Nothing But Blue Skies (4 page)

That, she realised, could be a problem.

It was nearly twenty past nine when she finally slithered and flopped through the door of Kendrick and Drake, Estate Agents. She arrived at her desk snuffling, guilty and wet, expecting to be shouted at, but the torrent of recrimination she'd been expecting didn't materialise; Mrs White was out viewing a property, leaving Paul and Susan (both completely cold-free) to mind the fort. Nobody here, in fact, but us humans.

‘You look awful,' Susan announced, as soon as Karen had dumped the portable paddling-pool that her own angst had turned her coat into. ‘Every time I set eyes on you these days, you're soaked to the skin.'

It was possible that Karen might have parried and countered this first strike with some dazzling gem of repartee, if she hadn't disintegrated in a fit of sneezing instead. By now, of course, she knew all about colds and was able to reassure herself that she hadn't inadvertently eaten a Semtex sandwich with nitroglycerine salad, but was merely clearing out her blocked nasal passages the old-fashioned quick and dirty way. Even so, the thought of the spectacle she must be making of herself was enough to send passers-by in the street outside scurrying for the cover of handy doorways. Her two colleagues, however, didn't seem unduly concerned. Paul, in fact, gave her his handkerchief, which she eagerly accepted in spite of the fact that she had two of her own in her pocket. True, she'd have preferred it if his first gift to her hadn't been a piece of rag designed for mopping up snot, but there are times when a girl's got to take what she's given.

‘Thanks,' she mumbled, noticing as she spoke that her words sounded as if they were being filtered through two full-up vacuum-cleaner bags and an archery target. ‘Sorry I'm late, the traffic—'

‘With a cold like that I'm amazed you made it in at all,' Susan replied. ‘If it'd been me, I'd have stayed in bed with a bottle of whisky and the TV remote.'

The nexus of emotions that these words inspired in Karen - basically, she was shocked that Paul wasn't as shocked as she was by this glib endorsement of dereliction of duty - took her a moment or so to get straight in her mind. Of course, no dragon would ever dream of saying anything like that. Dragons didn't call in sick (possibly because dragons seldom if ever got sick; there were only five known dragon diseases, and four of them were invariably fatal within fifteen minutes of the first symptom appearing) and if they did, they wouldn't be so damned cocky about it. Susan, on the other hand, made skiving off sound admirable, dashing, possibly even mildly glamorous; while Paul was just standing still and smiling.

Well, this was neither the time nor the place for trying to fathom the human mindset. Duty called. Lovelorn, wet and terminally bunged up Karen might be, but these were office hours and she was here to work. Even though it was by now fairly obvious that humans and dragons had rather different work ethics, she couldn't quite bring herself to work to human standards, mostly because she couldn't understand the rules. Back Home, it was easy - once a superior officer had assigned you a specific task, you didn't stop or rest until you'd done it, successfully and with a modicum of grace and flair. A word of thanks or a nod of appreciation was a pleasant bonus but not something you ever expected, since the satisfaction of a job well done was more than enough reward in itself. Concepts such as pay, or working hours, or doing just enough to get by simply didn't exist where she came from, and even if the dragon mind could encompass them, it was hard to see how you'd manage to fit them in to the sort of work dragons did - rounding up water vapour, marshalling it into clouds, escorting it to the drop zone and regulating the time, place and duration of the rainfall. The nearest equivalent she'd come across down here wasn't even done by humans, which made sense; she doubted whether they'd be capable of the mental discipline and commitment to excellence displayed by the average sheepdog.

Unfortunately, even Karen couldn't do work if there wasn't any work for her to do; she was still having difficulty with the human concept of the ‘quiet day', when the junior officers are expected to sit patiently at their desks waiting for a customer to walk in through the door and give them something to do. She found it hard to imagine how a system so random and inefficient could be tolerated. What if, on Wednesday, nobody wanted to buy or sell a house all day, while on Thursday they were inundated with more business than they could handle? She'd raised the point with Mrs White at her interview, and she'd looked at Karen oddly and replied that most of the time it sort of averaged out. (A truly bizarre attitude, she'd thought at the time, all the more bewildering since it had been Mrs White staring at her as if she was a bit strange in the head, rather than the other way round.) In retrospect, she realised, Mrs White had given her a whole lot of odd looks, both during the interview and subsequently, though of course the branch manager hadn't hesitated for a moment before giving her the job, thanks to the stunning portfolio of qualifications and references Karen had presented her with—

(—A small rearrangement of history, too trivial to merit the description ‘magic': for a dragon who'd come third in her year at the Academy and earned a distinction in both Applied Metaphysics and Transdimensional Badminton, fiddling about with some computer records and assimilating a few dozen textbooks had been a slice of Victoria sponge with a cherry on top. The only thing Karen had found remarkable about the training required of an apprentice estate agent was how utterly inappropriate it was - masses of irrelevant junk about how houses were built, and nothing at all about how best to pass off half-truths and downright lies to cynical and suspicious punters. It was a bit like training someone to be a lion-tamer by teaching them how to play the mandolin.)

So, when she'd answered the one letter that needed answering and filed the three that didn't, tidied up a few loose scraps of paper and washed out the coffee mugs, Karen was at a loss for anything to do. That was a nuisance. For one thing, staying busy helped her to keep her mind off the fact that she was in the same room with the man she'd forsworn her dragonhood for, and all he'd said to her all morning was, ‘Do you need a hanky?' and, ‘Thanks; black, no sugar.' For meteorological as well as personal reasons, that was something she didn't really want to dwell on if she could help it; nor did she particularly relish the thought of listening to the Competition telling him the apparently riveting story of how her aunt had taken back a defective pair of tights to Marks & Spencers. How anybody could hang on every word of such a pointless, boring recital if he wasn't hopelessly in love with the narrator, she couldn't imagine. Just as she was on the point of ‘accidentally' yanking out the top drawer of the filing cabinet and spilling its contents all over the floor (so that she could kill an hour or so putting them all back) the door opened and someone walked in.

