To Say Nothing of the Dog (9 page)

Lady Schrapnell’s voice was still booming in my ears, and I got to my feet and looked about cautiously, but there was no sign of her. Or of a boat or a river. The railway tracks were on a grassy embankment, with trees growing below and beside them.

The first rule of time travel is “Ascertain exact time-space location,” but there didn’t seem to be any way of doing that. It was clearly summer—the sky overhead was blue and there were flowers growing between the ties—but no signs of civilization other than the train tracks. So sometime after 1804.

In vids, there is always a newspaper lying on the ground with a helpful headline like “Pearl Harbor Bombed!” or “Mafeking Relieved!” and a clock above it in a shop window thoughtfully showing the time.

I looked at my watch. It wasn’t there, and I squinted at my wrist, trying to remember whether Warder had taken it off me when she was trying shirts on. I remembered she’d tucked something in my waistcoat pocket. I pulled it out, on a gold chain. A pocket watch. Of course. Wristwatches were an anachronism in Nineteenth Century.

I had trouble getting the pocket watch open and then difficulty reading the extinct Roman numerals, but eventually I made it out. A quarter past X. Allowing for the time I’d spent getting the watch open and lying on the tracks, bang on target. Unless I was in the wrong year. Or the wrong place.

As I didn’t know where I was supposed to have come through, I didn’t know if I was in the right place or not, but if there’s a small amount of temporal slippage, there usually isn’t much locational slippage either.

I stood up on a rail to look down the tracks. To the north, the tracks headed into deeper woods. In the opposite direction, the woods seemed thinner, and there was a dark plume of smoke. A factory? Or a boathouse?

I should gather up my bags and go see, but I continued to stand on the rail, taking in the warm summer air and the sweet scent of clover and new-mown hay.

I was a hundred and sixty years away from pollution and traffic and the bishop’s bird stump. No, that wasn’t true. The bishop’s bird stump had been given to Coventry Cathedral in 1852.

Depressing thought. But there wasn’t any Coventry Cathedral. St. Michael’s Church hadn’t been made a bishopric till 1908. And there wasn’t a Lady Schrapnell. I was more than a century away from her snapped orders and from vicious dogs and from bombed-out cathedrals, in a more civilized time, where the pace was slow and decorous, and the women were softspoken and demure.

I gazed about me at the trees, the flowers. Buttercups grew between the tracks, and a tiny white flower like a star. The nurse at Infirmary had said I needed rest, and who couldn’t rest here? I felt totally recovered just standing here on the tracks. No blurring of vision. No air-raid sirens.

I had spoken too soon. The air-raid siren started up again and then as abruptly stopped. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and then took several long, deep breaths.

I wasn’t cured yet, but I soon would be, breathing in this clear, pure air. I gazed up at the cloudless sky, at the plume of black smoke. It seemed higher in the sky and nearer—a farmer burning weeds?

I longed to see him, leaning on his rake, untouched by modern worries, modern haste, longed to see his rose-covered cottage with its white picket fence, its cozy kitchen, its soft feather bed, its—

The air-raid siren sounded again in short sharp blasts. Like a factory whistle. Or a train.

Adrenaline is an extremely effective drug. It galvanizes the body into action and has been known to produce impossible feats of strength. And speed.

I snatched up the satchel, the hamper, the portmanteau, the carpetbag, the boxes, and my hat, which had somehow fallen off again, chucked them all down the near side of the embankment, and chucked myself after them before the plume of black smoke had cleared the trees.

The covered basket that Finch had been so concerned about was still on the tracks, sitting squarely on the far rail. The adrenaline leaped across, scooped it up, and rolled down the embankment as the train thundered past in a deafening roar.

Definitely not totally recovered. I lay at the bottom of the embankment for a considerable time contemplating that fact and trying to start breathing.

After a while I sat up. The embankment had been fairly high, and the basket and I had rolled a considerable way before coming to a stop in a mass of nettles. As a result, the view was very different than that from the tracks, and I could glimpse, beyond a thicket of alders, a corner of some white wooden structure and a glimpse of fretwork. It could definitely be a boathouse.

