“It’s Horner, Ma.”
“Jack? It ain’t safe for me to talk to you.”
“For old time’s sake, sweetheart. You owe me a favor.” Some two-bit crooks had once knocked off the Cupboard, leaving it bare. I’d tracked them down and returned the cakes and soup.
“Okay. But I don’t like it.”
“You know everything that goes on around here on the food front, Ma. What’s the significance of a pie with four and twenty trained blackbirds in it?”
She whistled long and low. “You really don’t know?”
“I wouldn’t be asking you if I did.”
“You should read the Court pages of the papers next time, sugar. Jeez. You are out of your depth.”
“C’mon, Ma. Spill it.”
“It so happens that that particular dish was set before the King a few weeks back…. Jack? Are you still there?”
“I’m still here, ma’am,” I said quietly. “All of a sudden a lot of things are starting to make sense.” I put down the phone.
It was beginning to look like Little Jack Horner had pulled out a plum from this pie.
It was raining, steady and cold. I phoned a cab.
Quarter of an hour later one lurched out of the darkness.
“You’re late.”
“So complain to the tourist board.”
I climbed in the back, wound down the window, and lit a cigarette.
And I went to see the Queen.
The door to the private part of the palace was locked. It’s the part that the public don’t get to see. But I’ve never been public, and the little lock hardly slowed me up. The door to the private apartments with the big red heart on it was unlocked, so I knocked and walked straight in.
The Queen of Hearts was alone, standing in front of the mirror, holding a plate of jam tarts with one hand, powdering her nose with the other. She turned, saw me, and gasped, dropping the tarts.
“Hey, Queenie,” I said. “Or would you feel more comfortable if I called you Jill?”
She was still a good-looking slice of dame, even without the blonde wig.
“Get out of here!” she hissed.
“I don’t think so, toots.” I sat down on the bed. “Let me spell a few things out for you.”
“Go ahead.” She reached behind her for a concealed alarm button. I let her press it. I’d cut the wires on my way in—in my profession there’s no such thing as being too careful.
“Let me spell a few things out for you.”
“You just said that.”
“I’ll tell this my way, lady.”
I lit a cigarette, and a thin plume of blue smoke drifted heavenward, which was where I was going if my hunch was wrong. Still, I’ve learned to trust hunches.
“Try this on for size. Dumpty—the Fat Man—wasn’t your brother. He wasn’t even your friend. In fact he was blackmailing you. He knew about your nose.”
She turned whiter than a number of corpses I’ve met in my time in the business. Her hand reached up and cradled her freshly powdered nose.
“You see, I’ve known the Fat Man for many years, and many years ago he had a lucrative concern in training animals and birds to do certain unsavory things. And that got me to thinking…. I had a client recently who didn’t show, due to his having been stiffed first. Dr. Foster, of Gloucester, the plastic surgeon. The official version of his death was that he’d just sat too close to a fire and melted.
“But just suppose he was killed to stop him telling something that he knew. I put two and two together and hit the jackpot. Let me reconstruct a scene for you: You were out in the garden—probably hanging out some clothes—when along came one of Dumpty’s trained pie blackbirds and pecked off your nose.
“So there you were, standing in the garden, your hand in front of your face, when along came the Fat Man with an offer you couldn’t refuse. He could introduce you to a plastic surgeon who could fix you up with a nose as good as new, for a price. And no one need ever know. Am I right so far?”
She nodded dumbly, then, finding her voice, muttered, “Pretty much. But I ran back into the parlor after the attack, to eat some bread and honey. That was where he found me.”
“Fair enough.” The color was starting to come back into her cheeks now. “So you had the operation from Foster, and no one was going to be any the wiser. Until Dumpty told you that he had photos of the op. You had to get rid of him. A couple of days later you were out walking in the palace grounds. There was Humpty, sitting on a wall, his back to you, gazing out into the distance. In a fit of madness, you pushed. And Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
“But now you were in big trouble. Nobody suspected you of his murder, but where were the photographs? Foster didn’t have them, although he smelled a rat and had to be disposed of—before he could see me. But you didn’t know how much he’d told me, and you still didn’t have the snapshots, so you took me on to find out. And that was your mistake, sister.”
Her lower lip trembled, and my heart quivered. “You won’t turn me in, will you?”
“Sister, you tried to frame me this afternoon. I don’t take kindly to that.”
With a shaking hand she started to unbutton the top button of her blouse. “Perhaps we could come to some sort of arrangement?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, your majesty. Mrs. Horner’s little boy Jack was always taught to keep his hands off royalty. It’s a pity, but that’s how it is.” To be on the safe side I looked away, which was a mistake. A cute little ladies’ pistol was in her hands and pointing at me before you could sing a song of sixpence. The shooter may have been small, but I knew it packed enough of a wallop to take me out of the game permanently.
This dame was lethal.
“Put that gun down, your majesty.” Sergeant O’Grady strolled through the bedroom door, his police special clutched in his hamlike fist.
“I’m sorry I suspected you, Horner,” he said drily. “You’re lucky I did, though, sure and begorrah. I had you tailed here and I overheard the whole thing.”
