The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [320]
“What about if we were to go?” I ventured, thinking practically for once. “There can’t be anything more irregular than go, went, gone, can there?”
“Because,” replied Miss Havisham, her patience eroding by the second, “they might misconstrue it as walked—note the ed ending?”
“Not if we ran,” I added, not wanting to let this go. “That’s irregular, too.”
Miss Havisham stared at me icily. “Of course we could. But ran might be seen in the eyes of a hungry Verbisoid to be either trotted, galloped, raced, rushed, hurried, hastened, sprinted and even departed.”
“Ah,” I said, realizing that trying to catch Miss Havisham out was about as likely as nailing Banquo’s ghost to a coffee table, “yes, it might, mightn’t it?”
“Look,” said Miss Havisham, softening slightly, “if running away killed grammasites, there wouldn’t be a single one left. Stick to ‘Jerusalem’ and you won’t go far wrong—just don’t try it with adjectivores or the parataxis; they’d probably join in—and then eat you.”
She snorted, picked up the bundle of waistcoats and pulled me towards the elevator, which had just reopened. It was clear that the twenty-second subbasement wasn’t a place she liked to be. I couldn’t say I blamed her.
She relaxed visibly as we rose from the subbasements and into the more ordered nature of the library itself. We weren’t alone in the elevator. With us was a large Painted Jaguar and her son, who had a paddy-paw full of prickles and was complaining bitterly that he had been tricked by a hedgehog and a tortoise, who had both escaped. The Mother Jaguar shook her head sadly and looked at us both with an exasperated air before addressing her son:
“Son, son,” she said, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, “what have you been doing that you shouldn’t have?”
“So,” said Miss Havisham as the elevator moved off, “how are you getting along in that frightful Caversham Heights book?”
“Well, thank you, Miss Havisham,” I muttered, “the characters in it are worried that their book will be demolished from under their feet.”
“With good reason I expect. Hundreds of books like Heights are demolished every day. If you stopped to waste any sympathy, you’d go nuts—so don’t. It’s man eat man in the Well. I’d keep yourself to yourself and don’t make too many friends—they have a habit of dying just when you get to like them. It always happens that way. It’s a narrative thing.”
“Heights isn’t a bad place to live,” I ventured, hoping to elicit a bit of compassion.
“Doubtless,” she murmured, staring at the floor indicator. “I remember when I was in the Well, when they were building Great Expectations. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world when they told me I would be working with Charles Dickens. Top of my class at Generic College and, without seeming immodest, something of a beauty. I thought I would make an admirable young Estella—both refined and beautiful, haughty and proud, yet ultimately overcoming the overbearing crabbiness of her cantankerous benefactor to find true love.”
“So . . . what happened?”
“I wasn’t tall enough.”
“Tall enough? For a book? Isn’t that like having the wrong hair color for the wireless?”
“They gave the part to a little strumpet who was on salvage from a demolished Thackeray. Little cow. It’s no wonder I treat her so rotten—the part should have been mine!”
She fell into silence.
“Let me get this straight,” said the Painted Jaguar, who was having a bit of trouble telling the difference between a hedgehog and a tortoise. “If it’s slow and solid, I drop him in the water and then scoop him out of his shell—”
“Son, son!” said his mother, ever so many times, graciously waving her tail. “Now attend to me and remember what I say. A hedgehog curls himself up into a ball and his prickles stick out every way—”
“Did you get the Jurisfiction exam papers I sent you?” asked Miss Havisham. “I’ve got your practical booked for the day after tomorrow.”
“Oh!” I said with quite the wrong tone in my voice.
“Problems?” she asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
“No, ma’am—I just feel a bit unprepared—I think I might make a pig