The well of lost plots (25 page)

I READ MYSELF INTO
Shadow
’s featured town halfway down page 231. Johnny, the farmer’s boy who was Shadow’s owner and coprotagonist, would be having Shadow’s eyes checked in a few days, so a brief reconnaissance of the locality seemed like a good idea. If I could
persuade
rather than order the vet to swap the dogs, then so much the better. I alighted in a town that looked like some sort of forties English rural idyll — a mix between Warwickshire and the Dales. All green grass, show-quality cattle, yellow-lichened stone walls, sunshine and healthy-looking, smiling people. Horses pulled carts laden high with hay down the main street, and the odd shiny motorcar puttered past. Pies cooled on windowsills and children played with hoops and tinplate steam engines. The smell in the breeze was of freshly mown grass, clean linen and cooking. Here was a world of high tea, tasty trifles, zero crime, eternal summers and boundless good health. I suspected living here might be quite enjoyable — for about a week.

I was nodded at by a passerby.

“Beautiful day!” she said politely.

“Yes. My—”

“Rain later?”

I looked up at the puffy clouds that stretched away to the horizon. “I shouldn’t have thought so, but can you—”

“Well, be seeing you!” said the woman politely, and was gone.

I found an alleyway and tied the sheepdog to a downpipe; it was neither useful nor necessary to lead a dog around town for the next few hours. I walked carefully down the road, past a family butcher’s, a tearoom and sweetshop selling nothing but gobstoppers, bull’s-eyes, ginger beer, lemonade and licorice. A few doors farther on I found a newsagent and post office combined. The outside of the small shop was liberally covered with enamel signs advertising Fry’s chocolates, Colman’s starch, Wyncarnis tonic, Ovaltine and Lyons cakes. A small sign told me I could use the telephone, and a rack of postcards shared the pavement with boxes of fresh veg. There was also a display of newspapers, the headlines reflecting the interwar politics of the book.

Britain Voted Favorite Empire Tenth Year Running
, said one.
Foreigners Untrustworthy
,
Study Shows
, said another. A third led with “
Spiffing” — New Buzzword Sweeps Nation
.

I posted the “smoother” check to Johnny’s father with a covering letter explaining that it was an old loan repaid. Almost immediately a postman appeared on a bicycle and removed the letter — the only one in the postbox, I noted — with the utmost of reverence, taking it into the post office where I could hear cries of wonderment. There weren’t many letters in
Shadow
, I assumed. I stood outside the shop for a moment, watching the townsfolk going about their business. Without warning one of the cart horses decided to drop a huge pile of dung in the middle of the road. In a trice a villager had run across with a bucket and shovel and removed the offending article almost as soon as it had happened. I watched for a while and then set off to find the local auctioneers.

“So let me get this straight,” said the auctioneer, a heavyset and humorless man with a monocle screwed into his eye, “you want to buy pigs at treble the going rate? Why?”

“Not anyone’s pigs,” I replied wearily, having spent the last half hour trying to explain what I wanted, “Johnny’s father’s pigs.”

“Quite out of the question,” muttered the auctioneer, getting to his feet and walking to the window. He did it a lot, I could tell — there was a worn patch right through the carpet to the floorboards beneath, but only from his chair to the window. There was another worn patch from the door to a side table — the use of which I was yet to understand. Considering his limitations, I guessed the auctioneer was no more than a C-9 Generic — it explained the difficulty of persuading him to alter anything.

“We do things to a set formula here,” added the auctioneer, “and we don’t very much like change.”

He walked back across the worn floorboards to his desk, turned to face me and wagged a reproachful finger.

“And believe me, if you try anything a bit rum at the auction, I can discount your bid.”

We stared at each other. This wasn’t working.

“Tea and cake?” asked the auctioneer, walking to the window again.

“Thank you.”

“Splendid!” He rubbed his hands together and returned to his desk. “They tell me there is
nothing
quite so refreshing as a cup of tea!”

He flipped the switch on the intercom. “Miss Pittman, would you bring in some tea, please?”

The door opened instantaneously to reveal his secretary holding a tray of tea things. She was in her late twenties, and pretty in an English rose sort of way; she wore a floral summer dress under a fawn cardigan.

