The Eyre Affair tn-1 Read online

  We played like this for perhaps ten minutes, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I knew that if I did I would smile and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted him to know I was still pissed off. Then he could charm me. When the piece finally came to an end I continued to stare ahead. The man next to me didn’t move.

  ‘Hello, Landen,’ I said finally.

  ‘Hello, Thursday.’

  I played a couple of notes absently but still didn’t look up.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ I said.

  ‘A lot of water under the bridge,’ he replied. ‘Ten years’ worth.’

  His voice sounded the same. The warmth and sensitivity I had once known so well were still there. I looked up at him, caught his gaze and looked away quickly. I had felt my eyes moisten. I was embarrassed by my feelings and scratched my nose nervously. He had gone slightly grey but he wore his hair in much the same manner. There were slight wrinkles around his eyes, but they might just as easily have been from laughing as from age. He was thirty when I walked out; I had been twenty-six. I wondered whether I had aged as well as he had. Was I too old to still hold a grudge? After all, getting into a strop with Landen wasn’t going to bring Anton back. I felt an urge to ask him if it was too late to try again, but as I opened my mouth the world juddered to a halt. The D sharp I had just pressed kept on sounding and Landen stared at me, his eyes frozen in mid-blink. Dad’s timing could not have been worse.

  ‘Hello, Sweetpea!’ he said, walking up to me out of the shadows. ‘Am I disturbing anything?’

  ‘Most definitely—yes.’

  ‘I won’t be long, then. What do you make of this?’

  He handed me a yellow curved thing about the size of a large carrot.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, smelling it cautiously.

  ‘It’s the fruit of a new plant designed completely from scratch seventy years from now. Look—‘

  He peeled the skin off and let me taste it.

  ‘Good, eh? You can pick it well before ripe, transport it thousands of miles if necessary and it will keep fresh in its own hermetically sealed biodegradable packaging. Nutritious and tasty, too. It was sequenced by a brilliant engineer named Anna Bannon. We’re a bit lost as to what to call it. Any ideas?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something. What are you going to do with it?’

  ‘I thought I’d introduce it somewhere in the tenth millennium before the present one and see how it goes—food for mankind, that sort of thing. Well, time waits for no man, as we say. I’ll let you get back to Landen.’

  The world flickered and started up again. Landen opened his eyes and stared at me.

  ‘Banana,’ I said, suddenly realising what it was that my father had shown me.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Banana. They named it after the designer.’

  ‘Thursday, you’re making no sense at all,’ said Landen with a bemused grin.

  ‘My dad was just here.’

  ‘Ah. Is he still of all time?’

  ‘Still the same. Listen, I’m sorry about what happened.’

  ‘Me too,’ replied Landen, then lapsed into silence. I wanted to touch his face but I said instead:

  ‘I missed you.’

  It was the wrong thing to say and I cursed myself; too much, too soon. Landen shuffled uneasily.

  ‘You should take aim more carefully. I missed you a lot, too. The first year was the worst.’

  Landen paused for a moment. He played a few notes on the piano and then said: ‘I have a life and I like it here. Sometimes I think that Thursday Next was just a character from one of my novels, someone I made up in the image of the woman I wanted to love. Now… well, I’m over it.’

  It wasn’t really what I was hoping to hear, but after all that had happened I couldn’t blame him.

  ‘But you came to find me.’

  Landen smiled at me. ‘You’re in my town, Thurs. When a friend comes in from out of town, you look them up. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?’

  ‘And you buy them flowers? Does Colonel Phelps get roses too?’

  ‘No, he gets lilies. Old habits die hard.’

  ‘I see. You’ve been doing well for yourself

  ‘Thanks,’ he replied. ‘You never answered my letters.’

  ‘I never read your letters.’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘I can’t see that’s any of your business.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no.’

  The conversation had taken a turn for the worse. It was time to bale out. ‘Listen, I’m bushed, Landen. I have a very big day ahead of me.’

  I got up. Landen limped after me. He had lost a leg in the Crimea but he was well used to it by now. He caught up with me at the bar.

  ‘Dinner one night?’

  I turned to face him. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Tuesday?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Good,’ said Landen, rubbing his hands. ‘We could get the old unit back together—‘

  This wasn’t what I had in mind. ‘Hang on. Tuesday’s not very good after all.’

  ‘Why not? It was fine three seconds ago. Has your dad been round again?’

  ‘No, I just have a lot of things that I have to do and Pickwick needs kennelling and I have to pick him up at the station as airships make him nervous. You remember the time we took him up to Mull and he vomited all over the steward?’

  I checked myself. I was starting to blabber like an idiot.

  ‘And don’t tell me,’ added Landen, ‘you have to wash your hair?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘What work are you doing in Swindon anyway?’ asked Landen.

  ‘I wash up at SmileyBurger.’

