Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Sausages Read online

  It’s one of the basic laws of human nature that a man suddenly finding himself in possession of an unanticipated pencil sharpener will immediately proceed to sharpen all the pencils in his possession. Don had a lot of pencils. He acquired them without realising, in much the same way as he shed pens. It was, he knew, all to do with the essential equilibrium of the universe. Every time he found himself in Smith’s he bought a bumper pack of ten or a dozen ballpoints, and every time he looked round for a pen, he couldn’t find one. Instead, there’d be a pencil (broken or worn down to a stub), and he knew for a fact he hadn’t bought a pencil since he’d left school. No matter. Some part of the Great Machine required that surplus pens be transmuted into pencils, to maintain cosmic balance, and for some reason he’d been chosen to act as the instrument of Providence. It was, if anything, an honour, and he’d learned to live with it. It was just unfortunate that he happened to be on the heavy-handed side when writing.

  Accordingly, it only took him a moment to put together a small heap of blunt, mutilated pencils. Then he set to work. It was one of those really fun sharpeners, the sort where you turn a handle, and a hidden mechanism feeds the pencil into the blades; if you keep on cranking away, you can reduce a pencil to a pile of feathery shavings in just over a minute, or you can exercise a little restraint and create a beautifully tapered, needle-pointed graphite spike that’ll last just long enough to write one letter before going ping. As he worked, it did occur to him to wonder where all the shavings were going – usually there’s a little transparent box underneath, but if this model had such a thing he couldn’t identify it – but since it wasn’t his property, and he didn’t intend to keep it long enough to have to empty it, he didn’t waste time and mental energy on the problem.

  Eleven pencils later, he paused to rest his aching wrist and consider what he’d accomplished. Nothing like a freshly sharpened pencil to give a man a sense of purpose.

  Sharp, he thought. Stay sharp, be sharp, see sharp—

  C sharp.

  Which is musician’s secret code for dah.

  His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Well, of course. What else could it possibly be? He grinned and a moment later became the first of untold millions to hum dum de dee, diddle-derr dah under his breath.

  He staggered back until his bum collided with the back of a chair, into which he flopped. It was, he recognised, one of those moments, a bathwater-spilling apple-on-head moment, a point of intersection between humanity and the Continuum. He sat unable to move for about five minutes. Then, scattering pencils like straws in the wind, he lunged at the phone and pecked in a number.

  “Dennis?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Dennis, it’s me. Listen.”

  “Don?”

  He took a deep breath. “Dum de dee, diddle-der dah.”

  Long pause.

  “Dennis? Are you still there?”

  “Bloody hell.” The voice at the other end of the line was hoarse with awe. “That’s brilliant.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hum it again.”

  “Dum de dee—”

  “Diddle-der dah. Don, that’s perfect. It’s amazing. Oh shit, I’m going to be stuck with that in my head for the rest of the week. That’s—”

  “I know,” Don said. “I’ll send an invoice.”

  He put the phone down, feeling vaguely but powerfully unsatisfied. The best work he’d ever done, quite probably the highlight of his career, the jingle he’d always be remembered for, the one he’d spend the rest of his working life vainly trying to equal – his Ninth Symphony, his Enigma Variations, his “Hound Dog,” his “Paint It Black” – and what was he feeling? Nothing, apart from a tense, nervous buzz, a bit like a caffeine rush. Is that all? a little voice was muttering inside his head. Call that a day’s work?

  Well, no, he didn’t. That was three months’ work – completed, what was more, in record time. But the buzzy voice wasn’t having that. What’s next then? it was saying. More work. Bring it on.

  Weird. Usually, when he’d just completed a major commission, it took him a week to recover from the strain. Then, if he was sure he was up to it, he’d start sketching out the broad outlines of the orchestration. A week after that, he’d consider bracing himself for the ordeal of putting on his posh coat and doing lunch with the sound mixers. Instead…

  He glanced down at his right hand. There was a pencil in it, with which he’d drawn a few roughly sketched staves on the back of a gas bill. He narrowed his eyes and realised he’d just orchestrated the jingle: complete, job done, and very well too.

