Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms (8 page)

And he realized too, that he would never go to Jeannie with the information, however large the reward she offered. This wasn’t about money; it was about an unfinished journey: a Horten family journey.

He sat and thought for a while, clinking the little pile of threepenny bits as he did so. Each coin, he felt sure, had to have a different destination—a slot of its own.

“Dad?” shouted Stuart through the open bedroom door.

There was no reply. Stuart went all the way down to the kitchen and found his father listening intently to the radio, his knife poised in midair, a bit of onion speared on the end.

“Dad,” repeated Stuart. “What sort of things did they make in the Horten factory? I know you told me, but I’ve forgotten.”

For a moment his father didn’t move, and then, bizarrely, he began to recite a rhyme.

“If it swivels, clicks or locks, You’ll read
Horten’s
on the box.

If coins go in and gifts come out, It’s made by Horten’s; there’s no doubt!”

“You know, I haven’t thought of that in decades,” he added happily. “They used to print it on the advertisements. In those days nearly every business in Beeton had a Horten’s coin-operated mechanism on the premises.”

“Thanks,” said Stuart. He sprinted upstairs again, snatched a pencil and paper from his desk, and sat and concentrated, trying to remember all the subjects of the photographs that he’d seen in
Modern Beeton: A Photographic Record
.

MAIN STREET—phone booth
BANDSTAND
MOVIE THEATER
TRAIN STATION— weighing machine
FAIRGROUND
GAS STATION
OUTDOOR SWIMMING POOL
(ONE PHOTO MISSING)

Then he fetched the Ordnance Survey map of Beeton that his father had bought at a local shop and spread it out across the bed. He marked the movie theater he’d ridden past on his bike, and also the park where he’d seen the bandstand. There was a field on the western outskirts of the town that was labeled
Old Fairground
, and five different buildings marked with a tiny drawing of a gas pump, but he could see no sign whatsoever of an outdoor swimming pool.

“Any plans for tomorrow?” asked his father over their pizza supper.

“I thought I might begin a summer project,” said Stuart casually. “Mapping the best bicycle routes in Beeton. If that’s okay?”

“That sounds fascinating. Will you be approaching it from a schematic or a cartographic angle?”

“Both,” said Stuart quickly, before his father could begin a discussion on the different methods of mapping. “And I’ll start right after breakfast.”

CHAPTER 12

Stuart’s first stop the next day was the movie theater, but when he got there, he realized that:

a) It was closed until the afternoon.

b) It was no longer a movie theater. It was a bingo hall.

c) It was called the Gala.

d) It was on Fitch Street, which meant that …

e) It was the exact place where he’d be meeting Leonora tomorrow morning.

Therefore it could wait. In any case, according to the notice outside, “
Unaccompanied Children
” were “
Not Allowed In
.”

He pressed his nose against the window, but could see only a foyer with a swirly carpet and a shuttered box office. He got back on his bike and headed for the park.

It was quite large, with a kids’ playground at one end and a grassy area at the other. The central portion was divided into a sweep of grass, with neat flower beds, and a large wild area—the Beeton Park Nature Reserve. Stuart peered through the chain-link fence but could see no interesting animals or birds, only a sludgy path through bulrushes and a cloud of midges.

The bandstand was in the middle of the grass area. It was octagonal, with eight posts holding up the roof and a twisting wrought-iron railing around the edge of the raised platform. There were still traces of gold and red paint near the top of the posts, but the whole thing looked neglected and rusty. A large, weather-beaten bulletin board was fixed to the brickwork of the base, over which someone had stuck a poster advertising the Beeton Summer Festival.

Stuart went up the steps to the empty platform. There was nothing at all to see, apart from a few cigarette butts and a dented Coke can. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but he’d expected
something—
perhaps a machine (made in the Horten factory) that played a selection of brass-band tunes on insertion of a threepence. Feeling frustrated, he went back to where he’d left his bike, and took a moment to consult the map.

Next stop, the old fairground.

It took him ages to find it. That was because he’d been looking for a field. He’d imagined stumbling across a broken merry-go-round, all covered in ivy. What he found instead was a brand-new housing complex with a gate across the entrance and a bored-looking salesman sitting in a trailer next to it.

“Thinking of buying something, Sonny?” he asked Stuart sarcastically. “Here, take a leaflet.”

Stuart glanced at the cover.

CAROUSEL PROPERTIES

Exclusive homes at affordable prices.
We won’t be taking you for a ride.

“No, thank you,” Stuart said. He turned away, and then had a thought. “Before the new houses were built,” he asked, “was there anything here? Anything left over from when it was a fairground?”

The salesman shrugged. “Search me,” he said. “You don’t think I live in this dump, do you? I drive over from Birmingham every day.”

