Lost in a Good Book

  'Yes,' I said confidently. 'Hoover Electron 800 Deluxe.'

  She nodded, placed her hands on the tub icon and muttered to herself between clenched teeth. I took hold of her arm and after a moment or two, in which I could feel Miss Havisham shake with the effort, we had jumped out of the washing label and into the Hoover instructions.

  'Don't allow the drain hose to kink as this could stop the machine from emptying,' said a small man in a blue Hoover boiler suit standing next to a brand-new washing machine. We were standing in a sparkling clean washroom that was barely ten feet square. It had neither windows nor door – just a Belfast sink, a tiled floor, hot and cold inlet taps and a single plug on the wall. For furniture a bed was pushed against the corner and next to it were a chair, table and cupboard.

  'Do remember that to start a programme you must pull out the programme control knob. Sorry,' he said, 'I'm being read at the moment. I'll be with you in a sec. If you have selected white nylon, minimum iron, delicate or …'

  'Thursday!' said Miss Havisham, who suddenly seemed weak at the knees. 'That took quite some—'

  I just managed to catch her as she collapsed; I gently laid her down on the small truckle bed.

  'Miss Havisham? Are you okay?'

  She closed her eyes and breathed slowly. The jump had worn her out.

  I pulled the single blanket over her, sat on the edge of the low bed, pulled my hair tie out and rubbed my scalp.

  '… until the drum starts to rotate. Your machine will empty and spin to complete the programme … Hello!' said the man in the boiler suit. 'The name's Cullards – I don't often get visitors!'

  I introduced myself and explained who Miss Havisham was.

  'Goodness!' said Mr Cullards, scratching his shiny bald head and smiling impishly. 'Jurisfiction, eh? You are off the beaten track. The only visitor I've had was … excuse me – Control setting "D": whites economy, lightly soiled cotton or linen articles which are colour fast to boiling – was the time we had a new supplement regarding woollens – but that would have been six or seven months ago. Where does the time go?'

  He seemed a cheerful enough chap. He thought for a moment and then said:

  'Would you like a cup of tea?'

  I thanked him and he put the kettle on.

  'So what's the news?' asked Mr Cullards, rinsing out his one and only cup. 'Any idea when the new washing machines are due out?'

  'I'm sorry,' I said, 'I have no idea—'

  'I'm about ready to move on to something a bit more modern,' continued Cullards, 'I started on vacuum cleaner instructions but was promoted to Hoovermatic T5004, then transferred to the Electron 800 after twin-tub obsolescence. They asked me to take care of the 1100 Deluxe but I told them I'd sooner wait until the Logic 1300 came out.'

  I looked around at the small room.

  'Don't you ever get bored?'

  'Not at all!' said Cullards, pouring the hot water into the teapot. 'Once I've put in my ten years I'm eligible to apply for work in all domestic appliance instructions: food mixers, liquidisers, microwaves – who knows, if I work really hard I could make it into television or wireless. That's the future for an ambitious manual worker. Milk and sugar?'

  'Please.'

  He leaned closer.

  'Management have this idea that only young 'uns should do Sound & Vision instructions but they're wrong. Most of the kids in VCR manuals barely do six months in Walkmans before they're transferred. It's little wonder no one can understand them.'

  'I never thought of that before,' I confessed.

  We chatted for the next half-hour. He told me he had begun French and German classes so he could apply for work in multilingual instructions, then confided in me his fondest feelings for Tabitha Doehooke, who worked for Kenwood. We were just talking about the sociological implications of labour-saving devices within the kitchen and how they related to the women's movement when Miss Havisham stirred awake, drank three cups of tea, ate the biscuit that Mr Cullards was reserving for his birthday next May, and announced that we should be on our way.

  We said our goodbyes and Mr Cullards made me promise I would clean out the powder dispenser on my washing machine; in an unguarded moment I had let slip I had yet to do so, despite the machine being nearly three years old.

  The short trip to the non-fiction section of the Great Library was an easy jump for Miss Havisham, and from there we fworped back into her dingy ballroom in Great Expectations, where the Cheshire cat and Harris Tweed were waiting for us, talking to Estella. The cat seemed quite relieved to see us both, but Harris simply scowled.

