Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘How could one not?’

There was a paint-spattered easel set up in the middle of the room, on which sat an unfinished portrait of a male nude facing the viewer. There was something special about the picture – a certain raw and very seasonal energy in a taut, well-filled physique. It wasn’t a coy rendering of a nude, either – every detail of his body had been meticulously represented. Every hair, every muscle. There was no part of him she hadn’t found worthy of meticulous attention – except his face. There were no features at all. The painting was all physicality, and no identity, except the shape of the jaw. It looked somehow familiar, as though I’d seen it before, and recently.

‘Friend of yours?’ I asked.

‘He was my husband.’

‘You’ll paint his face in last?’

‘The portrait’s finished,’ she replied. ‘He vanished one evening just before beginning an overwinter.’

‘What happened to him?’ I asked, and she flashed me an angry look.

I was, I admit, surprised by her reaction. People vanish all the time so it’s not considered an inappropriate subject. They found Billy DeFroid’s remains scattered across a car park come the thaw, and Sister Placentia was happy to tell anyone who asked – even down to which bits they never found.

‘I have my suspicions,’ she said, suddenly calming down, ‘and although I don’t know he’s dead, it’s been too long to assume anything other than the worst.’

She paused for thought and stared at the painting again.

‘Although his features begin to fade in my memory, his body I’ll remember always. The way it felt under my fingertips, the weight of it upon mine. He vanished the Spring before we were planning for a family. I’d bulked up especially for the confinement.’

‘O-kay,’ I said, embarrassed by her candour, ‘I’m sorry for your losses.’

She stared at the painting thoughtfully.

‘He liked the snow but not the Winter,’ she said in a quiet voice, ‘valued the climb greater than the view from the summit. He didn’t smile much, but when he did, the world smiled with him, and we bundled as though it were the first time, and would be the last.’

‘I’ve never known someone like that,’ I said. ‘All my friends are just, well, ordinary .’

‘Don’t underestimate mediocrity,’ she said. ‘Lasting happiness, I’ve found, only really favours the unadventurous. Take a seat.’

She directed me towards a high-back chair and picked up a Polaroid camera. She pulled it open, put a new flashbulb in the holder, cocked the shutter and pointed it at me, then focused.

‘Look down,’ she said, half hidden behind the camera, ‘just your eyes.’

I did as she asked.

‘Have you ever bundled?’

‘Yes.’

‘On your own doesn’t count.’

‘Then no.’

‘Imagine it now,’ she said, ‘with that special one. Not the one in your mind, but the one in your heart. The one to whom your physical thoughts turn when you can feel the heat rising in your body, the yearning for intimacy. And when those thoughts have filled your mind, look up.’

I thought about pretty much everyone I’d ever fancied over the years but rejected them all, then found myself thinking about the painter, there in front of me with her dark hair, dark manner and dark strangeness. I thought of her and me closely entwined in a tight knot of passion, and looked up.

The flash went off, then there was a crinkly noise as the spent flashbulb cooled. She flicked the release, pulled out the paper tab, tore it off and discarded it, then looked at her watch.

‘I’ll be gone from the Sector in a couple of days,’ I said, handing her my card. ‘You can reach me here.’

She took the card, waited another ten seconds then opened the door on the back of the Polaroid and peeled the print from the negative. She looked at it, nodded approval then set the picture upon her work desk to dry.

‘Have you rights to Morphenox?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘But you won’t need it, what with staying up?’

‘No, I guess not.’

‘I’ve been neglecting my bulking up this season,’ she confessed, ‘and need something to see me through the Hib. Give me your dose and I’ll knock two hundred euros off the painting.’

Now I came to think of it, she was looking a little light. Transferring my Morphenox to her was illegal, of course, but I did have a dosage on me and, wanting to do what I could to maximise her chances of survival, I agreed.

‘Only on condition you don’t pay me. No money off the painting – nothing. I’ll be in enough trouble as it is if I’m rumbled.’

She understood the reasoning, thanked me, then moved to one of her larger canvases, which depicted Gwendolyn IX on horseback, leading the troops. She never did such a thing in reality, but overdramatic portraits of the great woman were bread-and-butter for the jobbing artist – that, memento mori , still-lifes of flowers in a jar [48] Always a firm favourite, no idea why. and prize cow-mammoths. She picked up a palette, dabbed her brush in some paint and then moved it absently around on the canvas. It was like I suddenly wasn’t there.

‘Well, okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll be off, then.’

She said nothing and I moved away, but she spoke again when I reached the door.

‘The wise money says not to leave the rocks.’

‘What rocks?’

‘The ones under the oak,’ she said without looking up, ‘near the blue Buick.’

‘You’ve had the dream?’

‘I’ve had scraps.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, ‘I don’t have dreams.’

‘Everyone needs dreams,’ she said simply. ‘If you don’t have them, they can’t come true.’

I wanted to ask her more but she’d returned to her painting and begun to hum. The conversation was over, and I returned to my room.

With the fatigue now almost overpowering, I elected to turn in. I fully wound the phonograph, selected an ultra-long play of the Preludio Sinfonica , slipped it on the player and pressed Start & Repeat . This done, I placed my Bambi under the pillow, undressed, climbed into bed and pulled up the blankets to stare at the ceiling, hands behind my head, the calming strains of music wafting in from the next room.

The situation was not what I had intended. I was in a strange town in a fringe sector, about to hit the sack in the apartment of a woman who had suffered a fatal attack of Hibernational Narcosis mixed with night terrors. I’d lost my mentor and a much-respected Consul to boot, partly as a result of my own intransigence. Mind you, if Logan hadn’t paused when the lift doors had opened, then Aurora would be dead instead of him – but then probably me as well.

Conscious that I should only be night-napping and not tumbling down the slope to deep hibernation, I set my Taser-clock [49] It was a travelling version named the ‘LazeeTazee’. I’d brought it for the train journey, just in case. for an early rise the following morning and attached the electrode to my earlobe, then switched off the light. In the faint gloom I could just make out the shape of Clytemnestra: happy that she’d just murdered her husband. I thought of the artist, and what she asked me to think of when she took the picture, then my thoughts jumbled as grateful slumber bore down upon me. Thoughts of Aurora, the dead woman with the bouzouki, the Hugo Foulnap-who-wasn’t, Porter Lloyd, Jack Logan and finally Moody telling me that I would visit the blue Buick, and to not leave the rocks.

But I knew it would all be okay. I wasn’t going to dream.

But I did, of course.