Here Comes the Sun (14 page)

Little Helga (who was rapidly becoming Big Helga, but the inhabitants of the village affected not to notice) yawned, rubbed her eyes and set off to the dairy to do the early milking. She was just crossing the yard, pail on arm, when she stopped and stared. Then she dropped the pail and ran back to the house.

‘Listen, everyone!' she called out. ‘Neighbour Bjorn is leaving the village!'

There was, for the first time in the history of the family, complete silence in the kitchen.Well, not complete silence: Minoushka stepped back on the cat's tail, with highly vocal consequences, and there was a noisy clatter when Grandmama dropped the porridge spoon; but at least nobody spoke.

Little Helga, being young, misinterpreted the reaction as signifying disbelief.

‘Honest,' she said. ‘I saw him going up the path to the top of the hill, and he had his axe over his shoulder with
a big red spotted handkerchief tied to the handle, and he was carrying a huge sack over the other shoulder, and he was wearing his Hell's Angels vest, which he only wears when he goes down to the town to buy intoxicating liquor. And the little brown dog was trying to follow him, but he kept stopping and throwing apples at it.'

More silence. Then Great-grandfather shook his head.

‘It's impossible,' he said. ‘Nobody ever
leaves
the village. People come here from the outside, yes, but they never leave.'

‘Because of it being idyllic here,' Great-grandmother explained, with a microscopic quantity of residual wistfulness in her voice. She had fallen in love with the village the moment she set eyes on it sixty-two years ago, but before that she had lived in Chicago, and she couldn't help remembering, sometimes, that in Chicago they were admittedly short on idylls but hot as mustard on sanitation and running water. ‘The whole point of idyllic is, you stay.'

‘Oh dear,' said Grandmother. ‘If he's leaving, it can only mean he's been unhappy here. Oh, the poor man!'

‘We must counsel him,' said Grandfather firmly, rising from the table and removing his bib. ‘We would never forgive ourselves if he left and we didn't try to stop him.'

‘We would have failed him,' Grandmother added, ‘in his hour of need. It would mean we are bad neighbours.'

Helga lowered her head and peered out of the window. It wasn't easy to see through, because the unutterably picturesque leaded panes were so distorted with genuine age that light only squeezed through them after a severe struggle.

‘Do hurry,' she said, anxiously. ‘He's stopped to try and find more apples to throw at the little brown dog. If you hurry, you might just catch him.'

So Grandmother and Grandfather and Great-grandmother and Minoushka and Little Helga and Lazy Olaf and Little Torsten dashed out of the house and up the hill, to where Bjorn was taking careful aim with a suitably aerodynamic Granny Smith.

‘Surely,' panted Grandfather, catching his breath. ‘Surely, neighbour Bjorn, you don't propose to leave us without even saying goodbye.'

‘Goodbye,' Bjorn replied. ‘Satisfied?' He let fly, and the little brown dog finally took the hint and retired, hobbling, to the woodshed. Bjorn picked up his luggage.

‘But why?' Little Torsten demanded. ‘Have you not been happy here, dear neighbour Bjorn?'

‘No.'

‘Where will you go?' wailed Grandmother. ‘What will you do?'

Bjorn considered for a while. ‘First,' he said, ‘I'm going to find the nearest town that's got a halfway decent bar and a cinema that shows dirty movies, and I'm going to . . .'

‘Why does he want to see dirty movies, Grandmama?'

‘Hush, Torsten.'

‘Yes, but Grandmama, if the film's got all dirty, doesn't that mean the pictures will come out all blurry and . . .'

‘
Hush!
'

‘And after that,' Bjorn went on, ‘I'm going to find out what's happened to the sun. All right?'

The villagers stared at him as if he was mad.

‘What do you mean, neighbour Bjorn?' asked Lazy Olaf slowly. ‘It's the sun, that's all. There's nothing wrong with it. Look.'

He turned and pointed at the sky. The sun, as it happened, was obscured by a blanket of cloud.

‘See?' Bjorn said. ‘It's what we call a cover-up where I come from. Somebody's made one hell of a cock-up, and they're keeping it under wraps.'

‘Maybe,' replied Grandfather. ‘Or maybe it just means it's going to rain soon. Rain is good, neighbour Bjorn. It makes the crops grow and nourishes the little seedlings and . . .'

