Jasper Fforde - Something rotten

'But that's remarkable!'

'Remarkable but not unprecedented,' replied Joffy. 'Thirteenth-century seers have been popping up all over the place. Eighteen in the last six months. Zvlkx will be of interest to the faithful and us at the Friends, but the TV networks probably won't cover it. The ratings of Brother Velobius's second coming last week didn't even come close to beating Bonzo the Wonder Hound reruns on the other channel.'

I thought about this for a moment in silence.

'That's enough about Swindon,' said my mother, who had a nose for gossip — especially mine. 'What's been happening to you?'

'How long have you got? What I've been getting up to would fill several books.'

'Then . . . let's start with why you're back.'

So I explained about the pressures of being the head of Jurisfiction, and just how annoying books could be sometimes, and Friday, and Landen, and Yorrick Kaine's fictional roots. On hearing this Joffy jumped.

'Kaine is . . . fictional?'

I nodded.

'Why the interest? Last time I was here he was a washed-up ex-member of the Whig Party.'

'He's not now. Which book is he from?'

I shrugged.

'I wish I knew. Why? What's going on?'

Joffy and Mum exchanged nervous glances. When my mother gets interested in politics, it really means things are bad.

'Something is rotten in the state of England,' murmured my mother.

'And that something is the English Chancellor Yorrick Kaine,' added Joffy, 'but don't take our word for it. He's appearing on Toad News Network's Evade the Question Time here in Swindon at eight tonight. We'll go and see him for ourselves.'

I told them more about Jurisfiction and Joffy, in return, cheerfully reported that attendance at the Global Standard Deity church was up since he had accepted sponsorship from the Toast Marketing Board, a company that seemed to have doubled in size and influence since I was here last. They had spread their net beyond hot bread and now included jams, croissants and pastries in their portfolio of holdings. My mother, not to be outdone, told me she received a little bit of sponsorship money herself from Mr Rudyard's cakes, although she privately admitted that the Battenberg she had served up was actually her own. She then told me in great detail about her aged friends' medical operations, which I can't say I was overjoyed to hear about, and as she drew breath in between Mrs Stripling's appendectomy and Mr Walsh's 'plumbing' problems, a tall and imposing figure walked into the room. He was dressed in a fine morning coat of eighteenth-century vintage, wore an impressive moustache that would have put Commander Bradshaw's to shame, and had an impenousness and sense of purpose that reminded me of Emperor Zhark. 'Thursday,' announced my mother in a breathless tone, 'this is the Prussian Chancellor, Herr Otto Bismarck — your father and I are trying to sort out the Schleswig-Holstein question of 1863-4; he's gone to fetch Bismarck's opposite number from Denmark so they can talk. Otto . . . I mean, Herr Bismarck, this is my daughter, Thursday.'

Bismarck clicked his heels and kissed my hand in an icily polite manner.

'Fräulein Next, the pleasure is all mine,' he intoned in a heavy German accent.

My mother's curious and usually long-dead house guests should have surprised me, but they didn't. Not any more. Not since Alexander the Great turned up when I was nine. Nice enough fellow — but shocking table manners.

'So, how are you enjoying 1988, Herr Bismarck?'

'I am especially taken with the concept of dry cleaning,' replied the Prussian, 'and I see big things ahead for the gasoline engine.' He turned back to my mother. 'But I am most eager to speak to the Danish prime minister. Where might he be?'

'I think we're having a teensy-weensy bit of trouble locating him,' replied my mother, waving the cake knife. 'Would you care for a slice of Battenberg instead?'

'Ah!' replied Bismarck, his demeanour softening. He stepped delicately over DH82 to sit next to my mother. 'The finest Battenberg I have ever tasted!'

'Oh, Herr B,' flustered my mother, 'you do flatter me so!'

She made 'shooing' motions at us out of vision of Bismarck and, obedient children that we are, we withdrew from the living room.

'Well!' said Joffy as we shut the door. 'How about that? Mum's after a bit of Teutonic slap and tickle!'

I raised an eyebrow and stared at him.

'I hardly think so, Joff. Dad doesn't turn up that often and intelligent male company can be hard to find.'

Joffy chuckled.

'Just good friends, eh? Okay. Here's the deal: I'll bet you a tenner Mum and the Iron Chancellor are doing the wild thing by this time next week.'

'Done.'

We shook hands and, with Emma, Hamlet, Bismarck and my mother thus engaged, I asked Joffy to look after Friday so I could slip out of the house to get some air.

I turned left and wandered up Marlborough Road, looking about at the changes that two years' absence had wrought. I had walked this way to school for almost eight years, and every wall and tree and house was as familiar to me as an old friend. A new hotel had gone up on Piper's Way and a few shops in the Old Town had either changed hands or been updated. It all felt very familiar, and I wondered whether the feeling of wanting to belong somewhere would stay with me, or fade, like my fondness for Caversham Heights , the book in which I had made my home these past few years.

I walked down Bath Road, took a right and found myself in the street where Landen and I had lived, before he was eradicated. I had returned home one afternoon to find his mother and father in residence. Since they hadn't known who I was and considered — not unreasonably — that I was dangerously insane, I decided to play it safe today and just walk past slowly on the other side of the street.

Nothing looked very different. A tub of withered Tickia orologica was still on the porch next to an old pogo stick and the curtains in the windows were certainly his mother's. I walked on, then retraced my steps, my resolve to get him back mixed with a certain fatalism, a feeling that perhaps ultimately I wouldn't and I should prepare myself. After all, he had died when he was two years old, and I had no memories of how it had been, only of how things might have turned out had he lived.

I shrugged my shoulders and chastised myself on the morbidity of my own thoughts, then walked towards the Goliath Twilight Homes where my gran was staying these days.

Granny Next was in her room watching a nature documentary called Walking with Ducks when I was shown in by the nurse. Gran was wearing a blue gingham nightie, had wispy grey hair and looked all of her no years. She had got it into her head that she couldn't shuffle off this mortal coil until she had read the ten most boring books, but since 'boring' was about as impossible to quantify as 'not boring' it was difficult to know how to help.

'Shhh!' she muttered as soon as I walked in. 'This programme's fascinating !' She was staring at the TV screen earnestly. 'Just think,' she went on, 'by analysing the bones of the extinct duck Anas platyrhynchos they can actually figure out how it walked.'

I stared at the small screen, where an odd animated bird waddled strangely in a backward direction as the narrator explained just how they had managed to deduce such a thing.

'How could they know that just by looking at a few old bones?' I asked doubtfully, having learned long ago that an 'expert' was usually anything but.

'Scoff not, young Thursday,' replied Gran, 'a panel of expert avian palaeontologists have even deduced that a duck's call might have sounded something like this: "Quock, quock".'

'"Quock?" Hardly seems likely.'