Overtime (18 page)

The sentry shook his head. ‘None of our lot,' he said. ‘No sign of the other one, either.'

The Warden raised an eyebrow. ‘What other one?' he said.

‘Blondel,' said the sentry.

There was a silence. It probably seemed longer than it actually was.

‘Did you say Blondel?' the Chief Warden asked. ‘Blondel the singer?'

The sentry nodded. ‘That's right,' he said. ‘I recognised the face when he thumped me.'

‘He thumped you ...'

‘When he broke into the rig,' the sentry explained. ‘That was, oh, fifteen minutes before your blokes.'

Giovanni pushed his way past the Chief Warden. ‘You can't be sure it was him,' he said. ‘Just a quick glance ...'

‘But I heard him,' replied the sentry. ‘He sang, over the tannoy. I'd know that voice anywhere. He sang that big number from the 1189 White Album. You know, goes like—' He hummed a few bars.

‘L'Amours Dont Sui Epris?'
the Chief Warden whispered. He had gone very pale all of a sudden.

‘That's it,' the sentry said. ‘Dead good, that, especially that bit where ...'

Nobody was listening. The Chief Warden turned to the Galeazzo brothers.

‘Did you know,' he said softly, ‘that Blondel was in the Archives?'

By a feat of great dexterity, Giovanni stood on the toes of both his brothers at once. ‘I had no idea,' he said. ‘That's awful.'

The Warden gave him an extremely unpleasant look. ‘You're sure, are you?' he said. ‘Well, what a coincidence. Because if you'd known he was here, and there had been a chance of saving him . . . You realise that now none of his songs were ever written?'

‘Really?' Giovanni raised both eyebrows. ‘What a tragedy.'

‘Well ...' The Warden shrugged his shoulders. ‘You'd better help me get this man in the car. We'll need him for questioning.'

Together they lifted the sentry into the Land Rover. It wasn't till he was safely installed on the back seat and propped up on two cushions that the Chief Warden produced a gun and ordered the brothers out of the car. Once they were out of it, but while they were still reacting strongly and making a variety of protests and appeals to his better nature, he slammed the door and told the driver to drive on.

 

The choice between being forcibly married to a beautiful but incompatible girl and remaining indefinitely in a coal cellar is not one that many people have to confront. Even Aristotle, whose works cover a wide range of possible moral dilemmas, glosses over it in a very perfunctory manner; and Guy wasn't exactly one of Aristotle's greatest fans in any event. He decided to rely on instinct.

‘If it's all the same to you,' he shouted through the door, ‘I'll stay where I am, thanks.'

‘Mr Goodlet ...'

‘Thank you,' Guy repeated, politely but firmly. To reinforce the point, he piled coal against the door.

‘You're being rather childish, Mr Goodlet.'

Maybe, Guy thought. So what's wrong with children all of a sudden? Clever people, children. Don't have to go to work.

‘I'm sure that if we discussed this in a sensible manner,' said La Beale Isoud, ‘we could easily sort matters out.'

‘No, really,' Guy said, ‘I like it here. So, if it's all the same to you ...'

‘It is
not
all the same to me,' retorted La Beale Isoud, and there was something in her tone of voice when suggested that her previously inexhaustible-seeming reservoir of ladylike behaviour might be running a trifle low. ‘Mr Goodlet,' she went on, ‘whether you like it or not - whether either of us likes it or not, come to that - it would seem that at some time in the future we are to become man and wife. I really think that we should be trying to establish the groundwork for a mature and meaningful relationship, and I don't really see how that can be achieved with you in the coal cellar.'

Guy said nothing. Something or other ran lightly over his foot and up his leg as far as his knee. He shuddered slightly.

‘Mr Goodlet. Guy,' said La Beale Isoud, ‘I'm not going to plead with you indefinitely, you know. What will be, will be, and if you want to start off our relationship on this sort of note, then I for one will not be answerable for the consequences.'

