Storm and Silence

  ‘Um, well… yes, of course. Very pretty.’

  He thought my wings were pretty! He actually thought my wings were pretty!

  ‘I should jump off the roof to see if I can fly with them,’ I suggested eagerly. ‘Wouldn’t you like to see me fly?’

  Abruptly, his grip around my waist became tight as a vice.

  ‘Err… maybe not right now. You’re surely tired from being up the entire night. How about tomorrow, if you still feel like jumping off the roof then?’

  I pouted. ‘But I want to do it now! It'll be fun!’

  ‘Personally, I’m not quite sure about that. Would you sleep on it? Please?’

  There was that word again… that word that Mr Ambrose never used.

  ‘All right.’ Sighing contentedly, I wrapped my arms and also my huge fiery wings around him. The little piggies in the corner had started to dance tango. ‘I’ll do anything for you.’

  ‘Ehem… I am gratified to hear it. Now… how about sitting down?’

  ‘If you want…’

  He led me to the middle of the room, to where the visitor chair stood in front of the desk. As I moved closer to the desk, the light of the lamp fell on me, and Mr Ambrose’s eyes widened.

  ‘Wait just a minute,’ he exclaimed. ‘Don’t sit down just yet. Your coat…’

  But he had already let go of me, and my legs somehow were unable to support my own weight. I was about to fall into the chair when his hands shot out and held me back.

  ‘Are you insane?’ He hissed. ‘I said wait! Look at yourself! You can’t sit down like this! Take your tailcoat off, first. It is spattered with blood and street dirt. Have you got any idea how much it costs to clean the upholstery on a chair like this?’

  I blinked up at him, confused. ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Too much for me to be willing to pay it.’

  ‘That doesn't say much,’ I pointed out.

  ‘My point, Mr Linton, is that if you try to sit down on that chair again, I will bring you back outside into the hallway and dump you on the floor, just like you asked me to earlier.’

  So he felt more concern for the upholstery of his office chair than for me. It was nice to see he hadn’t changed that much.

  I realized that in stopping me from sitting down, Mr Ambrose had grabbed onto me a lot more generously than before. He had both arms around me now and was pressing me to his chest with the fervour of a man determined to avoid a large bill from the cleaner's.

  He must have been really anxious to avoid that bill, because instead of letting go of me when my legs had steadied a bit, he pulled me even tighter against him. Though my vision was slightly blurred, I could see the hard lines of his face perfectly well. His jaw was taut, which only accentuated the noble harshness of his features. His eyes were boring down into mine, full of dark intensity.

  ‘Do not sit down.’ His voice was actually hoarse. Dear me, cleaning the upholstery of a chair had to be more expensive than I thought if he could get this worked up about it. He didn’t let go.

  ‘But… then what am I supposed to do?’ My voice wasn’t too steady either. And… I didn’t want me to sit down any more than he did. I didn’t want him to let go. Odd. I didn’t have to fear a big bill from the cleaner's, did I?

  He cleared his throat. ‘You can take off your tailcoat. Then you can sit down… Mr Linton.’

  The ‘Mister’ came over his lips with no slight hesitation. Was that because he was still calculating the cleaner’s bill? Or did it have something to do with the way we were pressed together, so closely it had to be evident that ‘Mister’ was not the correct address for the person he was holding in his arms?

  I, for my part, felt enough so I would never have called him ‘Miss Ambrose’. The hard muscles of his chest, his arms, his abdomen… they all pressed into my softness in a way that made it all too clear what he was.

  A man.

  A really manly man with a lot of mannishness in his manliness.

  As if of their own volition, my arms snaked up behind and around him. My head found a comfortable spot on his chest and came to rest there. All of a sudden, I didn’t care about any cleaner’s bill. I certainly didn’t care to sit down. To sit down, I would have had to let go.

  ‘Hmm… take it off,’ I mumbled. Beneath my ear that lay on his chest, I could hear his heart. I wondered why it was beating so fast. ‘Take my tailcoat off… Good idea. Only… I’m not sure I can stand on my own. I feel so tired…’

  Gently, hesitantly, he reached up to unwind my arms from behind his back.

