Something rotten (15 page)

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” said my mother, clapping her hands, “and if you’d all like to take a seat, we can allow this meeting to begin.”

Everyone sat down, tea and Battenberg cake in hand, and looked expectant.

“Firstly I would like to welcome a new member to the group. As you know, my daughter has been away for a couple of years—not in prison, I’d like to make that clear!”

“Thank you, Mother,” I murmured under my breath as there was polite laughter from the group, who instantly assumed that’s exactly where I
had
been.

“And she has kindly agreed to join our group and say a few words. Thursday?”

I took a deep breath, stood up and said quickly, “Hello, everyone. My name’s Thursday Next, and my husband doesn’t exist.”

There was applause at this, and someone said, “Way to go, Thursday,” but I couldn’t think of anything to add, nor wanted to, so sat down again. There was silence as everyone stared at me, politely waiting for me to carry on.

“That’s it. End of story.”

“I’ll drink to that!” said Emma, gazing forlornly at the locked drinks cabinet.

“You’re very brave,” said Mrs. Beatty, who was sitting next to me. She patted my hand in a kindly manner. “What was his name?”

“Landen. Landen Parke-Laine. He was murdered by the ChronoGuard in 1947. I’m going to the Goliath Apologarium tomorrow to try to get his eradication reversed.”

There was a murmuring.

“What’s the matter?”

“You must understand,” said a tall and painfully thin man who up until now had remained silent, “that for you to progress in this group, you must begin to accept that this is a problem of the memory—there is no Landen; you just
think
there is.”

“You mean to tell me, Mr. Holmes, that by a scientific oddity we are in the wrong book?”

“It’s very dry in here, isn’t it?” muttered Emma unsubtly, still staring at the drinks cabinet.

“I was like you once,” said Mrs. Beatty, who had stopped patting my hand and returned to her knitting. “I had a wonderful life with Edgar, and then one morning I wake up in a different house with Gerald lying next to me. He didn’t believe me when I explained the problem, and I was on medication for ten years until I came here. It is only now, in the company of your good selves, am I coming to the realization that it is merely a malady of the head.”

I was horrified. “Mother?”

“It’s something that we must try and face, my dear.”

“But Dad visits you, doesn’t he?”

“Well, I
believe
he does,” she said, thinking hard, “but of course when he’s gone, it’s only a memory. There isn’t any
real
proof that he ever existed.”

“What about me? And Joffy? Or even Anton? How were we born without Dad?”

She shrugged at the impossibility of the paradox. “Perhaps it was, after all,” sighed my mother, “youthful indiscretions that I have expunged from my mind.”

“And Emma? And Herr Bismarck? How do you explain them being here?”

“Well,” said my mother, thinking hard, “I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for it . . . somewhere.”

“Is this what this group teaches you?” I replied angrily. “To deny the memories of your loved ones?”

I looked around at the gathering, who had, it seemed, given up in the face of the hopeless paradox that they lived every minute of their lives. I opened my mouth to try to describe eloquently just how I
knew
that Landen had once been married to me when I realized I was wasting my time. There was nothing, but
nothing,
to suggest that it was anything other than in my mind. I sighed. To be truthful, it
was
in my mind. It hadn’t happened. I just had memories of how it
might
have turned out. The tall, thin man, the realist, was beginning to convince everyone they were not victims of a timeslip, but delusional.

“You want proof—”

I was interrupted by an excited knock at the front door. Whoever it was didn’t waste any time; she just walked straight into the house and into the front room. It was a middle-aged woman in a floral dress who was holding the hand of a confused and acutely embarrassed-looking man.

“Hello, group!” she said happily. “It’s Ralph! I got him back!”

“Ah!” said Emma. “This calls for a celebration!” Everyone ignored her.

“I’m sorry,” said my mother, “have you got the right house? Or the right self-help group?”

“Yes, yes,” she reasserted. “It’s Julie, Julie Aseizer. I’ve been coming to this group every week for the past three years!”

There was silence in the group. All you could hear was the quiet click of Mrs. Beatty’s knitting needles.

“Well, I haven’t seen you,” announced the tall, thin man. He looked around at the group. “Does
anyone
recognize this person?”

The group shook their heads blankly.

“I expect you think this is
really
funny, don’t you?” said the thin man angrily. “This is a self-help group for people with severe memory aberrations, and I really don’t think it is either amusing or constructive for pranksters to make fun of us! Now, please leave!”

She stood for a moment, biting her lip, but it was her husband who spoke.

“Come on, darling, I’m taking you home.”

“But wait!” she said. “Now he’s
back,
everything is as it
was,
and I wouldn’t have needed to come to your group, so I
didn’t
—yet I
remember . . .
”

Her voice trailed off, and her husband gave her a hug as she started to sob. He led her out, apologizing profusely all the while.

As soon as they had gone, the thin man sat down indignantly. “A sorry state of affairs!” he grumbled.

“Everyone thinks it’s funny to do that old joke,” added Mrs. Beatty. “That’s the second time this month.”

“It gave me a powerful thirst,” added Emma. “Anyone else?”

“Maybe,” I suggested, “they should start a self-help group for themselves—they could call it Eradications Anonymous
Anonymous
.”

No one thought it was funny, and I hid a smile. Perhaps there would be a chance for me and Landen after all.

