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indriSUMMARY: Giles and Ethan, the electric Kool-Aid funky Satan groove year, in the early seventies. Rated M. Spoilers to Band Candy. Acknowledgements and disclaimers.
53.
The Saturday post brought an envelope addressed to Ethan the next day. This was almost unprecedented, at least since his mother had given up writing to him. He found it on the kitchen table, next to a letter from one of Stan's sisters, and an electricity bill that someone had already marked up with "Diedre - please pay." He did not recognise the handwriting, which was elegant and old-fashioned, and when he flipped it over, it had no return address.
Inside was a letter from Mr Grey in Oxford with a rather strange offer of work. There were errands that Mr Grey needed done, it read, that he was unwilling to explain via Her Majesty's post. If Mr Rayne was interested, he need only walk to a specific telephone booth near the British Museum where he would find a pound note and another request. If Mr Rayne was not interested, then he need do nothing at all: Mr Grey would presume this if the pound note was still there in a week's time. He thanked Mr Rayne for his time.
It all sounded highly suspect, but Ethan hadn't expected anything different from one of Adrienne's contacts, and it was good of her to find something for him so quickly. He'd probably follow it up tomorrow.
In the meantime, he had housework to do now that the rain had stopped. He renewed the various wards and anti-scrying spells on the building. He also embedded some new protection and warning spells that he'd only recently learnt from the Spivak, adapting them as needed. Then he saw that one of the Watcher cars was skulking around again, so he went to the telephone box and called the police with an anonymous tip-off about a drug-dealer pestering people on the street, hoping that Stan didn't choose this precise moment to return. Later, as he was making himself some lunch, he was rewarded by the sight of uniformed officers making enquiries of the besuited young man in the car. He was having quite a good day so far.
He turned the radio on and nodded his head along with the music as he made himself some tea.
He went upstairs then and paused on the first floor landing to pick a fresh book from the volumes piled high under the window. Narrative of the Expedition to the China Seas and Japan? Agatha Christie's At Bertram's Hotel or Official Rules of Cards Games? Lessing's In Pursuit of the English? Kenneth Clark's Civilisation? Bachelor Summer. Mog the Forgetful Cat. There were several hundred others he hadn't yet read and a hundred more he already had.
What he really wanted was a book that would tell him what to do next about Rupert. Maybe one of them could, but he was hard pressed to tell which one.
He was aware that there were certain social conventions that one could ordinarily employ to indicate an increasing level of serious interest, but these did not seem to apply to their situation. They were already sleeping together, going on holiday together and living in the same house. And yet Ethan was still far from certain that Rupert viewed this as anything more than a temporary liaison, despite the late-night conversations and enthusiastic sex. Perhaps there were useful conventions among homosexual men, but there wasn't anyone Ethan knew well enough to ask, and Rupert wouldn't know those conventions anyway.
Ethan would just have to figure it out for himself, as he always had.
He wondered why he didn't have many friends to ask. Why, in fact, did he have virtually no friends outside the immediate household? He'd had such early, easy successes meeting Randall and Evelyn, but since then, perhaps, he'd been coasting, content with whoever happened to turn up at the house, given that the people Evelyn introduced him to were contacts rather than potential friends. And why hadn't he realised that before?
He picked up a copy of Love-starved Hellcat, flicked through a few pages, and then threw it down the stairs. It ricocheted off the stairwell wall in a pleasing fashion. He sat on the floor and had a sip of his tea. He looked through a few more paperbacks and then Nurse Turner Runs Away followed its sister publication into the air. Lost Horizons made it all the way around the stairwell corner.
Diedre came out of her room. "What are you doing?"
"I'm throwing books down the stairs," said Ethan.
She sat next to him and started to weed through the stacks, picking out only the most mildewed and dog-eared volumes. A copy of Kipps sailed into the air, hit a step and could be heard sliding down all the way to the ground floor. Ethan gave her an appreciative nod for her artistry. He picked up an extremely well-read and tattered copy of The Price of Salt. This proved so fragile that its cover came off on landing.
"What was it like when you first met Randall?" he asked her.
