Before the Storm

by Sean McMullen

  ‘Talk you out of the shock that both of you have entered. I suggest that we walk to the railway station; we can talk in private that way. Emily, find your parents, tell them Daniel caught his arm on a projecting nail, tearing his coat and cutting himself.’

  ‘I’ll go with her. I’ll say I saw it all,’ declared Muriel, as she helped Daniel back into his coat.

  ‘Very good,’ said BC. ‘Daniel, stay with me.’

  ‘Mother and Father will be furious because we did not go in with them,’ said Daniel, staring after Muriel and Emily as they hurried off into the crowd.

  ‘I imagine the bombs would have annoyed them a lot more,’ replied BC.

  ‘You are bleeding again,’ said Daniel. ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘Some stitches tore a little with all the action, and blood seeped through the tears,’ she said, unbuttoning her coat to check the bleeding. ‘It is no worse than a nosebleed, and Muriel’s extra bandaging will hold for now.’

  ‘No worse than a nosebleed?’ exclaimed Daniel.

  ‘Keep your voice down, we cannot afford to draw attention to ourselves.’

  ‘Oi, Muriel’s waving. I do believe she has seen Mother and Father.’

  With that, BC buttoned her jacket and led the way forward. Daniel noted at once that his parents looked rather grim.

  ‘Ah, Mr and Mrs Lang, I do apologise!’ BC declared as they approached the Langs. ‘I thought that Emily, Daniel, and Muriel would like to see the ceremony from a special viewing platform, but you had gone inside before I could get word to you.’

  ‘Oh, a special platform?’ asked Mr Lang, brightening at once.

  ‘It was very romantic,’ added Emily, who managed a strained smile.

  ‘But I was their chaperone,’ added Daniel, still glancing about for British German artists disguised as policemen.

  ‘So was I,’ added Muriel with a very broad smile.

  ‘Oh, then that is quite all right,’ said Mr Lang. ‘Did you hear the Duke declare the parliament open?’

  ‘Indeed we did, Sir,’ replied BC.

  ‘Wonderful, just wonderful,’ added Mrs Lang. ‘So historic, so grand, so romantic.’

  ‘I thought that we four might walk back to Flinders Street Station through the city centre,’ said BC. ‘I would like to look at all the decorations that have been put up to celebrate the opening of parliament.’

  They were soon alone again, walking along Exhibition Street. BC explained about a medical condition that would not be identified and named for some decades to come.

  ‘It will be called post-traumatic stress syndrome in about seventy years. Daniel, you made a decision to die, you threw yourself across me, fully expecting to be shot and be killed. Now you cannot quite accept that you are still alive.’

  ‘I … I suppose so,’ conceded Daniel. ‘I know it sounds silly.’

  ‘It is not silly. You were willing to die to save me, and for that I thank you. Emily, the angel of death was so close that he brushed Daniel and me with his wings. Your shot sent him on his way, with the soul of another.’

  ‘But I killed the man. It was truly horrid.’

  ‘If you had enjoyed it, I would have cut you down where you stood. I do not tolerate murderers in my crew.’

  That thought sobered Daniel considerably, yet somehow heartened him as well. Muriel stared at BC as they walked, frowning with confusion.

  ‘You don’t really like fighting and killing, do you?’ Muriel asked.

  ‘Fighting and killing are like wiping one’s bottom. You have to do it from time to time, so you must learn how to do it properly or things could become very unpleasant. On the other hand, there are more important things in life than fighting, killing and bottoms. Those of the British and German empires forgot about those other things.’

  The analogy appealed to Daniel, and he began to cheer up a little. He gave Muriel a hurried explanation of everything that had been happening, leaving out the part about BC and Fox being from the future. By the time he had finished, they had reached Swanston Street.

  ‘What about the bombs around the ceiling?’ he now asked BC. ‘Why did they not go off?’

  ‘I cannot say,’ replied BC.

  Again Muriel put an arm around Daniel, and Daniel took care to press against her. Emily sneered, then turned back to BC.

  ‘How is your stomach?’ she said.

  ‘Light damage, but I am still operational. I shall go to bed early tonight.’

  BC needed to sit down by the time they reached the railway station. Daniel stood protectively beside her, but Muriel was holding his hand and stroking it a lot.

  ‘I still cannot believe what I am seeing,’ said Emily to BC, while looking directly at Daniel and Muriel.

