My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (14 page)

‘But what right had you to bring me to this place?' I asked, peeved that he should have anticipated my behaviour so well.

‘None, my dear,' he confessed, patting my hand. ‘None whatsoever. You ask why you should help me. Well, I hope to show you
that
there is much in this for you,
if you will be so good as to listen further. For my belief is that we can mutually assist one another,' he smiled, sipping
his coffee. ‘We are talking of more than merely your safe return home. You must not forget, dear Frøken Charlotte, that I have been watching you, & was acquainted well enough with your plucky character to know how to tempt you to the Oblivion Room. Now I will come straight to the point of why I did so. What I need is someone whom I can trust, to occupy that house & safeguard the machine, so I can continue to come & go as I please. That someone, in my scheme of things, is
you.
Now in return –‘ (& here he paused for effect) ' – you may not only have the run of the entire house, but become its legal mistress.'

At this he grinned at me most winningly, & winked. Well, I'll grant him this much, I thought: he knows how my heart works
all right A young whore raised in an orphanage, mistress of a huge & imposing mansion in a grand part of town! The things
I could do if I got my hands on that place! Lord, I could run my own brothel! I'd call it Hotel Charlotte. I'd employ ten,
no, twenty girls, & have Doktor Thorning check their
tissekones
for diseases once a month. I'd buy good beds, with the best linen & the softest pillows, & there would be hot & cold running
water in each room, & scented soaps, & –

As though reading my thoughts, he smiled. ‘And do with it as you wish, within reason. But you must stay discreet.'

‘But how is this to be achieved?' I asked, so excited by my fantasy that I nearly spilled my frothy beverage. ‘I can understand
your need to protect the Mother Machine, as you call it, but you will never prise your wife out of that house!'

‘Aha,' he said, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin as the waiter came and cleared the crockery. ‘Let me explain something
that might give you hope. In the seven years since I have regularly been returning to Copenhagen, I have been able to influence
my wife's movements,' he said slowly. ‘And with your help, I hope to influence them further. So far, indeed, as to send her
packing, never to return.'

Much as I wanted to believe this, I found it most puzzling & frankly hard to credit. ‘Influence a woman as obtuse as Fru Krak?
How so?'

‘Obtuse, yes. But she is also superstitious &, in certain ways, gullible to the extreme. Are you familiar with a publication
known as the
Fine Lady?

I nodded. ‘She is a slave to it'

‘Precisely,' smiled Herr Krak. ‘A Fine Lady through & through, would you not say?'

‘She certainly pays most particular heed to what her horoscope commands,' I averred.

‘Well, meet its author!' he beamed, showing an array of implausibly white teeth.

‘What – you? You wrote the Aquarian Lady?' I gasped. Now I was indeed impressed.

‘Not just Aquarius. I did all twelve. Each week, for the last few years, anonymously, & for no pay.' My eyes widened. ‘I made
the mistake, I fear, of encouraging her with the Pastor, as I wished never to be shackled to her again, in case I found myself
trapped back there one day, God forbid. However, when I realized he might pose a threat to the machine, I decided to try &
influence her into getting a domestic servant whom I might use on the other side. I know my wife's weak spots: within a week
of hatching this plan, the Aquarian Lady was persuaded to hire a cleaning girl. But it was pure luck that I should end up
with one as bright and clever as you.'

I was shocked. I had known it was a trap, but had never guessed the scope of it! What evil genius!

‘And when you'd written this horoscope, you came to Copenhagen & you posted it to the
Fine Lady'
I realized aloud. ‘In the letterbox down by Sortedams Lake. And all those who saw you there thought you were a ghost, not
stopping to wonder why a phantom might be availing itself of the Royal Mail!'

I could not help but clap my hands then & there: Lord, you had to admire the nerve of the Professor's endeavour! I was beginning
to get the feeling that we might become allies after all.

