The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts (8 page)

“He’s asleep.”

“Then wake him.”

“Very well, Miss.”

Georgina tightened her lips, shocked to realise that she was turning into her elder sister: perhaps she should imitate her voice: “Very well, Ma’am… you say…”

“Very well… Ma’am.”

Georgina crossed the threshold.

It was a wide entrance way with rooms off both sides and a stone staircase leading up to a landing and the upper storey.

“Please wait here,” said the woman. “Fellowes will be along shortly to show you to the temporary guest room.”

Georgina was alone again.

A clock ticked, loud in the reverberating silence of the stone hall.

Eventually, Fellowes returned, visibly taken aback that Georgina was still there.

“You are to show me to my room,” Georgina said.

“Am I?”

“The woman said.”

“Did she?”

“Yes.”

Fellowes crossed the flags and ascended the staircase. Georgina followed, pausing every two steps to allow the man some sort of lead. By the time they reached the top, the boy arrived with Georgina’s trunk.

“The guest room is along here,” said Fellowes.

“Where’s the master bedroom?”

“It’s not been touched since the Captain–”

“I’m simply curious,” Georgina said. “Where is it?”

“Along the landing, Miss, and there… blue door.”

“Excellent.”

Before Fellowes could do anything, Georgina swept along the landing and through the blue door. Fellowes shuffling stride sped up to try and intercept her, but he was too late.

“It’s not been aired,” he said.

“Bring me some light.”

“Miss?”

“And bedding, I shall sleep here,” Georgina said, and when the boy, a youth of ten or eleven, appeared and plonked the trunk down, she added, “Thank you, that will be all.”

The boy slunk out, smirking.

Fellowes looked reluctant. His hand moved with indecision making the lantern shift the great path of light that shone into the room to illuminate the corner of a bed. Georgina moved across the room and sat there.

“Miss, I really think…”

Georgina gave a tiny smile, thin, and very like Earnestine’s.

Fellowes wavered.

“That would be lovely, thank you. Fellowes, is it?”

“Yes Miss.”

He disappeared, scurrying away.

Georgina mouthed ‘Ma’am’ after him, then she felt rather foolish and very like Charlotte.

The door closed slowly and, sitting still, she realised how cold it was in the room. The wind whistled outside, howling suddenly in the echo chamber of a chimney before returning to a low murmuring, and a tree scraped across the window.

Even the light under the door had vanished.

This was Arthur’s room, she thought, and it would have been their room. She could not feel his presence, smell his aftershave or hear his heart beat as she had when he’d held her to him. She seemed to be sitting on a raft adrift on an immense black river, while at the same time the darkness enveloped her as if she were in a tomb.

The light flickered under the door frame and Fellowes knocked.

“Come in.”

Fellowes had a pair of candles in brass holders. He set one upon a dresser and the other on a bedside table. The room slowly came to life. There was a military jacket hanging outside the wardrobe, shaving equipment laid out on the dresser, as well as pictures and knick–knacks. She touched his aftershave jar, smelt her fingers and almost conjured up the time they’d met, the long railway journey and that one night together.

The sheets weren’t fresh but they weren’t musty: “This will be fine.”

“Miss… I… really, you can’t.”

“Goodnight, Fellowes.”

She ushered him out, closed the door and leant against it to sigh her utmost. It had been a long day.

She undressed herself; it wouldn’t do to call a maid as she might join forces with the butler and she’d be in the guest room.

She snuggled into Arthur’s bed.

Arthur’s bed, the thought was intoxicating.

There were two books on the bedside table:
Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanac
edited by Sydney Pardon and
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens. The latter had a bookmark betraying a lack of progress. She would read it, she thought, but use a different device to keep her place. There was another book, which had a blank cover and also empty within, or at least where Georgina opened it. Flicking to the front, she found Arthur’s handwriting. It was a journal. The last entry talked about going to London, called in by Major Dan and looking forward to a possible adventure. She had been part of that adventure.

She felt that familiar lump in her throat again.

She decided then to continue the journal.