“Hi, Sarge, thanks for stopping by. But I hadn’t finished my explanation. If you’ll take a seat I’ll wrap it up.”
He nodded brusquely, and sat down near the door. His gun hardly moved.
I got up from the bed and walked over to the Queen. “You see, toots, what I didn’t tell you was who did have the snaps of your nose job. Humpty did, when you killed him.”
A charming frown crinkled her perfect brow. “I don’t understand…. I had the body searched.”
“Sure, afterward. But the first people to get to the Fat Man were the King’s Men. The cops. And one of them pocketed the envelope. When any fuss had died down the blackmail would have started again. Only this time you wouldn’t have known who to kill. And I owe you an apology.” I bent down to tie my shoelaces.
“Why?”
“I accused you of trying to frame me this afternoon. You didn’t. That arrow was the property of a boy who was the best archer in my school—I should have recognized that distinctive fletching anywhere. Isn’t that right,” I said, turning back to the door, “‘Sparrow’ O’Grady?”
Under the guise of tying my shoelaces I had already palmed a couple of the Queen’s jam tarts, and, flinging one of them upward, I neatly smashed the room’s only lightbulb.
It only delayed the shooting a few seconds, but a few seconds was all I needed, and as the Queen of Hearts and Sergeant “Sparrow” O’Grady cheerfully shot each other to bits, I split.
In my business, you have to look after number one.
Munching on a jam tart I walked out of the palace grounds and into the street. I paused by a trash can, to try to burn the manila envelope of photographs I had pulled from O’Grady’s pocket as I walked past him, but it was raining so hard they wouldn’t catch.
When I got back to my office I phoned the tourist board to complain. They said the rain was good for the farmers, and I told them what they could do with it.
They said that things are tough all over.
And I said, “Yeah.”
Troll Bridge
T HEY PULLED UP MOST of the railway tracks in the early sixties, when I was three or four. They slashed the train services to ribbons. This meant that there was nowhere to go but London, and the little town where I lived became the end of the line.
My earliest reliable memory: eighteen months old, my mother away in hospital having my sister, and my grandmother walking with me down to a bridge, and lifting me up to watch the train below, panting and steaming like a black iron dragon.
Over the next few years they lost the last of the steam trains, and with them went the network of railways that joined village to village, town to town.
I didn’t know that the trains were going. By the time I was seven they were a thing of the past.
We lived in an old house on the outskirts of the town. The fields opposite were empty and fallow. I used to climb the fence and lie in the shade of a small bulrush patch, and read; or if I were feeling more adventurous I’d explore the grounds of the empty manor beyond the fields. It had a weed-clogged ornamental pond, with a low wooden bridge over it. I never saw any groundsmen or caretakers in my forays through the gardens and woods, and I never attempted to enter the manor. That would have been courting disaster, and, besides, it was a matter of faith for me that all empty old houses were haunted.
It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. It was part of my young creed that the night was full of ghosts and witches, hungry and flapping and dressed completely in black.
The converse held reassuringly true: daylight was safe. Daylight was always safe.
A ritual: on the last day of the summer school term, walking home from school, I would remove my shoes and socks and, carrying them in my hands, walk down the stony flinty lane on pink and tender feet. During the summer holiday I would put shoes on only under duress. I would revel in my freedom from footwear until school term began once more in September.
When I was seven I discovered the path through the wood. It was summer, hot and bright, and I wandered a long way from home that day.
I was exploring. I went past the manor, its windows boarded up and blind, across the grounds, and through some unfamiliar woods. I scrambled down a steep bank, and I found myself on a shady path that was new to me and overgrown with trees; the light that penetrated the leaves was stained green and gold, and I thought I was in fairyland.
A little stream trickled down the side of the path, teeming with tiny, transparent shrimps. I picked them up and watched them jerk and spin on my fingertips. Then I put them back.
I wandered down the path. It was perfectly straight, and overgrown with short grass. From time to time I would find these really terrific rocks: bubbly, melted things, brown and purple and black. If you held them up to the light you could see every color of the rainbow. I was convinced that they had to be extremely valuable, and stuffed my pockets with them.
I walked and walked down the quiet golden-green corridor, and saw nobody.
I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. I just wondered where the path was going. It traveled in a straight line, and was perfectly flat. The path never changed, but the countryside around it did. At first I was walking along the bottom of a ravine, grassy banks climbing steeply on each side of me. Later, the path was above everything, and as I walked I could look down at the treetops below me, and the roofs of the occasional distant houses. My path was always flat and straight, and I walked along it through valleys and plateaus, valleys and plateaus. And eventually, in one of the valleys, I came to the bridge.
It was built of clean red brick, a huge curving arch over the path. At the side of the bridge were stone steps cut into the embankment, and, at the top of the steps, a little wooden gate.
I was surprised to see any token of the existence of humanity on my path, which I was by now convinced was a natural formation, like a volcano. And, with a sense more of curiosity than anything else (I had, after all, walked hundreds of miles, or so I was convinced, and might be anywhere), I climbed the stone steps, and went through the gate.
I was nowhere.
