Science Fiction Originals Vol 3 Part 37

"Did she?" I said.

"She says you shouted at her."

"She shouted at me, as I recall."

"Well." He scratched his head. "I guess we've all done our fair share of shouting at each other in the past couple of days."

I presumed this was a coded reference to last night's meeting of the village council, which had degenerated into a near-riot when the subject of Peter Ma.s.sey's succubus had been raised. Domino, who had attended the meeting, had given me a blow-by-blow description of the evening. I thought it was a wonder we weren't all completely insane by now.

I said, "Do you want a coffee?"

He looked at my mug on the desk. "You drink instant, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Pa.s.s," he said.

I sighed. "I'm not going to apologise for shouting at Pauline," I told him, "because I didn't shout at her."

All of a sudden he looked embarra.s.sed. "I've asked her to marry me."

I blinked at him. "You what?"

"Asked her to marry me." "Well." I sat back in my chair. "What did she say?"

"She said yes, of course," he said, a little surprised that I'd had to ask.

"You've only known each other a few days, Harvey."

Hey," he said, "haven't you noticed? Magic happens here. Maybe love at first sight happens here too."

I blew a raspberry, just so he knew what I thought of love at first sight and magic and everything that was happening to Seldon.

"Anyway, Menzels hate long engagements," he said.

"Obviously."

"And we want you to be the best man."

I looked at him for a few moments, then I burst out laughing, which was obviously not the reaction he'd been expecting because he took off his flat cap and threw it at me. "I'm serious, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"It'll give your tenants the laugh of their lives," I said, subsiding into giggles and tossing his cap back to him.

He pulled up a chair and sat down. "How much is this place worth?" he asked.

"It's not worth anything," I said. "That's why I'll be bankrupt in a few months."

"So why don't you let me buy it from you?"

I stopped laughing.

"See, what I was thinking," he said, examining the inside of his cap, "was that I could buy this place from you, and you could continue to run it for me on a salary."

"You've lost your mind," I said.

He shook his head. "No, sir. I did some telephoning yesterday-"

"After Pauline told you to help me out," I said.

"And it turns out that this place is the only part of Seldon that I don't actually own," he went on as if he hadn't heard me. "According to that cobwebby old guy in Salisbury who pretends he's my attorney, Andy Hayward and the Thirteenth Earl cut some kind of deal. He won't tell me what it was, but it turns out that you own the land this garage stands on, not me."

"I didn't know that," I said, trying to remember the wording of the doc.u.ments Andy and I had signed when I bought the place.

"So you could do anything with it," he said. "You could open a bowling alley or a fast-food franchise or a Hindu temple, and you'd be well within your rights." He saw the look on my face and smiled. "Forget it, fella. I have the local council in my pocket. You wouldn't get planning permission for anything more ambitious than a washing-line."

"I've always thought that what Seldon really needs is a bowling alley," I said.

Harvey laughed. "What it means is there's a gap in my property portfolio, right on my doorstep, and I'd like to close it."

"This place makes a loss," I told him. "You'd be insane to buy it and carry on running it as a garage."

"Not at all. People like having a garage in the village. It's not as if n.o.body stops here, is it?"

"No, but the running costs keep going-"

He held up a hand. "It doesn't matter, Geoffrey. This garage has been here ever since internal combustion first reached Wiltshire. It's as much a part of the village as The Black Bull, and I'm happy to run it at a loss because of that."

I was stunned. "Pardon me for saying so, but you're the most unlikely Fairy G.o.dmother I can imagine."

"And it'll be a handy tax write-off as well," he said.

Word of mouth spreads quickly in a village as small as Seldon, and by eight o'clock virtually every human being within a five-mile radius was in or around The Black Bull. The car park had overflowed and there were cars double-parked up the High Street all the way to the garage.

Harvey had arranged for a special delivery from a real-ale brewery in Warminster to celebrate his engagement, and had hired a team of caterers from Andover who had organised the food with paramilitary precision. Seldon hadn't seen anything like it since the legendary Tenth Earl, who had commemorated the end of the First World War with a party that had lasted four days.

Domino shook his head as we fought our way through the mob. "Decadent," he commented. "Depraved."

He looked at me. "Drink?"

I nodded. "I'll try and find us something to eat."

He regarded the heaving press of bodies and shook his head. "We'll never find each other again," he said.

"Better to stay together."

We began to elbow our way towards the bar. There were so many people in the lounge bar that there was a haze of sweat in the air, and a layer of cigarette and cigar and pipe-smoke so thick that I couldn't see the ceiling, even though all the windows and doors were wide open.

All of Betty's staff were on duty tonight, and she had drafted in anybody who seemed willing and relativelyresponsible to serve behind the bar. It took us twenty minutes to get an orange juice and a vodka and tonic, and another ten minutes to get across the room to where Harvey and Pauline were sitting.

"Is this not magnificent?" Harvey asked, spreading his arms as much as he could and grinning in welcome. He seemed to have got over his embarra.s.sment about Pauline.

"It's impressive, certainly," I admitted.

"Congratulations, Harvey," Domino said, raising his gla.s.s of orange. "Pauline."

"I hear you're good with accounts," Harvey told him.

"I can't work miracles," Domino said.

"Well, my accountant dates back to the days when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. How'd you like a job?"

Domino looked at me. "I have a job."

"Nah." Harvey waved a hand dismissively. "I mean a real job. A permanent job."

"Harvey," Pauline said quietly, tugging his sleeve.

