Expecting Someone Taller (17 page)

‘Forget it,' Memory shrieked through the rushing wind. ‘He can't hear a word you're saying.'

But Thought was nothing if not persistent. With his beak, he pecked a series of little marks onto the Perspex. When he was finished, Alberich was able to make out the words, ‘Wotan says stay out of England,' written back to front on the pane. He nodded to the ravens to acknowledge the message, and they wheeled away exhausted. Alberich pondered this warning for a moment, then looked at his watch. They were due to land in Frankfurt in half an hour.

At Frankfurt Airport, he telephoned his partner.

‘Dietrich?' he said. ‘It's Hans. Look, I'm at Frankfurt now, but I've got to go back to England right away. There's a flight in three hours. Can you bring me some clean shirts and the papers on the Nigerian project?'

‘What have you got to go back for?'

‘What's that? Oh, would you believe I left my briefcase behind? With all the things I need for the Trade Fair?'

‘Can't they send it on?'

‘It'd take too long. I'm going back.'

‘Fancy forgetting your briefcase.'

‘I'm only human,' Alberich lied. ‘Don't forget the shirts.'

 

To his surprise, Malcolm had managed to get some sleep, but he was awake by six. He went through the events of the
previous day in his mind, trying to reassure himself that it had all happened. Something inside him told him that this strange happiness was bound to end in tears, but he put that down to his natural pessimism. Besides, there was one sure way of knowing whether things were all right or not.

He tuned his mind in to the early morning news and was reassured. No disasters had afflicted the world during the last day, although there had been one strange occurrence. A farmer from the small village of Combe in Somerset had been out shooting rabbits at a quarter to ten last night, and had seen his ten-acre field of wheat change before his eyes into ten acres of roses, peonies, narcissi, daffodils and tulips. The farmer, a Mr William Ayres of Combe Hill Farm, attributed this extraordinary mutation to a leak from the nearby Hinckley Point nuclear power station, although no such leak had as yet been confirmed by the CEGB . . .

Malcolm blinked, and for a moment was concerned. But Mr Ayres was bound to be insured, and even if he wasn't, he could pick the flowers and use them to decorate the church for his daughter's wedding. Malcolm laughed. He bore the Ayres family, both its present and prospective members, no ill will at all, and that was surely a good thing for the world.

It occurred to him that he had forgotten to tell the girl when breakfast would be ready. He jumped out of bed, thought up a light blue shirt and a pair of cream corduroy trousers, and transported himself across the house. As he passed the library, he heard cataloguing noises. Although it was only half-past six, the girl was working already. He listened carefully for her thoughts, and a tender smile hitched up the ends of his mouth. She was throwing herself into her work to take her mind off the sad feelings of longing in her heart. A soppy girl, Malcolm could not help thinking,
but none the worse for that. He opened the library door and went in.

‘You're up early,' he said.

‘I hope I didn't disturb you,' said the girl anxiously.

‘Not at all,' Malcolm replied. ‘I'm usually awake by this time. Would you like some breakfast?'

After the inevitable ‘If you're sure' ritual, she agreed to have a cup of coffee and a slice of toast, and Malcolm hurried down to the kitchen. The coffee machine seemed to take for ever, as did the toaster, but eventually he got what he wanted out of both of them and carried the tray up to the library. In his mind he tried to rehearse some way of bringing the conversation round to the issues he wanted to raise, but he had to give up the attempt. He would think of something when the time came, and he did not want to rush something as important as this, even if the result was a foregone conclusion.

