Mmm.
The problem was Jeremy didn’t have a plan, or even the outlines of one, his strategy thus far having extended only to hiding in his barn and having a bit of a think about what choice and madness were or were not. Fine, so he’d decided he had been chosen but it wasn’t him that was bonkers, it was the world, but no time had yet been devoted to considering his future. Short-termist? Well, you might say so but would you have had a plan up your sleeve in Jeremy’s circumstances? I don’t think so. Just let us say that since the unwelcome visit of Sir Magnus and the peculiar German, the ante had been upped. Think of it as a weather forecast in which the storm warning has been raised from amber to red.
Mmmm.
More pacing. And, irritatingly, Jeremy had taken to counting the number of paces. The mental calculator wouldn’t stop: One hundred and thirty-one, one hundred and thirty-two, one hundred and thirty-three, and… so… on and on. Jeremy was beginning to feel like one of those health freaks with an electronic gizmo on their arm counting the number of steps they take on their fitness programmes. Crazy was what he used to dismiss them as. But now he was at it too. Did this mean, despite all his best efforts at asserting his sanity, deep, deep down he was batshit too and had only been deluding himself?
One hundred and fifty-eight, one hundred and fifty-nine…
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he was saying, leaving off the pacing to bang his head on a flimsy wall for a bit when there came more tapping at the barn door. Only, mercifully this time it was coded. Two taps, pause; three taps, another pause; six taps—then silence.
“Barry?” whispered Jeremy, sidling to the door and nestling his ear against it.
“Everything okay in there?” said Barry, parking his wheelbarrow. “Only I seen them geezers what was just with you. Didn’t like the look of then, did I? And I was just wondering…”
“Barry? Come in. Come in,” counter-whispered Jeremy, opening the door a crack and peering over the gardener’s shoulder at the estate behind him. “Have they gone?”
“The posh bloke and the weepy fräulein bint? Yeah, they’re gone. Little chat on the doorstep with your missus and the parents, then they were off in ’is bleedin’ great motor, weren’t they?”
“Good. Good. Quick quick. Come in.”
“You all right, boss, are you? Lookin’ a bit peeky.”
“I’m all right… well, sort of. Don’t suppose you brought any supplies?”
“The nuts an’ berries an’ water? Yeah, got them in my barrow, haven’t I?”
“Nothing… um… you know… stronger?”
Barry grinned.
“You mean, like…?”
Jeremy pinched his jaw between a thumb and a forefinger and rolled his eyes.
Barry smiled.
“You mean the little bottle of nettle homebrew I keep in my satchel for emergencies, boss?”
“Um…”
“Yeah, I got one of those. Two, matter of fact.”
“Step this way, Bazza,” said Jeremy.
‘Bazza’ was what Jeremy called Barry for fun. Me Jezza, you Bazza was one of their in-jokes. At least self-mockery made Jeremy feel a little better at having been a banker wanker for so long. And Barry got the irony. It evened things out between them.
“So, wazzup, bro? Where’re you at?” he said, once he’d patted Pete on the head and broken open both bottles of the nettle brandy with significant additives of Barry’s own design he refused to disclose to anyone, even Jeremy, claiming so to do would be to open his soul to the world. Which he wasn’t going to. No way, Hozay, he wasn’t.
It was later, in his cups, that Jeremy spilled the beans to Barry—all of them, including the whole choosing/chosen/madness nightmare. And, strangely, Barry seemed to understand.
Four
And what, you will be wondering, was the content of the “little chat on the doorstep” Sir Magnus and Frau Professor Doktor Gisela von Strumpf had with Sophie, Gloria, and Ron before hopping into the “bleedin’ great motor”—the midnight blue Bentley 4x4—and being driven away?
Well, Jeremy had been correct in assuming they would be returning with backup. At least Sir Magnus would. Gisela von Strumpf reckoned she would only take part in an advisory capacity from a safe distance, but was prepared to recommend any number of her colleagues with more relaxed attitudes to pigs. And, to that contingent Sir Magnus was prepared to add some chums of his from his time as “financial counsellor” to the army’s Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Not the sorts of boys you would want to mess with,” he told Sophie, Gloria, and Ron. “No time for nutcases in their business, if you know what I mean. Wouldn’t want a nutcase covering your back when there’re crazed Islamist terrorists running about, now would you? So these boys sorted out their heads when they went wonky. Do a job on our Jezza they would, and no question.”
Ron, who had once served six weeks in the Territorial Army, was impressed.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “Spine, that’s what that boy needs. And somebody to knock a bit of sense into it.”
“Glad we’re on the same page, old chap. Now, look, Frau Professor Doktor von Strumpf and I really should be taking our leave, so…”
But Sir Magnus and von Strumpf weren’t allowed to leave until Sophie, after some umming, ahhing and looking sheepish, had unveiled to him the family’s own plan for dealing with Jeremy should all other means fail.
“Just in case, narmean? Only as a last resort,” she said before wondering what Sir Magnus might think about “doing away” with Jeremy if—and only if, of course—he didn’t respond to any of these “treatments” and got sane enough to go back to the bank and start making the kinds of money the family so badly needed to continue their “lifestyles.”
“You mean kill him?” said Sir Magnus.
“And with any luck his pig too,” thought Frau Professor Doktor Gisela von Strumpf, but didn’t say so out loud.
“Yes,” said Sophie. “Only not, like, real killing with a gun. Nothing we’d get blamed for. Just helping him along the way a bit. Some little pills in his nuts and berries that would make it look like suicide. After all, he is bonkers, so suicide thoughts would be normal, narmean? So…”
“And his very own parents would be agreeable to such skulduggery?” asked Sir Magnus, staring at Gloria and Ron for confirmation.
“We’ve talked it over with Sophie. Ain’t we, girl?” Gloria admitted with faux glumness.
Sophie nodded with faux reluctance.
“And it seems to us, it would be best for all concerned.”
“Mainly poor old Jeremy himself,” said Ron. “Put him out of his misery. Same way you’d do with a horse after it’s broken its leg. The kindest thing to do.”