A game of cards had just ended between Pip and Estella, and Miss Havisham, resplendently shabby in her rotting wedding dress and veil, seemed to be trying to come to a decision.
‘When shall I have you here again?’ she said in a low growl. ‘Let me think.’
‘Today is Wednesday, ma’am—’ began Pip, but he was silenced by Miss Havisham.
‘There, there! I know nothing of days of the week; I know nothing of weeks of the year. Come again after six days. You hear?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Miss Havisham sighed deeply and addressed the young woman, who seemed to spend most of her time glaring at Pip, his discomfort in the strange surroundings seemed to fill her with inner mirth.
‘Estella, take him down. Let him have something to eat, and let him roam and look about him while he eats. Go, Pip.’
They left the darkened room and I watched as Miss Havisham stared at the floor, then at the half-filled trunks of old and yellowed clothes that might have accompanied her on her honeymoon. I watched her as she pulled off her veil, ran her fingers through her greying hair and kicked off her shoes. She looked about her, checked the door was closed and then opened a bureau which I could see was full, not of the trappings of her wretched life, but of small luxuries that must, I presumed, make her existence here that much more bearable. Amongst other things I saw a Sony Walkman, a stack of National Geographics, a few Daphne Farquitt novels, and one of those bats that has a rubber ball attached to a piece of elastic. She rummaged some more and took out a pair of trainers and pulled them on with a great deal of relief. She was just about to tie the laces when I shifted my weight and knocked against a small table. Havisham, her senses heightened by her long incarceration in silent introspection, gazed in my direction, her sharp eyes piercing the gloom.
‘Who is there’’ she asked sharply. ‘Estella, is that you?’
Hiding didn’t seem to be a worthwhile option, so I stepped from the shadows. She looked me up and down with a critical eye.
‘What is your name, child?’ she asked sternly.
‘Thursday Next, ma’am.’
‘Ah!’ she said again. ‘The Next girl. Took you long enough to find your way in here, didn’t it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Never be sorry, girl—it’s a waste of time, believe me. If only you had seriously attempted to come to Jurisfiction after Mrs Nakajima showed you how up at Haworth… well, I’m wasting my breath, I can see.’
‘I had no idea!’
‘I don’t often take apprentices,’ she carried on, disregarding me completely, ‘but they were going to allocate you to the Red Queen. The Red Queen and I don’t get along. I suppose you’ve heard that?’
‘No, I’ve—’
‘Half of all she says is nonsense and the other half is irrelevant. Mrs Nakajima recommended you most highly but she has been wrong before; cause any trouble and I’ll bounce you out of Jurisfiction quicker than you can say ketchup. How are you at tying shoelaces?’
So I tied Miss Havisham’s trainers for her, there in Satis House among the rotted trappings of her abandoned marriage. If you had told me I would be doing this even an hour previously I would have considered you insane.
‘There are three simple rules if you want to stay with me,’ began Miss Havisham in the sort of voice that brooks no argument. ‘Rule One—you do exactly as I tell you. Rule Two—you don’t patronise me with your pity. I have no desire to be helped in any way. What I do to myself and others is my business and my business alone. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, ma’am. What about Rule Three?’
‘All in good time. I shall call you Thursday and you may call me Miss Havisham when we are together; in company I shall expect you to call me “ma’am”. I may summon you at any time and you will come running. Only funerals, childbirth or Vivaldi concerts take precedence. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Miss Havisham.’
I stood up and she thrust a candle up to my face and regarded me closely. It allowed me a close look at her too. Despite her pallid demeanour, her eyes sparkled brightly and she was not nearly as old as I supposed—all she needed was a fortnight of good meals and some fresh air. I was tempted to say something to enliven the dismal surroundings but her iron personality stopped me, I felt as though I were facing my teacher at school for the first time.
‘Intelligent eyes,’ muttered Havisham, ‘committed and honest. Quite, quite sickeningly self-righteous. Are you married?’
