The Drosten's Curse Read online

  OUT ON THE GOLF course, now shimmering with heat under the June sun, a peculiar person struggled with his golf bag, which seemed to be much larger than was necessary. It was almost taller than him. But then, he was on the small side. Once again his putter fell to the grass and once again a fellow golfer spotted him flailing about just where he shouldn’t be and yelled, ‘Get out of the way, man! Fore, for heaven’s sake! Fore!’

  As he picked up his putter, only to watch several woods clatter onto the carefully manicured turf in a heap, the figure sighed and wondered, ‘Four of what? I don’t think I even have one of them…I don’t think…’ He was out of his depth, as he usually was, and felt distinctly hot and uncomfortable in his black woollen unsuitable suit. He peered in the direction of the Fetch Hotel and the Fetch Hotel front entrance and the Fetch Hotel reception desk and the area near to the reception desk and the precise spot – which he could only guess at longingly – where Bryony Mailer was standing at that very moment.

  He sighed again, this time from the soles of his feet, right up to the ends of each hair on his head. It was horrible being in love. It was considerably more horrible being in love with someone too beautiful for you to even look at properly – unless you knew they were looking somewhere else and you wouldn’t have to meet their eyes and blush and then want to burst into flames or evaporate or something. It was more horrible still when you understood completely that the person you loved clearly found you far less interesting than watching a pebble. It was most horrible when your love could never be, not in any way, not ever.

  He sighed again until he felt completely hollowed out and didn’t even flinch when a golf ball sliced past him, close enough for him to hear the way its tiny dimples disturbed the air.

  Some of the balls had dimples and some of them didn’t – Putta couldn’t understand that, either…

  ‘Fore, you moron! Fore!’ An irate voice screamed away to his left.

  He really would have to work out this four thing. He bent to gather up his clubs with a heavy and tragically romantic heart.

  AS A GOLF BALL landed much further away from the twelfth green than its owner had intended, Bryony thumbed through her stack of pending reservation slips while deciding – yet again – that she hated golf, hated golfers, hated golfers’ wives (did they have no lives of their own?) and that she really hated her ex-boyfriend Mick (a non-golfer) for having sapped her confidence, just when she’d been making postgraduate career decisions. A year ago, she’d thought working here would be relaxing and give her a taste of real life, and maybe she could write a book about…something…something to do with history…in her evenings off before becoming a stunningly attractive and popular young professor somewhere. Now she knew she was bored out of her mind, was never going to write anything if she didn’t get away from the horrible Fetch premises and horrible Fetch guests and the horrible Mr Mangold. Bryony was equally certain that she had no idea what came next. Her lack of clarity about what came next was scary and why she hadn’t left yet.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry terribly much about that, you know,’ said a friendly, velvety kind of voice.

  Bryony glanced up to see a very tall man studying her from the doorway. He grinned with rather more teeth than one person should have. He appeared to have been dressed by a committee, possibly a drunk committee: wing collar and something that might once have been a cravat, baggy oatmeal trousers, brown checked waistcoat, plum-coloured velvet jacket with bulging pockets, raddled shoes…an immense and disreputable scarf with a life of its own…‘These things quite often work themselves out in highly unpredictable ways. Luck has a lot to do with it. Although one can make one’s own luck, I always think. At least I think I think that. Or else someone told me that. Probably someone lucky.’ He made his way across the foyer towards her, half loping and half tiptoeing with a general air of being highly delighted to see everything around him including the dust on the broken grandfather clock. ‘Ah, not a grandfather clock, you know – a grandmother clock. They’re a touch smaller…Someone told me that, too. At some point.’ Bryony thought she had never encountered anyone so remarkable in her life.

  She was right.

  As the man toped, or liptoed, up to Bryony’s desk he continued amiably, ‘Quite possibly you’ll discover you’re a creature of infinite resource. It’s very warm for January, isn’t it? Or then again I may have missed January and I’m definitely not in Chicago. Am I?’

