A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (48 page)

“One hundred and eight!” she muttered. “I feel like the bunny in that Fusioncell ad, you know, the one that has to run on brand X?”

“You're Fusioncell all the way to me, Gran.”

She gave a faint smile and leaned back on the pillows.

“Read the book to me, my dear.”

I sat down and opened the small Beatrix Potter volume. I glanced up at Gran, who had closed her eyes.

“Read!”

So I did, right from the front to the back.

“Anything?”

“No,” I replied sadly, “nothing.”

“Not even the whiff of garden refuse or the distant buzz of a lawn mower?”

“Not a thing.”

“Hah!” said Gran. “Read it to me again.”

So I read it again, and again after that.

“Still nothing?”

“No, Gran,” I replied, beginning to get bored.

“How do you see the character of Mrs. Tittlemouse?”

“Resourceful and intelligent,” I replied. “Probably a gossip and likes to name-drop. Leagues ahead of Benjamin in the brain department.”

“How do you figure that?” queried Gran.

“Well, by allowing his children to sleep so vulnerably in the open air, Benjamin clearly shows minimal parenting skills, yet he has enough
self
-preservation to cover his own face. It was Flopsy who had to come and look for him, as this sort of thing has obviously happened before—it is clear that Benjamin can't be trusted with the children. Once again the mother has to show restraint and wisdom.”

“Maybe so,” replied Gran, “but where's the wisdom in watching from the window while Mr. and Mrs. McGregor discovered they had been duped with the rotten vegetables?”

She had a point.

“A narrative necessity,” I declared. “I think there is more high drama if you follow the outcome of the rabbit's subterfuge, don't you? I think Flopsy, had she been making all the
decisions, would have just returned to the burrow but was, on this occasion, overruled by Beatrix Potter.”

“It's an interesting theory,” commented Gran, stretching her toes out on the counterpane and wriggling them to keep the circulation going. “Mr. McGregor's a nasty piece of work, isn't he? Quite the Darth Vader of children's literature.”

“Misunderstood,” I told her. “I see
Mrs.
McGregor as the villain of the piece. A sort of Lady Macbeth. His labored counting and inane chuckling might indicate a certain degree of dementia that allows him to be easily dominated by Mrs. McGregor's more aggressive personality. I think their marriage is in trouble, too. She describes him as a ‘silly old man' and ‘a doddering old fool' and claims the rotten vegetables in the sack are just a pointless prank to annoy her.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really. I think that's about it. Good stuff, isn't it?”

But Gran didn't answer; she just chuckled softly to herself.

“So you're still here then,” she asked, “you didn't jump into Mr. and Mrs. McGregor's cottage?”

“No.”

“In that case,” began Gran with a mischievous air, “how did you know she called him a ‘doddering old fool'?”

“It's in the text.”

“Better check, young Thursday.”

I flicked to the correct page and found, indeed, that Mrs. McGregor had said no such thing.

“How odd!” I said. “I must have made it up.”

“Maybe,” replied Gran, “or perhaps you
overheard
it. Close your eyes and describe the kitchen in Mr. McGregor's cottage.”

“Lilac-washed walls,” I muttered, “a large range with a kettle singing merrily above a coal fire. There is a dresser against one wall with floral-patterned crocks upon it and atop the scrubbed kitchen table there is a jug with flowers—”

I lapsed into silence.

“And how would you have known that,” asked Gran triumphantly,
“unless you had actually been there?”

I quickly skimmed the book, surprised and impressed by the tantalizing glimmer of another world beyond the attractive watercolors and simple prose. I concentrated hard but nothing similar happened. Perhaps I wanted it too much; I don't know. After the tenth reading I was just looking at the words and ink and nothing else.

“It's a start,” said Gran encouragingly. “Try another book when you get home, but don't expect too much too soon—and I'd strongly recommend you go and look for Mrs. Nakajima. Where does she live?”

“She took retirement in
Jane Eyre
.”

“
Before
that?”

“Osaka.”

“Then perhaps you should seek her there—and for heaven's sake, relax!”

I told her I would, kissed her on the forehead and quietly left the room.

ToadNewsNetwork was the top news station, Lydia Startright their top reporter. If there was a top event, you could bet your top dollar that Toad would make it their top story. When Tunbridge Wells was given to the Russians as war reparations there was no topper story—except, that is, the mammoth migrations, speculation on Bonzo the Wonder Hound's next movie or whether Lola Vavoom shaved her armpits or not. My father said that it was a delightfully odd—and dangerously self-destructive—quirk of humans that we were far more interested in pointless trivia than in genuine news stories.

