40.
Second First Person
Yacht Choice of Famed Literary Detective a
Mystery
The shooting of Thursday Next last Saturday leaves
the question of her favorite yacht unanswered, our Swindon
correspondent writes. “From the look of her, I would expect a
thirty-two-foot ketch, spinnaker-rigged and with a Floon automatic
pilot.” Other yachting commentators disagree and think she would
have gone for something larger, such as a sloop or yawl, although
it is possible she might only have wanted a boat for coastal day
work or a long weekend, in which case she might have gone for a
compact twenty-footer. We asked her husband to comment on her taste
in sailing, but he declined to give an answer.
Article in Yachting Monthly, July
1988
I was watching her, right up to the moment
she was shot. She looked confused and tired as she walked back from
the penalty, and the crowd roared when I shouted to get her
attention, so she didn’t hear me. It was then that I saw a man
vault across the barrier and run up to her. I thought it was a
nutty fan or something, and the shot sounded more like a
firecracker. There was a puff of blue smoke, and she looked
incredulous for a moment, and then she just crumpled up and
collapsed on the turf. As simple as that. Before I knew what I was
doing, I had handed Friday to Joffy and jumped over the barrier,
moving as fast as I could. I was the first one to reach Thursday,
who was lying perfectly still on the muddy ground, her eyes open, a
neat red hole two inches above her right eye.
Someone yelled, “Medic!” It was me.
I switched to automatic. For the moment the idea
that someone had shot my wife was expunged from my mind; I was
simply dealing with a casualty—and heaven knows I’d done that often
enough. I pulled out my handkerchief and pressed it on the
wound.
I said, “Thursday, can you hear me?”
She didn’t answer. Her eyes were unblinking as the
rain struck her, and I placed my hand above her head to shield her.
A medic appeared at my side, sloshing down into the muddy ground in
his haste to help.
He said, “What’s happened?”
I said, “He shot her.”
I reached gingerly around the back of her head and
breathed a small sigh of relief when I couldn’t find an exit
wound.
A second medic—a woman this time—joined the first
and told me to step aside. But I moved only far enough for her to
work. I took hold of Thursday’s hand.
The first medic said, “We’ve got a pulse,” as he
unwrapped an airway, then added, “Where’s the blasted
ambulance?”
I stayed with her all the way to the hospital and
let go of her hand only when they took her into the operating
theater.
A friendly casualty nurse at St. Septyk’s said,
“Here you go,” as she gave me a blanket. I sat on a hard chair and
stared at the wall clock and the public-information posters. I
thought about Thursday, trying to figure out how much time we had
spent together. Not long for two and a half years, really.
A boy next to me with his head stuck in a saucepan
said, “Wot you in here for, mister?”
I leaned closer and spoke into the hollow handle so
he could hear me and said, “I’m okay, but someone shot my
wife.”
The little boy with his head stuck in a saucepan
said, “Bummer,” and I replied, “Yes, bummer.”
I sat and looked at the posters again for a long
time until someone said, “Landen?”
I looked up. It was Mrs. Next. She had been crying.
I think I had, too.
She said, “How is she?”
And I said, “I don’t know.”
She sat down next to me. “I brought you some
Battenberg.”
I said, “I’m not really that hungry.”
“I know. But I just don’t know what else to
do.”
We both stared at the clock and the posters in
silence for some minutes. After a while I said, “Where’s
Friday?”
Mrs. Next patted my arm. “With Joffy and
Miles.”
“Ah,” I said, “good.”
Thursday came out of surgery three hours later.
The doctor, who had a haggard look but stared me in the eye, which
I liked, told me that things weren’t terrific but she was stable
and a fighter and I wasn’t to give up hope. I went to have a look
at her with Mrs. Next. There was a large bandage around her head,
and the monitors did that beep thing they do in movies. Mrs. Next
sniffed and said, “I’ve lost one son already. I don’t want to lose
another. Well, a daughter I mean, but you know what I mean, a
child.”
I said, “I know what you mean.”
I didn’t, having never lost a son, but it seemed
the right thing to say.
We sat with her for two hours while the light
failed outside and the fluorescents flickered on.
When we had been there another two hours, Mrs. Next
said, “I’m going to go now, but I’ll be back in the morning. You
should try and get some sleep.”
I said, “I know. I’m just going to stay here for
another five minutes.”
