Something rotten (5 page)

“You stay out here,” I said to Pickwick, “and don’t let Alan misbehave himself.”

It was too late. Alan, small size notwithstanding, had already terrorized Mordecai and the other dodos into submission. They all shivered in fright beneath the hydrangeas.

“Are you staying for long?” inquired my mother. “Your room is just how you left it.”

This meant just how I left it when I was nineteen, but I thought it rude to say so. I explained that I’d like to stay at least until I got an apartment sorted out, introduced Hamlet and asked if he could stay for a few days, too.

“Of course! Lady Hamilton’s in the spare room and that nice Mr. Bismarck is in the attic, so he can have the box room.”

My mother grasped Hamlet’s hand and shook it heartily. “How are you, Mr. Hamlet? Where did you say you were the prince of again?”

“Denmark.”

“Ah! No visitors after seven P.M. and breakfast stops at nine A.M. prompt. I do expect guests to make their own beds and if you need washing done you can put it in the wicker basket on the landing. Pleased to meet you. I’m Mrs. Next, Thursday’s mother.”

“I have a mother,” replied Hamlet gloomily as he bowed politely and kissed my mother’s hand. “She shares my uncle’s bed.”

“They should buy another one, in that case,” she replied, practical as ever. “They do a very good deal at IKEA, I’m told. Don’t use it myself because I don’t like all that self-assembly—I mean, what’s the point of paying for something you have to build yourself? But it’s popular with men for
exactly
that same reason. Do you like Battenberg?”

“Wittenberg?”

“No, no.
Battenberg.
”

“On the river Eder?” asked Hamlet, confused over my mother’s conversational leap from self-assembly furniture to cake.

“No, silly, on a doily—covered with marzipan.”

Hamlet leaned closer to me. “I think your mother may be insane—and I should know.”

“You’ll get the hang of what she’s talking about,” I said, giving him a reassuring pat on the arm.

We walked through the hall to the living room, where, after managing to extract Friday’s fingers from Mum’s beads, we managed to sit down.

“So tell me all your news!” she exclaimed as my eyes flicked around the room, trying to take in all the many potential hazards for a two-year-old.

“Where do you want me to begin?” I asked, removing the vase of flowers from the top of the TV before Friday had a chance to pull them over on himself. “I had a flurry of things to do before I left. Two days ago I was in Camelot trying to sort out some marital strife, and the day before—sweetheart, don’t touch that—I was negotiating a pay dispute with the Union of Orcs.”

“Goodness!” replied my mother. “You must be simply
dying
for a cup of tea.”

“Please. The BookWorld might be the cat’s pajamas for characterization and explosive narrative, but you can’t get a decent cup of tea for all the bourbon in Hemingway.”

“I’ll do it!” said Joffy. “C’mon, Hamlet, tell me about yourself. Got a girlfriend?”

“Yes—but she’s bonkers.”

“In a good way or a bad way?”

Hamlet shrugged. “Neither—just bonkers. But her brother—hell’s teeth! Talk about sprung-loaded . . . !”

Their conversation faded as they disappeared into the kitchen.

“Don’t forget the Battenberg,” my mother called after them.

I opened my suitcase and took out a few rattly toys Mrs. Bradshaw had given me. Melanie had looked after Friday a lot, as she and Commander Bradshaw had no children of their own, what with Melanie’s being a mountain gorilla, so she had doted on Friday. It had its upsides: he always ate his greens and loved fruit, but I had my suspicions that they climbed on the furniture when I wasn’t about, and once I found Friday trying to peel a banana with his feet.

“How’s life treating you?” I asked.

“Better for seeing you. It’s quite lonely with Mycroft and Polly away at the Fourteenth Annual Mad Scientists’ Conference. If it wasn’t for Joffy and his partner Miles popping round every day, Bismarck and Emma, Mrs. Beatty next door, Eradications Anonymous, my auto-body work class and that frightful Mrs. Daniels, I’d be completely alone. Should Friday be in that cupboard?”

I turned, jumped up and grabbed Friday by the straps of his dungarees and gently took the two crystal wineglasses from his inquisitive grasp. I showed him his toys and sat him down in the middle of the room. He stayed put for about three seconds before tottering off in the direction of DH-82, Mum’s bone-idle Thylacine, who was asleep on a nearby chair.

DH-82 yelped as Friday tugged playfully at his whiskers. The Thylacine then got up, yawned and went to find his supper dish. Friday followed. And I followed Friday.

