The Portable Door (1987) (17 page)

The receptionist greeted him with a cheerful chirrup that made his teeth ache. He mumbled some sort of a reply, and shuffled up the stairs to his office. Empty; then he remembered that he was on strong-room sorting duty, and he hadn’t brought his scruffy pully. He hung his coat behind the door (no scratch marks) and went back down the stairs, feeling every step distinctly.

“Hello,” Sophie called out as he opened the door, and the cold hit him like a slap with a wet fish. “God, you look awful.”

He nodded. “I’m not feeling all that great,” he admitted.

“You should’ve stayed in bed.”

Paul shrugged. “Oh, I thought I’d better come in.”

“Suit yourself. Right, let’s get started, then.” There’s this to be said for being hung over; if you’ve got a job to do that involves substantial levels of ambient weirdness, it helps, because you can’t be bothered to notice stuff that under other circumstances would come close to frying your synapses. Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O’Hara’s birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker’s guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, with
Das Ende
written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn’t remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll’s-house-sized books with titles like
Lilliput On $2 A Day;
a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from the North Central railway terminus, Ruritania;
Bartholomew’s Road Atlas of Oz
(one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed
To Be Opened On My Death: E.A. Presley
, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board 0-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969—85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute- books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars;
Unicorn-Calling For Pleasure & Profit
by J.R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2109; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck’s—“Bloody hell,” he said.

Sophie looked up. “What?”

“Come over here.”

He flipped back the lid of the long wooden box so that she could see what was inside. They both studied it in silence for a moment or so.

“Yes, it’s pretty much the same as mine,” Sophie said eventually. “Only the wire binding on the handle of mine is a sort of dull grey.”

Paul knelt down for a closer look. “No, mine’s the same colour as this one,” he said. “Like that brass wire you buy for hanging pictures from. I think on mine—what’s that round bit on the end called?”

“Pommel.”

“The pommel on mine may be a tad smaller, but I can’t be sure. That aside, though, I’d say it’s pretty well identical. Except,” he added, “it’s missing the chunk of stone on the end.” He stood up, still gazing at the sword in the box. “Take a look in the old register,” he said.

“776⁄J.”

Sophie leafed through the big red book for a minute or so. “It just says Windsor,” she said.

“Oh well,” Paul replied. He closed the lid and shoved the box back into its dark corner. He noticed that he’d forgotten about his headache; but noticing made it come back.

“Five to one,” Sophie announced.

“Ah, right.” It was another moment. “Do you fancy—?”

“I’d better be going,” Sophie said. “I’m meeting my mum for lunch at five past.”

“Oh,” Paul said. “Right. See you later, then.”

As it happened, he didn’t really mind too much, what with the headache and the anguished bowels and everything; the last thing he wanted, he realised, was food of any description, while trying to make impressively light, brilliant conversation was plainly beyond him. In fact, he couldn’t really be bothered to move from where he was. It was pleasantly cool down there, and quiet, and he couldn’t face the stairs. He sat down on a trunk, leaned his back against the shelves, and closed his eyes.

When Paul woke up, his watch told him it was twenty past one, and he felt considerably better. The dwarves had stopped drilling out the back of his head, and his eyes didn’t hurt quite so much. He still had a stomach like a car battery, but he could live with that, so long as he avoided putting anything in it. He stood up and looked around. They weren’t getting on too badly, he realised; another day and a half, two days, and they ought to be through here. It occurred to him that since he had nothing better to do, he might as well press on and do a bit more on his own. He had the feeling she’d approve of that, though he wasn’t sure why.

The first box he opened contained something that he took at first to be a pillowcase, except that it was made of a sort of thin, rubbery stuff; he had no idea what it was, but it wasn’t cloth. There was no number or anything on the box, so he spread the thing out on the floor. That left him none the wiser. It was rectangular, and printed on it was the crude outline of a door, with panels, hinges and a little circle for a doorknob. He shrugged, folded it up and put it back, with its very own yellow sticky. In the notebook he wrote down
rubber mat;
then, since he was feeling just a tad flippant, he rubbed that out with the rubber on the end of the pencil, and wrote in
Acme portable door
. But that looked silly, so he rubbed it out again and changed it to
rectangular flat rubber object
, and left it at that.

Next item was an envelope full of blank sheets of paper. He checked the number in the old red book, but it wasn’t there.
Fine
, he said to himself,
be like that
.

Next item was another bundle of letters, ancient envelopes with Victorian stamps, bound in faded red ribbon. The ink was brown with age and the handwriting was cramped and scruffy, and it hurt his eyes to read it, so he checked the reference number against the red book. 839⁄N—
839⁄N; seventeen love letters; property of Paul Carpenter, Esq
.

He looked at the page.
Bloody hell
, he thought,
there’s a coincidence
. But the ink in the register was almost as brown as the writing on the letters themselves, and the date for when they’d been booked in was 1877. He shrugged, and started copying the details into the notebook. He’d written down the first two lines of the address before he noticed it was his own.

Fuck this for a game of soldiers
, he told himself.

The pink ribbon was tightly knotted, and he broke a fingernail untying it. He took the first letter out of the envelope and looked at the date. Three weeks ago.

Paul closed his eyes, then opened them again. Still three weeks ago.
Shit
.

Not fair
, he shouted to himself,
all I had was two and a

half pints of rotten lemonade shandy, that’s not enough, surely. Bet Duncan and bloody Jenny don’t go around—Hang about. What sort of letters?

He looked back at the register, and read the relevant adjective, carefully, four times. Whoever had written the red book, they had clear, precise handwriting. Not lone letters or lore letters or lowe letters or loue letters or bye letters. He put the register down carefully, and frowned.

