"Oh ah," said the old man.
"Got this mad bird at home," said Dirk. "Kept attacking me."
"Oh ah," said the man, nodding resignedly.
"I mean an actual bird," said Dirk, "an eagle."
"Oh ah."
"With great wings."
"Oh ah."
"Got hold of me with one of its talons through the letter-box."
"Oh ah."
Dirk wondered if it was worth pursuing the conversation much further. He lapsed into silence and looked around.
"You're lucky it didn't slash at you with its beak as well," said the old man after a while. "An eagle will do that when roused."
"It did!" said Dirk. "It did! Look, right here on my nose. That was through the letter-box as well. You'd scarcely believe it! Talk about grip! Talk about reach! Look at what it did to my hand!"
He held it out for sympathy. The old man gave it an appraising look.
"Oh ah," he said at last, and retreated into his own thoughts.
Dirk drew his injured hand back.
"Know a lot about eagles, then, do you?"
The man didn't answer, but seemed instead to retreat still further.
"Lot of people here tonight," Dirk ventured again, after a while.
The man shrugged. He took a long drag on his cigarette, half closing his eyes against the smoke.
"Is it always like this? I mean, are there always so many people here at night?"
The man merely looked down, slowly releasing the smoke from his mouth and nostrils.
Yet again, Dirk looked around. A man a few feet away, not so old-looking as Dirk's companion but wildly deranged in his demeanour, had sat nodding hectically over a bottle of cooking brandy all this time. He slowly stopped his nodding, screwed with difficulty a cap on to the bottle, and slipped it into the pocket of his ragged old coat. An old fat woman who had been fitfully browsing through the bulging black bin liner of her possessions began to twist the top of it together and fold it.
"You'd almost think that something was about to happen," said Dirk.
"Oh ah," said his companion. He put his hands on his knees, bent forward and raised himself painfully to his feet. Though he was bent and slow, and though his clothes were dirt-ridden and tattered, there was some little power and authority there in his bearing.
The air which he unsettled as he stood, which flowed out from the folds of his skin and clothes, was richly pungent even to Dirk's numbed nostrils. It was a smell that never stopped coming at you--just as Dirk thought it must have peaked, so it struck on upwards with renewed frenzy till Dirk thought that his very brain would vaporise.
He tried not to choke, indeed he tried to smile courteously without allowing his eyes to run as the man turned to him and said, "Infuse some blossom of the bitter orange. Add some sprinklings of sage while it is still warm. This is very good for eagle wounds. There are those who will add apricot and almond oil and even, the heavens defend us, sedra. But then there are always those that will overdo things. And sometimes we have need of them. Oh ah."
With that he turned away once more and joined the growing stream of pathetic, hunched and abused bodies that were heading for the front exit from the station. In all about two, maybe three dozen were leaving. Each seemed to be leaving separately, each for his or her entirely independent reasons, and not following too fast the one upon the other, and yet it was not hard to tell, for anyone who cared to watch these people that no one cared to watch or see, that they were leaving together and in a stream.
Dirk carefully nursed his cigarette for a minute or so and watched them intently as one by one they left. Once he was certain that there were no more to go, and that the last two or three of them were at the door, he dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his heel. Then he noticed that the old man had left behind his crumpled cigarette packet. Dirk looked inside and saw that there were still two bedraggled cigarettes left. He pocketed it, stood up, and quietly followed at a distance that he thought was properly respectful.
Outside on the Euston Road the night air was grumbling and unsettled. He loitered idly by the doorway, watching which way they went--to the west. He took one of the cigarettes out and lit it and then idled off westwards himself, around the taxi rank and towards St Pancras Street.
On the west side of St Pancras Street, just a few yards north of the Euston Road, a flight of steps leads up to the forecourt of the old Midland Grand Hotel, the huge, dark gothic fantasy of a building which stands, empty and desolate, across the front of St Pancras railway station.
