‘On what charge?’ replied Hopkins arrogantly.
‘I am not authorised to tell you,’ said the magistrate triumphantly. ‘Proceedings have been started and you will be informed in due course.’
‘But this is preposterous!’ shouted Hopkins as he was dragged away.
‘No,’ replied the magistrate, ‘this is Kafka.’
When Hopkins had gone and the crowd had stopped chattering, the magistrate turned back to me and said:
‘You are Thursday N, aged thirty-six, one hour and five minutes late and occupation house-painter?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are brought before this court on a charge of… what is the charge?’
There was silence.
‘Where,’ asked the magistrate, ‘is the prosecution counsel?’
One of his clerks whispered in his ear as the crowd spontaneously burst into laughter.
‘Indeed,’ said the magistrate grimly. ‘Most remiss of him. I am afraid, in the absence of prosecuting counsel, this court has no alternative but to grant a postponement.’
And so saying he pulled a large rubber stamp from his pocket and brought it down with a crash on some papers that Snell, quick as a flash, managed to place beneath it.
‘Thank you, Your Honour,’ I managed to say before Snell grasped me by the arm, whispered in my ear: ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ and steered me ahead of him past the throng of dark suits to the door.
‘Bravo!’ yelled a man from the gallery. ‘Bravo!… And bravo again!’
We walked out to find Miss Havisham deep in conversation with Esther about the perfidious nature of men in general and Esther’s husband in particular. They were not the only ones in the room. A bronzed Greek was sitting sullenly next to a Cyclops with a bloodied bandage round his head. The lawyers who were accompanying them were discussing the case quietly in the corner.
‘How did it go?’ asked Havisham.
‘Postponement,’ said Snell, mopping his brow and shaking me by the hand. ‘Well done, Thursday. Caught me unawares with your “house-painter” defence. Very good indeed!’
‘But only a postponement?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve never known a single acquittal from this court. But next time we’ll be up before a proper judge—one of my choosing!’
‘And what will become of Hopkins?’
‘He,’ laughed Snell, ‘will have to get a very good lawyer!’
‘Good!’ said Havisham, getting to her feet. ‘It’s time we were at the sales. Come along!’
As we made for the door, the magistrate called into the kitchen parlour:
‘Odysseus? Charge of grievous bodily harm against Polyphemus the Cyclops?’
‘He devoured my comrades!’ growled Odysseus angrily.
‘That’s tomorrow’s case. We will not hear about that today. You’re next up—and you’re late.’
And the examining magistrate shut the door again.
19. Bargain Books
‘Jurisfiction was the fastest learning curve I had ever experienced. I think they were all expecting me to arrive a lot earlier than I did. Miss Havisham tested my book-jumping prowess soon after I arrived and I was marked up a dismal 38 out of 100. Mrs Nakajima was 93 and Havisham a 99. I would always need a book to read from to make a jump, no matter how well I had memorised the text. It had its disadvantages but it wasn’t all bad news. At least I could read a book aloud without vanishing off inside it…’
THURSDAY NEXT. The Jurisfiction Chronicles
Outside the room Snell tipped his hat and vanished to represent a client currently languishing in debtors’ prison. The day was overcast yet mild. I leaned on the balcony and looked down into the yard below at the children playing.
‘So!’ said Havisham. ‘On with your training now that hurdle is over. The Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale begins at midday and I’m in mind for a bit of bargain hunting. Take me there.’
‘How?’
‘Use your head, girl!’ replied Havisham sternly as she grabbed her walking stick and thrashed it through the air a few times. ‘Come, come! If you can’t jump me straight there, then take me to your apartment and we’ll drive—but hurry. The Red Queen is ahead of us and there is a boxed set of novels that she is particularly keen to get her hands on—we must get there first!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered, ‘I can’t—’
‘No such word as can’t!’ exploded Miss Havisham. ‘Use the book, girl, use the book!’