I disentangled the basket and myself, climbed up the embankment, and looked carefully up and down the tracks. There was no smoke in either direction, and no sound at all. Satisfied, I sprinted across the tracks, gathered up my etc., looked in both directions, bolted back across, and set off through the woods toward the boathouse.

Adrenaline also tends to clear the brain, and several things became remarkably clear as I trudged toward the boathouse, the foremost of which was that I had no idea what to do when I got there.

I distinctly remembered Mr. Dunworthy saying, “Here are your instructions,” and after that a jumble of Stilton spoons and collars and the All-Clear, and then he’d said the rest of the two weeks was mine to do with as I liked. Which obviously meant that a portion of it wasn’t. And when I’d got in the net, Finch had said, “We’re counting on you.”

To do what? There was something about a boat and a river. And a Something End. Audley End. No, that didn’t sound right. It began with an “N.” Or was that the water nymph? Hopefully, it would come back to me when I got to the boathouse.

It wasn’t a boathouse. It was a railway station. There was a carved wooden sign on the wall above a green bench. Oxford, it said.

And what was I supposed to do now? Oxford had boathouses and a river. But if I’d come through at the railway station, perhaps I was supposed to take a train to this Something End and then a boat from there. I seemed to remember Mr. Dunworthy saying something about a railway. Or had that been the headrig?

My coming through at the railway station might have been due to slippage, and I was really supposed to have come through down at Folly Bridge. I distinctly remembered something having been said about a boat and the river.

On the other hand, I had a great deal of luggage for a boat.

I looked across the tracks to the platform. On the far side of the green bench was a glass-covered notice board. The train schedule. I could look at it, and if Something End was listed, I’d know I was supposed to take the train, especially if one was due shortly.

The platform was empty, at least for the moment. The distance up to it looked high, but not impossible, and the sky was unsullied blue in both directions. I looked up and down the tracks and then at the door to the waiting room. Nothing. I checked the tracks three or four more times, just to be safe, and then sprinted across them, heaved my luggage over the edge, and clambered up after it.

The platform was still uninhabited. I piled my luggage on the end of the bench and strolled over to the notice board. I read the headings: Reading, Coventry, Northampton, Bath. It was very likely one of the smaller stations: Aylesbury, Didcot, Swindon, Abingdon. I read the entire list. There wasn’t a single End among them.

And I couldn’t go into the station and ask when the next train to Something End was. What was it?
Something
End. Howard’s End? No, that was a novel by E. M. Forster. It hadn’t even been written yet. Something End. There was a pub in the Turl called The Bitter End, but that didn’t sound right either. It began with an “N.” No, that was the naiad. An “M.”

I went back over to the bench and sat down, trying to think. Mr. Dun-worthy had said, “Here are your instructions,” and then something about oyster spears and tea with the Queen. No, that
had
to have been the headrig. And then, “We’re sending you through to the seventh of June, 1888.”

Perhaps I’d better find out if I was really on the seventh of June, 1888, before I worried about anything else. If I was in the wrong time, I had no business going anywhere, by train or by boat. I needed to stay here till Warder got the fix, realized I was in the wrong time, and set up a rendezvous to take me back. At least it wasn’t a field of marrows.

And it had occurred to me, now that I was recovering a bit, that Warder would have set my watch for the time in the past. In which case, it proved absolutely nothing at all.

I stood up and went over to the station window to see if there was a clock inside. There was. It said twenty to eleven. I pulled out my pocket watch and checked it against the clock. Twenty to XI.

In books and vids there’s always a newsboy hawking papers with the date neatly visible for the time traveller to see, or a calendar with the dates marked off with an X. There was no sign of a calendar, a newsboy, or a friendly porter who’d volunteer, “Lovely weather for June seventh, isn’t it, sir? Not like last year. We hadn’t any summer at all in ‘87.”

I went back to the bench and sat down, trying to concentrate. Marlborough End, Middlesex End, Montague End, Marple’s End.

A train whistle (which I instantly recognized as such) sounded, and a train tore through the station without stopping, with a roar and a sudden wind that blew my boater with it. I went running after it, caught it, and was putting it back on when a paper, apparently caught in the same draft, blew against the back of my legs.

I unwrapped myself from it and looked at it. It was a sheet from a newspaper. The
Times.
7 June 1888.

