The Fourth Bear

17. Home Again

“Hello, sweetheart,” said Madeleine as Jack walked in the door. “What did your psychiatric evaluator have to say?”

“I’m only mad if my car isn’t. If my car is mad, then I’m sane—but I have to prove that my car is insane for me to be seen as sane. Is that clear?”

“As mud.”

“And I think we’ve found Goldilocks—or bits of her anyhow.”

“Murder?”

“Possibly. Have you seem Jerome’s pet whatever-it-is today?”

“There was a gnawing sound from behind the hot-water tank,” she replied, “but I didn’t see anything.”

“And the Punches?”

“They are the neighbors… from hell,” she replied coldly.

Jack looked at the partition wall. All was silent. “They seem pretty quiet to me.”

“They’re taking a breather,” replied Madeleine, consulting the kitchen clock. “Since they got in from work, I’ve noticed they have a strict schedule to their arguments—fifty minutes of violent squabbling, then ten minutes’ rest. Regular as clockwork.”

“Oh, come on!” said Jack. “No one fights to a schedule.”

“Three seconds from now,” said Madeleine, donning a set of earplugs. Megan, who was doing her homework on the kitchen table, did the same. Almost immediately there was a thump and a crash from next door, all the pictures on the wall shook, and tiny trails of dust fell from the ceiling. There was silence for a moment, then a scream of laughter and another crash.

Madeleine looked at her husband and raised an eyebrow.

“See?”

“I wonder how they got rid of them in the last neighborhood.”

“Sorry?” said Madeleine, pulling out one of the earplugs.

“I said, ‘I wonder how they got rid of them in the last neighborhood.’"

Madeleine raised a finger in the air. “Good point. I Googled them and found www.hatepunch.co.uk, which is a Web site dedicated to assisting anyone unlucky enough to live near them.”

“And?”

“The Punches are pretty canny and know how to keep quiet as soon as the law or social services come around, and they can drag noise-pollution proceedings out for months—sometimes years. The only sure way to get rid of them quick is to pay them off with a cash ‘gift’ of twenty grand.”

“That’s extortion and possibly demanding money with menaces,” announced Jack. “I can have them for that.”

“Apparently not,” replied Madeleine. “They never ask for the money and deny they want it if asked—you just push it through their mail slot, and a week later they decide to move on.”

“Hmm,” said Jack with a grudging respect, “good scam.”

“It’s the perfect scam. The residents’ association has already raised half the fee. They want to move fast, before the word gets around that Punch is in the neighborhood.”

“Property prices!” snorted Jack, “Sometimes I wonder if they think of nothing else. But listen: All we’re doing is passing the problem on to somebody else.”

“I think the residents’ association knows that, sweetheart. And what’s more, I don’t think they care.”

“I care,” he replied. “There must be something we can do.”

There was another crash from next door, which set the ceiling light swinging.

“On the other hand,” he added, “they are pretty annoying.”

Jack had to ring the doorbell for a long time, as Punch and Judy were having a fight and couldn’t hear the bell for all the screams, swearing and breaking of furniture. When the door finally opened, it was Judy, who had a cut lip and a nosebleed.

“Yes?” she said, holding a handkerchief to her nose and clearly annoyed at being disturbed during her leisure time.

“If Mr. Punch did that to you, I can have him arrested for assault,” said Jack, wondering whether perhaps Judy wasn’t quite as much of a willing partner as she made out.

“Go to hell,” she said, and slammed the door in his face. There were more sounds of crockery breaking as Jack rang the doorbell again, and after another ten minutes the door opened again. This time it was Mr. Punch, who held an ice pack over his still-damaged eye.

“What?” he asked irritably.

“I just want you to know that I’m onto your little scam and I’ll use every—”

“Get real,” said Punch cruelly, “and then go to hell.”

And he slammed the door.

“How did it go?” asked Madeleine when Jack got back.

“I had an interesting exchange of views with both of them,” he replied, “and I’m sure we can come to some sort of amicable solution to the whole sorry business.”

