A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (7 page)

BOOK: A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5
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A screech of tires roused me from my thoughts. I looked up. In the middle of the hospital room was a brightly painted sports car. I blinked twice but it didn't vanish. There was no earthly reason why it should be in the room or even any evidence as to how it got there, the door being only wide enough for a bed, but there it was. I could smell the exhaust and hear the engine
ticking over, but for some reason I did not find it at all unusual. The occupants were staring at me. The driver was a woman in her midthirties who looked sort of familiar.

“Thursday!—” cried the driver with a sense of urgency in her voice.

I frowned. It all
looked
real and I was definitely sure I had seen the driver somewhere before. The passenger, a young man in a suit whom I didn't know, waved cheerily.

“He didn't die!” said the woman, as though she wouldn't have long to speak. “The car crash was a blind! Men like Acheron don't die that easily! Take the Litera Tec job in Swindon!”

“Swindon?—” I echoed. I thought I had escaped that town—it afforded me a few too many painful memories.

I opened my mouth to speak but there was another screech of rubber and the car departed, folding up rather than fading out until there was nothing left but the echo of the tires and the faint smell of exhaust. Pretty soon that had gone too, leaving no clue as to its strange appearance. I held my head in my hands. The driver had been
very
familiar. It had been me.

My arm was almost healed by the time the internal inquiry circulated its findings. I wasn't permitted to read it but I wasn't bothered. If I had known what was in it, I would probably only have been more dissatisfied and annoyed than I was already. Boswell had visited me again to tell me I had been awarded six months' sick leave before returning, but it didn't help. I didn't want to return to the Litera Tec's office; at least, not in London.

“What are you going to do?” asked Paige. She had turned up to help me pack before I was discharged from the hospital.

“Six months' leave can be a long time if you've got no hobbies or family or boyfriend,” she went on. She could be very direct at times.

“I have lots of hobbies.”

“Name
one
.”

“Painting.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. I'm currently painting a seascape.”

“How long has it taken you so far?”

“About seven years.”

“It must be very good.”

“It's a piece of crap.”

“Seriously, though,” said Turner, who had become closer to me in these past few weeks than during the entire time we had known each other, “what are you going to do?”

I handed her the SpecOps 27 gazette; it outlined postings around the country. Paige looked at the entry that I had circled in red ink.

“Swindon?”

“Why not? It's home.”

“Home it might be,” replied Turner, “but weird it
definitely
is.” She tapped the job description. “It's only for an operative— you've been acting inspector for over three years!”

“Three and a half. It doesn't matter. I'm going.”

I didn't tell Paige the real reason. It could have been a coincidence, of course, but the advice from the driver of the car had been most specific:
Take the LiteraTec job in Swindon!
Perhaps the vision had been real after all; the gazette with the job offer had arrived
after
the visitation by the car. If it had been right about the job in Swindon, it stood to reason that perhaps the news about Hades was also correct. Without any further thought, I had applied. I couldn't tell Paige about the car; if she had known, friendship notwithstanding, she would have reported me to Boswell. Boswell would have spoken to Flanker and all sorts of unpleasantness might have happened. I was getting quite good at concealing the truth, and I felt happier now than I had for months.

“We'll miss you in the department, Thursday.”

“It'll pass.”


I'll
miss you.”

“Thanks, Paige, I appreciate it. I'll miss you too.”

We hugged, she told me to keep in touch, and left the room, pager bleeping.

I finished packing and thanked the nursing staff, who gave me a brown paper parcel as I was about to leave.

“What's this?” I asked.

“It belonged to whoever saved your life that night.”

“What do you mean?”

“A passerby attended to you before the medics arrived; the wound in your arm was plugged and they wrapped you in their coat to keep you warm. Without their intervention you might well have bled to death.”

Intrigued, I opened the package. Firstly, there was a handkerchief that despite several washings still bore the stains of my own blood. There was an embroidered monogram in the corner that read
EFR
. Secondly the parcel contained a jacket, a sort of casual evening coat that might have been very popular in the middle of the last century. I searched the pockets and found a bill from a milliner. It was made out to one Edward Fairfax Rochester, Esq., and was dated 1833. I sat down heavily on the bed and stared at the two articles of clothing and the bill. Ordinarily I would not have believed that Rochester could have torn himself from the pages of
Jane Eyre
and come to my aid that night; such a thing is, of course, quite impossible. I might have dismissed the whole thing as a ludicrously complicated prank had it not been for one thing: Edward Rochester and I had met once before . . .

6.
Jane Eyre
: A Short Excursion into the Novel

Outside Styx's apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, nor would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey—and returned.

