“Working?” said Tod.
“Yes, you have to earn the money to live, you know. It’s not difficult. It’s only a firm of accountants. Get there just before nine on Monday — today being Friday, of course — and go up to the fourth floor to Garter and Sixsmith and just walk in. You’ll find they’ll accept you as my replacement as soon as you give your name. Have you got all that?”
“Fourth floor at nine on Monday, Gutter and Sick-smith,” Tod repeated like one hypnotized. He had never, ever in his life, worked for wages. Perhaps the gods had decided it would be good for his soul. He knew numbers of people, back in the Pentarchy, who did work. His cousin Michael did. But Tod had never, ever had the slightest curiosity to know how it felt.
“Right. Then we’ll go and get the car,” Brother Tony said.
“Car?” Tod felt a certain brightening. There was a car went with this? His eye fell on a vehicle standing by Star House, large and sleek and gray, clearly a thing of power and beauty, and otherworld at once seemed a slightly better place.
“Yes, I’ll be leaving it with you,” Brother Tony joyed Tod’s heart by saying. “It belongs to Arth and I can’t take it to Hong Kong anyway. This way.”
They went briskly around a few more corners, and Tod’s step was nearly as jaunty as Brother Tony’s, until they came into the other end of the road from which they had started. It was lined with cars, parked closely on either side. Halfway down the line, Brother Tony stopped and felt for keys. Though none of the cars near was as beautiful as the gray one, there was a red one and a white one which were trim and passable. Tod’s spirits were quite high until he saw the car which Brother Tony was actually unlocking. Up to then, his eye had passed over it because he had not thought it was a car.
It was small. It had a domed top, like the head of an amiable but stupid dog, and a curious posture, down at the front and up at the back, as if the stupid dog were engaged in sniffing the gutter; and to make it more remarkable, it was not one colour but several random ones. The domed top was orange. One flimsy-looking door was green. The down-bending bonnet was sky-blue. The rest was a rusty sort of cream. It was like a jester — or someone’s idea of a joke.
“This,” Tod said, “is a car?”
“Yes,” Brother Tony answered, flinging wide the green door of the motley monster. He threw his leather bag in upon a smart pile of luggage on the rear seat. “It’s a Deux Chevaux. That means two horses, by the way. Get in.”
But it’s not even one horse! Tod thought, dubiously opening the other door, which was pink and appeared to be made of tin. It bent about as he moved it. He climbed in upon a seat made of the cloth they wiped dishes with in the kitchen of his Residence in Haurbath and gingerly sat. “Watch carefully,” Brother Tony was saying. “You’ll have to drive it back here. So watch the way too.”
“Where are we going?” Tod asked.
“To meet Paulie. The ritual will transfer her affections to you as soon as she sees you, don’t worry,” Brother Tony said cheerfully. “I just have to bring you together.”
Arth seemed to have thought of everything. Tod sat in wordless misery watching his companion insert a key into the shaky fascia of the little monster. In response, the monster growled and produced a tinny chugging which caused it to shake all over. Loose metal flapped. Tod shut his eyes. Then forced them open again because he was supposed to watch.
A few seconds were enough to show him that the controls were identical to those of his own superlative Delmo-Mendacci. He wondered if one was not borrowed from the other, and if so, which world had borrowed from which. He was inclined to think otherworld must have stolen the idea of cars from the Pentarchy. This thing Brother Tony was driving was so clearly a debased copy of a dim notion of a car. It went with the same disgraceful chugging with which it had begun, in what was probably a westerly direction, slowly and with obvious effort, toward the outskirts of the town. Tod hoped they were going right beyond the town, but those hopes were dashed when they had chugged into a wider, quieter neighborhood and Brother Tony announced they were nearly there. Fawn-colored houses, these were, or delicately reddish, standing individually at the back of little pieces of grass and driveway, each one a slightly different shape from its neighbors to show that it was the residence of persons who could afford to choose.
With the verve of long habit, Brother Tony swung the wheel of the motley little monster to chug down the sloping driveway of the most fawn-colored house of the lot. The little piece of grass in front of its clean new prim facade was adorned with sparse mauve-flowering bushes. “Here we are,” he said, and before Tod could move, he was hauling his smart luggage out of the rear seat. Having done this, he presented the keys of the subcar to Tod. “She’s all yours.” Leaving his luggage in the driveway, he went with jaunty steps to the front door — which was labeled with a tastefully crooked 42—and pushed a button there. Tod could hear the result inside. Ping-pong it went, dulcetly. Tod stood on the doorstep, resigned, as little tripping footsteps approached the door inside.
The woman who opened the door was plump and about Tod’s own height. Her hair was most carefully done in a sheeny, close-fitting way, with burnished fair highlights evidently applied afterward. Her face was exquisitely made-up, and the same care had been applied to the rest of her. The triangle of skin revealed above her bosom by her long floral robe was soft and white; the hand that held the door was equally soft and white, adorned with oval shiny pink nails and gold rings with diamonds in them; her small feet in high-heeled floral mules were as soft and white as the rest of her visible skin.
“Tony?” she said. Immaculate black eyelashes lay wide around her eyes as she stared at Tod.
Brother Tony leaned over Tod’s shoulder. “Paulie, let me introduce my good friend Roderick,” he said, and clapped Tod on the shoulder he was leaning over. “I just know the two of you will get on like a house on fire. Now I must fly — taxi’s here.” He retreated briskly and picked up his luggage. Tod looked around to see him climbing into a square, high black vehicle which had drawn up beyond the drive.
“Where’s he going?” Paulie said — not unreasonably, Tod thought.
“Hong Kong, I think,” Tod said.
“Oh.” The lash-rimmed eyes turned back to Tod. Paulie’s carefully pink mouth smiled. Behind that, she had an air of being slightly bewildered.
“Well, won’t you come in, Roddy?”
Arth knew its stuff. Tod reluctantly advanced into a small, shiny hallway as Brother Tony’s taxi pulled away, where he stood smelling the several perfumes emanating from Paulie. She had certainly been waiting, all prepared to meet Tony, he thought while she was shutting the front door, but she was accepting a scruffy-looking substitute without a blink. Fear and hatred of Arth grew in him. She led him forward into a sitting room as carefully decorated as she was herself, with not a shiny cushion nor a little brass ornament that was not evidently placed exactly so. She induced him into a soft, clean chair and sat beguilingly on a tuffet at his knees. Tod’s misery increased.
“Do you want a drink, Roddy?”
“No, thanks.” It was not that he did not like plump women, Tod told himself. His taste ran to all sorts. But this Paulie’s plumpness had a solid, sorbo-rubber look to it, and looked hard to dent. As one who had had his arms around Zillah only — yes, it really was only a couple of hours ago! — Tod felt decidedly off plumpness. But there was more to it than that. Paulie was so carefully got up, perfumed and coiffured and jeweled. He found he kept remembering the time, a year or so ago, when he had accompanied his father on a state visit to Leathe. The Ladies who had met them there were all equally carefully dressed and perfumed and lacquered. And they had talked to him in the same soft, high, charming voices that Paulie was using at this moment.