‘Yes,’ I mumbled, ‘that is to say—no.’
‘Come, come!’ said Havisham angrily. ‘It is a simple enough question.’
‘I was married,’ I answered.
‘Died?’
‘No,’ I mumbled, ‘that is to say—yes.’
‘I’ll try harder questions in future,’ announced Havisham, ‘for you are obviously not adept at the easy ones. Have you met the Jurisfiction staff?’
‘I’ve met Mr Snell—and the Cheshire cat.’
‘As useless as each other,’ she announced shortly. ‘Everyone at Jurisfiction is either a charlatan or an imbecile—except the Red Queen, who is both. We’ll go to Norland Park and meet them all, I suppose.’
‘Norland? Jane Austen? The house of the Dashwoods? Sense and Sensibility?’
But Havisham had moved on. She held my wrist to look at my watch, took me by the elbow and, before I knew what had happened, we had joggled out of Satis House to the library. Before I could recover from this sudden change of surroundings, Miss Havisham was reading from a book she had drawn from a shelf. There was another strange joggle and we were in a small kitchen parlour somewhere.
‘What was that?’ I asked in slight alarm, I wasn’t yet used to the sudden move from book to book but Havisham, well accustomed to such manoeuvres, thought little of it.
‘That,’ replied Miss Havisham, ‘was a standard book-to-book transfer. When you’re jumping solo you can sometimes make it through without going to the library—so much the better; the cat’s banal musings can make one’s head ache. But since I am taking you with me, a short visit is sadly necessary. We’re now in the back-story of Kafka’s The Trial. Next door is Josef K’s hearing, you’re up after him.’
‘Oh,’ I remarked, ‘is that all.’
Miss Havisham missed the sarcasm, which was probably just as well, and I looked around. The room was sparsely furnished, a washing tub sat in the middle and next door, from the sound of it at least, a political meeting seemed to be in progress. A woman entered from the courtroom, smoothed her skirts, curtsied and returned to her washing.
‘Good morning, Miss Havisham,’ she said politely.
‘Good morning, Esther,’ replied Miss Havisham. ‘I brought you something.’ She handed her a box of Pontefract cakes and then asked: ‘Are we on time?’
There was a roar of laughter from behind the door, which quickly subsided into excited talking.
‘Won’t be long,’ replied the washerwoman. ‘Snell and Hopkins have already gone in. Would you like to take a seat?’
Miss Havisham sat, but I remained standing.
‘I hope Snell knows what he’s doing,’ muttered Havisham darkly. ‘The examining magistrate is something of an unknown quantity.’
The applause and laughter suddenly dropped to silence in the room next door, and we heard the door handle grasped. Behind the door a deep voice said:
‘I only wanted to point out to you, since you may not have realised it yet, that today you have thrown away all the advantage that a hearing affords an arrested man in every case.’
I looked at Havisham with some consternation but she shook her head, as though to tell me not to worry.
‘You scoundrels!’ shouted a second voice, still from behind the door. ‘You can keep all your hearings!’
The door opened and a young man with a red face, dressed in a dark suit, ran out, fairly shaking with rage. As he left the man who had spoken—I assumed this to be the examining magistrate—shook his head sadly and the c
ourtroom started to chatter about Josef K’s outburst. The magistrate, a small, fat man who breathed heavily, looked at me and said.
‘Thursday N?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘You’re late.’
And he shut the door.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Miss Havisham kindly, ‘he always says that. It’s to make you ill at ease.’
‘It works. Aren’t you coming in with me?’
She shook her head and placed her hand on mine.
‘Have you read The Trial?’
I nodded.
‘Then you will know what to expect. Good luck, my dear.’
I thanked her, grasped the door handle and, with heavily beating heart, entered.
