The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [459]
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