The Eyre Affair tn-1

by Jasper Fforde

  ‘Is Mr Rochester at home today?’ I asked.

  ‘He has gone to make arrangements. I understand he went to Mr Eshton’s place; there is quite a party going on. Colonel Dent will be there as well as Lord Ingram. I don’t expect him back for a week.’

  ‘With all that is going on here, do you think it is wise?’

  Mrs Fairfax looked at me as though I were an infant.

  ‘You don’t understand, do you? After the fire Mr Rochester goes away for a week. That’s how it happens.’

  I wanted to ask more but the housekeeper excused herself and I was left alone. I collected my thoughts, smoothed the cloak and went outside to walk around the house, checking that everything was secure. All the estate workers nodded to me respectfully as I passed, each of them armed with a weapon of some sort. Hoping that none of them would have to face him, I walked across the lawn in the direction that Hades had taken the previous night. I was just passing the large beeches near the ha-ha when a familiar voice made me turn.

  ‘Do we stand a chance against him?’

  It was Rochester. He was standing behind one of the large tree trunks, looking at me with grave concern etched upon his face.

  ‘Every chance, sir,’ I responded. ‘Without me he is trapped here; if he wants to return he has to negotiate.’

  ‘And where is he?’

  ‘I was going to try the town. Aren’t you meant to be at Mr Eshton’s?’

  ‘I wanted to speak to you before I left. You will do all you can, won’t you?’

  I assured him that I would do everything in my power and then set off for the town.

  Millcote was a good-sized town. I made my way to the centre, where I found a church, a staged-coach stop, three inns, a bank, two draper’s, a bagged-goods merchant and assorted other trades. It was market day and the town was busy. No one gave me a second glance as I walked through the stalls, which were piled high with winter produce and game. Apart from the faint odour of ink that pervaded the scene, it might have been real. The first hostelry I chanced across was The George. Since it was actually named in the book I supposed it might offer the best chance.

  I entered and asked the innkeeper whether a man of large stature had taken a room at the inn that morning. The landlord proclaimed that he had not but added that his was not the only inn in the town. I thanked him and walked to the door, but was arrested by the incongruous sound of a camera shutter. I slowly turned around. Behind me were a Japanese couple, dressed in period costume but with one of them holding a large Nikon camera. The woman hastily tried to conceal the blatant anachronism and started to drag the man out of the door.

  ‘Wait!’

  They stopped and looked nervously at one other.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked incredulously.

  ‘Visiting from Osaka,’ affirmed the woman, at which the man—he seemed not to speak English—nodded his head vigorously and started to consult a Bronte guidebook written in Japanese.

  ‘How—?’

  ‘My name is Mrs Nakijima,’ announced the woman, ‘and this is Mr Suzuki.’

  The man grinned at me and shook my hand excitedly.

  ‘This is crazy!’ I said angrily. ‘Are you trying to tell me that you two are tourists?’

  ‘Indeed,’ admitted Mrs Nakijima, ‘I make the jump once a year and bring a visitor with me. We touch nothing and never speak to Miss Eyre. As you can see, we are dressed fittingly.’

  ‘Japanese? In mid-nineteenth-century England?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Why not indeed.

  ‘How do you manage it?’

  The woman shrugged.

  ‘I just can,’ she answered simply. ‘I think hard, speak the lines and, well, here I am.’

  I didn’t have time for this at all.

  ‘Listen to me. My name is Thursday Next. I work with Victor Analogy at the LiteraTec office in Swindon. You heard about the theft of the manuscript?’

  She nodded her head.

  ‘There is a dark presence in this book but my plan to extract him is dependent on there being only one way in and one way out. He will stop at nothing to use you to get out if he can. I implore you to jump back home while you still can.’

  Mrs Nakijima consulted for some time with her client. She explained that Mr Suzuki was hoping to see Jane if possible, but that if he were taken back now he would want a refund. I reiterated my position on the matter and they eventually agreed. I followed them to their room upstairs and waited while they packed. Mrs Nakijima and Mr Suzuki both shook me by the hand, held on to each other and evaporated. I shook my head sadly. It seemed there were very few places that the tourist business hadn’t touched.

