My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time

by Liz Jensen

  It was on this subject, as I walked in the park, that I was applying my concentration when a smatter of rain set up, the kind of shower that is the hallmark of England, just as it is of my own land. Having borrowed a most intriguingly designed telescopic umbrella from Fru Helle Jakobsen in anticipation of such an event, I was struggling with the mechanism by which one opened it when I saw them before me by the pond: a man & a boy feeding the ducks & swans with chunks of bread from a bag. Unusual that it should have been the child I noticed first, rather than its father, for I could not abide children, or rather did not know any, & classified them as belonging to a separate species which it was best to avoid, but it was surely the oddity of the lad’s brightly coloured outfit that first drew my attention: a screaming red & blue suit with a flowing cape, & a mask that covered his whole head, & featured staring insect-like eyes. The child seemed about nine years of age, but I later learned it was younger, for they make them two sizes larger in the future: girls are bleeding by ten in that world, yet they are still just babes, despite all the grown-up knowledge they have, & all the speedy texting they do. As I walked past, the child continued flinging bread-crusts while the man – his father – looked on. He had the air of a gentleman, with his dark hair & a handsome face that rested easy on the eye, but as I pondered the value & significance of his somewhat neutral trousers & jacket it slowly struck me that perhaps – perhaps – it was odd that he be here at all. What man looks after his own child in the middle of the day, when surely most breadwinners are out at work? Might he be a Man of Leisure? The idea made me feel most perky, for it is a truth universally acknowledged that any man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a mistress.

  What instinct told me to experiment with him, as I observed him lovingly supervising his little son? His pirate-dark features, so different from the fuzzy paleness of my native folk? My suspicion that he was an extremely rich man, & that I might have some fun along the way?

  Yes, beloved one. Put your hand to my brow at this point, & feel the click of my mental abacus. But the path of aspiration never runs smooth. And nor did it with me & my new client. For first of all, in order that our financial relationship might be initiated, my sudden enthusiasm must be reciprocated, & for that to happen (& how could it not, once he had seen me?) I realized that I must attract his attention, pronto, or lose him for ever. But by what means to go about it? He & his oddly clad child seemed in another world, all of their own, that was of just the right dimension to contain but the two of them, & I saw no chink by which I might enter & be part of it. I circled the large pond thrice, in the expectation that my new-found object of desire – whose close-cropped dark hair, & determined & manly jaw, I used the circumnavigation to scrutinize, linger over & appreciate – would glance at me, for I was clad in my green short-skirted finery & high heels, but glance he did not, being busy with the duck-feeding of fatherhood, & all my sorry flip-flap seemed for naught, & I was ready to explode with the frustration of it, until I hatched the ruse of accidentally-on-purpose chucking my opened umbrella into the drink with a small & feminine cry of OOH!

  At which sound the child set about laughing & pointing, not at my upside-down umbrella floating there amid the pecking swans like a giant tea-saucer, but at me. (Later I learned I had seemingly hurled my umbrella into the water ‘like a cavewoman with a parachute’, but I knew none of this as I watched the child speak excitedly to its father, who then looked across at me in a puzzled fashion, & smiled questioningly)

  ‘Ooh,’ I said again, & indicated the pond, where my umbrella floated sadly. ‘Oh pokkers også!’ & then, for lack of any other means of expressing myself, I explained to him in my own tongue that I had accidentally dropped my dear departed grandmother’s favourite umbrella, a family heirloom & object of great sentimental value, & might he help me to retrieve it?

  The man’s brown eyes sparkled with amusement – though what he found so hilarious about my plight I could not fathom – & the more animatedly I spoke, the more he grinned at me (& he must be rich indeed to afford such beautiful teeth!) as though it were all a huge & preposterous joke that I had suffered such a mishap & might need to call on his kindness for assistance. And all the while his child jumped up & down, repeating something over & over again the way children do, making the man laugh even more. Then he shook his head, & addressed me kindly in English & gestured towards the water, where my ‘family heirloom’ had now tipped to one side, its hemispheric hull slowly pooling with pond-water & chickweed. O calamity!

  ‘Quick,’ I urged in Danish, ‘before it sinks!’

  And so not understanding my words, but sensing the desperation they conveyed, my Man of Leisure proved himself most resourceful by locating a small branch, which he then stripped to make a stick with which to hook the telescopic umbrella from the watery grave that would otherwise be its destiny. Meanwhile, as luck would have it, four sizeable swans haddecided Fru Jakobsen’s umbrella was their rightful property, & amid much hissing, they made to intercept & colonize theever-sinking apparatus. Seeing this, my new-found saviour stepped boldly & agilely on to a rock that stood in the water,in order to reach closer, but the aggressive birds merely hissed more, causing the child to cry out in terror. Hesitantly, Ipatted the young thing on its masked head: I have seen others so doing with children, which apparently much resemble dogsin this way. The gesture seemed to calm the child, & together we watched its father as, with a triumphant flourish, he caught the handle of the umbrella with his stick, & raised it high in the air, to the great anger of the swans, which flapped their wings & stretched their snaky hissing necks just as he lost hisfooting on the stone, causing the umbrella to tip sideways & release a torrent of water on to the birds, spattering them with muddy chickweed. Knowing the swan to be a proud creature, easily humiliated, I gestured to the boy to throw more breadto distract them from their shame, which he duly did while I hurried to join Moneybags on his stone, where I assumed hewould look deep into my eyes, recognize his future mistress when he saw her, & kiss me passionately. But I had misjudgedthis element of the proceedings, for my alighting on the stone caused him to sway, at which the umbrella tipped further, &to stop us both falling I clung to him. The result of this, which you may well have predicted, you clever one, though I didnot, was to send us both crashing headlong into the freezing deep, whence we emerged a moment later gulping filthy brine.

