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  The whole matter would probably have been settled very quickly, had not my father made me promise to hold out for something he had to explain, some relic of his own working life called a pension.

  Once that trifling issue was resolved, the Fire King gave me to understand, communicating via his châtelaine, that I had become the Watchman.

  The châtelaine was called Aula and I had reason to believe she was very desirable. She had an extremely husky voice, especially after she had been hollering at me for a while. All I could discern from on high was her long black hair, which glistened like an elf fresh from the womb tank, and the reaction, very obvious from my privileged view, all the men of the court displayed as she swept by. They would puff themselves up whenever they saw her and in her wake stand a little apart, as though they would have liked to split themselves off into some fantasy realm where they might be King for just a short while.

  I had no such aspirations. The job of watchman suited me down to the ground, which was an awfully long way. It provided many long days and nights of staring at unbroken and rather uninspiring vistas during which, as long as no military activity broke me into a run back to court, I wondered how I might see Aula properly for myself.

  Not only did the prospect seem hopeless, but potentially pointless. Life at the Fire King’s court was probably rather dull for the rank and file, which was all I should be if I ever returned to my original size. Fun was for the noble families.

  At first what I hated most about my accident was that it compelled me to receive my impressions of life at second hand. Gradually I came to understand things had never been any different.

  The revelation that I had never amounted to anything, that I was coarse and vulgar and not at all eligible for a wealthy woman, only made me the more determined to set eyes on Aula. Anyone who could help me reach that goal, I should count a friend.

  The prospect of crossing the sea terrified me.

  The hardest part was stepping into those waves that inevitably called to mind the fluid of the growth vat in which I had almost drowned.

  In the event, the water came no higher than my waist. Even so, I did not feel as though I was making quick enough progress. Unlikely as it was that anyone would come to check on me, they would not have to ride all the way from court to see I had deserted my coastal post. I gritted my teeth and forced myself on, but efforts to speed up only resulted in losing my footing and moments of thrashing panic.

  Sweat from my exertions and seawater had drenched me by the time I reached the Fnurgylian shore.

  I held my forearm in front of my eyes and walked on past the musketeers. I tried not to tread on any since they would come in handy later.

  I came before long to what passed for the royal palace. It was nowhere near as well appointed nor fortified as the Fire King’s, and I began to wonder if I had not come to the wrong place. But Fnurgylia was the nearest country that had not yet accepted the Fire King as lord. It was my best chance.

  The King of Fnurgylia and I reached agreement very quickly. I even remembered to ask for another pension. I had to assume that my act of high treason would constitute grounds for withholding the one the Fire King had promised me.

  I returned to my post. Months passed. It felt like it would take the Fnurgylian craftsmen forever to produce what was needed. Since I had no hope of sleeping, I volunteered for extra shifts. Really I had nothing to do with my spare time except hang around outside the palace in the hope of seeing what there was to see of Aula. I did not want to do that in case I freaked her out.

  For that was what I was: a freak, an outcast. If I had been given the opportunity to return to my old job at the elf factory, I would have taken it.

  Perhaps I slept; at any rate I dreamed of turning up to work one morning, changing the bawdy calendar and exchanging meaningless pleasantries with meaningless colleagues.

  I was large; it was only right that I should be in charge, and able to consummate my marriage to Aula. I would rest content knowing that I had overleaped all the fine families and the Fire King himself.

  Once I began to think about that consummation, it seemed only a few minutes before the Fnurgylian beacons were lit to signal the completion of their great siege tower.

  It had no wheels because it needed none. On top was a huge handle. The Fnurgylian horde boarded. I picked it up. The soldiers screamed. Even the King screamed. I thought this was a bad sign. I was glad I was going to be my people’s king; I would not have wanted to lumber them with an ineffectual ruler.

  I began the journey back across the sea at dusk. I put the siege tower on my shoulder to keep it dry. It was heavier than I had expected and the Fnurgylians were constantly shouting in my ear that I should be careful lest they drown and complaining I wasn’t providing a smooth enough ride. I was sick of them already and instructed them to be quiet or I would drop the lot of them in the middle of the sea.

  Their harangues took up so much of my attention that I had almost reached my home shore before I noticed the black-armoured elves like beetles spread out the whole length of the beach.

  The catapults seemed to leap of their own accord. Stones smacked the sea either side of me. One caught me on my free shoulder; if it had struck the siege tower, the offensive would have been over before it began.

  The Fnurgylian musketeers returned fire. The reports were so close to my ear that they caused me grief and made me signal them to stop, but they did not understand because few of them had troubled to learn my sign language. Even those like the King who must have taken my meaning were driven beyond rational or any other kind of discussion by mortal dread.

  There was little point in what they were doing: the musket is such an inaccurate weapon that the only reason elves died was because there were so many of them and so closely packed. There could be no question of the Fnurgylians resisting such a cohort as I had never seen. It was as though every elf that had passed through the factory in my lifetime was now ranged against me.

