A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (56 page)

The very Irreverent Joffy Next was the minister for the Global Standard Deity's first church in England. The GSD had a little bit of all religions, arguing that if there
was
one God, then He would really have very little to do with all the fluff and muddle down here on the material plane, and a streamlining of the faiths might very well be in His interest. Worshipers came and went as they pleased, prayed according to how they felt most happy, and mingled freely with other GSD members. It enjoyed moderate success, but what God actually thought of it no one ever really knew.

PROFESSOR M
.
BLESSINGTON
,
PR
(ret.),
The Global Standard Deity

I
PAID TO HAVE
my car released with a check that I felt sure would bounce, then drove home and had a snack and a shower before driving over to Wanborough and Joffy's first Les Artes Modernes de Swindon exhibition. Joffy had asked me for a list of my colleagues to boost the numbers, so I fully expected to see some work people there. I had even asked Cordelia, who I had to admit was great fun when not in PR mode. The art exhibition was being held in the Global Standard Deity church at Wanborough and had been opened by Frankie Saveloy a half hour before I arrived. It seemed quite busy as I stepped inside. All the pews had been moved out, and artists, critics, press and
potential purchasers milled amongst the eclectic collection of art. I grabbed a glass of wine from a passing waiter, suddenly remembered I shouldn't be drinking, sniffed at it longingly and put it down again. Joffy, looking very smart indeed in a dinner jacket and dog collar, leapt forward when he saw me, grinning wildly.

“Hello, Doofus!” he said, hugging me affectionately. “Glad you could make it. Have you met Mr. Saveloy?”

Without waiting for an answer, he propelled me towards a puffy man who stood quite alone at the side of the room. He introduced me as quickly as he could and then legged it. Frankie Saveloy was the compère of
Name That Fruit!
and looked more like a toad in real life than he did on TV. I half expected a long sticky tongue to shoot out and capture a wayward fly, but I smiled politely nonetheless.

“Mr. Saveloy?” I said, offering my hand. He took it in his clammy mitt and held on to it tightly.

“Delighted!” grunted Saveloy, his eyes flicking to my cleavage. “I'm sorry we couldn't get you to appear on my show—but you're probably feeling quite honored to meet me, just the same.”

“
Quite
the reverse,” I assured him, retrieving my hand forcibly.

“Ah!” said Saveloy, grinning so much the sides of his mouth almost met his ears and I feared the top of his head might fall off. “I have my Rolls-Royce outside—perhaps you might like to join me for a ride?”

“I think,” I replied, “that I would sooner eat rusty nails.”

He didn't seem in the least put out. He grinned some more and said: “Shame to put such magnificent hooters to waste, Miss Next.”

I raised my hand to slap him but my wrist was caught by Cordelia Flakk, who had decided to intervene.

“Up to your old tricks, Frankie?”

Saveloy grimaced at Cordelia.

“Damn you, Dilly—out to spoil my fun!”

“Come on, Thursday, there are plenty of bigger fools to waste your time on than this one.”

Flakk had dropped the bright pink outfit for a more reserved shade but was still able to fog film at forty yards. She took me by the hand and steered me towards some of the art on display.

“You have been leading me around the houses a bit, Thursday,” she said testily. “I only need ten minutes of your time with those guests of mine!”

“Sorry, Dilly. Things have been a bit hectic. Where are they?”

“Well,” she replied, “they were
meant
to be both performing in
Richard III
at the Ritz.”

“Meant to be?”

“They were late and missed curtain up. Can you
please
make time for them both tomorrow?”

“I'll try.”

“Good.”

We approached a small scrum where one of the featured artists was presenting his latest work to an attentive audience composed mostly of art critics who all wore collarless black suits and were scribbling notes in their catalogues.

“So,” said one of the critics, gazing at the piece through his half-moon spectacles, “tell us all about it, Mr. Duchamp
₂₉₂₄
.”

