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“What’s this?” I asked.
“It belonged to whoever saved your life that night.”
“What do you mean?”
“A passerby attended to you before the medics arrived; the wound in your arm was plugged and they wrapped you in their coat to keep you warm. Without their intervention you might well have bled to death.”
Intrigued, I opened the package. Firstly, there was a handkerchief that despite several washings still bore the stains of my own blood. There was an embroidered monogram in the corner that read EFR. Secondly the parcel contained a jacket, a sort of casual evening coat that might have been very popular in the middle of the last century. I searched the pockets and found a bill from a milliner. It was made out to one Edward Fairfax Rochester, Esq., and was dated 1833. I sat down heavily on the bed and stared at the two articles of clothing and the bill. Ordinarily I would not have believed that Rochester could have torn himself from the pages of Jane Eyre and come to my aid that night; such a thing is, of course, quite impossible. I might have dismissed the whole thing as a ludicrously complicated prank had it not been for one thing: Edward Rochester and I had met once before . . .
6.
Jane Eyre: A Short Excursion into the Novel
Outside Styx’s apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, nor would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey—and returned.
THURSDAY NEXT
—A Life in SpecOps
IT WAS 1958. My uncle and aunt—who even then seemed old—had taken me up to Haworth House, the old Brontë residence, for a visit. I had been learning about William Thackeray at school, and since the Brontës were contemporaries of his it seemed a good opportunity to further my interest in these matters. My Uncle Mycroft was giving a lecture at Bradford University on his remarkable mathematical work regarding game theory, the most practical side of which allowed one to win at Snakes and Ladders every time. Bradford was near to Haworth, so a combined visit seemed a good idea.
We were led around by the guide, a fluffy woman in her sixties with steel-rimmed spectacles and an angora cardigan who steered the tourists around the rooms with an abrupt manner, as though she felt that none of them could possibly know as much as she did, but would grudgingly assist to lift them from the depths of their own ignorance. Near the end of the tour, when thoughts had turned to picture postcards and ice cream, the prize exhibit in the form of the original manuscript of Jane Eyre greeted the tired museum-goers.
Although the pages had browned with age and the black ink faded to a light brown, the writing could still be read by the practiced eye, the fine spidery longhand flowing across the page in a steady stream of inventive prose. A page was turned every two days, allowing the more regular and fanatical Brontë followers to read the novel as originally drafted.
The day that I came to the Brontë museum the manuscript was open at the point where Jane and Rochester first meet; a chance encounter by a stile.
“—which makes it one of the greatest romantic novels ever written,” continued the fluffy yet lofty guide in her oft-repeated monologue, ignoring several hands that had been raised to ask pertinent questions.
“The character of Jane Eyre, a tough and resilient heroine, drew her apart from the usual heroines of the time, and Rochester, a forbidding yet basically good man, also broke the mold with his flawed character’s dour humor. Jane Eyre was written by Charlotte Brontë in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Be
ll. Thackeray described it as ‘the master work of a great genius.’ We continue on now to the shop where you may purchase picture postcards, commemorative plates, small plastic imitation Heathcliffs and other mementos of your visit. Thank you for—”
One of the group had their hand up and was determined to have his say.
“Excuse me,” began the young man in an American accent. A muscle in the tour guide’s cheek momentarily twitched as she forced herself to listen to someone else’s opinion.
“Yes?” she inquired with icy politeness.
“Well,” continued the young man, “I’m kinda new to this whole Brontë thing, but I had trouble with the end of Jane Eyre.”
“Trouble?”
“Yeah. Like Jane leaves Thornfield Hall and hitches up with her cousins, the Riverses.”
“I know who her cousins are, young man.”
“Yeah, well, she agrees to go with this drippy St. John Rivers guy but not to marry him, they depart for India and that’s the end of the book? Hello? What about a happy ending? What happens to Rochester and his nutty wife?”
The guide glowered.
“And what would you prefer? The forces of good and evil fighting to the death in the corridors of Thornfield Hall?”
“That’s not what I meant,” continued the young man, beginning to get slightly annoyed. “It’s just that the book cries out for a strong resolution, to tie up the narrative and finish the tale. I get the feeling from what she wrote that she just kinda pooped out.”
The guide stared at him for a moment through her steel-rimmed glasses and wondered why the visitors couldn’t behave just that little bit more like sheep. Sadly, his point was a valid one; she herself had often pondered the diluted ending, wishing, like millions of others, that circumstances had allowed Jane and Rochester to marry after all.
“Some things will never be known,” she replied noncommittally. Charlotte is no longer with us so the question is abstract. What we have to study and enjoy is what she has left us. The sheer exuberance of the writing easily outweighs any of its small shortcomings.”
