Lost in a good book (10 page)

Landen Parke-Laine had been with me in the Crimea in ’72. He lost a leg to a land mine and his best friend to a military blunder. His best friend was my brother, Anton—and Landen testified against him at the hearing that followed the disastrous “charge of the light armored brigade.” My brother was blamed for the debacle, Landen was honorably discharged, I was awarded the Crimea Star for gallantry, I didn’t speak to him for ten years and now we’re married. It’s funny how things turn out.

THURSDAY NEXT
,
Crimean Reminiscences

H
ONEY
, I’
M HOME
!” I yelled out. There was a scrabbling noise from the kitchen as Pickwick’s feet struggled to get a purchase on the tiles in his eagerness to greet me. I had engineered him myself when you could still buy home cloning kits over the counter. He was an early version 1.2, which explained his lack of wings—they didn’t complete the sequence for two more years. He made excited
plock plock
noises and bobbed his head in greeting, rummaged in the wastebasket for a gift and eventually brought me a discarded junk mail flyer for
Lorna Doone
merchandising. I tickled him under the chin, and he ran to the kitchen, stopped, looked at me and bobbed his head some more.

“Hell-ooo!” yelled Landen from his study. “Do you like surprises?”

“When they’re nice ones!” I yelled back.

Pickwick returned to my side, plock-plocked some more and tugged the leg of my jeans. He scuttled off into the kitchen again and waited for me at his basket. Intrigued, I followed. I could see the reason for his excitement. In the middle of the basket, amongst a large heap of shredded paper, was an egg.

“Pickwick!” I cried excitedly.
“You’re a girl!”

Pickwick bobbed some more and nuzzled me affectionately. After a while she stopped and delicately stepped into her basket, ruffled her feathers, tapped the egg with her beak and then walked round it several times before gently placing herself over it. A hand rested on my shoulder. I touched Landen’s fingers and stood up. He kissed me on the neck and I wrapped my arms round his chest.

“I thought Pickwick was a boy?” he asked.

“So did I.”

“Is it a sign?”

“Pickers laying an egg and turning out to be a girl?” I replied. “What do you mean—you’re going to have a baby, Land?”

“No, silly, you
know
what I mean.”

“I do?” I asked, looking up at him with carefully engineered innocence.

“Well?”

“Well what?” I stared into his bright concerned face with what I thought was a blank expression. But I couldn’t hold it for long and was soon a bundle of girlish giggles and salty tears. He hugged me tightly and placed his hand gently on my tum.

“In there? A baby?”

“Yes. Small pink thing that makes a noise. Seven weeks. Probably appear July-ish.”

“How are you feeling?”

“All right,” I told him. “I felt a bit sick yesterday, but that might have had nothing to do with it. I’ll work until I start waddling and then take leave. How are
you
feeling?”

“Odd,” said Landen, hugging me again, “in a very nice kind of
elated
sort of way. . . . Who can I tell?”

“No one quite yet. Probably just as well—your mum would knit herself to death!”

“And what’s wrong with my mother’s knitting?” asked Landen, feigning indignation.

“Nothing,” I giggled, “but there is a limit to storage space.”

“At least the things she knits are recognizable,” he replied. “That jumper your mum gave me for my birthday—what does she think I am, a squid?”

I buried my face in his collar and held him close. He rubbed my back gently and we stood together for several minutes without talking.

“Did you have a good day?” he asked at last.

“Well,” I began, “we found
Cardenio,
I was shot dead by an SO-14 marksman, became a vanishing hitchhiker, saw Yorrick Kaine, suffered a few too many coincidences and knocked a neanderthal unconscious.”

“No puncture this time?”

“Two, actually—at the same time.”

“What was Kaine like?”

“Difficult to say. He arrived at Volescamper’s as we were leaving. Aren’t you even
curious
about the marksman?”

“Yorrick Kaine is giving a talk tonight about the economical realities of a Welsh free trade agreement—”

“Landen,” I said, “it’s my uncle’s party tonight. I promised Mum we’d be there.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“All right,” sighed Landen. “What was it like?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Are you going to ask me about the incident with SO-14 now?” My uncle Mycroft had announced his retirement. He was seventy-seven, and following the events of the Prose Portal and Polly’s imprisonment in “I wandered lonely as a cloud,” they had both decided that enough was enough. The Goliath Corporation had been offering Mycroft not one but
two
blank checks for him to resume work on a new Prose Portal, but Mycroft had steadfastly refused, maintaining that the Portal could not be replicated even if he had wanted to. We took my car up to Mum’s house and parked a little way up the road.

