My Hero (7 page)

‘Hey!' he said. ‘The gun wasn't loaded.'

‘Gee, Slim, I'm sorry. I didn't think . . .'

The figure in the glass slumped and slid down under the windowsill. Instinctively, Skinner stepped forward, and . . .

And fell over a body.

‘Neat draw, mister.'

Skinner looked down at the corpse at his feet, and then realised. The voice had come from the gun.

‘Did you just say something?'

‘I said, neat draw. I exaggerated.'

‘Hey . . .'

‘I thought, it's the guy's first time, he needs his confidence boosting. Actually, if it hadn't been for me you'd have blown a hole right through the five-day clock.'

Skinner looked round. He was on Main Street; not Main Street, Chicopee Falls, but generic, industry-standard Main Street; and, as the specification requires, a man in a black hat on a second-floor balcony across the way was aiming a rifle at him.

BANG!

And, as the specification insists, the man in the black hat, now deceased, fell forwards through the balcony rail, which collapsed like balsa wood around him. The sound he made as he hit the ground was a sort of lazy thump, like a windfall apple.

‘Now that was a neat draw, I gotta hand it to you.'

‘Hey, you!' Skinner screeched. ‘Cut that out, you hear me?'

‘That's gratitude for you,' grumbled the Scholfield.

‘Now, if you wouldn't mind taking your finger off my trigger, you're choking me.'

It occurred to Skinner that at this juncture it might be politic to run away and hide behind something.

Having done so (something turning out to be the door
of the livery stable; there were horses in there somewhere, but they didn't seem inclined to bother him), he sat down on a pile of hay and did a bit of violent trembling. It didn't help much, but he knew what was expected of him.

‘Are you planning on sitting there all day? Because I don't know about you, but I need a good clean and a shot of oil. You'd better put the kettle on.'

‘Kettle?'

‘You have to flush me out with boiling water, otherwise I rust. I'd have thought you'd have known that.'

‘Hey.' Skinner closed his eyes. ‘Have you got any idea what's happening to me?' he asked.

‘Sure.'

‘Well?'

‘Boiling water. A drop of Rangoon oil, if you've got it And you use a feather or something to get the bits of dust and crap out of my works. Then I might consider explaining.'

Skinner hadn't the faintest idea what Rangoon oil was when it was at home, but he found a coffee pot and an iron stove with a broken leg, and there was water in the horses' troughs. He scalded his fingers painfully trying to dribble water out of the pot down the Scholfield's barrel.

‘That's better. You've missed a bit down in the forcing cone, but you can do that later. Right then, why are you here?'

Skinner shook his head. ‘You tell me,' he said.

‘You shot your hero. You're not supposed to do that.'

‘But that's crazy,' Skinner replied. ‘People kill off their heroes all the time. Look at Shakespeare, for Chrissakes.'

‘Ah, but not personally. They get other characters to do it for them. Actually taking a gun and shooting them yourself is against the rules.'

‘What rules?'

‘Which means,' the Scholfield went on, ‘you have to
take his place. That's only if he insists, of course. I guess Slim insisted. Probably he didn't like you very much.'

‘But . . .'

‘And who can blame him? You really made life hell for that sucker, believe me. How could you fail to notice he was meant to be a villain, for God's sake?'

Skinner shook his head. As a method of field testing the maxim ‘Truth is stranger than fiction', it was certainly thorough; but he couldn't help wishing someone other than himself had got the job.

‘All right,' he said wearily. ‘So what do I do now? And how do I get back home?'

There was silence for a moment as the Scholfield considered its reply. Tact comes as naturally to full-bore handguns as, say, ice-skating to African elephants, but there comes a time when an exceptional individual is prepared to stand up and break the mould.

‘In answer to your second question, you can't. Turning to the first question . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Assuming you're looking for a nice, simple, relatively painless answer to all your problems . . .'

‘Well?'

‘You could always try shooting yourself.'

 

‘. . . And he's still there,' Jane concluded. ‘Thirty odd years later.' She paused. ‘Isn't that
awful
?'

She waited for a reply. Eventually, she heard the sound of Regalian heaving a long sigh.

‘Sunny up where you are, is it?'

‘No, not particularly.'

‘Right, so we can rule out sunstroke. And it isn't April the First, though it might conceivably be some forward-thinking individual getting his joke in early to avoid the
seasonal bottleneck. Otherwise, I can only imagine you've been drinking.'

‘But . . .'

‘In which case,' Regalian went on, ‘jolly good luck to you, I can see the merits of your chosen course of action. Still, I'd prefer it if the next time you ring me up to breathe gin fumes at me you don't choose my day off. Goodbye.'

‘Hang
on
, will you?'

His author's voice. Unwillingly Regalian paused, then put the receiver back to his ear.

‘Look,' Jane said, ‘I know it all sounds a bit cock-eyed . . .'

‘Cock-eyed!'

‘. . . But I'm convinced. I don't know why, but I am.'

‘You're the fantasy expert.'

‘Yes,' Jane replied. ‘But that's got nothing to do with it. I swear to you, I believed him. I still do.'

‘Listen,' Regalian said, ‘I'm holding my watch close to the phone so you can hear the ticking. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine - there, another gullible idiot's just been born, you have company.'

‘Look . . .'

