The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (25 page)

As it happened, this was a fortuitous move.
It meant that he was away from the central open space of the station, and near a wall against which he could press himself inconspicuously when he suddenly heard the sound of two pairs of feet crossing the forecourt outside.
In a few seconds, they entered the main part of the station, by which time Dirk was well out of sight round the angle of a wall.
Being well out of sight worked less well for him in another respect, which was that for a while he was unable to see the owners of the feet. By the time he caught a glimpse of them, they had reached exactly the same area where a few minutes previously a small horde of people had, quietly and without fuss, vanished.
He was surprised by the red spectacles of the woman and the quietly tailred Italian suit of the man, and also the speed with which they themselves then immediately vanished.
Dirk stood speechless. The same two damn people who had been the bane of his life for the entire day (he allowed himself this slight exaggeration on the grounds of extreme provocation) had now flagrantly and deliberately disappeared in front of his eyes.
Once he was quite certain that they had absolutely definitely vanished and were not merely hiding behind each other, he ventured out once more into the mysterious space.
It was bafflingly ordinary. Ordinary tarmacadam, ordinary air, ordinary everything. And yet a quantity of people that would have kept the Bermuda triangle industry happy for an entire decade had just vanished in it within the space of five minutes.
He was deeply aggravated.
He was so deeply aggravated that he thought he would share the sense of aggravation by phoning someone up and aggravating them - as it would be almost certain to do at twenty past one in the morning.
This wasn't an entirely arbitrary thought - he was still anxious concerning the safety of the American girl, Kate Schechter, and had not been at all reassuned to have been answered by her machine when last he had called. By now she should surely be at home and in bed asleep, and would be reassuringly livid to be woken by a meddling phone call at this time.
He found a couple of coins and a working telephone and dialled her number. He got her answering machine again.
It said that she had just out for the night to Asgard. She wasn't certain which parts of Asgard they were going to but they would probably swing by Valhalla later, if the evening was up to it. If he cared to leave a message she would deal with it in the morning if she was still alive and in the mood. There were some beeps, which rang on in Dirk's ear for seconds after he heard them.
"Oh," he said, realising that the machine was currently busy taping him, "good heavens. Well, I thought the arrangement was that you were going to call me befone doing anything impossible."
He put the phone down, his head spinning angrily. Valhalla, eh? Was that where everybody was going to tonight except him? He had a good mind to go home, go to bed and wake up in the grocery business.
Valhalla.
He looked about him once again, with the name Valhalla ringing in his ears. There was no doubt, he felt, that a space this size would make a good feasting hall for gods and dead heroes, and that the empty Midland Grand Hotel would be almost worth moving the shebang from Norway for.
He wondered if it made any difference knowing what it was you were walking into.
Nervously, tentatively, he walked across and through the space in question. Nothing. Oh well. He turned, and stood surveying it for a moment or two while he took a couple of slow drags on the cigarette he had got from the tramp. The space didn't look any different.
He walked back through it again, this time a little less tentatively, but with slow positive steps. Once again, nothing happened, but then just as he was moving out of it at the end he half fancied that he half heard a half moment of some kind of raucous sound, like a burst of white noise on a twisted radio dial. He turned once more, and headed back into the space, moving his head carefully round trying to pick up the slightest sound. For a while he didn't catch it, then suddenly there was a snatch of it that burst around him and was gone. A movement and another snatch. He moved very, very slowly and carefully. With the most slight and gentle movements, trying to catch at the sound he moved his head round what seemed like a billionth part of a billionth part of a degree, slipped behind a molecule and was gone.
He had instantly to duck to avoid a great eagle swooping out of the vast space at him.
Chapter 28
It was another eagle, a different eagle. The next one was a different eagle too, and the next. The air seemed to be thick with eagles, and it was obviously impossible to enter Valhalla without getting swooped on by at least half a dozen of them. Even eagles were being swooped on by eagles.
Dirk threw up his arms over his head to fend off the wild, beating flurries, turned, tripped and fell down behind a huge table on to a floor of heavy, damp, earthy straw. His hat rolled under the table. He scrambled after it, stuffed it back firmly on his head, and slowly peered up over the table.
