The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions

by Robert Rankin

  Moonlight bathed the observation deck. A gentle breeze whispered, a high-flying parrot cooed softly.

  George took Ada in his arms and kissed her.

  ‘Ada,’ said George. ‘I love you, Ada. Will you marry me?’

  A moment passed that seemed to George a lifetime.

  ‘Of course I will marry you,’ Ada Lovelace said.

  *

  Three days later the Martian airship touched down upon the cobbled vastness of the Royal London Spaceport at Sydenham.

  Bedraggled passengers, their finery gone, their high-blown spirits deflated, shook George and Ada by the hand and traipsed down the gangway to be greeted by bewildered onlookers.

  ‘Darwin,’ said George to the monkey close at hand.

  ‘Would you care to be the best man at my wedding?’

  ‘That will not please the professor,’ said Ada, laughing as she said it.

  ‘That to the professor,’ said George, making a rather rude gesture.

  ‘I suppose we must speak with someone in authority,’ said Ada. ‘Explain, well, everything really.’

  ‘Let us do it then,’ said George in reply. ‘And then we will take a hansom and I will introduce you to my family. It is a long time since I have seen them. I hope they will be as happy to see me as I will be to see them.’

  Together they strolled down the gangway, Darwin hard on their heels.

  They had not strolled a further ten yards, however, when they heard certain sounds behind them that caused them to pause in their tracks and turn back.

  Those certain sounds were of engines, roaring into life.

  ‘Oh no!’ cried George. ‘He would not.’

  But he had.

  As George and Ada and Darwin looked on, the Martian airship, now piloted by Professor Coffin, who waved at them through the windscreen and displayed the casket of jewels that Ada had been given as a going-away present, lifted off, swung about and soared away into the sky.

  35

  Zealous officialdom saw to it that things did not go exactly how George had hoped that they would. That he and Ada were immediately arrested and led away in handcuffs for interrogation lacked somewhat for the ‘triumphal homecoming’ that he had had in mind. He and Ada had, after all, brought back the survivors of the Empress of Mars safe and sound and once more to England. That at the very least had to be worth a medal or two and a tea of sweets with the Queen. The hand-cuffing and the frogmarching lacked for a certain dignity and suitable gravitas. And George became a most grumpy George when he found himself tossed into a pokey cell.

  He called out for justice and demanded that he might speak with someone of high office in the Government of the realm. A spaceport guard in an ill-fitting uniform entered George’s cell and struck him down with a steam-driven truncheon, which he assured George was ‘quite the latest thing’.

  At length George was conveyed to the low office of a minor body in charge of passport control. His handcuffs were removed and he was flung into a chair before a crowded office desk. George’s guard left the room, informing George that he would be waiting outside and no funny business would be tolerated. The minor body viewed George Fox across the crowded desk.

  George was asked to produce his papers.

  George explained that he had none.

  George was then told that in order to enter England he would need to display papers of indenture and permission to travel. An entry visa, accompanied by letters of recommendation, sealed with the authorisation of at least three diplomatic envoys and a license for the unclassified hairy-boy that—

  ‘It is a monkey!’ protested George. ‘Darwin, my monkey butler.’

  The minor body ran his fingers down the passenger list of the Empress of Mars. ‘Lord Brentford had a monkey butler called Darwin,’ he observed. ‘And Lord Brentford is numbered amongst the deceased.’ He gave George a very hard look and then made notes with a hand-driven pen that was not the latest thing.

  ‘And you claim that you were a passenger yourself on the Empress of Mars?’ said the minor body.

  ‘I was,’ said George. ‘And where is Ada Lovelace?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said the minor body. ‘Your accomplice.’

  ‘My what?’ asked George.

  ‘Your partner in subversion and crime. I understand that she too claims to have been a passenger on the Empress of Mars, but her name does not appear on the passenger list.’

  ‘Ah,’ said George. ‘Oh dear,’ said George. ‘I can explain,’ said George also. But he was not altogether certain that he could. Not to the satisfaction of this minor body, who clearly took his job most seriously.

  ‘Look at you,’ said this body. ‘Your accomplice is dressed in her undergarments like some music hall floozy and not only do you sport a suit that is clearly two sizes too small, but you do not wear a hat!’

  The minor body made big notes of this scandalous sartorial faux pas.

  ‘I suspect, sir,’ said he, ‘that you are a Prussian spy, or indeed one of the American anarchists whom I am informed by the survivors attacked the Empress of Mars in New York.’

  ‘This is absurd,’ said George. ‘I rescued these people. Ada and I rescued them. Ask any of them, they will tell you.’

  ‘Ask them?’ asked the minor body. ‘Are you quite bereft of your wits? Those survivors are members of the aristocracy. One does not trouble the likes of them with such trivialities.’

  George made a most exasperated face. He was most exasperated.