"Why are you asking that?"
"I'm just asking it. Pass me the Rohmer?"
She shrugged and handed him the book. "He was the most magnificent man in the room. I knew I had to talk with him. So I went and asked him about books, and what life was like in America, and we just talked and talked and talked and talked until Paul dragged me away from him. But I had already decided that we had to run away together."
"Had he decided that too?"
"No. I had to persuade him over lunch the next day." She threw an elderly The Way We Live Now after the Rohmer.
"Does it have to be a crowded room, do you think?"
"No," said Diedre, decisively. "But it is statistically more likely." She looked at him shrewdly. "After you after stories of true romance, today?"
"We don't seem to have any of those here," he said, waving at the piles of books.
"But surely your mother told you glorious stories of how she met your father."
Ethan grimaced. "He was a human paragon the like of which shall never walk this earth again. But it still took her six months to get over his accent."
"You don't have an accent."
"Not any more, no. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."
"Can you still do your old one?"
He shook his head. "It sounds like a parody now, even to me."
"Say something anyway in it."
"No," he said. He threw a Ladybird book on Birds and Their Nests rather harder than he'd meant to.
"Is this about Ripper, then? Has he got a nice arse?"
Ethan looked at her. "What's got into you?"
She wriggled her shoulders. "Randall's talking about leaving here. He wants to go on a trip around the country, staying with all the people he knows from the festival and so on."
"But he'd come back, surely?"
"He's talking about months, Ethan. Months! I'd have to go with him. Sleeping in other people's back bedrooms on air mattresses."
"You'd have to break up with Tom," said Ethan. "He won't like that."
Diedre looked away. "His mother's sick. I can't break up with him now."
"If you leave it much longer, he'll propose."
"Oh God," said Diedre.
"Just make sure that the rest of us are in the house when you tell him. Then we can throw him out if we have to."
"Oh God," she said, again, burying her face in her hands.
The back door opened downstairs. Ethan could tell who it was from the tread in the kitchen. "That'll be Rupert now."
The footsteps came closer and then a sort of spluttering started, loudly enough that Diedre looked up and wiped her eyes.
"What, what has happened here?" demanded Rupert, as he came around the stairwell corner. He was clutching the books to his bosom and looked very angry.
"We've been throwing books down the stairs," said Diedre, rather less helpfully than Ethan might have liked.
Rupert looked speechless.
"It's all right, Rupert," said Diedre. "None of them are any good."
"Actually, some of them are," said Ethan. "And some of them aren't."
Ripper looked rather menacing now. "And where do you think this will end? Will you be throwing people down the stairs next?" He grabbed the other injured tomes and took them upstairs.
"That's not a fair argument," Diedre shouted after him.
Ethan sighed. He threw another few books down the stairwell, just for the sake of it. One of them chipped Randall's paint.
54.
Ripper locked his bedroom door with a ward. He put the books down on the windowsill and inspected the damage. Most of the volumes seemed to be all right, although there was a bent Trollope and a Nurse Turner Runs Away which had lost its back cover. He might have to admit that no great crimes against literature had been committed, but it was the principle of the thing.
Besides, he had to get some decent guitar time in anyway. He had a full day rehearsal with The Grins tomorrow and he hadn't been practising as much as he should. Their first gig together was Tuesday. He'd been far too distracted lately and the time off for the midsummer festival had not helped.
He started with a couple of songs he'd mastered some time ago, just to get his fingers warmed up. Then it was on to The Grins songs, which weren't technically all that complex, but did have some rather rapid stretches. He was determined to get the pieces right and thus vindicate their decision to hire him. He played for a couple of hours, taking short breaks here and here but without leaving the room.
Late in the afternoon, he heard Ethan come upstairs and pause outside the door, going away without knocking. Ripper fumbled the fingering and had to restart.
After a couple more numbers, Ethan's footsteps returned. A piece of paper slid under the door. It was too far away for Rupert to read. "I'm rehearsing," Ripper shouted.
A minute later, a second piece of paper was slid under the door. Rupert paused his playing and pulled out his glasses. In large letters, the second paper read, "I can tell."
