The Portable Door (1987) (42 page)

“As you wish,” Arthur said. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind—”

“What? Oh, yes, of course.” Humphrey pulled the two halves of the box together; they closed with an audible snap, he folded back the lid, and Mr Tanner’s mum sat up, blinking. “You see?” Humphrey said. “I did give you my word, after all.”

With a blood—curdling snarl, Mr Tanner’s mum suddenly grew a set of three-inch claws and went to swipe Humphrey across the face with them; but he snapped his fingers, and she froze in mid-stroke. “As for you,” he said, “I’m not quite finished with
you
yet.” He snapped his fingers a second time, and Mr Tanner’s mum changed into a stunningly beautiful voluptuous blonde, with no clothes on. She shrieked and, to Paul’s great surprise, blushed.

“Turning me down,” Humphrey said slowly, “is one thing. Turning me down, and then making an exhibition of yourself chasing after
that
(a savage nod in Paul’s direction) is another matter entirely.” He paused, then grinned at Arthur. “Oh, didn’t anybody tell you?” he said conversationally. “Your own true love’s been quite busy since you’ve been away, and her latest project is this half-baked excuse for a stick insect here. Do you know,” he added with a smirk, “I’ve a good mind to maroon the two of you in your old rooms together for the rest of eternity, to give you plenty of time to discuss the matter in private.”

Paul opened his mouth to explain, but no words came out. Arthur looked at him, and shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said. “My Rosie’d never do anything like that.”

Humphrey threw his head back and laughed. “Priceless,” he said. “Well, never mind. As I mentioned just now, I have some unfinished business with your sweet Rosie; once I’ve finished with her, I’ll send her along to join you in whatever place or setting you end up in. Unless, of course, she changes her mind about me, which is a lady’s prerogative, after all. She may decide that I’m preferable to fifty billion years in a confined space with you and your new friends. We’ll have to see, won’t we?” Humphrey snapped his fingers a third time, and Arthur froze solid before he could say a word. “Now then,” Humphrey went on, “what about your friend, young Philip here? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were the one who tried to warn my dear uncle about me, thereby forcing my hand before I was quite ready. I believe it’s only fair I should think up something particularly suitable for you. And Miss Pettingell,” he added, “and Mr Carpenter. It was none of your business, was it? But you had to go poking your noses in where they didn’t belong. Let’s see, now; I do believe that, shortly before you came here, Miss Pettingell and Mr Carpenter had just discovered that they were part of the same happy ending. But we can easily fix
that
.” He stood up and crossed the room to where Sophie’s handbag lay on the floor. From it he took the plastic bottle, still over half full of clear golden liquid. “My uncle’s own recipe,” he said affectionately, “worth a fortune to us over the years. Let’s think, now: what permutation is likely to cause the most trouble?” He unscrewed the cap; then he put his hand on Sophie’s forehead and tilted her head back. “In about twenty minutes,” he said, “you’ll wake up and find yourself gazing in wonder into young Philip’s small, piggy eyes. But you’re a strong-willed, bolshy little thing; you’ll love our Pip with a frenzied passion that’ll last until the sun goes cold, but all the time you’ll know at the back of your mind that he’s not really the one. And since the three of you’ll be cooped up in that dingy little bedsit, without even the option of murder or suicide to break the tension, I imagine the atmosphere in there is going to get more than a little fraught.”

Paul couldn’t bear to watch. He looked away; at the ceiling, then down at the table—at the table, with its mirror-polish, on which stood that by now familiar object, the long stapler. A tiny part of his mind wondered how it had got there, since it hadn’t been there a moment ago; but he was so used to it turning up and disappearing again that its latest manifestation didn’t really bother him. He looked away, at the moulding on the oak-panelled walls; but then something registered in his mind, and he looked back; not, this time, at the stapler itself, but at its reflection in the table top. The last time he’d been in this room, when Ricky Wurmtoter had given them the Dire Warnings lecture and told them about the imp-reflecting qualities of that very table, he’d remembered thinking how curious was the manner in which the thing worked. You looked at the object, and then at its reflection; and the reflection was just the normal inverted image of the object, but at the same time it was also something else. On that occasion, it had been the doomed Mr Lundqvist, transformed into a mouse by some dark sorcery. This time…this time, the stapler was just a stapler, but it was also a tiny little bald man, dressed in a black frock coat and grey striped trousers, crouched like a hunting cat and waving frantically at him with his tiny hands.