Under any other circumstances, the sight of a short, fat, bald, middle-aged man with a missing front tooth and bottle-end glasses most likely wouldn't have had such an electrifying effect on her. As it was, Karen was so determined to intercept him before the other two got to him that she almost knocked him over.

‘Hello!' she warbled. ‘Please come in. Sit down. Coffee? The kettle's just boiled. No? Never mind. How can we help you?'

The man looked up at her nervously, as if he was afraid he was about to be spread thin on toast and eaten. ‘Have you got any bungalows?' he asked.

‘Yes!' Perhaps a shade too much enthusiasm, passion even, in the reply. Too late to worry about it now, though. ‘Yes,' she repeated, but with sixty per cent less passion. ‘As it happens, we've got a wide choice of really great bungalows at the moment, in lots of wonderful locations, in every conceivable price range - I mean, some of them are so cheap we're almost giving them away free with soap powder.' That didn't sound right, either. It was at times like this that she was painfully aware of Human not being her first language. ‘Not that we're having to give them away,' she added quickly. ‘I mean, the demand's been so great we're practically turning people away at the door—'

The man looked round at the otherwise empty office. ‘Really,' he said.

‘Most days,' Karen replied. ‘Today's been a bit quiet, that's all. Usually it's like a battlefield in here, with people climbing all over the desks trying to grab copies of the particulars . . . Well, not as busy as that, perhaps. But busier than this. Usually.'

As he stared at her, the man seemed to be weighing up his chances of getting past her and out of the door before she could bite him. Apparently he was a realist, because he stayed put and made a visible effort to keep still. ‘Fine,' he said. ‘Well . . . '

‘I expect,' Karen went on, wondering if there was any way she could retrieve the situation or whether it would be better to go into the back and wait till everybody had gone home, ‘you'd like to see some particulars. Yes?'

‘All right,' the man said.

‘Great. Wait there.'

The man froze. ‘Right here,' he said.

‘Yes, that's fine. I'll be back in just a second or two.'

‘Will you? Oh.'

‘You'll be all right if I just leave you there?'

‘Oh yes, I'll be fine.'

Reluctantly she turned her back on him, just for a moment; but it was plenty long enough for him to jump out of the chair, tear the door open and slam it ferociously behind him.

By the time Karen got to the window, he was halfway down the street and running well for a man with such an obvious fitness problem.

‘Hey!' Susan's voice behind her made her reluctant to turn round. ‘That must've been pretty close to a record. How long do you think that was? Thirty seconds?'

‘More like forty-five.' Paul's voice. It made her eyes hurt suddenly.

‘Even so,' Susan was saying, ‘that's pretty neat work. It usually takes me at least a minute and a half to get rid of a punter, and I used to think I was good.'

‘Watch and learn,' Paul replied. ‘Maybe she'll give you a few tips.'

Still Karen didn't turn round. The cold had apparently taken a turn for the worse, because she was finding it very difficult indeed to breathe.

‘Sorry,' she heard Susan say. ‘We're only teasing. But really, you've got to learn not to come on so strong with people. All this fire-breathing stuff—'

‘We don't do that,' Karen blurted out angrily. ‘It's just a myth.'

For one and a half seconds, they both stared at her without saying anything. Then Paul, having eliminated the impossible in the manner advocated by Sherlock Holmes, came to the conclusion that what she'd just said must have been meant as a joke, and laughed. Somehow, that only made it worse.

CHAPTER TWO

‘M
y fault,' Gordon announced, making a grand if slightly vague gesture towards the pub window. ‘All my fault. I admit it. I'm guilty.'

Several people turned round to stare for a moment or so. This indicated that they weren't regular customers. Most of the familiar faces didn't seem to notice Gordon's outburst, apart from one or two who took the opportunity to set their watches. Gordon, of course, couldn't see any of them. He was too deep in his own private purgatory to notice anything that didn't have whisky in it.

The barman, who'd been there seven years, grabbed some change from the till and programmed the jukebox, which started to play ‘Here Comes The Rain Again'. It was an ancient and hallowed ritual, like the changing of the guard or the silly games they play in Parliament. Partly he did it because of a deep-rooted sense of tradition; mostly, because Gordon would howl the place down if he didn't.

‘My song!' Gordon exclaimed. ‘They're playing my song!'

It wasn't just that his money was as good as anybody else's; Gordon Smelt's daily performance was tolerated - encouraged, even - because he was, after all, a celebrity, a TV personality, a member of the new royalty. In fifty years or so, they'd be putting up a blue plaque over the door, something like ‘Gordon Smelt Got Rat-Arsed Here, 1989-2007'. There'd be a tailor's dummy in a glass case in the corner dressed up in a suit of his clothes, and you'd be able to buy Gordon Smelt sweatshirts, pens, CD covers, tastefully etched whisky tumblers, interactive Gordon Smelt multimedia drinking games; and when offcomers and ignorant Japanese tourists dared to ask, ‘Yes, but who
was
Gordon Smelt?', the landlord would explain that Gordon Smelt had been a weather man - arguably the last survivor of the golden age of TV weather forecasting, or else the first precursor of the new wave (or whatever) - and press home the advantage by selling the hapless enquirer a copy of the official video, ‘Gordon Smelt's Greatest Forecasts', digitally remastered into 3D with an accompanying booklet and bumper sticker. With a golden future of merchandising like that to pass on to his heirs, the landlord reckoned, it was worth putting up with the drunken shouting and the inevitable messes on the lavatory floor.