Suddenly, I understood. I took the leather-bound Jurisfiction book from my pocket and opened it. The first page, the one I had read already, was about the library. On the second page there was a passage from Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and on the third a detailed description of my apartment back at Swindon—it was good, too, right down to the water stains on the kitchen ceiling and the magazines stuffed under the sofa. The rest of the pages were covered with closely typed rules and regulations, hints and tips, advice and places to avoid. There were illustrations, too, and maps quite unlike any I had seen before. There were, in fact, far more pages in the book than could possibly be fitted within the covers, but that wasn’t the oddest thing. The last ten or so pages featured several hollowed-out recesses which contained devices that were far too wide to have fitted in the book. One of the pages contained a device similar to a flare gun which had ‘Mk IV TextMarker’ written on its side. Another page had a glass panel covering a handle like a fire alarm. A note painted on the glass read: ‘IN UNPRECEDENTED EMERGENCY,* BREAK GLASS’. The asterisk, I noted somewhat chillingly, related to the footnote: ‘*Please note: personal destruction does NOT count as an unprecedented emergency.’ The last few pages were blank—for notes of my own, I assumed.
‘Well?’ said Havisham impatiently. ‘Are we going?’
I flicked to the page that held the short description of my apartment in Swindon. I started to read and felt Havisham’s bony hand hang on to my elbow as the Prague rooftops and ageing tenement buildings faded out and my own apartment hove into view.
‘Ah!’ said Havisham, looking around at the small kitchen with a contemptuous air. ‘And this is what you call home?’
‘At the moment. My husband—’
‘The one whom you’re not sure is alive or dead or married to you or not?’
‘Yes,’ I said firmly, ‘that one.’
She smiled at this and added with a baleful stare:
‘You wouldn’t have an ulterior motive for joining me in Expectations, would you?’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘Didn’t come to do something else?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘You’re lying about something,’ she announced slowly, ‘but about what I’m not so sure. Children are such consummate liars. Have your servants recently left you?’
She was staring at the dirty dishes.
‘Yes,’ I lied again, not so keen on her disparagement any more. ‘Domestic service is a tricky issue in 1985.’
‘It’s no bed of roses in the nineteenth century either,’ Miss Havisham replied, leaning on the kitchen table to steady herself. ‘I find a good servant but they never stay—it’s the lure of them, you know, the liars, the evil ones.’
‘Evil ones?’
‘Men!’ hissed Havisham contemptuously. ‘The lying sex. Mark my words, child, for no good will ever come of you if you succumb to their charms—and they have the charms of a snake, believe me!’
‘I’ll try to keep on my toes,’ I told her.
‘And your chastity firmly guarded,’ she told me sternly.
‘Goes without saying.’
‘Good. Can I borrow that jacket?’
She was pointing at Miles Hawke’s Swindon Mallets jacket. Without waiting for a reply she put it on and replaced her veil with a SpecOps cap. Satisfied, she asked:
‘Is this the way out?’
‘No, that’s the broom cupboard. This is the way out over here.’
We opened the door to find my landlord with
his fist raised ready to knock.
‘Ah!’ he said in a low growl. ‘Next!’
‘You said I had until Friday,’ I told him.
‘I’m turning off the water. The gas, too.’
‘You can’t do that!’
He leered. ‘If you’ve got six hundred quid on you, perhaps I can be convinced not to.’
But his smirk changed to fear as the point of Miss Havisham’s stick shot out and caught him in the throat. She pushed him heavily against the wall in the corridor. He choked and made to move the stick but Miss Havisham knew just how much pressure was needed—she pushed the stick harder and he stayed his hand.
‘Listen to me!’ she snapped. ‘Touch Miss Next’s gas and water and you’ll have me to answer to. She’ll pay you on time, you worthless wretch—you have Miss Havisham’s word on that!’
He gasped in short breaths, the tip of Miss Havisham’s stick stuck fast against his windpipe. His eyes were clouded with the panic of suffocation; all he could do was breathe fitfully and try to nod.
‘Good!’ replied Miss Havisham, releasing the man, who fell in a heap on the floor.
‘The evil ones,’ announced Miss Havisham. ‘You see what men are like?’