Let other pens dwell on joy and happiness. It is enough to record that Malcolm hijacked a discussion on card-indexes and used it to convey his message. Although he could read the girl's thoughts and so avoid all misunderstandings, he still found it heavy going, and heard himself using words and phrases that would have seemed excessively sentimental in
True Love
magazine; but everyone has a right to make fools of themselves once in their lives. The main thing was that everything was going to be all right now, and he had managed to persuade her of this. She had seemed rather diffident at first, but he had got so used to her saying, ‘Are you sure you don't mind?' and, ‘If you're sure it's no trouble,' that he took no notice of her words and simply watched her thoughts going round, like the figures on a petrol pump. When the appropriate reading came up, he took her hand and squeezed it gently. Through the
snowstorm of emotions that raged around him, he heard a tinkling sound, like a coin dropping on the floor. Suddenly this seemed very important, and he looked down. On the polished wooden floor he saw the Ring, which had somehow slipped off his finger. He felt a sudden urge to give it to her; for what better gift could there be than the whole world? She was still holding his hand, tightly and trustingly, so that it would be incredibly churlish of him to do anything except sit absolutely still and be loved. There was also a particularly fine smile going on, and he let the Ring lie there until it was over. Just to be sure, however, he covered the Ring with his foot. Everything that needed saying had now been said, and it was obviously the time for action: a kiss, or something of that sort. But Malcolm could not bring himself to initiate such a move, although he could not imagine why. ‘One thing at a time,' whispered a voice in his brain. ‘Let's not get carried away.' So he contented himself with putting his arm tenderly round her shoulders, and suggesting that they go for a walk in the garden. For once, the girl did not ask him if he was sure that would be no bother, and they stood up, still entwined.

‘Just a moment,' Malcolm said. ‘Don't go away.'

He stooped down swiftly and picked up the Ring. After a moment's hesitation, he pushed it back onto his finger. It felt loose and uncomfortable.

 

‘So how did you get her to agree to it?' Loge said. ‘It must have been difficult.'

‘Not really,' said Wotan. ‘There was one of those grim silences we know so well in our family, then she said “If you insist,” and there we were. I was amazed, as you can imagine. I'd thought up all sorts of arguments - you always said you wanted to work in the family business, it'll get you
out of the house, a change is as good as a rest, that sort of thing - and I didn't have to use any of them. Women are strange creatures.'

‘Are you sure she's up to it?'

‘Positive. You've only seen her in the domestic mode, nagging and persecuting.'

‘Which one was it again?'

‘Ortlinde. She's the best-looking, and the droopiest. Mind you, with eight of them, I tend to get them mixed up. Maybe I should get them wearing numbers on their backs like footballers. I think Ortlinde's the second from youngest. Fancy another?'

‘No, thanks, I'm driving.'

‘So am I, but who cares? This is something to celebrate.' Wotan pulled open the drinks cabinet behind the front seat and took out a bottle of schnapps. ‘Here's to two birds with one stone. I get control of the Ring and shot of a dopey daughter at the same time.'

‘I hate to say this . . .' said Loge.

‘I know, I know, it didn't work before and all the rest of it. But that was different.'

‘Not so different.' Loge knew he was pushing his luck, but it had to be said. Besides, if it all went wrong, Wotan would be so furious that he would be lucky to get away with being turned into a trout hatchery. ‘After all, Siegfried was roughly the same sort of proposition. He'd never had a girl before, either.'

‘Siegfried wasn't a drip,' said Wotan crisply. ‘This one is. So's she. She's so wet you could grow cress on her.'

‘She didn't strike me as wet the other morning.'

‘Ah,' said Wotan, ‘that's different. That's her complicated little psyche belting away, that is. You see, my daughters are all the same. The way they see it, I've ruined
their lives for them by making them stay at home in that bloody great house, stunting their emotional growth and all the rest of it, when they should have gone out into the world and had a good time. And you can see their point, I suppose. That house is a liability.' Wotan scowled at the very thought of it, and the first drops of rain started to fall. ‘It's difficult to explain my family to a normal, sane person, but I think it goes something like this. They've been cooped up in Valhalla ever since their mother left, with nothing to do but be resentful and tell themselves how inadequate and unlovable they are, and how nobody could ever be interested in them because of their stunted personalities (stunted by me, it goes without saying). And they take all this out on their poor old dad by making his life almost as miserable as their own, in the tried and tested way you saw the other day.'