  ‘Daniel, I think you have learned that while it is easy to die for someone, it is a lot nicer to live for them,’ ventured BC.

  ‘Well, yes,’ replied Daniel, putting an arm around Muriel as she pressed harder against him.

  BC took out her small, black device and held it to her lips.

  ‘BC reporting, serial KB7WCB0542,’ she whispered. ‘Request status. Trans.’

  For some moments she listened, her eyes widening.

  ‘What is that?’ whispered Muriel to Daniel.

  ‘A sort of telegraph,’ he replied, and Muriel seemed to decide that this explained everything.

  ‘Confirmed,’ said BC into the device. ‘Status, no target. Trans end.’ BC shook her head then turned to Emily. ‘Fox did nothing either.’

  They were relieved to find that the train going south was almost empty. BC began to recover her strength as she looked out over the suburbs that the train was passing. Muriel unbuttoned BC’s coat to check the bandages.

  ‘Who put these stupid bandages on Liore?’ muttered Muriel. ‘No wonder there’s bleeding.’

  ‘The fuses, it must have been the fuses,’ BC said as the train passed over the bridge spanning the Yarra River.

  ‘Fuses?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Strings that burn slowly so that …’ began Daniel.

  ‘I know what fuses are!’ snapped Emily before Daniel could betray her to Muriel. ‘I mean why did they not work?’

  ‘I have a theory,’ said BC. ‘The people who carried the bombs up and tied them under the ceiling probably did not know how to handle fireworks.’

  ‘Or bombs,’ added Daniel.

  ‘On target. Perhaps some clumsy person picked up the bombs by the fuses, pulling them out of the explosives, but not the packaging.’

  ‘I’ll have to re-bandage you when we get home,’ said Muriel to BC.

  ‘There will be a terrible fuss when people take the packages down and discover what is really inside them,’ said Emily. ‘The Germans will still be blamed, because of the clues that have already been planted. The war may still happen.’

  ‘We have done all that we can,’ stated BC with finality. ‘We did not stop the bombing. It was chance that did that. Perhaps chance will help us yet again.’

  ‘So all that danger, those three deaths, they were all for nothing?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘A good soldier does not take credit for what someone else did. History has been different for the two hours past, that is all that I am sure of just now.’

  ‘And you have not ceased to exist,’ said Emily.

  ‘Indeed, that too.’

  ‘History is different?’ asked Muriel.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ advised Daniel, recalling how hard it had been to explain time travel to Barry.

  All four of them were moving slowly and stiffly from their exertions of two hours earlier when they got out of the train at North Brighton Station. Barry the Bag was collecting tickets at the gate. There was nobody else on the platform.

  ‘Barry, you will never guess what happened!’ called Daniel, as they approached him.

  ‘No bombs,’ said Barry calmly.

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How?’ demanded Emily, stamping her foot with annoyance
as she stopped before Barry.

  ‘’Cause I flogged ’em with Lurker the Worker.’

  ‘You what?’ shrieked Emily.

  ‘Well, ya told us all to work out plans, like some desperate stuff we was to do if everything came down in a pile of shit, so I did. I had a few words to Lurker the Worker, an’ he dropped a message to Wreder the Writer.’

  ‘Who is Lurker the Worker?’ asked BC, closing her eyes, putting a hand to her head, and looking decidedly unsteady for the first time that day.

  ‘Lurker the Worker is a horrid fat man who never does any work,’ explained Emily. ‘Wreder the Writer is a railway stores clerk who writes out false dispatch notes – and once made some of Father’s parcels disappear.’

  ‘Yeah, but I got ’em back once I knew they was yer old man’s!’ protested Barry.

  ‘Please!’ barked BC. ‘Everyone, let Barry continue.’

  ‘Yeah, well … Wreder’s a clerk, so I got Lurker to get him to check if any railway wagons had stuff that was to be unloaded onto carts goin’ to the Exhibition Buildings this mornin’. I figured that they would keep the stuff safe like that until just before they wanted to use it. Anyway, he found a couple of dodgy lookin’ wagons, so Lurker the Worker got back to me. Now Luker the Lurker was ’ere, havin’ a beer with me old man and Lurker the Worker, it bein’ a holiday, so –’

  ‘Luker the Lurker?’ asked BC as she sat down on a bench and put her face in her hands.

  ‘He is a horrid thin man who works as a waiter during the day, and lurks about looking for things to steal at night,’ said Muriel.