“—in the ear?” said Joffy as I walked into the kitchen. “Does that work?”

“Apparently,” replied the Prince. “We found him stone dead in the orchard.”

I scooped up Friday, who was about to tuck in to DH-82’s food, and took him back to the living room.

“Sorry,” I explained. “He’s into everything at the moment. Tell me about Swindon. Much changed?”

“Not really. The Christmas lights have improved tremendously, there’s a Skyrail line straight through the Brunel Centre, and Swindon now has twenty-six different supermarkets.”

“Can the residents eat that much?”

“We’re giving it our best shot.”

Joffy walked back in with Hamlet and placed a tray of tea things in front of us.

“That small dodo of yours is a terror. Tried to peck me when I wasn’t looking.”

“You probably startled him. How’s Dad?”

Joffy, to whom this was a touchy subject, decided not to join us but play with Friday instead.

“C’mon, young lad,” he said, “let’s get drunk and shoot some pool.”

“Your father has been wanting to get hold of you for a while,” said my mother as soon as Joffy and Friday had gone. “As you probably guessed, he’s been having trouble with Nelson again. He often comes home simply
reeking
of cordite, and I’m
really
not keen on him hanging around with that Emma Hamilton woman.”

My father was a sort of time-traveling knight errant. He used to be a member of SO-12, the agency charged with policing the time lines: the ChronoGuard. He resigned due to differences over the way the historical time line was managed and went rogue. The ChronoGuard decided that he was too dangerous and eradicated him by a well-timed knock at the door during the night of his conception; my aunt April was born instead.

“So Nelson died at the Battle of Trafalgar?” I asked, recalling Dad’s previous problems in the time line.

“Yes,” she replied, “but I’m not sure he was meant to. That’s why your father
says
he has to work so closely with Emma.”

Emma, of course, was Lady Emma Hamilton, Nelson’s consort. It was she who had alerted my father to Nelson’s eradication. One moment she had been married to Lord Nelson for more than ten years, the next she was a bankrupt lush living in Calais. Must have been quite a shock. My mother leaned closer.

“Between the two of us, I’m beginning to think Emma’s a bit of a tram—Emma! How nice of you to join us!”

At the doorway was a tall, red-faced woman wearing a brocade dress that had seen better days. Despite the rigors of a lengthy and damaging acquaintance with the bottle, there were the remains of great beauty and charm about her. She must have been dazzling in her youth.

“Hello, Lady Hamilton,” I said, getting up to shake her hand. “How’s the husband?”

“Still dead.”

“Mine, too.”

“Bummer.”

“Ah!” I exclaimed, wondering quite where Lady Hamilton had picked up the word, although on reflection she probably knew a few worse. “This is Hamlet.”

“Emma Hamilton,” she cooed, casting an eye in the direction of the unquestionably handsome Dane and giving him her hand. “Lady.”

“Hamlet,” he replied, kissing her proffered hand. “Prince.”

Her eyelashes fluttered momentarily. “A Prince? Of anywhere I’d know?”

“Denmark, as it happens.”

“My . . .
late
boyfriend bombarded Copenhagen quite mercilessly in 1801. He said the Danes put up a good fight.”

“We Danes like a tussle, Lady Hamilton,” replied the Prince with a great deal of charm, “although I’m not from Copenhagen myself. A little town up the coast—Elsinore. We have a castle there. Not very large. Barely sixty rooms and a garrison of under two hundred. A bit bleak in the winter.”

“Haunted?”

“One that I know of. What did your
late
boyfriend do when he wasn’t bombarding Danes?”

“Oh, nothing much,” she said offhandedly. “Fighting the French and the Spanish, leaving body parts around Europe—it was quite de rigueur at the time.”

There was a pause as they stared at one another. Emma started to fan herself.

“Goodness!” she murmured. “All this talk of body parts has made me quite hot!”

“Right!” said my mother, jumping to her feet. “That’s it! I’m not having this sort of smutty innuendo in my house!”

Hamlet and Emma looked startled at her outburst, but I managed to pull her aside and whisper, “Mother! Don’t be so judgmental—after all, they’re both single. And Hamlet’s interest in Emma might take
her
interest off someone else.”

“Someone . . . else?”

You could almost hear the cogs going around in her head. After a long pause, she took a deep breath, turned back to them and smiled broadly.

