The Portable Door (1987) by Tom Holt

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

NINE

For some time after the goblin had gone, Paul sat quite still, looking at a photograph of an unspecified area of Australian sand, seen from above. He didn’t feel angry, or sad, or suicidal; if he felt anything, it was as though someone had picked him up like a teapot and poured all the Paul Carpenter out through his ear, leaving him completely empty. When the feeling eventually coagulated into words, he said to himself, Oh well.

As far as he was concerned, he could’ve sat there all day. Didn’t matter. If he hadn’t been there, he’d have been at home, in his poxy little room, staring at the walls. What difference did it make where you happened to be, anyway? It was as important as the colour of the socks you choose to wear on the day of your execution. Might as well look at a picture of some sand as four slabs of masonry covered in beige woodchip. Where you are, when you are, what you’re doing: none of it matters a damn when there’s nothing left inside you except a huge hole where your life used to be.

Not that that mattered, either; he’d known from the start that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. Not even Sir Clive Sinclair in all his glory had ever come up with anything less likely to succeed than the slender hope Paul had built his life around, ever since he’d sat down in the waiting area outside the conference room on the day of his interview and seen the thin girl. Hence, presumably, the absence of any real feeling. The blow, the shock, hadn’t exactly hit him out of a clear blue sky. It was like being told that Santa Claus doesn’t exist when you’re fifty-five and head of particle physics research at MIT; sad, depressing, but hardly unexpected.

Oh well, he thought; and that was more or less all he had to contribute.

That was how Mr Tanner found him, some unspecified time later.

“Well?” Mr Tanner said.

Paul looked up. “Sorry,” he said.

Mr Tanner frowned at him. “Have you finished that last lot I gave you?”

“No.”

“Oh. Problems?”

Paul shook his head. “It’s my fault,” he said. “I got sidetracked.”

He’d expected anger, or at the very least another dose of Mr Tanner’s special unpleasantness. Instead, he heard him say, “Mum’s been in here bothering you, hasn’t she?”

“She did drop by,” Paul replied.

“Oh. Well, just ignore her, that’s what I do. She can be a real pain in the bum when she wants to.”

“She didn’t bother me,” Paul replied.

Mr Tanner grinned, presumably because he could read the lie. Dragon black pudding, or something of the kind. “You wouldn’t think to look at her that she’s probably the best metallurgist in Europe,” he said. “Not to mention the second richest female in the UK. What did she do? Show you something you’d rather not have seen?”

“Something like that,” Paul replied.

Mr Tanner sat down on the edge of the desk. “There’s something you should know about our line of work,” he said.

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