Stories: All-New Tales

“Then whoever he is, he hasn’t a notion how angry he’s making me!” I said.

“The idiot thinks he’s wooing you,” Liam said. “He probably belongs to one of those societies where they trail about in medieval clothes, or armour and so forth. But he’s also up to date enough to tamper with your Housebot and probably bug your phone. So think of any of the rich men you know who fits this description and then you’ll have him. Come on. Think.”

I had been trying to think. But you try thinking with a row of parrots sitting on the rail of your bed and the rest swooping about shouting that they love you. I had made no progress. I sat and watched raindrops plop into my coffee and thought hard. I do know a lot of rich men. You do, in my trade. But they were all mostly media men and those are not romantic. A more cynical lot you can’t imagine. Unless I had annoyed one of them of course…And most of the clothes designers are gay.

“Oh,” said Liam. “My other conjecture is that he’s thoroughly unattractive. I suspect he’s used to having to pay a lot to get women interested. Rather pathetic really.”

I instantly thought of the truly unattractive set of fellows Mother had introduced me to on Christmas Eve. “That’s it!” I cried out. “Bless you, Liam! I’ll phone Mother this evening.”

“I don’t think it’s your mother doing it,” he said.

“No, no,” I said and explained. He agreed that I might be on the right track and we talked it over for a while. Then he said, “By the way, the trees will be pear trees,” and handed me a list. “So you’ll know what to expect next,” he told me and got up and left. Just like that.

I was too angry to look at the list. I wish I had.

December 31, 2233, New Year’s Eve

I’M GOING TO THREE parties today, so I’m getting out of my bird-infested flat as soon as I can. But I did ring Mother. I raved at her rather. She may have thought I was insane at first, but when I calmed down and described the geese-by the way, the one on the sofa had laid an egg when I got back-she began to see I might be having real trouble. She said, in the cautious, respectful way she always talks about money, “Well, you might be talking about Franz Dodeca, I suppose. Not that he would do a thing like that, of course. He owns Multiphones and SpeekEasi and Household Robotics and he’s a multimillionaire and he’s naturally very much respected.”

“Which is he?” I asked. “Of the freaks you introduced to me.”

“Not freaks, darling,” she said reproachfully. “He was the one with the charming diamante teeth.”

I thought grimly of this Dodeca, a short fat man in an unbecoming pin-striped suit. A pale freckled creature, I recalled, with thin reddish hair scraped back over his freckled scalp. He kept baring those dreadful glittering teeth at me in creepy smiles. And this idiot owns my diary, my phone and my Housebot! I hoped he swallowed one of his teeth and choked. “Tell him,” I said to Mother, “to stop sending me birds. Tell him he hasn’t got a chance. Tell him he’s destroyed his already nonexistent chances by stalking me this way. Tell him no and go away!”

Mother demurred. I could tell she was reluctant to pass up the chance of all that money in the family. But after I had told her at least ten times that there was absolutely no chance of my marrying this idiot, even if he owned the universe, she said, “Well, darling, I’ll phone him and try to put it tactfully.”

If she did phone dear Franz, she has had no effect. The swans arrived this morning, seven of them. Along with six more geese, et cetera, et cetera. At least I got five more gold rings. They came with a note of dreadful pleading, signed, “Your eternally loving Franz,” which looked odd in round shop-assistant writing. I suppose Mother must have phoned the man, since he seems to know that his cover is now blown. But it doesn’t seem to have stopped him.

The swans had obviously been drugged. The delivery crew carried them in big drooping armfuls, through the living room and onto the patio, where they carefully wedged them into the pool. The geese waddled in after. There are now twelve of them and they’re laying eggs everywhere. As if it wasn’t enough to be overrun with hens-also laying-and a new set of green screaming parrots. The swans were just waking up when I left. Housebot tried to make me an omelette before I went and I nearly threw up.

January 1, 2234, New Year’s Day

THANK HEAVENS! EVEN THE Dodeca millions can’t make anyone in this country work on New Year’s Day. No further birds arrived. Nothing came. Relief! Or it would be if the swans didn’t fight the geese all the time. And I realised when I got in around four this morning that the place smells. Horribly. Of bird droppings, rotting seeds and old feathers. Housebot can’t keep up with the cleaning.

I shall have to stop wearing my Stiltskins. My feet are killing me after last night. One of my big toes has gone kind of twisted. I have very hazy memories of the fun, though I do recall that I ran into Liam at the Markhams’ fireworks party and, besides jeering at my Stiltskins, he wanted to know if I’d consulted his list yet. I said I didn’t want to know. I told him about dear Franz too-I think. He was, I dimly remember, insistent that I throw away my phone and scrap Housebot. The man has no idea!

But this memory has made me realise that I will almost certainly get more swans and more geese tomorrow. I can’t rely on Mother to stop them. There is no more room in the patio pool. But it has occurred to me that the big house next door, which belongs to my last-stepfather-but-two, has a large garden with an ornamental as-it-were lake in it. I shall phone Stepdaddy Five. As far as I know, he’s still in a hut in Bali, recovering from having been married to Mother.

I got through to him eventually. He was, as ever, sweet about it all. “Isn’t that just like your mother!” he said. “I know Franz Dodeca slightly. He’s a total obsessive, too rich for his own good. Come here to Bali and I’ll undertake to keep him off you.”

Well, I couldn’t do that. It strikes me as incest. Instead I asked him to lend me the garden of his house next door. He agreed like a shot and gave me the entry code at once. But he warned me that his caretaker gardener might not be pleased. He said he would phone this Mr. Wilkinson and explain. “And keep me posted,” he said. “Nothing happens here in Bali. It suits me, but I like a hit of distant action from time to time.”

January 2, 2234

JUST AS WELL I made that arrangement with Stepdaddy Five. They brought yesterday’s swans et cetera today, plus today’s lot, making fourteen inert, heavy floppy swans and twelve more geese. I showed the lot through Stepdaddy Five’s front door and out to the lake in his garden. The geese seemed to like it there. When the trees and the pigeons and the hens came, I showed them out there too. But the parrots had to stay with me because they were not hardy enough, they said. At least I got ten more gold rings.

We are getting seriously short of bird food. I went round to the corner shop, but they don’t open till tomorrow. Avian Foodstuffs are on holiday for the week. Again.

I don’t believe this! The swans were not all. I was just about to cross the road from the corner shop when I saw, trudging and bawling down the street, a whole herd of cows. Eight of them anyway. They were being driven by eight young women who, to do them justice, were looking a bit self-conscious about it. People in cars and on the pavements were stopping to stare. Some folk had followed them from Picadilly, apparently. You don’t often see cows in London these days.

My stomach felt queer. I knew they were for me. And they were. Honestly, how can this Dodeca even imagine I might want eight cows? Cows are not in the least romantic. Their noses run and they drop cowpats all the time as they walk. They dropped more cowpats through Stepdaddy Five’s nice hallway as I showed the lot of them out into his garden. I said to the girls, “If you want to stay, this house has fourteen bedrooms and there’s a pizza takeaway down the road. Feel free.” I was feeling more than a little light-headed by then. The parrots don’t help.

Now it’s got worse. Mr. Wilkinson arrived half an hour after the cows and bawled me out for allowing a herd of cows to trample his lawn. I said I would get rid of them as soon as I could. I was going to phone Mother and extract this Dodeca’s phone number from her and then phone him and tell him to come and take his livestock away. And see how he liked it. Before I could, though, a severe