“Are you in much pain, sir?” I asked, looking at the bedraggled figure; he still had bandaged eyes.
“Luckily, no,” he lied, wincing as he moved.
“Thank you; you have saved my life for a second time.”
He gave a wan smile.
“You returned my Jane to me. For those few months of happiness, I would suffer twice these wounds. But let us not speak of my wretched state. You are well?”
“Thanks to you.”
“Yes, yes, but how will you return? I expect Jane is already in India by now with that gutless pantaloon Rivers; and with her goes the narrative. I don’t see your friends being able to rescue you.”
“I will think of something,” I said, patting him on the sleeve. “You never know what the future will bring.”
It was the morning of the following day; my months in the book had passed in as much time as it takes to read them. The Welsh Politburo, alerted to the wrongdoings on their doorstep, had given Victor, Finisterre and a member of the Brontë Federation a safe conduct to the moldering Penderyn Hotel, where they now stood with Bowden, Mycroft and an increasingly nervous Jack Schitt. The representative of the Brontë Federation was reading the words as they appeared on the yellowed manuscript in front of him. Aside from a few minor changes, the book was traveling the same course it always did; it had been word perfect for the past two hours. Jane was being proposed to by St. John Rivers, who wanted her to go with him to India as his wife, and she was about to make up her mind.
Mycroft drummed his fingers on the desk and glanced at the rows of flicking dials on his contraption; all he needed was somewhere to open the door. Trouble was, they were fast running out of pages.
Then, the miraculous happened. The Brontë Federation expert, a small, usually unexcitable man named Plink, was suddenly ignited by shock.
“Wait a minute; this is new! This didn’t happen!”
“What?” cried Victor, rapidly flicking to his own copy. Indeed, Mr. Plink was correct. There, as the words etched themselves across the paper, was a new development in the narrative. After Jane promised St. John Rivers that if it was God’s will that they should be married, then they would, there was a voice—a new voice, Rochester’s voice, calling to her across the ether. But from where? It was a question that was being asked simultaneously by nearly eighty million people worldwide, all following the new story unfolding in front of their eyes.
“What does it mean?” asked Victor.
“I don’t know,” replied Plink. “It’s pure Charlotte Brontë but it definitely wasn’t there before!”
“Thursday,” murmured Victor. “It has to be. Mycroft, stay on your toes!”
They read delightedly as Jane changed her mind about India and St. John Rivers and decided to return to Thornfield.
I made it back to Ferndean and Rochester just before Jane did. I met Rochester in the dining room and told him the news; how I had found her at the Riverses’ house, gone to her window and barked: “Jane, Jane, Jane!” in a hoarse whisper the way that Rochester did. It wasn’t a good impersonation but it did the trick. I saw Jane start to fluster and pack almost immediately. Rochester seemed less than excited about the news.
“I don’t know whether I should thank you or curse you, Miss Next. To think that I should be seen like this, a blind man with one good arm. And Thornfield a ruin! She shall hate me, I know it!”
“You are wrong, Mr. Rochester. And if you know Jane as well as I think you do, you would not even begin to entertain such thoughts!”
There was a rap at the door. It was Mary. She announced that Rochester had a visitor but that they would not give their name.
“Oh Lord!” exclaimed Rochester. “It’s her! Tell me, Miss Next, could she love me? Like this, I mean?”
I leaned across and kissed his forehead.
“Of course she could. Anyone could. Mary, refuse her entry; if I know her she will enter anyway. Goodbye, Mr. Rochester. I can think of no way to thank you, so I shall just say that you and Jane will be in my thoughts always.”
Rochester moved his head, trying to gauge where I was by sound alone. He put out his hand and held mine tightly. He was warm to the touch, yet soft. Thoughts of Landen entered my mind.
“Farewell, Miss Next! You have a great heart; do not let it go to waste. You have one who loves you and whom you love yourself. Choose happiness!”
