Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

‘Any institution has room for improvement,’ I said, ‘but on the whole I think it was okay – I just stayed there too long. Look,’ I added, ‘I don’t want to appear ungrateful or anything, but I’d be a lot happier just heading off home, straight back to Cardiff.’

‘No can do, Wonky. Toccata wants to see you, so that’s what’s going to happen. Pass the ketchup.’

‘There isn’t any.’

‘Yes,’ she said with a mournful expression, ‘we watered it down and told the winsomniacs it was tomato soup.’

We fell silent for a moment, but Jonesy, I realised, was never quiet for long. She liked to chatter in order, I think, to fill the dead air, and the Winter was full of dead air. I learned that she was a first-generation settled Guestworker, an outsider of mixed-hemisphere parents. Her mother had been an Argentinian maid who had fallen in love and slept over. Scandalous at the time, but little thought of today.

‘I joined the Service after several tours in the Ottoman,’ she said, then fell silent for a moment. ‘Lost some people out there under my command,’ she said, ‘lost some good people.’

‘Is that why you’re in Sector Twelve?’ I asked.

‘It’s all about payback, I think,’ she said, as if not fully sure herself. ‘Could have retired, but working under Toccata is never dull. Besides, I may actually do some good. It’s not risk-free, but honourable conduct rarely is.’

Once breakfast was done, Jonesy said she had some errands to run and she’d meet me at midday to go and see Toccata.

‘You could make up some really good “Do you remember whens”,’ she said, ‘reminiscences of our early life together, y’know?’

‘Yes, I suppose I could.’

‘Try now.’

‘I’m not good at off-the-cuff invent—’

‘Did you like your breakfast? The one I made for you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then let’s hear the story of how we met.’

She stared at me in a dangerous fashion. The breezy, chatty Jonesy was really only one part of her – the saner part.

‘Okay, then,’ I said, trying to think of something original and failing, ‘we were – um – cast as… the front and back halves of a pantomime horse.’

‘Trippy,’ said Jonesy, more intrigued than I’d hoped, ‘and why would that have happened?’

‘Part of a… Winter talent show?’

‘Good.’

‘We don’t get along at first—’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because you insisted I was the back half?’

‘Totally plausible. Carry on.’

‘But because the show must go on and the “equestrian gavotte” requires synchronised footsteps, we sort of forget our differences, practise together in private and then emerge victorious… and in love.’

‘Brilliant,’ she said, beaming all over.

‘Really? I thought it sounded particularly corny.’

‘The best relationships always begin like a bad rom-com in my experience. I’ll find a tartan travel rug and a picnic set for the Sno-Trac,’ she added, now quite enthused by the whole idea. ‘You’re washing up breakfast, but you can argue with me about it if you want – sort of like “I did it last time”.’

‘You made breakfast,’ I said, ‘it would only be fair.’

‘Well, okay,’ she said, mildly disappointed.

Jonesy got up, pulled on her coat and opened the front door.

‘I’ve left a basket of food on the kitchen counter. I’ll meet you outside at midday.’

She then wished me a pleasant day, told me to not force my first shit out as I’d definitely regret it, and that there was a package outside in the corridor.

‘Thank you,’ I said to her retreating form as she moved along the curved corridor, and she waved a hand without looking back.

The parcel was large and flat and wrapped in brown paper and string. I brought it inside, cut the string with my pocket knife to find it was a painting, a portrait, of me. I rested the painting on the bookcase, then stepped back.

It was the picture I had commissioned from the painter. But it wasn’t wholly original. It was the same painting I had seen in her studio four weeks before, the one of her faceless husband. But it was no longer her husband and no longer naked. It was me , with my features and a black one-piece swimsuit painted over. She’d even added white pumps over his previously naked feet, and a blue-and-white striped towel for me to sit on.

There was something very disturbing about the painting. It wasn’t because she had recycled a canvas of her obviously-missed husband for a stranger she barely knew, but this: she’d painted me on the Gower, as in my dream, and, more bizarrely, it looked for all the world as though she had painted me from her viewpoint, there on the beach. In the dream she had said she loved me, and this was a painting of me, hearing her say it. Which sort of defied logic: it should have been the other way round. Reality, then dream. I stared at the painting for a good ten minutes, trying to figure it out, but getting nowhere. In any event, I thought the likeness was good. I now owed her five hundred euros, which on reflection was money I could ill afford, but at least it would give me an opportunity to talk to her again.

I walked around the room several times, managed two press-ups and sat for a while on the bed feeling fatigued and itchy, then fetched the portrait of me and placed it next to Clytemnestra, in order to soften her psychopathic glare. I then went and made myself some tea, had another shower, and stared out of the window.

After an hour of this I grew bored and restless so decided to go and see Porter Lloyd. I pulled on my uniform, threw my bag around my shoulder and departed, but stopped at the painter’s door as I walked around the corridor. I scribbled a note of thanks and my address so she could invoice me come Springrise, and was going to pop it through the letterbox when I stopped. The name under the bell was Birgitta, and I felt a sudden pang of confusion. I hadn’t known her name. She’d not told me. I’d heard it in the dream. I took a deep breath, supposed that I must have seen it without registering it, and, still confused, walked downstairs.

‘I’m so, so sorry,’ said Porter Lloyd when I found him at reception, ‘I had no idea you were still up there.’

‘I hadn’t taken the Sno-Trac,’ I said, ‘so you must have known I was still here.’

‘I don’t like to go in the basement much,’ he said, ‘so wouldn’t know if it was here or not. How late for work were you?’

‘Four weeks,’ I said, ‘probably some kind of record.’

He gave a short laugh, and I joined in, feeling stupid. I then asked about the night I thought Clytemnestra had peeled herself out of the painting.

‘That was the first night,’ said Lloyd, ‘I didn’t see you after that. I can only apologise again. I work with the information I’m given.’

I looked out of the window at the weather, which was overcast but clear. I suddenly had a daring thought: I didn’t have to hang around to see Toccata at all. Technically I didn’t take orders from her – I was based out of Cardiff.

‘I think I’d better be leaving,’ I said. ‘Sno-Trac in the basement, you say?’

‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘I’ll take you.’