Miss Pittman followed the smoothly worn-down floorboards and carpet from the door to the side table. She curtsied and laid the tea things next to an identical tray left from an earlier occasion. She threw the old tea tray out the window and I heard the soft tinkle of broken crockery; I had seen a large pile of broken tea things outside the window when I arrived.

His secretary paused, hands pressed tightly together. “Shall — shall I pour you a cup?” she asked, a flush rising to her cheeks.

“Thank you!” exclaimed Mr. Phillips, walking excitedly to the window and back again. “Milk and—”

“One sugar.” His secretary smiled shyly. “Yes, yes . . . I know.”

“But of course you do!” He smiled back.

Then, the next stage of this odd charade took place. The auctioneer and secretary moved to the place where their two worn paths were closest, the outer limits that their existence and limited story line allowed them. Miss Pittman held the cup by its rim, placed her toes right on the edge where the worn carpet began and shiny floorboard ended, stretching out as far as she could. Mr. Phillips did the same on his side of the divide. The tips of his fingers could just touch the opposite rim of the cup, but try as he might, he could not reach far enough to grasp it.

“Allow me,” I said, unable to watch the cruel spectacle any longer. I passed the cup from one to the other.

How many cups of tea had gone cold in the past thirty-five years, I wondered, how uncrossable the six feet of carpet that divided them! Whoever event-managed this book down in the Well had a cruel sense of humor.

Miss Pittman curtsied politely and departed while the auctioneer watched her go. He sat down at his desk, eyeing the teacup thirstily. He licked his lips and rubbed his fingertips in expectation, then took a sip and savored the moment lovingly.

“Oh my goodness!” he said deliriously, “Even better than I thought it would be!”

He took another sip and closed his eyes with the sheer delight of it.

“Where were we?” he asked.

I took a deep breath. “I want you to buy Johnny’s father’s pigs with an offer that purports to come from an unknown buyer — and as close to the top of page two hundred and thirty-two as you can.”

“Utterly impossible! You are asking me to change the narrative! I will have to see higher authority.”

I passed him my Jurisfiction ID card. It wasn’t like me to pull rank, but I was getting desperate.

“I’m on official business sanctioned by the Council of Genres themselves through Text Grand Central.” It was how I thought Miss Havisham might say it.

“You forget that we are out of print pending modernization,” he replied shortly, tossing my ID back across the table. “You have no mandatory powers here,
Apprentice
Next. I think Jurisfiction will look very carefully before attempting a change on a book without internal approval. You can tell the Bellman that, from me.”

We stared at each other, a diplomatic impasse having arrived.

I had an idea. “How long have you been an auctioneer in this book?”

“Thirty-six years.”

“And how many cups of tea have you had in that time?”

“
Including
this one?”

I nodded.

“One.”

I leaned forward. “I can fix it for you to have as many cups of tea as you want, Mr. Phillips.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Oh, yes? And how would you manage that? As soon as you’ve got what you want, you’ll be off and I’ll never be able to reach Miss Pittman’s proffered cup again!”

I stood up and went to the table on which the tea tray was lying. It was a small table made of oak and lightly decorated. It had a vase of flowers on it, but nothing else. As Mr. Phillips watched, I picked up the table and placed it next to the window. The auctioneer looked at me dumbfounded, got up, walked to the window and delicately touched the table and the tea things.

“An audacious move,” he said, waving the sugar tongs at me, “but it won’t work — she’s a D-7 — she won’t be able to change what she does.”

“D-7s never have names, Mr. Phillips.”

“
I
gave her that name,” he said quietly, “you’re wasting your time.”

“Let’s see, shall we?” I spoke into the intercom to ask Miss Pittman to bring in more tea.

The door opened as before and a look of shock and surprise crossed the girl’s face.

“The table!” she gasped, rattling the Royal Doulton tea things on the tray. “It’s — !”

“You can do it, Miss Pittman,” I told her, “just place the tea where you always do.”

She moved forward, following the well-worn path, arrived at where the table used to be and then looked at its new position, two strides away. The smooth and unworn carpet was alien and fearful to her; it might as well have been a bottomless chasm. She stopped dead.

