The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts

by David Wake

  Mrs Arthur Merryweather

  “Ness, we were so worried,” said Georgina as she led Earnestine to a seat. Her elder sister looked shattered and groggy. “You’ve been gone nearly a week.”

  “A week, but I was only gone a day and a half.”

  Finally, they guided Earnestine into the hallway of 12b Zebediah Row. Earnestine raised her head as if she didn’t recognize her own home. She seemed to shy away from the light, darker now that so few panes of red and blue stained glass remained. Just as the porch was boarded up, so Earnestine’s countenance seemed shuttered.

  “Shall I get you a glass of water?” Charlotte asked.

  “Brandy,” said Georgina. It did look like Earnestine was ill.

  “I’ve Temporal Ague,” Earnestine answered, clearly reading Georgina’s expression.

  “Temporal Ague?”

  Charlotte backed away: “Is it catching?”

  “Don’t be silly, Charlotte – brandy!”

  “I was going.”

  Charlotte went to the drinks cabinet and brought back the bottle of brandy.

  “Glass, Lottie,” Georgina said, and then softly. “Is it catching?”

  “No, it’s… because I’ve travelled in time,” said Earnestine.

  Once Earnestine had taken a sip, and coughed, the colour seemed to come back to her cheeks. Thank heavens for medicinal alcohol, Georgina thought.

  “What happened to the porch?” Earnestine asked.

  Charlotte piped up: “It was–”

  “Nothing to worry about,” Georgina said.

  “It was an angry mob with pitchforks and everything, chanting, and out for blood–”

  “Charlotte!”

  “They shouted, woke up the whole neighbourhood.”

  “Charlotte!”

  “They said we were in league with the Chronological Committee. Gina was amazing.”

  “Charlotte!!!”

  Charlotte was quiet.

  “Did that really happen?” Earnestine asked.

  “I was amazing, yes,” said Georgina. “A lot has changed while you’ve been away.”

  “They say a week is a long time in politics?”

  “Yes.”

  “A day in the future seems like an eternity,” Earnestine said. “A lot changes in the next seventy five years. Millions. They died in their millions… will die. In a Great War, the whole world was laid to waste. Every nation: the British Empire, Germany, France, the United States, Japan, every nation, and they just killed each other, and then there was starvation, disease, tuberculosis and the real killers like influenza. Whole communities just swept away.”

  “Oh Ness.”

  “This is what we have to look forward to if we don’t stop the conspiracy.”

  “Then we’re joining forces with the Chronological Committee?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “With Mrs Frasier?”

  “If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you.”

  “Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs. Yes?”

  “But I doubt myself when all men believe me.”

  “Why are you quoting ‘If–’?”

  “Mrs Frasier quoted it in the future.”

  “It just means that, like you, she knows her Kipling.”

  Earnestine hesitated: “She’s not telling us everything.”

  Miss Charlotte

  The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Charlotte shouted. She ran to the door and then came back looking shamefaced. There were Temporal Peelers behind her, tall and imposing, and when they parted, there was Mrs Frasier.

  “Earnestine,” she said, “I’ve not seen you in such a long time.”

  “It’s only been…” Earnestine looked at her fob watch. She still hadn’t changed it, so it made no sense. Half past nine: was that a late breakfast or a supper?

  Mrs Frasier consulted her two fob watches: “Nearly a month for me, but less than a day for yourself, I believe. I thought I’d pop back and visit you for afternoon tea.”

  “Afternoon tea?”

  Mrs Frasier smiled: “Because of you, things have moved forward. We can begin the next phase.”

  “I see,” said Earnestine, her lips tightening.

  “Tea then,” said Mrs Frasier, and then she raised her voice: “Jane, Jane… tea, chop–chop.”

  “Can we have cake?” Charlotte asked.

  “Of course, Lottie,” said Mrs Frasier. “It’ll be a proper little feast, all of the Derring–Do Club together again. In the drawing room I think.”

