Expecting Someone Taller Read Online Free

the world. Indeed he had taken this lesson so much to heart that when the Government sent him little pieces of card apparently entitling him to vote in elections, he felt sure that they had intended them for somebody else. He told himself that he would soon get used to it, just as he had always been told that he would grow into the grotesquely outsized garments he was issued with as a child. Although two years had now passed since his arrival in the West Country, the sleeves of his new life, so to speak, still reached down to his fingernails. But that was presumably his fault for not growing. Needless to say, it was a remark of his sister Bridget’s that best summed up his situation; to be precise, a joke she used to make at the age of seven. ‘What is the difference,’ she would ask, ‘between Marmalade [the family cat] and Malcolm?’ When no satisfactory answer could be provided by the admiring adults
assembled to hear the joke, Bridget would smile and say, ‘Daddy isn’t allowed to shout at Marmalade.’
    So it seemed rather strange (or counter-intuitive, as his sister would say) that Malcolm should have been chosen by the badger to be the new master of the world. Bridget, yes; she was very good indeed at organising things, and would doubtless make sure that the trains ran on time. But Malcolm - ‘only Malcolm’, as he was affectionately known to his family - that was a mistake, surely. Still, he reflected as he put the Ring back on his finger, since he was surely imagining the whole thing, what did it matter?
    Without bothering to get out of bed, he breathed on the Ring and rubbed it on his forehead. At once, countless gold objects materialised in the air and fell heavily all around him, taking him so completely by surprise that all he could think was that this must be what the Americans mean by a shower. Gold cups, gold plates, gold chalices, torques, ashtrays, pipe-racks, cufflinks, bath-taps, and a few shapeless, unformed articles (presumably made by apprentice Nibelungs at evening classes under the general heading of paperweights) tumbled down on all sides, so that Malcolm had to snatch up a broad embossed dish and hold it over his head until the cascade had subsided in order to avoid serious injury.
    Gathering the shreds of his incredulity around him, Malcolm tried to tell himself that it probably wasn’t real or solid gold; but that was a hard hypothesis. Only a complete and utter cheapskate would go to the trouble of materialising copper or brass by supernatural means. No, it was real, it was solid, it existed, and it was making the place look like a scrapyard, as his mother would undoubtedly say were she present. Having wriggled out from under the hoard, Malcolm found some cardboard boxes and put it all neatly
away. That alone was hard work. Malcolm shook his head, yawned, and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, thus accidentally starting off the whole process all over again . . .
    â€˜For Christ’s sake!’ he shouted, as a solid gold ewer missed him by inches, ‘will you stop that?’
    The torrent ceased, and Malcolm sat down on the bed.
    â€˜Well, I’m damned,’ he said aloud, as he removed a gold tie-pin that had fallen into his pyjama pocket. ‘Ruler of the world . . .’
    Try as he might, he couldn’t get the concept to make sense, so he put it aside. There was also the Tarnhelm to consider. Very, very tentatively, he put it on and stood in front of the mirror. It covered his head - it seemed to have grown in the night, or did it expand and contract automatically to fit its owner? - and was fastened under the chin by a little buckle in the shape of a crouching gnome.
    So far as he could remember, all he had to do was think of something he wanted to be, or a place he wanted to go to, and the magic cap did all the rest. As usual when asked to think of something, Malcolm’s mind went completely blank. He