Little People (10 page)

‘Think,' I said. ‘I just wrote out those answers to those questions.'

She twitched her nose. ‘You did. And?'

The penny landed and teetered round on its edge before flopping over. Yes, I had conclusive proof to back up my elf story; but she, not being a mathematician, couldn't understand the significance of it. I took a deep breath. ‘Do you trust me?' I asked.

‘No, of course not.'

‘Try. Just this once. Please. I want you to go and find someone you know who's good at maths. Show them both the questions and the answers, and ask them what they reckon to it. All right? I'll wait here.'

A look of martyred patience dragged across her face. ‘Have I got to?'

‘Yes.'

‘Really?'

‘Really.'

‘All right. Don't let anybody touch those books. That includes you. Actually, that includes you a
lot
.'

Cru was gone a long time. When eventually she came back, she had a pained, thoughtful look on her face.

‘This is weird,' she said. ‘In fact, this is the weirdest thing since Salvador Dali got a job as the speaking clock. This is your handwriting, yes?'

‘You know perfectly well it is.'

‘True,' she replied. ‘I don't think there's anybody else in the world who can do such cruel and unusual things to innocent letters.' She checked her books were where they'd been, to the millimetre, then sat down. ‘I found someone to ask,' she said. ‘Melanie Harrison, not my favourite person and about as interesting as a gardening programme in Portuguese, but very good at sums. Then I found someone else, just to be sure.' She handed me the papers. ‘If what they said is right, there's no way you could've done those answers.'

I grinned. ‘I didn't,' I said.

‘I'd guessed that.' She paused for a moment, and turned up the gain on her scowl.

‘So,' I said, ‘your friends confirmed it. These are the right answers.'

‘Ah.' She looked at me as if I was a pane of glass. ‘That's actually a very good question. You see, apparently whoever wrote that stuff doesn't do maths the way everybody else does it. That's what freaked our Melanie and our Sean. I couldn't follow all the technical drivel, but apparently, it's maths, Jim, but not as we know it. Completely new, different approach, is what they told me.'

I frowned. ‘But I use a new and different approach all the time,' I said. ‘That's why I keep getting the wrong answer.'

‘Ah, but that's because you're stupid,' Cru explained. ‘Whoever did this stuff may be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them.' She leaned forward on her elbows. ‘So,' she said, ‘out with it. Who's the new Einstein?'

I looked at her and didn't say anything. No need.

‘Thought so,' she replied slowly. ‘Which is why you made me look at the question paper. There's something written on it that you can see and I can't.'

I nodded.

‘Fine.' She breathed out slowly through her nose. ‘Let me guess. This writing that you can see and I can't – it's not very big, is it?'

‘Nope.'

‘In fact, it's quite small. Tiny.'

‘Virtually microscopic.'

‘Jesus.' She clicked her tongue. ‘Have I got to use the E word?'

I shook my head. ‘But I think it'd be a gracious gesture if you did,' I added.

‘All right, then.'

I waited for a few seconds, then drummed my fingertips ostentatiously on the table top.

‘Elf,' she mumbled. ‘Satisfied?'

‘Thank you.'

‘It was the least I could do,' she snarled. ‘All right, so what's the story? What happened?'

I shrugged. ‘Haven't a clue, really,' I replied. ‘I went to do these questions, and when I opened the folder and took them out, there was this writing all up through the margin. So I copied it out, and came to find you.'

Cru glared at me. ‘That's it?'

‘That's it. The full story, complete and unabridged.'

‘Oh.' She rubbed her eyelids, as if something was making her feel very tired. No idea what it could be. ‘Theories.'

I nodded, and told her. She sighed.

‘It's not getting any better, is it?' she said. ‘You know, I think that's what's really getting to me about all this is the thought that after all the time and effort I put into trying to study hard and do well at my maths and science and stuff, just when I thought I was getting somewhere and really beginning to see how the universe works in an orderly and logical way, with no cheating – then you come along and the next thing I know is, I've got no choice but to believe in sodding elves. It isn't fair, is it? I mean, supposing I was doing a physics exam—'

‘Unlikely,' I pointed out. ‘You told me you stopped doing physics when you were fifteen.'