‘Yes, yes, I know,' Bjorn interrupted impatiently. ‘I used to make the stuff, okay? And I could tell you things about how we used to do it that'd make your hair stand on end,' he added. ‘Look, just take it from me, all right? That is not the real sun. Something has happened to the real sun, and whatever it is they've got up there is a substitute, okay? Okay.'

He turned definitively and started to walk away. Little Torsten wiped away a tear.

‘Don't go,' he whimpered.

Bjorn hesitated slightly, and then quickened his stride. Little Torsten started to cry.

‘
Please
don't go,' he wailed through his tears. ‘Even though you're grumpy and bad-tempered sometimes, and you never have a kind word for anyone and never help anyone out and never say thank you when Aunt Gretchen gives you griddle-cakes and you get drunk on Wednesday nights and go around being sick in people's hanging baskets and you're cruel to animals and you tread on the flowers round the village pump and you never go church and you haven't paid your contribution to the poor relief fund for three years and you park your cart in Uncle Gustav's parking space and you steal the food we leave out for the poor blind boy and you cheat at dominoes and you cut down Grandmama's cherry tree for no reason at all and when she complained you called her a rude word and you leave empty crisp-packets all over everyone's front gardens and you trod on my toy horse once and when I cried you laughed at me and Hilda says you've got the manners of a warthog and the weeds from your garden blow out all over Uncle Carl's
potato patch and you put vodka in Big Peter's orange juice at his wedding and Uncle Christian swears blind you've moved your back fence three feet over into his garden and you drew a moustache on the picture of the Blessed Virgin in the little white chapel, we still love you.'

There was a thoughtful silence.

‘Do we, though?' said a voice at the back.

‘And he took my bicycle once without asking,' said Grandmama. ‘And when I found it again, the forks were all bent.'

‘And there's my lawnmower,' added Lazy Olaf. ‘When am I going to get that back, I ask myself.'

‘He still hasn't paid for that broken window.'

‘Loud music all hours of the day and night.'

‘Revving up his chainsaw when people are trying to sleep.'

Grandfather stooped to pick up an apple lying on the ground in front of him. ‘Go on,' he shouted, ‘get on out of it. We can do without your sort around here.' He threw the apple.

‘And if he comes back again,' said Grandmama, savagely, ‘we'll set the dogs on him.'

The little brown dog, which had come bounding out with its tail wagging, bared its teeth and snarled.

Halfway up the hill, Bjorn broke into a run.

 

‘She's keen, certainly,' said the director. ‘I have high hopes, you know. We need that sort of dedication and commitment in this department.'

The director's secretary sniffed. ‘Look,' she said. ‘Someone's left the lights on all weekend.'

‘Oh dear,' the director replied, fumbling in his pocket for the key. ‘Wait a moment, though. It's not locked. What on earth . . . ?'

He pushed open the door carefully and walked in to the main office.

‘Good-morning,' Jane called out from behind the console. ‘I worked over the weekend, hope you don't mind. You're right, it's easy once you get the hang of it. Of course, the computer helps marvellously. It's just like the one we used to have where I worked before, except that the memory's bigger, of course. Do you like it?'

The director was staring at the screen. From time to time, he made little choking noises.

The screen was different. Instead of the intricate cobwebs of inextricably tangled patterns, it looked like nothing so much as a very finely woven net.

‘What have you done?' the director croaked.

‘I've sorted it,' Jane replied cheerfully. ‘Looks so much better like that, don't you think? Everybody living happily ever after, you see.'

‘But . . .' The director struggled for words. ‘But, you stupid girl, they're meant to be star-crossed lovers.'

‘So,' Jane replied. ‘I uncrossed them. Simple as that,' she added, and put the cover back over the console. ‘It'll make life so much easier in the long run if people aren't having to cope with shattering emotional crises all over the place. Do you realise how many working days were lost in the Soviet Union last year because of emotional trauma? I looked it up. Four million. And as for Scandinavia . . .'

The director collapsed against a filing cabinet, breathing heavily. ‘You - uncrossed them,' he gasped. ‘My life's work, and you . . .' He made a noise like a horse whinnying and grabbed at the side of the cabinet for support. His secretary moved across to the desk and sharpened some pencils.