THURSDAY NEXT
—
A Life in SpecOps

I
T WAS
1958. My uncle and aunt—who even then seemed old—had taken me up to Haworth House, the old Brontë residence, for a visit. I had been learning about William Thackeray at school, and since the Brontës were contemporaries of his it seemed a good opportunity to further my interest in these matters. My Uncle Mycroft was giving a lecture at Bradford University on his remarkable mathematical work regarding game theory, the most practical side of which allowed one to win at Snakes and Ladders every time. Bradford was near to Haworth, so a combined visit seemed a good idea.

We were led around by the guide, a fluffy woman in her sixties with steel-rimmed spectacles and an angora cardigan who
steered the tourists around the rooms with an abrupt manner, as though she felt that none of them could possibly know as much as she did, but would grudgingly assist to lift them from the depths of their own ignorance. Near the end of the tour, when thoughts had turned to picture postcards and ice cream, the prize exhibit in the form of the original manuscript of
Jane Eyre
greeted the tired museum-goers.

Although the pages had browned with age and the black ink faded to a light brown, the writing could still be read by the practiced eye, the fine spidery longhand flowing across the page in a steady stream of inventive prose. A page was turned every two days, allowing the more regular and fanatical Brontë followers to read the novel as originally drafted.

The day that I came to the Brontë museum the manuscript was open at the point where Jane and Rochester first meet; a chance encounter by a stile.

“—which makes it one of the greatest romantic novels ever written,” continued the fluffy yet lofty guide in her oft-repeated monologue, ignoring several hands that had been raised to ask pertinent questions.

“The character of Jane Eyre, a tough and resilient heroine, drew her apart from the usual heroines of the time, and Rochester, a forbidding yet basically good man, also broke the mold with his flawed character's dour humor.
Jane Eyre
was written by Charlotte Brontë in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell. Thackeray described it as ‘the master work of a great genius.' We continue on now to the shop where you may purchase picture postcards, commemorative plates, small plastic imitation Heathcliffs and other mementos of your visit. Thank you for—”

One of the group had their hand up and was determined to have his say.

“Excuse me,” began the young man in an American accent.
A muscle in the tour guide's cheek momentarily twitched as she forced herself to listen to someone else's opinion.

“Yes?” she inquired with icy politeness.

“Well,” continued the young man, “I'm kinda new to this whole Brontë thing, but I had trouble with the end of
Jane Eyre.

“Trouble?”

“Yeah. Like Jane leaves Thornfield Hall and hitches up with her cousins, the Riverses.”

“I know who her cousins are, young man.”

“Yeah, well, she agrees to go with this drippy St. John Rivers guy but not to marry him, they depart for India and that's the end of the book? Hello? What about a happy ending? What happens to Rochester and his nutty wife?”

The guide glowered.

“And what would you prefer? The forces of good and evil fighting to the death in the corridors of Thornfield Hall?”

“That's not what I meant,” continued the young man, beginning to get slightly annoyed. “It's just that the book cries out for a strong resolution, to tie up the narrative and finish the tale. I get the feeling from what she wrote that she just kinda pooped out.”

The guide stared at him for a moment through her steel-rimmed glasses and wondered why the visitors couldn't behave just that little bit more like sheep. Sadly, his point was a valid one; she herself had often pondered the diluted ending, wishing, like millions of others, that circumstances had allowed Jane and Rochester to marry after all.

“Some things will never be known,” she replied noncommittally. Charlotte is no longer with us so the question is abstract. What we have to study and enjoy is what she has left us. The sheer exuberance of the writing easily outweighs any of its small shortcomings.”

The young American nodded and the small crowd moved
on, my aunt and uncle among them. I hung back until only I and a single Japanese tourist were left in the room; I then tried to look at the original manuscript on tiptoe. It was tricky, as I was small for my age.

“Would you like me to read it for you?” said a kindly voice close at hand. It was the Japanese tourist. She smiled at me and I thanked her for her trouble.

She checked that no one was around, unfolded her reading glasses and started to speak. She spoke excellent English and had a fine reading voice; the words peeled off the page into my imagination as she spoke.

. . . In those days I was young and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind; the memories of nursery stories were there among other rubbish; and when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigor and vividness beyond what childhood could give . . .

