Vivian was so busy looking down at them dubiously that she ran into Petula in the corridor outside. “Oh, you’re up!” said Petula. “I was just coming to wake you. Elio will be pleased you’re wearing that suit. He liked the colours ever-so. Androids don’t have much colour-sense, you know.”
“It’s very bright,” Vivian said truthfully.
Petula took her downstairs and showed her to a room she called the matutinal. Jonathan was there eating pancakes in a blaze of light from a swirly window. He had clearly been thinking the same way as Vivian, because he was wearing the suit with diamonds.
“I’ll give Sam until five-to,” he said. “Then we’ll go.”
Vivian could tell that he was regretting his fair-mindedness of last night. “Yes, but is this the right suit?” she said.
Jonathan glanced at it. “I can’t remember, but it’s bound to be wrong if Sam comes too. Unless something’s happened to Sam,” he added hopefully.
Sam’s name was hardly out of his mouth when the door slid aside and Sam came in, hauling a birdcage carrier with a big white bundle floating under it. “I’m here,” he announced. “She gave me all the right clothes.”
“Speak of the devil!” Vivian said.
Jenny followed Sam into the room. “Meaning me?” she said, laughing. “What have you got there, Sam?”
“Dressing-up clothes,” Sam said guiltily.
“Oh. I wondered if you’d brought the picnic,” Jenny said. “Jonathan, Vivian, since it’s the last day of half term, Ramona and I have decided to take the day off and show Vivian the country. We’ve checked the weather, and it’s going to be a lovely hot day, so we thought we’d go down the river with a picnic.”
It was lucky Jenny had her back to Sam. He went purple with dismay. Vivian had to push a big smile on to her face in order not to look as bad as Sam did. Jonathan’s face went rather fixed, but he answered smoothly, “Good idea! When do you want to start?”
“Will about eleven do?” Jenny asked. “I’ve a load of things to see to here first.”
Sam held his breath in order not to sigh with relief.
“We’ll meet you in the hall at eleven, then,” Jonathan promised. As soon as Jenny had gone, he surged to his feet. “Pick up a pancake and bring it with you, V.S. We’ve got to get going.”
Vivian picked up a pancake, but she sat down to eat it. Jonathan’s mother is being really kind, she thought. I know it’s because she thinks I’m her niece, but if I don’t turn up for the picnic, she’ll have wasted a day off work and she’ll worry where I am. And then it’ll all come out and Jonathan and Sam will be in really bad trouble. Oh bother! This must be the reason why my ghost was coming back!
“Come on,” said Sam.
“Listen,” said Vivian. “We can get to the right precise moment on the station, can’t we?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said impatiently. “All the same—”
“So can’t we get back to the right precise moment here too?” said Vivian. “How do we get back?”
Jonathan and Sam stared at one another. “Yes, how do we get back? You never thought of that!” Sam said accusingly.
“I—er—” said Jonathan. “Well, we know we did get back, so it must be going to be all right.”
“Yes, when you and her go off on your own,” said Sam. “What about me? Find out. Ask Elio. He knows everything.”
“All right,” Jonathan agreed. “But I’ll have to be awfully cunning about asking him. If he gets a hint of what we’re doing, he’ll tell. It would be his duty. Androids are like that.”
Sam rubbed his behind nervously. “Be cunning,” he said. “Very cunning. But find out or I’ll tell.”
Jonathan made an impatient noise and rushed to the door. It opened as he got there and he nearly bumped into Elio coming in. “I was just coming to look for you!” he said.
Speak of the devil again! Vivian thought, taking three more pancakes and carefully pouring syrup over them. She was not going to let Jonathan rush her off to the Twentieth Century without breakfast first.
“You see, Elio, I’ve been reading this book,” Jonathan began cunningly.
Elio advanced in his soft, respectful way. He walked round Jonathan and then round Sam. He came over to the table. Vivian looked up from her first bite of pancake to find Elio standing beside her and smiling all over his pale face. “Ah, Miss Vivian,” he said. “Petula told me you were wearing that suit. I’m so glad you like it. Those are my favourite colours.”