‘All right,' she snapped, ‘yes. But just supposing. I'd be having to sit there, writing answers that say yes, the cosmos is just one great big machine and if you wind up the spring and press the lever, such and such will inevitably happen and such and such inevitably won't – and it'd all be a load of old socks, because really there's magic and elves and things that some people can see and other people can't, for no bloody
reason
.' She looked up at me, bewildered as a chameleon on a paisley scarf. ‘Come on,' she said, ‘you're supposed to be into maths and science and stuff. How the hell can you bring yourself to lie to the examiners?'

Of course, I hadn't thought of it in that light, maybe because I had more sense. After all, things were difficult enough as it was without making everything worse by trying to
understand
. ‘No idea,' I said. ‘I guess you'd have to say that the elf stuff is all maths and physics we just haven't got around to discovering yet. Look, no offence, but I'd rather not go into that side of it right now, if it's all the same to you. I need to know what to do next.'

Cru shrugged. ‘Well, I can see that,' she said. ‘And I think that the first step should definitely be to find this elf. Agreed?'

‘Er, I suppose so. But that's easier said than done. What did you have in mind? Infra-red motion detectors? Stop-motion surveillance cameras? A very large fly-paper?'

I'd offended her again. ‘Sarcasm isn't going to help, now, is it?' she said. ‘No, I was thinking of a more direct approach.'

‘Really? More direct than a fly-paper?'

‘Yes,' she said firmly. ‘Think about it for a moment. There's this elf, OK, and he's doing your maths assignments for you. Consider that action for a moment. Can you tell me what it is?'

I shrugged. ‘Bloody useful.'

‘Yes, I know. Apart from that. I believe it's a way of getting your attention, saying “Hello, I'm here.” Does that make any sense to you?'

‘Seems like a reasonable assumption under the circumstances,' I replied. ‘So what do you suggest?'

She steepled her fingers, ‘Well,' she said. ‘The elf wrote to you. Write back.'

Of course, I hadn't even considered that; I'd been too busy trying to figure out how to make a non-lethal mousetrap to contemplate the possibility that I could just sit down with the elf and talk. ‘That's a very good idea,' I said.

‘Being mine, that goes without saying. Mind you,' she went on, ‘that's assuming you know where to put the letter so he'll find it. Also that he can read English. Big ifs.'

I shook my head. ‘No, not really,' I replied. ‘If he can't read English, how can he write it? As far as reaching him goes, I'll put a message in my diary and another one in each of my written work folders. If he wants to be reached, that ought to reach him.'

Cru was silent for a moment. ‘Actually,' she said, ‘that's quite sensible. Yes, you could try that, at least as a start. And if it doesn't work, we'll have to think of something else: messages painted on walls, adverts in the newspapers, sky-writing. I guess it depends on how badly he wants to get in touch with you.'

I thought of the tiny letters spelling out HELP. ‘It's a lot of trouble and effort for him to go to if he doesn't,' I reasoned. ‘And he's not stupid, after all.'

‘What makes you think – ? Oh, you mean the maths answers.' She frowned. ‘I don't mean to sound downbeat, but mathematical ability doesn't necessarily equate with common sense or intelligence. After all, look at you.'

‘Well, quite,' I replied. ‘Nevertheless, I think that's what I'll do.' I looked away, breaking eye contact. ‘Thanks,' I said.

‘You're grudgingly welcome. Thanks for what?'

I sighed. ‘For listening. For not letting on that you're trying to humour a lunatic, even if that's what you're actually doing. For – well, lots of things, I suppose.'

‘Whatever.' She opened a book and looked at it. I noticed it was the wrong way up. ‘Well,' I said, ‘I'd better get to it, then. As and when I find anything, I'll tell you straight away.'

‘No, you bloody well won't,' she replied. ‘Not if it's the middle of the night or I'm busy. Next time you see me will do just fine, thank you all the same.'