The hall was dark, but alive with great bonfires.
Noise and woodsmoke filled the air, and the smells of roasting pigs, roasting sheep, roasting boar, and sweat and reeking wine and singed eagle wings.
The table he was crouched behind was one of countless slabs of oak on trestles that stretched in every direction, laden with steaming hunks of dead animals, huge breads, great iron beakers slopping with wine and candles like wax anthills. Massive sweaty figures seethed around them, on them, eating, drinking, fighting over the food, fighting in the food, fighting with the food.
A yard or so from Dirk, a warrior was standing on top of a table fighting a pig which had been roasting for six hours, and he was clearly losing, but losing with vim and spirit and being cheered on by other warriors who were dousing him down with wine from a trough.
The roof - as much of it as could be made out at this distance, and by the dark and flickering light of the bonfires - was made of lashed-together shields.
Dirk clutched his hat, kept his head down and ran, trying to make his way towards the side of the hall. As he ran, feeling himself to be virtually invisible by reason of being completely sober and, by his own lights, normally dressed, he seemed to pass examples of every form of bodily function imaginable, other than actual teeth-cleaning.
The smell, like that of the tramp in King's Cross station, who must surely be here participating, was one that never stopped coming at you. It grew and grew until it seemed that your head had to become bigger and bigger to accommodate it. The din of sword on sword, sword on shield, sword on flesh, flesh on flesh was one that made the eardrums reel and quiver and want to cry. He was pummelled, tripped, elbowed, shoved and drenched with wine as he scumed and pushed through the wild throng, but arrived at last at a side wall - massive slabs of wood and stone faced with sheets of stinking cow hide.
Panting, he stopped for a moment, looked back and surveyed the scene with amazement.
It was Valhalla.
Of that there would be absolutely no question. This was not something that could be mocked up by a catering company. And the whole seething, wild mass of carousing gods and warriors and their caroused-at ladies, with their shields and fires and boars did seem to fill a space that must be something approaching the size of St Pancras station. The sheer heat that rose off it all seemed as if it should suffocate the flocks of deranged eagles which thrashed through the air above them.
And maybe it was. He was by no means certain that a flock of enraged eagles which thought that they might be suffocating would behave significantly differently from many of the eagles he was currently watching.
There was something he had been putting off wondering while he had fought his way through the mass, but the time had come to wonder it now.
What, he wondered, about the Draycotts?
What could the Draycotts possibly be doing here? And whene, in such a mle, could the Draycotts possibly be?
He narrowed his eyes and peered into the heaving throng, trying to see if he could locate anywhere a pair of red designer spectacles or a quiet Italian suit mingling out there with the clanging breastplates and the sweaty leathers, knowing that the attempt was futile but feeling that it should be made.
No, he decided, he couldn't see them. Not, he felt, their kind of party. Further reflections along these lines were cut short by a heavy short-handled axe which hurtled through the air and buried itself with an astounding thud in the wall about three inches from his left ear and for a moment blotted out all thought.
When he recovered from the shock of it, and let his breath out, he thought that it was probably not somethiog that had been thrown at him with malicious intent, but was merely warriorly high spirits. Nevertheless, he was not in a partying mood and decided to move on. He edged his way along the wall in the direction which, had this actually been St Pancras station rather than the hall of Valhalla, would have led to the ticket office. He didn't know what he would find there, but he reckoned that it must be different to this, which would be good.
It seemed to him that things were generally quieter here, out on the periphery.
The biggest and best of the good tunes soemed to be concentrated more strongly towanls the middle of the hall, whereas the tables he was passing now seemed to be peopled with those who looked as if they had teached that season in their immortal lives when they preferred to contemplate the times when they used to wrestle dead pigs, and to pass appreciative comments to each other about the finer points of dead pig wrestling technique, than actually to wrestle with one again themselves just at the moment.
He overheard one remark to his companion that it was the left-handed three-fingered flat grip on the opponent's sternum that was all-important at the crucial moment of finally not quite falling over in a complete stupor, to which his companion responded with a benign "Oh ah."
