In fact the ornaments almost concealed the furniture, but this was no loss. Apart from two chairs groaning under the weight of accumulated antimacassars, the rest of the furniture seemed to have no use whatsoever apart from supporting ornaments. There were spindly tables everywhere. The floor was layered in rag rugs. Someone had really liked making rag rugs. And, above all, and around all, and permeating all, was the smell.
It smelled of long, dull afternoons.
On a cloth-draped sideboard were two small wooden chests flanking a larger one. They must be the famous boxes full of treasure, he thought.
He became aware of ticking.
There was a clock on the wall. Someone had once had what they must have thought was the jolly idea of making
a clock like an owl. When the pendulum swung, the owl’s eyes went backwards and forwards in what the seriously starved of entertainment probably imagined was a humorous way. After a while. your own eyes started to oscillate in sympathy.
Miss Flitworth bustled in with a loaded tray. There was a blur of activity as she performed the alchemical ceremony of making tea, buttering scones, arranging biscuits, hooking sugar tongs on the basin …
She sat back. Then, as if she had been in a state of repose for twenty minutes, she trilled slightly breathlessly: ‘Well … isn’t this nice.’
YES, MISS FLITWORTH.
‘Don’t often have occasion to open up the parlour these days.’
NO.
‘Not since I lost my dad.’
For a moment Bill Door wondered if she’d lost the late Mr Flitworth in the parlour. Perhaps he’d taken a wrong turning among the ornaments. Then he recalled the funny little ways humans put things.
AH.
‘He used to sit in that very chair, reading the almanac.’
Bill Door searched his memory.
A TALL MAN, he ventured. WITH A MOUSTACHE? MISSING THE TIP OF THE LITTLE FINGER ON HIS LEFT HAND?
Miss Flitworth stared at him over the top of her cup.
‘You knew him?’ she said.
I THINK I MET HIM ONCE.
‘He never mentioned you,’ said Miss FIitworth archly. ‘Not by name. Not as Bill Door.’
I DON’T THINK HE WOULD HAVE MENTIONED ME, said Bill Door slowly.
‘It’s all right,’ said Miss Flitworth.‘I know all about it. Dad used to do a bit of smuggling, too. Well, this isn’t a big farm. It’s not what you’d call a living. He always said a body has to do what it can. I expect you were in his line of
business. I’ve been watching you. That was your business, right enough.’
Bill Door thought deeply.
GENERAL TRANSPORTATION, he said.
‘That sounds like it, yes. Have you got any family, Bill?’
A DAUGHTER.
‘That’s nice.’
I’M AFRAID WE’VE LOST TOUCH.
‘That’s a shame,’ said Miss Flitworth, and sounded as though she meant it. ‘We used to have some good times here in the old days. That was when my young man was alive, of course.’
YOU HAVE A SON? said Bill, who was losing track.
She gave him a sharp look.
‘I invite you to think hard about the word “Miss”,’ she said.‘We takes things like that seriously in these parts.’
MY APOLOGIES.
‘No, Rufus was his name. He was a smuggler, like dad. Not as good. though. I got to admit that. He was more artistic. He used to give me all sorts of things from foreign parts, you know. Bits of jewelry and suchlike. And we used to go dancing. He had very good calves, I remember. I like to see good legs on a man.’
She stared at the fire for a while.
‘See … he never come back one day. Just before we were going to be wed. Dad said he never should have tried to run the mountains that close to winter, but I know he wanted to do it so’s he could bring me a proper present. And he wanted to make some money and impress dad, because dad was against -‘
She picked up the poker and gave the fire a more ferocious jab than it deserved.
‘Anyway, some folk said he ran away to Farferee or Ankh-Morpork or somewhere, but I know he wouldn’t have done something like that.’
The penetrating look she gave Bill Door nailed him to the chair.
‘What do you think, Bill Door?’ she said sharply.
He felt quite proud of himself for spotting the question within the question.
MISS FLITWORTH, THE MOUNTAINS CAN BE VERY TREACHEROUS IN THE WINTER.
She looked relieved. ‘That’s what I’ve always said,’ she said.‘And do you know what, Bill Door? Do you know what I thought?’
NO, MISS FLITWORTH.
‘It was the day before we were going to be wed, like I said. And then one of his pack ponies came back by itself and then the men went and found the avalanche … and you know what I thought? I thought, that’s ridiculous. That’s stupid. Terrible, isn’t it? Oh, I thought other things afterwards, naturally, but the first thing was that the world shouldn’t act as if it was some kind of book. Isn’t that a terrible thing to have thought?’
I MYSELF HAVE NEVER TRUSTED DRAMA, MISS FLITWORTH.
She wasn’t really listening.
‘And I thought, what life expects me to do now is moon around the place in the wedding dress for years and go completely doodly. That’s what it wants me to do. Hah! Oh, yes! So I put the dress in the ragtag and we still invited everyone to the wedding breakfast, because it’s a crime to let good food go to waste.’
She attacked the fire again, and then gave him another megawatt stare.
‘I think it’s always very important to see what’s really real and what isn’t, don’t you?’
MISS FLITWORTH?
‘Yes?’
DO YOU MIND IF I STOP THE CLOCK?
She glanced up at the boggle-eyed owl.
‘What? Oh. Why?’
I AM AFRAID IT GETS ON MY NERVES.
‘It’s not very loud, is it?’
Bill Door wanted to say that every tick was like the hammering of iron clubs on bronze pillars.
H’S JUST RATHER ANNOYING, MISS FLITWORTH.
‘Well, stop it if you want to, I’m sure. I only keep it wound up for the company.’
Bill Door got up thankfully, stepped gingerly through the forest of ornaments, and grabbed the pinecone shaped pendulum. The wooden owl glared at him and the ticking stopped. at least in the realm of common sound. He was aware that, elsewhere, the pounding of Time continued none the less. How could people endure it? They allowed Time in their houses, as though it was a fiend.
He sat down again .
Miss Flitworth had started to knit, ferociously.
The fire rustled in the grate.
Bill Door leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling.
‘Your horse enjoying himself?’
PARDON?
‘Your horse. He seems to be enjoying himself in the meadow,’ prompted Miss Flitworth.
OH. YES.
‘Running around as if he’s never seen grass before.’
HE LIKES GRASS.
‘And you like animals. I can tell.’
Bill Door nodded. His reserves of small talk, never very liquid, had dried up.
He sat silently for the next couple of hours, hands gripping the arms of the chair, until Miss Flitworth announced that she was going to bed. Then he went back to the barn, and slept.
Bill Door hadn’t been aware of it coming. But there it was, a grey figure floating in the darkness of the barn.
Somehow it had got hold of the golden timer.
It told him, Bill Door, there has been a mistake.
The glass shattered. Fine golden seconds glittered in the air, for a moment, and then settled.
It told him, Return. You have work to do. There has been a mistake.
The figure faded.
Bill Door nodded. Of course there had been a mistake.
Anyone could see there had been a mistake. He’d known all along it had been a mistake.
He tossed the overalls in a corner and took up the robe of absolute blackness.
Well, it had been an experience. And, he had to admit, one that he didn’t want to relive. He felt as though a huge weight had been removed.
Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward?
How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive?
Obviously it was something you had to be born to.
Death saddled his horse and rode out and up over the fields. The corn rippled far below, like the sea. Miss Flitworth would have to find someone else to help her gather in the harvest.
That was odd. There was a feeling there. Regret? Was that it? But it was Bill Door’s feeling, and Bill Door was … dead. Had never lived. He was his old self again, safe where there were no feelings and no regrets.