The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times

by Xan Brooks

  After she’s been about five minutes in hiding, the Scarecrow passes by. All but the lower part of his face is covered by a mask made from tanned leather. His empty left sleeve has been crisply folded and pinned to the lapel of his coat. She calls, “Well done, you found me. I’m right over here.”

  The Scarecrow gets down on his heels. “You shouldn’t have shouted. I would have walked right by.”

  “Well, never mind. It’s a silly game in any case.”

  How old is the Scarecrow? There is no way of telling. His hair is dark and his voice is strong; she supposes he may be reasonably young, not much beyond thirty. Looking at him, she is struck afresh by the oddness of these trips. If someone had taken her aside two Sundays gone and told her that this is where she would be and that he would be here too, she would never have believed it, not in a million years.

  She says, “It’ll be getting dark soon. And then the stars will come out.”

  He asks, “Is that good or bad?”

  “Oh, very good. I love seeing the stars.”

  From a distance, very faintly, comes the squeal of hysterical laughter. Winifred. Caught.

  The Scarecrow retrieves a cigarette from the pack and Lucy helps get it alight. Life must be so tiresome with the use of only one arm. But the silence between them is pressing; it makes her shy and tongue-tied.

  She says, “Well, this is very pleasant.”

  “You find it pleasant?”

  “Of course it is. I do like the forest. It feels like we have the whole place to ourselves.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’re mistaken. There are others here too and if we’re very unlucky we may even see them. The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.”

  “Aha,” says Lucy. After a beat, she adds, “The what?”

  “The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift. It’s an organisation of pacifist boy scouts. They like to ramble the woods on summer nights. Sometimes if you listen, you can hear them singing.”

  “What a strange name. Are you making fun of me?”

  The Scarecrow draws on his cigarette. “No,” he says. “If I wanted to tease you, I hope I’d be able to come up with something a bit more sensational.”

  Lucy fidgets. She can feel that the seat of her dress is damp from where she’s been sitting. Next time, she thinks, she’ll bring a blanket to rest on.

  “If I wanted to tease you, I would say that the woods are full of wolves or bears. I’d say, ‘Did you hear that noise? I do hope it’s not wolves’.”

  “Yes, all right. Thank you.”

  “But there are no wolves. Or bears, for that matter. There’s only a band of sanctimonious boy scouts.”

  Toto shouts, “Found you at last. Now bloody budge up, I can hardly see you in there.”

  Away from the trail, Toto likes to dispense with the wheelchair and proceed under his own steam. The dwarf has no legs but he moves by wriggling aboard his muscular hips, employing his one good arm to steer and steady himself much as a gondolier might plant his pole in a Venetian canal. In he comes, his head and shoulders rolling. Ideally she would have liked to speak with the Scarecrow longer. Still, there’s no denying that Toto in motion is a sight to behold.

  “Budge up,” he barks at the Scarecrow. “Are you staying or what?”

  The Scarecrow says, “All I’m doing is smoking.”

  “You can be doing that anywhere. Walk about, have a smoke. See if you can round up any more of the tykes.”

  “Good to talk to you, Lucy,” the Scarecrow says.

  “Shoo, shoo,” says the dwarf. And then to the girl, “Help me off with this jacket, there’s a pet. Damn thing gets all rucked up by my pits.”

  Once, years before, they had hidden in the pantry while her mother went looking. The game in the forest has suddenly brought it all back. She and Tom and their father huddled in the half-light with the door closed at their backs and the jars and tins arranged on the shelves all around. She recalls that the flour had looked so inviting that her father dared her to eat it and see. In the event they each licked their fingertips and dipped their hands in the jar. But the flour was awful, which in turn set them laughing. It seemed strange that the linchpin of all her mother’s delicious cakes and breads could taste so revolting in its purest, whitest state.

  Later, back at the truck, she learns that some altercation has occurred in another part of the forest. Edith is angry, overwrought and on the verge of tears. Lucy can’t work out the details and feels it would be impolite to ask and yet, unaccountably, it seems the slow, docile Lion is somehow to blame. Edith has climbed into Coach’s truck where she sits with her arms tightly folded. She says all that she wants is to be driven back home.