There was a fountain pen in the drawer and she fished this out, a couple of shakes and it wrote. She wrote the date, neatly, and then began an entry: ‘I, Mrs Arthur Merryweather, continue this journal. Upon arriving at Magdalene Chase, after travelling across country on the 11:23 from Paddington, it was dark and–’

The candle guttered, its flickering light warning her of impending darkness. Georgina capped the pen and closed the journal.

When she returned them to the drawer, she noticed a daguerreotype of a beautiful young woman, almost animated by the flickering light, who smiled with her head tilted alluringly and–

Georgina snatched up the picture: who was this woman, this harlot, this strumpet to so litter Arthur’s bedside cabinet?

She replaced it very deliberately with her face looking down at the varnished teak.

The light went out.

She slept, worried, and envious of her sisters, who were still safe at home. ‘Bleak House’ seemed an appropriate choice for this cold forbidding place.

Miss Charlotte

When the strange men finally left, there was a dreadful silence almost as if they had removed the air’s ability to transmit sound, and then, all too suddenly, the wailing began and it just didn’t stop. It stayed like that until the gin ran out, and then it became worse.

“Ruination!” cried Madam Waggstaff, flapping her arms above the unconscious Mr Waggstaff.

Three Gentleman Callers were turned away by the… Charlotte realised that these similarly dressed, if ‘dressed’ was the right word, girls were
strumpets
. The arrested man had thought she was one too. If only Charlotte could figure out what that meant?

“Temporal Peelers!” Madam Waggstaff reminded them. “Here! Ruination!”

When Mr Waggstaff regained consciousness, Madam Waggstaff thanked the Lord, the heavens, and Mary, the Mother of God, and more angels than Charlotte could have named. The big burly man, once his wits were restored, shouted incoherently, using words that Charlotte didn’t understand. They sounded coarse and she realised that each could be substituted with the b–word, so he was most likely one of those foul mouthed ne’er–do–wells that the papers were so fond of complaining about. Finally, fed up with the bawling explanations, he struck the nearest girl and retired to his armchair.

Little Dove, one of the strumpets, was sent out with a shilling for more gin and when she returned it all quietened down. Come ‘chucking out’ time, no Gentlemen Callers even rang the doorbell and so – ruination, ruination – it was all apparently over.

“Word has got around!” Madam Waggstaff explained to the ceiling.

Charlotte made a pot of tea.

Madam Waggstaff took a sip: “There’s no gin in this.”

Charlotte made a face in reply.

“Gin’s horrible,” she said.

Charlotte stormed off to find a bedroom with a better perfume than the one with the spilt piss pot. The one she found didn’t have a number on the door either. She smelt the sheets, wrinkled her nose up, and then found fresh linen. She remade the bed as if she were a domestic, jammed a chair under the handle and went to sleep.

Or rather she lay under the covers and thought hard.

For the whole of the previous day, she had pretended to understand French tenses. What vexed her now was the phrase the man in the top hat, Chief Examiner Lombard, had used. He had said ‘He destroyed the world’. Not something like ‘he will destroy’ or ‘he attempted to destroy’ or any of the other multitude of options listed on pages 2–14, 17 and 23–45 of her textbook. He’d used the passé composé or the passé historique or… whatever: the
past tense.

However, manifestly, the man had not destroyed the world. The world still existed and continued to turn, albeit in a confusing and perplexing manner.

She also realised that she couldn’t go and join the French Foreign Legion. Partly because it was French and so all her friends, the cadets, wouldn’t talk to her any more, but mostly because she’d only managed to travel seven miles and the desert forts depicted in the penny–dreadfuls were so much further than that. She couldn’t go return Zebediah Row because Earnestine would send her back to school, where the Reverend Long would cane her and Miss Cooper would give her lines. Also, having assumed a life of adventure and excitement in the desert, she hadn’t bothered to even start her homework.

There were mysteries here too: that horrid man’s arrest and the disappearance of Uncle Jeremiah. It would be exciting to solve the puzzle and it could even be an adventure, providing Earnestine didn’t find out, forbid it and thus spoil everything.

However, her main worry was that she was really hungry.

Macaroons wouldn’t be too much to ask for, surely?

Or Garibaldi’s?

