Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair

Quite suddenly I felt someone slap me on the back of my head. It wasn’t hard but enough to make me jump. I turned to find the GSD priest looking at me with a silly grin on his face.

‘Wotcha, Doofus!’ he bellowed.

‘Hello, Joffy,’ I replied, only slightly bemused. ‘Want me to break your nose again?’

‘I’m cloth now, sis!’ he exclaimed. ‘You can’t go around bashing the clergy!’

I stared at him for a moment.

‘Well, if I can’t bash you,’ I told him, ‘what can I do?’

‘We at the GSD are very big on hugs, sis.’

So we hugged, there in front of Anton’s memorial, me and my loopy brother Joffy, whom I had never hugged in my life.

‘Any news on Brainbox and the Fatarse?’ he asked.

‘If you mean Mycroft and Polly, no.’

‘Loosen up, sis. Mycroft is a Brainbox and Polly, well, she does have a fat arse.’

‘The answer’s still no. Mind you, she and Mum have put on a bit of weight, haven’t they?’

‘A bit? I should say. Tesco’s should open a superstore just for the pair of them.’

‘Does the GSD encourage such blatant personal attacks?’ I asked.

Joffy shrugged. ‘Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t,’ he answered. ‘That’s the beauty of the Global Standard Deity—it’s whatever you want it to be. And besides, you’re family so it doesn’t count.’

I looked around at the well-kept building and graveyard.

‘How’s it all going?’

‘Pretty well, thanks. Good cross-section of religions and even a few neanderthals, which is quite a coup. Mind you, attendances have almost trebled since I converted the vestry into a casino and introduced naked greasy-pole dancing on Tuesdays.’

‘You’re joking!’

‘Yes, of course I am, Doofus.’

‘You little shit!’ I laughed. ‘I am going to break your nose again!’

‘Before you do, do you want a cup of tea?’

I thanked him and we walked towards the vicarage.

‘How’s your arm?’ he asked.

‘It’s okay,’ I replied. Then, since I was eager to try to keep up with his irreverence, I added: ‘I played this joke on the doctor in London. I said to him when he rebuilt the muscles in my arm, “Do you think I’ll be able to play the violin?” and he said: “Of course!” and then I said: “That’s good, I couldn’t before!”‘

Joffy stared at me blank-faced. ‘SpecOps Christmas parties must be a riot, sis. You should get out more. That’s probably the worst joke I’ve ever heard.’

Joffy could be infuriating at times, but he probably had a point—although I wasn’t going to let him know it. So I said instead: ‘Bollocks to you, then.’

That did make him laugh.

‘You were always so serious, sis. Ever since you were a little girl. I remember you sitting in the living room staring at the News at Ten, soaking in every fact and asking Dad and the Brainbox a million questions—Hello, Mrs Higgins!’

We had just met an old lady coming through the lichgate carrying a bunch of flowers.

‘Hello, Irreverend!’ she replied jovially, then looked at me and said in a hoarse whisper: ‘Is this your girlfriend?’

‘No, Gladys—this is my sister, Thursday. She’s SpecOps and consequently doesn’t have a sense of humour, a boyfriend, or a life.’

‘That’s nice, dear,’ said Mrs Higgins, who was clearly quite deaf, despite her large ears.

‘Hello, Gladys,’ I said, shaking her by the hand. ‘Joffy here used to bash the bishop so much when he was a boy we all thought he would go blind.’

‘Good, good,’ she muttered.

Joffy, not to be outdone, added: ‘And little Thursday here made so much noise during sex that we had to put her in the garden shed whenever her boyfriends stayed the night.’

I elbowed him in the ribs but Mrs Higgins didn’t notice; she smiled benignly, wished us both a pleasant day, and teetered off into the churchyard. We watched her go.

‘A hundred and four next March,’ murmured Joffy. ‘Amazing, isn’t she? When she goes I’m thinking of having her stuffed and placed in the porch as a hatstand.’

‘Now I know you’re joking.’

He smiled.

‘I don’t have a serious bone in my body, sis. Come on, I’ll make you that tea.’

The vicarage was huge. Legend had it that the church’s spire would have been ten feet taller had the incumbent vicar not taken a liking to the stone and diverted it to his own residence. An unholy row broke out with the bishop and the vicar was relieved of his duties. The larger-than-usual vicarage, however, remained.

Joffy poured some strong tea out of a Clarice Cliff teapot into a matching cup and saucer. He wasn’t trying to impress; the GSD had almost no money and he couldn’t afford to use anything other than what came with the vicarage.

‘So,’ said Joffy, placing a teacup in front of me and sitting down on the sofa, ‘do you think Dad’s boffing Emma Hamilton?’

‘He never mentioned it. Mind you, if you were having an affair with someone who died over a hundred years ago, would you tell your wife?’

‘How about me?’

‘How about you what?’

‘Does he ever mention me?’

I shook my head and Joffy was silent in thought for a moment, which is unusual for him.

‘I think he wanted me to be in that charge in Ant’s place, sis. Ant was always the favoured son.’

‘That’s stupid, Joffy. And even if it were true—‘which it isn’t—there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Ant is gone, finished, dead. Even if you had stayed out there, let’s face it, army chaplains don’t exactly dictate military policy.’

‘Then why doesn’t Dad ever come and see me?’

I shrugged.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a ChronoGuard thing. He rarely visits me unless on business—and never for more than a couple of minutes.’

Joffy nodded then asked: ‘Have you been attending church in London, sis?’

‘I don’t really have the time, Joff.’

‘We make time, sis.’

I sighed. He was right.

‘After the charge I kind of lost my faith. SpecOps have chaplains of their own but I just never felt the same about anything.’

‘The Crimea took a lot away from all of us,’ said Joffy quietly. ‘Perhaps that is why we have to work twice as hard to hang on to what we have left. Even I was not immune to the passion of the battle. When I first went to the peninsula I was excited by the war—I could feel the insidious hand of nationalism holding me upright and smothering my reason. When I was out there I wanted us to win, to kill the foe. I revelled in the glory of battle and the camaraderie that only conflict can create. No bond is stronger than that welded in conflict; no greater friend is there than the one who stood next to you as you fought.’

Joffy suddenly seemed that much more human; I presumed this was the side of him his parishioners saw.

‘It was only afterwards that I realised the error of what we were doing. Pretty soon I could see no difference between Russian and English, French or Turk. I spoke out and was banned from the front line in case I sowed disharmony. My bishop told me that it was not my place to judge the errors of the conflict, but to look after the spiritual wellbeing of the men and women.’

‘So that’s why you returned to England?’

‘That’s why I returned to England.’

‘You’re wrong, you know,’ I told him.

‘About what?’

‘About not having a serious bone in your body. Did you know Colonel Phelps was in town?’

‘I did. What an arse. Someone should poison him. I’m speaking opposite him as “the voice of moderation”. Will you join me at the podium?’