Fuck
, thought Paul.
Mr Wells senior
.

Yes
, said a voice, very faint inside his head.
Now pay attention. When I break the spell, lay the chain over the stapler
.

You what?
Paul thought; but then he felt the unseen ropes give way abruptly, and he fell forward, just as Arthur had done when Humphrey had released him a while ago. Paul lost his balance and toppled out of his chair, but as he slid forward he shot his hand out, grabbing for the little gold chain on the table top. He could just reach it; and as Humphrey whirled round, a vicious-looking sword in his uplifted hand, Paul flicked the chain through the air with his fingertips.

More by luck than judgement, the chain flew through the air, clattered against the stapler and wrapped itself round it like a bolas. At once there was a blinding flash of blue light. Humphrey dropped the sword with a clatter and crashed against the wall as John Wellington Wells (a short, stout man who looked like Arthur Lowe without his glasses on) stepped down from the table.

“Thank you,” he said politely to Paul. Then he clicked his sausage-like fingers.

Several things happened all at once. Mr Tanner’s mum acquired a long dress of rose-madder silk, with zouave jacket and bustle. Arthur and Pip fell off their chairs and landed on their backsides on the floor. A snake of some sort—a boa constrictor, or some kind of python—appeared out of thin air and coiled itself round Humphrey until only his nose and the tips of his shoes were visible. Sophie’s head fell forward on her chest, and she snored loudly. John Wellington frowned, and spat out a mouthful of staples. An empty plastic bottle rolled across the floor.

Paul stared for a moment at the plastic bottle; then he slumped forward, his head in his hands. Then he heard the voice of John Wellington, directly above him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he was saying, and Paul looked up sharply.

John Wellington was frowning at him, and Paul expected him to say, “Stupid boy,” at any moment. Instead, he heard a voice inside his head; the same one he’d heard a minute earlier, only louder this time. John Wellington clearly believed in discretion.

It’s all right
, said John Wellington inside his head,
it’ll be at least twenty minutes before she wakes up, and so long as you’re in position when the time comes, everything’ll be as right as rain. Better, in fact
.

Better? Paul queried.

Quite so. Be realistic. True, the young lady does indeed love you, but nothing lasts for ever; under normal circumstances, I’d give it eighteen months, at the very most, and then she’d be off with someone else, someone quite unsuitable who’d make her very unhappy. This way is very much better, for both of you
.

But that’s not right, Paul stated. I can’t take advantage—
It’s not a matter of taking advantage. It’s a matter of finding happiness, suddenly and against all probability, in a world where love is seldom true and never eternal. Not, that is, without the help of a little white magic, at seven and threepence ha’penny the pint, trade
.

But isn’t there anything you can do? he asked. An antidote, or something?

No
.

Oh, Paul responded. But even so, I don’t think it’s right, it’s—The slight twinge of pain inside his head could have been the voice scowling.
Stupid boy
, said the voice.

§

Sophie woke up.

“Paul?” she said.

“Hello.”

She narrowed her eyes and squinted. “Yes, right,” she said. “Only, you look different somehow.”

Paul took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said, “I thought you might say that. There’s a reason.”

Sophie sat up, and winced. “Cricked neck,” she explained. “Have I been asleep, or something?”

Paul nodded. “For about twenty minutes.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “What happened?” she said. “The last thing I can remember is that bastard, making me drink the love stuff. Only—” She hesitated, trying to make sense of what was in her mind. “Only he was going to make me fall in love with that funny little clerk, with the pointy nose.”

“That’s right,” Paul said. “Only that didn’t happen. Yes, you drank the philtre, but then—”

“Yes? Well?”

Paul sighed. “Mr Wells—that’s old Mr Wells, the one who’d been lost, he turned out to be the long stapler—you know, the one that won’t stay put for five minutes. I saw him, in that mirror thing that shows things as they really are. And I, well, kind of set him free, and he sorted out the other Mr Wells, Humphrey, and basically that’s that. You missed it all, of course.”

“I suppose so,” Sophie said.

“Old Mr Wells,” Paul went on quickly, “John Wellington, he zapped Humphrey with lightning or something. Then he—well,
changed
him.”

“What do you mean, changed?”

