Jasper Fforde - Lost in a Good Book

Miss Havisham picked up the pen and paused before signing.

‘We’ll need my boat, Mr Wemmick,’ she said, lowering her voice.

‘I’ll Footnoterphone ahead, Miss H,’ said Wemmick, winking broadly. ‘You’ll find it on the jetty.’

‘For a man you are not bad at all, Mr Wemmick!’ said Miss Havisham. ‘Thursday, gather up the equipment!’

‘What now?’ I asked, weighed down by the large canvas bag.

‘Dickens is within walking distance,’ explained Havisham, ‘but it’s better practice for you if you jump us straight there—there are over fifty thousand miles of shelf space.’

‘Ah—okay, I know how to do that,’ I muttered, putting down the bag, taking out my travel book and flicking to the passage about the library.

‘Hold on to me as you jump and think Dickens as you read.’

So I did, and within a trice we were at the right place in the library.

‘How was that?’ I asked quite proudly.

‘Not bad,’ said Havisham. ‘But you forgot the bag.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll wait while you get it.’

So I read myself back to the lobby, retrieved the bag to a few friendly jibes from Deane, and returned—but by accident to a series of adventuresome books for plucky girls by someone named Charles Pickens , so I read the library passage again and was soon with Miss Havisham.

‘This is the outings book,’ she said without looking up. ‘Name, destination, date, time—I’ve filled it in already. Are you armed?’

‘Always—do you expect any trouble?’

Miss Havisham drew out her small pistol, released the twin barrels, pivoted it upward and gave me one of her more serious stares.

‘I always expect trouble, Thursday. I was on HPD—Heathcliff Protection Duty—in Wuthering Heights for two years and, believe me, the ProCaths tried everything—I personally saved him from assassination eight times.’

She extracted a spent cartridge, replaced it with a live one and locked the barrels back into place.

‘But Great Expectations ? Where’s the danger there?’

She rolled up her sleeve and showed me a livid scar on her forearm.

‘Things can turn pretty ugly even in Toytown,’ she explained. ‘Believe me, Larry is no lamb—I was lucky to escape with my life.’

I must have been looking slightly nervous because she went on:

‘Everything okay? You can bale out whenever you want, you know. Say the word and you’ll be back in Swindon before you can say “Mrs Hubbard”.’

She looked at me intensely and I thought of the baby. I’d survived the sales with no ill effects—how hard could ‘footling’ with the back-story of a Dickens novel be? Besides, I needed all the practice I could get.

‘Ready when you are, Miss Havisham.’

She nodded, rolled down her sleeve again, pulled Great Expectations from the bookshelf and opened it on one of the reading desks.

‘We need to go in before the story really begins so this is not a standard book jump. Are you paying attention?’

‘Yes, Miss Havisham.’

‘Good. I’ve no desire to go through this more than once. First, read us into the book.’

I did as she bade—making quite sure I had hold of the bag this time—and there we were, in among the gravestones on the opening page of Great Expectations , the chill and dampness in the air, the fog drifting in from the sea. On the far side of the graveyard a small boy was crouching among the weathered stones, talking to himself as he stared at two gravestones set to one side. But there was someone else there. In fact, there was a group of people, digging away at an area just outside the churchyard walls on the opposite side to the boy, illuminated in the fading light by two powerful electric lights fed by a small generator that hummed to itself some distance away.

‘Who are they?’ I whispered.

‘Okay,’ hissed Havisham, not hearing me straight away, ‘now we jump to wherever we want by… What did you say?’

I nodded in the direction of the group. One of their number pushed a wheelbarrow along a plank and dumped its contents on to a large pile of spoil.

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Miss Havisham, walking briskly towards the small group. ‘It’s Commander Bradshaw!’

I trotted after her, and I soon saw that the digging was of an archaeological nature. Pegs were set in the ground and joined by lengths of string, delineating the area in which the volunteers were scraping with trowels, all trying to make as little noise as possible. Sitting on a folding safari seat was a man dressed like a big-game hunter. He wore a safari suit, pith helmet and sported both a monocle and a large and bushy moustache. He was also barely three feet tall. When he got up from his chair, he was shorter.

‘ ‘Pon my word, it’s the Havisham girlie!’ he said in a hoarse whisper. ‘Estella, you’re looking younger every time I see you!’

Miss Havisham thanked him and introduced me. Bradshaw shook me by the hand and welcomed me to Jurisfiction.

‘What are you up to, Trafford?’ asked Havisham.

‘Archaeology for the Charles Dickens Foundation, m’girl. A few of their scholars are of the belief that Great Expectations began not in this churchyard but in Pip’s house when his parents were still about. There is no manuscriptual evidence so we thought we’d have a little dig around the environs and see if we could pick up any evidence of previously overwritten scenes.’

‘Any luck?’

‘We’ve struck a reworked idea that ended up in Our Mutual Friend , a few dirty limericks and an unintelligible margin squiggle—but nothing much.’

Havisham wished him well; we said our goodbyes and left them to their dig.

‘Is that unusual?’

‘You’ll find around here that there is not much that is usual,’ replied Havisham. ‘It’s what makes this job such fun. Where did we get to?’

‘We were going to jump into the pre-book back-story.’

‘I remember. To jump forward we have only to concentrate on the page numbers, or, if you prefer, a specific event. To go backward before the first page we have to think of negative page numbers or an event that we assume happened before the book began.’

‘How do I picture a negative page number?’

‘Visualise something—an albatross, say.’

‘Yes?’

‘Okay, now take the albatross away.’

‘Yes?’

‘Now take another albatross away.’

‘How can I? There are no albatrosses left!’

‘Okay; imagine I have lent you an albatross to make up your seabird deficit. How many albatrosses have you now?’

‘None.’

‘Good. Now relax while I take my albatross back.’

I shivered as a coldness swept through me and for a fleeting moment an empty, vaguely albatross-shaped void opened and closed in front of me. But the strange thing was, for that briefest moment I understood the principle involved—but then it was gone like a dream upon waking. I blinked and stared at Havisham.

‘That,’ she announced, ‘was a negative albatross. Now you try it—only use page numbers instead of albatrosses.’

I tried hard to picture a negative page number but it didn’t work and I found myself in the garden of Satis House, watching two boys square up for a fight. Miss Havisham was soon beside me.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m trying—’

‘You are not, my girl There are two sorts of people in this world, doers and tryers. You are the latter and I am trying to make you the former. Now concentrate, girl!’

So I had another attempt and this time found myself in a curious tableau resembling the graveyard in Chapter 1 but with the graves, wall and church little more than cardboard cut-outs. The two featured characters, Magwitch and Pip, were also very two-dimensional and as still as statues—except that their eyes swivelled to look at me as I jumped in.