  ‘Yeah, right, so I gives him a couple of me best artistic French postcards and asks him to mind the office and gate. Shoulda seen him when he saw those cards, he nearly choked on his beer!’

  ‘Please, keep to the point,’ prompted BC without looking up.

  ‘Anyway, so Lurker the Worker and I took the next train north and checked the wagons in Jolimont that Wreder the Writer told us about. One had bundles of stuff with fuses hangin’ out and stuff about them bein’ fireworks written on the wrappin’. I cuts one open, and there’s big sticks of dynamite instead.’

  ‘Nitroglycerine-based explosive,’ said BC. ‘Very dangerous.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what Lurker the Worker said. Actually he said “Bleedin’ ’ell, some cove’s ’alf-inched a load of mining explosives!” Barry, Old Bagman, thinks I, here’s an opportunity to dip into some wealth. “What’s the worth?” says I. “Luker the Lurker would slip eighty quid,” says he.’

  ‘Speak courtly English, please,’ said BC.

  ‘Er, well, Wreder’d noticed that the papers for the wagon were missing stuff, like the owner’s name. That’s suspicious, so he’d not rat to the coppers. “Seller’s market”, says I.’

  ‘Will someone please translate what he is saying?’ asked BC.

  ‘Barry stole a load of dynamite bombs disguised as fireworks from a railway wagon,’ said Emily. ‘He was told about them by some criminal who works for the railways. Barry then sold them to another criminal.’

  ‘Who doesn’t work for the railways,’ added Daniel.

  ‘Yeah, an’ it was probably worth more tin than Luker the Lurker paid, but I wanted that load moved quick, no questions asked. When we got back ’ere, Luker said certain mining operations of an unlicensed nature had an interest in cheap explosives with no questions asked, but he’d only pay sixty ’cause he’d have to hire a cart.’

  ‘And you did this all by yourself?’ asked Emily, starting to feel grudging admiration for Barry.

  ‘Nah, Lurker the Worker helped me pull out the fuses – first time I seen him work, ya know? We put the load into a dogbox, then wrote FIREWORKS on some bags of cotton waste from another wagon and stuck the fuses in ’em. Then Wreder the Writer had the dogbox car shunted here.’

  ‘Here?’ gasped Daniel, Muriel and Emily together.

  ‘Yeah, we unloaded, too. Packages store.’

  ‘Will someone please translate again?’ asked BC.

  ‘The packages store currently contains enough dynamite to splatter this railway station all over Brighton and leave a very impressive crater,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Yeah, but only till Luker the Lurker turns up with a horse and cart.’

  BC cast a glance in the direction of the packages store. Emily and Muriel hid behind Daniel as Daniel hid behind BC.

  ‘How long?’ asked BC.

  ‘Half-hour, he said, but that was a while back, give or take. Ya know how it is when ya gotta find a Clydesdale and cart on a holiday, no questions asked. We made sixty quid – that’s twenty each for Lurker and Wreder, and twenty for me.’

  ‘So Fox did not help?’ asked Emily, still hardly able to believe what she was hearing.

  ‘Nah, he’s probably back at St Kilda, keepin’ an eye out for German coves who really aren’t Germans, and sketchin’ things. I think he likes a bit of the old art, does our Foxy.’

  Just then a cart drawn by an elderly horse crossed the railway tracks and came to a halt. The carter waved to Barry. BC glanced about hurriedly, then turned to the others.

  ‘Emily, Muriel, stand guard with me, but keep your guns out of sight,’ she said softly. ‘Barry, Daniel, help whichever Lurker that is to load the cart.’

  ‘But what will happen if I drop a package?’ quavered Daniel.

  ‘Try not to,’ replied Barry. ‘On second thought, mind the horse.’

  Luker the Lurker and Barry the Bag were very skilled at loading carts with stolen goods in extreme haste. Within three minutes of the cart pulling up, it was rumbling away down Bay Street. In the distance they could hear the whistle of the train that had brought them there returning from the end of the line at Sandringham.

  ‘Yeah, well, back to work, but twenty quid richer,’ laughed Barry, obviously relieved that the danger was past.

  BC gestured for Emily, Muriel and Daniel to stand beside her.

  ‘Attention!’ barked BC.

  BC clicked her heels together and brought her fist across her chest in a salute. Emily and Daniel followed her lead, rather more clumsily. Muriel merely clasped her hands and looked awkward.