The first piece of paper was headed, "Some English towns with Esplanades". Underneath was a long list of seaside towns. Rupert was surprised to see how many of them were on the Isle of Wight.
He wrote on the back of the paper, "What about Scotland and Wales?" and slid it back.
Soon after came the written response: "Won't know until Monday. Library now shut."
Rupert put down his guitar and put away his glasses. It was probably time for dinner anyway. He came out into the hall, clutching the pieces of paper.
"How are we going to narrow this down, exactly? Call up every town on the list and say we're hunting witches?"
"A witch-hunt?" said Ethan. "I suppose it is. But it's your turn to contribute. You think of something."
Rupert heard a noise from upstairs that rather distracted him. "Was that a scream?"
"Tom's watching Doctor Who," said Ethan. The television had been moved into the attic to prevent people wandering in and out of Adrienne's room at all hours. "Pub later?"
Rupert had a bit of time before the household set out for Saturday night at the pub. He decided it was time to call his parents.
The phone box was empty, apart from an empty beer bottle and a container of sherbet that had powdered the handset, making it sticky. He rang the number and fed in some change when he heard the pips.
They were at home, of course. His mother picked up the phone, but he could hear his father in the background, fussing with the dog. Every time Rupert said a sentence, his mother repeated it so his father could hear.
"Everything's going well," he said. "I was up at Stonehenge for midsummer." This started a maternal anecdote that he was loathe to interrupt, despite his dwindling change. "I've got my first gig with the new band on Tuesday. What? Ah, well, I mean that would be very lovely, but not this time, if that's all right, I'd be twice as nervous. But another time, of course. How are you both doing?" He put some more coins in. "Of course I'll be back for Christmas. That's months off though." Then, as an afterthought, he asked, "I don't suppose, I heard that, well, Eusapia Ciccarello was possibly in London, and-- No? A hermit. Really? Where? Well, the rumour I heard must be wrong then." He put his last coin into the machine. "And how's everything else? Right. No, really, I am sure, this is the right decision for me. I'm sure. I will. I do. You take care too."
53.
The Saturday post brought an envelope addressed to Ethan the next day. This was almost unprecedented, at least since his mother had given up writing to him. He found it on the kitchen table, next to a letter from one of Stan's sisters, and an electricity bill that someone had already marked up with "Diedre - please pay." He did not recognise the handwriting, which was elegant and old-fashioned, and when he flipped it over, it had no return address.
Inside was a letter from Mr Grey in Oxford with a rather strange offer of work. There were errands that Mr Grey needed done, it read, that he was unwilling to explain via Her Majesty's post. If Mr Rayne was interested, he need only walk to a specific telephone booth near the British Museum where he would find a pound note and another request. If Mr Rayne was not interested, then he need do nothing at all: Mr Grey would presume this if the pound note was still there in a week's time. He thanked Mr Rayne for his time.
It all sounded highly suspect, but Ethan hadn't expected anything different from one of Adrienne's contacts, and it was good of her to find something for him so quickly. He'd probably follow it up tomorrow.
In the meantime, he had housework to do now that the rain had stopped. He renewed the various wards and anti-scrying spells on the building. He also embedded some new protection and warning spells that he'd only recently learnt from the Spivak, adapting them as needed. Then he saw that one of the Watcher cars was skulking around again, so he went to the telephone box and called the police with an anonymous tip-off about a drug-dealer pestering people on the street, hoping that Stan didn't choose this precise moment to return. Later, as he was making himself some lunch, he was rewarded by the sight of uniformed officers making enquiries of the besuited young man in the car. He was having quite a good day so far.
He turned the radio on and nodded his head along with the music as he made himself some tea.
He went upstairs then and paused on the first floor landing to pick a fresh book from the volumes piled high under the window. Narrative of the Expedition to the China Seas and Japan? Agatha Christie's At Bertram's Hotel or Official Rules of Cards Games? Lessing's In Pursuit of the English? Kenneth Clark's Civilisation? Bachelor Summer. Mog the Forgetful Cat. There were several hundred others he hadn't yet read and a hundred more he already had.