Regalian sighed again. ‘I know what you're going to say,' he said. ‘You're going to say you're the writer and I'm just a poor bloody character, so why don't I do like I'm damned well told.'

‘No,' Jane said. ‘Actually, I wasn't going to say anything of the sort.'

‘Weren't you? Going to rely on innuendo and the unspoken threat, were you?'

‘I was going to say,' Jane went on, ‘that that wasn't all.'

‘You mean there's more?'

‘Yes.'

‘Dear God,' Regalian exclaimed. ‘Don't you think there's a risk of you wearing your imagination out if you carry on like this? I mean, you need it for work.'

‘
Look
. . .'

‘Go on.' Regalian propped his feet on the table and unwrapped a toffee. ‘I'm listening.'

H
aving extracted from Jane her solemn promise of assistance and ten pounds in change, Hamlet went in search of something to keep body and soul together. After weighing up the available alternatives, he decided on sellotape.

They were due to meet again at four in Cheadle, under the station clock. Until then, all he had to do was stay out of trouble and try not to shed too many component parts. Easy enough, he reckoned, for someone who had spent the last four hundred years wrestling with insoluble moral dilemmas and stabbing people. A change is, after all, as good as a rest.

He found a public lavatory with an empty booth, and sat for ten minutes or so taping himself up, until he resembled a transparent mummy or, if you prefer, a sausage in a skin. Provided that he avoided sudden movements and it didn't rain, he was all right for the time being.

He left the lavatory and strolled down the street. Up till now he had been too preoccupied with his problems to pay much attention to his surroundings, and it suddenly hit him that here he was, in Real Life.

Gosh.

Oh brave new world, that has such people in it. Hitherto, he had spent his life in the company of characters. Now characters aren't like people in many respects, and appearance is one of them. Characters, like film stars, are invariably strikingly handsome, meltingly beautiful, or at the very least charmingly ugly. You don't tend to get many ordinary-looking characters. Even First Citizen and A Courtier tend to look as if they've just stepped out of an underwear advertisement. It was only when passers-by started giving him odd looks and crossing the street that he realised that he was staring.

Another thing that struck him forcibly was the total aimlessness of everything they did. Where he came from, all the world was a stage and all the men and women merely players; they had their exits and their entrances, and everything they did or said either advanced the plot, developed character or filled in the gaps with jokes. It meant that life was initially hectic and, once you'd been in the play a few times, mind-gnawingly repetitive. Out here, there was absolutely no way of knowing what anybody was going to do next. It was intoxicating.

‘God,' he said aloud (he was, after all, Hamlet, and old habits die hard), ‘this is absolutely amazing! I want to stay here for ever and ever.'

He turned, and smiled winningly at a small child, who was prodding its mother in the ribs and drawing her attention to the fact that there was a man over there with a paper bag over his head. Because of the bag, the smile didn't achieve much, and in any event the mother whisked the child away with the practised speed of a waiter on piecework; but Hamlet didn't mind. It was all really
fun
. It was so much nicer than work.

Work, he thought. Let's see, it's half past three. Matinée time. Right now, I'd be starting that dismal bloody scene
with the Players. Bugger that for a game of soldiers.

(And just then, at the theatre in Stratford on Avon, a very bemused actor playing Polonius was explaining to the Players that if Hamlet had been there, instead of having been called away to a vitally important business meeting, he'd have been urging them to hold, as it were, a mirror up to nature . . .)

He stopped in his tracks. Did he really have to go back? Why didn't he just stay here, settle down, enjoy himself for once? Get a job in a building society and become the Relatively Cheerful Dane?

A stray atom of pollen drifted into his nose, and he sneezed.

It's a sad fact of life that good noses are hard to come by; and in spare-part surgery, more than anything else, you get what you pay for. Norman Frankenbotham, struggling to make do on a pension, had had to settle for a job lot of nasal gear that had seen better days, and plenty of them. He'd done his best with polyurethane varnish and suture, and the result was fine for ordinary everyday breathing. Sneezes, however, are another matter; and if he'd had the chance for a quiet chat with his creation, Norman would have impressed upon him the vital importance of avoiding dust, pollen and similar irritants if he didn't want to end up with a face like something dreamed up by Stephen King after a late night snack of extra mature Cheddar.

Hamlet froze; then, having looked round to make sure nobody was watching, he stooped quickly, feeling a few coils of sellotape giving way as he did so, retrieved the nose and sidled into a shop doorway, where he could examine the damage in the glass.

‘Oh
budder
!' he exclaimed. ‘By doze!'

Having replaced the bag, he stepped back into the street, breathing through his mouth and walking very
carefully. He had reached a decision. He was going home, whatever it took. The spirit may have been willing, but the flesh was just a smidge too weak for his liking.

 

‘Forget it,' Regalian said. ‘There is absolutely no way . . .'

‘Please.'

Regalian drew a deep breath, intending to let Jane know, with map references, where she could put her suggestion. He hesitated.

‘Did you say,' he whispered, ‘cowboys?'

‘That's right.'

‘Like, um, John Wayne and, er, Gary Cooper and, you know, um, thing?'

‘Thing?'

‘Audrey Murphy.'

‘It's Audie, not Audrey. Yes, just like them. Why?'

‘Oh, nothing.'

Like a fisherman detecting the faintest twitch on the line, Jane suddenly became alert. ‘There's something, isn't there?' she asked. ‘You like the idea, don't you?'