I stayed there for another hour. A kindly nurse
brought me a cup of tea, and I ate some Battenberg. I got home at
eleven. Joffy was waiting for me. He told me that he had put Friday
to bed and asked me how his sister was.
I said, “It’s not looking very good, Joff.”
He patted me on the shoulder, gave me a hug and
told me that everyone at the GSD had joined the Idolatry Friends of
St. Zvlkx and the Sisters of Eternal Punctuality to pray for her,
which was good of him, and them.
I sat on the sofa for a long time, until there was
a gentle knock at the kitchen door. I opened it to find a small
group of people. A man who introduced himself as Thursday’s cousin
Eddie but whispered that actually his name was Hamlet said to me,
“Is this a bad time? We heard about Thursday and wanted to tell you
how sorry we were.”
I tried to be cheery. I really wanted him to sod
off, but instead I said, “Thank you. I don’t mind at all. Friends
of Thursday are friends of mine. Tea and Battenberg?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
He had three others with him. The first was a short
man who looked exactly like a Victorian big-game hunter. He
wore a pith helmet and safari suit and had a large bushy white
mustache.
He gave me his hand to shake and said, “Commander
Bradshaw, dontchaknow. Damn fine lady, your wife. Appreciate a girl
who knows how to carry herself in a scrap. Did she tell you about
the time she and I hunted Morlock in Trollope?”
“No.”
“Shame. I’ll tell you all about it one day. This is
the memsahib, Mrs. Bradshaw.”
Melanie was large and hairy and looked like a
gorilla. In fact, she was a gorilla, but she had impeccable
manners and curtsied as I shook her large coal black hand, which
had the thumb in an odd place, so was difficult to shake properly.
Her deep-set eyes were wet with tears, and she said, “Oh, Landen!
Can I call you Landen? Thursday used to talk about you all the time
when you were eradicated. We all loved her a great deal—I mean, we
still do. How is she? How is Friday? You must feel awful!”
I said, “She’s not really very well,” which was the
truth.
The third member of the party was a tall man
dressed in black robes. He had a very large bald head and high
arched eyebrows. He put out a finely manicured hand and said, “My
name’s Zhark, but you can call me Horace. I used to work with
Thursday. You have my condolences. If it will help, I would happily
slaughter a few thousand Thraals as a tribute to the gods.”
I didn’t know what a Thraal was but told him it
really wasn’t necessary. He said, “It’s really no trouble. I’ve
just conquered their planet, and I’m not sure what I should do with
them.”
I told him that this really, really wasn’t
necessary and added that I didn’t think Thursday would have liked
it, then cursed myself for using the past tense. I put on the
kettle and said, “Battenberg?”
Hamlet and Zhark answered together. They were
obviously quite keen on my mother-in-law’s speciality. I smiled for
the first time in eight hours and twenty-three minutes and said,
“There’s plenty for everyone. Mrs. Next keeps on sending it over,
and the dodos won’t touch it. You can take away a cake each.”
I made the tea, Mrs. Bradshaw poured it, and there
was an uncomfortable silence. Zhark asked if I knew where Handley
Paige lived, but the big-game hunter gave him a stern look and he
was quiet.
They all talked to me about Thursday and what she
had done in the fictional BookWorld. The stories were all highly
unbelievable, but I didn’t think to question any of them—I was glad
for the company and happy to hear about what she had been doing
over the past two years. Mrs. Bradshaw gave me a rundown of what
Friday had been up to as well and even offered to come and look
after him whenever I wanted. Zhark was more interested in talking
about Handley but still had time to tell me a wholly unbelievable
story about how he and Thursday dealt with a Martian who had
escaped from The War of the Worlds and turned up in The
Wind in the Willows.
“It’s a W thing,” he explained, “in the
titles, I mean. Wind-War, Worlds-Willows, they are so similar
that—”
Bradshaw nudged him to be quiet.
They left two hours later, slightly full of drink
and very full of Battenberg. I noticed the tall one in the black
cloak had riffled though my address book before he left, and when I
looked, he had left it open on Handley’s address. I returned to the
living room and sat on the sofa until sleep overcame me.
I was wakened by Pickwick wanting to be let out,
and Alan wanting to be let in. The smaller dodo had some paint
spilled on him, smelt of perfume, had a blue ribbon tied around his
left foot and was holding a mackerel in his beak. I have no idea to
this day what he’d been getting up to. I went upstairs, checked
that Friday was sleeping in his cot, then had a long shower and a
shave.