  ‘I’ll help you. Don’t worry.’

  He stepped back from me, and somewhere inside me I felt a tug of disappointment. Disappointment? Why? What did I care whether he was close to me?

  But then he started unbuttoning my tailcoat, and the disappointment vanished. It was replaced by a surge of heat up from my toes to the tips of my ears. What was the matter with me? It had to be the drink. Or terror of the the cleaner’s bill.

  Gently, his fingers travelled up my belly, popping buttons as they went. His fingers were unlike any other fingers that had ever touched me there: smooth and yet firm, light and yet insistent. I realized suddenly that they weren’t just unlike any other fingers that had touched me there before - apart from my sisters’ and my own, they were the only fingers that had ever touched me there. They made me wish for more buttons on my coat, for something to prolong the feel of this. The feel of him.

  Then, the tailcoat slid off my shoulders and landed on the floor with a soft, velvety noise. I stood before Mr Ambrose in nothing but trousers and a thin linen shirt. Drowsily, I looked down at the shirt.

  ‘Oh,’ I mumbled, and pointed to the left side of the shirt, where a few specks of blood stained the white material. ‘The blood must have seeped through the coat. Do you want to take the shirt off, too?’

  From somewhere, I heard a strangled groan. When I looked up, Mr Ambrose was standing before me, his face as composed as ever, but his jaw seemed to be a bit tighter than usual.

  ‘I don't think,’ he said, ‘that will be necessary, thank you.’

  ‘But it’s got blood on it!’ I protested. ‘I should take it off! The upholstery on your chair-’

  ‘…will be perfectly fine, Mr Linton! Now sit down!’

  For once, I did as he said. My legs didn’t feel all too steady, and even Alexander the Great, who had sneaked in behind us unnoticed, was sitting down in a corner of the room. Surely, if a world-famous conqueror was sitting down, that meant that I could, too.

  Mr Ambrose bent to retrieve my tailcoat from the floor. Straightening, he said: ‘I will give your clothes to the night porter. He will have them washed and dried soon enough.’

  I squinted at him, doubtfully. ‘He’s a porter. Does he know how to wash clothes?’

  ‘Probably not. But I demand ingenuity and dedication of all my employees.’

  Turning, he marched towards the door without another word. Was it just my imagination, or did he walk just a little faster than usual, almost as if he were running? At the door, he hesitated. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said. Then he fled, slamming the door behind him.

  Suppressing a yawn, I nodded to Alexander in the corner. ‘I think he really doesn't like you,’ I told him.

  The Macedonian conqueror shrugged and started cleaning his fingernails.

  Looking for Truffles and Butterflies

  Mr Ambrose’s porter apparently was no instant-cleaning wizard. I soon grew tired of waiting for my tailcoat’s return. To tell the truth, I felt tired in general - tired and battered and dirty. What I really needed was not just to get my clothes cleaned, but to get myself cleaned, too. To wash the dirt off my skin, and all the confusions of the night along with it.

  Didn’t Mr Ambrose have a powder room? With a shower? I thought I remembered something of the sort from when I had needed to powder my foot. Or had it been my nose?

  I got to my feet and waited until that nasty, ill-tempered floor had more or less s
topped trying to buck me off. It took some time, but finally it seemed to accept I wasn’t just going to be thrown out of the window.

  With all the authority I could muster, I pointed a finger at the floor.

  ‘Stay!’ I told it. ‘I’m going to go to powder my little toe now, and you’re going to stay right where you are. Understood?’

  The floor nodded, and I raised my chin in triumph. There! I had gained a complete victory. The little yellow piggies cheered and applauded as I paraded past the desk to the little door behind it.

  The powder room was just as I remembered it. One toilet, one shower, and no powder at all. Not even gunpowder. But then, I had come to shower, not to blow things up, so maybe that was just as well.

  It was a little darker in the room than the last time I had been in here, though. For a moment I wondered why, until I remembered.

  Of course! It’s nighttime, and that bright thingy in the sky is missing. What’s it called again?

  The sun! Yes, that’s what it was called.

