44.
Final Curtain
Neanderthals Make New Year’s “At Risk”
List
Neanderthals, the once extinct cousins of Homo
sapien, were yesterday granted “at risk” status along with the
Edible Dormouse and Poorly Crested Grebe. Incoming Chancellor Mr.
Redmond van de Poste of the Toast Party granted them this honor as
recognition of their work during the Swindon-Reading SuperHoop. Mr.
van de Poste met with neanderthals and read from a specially
prepared speech. “Personally, I really don’t give a button over
your status,” he told them, “but it’s politically expedient and
vote-winning to be doing something to help lowly clods like you
gain some sort of limited freedom.” His speech was received warmly
by the neanderthals, who were expecting half-truths and
disinformation. “An application to become ‘endangered,’ ” continued
Mr. van de Poste, “will be looked at on its merits in the New
Year—if we can be bothered.”
Article in the Swindon Daily Eyestrain,
September 7, 1988
I was well enough to be given an award
three weeks later at a mayoral lunch. Lord Volescamper presented
the whole SuperHoop team with a special “Swindon Star” medal,
especially struck for the purpose. The only neanderthal to show up
was Stig, who understood what it meant to me, even if he couldn’t
truly understand the concept of individual aggrandizement.
There was a party afterwards, and everyone wanted
to chat to me, mostly to ask me if I would play any more
professional croquet. I met Handley Paige again, who jumped when he
saw me and downed a drink nervously.
“I’ve decided not to kill off my Emperor Zhark
character,” he announced quickly. “I’d just like to make that point
right now, in case anyone might think I was going to stop writing
Zhark books, which I’m not. Not at all. Not ever.” He looked around
nervously.
“I’m sorry?” I said. “I’m not sure I
understand.”
“Oh . . . right,” he replied sarcastically, tried
to drink from his empty glass and then strode off to the bar.
“What was all that about?” asked Landen.
“Search me.”
Spike was at the party, too, and he sidled up to me
as I was fetching another drink.
“What did she say to you when she took your
place?”
I turned to face him; I wasn’t surprised that he
knew Cindy had replaced me. The semidead was his field of
expertise, after all.
“She said that she wanted to make up for some of
the misery she had caused, and she knew she would never hold either
you or Betty again.”
“You could have refused her, but I’m glad you
didn’t. I loved her, but she was rotten to the core.”
He fell silent for a moment and I touched him on
the arm.
“Not entirely rotten, Spike. She loved you both
very much.”
He looked at me and smiled.
“I know. You did the right thing, Thursday. Thank
you.”
And he hugged me, and was gone.
I answered lots more questions regarding the
SuperHoop match, and when I decided enough was enough, I asked
Landen to take me home.
We drove towards home in the Speedster, Landen
driving and Friday in a baby seat in the back, right next to
Pickwick, who didn’t want to be left alone now that Alan had
gone.
“Land?”
“Mmm?”
“Did you ever think it odd that I survived?”
“I’m grateful that you did, of course—”
“Stop the car a minute.”
“Why?”
“Just do as I say.”
He pulled up, and I very carefully climbed out and
walked towards where two familiar figures were sitting on the
pavement outside a Goliath Coffee Shop. I approached silently and
sat down next to the larger of the two before he’d even noticed. He
looked around and jumped visibly when he saw me.
“Once,” said a sad and familiar voice, “you would
never have been able to sneak up on a Gryphon!”
I smiled. He was a creature with the head and wings
of an eagle and the body of a lion. He wore spectacles and a scarf
under his trench coat, which somewhat dented his otherwise fearsome
appearance. He was fictional, to be sure, but he was also head of
Jurisfiction’s legal team, my lawyer—and a friend.
“Gryphon!” I said with some surprise. “What are you
doing in the Outland?”
“Here to see you,” he whispered, looking around and
lowering his voice. “Have you met Mock Turtle? He’s now my number
two at the legal desk.”
He gestured towards where a turtle with the head of
a calf was staring mournfully into space. He was, like the Gryphon,
straight out of the pages of Alice in Wonderland.
“How do you do?”
“Okay—I suppose,” sighed the Mock Turtle, dabbing
his eyes with a handkerchief.
“So what’s up?” I asked.
“It’s quite serious—too serious for the
footnoterphone. And I needed an excuse to do some Outlander
research on traffic islands. Fascinating things.”
I felt hot and prickly all of a sudden. Not about
traffic islands, of course, about my conviction. The Fiction
Infraction. I had changed the ending of Jane Eyre and was
found guilty by the Court of Hearts. All that was missing was the
sentence.
“What did I get?”