Or cake?

Chapter V

Miss Deering-Doolittle

And they didn’t see her off the next day.

Cook had made bacon and eggs, which she wolfed down.

Earnestine walked to work again.

The newspaper vendors were full of news of a Member of Parliament, who had been arrested.

Earnestine asked one: “What’s happened?”

“It’s Foxley, Miss. They’ve only gone and nabbed him.”

“Foxley?”

“The Right Honourable, brother of the Earl no less, and his were a safe London seat.”

“What for?”

“Crimes, Miss, dreadful crimes. And they act all high and mighty and better than us, going on, he did, about family values, but that’s their class for you, begging your pardon, Miss.”

She bought a paper, folded it and tucked it under her arm and marched to Queensbury Road feeling quite the important business woman, if such a thing could exist.

When she arrived, she glanced right and left. The street was empty, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.

Boothroyd was already making the tea.

“Shall we have biscuits?” he said.

Earnestine wasn’t sure he realised that she’d left, been away the night and returned.

“Please.”

Her first task was to remove the piles that Boothroyd had moved back onto the desk and generally return things to that state they’d been when she’d finally called it a day yesterday. Next, there being no other plan, she simply picked a place and selected the first application. As she worked through, she found various objects to use as paperweights: a brick, a rather beautiful crystal that had been encased in rock, a trilobite and a piece of metal that looked like an important part of something else.

One sculpture she uncovered was a teak box with a strange removable handle on the top and a dial on the front. It didn’t work as a paperweight because it was attached to the wall by a twisted cord.

“Oh, the telephonic apparatus!” said Boothroyd. “At last, I know what that ringing noise was.”

Earnestine’s system was simple: a place for everything and everything in its place.

After a while the room suggested a gallery displaying sculptures and object d’art, which was quite pleasing.

“Mister Boothroyd, may I suggest the fire for this one?”

“Miss Deering–Dolittle, it may be important.”

“One can buy this item at a good hardware store.”

“Can you?”

“Indeed, we have a cast iron one ourselves at home.”

“The fire then,” Boothroyd conceded. “What would I do without you?”

“I’ve only been here a day, Mister Boothroyd.”

“And already you’ve made yourself indispensable, my dear.”

“Thank you, Mister Boothroyd, one tries one’s best.”

“I think you should take a break,” Boothroyd suggested.

Earnestine realised that she did fancy a cup of tea, but Boothroyd instead suggested the Duelling Machine in the warehouse.

“An excellent way to blow off steam,” he said and he left her to it.

Earnestine examined the instructions, squinting at the spidery additions in the margins. The Jacquard cards, hard and made from a material Earnestine didn’t know, went in a slot at the back… no, this way round and the handle wound the internal springs. There were three: back, right – quite stiff – and the front, which whirred away until she realised that there was a catch. Finally, the instructions said it was started by dropping a gauntlet on the Activation Plate, see Fig 1. There was a heavy leather glove supplied for the principle, which had been loaded with lead shot and sewn shut. To deactivate it, all one had to do was press the heart in the centre of the main column with whatever weapon one had selected. This seemed remarkably simple, and the obvious nicks and holes attested to how often this had been achieved in the past.

She marked a line two paces away in the dust with the toe of her Oxford Street boot and experimentally swished a foil this way and that. Finally, she pulled the face mask over, finding she could see through the wire mesh, but realising that her coiffure was ruined.

“En garde,” she said, bringing the blade upright, the cold steel guard tucked under her chin, and then, ruining the bold stance, she bent forward and tossed the gauntlet down. It landed squarely on the activation plate.

The metal dropped, the central arm jerked up in a parody of the duelling pose and then the first Jacquard card shunted in at the back, clunking and whirring. The right armature swung round, a counter balance, distracting Earnestine as the other arm came up and prodded forward. It caught her in the midriff; her corset transferred the force across her entire torso, so it flung her over backwards crushing both her bustle and her dignity. The thing carried on, whirling, swirling and stabbing, slashing and probing as the entire pack of cards jostled into the mechanism telling the mechanical combatant to fight and struggle on, despite facing an already fallen opponent.