Professor Krak explained then that he could not risk revealing himself to Fru Krak, but already he felt she had sensed something
(this I could confirm), & was suspicious. ‘Yet if she tells the Pastor she suspects I am still alive, she can't marry him
without risking bigamy. So she has been burying her head in the sand like an ostrich, & reading her horoscope. Through which
I was trying to ensure she kept you on as a servant, & stayed out of the basement rooms. But who knows how the situation might
change when the Pastor becomes official master of the house?'

‘So you need to somehow get rid of Fru Krak and the Pastor, & make me owner of the property,' I said. ‘For if they sold it,
someone else might discover the machine & destroy it'

‘Precisely so.'

‘And do you have a plan?'

He shook his head. ‘I had thought of using the horoscope again,' he said, ‘but I fear that on this issue it might not be enough
to budge her – especially now that you tell me she actually descended to the basement. Now you know the Pastor better than
I: perhaps there is a possibility to be exploited there? Either way, I know that if you & I put our heads together …'

I nodded vigorously, for having assessed what life of luxury was in store for me if I entered into his scheme, my brain was
already conjuring, & indeed a quite clever, nay, brilliant notion was beginning to crystallize in my head, inspired by the denouement of a moving picture story I had watched the previous night
on television. ‘Give me a moment,' I said, & scribbled some notes upon a napkin. Once I had worked out all the logistics,
I clapped my hands in delight.

‘What say you to this?' I cried, outlining my cunning ruse, & laying it before him on the table, where it gleamed like a freshly
minted jewel.

‘My, oh my!' he cried with great enthusiasm when I had finished. ‘You clever girl! What sharp wits you have about you, for
I would never have thought of such a thing in a century!'

Which compliment I took most prettily, for I was enjoying the flattery, & was loath to tell him that in fact the real credit
was due to a two-dimensional dog called Scooby-Doo & his human comrades, & that all I had done was to steal & refine a plan
involving property fraud that they had exposed in the course of their detective work. O, how proud was I in that moment! And
how joyously impressed was Professor Krak! So much so that when we had finished our coffee, he led me to a smart dress shop,
& bade me choose any outfit I wanted, for I had deserved it, & what's more, he ‘sensed festivities on the horizon'. And so
I emerged an hour later clad in delightful lacy russet-coloured underwear, light as a cobweb, & a green robe that matched
my eyes and revealed much of my legs above the knee (how deliciously naked I felt!), & high-heeled shoes & magical stockings
that clung to the thigh themselves & needed no suspenders, & I was mightily pleased with my appearance: for the outfit much
flattered my figure and as we walked through the streets of the Tin City, marvelling at the sheer height and power of the
buildings Professor Krak aptly referred to as ‘sky-scrapers', I was right glad to note that whatever progress men had undergone
in the century & a bit since I last knew them, some of their habits, such as swivelling the head the better to appreciate
a young woman with a stupendously good body (if you will forgive the boast, precious reader), have stayed the same.

We then hailed a taxi. Delighted with the progress we had made in formulating a plan, Professor Krak said that I was to return
to Copenhagen as soon as was feasible.

‘What does
as soon as is feasible
mean, exactly?' I queried, my sudden anxiety exacerbated by the swerving & lurching of our vehicle. ‘What is wrong with tomorrow,
in heaven's name?' For as you can imagine I was mad-keen to establish myself as mistress of Hotel Charlotte, & had been busily
furnishing it in my imagination: curlicued bed-posts, fancy chamber pots, rouched curtains, ashtrays made from exotic shells,
gilded spittoons.

He shook his head. ‘It's a treacherous business at both ends,' he said. ‘Fru Krak is not our only opponent, I fear. We have
also the custodians of the Greenwich Observatory to contend with.'

It was a second or two before the import of what he had said sunk in.

‘I thought you worked with them.'

‘In a manner of speaking, I do,' he said carefully. ‘The fact is, there is a man whom I bribe to let me in, a buildings inspector.
But sadly, he only has access at certain times, & for most specific purposes. The timing is delicate. We will be forced to
wait until August, I fear.'

‘The month now being?'

‘June.' I gasped, but he continued hastily: ‘Do not worry, I beg you. Your precious time, dear Froken Charlotte, need not
be wasted. On the contrary. Let us collect the good Fru Schleswig & direct ourselves posthaste to join my pioneers at the
Halfway Club. Did I not tell you I sensed festivities on the horizon?'

