My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time (23 page)

Josie broke the silence. ‘Daddy,' she asked, her brown Fergus-eyes serious. ‘When are we going home?'

More silence, & then we all spoke at once:

‘But it's lovely here!' (me)

‘Never!' (Franz)

‘I cud eet anutha potato!' (Fru S)

‘What does she say?' (Else & Gudrun).

And then we looked at Fergus. ‘Daddy's working on it, hen,' he said finally. This statement was followed by more silence,
with the round-eyed child wondering why we were all so agitated. Then Fergus spoke again, addressing all of us. ‘My view is
that if Fred hasn't returned by tomorrow, we should leave here under our own steam, without him. I'm familiar with the technology
of the machine: I think we should try to make it back to London no matter what. Because something must have happened, to stop
him getting back,' he argued. ‘I know how this thing works now, and –'

But I cut him short. ‘It's too big a risk!'

‘What's he say?' asked Else, Gudrun & Fru Schleswig in unison, but I ignored them & continued in English: ‘What if we land
in another time & place, with no way to get back?'

By now Franz had provided translations for Gudrun & Else, who cried out, alarmed: ‘Over my dead body Charlotte! You're only
leaving if you've got a way of coming back. Full stop.'

‘It is the most risky of initiatives,' counselled Franz, first in English, & then in Danish for the benefit of Else. ‘It will
end in the worst kind of doom, you mark my words. Best stay here for evermore,' he finished, eyeing Else to see her reaction.
Which seemed to be one of approval.

‘She iz alwiz tryin to get rid of me,' grumbled Fru Schleswig through a mouthful of
flæskesteg.
A small piece flew from her mouth & landed on a candle, where it sputtered violently, giving off a porky whiff.

‘No, listen,' said Fergus, by now more agitated than I had ever seen him. ‘I don't deny the risk, but –'

‘Min eneste ene,
we cannot do it!' I exclaimed, standing up, the better to stamp my foot – for this was our second ever disagreement, & it
was important to give my opinion emphasis. ‘We must simply stay here until there is another way of –'

But my speech was broken by an almighty crash: the double doors of the dining room flew open, and there before us, blackened
with what looked like soot, his clothing hanging off his tall frame in rags, was none other than –

‘Well, I'll be buggered: it's Fred!' cried Fergus, leaping up from the table. Gudrun, too, was on her feet immediately, &
rushed to where the Professor stood. For a moment we were all exclaiming & laughing with relief – but any optimism we might
have felt was short-lived, as Professor Krak (for it was indeed he) had clearly been through a most terrifying ordeal. He
steadied himself against the door-jamb, then began sinking to the floor: Fergus caught him just before he hit the ground &
Gudrun pressed a glass of red wine to his lips. Unshaven and unkempt, he looked a fright, & smelled of smoke and oil: his
once noble head of hair was clotted into a single dark clump. He groaned as though in pain.

‘Thank God,' he said hoarsely, his eyes closing as though to blot out a memory. ‘I thought I wouldn't make it'

Josie was watching, wide-eyed. I took her hand & squeezed it: her ‘wee theme park' was turning frightening.

‘What happened, pray?' I was fair jumping up & down with impatience to know what had transpired to make the Professor's voyage
to London so disastrous.

‘It all went wrong,' he sighed, as Fergus helped him to a chair. Gudrun mopped his brow, & put his hip-flask to his lips for
a restorative swig, then swiftly placed a plate of food before him: this he instantly began devouring greedily, like a dog
at a plate of offal, employing none of his usual refinement & ceremony. Fru Schleswig watched approvingly. ‘Horribly, grotesquely
wrong,' he continued through a mouthful of
flæskesteg.
‘For I ended up not in London, but at the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar in Zaragoza.'

Swiftly, I translated for Fergus. ‘Zaragoza!' he cried. ‘But Fred, that's a whole rotation and a half beyond where –'

‘Indeed it is,' moaned Professor Krak in Danish, for he was clearly in no state to handle English syntax. ‘And it was in this
most unexpected place – never a favourite destination of mine (though the architecture is to be admired) – that I was vilely
treated by medieval villains and hurled into a vat of fetid slime. They threw rotten goose-eggs at me, & there was then talk
of a public trial, after which I would be hanged as a magician, & my gizzard fed to a species of mountain wolf known as
Lupus maximus horribilis.
Had I not managed to bribe the prison guard with my laser torch, I would not be alive to tell the tale.'