  I left the warmth of the inn for the chill exterior and made my way past a stall selling late root vegetables and on to The Millcote, where I enquired about any new guests.

  ‘And who would be wanting to see Mr Hedge?’ enquired the innkeeper, spitting into and then polishing a crude beer mug.

  ‘Tell him Miss Next is here to see him.’

  The innkeeper vanished upstairs and returned presently.

  ‘Room Seven,’ he replied shortly, and returned to his duties.

  Acheron was sitting by the window, his back to the door. He didn’t move when I entered.

  ‘Hello, Thursday.’

  ‘Mr Hedge?’

  ‘Locals in mid-nineteenth-century England are a superstitious lot. I thought Hades might seem a little strong for them.’

  He turned to face me, his piercing blue eyes seeming to look straight into me. But his power over me had waned; he could not read me as he had others. He sensed this immediately, gave a half-smile and resumed staring out of the window.

  ‘You grow strong, Miss Next.’

  ‘I thrive on adversity.’

  He gave a short laugh.

  ‘I should have made quite sure of you back at Styx’s apartment.’

  ‘And spoilt all the fun? Your life would be considerably more dull without me and the rest of SpecOps to louse it up.’

  He ignored me and changed the subject.

  ‘Someone as resourceful as you would never have come in here without a way out. What is it, Thursday? A prearranged code to let Mycroft know when to open the door?’

  ‘Something like that. If you give me the instruction manual and Polly I promise you shall have a fair trial.’

  Hades laughed.

  ‘I think I am way beyond a fair trial, Thursday. I could kill you now and I feel a strong urge to do precisely that, but the prospect of being trapped in this narrative for all time bars me from that action. I tried to get to London but it’s impossible; the only towns that exist in this world are the places that Charlotte Bronte wrote about and which feature in the narrative. Gateshead, Lowood—I’m surprised that there is even as much of this town. Give me the code word to get out and you can have the manual and Polly.’

  ‘No. You give me the manual and my aunt first.’

  ‘You see? Impasse. You’ll want to wait until the book is written again, though, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you will expect no trouble from me until such time as Jane leaves Thornfield for good. After that, we negotiate.’

  ‘I won’t negotiate, Hades.’

  Hades shook his head slowly. ‘You’ll negotiate, Miss Next. You may be disgustingly righteous but even you will balk at spending the rest of your life in here. You’re an intelligent woman; I’m sure you’ll think of something.’

  I sighed and walked back outside, where the bustle of the shoppers and traders was a welcome break from the dark soul of Hades.

  33. The book is written

  ‘From our position in the lounge of the Penderyn Hotel we could see Thursday’s good work. The narrative continued rapidly; weeks passed in the space of a few lines. As the words wrote themselves back across the page they were read aloud by Mycroft or myself. We were all waiting for the phrase “sweet madness” to appear in the text, but it didn’t. We
prepared ourselves to assume the worst; that Hades was not caught and might never be. That Thursday might stay in the book as some sort of permanent caretaker.’

  From Bowden Cable’s Journal

  The weeks passed rapidly at Thornfield and I busied myself with the task of making Jane secure without her ever knowing it. I had a young lad positioned at the Millcote to warn of Hades’ movements, but he seemed quite happy just to go out walking every morning, borrow books from the local doctor, and spend his time at the inn. His inaction was a cause of some worry, but I was glad it was merely that for the time being.