I slipped quickly out into the adjoining room as Jane entered. I quietly latched the door as Rochester did a fine job of pretending that he didn’t know who she was.
“Give me the water, Mary,” I heard him say. There was a rustle and then I heard Pilot padding about.
“What is the matter?” asked Rochester in his most annoyed and gruff expression. I stifled a giggle.
“Down, Pilot!” said Jane. The dog was quiet and there was a pause.
“This is you, Mary, is it not?” asked Rochester.
“Mary is in the kitchen,” replied Jane.
I pulled the now battered manual out of my pocket with the slightly charred poem. I still had Jack Schitt to contend with, but that would have to wait. I sat down on a chair as an exclamation from Rochester made its way through the door:
“Who is it? What is it? Who speaks?”
I strained to hear the conversation.
“Pilot knows me,” returned Jane happily, “and John and Mary know I am here. I came only this afternoon!”
“Great God!” exclaimed Rochester. “What delusion has come over me? What sweet madness has seized me?”
I whispered: “Thank you, Edward,” as the portal opened in the corner of the room. I took one last look around at a place to which I would never return, and stepped through.
There was a flash and a blast of static, Ferndean Manor was gone, and in its place I saw the familiar surroundings of the shabby lounge of the Penderyn Hotel. Bowden, Mycroft and Victor all rushed forward to greet me. I handed the manual and poem to Mycroft, who swiftly set about opening the door to “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.”
“Hades?” asked Victor.
“Dead.”
“Completely?”
“Utterly.”
In a few moments the Prose Portal reopened and Mycroft rushed inside, returning shortly afterward clutching Polly by the hand; she was holding a bunch of daffodils and trying to explain something.
“We were just talking, Crofty, my love! You don’t think I would be interested in a dead poet, do you?”
“My turn,” said Jack Schitt excitedly, waving his copy of The Plasma Rifle in War. He placed it with the bookworms and signaled to Mycroft to open the portal. As soon as the worms had done their work Mycroft did as he was bid. Schitt grinned and reached through the shimmering white doorway, feeling around for one of the plasma rifles that had been so well described in the book. Bowden had other ideas. He gave him a small shove and Jack Schitt disappeared through the doorway with a yell. Bowden nodded at Mycroft, who pulled the plug; the machine fell silent, the gateway to the book severed. It was bad timing on Jack Schitt’s part. In his eagerness to get his hands on the rifle he had not made sure his Goliath officers were with him. By the time the two guards had returned, Bowden was assisting Mycroft in smashing the Prose Portal after carefully transferring the bookworms and returning the original manuscript of Jane Eyre—the ending now slightly altered— to the Brontë Federation.
“Where’s Colonel Schitt?” asked the first officer.
Victor shrugged.
“He went away. Something to do with plasma rifles.”
The Goliath officers would have asked more questions but the Welsh foreign secretary himself had arrived and announced that since the matter was now resolved we would be escorted from the Republic. The Goliath operatives started to argue but were soon ushered from the room by several members of the Welsh Republican Army, who were definitely not impressed by their threats.
We were driven in the presidential limousine out of Merthyr and dropped in Abertawe. The Brontë Federation r
epresentative was icily quiet during the entire trip—I sensed he wasn’t that happy about the new ending. When we got to the town I gave them the slip, ran to my car and hastily drove back to Swindon, Rochester’s words ringing in my ears. Landen’s marriage to Daisy was happening at three that afternoon and I was sure as hell going to be there.
35.
Nearly the End of OurBook
I had disrupted Jane Eyre quite considerably; my cry of “Jane, Jane, Jane!” at her window had altered the book for good. It was against my training, against everything that I had sworn to uphold. I didn’t see it as anything more than a simple act of contrition for what I felt was my responsibility over Rochester’s wounds and the burning of Thornfield. I had acted out of compassion, not duty, and sometimes that is no bad thing.