18. The Trial of Fraulein N
‘The Trial, Franz Kafka’s masterpiece of enigmatic bureaucratic paranoia, was unpublished in the writer’s lifetime. Indeed, Kafka lived out his short life in relative obscurity as an insurance clerk and bequeathed his manuscripts to his best friend on the understanding that they would be destroyed. How many other great writers, one wonders, penned masterworks which actually were destroyed upon their death? For the answer, you will have to look in among the sub-basements of the Great Library, twenty-six floors of unpublished manuscripts. Amongst a lot of self-indulgent rubbish and valiant yet failed attempts at prose you will find works of pure genius. For the greatest non-work of non-non-fiction, go to Sub-basement 13, Category MCML, Shelf 2919/812, where a rare and wonderful treat awaits you—Bunyan’s Boot-scraper by John McSquurd. But be warned. No trip to the Well of Lost Plots should be undertaken alone…’
UA OF W CAT. The Jurisfiction Guide to the Great Library
The courtroom was packed full of men all dressed in black, chattering and gesticulating constantly. There was a gallery running around just below the ceiling where more people stood, also talking and laughing, and the room was hot and airless to the point of suffocation. There was a narrow path between the men, and I slowly advanced, the crowd merging behind me and almost propelling me forward. As I walked the spectators chattered about the weather, the previous case, what I was wearing and the finer points of my case—of which, it seemed, they knew nothing. At the other end of the hall was a low dais upon which was seated, just behind a low table, the examining magistrate. Behind him were court officials and clerks talking with the crowd and each other. To one side of the dais was the lugubrious man who had knocked on my door and tricked me into confessing back in Swindon. He was holding an impressive array of official-looking papers. This, I assumed, was Matthew Hopkins, the prosecution lawyer. Snell joined me and whispered in my ear:
‘This is only a formal hearing to see if there is a case to answer. With a bit of luck we can get your case postponed to a more friendly court. Ignore the onlookers—they are simply here as a narrative device to heighten paranoia and have no bearing on your case. We will deny all charges.’
‘Herr Magistrate,’ said Snell, as we took the last few paces to the dais, ‘my name is Akrid S defending Thursday N, in Jurisfiction v the Law, case number 142857.’
The magistrate looked at me, took out his watch and said:
‘You should have been here an hour and five minutes ago.’
There was an excited murmur from the crowd. Snell opened his mouth to say something but it was I who answered.
‘I know,’ I said, ‘I am to blame. I beg the court’s pardon.’
At first, the magistrate didn’t hear me and began to repeat himself for the benefit of the crowd:
‘You should have been here an hour and… what did you say?’
‘I said I was sorry and begged your pardon, sir,’ I repeated.
‘Oh,’ said the examining magistrate as a hush fell upon the room. ‘In that case, would you like to go away and come back in, say, an hour and five minutes’ time, when you will be late through no fault of your own?’
The crowd applauded at this, although I couldn’t see why.
‘At Your Honour’s pleasure,’ I replied. ‘If it is the court’s ruling that I do so, then I will comply.’
‘Very good,’ whispered Snell.
‘Oh!’ said the magistrate again. He briefly conferred with his clerks behind him, seemed rattled for a moment, stared at me again and said:
‘It is the court’s decision that you be one hour and five minutes late!’
‘I am already one hour and five minutes late!’ I announced to scattered applause from the room.
‘Then,’ said the magistrate simply, ‘you have complied with the court’s ruling and we may proceed.’
‘Objection!’ said Hopkins.
‘Overruled,’ replied the magistrate as he picked up a tatty notebook that lay on the table in front of him. He opened it, read something and passed the book to one of his clerks.
‘Your name is Thursday N. You are a house-painter?’
‘No, she—’ said Snell.
‘Yes,’ I interrupted. ‘I have been a house-painter, Your Honour.’
There was a stunned silence from the crowd, punctuated by someone at the back who yelled: ‘Bravo!’ before another spectator thumped him. The examining magistrate peered at me more closely.
