Jasper Fforde - The Well of Lost Plots

'Yes,' I replied. 'What's a smoother?'

'Do you not read your TravelBook?'

'It's quite long,' I pleaded. 'I've been consulting it whenever possible but have still got no farther than the preface.'

'Well,' she began as we jumped to Wemmick's Stores in the lobby of the Great Library, 'plots have a sort of inbuilt memory. They can spring back to how they originally ran with surprising ease.'

'Like time,' I murmured, thinking about my father.

'If you say so,' returned Miss Havisham. 'So on Internal Plot Adjustment duties we often have to have a smoother — a secondary device that reinforces the primary plot swing. We changed the end of Conrad's Lord Jim , you know. Originally, he runs away. A bit weak. We thought it would be better if Jim delivered himself to Chief Doramin as he had pledged following Brown's massacre.'

'That didn't work?'

'No. The chief kept on forgiving him. We tried everything. Insulting the chief, tweaking his nose — after the forty-third attempt we were getting desperate; Bradshaw was almost pulling his hair out.'

'So what did you do?'

'We retrospectively had the chief's son die in the massacre. It did the trick. The chief had no trouble shooting Jim after that.'

I mused about this for a moment.

'How did Jim take it?' I asked. 'The decision for him to die, I mean?'

'He was the one who asked for the plot adjustment in the first place,' murmured Havisham. 'He thought it was the only honourable thing to do — mind you, the chief's son wasn't exactly over the moon about it.'

'Ah,' I said, pondering that here in the BookWorld the pencil of life occasionally did have a rubber on the other end.

'So you'll send a cheque for a hundred pounds to the farmer, and buy his pigs for double the market rate — that way, he won't need the cash and won't want to resell Shadow to the film producer. Get it? Good afternoon, Mr Wemmick.'

We had arrived at the stores. Wemmick himself was a short man, a native of Great Expectations , aged about forty with a pockmarked face. He greeted us enthusiastically.

'Good afternoon, Miss Havisham, Miss Next — I trust all is well?'

'Quite well, Mr Wemmick. I understand you have a few canines for us?'

'Indeed,' replied the storekeeper, pointing to where two dogs were attached to a hook in the wall by their leads.

'Pug, Lady Bertram's, to be replaced, one. Shadow, sheepdog, sighted, to swap with existing dog, blind, one. Cheque for the farmer, value: one hundred pounds sterling, one. Cash to buy pigs, forty-two pounds, ten shillings and fourpence. Sign here.'

The two dogs panted and wagged their tails. The collie had his eyes bound with a bandage.

'Any questions?'

'Do we have a cover story for this cheque?' I asked.

'Use your imagination. I'm sure you'll think of something.'

'Wait a moment,' I said, alarm bells suddenly ringing, 'aren't you coming with me to supervise?'

'Not at all!' Havisham grinned with a strange look in her eye. 'Assessed work has to be done solo; I'll mark you on your report and the successful — or not — realigned story within the book. This is so simple even you can't mess it up.'

'Couldn't I do Lady Bertram's pug?' I asked, trying to make it sound like something hard and of great consequence.

'Out of the question! Besides, I don't do'children's books any more — not after the incident with Larry the Lamb. But since Shadow is out of print no one will notice if you make a pig's ear of it. Remember that Jurisfiction is an honourable establishment and you should reflect that in your bearing and countenance. Be resolute in your work and fair and just. Destroy grammasites with extreme prejudice — and shun any men with amorous intentions.'

She thought for a moment.

'Or any intentions, come to that. Have you got your TravelBook to enable you to jump back?'

I patted my breast pocket where the slim volume was kept and she was gone, only to return a few moments later to swap dogs and vanish again. I was just about to jump to the second floor when a voice made me turn.

'Hello!' he said. 'All well?'

It was the Cheshire Cat. He was sitting on top of the Boojumorial, grinning fit to burst.

'I'm just about to do my practical.'

'Excellent!' said the Cat. 'Whereabouts?'

'Shadow the Sheepdog.'

'Enid Blyton, 1950, Collins, two fifty-six pages, illustrated,' muttered the Cat, to whom every book in the Library was a revered friend. 'Apart from the D-words in it, for Blyton it's not too bad at all — a product of its time, one might argue. What are you going to do with it?'

'Happier ending,' I explained. 'I have to swap dogs.'

'Ah!' said the Cat, wrinkling his whiskers and grinning some more. 'Just like the job we did on Gipson's Old Yeller last year.'

' Old Yetter ?' I repeated incredulously. 'The new ending is the happy one?!'

'You should have read it before we changed it. Sad wasn't the word. Children were going into traumatic shock it was so depressing.'

And he blew his nose so violently he vanished with a faint pop .

I waited for a moment in case he reappeared and, when he didn't, read my way diligently to the second floor of the Library and picked Shadow the Sheepdog off the shelf. I paused. I was nervous and my palms had started to sweat. I scolded myself. How hard could a plot readjustment in an Enid Blyton be? I took a deep breath and, notwithstanding the simplistic nature of the novel, opened the slim volume with an air of serious trepidation — as though it were War and Peace .

I read myself into the book, halfway down page 231. Johnny, the farmer's boy who was Shadow's owner and co-protagonist, would be having Shadow's eyes checked in a few days, so a brief reconnaissance of the area seemed like a good idea. If I could persuade rather than order the vet to swap the dogs, then so much the better. I alighted in a town which looked like some sort of forties rural idyll — a mix of Warwickshire and the Dales. All green grass, show-quality cattle, yellow-lichened stone walls, sunshine and healthy-looking, smiling people. Horses pulled carts laden high with hay down the main street and the odd shiny motor-car puttered past. Pies cooled on window sills and children played with hoops and tinplate steam engines. The smell in the breeze was of freshly mown grass, clean linen and cooking. Here was a world of high tea, tasty trifles, zero crime, eternal summers and boundless good health. I suspected living here might be quite enjoyable — for about a week.

I was nodded at by a passer-by.

'Beautiful day!' she said politely.

'Yes,' I replied. 'My—'

'Rain later?' she enquired.

I looked up at the small puffy clouds that stretched away to the horizon.

'I shouldn't have thought so,' I began, 'but can you—'

'Well, be seeing you!' said the woman politely, and was gone.