THURSDAY NEXT
—private diaries
AT FIVE past three I screeched to a halt outside the Church of Our Blessed Lady of the Lobsters, much to the surprise of the photographer and the driver of a large Hispano-Suiza that was parked in readiness for the happy couple. I took a deep breath, paused to gather my thoughts and, shaking slightly, walked up the steps to the main doors. The organ music was playing loudly and my pace, which up to that point had been a run, suddenly slowed as my nerve abandoned me. What the hell was I playing at? Did I think I had any real chance of appearing from nowhere after a ten-year absence and then expecting the man I was once in love with just to drop everything and marry me?
“Oh yes,” said a woman to her companion as they walked past me, “Landen and Daisy are so much in love!”
My walk slowed to a snail’s pace as I found myself hoping to be too late and have the burden of decision taken from me. The church was full, and I slid unnoticed into the back, just next to the lobster-shaped font. I could see Landen and Daisy at the front, attended to by a small bevy of pages and bridesmaids. There were many uniformed guests in the small church, friends of Landen’s from the Crimea. I could see someone whom I took to be Daisy’s mother sniveling into her handkerchief and her father looking impatiently at his watch. On Landen’s side his mother was on her own.
“I require and charge you both,” the clergyman was saying, “that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it.”
He paused, and several guests shuffled. Mr. Mutlar, whose lack of chin had been amply compensated by increased girth in his neck, seemed ill at ease and looked about the church nervously. The clergyman turned to Landen and opened his mouth to speak, but as he did so there came a loud, clear voice from the back of the church:
“The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment!”
One hundred and fifty heads turned to see who the speaker was. One of Landen’s friends laughed out loud; he obviously thought it was a joke. The speaker’s countenance did not, however, look as though any humor was intended. Daisy’s father was having none of it. Landen was a good catch for his daughter and a small and tasteless joke was not going to delay her wedding.
“Proceed!” he said, his face like thunder.
The clergyman looked at the speaker, then at Daisy and Landen, and finally at Mr. Mutlar.
“I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted and evidence of its truth or falsehood,” he said with a pained expression; nothing like this had ever happened to him before.
Mr. Mutlar had turned an unhealthy shade of crimson and might have struck the speaker had he been close enough.
“What is this nonsense?” he shouted instead, setting the room buzzing.
“Not nonsense, sir,” replied the speaker in a clear voice. “Bigamy is hardly nonsense, I think, sir.”
I stared at Landen, who looked confused at the turn of events. Was he married already? I couldn’t believe it. I looked back at the speaker and my heart missed a beat. It was Mr. Briggs, the solicitor I had last seen in the church at Thornfield! There was a rustle close by and I turned to find Mrs. Nakijima standing next to me. She smiled and raised a finger to her lips. I frowned, and the clergyman spoke again.
“What is the nature of this impediment? Perhaps it may be got over—explained away?”
“Hardly,” was the answer. “I have called it insuperable and I speak advisedly. It consists simply of a previous marriage.”
Landen and Daisy looked at one another sharply.
“Who the hell are you?” asked Mr. Mutlar, who seemed to be the only person galvanized into action.
“My name is Briggs, a solicitor of Dash Street, London.”
“Well, Mr. Briggs, perhaps you would be good enough to explain the previous marriage of Mr. Parke-Laine so we may all know the extent of this man’s cowardly action.”
Briggs looked at Mr. Mutlar and then at the couple at the altar.
“My information does not concern Mr. Parke-Laine; I am speaking of Miss Mutlar, or, to give her her married name, Mrs. Daisy Posh!”
There was a gasp from the congregation. Landen looked at Daisy, who threw her garland on the floor. One of the bridesmaids started to cry, and Mr. Mutlar strode forward and took Daisy’s arm.
“Miss Mutlar married Mr. Murray Posh on October 20, 1981,” yelled Mr. Briggs above the uproar. “The service was held at Southwark. There was no divorce petition filed.”