  Rochester had sent a note advising of his return and a party was arranged for local friends of his. Jane seemed to be severely agitated by the arrival of the airhead Blanche Ingram, but I gave it little heed. I was busy trying to arrange security with John, the cook’s husband, who was a resourceful and intelligent man. I had taught him to shoot with Rochester’s pistols and he was, I was delighted to find out, an excellent shot. I had thought that Hades might make an appearance with one of the guests but, apart from the arrival of Mr Mason from the West Indies, nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

  The weeks turned into months and I saw little of Jane—on purpose, of course—but kept in contact with the household and Mr Rochester to make sure that all was going well. And it appeared that all was going well. As usual, Mr Mason was bitten by his mad sister in the upper room; I was standing outside the locked door when Rochester went for the doctor and Jane tended to Mason’s wounds. When the doctor arrived I kept watch in the arbour outside, where I knew Jane and Rochester would meet. And so it went on until a brief respite when Jane went away to visit her dying aunt in Gateshead. Rochester had decided to marry Blanche Ingram by this time and things had been slightly tense between him and Jane. I felt some relief that she was away; I could relax and talk to Rochester quite easily without Jane suspecting anything.

  ‘You aren’t sleeping,’ observed Rochester as we walked together on the front lawn. ‘Look how your eyes are dark-rimmed and languorous.’

  ‘I don’t sleep well here, not while Hades is barely five miles distant.’

  ‘Your spies, surely, would alert you to any movement of his?’

  It was true; the network worked well, although not without some considerable expenditure on Rochester’s part. If Hades set off anywhere I knew about it within two minutes from a rider who stood by for just such an occasion. It was in this manner that I was able to find him when he was out, either walking or reading or beating peasants with his stick. He had never come within a mile of the house, and I was happy to keep it that way.

  ‘My spies afford me peace of mind, but I still can’t believe that Hades could be so passive. It chills and worries me.’

  We walked on for a while, Rochester pointing out places of interest to me around the grounds. But I was not listening.

  ‘How did you come to me, that night outside the warehouse, when I was shot?’

  Rochester stopped and looked at me.

  ‘It just happened, Miss Next. I can’t explain it any more than you can explain arriving here when you were a little girl. Apart from Mrs Nakijima and a traveller named Foyle, I don’t know of anyone else who has done it.’

  I was surprised at this.

  ‘You have met Mrs Nakijima, then?’

  ‘Of course. I usually do tours of Thornfield for her guests when Jane is up at Gateshead. It carries no risk and is extremely lucrative. Country houses are not cheap to run, Miss Next, even in this century.’

  I allowed myself a smile. I thought that Mrs Nakijima must be making a very sizeable profit; it was, after all, the ultimate trip for a Bronte fan, and there were plenty of those in Japan.

  ‘What will you do after this?’ asked Rochester, pointing out a rabbit to Pilot, who barked and ran off.

  ‘Back to SpecOps work, I guess,’ I replied. ‘What about you?’

  Rochester looked at me broodingly, his eyebrows furrowed and a look of anger rising across his features.

  ‘There is nothing for me after Jane leaves with that slimy and pathetic excuse for a vertebrate, St John Rivers.’

  ‘So what will you do?’

  ‘Do? I won’t do anything. Existence pretty much ceases for me about then.’

  ‘Death?’

  ‘Not as such,’ replied Rochester, choosing his words carefully. ‘Where you come from you are born, you live and then you die. Am I correct?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘A pretty poor way of living, I should imagine!’ laughed Rochester. ‘And you rely upon that inward eye we call a memory to sustain yourself in times of depression, I suppose?’

  ‘Most of the time,’ I replied, ‘although memory is but one hundredth of the strength of currently felt emotions.’

  ‘I concur. Here, I neither am born, nor die. I come into being at the age of thirty-eight and wink out again soon after, having fallen in love for the first time in my life and then lost the object of my adoration, my being…!’

  He stopped and picked up the stick that Pilot had considerately brought him in place of the rabbit he couldn’t catch.

  ‘You see, I can move myself to anywhere in the book I wish at a moment’s notice and back again at will; the greatest parts of my life lie between the time I profess my true love to that fine, impish girl and the moment the lawyer and that fool Mason turn up to spoil my wedding and reveal the madwoman in the attic. Those are the weeks to which I return most often, but I go to the bad times, too—for without a yardstick sometimes the high points can be taken for granted. Sometimes I muse that I might have John stop them at the church gate and stall them until the wedding is over, but it is against the way of things.’