  Bryony heard herself say, ‘Arbroath. Or a few miles outside Arbroath…And it’s June.’ Somehow the width of the stranger’s grin was making her feel as if she had entered a different layer of reality – a previously secret and peculiar layer where locations and dates were no longer certain.

  ‘Well, that’s quite close. I degaussed the Mackenzie Trench circuit before I set off. Which sometimes works. But mostly not, now that I think about it.’ And he smiled again, even more largely. ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor.’ He seemed somehow like her oldest friend, like a wonderful relative she’d heard a lot about but never met.

  Bryony, while wondering how any human being could have that much hair – this kind of dense, lolloping head of wildly curly hair – fumbled through all the possible replies she could make to this Doctor person. Among them were, ‘Who on earth are you really, though?’ and ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’ and ‘What?’ and ‘Do you ever wash that scarf? Or can’t you because it would object? Would it be like trying to wash a cat…?’

  While she urred and ahed and didn’t make any proper words at all, the Doctor nodded patiently, even slightly annoyingly, as if he were coaxing a dim child through a really easy sum. On the one hand he was clearly the type of person who should make anyone sensible very nervous, but on the other he filled her with the deepest sense of trust she’d ever experienced. Which took her right back to supposing she ought to be nervous.

  Eventually, she managed, ‘Do you have a reservation?’ Which was a completely boring thing to say and made him look gently disappointed.

  ‘A reservation? Well, no, I don’t believe I do. When I travel I generally bring my own accommodation.’ The Doctor’s very large and very curious eyes lifted to ponder the ceiling while his monologue ambled along both gently and unpreventably. ‘I might be due a holiday, of course. I always forget to take them. Usually someone reminds me, but there’s no one to do that for me at the moment.’

  Just for a second as she met the Doctor’s eyes, Bryony experienced a stab of immense loneliness – almost unimaginable and inhuman isolation. This was followed by something much more pleasant, something very like the type of excitement she’d experienced as a child when she’d looked forward to holidays or birthday presents.

  Bryony shook her head and wondered if she really should have searched about for overlooked biscuits, or rummaged in the second-from-the-left desk drawer for that dog-eared packet of Orangeade Spangles and eaten something, because she did feel a bit weird. But then – like so many humans – she let her mind simply dodge away from something too unusual to be comfortable. Instead, she decided to wonder if this Doctor person was just some weirdo who was camped in the scrub by the lake – they’d had that kind of problem before. He smelled a bit peculiar. Then again, it was a clean kind of smell: more like the way the air smelled right before a thunderstorm with a trace of added icing sugar than the scent of someone who had woken up in a tent.

  The Doctor continued, while apparently trying not to laugh. ‘I was lost in a virtual jungle for a while quite recently. Have you ever been lost in a virtual jungle? Takes it out of you. Perhaps I should have a holiday?’ He eyed her name tag. ‘Bryony Mailer, do you think I need a holiday? Should I stay here?’ Then he looked straight at her the way an extremely bright boy might if he were expecting ice cream.

  And Bryony Mailer thought – This is it. This is what’s next.

  Then she told the Doctor. ‘Yes. I think you should stay. You should stay here.’

  AT THE MOST SECLUDED edge of the Fetch Estate in a small, bu
t dazzlingly well-equipped cottage, Mrs Julia Fetch rearranged her extensive collection of glass octopuses (or octopodes). She had them made in Venice by an increasingly elderly team of master glass blowers, lamp workers and glass artists. She softly ran her – she had to admit – increasingly elderly fingers across the rounded head of an Octopus rubescens and gently waved at the perfectly modelled tentacles of a red-spot night octopus, or Octopus dierythraeus. She smiled.

  As the years had passed, she’d found that she had become slightly forgetful, perhaps even very forgetful – she could barely picture her long-ago husband’s face – but she had perfect recall when it came to the names of octopus species. She had always been fond of octopodes (or octopuses) and she was using a tiny fraction of her monumental cash reserves to have every variety of octopus modelled in glass. There were over a hundred to reproduce and each exquisitely delicate sculpture took nearly a year of the craftsmen’s work. It was very possible that she wouldn’t quite manage to see the collection completed. She was also sole patron and very generous supporter of the Julia Fetch Foundation for the Care and Support of Octopuses (or Octopodes). These were really her only two remaining indulgences, apart from the cottage’s fantastic kitchen – which she hardly used – and the marble-lined bathroom and generously proportioned bath in which she soaked her sometimes rather achy limbs, while wishing that she had more legs. Or more arms. Or both.