‘But how did you get back?' asked Fergus, when Franz had provided the translation. It was most evident that he was thinking
now of his daughter, for I knew him inside out. O, had I only insisted that he not come on such a dangerous undertaking! Had
I only forbidden it! Gently, he drew Josie to him & stroked her dark mop of hair.

‘The Professor stinks of poo,' she whispered.

The Professor took another gulp of wine & thence continued in English. ‘The Basilica is close to the meridian. I located it,
& the Time-Sucker, using my little GPS machine, which miraculously survived my dunking, & managed to trigger the Magnetic
Memory Imperative just in time. That is the closest shave I think I ever had – and there have been many!'

Poor Fergus: I could see his brain working up a storm-cloud of dark thoughts. ‘But Fred, can you put your finger on what exactly
went wrong with the mechanism?' he asked anxiously. ‘Could it be to do with the electrical element we introduced?'

‘Most certainly,' replied Professor Krak, wiping his mouth and nodding his gratitude to Gudrun who was doling out more potatoes,
which he attacked ravenously.

‘A disaster,' murmured Franz, whom I had by now dubbed the Crown Prince of Pessimism. ‘To think, that if I had not returned
here before now, I would be trapped in London for ever, a slave to my own miserable fate! And now the machine has failed you,
& you are trapped here, just as I was, there!'

‘It has not failed us, foolish boy!' snapped Professor Krak through a mouthful of pork. ‘It is simply in need of some adjustment,
which I am perfectly capable of performing once I have made some rudimentary calculations. Bring me a pen,' he barked, and
Franz obeyed, whereupon Professor Krak proceeded hastily to scribble a tangle of numbers and diagrams on the white tablecloth.
Fergus joined him, & soon the two men were lost in technical conversation. In subdued mood, the rest of us cleared the table;
when Else, Gudrun & Franz had left, Fru Schleswig, Josie & I prepared for bed: by the time the clock struck midnight & a new
year dawned, the men had repaired to the basement where they continued their discussions within the body of the machine and
began what Professor Krak called the ‘reconfiguration process'. And in such a manner did another New Year's Eve that did not
match up to expectations draw to a close, thus confirming my theory that some festivals are never what they are cracked up
to be.

The next morn, feeling no familiar male warmth next to mine, I descended to the basement to find Fergus & Professor Krak still
working inside the machine. They looked exhausted, but triumphant; neither man had slept a wink, but the atmosphere had changed:
Professor Krak looked relieved, & Fergus, weary-eyed & his face covered now in the most delightful stubble, folded me in his
arms. ‘I think we have cracked it, hen,' he smiled with pride, & I forgave him the disappointment of last night, which was
none of his fault, & I fell in love with him all over again.

‘Then you, Professor Krak, must have hot water, & some breakfast, & then sleep,' I insisted. ‘I shall run you a bath instantly,
for it's high time you got rid of that Castel Gandolfo reek from your clothes, & restored your hair to its usual glory. It's
New Year: make it a day of rest after your ordeal.'

An hour later, all was peaceful again. Imagine us there, gentle reader, if you will – for it is the last time you will see
us assembled in such a happy scene. Look: Fergus is dozing in front of the cedarwood fire, with a sleepy Josie tucked in his
arms; Professor Krak is in the bathtub recovering from his filthy dunking in the vat; & Franz, who has returned, is reassembling
the vacuum cleaner after having dissected its components – (‘See here, Fru Schleswig: your intake & exhaust port, your fan,
your clutch actuator, your motor, & your canisters, all working to obey Bernoulli's Principle, by which as air speed increases,
pressure decreases; is it not a marvel, the way the
pressure differentials
cause the suction?') while she in turn is boasting to him (preposterously) that she taught me the alphabet when I was three,
& herself once read ‘an oringe-cullered booke, with one hundred & fortee payges & the wurd turnippe in the tytle'. Else is
away preparing her shop for the New Year Sale & I, meanwhile, am at work with needle & olive thread, taking in one of the
many robes Fru Krak had left in her wardrobe, so that it will flatter my curves & prompt my lover to grope me even more than
he already does. Can such peace last? I think you know the answer to that by now.

