The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [342]
I told him that I hadn’t.
“When you do, don’t laugh or anything.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
I poured some tea for Miss Havisham, remembering to put the milk in first.
Deane ate a canapé and asked, “So how are things with you these days? Last time we met, you were having a little trouble in the Outland.”
“I’m living in the Well now, as part of the Character Exchange Program.”
“Really? What a lark. How’s the latest Farquitt getting along?”
“Well, I think,” I told him, always sensitive to Deane’s slight shame at being a one-dimensional evil-squire figure, “the working title is Shameless Love.”
“Sounds like a Farquitt,” sighed Deane. “There’ll probably be a rustic serving girl who is ravaged by someone like me, cruelly cast from the house to have her baby in the poorhouse—only to have their revenge ten chapters later.”
“Well, I don’t know—”
“It’s not fair, you know,” he said, his mood changing. “Why should I be condemned, reading after reading, to drink myself to a sad and lonely death eight pages before the end?”
“Because you’re the bad guy and they always get their comeuppance in Farquitt novels?”
“It’s still not fair.” He scowled. “I’ve applied for an Internal Plot Adjustment countless times but they keep turning me down. You wouldn’t have a word with Miss Havisham, would you? She’s on the Council of Genres Plot Adjustment subcommittee, I’m told.”
“Would that be appropriate? Me talking to her, I mean?”
“Not really,” he retorted, “but I’m willing to try anything. Speak to her, won’t you?”
I told him I would try but decided on the face of it that I probably wouldn’t. Deane seemed pleasant enough at Jurisfiction, but in The Squire of High Potternews he was a monster. Dying sad, lonely and forgotten was probably just right for him—in narrative terms, anyway.
I gave the tea to Miss Havisham, who abruptly broke off talking to Perkins as I approached. She gave me a grimace and vanished. I followed her to the second floor of the Great Library, where I found her in the Brontë section already with a copy of Wuthering Heights in her hand. I knew from Havisham’s hatred of men that she probably did have a soft spot for Heathcliff—but I imagined it was only the treacherous marsh below Penistone crag.
“Did you meet the three witches, by the way?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “They told me—”
“Ignore everything they say. Look at the trouble they got Macbeth into.”
“But they said—”
“I don’t want to hear it. Claptrap and mumbo jumbo. They are troublemakers and nothing more. Understand?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t say ‘Sure’—it’s so slovenly! What’s wrong with ‘Yes, Miss Havisham’?”
“Yes, Miss Havisham.”
“Better, I suppose. Come, we are Brontë bound!”
And so saying, we read ourselves into the pages of Wuthering Heights.
12.
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights was the only novel written by Emily Brontë, which some say is just as well, and others, a crying shame. Quite what she would have written had she lived longer is a matter of some conjecture; given Emily’s strong-willed and passionate character, probably more of the same. But one thing is certain; whatever feelings are aroused in the reader by Heights, whether sadness for the ill-matched lovers, irritability at Catherine’s petulant ways or even profound rage at how stupid Heathcliff’s victims can act as they meekly line up to be abused, one thing is for sure: the evocation of a wild and windswept place that so well reflects the destructive passion of the two central characters is captured here brilliantly—and some would say, it has not been surpassed.
MILLON DE FLOSS,
Wuthering Heights: Masterpiece or Turgid Rubbish?
IT WAS SNOWING when we arrived and the wind whipped the flakes into something akin to a large cloud of excitable winter midges. The house was a lot smaller than I imagined but no less shabby, even under the softening cloak of snow. The shutters hung askew and only the faintest glimmer of light showed from within. It was clear we were visiting the house not in the good days of old Mr. Earnshaw but in the tenure of Mr. Heathcliff,