  Mrs Frasier swept past, her burgundy dress trailing the floor. The others had no choice but to follow.

  “Still got that picture in your bag I see,” said Mrs Frasier.

  “I beg your pardon?” Earnestine said.

  Mrs Frasier pointed to the gap in the wall: “Gina?”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot,” said Georgina. “It’s in my… how did you know?”

  Mrs Frasier made a little writing gesture in the air.

  Jane bought the tea, a pot and the best china on a metal tray.

  Mrs Frasier took charge: “Thank you, Jane.”

  She sat; they all sat, except for Earnestine.

  “I’ll be Mother,” said Mrs Frasier. She poured: lemon for Earnestine, milk for Georgina and Charlotte, and two lumps deposited into Georgina’s with the silver tongs. “And lemon for me.”

  They took their tea, blew gently on the surface to create ripples that spread outwards.

  “Such a good picture too,” said Mrs Frasier. “All of us together at the theatre: the Captain and the Lieutenant, Uncle, and then Earnestine, Georgina and Charlotte. Did we count the men then? I think we did, even then. The Derring–Do Club.”

  “You’re not a member of the Derring–Do Club,” said Earnestine.

  “Of course I am,” said Mrs Frasier. “You really are such a silly little girl, Earnestine.”

  “I am not a little girl.”

  “And petulant too.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Mrs Frasier, of course.”

  “We’ll find out what you’re up to and put a stop to it.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “We will.”

  “So much fire, so little wisdom,” said Mrs Frasier, not unkindly. “You’ll join us.”

  “I will not!” said Earnestine.

  “Yes, you will, because I did,” said Mrs Frasier with a smile. “We have so much in common, you and I. You see, I’m Mrs Marcus Frasier now, but my name is Earnestine too–”

  “That’s my name?”

  “Yes, I’m Earnestine Frasier, née Deering–Dolittle.”

  Chapter XIV

  Mrs Frasier

  She smiled at the three sisters and their shocked faces. Earnestine – the younger Earnestine – looked utterly aghast, amusingly so; while the other two, Georgina and Charlotte, looked from their elder sister to their… more elder sister and back again.

  Mrs Frasier relished Earnestine’s startled reaction. She knew she shouldn’t. She should feel sympathy for this young lady. Mrs Frasier did, after all, know what was in store for her.

  She took a calm sip of her tea, tasting the sharp tang of lemon.

  “Yes, Earnestine,” she said, “I was you, Earnestine Deering–Dolittle, and you will be me, Mrs Marcus Frasier.”

  “No, it can’t be,” cried Earnestine.

  Mrs Frasier stood, took two decisive strides right up to Earnestine. Nose to nose, they had the same angle and shape making an even ‘V’ between them. She put her hand upon her head and shifted it across. They were the same height. She pulled her earlobes to signify that they were identical apart from the slight elongation caused by the older version’s heavy earrings, but their ears each had the same shell–like appearance.

  Mrs Frasier stepped back and smiled.

  “You have a gold tooth,” Earnestine said. “I don’t.”

  “You don’t… yet.”

  Earnestine put out her
arm behind her, feeling for a chair, but it wasn’t positioned straight on. Georgina leaned in and guided her down.

  “No, no…” said Earnestine.

  “You see, we are on the same side… in fact, we are the same side.”

  Georgina glanced back and forth, comparing eye colour, hair, shape of chin, everything. Mrs Frasier let her examine fully, knowing that Georgina was finding it suddenly obvious – of course it was. If one sees two people who look similar, perhaps one thinks of a family relationship, but one never for a moment thinks they are the same person.

  Still, she had a part to play.

  “Now, if I remember rightly, we have some foolish questions and then I went… I will go and attend to certain matters.”

  “What foolish questions?” Charlotte asked.

  “Quite.”

  Earnestine found her voice: “You can’t be me?”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Because… you’re nothing like me.”

  “I’m older, lost some of my puppy fat, and clearly I’ve grown up, but we’re the same.”