  'Estella!' said Miss Havisham abruptly 'Please don't talk to Mr Tweed.'

  'Yes, Miss Havisham,' replied Estella meekly.

  Havisham replaced her trainers with her less comfortable wedding shoes.

  'I have Pip waiting outside,' said Estella slightly nervously. 'If you will excuse me mentioning it – Ma'am is a paragraph late.'

  'Dickens can just flannel for a bit longer,' replied Havisham. 'I must finish with Miss Next.'

  She turned to me with a grim look; I thought I'd better say something to soothe her – I hadn't yet seen Havisham lose her temper 'like Vesuvius', as the Red Queen had so graphically described it, and I was in no hurry to do so.

  'Thank you for my rescue, ma'am,' I said quickly. 'I'm very grateful to you.'

  'Humph!' replied Miss Havisham. 'Don't expect salvation from me every time you get yourself into a jam, my girl. Now, what's all this about a baby?'

  The Cheshire cat, sensing trouble, vanished abruptly on the pretext of some 'cataloguing', and even Tweed mumbled something about checking Lorna Doone for grammasites and went too.

  'Well?' asked Havisham again, peering at me intensely.

  I didn't feel quite as frightened of her as I once did, so I told her all about Landen and why I went into The Raven to begin with.

  'For love? Pah!' she responded, dismissing Estella with a wave of her hand in case the young woman got any odd ideas. 'And what, in your tragically limited experience, is that?'

  'I think you know, ma'am. You were in love once, I believe?'

  'Stuff and nonsense, girl!'

  'Isn't the pain you feel now the equal to the love you felt then?'

  'You're coming perilously close to contravening my rule two, girl!'

  'I'll tell you what love is,' I said 'It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter!'

  'That was quite good,' said Havisham, looking at me curiously. 'Could I use that? Dickens won't mind.'

  'Of course.'

  'I think,' said Miss Havisham after five minutes of silent thought as I stood waiting, 'that I shall categorise your complex marital question under widowed, which sits with me well enough. Upon reflection – and quite possibly against my better judgment – you may stay as my apprentice. That's all. You are needed to help retrieve Cardenio. Go!'

  So I left Miss Havisham in her darkened chamber with all the trappings of her wedding that never was. In the few days I had known her I had learned to like her a great deal, and hoped someday I might repay her kindness and fortitude.

  30

  Cardenio rebound

  * * *

  'PageRunner: Name given to any character who is out of his or her book and moves through the back-story (or more rarely the plot) of another book. They may be lost, vacationing, part of the Character Exchange Programme or criminals, intent on mischief. (See: Bowdlerisers.)

  Texters: Slang term given to a relatively harmless PageRunner (q.v.) (usually juvenile) who surfs from book to book for adventure, rarely appears in the front-story but who does, on occasion, cause small changes to text and/or plot lines.'

  UA OF W CAT – The Jurisfiction Guide to Book-jumping (glossary)

  Harris Tweed and the Cheshire cat took me back to the Library. We sat on a bench in front of the Boojumorial and Harris stared at me while the cat – who was nothing if not courteous
– went and bought me a pasty from the snack bar just next to Mr Wemmick's storeroom.

  'Where did she find you?' snapped Harris. I was getting used to his aggressive mannerisms by now. If he thought as little of me as he made out, then I wouldn't be here at all. The cat popped its head up between us and said:

  'Hot or cold pasty?'

  'Hot, please.'

  'Okay, then,' he said, and vanished again.

  I explained Havisham's leap from the Goliath vault to the washing label; Tweed was clearly impressed. He had been apprenticed to Commander Bradshaw many years previously, and Bradshaw's accuracy in book-jumping was as poor as Havisham's was good – hence the commander's interest in maps.

  'A washing label. Now that is impressive,' mused Harris. 'Not many PROs would even attempt to jump blind into less than a hundred words. Havisham took quite a risk with you, Miss Next. Cat, what do you think?'