  ‘Sure you do. SpecOps?’

  I nodded my head. ‘I joined Swindon’s LiteraTec unit.’

  ‘Permanently?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you’ve come back to Swindon for good?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I placed my hand on his. I wanted to hug him and burst into tears and tell him I loved him and would always love him like some huge emotional dumb girlie, but time wasn’t quite right, as my father would say. I decided to get on the question offensive instead so I asked:

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never thought about it?’

  ‘I thought about it a lot.’

  We both lapsed into silence. There was so much to say that neither of us could think of any way to start. Landen opened a second front: ‘Want to see Richard III?

  ‘Is it still running?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m tempted but the fact remains I don’t know when I will be free. Things are… volatile at present.’

  I could see he didn’t believe me. I couldn’t really tell him I was on the trail of a master criminal who could steal thoughts and project images at will; who was invisible on film and could murder and laugh as he did so. Landen sighed, dug out a calling card and placed it on the counter.

  ‘Call me. Whenever you’re free. Promise?’

  ‘Promise.’

  He kissed me on the cheek, finished his drink, looked at me again and limped out of the bar. I was left looking at his calling card. I didn’t pick it up. I didn’t need to. The number was the one I remembered.

  My room was exactly like all the other rooms in the hotel. The pictures were screwed to the walls and the drinks in the mini-bar had been opened, drunk, then resealed with water or cold tea by travelling reps too mean to pay for them. The room faced north; I could just see the airship field. A large forty-seater was moored on the mast, its silver flanks floodlit in the dark night. The small dirigible that had brought me in had continued on to Salisbury; I briefly thought about catching it again when it called on its return the day after tomorrow. I turned on the television just in time to catch Today in Parliament. The Crimean debate had been raging all day and wasn’t over yet. I emptied my pockets of loose change, took my automatic out of its shoulder holster and o
pened the bedside drawer. It was full. Apart from the Gideon’s Bible there were the teachings of Buddha and an English copy of the Koran. There was also a GSD volume of prayer and a Wesleyian pamphlet, two amulets from the Society for Christian Awareness, the thoughts of St Zylkx and the now mandatory Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I removed all the books, stuffed them in the cupboard and placed my automatic in the drawer instead. I unzipped my case and started to organise my room. I hadn’t rented out my apartment in London; I didn’t know if I was staying here or not. Oddly, the town had started to feel very comfortable and I wasn’t sure whether I liked that or not. I laid everything on my bed and then put it carefully away. I placed a few books on the desk and the life-saving copy of Jane Eyre on to the bedside table. I picked up Landen’s photo and walked over to the bureau, thought for a moment and then placed it upside down in my knicker drawer. With the real thing around I had no need for an image. The TV droned on:

  ‘… despite intervention by the French and a Russian guarantee of safe habitation for English settlers, it looks as though the English government will not be resuming its place around the table at Budapest. With England still adamant about an offensive using the new so-called Stonk plasma rifle, peace will not be descending on the Black Sea peninsula…’

  The anchorman shuffled some papers.

  ‘Home news now, and violence flared again in Chichester as a group of neo-surrealists gathered to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the legalisation of surrealism. On the spot for Toad News Network is Henry Grubb. Henry, how are things down there?’

  A shaky live picture came on to the screen, and I stopped for a moment to watch. Behind Grubb was a car that had been overturned and set on fire, and several officers were in riot gear. Henry Grubb, who was in training for the job of Crimean correspondent and secretly hoped that the war wouldn’t end until he had had a chance to get out there, wore a navy blue flak jacket and spoke with the urgent, halting speech of a correspondent in a war zone.

  ‘Things are a bit hot down here, Brian. I’m a hundred yards from the riot zone and I can see several cars overturned and on fire. The police have been trying to keep the factions apart all day, but the sheer weight of numbers has been against them. This evening several hundred Raphaelites surrounded the N’est pas une pipe public house where a hundred neo-surrealists have barricaded themselves in. The demonstrators outside chanted Italian Renaissance slogans and then stones and missiles were thrown. The neo-surrealists responded by charging the lines protected by large soft watches and seemed to be winning until the police moved in. Wait, I can just see a man arrested by the police. I’ll try and get an interview.’

  I shook my head sadly and put some shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe. There was violence when surrealism was banned and there was violence as the same ban was lifted. Grubb continued his broadcast as he intercepted a policeman marching away a youth dressed in sixteenth-century garb with a faithful reproduction of the Hand of God from the Sistine chapel tattooed on his face.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, how would you counter the criticism that you are an intolerant bunch with little respect for the value of change and experimentation in all aspects of art?’

  The Renaissancite glanced at the camera with an angry scowl.

