The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [403]
She got the message and drove me along the road towards Pendine. Before we arrived I could see the Bluebird on the sands, together with Mr. Toad’s car and a small group of people. The tide was out and a broad expanse of inviting smooth sand greeted Miss Havisham. As I watched, my pulse racing, two plumes of black smoke erupted from the back of the record-breaker as the engines fired up. Even through the window I could hear the guttural cry of the engines.
“Dewch ymlaen!” I urged the driver, and we swerved onto the car park just near the statue of John Parry Thomas. I ran down onto the beach, arms waving and yelling, but no one heard me above the roar of the engines, and even if they had, there was little reason for them to take any notice.
“Hi!” I shouted. “Miss Havisham!”
I ran as fast as I could but only exhausted myself so that I ran slower with every passing step.
“Stop!” I yelled, getting weaker and breathless. “For pity’s sake—!”
But it was too late. With another deep growl the car moved off and started to gather speed across the sand. I stopped and dropped to my knees, trying to gulp deep lungfuls of air, my heart racing. The car hurtled away from me, the engine roar fading as she tore along the hard sand. I watched it go at medium speed to the far end of the beach, then turn in a large arc for the first of her two runs. The engine growled again, rising to a high scream as the car gathered speed, the driving wheels throwing a shower of sand and pebbles far behind it. I willed her to be safe and for nothing to happen, and indeed, nothing did until she was decelerating after the first run. I was breathing a sigh of relief when one of the front wheels broke loose and was dragged beneath the car, throwing it up into the air. The front edge of the bodywork dug into the sand and the car swerved violently sideways. I heard a cry of fear from the small crowd and a series of sickening thuds as the car rolled end over end down the beach, the engine screaming out of control as the wheels gripped nothing but air. It came to rest right way up not five hundred yards from me, and I ran towards it. I was three hundred yards away when the petrol tank ignited in a mushroom of fire that lifted the three-ton car from the sand. When I got there, I jumped onto the front of the car and pulled Miss Havisham from the burning wreck, dragged her clear and rolled her on the sand to extinguish the flames.
“Water!” I cried. “Water for her burns!”
The small crowd of onlookers were hopeless and could do nothing but stare at us in shock as I used my pocketknife to cut away the burnt remnants of her wedding veil. I winced as I worked—she was horribly burned.
“Thursday?” she murmured, although she couldn’t see me. “Please—please take me home.”
I’d never jumped dual, taking someone with me, but I did it now. I jumped clean out of Pendine and into Great Expectations, right into Miss Havisham’s room at Satis House, next to the rotting wedding party that never was, the darkened room, the clocks stopped at twenty to nine. It was the place where I had first seen her all those weeks ago, and it would be the place I saw her last. I laid her on the bed and tried to make her comfortable.
“Cat!”1
“There’s been a code-12. Fictional vehicle left on Pendine sands in the Outland. I need a fixed perimeter and a cleanup gang ASAP!”2
“Not good, Chesh. I’ll get back to you.”3
“Dear Thursday,” said Miss Havisham, clasping my hand in hers, “was it an accident?”
“I don’t know, Miss Havisham. But the Eject-O-Hat was not mine—it was intended for you.”
She sighed. “Then, then . . . they got to me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. This is the BookWorld so it’s got to be someone close and whom we don’t suspect. Someone we thought was a friend.”
“Bradshaw?”
She shook her head and started to cough. For a moment, I didn’t think she would stop. The Jurisfiction medic jumped into the darkened room, followed by several