My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (22 page)

Glædelig jul!

And the conversation flowed as did the wine & the laughter – though Fru Schleswig was an exception on the talking front, having transformed herself into a veritable eating machine: a napkin tucked beneath her chin & a determined glint in her eye, she was in her gluttonous element, & becoming suddenly & impressively ambidextrous in her gastronomic enthusiasm, declaring herself ‘happie as a pygge in shitte'. Then, stuffed to the gills, we finished the repast with
brune-kager
and
vaniliekranse,
figs & dates, & we pulled crackers & drank wine & schnapps & made most merry, until Josie, exhausted, tore open her gifts & played for five minutes with the charming little wooden tram set that Professor Krak had bought her, before falling fast asleep with her tousled head on my lap.

The following week was Paradise. For what, pray, is bliss, but living in harmony with those you love, & having the time to
kiss & hug them all you can? I speak here of Fergus & Josie, to be sure, but also of my dear Else, of whom we saw a great
deal, & Gudrun too, when her duties at the laundry permitted. Fru Schleswig I leave to your imagination – suffice it to say
she too was happy, in the way a house-plant might be, if well-watered & kept at the right temperature. Although the residence
was now officially the property of Fru Schleswig, Professor Krak & I agreed it best to keep the tragic crone ‘out of the loop'
on this matter, for the time being, in case property-ownership should befuddle a brain already so dangerously overcharged
with puzzling events that it might disintegrate altogether. While Josie & I played hide-and-seek and Chase throughout the
house, revelling in our new-found freedom, my Fergus & Professor Krak, much in cahoots, discussed the technicalities of time-travel,
& to the elder man's delight, my husband (husband in spirit, though not yet in fact) scrutinized the objects the orangutan
Pandora had brought back from her travels, and identified their probable nature & origins.

‘I'd say she went to Africa on more than one occasion,' Fergus pondered, ‘to judge from all these sea-shells.'

Herr Krak nodded in vehement agreement, declaring that indeed, he believed that Pandora may well have visited several countries
in Africa, namely Algeria, Mali, Ghana and Togo, during a range of eras.

Fergus was fingering a most macabre handbag fashioned from the body of an armoured ratty creature, its scales like the petals
of an artichoke. It was semi-curled, as if caught and skinned in a cringe of fear; its tail formed the handle. ‘This armadillo
artefact is likely to come from South America, very possibly Brazil,' said my dear one & I gazed with pride at him, & the
more I gazed the more the wonder grew that one small head could carry all he knew. ‘And I do believe that this,' he said,
hefting a length of hollow bamboo with a spear-tip, ‘is a blowpipe used by the tribal people of Borneo.'

Professor Krak was as surprised as he was delighted with this news, for he declared he had always suspected that the time-sucking
mechanism could, in rare circumstances, catapult subjects to other locations than those situated on the Prime Meridian, but
had never been able to prove it.

‘To think that I hadn't a clue what that other object was,' I mused. ‘The mobile phone. Remember, Professor Krak? You must
then have been as discombobulated as I, when you first encountered it'

‘I was indeed,' he replied thoughtfully. ‘Do you have one on you, Fergus, by any chance?' he asked suddenly. ‘I have always
meant to continue experimenting with communication across time, for there seems no good reason to me, epistemologically speaking,
why this should not be possible, if the caller places himself correctly at the mouth of a Time-Sucker. I have not managed
it before, but one never knows when one might be in luck.'

‘Och, with the best will in the world, I really can't see how that would be possible,' laughed Fergus gently, handing over
his device. ‘It's a compelling idea, Fred, but in reality …'

But the older man was not to be contradicted. ‘You're looking at it all wrong,' he declared, switching on the mobile & waiting
for a signal with evident expectation. ‘For time is actually more like space than it is like time, if you understand my drift.
The fourth dimension, as it is called. I have read up a little on this matter since coming here: Hawking and Gott are the
big names in your era. Clever people, but with all their talk of helixes & matter-anti-matter, they can't see the wood for
the trees! If they knew how much simpler it all was than they presume to transport oneself to the lonely saline seas of the
Triassic Age! Anyway, dear boy, just try to see a different time as an alternative location, merely – a philosophical shift
sideways.'

This thought was already giving me vertigo, & it was clear there was no signal to be had (what a surprise!) so I left the two men discussing the importance of getting the house connected to the new electricity grid which had just been established in Østerbro, in the hope that some of the Time Machine's elaborate routines might thereby be sped up, & went to find Josie, whom I found
crouched on her mattress like a little mushroom, looking at the illustrations in the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, her
eyes drooping with exhaustion. I told her it was time to sleep, then tucked her into bed & kissed her.

‘The best Christmas I ever, ever had,' she said sleepily.

‘Me too,' I told her. ‘By a long way.'

‘How long?'

‘As long as a piece of string.'

‘How long's that?'

‘Three million, nine hundred and twenty-eight kilometres. It's the longest piece of string in the world, & it's kept in the
royal curiosity cabinet, next to the pea the princess slept on.'

Satisfied with this thought, she closed her eyes, & I lay down next to her & fancied myself in Heaven. Soon I too was asleep,
though I was to be woken later & carried like a big squealing parcel to another bedroom by Fergus, who wanted some fun, &
what fun it was, for never have I had better rogering than with him, & never such romance to go with it: here was a man who
could make me whimper with pleasure & joy all at once, & scream my head off too. But I feel blushes coming on, so I will spare
you further details.