"How about it?" Harvey boomed.

"Harvey..." Pauline was looking at Domino while she tried to shut her fiance up.

"Well..." Domino looked at me again. "It's tempting."

"You sod, Menzel," I said, shaking my head. "You buy my garage, then you buy my staff. How'd you like to pay off my mortgage?"

"We'll speak about that tomorrow," he said, suddenly serious. "I got plans for you and me, fella. You, me, Pauline, Domino, Seldon. We're all going places."

"Well, except Seldon," I said. "I'd like to think Seldon would stay in much the same place."

He burst out laughing. "Yeah," he guffawed. "Wouldn't like to see it get lost, would we?"

Harvey was one of those people who can get pretty seriously drunk without showing very many outward signs, and it only occurred to me now that he must have been drinking since this afternoon. He was sprawled in his corner seat, grinning and thoroughly indulging himself as Lord of the Manor, and he was going to have the mother and father of all hangovers tomorrow. I smiled.

Pauline and Domino started to chat quietly to each other, heads close together. I noted a lot of abbreviated hand-waving and a couple of astonished looks on Pauline's behalf, although not quite as astonished as I might have expected. I wondered how she had managed to figure it out.

I became involved in a heated conversation with a couple of Harvey's tenant farmers about the business at Derek Wood's farm. One of the CNN men joined in, then a couple of very drunk CBS cameramen, who claimed to have footage of Merlin doing card tricks over by White Lane Ford. At some point I looked over to the corner. Harvey had pa.s.sed out and was snoring with a big sloppy grin on his face. Pauline and Domino were still having their conversation. I saw her lift his arm by the wrist and move it up and down, and by the look on her face I knew she was surprised at how light it was.

I went back to the bar a couple of times. The second time, I found myself standing behind the bar watching the Polish newsmen. They were standing in a line in front of me and shouting, "Piwo! Piwo! Piwo! Pi wo!" and thumping the bar top in time to their chant.

"They want beer," Betty told me as she went by towards the other end of the bar. "'Piwo' is Polish for beer."

"Is it?"

She nodded. "In the past six weeks I've learned how to say 'beer' in eighteen different languages." She paused. "What are you doing behind the bar?"

"I have no idea."

"Well, while you're here, make yourself useful and serve these lads, would you?"

I shrugged and started to pull pints. The beer, supplied by Harvey, was free, but the Poles insisted on paying anyway. I took their money and put it in the till, and when I turned back to the bar there were more people waiting to be served. I served them.

Pulling pints seemed not too dissimilar to pumping petrol, so I decided to stay there for a while. I smoked the cigar Harvey had given me, and a little while later a harra.s.sed-looking Betty came along the bar, beamed at me, and handed me a packet of slim panatellas.

The racket in the pub reached a crescendo around half past ten, then started to quiet down a little as the locals began to drift unsteadily off into the night. There were long moments when n.o.body wanted a drink, and I lit a cigar and leaned back and watched all the foreign newsmen and a.s.sorted tourists and villagers and caterers drinking and singing and shouting and laughing.

"I reckon this has been good for us," Betty said beside me.

I hugged her and kissed the top of her head. "Bless you, Bets."

"You daft sod," she said, snuggling up against me. Betty was at least twenty years older than me, soft and small and round, an applied mathematics graduate who always seemed a little astonished that she had wound up running a pub in rural Wiltshire. She was the only person I knew who had the b.a.l.l.s to tell me she was worried that I drank too much. "I mean it," she said, gesturing at the a.s.sembled revelers. "Harvey's donea lot of good for the village tonight. We've all been under a lot of strain for the past six weeks; we needed something like this. Blow off a little steam."

"Harvey doesn't care about that," I told her. "He just wanted to celebrate his engagement."

"It doesn't matter. How's Karen?"

"As tenuous as ever."

She shook her head sadly and gave me a firm hug. "Poor Geoff."

"Yes," I said. "Poor Geoff."

"When are you going?"

I looked at her.

"I haven't been here nearly as long as you have," she said, "but even I know that if you want to keep something secret you don't tell Barry Vickers."

"I only asked Barry to value the house for me," I said. "He hasn't put it on the market yet." And then I wondered how much of my dealings with Vickers & Sons, Estate Agents, had reached Harvey's ears, and how much of it had prompted him to offer to buy the garage. I sighed. "I don't know how much longer I can live there, Bets."

"Most of us are amazed you've stayed there this long," she said.

I thought about it, about all the nights when I hadn't been quite drunk enough to prevent me lying awake staring at the ceiling and thinking of Karen trapped in the front room. I couldn't remember when I'd finally decided I'd had enough. It seemed that I had always been ashamed of wanting to run away.

"I'll never sell it, anyway," I said. "n.o.body in their right mind will buy a house with Karen's ghost in the front room." I actually felt myself cringe when I thought about it. "n.o.body else would know what television programmes she likes to watch."

Betty handed me a clean bar towel. "Dry your eyes and blow your nose," she said.

"Sorry." I dried my eyes and blew my nose.

"n.o.body would blame you for leaving," said Betty. "None of us can imagine what it must have been like for you these past few weeks."

"Are you still serving?" Pauline asked, leaning on the bar.

Betty looked at her watch. She liked to keep to the legal opening hours, even though a loophole in the local licensing laws meant that Harvey could order her to stay open as long as he wanted. "Yes, Miss."

"Pauline," said Pauline.

"Yes, Miss," Betty sniffed, going off to pull another pint.