  ‘No, hold on, hold on, hold on,’ cried George. Suddenly seeing a light at the end of what looked to be a very long dark tunnel. ‘My name is on the passenger list. Oh yes, indeed it is.’

  ‘Is it now?’ asked the minor body. ‘So what is your name, pray?’

  ‘My name is George Fox,’ said George Fox. ‘Lord George Fox, so you can just release me now, give me a nice cup of tea and then allow me to return to my aristocratic country seat. Go to it, my good man.’

  The minor body stiffened slightly in his chair. ‘A lord?’ said he. ‘You?’ said he. ‘In a suit like that and no hat?’ said he also.

  ‘I am a survivor of an airship wreck,’ complained George. ‘But I am on the passenger list. Go on, look me up.’

  The minor body turned pages. Most slowly indeed he turned them. But presently he paused in his turning and uttered a single, ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes,’ said George. ‘Oh indeed. Now release me and bring me some tea.’

  ‘Lord George Fox,’ said the minor body, and he began to smile.

  ‘Splendid,’ said George. ‘And I am pleased that you are able to affect a detached attitude and see the humour of your own folly in doubting me.’

  The minor body looked up at George. ‘Not as such,’ said he. ‘You see, I have here,’ and he held up just what he had there, ‘a warrant for the arrest of Lord George Fox, issued by the Penge Constabulary at the request of a number of tailors and outfitters with whom this very Lord George failed to settle before he boarded the Empress of Mars.’

  The minor body intoned the list. ‘Jonathan Crawford, suiting to the gentry. Elias Mainwaring, purveyor of quality canes and umbrellas. Louis Vuitton – manufacturers of superior luggage.’ And several others that George had quite forgotten but had no particular wish to be reacquainted with.

  George Fox groaned and his striking chin sank towards his chest.

  ‘We have you, sir,’ said the minor body, ‘in the parlance of the Police Gazette, “bang to rights” and no mistake.’

  George did further groanings.

  ‘Do you have anything to say for yourself before I call back the guard to return you to your cell?’

  George felt hard put now to think of anything.

  ‘I will have to ask you to turn out your pockets,’ said the minor body. ‘It appears that the guards have neglected to search you. Can’t have you producing a set of skeleton keys and making your escape, can we?’

  George shook his head. ‘I suppose you cannot,’ he said.

&nbs
p; George rooted through his pockets and produced his few meagre possessions, his gold watch, a handkerchief, this trifle and the next. He placed them before him on a slightly less crowded area of the minor body’s desk.

  ‘Is that everything?’ asked the minor body.

  ‘Everything!’ said George, with a dismal nod.

  The minor body poked about amongst George’s personal belongings, took up something and asked George, ‘What is this?’

  George viewed the item the minor body held in his hand. A slim glass phial of colourless liquid topped by a screw-on cap.

  ‘Ah,’ said George, and a faint smile flickered at his lips.

  ‘I really do have to ask you,’ said Ada Lovelace as she and George were driven away from the Royal London Spaceport, not in a police wagon but in a rather nice landau carriage drawn by matched black geldings, ‘exactly how you achieved this.’

  ‘Wave back at the nice minor body,’ said George. ‘He is bidding us good fortune.’

  Ada waved. ‘Just how?’ she asked of George.

  ‘Charm?’ suggested George. ‘Force of personality? Justice, perhaps?’

  Ada kissed George on the cheek. ‘So not the Scent of Unknowing,’ said she. ‘Which is what I would have employed.’

  They shared a moment of carefree joy and George Fox treasured this moment.

  ‘So,’ said Ada, ‘my bold adventurer and husband-to-be. Whither are we bound?’

  ‘Well,’ said George, and he made a certain face, ‘we are both in rags and penniless too, so there is only one thing for it.’

  ‘Beg on London Bridge?’ said Ada. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘Do what those in their teens have done throughout this century and will probably continue to do throughout centuries to come, when they are in financial trouble. Go home to Mum and Daddy.’

  Ada Lovelace made a face, the perfect match of George’s.

  ‘Yours or mine?’ she asked him, thoughtfully.

  ‘In our present state of dress, I am thinking yours,’ said George.

  There can sometimes be a terrible problem with dates. Getting dates right, remembering dates. George had no trouble remembering that Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron. She had told him that she was and he had seen the newspaper cutting. George had not, however, mentioned at the time that he had ‘done’ Lord Byron at school. And that Lord George Gordon Byron, the sixth Baron Byron, had been born in seventeen eighty-eight and died in eighteen twenty-four. And that this was now eighteen ninety-five and Ada could scarcely be more than eighteen.

  ‘Regarding your father,’ George asked, as the landau moved through the pretty village of Penge, passing, so it chanced, the new police station. ‘According to history books and indeed his memorial in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey, Lord Byron died in eighteen twenty-four.’