I closed my eyes and a thin chill suddenly filled the air around me. The tourist's voice was clear now, as though speaking in the open air, and when I opened my eyes the museum had gone. In its place was a country lane of another place entirely. It was a fine winter's evening and the sun was just dipping below the horizon. The air was perfectly still, the color washed from the scene. Apart from a few birds that stirred occasionally in the hedge, no movement punctuated the starkly beautiful landscape. I shivered as I saw my own breath in the crisp air, zipped up my jacket and regretted that I had left my hat and mittens on the peg downstairs. As I looked about I could see that I was not alone. Barely ten feet away a young woman, dressed in a cloak and bonnet, was sitting on a stile watching the moon that had just risen behind us. When she
turned I could see that her face was plain and outwardly unremarkable, yet possessed of a bearing that showed inner strength and resolve. I stared at her intently with a mixture of feelings. I had realized not long ago that I myself was no beauty, and even at the age of nine had seen how the more attractive children gained favor more easily. But here in that young woman I could see how those principles could be inverted. I felt myself stand more upright and clench my jaw in subconscious mimicry of her pose.

I was just thinking about asking her where the museum had gone when a sound in the lane made us both turn. It was an approaching horse, and the young woman seemed startled for a moment. The lane was narrow, and I stepped back to give the horse room to pass. As I waited, a large black-and-white dog rushed along the hedge, nosing the ground for anything of interest. The dog ignored the figure on the stile but stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me. His tail wagged enthusiastically and he bounded over, sniffing me inquisitively, his hot breath covering me in a warm cloak and his whiskers tickling my cheek. I giggled and the dog wagged his tail even harder. He had sniffed along this hedge during every single reading of the book for over 130 years, but had never come across anything that smelled so, well . . .
real.
He licked me several times with great affection. I giggled again and pushed him away, so he ran off to find a stick.

From subsequent readings of the book I was later to realize that the dog Pilot had never had the opportunity to fetch a stick, his appearances in the book being all too few, so he was obviously keen to take the opportunity when it presented itself. He must have known, almost instinctively, that the little girl who had momentarily appeared at the bottom of page eighty-one was unfettered by the rigidity of the narrative. He knew
that he could stretch the boundaries of the story a small amount, sniffing along one side of the lane or the other since it wasn't specified; but if the text stated that he had to bark or run around or jump up, then he was obliged to comply. It was a long and repetitive existence, which made the rare appearances of people like me that much more enjoyable.

I looked up and noticed that the horse and rider had just passed the young woman. The rider was a tall man with distinguished features and a careworn face, bent into a frown by some musings that seemed to envelop him in thoughtful detachment. He had not seen my small form and the safe route down the lane led right through where I was standing; opposite me was a treacherous slab of ice. Within a few moments the horse was upon me, the heavy hooves thumping the hard ground, the hot breath from its velvety nose blowing on my face. Suddenly, the rider, perceiving the small girl in his path for the first time, uttered: “What the deuce—” and reined his horse rapidly to the left, away from me but onto the slippery ice. The horse lost its footing and went crashing to the ground. I took a step back, mortified at the accident I had caused. The horse struggled to gain a footing and the dog, hearing the commotion, returned to the scene, presented me with a stick and then barked at the fallen group excitedly, his deep growl echoing in the still evening. The young woman approached the fallen man with grave concern on her face. She was eager to be of assistance and spoke for the first time.

“Are you injured, sir?”

The rider muttered something incomprehensible and ignored her completely.

“Can I do anything?” she asked again.

“You must just stand on one side,” answered the rider in a gruff tone as he rose shakily to his feet. The young woman
stepped back as the rider helped his horse recover with a clattering and stamping of hooves. He silenced the dog with a shout and then stopped to feel his leg; it was obvious that he had hurt it quite badly. I felt sure that a man of such dour demeanor must surely be very angry with me, yet when he espied me again he smiled kindly and gave me a broad wink, placing a finger to his lips to ensure my silence. I smiled back, and the rider turned to face the young woman, his brow furrowing once more into a grimace as he fell back into character.

High in the evening sky I could hear a distant voice calling my name. The voice grew louder and the sky darkened. The cold air warmed on my face as the lane evaporated, the horse, rider, young woman and the dog returning to the pages of the book whence they had sprung. The room in the museum faded in about me and the images and smells transformed back into the spoken word as the woman finished the sentence.

. . . for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen and sat down . . .

“Thursday!” cried my Aunt Polly crossly. “
Do
try to keep up. I'll be asking questions later!”

She took me by the hand and led me away. I turned and waved my thanks to the Japanese tourist, who smiled genially back at me.

I returned to the museum a few times after that but the magic never worked again. My mind had closed too much by the time I was twelve, already a young woman. I only ever spoke of it to my uncle, who nodded sagely and believed every word. I never told anyone else. Ordinary adults don't like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own gray minds.

As I got older I started to doubt the validity of my own memory, until by my eighteenth birthday I had written it off as the product of an overactive imagination. Rochester's reappearance outside Styx's apartment that night served only to confuse. Reality, to be sure, was beginning to bend.

BOOK: A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5
8.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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