Show me a girl whose heart does not skip a beat at the thought of a party – a party in her honour, no less – & I will show you a liar. As our taxi crawled along dust-belching streets, the Professor explained to us in his twitchy & excitable way (I say us, for the preposterously clad & modernized Fru Schleswig had now crammed herself into our company with much
umphing
&
oomphing)
that the building in which the Halfway Club was housed served a dual purpose, the ground floor being the club itself, & the basement storing tiles, cement & brickware, part of the building enterprise of Herr & Fru Jakobsen. The Jakobsens, he said, were two pillars of the community who had ‘relocated' (as though changing countries & eras were as simple as uprooting to another part of town!) after an intransigent infestation of headlice drove their wig business into ruin: the couple themselves inhabited the upper floor, where they also let rooms to ‘Danes of yore' in need of accommodation.

A party in my honour!

‘Why, we could be back home!' I exclaimed in delight, when our taxi drew near to what looked like a schoolhouse, for the Halfway
Club was painted the same traditional ochre-yellow as the orphanage of my youth, & atop it (a patriotic tear sprang to my
eye!) the glorious red and white of the Danish flag fluttered at full-mast

‘Yes, the pioneers tend to get somewhat nostalgic,' sighed the Professor. ‘Like all refugees, they hanker after what they
left behind. The Jakobsens especially.'

As we approached, a cheer went up, & the double doors of the schoolhouse flew open to reveal a most excited-looking throng
of people in modern dress, all waving miniature Danish flags. Now you do not need me to tell you how very gratifying this
was! News of my arrival – and the role Professor Krak was counting on me to play – had clearly come as a most welcome event
among the community of Danish time-travellers. ‘Dear Frøken Charlotte, you will be our heroine for ever!' cried an elegant lady, who shook my hand warmly & introduced herself as Fru
Helle Jakobsen. At which flabbergasting pronouncement I merely smiled, & gulped down the schnapps she discreetly handed me,
& then cried bravely, getting into the spirit of the thing, ‘I will do my best, good madam!', & let her then present a whole
muddle of people – a burly sailor-looking type with a lascivious eye called Henrik Dogger, two boys named the Joergensen twins,
& their teenaged friend, the flame-haired Mattias Rosenvinge, one Max Kong, who carried a violin, one Rigmor Schwarb, who
carried no musical instrument but whispered that if I ever needed instruction in the sexual gadgetry & manners of modern times
(she winked knowingly) I must not be shy to ask, the multitudinous Poulsen family, a couple named Jespersen & their mangy
mastiff, then a nervous spinster called Ida Sick who shook my hand most vigorously & said she hoped I would not be staying
in London long, as it were, for she knew I had important work to do & if she were frank (here she tittered) she couldn't wait
to see the back of me! Next a huge man with the big matted beard of a sailor came up, & said he was Fru Jakobsen's ‘other
half, Georg, at my service, & then declared that what you two good ladies (for there was no shaking off Fru Schleswig) really
wanted, he would wager, was a taste of his wife's fine home-baked
wienerbrød.

At which Professor Krak clapped his hands & raised a glass: more schnapps appeared & soon some twenty people were making a toast to me & Fru Schleswig, & chattering most excitedly. Helle Jakobsen returned with a further tray of sweetmeats & took Fru Schleswig aside in a most warm & hospitable manner, exclaiming with much enthusiasm, ‘I gather, madam, that you share my passion for new-fangled cleaning devices!' & in no time was waxing lyrical about dust-suction while Fru Schleswig, her prodigious backside now moulded into an armchair, listened whilst gobbling her way through a plateful of cinnamon-dusted pastries. Franz then showed up, looking a little drunk, carrying his scrapbook under one arm & supported on the other by Rigmor Schwarb, whom I now noticed sported a tattooed snake that writhed around her elbow before disappearing into the pit of her arm. As these two launched into a heated argument about Franz's ‘cowardly' wish to return home, I took in the surroundings.