“It’s not that bad!” exclaimed the Gryphon,
snapping his fingers at the Mock Turtle, who passed him a sheet of
paper now stained with his own tears.
I took the paper and scanned the semiblurred
contents.
“It’s a bit unusual,” admitted the Gryphon. “I
think the bit about the gingham is unnaturally cruel—might be the
cause of an appeal on its own.”
I stared at the paper. “Twenty years of my life in
blue gingham,” I murmured.
“And you can’t die until you’ve read the ten most
boring books,” added the Gryphon.
“My gran had to do the same,” I explained, feeling
just a little puzzled.
“Not possible,” said the Mock Turtle, drying his
eyes. “This sentence is unique, as befits the crime. You can take
the twenty years of gingham anytime you want—not necessarily
now.”
“But my gran had this punishment—”
“You’re mistaken,” replied the Gryphon firmly,
retrieving the paper, folding it and placing it in his pocket, “and
we had better be off. Will you be at Bradshaw’s golden wedding
anniversary?”
“Y-es,” I said slowly, still confused.
“Good. Page 221, Bradshaw and the Diamond of
M’shala. It’s bring-a-bottle-and-a-banana. Drag your husband
along. I know he’s real, but no one’s perfect—we’d all like to meet
him.”
“Thank you. What about—”
“Goodness!” said the Gryphon, consulting a large
pocket-watch. “Is that the time? We’ve got a lobster quadrille to
perform in ten pages!”
The Mock Turtle cheered up a bit when he heard
this, and in a moment they were gone.
I walked slowly back to where Landen and Friday
were waiting for me in the car.
“Dah!” said Friday really loudly.
“There!” said Landen. “He most definitely said
‘Dad’!” He noticed my furrowed brow. “What’s up?”
“Landen, my gran on my mother’s side died in
1968.”
“And?”
“Well, if she died then, and Dad’s mum died in 1979
. . .”
“Yes?”
“Then who is that up at the Goliath Twilight
Homes?”
“I’ve never met her,” explained Landen. “I thought
‘Gran’ was a term of endearment.”
I didn’t answer. I had thought she was my gran but
she wasn’t. In fact, I’d known her only about three years. Before
that I had never set eyes on her before. Perhaps that’s less than
accurate. I had seen her whenever I stared into a mirror, but she
had been a lot younger. Gran wasn’t my gran. Gran was
me.
Landen drove me up to the Goliath Twilight Homes,
and I went in alone, leaving Landen and Friday in the car. I made
my way with heavily beating heart to her room and found the ward
sister bending over the gently dozing form of the old, old woman
that I would eventually become.
“Is she suffering much?”
“The painkillers keep it under control,” replied
the nurse. “Family?”
“Yes,” I replied, “we’re very close.”
“She’s a remarkable woman,” murmured the nurse.
“It’s a wonder she’s still with us at all.”
“It was a punishment,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“Never mind. It won’t be long now.”
I moved closer to the bed, and she opened her
eyes.
“Hello, young Thursday!” said Gran, waving at me
weakly. She took off the oxygen mask, was roundly scolded by the
nurse and put it back on again.
“You’re not my gran, are you?” I said slowly,
sitting on the bedside.
She smiled benevolently and placed her small and
pink wrinkled hand on mine.
“I am Granny Next,” she replied, “just not
yours. When did you find out?”
“I got my sentencing from the Gryphon just
now.”
Now that I knew, she seemed more familiar to me
than ever before. I even noticed the small scar on her chin, from
the Charge of the Armored Brigade way back in ’72, and the
well-healed scar above her eye.
“Why did I never realize?” I asked her in
confusion. “My real grandmothers are both dead—and I always
knew that.”
The tired old woman smiled again. “You don’t have
Aornis in one’s head without learning a few tricks, my dear.
My time with you has not been wasted. Our husband would not have
survived without it, and Aornis could have erased everything when
we were living in Caversham Heights. Where is he, by the
way?”
“He’s looking after the boy Friday outside.”
“Ah!”
She looked into my eyes for a moment, then said,
“Will you tell him I love him?”
“Of course.”
“Well, now that you know who I am, I think it’s
time to go. I did find the ten most boring classics—and I’ve
almost finished the last.”
“I thought you had to have an ‘epiphanic moment’
before you departed? A last exciting resolution to your
life?”
“This is it, young Thursday. But it’s not mine,
it’s ours. Now, pick up that copy of Faerie Queen. I
am one hundred and ten, and it is well past my out time.”
I looked across at the table and picked up the
book. I had never read the end—nor even past page 40. It was that
dull.
“Don’t you have to read it?” I asked.