‘And,' Jane went on, ‘I've programmed the computer to make sure they stay like that. It's much easier that way,
you know, and ever so much more efficient. In fact, all it'll take from now on is one full-time member of staff to make sure it's running smoothly, and a couple of part-timers to do the filing. I'm sure,' she went on relentlessly, ‘they'll be ever so pleased to hear that in the Treasurer's Office.'

On the screen behind her, a galaxy of perfectly regulated blue and pink dots flashed in harmonious concord. All over the world, boy was meeting girl and falling in love, and they were immediately going out and choosing bathroom curtains together. The director's secretary shrugged.

‘Well,' she observed, ‘I'll say this much, it's a darned sight tidier than it used to be. I never could be doing with all those messy loops and squiggles.'

The director propped himself up against the filing cabinet and took off his spectacles. ‘Miss Frobisher,' he roared in a voice like thunder. ‘Be so kind as to get me the Chief of Staff on the telephone immediately.'

But Miss Frobisher wasn't listening. She was gazing, with an expression on her face like Stout Cortez finding a parking space in Piccadilly, at the electrician, who had come in to replace a light-bulb in the washroom. And he was gazing back.

‘Bingo,' Jane commented. ‘You see what I mean about efficient.'

With a cry of enraged anguish the director dragged himself to his feet, shook a fist in Jane's direction and staggered out of the door in the direction of the Main Office. For the record, he got no further than Accounts; where he happened to share a lift with a rather nice, motherly lady from Pensions. When, three months later, they got back from their honeymoon, he resigned from his old job and applied for the assistant librarianship in the reference section.

‘This protégé of yours,' Ganger said. ‘I'm beginning to get bad feelings about the whole idea.'

Staff checked himself between the second and third syllables of ‘
My
protégé?' and considered. He had, after all, been in the service for a very long time now, and one learned to expect this sort of thing. As the old Catalan proverb says: he who chooses to live among rats should not get aerated at the sight of paw marks in the butter.

‘Why?' he said.

‘Well.' Ganger took up his usual position on the edge of the desk. Obviously chairs were completely
passé
where he came from. ‘Admittedly she's got talent. Talent, yes; also initiative, drive, authority, intelligence, all that stuff. But, you know, I can't help thinking she's getting above herself. I mean, first that thing with the sun, and now all this stuff with Star-Crossed Lovers. Like, wiping out a whole department overnight. You've got to draw the line somewhere, haven't you? She's making too many enemies too soon.'

Staff stroked his chin with the rubber on the end of his propelling pencil. ‘And that means she's making enemies for us, you mean?'

‘Naturally.' Ganger picked up a handful of paperclips and started to weave them into a chain. ‘Major aggravation, at this rate. You don't need me to tell you that.'

They considered the matter in silence for a while.

‘Finance and General Purposes smiled at me in the corridor the day before yesterday,' Staff said at last. ‘I spent the rest of the morning searching this office for hidden microphones.'

‘Find any?'

‘No,' Staff replied. Then he put his finger to his lips, picked up his empty coffee-cup, inverted it and put it over the buzzer on the edge of the desk. ‘Yes,' he went on. ‘Six. I left that one where it was to make them think they'd won.'

‘I wouldn't worry about it,' Ganger said, smiling. ‘Sure, they've got every office in the building bugged - oh, and by the way, if you only found six, there's three more about here somewhere, I was talking with that kid Vince from Supplies. But it's nothing to worry about.'

‘Nothing to . . .' Staff lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Nothing to worry about,' he hissed. ‘Have you the faintest idea . . .'

Ganger shrugged. ‘It all comes back to staffing levels,' he said. ‘Think about it. So they've got the room bugged. In order for that to mean anything, think of all the backup you'd need. You'd have to have a guy listening in on each office, and another two guys to transcribe it all, and another guy to sort through the transcripts and put yellow highlighter on all the treasonable bits. With an organisation this size, you're talking maybe a staff of twenty thousand people. You know how many people work in Internal Security? Four, and one of them's a trainee. All they do is go around putting the bugs in, maybe fixing them when they go wrong, putting in new ones when they get found, and even doing that, there's a waiting list of maybe six years. Nobody actually
listens
.'