A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (23 page)

Bowden joined me on the grass. He took a shoe off and emptied out some gravel.

“That post I was talking about in Ohio, you remember?”

“Yes?”

“They confirmed the appointment this morning.”

“Terrific! When do you start?”

Bowden looked down.

“I haven't agreed to it yet.”

“Why not?”

“Have you ever . . . um . . . been to Ohio?” he asked in an innocent tone of voice.

“No; I've been to New York several times, though.”

“It's very beautiful, I am told.”

“A lot of America is.”

“They are offering me twice Victor's pay.”

“Good deal.”

“And they said I could bring someone with me.”

“Who do you have in mind?”

“You.”

I looked at him, and his urgent and hopeful expression said
it all. I hadn't thought of him as a permanent boss or partner. I supposed that working with him might be like working under Boswell again. A workaholic who expected much the same from his charges.

“That's a very generous offer, Bowden.”

“Then you'll consider it?”

I shrugged.

“I can't think of anything beyond Hades. After living with him all day I had hoped that I would be spared his presence at night, but he is there too, leering at me in my dreams.”

Bowden had had no such dreams, but then he hadn't seen as much of Hades as I had. We both lapsed into silence and stayed that way for an hour, watching the river flow languidly past until the tow truck arrived.

I stretched out in my mother's huge iron bathtub and took a swig from the large G&T I had smuggled in with me. The garage had said they would have been happier to scrap the Speedster, but I told them to get it back on the road
no matter what,
as it still had important work to do. As I was drifting off to sleep in the warm pine-smelling waters there was a knock at the door. It was Landen.

“Holy shit, Landen! Can't a girl have a bath in peace?”

“Sorry, Thurs.”

“How did you get into the house?”

“Your mother let me in.”

“Did she now. What do you want?”

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

“You spoke to Daisy.”

“Yes I did. Are you really going to marry that cow?”

“I understand you're angry, Thursday. I didn't want you to
find out this way. I was going to tell you myself but you kind of dashed off the last time we were together.”

There was an awkward silence. I stared at the taps.

“I'm getting on,” said Landen finally. “I'll be forty-one next June and I want a family.”

“And Daisy will give you that?”

“Sure; she's a great girl, Thursday. She's not you, of course, but she's a great girl; very . . .”

“Dependable?”

“Solid, perhaps. Not exciting, but
reliable.
”

“Do you love her?”

“Of course.”

“Then there seems little to talk about. What do you want from me?”

Landen hesitated.

“I just wanted to know that I was making the right decision.”

“You said you loved her.”

“I do.”

“And she will give you the children you want.”

“That too.”

“Then I think you should marry her.”

Landen hesitated slightly.

“So that's okay with you?”

“You don't need my permission.”

“That's not what I meant. I just wanted to ask if you think this could all have had some other outcome?”

I placed a flannel over my face and groaned silently. It wasn't something I wanted to deal with right now.

“No. Landen, you
must
marry her. You promised her and besides—” I thought quickly. “—I have a job in Ohio.”

“Ohio?”

“As a LiteraTec. One of my colleagues at work offered it to me.”

“Who?”

“A guy named Cable. Great fellow he is too.”

Landen gave up, sighed, thanked me and promised to send me an invitation. He left the house quietly—when I came downstairs ten minutes later, my mother was still wearing a forlorn “I wish he were my son-in-law” sort of look.

My chief interest in all the work that I have conducted over the past forty or so years has been concerned with the elasticity of bodies. One tends to think only of substances such as rubber in this category but almost everything one can think of can be bent and stretched. I include, of course, space, time, distance and reality . . .

PROFESSOR MYCROFT NEXT

C
ROFTY
!—”

“Polly!—”

They met at the shores of the lake, next to the swath of daffodils that rocked gently in the warm breeze. The sun shone brightly, throwing a dappled light upon the grassy bank on which they found themselves. All about them the fresh smell of spring lay upon the land, bringing with it a feeling of calm and serenity that hushed the senses and relaxed the soul. A little way down the water's edge an old man in a black cape was seated upon a stone, idly throwing pebbles into the crystal water. It might have been almost perfect, in fact, apart from the presence of Felix8, his face not yet healed, standing on the daffodils and keeping a careful eye on his charges. Worried about Mycroft's commitment to his plan, Acheron had allowed him back into “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” to see his wife.

“Have you been well, my love?” asked Mycroft.

She pointed surreptitiously in the direction of the caped figure.

“I've been fine, although Mr. W over there seems to think that he's God's gift to women. He invited me to join him in a few unpublished works. A few flowery phrases and he thinks I'm his.”

“The cad!” exclaimed Mycroft, getting up. “I think I might just punch him on the nose!”

Polly pulled his sleeve and made him sit down. She was flushed and excited at the idea of her septuagenarian husband and Wordsworth getting into a fight over her—it would have been quite a boast at the Women's Federation meeting.

“Well, really!—” said Mycroft. “These poets are terrible philanderers.” He paused. “You said no, of course?”

“Well, yes, naturally.”

She looked at Mycroft with her sweetest smile, but he had moved on.

“Don't leave ‘Daffodils' otherwise I won't know where to find you.”

He held her hand and together they looked out across the lake. There was no opposite shore, and the pebbles that Wordsworth flicked into the water popped back out after a moment or two and landed back on the foreshore. Aside from that, the countryside was indistinguishable from reality.

“I did something a bit silly,” announced Mycroft quite suddenly, looking down and smoothing the soft grass with his palm.

