So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish - Douglas Adams [23]
“No time,” said Fenny, glancing at her watch, “my train leaves in half an hour.”
They sat at a small wobbly table. On it were some dirty glasses, and some soggy beer mats with jokes printed on them. Arthur got Fenny a tomato juice, and himself a pint of yellow water with gas in it. And a couple of sausages, he didn’t know why. He bought them for something to do while the gas settled in his glass.
The barman dunked Arthur’s change in a pool of beer on the bar, for which Arthur thanked him.
“All right,” said Fenny, glancing at her watch, “tell me what it is you have to tell me.”
She sounded, as well she might, extremely skeptical, and Arthur’s heart sank. Hardly, he felt, the most conducive setting to try to explain to her as she sat there, suddenly cool and defensive, that in a sort of out-of-body dream he had had a telepathic sense that the mental breakdown she had suffered had been connected with the fact that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the Earth had been demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass, something which he alone on Earth knew anything about, having virtually witnessed it from a Vogon spaceship, and that furthermore both his body and soul ached for her unbearably and he needed deeply to go to bed with her as soon as was humanly possible.
“Fenny,” he started.
“I wonder if you’d like to buy some tickets for our raffle? It’s just a little one.”
He glanced up sharply.
“To raise money for Anjie, who’s retiring.”
“What?”
“And needs a kidney machine.”
He was being leaned over by a rather stiffly slim, middle-aged woman with a prim knitted suit and a prim little perm, and a prim little smile that probably got licked by prim little dogs a lot.
She was holding out a small book of cloakroom tickets and a collecting tin.
“Only ten pence each,” she said, “so you could probably even buy two. Without breaking the bank!” She gave a tinkly little laugh and then a curiously long sigh. Saying “without breaking the bank” had obviously given her more pleasure than anything since some G.I.s had been billeted on her in the war.
“Er, yes, all right,” said Arthur, hurriedly digging in his pocket and producing a couple of coins.
With infuriating slowness, and prim theatricality, if there was such a thing, the woman tore off two tickets and handed them to Arthur.
“I do hope you win,” she said with a smile that suddenly snapped together like a piece of advanced origami, “the prizes are so nice.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Arthur, pocketing the tickets rather brusquely and glancing at his watch.
He turned toward Fenny.
So did the woman with the raffle tickets.
“And what about you, young lady?” she said. “It’s for Anjie’s kidney machine. She’s retiring, you see. Yes?” She hoisted the little smile even farther up her face. She would have to stop and let it go soon or the skin would surely split.
“Er, look, here you are,” said Arthur, and pushed a fifty-pence piece at her in the hope that that would see her off.
“Oh, we are in the money, aren’t we?” said the woman, with a long smiling sigh. “Down from London, are we?”
Arthur wished she wouldn’t talk so slowly.
“No, that’s all right, really,” he said with a wave of his hand, as she started with an awful deliberation to peel off five tickets, one by one.
“Oh, but you must have your tickets,” insisted the woman, “or you won’t be able to claim your prize. They’re very nice prizes, you know. Very suitable.”
Arthur snatched the tickets, and said thank you as sharply as he could.
The woman turned to Fenny once again.
“And now, what about—”
“No!” Arthur nearly yelled. “These are for her,” he explained, brandishing the five new tickets.
“Oh, I see! How nice!”
She smiled sickeningly at both of them.
“Well, I do hope you—”
“Yes,” snapped Arthur, “thank you.”
The woman finally departed to the table next to theirs. Arthur turned desperately to Fenny, and was relieved to see that she was rocking with silent laughter.
He sighed and smiled.
“Where were we?”
“You were calling me Fenny, and I was about to ask