The top of the bridge was paved with mud. On each side of it was a meadow. The meadow on my side was a wheatfield; the other field was just grass. There were the caked imprints of huge tractor wheels in the dried mud. I walked across the bridge to be sure: no trip-trap, my bare feet were soundless.
Nothing for miles; just fields and wheat and trees.
I picked a stalk of wheat, and pulled out the sweet grains, peeling them between my fingers, chewing them meditatively.
I realized then that I was getting hungry, and went back down the stairs to the abandoned railway track. It was time to go home. I was not lost; all I needed to do was follow my path home once more.
There was a troll waiting for me, under the bridge.
“I’m a troll,” he said. Then he paused, and added, more or less as an afterthought, “Fol rol de ol rol.”
He was huge: his head brushed the top of the brick arch. He was more or less translucent: I could see the bricks and trees behind him, dimmed but not lost. He was all my nightmares given flesh. He had huge strong teeth, and rending claws, and strong, hairy hands. His hair was long, like one of my sister’s little plastic gonks, and his eyes bulged. He was naked, and his penis hung from the bush of gonk hair between his legs.
“I heard you, Jack,” he whispered, in a voice like the wind. “I heard you trip-trapping over my bridge. And now I’m going to eat your life.”
I was only seven, but it was daylight, and I do not remember being scared. It is good for children to find themselves facing the elements of a fairy tale—they are well-equipped to deal with these.
“Don’t eat me,” I said to the troll. I was wearing a stripy brown T-shirt and brown corduroy trousers. My hair also was brown, and I was missing a front tooth. I was learning to whistle between my teeth, but wasn’t there yet.
“I’m going to eat your life, Jack,” said the troll.
I stared the troll in the face. “My big sister is going to be coming down the path soon,” I lied, “and she’s far tastier than me. Eat her instead.”
The troll sniffed the air, and smiled. “You’re all alone,” he said. “There’s nothing else on the path. Nothing at all.” Then he leaned down, and ran his fingers over me: it felt like butterflies were brushing my face—like the touch of a blind person. Then he snuffled his fingers, and shook his huge head. “You don’t have a big sister. You’ve only a younger sister, and she’s at her friend’s today.”
“Can you tell all that from smell?” I asked, amazed.
“Trolls can smell the rainbows, trolls can smell the stars,” it whispered, sadly. “Trolls can smell the dreams you dreamed before you were ever born. Come close to me and I’ll eat your life.”
“I’ve got precious stones in my pocket,” I told the troll. “Take them, not me. Look.” I showed him the lava jewel rocks I had found earlier.
“Clinker,” said the troll. “The discarded refuse of steam trains. Of no value to me.”
He opened his mouth wide. Sharp teeth. Breath that smelled of leaf mold and the underneaths of things. “Eat. Now.”
He became more and more solid to me, more and more real; and the world outside became flatter, began to fade.
“Wait.” I dug my feet into the damp earth beneath the bridge, wiggled my toes, held on tightly to the real world. I stared into his big eyes. “You don’t want to eat my life. Not yet. I—I’m only seven. I haven’t lived at all yet. There are books I haven’t read yet. I’ve never been on an airplane. I can’t whistle yet—not really. Why don’t you let me go? When I’m older and bigger and more of a meal I’ll come back to you.”
The troll stared at me with eyes like headlamps.
Then it nodded.
“When you come back, then,” it said. And it smiled.
I turned around and walked back down the silent straight path where the railway lines had once been.
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After a while I began to run.
I pounded down the track in the green light, puffing and blowing, until I felt a stabbing ache beneath my rib cage, the pain of stitch; and, clutching my side, I stumbled home.
The fields started to go, as I grew older. One by one, row by row, houses sprang up with roads named after wildflowers and respectable authors. Our home—an aging, tattered Victorian house—was sold, and torn down; new houses covered the garden.
They built houses everywhere.
I once got lost in the new housing estate that covered two meadows I had once known every inch of. I didn’t mind too much that the fields were going, though. The old manor house was bought by a multinational, and the grounds became more houses.
It was eight years before I returned to the old railway line, and when I did, I was not alone.
I was fifteen; I’d changed schools twice in that time. Her name was Louise, and she was my first love.
I loved her gray eyes, and her fine light brown hair, and her gawky way of walking (like a fawn just learning to walk which sounds really dumb, for which I apologize): I saw her chewing gum, when I was thirteen, and I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.
The main trouble with being in love with Louise was that we were best friends, and we were both going out with other people.
I’d never told her I loved her, or even that I fancied her. We were buddies.
I’d been at her house that evening: we sat in her room and played Rattus Norvegicus, the first Stranglers LP. It was the beginning of punk, and everything seemed so exciting: the possibilities, in music as in everything else, were endless. Eventually it was time for me to go home, and she decided to accompany me. We held hands, innocently, just pals, and we strolled the ten-minute walk to my house.
The moon was bright, and the world was visible and colorless, and the night was warm.
We got to my house. Saw the lights inside, and stood in the driveway, and talked about the band I was starting. We didn’t go in.
Then it was decided that I’d walk her home. So we walked back to her house.