“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 café 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 curb, swerved to avoid a mother with a pram and found ourselves in a car park. 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 negotiated 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 sales about to open. Here we go! Hold on!”

  There was only one way out of the car park 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 pedestrianized precinct to screech to a halt in front of a large queue that had gathered 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 car 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, got out and slammed the door, “but it’s not so very bad, now is it? I like the gearbox especially.”

  I knew both of the officers and they didn’t look very amused. The local PD didn’t much care for SpecOps and we didn’t much care for them. They would be overjoyed to pin something on any of us. 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.

  “Name?”

  “Miss Dame-rouge,” announced Havisham, lying spectacularly, “and don’t bother asking me for my license 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 mouthed, “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 signaled 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 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 in the door just before it 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 under the hood of her cloak. She was dressed completely in red, and I suspected that under her makeup her skin might be red, too.

  “Good morning, your majesty,” I said, as politely as I could.

  “Humph!” replied the red queen, then after a pause, added: “Are you that tawdry Havisham woman’s new apprentice?”

  “Since this morning, ma’am.”

  “A morning wasted, I shouldn’t wonder. Do you have a name?”

  “Thursday Next, ma’am.”

  “You may curtsy if you so wish.”

  So I did.

  “You will regret not learning with me, my dear—but you are, of course, merely a child, and right and wrong are so difficult to spot at your tender age.”

  “Which floor, your majesty?” asked the neanderthal.

  The Red Queen beamed at him, told him that if he played his cards right she would make him a duke and then added, “Three,” as an afterthought.

  There was one of those funny empty pauses that seem to exist only in elevators and dentist waiting rooms. We stared at the floor indicator as it moved slowly upwards and stopped on the second floor.

  “Second floor,” announced the neanderthal. “Historical, Allegorical, Historical-Allegorical, Poetry, Plays, Theology, Critical Analysis and Pencils.”

  Someone tried to get on. The Red Queen barked “Taken!” in such a fearful tone that the person backed out again.

  “And how is Havisham these days?” asked the Red Queen with a diffident air as the lift moved upwards again.

  “Well, I think,” I replied.

  “You must ask her about her wedding.”

  “I don’t think that’s very wise,” I returned.

  “Decidedly not!” said the Red Queen, guffawing like a sea lion. “But it will elicit an amusing effect. Like Vesuvius, as I recall!”

  “Third floor,” announced the neanderthal. “Fiction, Popular, authors A–J.”

  The doors opened to reveal a mass of book fans, fighting in a most unseemly fashion over what even I had to admit were some very good bargains. I had heard about these Fiction Frenzies before—but never witnessed one.

  “Come, this is more like it!” announced the Red Queen happily, rubbing her hands together and knocking a little old lady flying as she hopped out of the elevator.

  “Where are you, Havisham?” she yelled, looking to left and right. “She has to be . . . Yes! Yes! Ahoy there, Stella, you old trollop!”

  Miss Havisham stopped in mid-stride and stared in the Queen’s direction. In a single swift movement she drew a small pistol from the folds of her tattered wedding dress and loosed off a shot in our direction. The Red Queen ducked as the bullet knocked a corner off a plaster cornice.

  “Temper, temper!” shouted the Red Queen, but Havisham was no longer there.

  “Hah!” said the Red Queen, hopping into the fray. “The devil take her—she’s heading towards Romantic Fiction!”

  “Romantic Fiction?” I echoed, thinking of Havisham’s hatred of men. “I don’t think that’s very likely!”

  The Red Queen ignored me and made a detour through Fantasy to avoid a scrum near the Agatha Christie counter. I knew the store a little better and nipped in between Haggard and Hergé, where I was just in time to see Miss Havisham make her first mistake. In her haste she had pushed past a little old lady sizing up a “buy two get one free” offer on contemporary fiction. The little old lady—no stranger to department store sales battle tactics—parried Havisham’s blow expertly and hooked her bamboo-handled umbrella around her ankle. Havisham came down with a heavy thud and lay still, the breath knocked out of her. I kneeled beside her as the Red Queen hopped past, laughing loudly and making “nyah, nyah” noises.