  Toto is incensed. Coach and Crisis have barely had time to position him in his chair, but now he wants to set himself down again. He affects to lunge at the miscreant and reprimands him as though he is scolding a dog. “Lion! You dirty article. Play nice. No rough stuff. Look at her and look at you. You great, disgusting brute.”

  Lucy steals a glance and is relieved to see that, whatever offence the Lion has committed, the creature is clearly overcome by remorse. He tries to speak but his constricted throat won’t engage, so instead he turns to clasp his hands and silently entreat the furious girl in the truck.

  “Edith, look,” says Winifred. “He’s saying he’s sorry.”

  “Lion! You great dirty brute.”

  Crisis says, “It’s because he’s been drinking. He had a skinful coming over. He gets too jumpy otherwise. Not that I’m making excuses for him, mind.”

  “Can we go home, please?” calls Edith from the truck.

  It is left to Fred to make the peace. The girl walks between the funny men, variously stretching and stooping to kiss each one goodbye. She leaves the Lion until the end. He shakes in her embrace and appears to be weeping.

  On his way to crank the engine, Coach digs Lucy lightly in the ribs. “You all right there?”

  She nods glumly.

  “Attagirl,” says Coach.

  “Same time next week,” the Tin Man is shouting. “It’s been a joy and an honour.”

  The truck rocks drunkenly on the bridleway. If Coach dared drive any faster, they might be overturned. The girl starts tottering, she has not quite found her sea legs – but when she reaches out for support, the usually accommodating Edith bats her hand brusquely away.

  Lucy back-pedals and comes into contact with John. The boy has rolled himself in a ball and appears already to be sleeping. When the truck runs over a branch, it dislodges his thumb from his mouth.

  The night is overcast, full of incoming rain. It is as though God has run a roller north-to-south across the sky. Lucy does not like it; it makes the heavens look black.

  Fred chatters from the gloom. “Hide-and-seek, they call it. Torture, I call it, when the ground is that wet. But oh no, Coach says hide-and-seek, so hide-and-seek it is. My shoes are completely caked. I think my smock must be as well. And it’s all right for Coach.” She turns to raise her voice at the rear hatch of the driver’s cab. “It’s all right for Coach, because it’s not him who’s playing, he just stands about gassing, miserable bastard.” She settles back. “He can’t hear me anyway.”

  Lucy says, “My dress as well. My nan will have kittens.”

  “If we come down with pneumonia, we’ll know where we caught it.”

  She finds herself peering through the pale stands of trees, at the strips of velvety darkness, and realises that she is looking for the pacifist scouts the Scarecrow told her about, except, of course, she can no longer remember the name. The Kiddo Kiff? The Kiddo Cliff? Something jagged and festive, like a twist of tinsel or a clatter of bells. Her limbs are sore and her lids are heavy and yes, she does worry about the mud on her dress, she can’t help herself, it feels like a failing, like she is coming home soiled. As soon as she sat down amid the bracken, she could
feel the wetness crawling through the fabric – but what was she to do? The forest is filthy, it scratches, splatters and drips. That’s the nature of nature. If one doesn’t like it, one ought to stay put indoors.

  So far as she can tell, Epping Forest is empty. But maybe it’s not. Quite possibly it isn’t. There might be a row of boy scouts just five paces away and she would never know because Coach is driving too fast and the trees are too thick and there is no moon out tonight. All the same, she does wish that she could remember the name. The Kindred of the Cliff Kiddos?

  “And the other thing that happened, just you listen to this. When the Tin Man found me he got so excited he caught his foot on a root and fell forward on me. And you know, his hooks. I thought he was going to run me right through. En-garde! Like in The Three Musketeers.”

  “I think I did hear you screaming.”

  “It’s funny now, but it gave me a fright. And him too, he was good about it, but then he’s not a bad sort, old Tinny. And he is still my favourite, so there. I shall fight you for him, Luce, and I reckon I’m stronger than you, which means Tinny is mine.”

  Out of the darkness, Edith says, “They’re all horrible.”

  Fred turns towards her. “You still in a grump, Ede?”

