Jeremy Jaffacake had known the jig was up after five minutes. The Starblaydis were smart, you had to give them that. Smug, but smart. They’d examined at the Audioslavians and pinpointed their main weakness, and their main weakness was the manager. Get to him, and in a round about way you’ll get to the team. Patterick’s veneer of confidence was a thin one. If you broke it, he’d start making bad decisions.
Four years ago, in Patterick’s first competition, Euran Oceania Territories had beaten the Bulls in a similar fashion. Blood and thunder, an eye for an eye, you go low, we also go low, everything is low and also a mess. Audioslavian footballers weren’t physical, tenacious shithouses because they were tough. Quite the opposite. If you tried to turn the other cheek the Bulls would demolish you. If you stood up to them and gave them a taste of their own medicine, they all of a sudden didn’t seem so willing to fight. Confused by their opponents’ acceptance of their invitation to bring the game into disrepute, it was the Audioslavians’ turn to lose sight of the gameplan. Audioslavia had had the better of much of their game with EOT, and had had strong spells against the Starblaydis, but in the end they never
really got into their rhythm.
And so it went. Audioslavia lose another final. Starblaydia win a tournament for the first time it was popular speculate on what Michael Jackson's next album would be like. AOCAF Cup time was over. World Cup time was upon us again.
Jeremy Jaffacake held the newspaper open, surveyed Audioslavia’s qualifying group and inhaled through his teeth.
Poafmersia at home in the opening game and the unranked Silver Commonwealth away. To get off on the right foot, that really needed to be four points minimum. Another bout with Euran Oceania Territories would come next - Audioslavia had already taken two measures of revenge over EOT for that AOCAF Cup exit and another win would do nicely, especially with the side having to visit Delaclava immediately afterwards. Juvencus would have been a super tough tie a few years ago, but at least a point should be the minimum requirement this time out, while Lovisa would have been a tough tie two hundred years ago. Their form now... who knew?
After that the Sylestone encounter could go either way, and then there was The Holy Empire, the group’s top seeds. What kind of team would they be bringing? God knew. In fact it could even be a team of gods again. Either way, they’d be strong. Two points from those two matches would go a long way. The Bulls would finish up both halves of qualifying against the south western east northerners.
The odds on getting that sole auto-qualification spot went in the Imperial’s favour. A good showing and a second place finish would hopefully be enough for the Bulls to qualify.
Jeremy put down his newspaper and threw his cigarette onto the floor, stamping it out with his right foot. He paused for a split second and wondered what was wrong with this current situation, and recalled that, with this being a hot Calorborne day and with him being near the beach, he’d taken his shoes off an hour previously. He jerks his foot from the floor sharply and banged his knee so hard against the table that he laughed. The various patrons at the cafe watched as the strange barefooted man in the beige trilby, white shirt and khaki shorts hopped and chuckle-yelped back towards the beach.
Within twenty minutes, his foot had stopped burning and he’d made his way to a largish wooden house that overlooked the beach. There were lights on and the noise of a radio inside that was so muffled that it was most likely in a room at the back of the house. Jeremy walked silently up the short stairway to the porch and paused at the front door. Knock or sneak? Knowing who it was on the inside, sneaking was probably not going to work. A few decades ago he’d have swung up to the second floor and slipped through the window, but that would have been a very lavish entrance and, in any case, these days his knees creaked and cracked so much under duress that in climbing he’d have sounded like monkey popping bubblewrap with two maracas.
Jeremy looked to his right and noticed a rocking chair and a hammock, both positioned so that its occupant would get a good view of the beach. The rocking chair was about the right size for a person. The hammock looked big enough to fit a horse into.
Slowly, Jeremy twisted the door handle and let the door glide open on its hinges. A kitchen. Cooking area to the right, washing machine and cupboards to the left, along with a door to what he supposed would be the living room. In the middle of the kitchen stood a chest-high table with three stools, one large enough to seat a horse, one dark blue and regular sized, one pink and baby blue with a large ‘J’ on the top. On the table was a large white cloth that looked to be covering an array of crockery and what he assumed must be a bottle of wine, unless it was instead the thing he'd come here for.
Before he could check, something caught Jeremy’s attention. After so many years of breaking into places that didn’t want to be broken into, Jeremy had learned to pick up on things that he wouldn’t have expected to be there. One time, breaking into the house of someone who
deserved to have their house broken into, the strange thing had been a dog bowl. The dog itself hadn’t been strange when it had introduced itself to him four seconds later, except perhaps for how much it had seemed to relish eating Jeremy’s left boot while his right had escaped with Jeremy. Another time, breaking into the offices of a newspaper he’d previously worked for, the strange thing had been a walkie-talkie on his old desk. A very big, very old and very heavy walkie-talkie that made it
very useful for disabling the type of security guard who loses walkie-talkies and comes back to get them while playing
Ornery Avians on their phone.
