The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [326]
8.
Ton-Sixty on the A419
The wealthy son of a Polish count and an American mother, Louis Zborowski lived at Higham Place near Canterbury, where he built three aero-engined cars, all called Chitty Bang Bang. But there was a fourth: the Higham Special, a car he and Clive Gallop had engineered by squeezing a twenty-seven-liter aero-engine into a Rubery Owen chassis and mating it with a Benz gearbox. At the time of Zborowski’s death at Monza behind the wheel of a Mercedes, the Special had been lapping Brooklands at 116 mph—but her potential was as yet unproved. After a brief stint with a lady owner whose identity has not been revealed, the Special was sold to Parry Thomas, who with careful modifications of his own pushed the land speed record up to 170.624 mph at Pendine sands, south Wales, in 1926.
THE VERY REVEREND MR. TOREDLYNE,
The Land Speed Record
HAS SHE BEEN boring you, Mr. Perkins?” called out Havisham.
“Not at all,” replied Perkins, giving me a wink, “she has been a most attentive student.”
“Humph,” muttered Havisham. “Hope springs eternal. Get in, girl, we’re off!”
I paused. I had been driven by Miss Havisham once before, and that was in a car that I thought relatively safe. This beast of an automobile looked as though it could kill you twice before even reaching second gear.
“What are you waiting for, girl?” said Havisham impatiently. “If I let the Special idle any longer, we’ll coke up the plugs. Besides, I’ll need all the fuel to do the run.”
“The run?”
“Don’t worry!” shouted Miss Havisham as she revved the engine. The car lurched sideways with the torque, and a throaty growl filled the air. “You won’t be aboard when I do—you’re needed for other duties.”
I took a deep breath and climbed into the small two-seater body. It looked newly converted and was little more than a racing car with a few frills tacked on to make it roadworthy. Miss Havisham depressed the clutch and wrestled with the gearshift for a moment. The large sprockets took up the power with a slight tug; it felt like a Thoroughbred racehorse that had just got the scent of a steeplechase.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Home!” answered Miss Havisham as she moved the hand throttle. The car leaped forward across the grassy courtyard and gathered speed.
“To Great Expectations?” I asked as Miss Havisham steered in a broad circuit, fiddling with the levers in the center of the massive steering wheel.
“Not my home,” she retorted, “yours!”
With another deep growl and a lurch the car accelerated rapidly forward—but to where I was not sure. In front of us lay the broken drawbridge and stout stone walls of the castle.
“Fear not!” yelled Havisham above the roar of the engine. “I’ll read us into the Outland as easy as blinking!”
We gathered speed. I expected us to jump straightaway, but we didn’t. We carried on towards the heavy castle wall at a speed not wholly compatible with survival.
“Miss Havisham?” I asked, my voice tinged with fear.
“I’m just trying to think of the best words to get us there, girl!” she replied cheerfully.
“Stop!” I yelled as the point of no return came and went in a flash.
“Let me see . . . ,” muttered Havisham, thinking hard, the accelerator still wide open.
I covered my eyes. The car was running too fast to jump out and a collision seemed inevitable. I grasped the side of the car’s body and tensed as Miss Havisham took herself, me and two tons of automobile through the barriers of fiction and into the real world. My world.
I opened my eyes again. Miss Havisham was studying a road map as the Higham Special swerved down the middle of the road. I grabbed the steering wheel as a milk-float swerved into the hedge.
“I won’t use the M4 in case the C of G get wind of it,” she said, looking around. “We’ll use the A419—are we anywhere close?”
I recognized where we were instantly. Just north of Swindon outside a small town called Highworth.
“Continue round the roundabout and up