The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [414]
“I’m fine, really.”
“I’m sure you are—but since you have only recently qualified and are without a mentor, we felt it was better if you were taken off the active list for a while.”
“ ‘We’?”
He picked up his clipboard, which had beeped at him. Havisham had told me that he never actually placed any papers in the all-important clipboard—the words were beamed directly there from Text Grand Central.
“The Council of Genres have taken a personal interest in your case,” he said after reading the clipboard. “I think they felt you were too valuable to lose through stress—an Outlander in Jurisfiction is quite a coup, as you know. You have powers of self-determination that we can only dream of. Take it in the good spirit it is meant, won’t you?”
“So I don’t get to take Havisham’s place at Jurisfiction?”
“I’m afraid not. Perhaps when the dust has settled. Who knows? In the BookWorld, anything is possible.”
He handed me a scrap of paper. “Report to Solomon on the twenty-sixth floor. Good luck!”
I got up, thanked the Bellman and left his office. There was silence as I walked back past the other agents, who looked at me apologetically. I had been canned through no fault of my own, and everyone knew it. I sat down at Havisham’s desk and looked at all her stuff. She had been replaced by a Generic in Expectations, and although they would look almost identical, it could never be the same person. The Havisham that I had known had been lost at Pendine sands. I sighed. Perhaps demotion was a good thing. After all, I did have a lot to learn, and working with the C of G for a bit probably had its merits.
“Miss Next?”
It was Commander Bradshaw.
“Hello, sir.”
He smiled and raised his hat. “Would you care to have tea with me on the veranda?”
“I’d be delighted.”
He smiled, took me by the arm and jumped us both into Bradshaw Hunts Big Game. I had never been to East Africa, either in our world or this, but it was as beautiful as I had imagined it from the many images I had grown up with. Bradshaw’s house was a low colonial building with a veranda facing the setting sun; the land around the house was wild scrub and whistling thorns. Herds of wildebeests and zebras wandered across in a desultory manner, their hooves kicking up red dust as they moved.
“Quite beautiful, wouldn’t you say?”
“Extraordinary,” I replied, staring at the scenery.
“Isn’t it just?” He grinned. “Appreciate a woman who knows beauty when she sees it.”
His voice lowered a tone. “Havisham was one of the finest, a little too fast for me, but a good egg in a scrap. She was very fond of you.”
“And I of her. Mr. Bradshaw—”
“Trafford. Call me Trafford.”
“Trafford, do you think it was an accident?”
“Well, it looked like one,” he said after thinking for a moment, “but then a real one and a written one are pretty similar, even to an expert eye. Mr. Toad was pretty cut up about it and got into a helluva pickle for visiting the Outland without permission. Why, are you still suspicious?”
I shrugged. “It’s in my nature. Someone wants me off the active list and it isn’t the Bellman. Did Havisham confide in you about Perkins?”
“Only that she thought he’d been murdered.”
“Had he?”
“Who knows?” Bradshaw took off his hat and fanned himself with it. “The office think it’s Deane, but we’ll never know for sure until we arrest him. Have you met the memsahib? My darling, this is Thursday Next—a colleague from work.”
I looked up and jumped slightly because Mrs. Bradshaw was, in fact, a gorilla. She was large and hairy and was dressed only in a floral-patterned pinafore.
“Good evening,” I said, slightly taken aback, “a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Bradshaw.”
“Good evening,” replied the gorilla politely, “would you like some cake with your tea? Alphonse has made an excellent lemon sponge.