Over the top of the steps, picked out in gold letters on wrought-iron-work, stands the name of the station. Taking his time, Dirk followed the last of the band of old tramps and derelicts up these steps, which emerged just to the side of a small, squat, brick building which was used as a car-park. To the right, the great dark hulk of the old hotel spread off into the night, its roofline a vast assortment of wild turrets, gnarled spires and pinnacles which seemed to prod at and goad the night sky.
High in the dim darkness, silent stone figures stood guard behind long shields, grouped around pilasters behind wrought iron railings. Carved dragons crouched gaping at the sky as Dirk Gently, in his flapping leather coat, approached the great iron portals which led to the hotel, and to the great vaulted train shed of St Pancras station. Stone figures of winged dogs crouched down from the top of pillars.
Here, in the bridged area between the hotel entrance and the station booking hall, was parked a large unmarked grey Mercedes van. A quick glance at the front of it was enough to tell Dirk that it was the same one which had nearly forced him off the road several hours earlier in the Cotswolds.
Dirk walked into the booking hall, a large space with great panelled walls along which were spaced fat marble columns in the form of torch holders.
At this time of night the ticket office was closed--trains do not run all night from St Pancras--and beyond it the vast chamber of the station itself, the great Victorian train shed, was shrouded in darkness and shadow.
Dirk stood quietly secluded in the entrance to the booking hall and watched as the old tramps and bag ladies, who had entered the station by the main entrance from the forecourt, mingled together in the dimness. There were now many more than two dozen of them, perhaps as many as a hundred, and there seemed to be about them an air of repressed excitement and tension.
As they moved about it seemed to Dirk after a while that, though he had been surprised at how many of them there had been when he first arrived, there seemed now to be fewer and fewer of them. He peered into the gloom trying to make out what was happening. He detached himself from his seclusion in the entrance to the booking hall and entered the main vault, but kept himself nevertheless as close to the side wall as possible as he ventured in towards them.
There were definitely fewer still of them now, a mere handful left. He had a distinct sense of people slipping away into the shadows and not re-emerging from them.
He frowned at them.
The shadows were deep but they weren't that deep. He began to hurry forward, and quickly threw all caution aside to reach the small remaining group. But by the time he reached the centre of the concourse where they had been gathered there were none remaining at all and he was left whirling round in confusion in the middle of the great, dark, empty railway station.
26
* * *
When, a few seconds later, the blinding acceleration eased a little, she found she was gulping and choking, her eyes were stinging and streaming to the extent that she could hardly see, and there was hardly a muscle in her body which wasn't gibbering with shock as waves of air pummelled past her, tearing at her hair and clothes and making her knees, knuckles and teeth batter at each other.
She had to struggle with herself to suppress her urge to struggle. On the one hand she absolutely certainly did not want to be let go of. Insofar as she had any understanding at all of what was happening to her she knew that she did not want to be let go of.
On the other hand the physical shock of it was facing some stiff competition from her sheer affronted rage at being suddenly hauled into the sky without warning. The result of this was that she struggled rather feebly and was angry at herself for doing so. She ended up clinging to Thor's arm in the most abject and undignified way.
The night was dark, and the blessing of this, she supposed, was that she could not see the ground. The lights she had seen dotted here and there in the distance now swung sickeningly away beneath her, but her instincts would not identify them as representing ground. Already the flickering beacons which shone from the insanely turreted building she had glimpsed seconds before this outrage occurred were swaying away behind her now at an increasing distance.
They were still ascending.
She could not struggle, she could not speak. She could probably, if she tried, bite the stupid brute's arm, but she contented herself with the idea of this rather than the actual deed.
The air was bad and rasped in her lungs. Her nose and eyes were streaming, and this made it impossible for her to look forward. When she did try it, just once, she caught a momentary blurred glimpse of the head of the hammer streaking out through the dark air of them, of Thor's arm grasping its stunted handle and being pulled forward by it. His other arm was gripped around her waist. The strength of him defied her imagination but did not make her any the less angry.