Guy considered this for a moment; then, having reflected maturely on what Isoud had said, and also the way in which she had said it, scrabbled around for some more coal to pile against the door. The woman sounded exactly like his cousin Flora.

There was a long silence, but Guy wasn't going to be fooled. She might have gone away; on the other hand, she might be waiting outside the door, holding her breath and with an attendant clergyman and two bridesmaids standing behind her fingering sacrificial implements.

‘Are you there, Mr Goodlet?'

‘Yes.'

‘It may interest you to know,' said La Beale Isoud, ‘that I am none too happy about this idea myself. However, instead of shouting at each other through the door, perhaps we should be considering how we can prevent this thing happening?' A long pause. ‘Mr Goodlet?'

‘Still here.'

‘Mr Goodlet, I'm rapidly running out of patience. Would you at least have the good manners to answer me when I speak to you?'

‘Look,' Guy said, ‘I really don't want to seem rude, but if there's a photograph of us on our wedding day, then I'm afraid I'm just going to stay put. The way I see it, we can't get married if I stay here. If you want to get on and do something else, please don't mind me.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake ...'

Guy heard the sound of bad-tempered heels clacking away across flagstones, and relaxed slightly. It might be that she'd gone to fetch a crowbar, but as far as he could remember it had seemed like a good, solid door, opening inwards. He lay back on the heap of coal and considered his situation in some detail.

He tried to puzzle out, from what Blondel had told him, how time worked. On the one hand, it seemed, you could whizz back and forwards through time as easily as catching a train. On the other hand, it stood to reason that if a photograph of him on his wedding day had been taken, then he'd had a wedding day at some time or other - some time in the
future,
of course - and in that case, the thing had already happened and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Except, of course, that it was in the future, so it couldn't already have happened. He could stop it happening by taking his revolver and shooting himself here and now - assuming he didn't miss, which seemed on recent experience to be quite a large assumption - but since he wasn't seriously proposing to put it to the test, that one could be shelved for the time being.

Meanwhile, what he needed most of all, he decided, was a smoke; and to this end he produced from his pockets his last remaining cigarette, his last two matches and the remains of his matchbox, which had not been improved structurally by having been fallen on several times recently. He struck a match.

The match went out and he struck another, which flared up, managed to find a gust of wind in the entirely draught-free environment of the cellar and blew out. Guy stretched out a hand and felt for the door he'd just seen.

As Aristotle said, when caught between a ravening tiger and a process-server bearing a legal document, it's always worth looking for the fire escape.

 

The Chief Warden returned to his office tired, worried and upset. In the space of a single day he had broken all the laws and regulations of his vocation, only to discover that his aiders and abettors were responsible for the annihilation of (in his opinion) the greatest musical genius who had ever lived, who had perished in one of his own Archives. As if that wasn't bad enough, he remembered, his wife had told him they had people coming to dinner and he was on no account to be late. As he unlocked the office door, he toyed briefly with the idea of nipping back through time to half past six and thus at least saving himself a degree of aggravation. It would be a flagrant breach, of course, but compared with what he'd done, it was a mere parking ticket on the windscreen of his honour. Still, perhaps not. Now, all he had to do was open the safe, put the key back in it for the night, and think of a reasonable excuse on the way home ...

There were people in his office. They had been sitting in the dark, because the light was off when he walked in; almost as if they were waiting to catch him unawares.

‘Good evening, Chief Warden.'

Even if he'd contemplated turning and trying to make a run for it, there wouldn't have been any point; a very substantial security officer had filled up the doorway. The Chief Warden relaxed. After all, since it was all such a foregone conclusion, there was no point in getting all tense about it.

‘Come in and take a seat, please.' Although it was - what, two hundred years? About that - since the selection committee meeting when he'd received his appointment, he recognised the voice instantly; and when the speaker swivelled round in the chair and faced him, he was ready for it. But he still couldn't help making a sort of mouse-in-a-blender noise and turning his head away. The Chief Warden was, after all, human, and no human being, however cool or laid back, can hope to face a man split down the middle with equanimity.

