She smiled at the two lucky winners of her crazy competition, who smiled back through the half-glazed office door, and we both trotted into the ladies'.
'Ten minutes,' she said to me as I locked myself in a cubicle. I opened the book and started to read:
Many were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved. 'Dear, dear Norland!' said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of them being there …
The small melamine cubicle started to evaporate and in its place was a large park, bathed in the light of a dying sun, the haze softening the shadows and making the house glow in the failing light. There was a light breeze, and in front of the house a lone girl walked, gazing fondly at the—
'—do you always read aloud in the toilet?' asked Cordelia from behind the door.
The images
evaporated in a flash and I was back in the ladies'.
'Always,' I replied. 'And if you don't leave me alone, I'll never be finished.'
'… when shall I cease to regret you! – When I learn to feel a home elsewhere? – Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more! – and you, ye well known trees! – but you will continue …'
The house came back again, the young woman talking quietly, matching her words to mine as I drifted into the book. I was now sitting not on a hard SpecOps standard toilet seat but on a white-painted wrought-iron garden bench. I stopped reading when I was certain I was completely within Sense and Sensibility and listened to Marianne as she finished her speech:
'… and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade! But who will remain to enjoy you?'
She sighed dramatically, clasped her hands to her breast and sobbed quietly for a moment or two. Then she took one long look at the large white-painted house and turned to face me.
'Hello!' she said in a friendly voice. 'I haven't seen you around here before. Would you be working for Juris-thingummywhatsit?'
'Don't we have to be careful as to what we say?' I managed to utter, looking around nervously.
'Goodness me no!' exclaimed Marianne with a delightful giggle. 'The chapter is over and, besides, this book is written in the third person. We are free to do what we please until tomorrow morning when we depart for Devon. The next two chapters are heavy with exposition – I hardly have anything to do, and I say even less! You look confused, poor thing! Have you been into a book before?'
'I went into Jane Eyre once.'
Marianne frowned overdramatically.
'Poor, dear, sweet Jane! I would so hate to be a first-person character! Always on your guard, always having people reading your thoughts! Here we do what we are told but think what we wish. It is a much happier circumstance, believe me!'
'What do you know about Jurisfiction?' I asked.
'They will be arriving shortly,' she explained. 'Mrs Dashwood might be beastly to Mama but she understands self-preservation. We wouldn't want to suffer the same tragic fate as Confusion and Conviviality, now, would we?'
'Is that Austen?' I queried. 'I've not even heard of it!'
Marianne sat down next to me and rested her hand on my arm.
'Mama said it was a socialist collective,' she confided in a hoarse whisper. 'There was a revolution – they took over the entire book and decided to run it on the principle of every character having an equal part, from the duchess to the cobbler! I ask you! Jurisfiction tried to save it, of course, but it was too far gone – not even Ambrose could do anything. The entire book was … boojummed!'
She said the last word so seriously that I would have laughed had she not been staring at me so intently with her dark brown eyes.
'How I do talk!' she said at last, jumping up, clapping her hands and doing a twirl on the lawn. '… and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade. …'
She stopped and checked herself, placed her hand over her mouth and nose and uttered an embarrassed girlish giggle.
'What a loon!' she muttered. 'I've said that already! Farewell, Miss … Miss … I beg your pardon but I don't know your name!'
'It's Thursday – Thursday Next.'
'What a strange name!'
She gave a small curtsy in a half-joking way.