and put them on!"
Spinning on his heel, he slammed shut the wardrobe door.
"No! No!" Terror rang in her voice; she raised her hands before her as to
ward off a blow, and her eyes widened in the beginning of belief. Godwin
noted these reactions with less than complete approval. Everything was
going so fast, so predictably. There was no real challenge in his kind
of work any more. If only he had been set to tackle someone relatively
invulnerable
But here he was, and here she was, and that was that. He was obliged to
make the best of things.
Rasping: "What the hell is unreal about my home? I suppose that bed's
a fake, right? You spent all night on a patch of bare boards! And it's
actually freezing cold in here and you've got goose pimples all over
you! And I had the Peasmarsh labels made up and paid for them to be
sewn into phony clothes your size specially so when you turned up I
could impress you! And you didn't drink freshly squeezed orange juice
and freshly brewed Blue Mountain coffee and you didn't fill your belly
with free-range eggs scrambled with Cornish butter and chopped chives and
you didn't wipe your stupid arse with tissue off that roll right there!"
By now he was panting with the force of his diatribe and she was flinching
and casting about as though in search of somewhere to hide.
"Ah, shit!" he exploded by way of a climax. "I thought I was doing you
a favor. Most people think it's kind of a favor to be offered their
heart's desire. So you're different. So you'd rather wallow in the dirt
until you rot."
"No!" She clutched at him, the tears still streaming down; she was
snuffling now, as her nose filled with fluid. "No, it's just that nobody
ever gave me this kind of chance ever in my whole life before! I mean,
you can't blame me for finding it unreal! Can you? Can you?"
"Ah, hell . . I suppose not." With careful timing he put one arm around
her and gave a squeeze; it coincided precisely with the next time she
exhaled and obliged her to take an unusually deep breath.
"Okay, make it ten minutes instead of five. But I warn you: you've already
wasted half of them, and Hermann doesn't like to be kept waiting."
Infinitely relieved, on the point of stepping under the shower at last,
she hesitated.
"Who's Hermann?"
"Someone who can straighten out that mixed-up head of yours. Stop asking
questions! If you can't learn to take things for granted, you won't make
out in the world where I live. And you'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"You think I could?"
"That's up to you. From me you get today's help, and that is all!"
Eyes bright now, lips pressed tight together for fear of letting out
something else better unsaid, she turned the shower control at random
and succeeded in half scalding herself. Godwin sighed. One of these
days, one of these years, maybe he'd be called to tackle some really
tough assignment, or at least an assignment which would feel as tough
as those he had undertaken in the past.
Maybe, though, that was inherently impossible now. Maybe he understood
his techniques too well, deployed them with excessive facility
No. That couldn't be the case. Surely not. So the next one, with a bit
of luck, might occupy him for a reasonable length of time, give him a
sense of working at full stretch, of achievement, of fulfilment. But it
wasn't, of course, for him to say.
He could only hope, and hope that his hoping might be noticed.
"You'll find knickers to fit you in that drawer," he said, pointing,
when Gorse emerged from the shower frantically toweling down. "Two
minutes to go. You'd better hurry."
The weather was cool today, but dry. There was, of course, a cruising
taxi at the end of the street; the driver spotted Godwin's signal
and waited for him. They picked their way among a horde of bored
Sunday-morning children, mostly inspecting rubbish to find out whether
it was salable. One of the front wheels from the Mark X Jaguar had been
stolen during the night.
"Why
Spinning on his heel, he slammed shut the wardrobe door.
"No! No!" Terror rang in her voice; she raised her hands before her as to
ward off a blow, and her eyes widened in the beginning of belief. Godwin
noted these reactions with less than complete approval. Everything was
going so fast, so predictably. There was no real challenge in his kind
of work any more. If only he had been set to tackle someone relatively
invulnerable
But here he was, and here she was, and that was that. He was obliged to
make the best of things.
Rasping: "What the hell is unreal about my home? I suppose that bed's
a fake, right? You spent all night on a patch of bare boards! And it's
actually freezing cold in here and you've got goose pimples all over
you! And I had the Peasmarsh labels made up and paid for them to be
sewn into phony clothes your size specially so when you turned up I
could impress you! And you didn't drink freshly squeezed orange juice
and freshly brewed Blue Mountain coffee and you didn't fill your belly
with free-range eggs scrambled with Cornish butter and chopped chives and
you didn't wipe your stupid arse with tissue off that roll right there!"
By now he was panting with the force of his diatribe and she was flinching
and casting about as though in search of somewhere to hide.
"Ah, shit!" he exploded by way of a climax. "I thought I was doing you
a favor. Most people think it's kind of a favor to be offered their
heart's desire. So you're different. So you'd rather wallow in the dirt
until you rot."
"No!" She clutched at him, the tears still streaming down; she was
snuffling now, as her nose filled with fluid. "No, it's just that nobody
ever gave me this kind of chance ever in my whole life before! I mean,
you can't blame me for finding it unreal! Can you? Can you?"
"Ah, hell . . I suppose not." With careful timing he put one arm around
her and gave a squeeze; it coincided precisely with the next time she
exhaled and obliged her to take an unusually deep breath.
"Okay, make it ten minutes instead of five. But I warn you: you've already
wasted half of them, and Hermann doesn't like to be kept waiting."
Infinitely relieved, on the point of stepping under the shower at last,
she hesitated.
"Who's Hermann?"
"Someone who can straighten out that mixed-up head of yours. Stop asking
questions! If you can't learn to take things for granted, you won't make
out in the world where I live. And you'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"You think I could?"
"That's up to you. From me you get today's help, and that is all!"
Eyes bright now, lips pressed tight together for fear of letting out
something else better unsaid, she turned the shower control at random
and succeeded in half scalding herself. Godwin sighed. One of these
days, one of these years, maybe he'd be called to tackle some really
tough assignment, or at least an assignment which would feel as tough
as those he had undertaken in the past.
Maybe, though, that was inherently impossible now. Maybe he understood
his techniques too well, deployed them with excessive facility
No. That couldn't be the case. Surely not. So the next one, with a bit
of luck, might occupy him for a reasonable length of time, give him a
sense of working at full stretch, of achievement, of fulfilment. But it
wasn't, of course, for him to say.
He could only hope, and hope that his hoping might be noticed.
"You'll find knickers to fit you in that drawer," he said, pointing,
when Gorse emerged from the shower frantically toweling down. "Two
minutes to go. You'd better hurry."
The weather was cool today, but dry. There was, of course, a cruising
taxi at the end of the street; the driver spotted Godwin's signal
and waited for him. They picked their way among a horde of bored
Sunday-morning children, mostly inspecting rubbish to find out whether
it was salable. One of the front wheels from the Mark X Jaguar had been
stolen during the night.
"Why
Similar Books