  “You should have a listen to yourself. It’s pathetic.”

  “She’s only in a sulk because she didn’t like the game. None of us did, welcome to the club. Honestly Ede, it’s like you think you’re made out of glass.”

  “They’re not our boyfriends,” Edith says. In the gloom, Lucy cannot make out what the girl’s face is doing. “They’re horrible. Sunday nights are horrible.”

  After a moment, Fred says, “Ignore her, Luce. She’s in one of her sulks.”

  At the southern skirt of Epping Forest, the road ascends for a spell aboard steep grassy banks and crosses an expanse of meadow and woodland – and the sensation is that of laborious ascent; it must be how plane passengers feel in the opening seconds of take-off. The land drops away and the night wind whips her ears as the Maudslay travels amid the treetops. And yet to Lucy it seems as though Coach’s truck is stationary and the landscape is moving. The trees come streaming past in the opposite direction. She looks out from the bed and watches them run, humped and shaggy, across the meadow at midnight. They are like prehistoric beasts, an army of mammoths in frightened retreat. She fancies that they must be escaping some natural disaster – all of them running, heads down and silent, at the same dogged pace, and then all at once gone. The land bare, the trees streaming away to the north and Lucy sat in the old army truck, left behind to confront whatever is coming up next.

  5

  The Long Boys are playing inside the Alcazar hall. Their antics have drawn an appreciative crowd. The Long Boys come from Tennessee, which means they are currently thousands of miles from home. Their pockets are lined with ticket stubs and foreign coins and receipts for hotels they have already forgotten. The Old World is new and they’re still unpicking its mysteries. Ordinary smells are exotic to them.

  The musicians come billed as “genuine darktown entertainers”, purveyors of an unruly young sound that has America in a spin. They take the stage one-by-one, loping out from the wings and under the lights, where Ambrose Metcalf reads their names from a card. Ambrose Metcalf has corked his cheeks for the occasion, but the compère fools no one. He is a liverish man in late middle-age. He wears a blazer and a monocle. The night before he called the bingo numbers. He introduces each man with an agonised formality that is unintentionally funny. Midway through his preamble, the audience has divided. One half is applauding the Long Boys’ arrival. The other is laughing at hapless Ambrose Metcalf.

  Here come the Long Boys and they are itching to play. First from the wings is the celebrated trumpeter, Sunny Boy Bill, a wide-eyed, slender prodigy, barely out of his teens, and trailing behind comes burly George Washington, who blows the trombone. The band’s drummer, Rollin’ Colin George, claims to be double-jointed and in all likelihood is, while the light-skinned octoroon on clarinet answers to the name of Skinny Boy Floyd and is a notorious tearaway, newly released from Sing Sing. And here Ambrose Metcalf raises his voice and implores the hooting spectators to put their hands together and give the warmest Alcazar welcome to the biggest, longest Long Boy of them all – the boss and the bandleader, Mr Samuel ‘Sweetpea’ Long. He cries, “On banjo and vocals. Samuel ‘Sweetpea’ Long.”

  Out steps Mr Long. Handsome, ageless and painstakingly mild. His hands are clasped and his head is bowed in a pantomime of deference because he is at pains to point out that it is the music that matters, not the lowly creatures who play it. Music hails from heaven; he is merely its packmule. So he says “Good gracious me” and “I am quite overcome”. He knows that nothing scares white society more than an upstart negro.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. Mr Samuel ‘Sweetpea’ Long.”

  The house is full, the audience an even split of regulars and visitors. There is a coach party from Brighton, an arts critic from the Times, and six members of an Irish street-gang from the Islington slums. The critic will later dismiss the evening’s activities as “low negro baboonery” and call for the musicians to be packed off back to America, where they regard such behaviour with more tolerance.