So I was at the right time, and all I had to work out was what I was supposed to do now.

I sat down and put my head in my hands, trying to concentrate. Carruthers had come through without his boots and Warder had slammed her clipboard down and Mr. Dunworthy had said something about a river and a contact. A contact.

“Contact Tennyson,” he’d said, only that wasn’t the name. But it had begun with a “T.” Or an “A.” And Finch had said something about a contact, too. A contact.

That explained why I didn’t know what to do. All I’d been told was that I was to meet a contact, and he or she would tell me. I felt a surge of relief. The contact would explain everything.

So now the only question was, who was it and where was he or she? “Contact someone,” Mr. Dunworthy had said. What was the name? Chiswick. No, that was the head of Time Travel. Correction, the ex-head of Time Travel. “Contact—” Klepperman. Ensign Klepperman. No, that was the sailor who’d been killed in the line of duty. Because he hadn’t known what he was doing.

“Contact—” Who? As if in answer, another train whistle blew several deafening blasts, and a train pulled into the station. Spitting sparks and great whooshes of steam, the train came to a stop. A porter jumped down from the third car, deposited a plush-covered stool in front of the door, and got back on the train.

Several minutes went by, and the porter reappeared, carrying a hatbox and a large black umbrella. He extended his hand to a frail old lady, and then a younger one, as they stepped down.

The elderly lady was wearing crinolines and a bonnet and lace mitts, and for a moment I was afraid I was in the wrong year after all, but the younger one had a long, flared skirt and a hat that tilted forward over her brow. She had a sweet face, and when she spoke to the porter, telling him what bags they had, her voice was both softspoken and demure.

“I told you he wouldn’t be here to meet us,” the old lady said in a voice with Lady Schrapnellian overtones.

“I’m certain he will be here shortly, Auntie,” the young woman said. “Perhaps he was delayed on college business.”

“Poppycock,” the old lady said, a word I had not ever expected to hear anyone say. “He’s off fishing somewhere. Disgraceful occupation for a grown man! Did you write to tell him when we were coming?”

“Yes, Auntie.

“And told him the time, I hope?”

“Yes, Auntie. I’m certain he’ll be here shortly.”

“And in the meantime we’re left to stand here in this dreadful heat.”

The weather had seemed pleasantly warm, but then I wasn’t wearing black wool buttoned to the neck. Or lace mitts.

“Absolutely sweltering,” she said, fishing in a small beaded purse for a handkerchief. “I feel quite weak.
Care
ful with that!” she boomed at the porter, who was struggling with a huge trunk. Finch had been right. They did travel with steamer trunks.

“Quite faint,” Auntie said, fanning herself weakly with the handkerchief.

“Why don’t you sit down over here, Auntie,” the young woman said, leading her over to the other bench. “I’m certain Uncle will be here momentarily.”

The old lady sat down in a whoomph of petticoats. “Not like that!” she snapped at the porter. “This is all Herbert’s fault. Getting married! And just when I was coming to Oxford. Don’t scratch the leather!”

It was obvious neither of these ladies was my contact, but at least I no longer seemed to be having Difficulty Distinguishing Sounds. And I could understand what they were saying, which isn’t always the case in the past. My first jumble sale I hadn’t understood one word in ten: skittles and shies and sales of work.

Also, I seemed to have overcome my Tendency to Sentimentality. The younger lady had a pretty heart-shaped face, and even prettier ankle-shaped ankles, which I’d caught a white-stockinged glimpse of when she alighted from the train, but I hadn’t felt any inclination to dissolve into rapturous comparisons with sylphs or cherubim. Better still, I had been able to come up with both words without any trouble. I felt completely cured.

“He’s forgotten us completely,” Auntie said. “We’ll have to hire a fly.”

Well, perhaps not completely cured.

“There’s no need for us to hire a carriage,” the young woman said. “Uncle won’t have forgotten.”

“Then why isn’t he here, Maud?” she said, arranging her skirts so they took up the entire bench. “And why isn’t Herbert here? Marriage! Servants have no business marrying. And how did Herbert meet anyone suitable to marry? I absolutely forbade her to have followers, so I suppose that means it’s someone unsuitable. Some person from a music hall.” She lowered her voice. “Or worse.”