  ‘People say we’re just Renaissancites causing trouble, but I’ve seen Baroque kids, Raphaelites, Romantics and Mannerists here tonight. It’s a massive show of classical artistic unity against these frivolous bastards who cower beneath the safety of the word progress. It’s not just—‘

  The police officer intervened and dragged him away. Grubb ducked a flying brick and then wound up his report.

  ‘This is Henry Grubb, reporting for Toad News Network, live from Chichester.’

  I turned off the television with a remote that was chained to the bedside table. I sat on the bed and pulled out my hair tie, let my hair down and rubbed my scalp. I sniffed dubiously at my hair and decided against a shower. I had been harder than I intended with Landen. Even with our differences we still had more than enough in common to be good friends.

  11. Polly flashes upon the inward eye

  ‘I think Wordsworth was as surprised to see me as I was him. It can’t be usual to go to your favourite memory only to find someone already there, admiring the view ahead of you.’

  Polly Next interviewed exclusively for The Owl on Sunday

  As I was dealing with Landen in my own clumsy way, my uncle and aunt were hard at work in Mycroft’s workshop. As I was to learn later, things seemed to be going quite well. To begin with, at any rate.

  Mycroft was feeding his bookworms in the workshop when Polly entered; she had just completed some mathematical calculations of almost incomprehensible complexity for him.

  ‘I have the answer you wanted, Crofty, my love,’ she said, sucking the end of a well-worn pencil.

  ‘And that is?’ asked Mycroft, busily pouring prepositions on to the bookworms, who devoured the abstract food greedily.

  ‘Nine.’

  Mycroft mumbled something and jotted the figure down on a pad. He opened the large brass-reinforced book that I had not quite been introduced to the night before to reveal a cavity into which he placed a large-print copy of Wordsworth’s poem ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’. To this he added the bookworms, who busily got to work. They slithered over the text, their small bodies and unfathomable collective id unconsciously examining every sentence, word, vowel sound and syllable. They probed deeply into the historical, biographical and geographical allusions, then they explored the inner meanings hidden within the metre and rhythm and juggled ingeniously with subtext, content and inflection. After that they made up a few verses of their own and converted the result into binary.

  Lakes! Daffodils! Solitude! Memory! whispered the worms excitedly as Mycroft carefully closed the book and locked it. He connected up the heavy mains feed to the back of the book and switched the power switch to ‘on’; he then started work on the myriad of knobs and dials that covered the front of the heavy volume. Despite the Prose Portal being essentially a biomechanism, there were still many delicate procedures that had to be set before the device would work; and since the portal was of an absurd complexity, Mycroft was forced to write up the precise sequence of start-up events and combinations in a small child’s exercise book of which—ever wary of foreign spies—he held the only copy. He studied the small book for several moments before twisting dials, setting switches and gently increasing the power, all the while muttering to himself and Polly:

  ‘Binametrics, spherics, numerics. I’m—‘

  ‘On?’

  ‘Off!’ replied Mycroft sadly. ‘No, wait… There!’

  He smiled happily as the last of the warning lights extinguished. He took his wife’s hand and squeezed it affectionately.

  ‘Would you care to have the honour?’ he asked. ‘The first human being to step inside a Wordsworth poem?’

  Polly looked at him uneasily.

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

  ‘As safe as houses,’ he assured her. ‘I went into “The Wreck of the Hesperus” an hour ago.’

  ‘Really? What was it like?’

  ‘Wet—and I think I left my jacket behind.’

  ‘The one I gave you for Christmas?’

  ‘No; the other one. The blue one with large checks.’

  ‘That’s the one I did give you for Christmas,’ she scolded. ‘I wish you would be more careful. What was it you wanted me to do?’

  ‘Just stand here. If all goes well, as soon as I press this large green button the worms will open a door to the daffodils that William Wordsworth knew and loved.’

  ‘And if all doesn’t go well?’ asked Polly slightly nervously. Owens’ demise inside a giant meringue never failed to impinge on her thoughts whenever she guinea-pigged one of her husband’s machines, but apart from some slight singeing while testing a one-man butane-powered pantomime horse, none of Mycroft’s devices had ever harmed her at all.

  ‘Hm
m,’ said Mycroft thoughtfully, ‘it is possible although highly unlikely that I could start a chain reaction that will fuse matter and annihilate the known universe.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, not really at all. My little joke. Are you ready?’

  Polly smiled. ‘Ready.’

  Mycroft pressed the large green button and there was a low hum from the book. The streetlights flickered and dimmed outside as the machine drew a huge quantity of power to convert the bookworm’s binametric information. As they both watched, a thin shaft of light appeared in the workshop, as though a door had been opened from a winter’s day into summer. Dust glistened in the beam of light, which gradually grew broader until it was large enough to enter.

  ‘All you have to do is step through!’ yelled Mycroft above the noise of the machine. ‘To open the door requires a lot of power; you have to hurry!’