Jasper Fforde - Thursday Next 1 - The Eyre Affair

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The Eyre Affair

Jasper Fforde

The Eyre Affair

scanned by Ginevra

corrected by b0rdR

Pirouetting on the boundaries between sci-fi, the crime thriller and intertextual whimsy, Jasper Fforde's

outrageous The Eyre Affair puts you on the wrong footing even on its dedication page, which proudly

announces that the book conforms to Crimean War economy standard.

Fforde's heroine, Thursday Next, lives in a world where time and reality are endlessly mutable--

someone has ensured that the Crimean War never ended for example--a world policed by men like her

disgraced father, whose name has been edited out of existence. She herself polices text--against men

like the Moriarty-like Acheron Styx, whose current scam is to hold the minor characters of Dickens'

novels to ransom, entering the manuscript and abducting them for execution and extinction one by one.

When that caper goes sour, Styx moves on to the nation's most beloved novel--an oddly truncated

version of Jane Eyre--and kidnaps its heroine. The phlegmatic and resourceful Thursday pursues

Acheron across the border into a Leninist Wales and further to Mr Rochester's Thornfield Hall, where

both books find their climax on the roof amid flames.

The right of Jasper Fforde to be identified as the Author

of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

First published in Great Britain in 2001 by Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder Headline

A New English Library Paperback Original 2468 10 9753 I

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form

or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor

be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that

in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed

on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

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The Eyre Affair

Fforde, Jasper

The Eyre affair

1. Detective and mystery stories

I. Title 823.9'i4 [F]

ISBN 0340 73356 X

Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Polmont, Stirlingshire

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Clays Ltd, St Ives pic

Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline

338 Euston Road

London nwi 3BH

This E-BOOK is not for sale!!!

For my father

John Standish Fforde

1921-2000

Who never knew I was to be published but

would have been most proud nonetheless

- and not a little surprised.

The typography and binding of this

book conform to accepted Goliath

Corporation standards

Goliath

For all you'll ever need.™

Warning: Misuse trt flie (Miaffi Corporation's protucta or

semices may Interfere with you and your family's cwftwed

rights to tealtn, libety and Ite pursuit of happiness.

Contents

1. A woman named Thursday Next

2. Gad's Hill

3. Back at my desk

4. Acheron Hades

5. Search for the guilty, punish the innocent

6. Jane Eyre: A short excursion into the novel

7. The Goliath Corporation

8. Airship to Swindon

9. The Next family

10. The Finis Hotel, Swindon

11. Polly flashes upon the inward eye

12. SpecOps 27: The Literary Detectives

13. The Church at Capel-y-ffin

14. Lunch with Bowden

15. Hello & Goodbye, Mr Quaverley

16. Sturmey Archer & Felix?

17. SpecOps 17: Suckers & Biters

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The Eyre Affair

18. Landen again

19. The very Irrev. Joffy Next

20. Dr Runcible Spoon

21. Hades & Goliath

22. The waiting game

23. The drop

24. Martin Chuzzlewit is reprieved

25. Time enough for contemplation

26. The Earthcrossers

27. Hades finds another manuscript

28. Haworth House

29. Jane Eyre

30. A groundswell of popular feeling

31. The People's Republic of Wales

32. Thornfield Hall

33. The book is written

34. Nearly'the end of their book

35. Nearly the end of our book

36. Married

A woman named Thursday Next

. . . The Special Operations Network was instigated to handle policing duties considered either too unusual or too specialised to be tackled

by the regular force. There were thirty departments in all, starting at the more mundane Neighbourly Disputes (SO-jo) and going on to

Literary Detectives (SO-2y) and Art Crime (SO-24). Anything below SO-2O was restricted information, although it was common

knowledge that the ChronoGuard were SO-12 and Antiterrorism SO-9. It is rumoured that SO-i was the department that polices the

SpecOps themselves. Quite what the others do is anyone's guess. What is known is that the individual operatives themselves are mostly ex-

military or ex-police and slightly unbalanced. 'If you want to be a SpecOp,' the saying goes, 'act kinda weird . . .'

