The Museum of Things Left Behind
Escape into this hugely enjoyable, big-hearted and beautifully written novel, set in Vallerosa, a European country you’ve never heard of before.FIND YOURSELF IN VALLEROSA, A PLACE LOST IN TIMEVallerosa is every tourist’s dream – a tiny, picturesque country surrounded by lush valleys and verdant mountains; a place sheltered from modern life and the rampant march of capitalism. But in isolation, the locals have grown cranky, unfulfilled and disaffected. In the Presidential Palace hostile Americans, wise to the country’s financial potential, are circling like sharks …Can the town be fixed? Can the local bar owners be reconciled? Can an unlikely visitor be the agent of change and rejuvenation this broken idyll is crying out for?Full of wisdom, humour and light, THE MUSEUM OF THINGS LEFT BEHIND is a heart-warming fable for our times that asks us to consider what we have lost and what we have gained in modern life. A book about bureaucracy, religion and the people that really get things done, it is above all else a hymn to the inconstancy of time and the pivotal importance of a good cup of tea.
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Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2015
Copyright © Seni Glaister 2015
Seni Glaister asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record of this book is
available from the British Library.
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Source ISBN: 9780008118952
Ebook Edition © May 2015 ISBN: 9780008118969
Version: 2016-05-11
Contents
1 In Which a Letter Stands Out
2 In Which Treason Is Narrowly Avoided
3 In Which a Formal Communication From a Foreign Entity Is Delivered
5 In Which a President Addresses His Nation
6 In Which Enough Tea Is Grown
7 In Which the President Has Doubt
8 In Which a Protestation Is Made
9 In Which PEGASUS Has Her Wings Clipped
10 In Which a Royal Visitor Arrives
12 In Which the British Visitor Is Made to Feel at Home
13 In Which the Visitor Goes Exploring
14 In Which Tourism and Recreation Go into Battle
15 In Which the President Loses His Cool
16 In Which the Dancing Begins
17 In Which the Visitor Gets a Lesson in Timekeeping
18 In Which Lizzie Makes a Bedside Visit
19 In Which the Curiosities Are Examined
20 In Which Lizzie Exerts Some Power
21 In Which the Americans Play Ball
22 In Which the Visitor Gets Down to Business
23 In Which the Purpose of Education Is Questioned
24 In Which Lizzie Beats the System
25 In Which Love Is the Answer
28 In Which There’s Education in Moderation
29 In Which the Chief of Staff Plots
30 In Which the Troubles Escalate
31 In Which Lizzie Shares a Secret
32 In Which the Ministers Measure Up
33 In Which Tourism Is Boosted
34 In Which Laughter Spells Trouble
38 In Which Dancing Spells Doom
40 In Which Lizzie Begins to Understand
41 In Which a Meeting Is Tabled
42 In Which Sergio Faces the Music
The Cabinet
The President – Sergio Scorpioni
Minister for Defence – Alixandria Heliopolis Visparelli
Minister for the Exterior – Mario Lucaccia
Minister for the Interior – Rolando Posti
Minister of Finance – Roberto Feraguzzi
Minister for Health – Dottore Decio Rossini
Minister for Agricultural Development – Enzo Civicchioni
Minister for Education – Professore Giuseppe Scota
Minister for Recreation – Marcello Pompili
Minister for Leisure – Tersilio Cellini
Minister for Tourism – Settimio Mosconi
Minister for Employment – Vlad Lubicic
Chief of Staff to the President – Angelo Bianconi
The Proletariat
The Postman – Remi
The Stationmaster – Vinsent Gabboni
Patron of Il Gallo Giallo – Dario Mariani
Patron of Il Toro Rosso – Piper
The Clockmaker – Pavel
The Potter – Elio
The Visitors
British VIP – Lizzie Holmesworth
American Consultant 1 – Chuck Whylie
American Consultant 2 – Paul Fields
CHAPTER 1
High above the city, in the dustiest, windiest, sparsest corner of the north-west quadrant, Remi was sorting the mail. He had arrived out of breath at the sorting office. He glanced at his stopwatch and noted, with a flicker of irritation, that he was at the upper end of the time he allowed himself for this short journey. The early-morning rain had added an element of risk to some of the sharper corners, and on several occasions he’d had to slow almost to a stop to avoid injury to himself or damage to his bicycle. Happily, though, he lived on the same level as his workplace, and his commute was generally a straightforward three-kilometre cycle ride on the slippery paths that snaked through the tea plantations from the small home he shared with his mother. In a month or two, with the onset of the harsh summer sun, these paths would quickly mould into dusty, deeply grooved channels. In turn the channels would soon evolve into narrow ruts, which would hug his bicycle tyres so snugly that he could ride much of the way with his eyes closed – a feat he had often attempted with considerable, albeit unrecorded, success. Even in the wet spring months his journey to work was not strenuous; his bicycle could probably still find its own way through sheer habit, and this was certainly the easiest section of his day’s circuit. That morning, however, his journey had been interrupted not once but twice, on the first occasion by a neighbour, who needed help with a stuck pig, then shortly afterwards by a second neighbour, who held the firm belief that a problem shared was a problem halved. Remi had wondered, as he pedalled furiously to make up for the lost seconds, whether the sharing of a problem exactly doubled it, providing it with two minds instead of one in which to fester, and he further worried that the problem, like the simplest of organisms, was simultaneously dividing and subdividing in his brain and that of his neighbour.
