The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [193]
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.