MILLON DE FLOSS

- A Short History of the Special Operations Network

My father had a face that could stop a clock. I don't mean that he was ugly or anything; it was a phrase the

ChronoGuard used to describe someone who had the power to reduce time to an ultra-slow trickle. Dad had been a

colonel in the ChronoGuard and kept his work very quiet. So quiet, in fact, that we didn't know he had gone rogue at

all until his timekeeping buddies raided our house one morning clutching a Seize & Eradication order open-dated at

both ends and demanding to know where and when he was. Dad had remained at liberty ever since; we learned from

his subsequent visits that he regarded the whole service as 'morally and historically corrupt' and was fighting a one-

man war against the bureaucrats within the Office for Special Temporal Stability. I didn't know what he meant by

that and still don't; I just hoped he knew what he was doing and didn't come to any harm doing it. His skills at

stopping the clock were hard-earned and irreversible: he was now a lonely itinerate in time, belonging to not one age

but to all of them and having no home other than the chronoclastic ether.

I wasn't a member of the ChronoGuard. I never wanted to be. By all accounts it's not a huge barrel of laughs,

although the pay is good and the service boasts a retirement plan that is second to none: a one-way ticket to anywhere

and anywhen you want. No, that wasn't for me. I was what we called an 'Operative Grade I' for SO-27, the Literary

Detective Division of the Special Operations Network based in London. It's way less flash than it sounds. Since 1980

the big criminal gangs had moved in on the lucrative literary market and we had much to do and few funds to do it

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The Eyre Affair

with. I worked under Area Chief Boswell, a small, puffy man who looked like a bag of flour with arms and legs. He

lived and breathed the job; words were his life and his love — he never seemed happier than when he was on the trail

of a counterfeit Coleridge or a fake Fielding. It was under Boswell that we arrested the gang who were stealing and

selling Samuel Johnson first editions; on another occasion we uncovered an attempt to authenticate a flagrantly

unrealistic version of Shakespeare's lost work, Gardenia. Fun while it lasted, but only small islands of excitement

among the ocean of day-to-day mundanities that is SO-2y: we spent most of our time dealing with illegal traders,

I had been with Boswell and SO-2y for eight years, living in a Maida Vale apartment with Pickwick, a regenerated

pet dodo left over from the days when reverse extinction was all the rage and you could buy home cloning kits over

the counter. I was keen — no, I was desperate — to get away from the LiteraTecs but transfers were unheard of and

promotion a non-starter. The only way I was going to make full Inspector was if my immediate superior moved on or

out. But it never happened; Inspector Turner's hope to marry a wealthy Mr Right and leave the service stayed just

that — a hope — as so often Mr Right turned out to be either Mr Liar, Mr Drunk or Mr Already Married.

As I said earlier, my father had a face that could stop a clock; and that's exactly what happened one spring morning

as I was having a sandwich in a small cafe not far from work. The world flickered, shuddered and stopped. The

proprietor of the cafe froze in mid-sentence and the picture on the television stopped dead. Outside, birds hung

motionless in the sky. Cars and trams halted in the streets and a cyclist involved in an accident stopped in midair, the

look of fear frozen on his face as he paused two feet from the hard asphalt. The sound halted too, replaced by a dull

snapshot of a hum, the world's noise at that moment in time paused indefinitely at the same pitch and volume.

'How's my gorgeous daughter?'

I turned. My father was sitting at a table and rose to hug me affectionately.

'I'm good,' I replied, returning his hug tightly. 'How's my favourite father?'

'Can't complain. Time is a fine physician.'

I stared at him for a moment.

'Y'know,' I muttered, 'I think you're looking younger every time I see you.'

'I am. Any grandchildren in the offing?'

'The way I'm going? Not ever.'

My father smiled and raised an eyebrow.

'I wouldn't say that quite yet.'

He handed me a Woolworths bag.

'I was in '78 recently,' he announced. 'I brought you this.'

He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn't recognise the title.

'Didn't they split in '70?'

'Not always. How are things?'

'Same as ever. Authentications, copyright, theft—'

'—same old shit?'

'Yup.' I nodded. 'Same old shit. What brings you here?'

'I went to see your mother three weeks ahead your time,' he answered, consulting the large chronograph on his wrist.

