First Among Sequels

2. Mum and Polly and Mycroft

My mother lived less than a mile away and actually on the route to work, so I often dropped in just to make sure she was okay and wasn’t about to embark on some harebrained scheme, as was her habit. A few years ago she had hoarded tinned pears on the principle that once she’d cornered the market, she could “name her price,” a flagrant misunderstanding of the rules of supply and demand that did no damage to the tinned-fruit producers of the world but condemned her immediate family and friends to pears at every meal for almost three years.

She was the sort of parent you would want to have living close by, but only on the grounds that she would then never come to stay. I loved her dearly, but in small doses. A cup of tea here, a dinner there-and as much child care as I could squeeze out of her. The text excuse I gave Landen was actually something of a mild fib, as the real reason for my popping around was to pick something up from Mycroft’s workshop.

“Hello, darling!” said Mum as soon as she opened the door. “Did you get my text?”

“Yes. But you must learn how to use the backspace and delete keys-it all came out as nonsense.”

“‘L&Ks4DnRNXT-SNDY??’” she repeated, showing me her cell phone. “What else could that mean but ‘Landen and kids for dinner next Sunday?’ Really, darling, how you even begin to communicate with your children, I have no idea.”

“That wasn’t real text shorthand,” I said, narrowing my eyes suspiciously. “You just made it up.”

“I’m barely eighty-two,” she said indignantly. “I’m not on the scrap heap yet. Made up the text indeed! Do you want to come back for lunch?” she added, without seeming to draw breath. “I’ve got a few friends coming around, and after we’ve discussed who is the most unwell, we’ll agree volubly with one another about the sorry state of the nation and then put it all to rights with poorly thought-out and totally impractical ideas. And if there’s time after that, we might even play cribbage.”

“Hello, Auntie,” I said to Polly, who hobbled out of the front room with the aid of a stick, “If I texted you ‘L&Ks4DnRNXT-SNDY??’ what would you think I meant?”

Polly frowned and thought for a moment, her prunelike forehead rising in a folding ripple like a festoon curtain. She was over ninety and looked so unwell that she was often mistaken for dead when asleep on the bus. Despite this she was totally sound upstairs, with only three or four fair-to-serious medical ailments, unlike my mother, who had the full dozen-or so she claimed.

“Well, do you know I’d be a bit confused-”

“Hah!” I said to Mum. “You see?”

“-because,” Polly carried on, “if you texted me asking for Landen and the kids to come over for Sunday dinner, I’d not know why you hadn’t asked him yourself.”

“Ah…I see,” I mumbled, suspicious that the two of them had been colluding in some way-as they generally did. Still, I never knew why they made me feel as though I were an eighteen-year-old when I was now fifty-two and myself in the sort of respectable time of life that I thought they should be. That’s the thing about hitting fifty. All your life you think the half century is death’s adolescence, but actually it’s really not that bad, as long as you can remember where you left your glasses.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” said my mother. “I got you something-look.”

She handed me the most hideous sweater you could possibly imagine.

“I don’t know what to say, Mum, and I really mean that-a short-sleeved lime green sweater with a hood and mock-antler buttons.”

“Do you like it?”

“One’s attention is drawn to it instantly.”

“Good! Then you’ll wear it straightaway?”

“I wouldn’t want to ruin it,” I replied hastily. “I’m just off to work.”

“Ooh!” said Polly. “I’ve only now remembered.” She handed me a CD in a plain sleeve. “This is a preproduction copy of Hosing the Dolly.”

“It’s what?”

“Please try to keep up with the times, darling. Hosing the Dolly. The new album by Strontium Goat. It won’t be out until November. I thought Friday might like it.”

“It’s really totally out there, man,” put in my mother. “Whatever that means. There’s a solo guitar riff on the second track that reminded me of Friday’s playing and was so good it made my toes tingle-although that might just have been a pinched nerve. Wayne Skunk’s granny is Mrs. Arbuthnot-you know, the funny old lady with the large wart on her nose and the elbows that bend both ways. He sent it to her.”

I looked at the CD. Friday would like it, I was certain of that.

“And,” added Polly, leaning closer and with a conspiratorial wink, “you don’t have to tell him it was from us-I know what teenagers are like, and a bit of parental kudos counts for a lot.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. It was more than a CD-it was currency.