“I call it
The Id Within,
” said the young artist in a quiet voice, avoiding everyone's gaze and pressing his fingertips together. He was dressed in a long black cloak and had sideburns cut so sharp that if he turned abruptly he would have had someone's eye out. He continued: “Like life, my piece reflects the many different layers that cocoon and restrict us in society today. The outer layer—reflecting yet counterpoising the harsh exoskeleton we all display—is hard, thin, yet somehow brittle—but beneath this a softer layer awaits, yet of the same shape and almost the
same size. As one delves deeper one finds many different shells, each smaller yet no softer than the one before. The journey is a tearful one, and when one reaches the center there is almost nothing there at all, and the similarity to the outer crust is, in a sense, illusory.”

“It's an onion,” I said in a loud voice.

There was a stunned silence. Several of the art critics looked at me, then at Duchamp
₂₉₂₄
, then at the onion.

I was sort of hoping the critics would say something like “I'd like to thank you for bringing this to our attention. We nearly made complete dopes of ourselves,” but they didn't. They just said: “Is this true?”

To which Duchamp
₂₉₂₄
replied that this
was
true in
fact,
but untrue
representationally,
and as if to reinforce the fact he drew a bunch of shallots from within his jacket and added: “I have
here
another piece I'd like you to see. It's called
The Id Within II (Grouped)
and is a collection of concentric three-dimensional shapes locked around a central core . . .”

Cordelia pulled me away as the critics craned forward with renewed interest.

“You seem very troublesome tonight, Thursday,” smiled Cordelia. “Come on, I want you to meet someone.”

She introduced me to a young man with a well-tailored suit and well-tailored hair.

“This is Harold Flex,” announced Cordelia. “Harry is Lola Vavoom's agent and a big cheese in the film industry.”

Flex shook my hand gratefully and told me how
fantastically
humbled he was to be in my presence.

“Your story
needs
to be told, Miss Next,” enthused Flex, “and Lola is
very
enthusiastic.”

“Oh no,” I said hurriedly, realizing what was coming. “No, no. Not in a million years.”

“You should hear Harry out, Thursday,” pleaded Cordelia.
“He's the sort of agent who could cut a
really
good financial deal for you, do a fantastic PR job for SpecOps
and
make sure your wishes and opinions in the whole story were rigorously listened to.”

“A movie?” I asked incredulously. “Are you nuts? Didn't you see
The Adrian Lush Show
? SpecOps and Goliath would pare the story to the bone!”

“We'd present it as
fiction,
Miss Next,” explained Flex. “We've even got a title:
The Eyre Affair.
What do you think?”

“I think you're both out of your tiny minds. Excuse me.”

I left Cordelia and Mr. Flex plotting their next move in low voices and went to find Bowden, who was staring at a dustbin full of paper cups.

“How can they present this as art?” he asked. “It looks just like a rubbish bin!”

“It
is
a rubbish bin,” I replied. “That's why it's next to the refreshments table.”

“Oh!” he said, then asked me how the press conference went.

“Kaine is fishing for votes,” he told me when I had finished. “Got to be. A hundred million might buy you some serious air-time for advertising, but putting
Cardenio
in the public domain could sway the Shakespeare vote—that's one group of voters you can't buy.”

I hadn't thought of this.

“Anything else?”

Bowden unfolded a piece of paper.

“Yes. I'm trying to figure out the running order for my stand-up comedy routine tomorrow night.”

“How long is your slot?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Let me see.”

He had been trying out his routine on me, although I
protested that I probably wasn't the best person to ask. Bowden himself didn't find any of the jokes funny, although he understood the technical process involved.

“I'd start off with the penguins on the ice floe,” I suggested, looking at the list as Bowden made notes, “then move on to the pet centipede. Try the white horse in the pub next, and if that works well do the tortoise that gets mugged by the snails—but don't forget the voice. Then move on to the dogs in the waiting room at the vet's and finish with the one about meeting the gorilla.”

“What about the lion and the baboon?”

“Good point. Use that instead of the white horse if the centipede goes flat.”

Bowden made a note.

“Centipede . . . goes . . . flat. Got it. What about the man going bear hunting? I told that to Victor and he sprayed Earl Grey out of both nostrils at once.”

“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.”