Jack’s heart nearly bounced out of his chest. He’d hidden it for so long that he’d almost forgotten that he was himself a PDR—a Person of Dubious Reality.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said defensively. “I’m as real as the next man. Besides, that Jack Sprat is spelled with one t—I have two.”
“Oh, right,” said Mr. Punch with a smirk. “In denial, are we? Got anything against PDRs?”
“No,” said Jack hurriedly. “Some of my best friends are PDRs. But I’m not and never have been—okay?”
“Okay, okay,” said Punch, winking. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“There’s no secret. I don’t know what you mean, really I don’t,” responded Jack, complaining perhaps a little too forcefully. “Maybe another time for the beer—and keep the fighting down, yes?”
“I’ll try,” said Mr. Punch, with all the conviction of a weak-willed recovering alcoholic being offered a shot of Jack Daniel’s, “but you know how it is.”
“Look what I’ve just found,” said Judy, returning to the door as though nothing had happened and holding a broken dinner plate.
“It’s the first piece of crockery I ever threw at you. See, I wrote the date on the back.”
They smiled and then hugged, gingerly trying to avoid the bruised areas on each other’s bodies.
“Fish pie, sweetheart?” said Judy.
“Sounds perfect, my cherub.”
And she picked up the baby and walked back inside the house.
“Well then,” said Jack, still firmly rattled by Punch’s comments over his PDRness. If Punch knew, how many others? His first wife knew because she’d been one, too—the “wife who could eat no lean”—but his second wife, Madeleine, had no idea, which on reflection was a big mistake. You can’t and shouldn’t keep those sorts of secrets from loved ones.
“So,” he added, swallowing a rising feeling of panic, “enjoy your… um… evening.”
“Th-thank you,” said Punch, gently closing the front door behind him. Jack walked back down the garden path to the sound of breaking crockery and a scream from Judy that transformed mid-wail into a lascivious giggle.
Jack took a deep breath to calm himself, opened his own kitchen door and walked in. “Honey,” he said, “I’m home!”
“Wotcha, Dad,” said Ben, his nose firmly wedged into a copy of Conspiracy Theorist magazine, something in which he had a particular interest. He had been overwhelmed when he learned that his dad had an alien working for him, but underwhelmed when he actually met him. Instead of talking about faster-than-light travel and wormholes, Ash had droned on at length about seventies Datsun motorcars, collectible plates and who he thought was the best Cartwright on Bonanza.
“Hi, Ben,” replied Jack. “Yeti populations holding steady?”
“Pretty much. Hear about the explosion up at Obscurity?”
“Let me guess,” said Jack, leaning backward to avoid being struck by a spoon that little Stevie had hurled across the room. “A government cover-up?”
However bad it got at the NCD and no matter how many times Briggs suspended him, Jack’s home life more than compensated for it. His wife of five years was Madeleine, and they had each brought two children to the home: Jack’s Pandora and Ben, and Madeleine’s Jerome and Megan. To cement the union still further, they’d also had Stevie, who was now eighteen months.
“This spoon hurling is getting stronger and more accurate,” said Jack, selecting another spoon from the drain board and sitting down at the table. Stevie gave a broad grin, took the new spoon and stared at it thoughtfully for a moment.
“Yes, indeed,” replied Madeleine, who was in the process of making a pot of tea, “the Olympic Ladle-Flinging Team wants to train him up for the 2020 Olympics.”
Jack smiled and looked at Megan, who was busy coloring at the other end of the table. “What’s that, princess?”
“It’s the Blue Baboon.”
“I never knew the Blue Baboon was green.”
“Can’t find the right crayon,” she said, and carried on coloring.
Madeleine and Jack were both on the second time around, marriage-wise. Unlike Jack, who was a widower, Madeleine had an ex-husband, Neville, who just turned out to be something of a dud. He had an eye for the ladies, too—a habit that Madeleine couldn’t overlook during their marriage, much to the surprise of her ex-husband, who thought his roguish charm would have her forgiving anything. It didn’t.
Jack loved Madeleine dearly, and he suddenly felt guilty that he’d not told her about his PDRness. But he would, this instant—it was the right and proper thing to do.
He got up, kissed her and said with an emboldened heart, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“It’s… that… I’m… Punch and Judy have moved in next door,” said Jack, losing his nerve entirely.
“I know. It should be quite a show,” replied Madeleine. “I’ve had the residents’ committee around already. They’ve opened a complaint book and want us to log every single problem we have with them.”
“I hope they’ve got a big book and several gallons of ink,” said Jack, giving up on confessions for the foreseeable future and fetching the milk from the fridge, “but I don’t think it will do much good. The pair of them have racked up so many noise-abatement orders they could wallpaper the toilet with them—and, if the rumors are correct, have done so.”
“What do we do?” asked Madeleine. “You know I can’t stand all that residents’ association curtain-twitching, protect-house-prices-at-all-costs stuff.”
Jack shrugged. “Nothing, for the moment. Keep an eye out, and if you hear them threatening to throw the baby downstairs again, let me know and we’ll get social services involved. They won’t do anything, but it might just calm them down a bit.”
“Fair enough. You know they’ve got a pet crocodile in the back garden?”
“It figures. There’ll be a string of sausages, a beadle, a hangman and a dog named Toby involved somewhere, too.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s a Nursery Crime thing. Punch and Judy are… PDRs.”
“I thought they might be,” replied Madeleine thoughtfully.
“You did?” asked Jack, suddenly worried. “How? How did you know? What, was it something they said? The way they walked? What?”
“It was probably,” said Madeleine, giving him a “how dopey do you think I am?” look, “something to do with their heads being made of painted papier-mâché.”
“Keen sense of observation you have there, pumpkin.”
“But why the ceaseless violence?”
“PDRs just can’t help themselves. Ever have a song going around in your head all day and you can’t shake it? Then find yourself humming it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the same with Punch and Judy and any other nursery character, but instead of a song it’s actions. Look at it as a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder or a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Punches have toned down their act a lot since the seventeenth century—infanticide, wife beating and multiple murder aren’t generally considered entertainment these days.”
“Are all forms of compulsive behavior a sign of PDRness?” she asked slowly.
“No, no, of course not,” replied Jack hurriedly, thinking about his own obsessional hatred for fat. “There have to be several other factors as well.”
Stevie gurgled at him from his high chair, and Jack, glad of the distraction, leaned over and affectionately tweaked his ear.
“Hi, Dad,” said Pandora as she walked into the kitchen with her fiancé, the Titan Prometheus. Having a daughter engaged to a four-thousand-year-old myth could be stressful at times, but Jack was determined not to be a flustery old hen of a father—and the union was improving her Greek no end. They were getting married in a month’s time, and there were still a lot of details to be ironed out.
“Do you think the record of the wedding should be as a video, a tapestry, depictions on a Grecian urn or as a twenty-eight-foot-long marble bas-relief?”