“I don’t understand — !” she began, her face bewildered as her hands continued to shake.

“Tell her to put the tea things down,” I told the auctioneer, who was becoming as distressed as Miss Pittman — perhaps more so. “
Tell her
!”

“Thank you, Miss Pittman,” murmured Mr. Phillips, his voice croaking with emotion, “put the tea things down over here, would you?”

She bit her lip and closed her eyes, raised her foot and held it, quivering above the edge of the shiny floorboards. Then she moved it forward and rested it on the soft carpet. She opened her eyes, looked down and beamed at us both.

“Well done!” I said. “Just two more.”

Brimming with confidence, she negotiated the two remaining steps with ease and placed the tray on the table. She and Mr. Phillips were closer now than they had ever been before. She put out a hand to touch his lapel, but checked herself quickly.

“Shall — shall I pour you a cup?”

“Thank you!” exclaimed Mr. Phillips. “Milk and—”

“One sugar,” She smiled shyly. “Yes, yes, I know.”

She poured the tea and handed the cup and saucer to him. He took it gratefully.

“Mr. Phillips?”

“Yes?”

“Do I have a first name?”

“Of course,” he replied quietly and with great emotion, “I have had over thirty years to think about it. Your name is Aurora, as befits somebody as beautiful as the dawn.”

She covered her nose and mouth to hide her smile and blushed deeply.

Mr. Phillips raised a shaking hand to touch her cheek but stopped as he remembered that I was still present. He nodded imperceptibly in my direction and said, “Thank you, Miss Pittman — perhaps later you might come in for some . . .
dictation
.”

“I will look forward to it, Mr. Phillips!”

And she turned, trod softly on the carpet to the door, looked round once more and went out. When I looked back at Mr. Phillips, he had sat down, drained by the emotionally charged encounter.

“Do we have a deal? Or do I put the table back where it was?”

He looked shocked. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

He considered his position for a moment and then offered me his hand. “Pigs at treble the going rate?”

“Top of page two thirty-two.”

“Deal.”

Pleased with my actions so far, I collected the dog and jumped forward to the middle of page two thirty-two. By now the sale of Johnny’s father’s pigs was the talk of the town and had even made it into the headlines of the local papers:
Unprecedented Pig Prices Shock Town
. There was only one thing left to do — replace the blind collie for the sighted one.

“I’m looking for the vet,” I asked a passerby.

“Are you?” replied the woman amiably. “Good for you!” and she hurried on.

“Could you tell me the way to the vet?” I asked the next person, a sallow man in a tweed suit.

He was no less literal: “Yes, I could.” He attempted to walk on. I tried to grasp him by the sleeve but missed and momentarily clasped his hand. He gasped out loud. This was echoed by two women who had witnessed the incident. They started to gossip volubly. I pulled out my ID.

“Jurisfiction,” I told him, adding, “on official business,” just to make sure he got the picture.

But something had happened. The townsfolk, who up until that moment had seemed to wander the streets like automatons, were all of a sudden animated individuals, talking, whispering and pointing. I was a stranger in a strange land, and while the townsfolk didn’t
seem
hostile, I was clearly an object of considerable interest.

“I need to get to the vet,” I said loudly. “Now, can anyone tell me where he lives?”

The two ladies who had been chattering suddenly smiled and nodded to one another.

“We’ll show you where he works.”

I left the first man still staring at his hand and looking at me in an odd way. I didn’t take offense. People looked at me oddly quite a lot.

I followed the ladies to a small building set back from the road. I thanked them both, one of whom I noticed remained at the gate while the other bustled away with a purposeful stride. I rang the doorbell.

“Hello?” said the vet, opening the door and looking surprised; he only had one client booked that day — Johnny and Shadow. The vet was meant to tell the young lad how Shadow would stay blind forever.

“This dog,” said the vet automatically, “will never see again. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

“Jurisfiction,” I told him, showing him my ID. “There’s been a change of plan.”

“What sort of change?” he asked as I gently forced my way in and closed the door. “Are you here to alter the less-than-savory references to stereotypical Gypsy folk in chapters thirteen to fifteen?”