  ‘And precisely what point are you making?’ asked Ada.

  ‘That was seventy-one years ago,’ said George. ‘Yet you claim to be his daughter and have a newspaper cutting that apparently confirms this.’

  ‘And?’ said Ada.

  ‘You do look younger than seventy-one,’ said George.

  ‘Flatterer,’ said Ada.

  In a perfect world, thought George Fox, all matters would be resolved. And resolved satisfactorily. The good would be rewarded for their goodness and the bad punished accordingly. Questions that demanded answers would receive them. Puppies would never grow up and Planet Earth would sail through space upon the wings of joy.

  ‘You have no intention of explaining it to me, have you?’ George asked Ada.

  ‘None at all, dear George,’ the girl replied.

  Ada named a fashionable street in Mayfair and requested that the driver of the landau take them there. The matched black geldings trotted, the weather was pleasant, countryside passed to the outskirts of town and London loomed ahead.

  ‘It has all been such an adventure,’ said Ada. ‘Have you enjoyed it, George?’

  ‘In truth,’ said George, ‘now that we are back in London and safe, I suppose that I have.’

  ‘Suppose that you have?’

  ‘I definitely did.’ George gave Ada’s hand a squeeze. ‘It was fearful at times. But I met you. And I found my fate, as it were. Saw the statue of Sayito that is older than time and the most sacred object in the universe. Although I never actually saw the book, and it was prophesied that I would. But all is well that ends well. And it was quite an adventure.’

  ‘You will not be seeking employment from Professor Coffin again?’ Ada asked.

  ‘That scoundrel!’ George made a very sour face. ‘I feel certain that he will now have retired from the showman’s profession and will live most comfortably for the rest of his life when he sells those jewels that were yours.’

  ‘If there was justice in this world,’ said Ada, ‘then he would find no happiness from his evil. But I care not for him, nor the jewels. I care only for you.’

  George Fox got a lump in his throat. He had never been so happy.

  The landau moved on towards fashionable Mayfair and George held great hopes for the future.

  36

  Very impressed was George with the Byrons, a fine Bohemian crowd, who inhabited roomy apartments and seemed artful, arty and gay.

  The house had somewhat gone to seed, but the rooms were brightly muralled in a style that was just then coming into vogue: Brit Art, otherwise known as Primitive. No great skills were employed, or required, just the necessary enthusiasm.

  George viewed a mural in the hallway that most enthusiastically extolled the joys of onanism. George was a little taken aback, but after all, these were the nineties. The fin de siècle.

  There were a great many Byrons, so it seemed to George. Some coming, a few going, but most just lolling about upon chaises longues, puffing at long-stemmed opium pipes and making the occasional languid gesture to imply that their absinthe glasses needed refilling.

  As, to use one of Mr Oscar Wilde’s expressions, a ‘lifestyle’, George could find much to recommend it. Especially for himself, after all his recent vicissitudes.

  As to exactly how each and every one of these Byrons was related to Ada, George could only guess. Most referred to her as ‘dear child’ and kissed her tenderly.

  George found, much to his surprise and satisfaction, that his grimly shrunken suit received neither mockery nor contempt. He was in fact complimented upon the novel nature of his look – ‘such a biting social statement, my dear, a triumph of irony’ – or asked whether it was ‘the very latest thing’ and where such a suit could be purchased.

  George felt rather at home with the Byrons, and they with him.

  Ada wasted no time in outlining her present position. She gathered together those Byrons who were capable of perambulation and told them how things would be. She meant to get married to George, she said, as soon as this could be arranged. George was a writer himself (this intelligence came as something of a surprise to George), but until he had received his first advance from his publisher, he would have to live here. As this received no objection, Ada went on to say that George and herself were presently penniless having lost all that they possessed when the Empress of Mars went down.

  This did have to be explained to the Byrons, who rarely paid any attention to the actual ‘news’ pages of newspapers.

  So, continued Ada, she would require an advance on her bridal dowry to purchase necessary necessities. George needed more sober apparel to visit his publisher. And she, much as it would not have bothered her to do so, could not walk the streets of London clad only in vest and corset and bloomers.

  A sharp intake of breath had been occasioned upon the part of the Byrons with the coming of the words ‘bridal dowry’. Ada added that naturally such a bridal dowry amounted to little more than a very short-term loan, as much of George’s large publishing advance would be lavished upon his new family.

  A Byron named Lord Billy finally wrote out a cheque.

  A Byron name
d Lady Elsie gave Ada the loan of a frock.

  A day or so later, George and Ada took tea at the famous Ritz. An announcement of their forthcoming marriage had been posted within the society pages of The Times newspaper and George had borrowed money from Ada’s dowry to buy her an engagement ring. Nothing of outrageous price, but a pretty thing in itself.