It was enough for everyone. A clamor started up as the Mutlar family beat a hasty retreat. The vicar offered an unheard-of prayer to no one in particular as Landen took a much needed seat on the pew that the Mutlar family had just vacated. Someone yelled “gold digger!” from the back, and the Mutlar family quickened their pace at the abuse that followed, much of which shouldn’t have been heard in church. One of the pages tried to kiss a bridesmaid in the confusion and was slapped for his trouble. I leaned against the cool stone of the church and wiped the tears from my eyes. I know it was wrong of me, but I was laughing. Briggs stepped through the arguing guests and joined us, tipping his hat respectfully.
“Good afternoon, Miss Next.”
“A very good afternoon, Mr. Briggs! What on earth are you doing here?”
“The Rochesters sent me.”
“But I only left the book three hours ago!”
Mrs. Nakijima interrupted.
“You left it barely twelve pages from the end. In that time over ten years have elapsed at Thornfield; time enough for much planning!”
“Thornfield?”
“Rebuilt, yes. My husband retired and he and I manage the house these days. None of us is mentioned in the book and Mrs. Rochester aims to keep it that way; much more pleasant than Osaka and certainly more rewarding than the tourist business.”
There didn’t seem much I could say.
“Mrs. Jane Rochester asked Mrs. Nakijima to bring me here to assist,” said Mr. Briggs simply. “She and Mr. Rochester were eager to help you as you helped them. They wish you all happiness and health for the future and thank you for your timely intervention.”
I smiled.
“How are they?”
“Oh, they’re fine, miss,” replied Briggs happily. “Their firstborn is now five; a fine healthy boy, the image of his father. Jane produced a beautiful daughter this spring gone past. They have named her Helen Thursday Rochester.”
I looked across at Landen, who was standing at the entrance to the church and trying to explain to his Aunt Ethel what was going on.
“I must speak to him.”
But I was talking to myself. Mrs. Nakijima and the solicitor had gone; melted back to Thornfield to report to Jane and Edward on a job well done.
As I approached, Landen sat on the church steps, took out his carnation and sniffed at it absently.
“Hello, Landen.”
Landen looked up and blinked.
“Ah,” he said, “Thursday. I might have known.”
“May I join you?”
“Be my guest.”
I sat down next to him on the warm limestone steps. He stared straight ahead.
; “Was this your doing?” he asked at last.
“No, indeed,” I replied. “I confess I came here to interrupt the wedding but my nerve failed me.”
He looked at me.
“Why?”
“Why? Well, because . . . because I thought I’d make a better Mrs. Parke-Laine than Daisy, I suppose.”
“I know that,” exclaimed Landen, “and agree wholeheartedly. What I wanted to know is why your nerve failed you. After all, you chase after master criminals, indulge in high-risk SpecOps work, will quite happily go against orders to rescue comrades under an intense artillery barrage, yet—”
“I get the point. I don’t know. Maybe those sorts of yes-or-no life-and-death decisions are easier to make because they are so black and white. I can cope with them because it’s easier. Human emotions, well . . . they’re just a fathomless collection of grays and I don’t do so well on the midtones.”
“Midtones is where I’ve lived for the past ten years, Thursday.”
“I know and I’m sorry. I had a lot of trouble reconciling what I felt for you and what I saw as your betrayal of Anton. It was an emotional tug-of-war and I was the little pocket handkerchief in the middle, tied to the rope, not moving.”
“I loved him too, Thursday. He was the closest thing to a brother that I ever had. But I couldn’t hang onto my end of the rope forever.”
“I left something behind in the Crimea,” I murmured, “but I think I’ve found it again. Is there time to try and make it all work?”
“Bit eleventh-hour, isn’t it?” he said with a grin.
“No,” I replied, “more like three seconds to midnight!”
He kissed me gently on the lips. It felt warm and satisfying, like coming home to a roaring log fire after a long walk in the rain. My eyes welled up and I sobbed quietly into his collar as he held me tightly.
“Excuse me,” said the vicar, who had been lurking close by. “I’m sorry to have to interrupt, but I have another wedding to perform at three-thirty.”