She got the feeling that they were now skimming along just beneath the clouds. Every now and then they would be buffeted by damp clamminess, and breathing would become yet harder and more noxious. The wet air tasted bitter, and deadly cold, and her streaming wet hair lashed and slammed about her face.
She decided that the cold was definitely going to kill her, and after a while was convinced that she was beginning to lose consciousness. In fact she realised she was actually trying to lose consciousness but she couldn't. Time slipped into a greyness though, and she was less aware of how much of it was passing.
At last she began to sense that they were slowing and that they were beginning to curve back downwards. This precipitated fresh waves of nausea and disorientation in her, and she felt that her stomach was being slowly turned through a mangle.
The air was, if anything, getting worse. It smelled worse, tasted more acrid and seemed to be getting a great deal more turbulent. They were definitely slowing now, and the going was becoming more and more difficult. The hammer was clearly pointing downwards now, and finding its way along rather than surging ahead.
Down still further they went, battling through the thickening clouds that swirled round them till it seemed that they must now reach all the way down to the ground.
Their speed had dropped to the point where Kate felt able to look ahead now, though the acridity of the air was such that she was only able to manage a very brief glance. In the moment that she glanced, Thor released the hammer. She couldn't believe it. He released it only for a fraction of a second, just to change his grip on the thing, so that they were now hanging from the shaft as it flew slowly forward, rather than being pulled along by it. As he redistributed his weight into this new posture he hoisted Kate firmly upwards as if pulling up a sock. Down they went, and down further and further.
There was now a roaring crashing sound borne in on them by the wind from up ahead, and suddenly Thor was running, leaping over rocky, sandy scrubland, dancing through the knotted tussocks, and finally pounding and drumming his feet to a halt.
They stood still at last, swaying, but the ground on which they stood was solid.
Kate breathed for a few seconds, bending over to catch her breath. She then pulled herself up to her full height and was about to deliver a full account of her feelings concerning these events at the top of her voice, when she suddenly got an alarming sense of where she was standing.
Though the night was dark, the wind whipping at her and the pungent smell of it told her that some kind of sea was very close by. The sound of wild crashing breakers told her that in fact it was more or less beneath her, that they were standing very near to the edge of a cliff. She gripped the arm of the insufferable god who had brought her here and hoped, vainly, that it hurt him.
As her reeling senses began gradually to calm down she noticed that there was a dim light spreading away before her, and after a while she realised that this was coming off the sea.
The whole sea was glowing like an infection. It was rearing itself up in the night, lunging and thrashing in a turmoil of itself and then smashing itself to pieces in a frenzy of pain against the rocks of the coast. Sea and sky seethed at each other in a poisonous fury.
Kate watched it speechlessly, and then became aware of Thor standing at her shoulder.
"I met you at an airport," he said, his voice breaking up in the wind. "I was trying to get home to Norway by plane." He pointed out to sea. "I wanted you to see why I couldn't come this way."
"Where are we? What is this?" asked Kate fearfully.
"In your world, this is the North Sea," said Thor and turned away inland again, walking heavily and dragging his hammer behind him.
Kate pulled her wet coat close around her and hurried after him.
"Well, why didn't you just fly home the way we just did but in, well, in our world?"
The rage in her had subsided into vague worries about vocabulary.
"I tried," responded Thor, still walking away.
"Well, what happened?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"What on earth's the point of that?"
"I'm not going to discuss it."
Kate shuddered in exasperation. "Is this godlike behaviour?" she shouted. "It bothers you so you won't talk about it?"
"Thor! Thor! Is it you?"
This last was a thin voice trailing over the wind. Kate peered into the wind. Through the darkness a lantern was bobbing towards them from behind a low rise.
