Have any of you read Jane Eyre?

It happened during an English Literature class at school when I was about 14 or 15, but I still remember it as if it was yesterday. Like most teenage kids, I dreaded looking silly in front of my classmates – particularly my friend “Fizz” who sat next to me. (In those days, I was known as “Buckets”, incidentally.) Fizz already thought I was crazy for getting a book called Letters of Giuseppe Verdi out of the library, and he also failed to see how I could find a book with a title like Memoirs of an Interpreter interesting.

But this particular day, our teacher, Mr Hodgkins, casually asked the class, in passing: “Have any of you read Jane Eyre?” If I remember correctly, one of the girls immediately put her hand up. A few seconds later, I put my hand up, too. This was an important test for me, you see, because of my religious convictions: I needed to tell the truth at all times and at all costs. Why the few seconds of hesitation, then? You’re probably ahead of me: I hesitated briefly (and humanly) because I didn’t want to look silly in front of Fizz and all the others, obviously. And if you’d been there, you would indeed have heard some sniggering when I put my hand up.

There is, however, one problem with that explanation: despite all appearances, it’s simply not true. It just so happens that fear of possible ridicule was not the reason I hesitated at all in this particular case. In fact, I would have been very proud to “admit” to having read the classic novel by Charlotte Brontë – and, indeed, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by her sister Anne Brontë, if it came to that (so there!). The reason I hesitated was because I was struggling to resolve a serious problem: I didn’t know whether or not I would be telling the truth if I put my hand up, because – get this – I honestly and sincerely didn’t know whether or not I had actually read Jane Eyre (or The Tenant of Wildfell Hall either, if it came to that)!

Confused? You bet I was. No, sorry – I mean: “And so you should be”. But, you see, the fact of the matter was that I had listened to the entire unabridged text of both of those books broadcast over the air as serialisations on BBC radio in the evenings. But I had no recollection of ever having set eyes on a single printed page of either of the two books. So had I read Jane Eyre? Well, I thought to myself, it depends what you mean. Yes. No. And also Yes-and-No. All three at once, in fact. But how do you indicate all that by putting up your hand, not putting up your hand, and putting-up-and-not-putting-up your hand all at the same time? Quite a problem, isn’t it? And there wasn’t a moment to lose! The question sent my mind (and my pulse) racing. Fortunately, I managed to figure out the right response in time. Phew!

If I’d got it wrong, though, maybe I could have emulated what Giuseppe Verdi did once after he made a social gaffe: “In a fury, I took a revolver and fired it into my mouth. It was made of chocolate. And I live – alas! alas!”