“I never thought of Mycroft retiring,” I said as we walked down the street.

“Me neither,” he replied. “What do you suppose he’ll do?”

“Watch
Name That Fruit!
most likely. He says that soaps and quiz shows are the ideal way to fade out.”

“He’s not far wrong,” added Landen. “After a few years of
65 Walrus Street,
death might become something of a welcome distraction.”

We heaved open the garden gate and greeted the dodos, who all had a bright pink ribbon tied round their necks for the occasion. I offered them a few marshmallows and they pecked and plocked greedily at the proffered gifts. The front door was opened by Wilbur, who was one of Mycroft’s sons and had reached middle age well before his time. Landen thought he did it on purpose, as though he could somehow accelerate through the days of work and get to retirement and golf just that little bit sooner.

“Hello, Thursday!” he enthused, ushering us inside.

“Hi, Wilbers. All well?”

“I’m
very
well,” replied Wilbur, smiling benignly. “Hello, Landen—I read your latest book. It was a big improvement on the last one, I must say.”

“You’re very kind,” replied Landen dryly.

“Drink?”

He offered us both a glass, and I took mine eagerly. I had just got it to my lips when Landen took it out of my hands. I looked at him and he mouthed, “Baby.” Blast. Hadn’t thought of that.

“I was
promoted,
you know,” continued Wilbur, walking through the hall and towards the living room.

He paused to allow us to murmur a congratulatory sound before continuing: “Consolidated Useful Stuff always promote those within the company that show particular promise, and after ten years in pension fund management ConStuff felt I was ready to branch into something new and dynamic. I’m now Services Director at a subsidiary of theirs named MycroTech Developments.”

“But my goodness
what
a coincidence!” said Landen sarcastically. “Isn’t that Mycroft’s company?”

“Coincidental,” replied Wilbur forcefully, “as you say. Mr. Perkup—the CEO of Mycro Tech—told me it was solely due to my diligence; I—”

“Thursday,
darling!
” interrupted Gloria, Wilbur’s wife. Formerly a Volescamper, she had married Wilbur under the accidental misapprehension that A: he would be coming into a fortune and B: he was as intelligent as his father. She had been wrong—in a spectacular fashion—on both counts.

“Darling, you are looking simply divine—have you lost weight?”

“I have no idea, Gloria, but . . . you’re looking different.”

And she was. Habitually dressed to the nines in expensive clothes, hats, makeup and lashings of what-have-you, tonight Gloria was dressed in chinos and a shirt. She hardly wore any makeup and her hair, usually perfectly coiffured, was tied up in a ponytail with a black scrunchie.

“What do you think?” she asked, doing a twirl for us both.

“What happened to the £500 dresses?” asked Landen. “Bailiffs been in?”

“No, this is all the rage—and you should know, Thursday.
FeMole
is promoting the Thursday Next look. This is very much ‘in’ at present.”

“Ridiculous,” I told her, wondering if there was an end to the ludicrous media spin-offs from the whole
Eyre
thing. Cordelia had gone so far as to license jigsaw puzzles and action figures before I had a chance to stop her. I wondered if she’d had a hand in this, too.

“If Bonzo the Wonder Hound had rescued Jane Eyre,” I asked, trying to keep a straight face, “would you all be wearing studded collars and smelling each other’s bottoms?”

“There is no need to be offensive,” replied Gloria haughtily as she looked me up and down. “You should be
honored.
Mind you, the December issue of
FeMole
thinks that a brown leather flier’s jacket is more in keeping with ‘the look.’ Your black leather is a little bit passé, I’m afraid. And those shoes—hell’s teeth!”

“Wait a moment!” I returned. “How can you tell me that I don’t have the Thursday Next look? I
am
Thursday Next!”

“Fashions evolve, Thursday—I’ve heard that next month’s fashions will be marine invertebrates. You should enjoy it while you can.”

