food processor and his radio cassette player had all vanished, but he did, however, have a new fridge. It had obviously been delivered by Nobby Paxton's felonious thugs and he would just have to make the usual little list.
Still, he had a new fridge and that was a considerable load off his mind. Already the whole atmosphere in the kitchen seemed easier. The tension had lifted. There was a new sense of lightness and springiness in the air which had even communicated itself to the pile of old pizza boxes which seemed now to recline at a jaunty rather than an oppressive angle.
Dirk cheerfully threw open the door to the new fridge and was delighted to find it completely and utterly empty. Its inner light shone on perfectly clean blue and white walls and on gleaming chrome shelves. He liked it so much that he instantly determined to keep it like that. He would put nothing in it at all. His food would just have to go off in plain view.
Good. He closed it again.
A screech and a flap behind him reminded him that he was entertaining a visiting eagle. He turned to find it glaring at him from on top of the kitchen table.
Now that he was getting a little more accustomed to it, and had not actually been viciously attacked as he had suspected he might be, it seemed a little less fearsome than it had at first. It was still a serious amount of eagle, but perhaps an eagle was a slightly more manageable proposition than he had originally supposed. He relaxed a little and took off his hat, pulled off his coat, and threw them on to a chair.
The eagle seemed at this juncture to sense that Dirk might be getting the wrong idea about it and flexed one of its claws at him. With sudden alarm Dirk saw that it did indeed have something that closely resembled congealed blood on the talons. He backed away from it hurriedly. The eagle then rose up to its full height on its talons and began to spread its great wings out, wider and wider, beating them very slowly and leaning forward so as to keep its balance. Dirk did the only thing he could think to do under the cincumstances and bolted from the room, slamming the door behind him and jamming the hall table up against it.
A terrible cacophony of screeching and scratching and buffeting arose instantly from behind it. Dirk sat leaning back against the table, panting and trying to catch his breath, and then after a while began to get a worrying feeling about what the bird was up to now.
It seemed to him that the eagle was actually dive-bombing itself against the door. Every few seconds the pattern would repeat itself - first a great beating of wings, then a rush, then a terrible cracking thud. Dirk didn't think it would get through the door, but was alarmed that it might beat itself to death trying. The creature seemed to be quite frantic about something, but what, Dirk could not even begin to imagine. He tried to calm himself down and think clearly, to work out what he should do next.
He should phone Kate and make certain she was all right. Whoosh, thud! He should finally open up the envelope he had been carrying with him all day and examine its contents. Whoosh, thud! For that he would need a sharp knife. Whoosh, thud! Three rather awkward thoughts then struck him in fairly quick succession.
Whoosh, thud! First, the only sharp knives in the place, assuming Nobby's removal people had left him with any at all, were in the kitchen. Whoosh, thud! That didn't matter so much in itself, because he could probably find something in the house that would do. Whoosh, thud! The second thought was that the actual envelope itself was in the pocket of his coat which he had left lying over the back of a chair in the kitchen. Whoosh, thud! The third thought was very similar to the second and had to do with the location of the piece of paper with Kate's telephone number on it. Whoosh, thud! Oh God. Whoosh, thud! Dirk began to feel very, very tired at the way the day was working out. He was deeply worried by the sense of impending calamity, but was still by no means able to divine what lay at the root of it. Whoosh, thud! Well, he knew what he had to do now... Whoosh, thud! ... so there was no point in not getting on with it. He quietly pulled the table away from the door. Whoosh - He ducked and yanked the door open, passing smoothly under the eagle as it hurtled out into the hallway and hit the opposite wall. He slammed the door closed behind him from inside the kitchen, pulled his coat off the chair and jammed the chair back up under the handle. Whoosh, thud! The damage done to the door on this side was both considerable and impressive, and Dirk began seriously to worry about what this behaviour said about the bird's state of mind, or what the bird's state of mind might become if it maintained this behaviour for very much longer. Whoosh... scratch... The same thought seemed to have occurred to the bird at that moment, and after a brief flurry of screeching and of scratching at the door with its talons it lapsed into a grumpy and defeated silence, which after it had been going on for about a minute became almost as disturbing as the previous batterings.
