Here Be Monsters

'Once upon a time, anyway.'

The light had half-blinded her for an instant, but her next step took her into shadow again.

Nothing very special, indeed: neither horns nor halo, neither Caliban nor Hyperion in retirement. Just another old man.

'Forgive me, Dr Thomas.' In that moment of half-blindness she had missed his first reaction to her. Now she saw only that he wanted to recognize her, from his gallery of wives and sisters of long ago, but couldn't do so. 'Elizabeth Loftus, Dr Thomas.' Just another old man: younger than old Mr Willis, but much taller and thinner, and sun-browned (sun-browned with perhaps a hint of dear Major Birkenshawe's whisky-flush, maybe), leathery-tanned by age and sun and alcohol. 'We haven't met.'

'Until now.' He smiled the correction at her, and pushed his spectacles up his nose with his index finger. And then smiled again, without embarrassment at what was in sharp focus at last.

'But we have met,' said Audley from behind. 'Back in the deeps of time, Haddock.'

Haddock Thomas stared past her, frowning slightly, but only with the effort of memory, with no outward hint of any emotion. Yet then, if he wasn't what he had seemed all these years, he would be good, thought Elizabeth bleakly. Too good, in fact.

'Don't tell me, now.' For the first time there was the very slightest hint of Welshness beneath the gravel. 'My eyes are not what they were - ' The eyes, faded china-blue, came back to Elizabeth ' - too much staring into the sun, you see, Elizabeth Loftus. Long ago it was a matter of life-or-death to look into it - 'The Hun in the Sun' behind you was very likely to be the last thing you ever saw, with no need to worry about old age. But from this terrace I have watched the sun over too many cloudless days, and the moon rise over starlit nights of dreams - Axel Munthe was right, he knew the price of sinning. But, of course, he also knew that the price was worth paying, for the sin. And that's one of the world's troubles today: the crass belief that we have a right to something for nothing.

When, in fact, we have no rights at all - and even nothing is expensive. Indeed, nothing may prove to be the most expensive commodity of all - even more costly than the sun itself.'

'He was always like this, Elizabeth,' said Audley. 'Or, perhaps not quite so philosophically pompous when he was younger. But quite bad enough, as I remember.'

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Haddock Thomas continued to look at her. 'It's the voice, you see, Miss Loftus - Mrs Loftus

- ?'

'Miss, Dr Thomas.' She mustn't like him: they had all succumbed to him - his pupils, his equals, even his interrogator and the friend whose girl he had taken - they had all liked him.

'Miss Loftus. The eye can be a great deceiver. Not merely in the present - not merely the picture which lies, or the quickness of the conjuror's hand - it deceives memory too. Smell is much better, perhaps best of all, so long as it lasts. But sound now… 'a tinkling piano in the next apartment' and the cry of John Peel's hounds, and the leather on the willow…' He placed his cigar on an ash-tray beside his glass and then offered her his hand. 'And now I believe they've proved that every voice has its print, as unique as every finger, Miss Loftus.'

Audley loomed in the corner of her vision, in full sunlight.

'And David Audley?' He relinquished her hand and offered it to Audley. ''Dr Audley, I presume?' should I say?'

Audley said nothing for a moment, as the sound of a car, close but invisible, rose from below the terrace wall.

Beep-baaarp-beep!

'Haddock.' The two men measured each other for changes. 'It's been a long time. But you look well.'

'A long time, indeed. So do you. still doing the same job? Much higher up, though?'

'The same job, Haddock,' said Audley gently. 'I follow my destiny.'

'Still on The Wall?' Haddock Thomas looked at Elizabeth. 'I'm sorry, Miss Loftus. An old joke - a very old joke, indeed.'

She mustn't let them patronize her. 'But they say the old jokes are the best ones, Dr Thomas. May I share it?'

'I don't know that you will find it very amusing.'

'An RAF joke?' She watched him. 'Or a Civil Service joke, perhaps? Or a schoolboy joke?

Give me a clue.'

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He measured her with a look. Actually, he had measured her already, but with an eye only on bust and waist, hip and leg, quite unashamedly. But this time the measurement was a different one. 'It is a Kipling joke, Miss Loftus. A Rudyard Kipling joke.' The Welsh was more pronounced. 'Are you a reader of the great mart's works?'

She dared not look at Audley. Paul always made outrageous fun of his obsessive weakness for Kipling, deliberately quoting back to him. But somehow she didn't think this was that kind of joke. 'I read him when I was a child, Dr Thomas.'

'But not afterwards? A pity! Much of his best work is for grown-ups. But then the English have a blind spot there. Which is all part of their guilty misapprehension of their history, as well as of him. But no matter, eh?' He was looking at Audley now. 'I told him - oh, it must have been almost before you were born, I told him - that he would never gain preferment in his line of business… Or, that when it was offered to him, he would not want it - like Kipling's Roman centurion… who was not a Roman at all, of course, for he had never seen Rome, nor known the heyday of Rome, but only lived with his legends and his illusions.

But there! I told him he would gain no preferment, and receive no thanks, if he chose to serve on The Wall - the Great Wall - the wall which the Emperor Hadrian caused to be built, to keep out the