  O calamity!

  Did he finally fall for me headlong, reader, as we faced death by drowning? You would have expected so, but the fact was that he was not as speedy as I had hoped in that department & indeed at the time seemed merely disconcerted & more eager to get us both out of the water (what a mercy one of us could swim!) & reassure his son that all was well, & that they would soon be home & dry, than to pronounce undying financial devotion to his new-found object of desire. Or so at least did I glean from the conversation between the two of them, which appeared not to include me. He eventually glanced at me nonetheless and I shrugged my shivering helplessness. ‘Sorry: I no speak English,’ I said dejectedly, for by now I was beginning to feel foolish about my misjudge ment of his intentions. ‘I from Croatia.’ At which he hesitated for a moment, then pointed to himself and said, ‘Fergus McCrombie,’ and then at the boy & said, ‘Josie McCrombie’ (as if the lad should figure in my equation!), and I pointed to my prettily heaving cleavage & said, ‘Frøken Charlotte Dagmar Marie of Østerbro,’ & thus were the introductions made, after which both father & son nodded happily, which cheered me a little, & then my spirits rose once more, for next Herr McCrombie gestured me to follow him to a place where (I surmised) we could dry off, pass the child over to a servant, & get down to business. And I would not content myself with a single encounter; O no. Here was a goose who would lay me a golden egg, I was sure of it. And another & another! No one-off client he, but a single provider!

  Not looking my dazzling best, I felt a little wary of a chance encounter with his wife, lest my bedraggled state should lead the woman grandiosely to
consider herself more worthy of his financial favours than I, but when we arrived at his house (disappointingly smaller than Fru Krak’s but of the same era), & he had shown me to his bedroom where I might change into the clothes that he offered (which were clearly his – how quaint! Did he like mannish women, I wondered?), I spotted no signs of another woman’s presence: no lace-frilled undergarments in the chest of drawers (and yes, reader, you can be most sure I made a thorough inspection, just as you would have done in my circumstances), nor hand-picked roses in vases, nor smell of apple and cinnamon a-bubble wafting from the hearth, nor intimate feminine objects in the bathroom, & I was right pleased about that, but did not then have the language to ask him where the temporary usurper of my rightful economic status might be & when we might expect her to return.

  Instead, everywhere, I saw signs of Herr McCrombie’s life, quite chaotically displayed: paintings and coloured daguerreotypes of a most accurate nature adorned the walls, & all about stood glass cases containing artefacts of great fascination: animal skulls & bones, & small sculptures & pots fashioned from clay & bronze & many plaster of Paris moulds of objects whose shapes I could not determine: it seemed my Man of Leisure enjoyed collecting things, or was perhaps an amateur explorer. Seeing the amazement & curiosity on my face, he waved at it all & said something & laughed, & I shook my head for the thousandth time & repeated that I was sorry, I no speak English, I from Croatia, & he repeated a many-syllabled word several times, that began with A, but I knew it not, and did not have a dictionary with me.

  And then instead of discussing the practicalities of getting shot of his child (which, having shed its costume & mask, appeared to have changed sex & become a pretty girl, of the short-haired & tomboyish variety), & perhaps settling my fee in advance, he gestured to ask whether I was hungry. Puzzled, for I had not yet learned the sexual etiquette of that era, I nodded yes, & soon – to my amazement – he was motioning at me to peel & chop, whilst he cleared the table & took out a recipe book with many an illustration of the succulent fare one might manufacture from the ingredients we had to hand, viz one chicken. My lesson with Dogger quite forgotten, we then set about cooking in a most hyggeligt-domestic manner while Josie prattled in their language & made elaborate & most impressive drawings of a fantastical semi-human figure that much resembled her earlier costumed self, called ‘Spiderman’. As preludes to erotic encounters go, the evening was veering a long way from the normal, but the meal was nevertheless accompanied by much laughter, for Josie was a girl who liked to pull faces, & as it happens I am also rather good at pulling faces, not to mention walking on my hands, & this I did to amuse the child, whose English was easier to follow than her father’s, for she cried, ‘Again!’, a word I knew, & ‘Look at me!’, a phrase I could also decipher, & then she demonstrated her skill at somersaulting on the bed & I joined in, despite a small worry that it might make me look unfeminine & thus diminish my air of womanly mystery, a bad start for an ambitious mistress. Later, while Herr McCrombie was bathing Josie, I explored the house more, with a view to doing a little light pilfering, but I got no further than the child’s bedroom, for there I was waylaid by the sight of many shelves of books, one of which caused me to cry out in a bright shock of delight, for the name on its spine was none other than Hans Christian Andersen, so when the bath was done, seeing that our own bed-time must wait until after the child’s, I waved the book & pointed, urging Herr McCrombie to read Josie The Ugly Duckling & the three of us settled together on the sofa, Herr McCrombie next to me, & Josie straddled easily on my lap, as though this were the most natural place in the world for her, & if she were a cat, she would purr, & soon I was stroking her dark head & feeling (most odd, for I hated children!) that if I were a cat, I would purr too. And as Herr McCrombie read about the duckling who looked at himself in the water & saw himself to be ugly, & grew apart from his siblings who scorned him, but then found himself to belong to another breed, far more beautiful, & hatched from a swan’s egg, I strained to catch words I might identify, & then & there made a silent vow to learn this foreign patter faster than you can say røgrød med fløde, for speaking it would surely be the key to my new patron’s bank account.