  So… you need those other thingamies now. Those whatyemaycallit… lamps!

  Dear me! I was really quite impressed by my vast memory and intellect. It even led me to suspect that there might be some sort of switch for the lamps beside the door - and voilà, I was right! My fingers found the switch and turned it.

  Bright light exploded from my left and I gave a little gasp, shielding my eyes from the sudden invasion. After a few seconds of familiarization, I took my hand from my eyes and saw that the room was now bathed in a soft yellow light. Now all I needed was for me to be bathed, too - only with water instead of light.

  The shower head protruded from the left wall, over a broad, white, ceramic basin. Of course, it had absolutely no gold ornaments or other adornments like any other decent upper-class British bathroom. This was Mr Ambrose’s shower, after all. At the moment, though, I didn’t care about ornaments. All I cared about was that water would come out of the pipes.

  Closing the door behind me, I strode over to the shower. For some strange reason, I felt as though I had forgotten something, but the prospect of the shower was so alluring I put it out of my mind.

  The floor in here seemed to be friendlier than the office floor. It only wobbled slightly once or twice as I made my way across the room.

  ‘Good floor,’ I mumbled. ‘Nice floor. That’s right. Just stay where you are.’

  The floor obeyed, and soon I had reached my destination and could grab one of the pipes for support.

  I noticed there wasn’t just a shower, there were towels, too. Perfect! Though a bit strange, admittedly. Who kept bath towels in his office?

  He probably practically lives here.

  Well, all the better. I wasn’t in the mood to drive miles to our bathtub at home, and I needed the calming feel of water on my skin. Maybe my head would feel a little clearer after I sprinkled a little water on it.

  Humming contentedly to myself, I slipped out of my remaining clothes, getting it done much more quickly than usual. Trousers were really handy things to wear, compared with hoop skirts. I grabbed one of the towels, all of which, of course, weren’t made of embroidered terry cloth, but simple white linen. They felt so smooth and cool that they reminded me of him. Wrapping myself in them was almost like wrapping myself in him. It felt nice.

  But… wasn’t I supposed to do that only after the shower? I felt a bit confused. Oh well, it couldn’t hurt and, as mentioned before, it felt so nice. I was so engrossed in the task of wrapping the towels tightly around me that I didn’t hear the approaching footsteps outside.

  Only when the door swung open and I heard a gasp behind me did I realize I was no longer alone.

  ‘Mr Linton!’

  Drat! I knew I had forgotten something. Nobody was supposed to be able to come in, right? Though I couldn’t remember how or why exactly…

  I turned, towels pressed against my chest, just in time to see Mr Ambrose back out of the room, his eyes tightly shut. The door slammed behind him.

  ‘Mr Linton?’ His voice came from the other side of the door. Was it just my imagination, or did he sound just a little bit not his usual cool self?

  ‘Yes, Sir?’

  ‘The next time you decide to use my private bathroom, would you be so kind as to bolt the door?’

  Bolts! That’s how you made sure the door didn’t open. I remembered it now. With effort, I squinted at the door.

  ‘I can’t, Sir. There’s no bolt on it.’

  ‘Of course there isn’t!’ he snapped. ‘Do you think I would waste money having a bolt installed on the door of a bathroom which only I ever use?’

  I nodded gravely. ‘Of course not, Sir. Time is money is pumpernickel, right?’

  ‘Power, Mr Linton, power. Not pumpernickel.’

  ‘Oh. Right you are, Sir!’

  ‘Next time you go in there without informing me, wedge a chair under the door! Understood, Mr Linton?’

  I nodded again. That sounded like a sound policy.

  ‘Yes, Sir. As you say, Sir. And by the way… I think you can stop calling me “Mister” Linton now.’ I giggled a little. ‘You’ve probably seen enough evidence to the contrary.’

  ‘Mister Linton!’

  ‘No, no. Not Mister. Didn’t you hear what I just said?’

  There was a silence from the other side of the door.

  ‘Mr Ambrose, Sir?’ I asked. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘I am counting to ten to calm myself. Do not disturb me, Mr Linton.’

