Lost in a good book by Jasper Fforde Page A

loudly and pointed at the operator with her umbrella.
    “You there!” she boomed like a captain before the storm. “What are you doing? I wanted to get off at Cricklade, damn you!”
    The operator seemed unperturbed at the insult and muttered an apology. This obviously wasn’t good enough for the loud and objectionable woman, who jabbed the small neanderthal violently in the ribs with her umbrella. He didn’t yell out in pain, he just flinched, pulled the driver’s door closed behind him and locked it. I stood up and snatched the umbrella from the woman.
    “What the—!” she said indignantly.
    “Don’t do that,” I told her. “It’s not nice.”
    “Poppycock!” she guffawed loudly. “Why, he’s only neanderthal!”
    “Meddlesome,” said one of the other passengers sitting near the back with an air of finality, staring at an advert for the Gravitube.
    The objectionable lady and I stared at her, wondering who she was referring to. She looked at us both, flushed, and said:
    “No, no. Ten letters, three down. Well decorated for prying. Meddlesome. ”
    “Very good,” muttered the lady with the crossword as she scribbled in the answer.
    I handed the umbrella back to the well-heeled woman, who eyed me malevolently; we were barely two feet apart but she wasn’t going to sit down first, and neither was I.
    “Jab the neanderthal again and I’ll arrest you for assault,” I told her.
    “I happen to know,” announced the woman tartly, “that neanderthals are legally classed as animals. You cannot assault a neanderthal any more than you can a mouse!”
    My temper began to rise—always a bad sign. I would probably end up doing something stupid.
    “Perhaps,” I replied, “but I can arrest you for cruelty, bruising the calm and anything else I can think of.”
    But the woman wasn’t the least bit intimidated.
    “My husband is a justice of the peace,” she announced like a hidden trump. “I can make things very tricky for you. What is your name?”
    “Next,” I told her without hesitation. “Thursday Next. SO-27.”
    Her eyelids flickered slightly and she stopped rummaging in her bag for a pencil and paper.
    “The Jane Eyre Thursday Next?” she asked, her mood changing abruptly.
    “I saw you on the telly,” chirped the woman with the crossword. “You seem a bit obsessed with your dodo, I must say. Why couldn’t you talk about Jane Eyre , Goliath, or ending the Crimean War?”
    “Believe me, I tried.”
    The well-heeled woman decided that this was a good moment to withdraw, so she sat back in her seat two rows behind me and stared out of the window as the Skyrail swept on past Broad Blunsdon Station; the passengers variously sighed, made tut-tut noises and shrugged to one another.
    “I am going to complain to the Skyrail management about this, ” said a heavyset woman with makeup like builder’s plaster. She carried a disgruntled-looking Pekinese. “A good cure for insubordination is—”
    Her speech came to an abrupt end as the neanderthal suddenly increased the speed of the car.
    I knocked on the acrylic door and said: “What’s going on, pal?”
    The neanderthal had taken about as much umbrella jabbing as he could that day, or any day, come to that.
    “We are going home now,” he said simply, staring straight ahead.
    “We?” echoed the woman with the umbrella. “No, we’re not. I live at Cricklade—”
    “He means I, ” I told her. “Neanderthals don’t use the personal pronoun.”
    “Damn stupid!” she replied. I glared at her and she got the message and lapsed into sulky silence. I leaned closer to the driver.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Kaylieu,” he replied.
    “Good. Now Kaylieu, I want you to tell me what the problem is.”
    He paused for a moment as the Swindon Airship stop came and went. I saw another shuttle that had been diverted to a siding and several Skyrail officials waving at us, so it was only a matter of time before the authorities knew what was going