  When she was younger, Mrs Fetch had enjoyed the usual toys and treats of the ultra-rich: buying sports cars and villas on sun-kissed coastlines, owning a London townhouse and a moderately sized castle (with village attached) quite near Folkestone, running stables full of racehorses and country estates all of which were seething with fat, juicy, slow-moving game birds and succulent deer. But she didn’t really enjoy driving, and paying other people to drive her Bugattis and Duesenburgs and Alfa Romeos had seemed silly. Filling her villas (and the townhouse and the castle) with loud strangers hadn’t been nearly as much fun as she’d expected, and filling them with friends was very difficult because having friends when you’re vastly rich just gets quite complicated. Rattling around next to her swimmerless swimming pools or wandering alone across her dusty ballrooms had been depressing. She’d caught herself talking to the geckos in one place and half expecting them to answer. Her racehorses were beautiful, but had never seemed that fond of her – they tended to be slightly highly strung. And she had never been able to bring herself to kill anything on her estates. In fact, she’d been vegetarian for at least twenty years, if not forty, or sixty…Eventually, she’d given away all her homes apart from this cottage. They’d been turned into community centres and octopus research facilities. She’d sold her sports cars and horses and let her estates go back to nature and be overrun by un-shot-at animals and, by now, some quite rare plants, which nobody shot at either.

  Or that was the past which she currently remembered. She sometimes had the feeling that she had previously remembered other pasts, but she couldn’t be sure. Being this old was slightly confusing. Then again – as the twins often told her – it was very reasonable to be confused when she knew so much and had been to so many places and done so many things, occasionally in diving gear (but never dressed as a pirate).

  And as long as she had the twins – her beautiful, kind and charming Honor, her handsome, kind and charming Xavier – she knew that everything would be all right. That was something she didn’t forget.

  She never left her cottage these days. She didn’t need to. A dedicated geostationary satellite poured a constant flow of information into her personal communications hub – located in what used to be the pantry – and she could spend all day, if she wanted, learning more about octopus camouflage techniques, or the cunning ways in which they could impersonate other sea creatures, or reading her Foundation’s latest test results on octopus intelligence. From the hub, she could also keep an eye on the stock market and watch her money quietly making more money.

  But she did feel the need for a little company now and then. She did think – perhaps regularly, perhaps only once a month, she wasn’t entirely certain – that it would be nice to invite some pleasant people to take tea with her. Nothing grand, or fussy – just tea with small sandwiches and perhaps slices of fruit cake and maybe scones.

  She did sometimes tell the twins about arranging to have tea and they did promise to go and find her suitable guests, but she couldn’t – if she was honest – absolutely recall how often this happened, or if she had ever served anybody tea, or discussed the mating rituals of squid while buttering very thin toast and handing out napkins. Occasionally she dreamed that the inside of her mind was somehow becoming occupied by a being much cleverer than she was, something with dark tendrils, or tentacles reaching into her personality and softly wriggling about across her memories in a way that made them jumble and fade.

  Still, it didn’t matter. She was entirely happy and probably had forgotten her last tea party in the usual old lady type of way. Probably, if she concentrated, she could say how many cucumber sandwiches this or that visitor had eaten and whether there had been enough jam. And there was no reason to worry if she couldn’t. As she stared out through her window at the well-groomed trees and glossy shrubs bordering her golf course, she nodded to herself and smiled again. She had a good life. And sixty-eight perfectly lovely Venetian glass octopodes. Or octopuses.

