Jasper Fforde - Lost in a Good Book

‘Oh, no ! Not now of all times!’

‘What?’ asked Landen.

‘I think I’m about to—’

‘—wake up.’

But I was talking to myself. I was back in my bedroom in Swindon, my memory excursion annoyingly cut short by Pickwick, who was staring at me from the rug, leash in beak and making quiet plock-plock noises. I gave her a baleful stare.

‘Pickers, you are such a pest. Just when I was getting to the good bit.’

She stared at me, little comprehending what she had done.

‘I’m going to drop you round at Mum’s,’ I told her as I sat up and stretched. ‘I’m going to Osaka for a couple of days.’

She cocked her head on one side and stared at me curiously.

‘You and Junior will be in good hands, I promise.’

I got out of bed and trod on something hard and whiskery. I looked at the object and smiled. It was a good sign. Lying on the carpet was an old coconut husk—and better than that, there was still some sand stuck to my feet. My reading of Robinson Crusoe hadn’t been a total failure after all.

Pickwick insisted on sitting on her egg all the way to Mum’s house and plocked nervously whenever I went over twenty miles per hour. I made her a nest in the airing cupboard and left her fussing over her egg while the other dodos strained at the window, trying to figure out what was going on. I rang Bowden while Mum fixed me a sandwich.

‘Are you okay?’ he enquired. ‘Your phone’s been off the hook!’

‘I’m okay, Bowd. What’s happening at the office?’

‘The news is out.’

‘About Landen?’

‘About Cardenio . Someone blabbed to the press. Vole Towers is besieged by news channels as we speak. Lord Volescamper has been yelling at Victor about one of us talking.’

‘Wasn’t me.’

‘Nor me. Volescamper has turned down fifty million quid for it already—every impresario on the planet wants to buy the rights for first performance. And get this—you’ve been cleared by SO-1 of any wrongdoing. They thought that since Kaylieu was shot by SO-14 marksmen yesterday morning then you might have been right after all.’

‘Big of them. Does this mean my leave is over?’

‘Victor wants to see you as soon as possible.’

‘Tell him I’m ill, would you? I have to go to Osaka.’

‘Why?’

‘Best not to know. I’ll call you.’

I replaced the receiver and Mum gave me some cheese on toast and a cup of tea. She sat down at the other side of the table and flicked through a well-thumbed copy of last month’s Femole— the one with me in it.

‘Any news from Mycroft and Polly, Mum?’

‘I got a card from London saying they were fit and well,’ she replied, ‘but they said they needed a jar of piccalilli and a torque wrench. I left them in Mycroft’s study and they’d vanished by the afternoon.’

‘Mum?’

‘Yes?’

‘How often do you see Dad?’

She smiled. ‘Most mornings. He drops by to say hello. Sometimes I even make him a packed lunch—’

She was interrupted by a roar that sounded like a thousand tubas in unison. The sound reverberated through the house and set the teacups in the corner cupboard rattling.

‘Oh, Lordy!’ she exclaimed. ‘Not mammoths again !’ And she was out of the door in a flash.

And a mammoth it was, in name and stature. Shaggy and as big as a tank, it had walked through the garden wall and was now sniffing suspiciously at the wisteria.

‘Get away from there!’ yelled my mother, searching around for a weapon of some sort. Wisely, the dodos had all run away and hidden behind the potting shed. Rejecting the wisteria, the mammoth delicately pulled up the vegetables in the vegetable plot one by one, stuffed them into its mouth and munched slowly and deliberately. My mother was almost apoplectic.

‘Second time this has happened!’ she yelled defiantly. ‘Get off my hydrangeas, you… you… thing !’ The mammoth ignored her, emptied the entire contents of the ornamental pond in one go and clumsily trampled the garden furniture to matchwood.

‘A weapon,’ announced my mother, ‘I need a weapon. I’ve sweated blood over this garden and no reactivated herbivore is going to have it for dinner!’

She disappeared into the shed and reappeared a moment later brandishing a yard broom. But the mammoth had little to fear, even from my mother. It did, after all, weigh almost five tons. It was used to doing exactly what it pleased. The only good news about the invasion was that it wasn’t the whole herd.

‘Giddout!’ yelled my mother, raising the broom to whack the mammoth on its hindquarters.

‘Hold it right there!’ said a loud voice. We turned. A SpecOps officer had hopped over the wall and was running towards us.

‘Agent Durrell, SO-13,’ he announced breathlessly, showing my mother his ID. ‘Spank the mammoth and you’re under arrest.’

My mother’s fury switched to the SpecOps agent.

‘So he eats my garden and I do nothing ?’

‘ Her name is Buttercup,’ corrected Durrell. ‘The rest of the herd went to the west of Swindon as planned but Buttercup here is a bit of a dreamer. And yes, you do nothing. Mammoths are a protected species.’

‘Well!’ said my mother indignantly. ‘If you did your job properly then ordinary law-abiding citizens like me would still have gardens!’

We looked around at the garden, which looked as though it had been the target of an artillery bombardment. Buttercup, her voluminous tum now full of Mum’s vegetable patch, stepped over the wall and scratched herself against an iron streetlamp, snapping it like a twig. The lamp standard dropped heavily on the roof of a car and popped the windscreen. Buttercup let out another almighty trumpeting, which set off a few car alarms, and in the distance there was an answer. She stopped, listened for a bit and then happily lumbered off down the road.

‘I’ve got to go!’ said Durrell, handing Mum a card ‘Compensation can be claimed if you call this number. You might like to ask for our free leaflet: “How to make your garden unpalatable to Proboscidea”. Good morning!’

He tipped his hat and jumped over the wall to where his partner had pulled up in an SO-13 Land Rover. Buttercup gave out another call and the Land Rover screeched off, leaving my mother and me staring at her wrecked garden. The dodos, sensing the danger had passed, crept out from behind the potting shed and plock-plocked quietly to themselves as they pecked and scratched at the scoured earth.

‘Perhaps it’s time for a Japanese garden,’ sighed my mother, throwing down the broom handle. ‘Reverse engineering! Where will it all end? They say there’s a Diatryma living wild in the New Forest?’