‘That's all right,' said the half-man, pre-empting the apology. ‘I'm used to it by now, Lord knows. I won't be offended if you look the other way.'

‘Thank you, sir,' the Chief Warden said, to the opposite wall. He sat down.

‘Now then,' the half-man continued, ‘you can't see them, but sitting on my right is His Holiness Anti-Pope Julian II, whom I believe you've met. Yes? And on my left,' the half-man continued, with a chuckle, ‘is His Holiness Pope Julian XXIII. Before you say anything, yes, they are one and the same person; as you know, Julian was Pope of Rome, died, and now commutes from the sixteenth century to be Anti-Pope. Well, he's kindly agreed to make two simultaneous trips, one in each capacity. Apparently it's the first time it's been done, so he asks you to make allowances. For a start, it means he can't speak.'

The Chief Warden's curiosity got the better of him. ‘May I ask ...?'

‘For fear,' replied the half-man, ‘of contradicting himself. Since he is speaking
ex cathedra
in both capacities, the results might be extremely unfortunate. He will therefore communicate with me by means of sign language, which does not qualify as a medium for Infallible statements, and I will relay his points to you myself. Since you cannot, understandably enough, bear to look at me, you'll have to trust me to interpret accurately. Are you agreeable to that?'

‘Perfectly,' said the Chief Warden.

‘Splendid,' said the half-man. ‘Finally, as these are judicial proceedings, we have a shorthand writer present who will take a transcript for the record. You have no objection?'

‘None whatsoever.'

The half-man nodded to Pursuivant, who was sitting at the end of the desk. Pursuivant sharpened his pencil, opened his notebook, and wrote down the date. He spelt it wrong.

‘Right,' said the half-man. ‘Here goes, then. You are John Athanasius, Chief Time Warden, of “Hour-glasses”, Newlands Road, Bleak City, Atlantis?'

The Chief Warden nodded. ‘Yes,' he said.

‘John Athanasius, you are - can't read my own writing, dammit; Julian, what does that ...? Oh yes, thank you - you are charged with contraventions of the Chronological Order, in that you did knowingly and for purposes of private gain admit unauthorised persons into one of the Time Archives, contrary to Sections 3 and 67 of the said Order. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?'

‘Guilty,' said the Chief Warden.

‘Oh,' said the half-man. ‘How tremendously unimaginative of you. We've been to a great deal of trouble to track you down, you know. I've got a whole corridor full of witnesses all hauled back from temporal oblivion just to say they saw you at it. Are you sure you won't change your plea?'

‘I'm sure.'

The half-man shrugged - difficult to do, with only one shoulder - and reached into his bag for half a black cap. ‘Is there - where is the dratted thing? - anything you wish to say before sentence is pronounced upon you?'

‘No.'

‘Ah, here we are. Are you sure?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Be like that. Now, which way round does it go? You'll have to take my word that I've got it on, of course. Just as well you aren't looking, you'd probably get a fit of the giggles, which'd be Contempt, and you're in enough trouble as it is. John Athanasius, you have been found guilty of a wholly unforgivable breach of the sacred truss - confound it, that's a T-
trust
which has been reposed in you. You try reading this with only one eye and see how you like it. I have listened with patience to your attempts at mitigation ... No, scrub round that. Pity. You have made no attempt to mitigate your crime, and I am therefore obliged to sentence you to filing in the Main Archive. Now have you anything to say as to why such sentence should not be imposed upon you?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Nothing at all? Not even
It's a fair cop, bang to rights, guv?
Nothing at all?'

‘No, sir.'

The half-man sighed. ‘Fine,' he said. ‘The whole evening has been a complete frost. Had we known, we could have entered judgement by default, Julian could have stayed at home, I could have gone out to dinner, Mr ... whatever his name is here could have gone to the greyhound races, or whatever it is his sort of person does in the evenings, but there it is. Sentence accordingly.'