A Girl in Time

by John Birmingham

  Chumley appeared, as if he had beamed down from orbit. He was still grinning uncomfortably, but also sweating now with the small room having heated up over the course of the night with all of those bodies packed in together. Like Smith, he looked sober.

  “Please, allow me,” he said, reaching to take the bag from Cady. She was drunk enough that he caught her by surprise and had managed to pry the sack out of her hands before Gracie intervened.

  “Come now, Chumley. Our Jane is not the sort who needs to be fetched and carried for. You of all people should know that.”

  He handed the bag back to Cady as the room emptied, and Bertie joined them, standing next to Smith, looking eager to continue the night's festivities.

  “But my rooms are very close to The Spotted Goose,” said Chumley. “It would be a discourtesy if I did not offer to escort them home. It's very easy to get lost in the fog, as you would know, Gracie.”

  Bertie chortled at that. Some inside joke, Cady supposed. Grace wiped the grin off his face by pulling on her gloves and back handing him in the solar plexus.

  “That will be enough of that, Bertram Roxburgh, if you ever wish me to become Mrs. Gracie Roxburgh. And after talking to Ms. Jane I'm not entirely sure that you should not become Bertie Worthington.”

  Both Bertie and Chumley laughed, but neither of them seemed entirely sure that she was joking.

  “You run along, Chumley old man,” said Bertie, recovering his sense of worth by having a swipe at Chumley's. “We don't require your presence any more. You must have some dreadful trade to be seeing to, and we must take a carriage through Aldgate. It will be a matter of no moment to see our American cousins safe home. I'm afraid the cab will not comfortably seat five. Not with this colossus of a chap trying to squeeze himself in. I don’t suppose you could afford it, either.”

  Bertie slapped Smith between the shoulder blades and bellowed out a hearty peal of laughter, which fooled nobody, least of all Chumley, who had been given his marching orders. Cady had not seen someone so deftly dissed and dismissed like that since high school. It was quite an uncomfortable reminder of how stratified this society was, even amongst these radical egalitarians. She wasn't sure what Chumley did for a living, but the fact that he worked at all placed his station far below Bertie and Gracie, whom she had come to understand were funding their adventure in the New World entirely from the proceeds of their respective family fortunes.

  “Of course, of course. You're right, of course,” said Chumley, first blanching then blushing with embarrassment at being reminded of his lesser rank. Smith regarded the interchange with his usual expression, mournful and unmoving. Possibly uncaring. You never could tell what was going on behind that granite facade.

  Cady could not help but feel Chumley's humiliation burning her own cheeks, but if she was being honest with herself, and the beer helped with that, she no more wanted to spend the rest of the evening with him than Gracie did.

  “I will thank you for a m-marvelous evening,” he said, beginning to stutter as the social horror got the better of him, “and I w-would w-wish you all the b-b-best.”

  “And all the b-b-best to you, old man,” said Bertie.

  Cady gave the poor bastard a peck on the cheek to send him on his way, feeling both awkward and relieved at his exit.

  “Ugh. He means well, but honestly, he's such a podsnapper,” said Gracie. “I'm surprised his mother lets him out of the house.”

  “I do rather think she throws him out with the night soil every morning,” said Bertie, and they chuckled with the enjoyment of sharing a small moment of cruelty. Cady had felt herself adrift on the seas of time all day, but she had not felt as lost as she did right then. She liked Gracie, genuinely liked her, and hanging out with the Frontier Grrls for a couple of hours had gone a long way toward chilling her out to a point where she might even be able to deal with the total insanity of what had befallen them. Of what had befallen her, because although Smith was in the same boat, for twenty-first century Cady, he was as dead and buried as all of these guys. She was the only one who was really lost, when you thought about it. After lots of really strong beer.

  She felt Gracie's hand on her arm, squeezing softly.

  “And now we must all go out for supper and drinks. Real drinks. Our treat.”