  Aboard the maplewood stage, the Long Boys take songs that are already unfamiliar and proceed to twist them out of shape, so that a tune that sets forth dressed as one thing changes costumes in the space of a bar, or doubles back on itself, or spins out to reveal a set of outlandish musical cousins who start to chatter and squabble, each vying for attention. They perform ‘Good Luck Shimmy’ and ‘Livery Stable Stomp’. They play ‘Heebie-Jeebies’ and ‘Beale Street Blues’ and the down-hearted song about the down-hearted girl who has got the world in a jug and the stopper in her hand. When they play ‘Tiger Rag’, the noise threatens to take the roof off. The pace is electric; Colin’s sticks are a blur. The beat accelerates and accelerates until it reaches a point when the dancers are overtaken and hauled in – where their outmoded dance steps will no longer suffice and they abandon well-worn routines in favour of a drunken tidal surge. George Washington sounds his trombone to simulate the tiger’s roar.

  Above the throng sits Rupert Fortnum-Hyde, as lordly and distant as a Greek deity. He and two friends have commandeered what the Alcazar presumptuously refers to as its royal box. They have latched the door at their backs and arranged rails of cocaine on the sill at their waists. In the pauses between songs, in lieu of applause, Rupert Fortnum-Hyde dips his dark head and permits a rail of white powder to run into a nostril. The drug excites his senses. The Long Boys excite him too, but Fortnum-Hyde has never been a man to let his enthusiasms unman him. Leave it to the others to clamour and bleat and behave like retarded children. He would rather cogitate at length before delivering his verdict, safe in the knowledge that it is his verdict that counts.

  Exactly how many rhythms can the Long Boys sustain during the course of the same ragtime number? He locates three – arguably four – distinct tempos pitted against one another. The songs slalom and careen, but they are not quite a cacophony. They contain some internal motor that allows the melodies to run out for a spell before snapping them back like elastic. It is all rather diverting. The friction is delicious and the music full of pep. Fortnum-Hyde decides that this style of playing should not be called ragtime or jazz; that “pep” suits it better. They should re-christen the music as pep and leave it at that.

  At the front of the hall, the set has reached a pitch of intensity, the Long Boys swinging with barely a break into a roiling, loose-jointed tease of a song that conspires to paint a schoolyard jingle with a knowing carnal gloss. This is Sweetpea’s cue to abandon the cumbersome apparatus of his microphone and join in the dance. He scissor-kicks himself from the stage and lands amid the first row of revellers. Casting propriety to the wind, he scoops a dancer in his arms and twirls her so ardently that her sk
irt rises to her midriff. Now vocal duties have switched to Skinny Boy Floyd, a model of beaming innocence as he sings of how he likes to stick his finger in the woodpecker’s hole and how the woodpecker says “God bless my soul”. Skinny Boy is a wonder. The man is musically ambidextrous. He plays alto clarinet and then sips a breath and begins singing tenor.

  “The woodpecker girl gave a sigh and a grin. She said, Turn it round, take it out, stick it in.”

  This is all too much for the colossal Truman Truman-Jones, surely the heaviest man in the house, who has been manfully attempting to avoid speaking first but discovers he can maintain his silence no longer. Muscle cords straining against his shirt collar, he ventures that the spectacle of the Long Boys puts him in mind of a newspaper cartoon he once saw in which a gaggle of primates invaded Buckingham Palace. It may well be amusing, it is certainly enlivening, but he needs to be convinced that it is art. Is he even saying that correctly? What is the proper collective noun for primates?

  “A screech of monkeys,” ventures York Conway at his side. “A masturbation of monkeys.”

  Truman-Jones heaves in like an ocean liner to fortify himself with another dose of white powder. But the tension has undone him. He blurts, “What do you make of it, Rupert? What manner of oddness is this?”

  At last, Rupert Fortnum-Hyde is prepared to deliver his verdict. He leans back in his chair and extends his long limbs as though delightedly bored. He says, “Rub-a-dub-dub.”

  And with a jolt of alarm, Truman-Jones realises he’s been caught out. He took a chance and jumped one way when he should have jumped the other, because there is no higher praise than a “Rub-a-dub-dub”, and if Fortnum-Hyde likes the Long Boys then that means he must as well. Back-tracking swiftly, he says, “Well, I have to admit it is an astonishing sight.”

  Rupert Fortnum-Hyde accepts the concession with a cool-eyed smile. “What an incorrigible racist you are, Jonesy,” he says.