My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (34 page)

‘Fred!' yelled Fergus. For who had appeared before us but the tall, gangling, unmistakable figure of Professor Krak! Josie
at once flew towards him & hugged his legs, & I could not but laugh aloud, for how very altered he was, with his bushy beard
& his vividly red & blue tunic of zig-zaggy stripes & polka dots – quite different from any former garb he had sported, including
Fru Krak's pink sea-horse gown! His skin looked weather-beaten, bronzed by the sun to a darker shade, but he seemed in vibrant
good health & much rested, & had more flesh on his bones than in olden times, which suited him greatly.

‘Dear friends, what a delightful reunion!' he beamed, ruffling Josie's hair & shaking our hands heartily, & then praising
the babe who (his lungs being most forceful) now roared his delight & kicked out lustily in an enthusiastic greeting. ‘Come,
let us present you to the Sultan, who has been my saviour here,' said the Professor, ‘& you can also be reunited with his
delightful queen, Fru Schleswig – who, as you will see, has quite found her element!'

We followed him along cool stone hallways & corridors, through courtyards & enclosed orchards of oranges, lemons and kumquats,
past fountains & pools littered with sweet-scented rose-petals of sunset pink & yellow. Good grief, our eyes were fair a-pop!
Finally we came upon the throne room where the great black Sultan sat, dignified as a sculpture hewn from granite: he stood
upright as we entered, & I gasped to see him in all his two-metre immensity, then gasped again, for there, beside him, was
enthroned a similarly imposing humanoid creature, who looked mightily familiar! It was only in that moment that I realized
it was but scale that had hampered Fru Schleswig's chances of romance in the past, for next to the Sultan she looked quite
an acceptable size, & even seemed to take on what might be construed as a version of femininity, clad as she was in a diaphanous
garment of scarlet silk encrusted with sequins & festooned with jewellery.

‘O Fru Schleswig, what a strange new world!' I cried, as she waved a ring-bedecked hand to greet us.

‘What a strange new world!'

‘Tiz new to u,' she said. The smell of marzipan wafted from her gigantic bosom. ‘But I bin here mor than a twelvmunth. Oi
lykes it, & oi am stayin.'

‘Dear madam, meet your grandson, Hamish Georg Schleswig McCrombie,' I said with a curtsy, quite unable to hide my delight
at my mother's transmogrification – for did I not always tell you, dear reader, that aristocratic blood flowed in my veins?
The good woman who begat me being now a veritable queen, does that not entitle me, as the offspring of royalty, to call myself
Princess Charlotte? Yes, dear one, it does indeed, & you may now kiss my hand! Ah, how one's deepest aspirations have the
knack of coming true, if one but looks the other way!

Upon which happy thought I thrust the infant Prince Hamish at the mountain of silk & jewellery-clad flesh that was the monarchess,
where he soon disappeared into her many pillowy layers, gurgling most happily. While the Queen of Marroquinta sat back in her throne & jiggled the babe on her knee, with Josie leaping about in excitement next to her, the Sultan welcomed us most warmly in his clicking Afric tongue, & then impressed us by uttering some Danish.

‘Min kone,'
he said, pointing to Queen Schleswig. (‘My wife,' I translated for Fergus & Josie.)
‘Meget tyk?
(‘Very fat.')
‘Spise mere, bliver tykkere?
(‘Eat more, get fatter.')
‘Det er godt?
('That's good.') Queen Schleswig beamed. ‘See?' she said, reaching for a chicken leg proffered her on a platter by a servant.
‘Thatz
the manne for me.'