  “Ness,” Georgina put her hand on her sister’s arm, “she does look like you, the same sharp nose and red hair.”

  Earnestine snatched her arm away: “I don’t have a sharp nose.”

  “I prefer regal,” said Mrs Frasier, touching the sharp edge with her index finger.

  She considered the three young ladies in front of her and she felt happy. It was such a pleasant experience to see them again, all together, and the need for pretence gone.

  “Well, I’ll leave you three alone as I have duties. Thank you for the tea,” Mrs Frasier said. “I remember… so long ago. It’s like one of those fairground exhibits – the Hall of Mirrors. Do you remember them? Of course you do. They make you thin or fat or like an hour glass or… young again.”

  “Or old,” Earnestine managed to say.

  “I’d forgotten that part of the conversation until now.”

  Mrs Frasier nodded and then walked away closing the drawing room door behind her.

  “We’ll be going then, Ma’am?” Scrutiniser Jones asked.

  “Yes, indeed,” Mrs Frasier said. She put her finger to her lips and then shooed the big man away. He cottoned on. Bright man, she thought, despite his ogre–like frame.

  Once the Peelers had gone out through the ruined porch, Mrs Frasier tip–toed back to the drawing room door to listen.

  Earnestine was whining: “She can’t be me, oh Gina!”

  “She’s as bossy as you,” said Charlotte, brightly. Silly girl, Mrs Frasier thought, she’d have to have words with her as it wasn’t ‘bossy’, just ‘forceful’… but later, when the ramifications of her identity had had time to settle in.

  “Lottie! Can’t you see Ness has had a shock?”

  Ah, yes, Gina, always the caring diplomat. She remembered… but that was a long time ago, a long, long time ago when she was young.

  “Shall I get the brandy?”

  “Lottie.”

  She heard Earnestine wail loudly.

  Young and silly, she thought: a little girl of a mere twenty years, but destined – she smiled to herself at this thought – for greatness.

  Was that pride?

  Mrs Frasier decided to leave them to it and slipped away.

  Scrutiniser Jones held the carriage door open and then Checker Rogers whipped the horses into a canter. They sped through London, not openly yet, but that would come. Soon, very soon.

  Their posters were up, bold and decisive, with striking images of noble men looking to the distance and towards a brave new future. Boys and men had been employed to travel round with buckets of glue and brushes pasting their message over adverts and exhortations to visit the theatre or the music hall. True, some had been defaced, but the inexorable tide of words would win through.

  Mrs Frasier’s ‘certain matters’ were waiting for her when she reached her new office. There was something refined about the Houses of Parliament, a wood panelled room had been set aside for her with an oak desk complete with green leather surface. There was something positively British about oak. It reeked with the centuries of polishing, a perfume of power.

  Her lists were ready on her desk. All these troublesome individuals with their dissenting opinions enumerated in fine ink, a beautiful hand, in neat columns and arranged in alphabetical order: title, name, letters and occupation. A few had a note appended: these were always the first to consider. The ink well on the desk was stocked with fine red vermilion and Mrs Frasier would dip her pen, flick, and then write a single letter.

  ‘A’ meaning ‘Arrest’.

  When she’d finished, she used a wooden rocking blotter dry the ink. She always pondered the little ‘A’s imprinted on the underside of the absorbent paper like so many squashed insects. It was satisfying to do something properly: everything in its place and a place for everything.

  The book was shut, the Chief Examiner came and took it away and then, somewhere, all the Peelers went to work, scurrying hither and thither, and thus the names turned into cowering men each pleading ignorance as a defence as they were taken to the Battersea Conveyor Terminal and whisked away.

  ‘A’ was for ‘Apple’, a bad apple, and soon the insidious cancer would be cut away for good.

  Once that was done, there was the rebuilding: suffrage, voting rights, an end to poverty, health improvements, education and so on and so forth. She knew that she would never finish the task she had set herself. Saving the world was not something one did, collected the medal and then had tea: it was a vocation.

  It would be never ending, but they had made a good start: out with the old.

