Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair

I sat down. The significance of this was not lost on anyone either there or watching the programme live; the English Minister for War was at that moment reaching for his phone. He wanted to speak to the Russians before they did anything rash—like attack.

Back at the hall in Swindon, Colonel Phelps had stood up.

‘Large claims from someone who is tragically ill informed,’ he intoned patronisingly. ‘We have all seen the destructive power of Stonk and its effectiveness is hardly the reason for this talk.’

‘Prove it,’ I responded. ‘I see you have a plasma rifle with you.

Lead us outside to the park and show us. You can try it on me, if you so wish.’

Phelps paused, and in that pause he lost the argument—and the war. He looked at the soldier carrying the weapon, who looked back at him nervously.

Phelps and his people left the stage to barracking from the crowd. He had been hoping to give his carefully rehearsed hour-long lecture over the memory of the lost brethren and the value of comradeship; he never spoke in public again.

Within four hours a ceasefire had been called for the first time in 131 years. Within four weeks the politicians were around the table in Budapest. Within four months every single English soldier was out of the peninsula. As for the Goliath Corporation, they were soon called to account over their deceit. They expressed wholly unconvincing ignorance of the whole affair and laid the blame entirely on Jack Schitt. I had hoped the Corporation would be chastised further, but at least it got Goliath off my back.

The reception turned out to be bigger than we thought and by ten o’clock it had spilled out into Landen’s garden. Boswell had got a little drunk so I popped him in a cab and sent him to the Finis. Paige Turner had been getting along well with the saxophonist—no one had seen either of them for at least an hour. Landen and I were enjoying a quiet moment to ourselves. I squeezed his hand, and asked: ‘Would you really have married Daisy if Briggs hadn’t intervened?’

‘I’ve got those answers you wanted, Sweetpea!’

‘Dad?’

He was attired in the full dress uniform of a colonel in the ChronoGuard.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said and I made a few enquiries.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘You remember, we spoke about two minutes ago?’

‘No.’

He frowned and looked at us both in turn, then at his watch.

‘Great Scott!’ he exclaimed. ‘I must be early. Damn these chronographs!’

He tapped the dial and left quickly without saying another word.

‘Your father?’ asked Landen. ‘I thought you said he was on the run?’

‘He was. He is. He will be. You know.’

‘Sweetpea!’ said my father again. ‘Surprised to see me?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘Congratulations to the two of you!’

I glanced around at the party still in full swing. Time was not standing still. It wouldn’t be long before the ChronoGuard tracked him down.

‘To hell with SO-12, Thursday!’ said he, divining my thoughts and taking a glass from a passing waiter. ‘I wanted to meet my son-in-law.’

He turned to Landen, grasped his hand and sized him up carefully.

‘How are you, my boy? Have you had a vasectomy?’

‘Well, no,’ replied Landen, vaguely embarrassed.

‘How about a heavy tackle playing rugby?’

‘No.’

‘Kick from a horse in the nether regions?’

‘No.’

‘What about a cricket ball in the goolies?’

‘No!’

‘Good. Then we might get some grandchildren out of this fiasco. It’s high time little Thursday here was popping out some sprogs instead of dashing around like some wild mountain piglet—‘ He paused. ‘You’re both looking at me very oddly.’

‘You were here not a minute ago.’

He frowned, raised an eyebrow and looked about furtively.

‘If it was me, and if I know me, I’d be hiding somewhere close by. Oh yes, look! Look there!’

He pointed to a corner of the garden where a figure was hiding in the shadows behind the potting shed. He narrowed his eyes and thought through the most logical train of events.

‘Let’s see. I must have offered to do you a favour, done it and come back but a little out of time; not uncommon in my line of work.’

‘What favour would I have asked you to do?’ I ventured, still confused but more than willing to play along.

‘I don’t know,’ said my father. ‘A burning question that has been much discussed over the years but has, so far, remained unanswered.’

I thought for a moment.

‘How about the authorship of the Shakespeare plays?’

He smiled. ‘Good point. I’ll see what I can do.’

He finished his drink.

‘Well, congratulations again to the two of you; I must be off. Time waits for no man, as we say.’

He smiled, wished us every happiness for the future, and departed.

‘Can you explain just what is going on?’ asked Landen, thoroughly confused, not so much by the events themselves as by the order in which they were happening.

‘Not really.’

‘Have I gone, Sweetpea?’ asked my father, who had returned from his hiding place behind the shed.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Well, I found out what you wanted to know. I went to London in 1610 and found that Shakespeare was only an actor with a potentially embarrassing sideline as a purveyor of bagged commodities in Stratford. No wonder he kept it quiet—wouldn’t you?’

This was interesting indeed.

‘So who wrote them? Marlowe? Bacon?’

‘No; there was a bit of a problem. You see, no one had even heard of the plays, much less written them.’

I didn’t understand.

‘What are you saying? There aren’t any?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. They don’t exist. They were never written. Not by him, not by anyone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Landen, unwilling to take much more of this, ‘but we saw Richard III only six weeks ago.’

‘Of course,’ said my father. ‘Time is out of joint big time. Obviously something had to be done. I took a copy of the complete works back with me and gave them to the actor Shakespeare in 1592 to distribute on a given timetable. Does that answer your question?’

I was still confused.

‘So it wasn’t Shakespeare who wrote the plays.’

‘Decidedly not!’ he agreed. ‘Nor Marlowe, Oxford, De Vere, Bacon or any of the others.’

‘But that’s not possible!’ exclaimed Landen.

‘On the contrary,’ replied my father. ‘Given the huge timescale of the cosmos, impossible things are commonplace. When you’ve lived as long as I have you’ll know that absolutely anything is possible. Time is out of joint; O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!’

‘You put that in?’ I asked, always assuming he was quoting from Hamlet and not the other way round.