The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [575]
“. . . and then the white horse he says, ‘What, Erich?’ ”
“Oh, Herr B!” said my mother, giggling and slapping him on the shoulder. “You are a wag!”
She noticed me standing there.
“Thursday! Are you okay? I heard on the radio there was some sort of accident involving a piano. . . .”
“I’m fine, Mum, really.” I stared coldly at the Prussian Chancellor who, I had decided, was taking liberties with my mother’s affections. “Good afternoon, Herr Bismarck. So, you haven’t sorted out the Schleswig-Holstein question yet?”
“I am waiting still for the Danish prime minister,” replied Bismarck, rising to greet me. “But I am growing impatient.”
“I expect him very soon, Herr Bismarck,” said my mother, putting the kettle on the stove. “Would you like a cup of tea while you’re waiting?”
He bowed politely again. “Only if Battenberg cake we will be having.”
“I’m sure there’s a bit left over if that naughty Mr. Hamlet hasn’t eaten it!” Her face dropped when she discovered that, indeed, naughty Mr. Hamlet had eaten it. “Oh dear! Would you like an almond slice instead?”
Bismarck’s eyebrows twitched angrily.
“Everywhere I turn, the Danish are mocking my person and the German Confederation,” he intoned angrily, smacking his fist into his open palm. “The incorporation of the Duchy of Schleswig into Danish state overlooked I might have, but personal Battenberg insult I will not. It is war!”
“Hang on a minute, Otto,” said my mother, who, having brought up a large family almost single-handedly, was well placed to sort out the whole Battenberg-Schleswig-Holstein issue. “I thought we’d agreed that you weren’t going to invade Denmark.”
“That was then, this is now,” muttered the Chancellor, puffing out his chest so aggressively that one of his brass buttons shot across the room and struck Pickwick a glancing blow on the back of the head. “Choice: Mr. Hamlet for his behavior apologizes on behalf of Danish people, or we go to war!”
“He’s talking to that nice conflict-resolution man at the moment,” replied my mother in an anxious tone.
“Then it is war,” announced Bismarck, sitting down at the table and having an almond slice anyway. “More talk is pointless. Return I wish to 1863.”
But then the door opened. It was Hamlet. He stared at us all and looked . . . well, different.
“Ah!” he said, drawing his sword. “Bismarck! Your aggressive stance against Denmark is at an end. Prepare . . . to die!”
The conflict-resolution talk had obviously affected him deeply. Bismarck, unmoved by the sudden threat to his life, drew a pistol.
“So! Battenberg you finish behind my back, yes?”
And they might have killed one another there and then if Mum and I hadn’t intervened.
“Hamlet!” I said. “Killing Bismarck won’t get your father back, now, will it?”
“Otto!” said Mum. “Killing Hamlet won’t alter the feelings of the Schleswigers, now, will it?”
I took Hamlet into the hall and tried to explain why sudden retributive action might not be such a good idea after all.
“I disagree,” he said, swishing his sword through the air. “The first thing I shall do when I get home is kill that murdering uncle of mine, marry Ophelia and take on Fortinbras. Better still, I shall invade Norway in a preemptive bid, and then Sweden, and—what’s the one next to that?”
“Finland?”
“That’s the one.”
He placed his left hand on his hip and lunged aggressively with his sword at some imaginary foe. Pickwick made the mistake of walking into the corridor at that precise moment and made a startled plooock noise as the point of Hamlet’s rapier stopped two inches from her head. She looked unsteady for a moment, then fainted clean away.
“That conflict-management specialist really taught me a thing or two, Miss Next. Apparently my problem was an unresolved or latent conflict—the death of my father—that persists and festers in an individual—me. To face up to problems, we must meet those conflicts head-on and resolve them to the best of our ability!”
It was worse than I thought.
“So you