“I don’t know,” Vanderdecker confessed. “Instinct, mainly. Look,” he said, putting his chin between his hands, “I remember reading somewhere about these tramps, people who’d been living rough for years and years, who finally were persuaded to come in out of the wind and the rain into a nice clean hostel. Clean clothes, beds, hot food. After a week or so, they all started sleeping on the floor, wearing the same clothes all the time and eating the scraps out of the dustbins. The staff couldn’t understand it at all, but the tramps just couldn’t trust the beds and the clothes and the food; they reckoned they must be some sort of trap and they wanted nothing to do with it. You get that way after a while.”
“I see,” Jane said. “So I’ve failed, have I?”
“Looks like it,” Vanderdecker said. “Sorry.”
Jane considered for a moment. “How about as a personal favour to me?” she asked. Vanderdecker stared at her.
“Come again?” he said.
“As a personal favour,” she said, “to help me out of a jam.”
“But…” Vanderdecker’s voice trailed away, and he looked at her. Perhaps he saw something he hadn’t seen for a long time. “You mean, just because I like you or something?”
“Just,” Jane said, “because you’re a nice person. Like letting someone through in a stream of traffic, or giving up your seat in the Underground.”
“I hadn’t looked at it from that angle,” Vanderdecker admitted.
“Try it.”
Vanderdecker drew in a deep breath. “Did I mention,” he said, “about my adventures in the real estate business?”
“No,” Jane said. “Are they relevant?”
“Fairly relevant, yes.”
“Oh,” Jane said. “Fire away, then.”
“Right.” Vanderdecker leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Many years ago,” he said, “many years ago even by my standards, I bought some land in America. Don’t know why; it was cheap, I had some capital for once, I thought I’d invest it. My idea was to build a little place out in the middle of nowhere but next to the sea, where I and my crew could be sure of some privacy and a glass or two of beer when we came in to land. That sort of thing. Anyway, before I could start building, I met this man in a pub who was down on his luck. He was Dutch, too, and I felt sorry for him. He had a dreadful story to tell, about how he’d been chased out of Holland because of his religious beliefs, forced to sell his farm and his stock and come out to the New World and start all over again, and how he hadn’t got anywhere like the right price for his property back home and the fare out here had taken up a large slice of that because all the carriers were profiteers, and on top of all that the weevils had got into the seed-corn and three of his cows had got the murrain and how he was going to afford enough land in America to support a wife and three children he really didn’t know. So I asked him how much he had and he told me and I offered to sell him my land for exactly that much. It was very cheap indeed, and he accepted like a shot. And I did it because I’m a nice chap, and of course it didn’t matter a hell of a lot to me, considering how I was fixed.”
“And?”
“And what I sold him was the island of Manhattan,” said Vanderdecker, sadly. “Error of judgement, wouldn’t you say?”
Jane didn’t say anything.
“Of course,” Vanderdecker went on, “I wasn’t to know that then. You never do. But that’s the thing about eternal life; you have to live with your mistakes, don’t you? Like when I met the Spanish Armada.”
“You met the Spanish Armada?”
“Pure fluke,” Vanderdecker said. “It was just after the coming of the Great Smell, and we were lying off Gravelines, becalmed Suddenly the sea is covered with Spanish ships. Marvellous. Then all the Spaniards become aware of the Great Smell, and before their commanders can stop them they’re all casting off and making for the open sea with their hands over their noses. Result; they lose the weather-gauge and get shot to bits by my old jute-trading contact Francis Drake. Or what about Charles the Second?”
“Charles the Second,” Jane said.
