The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

  The rest of the street was still bathed in a dim yellow glow. It was only the few feet immediatety around her that were suddenly dark. The next pool of light was just a few footsteps away in front of her. She took a deep breath, pulled herself together, and walked towards it, reaching its very centre at the exact instant that it, too, extinguished itself.

  The occupants of the two houses she had passed on the way also happened to choose that moment to leave their front rooms, as did their neighbours on the opposite side of the street.

  Perhaps a popular television show had just finished. That's what it was. Everyone was getting up and turning off their TV sets and lights simultaneously, and the resulting power surge was blowing some of the street lamps. Something like that. The resulting power surge was also making her blood pound a little. She moved on, trying to be calm. As soon as she got home she'd have a look in the paper to see what the programme had been that had caused three street lamps to blow.

  Four.

  She stopped and stood absolutely still under the dark lamp. More houses were darkening. What she found particularty alarming was that they darkened at the very moment that she looked at them.

  Glance — pop.

  She tried it again.

  Glance — pop.

  Each one she looked at darkened instantly.

  Glance — pop.

  She realised with a sudden start of fear that she must stop herself looking at the ones that were still lit. The rationalisations she had been trying to construct were now running around inside her head screaming to be let out and she let them go. She tried to lock her eyes to the ground for fear of extinguishing the whole street, but couldn't help tiny glances to see if it was working.

  Glance — pop.

  She froze her gaze, down on to the narrow path forward. Most of the road was dark now.

  There were three remaining street lamps between her and the front door which led to her own flat. Though she kept her eyes averted, she thought she could detect on the periphery of her vision that the lights of the flat downstairs from hers were lit.

  Neil lived there. She couldn't remember his last name, but he was a part-time bass-player and antiques dealer who used to give her decorating advice she didn't want and also stole her milk — so her relationship with him had always remained at a slightly frosty level. Just at the moment, though, she was praying that he was there to tell her what was wrong with her sofa, and that his light would not go out as her eyes wavered from the pavement in front of her, with its three remaining pools of light spaced evenly along the way she had to tread.

  For a moment she tried turning, and looked back the way she had come. All was darkness, shading off into the blackness of the park which no longer calmed but menaced her, with hideously imagined thick, knotted roots and treacherous, dark, rotting litter.

  Again she turned, sweeping her eyes low.

  Three pools of light.

  The street lights did not extinguish as she looked at them, only as she passed.

  She squeezed her eyes closed and visualised exactly where the lamp of the next street light was, above and in front of her. She raised her head, and carefully opened her eyes again, staring directly into the orange glow radiating through the thick glass.

  It shone steadily.

  With her eyes locked fast on it so that it burnt squiggles on her retina, she moved cautiously forward, step by step, exerting her will on it to stay burning as she approached. It continued to glow.

  She stepped forward again. It continued to glow. Again she stepped, still it glowed. Now she was almost beneath it, craning her neck to keep it in focus.

  She moved forward once more, and saw the filament within the glass flicker and quickly die away, leaving an after-image prancing madly in her eyes.

  She dropped her eyes now and tried looking steadily forward, but wild shapes were leaping everywhere and she felt she was losing control. The next lamp she took a lunging run towards, and again, sudden darkness enveloped her arrival. She stopped there panting, and blinking, trying to calm herself again and get her vision sorted out. Looking towards the last street lamp, she thought she saw a figure standing beneath it. It was a large form, silhouetted with jumping orange shadows. Huge horns stood upon the figure's head.

  She stated with mad intensity into the billowing darkness, and suddenly screamed at it, “Who are you?”

  There was a pause, and then a deep answering voice said, “Do you have anything that can get these bits of floorboard off my back?”

  Chapter 16

  There was another pause, of a different and slightly disordered quality.

  It was a long one. lt hung there nervously, wondering which direction it was going to get broken from. The darkened street took on a withdrawn, defensive aspect.

  “What?” Kate screamed back at the figure, at last. “I said... what?”

  The great figure stirred. Kate still could not see him properly because her eyes were still dancing with blue shadows, seared there by the orange light.

  “I was,” said the figure, “glued to the floor. My father —

  ”

  “Did you...are you...” Kate quivered with incoherent rage “are you responsible...for all this?” She turned and swept an angry hand around the street to indicate the nightmare she had just traversed.

  “It is important that you know who I am.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Kate. “Well let's get the name down right now so I can take it straight to the police and get you done for breach of something wilful or other. Intimidation. Interfering with — ”

  “I am Thor. I am the God of Thunder. The God of Rain. The God of the High Towering Clouds. The God of Lightning. The God of the Flowing Currents. The God of the Particles. The God of the Shaping and the Binding Forces. The God of the Wind. The God of the Growing Crops. The God of the Hammer Mjollnir.”

  “Are you?” simmered Kate. “Well, I've no doubt that if you'd picked a slack moment to mention all that, I might have taken an interest, but right now it just makes me very angry. Turn the damn lights on!”

  “I am — ”

  “I said turn the lights on!”

