Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair

‘What are you doing here?’ she hissed, one eyebrow twitching.

‘Who in Christ’s name are you?’ asked Hobbes.

She smacked him hard across the face; he staggered before recovering.

‘My name is Grace Poole,’ said Grace Poole. ‘In service I might be, but you have no right to utter the Lord’s name in vain. I can see by your attire that you do not belong here. What do you want?’

‘I’m, um, with Mr Mason,’ he stammered.

‘Rubbish,’ she replied, staring at him dangerously.

‘I want Jane Eyre,’ he stammered.

‘So does Mr Rochester,’ she replied in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘But he doesn’t even kiss her until page one hundred and eighty-one.’

Hobbes glanced inside the room. The madwoman was now dancing around, smiling and cackling as the flames grew higher on Rochester’s bed.

‘If she doesn’t arrive soon, there won’t be a page one hundred and eighty-one.’

Grace Poole caught his eye again and fixed him with a baleful glare.

‘She will save him as she has before thousands of times, as she will again thousands of times. It is the way of things here.’

‘Yeah?’ replied Hobbes. ‘Well, things just might change.’

At that moment the madwoman rushed out of the room and into Hobbes with her fingernails outstretched. With a maniacal laugh that made his ears pop she lunged at him and pressed her uncut and ragged nails into both his cheeks. He yelled out in pain as Grace Poole wrestled Mrs Rochester into a half nelson and frogmarched her to the attic. As Grace got to the door she turned to Hobbes and spoke again.

‘Just remember: it is the way of things here.’

‘Aren’t you going to try and stop me?’ asked Hobbes in a puzzled tone.

‘I take poor Mrs Rochester upstairs now,’ she replied. ‘It is written.’

The door closed behind her as a voice shouting ‘Wake, wake!’ brought Hobbes’s attention back to the blazing room. Within he could see the night-robed Jane throwing a jug of water over the recumbent form of Rochester. Hobbes waited until the fire was out before stepping into the room, drawing his gun as he did so. They both looked up, the ‘elves of Christendom’ line dying on Rochester’s lips.

‘Who are you?’ they asked, together.

‘Believe me, you couldn’t possibly begin to understand.’

Hobbes took Jane by the arm and dragged her back towards the corridor.

‘Edward! My Edward!’ implored Jane, her arms outstretched to Rochester. ‘I won’t leave you, my love!’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Hobbes, still backing away, ‘you guys haven’t fallen in love yet!’

‘In that you would be mistaken,’ murmured Rochester, pulling out a percussion pistol from beneath his pillow. ‘I have suspected something like this might happen for some time.’ He aimed at Hobbes and fired in a single quick movement. He missed, the large lead ball burying itself in the door frame. Hobbes fired back a warning shot; Hades had expressly forbidden anyone in the novel to be hurt. Rochester pulled a second pistol after the first and cocked it.

‘Let her go,’ he announced, his jaw set, his dark hair falling into his eyes.

Hobbes pulled Jane in front of him.

‘Don’t be a fool, Rochester! If all goes well Jane will be returned to you forthwith; you won’t even know she has gone!’

Hobbes backed down the hall towards where the portal was due to open as he spoke. Rochester followed, gun outstretched, his heart heavy as his one and only true love was dragged unceremoniously from the novel to that place, that other place, where he and Jane could never enjoy the life they enjoyed at Thornfield. Hobbes and Jane vanished back through the portal, which closed abruptly after them. Rochester put up his gun and glowered.

A few moments later Hobbes and a very confused Jane Eyre had fallen back through the Prose Portal and into the dilapidated smoking lounge of the old Penderyn Hotel.

Acheron stepped forward and helped Jane up. He offered her his coat to warm herself. After Thornfield Hall the hotel was decidedly draughty.

‘Miss Eyre—!’ announced Hades kindly. ‘My name is Hades, Acheron Hades. You are my respected guest; please take a seat and compose yourself

‘Edward—?’

‘Quite well, my young friend. Come, let me take you to a warmer part of the hotel.’

‘Will I see my Edward again?’

Hades smiled.

‘It rather depends on how valuable people think you are.’

Within twenty seconds of Jane’s kidnapping, the first worried member of the public had noticed strange goings-on around the area of page one hundred and seven of their deluxe hide-bound edition of Jane Eyre. Within thirty minutes all the lines into the English Museum library were jammed. Within two hours every LiteraTec department was besieged by calls from worried Bronte readers. Within four hours the president of the Bronte Federation had seen the Prime Minister. By suppertime the Prime Minister’s personal secretary had called the head of SpecOps. By nine o’clock the head of SpecOps had batted it down the line to a miserable Braxton Hicks. By ten he had been called personally by the Prime Minister, who asked him what the hell he was going to do about it. He stammered down the line and said something wholly unhelpful. Meanwhile, the news was leaked to the press that Swindon was the centre of the Jane Eyre investigation, and by midnight the SpecOps building was encircled by concerned readers, journalists and news network trucks.

Braxton was not in a good mood. He had started to chain-smoke and locked himself in his office for hours at a time. Not even putting practice managed to soothe his ruffled nerves, and shortly after the Prime Minister’s call he summoned Victor and me for a meeting on the roof, away from the prying eyes of the press, the Goliath representatives and especially from Jack Schitt.

‘Sir?’ said Victor as we approached Braxton, who was leaning against a smokestack that squeaked as it turned. Hicks was staring out at the lights of Swindon with a detachment that made me worried. The parapet was barely two yards away, and for an awful moment I thought perhaps he was going to end it all.

‘Look at them,’ he murmured.

We both relaxed as we realised that Braxton was on the roof so he could see the public that his department had pledged to help. There were thousands of them, encircling the station behind crowd barriers, silently holding candles and clutching their copies of Jane Eyre, now seriously disrupted, the narrative stopping abruptly halfway down page one hundred and seven after a mysterious ‘Agent in black’ enters Rochester’s room following the fire.

Braxton waved his own copy of Jane Eyre at us.

‘You’ve read it, of course?’

‘There isn’t much to read,’ Victor replied. ‘Eyre was written in the first person; as soon as the protagonist has gone, it’s anyone’s guess as to what happens next. My theory is that Rochester becomes even more broody, packs Adele off to boarding school, and shuts up the house.’

Braxton looked at him pointedly.

‘That’s conjecture, Analogy.’

‘It’s what we’re best at.’

Braxton sighed. ‘They want me to bring her back and I don’t even know where she is! Before all this happened, did you have any idea how popular Jane Eyre was?’