“It’s no worse than Arkshaw,” said Susan. “Better, even. I wonder what my father’s surname is—”
“We’ll find out,” interrupted Merlin.
“What did your grandmother mean—”
“Oh look, a brewery dray! I love shire horses.”
A very slow-moving, rather enormous cart emblazoned with Greene King brewery signs was taking up one and a half lanes, effectively stopping all the traffic behind it. The team of four blinkered Clydesdales drawing the dray could be no more oblivious to the occupants of the frustrated cars behind them than the smock-wearing drivers.
“I don’t,” said Audrey. “Horse-drawn vehicles shouldn’t be allowed in the city; it’s right out of order. The roads are slow enough already, and they’re not even really delivering beer. Hosses shouldn’t be allowed . . .”
As Audrey continued on her diatribe concerning all the ills of London traffic, Susan leaned in close to Vivien and whispered in her ear.
“Why don’t you want to talk about what your grandmother told me in front of other booksellers?”
“But what gorgeous horses—I never mind dawdling behind them!” exclaimed Vivien loudly, and then very quickly, looking down at Susan’s shoulder so her mouth was not visible in Audrey’s rearview mirror, she hissed vehemently, “Later, okay?”
“I mean, changing the guard is one thing, if you go down the Mall you expect it, but they’re regular, scheduled, not hosses popping up whenever, wherever . . .”
Susan nodded and sat back. Audrey continued to talk about the intrusions of horses and other livestock and/or wild animals onto London roads, segued into pedestrians who didn’t have a clue and then somehow on to a monologue about one of her favorite books: The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume. Which was apparently from the nineteenth century and surprisingly was about a hansom cab driver in Melbourne, Australia, so Susan wasn’t sure why Audrey saw it as a kind of taxi driver foundation myth for someone driving in London. But in any case, Audrey’s dissertation upon it, interspersed occasionally with reactions to the current driving environment, provided all conversation until they passed the southern side of Trafalgar Square, darted across into Northumberland Street, and pulled up outside a huge but rather run-down Victorian-era hotel.
As they piled out, a harassed family of two parents and three children between three and six, with numerous bags piled on the curb, began to get in, with the mother declaiming loudly in a Midwestern American accent, “We have to get to Heathrow real quick, driver.”
“No problem, missus! We’ll be on the frog and toad in half a mo!” called out Audrey, popping out to help with the bags and an action that might be described as an ironic tugging of the forelock.
“Come on up while I get changed,” said Merlin.
“You need to be ‘real quick,’” said Vivien. “I’m starving.”
Susan followed Merlin into the hotel, which was very busy. The lobby, which like the exterior was grand but run-down, was crowded with a horde of people checking in for some sort of conference. About seventy percent men—for other nations were still catching up on the postwar egalitarian reforms the United Kingdom had enjoyed—they all knew each other, apparently, despite the variety of accents and appearances from all over the world.
“Dentists,” said Merlin gloomily. “Five hundred of them, I believe. The bar will be unbearable tonight.”
Susan noticed a couple of teenagers lurking by one of the massive fake stone columns that broke up the lobby. They were dressed in New Romantic style, a kind of cross between Boy George and Adam Ant, with ruffles and lace and eye makeup, but both also wore white gloves on their left hands.
“Are they more of your lot?” she asked Merlin as they weaved their way through the crowd of dentists, who seemed a lot less serious than dentists ought to be while attending a major professional event. Many of them were wearing Hawaiian shirts, for one thing.
“No,” scoffed Merlin. “I’d say they’re confused about their music idols, can’t decide whether to be Michael Jackson or someone from Duran Duran. Our people work here. See that porter? That’s Cousin Heather.”
“But she has gloves on both hands.”
“She’s a porter! Got to protect your hands. Terribly wearing, handling luggage.”
“‘Billie Jean’ has been quite helpful, in terms of disguise,” said Vivien, reverting back to the style-conscious teenagers. “Everyone thinks we’re simply Michael Jackson fans now. Hardly anyone asks me about wearing one glove since the song came out.”
“Why don’t you wear them on both hands and avoid questions altogether?”
“But then people would always be asking why we wear gloves,” replied Vivien, as if this answered the question.
“Come on, we’ll take the stairs,” said Merlin. The queue for the two curiously undersized lifts was immense, made worse by dentists coming out or going in stopping to greet each other, with lots of shaking hands and hugs, while the lift doors fruitlessly tried to close around them.
“What floor are you on?” asked Susan, who was already tired of going up and down stairs, though at least in this hotel she presumed they would not lead to such strange spaces as in the New Bookshop. In fact, she was tired in general, she thought. What with no sleep since the Kexa showed up, and then everything else . . .
“Sixth,” said Merlin. “Come on! I’ll race you.”
He sped off and ran up the grand staircase, looking rather like Diana the Huntress, turning quite a number of both male and female heads. Neither Susan nor Vivien ran after him, instead continuing to walk at the same pace. Or possibly even slower.
“Is he always like this?” asked Susan.
“Only two settings, off or on,” said Vivien. “But the quicker he gets there, the less time we’ll have to wait while he changes clothes.”
Something in the way she said that made Susan raise an eyebrow.
“You’ll see,” said Vivien. “Merlin and clothes . . .”
Vivien was right. When they pushed the door to room 617 open, Susan’s first impression was that it was an extensive walk-in wardrobe, until she saw a narrow bed hidden among the serried ranks of racks of clothes. Wheeled racks, which had clearly been purloined from various clothes shops or fashion warehouses. There were men’s and women’s clothes of all kinds, ranging from evening wear to sundresses with one rack entirely of denim, in all its glorious variations of trousers and jackets, from standard Levi’s to multiply patched, holed, and worked-on objets d’art that had probably once graced a catwalk.
To make the small room even more crowded, there were piles of books under the racks. Nearly all orange-spined Penguin paperbacks, as far as Susan could see, arranged alphabetically by author in piles of six or seven. They looked fairly new, but obviously read, some with ordinary bookmarks poking out, and one—The King’s War 1641–1647 by C. V. Wedgwood—was on the bed and kept open with a clothes-peg about halfway through.
Merlin was nowhere to be seen, at least until a door previously hidden from view swung open, pushing a rack aside to reveal a very small bathroom, with a shower cubicle perhaps two-thirds of the size necessary for an adult human to stand up, and no bath. Merlin stood in the doorway, in black leather pants, frilled white shirt, and a burgundy leather waistcoat. He had also acquired a large moustache, a drooping thing that looked like a hairy blond slug stuck under his nose.