  In my heart I knew that as soon as I hit the beach I would just have to run for it. Given all the time in the world, I would never have come up with a better strategem.

  I crooked my right elbow across my eyes and grasped the siege tower on my left shoulder with my right hand. I stooped as I mounted the beach and flailed planlessly with my left hand to do any damage I could. I overturned a few catapults at haphazard, but there were always more. A stone struck me on the mouth, breaking a front tooth.

  The elves abandoned their engines of war and swarmed over me.

  The weight of them was negligible at first, but they advanced without regard for each other’s safety. All their higher functions had been stunted by the rapidity of their growth, which left time for little more than the basest instincts. They did not need telling to kill if they possibly could, or to die trying.

  They entered through my nostrils. I realised I was running out of time.

  Enough of them had kept hold of their blades that their million pinpricks began to tell. Without any one decisive blow being struck, I was being cut to pieces.

  I lengthened my stride, hawked and spat elves.

  The Fire King’s court was not so very far. Yet I was so very tired. The night was cold and I was wet through, slick with sweat and now with blood. Elves lost their grip on me and fell to their death, but there were always more as only a factory could supply.

  The elves scaled the siege tower on my shoulder. The Fnurgylians repulsed them with everything they had: muskets, crossbows, cavalry sabres, the burning carcasses of their horses. If the elves did not do for me, my passengers surely would.

  The first thing I saw of the court was the Fire King himself, standing on the battlements flanked by witches.

  While I was still a long way off, their blue fire came to greet me. A great gale of it struck me. I shut my eyes and kept walking—running was out of the question.

  The fire burned away the layers of elves.

  I stumbled up to the Fire King’s castle and fell on
my face before it. I dropped the siege tower into the central courtyard but I had no chance to see its fate on impact because I was all but unconscious on the ground before the walls.

  I smelled my hair smouldering.

  I must get up. I did not want to die there, probably only yards from Aula and victory. But it was a great comfort to lie in the cool grass and wait for the end.

  If I died, there was no way I would be able to claim my pension. My father would be disappointed.

  I got to my feet. The fireball above the Fire King’s head was very large and very blue. Upon the Fire King’s face was a grin so broad even I could see it. He drew back his hands to fling the fire at me.

  I dropped what was left of my trousers and let my bladder go, as I had done so many times over the growth vat.

  The fire went out. The witches howled. The Fnurgylian soldiers, tired and burned and awash with elven and human blood, staggered up the stairs to the battlements and slew everyone they found there.

  They did not slay the Fire King. The force of my deluge had hurled him from the wall. He lay in a pile of jumbled angles in the courtyard and steamed gently.

  Aula ran to him. She was in no danger: even the Fnurgylians could see she had that ethereal quality not of this world and they made way for her.

  I was sorry she wept, angry she wept for the Fire King instead of for me, the victim of untold injustice.

  With a delicacy born at least in part of my exhaustion, I bent over and picked her up between thumb and forefinger.

  The siege tower was miraculously intact: if nothing else, the Fnurgylians were formidable carpenters. I dropped her into it, picked it up by the handle and set it again on my shoulder.

  By the time I got to the elf factory it was full daylight.

  Aula had long since stopped screaming into my ear. Setting out to call me all the names under the sun, she had run dry after a very short time—evidently she did not fraternise all that much with the lower orders—and resorted to pleading and cajoling. If I would only let her go, she would see to it I got a full pardon and all sorts of other things I did not need. Nothing bound me now to the King of Fnurgylia, but I was counting on him lacking the imagination to work out how to subjugate me. Perhaps he would die in battle, against some extant king or a brand new one who crowned himself for the express purpose of taking over the Fire King’s domain.

  The only thing I wanted was inside the factory. I would deposit the siege tower in the growth vat so that Aula and I could be together forever.

  No-one warned the Overseer I was coming: the witches’ keep was deserted. I stopped in front of the factory, judged where the vat would be and tore the roof off with my free hand.

  The workers all looked up at me in shock.

  There were only three or four of them in that whole bright shiny place.

  The alchemical vats and stills were all gone. Elves were being made by the new machines from abroad at a fraction of the cost. As I watched, they spilled out of the far end of the machine fifty abreast.

  I set the siege tower down gently. Then I went to my parents’ house and crawled under my tarpaulin and curled into a foetal ball.

  A Queer Trade

  Norm and I huddled around the gas fire and tried to think of ways to make money.

  ‘Health and Safety is the problem,’ Norm said. ‘By the time we’d done all the due diligence, we’d be old and grey. I say we go for some kind of scam.’

  Norm wasn’t naturally a cruel man, hadn’t been when I met him. The world hadn’t been kind and that was all. I made him tea and toast to cheer him up. I knew better than to interrupt him when he was having one of his ideas.

  ‘Any fool can set up a website. We’ll take PayPal, withdraw all the money after a week and shut everything down. Then do it all over again.’

  After a while I stopped listening. Men need an audience much more than they need help or advice.