THURSDAY NEXT
,
A Life in SpecOps

S
INCE
I
WAS STILL
on official leave pending the outcome of the SO-1 hearing, I went home and let myself into my apartment, kicked off my shoes and poured some pistachios into Pickwick's dish. I made some coffee and called Bowden for a long chat, trying to find out what else had changed since Landen's eradication. As it turned out, not much. Anton had still been blamed for the charge of the light armored brigade, I had still lived in London for ten years, still arrived back in Swindon at the same time, still been up at Uffington picnicking the day before. Dad had once said the past has an astonishing resilience
to change; he wasn't kidding. I thanked Bowden, hung up and painted for a while, trying to relax. When that failed I went up for a walk at Uffington, joining the sightseers who had gathered to watch the smashed Hispano-Suiza being loaded onto a trailer. The Leviathan Airship Company had begun an inquiry and volunteered one of their directors to accept charges of corporate manslaughter. The hapless executive had begun his seven-year term already, thus hoping to avoid an expensive and damaging lawsuit for his company.

I returned home to find a dangerous-looking man was standing on my doorstep. I'd never seen him before but he knew me well enough.

“Next!” he bellowed. “I want three months' rent in advance or I'll throw all your stuff in the skip!”

“In advance?” I replied as I unlocked my door, hoping to sneak inside and close it as soon as possible. “You can't do that!”

“I
can,
” he said holding up a dog-eared lease agreement. “Pets are strictly against the terms of the lease. Clause 7 subsection B, under ‘Pets—special conditions.' Now pay up.”

“There's no pet in here,” I explained innocently.

“What's that, then?”

Pickwick had made a quiet
plock-plock
noise and poked her head round the door to see what was going on. It was a badly timed move.

“Oh
that.
I'm looking after her for a friend.”

My landlord's eyes suddenly lit up as he looked closer at Pickwick, who shrank back nervously. She was a rare Version 1.2 and my landlord seemed to know this.

He eyed Pickwick greedily. “Hand over the dodo,” he said, “and I'll give you four months' free rent.”

“She's not for trade,” I said firmly. I could feel Pickwick quivering behind me.

“Ah,” said my landlord. “Then you have two days to pay all your bills or you're out on your sweet little SpecOps arse. Capishe?”

“You say the nicest things.”

He glared at me, handed me a bill and disappeared off down the corridor to harass someone else.

I didn't have three months' advance rent, and he knew it. After a search I eventually found a lease agreement, and he was right—the clause was there in case of something much bigger and more dangerous, such as a saber-tooth, but he was within his rights. My cards had reached their limit and my overdraft was nearly full. SpecOps wages were just about enough to keep you fed and a roof over your head, but buying the Speedster had all but cleared me out and I hadn't even
seen
the garage repair bills yet. There was a nervous
plock-plock
from the kitchen.

“I'd sooner sell myself,” I told Pickwick, who was standing expectantly with collar and lead in her beak.

I stashed the bank statements back into the shoebox, fixed myself some supper and then flopped in front of the telly, switching to ToadNewsNetwork.

“—the czar's chief negotiator has accepted the foreign minister's offer of Tunbridge Wells as war reparations,” intoned the anchorman gravely. “The small town and two-thousand-acre environs would become a Russian-owned enclave named Botchkamos Istochnik within England and all citizens of the new Russian colony would be offered dual nationality. On the spot for TNN is Lydia Startright. Lydia, how are things down there?”

The screen changed to ToadNewsNetwork's preeminent reporter in the main street of Tunbridge Wells.

“There is a mixture of disbelief and astonishment amongst the residents of this sleepy Kent town,” responded Startright
soberly, surrounded by an assortment of retired gentlefolk carrying shopping and looking vaguely bemused. “Panic warm-clothing shopping has given way to anger that the foreign secretary could make such a decision without mentioning some sort of generous compensation package. I have with me retired cavalry officer Colonel Prongg. Tell me, Colonel, what is your reaction to the news that you might be Colonel Pronski this time next month?”

“Well,” said the colonel in an aggrieved tone, “I would like to say that I am disgusted and appalled at the decision. Appalled and disgusted in the strongest possible terms. I didn't fight the Russkies for forty years only to become one in my retirement. Myself and Mrs. Prongg will be moving, obviously!”

“Since Imperial Russia is the second-wealthiest nation on the planet,” replied Lydia, “Tunbridge Wells may find itself, like the island of Fetlar, to be an important offshore banking institution for Russia's wealthy nobility.”

“Obviously,” replied the colonel, thinking hard, “I would have to wait to see how things went before coming to any final decision. But if the takeover means colder winters, we'll move back to Brighton. Chilblains, y'know.”

“There you have it, Carl. This is Lydia Startright reporting for ToadNewsNetwork, Tunbridge Wells.”

The camera switched back to the studio.

“Trouble at Mole TV,” continued the anchorman, “and a bitter blow for the producers of
Surviving Cortes
, the channel's popular Aztec conquering reenactment series when, instead of being simply voted out of the sealed set of Tenochtitlán, a contestant was sacrificed live to the Sun God. The show has been canceled and an inquiry has been launched. MoleTV were said to be ‘sorry and dismayed about the incident' but pointed out that the show was ‘the highest-rated on TV, even
after
the blood sacrifice.' Brett?”

The camera switched to the other newsreader.

“Thank you, Carl. Henry, a two-and-a-half-ton male juvenile from the Kirkbride herd, was the first mammoth to reach the winter pastures of Redruth at 6:07 p.m. this evening. Clarence Oldspot was there. Clarence?”

