The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1)

“Have I gone, Sweetpea?” asked my father, who had returned from his hiding place behind the shed.

“Yes.”

“Good. Well, I found out what you wanted to know. I went to London in 1610 and found that Shakespeare was only an actor with a potentially embarrassing sideline as a purveyor of bagged commodities in Stratford. No wonder he kept it quiet— wouldn’t you?”

This was interesting indeed.

“So who wrote them? Marlowe? Bacon?”

“No; there was a bit of a problem. You see, no one had even heard of the plays, much less written them.”

I didn’t understand.

“What are you saying? There aren’t any?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. They don’t exist. They were never written. Not by him, not by anyone.”

“I’m sorry,” said Landen, unwilling to take much more of this, “but we saw Richard III only six weeks ago.”

“Of course,” said my father. “Time is out of joint big time. Obviously something had to be done. I took a copy of the complete works back with me and gave them to the actor Shakespeare in 1592 to distribute on a given timetable. Does that answer your question?”

I was still confused.

“So it wasn’t Shakespeare who wrote the plays.”

“Decidedly not!” he agreed. “Nor Marlowe, Oxford, De Vere, Bacon or any of the others.”

“But that’s not possible!” exclaimed Landen.

“On the contrary,” replied my father. “Given the huge timescale of the cosmos, impossible things are commonplace. When you’ve lived as long as I have you’ll know that absolutely anything is possible. Time is out of joint; O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!”

“You put that in?” I asked, always assuming he was quoting from Hamlet and not the other way round.

He smiled.

“A small personal vanity that I’m sure will be forgiven, Thursday. Besides: Who’s to know?”

My father stared at his empty glass, looked around in vain for a waiter, then said:

“Lavoisier will have locked onto me by now. He swore he’d catch me and he’s good. He should be; we were partners for almost seven centuries. Just one more thing: how did the Duke of Wellington die?”

I remembered he had asked me this once before.

“As I said, Dad, he died in his bed in 1852.”

Father smiled and rubbed his hands.

“That’s excellent news indeed! How about Nelson?”

“Shot by a French sniper at Trafalgar.”

“Really? Well, some you win. Listen: good luck, the pair of you. A boy or a girl would be fine; one of each would be better.”

He leaned closer and lowered his voice.

“I don’t know when I am going to be back, so listen carefully. Never buy a blue car or a paddling pool, stay away from oysters and circular saws, and don’t be near Oxford in June 2016. Got it?”

“Yes, but!—”