Not just the man, but the life, too, dear reader – and a life she very much enjoys to this day, for the royal Queen of Marroquinta,
aka Fru Fanny Schleswig, opted to stay contentedly put on her distantly doomed Afric isle, & who can blame her, when instead
of making do with a chilly annual dog-bath on Classensgade, she can sprawl naked on a chaise-longue by the Sultan's turquoise-encrusted
lily-pond, licked slowly by camels tempted by the marzipan she has smeared liberally all over? It seems that at long last
Fru Schleswig has finally found her niche in the universe, & it is a life that well suits her, for the Marroquinns appreciate
her in a manner no Dane would ever do, this being a land where fat is highly prized, not least by the adoring Sultan who showers
his fleshy white queen with jewels (‘roobiez, saffyrez & emrelds, I'll hav u no, & no skimpin on the golde settinges, neither'),
& once every full moon, in the temple where the sacred vacuum cleaner is housed, she performs certain intimate & ancient rites
(to the music of ‘Tragic Johanna', as chanted by the Grand Marroquinta Choir), for Queen S, being partial to getting drunk,
has profited from some of Franz's ideas & devised a jneans of converting its pipe & canister system for distilling purposes,
thereby producing a most tasty alcoholic spirit not dissimilar to our native
akvavit.
And every night the royal couple feast on delicacies such as Stuck Roast Pig, Fricassee of Flying Fish, Persimmon Roulade
& Jellyfish Pie, & though communication is minimal between them, are words not superfluous, when you are tucking into such
fare, & drinking yourself into happy oblivion by the light of the silvery moon?

We spent a gaudy & delicious hullabaloo of a week on Marroquinta, with much eating, drinking, dancing & singing: while Fergus
& I canoodled lovingly beneath the palms, our babe Prince Hamish learned to crawl, shoving fistfuls of tropical sand into
his mouth & frolicking on the beach with his sister, who had brought her Spiderman costume with her & was most happily engaged
both in entertaining him, & in devising games to play with the other children who emerged from the shade of the pomegranate
trees, full of wonder at the mysterious white foreigners who had landed in their midst.

These things I reflected on, beloved one, in that time, & I impart them to you in the belief that they will one day, if not
now, make sense to you, if you have not already discovered them, which you probably have, being far cleverer than I, & much
quicker on the uptake! I reflected that accidents will happen, & oft those accidents may turn out to be happy ones, despite
initial appearances to the contrary. That however ill appears the hand that Fate has dealt you, such as being burdened with
a creature such as Fru S, a sprinkle of imagination can transform pumpkins into carriages & pellets of cat-litter to precious
stones, & lavatory-cleaners into Afric queens. That wishing upon a star is not the most foolish thing a girl can do in life.
And that there is nothing on this wide earth, & in all time, as important as Love. It is worth dying for. But better, it is
worth living for, too. And how I plan to live!

‘Where did you go for your holidays, then?' asked the good ladies of the Sunnyside Kindergarten when we returned to London.
‘You all look fantastic'

‘Somewhere way, way, way off the map,' said Fergus with a smile.

And now you are dying to know what became of us all. Well, Professor Krak still resides in Greenwich, & makes regular forays
in the Time Machine to distant times & places, often accompanied by Fergus, who – just like the monkey Pandora – cannot resist
the temptation of bringing back souvenirs to add to his unstoppable collection of ancient artefacts. With the frequent international
exhibition of such wares (about which he writes most eloquently in academic journals – and O, did I tell you, reader, about
that marvellous brain of his, the size of a pumpkin!) his career has flourished mightily, for reasons I am sure you can surmise
– though I beg you, tell no one, for some of his fellow-archaeologists, being somewhat narrow-minded, might consider his visits
to the cultures of yesteryear a form of ‘cheating', & misprize him.

For my own part, having so much to learn about twenty-first-century Britain, I am loath to take up any more joy-riding, but
once a year we enter the Portakabin & make speed for Copenhagen, where Franz remains eccentric but contented in the Sankt
Hans, the tentacles of Helle & Georg's beauty empire spread further & wider by the week (even reaching the godforsaken city
of Aalborg!), & Else is in a permanent state of pregnancy, for ever since her union with a Russian count (who one day came
in to purchase mimosa for his fiancée but, taking one look at Else, decided to switch brides), she is happily breeding a second
generation of Østerbro Coquettes. Meanwhile would it surprise you to learn that on the first of such annual visits, the Professor managed to persuade a certain Frøken Gudrun Olsen to accompany us back to London, where she might have plastic surgery to remedy the disfigurement wreaked by
Pandora? And that within a few months, her scarred face had become as flawless as her English, & she was seriously considering
the Professor's proposal of a partnership, whereby she might mastermind his various endeavours, & become his wife?

