The Count of Eleven by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online Page B

couldn’t walk for the last six months of her life.”
    Most of those who heard him seemed more embarrassed or bewildered than roused to anger. Some glanced at the tartan slipper which a nurse from the retirement home had persuaded him to wear. Jack solemnised his face and went to the old man. “I’m sorry about your wife and I’m sorry about your shoe. I’ll buy you a new pair if you like.”
    His choice of words didn’t strike him until they were out of his mouth. He felt a giggle gathering itself like an uncontrollable sneeze as he saw the old man preparing to object. “I don’t want a pair, I only want one to match this,” Mr. Pether protested, stamping the shoe that was left.
    Jack covered his mouth and emitted a snort which he willed to sound more like a sneeze than like mirth. “I’ll do my best,” he said when he could.
    “I should come along now, Mr. Pether,” the nurse said, taking the old man’s arm. “We’ve had enough excitement for one day.”
    Their departure acted as a signal to the crowd. The spectacle was mostly smoke by now, only a few subdued flames struggling to fend off the jets of water. The quilted woman returned to her house, the cars swung away from the striped cones. A few of the youngest members of the audience lingered, apparently in the hope that the dousing of the fire would prove to be as false an ending as those of all the horror films they watched, and so did the cowled man. “It’s under control now,” a fireman told Jack. “I’m afraid there’s nothing salvageable.”
    “That’s fine. I mean, thanks for trying. For succeeding, I should say,” Jack blethered. “Will I need to tell someone how it started?”
    That will be necessary. Tell me if you wish.”
    “Ask him about the kind of films that conveniently got destroyed.”
    “That isn’t our job, sir.”
    The cowled man treated him to the suspicious glare he had previously reserved for Jack. “Aren’t you supposed to uphold the law of the land?”
    “Are you a witness, sir?”
    “The only kind. God’s.”
    Then shouldn’t you be in church, sir?” the fireman said, and told Jack “I think it’ll be advisable if we confer in the appliance.”
    Once they were in the cab of the fire engine the fireman said “Has he something against you?”
    “Working on the Sabbath.”
    “Well, we all need some kind of belief to keep us going. Just so long as we don’t try to impose it on others, I always say. My daughter’s been born again, as if her mother didn’t go through enough the first time.” He cleared his throat as though he wanted to spit and watched the cowled man flouncing downhill. “What have you to tell me?” he said.
    Jack pointed at himself with all his fingers. “Imagine Oliver Hardy with a blow lamp
    “Go on.”
    “Did you notice the old codger who was waving his shoe about? If you cast him as Stan Laurel… I hope I don’t sound as if I’m trying to make light of anything, but I feel such a fool now I think of what happened.”
    “However’s comfortable for you.”
    It seemed to Jack that there was no way of describing the events leading up to the fire other than as a joke against himself. He told it deadpan, and was almost sure that the fireman was stifling a laugh. Comedy was something that happened at a distance to you or to someone else. They were still in the cab when Andy Nation came to gaze aghast at the smouldering hole, pulling the zip of his jacket up and down as if he couldn’t bear his hands to be inactive. Jack knocked on the windscreen and called to him, and Andy looked everywhere for him but in the cab. “Up here,” Jack shouted. “I’ve joined the fire service. Starting fires, that is.”
    Andy winced. “Julia told me, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.”
    “It could have been far worse, Andy. This is my friend the builder.”
    “Will the shop need making safe?” Andy wanted to know.
    “When we’ve finished damping down,” the fireman