  ‘We salute you, Barry Porter,’ declared BC.

  Barry suddenly looked astonished. He was used to either being ignored or shouted at. Being the centre of attention while not being shouted at or chased away was entirely outside his experience.

  ‘Wot, me?’ he managed.

  ‘Yes,’ said BC. ‘Crew, stand easy.’

  ‘But I was nowhere near parlyment, it was you lot out against the Germans.’

  ‘Us?’ snorted BC. ‘Emily killed a spy, Daniel got shot defending me, I beat up a lot of people, and Muriel stopped us bleeding to death, but none of us did anything important. Barry, it was you alone who saved the future.’

  ‘I … you … she killed a cove?’ exclaimed Barry, going chalk white.

  ‘We girls are very dangerous,’ said Emily. ‘We just don’t boast about it like boys do.’

  ‘I just bandaged people,’ said Muriel huffily. ‘I don’t go shooting them.’

  ‘But you have a gun,’ Emily pointed out.

  ‘Must be dreamin’,’ muttered Barry, his hands over his head.

  ‘Had we followed your plan, Barry, nobody would have had to die,’ BC explained.

  Although it was clear that Barry was finding the revelations rather overwhelming, he snatched for what he hoped was a correct conclusion.

  ‘So, I was all right, then?’

  ‘The world will never know of it, but your plan was as clever as the Trojan Horse of the ancient Greeks, and those who were in the Charge of the Light Brigade were no braver than you,’ said BC.

  ‘Yeah, well, Miss Emily did tell me to think, so I did.’

  ‘You thought even better than I could have,’ Emily forced herself to admit.

  ‘Cor, ta,’ said the embarrassed Barry. He glanced south to the train that was now visible in the distance. ‘Well, suppose I’d better get back
to work.’

  ‘No, wait here,’ said BC, who then strode to the station office.

  There was a crash and a shout of surprise, followed by several heavy thuds. Half a dozen beer bottles flew through the door and over the edge of the platform, where they smashed into splashes of foam and shattered glass between the rails. They were followed by Barry’s father, who stumbled out onto the platform clutching his stomach. BC reappeared. Mr Porter shuffled off to open the gates for the train.

  ‘Barry, your father has very kindly agreed to mind the station by himself for the rest of the day,’ announced BC. ‘Emily, here are ten shillings. Why not take Barry back into Melbourne on that train? Show him the lights and decorations, and buy yourselves toffee apples. Daniel and I are going home. Muriel?’

  ‘Somebody has to do your bandages properly,’ Muriel declared to BC, although she was batting her eyelashes at Daniel.

  The train pulled into the station.

  ‘Hold your arm out!’ Emily demanded, grasping Barry by the collar and stopping him as he made for the carriage.

  ‘’Ere, wot for?’

  ‘So I can put my hand on it, like a lady with a gentleman. Now walk! Open the door – no! Get out again! You hold the door open for me while staying outside, then you get in and close the door behind us.’

  ‘Is this meant to be a treat?’ asked Barry, glancing forlornly at BC before closing the door.

  The train chuffed out of the station.

  ‘Barry the Bag, out on the town with Emily on his arm,’ said Daniel in wonder as the three of them stood staring after the departing train.

  ‘Am I meant to laugh or be sick?’ asked Muriel, squeezing Daniel’s hand.

  ‘Barry Porter, he could have been the greatest battle commander imaginable,’ said BC, shaking her head.

  ‘Yet in a way, he was,’ said Daniel.

  ‘I do believe you are right,’ concluded BC. ‘Barry the Bag commanding Lurker the Worker, Wreder the Writer, and Luker the Lurker. An uncoxed four! Yes, a small crew but an effective one.’

  ‘Come along, heroes, bandage time,’ said Muriel, tugging at Daniel’s arm and BC’s coat. ‘The battle is over, so the nurse is in command.’

  Two days later it was Saturday, and the six saviours of the century-to-come were gathered in a café near the river. Fox sketched other patrons while Emily tried not to choke on her first cup of coffee. BC sat scanning a newspaper for news of anything suspicious, and Daniel and Muriel sat holding hands. Barry was concluding the sale of an artistic postcard to someone with a bushy beard, who declared that he had come to Melbourne ’for the culture’. Deciding that she could force no more coffee down for the time being, Emily leaned closer to BC.