‘Is this relevant?’ demanded Hopkins, addressing the bench.
‘Silence!’ yelled the magistrate, continuing slowly and with very real gravity: ‘You mean to tell me that you have, at one time, been a house-painter?’
‘Indeed, Your Honour. After I left school and before college I painted houses for two months. I think it might be safe to say that I was indeed—although not permanently—a house-painter.’
There was another burst of applause and excited murmuring.
‘Herr S?’ said the magistrate. ‘Is this true?’
‘We have several witnesses to attest to it, Your Honour,’ answered Snell, getting into the swing of the strange proceedings.
The room fell silent again.
‘Herr H,’ said the magistrate, taking out a handkerchief and mopping his brow carefully and addressing Hopkins directly, ‘I thought you told me the defendant was not a house-painter?’
Hopkins looked flustered.
‘I didn’t say she wasn’t a house-painter, Your Honour, I merely said she was an operative for SpecOps 27.’
‘To the exclusion of all other professions?’ asked the magistrate.
‘Well, no,’ stammered Hopkins, now thoroughly confused.
‘Yet you did not state she was not a house-painter in your affidavit, did you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well then!’ said the magistrate, leaning back in his chair as another peal of laughter and spontaneous applause broke out for no reason. ‘If you bring a case to my court, Herr H, I expect it to be brought with all the details intact. First she apologises for being late, then she readily agrees to having painted houses. Court procedure will not be compromised—your prosecution is badly flawed.’
Hopkins bit his lip and went a dark shade of crimson.
‘I beg the court’s pardon, Your Honour,’ he replied through gritted teeth, ‘but my prosecution is sound—may we proceed with the charge?’
‘Bravo!’ said the man at the back again.
The magistrate thought for a moment and handed me his dirty notebook and a fountain pen.
‘We will prove the veracity of prosecution counsel by a simple test,’ he announced. ‘Fraulein N, would you please write the most popular colour that houses were painted when you were’—and here he turned to Hopkins and spat the words out—’a house-painter!’
The room erupted into cheers and shouts as I wrote the answer in the back of the exercise book and returned it.
‘Silence!’ announced the magistrate. ‘Herr H?’
‘What?’ he replied sulkily.
‘Perhaps you would be good enough to tell the court the colour that Fraulein N has written in my book?’
‘Your Honour,’ began Hopkins in an exasperated tone, ‘what has this to do with the case in hand? I arrived here in
good faith to arraign Fraulein N on a charge of a Class II Fiction Infraction and instead I find myself embroiled in some lunatic rubbish about house-painters. I do not believe this court represents justice—’
‘You do not understand,’ said the magistrate, rising to his feet and raising his short arms to illustrate the point, ‘the manner in which this court works. It is the responsibility of the prosecution counsel not only to bring a clear and concise case before the bench, but also to fully verse himself about the procedures that he must undertake to achieve that goal.’
The magistrate sat down amidst applause.
‘Now,’ he continued in a quieter voice, ‘either you tell me what Fraulein N has written in this book or I will be forced to arrest you for wasting the court’s time.’
Two guards had pushed their way through the throng and now stood behind Hopkins, ready to seize him. The magistrate waved the book and fixed the lawyer with a steely gaze.
‘Well?’ he enquired. ‘What was the most popular colour?’
‘Blue,’ said Hopkins in a miserable voice.
‘What’s that you say?’
‘Blue,’ repeated Hopkins in a louder voice.
‘Blue, he said!’ bellowed the magistrate. The crowd was silent and pushed and shoved to get closer to the action. Slowly and with high drama the magistrate opened the book to reveal the word green written across the page. The crowd burst into an excited cry, several cheers went up and hats rained down upon our heads.
‘Not blue, green,’ said the magistrate, shaking his head sadly and signalling to the guards to take hold of Hopkins. ‘You have brought shame upon your profession, Herr H. You are under arrest!’
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