“How silly?” asked Polly, mindful of the precariousness of the situation.

“I burned the
Chuzzlewit
manuscript.”

“You did
what
?”

“I said—”

“I heard. Such an original manuscript is almost beyond value. Whatever made you do a thing like that?”

Mycroft sighed. It was not an action he had taken upon himself lightly.

“Without the original manuscript,” he explained, “major disruption of the work is impossible. I told you that maniac removed Mr. Quaverley and had him killed. I didn't think he'd stop there. Who would be next? Mrs. Gamp? Mr. Pecksniff? Martin Chuzzlewit himself? I rather think I might have been doing the world a favor.”

“And destroying the manuscript stops this, does it?”

“Of course; no original manuscript, no mass disruption.”

She held his hand tightly as a shadow fell across them both.

“Time's up,” said Felix8.

I had been right
and
wrong over my predictions regarding Acheron's actions. As Mycroft told me later, Hades had been furious when he discovered that no one had taken him seriously, but Mycroft's action in destroying
Chuzzlewit
simply made him laugh. For a man unused to being hoodwinked, he enjoyed the experience. Instead of tearing him limb from limb as Mycroft had suspected, he merely shook him by the hand.

“Congratulations, Mr. Next.” He smiled. “Your act was brave and ingenious. Brave, ingenious but sadly self-defeating. I didn't choose
Chuzzlewit
by chance, you know.”

“No?” retorted Mycroft.

“No. I was made to study the book at O-level and really got to hate the smug little shit. All that moralizing and endless harking on about the theme of selfishness. I find
Chuzzlewit
only marginally less tedious than
Our Mutual Friend.
Even if they had paid the ransom I would have killed him anyway and enjoyed the experience tremendously.”

He stopped talking, smiled at Mycroft and continued:

“Your intervention has allowed Martin Chuzzlewit to continue his adventures. Todger's boarding house will not be torched and they can continue their unamusing little lives unperturbed.”

“I am glad of that,” replied Mycroft.

“Save your sentiments, Mr. Next, I haven't finished. In view of your actions I will have to find an alternative. A book that unlike
Chuzzlewit
has genuine literary merits.”

“Not
Great Expectations?
”

Acheron looked at him sadly.

“We're beyond Dickens now, Mr. Next. I would have liked to have gone into
Hamlet
and throttled that insufferably gloomy Dane, or even skipped into
Romeo and Juliet
and snuffed out that little twerp Romeo.” He sighed before continuing. “Sadly, none of the Bard's original manuscripts survive.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps the Bennett family could do with some thinning . . .”

“Pride and Prejudice!?”
yelled Mycroft. “You heartless monster!”

“Flattery will not help you now, Mycroft.
Pride and Prejudice
without Elizabeth or Darcy would be a trifle lame, don't you think? But perhaps not Austen. Why not Trollope? A well-placed nail-bomb in Barchester might be an amusing distraction. I'm sure the loss of Mr. Crawley would cause a few feathers to fly. So you see, my dear Mycroft, saving Mr. Chuzzlewit might have been a very foolish act indeed.”

He smiled again and spoke to Felix8.

“My friend, why don't you make some enquiries and find out the extent of original manuscripts and their whereabouts?”

Felix8 looked at Acheron coldly.

“I'm not a clerk, sir. I think Mr. Hobbes would be eminently more suitable for that task.”

Acheron frowned. Of all the Felixes only Felix3 had ever
contradicted a direct order. The hapless Felix3 was liquidated following a very disappointing performance when he hesitated during a robbery. It had been Acheron's own fault, of course; he had tried to endow Felix3 with slightly more personality at the expense of allowing him a pinch of morality. Ever since then he had given up on the Felixes as anything but loyal servants; Hobbes and Dr. Müller had to be his company these days.

“Hobbes!” shouted Hades at the top of his voice. The unemployed actor scuttled in from the direction of the kitchens holding a large wooden spoon.

“Yes, sire?”

Acheron repeated the order to Hobbes, who bowed and withdrew.

“Felix8!”

“Sir?”

“If it's not too much trouble, lock Mycroft in his room. I dare say we will have no need of him for a couple of weeks. Give him no water for two days and no food for five. That should be punishment enough for disposing of the manuscript.”

Felix8 nodded and removed Mycroft from the hotel's old lounge. He took him out into the lobby and up the broad marble staircase. They were the only ones in the moldering hotel; the large front door was locked and bolted.

Mycroft stopped by the window and looked out. He had once visited the Welsh capital as a guest of the Republic to give a talk on synthesizing oil from coal. He had been put up in this very hotel, met anyone who was anyone and even had a rare audience with the highly revered Brawd Ulyanov, octogenarian leader of the modern Welsh Republic. It would have been nearly thirty years ago, and the low-lying city had not changed much. The signs of heavy industry still dominated the landscape and the odor of ironworks hung in the air. Although many of the mines had closed in recent years, the winding gears
had not been removed; they punctuated the landscape like sentinels, rising darkly above the squat slate-roofed houses. Above the city on Morlais Hill the massive limestone statue of John Frost looked down upon the Republic he had founded; there had been talk of moving the capital away from the industrialized South but Merthyr was as much a spiritual center as anything else.

They walked on and presently came to Mycroft's cell, a windowless room with only the barest furniture. As he was locked in and left alone, Mycroft's thoughts turned to that which troubled him most: Polly. He had always thought she was a bit of a flirt but nothing more; and Mr. Wordsworth's continued interest in her caused him no small amount of jealous anxiety.