  “Thursday!” panted Miss Havisham as several stockinged feet ran across her. “A complete set of Daphne Farquitt novels in a walnut display case—run!”

  And run I did. Farquitt was so prolific and popular she had a bookshelf all to herself, and her recent boxed sets were fast becoming collector’s items—it was not surprising that there was a fight in progress. I entered the scrum behind the Red Queen and was instantly punched on the nose. I reeled with the shock and was pushed heavily from behind while someone else—an accomplice, I assumed—thrust a walking stick between my shins. I lost my footing and fell with a thud on the hard wooden floor. This was not a safe place to be. I crawled out of the battle and joined Miss Havisham where she had taken cover behind a display of generously discounted Du Maurier novels.

  “Not so easy as it looks, eh, girl?” asked Havisham with a rare smile, holding a lacy white handkerchief to my bleeding nose. “How close is the Royal Harridan to the Farquitt shelves?”

  “I last saw her fighting somewhere between Ervine and Euripides.”

  “Blast!” replied Havisham with a grunt. “Listen, girl, I’m done for. My ankle’s twisted and I think I’ve had it. But you— you might be able to make it.”

  I looked out at the squabbling masses as a pocket derringer fell to the ground not far from us.

  “I thought this might happen,” she continued, “so I drew a map.”

  She unfolded a piece of Satis House notepaper and pointed out where she thought we were.

  “You won’t make it across the main floor alive. You’re going to have to climb over the Police Procedurals bookcase, make your way past the cash register and stock returns, crawl under the Chicklit and then fight the last six feet to the Farquitt boxed set. It’s a limited edition of one hundred—I will never get another chance like this!”

  “This is lunacy, Miss Havisham!” I replied indignantly. “I will not fight over a set of Daphne Farquitt novels!”

  Miss Havisham looked sharply at me as the muffled crack of a small-caliber firearm sounded and there was the thud of a body falling.

  “I thought as much!” she sneered. “A streak of yellow a mile wide all the way down your back! How did you think you were going to handle the otherness at Jurisfiction if you can’t handle a few crazed fiction-fanciers hell bent on finding bargains? Your apprenticeship is at an end. Good day, Miss Next!”

  “Wait! This is a test?”

  “What did you think it was? Think someone like me with all the money I have enjoys spending my time fighting for books I can read for free in the library?”

  I resisted the temptation to say “Well, yes” and answered instead: “Will you be okay here, ma’am?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she replied, tripping up a man near us for no reason I could see. “Now go!”

  I turned and crawled rapidly across the carpet, climbed over the Police Procedurals to just beyond the registers, where the sales assistants rang in the bargains with a fervor bordering on messianic. I crept past them, through the empty returns department, and dived under the Chicklit table to emerge a scant two yards from the Daphne Farquitt special editions display; by a miracle no one had yet grabbed the boxed set. And it was very discounted—down from £300 to only £50. I looked to my left and could see the Red Queen fighting her way through the crowd. She caught my eye and dared me to try and beat her. I took a deep breath and waded into the swirling maelstrom of popular-prose-induced violence. Almost instantly I was punched on the jaw and thumped in the kidneys; I cried out in pain and quickly withdrew. I met a woman next to the J. G. Farrell section who had a nasty cut above her eye; she told me in a concussed manner that the Major Archer character appeared in both Troubles and The Singapore Grip. I glanced to where the Red Queen was cutting a swath through the crowd, knocking people aside in her bid to beat me. She smiled triumphantly as she head-butted a woman who had tried to poke her in the eye with a silver-plated bookmark. I took a step forward to join the fray, then stopped, considered my condition for a moment and decided that perhaps pregnant women shouldn’t get involved in bookshop brawls.

  So instead I took a deep breath and yelled: “Ms. Farquitt is signing copies of her books in the basement!”