Stuart got back on his bike.
Gas stations next
, he thought.

The first two were modern, the third had been converted into apartments, and the fourth demolished. The fifth, however, was empty and weed covered, with cracked pumps and a boarded-up store. Stuart walked all the way around the building. On one of the building’s side walls, some faded lettering was just about visible:
BICYCLE
REPAIRS
. Below it on the ground were four shallow holes in the cement, as if something had once been fixed there.

Stuart walked around the building a second time, and found nothing more. He sat on a wall and ate the interesting bits of his packed lunch, and then, feeling grim but determined, he biked back to the park.

The bandstand was no more inspiring the second time, and there wasn’t a trace of a clue. Stuart leaned his elbows on the railing and looked out across Beeton Park. The playground was full of children, but the stretch of grass was almost empty, apart from a couple of dogs racing in circles. On the far side a man with a pair of binoculars was opening the gate into the nature reserve.

Stuart closed his eyes and tried to think.
Did I miss something? Something tiny and subtle? Something huge and blindingly obvious?

He opened his eyes again. After a moment, he frowned. Over by the nature reserve there were now six men with binoculars lining up to go through the gate, and another nine or ten hurrying to catch up with them. Curious, Stuart left the bandstand and walked over. All the men were wearing raincoats and carrying cameras and notebooks, and they seemed strangely excited about something. The last of them was going through the gate into the reserve just as Stuart arrived; he was shorter than the others.

“Excuse me, what’s happening in there?” Stuart called out.

The man turned around, and Stuart saw that it was actually a tall boy, not much older than himself.

“We’ve had a rarity alert,” said the boy. “A single specimen of
Ixobrychus minutus.
”

“A what?” asked Stuart; it was like talking to his father.

“A little bittern,” said the boy.

“Is that a bird?”

The boy looked at Stuart in amazement. “Of course it’s a
bird
!” he replied contemptuously. “It’s a bird of reed bed and swamp. Hence its appearance here.”

“This isn’t a swamp,” said Stuart a bit crossly; he’d had an irritating sort of day, and now this boy was treating him like an idiot.

“As a matter of fact, it is,” said the boy. “The definition of
swamp
is an area of poor drainage. There used to be an outdoor swimming pool here, and when it was filled in, it created perfect swamp conditions. Only four little bitterns were seen in this country last year, and two of them were right here. Anyway, I’ve got to go now. Good-bye.”

He went through the gate, and disappeared along a path between the reeds. For a moment Stuart was too stunned to move, and then a great wave of excitement whooshed through him, and he hurried after the boy along the same path.

The reeds were very tall, and the tracks narrow and muddy. Stuart turned left and then right and then left again, and soon he no longer had any idea where the gate was. Every few minutes he’d stumble across a different group of men with binoculars. At the sound of his footsteps they’d turn to look at him accusingly, and he’d try to tiptoe past. So much mud had stuck to his sneakers that it looked as if he were wearing enormous brown slippers.

The first sign of the outdoor swimming pool he saw was the old diving board, blotched with mold. It reared above the rushes like a Diplodocus in a primeval forest. Soon after that, he spotted a wooden bulletin board, a few feet off the path. He struggled through the reeds toward it and read the faded lettering:

BEETON PARK
SWIMMING POOL

NO JUMPING
NO RUNNING
NO BALL GAMES

Right next to it was a bench, its wooden slats rotten with age.

“… Of course, this isn’t what you’d call an
official
nature reserve,” said a voice from the path. “There’s no restrictions whatsoever on who can visit, so schoolkids can just crash around all over the place, disturbing the wildlife. It’s not surprising we can’t find what we’re looking for …”

Stuart quickly sat down on the edge of the bench, so that the passing group of bird-watchers couldn’t see him. He felt a bit indignant; he’d hadn’t crashed around at all, he’d been as quiet as a—

There was a sudden weird barking noise just to his left. He turned his head and saw a bird perching on a dead branch. It had an orange bill and black wings, and it looked him straight in the eye before making the noise again. It sounded like a dog with laryngitis.

A stampede of bird-watchers came back along the path, waving their binoculars excitedly. The bird called one more time, and then took to the air, flapping slowly away. The bird-watchers turned around again and stampeded after it.

Stuart was still staring at the branch that the bird—the little bittern—had been sitting on. It was a very odd branch, curved in a tight loop. He stood up and walked through the muddy undergrowth toward it. He reached out a hand and touched its rough, reddish surface. It wasn’t dead wood; it was metal. He parted the tangle of stems that surrounded the object and realized that he was looking at a turnstile. It was rusting and crooked, and on one side of it was a small box, with a slot for a coin.