  ‘As you wish, Sir.’

  I tried to count along, to know when it would be all right to speak again, but it didn’t quite work. Every time I got to three I sort of stumbled and couldn’t remember the number that came next.

  ‘Mr Linton?’ His voice finally came from the other side.

  ‘Yes, Sir?’

  ‘Tell me when you are done in there. I, too, am not completely clean and wish to freshen up before retiring for the night.’

  ‘You can come in now, if you want,’ I offered generously. ‘There’s room enough for both of us here.’

  ‘No!’

  He sounded quite adamant. That was strange. Confused, I looked around the bathroom.

  ‘Yes, there is. Don’t you know the size of your own bathroom? There’s plenty of room, believe me.’

  ‘I am not disputing that. However, I still cannot come in.’

  I frowned. He was so stubborn sometimes. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ he explained to me, his voice painfully calm, ‘persons of different sexes do not shower together. Society generally frowns on that kind of thing.’

  My frown deepened as I tried to concentrate. If I tried very hard, I vaguely seemed to remember something of the sort.

  ‘But Napoleon is in here with me, too,’ I pointed out, waving at the Emperor, who was leaning against the opposite wall, playing chess with one of members of the piggy dance troupe.

  ‘Err, well… he’s a Frenchman. That’s different.’

  Before I had a chance to argue, I heard hurried footsteps receding on the other side of the door. Strange. Why had he run away?

  Pouting, I removed my towels and stepped under the shower. It would have been a novel experience taking a shower with somebody else. For some reason I couldn’t recall at the moment, I had never done it before. Thoughtfully, I eyed Napoleon on the other side of the room, but he didn’t seem interested. He was much too engrossed in his game of chess. The yellow piggy appeared to be winning, and the Emperor’s face was set in grim lines of concentration.

  Ah well, it would be a new experience anyway. To be honest, I had never stood under a shower before. They were a pretty new and fancy invention - expensive, too, by all I had heard. Much more expensive than the traditional bathtub. Mr Ambrose probably only had installed one because he had calculated that in thirty-seven years or so, the water he had saved would justify the additional investment.

  Money is power is pumpernickel, right?

  Oh well, t
here couldn’t be that much difference between a hot bath and a hot shower. Shrugging, I grasped the tap and turned it.

  A banshee-like scream echoed through the halls of Empire House. Outside the door, I could hear the sound of running footsteps, and then Mr Ambrose’s voice, calling: ‘Mr Linton? Mr Linton, has something happened?’

  ‘Yes!’ I yelled back. ‘Yes! A bucket full of ice water, that is what has happened! Where the dickens does the water in your pipes come from? Antarctica?’

  I heard something from the other side that sounded very much like a wall being punched with energy. Or maybe the floor. I hoped it was the floor. He deserved it more.

  ‘Well?’ I demanded. ‘Where the heck do you get your water from?’

  ‘A rainwater tank on the roof,’ came the cool reply. ‘Why?’

  ‘You use rainwater?’

  ‘Yes. You don’t honestly expect me to pay for water when I can get it for free, do you?’

  ‘Mr Ambrose, Sir?’ I asked, as sweetly as I could.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is the water in this tank per chance heated in any way?’

  ‘No, of course not. Why would I waste money on that?’

  I proceeded to explain to him exactly why. My explanation might have contained an expletive or two, or maybe a dozen, most directed at him, his ancestry to the tenth generation, and most especially his architect. When I was finished, his cool voice came from outside:

  ‘Mr Linton?’

  ‘Yes, Sir?’

  ‘Do not make any unnecessary noises again. I am trying to work.’

  And with that, he was gone.

  Quivering with cold, I stood under the shower, cursing the icy water running over my skin, and cursing Mr Ambrose. If he were in here with me, damn him, I was sure I would not be half as cold. He could be surprisingly warm considering how icy he was all the time.

  Closing my eyes, I imagined him here with me, wrapping his arms around me, holding me tightly against him. For some reason, I was sure it would feel very nice having him here. He would be much more interesting company than Napoleon, who was still standing against the wall, bent over his chess game.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw him.