Chapter III.12

Loofah flattened himself against the wall as a portly middle-aged man in a lime green blazer with orange piping pushed past him into the toilet and slammed the door. After his eyes had adjusted to the sudden loss of the toilet's fluorescent glare, he saw that he was now in a dimly lit corridor, with heavy flock wallpaper and a row of overcoats hanging on brass hooks along the opposite wall. A babble of voices and a clatter of crockery trickled through the turgid air, and he became aware of an unfamiliar sensation in his nostrils, rich and enticing. As he tried to work out what it could be, sniffing at the air like a bloodhound, he became aware of a strange and not unpleasant hollowness growing inside his abdomen.

The corridor opened into a room full of chattering people sitting at linen-draped tables. In front of each person was a china disc piled with all manner of steaming substances that the customers poked and cut with metal implements, periodically interrupting their chatter to lift forkfuls to their mouths. As Loofah watched, his sense of hollowness sharpened acutely and his mouth filled with saliva.

Something touched the sleeve of his jacket.

'Your meal is ready, sir,' purred a sultry voice at his shoulder.

The waitress, petite in stature but munificent in figure, wore a frilly apron and a little white cap pinned in her dark curls.

'What's a meal?' said Loofah absently.

The waitress showed him to a table next to the fish tank and spread the napkin over his lap. As he waited for his food, Loofah peered into the aquarium where goldfish and seahorses swam aimlessly to and fro, and several newts hung motionlessly from strands of water weed, callously indifferent to the single dead tadpole that was floating upside down at the surface.

'Do you mind if I join you?' said a hearty female voice, approaching from behind his chair and interrupting his reverie, 'I thought I'd get a bite to eat while the girls finish their shopping, but my usual table is taken.'

As the last mouthful of chewed spaghetti wriggled down his gullet, Loofah leaned back and looked down at his plate; nothing but a pool of melted butter blending itself into the last remains of the tomato sauce. The meal was finished and he was replete; he could feel his stomach gently churning as the process of digestion began.

Across the table, Mrs Antrobus sighed with contentment and pushed her own plate away. She dabbed her lips with her napkin.

'That was excellant,' she said, 'The Cumberland sausage here is a delight.'

Loofah nodded in approval; he liked a woman who enjoyed her food.

For several minutes they digested together in contented silence. The buxom waitress replaced their empty plates with cups of rich, dark coffee in which amoebic globs of cream squirmed. It was Mrs Antrobus who spoke first.

'I'm so pleased to have the opportunity of meeting you again,' she said, 'The girls speak very highly of you—of the pair of you, in fact.'

Loofah smiled, basking in her admiration.

'Why, it was only the other day that Elspeth was saying how glad she was that a brace of chaps of your calibre was on the case.'

This time he shrugged, as if to say that she might be going a little over the top, but he wouldn't mind at all if she wanted to continue.

'It must be marvellous, all this important work you're doing,' she indeed did go on, spooning sugar into her cup, 'Tell me, how are you getting on with your little quest?'

Loofah's smile froze as a cold trickle of reality insinuated itself into the honeyed buzz. His digestion stalled and he wriggled uncomfortably.

'To be quite frank, Mrs Antrobus,' he said, 'Things aren't going all that well. In fact, I don't seem to getting very far at all.'

'Oh dear, that is a shame. I understand that this is one of the government's most important projects.'

'So they tell me. But unfortunately some of the officials involved are not being quite as helpful as they might be. Not your Cissy and Elspeth, of course,' he added hastily, 'But some of the others.'

'That does surprise me. They're usually so reliable, ever such nice people.'

'The problem is that I desperately need information—for my quest, that is—but everything they tell me is in riddles. It's all like some great big jigsaw puzzle, and they only ever give me one piece at a time. And even then, most of the pieces don't fit.'

'Oh, but that's the way things are over here, and always have been.'

Loofah sighed. 'I'm sure you're right—but I just don't see why they can't just tell me everything I need to know all at once and in a straightforward way, instead of all this silly carry-on.'