“They told you to go to hell, didn’t they?” said Madeleine, who knew her husband pretty well.

“Yes. But I’m not out of ideas yet. That’s not to say I have any, but I’m sure I can deal with them without having to buy them off. Besides…”

Jack was thinking about his session with Kreeper and his PDRness. Punch and Judy were not just neighbors, they were something closer to family. And besides, this was what they did. For Punch and Judy there was nothing else—just uncontrolled and pointless violence toward each other.

“Besides… what?”

“Nothing.” He took a cookie out of the tin and nibbled it.

“How was your day?”

She shrugged. “It was dandy until the Punches got home.” She thought for a moment and looked confused. “Jack, Punch said something odd.”

“He… did?” asked Jack warily.

“Yes. I asked him why they insisted on beating the crap out of each other, and he said that you’d understand because they’d beat each other up as long as you continued not eating fat.” Jack’s heart missed a beat, and he felt a hot flush rise within him that seemed to burn his cheeks.

“He was just having a joke,” he replied in an unconvincing voice.

“You’re hiding something from me,” she said. “I know when you’re lying, Jack, and you’re doing it now.”

“Because…” began Jack, unsure of how to put it. He had hidden it from her for so long that he wasn’t sure how she would react when he told her.

“Because what?”

“Because I’m Jack Spratt,” he said at last.

“I know that,” she replied, her voice dropping as she saw the pain in his face.

“Yes, but I’m not a Jack Spratt, I’m the Jack Spratt, as in ‘who could eat no fat.’"

She looked at him with a furrowed brow, unsure of what to say. “‘Whose wife could eat no lean’?”

Jack nodded, Madeleine’s eyes widening at the sudden acquisition of this new knowledge.

“Your first wife ate nothing but fat,” she said slowly. “That was what killed her.”

“I know.”

“You mean, You’re a… a…”

“Yes,” said Jack softly, laying a hand on her arm, “I’m actually a character from a nursery rhyme. I’m a PDR, sweetheart, and have been from the moment I was born.”

Madeleine looked at him unsteadily. She felt confused, hurt, uncertain. She pushed his hand off her arm.

“How long have you known?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Ever since I married for the first time and then started work at the NCD. DCI Horner said I was just the man for the job. I felt I belonged. It seemed too much of a coincidence.”

“And the beanstalk and all that giant killing?”

“I think it’s a question of economy.”

She leaned against the door frame, her mind whirling. She’d had no idea, no idea at all, yet now it all seemed so obvious.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she gasped at length.

Jack shrugged. “I didn’t want to lose you. I thought you might not marry me if you knew.”

She looked at him for a moment, then asked in a subdued tone, “Am I one?”

Jack smiled. “Of course not, darling.”

“How can you tell?”

“It was my first wife who ‘ate no lean’—you’ll eat anything put in front of you.”

“Why does it always have to be about you? Can’t I be a PDR in my own right?”

It was a good point.

“It’s not likely. In the nursery world, surnames nearly always make good rhymes. Horner/corner, Spratt/fat, Hubbard/cupboard. Your maiden name of ‘Usher’ doesn’t rhyme with much except ‘gusher’ and… ‘flusher.’"

She said nothing but stared at the ground, trying to make sense of this unexpected news. They had been married five years, and she had never suspected it for one moment. Not once. She felt betrayed—and angry. Angry that the man she loved and trusted had been hiding something so fundamental from her.

“Nothing’s changed, Madeleine,” said Jack soothingly. “I’m still the same Jack Spratt!”

“You might have told me you weren’t real!” she blurted out.

“I am real,” he implored. “In a collective-consciousness, postmodern, zeitgeisty sort of way.”

“What on earth does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But what I do know is that… I love you.”

“Do you?” she asked, tears of anger and hurt welling up inside her. “Do you really? Or maybe it’s only because you’re written that way.”

The barbed remark was like a dagger in Jack’s heart, but before he could comment further, Pandora chose that moment to walk into the kitchen with Prometheus. They were carrying a much-annotated seating plan for their upcoming wedding.