‘They’re not all like that,’ I tried to explain.
‘Nonsense!’ replied Miss Havisham as we walked downstairs. ‘He was one of the better ones. At least he didn’t attempt to lie his way into your favours. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this one was barely repulsive at all. Do you have a car?’
Miss Havisham’s eyebrows rose slightly as she saw the curious paintwork on my Porsche.
‘It was painted this way when I bought it,’ I explained.
‘I see,’ replied Miss Havisham in a disapproving tone. ‘Keys?’
‘I don’t think—’
‘The keys, girl! What was Rule One again?’
‘Do exactly as you say.’
‘Disobedient, perhaps,’ she replied with a thin smile, ‘but not forgetful!’
I reluctantly handed over the keys. Havisham grasped them with a gleam in her eye and jumped into the driver’s seat.
‘Is it the four-cam engine?’ she asked excitedly.
‘No,’ I replied, ‘standard 1.6 unit.’
‘Oh, well!’ snorted Havisham, pumping the accelerator twice before turning the key. ‘It’ll have to do, I suppose.’
The engine burst into life. Havisham gave me a smile and a wink as she revved the engine up to the red line before she briskly snapped the gearshift into first and dropped the clutch. There was a screech of rubber as we careered off up the road, the rear of the car swinging from side to side as the spinning wheels sought to find traction on the asphalt.
I have not been frightened many times in my life. Charging into the massed artillery of the Imperial Russian Army had a surreal detachment that I had found eerie rather than fearful. Tackling Hades first in London and then on the roof of Thornfield Hall had been quite unpleasant, so had leading an armed police raid, and the two occasions I had stared at close quarters down the barrel of a gun hadn’t been a bundle of joy either.
None of those, however, even came close to the feeling of almost certain death that I experienced during Miss Havisham’s driving. We must have violated every road traffic regulation that had ever been written. We narrowly missed pedestrians, other cars, traffic bollards and ran three traffic lights at red before Miss Havisham had to stop at a junction to let a juggernaut go past. She was smiling to herself and, although erratic and bordering on homicidal, her driving had a sort of idiot savant skill about it. Just when I thought it was impossible to avoid a postbox she tweaked the brakes, flicked down a gear and missed the unyielding iron lump by the width of a hair.
‘The carburettors seem slightly unbalanced!’ she bellowed above the terrified screams of pedestrians. ‘Let’s have a look, shall we?’ She hauled on the handbrake and we slid sideways up a dropped kerbstone and stopped next to an open-air cafe, causing a group of nuns to run for cover. Havisham climbed out of the car and opened the engine cover.
‘Rev the car for me, girl!’ she shouted. I did as I was told and smiled wanly at one of the customers at the cafe, who eyed me malevolently.
‘She doesn’t get out often,’ I explained as Havisham returned to the driver’s seat, revved the engine loudly and left the customers at the cafe in a cloud of foul-smelling rubber smoke.
‘That’s better!’ yelled Miss Havisham. ‘Can’t you hear it? Much better!’
All I could hear was the wail of a police siren that had started up.
‘Oh, Christ!’ I muttered; Miss Havisham punched me painfully on the arm.
‘What was that for?’
‘Blaspheming! If there is one thing I hate more than men, it’s blaspheming… Get out of my way, you godless heathens!’
A group of people at a pedestrian crossing scattered in confused panic as Havisham shot past, angrily waving her fist. I looked behind us as a police car came into view, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring. I could see the occupants bracing themselves as they took the corner; Miss Havisham dropped a gear and we took a tight left bend, ran the wheels on the kerb, swerved to avoid a mother with a pram and found ourselves in a carpark. We accelerated between the rows of parked cars but the only way out was blocked by a delivery van. Miss Havisham stamped on the brakes, flicked the car into reverse and initiated a neat reverse slide that took us off in the opposite direction.
‘Don’t you think we’d better stop?’ I asked.
‘Nonsense, girl!’ snapped Havisham, looking for a way out while the police car nosed up to our rear bumper. ‘Not with the sale about to open. Here we go! Hold on!’