  Maybe, he thought, Polly’s not the only one around here who’s going loopy. Maybe it’s genetic, a sort of family curse, afflicting the female line with memory loss and the male side with exaggerated work ethic. No, probably not; his mother never forgot a birthday and Dad’s contribution to the family business was drinking the profits. Besides, he didn’t feel mad as such, just painfully on edge, listless, impatient to be getting on with something. But what?

  He stood up and walked briskly across the room, noting as he went how small it was. Silly little room, no bigger than a rabbit hutch. What he needed to do was move to a decent-sized place, where he wouldn’t be cramped up like a battery hen all the time. Somewhere with a bit of garden…

  Jesus. Did I just think that?

  He went into the bathroom and peered at his face in the mirror. Yes, he reassured himself, still me. The important thing was not to get overexcited and start panicking. Unfortunately, he wasn’t entirely sure he could manage that, not without help.

  He got the phone and rang Polly, tapping his fingernails impatiently on the tabletop while he waited for her to pick up.

  “Don?” She sounded pleased to hear his voice. “Thanks for calling back. Listen, I…”

  “Polly.”

  “… went to pick up my party dress from the dry cleaners and it wasn’t there.”

  He frowned. This was no time for his sister to be babbling at him. “What?”

  “It wasn’t there. Gone. Not a trace.”

  “Well, it must’ve got lost, or the ticket fell off or something.”

  “Not the dress. The shop.”

  Preoccupied as he was, he couldn’t help but realise there was something wrong there. “How do you mean, gone? Boarded up?”

  “No, gone. Not gone,” she amended. “More like it hadn’t ever been there in the first place. Turned into a newsagenty-corner-shoppy sort of thing.” There was a funny sound to her voice, a bit like when he used to play guitar, and he over-tightened a string. “And I know I didn’t just go to the wrong street, because I looked, and it said it on a wall, Clevedon Road.”

  It was as though he’d just tried to walk through a plate-glass window. “The dry cleaners in Clevedon Road?”

  “Yes. Why, do you know it?”

  “Next door to the corner shop?”

  “No, I mean yes. I mean, the corner shop is the dry bloody cleaners. I went in there before I’d realised, and this woman looked at me.”

  His throat was unaccountably lagged with wire wool. “When was this?”

  “What? Oh, about six-ish, I suppose. Why?”

  Calm, he thought. Rational explanations. “Because I was in there around lunchtime.”

  “Oh. Which one, the cleaners or the corner-shop place?”

  “Both.”

  A long silence. Then Don said, “Have you still got the ticket?”

  “The what?”

  “The ticket,” he said, rather louder than he’d intended. “The dry cleaning ticket, with your name and a number. And,” he added firmly, “the name and address of the shop.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well?”

  “Hold on.” Clunk. She’d dropped the phone. A very long ninety seconds, then, “Yes, I’ve got it right here. It’s green. It says forty-six, then Mayer in handwriting, and on the back…”

  “Yes?”

  “SpeediKleen, 16 Clevedon Road,” she chirped
triumphantly. “Oh, thank God for that. I was so worried…”

  He closed his eyes. “But you’re not now.”

  “Well, no, because it means I didn’t just… I mean, I wasn’t just imagining…”

  “I see,” he said grimly. “A dry cleaners vanishes into thin air, but you’re not particularly fussed about that. Sort of thing that happens every day of the week, in fact.”

  “What it means,” she replied sharply, “is I’m not going mad, like I thought I was. Sorry if my overwhelming relief offends you in any way.”

  “And the shop vanishing. That’s all right, is it?”

  “What? Oh, I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation, if only—”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know, do I?” she replied irritably. “Presumably they closed down and someone else moved in. To be perfectly honest, I’m not all that interested.”

  He breathed out heavily through his nose before replying. “It was there at lunchtime,” he said. “They must have worked bloody fast to have removed every last trace of it by six o’clock this evening.”

