The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [170]
“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!”
Her anger was directed at a small Tasmanian tiger that had been nosing the remains of some chicken on the table edge.
“Bad boy!” she added in a scolding tone. The Tastiger looked crestfallen, sat on its blanket by the Aga and stared down at its paws.
“Rescue Thylacine,” explained my mother. “Used to be a lab animal. He smoked forty a day until his escape. It’s costing me a fortune in nicotine patches. Isn’t it, DH-82?”
The small reengineered native of Tasmania looked up and shook his head. Despite being vaguely dog-shaped, this species was more closely related to a kangaroo than a Labrador. You always expected one to wag its tail, bark or fetch a stick, but they never did. The closest behavioral similarities were a propensity to steal food and an almost fanatical devotion to tail chasing.
“I miss your dad a lot, you know,” said my mother wistfully. “How—”
There was a loud explosion, the lights flickered, and something shot past the kitchen window.
“What was that?” said my mother.
“I think,” replied Landen soberly, “it was Aunt Polly.”
We found her in the vegetable patch dressed in a deflating rubber suit that was meant to break her fall but obviously hadn’t—she was holding a handkerchief to a bloodied nose.
“My goodness!” exclaimed my mother. “Are you okay?”
“Never been better!” she replied, looking at a stake in the ground and then yelling: “Seventy-five yards!”
“Righty-oh!” said a distant voice from the other end of the garden. We turned to see Uncle Mycroft, who was consulting a clipboard next to a smoking Volkswagen convertible.
“Car seat ejection devices in case of road accidents,” explained Polly, “with a self-inflating rubber suit to cushion