"Is that you, Thor?" A little old lady came into view, holding a lantern above her head, hobbling enthusiastically. "I thought that must be your hammer I saw. Welcome!" she chirruped. "Oh, but you come in dismal times. I was just putting the pot on and thinking of having a cup of something and then perhaps killing myself, but then I said to myself, just wait a couple of days longer, Tsuliwa . . . , Tsuwila . . . , Swuli . . . , Tsuliwaensis--I can never pronounce my own name properly when I'm talking to myself, and it drives me hopping mad, as I'm sure you can imagine, such a bright boy as I've always maintained, never mind what those others say, so I said to myself, Tsuliwaensis, see if anyone comes along, and if they don't, well, then might be a good time to think about killing myself. And look! Now here you are! Oh, but you are welcome, welcome! And I see you've brought a little friend. Are you going to introduce me? Hello, my dear, hello! My name's Tsuliwaensis and I won't be at all offended if you stutter."
"I . . .I'm, er, Kate," said Kate, totally flummoxed.
"Yes, well I'm sure that will be all right," said the old woman sharply. "Anyway, come along if you're coming. If you're going to hang around out here all night I may as well just get straight on with killing myself now and let you get your own tea when you're quite ready. Come along!"
She hurried on ahead, and in a very few yards they reached a terrible kind of ramshackle structure of wood and mud which looked as if it had become unaccountably stuck while half way through collapsing. Kate glanced at Thor, hoping to read some kind of reaction from him to give her a bearing on the situation, but he was occupied with his own thoughts and was clearly not about to share them. There seemed to her to be a difference in the way he moved, though. In the brief experience she had of him he seemed constantly to be struggling with some internal and constrained anger, and this, she felt, had lifted. Not gone away, just lifted. He stood aside to allow her to enter Tsuliwaensis's shack, and brusquely gestured her to go in. He followed, ducking absurdly, a few seconds later, having paused for a moment outside to survey what little could be seen of the surrounding landscape.
Inside was tiny. A few boards with
straw for a bed, a simmering pot hung over a fire, and a box tucked away in the corner for sitting on.
"And this is the knife I was thinking of using, you see," said Tsuliwaensis, fussing around. "Just been sharpening it up nicely, you see. It comes up very nice if you get a nice sweeping action with the stone, and I was thinking here would be a good place, you see? Here on the wall, I can stick the handle in this crack so it's held nice and firm, and then just go fling! And fling myself at it. Fling! You see? I wonder, should it be a little lower, what do you think, my dear? Know about these things, do you?"
Kate explained that she did not, and managed to sound reasonably calm about it.
" Tsuliwaensis," said Thor, "we have come not to stay but to . . . Tsuli--please put the knife down."
Tsuliwaensis was standing looking up at them quite chirpily, but she was also holding the knife, with its great heavy sweeping blade, poised over her own left wrist.
"Don't mind me, dears," she said, "I'm quite comfortable. I can just pop off any time I'm ready. Happy to. These times are not to live in. Oh, no. You go off and be happy. I won't disturb your happiness with the sound of me screaming. I'll hardly make a sound with the knife as you go." She stood quivering and challenging.
Carefully, almost gently, Thor reached out and drew the knife away and out of her shaking hand. The old woman seemed to crumple as it went, and all the performance faded out of her. She sat back in a heap on her box. Thor squatted down in front of her, slowly drew her to him and hugged her. She gradually seemed to come back to life, and eventually pushed him away telling him not to be so stupid, and then made a bit of a fuss of smoothing out her hopelessly ragged and dirty black dress.
When once she had composed herself properly she turned her attention to Kate and looked her up and down.
"You're a mortal, dear, aren't you?" she said at last.
"Well . . .yes," said Kate.
"I can tell it from your fancy dress. Oh, yes. Well, now you see what the world looks like from the other side, don't you, dear? What do you think then?"
Kate explained that she did not yet know what to think. Thor sat himself down on the floor and leant his big head back against the wall, half-closing his eyes. Kate had the sense that he was preparing himself for something.