Dirk wondered what it was up to.
He approached the door cautiously and very, very quietly moved the chair back a little so that he could see through the keyhole. He squatted down and peered through it. At first it seemed to him that he could see nothing through it, that it must be blocked by something. Then, a slight flicker and glint close up on the other side suddenly revealed the startling truth, which was that the eagle also had an eye up at the keyhole and was busy looking back at him. Dirk almost toppled backwards with the shock of the realisation, and backed away from the door with a sense of slight horror and revulsion.
This was extremely intelligent behaviour for an eagle wasn't it? Was it? How could he find out? He couldn't think of any ornithological experts to phone. All his reference books were piled up in other rooms of the house, and he didn't think he'd be able to keep on pulling off the same stunt with impunity, certainly not when he was dealing with an eagle which had managed to figure out what keyholes were for.
He retrealed to the kitchen sink and found some kitchen towel. He folded it into a wad, soaked it, and dabbed it first on his bleeding temple, which was swelling up nicely, and then on his nose which was still very tender, and had been a considerable size for most of the day now. Maybe the eagle was an eagle of delicate sensibilities and had reacted badly to the sight of Dirk's face in its current, much abused, state and had simply lost its mind. Dirk sighed and sat down.
Kate's telephone, which was the next thing he turned his attention to, was answered by a machine when he tried to ring it. Her voice told him, very sweetly, that he was welcome to leave a message after the beep, but warned that she hardly ever listened to them and that it was much better to talk to her directly, only he couldn't because she wasn't in, so he'd best try again.
Thank you very much, he thought, and put the phone down.
He realised that the truth of the matter was this: he had spent the day putting off opening the envelope because of what he was worried about finding in it. It wasn't that the idea was frightening, though indeed it was frightening that a man should sell his soul to a green-eyed man with a scythe, which is what circumstances were trying very hard to suggest had happened. It was just that it was extremely depressing that he should sell it to a green-eyed man with a scythe in exchange for a share in the royalties of a hit record.
That was what it looked like on the face of it. Wasn't it?
Dirk picked up the other envelope, the one which had been waiting for him on his doormat, delivered there by courier from a large London bookshop where Dirk had an account. He pulled out the contents, which were a copy of the sheet music of Hot Pototo, written by Colin Paignton, Phil Mulville and Geoff Anstey.
The lyrics were, well, straightforward. They provided a basic repetitive bit of funk rhythm and a simple sense of menace and cheerful callousness which had caught the mood of last summer. They went:
Hot Potato,
Don't pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.
Quick, pass it on, poss it on, poss it on.
You don't want to get caught, get caught, get caught.
Drop it on someone. Who ? Who ? Anybody.
You better not have it when the big one comes.
I said you better not have it when the big one comes.
It's a Hot Potato.
And so on. The repeated phrases got tossed back and forward between the two members of the band, the drum machine got heavier and heavier, and there had been a dance video.
Was that all it was going to be? Big deal. A nice house in Lupton Street with polyurethaned floors and a broken marriage?
Things had certainly come down a long way since the great days of Faust and Mephistopheles, when a man could gain all the knowledge of the universe, achieve all the ambitions of his mind and all the pleasures of the flesh for the price of his soul. Now it was a few record royalties, a few pieces of trendy furniture, a trinket to stick on your bathroom wall and, whap, your head comes off.
So what exactly was the deal? What was the Potato contract? Who was getting what and why?
Dirk rummaged through a drawer for the breadknife, sat down once more, took the envelope from his coat pocket and ripped through the congealed strata of Sellotape which held the end of it together.
Out fell a thick bundle of papers.
Chapter 22
At exactly the moment that the telephone rang, the door to Kate's sitting-room opened. The Thunder God attempted to stomp in through it, but in fact he wafted. He had clearly soaked himself very thoroughly in the stuff Kate had thrown into the bath, then redressed, and torn op a nightgown of Kate's to bind his forearm with. He casually tossed a handful of softened oak shards away into the comer of the room. Kate decided for the moment to ignore both the deliberate provocations and the telephone. The former she could deal with and the latter she had a machine for dealing with.
