Chapter 6 The GB Olympic Queueing Team
The thing is Amber and I had been to Durham before. It was where our older sister, May, was at university. She's doing English and Criminology which I thought would be really cool but it's all to do with Social Science (whatever that is) and they don't study murders or anything interesting like that. That's what we used the railcard for – it's got both Mum and Amber's name on it so it's all right for just the two of us to go. We only usually go up for the day. Most times Amber and May end up going shopping but we'd go to the pictures too and May always picks something I'd like. We went to see X Men First Class last time which I thought was excellent but Amber got confused because I don't think she realised that it was a prequel. She'd only watched the other ones for Hugh Jackman and was disappointed that he wasn't in it (yes, I know he has a cameo in it, but that wasn't enough for Amber and I didn't want put down any spoilers. Only I have now, haven't I? Thanks).
So you might be thinking 'Oh, isn't that a coincidence that they're going to Durham and that's where their sister is.' Well, congratulations to you because that's what a coincidence is, when two things happen at the same time. You may find it hard to believe but what with there being a university and a passport office in Durham something like this happening is not altogether impossible. Yes, there's an office in Liverpool that's nearer, but the Durham one was on the way to the Isle of Beep. So stop worrying about it and let me get on with the story.
'Have you told May about what's happened,' I asked Amber. The five of us were sat across two tables on the train. Dan was enjoying a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop and Nina and Horatio were reading different sections of the Sunday paper. Amber was charging up her Blackberry and messaging her friends.
'Yeah, I emailed her when we set off. Told her what had happened. She said she's busy tonight, but she'll catch up with us tomorrow afternoon after lectures.'
'Wasn't she upset about Mum and Dad?'
'Didn't seem to be. She said a friend of hers had her parents abducted by aliens. It all turned out all right in the end. She said if we were on the case she wasn't worried.'
'She did believe what you were saying, didn't she?'
'How do I know? Look, Carl, I'm busy here. I don't need the third degree, ok?'
'Ok!'
'Thank you.' She then went on to ignore me for the next two hours.
The train journey was long and boring. I didn't have my PSP with me and I got fed up of Tetris on my phone really quickly. So I picked my moment carefully and I finally got the story out of Nina and Horatio.
It turns out Horatio was a Spanish sailor by the name of Horacio Morientes who was the only survivor of a shipwreck. Or he thought he was the only survivor – there was this other bloke who survived and became his evil nemesis but that's nothing to do with this story. Anyway, he found Nina, a genie, trapped in a bottle ('more like a jar,' said Nina, 'with a lid. But as soon as a genie's involved everyone says “bottle”, so “bottle” it is) and before you could say 'three wishes' he was magically rescued and home and dry.
All sorts of astonishing misadventures ensued and before you know it they fell in love. So far, so sixties sitcom. Except it is expressly forbidden for a master to fall in love with their genie. Yeah, slavery's okey-dokey, but the 'L' word? That's a definite no-no. The only way around it was for Nina to renounce her power and the two of them to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. Which in this case would be all eternity, because as a result of getting married Horatio would join Nina in immortality. It all sounded very romantic at the time. No-one mentioned to them that being deathless meant they were unable to pass life on. They would never, ever be able to have children.
Being a genie and finding a genie are both types of a curse and there's rarely a happy ending where curses are involved. The conditions of the marriage were that they would have to be together forever. If ever one of them was out of earshot of the other then they would both crumble to dust. This was fine to begin with but as time went on it became apparent that the only thing they had truly had in common were their magical adventures. She began to find him boring and inattentive, he didn't like the way she examined the tiniest detail of everything she did. Little things, but the thought of an eternity of them weighed heavy on both their hearts. They began to spend less and less time together, but with the curse preventing either from having a life of their own they began to resent each other. Forced into each other's company they would say the most horrible and hurtful things, things that could never be taken back. The precious memories of the wonderful times they had spent together were soon forgotten.
I said that that was understandable after hundreds of years. Anybody would get irritated after that amount of time together. Horatio shook his head sadly. In the first five years of their marriage they had angrily screamed themselves hoarse dozens of times. Eventually, they had managed to come up with a working relationship, earning their keep all over Europe. Fortune Teller and stooge, or Magician and Assistant. They knew enough about the world of miracles in order to make a living as entertainers – circuses, theatres and fairs through the years, moving on before suspicions were formed about their ageless nature. But their wilful flouting of the rules of the supernatural meant they would never be respected or accepted by the world again. They had never been accepted by our world in the first place.