“Very pretty,” Vivian said, with her mouth full. “Thanks for choosing it.”
“Thank you,” Elio said, with a little bow. He switched himself from Vivian to Jonathan. “You mentioned a book, Master Jonathan?”
Vivian had time to eat a hearty breakfast while Jonathan exercised his cunning. He gave a long, long description of the book. Elio stood with his head bent, listening attentively, and did not move for nearly ten minutes.
“It sounds a rather confused plot,” he said at length. “What is the title?”
“I’ve forgotten,” Jonathan said hurriedly. “But the point is—well, it’s not important what happens in the end. It was the time-locks they kept using that I wanted to ask you about. They sounded too simple to be true. The book says they were just a sheet of energised greenstone and no controls, no chronometers—nothing!”
“Ah,” said Elio. “I see it was a very old book. Those are the most primitive kind of time-locks there were. They were discontinued many centuries ago, because agents were always losing the controls.”
“The controls?” Jonathan said trying not to sound too eager.
“An egg-shaped device, which nobody understands,” said. Elio, “since they are all reputed to have been made by Faber John himself. The power source and chronometer, together with spatial directionals of great accuracy, are all contained within it. Thus, in order to open the lock back into Time City from history, the agent had to take the device with him. In the hurly-burly out there, it was fatally easy to drop, mislay, or be robbed of this control. It happened so frequently that there were eventually very few left. They were, you must understand, irreplaceable. If you wish to examine one of the remaining few, you will find it on display in Erstwhile Science.”
“We’ll go and see it now,” Jonathan said, with a meaning look at Vivian who had started to eat melon. “Er—how did the egg-things work?”
“Upon mental orders from the agent,” said Elio. “As I said, they were somewhat mysterious, but I believe that they obeyed commands of the voice, or thoughts properly directed. Does that explain your difficulty?”
“I hope so,” said Jonathan. “I mean, yes—thanks, Elio.”
“Then I must go,” said Elio. He bowed to them and went to the door. “Please try to remember the title of that book,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “I do not like to hear of something I do not know.”
“I’ll think hard,” Jonathan promised. As soon as the door closed behind Elio, he rounded on Vivian. “Come on, V.S! Stop guzzling and get your Twenty Century clothes.”
Pushing me about! Vivian thought. “When I’ve eaten my fruit,” she said. “I’ve never had this huge juicy kind before. Anyway, now you know, all you’ve got to do is tell that egg-thing to get us back before eleven. It doesn’t matter when we go.”
“Yes, but I’m going to need a butter-pie if I have to wait much longer,” Sam said plaintively.
6
COUSIN MARTY
Jonathan was well prepared this time. He had found a square box on a strap, which looked almost like a gas mask case, to carry the egg-shaped control in. From this box he took a slender tube of oil and oiled the big old-fashioned hinges of the chained door to stop it creaking. This might be only an adventure to him, Vivian thought, as they all tiptoed down the stone passageway carrying their clothes, but he was being quite serious about it.
Jonathan had a powerful little flashlight in his box too. At the blocked archway, he shone it over the stones until he found the whi
te mark his sandal had made the night before. Then he kicked the same place. The false door pivoted smoothly round and they squeezed through the gaps. With the stronger light, it was much easier to go down the stairs. When they reached the stone room at the bottom, Jonathan propped the torch on the stairs to give them light while they changed into Twenty Century clothes.
Sam’s excited breathing filled the room as he unwrapped his bundle. Vivian was silent with dismay as she unfolded hers. Petula or someone had put her clothes through the cleaner that washed the Time City pyjamas and it had not suited them at all. Her coat was two sizes too small and her school hat was ruined. She decided to leave them behind and wear just her skirt with the top of the pyjama suit as a blouse. Her skirt seemed the right size, but it felt strange and tight when she put it on, and it felt worse when she had rolled up the legs of her pyjamas under it and fastened them with the garters from her socks. Then the top of her pyjamas shone out luridly in the torch-light. Vivian realised that nobody in 1939 was likely to wear purple and yellow stripes that moved about all the time. She was forced to ram her arms into her navy blue knitted cardigan, which had shrunk almost as badly as her coat, and then use all her strength to get it buttoned up. She felt terrible.
