The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [255]
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!”
I picked up the heavy 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 where a series of adventure books for plucky girls by Charles Pickens were stored. I sighed, read the library passage again and was soon with Miss Havisham.
“This is the outings book,” she said without looking up from one of the reading desks. “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 upwards 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 nervous, because she said: “ Everything okay? You can bail out whenever you want, you know. Say the word and you’ll be back in Swindon before you can say ‘Mrs. Hubbard.’ ”
It wasn’t a threat. She was giving me a way out. I thought of Landen and the baby. I’d survived the book sales and Jane Eyre with no ill effects—how hard could “footling” with the backstory 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 bookjump. 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 opened the book and read aloud from the first page, making quite sure I had hold of the bag this time:
“. . . Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon toward evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes;