Before the Storm

by Sean McMullen

  ‘Still, we know they’re in town.’

  ‘But wot else d’we know?’

  ‘They are acting suspiciously. They speak German too well, and they vanish after coffee.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I bet your German teacher vanishes into the dunny after he has a coffee, but that doesn’t mean we can nail him for tryin’ to blow up parlyment. We lost ’em! Cove’s a real worry if Barry the Bag loses ’im.’

  Daniel was ready to fall asleep as he and Barry boarded a train going south at Balaclava Station, yet Daniel knew that he still had to survive a dinner with his family, Fox, and BC.

  ‘Barry, do you, like, do that sort of thing all the time?’ he asked as the train pulled away from the platform.

  ‘Do wot?’

  ‘Dodge the police, lurk about in cafés with artists and secret police spies, all of that.’

  ‘Nah, I just breezes in, nicks wot’s easy, then comes back in a month or two, when folks ’ave forgotten me.’

  ‘It was terrifying at the time, but now it seems so exciting.’

  ‘Excitin’? Wouldn’t say that. It’s business, ya know? Dangerous business, but once ya got the rules, still business.’

  ‘I felt like a master criminal.’

  ‘Trust me, Dan the Man, we’re just small-time thugs. Still, nobody bothers with the small fella, that’s why I get by.’

  ‘What did you think of Muriel?’

  ‘The daft baggage in the café who was lookin’ at ya?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not too popular with ’er mum. She wouldn’t stock certain merchandise of mine in ’er shop.’

  ‘Do you think Muriel’s pretty?’

  ‘Pretty?’ responded Barry, as if he had once heard the word long ago, but it had not been explained to him.

  ‘Yes, pretty. I think she is,’ Daniel said dreamily.

  ‘Yeah, so wot?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  It was clear to Daniel that in spite of all Barry’s postcards, rubber devices, and luridly instructive books, the idea of romance had somehow bypassed him completely. Why does she have to be older than me? wondered Daniel, who thought of everyone who was both older than himself and female as a cross between a sergeant major and Emily.

  They got off at North Brighton, where Barry’s father shouted at him for not cleaning up the station for the following day’s inspection. BC was gone from the packages room when Barry and Daniel checked there.

  ‘Well, Dan, I got a cartload of work to get the place inspectional,’ said Barry, taking a broom. ‘Ya best be off to dinner.’

  Daniel reached out for the broom. ‘I’ll sweep the platforms, Barry, you do the cleaning things that I don’t know about.’

  ‘Ya daft?’ exclaimed Barry, who was clearly incredulous. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll just be another bum on a seat at dinner, no harm done if I walk in late.’

  ‘Ya still ’aven’t said why.’

  ‘You need help, and we’re mates.’

  Barry removed his grubby cap and scratched his greasy hair.

  ‘Er, shit, ta. I mean, I got lots o’ mates, but none wot would do nothin’ for me. Not unless there was somethin’ in it for them, anyways.’

  ‘So, I’ll sweep the platforms?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, but just sweep the dust onter the tracks as ya go, no big piles, inspectors don’t like that. Oh, and toss the papers an’ food scraps in a bin. Inspectors go on about encouragin’ rats if ya sweep that stuff onter the tracks. I’ll get the packages back in order in here, and give the place a dust. Lor, but I ’ope yer sister can scav a room for that BC. He’s a dark one an’ I want ’im outta here. Wouldn’t put it past ’im to shoot the bloody station inspector, judgin’ from what he an’ Foxy did to the push an’ those three coppers.’

  Daniel began to sweep. Part of what he had said to Barry was true. He did want to help his friend, but that was not the only reason that he was putting off his return home. For the past two hours or so he had been free and independent, taking chances and dodging danger. He wanted to wallow in the memory of being free of Emily and his mother, and of being heroic. Daniel had not only been useful, he had been indispensable. Alone, Barry would have been useless in Acland Street, even though he knew how to survive. Daniel could speak German and French, however, and at least identify a few other languages.

  Alone with his thoughts, Daniel began to daydream about what was still to come. They were against hard, deadly men, men who would kill without hesitation, men who intended to murder thousands of innocent people. Daniel could not fight, and could not lead, but he wanted to be heroic. He was not even being given a chance to fight. Even Emily had been given a gun, but he had not.

  Still, you don’t have to be a leader or know how to fight to save the day, Daniel suddenly concluded. He imagined himself on the roof of the Exhibition Buildings, keeping watch as BC pulled a smoking fuse out of a huge, black bomb. Dead bodies lay everywhere. Suddenly the last German appeared with a gun. Daniel threw himself between BC and the German just as he fired, giving his life to save BC. Then Fox ran up and shot the German. As Daniel lay dying and BC thanked him for saving his life and saving the future, Emily arrived. She knelt beside him, started weeping hysterically and saying what a hero he was. Last words, must get the last words right, thought Daniel. How to get at Emily with my dying words? I did it for the Empire? No, too many dying heroes said that. I did it to save BC? No, boys did not say that about each other, even if it was true. Go away, let me die in peace? Yes! Perfect! With luck Emily would not even think of a reply before he was dead.

  ‘Dan, mate, platform’s lookin’ good,’ said Barry, coming up behind him.

  ‘Go away, let me die in peace.’

  ‘Yeah, feelin’ a bit queasy meself. Reckon the milk was off in Luker the Lurker’s coffee.’

  ‘No, no! Sorry, I didn’t mean … I mean … I meant, er, I was just rehearsing for a school play.’

  ‘Yeah? Which one?’

  ‘Macbeth,’ replied Daniel, pulling the title out of his memory without really thinking about it.

  ‘Yeah? Weren’t he the Roman cove wot loved three witches, but killed ’imself ’cause his father wouldn’t let ’im marry –’

  ‘Barry, take my advice and stick to petty theft.’

  Daniel set off for home, this time with his thoughts on Muriel. He was, of course, younger than her, but she was very pretty. A pretty girl had stared at him. It was a pity that she was staring at him in order to be sure that he was Emily’s brother doing something scandalous, like drinking coffee in a bohemian café. Was she worth dying for? Daniel imagined himself lying on the ground after being shot while saving BC and parliament. Muriel was cradling his head on her lap. Suddenly Daniel decided that it might be worth spending an hour or so dying. She might even kiss him. Perhaps he might even linger for a whole day. Daniel walked straight into a lamppost.

  5

  GENTLEMAN

  Emily sat on her bed, staring unhappily at her doll collection. By now the dolls seemed vaguely ridiculous reminders of someone she had been a very long time ago, even though that time was only a day or two in the past. It was one thing to idolise an incredible hero in an image, but helping a real one was all too intense. Emily’s fantasies of meeting BC involved introducing the brave and deadly warrior to her mother, having afternoon tea, and perhaps going to a ball together in a carriage. Now her hero was certainly going to meet her mother, but in a way that she had never dreamt. They had decided that his name would be Liore Besay, which was enough like Liore-BC so that nobody would ask questions if anyone used his real name.

  ‘Greatness has been thrust upon me, and it is annoyingly heavy,’ Emily announced to her dolls, but they remained silent.

  Emily glanced at the coach clock on her dressing table. Her mother would be home in an hour, and soon after that Fox would arrive with BC. Emily wondered how she would survive the wait. Books! Now another memory called for her attention. Her brother had borrowed some issues
of Pearson’s Magazine from their father some months earlier, and Emily had in turn borrowed them from Daniel. They contained a serialised novel, The War of the Worlds by HG Wells. It was a tale of terrible octopus-shaped things from Mars invading England, and Emily had had nightmares about it for weeks afterwards. Although Daniel told her that Wells had also written a short novel about time travel, Emily had no interest in reading anything else by the author … yet now the whole of her universe depended upon the feasibility of time travel. She padded quietly into Daniel’s room and bent over before his bookcase. A check of Daniel’s science books yielded nothing about time travel, or about Martians.

  ‘Trapped, trapped, trapped!’ she muttered as she paced the floor of her bedroom. ‘I can order Daniel to go looking for German spies, but I can’t even get a proper book. If I were a boy I could go straight down to the library to find whatever I wanted, but the librarian would tell Mother. Not fair, it’s just not fair!’

  Emily fought down the wave of frustration, resolving to take it out on Daniel for being a boy. Meantime it was clear that novels were the only source of information on time travel, so HG Wells was going to be her only hope.

  Emily crept downstairs to her father’s study, unlocked it with the spare key that Mr Lang thought he had lost, and scanned the authors and titles in his bookcases. The bookcase to the left of his desk contained the fiction, and she quickly located the books by authors whose names began with W. The Time Machine: An Invention turned out to be quite a slim volume compared to the other novels, but it was by HG Wells, so it had to be the right one. Back in her own room, Emily was relieved to find that Wells had included a short but plausible passage on the theory of time travel at the start of the story. This was the part that Daniel had said he found boring, but for Emily it was like digging up a trunk crammed with gold coins and jewels. Someone important enough to write books had said that time travel was possible, so it had to be true. She made notes as she read. By the time she had finished, her mother had arrived home. By now Emily was convinced that time travel was indeed possible, and that BC and Fox were definitely from the future. It was the work of moments to return the book to her father’s study, then she went off to attend her domestic duties.

  It was Mrs Lang’s theory that Emily should spend some time in the kitchen every day, in order to become familiar with domestic matters and so be able to order servants about. Thus it was that Emily was standing by the stove, stirring the soup, when Fox and BC arrived. She heard the cast iron clapper of the front door rapping, then the sound of voices. They are big boys, they can take care of themselves, Emily reminded herself as she resisted the temptation to rush out and help them.

  Suddenly Martha bustled into the kitchen carrying a tray and looking seriously worried.

  ‘Oh Miss, oh Miss, nobody told me ’e was comin’, and ’ere’s me lettin’ the ’ouse get in such a state!’ babbled the maid to Emily.

  ‘Who do you mean?’ asked Emily, thinking at once that one of her father’s important friends from the Melbourne Club had arrived unexpectedly.

  ‘Young Lieutenant Liore, the officer from Master Fox’s ship. I just comes in from the laundry ter lay the table, an’ there ’e was, cheeks white like bone china, an’ that scar from fightin’ the mutineers, so brave, so ’andsome, like, an’, oh Miss, what could ’e be thinkin’ of me, lettin’ the ’ouse look like this?’

  Emily had forgotten that BC was actually very handsome and charismatic. Apparently he was also able to display great personal charm and perfect manners if necessary. Now that she thought about it, BC had everything that allured women without any of the qualities that repelled them. Emily arranged drinks on a tray while Martha frantically brushed and re-pinned her hair. Must remember to call him Liore, not BC, thought Emily as she entered the parlour. BC was dressed in Fox’s coat, but wearing it with a sense of style that Fox never could have managed.

  ‘Ah, Emily, splendid,’ said Mrs Lang. ‘Lieutenant Besay, may I introduce my daughter Emily? Emily, this is Lieutenant Liore Besay, from Fox’s ship.’

  ‘Enchanted, Miss,’ declared BC, who then bowed, took Emily’s hand, and kissed it.

  Emily shivered at the touch of his lips on her hand, but what was really impressing her now was that BC was acting like a true aristocrat, absolutely confident in himself, strangely graceful in every movement, good at putting people at ease, yet just slightly aloof and distant. Mrs Lang was not quite so flustered as Martha, but she was nervously wringing her hands.

  ‘There was a terrible mutiny on the ship,’ she explained to Emily in an unusually high voice. ‘The authorities do not want word of it to be voiced around, in case other sailors get ideas.’

  Fox had managed to clean, scrub and groom BC in the railway station’s washroom, and between them they had put together a single, relatively undamaged uniform. Apart from the scar beside his right eye, BC’s skin was now white and flawless, and his eyes so deeply green that they seemed almost black. He walked with an odd, wary elegance, and Emily fancied that he seemed like some prince visiting a servant’s cottage. There was also something vaguely disturbing about him, however. Somehow he reminded Emily of a cat that had just finished its dinner, then found itself alone with the family parrot. For now he was harmless, but under different circumstances …

  It was now that Mr Lang came in. He was introduced to BC, and was not sufficiently quick to deduce that any officer with a battle scar could quite probably be a strong, accomplished warrior. Concluding that the lean, pale, and almost beautiful youth needed to be shown that hale, clean living British people were strong, Mr Lang grasped BC’s hand and squeezed hard as he shook. BC squeezed back. There was a crackling sound as various bones in Mr Lang’s hand were ground against each other. He drew breath in a loud gasp, but managed not to cry out with the pain.

  ‘Your pardon Sir,’ said BC, putting a slight tinge of concern into his voice. ‘I was told that in this country it is polite to squeeze back when shaking hands.’

  ‘Quite all right,’ wheezed Mr Lang, pressing his hand under his armpit. ‘I’ve gone a bit soft, what with years of office work.’

  Daniel appeared at this point. He announced to his parents that he had been upstairs and doing his homework, but they paid him no attention. He quickly took Emily aside.

  ‘We found some Germans,’ he whispered to Emily. ‘Five of them.’

  ‘Good, tell me later,’ she whispered back.

  BC displayed meticulous manners as dinner was served, and proved to be a master of polite conversation. Emily’s parents found themselves flattered by the youth, yet they were desperate to please him. The talk meandered through no more than general banter and pleasantries, but finally BC seemed to decide that they could be allowed to discuss his background.

  ‘I must leave early tonight, I have not been well,’ he announced as the dinner plates were being cleared away by Martha – who had by now managed to change her dress, powder her face, and bind her hair up into another style.

  ‘I can imagine, Lieutenant,’ remarked Mr Lang. ‘That’s a nasty cut beside your eye. Seen action recently?’

  ‘Indeed I have, Sir, I was in a mutiny,’ replied BC.

  ‘Oh capital! I bet the fellow who did that to you is feeling even more sorry for himself.’

  ‘I doubt it, Sir, I killed him,’ said BC softly.

  There was complete silence for some moments.

  ‘I – oh,’ was as much as Mr Lang could manage at first, then he added, ’you were in the thick of it, then?’

  ‘Indeed I was, Sir. I killed five before I was shot in the stomach.’

  There was another lengthy and excruciatingly awkward pause. Even Emily had not known the full extent of the action when BC’s unit had mutinied. It was Mrs Lang who took BC’s bait.

  ‘But Lieutenant, er, Liore – you don’t mind me calling you Liore, do you?’

  ‘You may indeed, ma’am.’

  ‘Liore, the scar beside your eye is very fresh.’

&n
bsp; ‘Indeed, ma’am, that is why I stayed in Melbourne, the action was quite recent. The wound to my stomach was so serious that I needed to spend some weeks ashore, recovering. I am staying in a rooming house at –’

  ‘A rooming house?’ boomed Mrs Lang, surging to her feet and flinging all thoughts of manners and dining room protocols to the winds. ‘Oh no, no, no, no, that will never do! Martha? Martha!’

  ‘Ma’am?’ called Martha from just around the door, where she had been hiding to listen in.

  ‘Martha, make up the bed in the spare room, the garret. Do it now! Lieutenant Liore will be staying here until he recovers his strength.’

  ‘But –’ began BC.

  ‘Oh good, Liore, I knew you would agree. Ah, what did you say your title is?’

  ‘Just lieutenant, ma’am,’ replied BC with studied innocence. ‘I am the youngest of my family, I did not inherit the title.’

  ‘Oh my God, nobility, I knew it,’ whispered Mrs Lang to her husband before bustling out of the door with Martha. Mr Lang was close behind them.

  Emily, BC, Daniel, and Fox exchanged glances.

  ‘Just as I said,’ declared Emily smugly. ‘Speak a few words in good English, dress in a neat uniform, display charm and good manners, and Mother will assume you are some earl’s son. Now you will not be able to fight your way out of this house with a cutlass.’

  ‘Near collapse, I am,’ said BC, reverting to battle standard. ‘Benzothoractine, effective, another half hour. Then, no more.’

  ‘Good, very good,’ said Emily. ‘Stand up, take my arm, you must go and lie down on the sofa. Fox, kneel beside him. BC – Liore – unbutton your coat, and, um, could you please pull your shirt out to, ah, expose the bandage on your tummy?’

  ‘Tummy?’ asked Fox.

  ‘Endearment term, archaic, stomach, for describing,’ explained BC.

  Emily stole a glance at BC’s midriff. There was a patch of dried blood visible on the bandage.