There was only one way out of the carpark that didn’t involve capture—a path between two concrete bollards that looked way too narrow for my car. But Miss Havisham’s eyes were sharper than mine and we shot through the gap, bounced across a grass bank, skidded past the statue of Brunel, drove the wrong way down a one-way street, through a back alley, past the Carer’s Monument and across the pedestrianised precinct to screech to a halt in front of a long queue for the Swindon Booktastic closing-down sale—just as the town clock struck twelve.
‘You nearly killed eight people!’ I managed to gasp out loud.
‘My count was closer to twelve,’ returned Havisham as she opened the door. ‘And anyhow, you can’t nearly kill someone. Either they are dead or they are not; and not one of them was so much as scratched!’
The police car slid to a halt behind us, both sides of the vehicle had deep gouges down the side—the bollards, I presumed
‘I’m more used to my Bugatti than this,’ said Miss Havisham as she handed me the keys and slammed the door. ‘But it’s not so very bad, now, is it? I like the gearbox especially.’
The police didn’t look very friendly. They peered at Miss Havisham closely, unsure of how to put their outrage at her flagrant disregard for the Road Traffic Act into words.
‘You,’ said one of the officers in a barely controlled voice, ‘you, madam, are in a lot of trouble.’
She looked at the young officer with an imperious glare.
‘Young man, you have no idea of the word!’
‘Listen, Rawlings,’ I interrupted, ‘can we—’
‘Miss Next,’ replied the officer firmly but positively, ‘your turn will come, okay?’
I got out of the car. The local police didn’t much care for SpecOps and we didn’t care much for them. They would be overjoyed to pin something on any of us.
‘Name?’
‘Miss Dame-rouge,’ Havisham announced, lying spectacularly, ‘and don’t bother asking me for my licence or insurance—I haven’t either!’
The officer pondered this for a moment.
‘I’d like you to get in my car, madam. I’m going to have to take you in for questioning.’
‘Am I under arrest?’
‘If you refuse to come with me.’
Havisham glanced at me and mouth
ed ‘After three’. She then sighed deeply and walked over to the police car in a very overdramatic manner, shaking with muscle tremors and generally behaving like the ancient person she wasn’t. I looked at her hand as she signalled to me—out of sight of the officers—a single finger, then two, then finally, as she rested for a moment against the front wing of their car, the third and final finger.
‘LOOK OUT!’ I yelled, pointing up.
The officers, mindful of the Hispano-Suiza accident two days before, dutifully looked up as Havisham and I bolted to the head of the queue, pretending we knew someone. The two officers wasted no time and leapt after us, only to lose us in the crowd as the doors to Swindon Booktastic opened and a sea of keen bibliophiles of all different ages and reading tastes moved forward, knocking both officers off their feet and sweeping Miss Havisham and me into the bowels of the bookstore.
Inside there was a near-riot in progress, and I was soon separated from Miss Havisham; ahead of me a pair of middle-aged men were arguing over a signed copy of Kerouac’s On the Road which eventually ripped down the middle. I fought my way round the ground floor, past Cartography, Travel and Self-help, and was just giving up the idea of ever seeing Havisham again when I noticed a long red flowing robe poking out from beneath a fawn macintosh. I watched the crimson hem cross the floor and go into the elevator. I ran across and put my foot between the doors just before they shut. The Neanderthal lift operator looked at me curiously, opened the doors to let me in and then closed them again. The Red Queen stared at me loftily and shuffled slightly to achieve a more regal position. She was quite heavily built; her hair was a bright auburn shade, tied up in a neat bun under her crown, which had been hastily concealed beneath the hood of her cloak. She was dressed completely in red, and I suspected that under her make-up her skin might have been red, too.
‘Good morning, Your Majesty,’ I said, as politely as I could.
‘Humph!’ replied the Red Queen, then, after a pause, she added: ‘Are you that tawdry Havisham woman’s new apprentice?’
Lost in a Good Book tn-2 Page 18