  When Norm finally went off to learn how to build a website, I picked up The Club of Queer Trades by GK Chesterton. It was there that I found inspiration, but I didn’t dare interrupt Norm straightaway. I knew I had to wait for his enthusiasm to simmer down.

  Ten minutes later he came back to the fire. It was freezing in the bedroom.

  ‘Getting on alright?’ I asked.

  Norm shrugged. ‘Everybody else in the known universe is doing incredibly well, according to Facebook.’

  ‘What did you find out about building a site?’

  ‘Make us another cuppa, would you?’

  I put the kettle on, and then I told Norm my idea. I didn’t mention it was really Chesterton’s: Norm thought reading was a waste of time.

  ‘You know how everybody likes to be clever?’

  ‘I am clever,’ Norm said. ‘It’s just that people don’t recognise it because I’m not exactly the same kind of clever as everybody else. And if you’re not the marketable kind of clever, you might as well give up.’

  ‘There you are. It’s not enough just to be clever. You have to be seen to be clever too. Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course you do. What good is it else?’

  ‘But you can’t always guarantee to show off your cleverness to best advantage, can you? You’re dependent on being fed the right lines. What you really need is a straight man. Better yet, if you’re a man, you need a straight woman. She can set you up for the punchline and provide an audience too.’

  ‘Hurry up with that tea. I’m gasping.’

  I poured. ‘We could monetise this.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’m sure people would pay for the privilege of looking clever.’ In Chesterton, the pay was a guinea a night, but I had no idea how much that was in today’s money.

  Norm mulled it over. He drank two cups of tea and ate two slices of my banana bread before the penny, or perhaps the guinea, finally dropped.

  ‘So you’re saying we approach people—wealthy people, influential people—and offer to make them look good for money.’

  ‘That’s it.’ I had to give him a stake in the idea, otherwise he wouldn’t be interested.

  ‘But don’t they score points off their friends in public anyway? Isn’t that how they got to the top in the first place?’

  ‘Even if it is, they must know it’s a risk. They daren’t humiliate anyone completely, just in case the boot is ever on the other foot.’

  ‘Whereas if they were paying a stooge, they could say and do whatever they liked.’

  ‘As long as the price was right.’

  Norm was getting the hang of it. ‘So we would guarantee to make them look good, no holds barred.’

  I kissed him on his large forehead. ‘I think they’d pay for that. Don’t you?’

  ‘How would we advertise? If one person sees our advert, they all see it. The cat would be out of the bag.’

  I had thought of that. ‘The only way we could possibly do it is by word of mouth. Some of the people I knew slightly at university have done pretty well for themselves. I bet they’d help us get off the ground.’

  Norm promised to review his own Facebook contacts, but inevitably it was one of mine who gave us our start.

  Julian was surprised to hear from me, but pleased all the same. He was a busy man these days, with branches and affiliates all across Europe. It so happened he had a gala opening coming up in London, and while he didn’t think his kudos desperately needed boosting Norm offered him very reasonable rates, seeing as this was our first gig.

  ‘Obviously we want expenses and perks on top of our fee,’ Norm said to me after Julian had messaged back to confirm. ‘He’s going to have to pay for me to hire a monkey suit. I suppose you’ll want a new dress. And we both want plenty of free drinks.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to price ourselves out of the market. I suggest we pay up front and claim it back afterwards, while Julian’s still basking in the glow.’

  ‘Do you think we ought to practise our witty banter?’

  ‘We’
ll need to do better than that. We’ll have to send him a script.’

  Norm frowned. ‘Are you seriously expecting me to learn lines? Can I write them on my cuff?’

  ‘What would happen if anybody saw? You’re going to have to commit this to memory.’

  ‘Where are we going to get all this witty banter from?’

  I took my Complete Works of Oscar Wilde off the shelf. ‘This should get us started. If not, there are plenty of film scripts online.’

  Norm said he’d try and crank out a first draft. He shut himself in the bedroom with our old desktop. After a couple of hours I went in to check on him, on the pretext of bringing him more tea. He’d fallen asleep in front of Facebook, Twitter and iPlayer.

  In the end I wrote the script myself. Julian loved it. Norm hated it.

  ‘I can’t let him say that about me. I’ll look a right knob.’

  ‘That, my darling, is what we’re getting paid for.’

  I was impatient to press on with the clothes shopping. Since Norm and I had moved in together we’d done only the bare minimum. I was sick of Primark: it pricked my conscience every time.

  ‘I thought we were going to hire stuff,’ Norm complained.

  ‘This is a business we’re running here. We’ll need posh togs every time. It’s easy for you: you can keep on wearing the same suit.’

  Norm handed me his credit card. ‘I’m thirsty. Meet me in Spoon’s. You know my sizes, don’t you?’

  I knew his sizes, and how they had increased over the last six months. Unemployment was hitting him hard.

  It had been a while since I had had chance to restock my wardrobe properly. I made the most of it. By the time I rejoined Norm, he was the worse for wear. If I’d treated myself to the really leisurely trip I had intended, they would probably have thrown him out.