  'I think,' said the cat, handing me a steaming-hot pasty, 'that you've forgotten the Moggilicious cat food you promised, hmm?'

  'Sorry,' I replied. 'Next time.'

  'Okay,' said the cat.

  'Right,' said Harris, 'to business. Tell me, who are the chief players in Cardenio's, discovery?'

  'Well,' I began, 'there's Lord Volescamper, an hereditary peer – he said he found it in his library. Amiable chap – bit of a duffer. Then there's Yorrick Kaine, a Whig politician who hopes to use the free distribution of the play to sway the Shakespeare vote in his favour at tomorrow's election.'

  'I'll see if I can find which book they're from – if any at all,' said the cat, and vanished.

  'Is that really likely?' I asked. 'Volescamper has been around since before the war, and Kaine has been on the political scene for at least five years.'

  'It means nothing, Miss Next. Mellors had a wife and family in Slough for two decades and Heathcliff worked in Hollywood for three years under the name of Buck Stallion – no one suspected a thing in either case.'

  'So tell me about Cardenio,' I said. 'It is the Library's copy, yes?'

  'Without a doubt. The disappearance a month ago was quite embarrassing – despite elaborate security arrangements someone managed to swipe it from under the cat's whiskers. He's very upset about it.'

  'Did you saying fig or whig?' enquired the cat, who had reappeared.

  'I said Whig,' I replied; 'and I wish you wouldn't keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.'

  'All right,' said the cat; and this time he vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of his tail and ending with his grin.

  'He doesn't seem terribly upset,' I observed.

  'Looks can be deceptive – in the cat's case, trebly so. The news of Cardenio's discovery in your world nearly gave the Bellman a fit. He was all for putting together one of his madcap and typically boojum-ridden expeditions. As soon as I found out that Kaine was going to make Cardenio public property, I knew we had to act and act fast.'

  'But listen,' I said, my head spinning slightly with all this new intelligence, 'why is it so important that Cardenio remains lost? It's a brilliant play.'

  'I wouldn't expect you to understand,' replied Tweed, 'but once a play or book is lost, it's lost. There is always a reason. Besides, if the rest of the book world figures out there is something to gain by swiping library books, then we could be in one hell of a state.'

  I mused over this for a moment.

  'Okay, so why am I here?'

  'Clearly, this is no place for an apprentice but you know the layout of Vole Towers as well as having met the key suspects – do you know where Cardenio is kept?'

  'In a combination-and-key safe within the library itself.

  'Good. But first we need to get in. Can you remember any of the other books in the library?'

  I thought for a moment.

  'There was a rare first edition of Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.'

  'Come on,' Tweed said abruptly. 'We're off.'

  We took the elevator to Floor 'W' of the Library, found the copy we were looking for and were soon within the book, tiptoeing past a noisy party in the quad at Scone College. Tweed concentrated on the outward jump and a few moments later we were standing inside the locked library at Vole Towers.

  'Cat,' said Harris, looking around at the untidy library, 'you there?'21

  'A simple "yes" will do. Send the safe-crackers in by way of Decline and Fall. If they come across Captain Grimes, they are not to lend him money on any account. Anything on Volescamper or Kaine?'22

  'Blast!' exclaimed Tweed. 'Too much to hope they'd be stupid enough to use their own names.'

  Two men suddenly appeared next to us and Harris pointed them in the direction of the safe. One wore a fine evening dress over which he had casually tossed a cloak. The other was attired in a more sober woollen suit and carried a holdall that, once opened, revealed an array of beautifully crafted safe-cracking tools. After running an expert eye over the safe for a few moments, the elder of the two removed his cloak and jacket, took the stethoscope proffered to him by his companion, and listened to the safe as he gently turned the combination wheel.

  'Is that Raffles?' I whispered. 'The gentleman thief?'

  Harris nodded, checking his watch.

  'With his assistant, Bunny. If anyone can, they can.'

  'So who do you think stole Cardenio?'

  'It's definitely someone from inside books, that much we are sure of. The trouble lies in narrowing it down – there are several million possible contenders and any one of them could have gone rogue, jumped out of their book, swiped Cardenio and legged it over here.'