I didn’t contribute much to the group after that, and indeed the conversation soon threaded away from eradications and onto more mundane matters, such as the latest crop of TV shows that seemed to have flourished in my absence.
Celebrity Name That Fruit!
hosted by Frankie Saveloy was a ratings topper these days, as was
Toasters from Hell
and
You’ve Been Stapled!,
a collection of England’s funniest stationery incidents. Emma had given up all attempts at subtlety by now and was prying the lock off the drinks cabinet with a screwdriver when Friday wailed one of those ultrasonic cries that only parents can hear—makes you understand how sheep can know who’s lamb is whose—and I mercifully excused myself. He was standing up in his cot rattling the bars, so I took him out and read to him until we were both fast asleep.

10.

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle

Kierkegaard Book-Burning Ceremony Proves Danish Philosopher’s Unpopularity

Chancellor Yorrick Kaine last night officiated at the first burning of Danish literature with the incineration of eight copies of
Fear and Trembling,
a quantity that fell far short of the expected “thirty or forty tons.” When asked to comment on the apparent lack of enthusiasm among the public to torch their Danish philosophy, Kaine explained that “Kierkegaard is clearly less popular than we thought, and rightly so—next stop Hans Christian Andersen!” Kierkegaard himself was unavailable for comment, having inconsiderately allowed himself to be dead for a number of years.

Article in
The Toad,
July 14, 1988

I
was dreaming that a large chain-saw-wielding elephant was sitting on me when I awoke at two in the morning. I was still fully dressed, with a snoring Friday fast asleep on my chest. I put him back in his cot and turned the bedside lamp to the wall to soften the light. My mother, for reasons known only to herself, had kept my bedroom pretty much as it was from the time I had left home. It was nostalgic, but also deeply disturbing, to see just what had interested me in my late teens. It seemed like it had been boys, music, Jane Austen and law enforcement, but not particularly in that order.

I undressed and slipped on a long T-shirt and stared at Friday’s sleeping form, his lips making gentle sucky motions.

“Pssst!” said a voice close at hand. I turned. There, in the semidark, was a very large hedgehog dressed in a pinafore and bonnet. She was keeping a close lookout at the door and, after giving me a wan smile, crept to the window and peeked out.

“Whoa!” she breathed in wonderment. “Streetlights are
orange.
Never would have thought
that!
”

“Mrs. Tiggy-winkle,” I said, “I’ve only been gone two days!”

“Sorry to bother you,” she said, curtsying quickly and absently folding my shirt, which I had tossed over a chair back, “but there are one or two things going on that I thought you should know about—and you did say that if I had any questions, to ask.”

“Okay—but not here; we’ll wake Friday.”

So we crept downstairs to the kitchen. I pulled down the blinds before turning the lights on, as a six-foot hedgehog in a bonnet might have caused a few eyebrows to be raised in the neighborhood—no one wore bonnets in Swindon these days.

I offered Mrs. Tiggy-winkle a seat at the table. Although she, Emperor Zhark and Bradshaw had been put in charge of running Jurisfiction in my absence, none of them had the leadership skills necessary to do the job on their own. And while the Council of Genres refused to concede that my absence was anything but “compassionate leave,” a new Bellman was yet to be elected in my place.

“So what’s up?” I asked.

“Oh, Miss Next!” she wailed, her spines bristling with vexation. “Please come back!”

“I have things to deal with out here,” I explained. “You all know that!”

“I know,” she sighed, “but Emperor Zhark threw a tantrum when I suggested he spend a little less time conquering the universe and a little more time at Jurisfiction. The Red Queen won’t do anything post-1867, and Vernham Deane is tied up with the latest Daphne Farquitt novel. Commander Bradshaw does his own thing, which leaves me in charge—and someone left a saucer of bread and milk on my desk this morning.”

“It was probably just a joke.”

“Well, I’m not laughing,” replied Mrs. Tiggy-winkle indignantly.

“By the way,” I said as a thought suddenly struck me, “did you find out which book Yorrick Kaine escaped from?”

“I’m afraid not. The Cat is searching unpublished novels in the Well of Lost Plots at the moment, but it might take a little time. You know how chaotic things are down there.”

“Only too well.” I sighed, thinking about my old home in unpublished fiction with a mixture of fondness and relief. The Well was where books are actually constructed, where plotsmiths create the stories that authors
think
they write. You can buy plot devices at discount rates and verbs by the pint. An odd place, to be sure. “Okay,” I said finally, “you’d better tell me what’s going on.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, counting the points out on her claw, “this morning a rumor of potential change in the copyright laws swept through the BookWorld.”

“I don’t know how these rumors get started,” I replied wearily. “Was there any truth in it?”

“Not in the least.”

This was a contentious subject to the residents of the BookWorld. The jump to copyright-free Public Domain Status had always been a fearful prospect for a book character, and even with support groups and training courses to soften the blow, the Narrative Menopause could take some getting used to. The problem is that copyright laws tend to vary around the world, and sometimes characters are in public domain in one market and not in another, which is confusing. Then there is the possibility that the law might change and characters who had adjusted themselves to a Public Domain Status would find themselves in copyright again, or vice versa. Unrest in the BookWorld in these matters is palpable; it only takes a small spark to set off a riot.

“So all was well?”

“Pretty much.”

“Good. Anything else?”

“Starbucks wants to open another coffee shop in the Hardy Boys series.”

“Another one?” I asked with some surprise. “There’s already sixteen. How much coffee do they think they can drink? Tell them they can open another in
Mrs. Dalloway
and two more in
The Age of Reason
. After that, no more. What else?”

“The Tailor of Gloucester needs three yards of cherry-colored silk to finish the Mayor’s embroidered coat—but he’s got a cold and can’t go out.”

“Who are we? Interlink? Tell him to send his cat, Simpkin.”

“Okay.”

There was a pause.