  “So they must,” she said. “Polish shopfitters, probably. They don’t hang about. Anyhow, that’s none of my business. Thanks, Don. I’d got myself into a real state.”

  He realised he was starting to hyperventilate. “Quite all right,” he muttered.

  “That’s what I like about you,” she went on happily. “You’re so calm about things. Honestly, I’d never have thought of the ticket. It’s so obvious, but it just didn’t occur to me. It must be marvellous to have a rational, unflappable mind like yours.”

  He made a sort of grunting noise.

  “Anyhow,” she went on, sounding much more relaxed, “how’s everything otherwise? Got your jingle finished?”

  Sarcastically said, so he took a certain small pleasure in replying, “Yes, actually.”

  “Wow. Quick work.”

  “A sudden flash of inspiration.”

  “Well, there you go. I guess you’d better go and lie down in complete darkness with an ice pack on your head. Can’t risk your brain overheating.”

  A drop of moisture fell on the back of his hand. Sweat, from his forehead. “Ha ha,” he said, “very funny. How about you? Looking forward to your darts match?”

  Growling noise then, “Oh hell, I haven’t got my dress. The one I was going to wear.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Damn,” she said violently. “They’ve got no right to do that, close down the business when they’ve still got my stuff. Now what am I supposed to do?”

  He felt a smile crawling over his face. “Search me,” he said. “Doesn’t it strike you as just a little bit odd, though?”

  “Dunno about odd. Bloody annoying. That was an expensive dress. And I’m buggered if I’m going to waste time and money getting another one just for a stupid office darts match.”

  “Quite. Totally unreasonable, if you ask me.”

  “Oh, stop sounding so bloody magisterial. Look,” she went on quickly, “you can’t do me a favour, can you? Only I can’t get away. Could you go round there, see if you can find out what happened to the dry cleaners and where my stuff could have got to? You could ask the people next door, they’re bound to know. Or they could give you the name of the estate agent or the solicitors. Go on,” she added, as he hesitated to reply. “You’ve got time on your hands, now you’ve finished your jingle.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, trying to sound like he meant it. “I’ve got a lot of other stuff on right now. I mean, there’s a job for Radio West, I’m already late with that.”

  “That’s OK,” she said brightly. “You can hum to yourself while you’re looking for my dress. Come on, Don, it’s no big deal. And I can’t go to this ridiculous darts thing in my office clothes, and I definitely can’t wear anything nice, or they’ll think I’m a complete loser. Please?”

  He overdid the sigh a little. “All right. I’ll go there in the morning and see what I can find out. No promises, mind.”

  “Thanks, Don. Call me at the office, not my mobile. See you.”

  He sighed for real as he put down the receiver. Just because he’d been given a second problem didn’t necessarily mean the first one had been solved. On the other hand, this new mystery struck him as distinctly more interesting, not to mention rather less threatening than the possibility that there was something wrong with his head.

  Vanishing dry cleaners. Disappearing coffee. Work that just sort of does itself – ghastly complicated transfer deeds and usually impossible seventh notes. Take five minutes or so out of your not particularly busy schedule and sort it all out, will you? Because, after all, you’ve got a clear, calm, rational mind that about three minutes ago was threatening to boil over and come frothing out through your ears.

  We can’t both be crazy, can we?

  Jack Tedesci always insisted on driving, and he was one of those men who believes that paying for parking is like paying for sex, the mark of a loser. Accordingly, they’d been round the block six times, and now he was trying to edge his Mercedes convertible into a Fiesta-sized gap. He was a good slow-speed driver, but not nearly as good as he thought he was.

  Mr Huos yawned. “There’s a multi-storey about a hundred yards down,” he said wistfully.

  “I can get in here no problem,” Jack replied through gritted teeth. “Just watch that side for me, will you?”

  “Sure. You’ve got about an inch.”

  “Shit. I’ll have to come out and go back in again.”

  Deep inside Mr Huos’ soul something whimpered. Make it stop, it begged. Briefly he considered grabbing the wheel and putting the handbrake on, but then Jack would be offended and he’d cancel the deal, and it’d take weeks of grinding effort and melodrama to get it back on course. Pleading wouldn’t help; shouting might do the trick, but that would involve an outlay of mental energy he couldn’t really justify right now. Which only left one option.