“Medusa has agreed to come with a pillowcase on her head after all,” she said. “Do you think it would be awkward to sit her next to Athena?”

Is he? mouthed Madeleine to Jack. Jack mouthed back, Kind of, and Madeleine left the room at a brisk trot. There was the distant bang of a door from upstairs, and Jack realized that this time it was going to take more than just careful words to undo the damage.

“Have you and Madeleine been having a row?” asked Pandora.

“Not really,” replied Jack unconvincingly, and went upstairs. The bedroom door was locked, and he rapped very gently on the frame.

“Go away,” came a voice from inside, so he went downstairs to look after Stevie, who had discovered the dusty delights of the coal scuttle.

“Hi, Dad!” said Ben, who had just walked in. “How’s it swoggling?”

“I think your brother wants to be a chimney sweep,” replied Jack, attempting to put a cheery face on matters. “How are things with Penelope?”

Ben was sixteen and awash in an almost toxic cocktail of hormones; the object of his unrequited love was Penelope Liddell, who played the harp in the school band. Despite his hard-worked best intentions, he had utterly failed to convince her he was worthy of a date.

“Not that good,” he replied. “About a month ago, I overheard her saying she always looked forward to Laurence Sterne, so I spent the next three weeks reading nothing but Tristram Shandy and then quoted several passages and made a few obscure jokes of a Shandean nature to try and impress her.”

“What happened?”

“She asked me what I was talking about. I told her, and she said, ‘Laurence Sterne? Who’s he?’ And there’s no real answer to that except to say that he was an eighteenth-century pastor who wrote very strange books. Then she said she didn’t see how pasta could write books, and any pasta that old would be inedible anyway and that Sterne couldn’t be half as strange as me, and walked off. It was only later I found out what she really meant was how she always looked forward to ‘Lawrence’s turn… to go to the shops,’ as he usually had a few extra bob in his pocket.”

Jack patted him on the arm. “This reminds me of the time when you heard her say she loved Keats—only to find out she wanted to have two—a boy and a girl.”

“Yes,” he replied mournfully. “Life is full of little misunderstandings. I’m now an expert on Sterne and Keats, when a small investment in a Snickers bar and a can of soda would have at least got me a cheery thank-you and a peck on the cheek.”

At that moment Pandora walked back into the living room in a state of high dudgeon.

“No, no and no,” she said. “We won’t be having any live animal sacrifices.”

“Oh, come on,” said Prometheus, who had entered after her.

“It’s traditional.”

“So was the Black Death,” she retorted, “but I’m not having it at my wedding.”

“Just one teensy-weensy bull—barely a seven-hundred-pounder. You’ll hardly even notice it.”

“No!” said Pandora, putting her foot down. “I’m not having any animals put to death at my wedding. You’ll be inviting Zeus next.”

There was silence.

“You’ve invited him, haven’t you?”

Prometheus shrugged. “I had to. Hera called and said the God of Gods was down in the dumps when he didn’t get an invite. He was right off his smoting and hasn’t even looked at a pretty handmaiden to ravish for over a week.”

“This is because I invited Aunt Beryl and you don’t like her, isn’t it?”

“I have no problem with your Aunt Beryl,” replied the Titan.

“It’s that dog of hers that gets right on my nerves.”

“What’s wrong with Frubbles?”

“What’s right with Frubbles? That’s not a dog—it’s a skeleton with hair. And why does it shiver all the time?”

Pandora thought for a moment. The shivering annoyed her, too.

“I’ll speak to Beryl and tell her that Frubbles shouldn’t attend because… because Cerberus will be part of the wedding procession, okay?”

“Okay,” said Prometheus sulkily.

“But no Zeus, no sacrifices and definitely no Sirens. Dad, will you back me up?”

“I’m with you on this one, sweetpea.”

“Very well,” said Prometheus, who regarded Jack’s word as law, “but Zeus will only cause trouble. Forget reason—he acts like a three-year-old in charge of the U.S. Marine Corps.”