What he really wanted was a book that would tell him what to do next about Rupert. Maybe one of them could, but he was hard pressed to tell which one.
He was aware that there were certain social conventions that one could ordinarily employ to indicate an increasing level of serious interest, but these did not seem to apply to their situation. They were already sleeping together, going on holiday together and living in the same house. And yet Ethan was still far from certain that Rupert viewed this as anything more than a temporary liaison, despite the late-night conversations and enthusiastic sex. Perhaps there were useful conventions among homosexual men, but there wasn't anyone Ethan knew well enough to ask, and Rupert wouldn't know those conventions anyway.
Ethan would just have to figure it out for himself, as he always had.
He wondered why he didn't have many friends to ask. Why, in fact, did he have virtually no friends outside the immediate household? He'd had such early, easy successes meeting Randall and Evelyn, but since then, perhaps, he'd been coasting, content with whoever happened to turn up at the house, given that the people Evelyn introduced him to were contacts rather than potential friends. And why hadn't he realised that before?
He picked up a copy of Love-starved Hellcat, flicked through a few pages, and then threw it down the stairs. It ricocheted off the stairwell wall in a pleasing fashion. He sat on the floor and had a sip of his tea. He looked through a few more paperbacks and then Nurse Turner Runs Away followed its sister publication into the air. Lost Horizons made it all the way around the stairwell corner.
Diedre came out of her room. "What are you doing?"
"I'm throwing books down the stairs," said Ethan.
She sat next to him and started to weed through the stacks, picking out only the most mildewed and dog-eared volumes. A copy of Kipps sailed into the air, hit a step and could be heard sliding down all the way to the ground floor. Ethan gave her an appreciative nod for her artistry. He picked up an extremely well-read and tattered copy of The Price of Salt. This proved so fragile that its cover came off on landing.
"What was it like when you first met Randall?" he asked her.
"Why are you asking that?"
"I'm just asking it. Pass me the Rohmer?"
She shrugged and handed him the book. "He was the most magnificent man in the room. I knew I had to talk with him. So I went and asked him about books, and what life was like in America, and we just talked and talked and talked and talked until Paul dragged me away from him. But I had already decided that we had to run away together."
"Had he decided that too?"
"No. I had to persuade him over lunch the next day." She threw an elderly The Way We Live Now after the Rohmer.
"Does it have to be a crowded room, do you think?"
"No," said Diedre, decisively. "But it is statistically more likely." She looked at him shrewdly. "After you after stories of true romance, today?"
"We don't seem to have any of those here," he said, waving at the piles of books.
"But surely your mother told you glorious stories of how she met your father."
Ethan grimaced. "He was a human paragon the like of which shall never walk this earth again. But it still took her six months to get over his accent."
"You don't have an accent."
"Not any more, no. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."
"Can you still do your old one?"
He shook his head. "It sounds like a parody now, even to me."
"Say something anyway in it."
"No," he said. He threw a Ladybird book on Birds and Their Nests rather harder than he'd meant to.
"Is this about Ripper, then? Has he got a nice arse?"
Ethan looked at her. "What's got into you?"
She wriggled her shoulders. "Randall's talking about leaving here. He wants to go on a trip around the country, staying with all the people he knows from the festival and so on."
"But he'd come back, surely?"
"He's talking about months, Ethan. Months! I'd have to go with him. Sleeping in other people's back bedrooms on air mattresses."
"You'd have to break up with Tom," said Ethan. "He won't like that."
Diedre looked away. "His mother's sick. I can't break up with him now."
"If you leave it much longer, he'll propose."
"Oh God," said Diedre.
"Just make sure that the rest of us are in the house when you tell him. Then we can throw him out if we have to."
"Oh God," she said, again, burying her face in her hands.
The back door opened downstairs. Ethan could tell who it was from the tread in the kitchen. "That'll be Rupert now."
The footsteps came closer and then a sort of spluttering started, loudly enough that Diedre looked up and wiped her eyes.
"What, what has happened here?" demanded Rupert, as he came around the stairwell corner. He was clutching the books to his bosom and looked very angry.