Mrs Antrobus leaned across the table and patted the back of his hand.

'I'm sure they're doing the very best that they can,' she said, 'And it will all come good in the end, you'll see, it always does with the government. They're ever so dependable—I'd never vote for anyone else.'

He sighed again and twiddled his coffee spoon.

'I wish there weren't so many of them involved,' he grumbled, 'It does so complicate things. First it was the little animal in Synge Green, who sent me after the white deer. And I've just this minute come from a meeting with the Cow of Light, the deer's line manager.'

'Good Lord!' exclaimed Mrs Antrobus, 'These are some of the Secretariat's most senior officials. This project of yours is obviously getting absolutely top priority.'

In an oak-panelled meeting room watched over by Victorian admirals and exuberantly whiskered statesmen, the white deer sits in a red leather chair embossed with the royal crest. Opposite him, across acres of polished beech, the cow takes the chairman's place; she has a long strip of pink Elastoplast down her right flank. Then the little brown head pops out of a bone china teacup and the meeting begins—the mandarins turning the ponderous wheels of power.

'And now it seems I have to look for someone else.'

'Someone else? Another official, you mean?'

'I assume so. "The immigrant" was all the mirror said, and then I had to come out of the toilet because someone else wanted to use it.'

'"The immigrant"—how very mysterious! I wonder who it could be.'

'I haven't got a clue,' he said, 'And that's the problem. Do you happen to know any immigrants yourself?'

'You mean personally? Good Lord, no!' she exclaimed, 'Although there is that nice Indian gentleman who has the shop in our village. A lovely little man, very clean and tidy. My husband calls him "Mr Shop Wallah" and he always laughs, you know—he's ever so polite.'

Loofah brightened. 'Is he an official?' he asked.

'Oh no, I don't think so. Government people aren't allowed to go into business—I'm told that it's against their professional code.'

'I see,' said Loofah, disappointed. He pondered for a moment. 'Perhaps they mean one of us—someone from over there, I mean. After all, we're immigrants, aren't we?'

'Oh, but you're not immigrants!' she protested, clearly affronted by the idea, 'You're visitors—tourist visas only, no right of permanent residence. And in any case there's only yourself and that foreign chappie—and I don't think he'd be much help.'

'It's funny, but the man at the fête said that too, that there were just us two and Monsieur Dentressangle. And yet I've just met someone else who also claims to be a visitor.'

Mrs Antrobus shook her head and tutted.

'Oh dear, one of them,' she said, with obvious distaste, 'How annoying for you.'

'One of them? Isn't he really a visitor, then?'

'Oh, I daresay it was once, but those things aren't really anything now, are they?'

'Certainly not much of anything,' agreed Loofah, 'But what happened to him, to stop him being something?'

Mrs Antrobus thought for a minute, glanced quickly around, and then leaned forward confidentially.

'The one that was two became the one that was one,' she said quietly, 'It's very dangerous over here for you outsiders. If one half of the same whole is lost, then the other half…' She lifted undulating hands from the tablecloth, showing a mirage over hot tarmac.

'Becomes like him?'

'Exactly,' she said, 'A coin with only one side.'

Loofah squirmed with a twinge of indigestion.

'What do they do, once they're like him?' he asked quietly.

'They pester people, that's what they do. They moan about how horribly hard done by they are and they boast about how terribly important they used to be. They're a public nuisance and if you ask me it's a disgrace that the government doesn't do something about them.'

'Can't they just go back to where they came from?'

'Goodness me, no—a half-thing like that could never travel, even if the channels were open. I'm afraid they're stuck here forever, the pestilential things.'

For a long moment Loofah just stared at the tablecloth, anxiously praying for the wellbeing of the other side of his coin.

'Is that what happened to all the other old visitors, then?' he asked eventually, 'They lost their other halves?'

'Some did. Others got a little too close to themselves for comfort and—.'

'Pouf?' suggested Loofah.

Mrs Antrobus nodded solemnly.