“My dears, why don’t you have a walk in the garden? There is a gentle cooling breeze and the
niche d’amour
in the rose garden is very attractive this time of year.”

“A good time for a drink, perhaps?” asked Emma hopefully.

“Perhaps,” replied my mother, who was obviously trying to keep Lady Hamilton away from the bottle.

Emma didn’t reply. She just offered her arm to Hamlet, who took it graciously and was going to steer her out of the open doors to the patio when Emma stopped him with a murmur of “not the
French
windows” and took him out by way of the kitchen.

“As I was saying,” said my mother as she sat down, “Emma’s a lovely girl. Cake?”

“Please.”

“Here,” she said, handing me the knife, “help yourself.”

“Tell me,” I began as I cut the Battenberg carefully, “did Landen come back?”

“That’s your eradicated husband, isn’t it?” she replied kindly. “No, I’m afraid he didn’t.” She smiled encouragingly. “You should come to one of my Eradications Anonymous evenings—we’re meeting tomorrow night.”

In common with my mother, I had a husband whose reality had been scrubbed from the here and now. Unlike my mother, whose husband still returned every so often from the timestream, I had a husband, Landen, who existed only in my dreams and recollections. No one else had any memories or knowledge of him at all. Mum knew about Landen because I’d told her. To anyone else, Landen’s parents included, I was suffering some bizarre delusion. But Friday’s father
was
Landen, despite his nonexistence, in the same way that my brothers and I had been born, despite my father’s not existing. Time travel is like that. Full of unexplainable paradoxes.

“I’ll get him back,” I mumbled.

“Who?”

“Landen.”

Joffy reappeared from the garden with Friday, who, in common with most toddlers, didn’t see why adults couldn’t give airplane rides all day. I gave him a slice of Battenberg, which he dropped in his eagerness to devour. The usually torpid DH-82 opened an eye, darted in, ate the cake and was asleep again in under three seconds.

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!” Friday cried indignantly.

“Yes, it was impressive, wasn’t it?” I agreed. “Bet you never saw Pickwick move that fast—even for a marshmallow.”

“Nostrud laboris nisi et commodo
consequat,
” replied Friday with great indignation. “Excepteur sint cupidatat non proident!”

“Serves you right,” I told him. “Here, have a cucumber sandwich.”

“What did my grandson say?” asked my mother, staring at Friday, who was trying to eat the sandwich all in one go and making a nauseating spectacle of himself.

“Oh, that’s just him jabbering away in Lorem Ipsum. He speaks nothing else.”

“Lorem—what?”

“Lorem Ipsum. It’s dummy text used by the printing and typesetting industry to demonstrate layout. I don’t know where he picked it up. Comes from living inside books, I should imagine.”

“I see,” said my mother, not seeing at all.

“How are the cousins?” I asked.

“Wilbur and Orville both run Mycrotech these days,” answered Joffy as he passed me a cup of tea. “They made a few mistakes while Uncle Mycroft was away, but I think he’s got them on a short leash now.”

Wilbur and Orville were were my aunt and uncle’s two sons. Despite having two of the most brilliant parents around, they were almost solid mahogany from the neck up.

“Pass the sugar, would you? A few mistakes?”

“Quite a lot, actually. Remember Mycroft’s memory-erasure machine?”

“Yes and no.”

“Well, they opened a chain of High Street erasure centers called Mem-U-Gon. You could go in and have unpleasant memories removed.”

“Lucrative, I should imagine.”

“
Extremely
lucrative—right up to the moment they made their first mistake. Which was, considering those two, not an
if
but a
when.
”

“Dare I ask what happened?”

“I think that it was the equivalent of setting a vacuum cleaner to ‘blow’ by accident. A certain Mrs. Worthing went into the Swindon branch of Mem-U-Gon to remove every single recollection of her failed first marriage.”

“And . . . ?”

“Well, she was accidentally
uploaded
with the unwanted memories of seventy-two one-night stands, numerous drunken arguments, fifteen wasted lives and almost a thousand episodes of
Name That Fruit!
She was going to sue but settled instead for the name and address of one of the men whose exploits is now lodged in her memory. As far as I know, they married.”

“I like a story with a happy ending,” put in my mother.

“In any event,” continued Joffy, “Mycroft forbade them from using it again and gave them the Chameleocar to market. It should be in the showrooms quite soon—if Goliath hasn’t pinched the idea first.”