The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [1]
I wasn’t a member of the ChronoGuard. I never wanted to be. By all accounts it’s not a huge barrel of laughs, although the pay is good and the service boasts a retirement plan that is second to none: a one-way ticket to anywhere and anywhen you want. No, that wasn’t for me. I was what we called an “operative grade I” for SO-27, the Literary Detective Division of the Special Operations Network based in London. It’s way less flash than it sounds. Since 1980 the big criminal gangs had moved in on the lucrative literary market and we had much to do and few funds to do it with. I worked under Area Chief Boswell, a small, puffy man who looked like a bag of flour with arms and legs. He lived and breathed the job; words were his life and his love—he never seemed happier than when he was on the trail of a counterfeit Coleridge or a fake Fielding. It was under Boswell that we arrested the gang who were stealing and selling Samuel Johnson first editions; on another occasion we uncovered an attempt to authenticate a flagrantly unrealistic version of Shakespeare’s lost work, Cardenio. Fun while it lasted, but only small islands of excitement among the ocean of day-to-day mundanities that is SO-27: We spent most of our time dealing with illegal traders, copyright infringements and fraud.
I had been with Boswell and SO-27 for eight years, living in a Maida Vale apartment with Pickwick, a regenerated pet dodo left over from the days when reverse extinction was all the rage and you could buy home cloning kits over the counter. I was keen—no, I was desperate—to get away from the Litera Tecs but transfers were unheard of and promotion a nonstarter. The only way I was going to make full inspector was if my immediate superior moved on or out. But it never happened; Inspector Turner’s hope to marry a wealthy Mr. Right and leave the service stayed just that—a hope—as so often Mr. Right turned out to be either Mr. Liar, Mr. Drunk or Mr. Already Married.
As I said earlier, my father had a face that could stop a clock; and that’s exactly what happened one spring morning as I was having a sandwich in a small café not far from work. The world flickered, shuddered and stopped. The proprietor of the café froze in midsentence and the picture on the television stopped dead. Outside, birds hung motionless in the sky. Cars and trams halted in the streets and a cyclist involved in an accident stopped in midair, the look of fear frozen on his face as he paused two feet from the hard asphalt. The sound halted too, replaced by a dull snapshot of a hum, the world’s noise at that moment in time paused indefinitely at the same pitch and volume.
“How’s my gorgeous daughter?”
I turned. My father was sitting at a table and rose to hug me affectionately.
“I’m good,” I replied, returning his hug tightly. “How’s my favorite father?”
“Can’t complain. Time is a fine physician.”
I stared at him for a moment.
“Y’know,” I muttered, “I think you’re looking younger every time I see you.”
“I am. Any grandchildren in the offing?”
“The way I’m going? Not ever.”
My father smiled and raised an eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t say that quite yet.”
He handed me a Woolworths bag.
“I was in ’78 recently,” he announced. “I brought you this.”
He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn’t recognize the title.
“Didn’t they split in ’70?”
“Not always. How are things?”
“Same as ever. Authentications, copyright, theft—”
“—same old shit?”
“Yup.” I nodded. “Same old shit. What brings you here?”
“I went to see your mother three weeks ahead your time,” he answered, consulting the large chronograph on his wrist. “Just the usual—ahem—reason. She’s going to paint the bedroom mauve in a week’s time—will you have a word and dissuade her? It doesn’t match the curtains.”
“How is she?”
He sighed deeply.
“Radiant, as always. Mycroft and