Read Online Force Majeure by Daniel O'Mahoney - Free Book Online Page A

ever seemed to be. She wondered how recently it had been used, in any capacity.
    ‘Welcome to the Bureau of Appearances,’ Esteban said, throwing his arms wide, and it was impossible to tell if this was enthusiasm or irony.
    ‘Don’t be daft.’
    ‘Daft? This is daft.’ He patted the top of his desk. ‘ This is the Bureau of Appearances. Not what you were expecting?’
    She shook her head, humouring him.
    ‘There is,’ he admitted, ‘an office in one of the Follies, but we meet there only in emergencies. We do it our own way, mostly.’
    ‘Yours,’ she noted, ‘is very informal.’
    ‘Maybe. The other three in the Bureau aren’t much better. There’s been no census in Candida since Doctor Arkadin’s heyday, and even he admitted defeat. He left his domesday book unfinished. Some things you just don’t count.’
    ‘Candida,’ Kay said, smiling (though not too much) at her own joke, ‘makes no census.’
    ‘There you go. You’re looking good, by the by. Your clothes, as is. You’re settling.’
    I hope not. Still, she decided she must like him. She wouldn’t have come all this way, with all these bottles, if he hadn’t some charm or glamour or prestige. ‘How do you become an officer?’
    Esteban rose and slipped off his jacket, which he draped over the outstretched arm of the mannequin. ‘There are the usual rites of passage. You have to memorise certain scriptures word-for-word. You must be able to run through the woods without breaking a single twig beneath your feet. You must throw a spear into the ground and hide behind it so that no part of you can be seen from any angle. There’s a special rock that looks like an old misery-face you must make laugh. The usual six impossible things. The bollocks.’
    ‘What about for real?’
    ‘For real, you present yourself at the academy, and if no-one has a serious objection – and no-one includes the boss of you, the-Lady – and if challanco says so and you’re no trouble-maker or fire-raiser or lizard-in-a-human skin, then you get in with a wage and a pension of trust.’
    ‘Challanco?’
    ‘Boojum.’ (As though that explained it all.) ‘And you must be able to sign your name and forswear the use of swords and pistols in your duty. And you must be a poet, because that’s an official function, and once a year we subject each other to the dreadful doggerel that we’ve churned out in our spare time.’
    Kay pushed herself forward and asked: ‘Is it an essential requirement of the job that you have a penis?’
    He laughed. She was glad he laughed. ‘No. Do you fancy joining up?’
    ‘I might do.’
    Suddenly serious, he dropped his body onto the bed beside her. ‘There’s no might . The Office of the White Horse is a calling. It’s not the stuff of whims. It’s something that seizes you, so you know for certain that this is what you want to be, no matter how stupid or ridiculous the job seems.’
    ‘Like priesthood?’
    ‘Like sainthood,’ he insisted. His whole face spoke of it, his mellow eyes sunk in the smooth ovals above his cheekbones, his lips pressed tight as if slowly crushing a flower down into flatness. ‘Without the celibacy,’ he added.
    They emptied the first bottle.
    ‘Are you working tomorrow?’ Esteban asked; he was on his hands and knees scrabbling through his cupboards. The detritus of his life was building up into a shanty around his legs. Kay, now certainly drunk and no longer hiding it, watched with an amused eye and didn’t laugh, out of fear she would never stop.
    ‘Tomorrow, yes, but not too early. I can hang around.’
    ‘I know I have a board somewhere, I have all the pieces.’ He looked up from his cupboard door eagerly, and the light cast from his bulb revealed every trim, bristling hair on his crown. ‘War in Heaven goes on for years.’
    ‘I’m very bad; I play short games.’
    ‘Cards!’ he yelled, brandishing a pack at her.
    ‘You don’t use normal ones here. I know, Luis showed