7
NICK
ONE
I seemed to be dreaming about Roddy all that night. It must have been something to do with that house. Romanov said he’d dreamed about me in a crowd of kids, and in my dreams, Roddy was always with a whole bunch of children, too. “I have to talk to you alone!” I kept saying to her, and she would give me a worried look and say, “Don’t you understand? There’s nobody else to look after them.” Then I told her, “If we don’t talk, the whole thing is going to overbalance.” And she said, “It’s the salamanders doing it.” Over and over, in front of all kinds of scenery. It was crazy.
The phone ringing woke me up next morning. It rang and rang.
I woke up enough to give a deep, wild growl and shamble up the corridor draped in the towels I’d been using for blankets. I’ve told you what I’m like when I first wake up. I crashed into the table and knocked the phone off it. I left it on the floor and groped for the receiver until I found it; then I shook it a bit to shut it up. When that didn’t stop the noise, I put it to my ear and gave another wild growl.
“Is that you this time, Romanov?” said the horrible woman’s voice.
“Graah!” I said.
“No, listen to me,” she said. “I’ve tried and I’ve tried to be forgiving, and God knows I’ve tried to live on the pittance you give me …”
I groaned. Probably that was exactly what Romanov would have done, because she thought I was him. She went on and on. It was all about how difficult it was to keep up appearances without more money and how people stared at her because she had to wear the same dress twice—all that stuff. It got up my nose completely. “Why don’t you earn some money of your own, then?” I said, except that it came out as “Wumunumumen?”
“What?” she said. “Romanov, are you drunk?”
“No, I just haven’t had any coffee yet,” I said, or rather, “Jussuffcuffya.”
“You are!” she said, almost triumphantly. “Romanov, I’m seriously worried about you. You could have had a scintillating career here. The world was at your feet when you deserted me and took yourself off to that island. I didn’t understand you then; I don’t understand you now. I hear you’re planning to open a circus. Frankly, it doesn’t surprise me that you’ve started drinking, too. You must come back at once and take your place among decent people with the right outlook on life before you fall apart completely. You know I can look after you. I can help you, Romanov. I think you’re in with a bad crowd. I didn’t like the sound of that caretaker you’re employing at all, and I’m sure that elephant is just a cry for help....”
It was around then that I tried to stop her by putting the receiver back on the telephone, but it did no good. Her voice just went on trumpeting out into the corridor, on and on, all about what a weak character Romanov was and how he needed a good woman to help him. I sat on the floor and listened for five minutes or so, thinking it was really no wonder Romanov had left her and wondering how to shut her up. I was too sleepy to think properly, but I could tell that her voice was coming streaming in by magic from somewhere across my right shoulder. Everything was done by magic here. That gave me a sort of idea, and I sighed and picked the receiver up again.
She was angry by this time. She was going, “Romanov, will you answer me! If you don’t, you can be sure I shall do exactly what I said. I can manipulate magic, too, you know. If you stay this obstinate, I shall lay my hands on all the power I can get, and I shall make you sorry. It may take me years, but I shall do it, and then you’d better look out! I am sick to death of your attitude....”
Squawk, squawk, squawk, I thought, while I carefully traced the line her voice was coming in on, and when I had it, I sort of turned the line on round, like you turn the hands of a clock to point to a different hour. Her voice went fuzzy, and then faint, and then turned into a whisper with gaps in it, and finally it stopped altogether. I could tell she was still talking, but now she was doing it in quite the wrong direction, yelling away into the sea somewhere, and the corridor was peaceful again.
Beautiful! I thought, and slouched off in my towels to look for my clothes.
They were dry, but stiff as cardboard. While I was unbending them from round the pipes, I got the feeling that the plumbing had gone more normal than I remembered, but I still couldn’t see properly, so I wasn’t sure. And when I shuffled my way into the kitchen, that seemed different, too—smaller, probably. But I need four cups of coffee before I turn into a real human being, and I gave the coffee priority. I hunted by smell. I’m good at that. I found a tin of coffee and a jug and a strainer, and while I was hunting down the kettle I could hear singing on the range—this range was a shiny black sort of stove with a fire in its middle, which I certainly didn’t remember from last night—I discovered a newly baked loaf in one of its ovens.
Doing well, I thought, and sniffed around for the butter.
That hunt took me to the window above the sink, where the butter dish had been put into a bowl of water to keep cool. While I was feeling about for it, the window flew open and something sticky and pliable came through it and tried to take hold of my face. I jumped backward. I nearly screamed. It was such a shock that my eyes actually came right open. My heart banged, and I came up to normal human standard in a flash. This was just as well, as it turned out, but at the time I was really annoyed. Being sleepy is my luxury, and the sticky thing was only Mini’s trunk, anxiously probing in case I’d died in the night or something. I swore at her.
“You went deathly quiet inside the house and I didn’t know where you were!” she said.
“I was asleep, you fool!” I snarled.
“Oh!” she said. Then she went into her nervous school-girl act. I could hear one of her back legs rubbing shyly against the other. “I’m terribly sorry, but I’m …”
“Hungry,” I growled. “God! You ate a whole shedful last night!”
“The goat ate quite a lot, too,” she said apologetically.
“All right, all right, all right!” I said, and I stamped out through the door—the door now opened straight out of the kitchen, confusingly—and along the house to the shed, which was about as empty as a shed could be. There was one wisp of something left. The goat was in there polishing that off as I came. “Out!” I said to her.
She turned round, chewing, ready to give me a cheeky look. Then she saw the mood I was in. I swear I saw that goat change her mind. She went trotting meekly outside and left the place to Mini and the hens.
I slammed the shed door shut. “Elephant food,” I said. “Hen food. Food for goats while you’re at it, too.” When I opened the door again, the place was stacked to the ceiling, so full of hay and branches and big cattlecake things that I had a hard job getting to the corn bin. “Right,” I said as I scooped corn up with the bucket, “keep this shed full like this in future or I’ll want to know the reason why. That clear? It makes no sense to have to keep opening and shutting doors. Let the elephant help herself.”
Then I fed the hens and, still angry and yearning for coffee, stamped back to the kitchen. On the way I spotted an egg laid in the flower bed by the house wall, and I scooped that up. Odd, I thought. I clearly remembered that last night this wall was neat stone and nice pale wood. Now it seemed to be white-painted plaster. But I was wanting my coffee too much to bother about it.
I went in and put the egg in the butter bowl—Romanov might fancy it, I thought—and got my coffee at last. I didn’t take nearly as long having breakfast as I’d meant to. Somehow being properly awake so soon had thrown me off line. I felt urgent and s