  With something of a sheepish glow, the streetlights all came back on, and the windows of the houses all quietly illuminated themselves once more. The lamp above Kate popped again almost immediately. She shot him a warning look.

  “It was an old light, and infirm,” he said.

  She simply continued to glare at him.

  “See,” he said, “I have your address.” He held out the piece of paper she had given him at the airport, as if that somehow explained everything and put the world to rights.

  “I — ”

  “Back!” he shouted, throwing up his arms in front of his face.

  “What?”

  With a huge rush of wind a swooping eagle dropped from out of the night sky, with its talons outspread to catch at him. Thor beat and thrashed at it until the great bird flailed backwards, turned, nearly crashed to the ground, recovered itself, and with great slow beats of its wings, heaved itself back up through the air and perched on top of the street lamp. It grasped the lamp hard with its talons and steadied itself, making the whole lamppost quiver very slightly in its grip.

  “Go!” shouted Thor at it.

  The eagle sat there and peered down at him. A monstrous creature made more monstrous by the effect of the orange light on which it perched, casting huge, flapping shadows on the nearby houses, it had strange circular markings on its wings. These were markings that Kate wondered if she had seen before, only in a nightmare, but then again, she was by no means certain that she was not in a nightmare now.

  There was no doubt that she had found the man she was looking for. The same huge form, the same glacial eyes, the same look of arrogant exasperation and slight muddle, only this time his feet were plunged into huge hide boots, great furs, straps and thongs hung from his shoulders, a huge steel horned helmet stood on his head, and his exasperation was directed this t
ime not at an airline check-in girl but at a huge eagle perched on a lamppost in the middle of Primrose Hill.

  “Go,” he shouted at it again. “The matter is beyond my power! All that I can do I have done! Your family is provided for. You I can do nothing more for! I myself am powerless and sick.”

  Kate was suddenly shocked to see that there were great gouges on the big man's left forearm where the eagle had got its talons into him and ripped them through his skin. Blood was welling up out of them like bread out of a baking tin.

  “Go!” he shouted again. With the edge of one hand he scraped the blood off his other arm and flung the heavy drops at the eagle, which reared back, flapping, but retained its hold. Suddenly the man leapt high into the air and grappled himself to the top of the lamppost, which now began to shake dangerously under their combined weight. With loud cries the eagle pecked viciously at him while he tried with great swings of his free arm to sweep it from its perch.

  A door opened. It was the front door of Kate's house and a man with grey-rimmed spectacles and a neat moustache looked out. It was Neil, Kate's downstairs neighbour, in a mood.

  “Look, I really think — ” he started. However, it quickly became clear that he simply didn't know what to think and retreated back indoors, taking his mood, unsatisfied, with him.

  The big man braced himself, and with a huge leap hurled himself through the air and landed with a slight, controlled wobble on top of the next lamppost, which bent slightly under his weight. He crouched, glaring at the eagle, which glared back.

  “Go!” he shouted again, brandishing his arm at it.

  “Gaarh!” it screeched back at him.

  With another swing of his arm he pulled from under his furs a great short-handled sledge-hammer and hefted its great weight meaningfully from one hand to another. The head of the hammer was a roughly cast piece of iron about the size and shape of a pint of beer in a big glass mug, and its shaft was a stocky, wrist-thick piece of ancient oak with leather strapping bound about its handle.

  “Gaaaarrrh!” screeched the eagle again, but regarded the sledgehammer with keen-eyed suspicion. As Thor began slowly to swing the hammer, the eagle shifted its weight tensely from one leg to the other, in time to the rhythm of the swings.

  “Go!” said Thor again, more, quietly, but with greater menace. He rose to his full height on top of the lamppost, and swung the hammer faster and faster in a great circle. Suddenly he hurled it directly towards the eagle. In the same instant a bolt of high voltage electricity erupted from the lamp on which the eagle was sitting, causing it to leap with loud cries wildly into the air. The hammer sailed harmlessly under the lamp, swung up into the air and out over the darkness of the park, while Thor, released of its weight, wobbled and tottered on top of his lamppost, spun round and regained his balance. Flailing madly at the air with its huge wings, the eagle, too, regained control of itself, flew upwards, made one last diving attack on Thor, which the god leapt backwards off the lamppost to avoid, and then climbed up and away into the night sky in which it quickly became a small, dark speck, and then at last was gone.

  The hammer came bounding back from out of the sky, scraped flying sparks from the paving-stones with its head, turned over twice in the air and then dropped its head back to the ground next to Kate and nested its shaft gently against her leg.

  An elderly lady who had been waiting patiently with her dog in the shadows beneath the street lamp, which was now defunct, sensed, correctly, that all of the excitement was now over and proceeded quietly past them. Thor waited politely till they had passed and then approached Kate, who stood with her arms folded watching him. After all the business of the last two or three minutes he seemed suddenly not to have the faintest idea what to say and for the moment merely gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance.

  Kate formed the distinct impression that thinking was, for him, a separate activity from everything else, a task that needed its own space. It could not easily be combined with other activities such as walking or talking or buying airline tickets.

  “We'd better take a look at your arm,” she said, and led the way up the steps to her house. He followed, docile.