“Good!” said my mother. “Have you got time for a cup of tea and a slice of Battenberg?”

“No, thank you-I’m going to pick something up from Mycroft’s workshop, and then I’ll be on my way.”

“How about some Battenberg to go, then?”

“I’ve just had breakfast.”

The doorbell rang.

“Ooooh!” said Polly, peering furtively out the window. “What fun. It looks like a market researcher!”

“Right,” said my mother in a very military tone. “Let’s see how long we can keep him before he runs out screaming. I’ll pretend to have mild dementia, and you can complain about your sciatica in German. We’ll try to beat our personal Market-Researcher Containment record of two hours and twelve minutes.”

I shook my head sadly. “I wish you two would grow up.”

“You are so judgmental, daughter dear,” scolded my mother. “When you reach our age and level of physical decrepitude, you’ll take your entertainment wherever you can find it. Now, be off with you.”

And they shooed me into the kitchen while I mumbled something about how remedial basket weaving, whist drives or daytime soaps would probably suit them better. Mind you, inflicting mental torture on market researchers kept them busy, I suppose.

I walked out the back door, crossed the back garden and quietly entered the wooden out house that was my uncle Mycroft’s laboratory. I switched on the light and walked to my Porsche, which was looking a little forlorn under a dust sheet. It was still unrepaired from the accident five years before. The damage hadn’t been that severe, but 356 parts were getting pricey these days, and we couldn’t spare the cash. I reached into the cockpit, pulled the release and opened the hood. It was here that I kept a tote bag containing twenty thousand Welsh tocyns. On this side of the border pretty worthless, but enough to buy a three-bedroom house in Merthyr. I wasn’t planning to move to the Welsh Socialist Republic, of course-I needed the cash for a Welsh cheese deal I had cooking that evening. I checked that the cash was all still there and was just replacing the sheet on the car when a noise made me turn. Standing at the workbench in the half-light was my uncle Mycroft. An undeniable genius, with his keen mind he had pushed the frontiers in a range of disciplines that included genetics, fusion power, abstract geometry, perpetual motion and romantic fiction. It was he who had ushered in the home-cloning revolution, he who may have developed a memory-erasure machine and he who had invented the Prose Portal that had catapulted me into fiction. He was dressed in his trademark wool three-piece suit but without the jacket, his shirtsleeves were rolled up, and he was in what we all called his “inventing mode.” He seemed to be concentrating on a delicate mechanism, the function of which was impossible to guess. As I watched him in silence and with a growing sense of wonder, he suddenly noticed me.

“Ah!” he said with a smile. “Thursday! Haven’t seen you for a while-all well?”

“Yes,” I replied a bit uncertainly, “I think so.”

“Splendid! I just had an idea for a cheap form of power: by bringing pasta and antipasta together, we could be looking at the utter annihilation of ravioli and the liberation of vast quantities of energy. I safely predict that an average-size cannelloni would be able to power Swindon for over a year. Mind you, I could be wrong.”

“You’re not often wrong,” I said quietly.

“I think I was wrong to start inventing in the first place,” he replied after a moment’s reflection. “Just because I can do it, it doesn’t follow that I should. If scientists stopped to think about their creations more, the world might be a better-”

He broke off talking and looked at me in a quizzical manner.

“You’re staring at me in a strange way,” he said, with uncharacteristic astuteness.

“Well, yes,” I replied, trying to frame my words carefully. “You see…I think…that is to say…I’m very surprised to see you.”

“Really?” he said, putting down the device he was working on. “Why?”

“Well,” I replied with greater firmness, “I’m surprised to see you because…you died six years ago!”

“I did?” inquired Mycroft with genuine concern. “Why does no one tell me these things?”

I shrugged, as there was really no good answer to this.

“Are you sure?” he asked, patting himself on the chest and stomach and then taking his pulse to try to convince himself I might be mistaken. “I know I’m a bit forgetful, but I’m certain I would have remembered that.”

“Yes, quite sure,” I replied. “I was there.”

“Well, goodness,” murmured Mycroft thoughtfully, “if what you say is correct and I am dead, it’s entirely possible that this isn’t me at all, but a variable-response holographic recording of some sort. Let’s have a look for a projector.”