  She leant back and the leather of her chair squeaked. She allowed herself a thin cigar, letting the swirling smoke rise to its limits and spread across the ceiling. Outside a ship sounded its horn with a bellowing cry like a bull walrus claiming its territory – commerce. This was the centre, the very axle around which the British Empire turned. Ships sailed and steamed from here all over the world, a world where the sun never set. From this very room messages were influencing Whitehall, soon London, England, the Empire… and the World, why not?

  But Rome was not built in a day.

  This New World would take decades to construct and she would not live to see it flower. Like those great men of old, who planted trees so that later generations could enjoy an elm lined avenue they themselves would never walk along, or men who designed great cathedrals that they knew they would not live to worship within; so she, a mere woman, would not live to see this bold future, except through the eyes of some bronze statue cast to keep her memory alive.

  However, she knew that she could hand the baton on, so to speak, into safe hands.

  She smiled, letting the tobacco calm her raging blood. It was delicious. All this effort and finally – and worth savouring – here was this moment of triumph to enjoy with a deep satisfaction.

  In the oil paintings around the room, crusty old men stared down at her from the past – disapproving, she thought – and, although they were great statesmen, generals and thinkers, they were all men. She had a picture of a woman on her wall in the future: Boudicca. She would replace these pictures here with those of Cleopatra, Marie Curie, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and…

  She laughed aloud.

  “Earnestine Deering–Dolittle,” she announced to the empty room.

  When she was older, much older, and the years had taken their inevitable toll, she would hand the reins of power to someone younger, but as equally deserving as herself.

  Herself.

  Miss Deering-Dolittle

  Even though Earnestine was alone in her room, Mrs Frasier was staring right at her with an expression of disbelief.

  Earnestine washed her face, cupped her hands in the bowl and washed it again and wanted to wash even more, but every time she looked up at the mirror she saw that woman. As her disquiet increased, despair clutched at her heart, so her features became more haggard, older, a
nd then, even more so, Mrs Frasier glared back at her through the mist of moistened eyes.

  I am a monster, Earnestine thought, the very person I mistrust – all my life I have been impatient to grow up, to be taken seriously, but all the time I have been striving to become Mrs Frasier.

  One must pull oneself together.

  Stiff upper lip.

  Calm in a crisis.

  When all about are losing their heads and blaming it on you… but it was her fault, she was Mrs Frasier. She was the one who arrested… would arrest Mister Boothroyd and Uncle Jeremiah.

  No, she must trust herself when all men doubt… she’d be a man about it.

  But she felt relegated to a lower form. All her hopes, her dreams of adventure – yes, that word – and expedition. They belonged to someone else. Her life was no longer her own, it had been usurped. Trumped.

  She went back to the drawing room to face her sisters again. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you… she would be brave, she decided, and not let it show.

  “Can I just ask,” said Charlotte. “Who’s Mister Frasier?”

  Earnestine felt not just her lip, but her entire face tremble.

  Mrs Arthur Merryweather

  “Ness, sit down,” said Georgina taking hold of her sister. “That was a stupid thing to say, Charlotte.”

  “Me?”

  Earnestine made a strange sound, grief stricken: “No… some man is…”

  “Marcus,” said Charlotte, brightly. “Some man called Marcus Frasier.”

  Georgina struggled to hold her sister upright: “Ness, I think…”

  But Earnestine knees gave way and she sat rather unceremoniously on the floor.

  “There’s an obvious question,” Georgina said.

  “Yes,” Charlotte said. “Who’s Marcus Frasier?”

  “Oh no,” Earnestine wailed in a very un–Earnestine manner.

  “Lottie, you’re not helping,” Georgina chided.

  “I feel sick,” said Earnestine.

  “You’re not in the bun club, are you?” Charlotte asked.

  Georgina jerked back from her elder sister: “Charlotte, you are seriously out of order. Of course, she’s not in the ‘bun club’ as you so crudely put it. Clearly she can’t be as she isn’t married.”