The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [370]
“Not at all!” Havisham grinned with a strange look in her eye. “Assessed work has to be done solo; I’ll mark you on your report and the successful—or not—realigned story within the book. This is so simple even you can’t mess it up.”
“Couldn’t I do Lady Bertram’s pug?” I asked, trying to make it sound like something hard and of great consequence.
“Out of the question! Besides, I don’t do children’s books anymore—not after the incident with Larry the Lamb. But since Shadow is out of print, no one will notice if you make a pig’s ear of it. Remember that Jurisfiction is an honorable establishment and you should reflect that in your bearing and countenance. Be resolute in your work and fair and just. Destroy grammasites with extreme prejudice—and shun any men with amorous intentions.”
She thought for a moment. “Or any intentions, come to that. Have you got your TravelBook to enable you to jump back?”
I patted my breast pocket where the slim volume was kept and she was gone, only to return a few moments later to swap dogs and vanish again. I read my way diligently to the second floor of the Library and picked Shadow the Sheepdog off the shelf. I paused. I was nervous and my palms had started to sweat. I scolded myself. How hard could a plot adjustment in an Enid Blyton be? I took a deep breath and, notwithstanding the simplistic nature of the novel, opened the slim volume with an air of serious trepidation—as though it were War and Peace.
19.
Shadow the Sheepdog
Shadow the Sheepdog, the story of a supremely loyal and intelligent sheepdog in a rural prewar countryside, was published by Collins in 1950. A compulsive scribbler from her early teens, Enid Blyton found escape from her own unhappy childhood in the simple tales she wove for children. She has been republished in revised forms to suit modern tastes and has consistently remained popular over five decades. The independently minded children of her stories live in an idealized world of eternal summer holidays, adventure, high tea, ginger beer, cake and grown-ups with so little intelligence that they need everything explained to them—something that is not so very far from the truth.
MILLON DE FLOSS,
Enid Blyton
I READ MYSELF INTO Shadow’s featured town halfway down page 231. Johnny, the farmer’s boy who was Shadow’s owner and coprotagonist, would be having Shadow’s eyes checked in a few days, so a brief reconnaissance of the locality seemed like a good idea. If I could persuade rather than order the vet to swap the dogs, then so much the better. I alighted in a town that looked like some sort of forties English rural idyll—a mix between Warwickshire and the Dales. All green grass, show-quality cattle, yellow-lichened stone walls, sunshine and healthy-looking, smiling people. Horses pulled carts laden high with hay down the main street, and the odd shiny motorcar puttered past. Pies cooled on windowsills and children played with hoops and tinplate steam engines. The smell in the breeze was of freshly mown grass, clean linen and cooking. Here was a world of high tea, tasty trifles, zero crime, eternal summers and boundless good health. I suspected living here might be quite enjoyable—for about a week.
I was nodded at by a passerby.
“Beautiful day!” she said politely.
“Yes. My—”
“Rain later?”
I looked up at the puffy clouds that stretched away to the horizon. “I shouldn’t have thought so, but can you—”
“Well, be seeing you!” said the woman politely, and was gone.
I found an alleyway and tied the sheepdog to a downpipe; it was neither useful nor necessary to lead a dog around town for the next few hours. I walked carefully down the road, past a family butcher’s, a tearoom and sweetshop selling nothing but gobstoppers, bull’s-eyes, ginger beer, lemonade and licorice. A few doors farther on I found a newsagent and post office combined. The outside of the small shop was liberally covered with enamel signs advertising Fry’s chocolates, Colman’s starch, Wyncarnis tonic, Ovaltine and Lyons cakes. A small sign told me I could