feet one needed to cross the standing water of a waste reservoir.
He looked into the mirror of the office toilet to remind himself of how he should have been described as a person—if anyone needed to describe him to any people who did not know him. He had just physically added to that standing water (of which he had just unaccountably pictured) and he smiled a smile which he decided was uncharacteristic of him when viewed in a mirror. He wiped his hands on a paper towel. Was this how hawlers were meant to look? A strong personal face with deep lines and searching brows. Black looks offset by sweet smiles? Only the nemonymous ones had tantamount to the blank expressions of those bodily projected ghosts on TV dramas—so he knew exactly what he was, down to the chipped toenails, even if he hadn’t yet dared tell Susan and Sudra.
The office work had taken a backseat ever since the news broke about the Angevin twins. Nobody had given them a second or second’s thought beforehand and maybe many of them knew nothing of their existence at all. The tea lady—pushing her steaming urn—had nothing else in her new gambits of conversation. Not long ago she had been on about the wayward progress of the latest evictions on ‘Big Brother’. Now it was whether the Angevin twins had been kidnapped or simply run away like the Famous Five had to Kirrin Island.
None had been prepared for the startling information—and how important it would be for the city and its life—until the population had woken up to such breaking news: hearing of the twins’ existence for the first time followed a few seconds later by more data upon their mysterious non-existence. The twins, before this extreme metamorphosis, had been surprisingly old for their age, so nothing was ruled in, nothing ruled out.
Mike tried to concentrate on his paperwork—without much enthusiasm—occasionally glancing up at his colleagues to whom he often remembered talking when times were more ordinary. It had indeed been a job where office politics often took sway—with alternating recriminations and reconciliations. Corporate entertaining of clients at sport and art arenas. Hitting the knuckle of the business with sensitive tweaking of figures and projections.
“How’s your wife doing at The Third Floor?”
Mike’s colleague—what was his name?—had actually spoken to him. The first attempt at conversation for several days.
“OK. Do you know her boss? Ogdon he is. He often serves behind the bar. Strange bloke.”
Mike had answered, as if he had learned his lines parrot-fashion. Ogdon was known to most people. He used to run a pub near the office to where everyone had resorted at lunchtime for a boozy crush and exchange of business gossip. More was gathered at such gatherings... than gathering the proper statistics back at your desk. Life was human. Life could not be contained within restricted socks. Booze loosened the tongues and then facts flowed, too.
“Yes, Ogdon. I know him. In fact, I knew him before he was a pub landlord. He used to sit for days in a square between tower-blocks, by a fountain, writing novels…”
Mike’s colleague might have continued, had not Mike himself brought the contrived conversation to an end with a throwaway line:
“Novels get you nowhere.”
*
The bendy bus threaded the lower streets, having eschewed the mainstream for the back doubles. The windows were scratched by scores of cavalier vandals, who had tried to smash them just with their gaze until getting the milled edges of their shiny shillings to the glass in a pique of frustration that their lives were going nowhere fast. Arthur was behind the huge steering-wheel as the wheel tried to take him more than he was able to take the wheel. Much water had passed under the bridge since that time he and his sister Amy were sent missing: and even he couldn’t remember the circumstances. He’d need a brainwright sooner. In a dream, he once believed he and Amy were some kind
He looked into the mirror of the office toilet to remind himself of how he should have been described as a person—if anyone needed to describe him to any people who did not know him. He had just physically added to that standing water (of which he had just unaccountably pictured) and he smiled a smile which he decided was uncharacteristic of him when viewed in a mirror. He wiped his hands on a paper towel. Was this how hawlers were meant to look? A strong personal face with deep lines and searching brows. Black looks offset by sweet smiles? Only the nemonymous ones had tantamount to the blank expressions of those bodily projected ghosts on TV dramas—so he knew exactly what he was, down to the chipped toenails, even if he hadn’t yet dared tell Susan and Sudra.
The office work had taken a backseat ever since the news broke about the Angevin twins. Nobody had given them a second or second’s thought beforehand and maybe many of them knew nothing of their existence at all. The tea lady—pushing her steaming urn—had nothing else in her new gambits of conversation. Not long ago she had been on about the wayward progress of the latest evictions on ‘Big Brother’. Now it was whether the Angevin twins had been kidnapped or simply run away like the Famous Five had to Kirrin Island.
None had been prepared for the startling information—and how important it would be for the city and its life—until the population had woken up to such breaking news: hearing of the twins’ existence for the first time followed a few seconds later by more data upon their mysterious non-existence. The twins, before this extreme metamorphosis, had been surprisingly old for their age, so nothing was ruled in, nothing ruled out.
Mike tried to concentrate on his paperwork—without much enthusiasm—occasionally glancing up at his colleagues to whom he often remembered talking when times were more ordinary. It had indeed been a job where office politics often took sway—with alternating recriminations and reconciliations. Corporate entertaining of clients at sport and art arenas. Hitting the knuckle of the business with sensitive tweaking of figures and projections.
“How’s your wife doing at The Third Floor?”
Mike’s colleague—what was his name?—had actually spoken to him. The first attempt at conversation for several days.
“OK. Do you know her boss? Ogdon he is. He often serves behind the bar. Strange bloke.”
Mike had answered, as if he had learned his lines parrot-fashion. Ogdon was known to most people. He used to run a pub near the office to where everyone had resorted at lunchtime for a boozy crush and exchange of business gossip. More was gathered at such gatherings... than gathering the proper statistics back at your desk. Life was human. Life could not be contained within restricted socks. Booze loosened the tongues and then facts flowed, too.
“Yes, Ogdon. I know him. In fact, I knew him before he was a pub landlord. He used to sit for days in a square between tower-blocks, by a fountain, writing novels…”
Mike’s colleague might have continued, had not Mike himself brought the contrived conversation to an end with a throwaway line:
“Novels get you nowhere.”
*
The bendy bus threaded the lower streets, having eschewed the mainstream for the back doubles. The windows were scratched by scores of cavalier vandals, who had tried to smash them just with their gaze until getting the milled edges of their shiny shillings to the glass in a pique of frustration that their lives were going nowhere fast. Arthur was behind the huge steering-wheel as the wheel tried to take him more than he was able to take the wheel. Much water had passed under the bridge since that time he and his sister Amy were sent missing: and even he couldn’t remember the circumstances. He’d need a brainwright sooner. In a dream, he once believed he and Amy were some kind
Similar Books