In this instance, the strange thing was a device built into the wall that appeared, at first glance, to be the sort of camera that specialises in facial recogni…
Four white ceiling lights pinged into a bright dazzle at exactly the same time as
the music hit. While Jeremy was shielding his eyes from the glare, an enormous figure blocked the doorway in front of him - the one leading from the kitchen the living room - and removed the cloth from the table with a flourish.
“Emmanuel!” said the figure. “Our guest has finally arrived!”
A hand rested gently on Jeremy’s shoulder. Jeremy didn’t have to unshield his eyes to figure out that the owner of the hand was stood behind him.
“I know, honey” came the voice of the hand’s owner. “I expected him to come up through the window, but he didn’t, so I figured I’d go out of it myself and shimmy down to give him a warm welcome.”
“Oh really?” said the other voice. “Why didn’t you use the window, Jeremy? It appears Emmanuel was waiting right there for you”
“Monkeys with maracas” said Jeremy. “It’s a long story. And would you turn that
effing music off!”
Jeremy had felt, for a fleeing split second, a feeling of dread when he’d seen that third stool.
What if the ‘J’ is for ‘Jaffacake’ he’d thought, before dismissing that idea as silly. He was right to have dismissed the idea. It turned out the ‘J’ was for ‘Jeremy’.
“More tea, Jeremy?” asked Swing. Sweet Swing was Emmanuel Portico’s lover-stroke-girlfrield-stroke-wife-stroke-horse. It was an arrangement that was apparently normal to Karditanis but incredibly weird to Audioslavians. Jeremy wanted to continue his line of conversation, which had consisted entirely of him saying it was weirder for them to have been planning this so long than it was for him to have been given his
WA Commendation for Services to Journalistic Integrity. An award sitting as the centre-piece of the table at unexpected the tea party they were having. Unexpected for Jeremy, of course. Jeremy nodded and Swing fit her entire right hoof into the right-hoof sized handle of the teapot and topped him up.
“It’s good tea isn’t it, Jeremy” said Emmanuel.
“It’s actually not bad, yeah” said Jeremy.
“I went out and bought some of the finest Earl of Camomilia tea I could find” said Swing. “And then Emmanuel chuckled at me and, the next day, brought back a pack of cheap teabags and said that, if I boiled two in a mug until the tea was a sort of dull orange, drowned it in milk and then put four spoonfuls of sugar in it, you’d like that much better”
“Some call it Builder’s Tea” said Jeremy. “I don’t know how anyone can drink any other type of tea. Also..” Jeremy nodded at the small bowl of sugar with a very tiny spoon sitting in it “I would have thought you’d have sugar lumps”
“Why?” said Swing. Jeremy blinked and then looked at Emmanuel, who was stirring his coffee and looking expectantly at Jeremy.
“Because you’re a horse” said Jeremy to the horse.
Silence.
“Horses eat sugar lumps in Audioslavia?” asked Swing.
“Horses eat sugar lumps everywhere” said Jeremy. “It’s a horse thing”
“I don’t think it is a horse thing” said Swing. “I mean… where would horses find sugar lumps?”
“Where do they find blinkers and bits and large brightly coloured poles to jump over” said Jeremy. “Horses are…”
“Horses are lots of things, yes” said Swing, raising an eyebrow. “I mean… by
now you must appreciate that
ponies, especially those from Equestria, are… y’know…”
“A horse of a different colour” said Jeremy.
“Often more than one” said Emmanuel
“
A pony of loads of colours” doesn’t quite fall off the tongue so easily. Anyway. So you’ve had this dinner party set up since…”
“Since I got back, pretty much. Well, since I figured that our mutual friend didn’t feel
too affronted that I’d double-crossed him”
“Jusuf Naid, or whatever he’s calling himself this week” said Jeremy. “Have you spoken to him?”
“We speak often” said Emmanuel.
“He’s a friend?”
“I don’t think he’s
anyone’s friend, or, at least, anyone who regards him as a friend should probably count their thumbs after they’ve shaken his hand, but he’s good company and he knows when the game has ended”
Jeremy took a sip of his tea and helped himself to another scone.
“So what next?” asked Jeremy. “There’s people in Vilita and Valanora who have won similar awards recently. I trust you’ll be trying to steal those as well?”
“Not at all” said Emmanuel. “
Those ones are deserved.”
“You’ve got to do something though” said Jeremy. “I mean, this is a lovely house and all but… well I tried retiring to Calorborne once myself and, honestly, after a couple of years you get bored”
Swing bristled slightly at the comment. Emmanuel gave her a small wink and smiled.
“I’m sure there will be more adventures to be had, but some of us rather enjoy being retired”
Sweet Swing did whatever horses do when they smile. Jeremy had previously figured that to be some sort of shake of their head accompanied by a ‘huwwahurrahurra’ sound, but it actually just resembled a smile.
“Make sure to take that ghastly trophy with you when you go” said Swing. “I can’t believe we’ve had to keep it on this table for so long”
Jeremy eyed the trophy.
His trophy.
“Y’know. I deserved this just as much as any of those guys in Vilita or Valanora.”
“Sure you did, Jeremy” said Emmanuel, patting JJ on the back. “Sure you did”.