“Marine invertebrates?” echoed Landen. “What happened to that squidlike jumper of your mum’s? We could be sitting on a fortune!”

“Can neither of you be serious?” asked Gloria disdainfully. “If you’re not in you’re out, and where would you be then?”

“Out, I guess,” I replied. “Land, what do you think?”

“Totally out, Thurs.”

We stared at her half smiling, and she laughed. Gloria was a good sort once you broke down the barriers. Wilbur, seizing the chance to tell us more about his fascinating new job, carried on as soon as his wife stopped talking.

“I’m now on £20K
plus
car and a good pension package. I could take voluntary retirement at fifty-five and still draw two-thirds of my wage. What is the SpecOps retirement fund like?”

“Crap, Wilbur—but you know that.”

A slightly smaller and more follicularly challenged version of Wilbur walked up.

“Hello, Thursday.”

“Hello, Orville. How’s the ear?”

“Just the same. What was that you were saying about retiring at fifty-five, Will?”

In all the excitement of pension plans I was forgotten. Charlotte, who was Orville’s wife, also had the Thursday Next look; she and Gloria fell eagerly into untaxing conversation about whether leather shoes in “the look” should be worn above or below the ankle and whether a small amount of eyeliner was acceptable. As usual, Charlotte tended to agree with Gloria; in fact, she tended to agree with everybody about everything. She was as hospitable as the day was long; just don’t get caught in an elevator with her—she could agree you to death.

We left them to their conversation, and I walked into the living room, deftly catching the wrist of my elder brother Joffy, who had been hoping to give me a resounding slap on the back of my head as was his thirty-five-year-old custom. I twisted his arm into a half nelson and had his face pressed against the door before he knew what had happened.

“Hello, Joff,” I said. “Slowing up in your old age?”

I let him go, he laughed energetically, straightened his jaw and dog collar and hugged me tightly while proffering a hand for Landen to shake. Landen, after checking for the almost mandatory hand buzzer, shook it heartily.

“How’s Mr. and Mrs. Doofus, then?”

“We’re fine, Joff. You?”

“Not that good, Thurs. The Church of the Global Standard Deity has undergone a split.”

“No!” I said with as much surprise and concern in my voice as I could muster.

“I’m afraid so. The new Global Standard
Clockwise
Deity have broken away due to unresolvable differences over the direction in which the collection plate is passed round.”

“
Another
split? That’s the third this week!”

“Fourth,” replied Joffy dourly, “and it’s only Tuesday. The Standardized pro-Baptist conjoined Methodarian-Lutherian sisters of something-or-other split into two subgroups yesterday. Soon,” he added grimly, “there won’t be enough ministers to man the splits. As it is I have to attend two dozen different breakaway church groups every week. I often forget which one I’m at, and as you can imagine, preaching to the Idolatry Friends of St. Zvlkx the Consumer the sermon that I should have been reading to the Church of the Misrepresented Promise of Eternal Life can be highly embarrassing. Mum’s in the kitchen. Do you think Dad will turn up?”

I didn’t know and told him so. He looked crestfallen for a moment and then said: “Will you come and do a professional mingle at my Les Artes Modernes de Swindon show next week?”

“Why me?”

“Because you’re vaguely famous and you’re my sister. Yes?”

“Okay.”

He tugged my ear affectionately and we walked into the kitchen.

“Hello, Mum!”

My mother was bustling around some chicken vol-au-vent. By some bizarre twist of fate the pastry had turned out not at all burned and actually quite tasty—it had thrown her into a bit of a panic. Most of her cooking ended up as the culinary equivalent of the Tunguska event.

“Hello, Thursday, hello, Landen, can you pass me that bowl, please?”

Landen passed it over, trying to guess the contents.

“Hello, Mrs. Next,” said Landen.

“Call me Wednesday, Landen—you’re family now, you know.” She smiled and giggled to herself.

“Dad said to say hello,” I put in quickly before Mum cooed herself into a frenzy. “I saw him today.”

My mother stopped her random method of cooking and recalled for a moment, I imagine, fond embraces with her eradicated husband. It must have been quite a shock, waking up one morning and finding your husband never existed. Then, quite out of the blue, she yelled: “DH-82,
down!
”