The Eyre Affair

A screech of tyres roused me from my thoughts. I looked up. In the middle of the hospital room was a brightly painted sports car.

I blinked twice but it didn’t vanish. There was no earthly reason why it should be in the room or even any evidence as to how it got there, the door being only wide enough for a bed, but there it was. I could smell the exhaust and hear the engine ticking over, but for some reason I did not find it at all unusual. The occupants were staring at me. The driver was a woman in her mid-thirties who looked sort of familiar.

‘Thursday—!’ cried the driver with a sense of urgency in her voice.

I frowned. It all looked real and I was definitely sure I had seen the driver somewhere before. The passenger, a young man in a suit whom I didn’t know, waved cheerily.

‘He didn’t die!’ said the woman, as though she wouldn’t have long to speak. ‘The car crash was a blind! Men like Acheron don’t die that easily! Take the LiteraTec job in Swindon!’

‘Swindon—?’ I echoed. I thought I had escaped that town—it afforded me a few too many painful memories.

I opened my mouth to speak but there was another screech of rubber and the car departed, folding up rather than fading out until there was nothing left but the echo of the tyres and the faint smell of exhaust. Pretty soon that had gone too, leaving no clue as to its strange appearance. I held my head in my hands. The driver had been very familiar. It had been me.

My arm was almost healed by the time the internal inquiry circulated its findings. I wasn’t permitted to read it but I wasn’t bothered. If I had known what was in it, I would probably only have been more dissatisfied and annoyed than I was already. Boswell had visited me again to tell me I had been awarded six months’ sick leave before returning, but it didn’t help. I didn’t want to return to the LiteraTec’s office; at least, not in London.

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Paige. She had turned up to help me pack before I was discharged from hospital.

‘Six months’ leave can be a long time if you’ve got no hobbies or family or boyfriend,’ she went on. She could be very direct at times.

‘I have lots of hobbies.’

‘Name one.’

‘Painting.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. I’m currently painting a seascape.’

‘How long has it taken you so far?’

‘About seven years.’

‘It must be very good.’

‘It’s a piece of crap.’

‘Seriously, though,’ said Turner, who had become closer to me in these past few weeks than during the entire time we had known each other, ‘what are you going to do?’

I handed her the SpecOps 27 gazette; it outlined’ postings around the country. Paige looked at the entry that I had circled in red ink.

‘Swindon?’

‘Why not? It’s home.’

‘Home it might be,’ replied Turner, ‘but weird it definitely is.’ She tapped the job description. ‘It’s only for an operative—you’ve been acting Inspector for over three years!’

‘Three and a half. It doesn’t matter. I’m going.’

I didn’t tell Paige the real reason. It could have been a coincidence, of course, but the advice from the driver of the car had been most specific: Take the LiteraTec job in Swindon! Perhaps the vision had been real after all; the gazette with the job offer had arrived after the visitation by the car. If it had been right about the job in Swindon, it stood to reason that perhaps the news about Hades was also correct. Without any further thought, I had applied. I couldn’t tell Paige about the car; if she had known, friendship notwithstanding, she would have reported me to Boswell. Boswell would have spoken to Flanker and all sorts of unpleasantness might have happened. I was getting quite good at concealing the truth, and I felt happier now than I had for months.

‘We’ll miss you in the department, Thursday.’

‘It’ll pass.’

‘I’ll miss you.’

‘Thanks, Paige, I appreciate it. I’ll miss you, too.’

We hugged, she told me to keep in touch, and left the room, pager bleeping.

I finished packing and thanked the nursing staff, who gave me a brown paper parcel as I was about to leave.

‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘It belonged to whoever saved your life that night.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A passer-by attended to you before the medics arrived; the wound in your arm was plugged and they wrapped you in their coat to keep you warm. Without their intervention you might well have bled to death.’

Intrigued, I opened the package. Firstly, there was a handkerchief that despite several washings still bore the stains of my own blood. There was an embroidered monogram in the corner that read ‘EFR’. Secondly the parcel contained a jacket, a sort of casual evening coat that might have been very popular in the middle of the last century. I searched the pockets and found a bill from a milliner. It was made out to one Edward Fairfax Rochester, Esq. and was dated 1833. I sat down heavily on the bed and stared at the two articles of clothing and the bill. Ordinarily I would not have believed that Rochester could have torn himself from the pages of Jane Eyre and come to my aid that night; such a thing is, of course, quite impossible. I might have dismissed the whole thing as a ludicrously complicated prank had it not been for one thing: Edward Rochester and I had met once before…

6. Jane Eyre: A short excursion into the novel

‘Outside Styx’s apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, nor would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey—and returned.’

Thursday Next. A Life in SpecOps

It was 1958. My uncle and aunt—who even then seemed old—had taken me up to Haworth House, the old Bronte residence, for a visit. I had been learning about William Thackeray at school, and since the Brontes were contemporaries of his it seemed a good opportunity to further my interest in these matters. My Uncle Mycroft was giving a lecture at Bradford University on his remarkable mathematical work regarding game theory, the most practical side of which allowed one to win at Snakes and Ladders every time. Bradford was near to Haworth, so a combined visit seemed a good idea.

We were led around by the guide, a fluffy woman in her sixties with steel-rimmed spectacles and an Angora cardigan who steered the tourists around the rooms with an abrupt manner, as though she felt that none of them could possibly know as much as she did, but would grudgingly assist to lift them from the depths of their own ignorance. Near the end of the tour, when thoughts had turned to picture postcards and ice cream, the prize exhibit in the form of the original manuscript of Jane Eyre greeted the tired museum-goers.

Although the pages had browned with age and the black ink faded to a light brown, the writing could still be read by the practised eye, the fine spidery longhand flowing across the page in a steady stream of inventive