Nothing But Blue Skies (1987) by Tom Holt

Author:Tom Holt
Format: epub
Published: 1987-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

My third wife – no, hold on, I’ve skipped a marriage somewhere, my fourth wife, she was a redhead. Green eyes. Freckles. You know,” Gordon went on, ignoring the fact that Neville hadn’t been listening for at least a quarter of an hour, “this is a funny old country. You need to have all kinds of licences and stuff before they let you own dynamite, and yet there’s women walking around with long red hair, green eyes and freckles, and nobody seems to give a damn. But when you think of all the damage one green-eyed freckled redhead can do in just one afternoon – ”

“Are you sure this is the right direction?” Neville interrupted. “Only I’m fairly sure we came this way an hour ago.”

“Don’t think so,” Gordon said firmly. “I mean,” he went on, “with dynamite, all you can really do is blow stuff up. By contrast, the variety of different ways in which a green-eyed redhead with freckles can bugger up someone’s life is pretty well infinite, especially,” he added with feeling, “if she’s wearing light blue. If the disarmament process is ever going to get anywhere, they’re going to have to round up all the red-haired, green-eyed, freckled women in long blue dresses and bury them in concrete somewhere in the New Mexico desert. Otherwise, it’s just asking for trouble.”

“Definitely been this way before,” Neville said. “Look, there’s that crab-shaped mark on the wall.”

Gordon stopped to take a closer look. “That’s not a crab,” he said. “More like a horseshoe. The crab-shaped mark was just past the taped-off three-phase point.”

“You’re thinking of the other taped-off three-phase point,” Neville replied. “Only it wasn’t, it was a vent outlet. It just looked like a three-phase point.”

They looked at each other for a moment.

“Sorry,” Gordon said, “I haven’t got a clue where we are, either.”

“Wonderful. Then why were you leading the way like you owned the place?”

“I was following you.”

“Oh, for – ” Neville leaned his back against the corridor wall and slid down it to the floor. “This is getting us nowhere,” he said.

“You know,” Gordon replied, squatting down beside him, “just then you sounded remarkably like my first wife.”

“The blonde?”

“The other blonde. She used to take every slight navigational error as proof of gross moral turpitude. Then she’d insist I find somebody to ask.”

Neville sighed. “They do that,” he agreed.

“And then, when you do ask someone, they give you directions that don’t make sense or lead you round in a circle. And then you get spoken to for not following the directions properly.” Gordon paused, and frowned. “I didn’t realise you were married,” he said.

“I’m not. But I do have a sister.”

Gordon nodded. “I believe sisters can sometimes be worse,” he said.

“You haven’t got any sisters?”

“Oddly enough, no. I’ve always assumed the extra wives were to make up.” He stared at the wall opposite, as if trying to cut through it with his X-ray vision. “I had a brother once,” he continued. “Had him for years. But then he became a chartered actuary and moved to Canada.

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