Dirk stopped, looked and backtracked.
Sitting hunched in a thoughtful posture over his iron plate, and clad in heavily stained and matted furs and buckles which were, if anything, more rank and stinking than the ensemble Dirk had last encountered him in, was Dirk's companion from the concourse at King's Cross station.
Dirk wondered how to approach him. A quick backslap and a "Hey! Good party. Lot of energy," was one strategy, but Dirk didn't think it was the right one.
While he was wondering, an eagle suddenly swooped down from out of the air and, with a lot of beating and thrashing, landed on the table in front of the old man, folded its wings and advanced on him, demanding to be fed. Easily, the old man pulled a bit of meat off a bone and held it up to the great bird, which pecked it sharply but accurately out of his fingers.
Dirk thought that this was the key to a friendly approach. He leant over the table and picked up a small hunk of meat and offered it in turn to the bird. The bird attacked him and went for his neck, forcing him to try and beat the savage creature off with his hat, but the introduction was made.
"Oh ah," said the man, shooed the eagle away and shifted a couple of inches along the bench. Though it was not a fulsome invitation, it was at least an invitation. Dirk clambered over the bench and sat down.
`"Thank you," said Dirk, puffing.
"Oh ah."
"If you remember, we - "
At that moment the most tremendous reverberating thump sounded out across Velhalla. It was the sound of a drum being beaten, but it sounded like a drum of immense proportions, as it had to be to make itself heard over the tumult of noise with which the hall was filled. The drum sounded three times, in slow and massive beats, like the heartbeat of the hall itself.
Dirk looked up to see where the sound might have come from. He noticed for the first time that at the south end of the hall, to which he had been heading, a great balcony or bridge extended across most of its width. There were some figures up there, dimly visible through the heat haze and the eagles, but Dirk had a sense that whoever was up there presided over whoever was down here.
Odin, thought Dirk. Odin the All-Father must be up on the bal cony.
The sound of the revels died down quickly, though it was several seconds before the reverberations of the noise finally fell away.
When all was quiet, but expectant, a great voice rang out from the balcony and through the hall.
The voice said, '"The time of the Challenging Hour is nearly at an end. The Challenging Hour has been called by the God Thor. For the third time of asking, where is Thor?"
A murmuring throughout the hall suggested that nobody knew where Thor was and why he had not come to make his challenge.
The voice said, "This is a very grave affront to the dignity of the All-Father. If there is no challenge before the expiration of the hour, the penalty for Thor shall be correspondingly grave."
The drum beat again three times, and the consternation in the hall increased. Where was Thor?
"He's with some girl," said a voice above the rest, and there were loud shouts of laughter, and a return to the hubbub of before.
"Yes." said Dirk, quietly, "I expect he probably is."
"Oh ah."
Dirk had supposed that he was talking to himself and was surprised to have elicited a response from the man, though not particularly surprised at the response that had been elicited.
"Thor called this meeting tonight?" Dirk asked him.
"Oh ah."
"Bit rude not to turn up."
"Oh ah."
"I expect everyone's n bit upset."
"Not as long as there's enough pigs to go round."
"Pigs?"
"Oh ah."
Dirk didn't immediately know how to go on from here.
"Oh ah," he said, resignedly.
"It's only Thor as really cares, you see," said the old man. "Keeps on issuing his challenge, then not being able to prove it. Can't argue. Gets all confused and angry, does something stupid, can't sort it out and gets made to do a penance. Everybody else just turns up for the pigs."
"Oh ah." Dirk was learning a whole new conversational technique and was astonished at how successful it was. He regarded the man with a new-found respect.
"Do you know how many stones there are in Wales?" asked the man suddenly.
"Oh ah," said Dirk warily. He didn't know this joke.
"Nor do I. He won't tell anybody. Says count 'em yourself and goes off in a sulk."
"Oh ah." He didn't think it was a very good one.
"So this time he hasn't even turned up. Can't say I blame him. But I'm sorry, because I think he might be right."