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'And how would you have known that?' asked Gran triumphantly. 'Unless you had actually been there?'
I quickly reread the book several times, concentrating 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 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 Nakaima. 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.
12
At home with my memories
* * *
'Toad News Network 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 genuine news stories.'
THURSDAY NEXT – A Life in SpecOps
Since 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 Armoured 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 that the past has an astonishing resistance to change, he wasn't kidding. I thanked Bowden, hung up and painted for a while, trying to relax. When that failed I went for a walk up at Uffington, joining the sightseers who had gathered to watch the smashed Hispano-Suiza being loaded on to 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, fixed myself some supper and then flopped in front of the telly, switching to Toad News Network.
'—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 Toad News Network's pre-eminent reporter in the main street of Tunbridge Wells.
'There is a mixture of disbelief and astonishment among 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 reac
tion 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 Russkis 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 Toad News Network, Tunbridge Wells.'
The scene 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 re-enactment series, when, instead of being simply voted out of the sealed set of Tenochtitlan, a contestant was sacrificed live to the Sun God. The show has been cancelled and an inquiry has been launched. Mole TV 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 other newsreader appeared on-screen.
'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 the Crimean front line.
'Thank you, Brett. Well, the migration season is truly upon us and Henry, a two-hundred-to-one outsider, wrong-footed the bookies when—'
I flicked channels Name That Fruit!, the nauseating quiz show, appeared. I flicked again to a documentary about the Whig political party's links to radical Baconian groups in the seventies. I switched through several other channels before returning to the Toad News Network.