Things had got better in the last twenty years or so, though. The curse that kept them together was pedantically literal. With mobile phones coming into common usage it was possible for the two of them to be apart while still technically within earshot. Voice mail got around any problems with areas with no signal, but should either of them let their phone's battery fall dead then they would both soon follow it. Nevertheless, finally being able to live separate lives had helped them repair some of the damage done between them. And occasionally, when something adventurous or magical came along – like now – they'd find themselves almost getting along.
'Almost,' said Nina as Horatio finished off his can of Stella Artois with a burp.
Another night, another Holiday Lodge Express. Another fried breakfast. I hoped dad would be grateful enough with us for saving him and the world that he'd overlook his next credit card bill. We all met in the cafeteria to compare notes. Nina started the day with some unwelcome news.
'The passport office opened at eight-thirty. They're probably queueing out the door already. Come on we'd better get down there.'
I'd never really been one for fried bread but I resented being rushed away from my last slice then. At least I got to finish off my second cup of tea.
'Do we all have to go?' asked Amber.
'We're all getting passports, so yes,' replied Horatio. 'Have you all filled out the forms?'
Horatio had printed off online application forms using the small IT suite that belonged to the hotel. We all dutifully held up our completed forms as we stormed down the street. Somebody was going to lose one, I knew it.
'Has everybody got their photos?' asked Nina. We'd all taken turns in the photo booth at the railway station last night, so there was an unenthusiastic chorus of yesses in reply.
'Excellent. Nearly there...'
Millburngate House was a big blocky place that looked like it had been made out of concrete Lego. It took a while for us to find the entrance, but when we did there were plenty of signs to make sure we went in the right direction. It was Amber who spotted it first.
'Here we go: “Imaginary and Non-Realistic Applications”. This must be the way.'
There was a very helpful blue line running down the corridor to guide us on our way. Eventually, it came to a set of double doors. Dan and Horatio pulled them open between them revealing...
Three massively long queues. They were unavoidable, the first thing that struck you. The doors led into a huge hall, bigger than the one used for assembly at school. At the far end, at the front of each queue, we could just make out three tiny windows, each staffed by a distant blur of a person, each the goal of the hundreds of people waiting patiently in line.
'This is impossible,' I said. 'It's not even been open an hour.'
'Told you,' said Nina. 'We probably could have done with queueing even before the place opened.'
'But all these people can't be going to the Isle of Beep,' I said. 'Isn't this for emergency applications? Doesn't anyone get their passport well before they set off.'
'It's for anyone visiting somewhere that isn't real or isn't on a map,' explained Nina. 'And that's something you seldom plan for. There are very few people who plan to make this sort of a trip. These offices are always busy with people needing passports at the last minute. Join the club.'
As Nina was speaking, someone else entered the hall the same way that we had. Without hesitation they joined the middle one of the three queues.
'I think we'd better get in line,' said Horatio. 'This is going to take long enough as it is. If we keep letting others in we'll be here all day.'
'Should we split up?' asked Dan. 'Would it be quicker if we all joined different queues?'
'I don't know,' said Amber. 'I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't think it's such a good idea.'
There was a quick conflab and it was decided that we would split up – Me with Nina in the middle queue, Amber with Horatio in the left hand one and Dan on the right hand side. He hadn't done anything like this before but he assured us he was a dab hand with forms and the like. We took our places and prepared for the long wait ahead.
Barely five minutes had gone by when Horatio statrted waving at us. None of the lines appeared to have gone down at all but a few more people had entered the hall and joined each of the three queues. There was enough of a gap between the queues that it was impossible to have a conversation between them without raising your voice. It seemed Horatio had elected not to attempt that was instead furiously miming something to me and Nina. It took a while to realise that he was gesturing toward someone a short way ahead of us in our queue. Mindful of not losing our place Nina and I peered past the people in front of us to see a woman in a black duffel coat carrying a cat. She had her hood up so it was difficult to see her face clearly. But her chin was visible, jutting out.
It was covered in stubble.
'I think we joined the wrong queue,' I said to Nina.
More soonliest.
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