The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [259]
“Don’t say a word. Not a single word!”
Pickwick was still awake when I got in even though it was nearly 6 a.m. There were two messages on the answer machine—one from Cordelia, and another from a very annoyed Cordelia.
27.
Landen and Joffy Again
George Formby was born George Hoy Booth in Wigan in 1904. He followed his father into the music hall business, adopted the ukulele as his trademark and by the time the war broke out was a star of variety, pantomime and film. During the first years of the war, he and his wife, Beryl, toured extensively for ENSA, entertaining the troops as well as making a series of highly successful movies. By 1942 he and Gracie Fields stood alone as the nation’s favorite entertainers. When invasion of England was inevitable, many influential dignitaries and celebrities were shipped out to Canada. George and Beryl elected to stay and fight, as George put it, “to the last bullet on the end of Wigan pier!” Moving underground with the English resistance and various stalwart regiments of the Local Defense Volunteers, Formby manned the outlawed “Wireless St. George” and broadcast songs, jokes and messages to secret receivers across the country. Always in hiding, always moving, the Formbys used their numerous contacts in the north to smuggle allied airmen to neutral Wales and form resistance cells that harried the Nazi invaders. Hitler’s order of 1944 to “have all ukuleles and banjos in England burnt” was a clear indication of how serious a threat he was considered to be. George’s famous comment after peace was declared, “ee, turned out nice again!,” became a national catchphrase. In postwar republican England he was made nonexecutive president for life, a post he held until his assassination.
JOHN WILLIAMS,
The Extraordinary Career of George Formby
IT WAS AFTER two or three days of plain Litera Tec work and a dull weekend without Landen that I found myself lying awake and staring at the ceiling, listened to the clink-clink of milk bottles and the click-click of Pickwick’s feet on the linoleum as she meandered around the kitchen. Sleep patterns never came out quite right in reengineered species; no one knew why. There had been no major coincidences over the past few days, although on the night of Joffy’s exhibition the two SpecOps-5 agents who had been assigned to watch Slorter and Lamme died in their car as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. It seemed their car had a faulty exhaust. Lamme and Slorter had been following me around very indiscreetly for the past two days. I just let them get on with it; they weren’t bothering me—or my unseen assailant. If they had, they’d as likely as not be dead.
But there was more than just SO-5 to worry about. In three days the world would be reduced to a sticky mass of sugar and proteins—or so my father said. I had seen the pink and gooey world for myself, too, but then I had also seen myself shot at Cricklade Skyrail station, so the future wasn’t exactly immutable—thank goodness. There had been no advance on the forensic report; the pink slime matched to no known chemical compound. Coincidentally, next Thursday was also the day of the general election, and Yorrick Kaine looked set to make some serious political gain thanks to his “generous” sharing of Cardenio. Mind you, he was still taking no chances—the first public unveiling of the text was not until the day after the election. The thing was, if the pink gunge got a hold, Yorrick Kaine could have the shortest career as a prime minister ever. Indeed, next Thursday