The scene changed to a field in Cornwall where a bored-looking mammoth had almost vanished inside a scrum of TV news reporters and crowds of well-wishers. Clarence Oldspot was still wearing his flak jacket and looked bitterly disappointed that he was reporting on hairy once extinct herbivores and not at the Crimean front line.

“Thank you, Brett. Well, the migration season is truly upon us, and Henry, a two-hundred-to-one outsider, wrongfooted the bookies when—”

I flicked the channel. It was
Name That Fruit!,
the nauseating quiz show. I flicked again to a documentary about the Whig political party's links to Radical Baconian groups in the seven-ties. I switched through several other channels before returning to the ToadNewsNetwork.

The phone rang and I picked it up.

“It's Miles,” said a voice that sounded like one hundred push-ups in under three minutes.

“Who?”

“Miles.”

“Ah!”
I said in shock. Miles. Miles Hawke, the owner of the boxer shorts and the tasteless sports jacket.

“Thursday? You okay?”

“Me? Fine. Fine. Completely fine. Couldn't be finer. Finer than a—How are
you?
”

“Do you want me to come round? You sound kinda odd.”

“No!”
I answered a little too sharply. “I mean, no, thanks—I mean, we saw each other only—um—”

“Two weeks ago?”

“Yes. And I'm very busy. God how busy I am. Never been busier. That's me. Busy as a busy thing—”

“I heard you went up against Flanker. I was concerned.”

“Tell me, did you and I ever—”

I couldn't say it but I needed to know.

“Did you and I ever what?”

“Did you and I—”

Think, think.

“Did you and I ever . . . visit the mammoth migrations?”

Damn and blast!

“The migrations? No. Should we have? Thursday, are you
sure
you're okay?”

I started to panic—and that was daft, given the circumstances. When facing people like Hades I didn't panic at all.

“Yes—I mean no. Oops, there's the doorbell. Must be my cab.”

“A cab? What happened to your car?”

“A pizza. A cab
delivering
a pizza. Got to go!”

And before he could protest I had put the phone down.

I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand and muttered:

“Idiot . . . idiot . . .
idiot!
”

I then ran around the flat like a lunatic, closing all the curtains and switching off the lights in case Miles decided to pop round to see me. I sat in the dark listening to Pickwick walking into the furniture for a bit before deciding I was being a twit and elected to go to bed with a copy of
Robinson Crusoe
.

I fetched a flashlight from the kitchen, undressed in the dark and climbed into bed, rolled around a bit on the unfamiliar mattress and then started to read the book, somehow hoping to repeat the sort of semisuccess I had enjoyed with
The Flopsy Bunnies
. I read of Crusoe's shipwreck and his arrival on the island and skipped the dull religious philosophizing. I stopped for a moment and looked around my bedroom to see whether
anything was happening. It wasn't; the only changes in the room were the lights of cars sweeping around my bedroom as they turned out of the road opposite. I heard Pickwick plock-plocking to herself, and returned to my book. I was more tired than I thought and as I read, I lapsed into slumber.

I dreamt I was on an island somewhere, hot and dry, the palms languid in the slight breeze, the sky a deep blue, the sunlight pure and clear. I trod barefoot in the surf, the water cooling my feet as I walked. There was a wrecked ship, all broken masts and tangled rigging, resting on the reef a hundred yards from the shore. As I watched I could see a naked man climb aboard the ship, rummage on the deck, pull on a pair of trousers and disappear below. After waiting a moment or two and not seeing him again I walked further along the beach, where I found Landen sitting under a palm tree gazing at me with a smile on his face.

“What are you looking at?” I asked him, returning his smile and raising my hand to shield my eyes from the sun.

“I'd forgotten how beautiful you are.”

“Oh
stop!
”

“I'm not kidding,” he replied as he jumped to his feet and hugged me tightly. “I'm really missing you.”

“I'm missing you, too,” I told him, “but where are you?”

“I'm not exactly sure,” he replied with a confused look. “Strictly speaking I don't think I'm anywhere—just here, alive in your memories.”

“This is my memory? What's it like?”

“Well,” replied Landen, “there are some really
outstanding
parts but some pretty dreadful ones too—in that respect it's a little like Majorca. Would you care for some tea?”

I looked around for the tea but Landen simply smiled.

“I've not been here long but I've learnt a trick or two. Remember that place in Winchester where we had scones that were fresh
warm from the oven? You remember, on the second floor, when it was raining outside and the man with the umbrella—”

“Darjeeling or Assam?” asked the waitress.

“Darjeeling,” I replied, “and two cream teas. Strawberry for me and quince for my friend.”

The island had gone. In its place was the tearoom in Winchester. The waitress scribbled a note, smiled and departed. The rooms were packed with amiable-looking middle-aged couples dressed in tweed. It was, not surprisingly, just as I remembered it.

“That was a neat trick!” I exclaimed.

“Naught to do with me!” replied Landen grinning. “This is all yours. Every last bit of it. The smells, the sounds—
everything.
”

I looked around in silent wonderment.

“I can remember all this?”

“Not
quite,
Thurs. Look at our fellow tea drinkers again.”