The emergence from the dim calm of the restaurant was an unexpected shock; a tsunami of street-sound combined with sunlight blazing off the shop windows and the parked cars to hit him with the force of an atomic blast. Loofah staggered back, blinded and deafened, his senses temporarily fused by the overload. He was therefore only half-aware of Mrs Antrobus pumping his hand with characteristic vigour, and of her wishing him well in his search for the mysterious object of his quest. By the time he had recovered from the initial sensory shock, she was already hurrying away into the glare; she had arranged to meet the girls outside Miss Selfridge and was running late.

Left alone once again, Loofah shielded his eyes from the dazzle and tried to get his bearings. He was in a street: light-blazing cars lined the kerbs while others patrolled the road like hungry predators; milling pedestrians loomed out of the harsh brilliance and echoing dissonances of traffic noise and shouting crashed against his eggshell skull like a cascade of broken glass. The tranquil pleasures of the restaurant were no more than a fading dream.

A fat woman burst out of the wall of light and cannoned into him, muttering angrily. He stumbled backwards and nearly fell into a pushchair, setting up a piercing wail from its occupant and a stream of invective from its owner. Fumbling blindly, he navigated his way back across the pavement to a shop front and with the minor comfort of the hot glass against his back he closed his eyes against the merciless brilliance.

Then, quite suddenly, the lights went out and he was in shadow—relief at last.

'The gentleman seems to be a bit lorst, Constable.'

Loofah opened his eyes; two vast mountains towered over him, blocking out the sky.

'Indeed 'e does, Constable, and I'd say that were a shame, a cryin' shame.'

Mountains in uniform, with breast-helmets silhouetted against the dazzle. Also, these were mountains that were disturbingly familiar—Loofah's relief was exceptionally short-lived.

'Not just a shame, Constable, more of a crime, I would say,' said the first policemen, ''Cos we can't 'ave loiterin' on our beat, can we?'

With cold eyes hidden by black lenses and voices that slashed like razors, their identical flint-hard faces were criss-crossed by a network of scars, archaeological sites imprinted with the history of past battles.

'Definitely not, Constable,' replied his twin, 'Definitely no loiterin', not on our beat.'

There were signs too of more recent conflict: a freshly stitched cut above an eyebrow, a bandaged finger, a plaster over an ear, its lobe torn off by priestly small arms fire.

'So if I woz the gentleman I'd be gettin' myself 'ome pretty damn pronto.'

'That is ov course assumin'—' the policeman paused ominously '—that 'e's got an 'ome to go to.'

The giant pair leaned over him menacingly.

'I—I—I don't think I have, um, actually,' stammered Loofah, looking nervously from one to the other.

One of the mountains shook its peak and tutted.

'Oh deary, deary me,' he said, 'I fink per'aps we might 'ave bin a bit 'asty, Constable. I fink per'aps that we might 'ave jumped to the wrong conclusion, as it were.'

'I fink you might well be right, Constable. 'Cos if the gentleman ain't got no 'ome, then we ain't lookin' at loiterin' at all, are we?'

'It would seem not, Constable. It would seem that wot we 'ave 'ere is a crime of a much more serious nature. 'Cos if the gentleman ain't got no 'ome, then I'd call that vagrancy, wouldn't you, Constable?'

'I most certainly would, Constable, vagrancy in the first degree.'

'A capital offence in this parish—though do coe-rect me if I'm wrong.'

'You're dead right, Constable, an' no mistake. Which is a shame I say, a real cryin' shame.'

With this both policemen reached to their belts and unclipped oak truncheons, each the size of a man's thigh.

'A shame indeed, Constable.' As he spoke the policeman gently slapped his palm with the truncheon, gauging its weight and hardness, while Loofah cowered against the ungiving glass. 'Though if the gentleman would only get his-self an 'ome, 'e'd be orf the 'ook, would 'e not?'

''E would indeed, Constable. A truer word woz never spoke.'

'So if I woz the gentleman that's wot I'd do—get me-self a nice little 'ome all of me own.'

The other policeman tapped the glass lightly with his weapon.

'Like wot they sell in this 'ere shop,' he said.