  Cady pulled herself back into the present, the past, whenever the hell she was, and found her friend—her oh-so-ditzy, oh-so-pretty, cruel little golden-haired friend—hanging on to her arm, dragging her toward the door, grinning and giggling as though she hadn't just been an unspeakable bitch, and in an exquisitely self-conscious moment of clarity, Cady thought, this is what it's like for Georgia, being friends with me.

  Remembering her friend and how far she was from home unsettled her again, and she allowed herself to be led away. Only the low rumble of Smith's voice did anything to halt her progress.

  “… Jane …” he said carefully, obviously having to remind himself of the cover story he’d thought it necessary to use, “are you forgetting that we have travel plans? We have to leave on the morrow, at a very particular time and place, if you will recall. Indeed, I do believe it was you who insisted on the arrangement.”

  “Dash my wig!” Bertie exclaimed. “We'll have none of that. Wherever you need to be, whence ever you are required to be there, put yourselves in my care, sir. But for now let's be away to tickle our innards.”

  “That's very kind of you, Mr. Roxburgh,” said Smith, “but my fiancé was most insistent that we adhere to her itinerary.”

  “Oh, do come along, chuckaboo” said Grace, actually dragging Cady toward the door. “When are you leaving? In the morning? By locomotive, or hansom cab, or do you plan to rope and ride a couple of bison over the horizon.”

  And then she fell about laughing at the unintended rhyme, and Cady, who was realizing just how drunk she was now that she finally had to start moving, was laughing along with her. There was a slightly jagged, hysterical edge to her laughter, but that simply amplified Gracie's high spirits.

  “Jane?” Smith said again. “We have to take that carriage in a couple of hours. We leave just after two in the morning, if you recall.”

  She did. Even through the haze of alcohol and hysteria, she did remember that. She had insisted they make their first jump together as close to the moment when they arrived here, and from the same place.

  “Well, that settles it then,” declared Bertie. “We shall none of us visit the Land of Nod this evening. We'll give old London town a jolly good seeing to, and pour you directly into your chosen carriage.”

  Their destination, a supper club called The Old Persuader, was a three story palace, faced with shiny plate-glass windows decorated in gold leaf rosettes and gilded cornices. Illuminated, bright colored adverts for The No Mistake Cordial and The Famous Knock Me Down Mix covered the facade. Cady could hear a piano tinkling and raucous voices raised in loud song. Bertie led the way, tipping some guy in a top hat who took their coats and hats before taking them in hand and carving a path through the crowd to a booth in a corner where waiters cleared away the remains of a meal and laid out cutlery and crockery and a plate of bread and butter.

  The atmosphere was thick with cigar and cigarette smoke, the fumes of heavy drinking, and the smell of cooking fat. Cady was hungry again and fell upon the plate of buttered bread, surprised to find the slices so white. She'd always assumed white bread was a modern thing. Jugs of ale arrived, and water for Titanic Smith, who insisted on it.

  Titanic Bore more like it, thought Cady.

  Food arrived. A haunch of beef surrounded by steamed greens so vivid in color they might have been touched up in Photoshop. Roasted potatoes, honeyed carrots and some kind of savory pudding or soft biscuit followed with boats of gravy, a pot of mustard and more bread. Cady didn't think she could fit it all in, but surprised herself, with unexpected encouragement from the marshal, who put aside his clear preference to be somewhere else.

  “Don't know when we might eat again on
the trail,” he said, forking a couple of thick slices of beef onto his plate, “so believe me when I say that I am mighty appreciative, Mr. Roxburgh.”

  They passed a couple of enjoyable hours in this fashion, eating, drinking and talking with Bertie and Gracie. Even Smith loosened up a little—agreeing to stop calling Bertie, ‘Mr. Roxburgh’—and then a lot, taking a turn on the piano in one of the lounges, later in the evening. He had a remarkable ear for music and a surprisingly beautiful singing voice, a gift from his mother, he told them. He was able to pick up a tune, having heard it hummed for a few moments, and could improvise his own arrangement after just a few bars.

  “A man has to entertain himself on the frontier, ladies,” he explained, as he pulled a harmonica out of the possibles bag in Cady's care and added the mouth organ's bluesy wailing to the tinkling keys of the piano.