  He closed his eyes.

  He really didn’t want to. For one thing, it always gave him heartburn. For another, there was always the chance that Jack, or somebody else, would notice, which could lead to complications he really didn’t need. Also there were ethical considerations, though he wasn’t too fussed about that side of things at the best of times. On the other hand, if he had to sit here and endure Jack’s parking for another minute, his mental comfort would be seriously impaired. Oh well, he thought.

  He visualised the road. In front a red Bedford van. Behind a blue Discovery. Between them a stretch of black tarmac with a stone kerb on one side.

  Centre on that word stretch.

  He dug the clawed fingers of his mind into the road surface, until they passed through and gave him a grip; then he compressed his mental chest and shoulder muscles and slowly began to heave. Gradually did it; too much force and he’d either rupture himself or tear a hole in the fabric of the Continuum, which really would bugger up his day. He felt the molecules of the tarmac begin to stretch, as time slowed, congealed, broke up and started to convert itself into energy, and then change from energy into space. Six inches. It doesn’t sound much, but the effort involved was stupendous; he was, after all, shifting two thirds of a tectonic plate. Next time he was going to have to insist they got a taxi. He felt his strength draining away, and that made him rush the last six inches. He felt something give and immediately slackened off. A bit late, but it was only a tiny little fracture, no more than a sixteenth of an inch, if that. Even so, he felt embarrassed, and angry with himself for the error in judgement. One of these days he’d get it disastrously wrong, and God only knew what the upshot would be.

  “There,” Jack said. “Told you I’d get in.”

  He opened his eyes. It would, of course, have been far simpler just to shrink the car, not to mention far less dangerous, but he hadn’t thought of that. He opened his door and got out, and found that his knees were wobbly.

  “Jack,” he said, “do you realise you’ve parked
in a loading bay?”

  “What? Oh snot. Hang on. I’ll have to move it or I’ll get a ticket, sure as eggs.”

  “Fine.” Mr Huos sighed. “Tell you what, you carry on. I’ll meet you back at the office. I’ve got a couple of things to do anyway.”

  What he couldn’t understand, he mused as he watched Jack winkle the Merc back out again, was how it worked. He could stretch the road, he could shrink the car, but he couldn’t get rid of the white paint letters that spelt out “Loading Bay”; it simply didn’t work like that. Which was why, he reflected, he was justified in refusing to think of it as magic. If he could do magic, he’d be able to conjure away a few square inches of white paint. Since he couldn’t, it plainly wasn’t magic. On the whole, he was glad about that. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to cope with a universe in which magic was possible. On the other hand, it’d be really nice if he could use his mysterious occult powers to infiltrate Jack Tedesci’s mind and radically alter his views about pay-and-display car parking. But he couldn’t – tried, failed – so it was no good speculating. Anyway, magic would be cheating, and if there was one thing Mr Huos prided himself on, it was the fact that he’d made his own way in the world without any undue help from anyone or anything.

  He glanced at his watch: a quarter past five, which meant that if he was quick he could drop his lightweight overcoat and the trousers from his charcoal-grey suit off at the dry cleaners in Clevedon Road and still be at Jack’s office before Jack got there.

  A familiar pain in his throat and chest: bloody heartburn again. Jack’s fault. He winced and pulled a face, then put it out of his mind. Nothing seemed to work on it – milk, bicarb, ranitidine, all the stuff they sold in Boots – presumably because it was directly linked to whatever it was (not magic) that he did with the fabric of space and time. Try explaining that to a doctor. Instead, he’d learned to ignore it, or rather pretend to himself that he was ignoring it. Also his head was aching and he had pins and needles in both hands, an effect he usually only suffered after a particularly arduous session. Mildly disturbing; what exactly had he done back there? If he turned on the TV news that evening and discovered that Brighton or Reigate had been toppled into the sea, he wouldn’t half feel stupid.