The Christmas lull was over. Armed with gift-packs of Viagra with which to bribe the men of power, I made arrangements for
electricity to be connected to the household, & once the municipal workmen had installed it, & strung the relevant wires from
street-poles, Fergus & Professor Krak – excited as two schoolboys – spent many hours encouraging the Time Machine to respond
to electrical stimuli. Franz would visit, & make suggestions, & also take time to study Fru Schleswig's vacuum cleaner, a
device now seldom dormant, for it had been revitalized by the new power system, & was being worked as never before, for the
normally slothful Fru Schleswig, fired with an unusual energy, had set about sucking the dust from every flat surface, cranny,
crack, or piece of upholstery she could find: the similarly re-energized Franz, behaving as though he too had been plugged
into a power source, enthused about how he planned to copy its mechanism with a view to setting up shop as an inventor, for
he declared himself bored with philosophy, being ‘a doer not a thinker, & not cut out to ponder things in a hypothetical &
crabwise manner'. It was a home quite buzzing with innovation & activity, & full of plans, for the flow-chart was to be adhered
to, declared Professor Krak, which meant he must make a quick foray back to London to settle the minds of his flock, the telephoning-across-time
notion having not yet borne fruit, despite his discovery of a weak signal in the garden, behind the holly tree. On his return,
we would finalize our mission in Copenhagen, install Fru Schleswig as mistress of the house, & then make haste for London,
where (in my scheme of things) Fergus & I would live happily ever after, amid flowers, champagne & kisses, as in all the best
stories, and have many podgy little cherubs to coo over.

If Professor Krak was a little nervous about the electrical tweaks he and Fergus had made to the Time Machine, he hid it well
on the morning he made ready to leave. Indeed, he had seemed as businesslike as any London Underground commuter preparing
for his regular journey to work – though in the hour before he left, however, he had acted a little oddly, for he had locked
himself into the Oblivion Room, & from the sounds that then emanated from it, it seemed he was pedalling most frantically
upon the bicycling contraption.

‘What is he thinking of?' I asked Fergus, puzzled. ‘He never cared before about his health: why now?'

‘Well, my theory is, hen, that he's gearing himself up for the mission,' said my love. ‘I reckon that while he's pedalling,
he's got the Bornean orang-utan on his mind. She's right in his line of vision there. I think it gets him all revved up, remembering
what she went through. Poignant, when you think about it. But these eggheads, they're often a bit daft.'

‘He loved her,' I remembered. ‘When he told me how she died, he had tears in his eyes!'

When Herr Krak finally emerged, he seemed to carry a whiff of alcohol with him, & there was another smell too, more medical – but he seemed almost gay, & excited about his trip. ‘Don't worry,' he assured Fergus (who was looking more than a little concerned). ‘All we have done is improve both speed and accuracy. Which should mean less of a dizzifying landing, with any luck. I beg you, dear friends, fear not!' he called as he closed the door of the machine upon himself & motioned us to stand back. ‘For trust me, I have done this a thousand times!'

Whereupon with a whirring & a jarring, followed by a blinding flash and a sharp sulphurous clang, he was suddenly no more, & all that remained of him, when we opened the door, was a puff of smoke & the faintest indentation of his buttocks upon the red velvet cushion of the carriage.

‘Famous last words,' said Fergus at noontide two days later, when Professor Krak failed to turn up as he had been scheduled
to. ‘I think we accidentally did something to alter its course. But what it might be I don't know.' And he looked most grave.

‘It's probably to do with getting into the Greenwich Observatory,' I replied. I did not feel too alarmed – for was I not back
in my own land & time, and would it really be the end of the world if we were stranded here? Would Love not conquer all? I
was drugged with happiness, replete with joy. I did not want to think about all that might go awry. But Fergus did. In the
thirty-six hours that followed, he kissed me as much as before, but they were the kisses of a man who was ever more distracted,
& who now spent much time inside the machine, fiddling with its innards and sighing & saying ‘och' in a perturbed fashion.

Tick, tock.

Time passed disturbingly fast. Three days on, & New Year's Eve had arrived. By now we were forever looking at the clock, &
calculating how long it had been since Professor Krak's departure. I was minded to turn the flow-chart to the wall, so out-of-kilter
had our schedule become, & so hopelessly off the map had our communal journey wandered. I will confess to you, my precious
love, that I have never much enjoyed the turning of the year: too many times the revelry has soured on me, too often, in the
past, has a customer's desire ‘to end the year with a bang' led me to miss the dancing, & turned the alcohol-fuelled madness
of midnight too flatly into the vinegar of morn. And yet, I argued to myself, this was to be my first New Year with Fergus,
& my life had changed: for that reason alone, it should be a blissful occasion, for had my life not begun afresh, thanks to
the blessing of Love? But by now – if I am to be quite honest about it – a nagging worry had incontrovertibly descended, like
an atmosphere, & even I, in my so far apparently infinite foolishness, had begun to have dismal thoughts about the continued
absence of Professor Krak. Might he have abandoned us here, now the Time Machine was secure? Surely, surely not! When I finally
voiced this thought, Fergus fell into a deeper than ever silence, while Franz, who is of a pessimistic nature, merely fuelled
my anxieties further by echoing and elaborating on them, using phrases like ‘ultimate betrayal' & ‘human experimentation'
& ‘hostages to fortune'. It was only Josie, preoccupied with her toy tram set, & Fru Schleswig, now titular mistress of the
home, & High Priestess of Vacuum Suction, who seemed contented & unconcerned.

So despite the best efforts to appear cheerful, it was to a somewhat muted New Year's Eve meal that we seated ourselves that
night. Else, dressed in flamingo pink, & Franz, in a velvet suit, & Gudrun, in red with her scar powdered over, joined us
for the
flæskesteg
I had prepared, for I did not wish my darling one to return to London without ever having tasted our national dish, & savoured
the beauty of roast pork & crackling in all its Danish glory. But a sombre meal it was, & the chewing & chomping of Fru Schleswig
echoed in the great hall like a bog-marsh in biological upheaval.