“Me, you, what’s the difference?” She giggled,
something that turned into a weak cough that wouldn’t stop until I
had leaned her gently upright.
“Thank you, my dear!” she gasped when the fit had
passed. “There is only a paragraph to go. The page is
marked.”
I opened the book but didn’t want to read the text.
My eyes filled with tears, and I looked at the old woman, only to
be met by a soft smile.
“It is time,” she said simply, “but I envy you—you
have so many wonderful years ahead of you! Read, please.”
I wiped away my tears and had a sudden
thought.
“But if I read this now,” I began slowly, “then
when I am one hundred and ten years old, I will
already have read it, and then I’d be—you know—just before
the last sentence before I . . . that is, the younger me . . .” I
paused, thinking about the seemingly impossible paradox.
“Dear Thursday!” said the old woman kindly, “always
so linear! It does work, believe me. Things are just so much
weirder than we can know. You’ll find out in due course, as
I did.”
She smiled benignly, and I opened the book.
“Is there anything you need to tell me?”
She smiled again.
“No, my dear. Some things are best left unsaid. You
and Landen will have a wonderful time together, mark my words. Read
on, young Thursday!”
There was a ripple, and my father was standing on
the other side of the bed.
“Dad!” said the old woman. “Thank you for
coming!”
“I wouldn’t miss it, oh, daughter-my-daughter,” he
said softly, bending down to kiss her on the forehead and hold her
hand. “I’ve brought a few people with me.”
And there he was, the young man whom I had seen
with Lavoisier at my wedding party. He laid a hand on hers and
kissed her.
“Friday!” said the old woman. “How old are your
children at the moment?”
“Here, Mum. Ask them yourself!”
And there they were, next to Friday’s wife, whom he
had yet to meet. She was a one-year-old somewhere, with no idea of
her future either. There were two children with her. Two
grandchildren of mine, who had yet to be even thought of, let alone
born. I continued reading Faerie Queen, slowly pacing myself
as more people rippled in to see the old woman before she
left.
“Tuesday!” said the old woman as another person
appeared. It was my daughter. We’d vaguely talked about her, but
that was all—and here she was, a sprightly sixty-year-old. She had
brought her children, too, and one of them had brought hers.
In all, I think I saw twenty-eight descendants of
mine that afternoon, all of them somber and only one of them yet
born. When they had said their good-byes and rippled from sight,
other visitors appeared to see her. There was Emperor and Empress
Zhark, and Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw, who were never to age at all. The
Cheshire Cat came, too, and several Miss Havishams, as well as a
delegation of lobsters from the distant future, a large man smoking
a cigar and several other people who rippled in and out in a polite
manner. I carried on reading, holding her other hand as the fire of
life slowly faded from her tired body. By the time I had started on
the final verse of Faerie Queen, her eyes were closed and
her breathing was shallow. The last of the guests had gone, and
only my father and I were left.
I finished the verse, and my sentence was complete.
Twenty years of gingham and ten boring books. I closed the volume
and laid it on the bed next to her. Already her face had drained of
color, and her mouth was partly open. I was alerted by a quiet
sniffle next to me. I had never seen my father cry before, but even
now large tears rolled silently down his cheeks. He thanked me and
departed, leaving me alone with the woman in the bed, the nurse
discreetly waiting at the door. I felt sad in that I had lost a
valued companion, but no great sense of grief. After all, I was
still very much alive. I had learned from my own father’s death
many years ago that the end of one’s life and dying are two very
different things indeed, and took solace in that.
“Are you okay?” asked Landen when I got back to
the car. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost!”
“Several,” I replied. “I think I just saw my whole
life pass in front of my eyes.”
“Do I feature?”
“Quite a lot, Land.”
“I had my life flash in front of me once,” he said.
“Trouble is, I blinked and missed all the good bits.”
“It will need more than a blink,” I told him,
nuzzling his ear. “How’s the little man?”
“Tired after a lot of pointing.”
I looked into the backseat. Friday was spark out
and snoring.
Landen started the car and pulled out of the
parking space.
“Who was the old woman, by the way?” he asked as we
turned into the main road. “You never did tell me.”
I thought for a moment. “Someone who knew me really
well and turned up when it mattered.”
“I have someone like that,” said Landen, “and if
she’s feeling up to it, I’d like to take her out for dinner. Where
do you fancy?”
I thought of the old woman in the bed, dressed in
gingham, hanging on for the last verse, and all the people who had
come to see her off. Life, I decided, would be good and, more than
that, unusual.
“If I’m with you,” I told him tenderly,
“SmileyBurger is the Ritz.”