The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [333]
The Bellman, elected head of Jurisfiction and dressed in his usual garb of a town crier, was angrily tingling his bell to try to persuade the crowd to calm down.
“Not again,” muttered Bradshaw as we walked up. “I wonder what the Orals want this time?”
I was unfamiliar with the term Orals, and since I didn’t want to appear foolish, I tried to make sense of the crowd on my own. The person nearest to me was a shepherdess, although that was only a guess on my part as she didn’t have any sheep—only a large crook. A boy dressed in blue with a horn was standing next to her discussing the falling price of lamb, and next to them was a very old woman with a small dog who whined, pretended to be dead, smoked a pipe and performed various other tricks in quick succession. Standing next to her was a small man in a long nightdress and bed hat who yawned loudly. Perhaps I was being slow, but it was only when I saw a large egg with arms and legs that I realized who they were.
“They’re all nursery rhyme characters!” I exclaimed.
“They’re a pain in the whatsit, that’s what they are,” murmured Bradshaw as a small boy jumped from the crowd, grabbed a pig and made a dash for it. Bo-peep hooked his ankle with her crook, and the boy sprawled headlong on the grass. The pig rolled into a flower bed with a startled oink and then beat a hurried escape as a large man started to give the boy six of the best.
“. . . all we want is the same rights as any other character in the BookWorld,” said Humpty-Dumpty, his ovoid face a deep crimson. “Just because we have a duty to children and the oral tradition doesn’t mean we can be taken advantage of.”
The crowd murmured and grunted their agreement. Humpty-Dumpty continued as I stared at him, wondering whether his belt was actually a cravat, as it was impossible to tell which was his neck and which was his waist.
“. . . we have a petition signed by over a thousand Orals who couldn’t make it today,” said the large egg, waving a wad of papers amidst shouts from the crowd.
“We’re not joking this time, Mr. Bellman,” added a baker who was standing in a wooden tub with a butcher and a candlestick maker. “We are quite willing to withdraw our rhymes if our terms are not met.”
There was a chorus of approval from the assembled characters.
“It was fine before they were unionized,” Bradshaw whispered in my ear. “Come on, let’s take the back door.”
We walked around to the side of the house, our feet crunching on the gravel chippings.
“Why can’t characters from the oral tradition be a part of the Character Exchange Program?” I asked.
“Who’d cover for them?” snorted Bradshaw. “You?”
“Couldn’t we train up Generics as sort of, well, ‘character locums’?”
“Best to leave industrial relations to the people with the facts at their fingertips. We can barely keep pace with the volume of new material as it is. I shouldn’t worry about Mr. Dumpty; he’s been agitating for centuries. It’s not our fault he and his badly rhyming friends are still looked after by the old OralTradPlus agreement—Good heavens, Miss Dashwood! Does your mother know that you smoke?”
It was Marianne Dashwood and she had been puffing away at a small cigarette as we rounded the corner. She quickly threw the butt away and held her breath for as long as possible before coughing and letting out a large cloud of smoke.
“Commander!” she wheezed, eyes watering. “Promise you won’t tell!”
“My lips are sealed,” replied Bradshaw sternly, “just this once.”
Marianne breathed a sigh of relief and turned to me. “Miss Next!” she enthused. “Welcome