So there I was, biro in hand, diary open in front of me, trying to think of something to say.

Not a wholly unfamiliar sensation, at that. In fact, when I look back it seems to me that I've spent a depressingly large proportion of my life doing that sort of thing, starting with Christmas thank-you letters back when I'd only just grasped the concept that ink only came out of one end of the pen, on through hours of hunkering down writing history essays and geography essays and English essays and the like, to the point where my collected works would fill two shelves in the British Museum library and make Dickens look like a minimalist – and every line on every page ground out in spite of a writer's block you could've carved the pyramids from.

My literary compositions are very much like a ten-year-old Citroen: they're a pain to get started, and when they stop they stay stopped. Eventually, after ten minutes of staring blankly at the empty page, I'd decided to begin with
Dear elf
– but that was just plain ridiculous, so I crossed it out and substituted
To whom it may concern
. Once I'd crossed that out as well, my creative battery was effectively flat, and no amount of scowling at the paper or sighing tragically was going to get me up and running again. Unfortunately, I didn't have a choice, so I tore out the page and put down
Hello
instead.

Well, quite; but I told myself that there'd be plenty of time to go back and revise later. The main thing was to crack on and get something down, no matter what.
How are you?
I wrote.

That more or less drained me for the next hour; in fact, to be honest, I think I might have closed my eyes for a moment or so at some stage, because the next thing I was aware of was as light but insistent tugging on the lobe of my right ear, which had somehow wound up pressed to the desktop.
Odd
, I thought, and lifted my head. The tugging stopped, which was nice, but now I could hear a tiny voice calling my name, apparently from a long way away – the tennis courts, perhaps, or the cricket pavilion. I frowned as the sleep started to clear off the windscreen of my mind. Why would anybody be out on the playing field at this time of night?

‘I said
WAKE UP!
'
yelled the voice, gradually getting louder with each word.
‘Are you deaf or something?'
I looked round, towards the window, which was firmly shut. Weirder and weirder.

‘No, you bloody fool, down
HERE!
Oh for crying out loud, can't you – ?
'

Down? Down where? I glanced down under my desk, behind my chair; nothing. Maybe I was imagining it; in which case –

‘Behind your elbow, bird-brain. No, not that one, the other –
'

And there it was. There she was. Shorter than the genuine accept-no-substitutes Barbie and with shorter hair and a rather less pronounced bust; wearing, if memory serves, a light green sleeveless cotton blouse and something that was either a fairly short skirt of a fairly wide belt, depending on how you define such things. She was stunningly lovely and she was holding an unfastened safety pin, which she was just about to stab into my forearm.

‘About bloody time, too,' she growled. ‘Jesus, you're stupid. If you had two more brain cells, you'd have a pair.'

I didn't say anything: I was too busy gawping, while what was left of my mind was wondering why at least some of the world's annual allowance of weirdness couldn't happen to somebody else, just for once. For her part, she dumped the safety pin, and stood glowering at me with her arms folded, tiny blue eyes loaded with an infinity of contempt; Sergeant Major Barbie, or My Little Fascist Dictator.

It looked like I'd just got myself a walking, talking, shouting, swearing, living doll.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘
E
xcuse me,' I said diffidently, ‘but who the hell are you?'

She looked up at me out of two forget-me-not-blue eyes and called me an arsehole. ‘How can you say that?' she said. ‘After everything I've been through to get here—'

‘Sorry,' I interrupted, ‘but you've got to tell me this. Are you an elf?'

She sighed. ‘No, I'm a chartered actuary. Dressing up in green miniskirts and being only six inches tall is just something I do in my spare time. Of course I'm an elf, you idiot. You should know that,' she added bitterly, ‘better than anybody.'

Oh God
, I thought,
another of those niggling little oblique references.
Unfortunately, there were more important issues waiting to be addressed, so clearing up that particular mystery was going to have to wait. ‘OK,' I said, ‘you're an elf, thank you. So – what are you doing here, and why are you doing it?'