  Though later that evening, when Josie was sleeping, I found a much swifter method, which began with me dropping a plate to the floor and smashing it, & both of us stooping to pick up the pieces, & banging our heads together, & laughing, & then hugging, & thence making our way to the bedroom, the better to explore & enjoy one another’s anatomy. And most happy & joyful it was, for we were like two greedy children at a bottomless jar of sweets, & in the heat of the moment I quite forgot that it was a means to an end, & I will confess that I enjoyed the act, as performed by our two most well-fitting bodies, in a most unprofessional manner. And when we had done & were quite ravished & exhausted, he kissed me & murmured sweet things in his language, & I lay there in a great state of contentment until I suddenly returned to my fiscal senses & explained in my own tongue what my terms, fees & conditions were, & that I would keep a tally in a notebook so he could pay the final bill when we were finished, but I would be happy to take on the role of his exclusive mistress for as long as I stayed in London.

  Tick, tock. The days passed, & I spent much time in Herr McCrombie’s company. I would not normally take the liberty of calling a client by his first name, for I have always considered it an intimacy too far, but after our first night together my new provider became most insistent upon the matter, & so I finally succumbed to the exigencies of his era & culture, & began to address him as ‘Fergus’.

  ‘So what’s Croatia like?’ he asked me one morn, as I fingered a beautiful Roman horse. ‘You’ve hardly told me anything. I know the Balkans a little bit. What city do you come from? Were you there during the war? Did you follow the trial of Miloševic?’

  And so, not knowing anything of Croatia (for I had never heard of it), let alone its wars, while I dressed to return to Professor Krak’s apartment, where I was still occasionally lodging for fear of arousing suspicions, I summoned the courage to tell him in my halting but increasingly serviceable English that I was not from that country at all, but from Denmark, & that there were reasons for my small deception which I could not go into now, but I would recount my full story as soon as my teacher, Herr Dogger, had supplied me with the necessary words.

  At which he looked at me quizzically. ‘You are quite a mystery, Lottie,’ he said, Lottie being his pet name for me. ‘But I will solve you. Remember, I’m an archaeologist: I’m good at removing layers.’ Upon which he grabbed me & set about undressing me again, & I never left the house after all.

  ‘Where your wife?’ I asked him when we woke the next morning, for I had by now assumed she was away visiting sick relatives or somesuch, which is one of the things wives seem to do, but would be coming back soon to spoil our fun, & the prospect of this interruption had been working on my psyche in a most discomfiting manner. But he seemed most puzzled, & I fancied I even detected shock on his face.

  ‘Lottie, if I had a wife, do you really think you’d be here?’ he asked. A question I was at a loss to answer, for the fact was, I did indeed think I might be here if he had a wife, for he was a man like any other, & indeed more so, in his enthusiasm for my body. (And here I will confess, dear one, I was much enamoured of his too, & had been from the very first moment I was in his arms.) In my sudden embarrassment (I, Charlotte Dagmar Marie of Østerbro, normally immune to such feelings!) I merely laughed, but in the silence that followed I realized that now, if any, was the time to set out the terms and conditions of my mistresshood, & show him the little book in which I had been noting down our transactions. But to my own bafflement, I said nothing.

  ‘Actually I don’t have a wife,’ he said. ‘So lucky you.’

  ‘But Josie’s mother?’ I asked, for suddenly I was curious. ‘Where is she?’ But at this he looked grave.

  ‘Dead,’ he said, & I quickly struggled to reassemble my face into a shape that represented sorrow
, though secretly I was most pleased, for Rigmor had told me about such things as divorce settlements & alimony, & I knew them to be a drain on a man’s resources. Fergus smiled at my perplexed look. ‘I was digging in Peru, & I found Josie one morning sleeping in a hole, wrapped in a blanket. She was cold & hungry & all alone. I made enquiries. It seemed the father abandoned her after the mother died. So I adopted her & brought her home. Her name’s Josefina, but I shortened it and lengthened the rest, so she’s now Josie Prudence Rosenberg McCrombie. The Prudence is after my grandmother, who was anything but prudent. She died in a hot-air balloon accident when she was eighty. And Rosenberg after Professor Rosenberg, who taught me archaeology. Now she’s my daughter.’