The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [226]
“Keep it for an encore. It’s three minutes long on its own— but don’t hurry; let it build. Then again, if your audience is middle-aged and a bit fuddy-duddy I’d drop the bear, baboon and the dogs and use the greyhound and the racehorses instead—or the one about the two Rolls-Royces.”
“Canapés, darling?” said Mum, offering me a plate.
“Got any more of those prawny ones?”
“I’ll go and see.”
I followed her into the vestry, where she and several other members of the Women’s Federation were getting food ready.
“Mum, Mum,” I said, following her to where the profoundly deaf Mrs. Higgins was laying doilies on plates, “I must talk to you.”
“I’m busy, sweetness.”
“It’s very important.”
She stopped doing what she was doing, put everything down and steered me to the corner of the vestry, just next to a worn stone effigy, reputedly a follower of St. Zvlkx.
“What’s the problem that’s more important than canapés, oh daughter-my-daughter?”
“Well,” I began, unsure of how to put it, “remember you said how you wanted to be a grandmother?”
“Oh that,” she said, laughing and moving to get up. “I’ve known you had a bun in there for a while—I was just wondering when you were going to tell me.”
“Wait a minute!” I said, feeling suddenly cheated. “You’re meant to be all surprised and tearful.”
“Done that, darling. Can I be so indelicate as to ask who the father is?”
“My husband’s, I hope—and before you ask, the ChronoGuard eradicated him.”
She pulled me into her arms and gave me a long hug.
“Now that I can understand. Do you ever see him in the sort of way I see your father?”
“No,” I replied a bit miserably. “He’s only in my memories.”
“Poor little duck!” exclaimed my mother, giving me another hug. “But thank the Lord for small mercies—at least you got to remember him. Many of us never do—just vague feelings of something that might have been. You must come along to Eradications Anonymous with me one evening. Believe me, there are more Lost Ones than you might imagine.”
I’d never really talked about Dad’s eradication with my mother. All her friends had assumed my brothers and I had been fathered by youthful indiscretions. To my highly principled mother this had been almost as painful as Dad’s eradication. I’m not really one for any organization with “anonymous” in the title, so I decided to backtrack slightly.
“How did you know I was pregnant?” I asked as she rested her hand on mine and smiled kindly.
“Spot it a mile off. You’ve been eating like a horse and staring at babies a lot. When Mrs. Pilchard’s little cousin Henry came round last week you could hardly keep your hands off him.”
“Aren’t I like that usually?”
“Not even remotely. You’re filling out along the bustline too—that dress has never looked so good on you. When’s sprogging time? July?”
I paused as a wave of despondency washed over me, brought about by the sheer inevitability of motherhood. When I first knew about it Landen had been with me and everything seemed that much easier.
“Mum, what if I’m no good at it? I don’t know the first thing about babies. I’ve spent my working life chasing after bad guys. I can field-strip an M-16 blindfold, replace an engine in an APC and hit a twopence piece from thirty yards eight times out of ten. I’m not sure a cot by the fireside is really my sort of thing.”
“It wasn’t mine either,” confided my mother, smiling kindly. “It’s no accident that I’m a dreadful cook. Before I met your father and had you and your brothers I worked at SO-3. Still do, on occasions.”
“You didn’t meet him on a day trip to Portsmouth then?” I asked slowly, wondering whether I really wanted to hear what I was hearing.
“Not at all. It was in another place entirely.”
“SO-3?”
“You’d never believe me if I told you, so I’m not going to. But the point is, I was very happy to have children when the time came. Despite all your ceaseless bickering when you were kids and teenage grumpiness, it’s been a wonderful adventure. Losing Anton was a storm cloud for a bit, but on balance it’s been good—better than SpecOps any day.” She paused for a moment. “But I was