  As she opened the front door she found Neil in the hall leaning his back against the wall and looking with grim pointedness at a Coca-Cola vending machine standing against the opposite wall and taking up an inordinate amount of space in the hallway.

  “I don't know what we're going to do about this, I really don't,” he said.

  “What's it doing there?” asked Kate.

  “Well, that's what I'm asking you, I'm afraid,” said Neil. “I don't know how you're going to get it up the stairs. Don't see how it can be done to be perfectly frank with you. And let's face it, I don't think you're going to like it once you've got it up there. I know it's very modern and American, but think about it, you've got that nice French cherrywood table, that sofa which will be very nice once you've taken off that dreadful Collier Campbell covering like I keep on saying you should, only you won't listen, and I just don't see that it's going to fit in, not in either sense. And I'm not even sure that I should allow it, I mean it's a very heavy object and you know what I've said to you about the floors in this house. I'd think again, I really would, you know.”

  “Yes, Neil, how did it get here?”

  “Well, your friend here delivered it just an hour or so ago. I don't know where he's been working out, but I must say I wouldn't mind paying his gym a visit. I said I thought the whole thing was very doubtful but he would insist and in the end I even had to give him a hand. But I must say that I think we need to have a very serious think about the whole topic. I asked your friend if he liked Wagner but he didn't respond very well. So, I don't know, what do you want to do about it?”

  Kate took a deep breath. She suggested to her huge guest that he carry on upstairs and she would see him in just a moment. Thor lumbered past, and was an absurd figure mounting the stairs.

  Neil watched Kate's eyes very closely for a clue as to what, exactly, was going on, but Kate was as blank as she knew how.

  “I'm sorry, Neil,” she said, matter-of-factly. “The Coke machine will go. It's all a misunderstanding. I'll get this sorted out by tomorrow.”

  “Yes, that's all very well,” said Neil, “but where does all this leave me? I mean, you see my problem.”

  “No, Neil, I don't.”

  “Well, I've got this...thing out here, you've got that...person upstairs, and the whole thing is just a total disruption.”

  “Is there anything I can do to make anything any better?”

  “Well it's not as easy as that, is it? I mean, I think you should just think about it a bit, that's all. I mean, all this. You told me you were going away. I heard the bath running this afternoon. What was I to think? And after you had gone on about the cat, and you know I won't work with cats.”

  “I know, Neil. That's why I asked Mrs Grey next door to look after her.”

  “Yes, and look what happened to her. Died of a heart attack. Mr Grey's very upset, you know.”

  “I don't think it had anything to do with me asking her if she would look after my cat.”

  “Well, all I can say is that he's very upset.”

  “Yes, Neil. His wife's died.”

  “Well, I'm not saying anything. I'm just saying I think you should think about it. And what on earth are we going to do about all this?” he added, re-addressing his attention to the Coca-Cola machine.

  “I've said that I will make sure it's gone in the morning, Neil,” said Kate. “I'm quite happy to stand here and scream very loudly if you think it will help in any way, but — ”

  “Listen, love, I'm only making the point. And I hope you're not going to be making a lot of noise up there because I've got to practise my music tonight, and you know that I need quiet to concentrate.” He gave Kate a meaningful look over the top of his glasses and disappeared into his flat.

  Kate stood and silently counted as much of one to ten as she
could currently remember and then headed staunchly up the stairs in the wake of the God of Thunder, feeling that she was not in a mood for either weather or theology. The house began to throb and shake to the sound of the main theme of The Ride of the Valkyries being played on a Fender Precision bass.

  Chapter 17

  As Dirk edged his way along the Euston Road, caught in the middle of a rush hour traffic jam that had started in the late nineteen seventies and which, at a quarter to ten on this Thursday evening, still showed no signs of abating, he thought he caught sight of something he recognised.

  It was his subconscious which told him this — that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.

  “Well of course I've just seen something I recognise,” Dirk muttered mentally to his subconscious. “I drive along this benighted thoroughfare twenty times a month. I expect I recognise every single matchstick lying in the gutter. Can't you be a little more specific?” His subconscious would not be hectored though, and was dumb. It had nothing further to add. The city was probably full of grey vans anyway. Very unremarkable.

  “Where?” muttered Dirk to himself fiercely, twisting round in his seat this way and that. “Where did I see a grey van?”

  Nothing.

  He was thoroughly hemmed in by the traffic and could not manoeuvre in any direction, least of all forward. He erupted from his car and started to jostle his way back through the jammed cars bobbing up and down to try and see where, if anywhere, he might have caught a glimpse of a grey van. If he had seen one, it eluded him now. His subconscious sat and said nothing.

  The traffic was still not moving, so he tried to thread his way further back, but was obstructed by a large motorcycle courier edging his way forward on a huge grimy Kawasaki. Dirk engaged in a brief altercation with the courier, but lost it because the courier was unable to hear Dirk's side of the altercation; eventually Dirk retreated through the tide of traffic which now was beginning slowly to move in all lanes other than the one in which his car sat, driverless, immobile and hooted at.