  A rowdy, appreciative audience gathered around him while he performed a set list of tavern favorites from the Old West and took a few requests from the locals. Cady found herself relaxing as Smith played, allowing herself to imagine that maybe this would all work out. He too, visibly relaxed as the night went on. It was hard to think of any real harm coming to them while they had such a pleasant time. Gracie taught her to sing along with a couple of music hall numbers, and she and Cady scandalized and delighted the room by tweaking the lyrics to “Our Lodger's Such a Nice Young Man” as the clock ticked over to midnight.

  She was tiring and about to return to their booth when Smith stopped her in her tracks with opening notes of a song she knew well, the first piece of music she’d actually recognized that evening.

  As he banged out the first bars of “Louie Louie” on the piano, a devilish grin splitting his usually sombre features for the first time, she actually screamed in recognition and grabbed Gracie by the shoulders.

  “I love this song!” she cried out.

  Which wasn't exactly true. Back home, she would have flicked radio channels or wondered what was wrong with the algorithm that had caused Spotify to serve up her grandfather's music. But here, the familiar, brutally simple, repetitive riff was an unexpected and welcome shout out from an old friend in a room full of strangers. And then Smith added the harmonica and his own vocals to the mix.

  Cady recognized the rhythm and the form of the lyrics, but not the words themselves. They sounded the same, but different. Something about missing a little girl across the sea. Still, the crowd soon picked up the chorus, and like a college dorm full of drunken students, they started roaring it out while Smith hammered at the piano, blew hurricanes through the mouth organ, and added his own, weirdly old-fashioned but powerful vocals to the mix.

  Cady hauled Gracie out onto the dance floor—or the small space between a couple of potted ferns next to the piano that she declared to be the dance floor—and gave her new bestie an impromptu lesson on how to dance like nobody was watching. Grace had drunk even more than Cady and had no immunity to the timeless appeal of rock-n-roll—especially not as interpreted by the honky-tonk stylings of “Wild Bill” Hickok. Soon she was twerking and grinding like a stripper on double time.

  More people joined them on the floor, and Cady wondered if Smith might have picked up some other tunes on his travels, but he stuck with an extra-long version of “Louie Louie,” which was fine with the drunken rabble in the piano bar of the Old Persuader.

  Groans of dismay and protest greeted the final notes of the song and “Wild Bill's” announcement that was he was “all played out.” They met back at their booth, where hangers-on were hanging on, madly keen for more tunes.

  “You absolutely must teach me that delightful fancy,” one young man insisted. He was nattily dressed in black-and-white striped trousers, a daffodil-yellow shirt, and a bright red tie. He carried a cane for effect and tapped it against a half-empty champagne bottle to draw everyone's attention.

  “I am the lion comique at the Empire,” he announced. “At Leicester Square!” he added, when Smith shrugged as though it meant a bit less than nothing to him.

  “You come on back here tomorrow night, and I'll teach it to you,” Smith promised, which was enough to mollify him, and gradually the crowd broke up and the background roar dropped back to something less apocalyptic.

  “And with that, we have to mosey,” said Smith, who like Cady, looked happy for the first time that day.

  14

  “When it's time, we just dig in our spurs and get gone. You understand?”

  Smith was helping her up into a hansom cab. Bertie and Gracie were already fussing about inside, settling themselves for the ride back across town.

  “Sure,” said Cady, even though she wasn't quite sure why he needed to tell her. And then the thought occurred to her through the haze of the night's drinking. “Even if they're watching?”

  “Yeah,” said Smith. “Just hold my hand and our baggage. But don't be touching or holding onto nobody else. Not less'n you plan on making a whole wagon train of this.”

  The imminence of departure helped sober her thoughts a little.

  “Okay. Got it,” she said.

  “Come along, you two,” crowed Bertie. “The night is but young.”

  “You sit next to me, Jane,” said Gracie, patting the faded bench. The whole carriage settled and groaned as Smith climbed in and took the seat next to Bertie. He had both of the dry bags full of possibles and equipage on his lap and he hugged them to him like sleeping children.

