Lost in a good book (18 page)

“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.”

I turned in my chair and scanned the room. All the couples were more or less identical. Each was a middle-aged couple dressed in tweed and twittering in a home counties twang. They weren’t really eating or talking coherently; they were just moving and mumbling to give the
impression
of a packed tearoom.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” said Landen excitedly. “Since you can’t actually remember anything about who was here, your mind has just filled in the room with an amalgam of who you might
expect
to see in a teashop in Winchester. Mnemonic wallpaper, so to speak. There is nothing in this room that won’t be familiar. The cutlery is your mother’s and the pictures on the walls are all odd mixes of the ones we had up in the house. The waitress is a compound of Lottie from your lunch with Bowden and the woman in the chip shop. Every blank space in your memory has been filled with something that you
do
remember—a sort of shuffling of facts to fill in the gaps.”

I looked back at our fellow tea-takers, who now seemed faceless.

I had a sudden—and worrying—thought.

“Landen, you haven’t been around my late teenage years, have you?”

“Of course not. That’s like opening private mail.”

I was glad of this. My wholly unlikely infatuation for a boy named Darren and my clumsy introduction to being a woman in the back of a stolen Morris 8 was not something I wanted Landen to witness in all its ignominious glory. For once I was kind of wishing I had a bad memory—or that Uncle Mycroft had perfected his memory erasure device.

Landen poured the tea and asked: “How are things in the real world?”

“I have to figure out a way into books,” I told him. “I’m going to take the Gravitube to Osaka tomorrow and see if I can track down anyone who knew Mrs. Nakajima. It’s a long shot, but who knows.”

“Take care won’t y—”

Landen stopped short as something over my shoulder caught his eye. I turned to see probably the last person I wanted to be there. I quickly stood up, knocked my chair over backwards with a clatter and aimed my automatic at the tall figure who had just entered the tearoom.

“No call for
that!
” grinned Acheron Hades. “The way to kill me here is to forget about me, and there is about as much chance of doing that as forgetting little hubbles here.”

I looked at Landen, who rolled his eyes heavenward.

“Sorry, Thurs. I meant to tell you about
him.
He’s quite alive here in your memories—but harmless, I assure you.”

Hades told the couple next to us to scram if they knew what was good for them and then sat down, tucking into their unfinished seed cake. He was exactly as I last saw him on the roof at Thornfield—his clothes were even smoking slightly. I could smell the dry heat of the blaze at Rochester’s old house, almost hear the crackle of the fire and the unearthly scream of Bertha as Hades threw her to her death. Hades smiled a supercilious grin. He was relatively safe in my memories, and he knew it— the worst I could do was to wake up.

I reholstered my gun.

“Hello, Hades,” I said, sitting back down again. “Tea?”

“Would you? Frightfully kind.”

I poured him a cup. He stirred in four sugars and observed Landen for a bit with an inquisitorial eye before asking: “So you’re Parke-Laine, eh?”

“What’s left of him.”

“And you and Next are in love?”

“Yes.”

I took Landen’s hand as though to reinforce the statement.

“I was in love once, you know,” murmured Hades with a sad and distant smile. “I was quite besotted, in my own sort of way. We used to plan heinous deeds together, and for our first anniversary we set fire to a large public building. We then sat on a nearby hill together to watch the fire light up the sky, the screams of the terrified citizens a symphony to our ears.”

He sighed again, only this time more deeply.

“But it didn’t work out. The course of true love rarely runs smooth. I had to kill her.”

“You
had
to kill her?”

“Yes,” he sighed, “but I spared her any pain—and said I was sorry.”

“That’s a very heartwarming story,” murmured Landen.

“You and I have something in common, Mr. Parke-Laine.”

“I sincerely hope not.”

“We live only in Thursday’s memories. She’ll never be rid of me until she dies, and the same goes for you—sort of ironic, isn’t it? The man she loves, the man she hates—!”

“He’ll be returning,” I replied confidently, “when Jack Schitt is out of ‘The Raven.’ ”

Acheron laughed.

“I think you overestimate Goliath’s commitment to their promises. Landen is as dead as I am, perhaps more so—at least I survived childhood.”

“I beat you fair and square, Hades,” I said, handing him a jam pot and a knife as he helped himself to a scone, “and I’ll take on Goliath and win, too.”

“We’ll see,” replied Acheron thoughtfully, “we’ll see.”

I thought of the Skyrail and the falling Hispano-Suiza.

“Did you try and kill me the other day, Hades?”

“If only!” he answered, waving the jam spoon in our direction and laughing. “But then again I
might
have done—after all, I’m here only as your
memory
of me. I sincerely hope that I am, perhaps, not dead and out there somewhere for real, plotting, plotting . . . !”