"I've been reading about you," she challenged the Thunder God. "Where's your beard?"
He took the book, a one volume encyclopaedia, from her hands and glanced at it before tossing it aside contemptuously.
"Ha," he said, "I shaved it off. When I was in Wales." He scowled at the memory.
"What were you doing in Wales for heaven's sake?"
"Counting the stones," he said with a shrug, and went to stare out of the window.
There was a huge, moping anxiety in his bearing. It suddenly occurred to Kate with a spasm of something not entinely unlike fear, that sometimes when people got like that, it was because they had picked up their mood from the weather. With a Thunder God it presumably worked the other way round. The sky ootside certainly had a restless and disgruntled look.
Her reactions suddenly started to become very confused.
"Excuse me if this sounds like a stupid question," said Kate, "but I'm a little at sea here. I'm not used to spending the evening with someone who's got a whole day named after them. What stones were you counting in Wales?"
"All of them," said Thor in a low growl. "All of them between this size... " he held the tip of his forefinger and thumb about a quarter of an inch apart, "...and this size." He held his two hands about a yard apart, and then put them down again.
Kate stared at him blankly.
"Well... how many were thene?" she asked. It seemed only polite to ask.
He rounded on her angrily.
"Count them yourself if you want to know!" he shouted. "What's the point in my spending years and years and years counting them, so that I'm the only person who knows, and who will ever know, if I just go and tell somebody else? Well?"
He turned back to the window.
"Anyway," he said, "I've been worried about it. I think I may have lost count somewhere in Mid-Glamorgan. But I'm not," he shouted, "going to do it again!"
"Well, why on earth would you do such an extraordinary thing in the first place?"
"It was a burden placed on me by my father. A punishment. A penance." He glowered.
"Your father?" said Kate. "Do you mean Odin?"
"The All-Father," said Thor. "Father of the Gods of Asgard."
"And you're saying he's alive?"
Thor turned to look at her as if she was stupid.
"We are immortals," he said, simply.
Downstairs, Neil chose that moment to conclude his thunderous performance on the bass, and the house seemed to sing in its aftermath with an eerie silence.
"Immortals are what you wanted," said Thor in a low, quiet voice. "Immortals are what you got. It is a little hard on us. You wanted us to be for ever, so we are for ever. Then you forget about us. But still we are for ever. Now at last, many are dead, many dying," he then added in a quiet voice, "but it takes a special effort."
"I can't even begin to understand what you're talking about," said Kate, "you say that I, we - "
"You can begin to understand," said Thor, angrily, "which is why I have come to you. Do you know that most people hardly see me? Hardly notice me at all? It is not that we are hidden. We are here. We move among you. My people. Your gods. You gave birth to us. You made us be what'you would not dare to be yourselves. Yet you will not acknowledge us. If I walk along one of your streets in this... world you have made for yourselves without us, then barely an eye will once flicker in my direction."
"Is this when you're wearing the helmet?"
"Especially when I'm wearing the helmet!"
"Well- "
"You make fun of me!" roared Thor.
"You make it very easy for a girl," said Kate. "I don't know what - "
Suddenly the room seemed to quake and then to catch its breath. All of Kate's insides wobbled violently and then held very still. In the sudden horrible silence, a blue china table lamp slowly toppled off the table, hit the floor, and crawled off to a dark corner of the room where it sat in a worried little defensive huddle.
Kate stared at it and tried to be calm about it. She felt as if cold, soft jelly was trickling down her skin.
"Did you do that?" she said shakily.
Thor was looking livid and confused. He muttered, "Do not make me angry with you. You were very lucky." He looked away.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that I wish you to come with me."
"What? What about that?" She pointed at the small befuddled kitten under the table which had so recently and so confusingly been a blue china table lamp.
"There's nothing I can do for it."