And so saying, he began to ferret through the piles of dusty machinery in his lab. And with nothing better to do and faintly curious, I joined in.

We searched for a good five minutes, but after finding nothing even vaguely resembling a holographic projector, Mycroft and I sat down on a packing case and didn’t speak for some moments.

“Dead,” muttered Mycroft with a resigned air. “Never been that before. Not even once. Are you quite sure?”

“Quite sure,” I replied. “You were eighty-seven. It was expected.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, as though some dim memory were stirring. “And Polly?” he added, suddenly remembering his wife. “How is she?”

“She’s very well,” I told him. “She and Mum are up to their old tricks.”

“Annoying market researchers?”

“Among other things. But she’s missing you dreadfully.”

“And I her.” He looked nervous for a moment. “Has she got a boyfriend yet?”

“At ninety-two?”

“Damn good-looking woman-smart, too.”

“Well, she hasn’t.”

“Hmm. Well, If you see someone suitable, O favorite niece, push him her way, won’t you? I don’t want her to be lonely.”

“I’ll do that, Uncle, I promise.”

We sat in silence for a few seconds more, and I shivered.

“Mycroft,” I said, suddenly thinking that perhaps there wasn’t a scientific explanation for his appearance after all, “I’m going to try something.”

I put out my fingertips to touch him, but where they should have met the firm resistance of his shirtsleeve, there was none-my fingers just melted into him. He wasn’t there. Or if he was, he was something insubstantial-a phantom.

“Ooooh!” he said as I withdrew my hand. “That felt odd.”

“Mycroft…you’re a ghost.”

“Nonsense! Scientifically proven to be completely impossible.” He paused for thought. “Why would I be one of those?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know-perhaps there’s something you hadn’t finished at your death and it’s been bothering you.”

“Great Scott! You’re right. I never did finish the final chapter of Love Among the Begonias.”

In retirement Mycroft had spent his time writing romantic novels, all of which sold surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that he had attracted the lasting enmity of Daphne Farquitt, the indisputable leader in the field. She fired off an accusatory letter accusing him of “wanton” plagiarism. A barrage of claims and counterclaims followed, which ended only when Mycroft died. It was so venomous, in fact, that conspiracy theorists claimed he was poisoned by crazed Farquitt fans. We had to publish his death certificate to quell the rumors.

“Polly finished Love Among the Begonias for you,” I said.

“Ah,” he replied, “maybe I’ve come back to haunt that loathsome cow Farquitt.”

“If that were the case, you’d be over at her place doing the wooo-wooo thing and clanking chains.”

“Hmm,” he said disdainfully, “that doesn’t sound very dignified.”

“How about some last-minute inventing? Some idea you never got around to researching?”

Mycroft thought long and hard, making several bizarre faces as he did so.

“Fascinating!” he said at last, panting with the effort. “I can’t do original thought anymore. As soon as my brain stopped functioning, that was the end of Mycroft the inventor. You’re right: I must be dead. It’s most depressing.”

“But no idea why you’re here?”

“None,” he said despondently.

“Well,” I said as I got up, “I’ll make a few inquiries. Do you want Polly to know you’ve reappeared in spirit form?”

“I’ll leave it to your judgment,” he said. “But if you do tell her, you might mention something about how she was the finest partner any man could have. Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.”

I snapped my fingers. That’s how I wanted to describe Landen and me. “That was good-can I use it?”

“Of course. Have you any idea how much I miss Polly?”

I thought of the two years Landen had been eradicated. “I do. And she misses you, Uncle, every second of every day.”

He looked up at me, and I saw his eyes glisten.

I tried to put my hand on his arm, but it went through his phantom limb and instead landed on the hard surface of the workbench.

“I’ll have a think about why I might be here,” said Mycroft in a quiet voice. “Will you look in on me from time to time?” He smiled to himself and began to tinker with the device on the workbench again.

“Of course. Good-bye, Uncle.”

“Good-bye, Thursday.”

And he slowly began to fade. I noticed as he did so that the room grew warmer again, and within a few more seconds he had vanished entirely. I retrieved the bag of Welsh cash and walked thoughtfully to the door, turning to have one last look. The workshop was empty, dusty and forgotten. Abandoned as it was when Mycroft died, six years before.