  'So how do you tell whether someone is an impostor or not?'

  Harris looked at me.

  'With great difficulty. Do you think I belong here, in your world?'

  I looked at the short man with the elegant tweed herringbone suit and touched him gently on the chest with a finger. He was as real to me as anyone I had ever met, either within books or without. He breathed, smiled, scowled – how was I meant to tell?

  'I don't know. Are you from a twenties detective novel?'

  'Wrong,' replied Harris. 'I'm as real as you are. I work three days a week for Skyrail as a signals operator. But how could I prove that? I could just as easily be a minor character in an obscure novel somewhere. The only sure way to tell would be to place me under observation for two months – that's about the limit of time any book person can stay outside their book. But enough of this. Our first priority is to get the manuscript back. After that, we can start figuring out who is who.'

  'There's no quicker way?'

  'Only one other that I know of. No book person is going to take a bullet, if you try and shoot one, chances are they'll jump.'

  'It sounds a bit like ducking witches.'

  'It's not ideal,' said Harris gruffly, 'I'm the first to admit that.'

  Within half an hour Raffles had worked out the combination and now turned his attention to the secondary locking mechanism. He was slowly drilling a hole above the combination knob and the quiet squeaking of the drill bit seemed inordinately loud to our heightened nerves. We were staring at him and silently urging him to go faster when a noise from the library's heavy door made us turn. Harris and I leaped to either side as the unlocking wheel spun to draw the steel tabs from the slots in the iron frame, and the door swung slowly open. Raffles and Bunny, well used to being disturbed, silently gathered up their tools and hid beneath a table.

  'The manuscript will be released to the publishers first thing tomorrow morning,' said Kaine as he and Volescamper strolled in. Tweed pointed his automatic at them and they jumped visibly. I pushed the door shut behind them and spun the locking mechanism before searching them.

  'What is the meaning of this?' said Volescamper in an outraged voice. 'Miss Next? Is that you?'

  'As large as life, Volescamper.'

  Yorrick Kaine had turned a deep shade of crimson.

  'Thieves!' he spat. 'How dare you!'

  'No,' replied Harris,
beckoning them farther into the room and signalling for Raffles to continue with his work. 'We have only come to retrieve Cardenio – something that does not belong to either of you.'

  'Now look here, I don't know what you're talking about,' began Volescamper in an outraged fashion, 'but this house is surrounded by SO-14 agents – there is no escape. And as for you, Miss Next, look here, I am deeply disappointed by your perfidy!'

  'What do you reckon?' I said to Harris. 'His indignation seems real.'

  'It does – but he has less to gain from this than Kaine.'

  'You're right – my money's on Kaine.'

  'What are you talking about?!' demanded Kaine angrily. 'The manuscript belongs to literature – how do you think you can sell something like this on the open market? You may think you can get away with it, but I will die before I allow you to remove the literary heritage that belongs to all of us!'

  'Well, I don't know,' I added, 'Kaine is pretty convincing too.'

  'Remember, he's a politician.'

  'Of course,' I returned, snapping my fingers. 'I'd forgotten. What if it's neither?'

  I didn't have time to answer as there was a crash from somewhere near the front of the house and the sound of an explosion. A low, guttural moan reached our ears followed by the terrified scream of a man in mortal terror. A shiver ran up my spine, and I could see that everyone else in the room had felt it too. Even the implacable Raffles paused for a moment before returning to work with just a little bit more urgency.

  'Cat!' exclaimed Harris. 'What's going on?'23

  'The Questing Beast?' exclaimed Tweed. 'The Glatisant? Summon King Pellinore immediately.'24

  'The Questing Beast?' I asked. 'Is that bad?'

  'Bad?' replied Harris. 'It's the worst. The Questing Beast was born in the oral tradition before books so every dark horror that sprang from the human imagination owes its existence to the ancient Glatisant. It has many names but its goal is always the same death and destruction. As soon as it comes through the door anyone still here will be stone cold dead.'

  'Through the vault door?'