  ‘So while I am talking to you here—‘

  ‘—I am also meeting Jane for the first time, wooing her, then losing her for ever. I can even see you now, as a small child, your expression of fear under the hooves of my horse—‘

  He felt his elbow.

  ‘And feel the pain of the fall, too. So you see, my existence, although limited, is not without benefits.’

  I sighed. If only life were that simple; if one could jump to the good parts and flick through the bad—

  ‘You have a man you love?’ asked Rochester suddenly.

  ‘Yes; but there is much bad air between us. He accused my brother of a crime that I thought unfair to lay upon the shoulders of a dead man; my brother never had a chance to defend himself and the evidence was not strong. I find it hard to forgive.’

  ‘What is there to forgive?’ demanded Rochester. ‘Ignore forgive and concentrate on living. Life for you is short; far too short to allow small jealousies to infringe on the happiness which can be yours only for the briefest of times.’

  ‘Alas!’ I countered. ‘He is engaged to be married!’

  ‘And what of that?’ scoffed Rochester. ‘Probably to someone as unsuitable for him as Blanche Ingram is for me!’

  I thought about Daisy Mutlar and there did, indeed, seem to be a strong similarity.

  We walked along together in silence until Rochester pulled out a pocket watch and consulted it.

  ‘My Jane is returning from Gateshead as we speak. Where is my pencil and notebook?’

  He rummaged within his jacket and produced a bound drawing-book and a pencil.

  ‘I am to meet her as if by accident; she walks across the fields shortly in this direction. How do I look?’

  I straightened his necktie and nodded my satisfaction.

  ‘Do you think me handsome, Miss Next?’ he asked quite suddenly.

  ‘No,’ I answered truthfully.

  ‘Bah!’ exclaimed Rochester. ‘Pixies both! Begone with you; we will talk later!’

  I left them to it and walked back to the house by way of the lake, deep in thought.

  And so the weeks wore on, the air becoming warmer and the buds starting to shoot on the trees. I hardly saw anything of Rochester or Jane, as they had eyes only for each other. Mrs Fairfax was not highl
y impressed by the union but I told her not to be so unreasonable. She flustered like an old hen at this remark and went about her business. The routine of Thornfield didn’t waver from normalcy for the next few months; the season moved into summer and I was there on the day of the wedding, invited specifically by Rochester and hidden in the vestry. I saw the clergyman, a large man named Mr Wood, ask whether anyone knew of an impediment that might prevent the wedding being lawful or joined by God. I heard the solicitor call out his terrible secret. Rochester, I could see, was beside himself with rage as Briggs read out the affidavit from Mason to declare that the madwoman was Bertha Rochester, Mason’s sister and Rochester’s legal wife. I remained in hiding as the argument ensued, emerging only when the small group was led over to the house by Rochester to meet his mad wife. I didn’t follow; I went for a walk, breathing in the fresh air and avoiding the sadness and anguish in the house as Rochester and Jane realised they could not marry.

  By the following day Jane was gone. I followed at a safe distance to see her take the road to Whitcross, looking like a small stray searching for a better life elsewhere. I watched her until she was out of sight and then walked into Millcote for lunch. Once I had finished my meal at The George I played cards with three travelling gamblers; by suppertime I had taken six guineas off them. As I played, a small boy appeared at our table.

  ‘Hello, William!’ I said. ‘What news?’

  I bent down to the height of the waif, who was dressed in adult-sized hand-me-downs that had been sewn up to fit.

  ‘Begging your pardon, Miss Next, but Mr Hedge has vanished.’

  I leaped up in some alarm, broke into a run and didn’t stop until I arrived at The Millcote. I flew upstairs to the landing, where one of my most trusted spies was tugging at his flat cap nervously. Hades’ room was empty.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss. I was in the bar downstairs, not drinking, mind; I swear to it. He must have slipped past me—‘

  ‘Did anyone else come down the stairs, Daniel? Tell me quick!’