Jasper Fforde - Lost in a Good Book

‘I’ll try to keep on my toes,’ I told her.

‘And your chastity firmly guarded,’ she told me sternly.

‘Goes without saying.’

‘Good. Can I borrow that jacket?’

She was pointing at Miles Hawke’s Swindon Mallets jacket. Without waiting for a reply she put it on and replaced her veil with a SpecOps cap. Satisfied, she asked:

‘Is this the way out?’

‘No, that’s the broom cupboard. This is the way out over here.’

We opened the door to find my landlord with his fist raised ready to knock.

‘Ah!’ he said in a low growl. ‘Next!’

‘You said I had until Friday,’ I told him.

‘I’m turning off the water. The gas, too.’

‘You can’t do that!’

He leered. ‘If you’ve got six hundred quid on you, perhaps I can be convinced not to.’

But his smirk changed to fear as the point of Miss Havisham’s stick shot out and caught him in the throat. She pushed him heavily against the wall in the corridor. He choked and made to move the stick but Miss Havisham knew just how much pressure was needed—she pushed the stick harder and he stayed his hand.

‘Listen to me!’ she snapped. ‘Touch Miss Next’s gas and water and you’ll have me to answer to. She’ll pay you on time, you worthless wretch—you have Miss Havisham’s word on that !’

He gasped in short breaths, the tip of Miss Havisham’s stick stuck fast against his windpipe. His eyes were clouded with the panic of suffocation; all he could do was breathe fitfully and try to nod.

‘Good!’ replied Miss Havisham, releasing the man, who fell in a heap on the floor.

‘The evil ones,’ announced Miss Havisham. ‘You see what men are like?’

‘They’re not all like that,’ I tried to explain.

‘Nonsense!’ replied Miss Havisham as we walked downstairs. ‘He was one of the better ones. At least he didn’t attempt to lie his way into your favours. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this one was barely repulsive at all. Do you have a car?’

Miss Havisham’s eyebrows rose slightly as she saw the curious paintwork on my Porsche.

‘It was painted this way when I bought it,’ I explained.

‘I see,’ replied Miss Havisham in a disapproving tone. ‘Keys?’

‘I don’t think—’

‘The keys , girl! What was Rule One again?’

‘Do exactly as you say.’

‘Disobedient, perhaps,’ she replied with a thin smile, ‘but not forgetful!’

I reluctantly handed over the keys. Havisham grasped them with a gleam in her eye and jumped into the driver’s seat.

‘Is it the four-cam engine?’ she asked excitedly.

‘No,’ I replied, ‘standard 1.6 unit.’

‘Oh, well!’ snorted Havisham, pumping the accelerator twice before turning the key. ‘It’ll have to do, I suppose.’

The engine burst into life. Havisham gave me a smile and a wink as she revved the engine up to the red line before she briskly snapped the gearshift into first and dropped the clutch. There was a screech of rubber as we careered off up the road, the rear of the car swinging from side to side as the spinning wheels sought to find traction on the asphalt.

I have not been frightened many times in my life. Charging into the massed artillery of the Imperial Russian Army had a surreal detachment that I had found eerie rather than fearful. Tackling Hades first in London and then on the roof of Thornfield Hall had been quite unpleasant, so had leading an armed police raid, and the two occasions I had stared at close quarters down the barrel of a gun hadn’t been a bundle of joy either.

None of those, however, even came close to the feeling of almost certain death that I experienced during Miss Havisham’s driving. We must have violated every road traffic regulation that had ever been written. We narrowly missed pedestrians, other cars, traffic bollards and ran three traffic lights at red before Miss Havisham had to stop at a junction to let a juggernaut go past. She was smiling to herself and, although erratic and bordering on homicidal, her driving had a sort of idiot savant skill about it. Just when I thought it was impossible to avoid a postbox she tweaked the brakes, flicked down a gear and missed the unyielding iron lump by the width of a hair.

‘The carburettors seem slightly unbalanced!’ she bellowed above the terrified screams of pedestrians. ‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’ She hauled on the handbrake and we slid sideways up a dropped kerbstone and stopped next to an open-air café, causing a group of nuns to run for cover. Havisham climbed out of the car and opened the engine cover.

‘Rev the car for me, girl!’ she shouted. I did as I was told and smiled wanly at one of the customers at the café, who eyed me malevolently.

‘She doesn’t get out often,’ I explained as Havisham returned to the driver’s seat, revved the engine loudly and left the customers at the café in a cloud of foul-smelling rubber smoke.

‘That’s better!’ yelled Miss Havisham. ‘Can’t you hear it? Much better!’

All I could hear was the wail of a police siren that had started up.

‘Oh, Christ!’ I muttered; Miss Havisham punched me painfully on the arm.

‘What was that for?’

‘Blaspheming! If there is one thing I hate more than men, it’s blaspheming… Get out of my way, you godless heathens!’

A group of people at a pedestrian crossing scattered in confused panic as Havisham shot past, angrily waving her fist. I looked behind us as a police car came into view, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring. I could see the occupants bracing themselves as they took the corner; Miss Havisham dropped a gear and we took a tight left bend, ran the wheels on the kerb, swerved to avoid a mother with a pram and found ourselves in a carpark. We accelerated between the rows of parked cars but the only way out was blocked by a delivery van. Miss Havisham stamped on the brakes, flicked the car into reverse and initiated a neat reverse slide that took us off in the opposite direction.

‘Don’t you think we’d better stop?’ I asked.

‘Nonsense, girl!’ snapped Havisham, looking for a way out while the police car nosed up to our rear bumper. ‘Not with the sale about to open. Here we go! Hold on!’

There was only one way out of the carpark that didn’t involve capture—a path between two concrete bollards that looked way too narrow for my car. But Miss Havisham’s eyes were sharper than mine and we shot through the gap, bounced across a grass bank, skidded past the statue of Brunel, drove the wrong way down a one-way street, through a back alley, past the Carer’s Monument and across the pedestrianised precinct to screech to a halt in front of a long queue for the Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale—just as the town clock struck twelve.

‘You nearly killed eight people!’ I managed to gasp out loud.

‘My count was closer to twelve,’ returned Havisham as she opened the door. ‘And anyhow, you can’t nearly kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not; and not one of them was so much as scratched!’

The police car slid to a halt behind us, both sides of the vehicle had deep gouges down the side—the bollards, I presumed

‘I’m more used to my Bugatti than this,’ said Miss Havisham as she handed me the keys and slammed the door. ‘But it’s not so very bad, now, is it? I like the gearbox especially.’

The police didn’t look very friendly. They peered at Miss Havisham closely, unsure of how to put their outrage at her flagrant disregard for the Road Traffic Act into words.

‘You,’ said one of the officers in a barely controlled voice, ‘you, madam, are in a lot of trouble.’

She looked at the young officer with an imperious glare.