‘Fru Krak the Second!' she smiled happily, whilst checking the fluctuations of the stock market on her mobile. ‘Well, what
make you of that?!'

And the Time Machine? I hear you cry. Can I, too, go for a ride?

Well, here I must disappoint you, reader, for much as I wish you could, Professor Krak – with the sensible Gudrun very much
in accordance – has been quite adamant that after all our troubles, the machine, and all the possibilities it offers to the
Romantic Travelling Soul, shall not be replicated. ‘There are plenty of unscrupulous characters about,' he warns, ‘who would
not hesitate to abuse my discoveries for financial gain – and worse.' Indeed, when he employed a private investigator to track
down Henrik Dogger, he learned that the dastardly man had already tried to disseminate his time-travel theories – first in
letters to famous astrophysicists &, when they failed to reply, by preaching to the converted at Psychic Fayres! Concerned
that it was only a matter of time before a rich individual or venturesome organization took Dogger seriously, on Gudrun's
advice Professor Krak had a member of the British underclass break into his lodgings in the distant suburb of Surbiton & erase
the thinking parts of his ‘software'. Then, as a further precautionary measure, the Professor jiggled & juggled the coordinates
of the Time-Suckers by means of ‘digital re-encryptment' (please ask me not what that entails, dear one, for you should realize
by now that I have not the foggiest clue), in such a way that they might remain permanently undiscoverable. ‘When Fru Schleswig
& I found ourselves stranded in Marroquinta, I made an exception to the confidentiality principle, what with being delirious,
& the situation constituting an emergency,' the Professor declared. ‘But henceforth, the secret of time-travel dies with me.'
Gudrun nodded sagely, & patted his arm.

From dust we came, & to dust must we return.

O, precious one, you know what looms now, & so do I, for the final page is upon us, & thus as all stories must, mine now draws to a close – even though in real life it shall continue, as shall yours, beyond these covers & spin like gossamer through the thin air, dancing up & down & whither knows where!

And what is there left to say of myself? Naught. Naught, dear one, for you see before you a happy woman, who possesses all that the human heart could wish for, & more. More! For I have my cherished-for-ever Fergus, the love of my life, & our dear
Josie, & Prince Hamish with his chubby fists & ear-splitting yell, & as I write I am swelled up anew, this time with a set
of twins, the first of many dozens of rowdy & undisciplined children we shall surely have, my love & I, in this bright shining
place that is neither past nor future, nor before nor beyond, nor the back of beyond, but here and now, where Love dwells,
and you too have dwelled a while, listening patiently to this tale, in the time before we parted ways, & O, I shall miss you
so, sweet companion, so loyal & true! (And how beautiful you are today! How sweetly flushed your cheek!)

But now let us blow a kiss &, as each of us disappears further into the distance, wave our handkerchiefs to one another (O,
wipe away that tear, Lottie McCrombie, you sentimental fool!), & from a story which began with real dust, it is to fairy dust
that I return, bidding you a fond and tender farewell, with a smile on my lips & a song in my heart, wishing you & those you
love a life as joyous as the one I am planning for myself.

But last of all I thank you, thank you, thank you, dear one, for stealing time to spend with me, for you know in your heart,
do you not, that my story, for all its apparent unlikeliness, is true, just as a fairy-tale is true, if its listener wishes
it so to be! And was it not worth it that you did?

Ah, the power of the heart, beloved reader.

The power of the heart.

O say yes!

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Clare Alexander, Michael Arditti, Polly Coles, Gina de Ferrer, Humphrey Hawksley and Kate O'Riordan for their perceptive readings of the manuscript. And to Carsten, for the real-life love story.