“Any hopeful little whisper I might feed them?” asked Maxine.
“Ah, l’espoir,” Bastien sighed, before taking Clarissa’s hand and leading her like a lamb to the slaughter toward the parliament chamber in which, after a brief consultation with the egregious Peter Peters, she was hoping to present the cast-iron case for the best possible deal for the UK while making no mention of money, Euro citizens, or Ireland. On the way, over her shoulder, she whispered to Maxine trotting along behind that she and Sebastiano were making “excellent progress.”
Once inside an antechamber, however, Bastien set Clarissa adrift and hurried off to discuss more urgent matters than Brexit with representatives from the twenty-seven other countries in the union. Smiling, in some cases laughing, pressing the flesh, kissing cheeks, back slapping, and in every instance speaking at least a modicum of his friends’ languages. Unlike Clarissa, who, until the official agenda began, was left to wander about on her stork-like legs trying to meet and greet, but failing. Nobody seemed keen to talk to her. There was the occasional “hello there, how’s it going?” from the German chancellor or the Dutch prime minister or the French president, but nothing to write home about. None of the crucial one-to-one insider deal-making hints and whispers she’d been hoping for. Partly because she was, in the Europeans’ view, a petitioner claiming an outrageous alimony settlement from a dubious divorce. Partly also because, working on the principle that if a person spoke loudly enough in English, Johnny Foreigner would eventually understand, she hadn’t even a Bonjour or a Guten Tag at her disposal, let alone a whole phrase or sentence. Thus ostracized, she searched the room for Peter Peters to have at least someone to chat to before her big speech.
“Excusey moy,” she asked of a passing prime minister from some country or another. “Any idea where Peter Peters is? He’s s’posed to be around here somewhere.”
“Peter Peters?” The Danish PM Anders Frederiksen scratched his head and frowned while trying to put a face to the name. “Ah, Peter Peters. Your back-up guy?” he said in impeccable English.
“My Brexit secretary. I need to speak to him urgently on a top-level matter.”
Anders smothered a chuckle. “Yes, okay, Peter Peters. So I have seen him.”
“Where?”
“In the little boys’ room, although he didn’t see me.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’d lost his spectacles. Last I saw of him he was walking backwards into a cubicle saying, “Where’re my specs? Oh, shit.”
“Dearie me,” said Clarissa, gloomily recalling both Peter Peter’s failing eyesight and his ongoing bowel issues.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Clarissa? People to see, deals to do. Busy, busy, busy. Longing to hear your speech later, though. Sooo great Britain used to be. I loved it over there.”
And with that Anders was off for a handshake and shoulder bump with emcee Bastien Duchamps, who knew how say “good day” in Danish.
“God dag, Anders,” he said, before the two of them lapsed into English, neither referring to the Brexit dilemma except for a passing mention.
“Blast it all to blastiness!” whispered Clarissa to herself before snatching a vol au vent from the tray of a passing waitress and wolfing it down in one.
“Mmm,” mused the waitress, an ex-concubine of Igor Ripurpantzov’s called Katya, newly promoted to the role of international spy.
And within microseconds, Clarissa’s discomfiture had been relayed in super-secret code to Moscow with the question: “How much longer can we allow this woman to survive?”
To which pinged back Ripurpantzov’s instant reply: “Forever. She’s fucking up the UK for us even better than we could. But nice work, keep the posts coming.”
After a few hours of fitful sleep and a breakfast of poached eggs on toast with tea or coffee according to preference, Barry suggested he and his guests take a ramble in the bluebell woods behind his mobile Shepherd’s Hut.
“Nothing better than a little nature to soothe the troubled breast into a magnitude of quiet, eh?” he said. “Bring the animals along too, shall we?”
Maurice was delighted at the proposal and, once persuaded they would be safe from prying eyes, so were Julie, Jeremy, and Dennis. Shirley, Hans and Colin were over the moon. The only one who wanted to stay at home was Pete the pig. As the others were ready to leave, he expressed this wish by lying down in Barry’s front garden, grunting contentedly, and refusing to budge even when prodded or offered a parsnip.
“You’re sure now, Pete?” said Jeremy, who during his recent adventures had never once been separated from his pig.
“Oink!”
“Okay then. So off we go. Sure you’ll be okay?”
“Oink, oink,” said Pete like a child reassuring an anxious parent he’ll be just fine left home-alone for the first time.
“Ookay then.”
And once satisfied Pete’s decision was final, Jeremy trotted off in the wake of Barry and company, who were waiting for him at the gate to a dense area of silver birches, old oaks, pines, and, by a rivulet, even two or three massive swamp cypresses. And yes bluebells. There were thousands of them stretching away along the borders of the single footpath, which would lead on a circular route through the woodland and back to the gate.
“Wow,” he said, taking a deep breath and Julie’s hand.
Shirley, Hans, and Colin were yipping and pawing at the gate, eager to be released from their leashes.
“So, young Jeremy, the world’s most wanted man,” said Barry. “Ready to ramble?”
Maurice and Dennis, who’d been getting better acquainted through spy/cop chat, smiled.
“Pete all right, is he?” Dennis asked.
“He’s fine.”
“So let’s hit the woods,” said Maurice. “Open the gate, Prof, and let us experience that magnitude of quiet of which you spoke.”
And apart from the barking of Shirley, Colin and Hans at the squirrels thumbing their noses at them from the branches of trees, and the twittering of birds, including a squawky flock of newly immigrant parakeets, the quiet was indeed magnitudinous. As he ambled along, Jeremy felt the pressures of recent days falling away. Julie’s hand in his helped too.
“Great, eh?” she said, skipping along beside him. “Haven’t felt this good since Dad took us up to the Lake District camping.”
Then she broke into song. “I love to go a-wandering, along the mountain track. Val-deri, Val-dera, Val-deri, Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha…”
Jeremy smiled. “Only we’re in a forest,” he said.
“Never mind, same effect.”
Ahead of them, Barry, Maurice, and Dennis turned and smiled too.
“Young love?” said Maurice.
“New love maybe,” said Dennis. “Mind you, you can’t blame the bloke after Missus Sophie finicky fancy pants.”
“That would be his wife to whom you’re referring,” said Maurice, stumbling over a swamp cypress breathing tube.
“Yeah, how did you…?”
“One does one’s homework, old chap.”
Which was when, after throwing three sticks in three different directions for Shirley, Hans, and Colin to chase instead of chasing the squirrels they’d never catch anyway, Barry left Dennis in charge of the dogs, and, checking that “new love” Jeremy and Julie were still otherwise distracted, took Maurice by the arm and guided him down a side path which would re-join the main one at the entrance gate.