Jack bathed Stevie and put everyone to bed after dinner, telling the kids when they asked that Madeleine “wasn’t feeling well.” He tapped on the bedroom door, but there was no answer, so he went to bed in the spare room. After tossing fitfully for an hour, he finally fell asleep, only to wake with a start. He patted the bedside table for his watch but couldn’t find it, so he got up and tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom. He looked in on Megan, who was wrapped up in her duvet like a dormouse huddled in a knot of straw. Jerome was asleep on the floor of his room next door, surrounded by Lego and Meccano.

Jack was just pondering whether to knock gently on Madeleine’s door when a movement on the edge of his vision made him stop. He turned slowly, the hairs on his neck rising. At the far end of the corridor, staring at a large, gold-painted vase that was sitting atop an occasional table, was the small, apelike creature he had seen yesterday in the closet under the stairs. It was not more than two feet high and covered with a smattering of brown hair. It couldn’t reach the vase and looked around for something to stand on. As it turned, the moonlight caught its features, and Jack shivered. A large snout surrounded a mouth filled with brown teeth that were anything but straight. Small eyes stood below a wrinkled brow, and its ears, pixielike, stuck out at odd angles from the side of its potato-shaped head. This, Jack knew, was Caliban.

He disappeared around the corner and reappeared a moment later pulling Stevie’s trike. He placed it under the table and stood precariously on top, the trike wobbling dangerously. Caliban put out two hands, picked up the shiny vase and looked at it admiringly. He stepped off the trike with some difficulty, as the vase was large and he couldn’t see around it, then took several uncertain steps toward where Jack was watching. Jack waited until the little ape was underneath him and then plucked the vase from his grip.

“Aha!” said Jack with a triumphant cry.

But Caliban wasn’t so easily dispossessed of his property, and with an “AHA!” he jumped up and grabbed it back, then ran off as fast as his short legs would carry him. Jack yelled, “Stop!” and ran after the small figure. The farce could end in only one way. The creature tripped over a fold in the carpet, fell flat on his face and dropped the vase, which then rolled toward the head of the stairs. Caliban put a paw to his mouth as he watched the vase escape him, and Jack, more concerned now for the vase than with capturing the ugly little ape, raced past the creature, took a running leap, fell headlong on the carpet and just managed to touch the vase as it rolled out into space, bounced on the second stair, smashed on the fifth and scattered pieces of gold-painted porcelain all over the hall downstairs. Jack lay on his stomach at the top of the stairs and watched the pieces settle on the floor below.

“Crap,” he muttered. The vase was Madeleine’s, and it had been until very recently a priceless and much-loved family heirloom.

Caliban walked up to where Jack was lying at the top of the stairs and looked forlornly at the remains of the vase.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “Was it valuable?”

Jack closed his eyes as he heard a door open behind them.

“More than you know,” he answered in a low voice.

“Who did this?” asked Madeleine as soon as she realized what had happened.

“He did,” replied Caliban and Jack in unison, each pointing an accusing finger at the other.

“What?!” said Jack in outrage. “You stole the vase, pal.”

“I wouldn’t have dropped it if you hadn’t been chasing me.”

“I wouldn’t have been chasing you if you hadn’t stolen it!”

“I wasn’t stealing it.”

“What then?”

“I was borrowing it.”

“You—”

Madeleine interrupted them both. “I don’t care who’s to blame; you can both clear it up. My grandmother gave me that vase before she died.”

Caliban giggled at the non sequitur but tried to make it sound like a cough when Madeleine glared at him.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” he replied meekly.

Madeleine walked angrily back to the bedroom and shut the door with a bang.

“Thanks a bunch,” said Jack to the misshapen ape as they both sat on the top step, “you troublemaking ignoramus.”

“I’m not an ignoramus,” retorted Caliban crossly. “Ask me anything.”

“All right, smart-ass. Who owns Bart-Mart?”

“QuangTech,” said the ugly little ape without a pause. “Everyone knows that.”