  DAVID AGNEW WAS A man who purposely ate octopus whenever he could. He was currently sitting in the Fetch Hotel’s Sweet Spot Bar and wishing he was, instead, lolling by the pool at his Greek island villa, tucking into some fresh octopus legs and shooting geckos with his air pistol. These were the kinds of things he enjoyed.

  He was not enjoying his vodka and orange which was warmish and rather unpleasant and definitely hadn’t involved fresh orange juice, even though he’d asked for it specifically and in his most commanding tone of voice. Some chance of proper service in a dump like this. Still, Fetch Brothers had a fabulous golf course and he could usually get round it in 86. Or 90. Definitely in 98. And soon his most commanding voice would really mean something around here.

  Agnew considered complaining, but he couldn’t be bothered because at present he felt extremely good about life. He’d showered after he left the course, changed into his new, rather dashing, safari suit and he wasn’t due back at the office for another two hours. That gave him more than enough time for a spot of lunch. He snapped his fingers to summon the barman and ordered a prawn cocktail and a basket of scampi and chips. And a glass of Liebfraumilch.

  While he waited for his bar meal, he glanced around at the golfing prints, the photos of men in large caps and plus fours, the little shelf of donated trophies and the Challenge Cup. This year, he had a real chance of winning the Cup. There had been ten players who were better than him on paper, but seven of them weren’t competing this time round.

  Actually – he corrected himself – eight of them wouldn’t be competing. Yes, he was sure of that. He was absolutely sure that Paul Harris wouldn’t be trying for the Challenge Cup this year. Or any other year.

  David Agnew tugged at his beige jacket to smooth it and grinned. The world was a very satisfactory place.

  Then it became significantly less satisfactory as a grassy, shabby, scrawny, sweaty man, clattered into the bar with a golf bag he seemed quite unable to control. Knocking over a number of stools as he proceeded, he then sank to a halt at the table next to Agnew’s and flopped the bag messily down beside him. Its ancient clubs emerged like a rusty threat and disfigured the carpet.

  Agnew gave the newcomer his best withering stare and pointed to a large sign which read GOLF BAGS AND GOLF ATTIRE ARE NOT PERMITTED BEYOND THE CLUBHOUSE.

  At this, the dreadful interloper flinched and said, ‘Oh. Oh, dear…I…but I’m…well, I thought that as I was…I’m a resident…guest…that is…oh, dear…I am very…’ He fumbled at the bag’s shoulder strap, which had come adrift, and stood up rapidly in a way that produced a shower of tees, grass tufts and dr
ied mud. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out – Agnew couldn’t begin to guess why – its last remaining club, a battered putter, and waved it around as if he was conducting some type of interior orchestra.

  ‘Careful! You nearly had my head off with that. What’s wrong with you?’

  The putter crashed down across Agnew’s table while the ghastly little man mumbled, ‘Wrong…? No, it’s just me…me, you see…people always seem to find that me being me is wrong…I don’t mean it to be…’

  Agnew bellowed, ‘Sit down!’

  At this, the stranger squeaked, ‘OK.’

  Agnew announced, ‘I have a headache and would like to finish my lunch in peace.’ Which was a confusing thing to say as his lunch hadn’t arrived yet, but he was too annoyed to make sense. Agnew frowned while the man peered at him.

  ‘Well, I…Sorry for speaking…but I won’t interrupt. That is…I’m Mr Ian Patterson.’ The grubby man recited his name as if it was something he’d had to memorise recently. ‘And I…being here without golfing was…it would have seemed…but I don’t golf…and…’ He shoved the fallen clubs back into his bag distractedly. ‘They loaned me these…things…and I already had the…the putter thingy…’ Then he started to thump at his clothing in a doomed effort to remove the layer of muddy dust under which he was now operating. This simply spread the dust further.

  ‘Mr Patterson!’

  ‘Ah!’ Patterson ducked warily for an instant and stopped thumping. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why don’t I give you a golf lesson?’ Agnew smiled like a crocodile approaching a fat gnu he’d caught out paddling by itself. ‘Would you like that? Eighteen holes? I’m David Agnew. Allow me to be…’ He clearly found it difficult to say the next word. ‘…Helpful.’