Sam was in trouble too. The Time Patrol lady had given him grey shorts with red braces and he got tangled in the braces. For his feet, he had heavy lace-up boots with steel segs in the soles, and these gave him even more trouble. So, while Jonathan, dressed in grey flannel and glasses, jittered impatiently about with the egg in his hand, Vivian did her best to sort Sam out. She got the braces straight. She knelt down and laced the boots, and tied each one in a double bow, knowing what Sam was like. But nothing would persuade Sam’s hair to stay hidden under his striped school cap. Vivian had to find a rubber band from her shrunken coat pocket and fasten his hair in a knob on top of his head, like Sempitern Walker’s.
“I feel hideous!” he complained.
“You look it,” said Jonathan. “Are you ready now?” He held the grey egg up. “The station at the moment I found V.S.,” he said.
Hot afternoon daylight streamed from the slab of slate and was interrupted by a big billow of yellow smokes, which blew into their faces smelling like fish. Sam coughed. “It’s different!” he said hoarsely, as the smoke cleared.
Maybe, Vivian thought, they had come a moment or so later. The train was chuffing slowly out of the station, sending fogs of the yellow smoke rolling along the platform. It was hard to tell just what the difference was, but it did seem that the figures of herself and Jonathan were a long way further up the platform towards the exit, as if Vivian had just climbed out of quite a different carriage. The crowd of evacuees was milling about beyond them and it seemed a much thinner crowd than Vivian remembered. Sam’s father, when she glimpsed him murkily through the smoke, was not having nearly so much sorting out to do.
“Get going while the smoke’s there to hide us!” Jonathan said, hurriedly stuffing the egg into his box.
Sam walked forward and Vivian followed. Smoke surrounded them. The nails in Sam’s boots chinked on the platform. Vivian looked round in time to see Jonathan coming out of nowhere behind them. Oh dear! she thought. Now he’s the only one with a gas mask. I hope we don’t meet an Air Raid Warden!
“Where do we go now?” Jonathan whispered.
Vivian had not given as much thought to details as Jonathan. She had to think quickly. If they went up to the exit, they would run into Sam’s father and Jonathan’s. She turned the other way. “There must be a way out this way,” she said.
They passed some milk churns. The smoke cleared as the train left and they came out into hot yellow sunlight at the very end of the platform, where it sloped down to the grass beside the railway lines. There was a convenient little white gate in the wire fence labelled GWR PRIVATE. They went through it, private or not, and came into a road where sparse groups of children with gas masks and luggage were already walking away with the people who were giving them homes.
“You’ll want a nice cup of tea,” they heard one say. “And you can have the room my Will had before he was called up.”
“I brung me teddy,” one of the children announced. “Ain’t he loverly?”
Jonathan looked back to the station building. “Shall we go and look for your Cousin Marty?” he said. “She must be quite worried by now. Or would it be safer to wait here till she comes by?”
“I don’t know what she looks like,” Vivian confessed. “I’m not even sure that she’s a she. All I know is the address on the other side of my label: M. Bradley, 52 Gladstone Road. We’ll have to go to the house and wait for her to get back. Or him.”
“You might have said so before!” Jonathan said, exasperated. “I could have brought a street map.”
“It’s the country. It won’t be big,” Vivian said soothingly.
They set off after the crowd of evacuees and hosts, down the sort of street there always is near a station.
“Horrible houses,” Sam said, chinking sturdily along.
“Hideous,” Jonathan agreed.
“I’m not responsible,” Vivian said huffily. But she felt she was rather. The red brick rows made a dismal contrast to the buildings of Time City. And by the end of that street it became clear to her that, though this town was small compared with London or Time City, it was still big enough to get lost in. They turned into another street and another. The crowd in front of them dwindled away down other streets, and none of the roads were called Gladstone Road. In the end, Jonathan stopped the last group of evacuees before they could dwindle away too, and politely asked the grown–ups with them where Gladstone Road was.