"We've been throwing books down the stairs," said Diedre, rather less helpfully than Ethan might have liked.
Rupert looked speechless.
"It's all right, Rupert," said Diedre. "None of them are any good."
"Actually, some of them are," said Ethan. "And some of them aren't."
Ripper looked rather menacing now. "And where do you think this will end? Will you be throwing people down the stairs next?" He grabbed the other injured tomes and took them upstairs.
"That's not a fair argument," Diedre shouted after him.
Ethan sighed. He threw another few books down the stairwell, just for the sake of it. One of them chipped Randall's paint.
54.
Ripper locked his bedroom door with a ward. He put the books down on the windowsill and inspected the damage. Most of the volumes seemed to be all right, although there was a bent Trollope and a Nurse Turner Runs Away which had lost its back cover. He might have to admit that no great crimes against literature had been committed, but it was the principle of the thing.
Besides, he had to get some decent guitar time in anyway. He had a full day rehearsal with The Grins tomorrow and he hadn't been practising as much as he should. Their first gig together was Tuesday. He'd been far too distracted lately and the time off for the midsummer festival had not helped.
He started with a couple of songs he'd mastered some time ago, just to get his fingers warmed up. Then it was on to The Grins songs, which weren't technically all that complex, but did have some rather rapid stretches. He was determined to get the pieces right and thus vindicate their decision to hire him. He played for a couple of hours, taking short breaks here and here but without leaving the room.
Late in the afternoon, he heard Ethan come upstairs and pause outside the door, going away without knocking. Ripper fumbled the fingering and had to restart.
After a couple more numbers, Ethan's footsteps returned. A piece of paper slid under the door. It was too far away for Rupert to read. "I'm rehearsing," Ripper shouted.
A minute later, a second piece of paper was slid under the door. Rupert paused his playing and pulled out his glasses. In large letters, the second paper read, "I can tell."
The first piece of paper was headed, "Some English towns with Esplanades". Underneath was a long list of seaside towns. Rupert was surprised to see how many of them were on the Isle of Wight.
He wrote on the back of the paper, "What about Scotland and Wales?" and slid it back.
Soon after came the written response: "Won't know until Monday. Library now shut."
Rupert put down his guitar and put away his glasses. It was probably time for dinner anyway. He came out into the hall, clutching the pieces of paper.
"How are we going to narrow this down, exactly? Call up every town on the list and say we're hunting witches?"
"A witch-hunt?" said Ethan. "I suppose it is. But it's your turn to contribute. You think of something."
Rupert heard a noise from upstairs that rather distracted him. "Was that a scream?"
"Tom's watching Doctor Who," said Ethan. The television had been moved into the attic to prevent people wandering in and out of Adrienne's room at all hours. "Pub later?"
Rupert had a bit of time before the household set out for Saturday night at the pub. He decided it was time to call his parents.
The phone box was empty, apart from an empty beer bottle and a container of sherbet that had powdered the handset, making it sticky. He rang the number and fed in some change when he heard the pips.
They were at home, of course. His mother picked up the phone, but he could hear his father in the background, fussing with the dog. Every time Rupert said a sentence, his mother repeated it so his father could hear.
"Everything's going well," he said. "I was up at Stonehenge for midsummer." This started a maternal anecdote that he was loathe to interrupt, despite his dwindling change. "I've got my first gig with the new band on Tuesday. What? Ah, well, I mean that would be very lovely, but not this time, if that's all right, I'd be twice as nervous. But another time, of course. How are you both doing?" He put some more coins in. "Of course I'll be back for Christmas. That's months off though." Then, as an afterthought, he asked, "I don't suppose, I heard that, well, Eusapia Ciccarello was possibly in London, and-- No? A hermit. Really? Where? Well, the rumour I heard must be wrong then." He put his last coin into the machine. "And how's everything else? Right. No, really, I am sure, this is the right decision for me. I'm sure. I will. I do. You take care too."
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Date: 2011-07-13 01:46 pm (UTC)Lovely to see this story back. Always.