'Just the usual — ahem — reason. She's going to paint the bedroom mauve in a week's time — will you have a word

and dissuade her? It doesn't match the curtains.'

'How is she?'

He sighed deeply.

'Radiant, as always. Mycroft and Polly would like to be remembered, too.'

They were my aunt and uncle; I loved them deeply, although both were mad as pants. I regretted not seeing Mycroft

most of all. I hadn't returned to my home-town for many years and I didn't see my family as often as I should.

'Your mother and I think it might be a good idea for you to come home for a bit. She thinks you take work a little too

seriously.'

'That's a bit rich, Dad, coming from you.'

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The Eyre Affair

'Ouch-that-hurt. How's your history?'

'Not bad.'

'Do you know how the Duke of Wellington died?'

'Sure,' I answered. 'He was shot by a French sniper during the opening stages of the Battle of Waterloo. Why?'

'Oh, no reason,' muttered my father with feigned innocence, scribbling in a small notebook. He paused for a moment.

'So Napoleon won at Waterloo, did he?' he asked slowly and with great intensity.

'Of course not,' I replied. 'Field Marshal Blücher's timely intervention saved the day.'

I narrowed my eyes.

'This is all O-level history, Dad. What are you up to?'

'Well, it's a bit of a coincidence, wouldn't you say?'

'What is?'

'Nelson and Wellington, two great English national heroes both being shot early on during their most important and

decisive battles.'

'What are you suggesting?' 'That French revisionists might be involved.' 'But it didn't affect the outcome of either

battle,' I asserted. 'We still won on both occasions!'

'I never said they were good at it.'

'That's ludicrous!' I scoffed. 'I suppose you think the same revisionists had King Harold killed in 1066 to assist the

Norman invasion!'

But Dad wasn't laughing. He replied with some surprise: 'Harold? Killed? How?' 'An arrow, Dad. In his eye.' 'English

or French?'

'History doesn't relate,' I replied, annoyed at his bizarre line of questioning.

'In his eye, you say—? Time is out of joint,' he muttered, scribbling another note.

'What's out of joint?' I asked, not quite hearing him. 'Nothing, nothing. Good job I was born to set it right—'

'Hamlet?' I asked, recognising the quotation. He ignored me, finished writing and snapped the notebook shut, then

placed his fingertips on his temples and rubbed them absently for a moment. The world joggled forward a second and

refroze as he did so. He looked about nervously.

'They're on to me. Thanks for your help, Sweetpea. When you see your mother, tell her she makes the torches burn

brighter — and don't forget to try and dissuade her from painting the bedroom.' 'Any colour but mauve, right?'

'Right.' He smiled at me and touched my face. I felt my eyes moisten;

these visits were all too short. He sensed my sadness and smiled the sort of smile any child would want to receive

from their father. Then he spoke:

'For I dipped into the past, far as SpecOps twelve could see—'

He paused and I finished the quote, part of an old ChronoGuard song Dad used to sing to me when I was a child.

'—saw a vision of the world and all the options there could be!'

And then he was gone. The world rippled as the clock started again. The barman finished his sentence, the birds flew

on to their nests, the television came back on with a nauseating ad for SmileyBurgers, and over the road the cyclist

met the asphalt with a thud.

Everything carried on as normal. No one except myself had seen Dad come or go.

I ordered a crab sandwich and munched on it absently while sipping from a Mocha that seemed to be taking an age to

cool down. There weren't a lot of customers and Stanford, the owner, was busy washing up some cups. I put down

my paper to watch the TV when the Toad News Network logo came up.

Toad News was the biggest news network in Europe. Run by the Goliath Corporation, it was a twenty-four-hour

service with up-to-date reports that the national news services couldn't possibly hope to match. Goliath gave it

finance and stability, but also a slightly suspicious air. No one liked the Corporation's pernicious hold on the nation,

and the Toad News Network received more than its fair share of criticism, despite repeated denials that the parent

company called the shots.

'This,' boomed the announcer above the swirling music, 'is the Toad News Network. The Toad, bringing you News

Global, News Updates, News NOW/!'

The lights came up on the anchorwoman, who smiled into the camera.

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