He was given rather confusing directions, and they set off again. Before long, they found themselves in the centre of what was obviously a thoroughly sleepy town. There was nothing much in sight except some ancient ruins over the road and a garage with one rusty petrol pump and TYPHOO TEA painted on the house that belonged to it. There was a man in overalls pottering about the pump. Vivian timidly crossed the road and asked him the way.
His directions were much clearer, but it was a long distance. They walked and walked, right to the other end of the town. It was still very hot. Vivian’s mixture of clothes felt more and more uncomfortable. Sam’s bootlaces came undone in spite of the double bows and he stumbled over them. Jonathan had sweat dripping out from under his glasses. He became more and more snappish and kept staring round as if he expected someone to ambush him from behind a street light or a pillar box.
“You might have explained properly that you had no idea where you were going!” he said angrily, while Vivian was kneeling in the road tying Sam’s boots.
“And we could have brought something to drink. I’m boiling!” Sam complained.
“So am I. At least you’ve got bare knees,” Jonathan said.
“But these boots are like lead foot-muffs,” said Sam. “Can’t I take them off?”
“No. That’s not respectable for these days,” Vivian said. “There. That’s double-double bows, and if they come undone again I’ll—I’ll eat my socks!”
“Oh let’s get on with this wild-goose chase!” Jonathan said. “I don’t believe there’s a Gladstone Road or a Cousin Marty anywhere in the century!”
Vivian took a moment to haul up her socks. Without her garters, they fell down every other step. She was not sure she believed in Cousin Marty any longer either. Ever since those slight but definite differences at the station, she had felt very uneasy. History had changed here. It could mean that nothing she knew was true any more.
She was quite surprised when they came to Gladstone Road round the next corner. It could have been the road outside the station. There were the same red houses, yellow privet hedges and silver railings, but since it was on the other side of the town, they could see green country rearing up beyond the roofs. There was a hump of hill with trees on it and, almost behind that, another taller hill, covered in grass with some kind of tower at the top.
Number fifty-two was half-way along. They hovered uncertainly outside its spiked silver front gate. “Let me knock,” Vivian whispered. “If she’s back, I’ll ask for a drink of water and then get talking.” But she still hovered. This town was so much bigger than she had expected that it did not seem likely any longer that Cousin Marty would know anything about the other evacuees. Jonathan was right to call it a wild–goose chase… And I still have to go away again and come back for some reason, she thought. It all seemed more impossible the longer she stood there.
“Bother you!” said Sam. He boldly opened the gate and climbed the path to the front door, where he seized the door-knocker and battered away with it.
Someone snatched the door open. A thin withered lady stood there with her arms folded, looking grimly at Sam. She had warts on her face. Her hair was done up in a brown turban and the rest of her in a brown dress. “What do you want?” she said. “I thought it was the other one come back or I wouldn’t have opened the door.”
“Water!” groaned Sam, like someone dying in the desert.
Jonathan pushed him aside. “Mrs. Bradley?” he asked smoothly.
“Miss Bradley,” the lady contradicted him. “Miss Martha Bradley is my name, my boy, and I don’t—”
“Quite so,” said Jonathan. “And you were supposed to be having Vivian Smith to stay with you—”
“Don’t talk to me about that!” Miss Bradley said angrily.
“I only wanted to enquire—” Jonathan began, still trying to be smooth.
But Miss Bradley interrupted him with a gush of angry talk. “I know there’s a war on,” she said, “and I know we all have to do our bit. So when my Cousin Joan writes to me from London after never a word for all these years, I don’t tell her the things I had a mind to tell her, though I know she only remembers me when she wants something. I said I’d have the child. Mind you, in the ordinary way nothing would possess me to have a shoddy little Cockney in my house—”
A Tale of Time City Page 9