Loge had been nodding his head and making sympathetic noises until he felt quite dizzy. He didn't want to hear any of this, but Wotan seemed determined to tell him. A combination of schnapps and relief was making him unwind, although whether he would be any safer to be employed by unwound than tensed up remained to be seen. Rattlesnakes, Loge remembered, usually unwind just before they bite.

‘So at home they really let fly. Not that we have long, earnest conversations about the state of our tortured personalities, thank God. No, they've decided that they can't talk to me, I'm delighted to say, and so what they do is they sublimate it all - I think that's the right word, isn't it? - into endless domestic trivia, like who had the Sellotape last and how can you expect me to find things if you will insist on moving them. But put them down in the outside world, and they turn into fluffy little bunnies, wouldn't say boo to
a goose, you know the sort of thing. I don't know which is worse, actually. At least they keep the place clean. Anyway, no self-confidence is the root of it all, so if our Ring-Bearer can convince Ortlinde that he's serious about her and that somebody really loves her in spite of everything, he'll need a crowbar to get her off him. Serve the idiot right, that would.'

‘But if she hates you so much, what makes you think she'll get the Ring for you? Won't she just go off with her Redeemer and leave you to get on with it?'

‘That was worrying me, I must admit, but when I thought it over, I saw just how clever I'd been,' said Wotan smugly. ‘The fact that she really does love him in her own, unique, screwed-up way means she can't fail. You see, the last thing my daughter wants is to be happy. She'd hate it. No, what she wants is to be finally, definitively
un
happy, and for it all to be my fault. It'd finally confirm all her dearest illusions about how her life has been ruined. People like that would far rather be right than happy. No, she'll get that Ring if it kills her.'

Loge wiped his forehead with his hand, and wished that he could go away and do something less stressful for a change, such as drive the chariot of the Sun or make the crops grow. But that was out of the question.

‘The only thing that could go wrong is if he finds out who she really is,' Wotan said, pouring himself another drink. ‘But my guess is that he won't want to find out, so unless somebody tells him, he won't work it out for himself. I think he's just as bad as she is. In fact, they're perfectly suited to each other. Who knows, they may even stick together after she's got the Ring off him, and I'll never have to see her ever again. Wouldn't that be perfect? Then there would only be seven of them, one for every day of the
week. But it's unlikely,' he added sadly. ‘Like I said, she'd go mad if she were happy.'

The rain had stopped, and Loge deduced that Wotan was in a good mood for once. That removed the immediate threat of transformation, but he still felt uneasy. Over the last few thousand years, Loge had found that Wotan's good moods always tended to come before periods of universal misery.

‘So what do we do now?' he asked.

‘Leave her to it,' said Wotan, leaning back in his seat. ‘I always knew she'd come in useful one day.'

 

Love, the songwriter says, is the sweetest thing, and too many sweet things can make you feel slightly sick. But Malcolm had got through the endearments and sweet nothings stage quite safely, and had finally got the girl to tell him all about herself. She had not wanted to, and as he listened to the story that eventually came pouring out, he could quite understand why. Not that he was bored; but an overdose of tragedy can cause roughly the same symptoms as boredom, such as a strong desire to change the subject. That, however, would not be tactful. He only hoped that he would not be called upon to give an equally full account of himself, which might call for more inventiveness than he felt himself capable of.

‘You see,' said the girl, ‘none of us could ever really
talk
to my father, and my father could never really
talk
to us, so that in the end I found I couldn't even talk to my sisters. We all just bottled it all up inside ourselves, really, until we wanted to hit out at each other. But we couldn't, because of not being able to talk. Do you see what I'm getting at?'

‘Sort of.'

‘And it was obvious that my father was absolutely heart-broken
when my mother left him. He tried to put a brave face on it, of course, but we all knew that she had let him down as well as letting us down, and that somehow we had let him down as well. And, of course, he feels that he's let us down, and so now we can't communicate at all.'