Well
, he thought.
Can’t do any harm
, he lied to himself. He laid the first letter flat on the nearest shelf, and started to read.

My darling Paul
—He paused, and stared. Whoever had written this

letter, he or she had the worst writing ever perpetrated outside of a doctor’s surgery. He squinted at it, but it defied his best efforts. Then he thought of something, and reached out for the spiral-bound notebook, in which Sophie had been writing down the inventory.

No doubt about it. Same writing.

Jesus
, he thought. He picked up the letter and carried it across the room, until he was standing directly under the single, unshaded light bulb.

My darling Paul
,

Ever since we met this morning, I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind. All I can do is think about you, the way you looked at me, the sound of your voice. I thought I’d never see you again, and suddenly there you were, like you’d stepped out of my daydream
.

I love you so much, I can’t think about anything else. I can’t concentrate on work or anything like that. Oh, you’ve guessed, haven’t you? You must have done. I sit there with that pile of ridiculous spreadsheets in front of me, desperately trying not to look at you across the desk from me, and the last thing in the world I want to think about is shuffling bits of paper. I want to feel the soft warmth of your lips on mine, the burning thrill as your fingers
—

“Bloody hell,” Paul muttered.

You must know how I feel about you
, he read,
I can read it in your eyes every time you look at me, and I’m absolutely sure you feel the same way about me, so why don’t you say something? You can’t be afraid, not when I’m sitting next to you burning to death with
(however hard he tried, he couldn’t make that word out; it might just possibly be
dessert
or
dishcloth
, but he didn’t think so).
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you don’t care and I’m making a complete idiot of myself I don’t care. I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, definitely not that clown Nigel with his stupid amateur dramatics, which is all he seems to care about at the moment. Oh, Paul, please say something quickly, I can’t bear the suspense any longer. I know
—

Footsteps outside the door. Faster than a rat up a conduit, Paul grabbed the letters and stuffed them back on the shelf, as the door opened and Sophie walked in.

“Hello,” she said. “You still here?”

Paul knew he must be glowing like a stop sign. “Mphm,” he mumbled. “Didn’t feel like any lunch, thought I’d do a bit more.”

She frowned at him. “You’re pretty keen all of a sudden,” she said. “All right, where’ve you got to?”

“Well, actually, I haven’t got terribly far.”

She came over and flicked through the notebook. “Two entries,” she said. “No, you haven’t, have you?”

He couldn’t think of anything to say. He shrugged. “Well.” She sighed. “We’d better get on with it. What’s next?”

He pulled down a deed-box and opened it. “How was your mother, by the way?” he asked.

“Mum? Oh, pretty much the same as when I saw her at breakfast this morning,” she replied. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason. Sorry, right. Well, it looks like a big wodge of Premium Bonds.”

She was writing in the notebook. “Okay,” she said. “Any name or anything?”

He rummaged around in the bottom of the box, and found a slip of paper.
£5,000 nominal value, property of Mr Paul Carpenter
. He shut his eyes tight, then opened them again. “Nope,” he replied.

“Marvellous,” Sophie sighed. “All right, slap a yellow sticky on and we’ll see what’s next.”

The next envelope held a sheaf of share certificates.

Paul didn’t know much about high finance, but even he knew that 20,000 ordinary shares in Kawaguchi Integrated Circuits Inc. had to be worth a lot of money.

Interesting, since apparently they belonged to him.

“Share certificates,” he said. “Property of Paul, um, Smith.”

“Fine,” she said, as he attached a yellow sticky and shoved them hastily back on the shelf. “Next.”

The further he went on, the harder he found it to keep going. $50,000 in traveller’s cheques; £35,000 in National Savings certificates; the deeds to two semidetached houses in Ewell…

“This Paul Smith sounds like he’s loaded,” Sophie commented. “All right, got that.” She looked up. “Do you want to swap over for a bit?”

He dropped the deed-packet. “No, no, that’s fine,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I mean. I’m quite happy doing this.”

“You sure? You’re getting covered in dust.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Really.”

She shrugged. “Please yourself. All right, what’s next?”

He groped for the next envelope. “Paul Smith again,” he said, in a rather hoarse voice. “Post Office savings book, four thousand quid.”

“He can’t be very bright, this Smith bloke. He’d get much better interest in a building society or something. Well,” she added, tapping the notebook impatiently, “what’s next? More of this Smith character’s ill-gotten gains?”

“Actually,” Paul said, in a very quiet voice, “I don’t think it did him much good.”

“Really? Why?”

Paul folded a piece of paper and put it back in its envelope. “That was his death certificate,” he muttered.

“Oh. Well, never mind. I was starting to dislike him, anyway.”

“Me too,” Paul said. “I can’t help feeling sorry for him, though.”

“Why’s that?”

“He died young,” Paul replied. “Not much older than me, as it happens.” Four months, two weeks, three days, to be precise; but he didn’t say anything about that. Nor did he mention the cause of death.

“That’s sad,” Sophie said. “I suppose. Anyway, none of our business. I’m going for a pee.”

As soon as she was out of the door, Paul sprang

across the room and started searching for the bundle of letters he’d hidden away when she came back from lunch. They didn’t seem to want to be found, and he was just beginning to think he’d imagined the whole thing when they turned up, wedged in the crevasse between two fat manila folders. He glanced down at them—
My darling Paul
—Yes, still there. He crammed them in his jacket pocket; then, not really wanting to one little bit, he fished out the last item with a yellow sticky on it.

Death certificate. Paul Carpenter. Date and place of birth, address, and cause of death.
Decapitation
, he thought.
Bloody hell
.