Jasper Fforde - The Eyre Affair

He smiled.

‘A small personal vanity that I’m sure will be forgiven, Thursday. Besides: who’s to know?’

My father stared at his empty glass, looked around in vain for a waiter, then said:

‘Lavoisier will have locked on to me by now. He swore he’d catch me and he’s good. He should be; we were partners for almost seven centuries. Just one more thing: how did the Duke of Wellington die?’

I remembered he had asked me this once before.

‘As I said, Dad, he died in his bed in 1852.’

Father smiled and rubbed his hands.

‘That’s excellent news indeed! How about Nelson?’

‘Shot by a French sniper at Trafalgar.’

‘Really? Well, some you win. Listen: good luck, the pair of you. A boy or a girl would be fine; one of each would be better.’

He leaned closer and lowered his voice.

‘I don’t know when I am going to be back, so listen carefully. Never buy a blue car or a paddling pool, stay away from oysters and circular saws, and don’t be near Oxford in June 2016. Got it?’

‘Yes, but—!’

‘Well, pip pip, time waits for no man!’

He hugged me again, shook Landen’s hand and then disappeared into the crowd before we could ask him anything more.

‘Don’t even try to figure it out,’ I said to Landen, placing a finger to his lips. ‘This is one area of SpecOps that it’s really better not to think about.’

‘But if—!’

‘Landen—!’ I said more severely. ‘No—!’

Bowden and Victor were at the party too. Bowden was happy for me and had come easily to the realisation that I wouldn’t be joining him in Ohio, as either wife or assistant. He had been offered the job officially but had turned it down; he said there was too much fun to be had at the Swindon LiteraTecs and he would reconsider it in the spring; Finisterre had taken his place. But at present, something else was preying on his mind. Helping himself to a stiff drink, he approached Victor, who was talking animatedly to an elderly woman he had befriended.

‘What ho, Cable!’ Victor murmured, introducing his new-found friend before agreeing to have a quiet word with him.

‘Good result, eh? Balls to the Bronte Federation; I’m with Thursday. I think the new ending is a wiz!’ He paused and looked at Bowden. ‘You’ve got a face longer than a Dickens novel. What’s the problem? Worried about Felix8?’

‘No, sir; I know they’ll find him eventually. It’s just that I accidentally mixed up the dust covers on the book that Jack Schitt went into.’

‘You mean he’s not with his beloved rifles?’

‘No, sir. I took the liberty of slipping this book into the dust cover of The Plasma Rifle in War.’

He handed over the book that had made its way into the Prose Portal. Victor looked at the spine and laughed. It was a copy of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.

‘Have a look at page twenty-six,’ said Bowden. ‘There’s something funny going on in “The Raven”.’

Victor opened the book and scanned the page. He read the first verse out loud:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, o’er a plan to venge myself upon that cursed Thursday Next—This Eyre affair, so surprising, gives my soul such loath despising, Here I plot my temper rising, rising from my jail of text. ‘Get me out!’ I said, advising, ‘Pluck me from this jail of text—or I swear I’ll wring your neck!’

Victor shut the book with a snap. ‘The last line doesn’t rhyme very well, does it?’

‘What do you expect?’ replied Bowden. ‘He’s Goliath, not a poet.’

‘But I read “The Raven” only yesterday,’ added Victor in a confused tone. ‘It wasn’t like this then!’

‘No, no,’ explained Bowden. ‘Jack Schitt is only in this copy—if we had put him in an original manuscript then who knows what he might have done.’

‘Con-g’rat-ula’tions!’ exclaimed Mycroft as he walked up to us. Polly was with him and looked radiant in a new hat.

‘We’re Bo’th Very Hap-py For You!’ added Polly.

‘Have you been working on the bookworms again?’ I asked.

‘Doe’s It Sh’ow?’ asked Mycroft. ‘Mu’st Dash!’

And they were off.

‘Bookworms?’ asked Landen.

‘It’s not what you think.’

‘Mademoiselle Next?’

There were two of them. They were dressed in sharp suits and displayed SpecOps 12 badges that I hadn’t seen before.

‘Yes?’

‘Prefet Lavoisier, ChronoGendarmerie. Ou est votre pere?’

‘You’ve just missed him.’

He cursed out loud.

‘Colonel Next est un homme tres dangereux, mademoiselle. II est important de lui parler concernant ses activites de trafic de temps.’

‘He’s my father, Lavoisier.’

Lavoisier stared at me, trying to figure out whether anything he could say or do would make me help him. He sighed and gave up.

‘Si vous changez votre avis, contactez-moi par les petites annonc.es du Grenouille. Je Us toujours les archives.’

‘I shouldn’t count on it, Lavoisier.’

He mulled this over for a moment, thought of something to say, decided against it and smiled instead. He saluted briskly, told me in perfect English to enjoy my day, and walked away. But his younger partner also had something to say:

‘A piece of advice to you,’ he muttered slightly self-consciously. ‘If you ever have a son who wants to be in the ChronoGuard, try and dissuade him.’

He smiled and followed his partner in their quest for my father.

‘What was that son thing about?’ asked Landen.

‘I don’t know. He looked kind of familiar, though, didn’t he?’

‘Kinda.’

‘Where were we?’

‘Mrs Parke-Laine?’ asked a very stocky individual, who stared at me earnestly from two deep-set brown eyes.

‘SO-12?’ I asked, wondering quite where the little beetle-browed man had sprung from.

‘No, ma’am,’ he replied, seizing a plum from a passing waiter and sniffing at it carefully before eating it, stone and all. ‘My name Bartholomew Stiggins; with SO-13.’

‘What do they do?’

‘Not at liberty to discuss,’ he replied shortly, ‘but we may have need your skills and talents.’

‘What kind of—‘

But Mr Stiggins was no longer listening to me. Instead, he was staring at a small beetle he had found on a flowerpot. With great care and a dexterity that belied his large and clumsy-looking hands, he picked the small bug up and popped it in his mouth. I looked at Landen, who winced.

‘Sorry,’ said Stiggins, as though he had just been caught picking his nose in public. ‘What the expression? Old habit die hard?’

‘There’s more in the compost heap,’ said Landen helpfully.

The little man grinned very softly through his eyes; I didn’t suppose he showed much emotion.

‘If interested, I’ll be in touch.’

‘Be in touch,’ I told him.

He grunted, replaced his hat, bid us both a happy day, enquired about the whereabouts of the compost heap and was gone.

‘I’ve never seen a neanderthal in a suit before,’ observed Landen.

‘Never mind about Mr Stiggins,’ I said, reaching up to kiss him.

‘I thought you’d finished with SpecOps?’

‘No,’ I replied with a smile. ‘In fact, I think I’m only just beginning…!’