  There was a moment’s silence, then a mass exodus towards the stairs and escalators. The Red Queen, caught up in the crowd, was dragged unceremoniously away with them; in a few seconds the room was empty. Daphne Farquitt was notoriously private—I didn’t think there was a fan of hers anywhere who wouldn’t jump at the chance of actually meeting her. I walked calmly up to the boxed set, picked it up and took it to the counter, paid and rejoined Miss Havisham behind the discounted Du Mauriers, where she was idly flicking through a copy of Rebecca. I showed her the books.

  “Not bad,” she said grudgingly. “Did you get a receipt?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And the Red Queen?”

  “Lost somewhere between here and the basement.”

  A thin smile crossed Miss Havisham’s lips, and I helped her to her feet. Together we walked slowly past the mass of squabbling book-bargainers and made for the exit.

  “How did you manage it?” asked Miss Havisham.

  “I told them Daphne Farquitt was signing in the basement.”

  “She is?” exclaimed Miss Havisham, turning to head off downstairs.

  “No, no, no,” I added, taking her by the arm and steering her to the exit. “That’s just what I told them.”

  “Oh, I get it!” replied Havisham. “Very good indeed. Resourceful and intelligent. Mrs. Nakajima was quite right—I think you’ll do as an apprentice after all.”

  She regarded me for a moment, making up her mind about something. Eventually she nodded, gave another rare smile and handed me a simple gold ring that slipped easily over my little finger.

  “Here—this is for you. Never take it off. Do you understand?”

  “Thank you, Miss Havisham, it’s very pretty.”

  “Pretty nothing, Next. Save your gratitude for real favors, not baubles, my girl. Come along. I know of a very good bun shop in Little Dorrit—and I’m buying!”

  Outside, paramedics were dealing with the casualties, many of them still clutching the remnants of the bargains for which they had fought so bravely. My car was gone—towed away, most likely—and we trotted as fast as we could on Miss Havisham’s twisted ankle, round the corner of the building until—

  “Not so fast!”

  The officers who had chased us earlier were blocking our path.

  “Looking for something? This, I suppose?”

  My car was on the back of a low loader being taken away.

  “We’ll take the bus,” I stammered.

  “You’ll take the car,” corrected the police officer. “My car— Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”

  He was talking to Miss Havisham, who had taken the Farquitt boxed set and walked into a small group of women to disguise her bookjump—back to Great Expectations or the bun shop in Little Dorrit or somewhere. I wished I could join her but my skills in these matters were not really up to scratch. I sighed.

  “We want some answers, Next,” said the policeman in a grim tone.

  “Listen, Rawlings, I don’t know the lady very well. What did she say her name was? Dame-rouge?”

  “It’s Havisham, Next—but you know that, don’t you? That ‘lady’ is extremely well known to the police—she’s racked up seventy-four outrageously serious driving offenses in the past twenty-two years.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. In June she was clocked driving a chain-driven Liberty-engined Higham Special automobile at 171.5 MPH down the M4. It’s not only irresponsible, it’s—Why are you laughing?”

  “No reason.”

  The officer stared at me.

  “You seem to know her quite well, Next. Why does she do these things?”

  “Probably,” I replied, “because they don’t have motorways where she comes from—or 27-liter Higham Specials.”

  “And where would that be, Next?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I could arrest you for helping the escape of an individual in custody.”

  “She wasn’t arrested, Rawlings, you said so yourself.”

  “Perhaps not, but you are. In the car.”

  20.

  Yorrick Kaine

  In 1983 the youthful Yorrick Kaine was elected leader of the Whigs, at that time a small and largely inconsequential party whose desire to put the aristocracy back in power and limit voting rights to homeowners had placed it on the outer edges of the political arena. A pro-Crimean stance coupled with a wish for British unification helped build nationalist support, and by 1985 the Whigs had three MPs in Parliament. They built their manifesto on populist tactics such as reducing the cheese duty and offering dukedoms as prizes on the National Lottery. A shrewd politician and clever tactician, Kaine was ambitious for power—in whatever way he could get it.