  Back in her long, concealing coat, Cady was grateful for the warmth of the well-sealed oilskin. It was bitterly cold outside now, and the fog made it worse, stealing in to draw the heat from their bones.

  “The Strand, my man!” Bertie shouted to the driver, and they rattled away on the rough cobblestone road. Although the crowds and traffic had thinned out noticeably, Cady was still impressed by how busy the city was so late at night. London was like New York. She never slept.

  Cady found herself wondering what New York would be like right now, in this time.

  Awful, she decided, if you were anyone less than a railroad baron or heir to some banking fortune. But then, New York in her time wasn't much better, was it? Not if you weren't rich and famous.

  And then she remembered. She was very rich now and internet famous, but not here. She caught Smith's eye across the dark confines of the cabin, and she could see that he was anxious to be gone. He checked the pocket watch every few minutes. He did have his kid to get home to, but that didn't make her needs any less valid. She had family, and friends, too, and a life she hadn't asked to be dragged out of.

  “Wild Bill,” she said, adopting the nickname Bertie had taken up, in spite of Smith's insistence he wasn't that Hickok. “That was some impressive work, tickling the ivories back there. I thought you didn't like that sort of attention. You always told me you liked to keep your head down when you were in a new place.”

  “Oh, Bill,” said Gracie. “You shouldn't hide your light under a bushel. You are a wonderful singer and quite the devil on the pianola. Why would you not want people knowing?”

  Smith looked at Cady while he considered his answer, but turned to Grace when he finally spoke.

  “It was my ma, learned me the piano, ma'am. She was a music teacher. Playin' is all I have of her now. I like to keep it for myself. As for not wanting all the attention, Jane, you are right. I did say that and I do believe it. But I thought you might like to hear a tune that was more familiar to you. We are a long way from home.”

  “We are,” Cady said quietly. “Thank you.”

  “And we are almost done here, anyhow. We will be gone very soon.”

  “My word, Bill,” declared Bertie. “You sound like a man on the run.”

  “All our lives we're either running toward something, or away from it,” said Smith. “You and Miss Gracie are lucky to be running toward better days, with your grand adventure ahead of you.”

  And that was enough to set both of them off, excitedly talking about their dreams and plans for life in the new worl
d.

  Cady just wanted to get back to her old one.

  On Smith's instructions, the driver dropped them a block down from The Spotted Goose.

  “We get a carriage here for the next leg of our journey,” he explained, “in sixteen minutes,” he confirmed after checking his watch.

  “Well, you have more faith in the punctuality of the coach company than I, Wild Bill,” said Bertie, “especially in this part of town. Are you sure you are to be picked up here?” Bertie looked around, unconvinced.

  “This is where we came in, and this is where we leave,” said Smith, directing his answer more to Cady than Bertie, “in fifteen minutes, now.”

  “How thrilling!” said Gracie, still high from the night's adventures and doubly excited by a countdown … although, it occurred to Cady that Grace would have no idea of what a countdown was. The space program was a long time from here.

  “It's so sad you're leaving us,” she said, suddenly reaching the maudlin drunk part of the evening. “We've only just become such good friends.”

  She hugged Cady, who returned the embrace and found herself reluctant to let go. Regardless of how mean Grace had been to Chumley, there was an innocence and even a sweetness to her that Cady found compelling. She was like a child. It was weird to think this young woman was probably more than a hundred years dead.

  “Oh, don't cry,” Gracie said, when she found Cady's eyes wet with tears. “We'll stay in touch. Write to us the very moment you reach your next stop. The post will find us at either of our parents' estates.”

  Smith insisted on paying the cab fare, in spite of Bertie's earlier promise. It appeared an unselfish gesture, but Cady figured he was just emptying his pockets of travel shrapnel. She still had her local coinage. It'd be worth something on eBay, for sure, like a rare stamp or a first-gen iPhone still in its original wrapping.

  Or maybe she'd just keep it as a souvenir of a very weird day and night she could never tell anybody about. Not unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life in a straightjacket or the interrogation cells at Area 51.