A ring at the door. We froze.

A loud & commanding banging, and a ferocious male cry of ‘Let us in or we will bash the door down!'

‘Don't go!' I yelled at Fru Schleswig, who, with that bovine instinct of obedience so common among lowly creatures of her
ilk, had already begun lumbering towards the hall. ‘We know not who it is!'

The banging ceased, & I was glad to remember that we had triple-bolted the front door. But the respite was all too brief,
within a minute, the thumping noises had started up once more, but louder this time, & with a splitting-wood timbre that hinted
at alarming events on the horizon.

Fergus woke with a start & snapped instantly into action, grabbing a poker & bidding Josie to take her toy tram, descend to
the basement, & hide inside the Time Machine. Alarmed, Franz quickly screwed the last component of the vacuum cleaner back
in place, & Fru Schleswig clasped it passionately to her bosom, whereupon Franz went to summon Professor Krak from his bath
– from which he emerged dripping & wild-haired & clad in his wife's pink bath-robe, adorned with sea-horses.

‘Right: we must now activate Plan 4b, sub-section ten!' he ordered sharply, referring to the flow-chart he had bidden us all
learn by heart, but which had faded to a distant memory in my mind by then, thanks to schnapps & the passage of time. ‘The
Time Machine is under direct enemy threat! Deploy all defence strategies, while I hasten to prepare the catalysing liquid,
which I pray is still fresh enough, after my visit to Zaragoza, to fuel the journey!'

By now Fergus, still clearly befuddled but nonetheless determined, was ascending the stairs with his poker, where from the
landing window a view was to be had of the street immediately below. I followed him, my heart a-patter, for there were few
things this could mean, & none of them bode well. When he reached the landing I heard him gasp.

‘Lottie, quick! Is that her?' he asked, pointing to a carriage that contained a plump woman wrapped in a beige shawl, fur-hatted
& hard-faced. And next to her, the pompous Pastor. I groaned in the affirmative.

‘Then Fred is right, & we must act quickly,' said my love. We had changed the locks, of course, in anticipation of just such
an intrusion, & there existed a blood-spattered document proving Fru Fanny Schleswig's legal ownership of the house – but
what none of us could have foreseen was the speed with which events would unravel: that first of all, Fru Krak would blab
about the Ghost of the Little Cleaning Girl in her sleep (a fact we later learned from an acquaintance of the Pastor's); that
the Parson would interrogate his wife further; that next, the Man of God, apprised of his home's occupation by a demonic machine,
would be filled with a most righteous & biblical fury, & insist on returning posthaste from Silkeborg, stopping only to awake
a lawyer & hire two burly thugs to defend his rightful ownership, as Fru Krak's husband, of the property in question, & expunge
Satan.

And so we did not stay to watch any further, as two monumentally big, scar-faced, stubble-jowled thugs (members of the criminal
underworld, most surely, to judge by their looks!) swung their sledgehammers again, striking ever deeper into the dark oak
of the front door. In that eye-blink of a moment, it became clear that there was only one course of action open to us, for
we could not hold these brutish oxen off, & their destructive work might not end with the front door, but in bloodshed.

‘We've got to go back to London this minute. Franz, since you are staying here, you must try to save the machine!' called
Fergus as we ran down the corridor, with the young man & Josie hurtling in our wake, while Fru Schleswig rolled & pitched
her way along in the rear, uttering her usual limited range of expletives. By the time we reached the basement, Professor
Krak, who had sped on ahead, had already entered the machine & was preparing it for passengers.

‘Right, who is leaving for London?' he cried.

‘Fergus, Josie and I wish to return,' I said quickly.

‘Yor not leevin me here aloan,' boomed the hippopotamic Fru Schleswig, wheezingly catching up with us. ‘Do notte think u kan
abandun yor pore old mutha a second tyme!'

‘As you wish, Fru Schleswig,' cried Professor Krak, ‘but make it snappy, for they are upon us!' (I groaned. Would I never
shake this woman off?)

‘But what will you do, Fred?' asked Fergus. ‘Surely you can't stay here yourself?'

‘Who else will guard the machine?' he replied. ‘I spent years building her!'