Lost in a Good Book

‘Lights stay off,’ growled a husky woman’s voice, ‘and don’t make any sudden moves.’

I dutifully froze. A hand snaked into my jacket and removed Cordelia’s automatic.

DH-82 was fast asleep in his basket, the idea of being a fierce guard-Tastiger had obviously not entered his head.

‘Let me see you,’ said the voice again. I turned and looked into the eyes of a woman who had departed more rapidly into middle age than years alone might allow. I noticed that her gun arm wavered slightly, she had a slightly florid appearance and her hair had been clumsily brushed and pulled into a bun. But for all that it was clear she had once been beautiful; her eyes were bright and cheerful, her mouth delicate and refined, her bearing resolute.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.

‘This is my mother’s house.’

‘Ah!’ she said, giving a slight smile and raising an eyebrow. ‘You must be Thursday.’

She returned her pistol to a holster that was strapped to her thigh beneath several layers of her large brocade dress and started to rummage in the cupboards.

‘Do you know where your mother keeps the booze?’

‘Suppose you tell me who you are?’ I demanded, my eyes alighting on the knife block as I searched for a weapon—just in case.

The woman didn’t give me an answer, or at least, not to the question I’d asked.

‘Your father told me Lavoisier eradicated your husband.’

I halted my surreptitious creep towards the carving knives.

‘You know my father?’ I asked in some surprise.

‘I do so hate that term eradicated,’ she announced grimly, searching in vain amongst the tinned fruit for anything resembling alcohol. ‘It’s murder, Thursday—nothing less. They killed my husband, too—even if it did take three attempts.’

‘Who?’

‘Lavoisier and the French revisionists.’

She thumped her fist on the kitchen top as if to punctuate her anger and turned to face me.

‘You have memories of your husband, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too,’ she sighed. ‘I wish to heaven I hadn’t, but I have. Memories of things that might have happened. Knowledge of the loss. It’s the worst part of it.’

She opened another cupboard door revealing still more tinned fruit.

‘I understand your husband was barely two years old—mine was forty-seven. You might think that makes it better but it doesn’t. The petition for his divorce was granted and we were married the summer following Trafalgar. Nine years of glorious life as Lady Nelson—then I wake up one morning in Calais, a drunken, debt-ridden wretch and with the revelation that my one true love died a decade ago, shot by a sniper’s bullet on the quarter-deck of the Victory.’

‘I know who you are,’ I murmured, ‘you’re Emma Hamilton.’

‘I was Emma Hamilton,’ she replied sadly. ‘Now I’m a broke out-of-timer with a dismal reputation, no husband and a thirst the size of the Gobi.’

‘But you still have your daughter?’

‘Yes,’ she groaned, ‘but I never told her I was her mother.’

‘Try the end cupboard.’

She moved down the counter, rummaged some more and found a bottle of cooking sherry. She poured a generous helping into one of my mother’s teacups. I looked at the saddened woman and wondered if I’d end up the same way.

‘We’ll sort out Lavoisier eventually,’ muttered Lady Hamilton sadly, downing the cooking sherry. ‘You can be sure of that.’

‘We?’

She looked at me and poured another generous—even by my mother’s definition—cup of sherry.

‘Me—and your father, of course.’

I sighed. She obviously hadn’t heard the news.

‘That’s what I came to talk to my mother about.’

‘What did you come to talk to me about?’

It was my mother. She had just walked in wearing a quilted dressing gown and her hair sticking out in all directions. For someone usually so suspicious of Emma Hamilton, she seemed quite cordial and even wished her ‘Good morning’—although she swiftly removed the sherry from the counter and replaced it in the cupboard.

‘You early bird!’ she cooed. ‘Do you have time to take DH-82 to the vet’s this morning? His boil needs lancing again.’

‘I’m kind of busy, Mum.’

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, sensing the seriousness in my voice. ‘Was that business at Vole Towers anything to do with you?’

‘Sort of. I came over to tell you—’

‘—Yes?’

‘That Dad has—Dad is—Dad was—’

Mum looked at me quizzically as my father, large as life, strode into the kitchen.

‘—is making me feel very confused.’

‘Hello, Sweetpea!’ said my father, looking considerably younger than the last time I saw him. ‘Have you been introduced to Lady Hamilton?’

‘We had a drink together,’ I said uncertainly. ‘But—You’re—you’re—alive!’

He stroked his chin and replied: ‘Should I be something else?’

I thought for a moment and furtively shook my cuff down to hide his chronograph on my wrist.

‘No—I mean, that is to say—’

But he had twigged me already.

‘—don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!’

He stood next to Mum and placed an arm round her waist. It was the first time I had seen them together for nearly seventeen years.

‘But—’

‘You mustn’t be so linear,’ said my father. ‘Although I try to visit only in your chronological order, sometimes it’s not possible.’

He paused.

‘Did I suffer much pain?’

‘No—none at all,’ I lied.

‘It’s funny,’ he said as he filled the kettle, ‘I can recall everything up until final curtain-minus-ten, but after that it’s all a bit fuzzy—I can vaguely see a rugged coastline and the sunset on a calm ocean, but other than that, nothing. I’ve seen and done a lot in my time, but my entry and exit will always remain a mystery. It’s better that way. Stops me getting cold feet and trying to change them.’

He spooned some coffee into the cafetiere. I was glad to see that I had only witnessed Dad’s death and not the end of his life—as the two, I learned, are barely related at all.

‘How are things, by the way?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ I began, unsure of where to start, ‘the world didn’t end yesterday.’

He looked at the low winter sun that was shining through the kitchen windows.

‘So I see. Good job too. An armageddon right now might have been awkward—have you had any breakfast?’

‘Awkward? Global destruction would be awkward?’

‘Decidedly so. Tiresome almost,’ replied my father thoughtfully. ‘The end of the world could really louse up my plans to get both your husbands back, and you wouldn’t like that, now, would you? Tell me, did you manage to get me a ticket to the Nolans’ concert last night?’