“He turned him into something,” Paul said, with a touch of awe in his voice. “You’ve never seen anything like it. One moment he was like there, the next—”

“Paul,” Sophie warned him. “What did he turn him into?”

Paul shivered a little as he answered. “A photocopier,” he replied. “He reckoned that since he’d had to be a stapler all those years, it was only right and proper Humphrey should be some kind of office equipment too. And then he got this funny look in his eye, and he asked us, “What’s the most hated and abused piece of kit in an office?” and we all said, “The photocopier,” without even having to be asked. Then John Wellington said that was what he reckoned too, and it’d serve Humphrey right to spend for ever being thumped and yelled at and blamed every time something was late or got all chewed up. Then, zap, and that was that.”

“Oh well,” Sophie said. “But what about—?”

Paul looked away. “It’s all right,” he said. “I asked John Wellington about it. First he said, there’s nothing anybody can do, but I kept on at him and finally he said, yes, there’s an antidote. All I’ve got to do—”

“You?” Sophie interrupted.

Paul nodded. “All I’ve got to do,” he said, “is swear, like, this solemn oath that I’m finished with—well, girls, basically. And women. And all that sort of thing. Then I go away somewhere, and after a week or two the philtre wears off, and everything’s fine.”

Sophie looked at him. “And what happens if you don’t? I mean, if you break the oath?”

Paul shrugged. “He was a bit vague about that,” he said. “But from what I could gather, I sort of disintegrate, basically, and my soul’s forfeit to Ahrimanes, Prince of Darkness.” He frowned. “But that’s all a bit academic, really, isn’t it? Because let’s face it, me giving up women and stuff, it’s like me abdicating the throne of England. What you’re never going to have, I mean, you aren’t going to miss…”

“Oh,” Sophie said. “But that’s stupid.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it
isn’t
,” Paul said irritably. “It’s what I want to do. Well, obviously it’s
not
what I want to do, but it’s the right thing. Obviously.”

“Why?”

He loved her with all his heart, but she could be annoying sometimes. “Because otherwise—well, you’ll be under the control of that bloody stuff, and—”

“But I love you.”

“No,” Paul said. “That’s just the philtre, it’s what it makes you think.”

“No, you moron. I
love
you. Before the philtre stuff.” Paul shook his head. “No,” he said. “I mean, you thought you did, but probably by now you’d have realised you didn’t, you were just having a funny five minutes or something; or maybe you’d breathed in the fumes while we were up in Lancashire, or—”

“
Paul
.” She was getting angry. “Shut
up
, for crying out loud. Do you love me or don’t you?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Right. That’s that, then,” she said; then she lunged at him and kissed him. “Ouch,” she added, as their teeth collided.

“Sorry,” Paul mumbled.

“Bloody hell. Look, just keep still, can’t you?”

So Paul kept still, for quite some time. Then, once he’d got some feeling back in his jaw and lips, he said, “Look, are you sure about this?”

“
Paul!
”

“All right, all right, I was just asking.”

§

A few minutes later, someone knocked at the door. “Is it, um, safe to come in?”

“That’s John Wellington,” Paul whispered. “Yes,” he called out, “um, yes, fine.”

The door opened, and John Wellington came in, followed by Professor Van Spee, Mr Suslowicz, the

Contessa di Castel’Bianco, Ricky Wurmtoter, Pip and, finally, Mr Tanner. “Sit down, please, all of you,” John Wellington said. “You too,” he added to Paul and Sophie, who’d jumped up looking guilty. “We’ve got a lot to get through, so we won’t waste any time.” He put his hand in his pocket and took out a paper bag, which Paul was sure he recognised.

“Mr Carpenter,” John Wellington went on, “I took the liberty of taking these from the drawer of your desk. You recognise them.”

Paul nodded; the dragon droppings, which made you hear what people meant, not what they said.

“Excellent,” John Wellington said. “Now, we all have a rough idea of what’s happened here, and I’ve taken appropriate steps to deal with my nephew. But that, I’m afraid, isn’t quite the end of the matter.” He frowned, and looked slowly up and down the table. “From what I’ve gathered from my own observations as a stapler—an interesting perspective, which some of you might find useful—and various things I’ve heard since I’ve been back, it seems to me that my wretched nephew wasn’t acting entirely on his own. In fact, it seems quite likely that one of the other partners in this firm was either in the plot with him, or at least knew about it but didn’t say or do anything about it.”