Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms

by Lissa Evans

  They walked there together, and Stuart waited until his father was transfixed by volume three of The History of European Lexicography before he set off for the information desk.

  “Aha!” said the same man as before, his glasses still dangling on a chain around his neck. “It’s our local history scholar. Stay there just a moment.”

  He disappeared into a back room, and Stuart waited impatiently, drumming his fingers on the desktop.

  “And here we are,” said the man, reappearing. “We’ve re-inserted the missing photograph. Do not forget the gloves.”

  Stuart took the little book over to a table and eased the white gloves onto his fingers. He opened Modern Beeton: A Photographic Record and spotted a little paragraph that he hadn’t noticed before, tucked away in tiny print at the bottom of the title page:

  This booklet was commissioned by

  Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms as a

  permanent record of the firm’s contribution

  to the life of twentieth-century Beeton.

  Stuart started to thumb through, and this time it was like looking at a family album. The little boy that was Great-Uncle Tony gazed out from every page, making a different face in each. First in the phone booth, then beside the weighing machine, then by the swimming-pool turnstile …

  “And that’s the order I found them in!” said Stuart out loud.

  There was a fierce “Shhh!” from the man behind the counter.

  Stuart hunched down, embarrassed, took a piece of scrap paper and a pencil, and started to make a list:

  Main Street. Phone booth. FOUND IT.

  Station. Weighing machine. FOUND IT.

  Outdoor swimming pool. Turnstile. FOUND IT.

  Movie theater/bingo hall. Toffee machine.

  Gas station.

  In this photo, Great-Uncle Tony was doing a handstand against the side of the building, where Stuart had seen the bicycle-repair sign. His booted feet were resting on a tall metal box on four legs.

  Stuart stared at the box for a while, then shrugged and wrote “???? machine” before turning the page.

  6. Fairground.

  Pictured were a Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round, a shoot-the-duck stall, and a cotton-candy booth. There was even a ghost train, decorated with some badly drawn phantoms and a wildly screaming girl. Great-Uncle Tony was in the photograph, of course, in the background, standing on one foot and miming a kick at a passing boy with the other. Just behind him was an odd-looking object. It looked like a huge, upright ruler as tall as Stuart’s father. At the top of it was a round bell, and written down the side of the ruler were the words:

  TEST

  YOUR

  STRENGTH

  What appeared to be an enormous mallet on a rope was hanging from a hook beside it.

  Stuart added the words Strength machine? to the list. Then he turned the page and saw, for the first time, the missing photo.

  Ancient and modern together: a young man of today encounters the past read the caption. The “young man” was Great-Uncle Tony, and for once he was right at the center of the picture. He was standing in a large, rather grand room, gazing at a glass cabinet filled with what looked like tiny buttons. Behind him were other cabinets, also filled with buttons. Stuart frowned, wrote:

  7. ????

  And then he turned to the last picture.

  8. Bandstand.

  The bandstand stood in the middle of the park. The bulletin board fixed to its base had a poster that said SUNDAY CONCERTS, and next to it, on the grass, sat Uncle Tony playing an imaginary trumpet. Stuart looked at the photo close-up, his nose almost touching the page, and then again from a distance. He even turned it upside down, just in case he was missing something. Finally he gave up and turned back to the photograph of Uncle Tony and the buttons.

  Cabinets of buttons. Shiny buttons. Shiny metal buttons.

  No, Stuart realized suddenly. They weren’t buttons at all.

  Hurriedly he returned the book to the desk. You weren’t supposed to run in the library, but he ran, and found his father in the reference section.

  “Dad,” he said breathlessly. “Remember a few days ago you said something about coins to me?”

  “Coins …?” said his father dreamily, his finger still marking his place in The History of European Lexicography, his brain elsewhere.

  “Coins,” repeated Stuart, slowly and firmly. “You said something about a collection being of interest to a newsymatolly something.”

  “Aha!” His father’s face lit up. “You’re talking about the Horten Numismatology Collection in Beeton Museum. Apparently it’s splendid.”

  “The Horten Numi-whatsit Collection?”

  “Yes.”

  “What, it’s named after our family?”

  “I believe so.”

  “But you didn’t tell me it was called that!”

  “Oh, didn’t I?” said his father, with infuriating vagueness.

  “No. Never mind. Can we go there?” asked Stuart. “Can we go there right now?”

  CHAPTER 19

  “Hello,” said the woman at the desk. “Does this little fellow want the young explorer’s backpack?”

  “No,” said Stuart.

  “It’s got stickers!” said the woman, encouragingly.

  “No,” said Stuart more firmly.

  His father was standing beside him in the foyer of the museum gazing at a scale model of a Roman catapult.

  “Of course, the Latin name, ballista, is the root of our modern word ballistics,” he said, to no one in particular.

  Stuart was looking at the museum map on the wall. Most of the rooms seemed to be filled with an exhibition about Beeton during the Second World War, but there were one or two that were labeled MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS. He needed a bit of time to poke about on his own.

  “If you’re interested in ballistae,” said a loud voice behind him, “then you’ll find a further collection of Roman siege engines in room four.”

  Stuart turned to see a man in a checked suit. He was wearing a badge that said ROD FELTON, CHIEF CURATOR, and he looked enormously enthusiastic, in a toothy sort of way.

  “In particular, there is the post-classical example known as an onager,” he added.

  Stuart’s father looked up keenly. “I believe the name onager is also the Latin for wild ass,” he said.

  Rod Felton almost jumped with delight. “That’s absolutely correct. It’s derived from the kicking action of the machine, which in turn is the result of torsional pressure from a twisted rope. And the later medieval version, the mangonel, was also a …”

  With any luck, thought Stuart, they’ll be yakking for half an hour. Unnoticed, he slipped past the desk into the museum.

  Hardly anyone else was in there. He passed a 1940s classroom and a 1940s grocery store, and then walked through a screened-off section containing a backyard air-raid shelter with a set of bunk beds inside. As he did so, a siren sounded and all the lights went off, and there was a short pause before a tape of bombing noises began. He carried on walking.

  “Beeton in Wartime” continued—there were photographs and leaflets and posters, and a large-scale model of the town showing where bombs had dropped and where underground shelters had been built. Stuart lingered briefly over the model. It was very neatly made, with lots of detail, and he was just tracing the route he’d taken the day before when he heard the curator’s voice bellowing from somewhere behind him.

  “The weapon known as the trebuchet, or trebucket, on the other hand, was employed in the Middle Ages during sieges in order to …”

  Stuart broke into a jog and raced through the rest of the wartime exhibition. The next room contained Roman weaponry and armor, and the one after that a collection of Victorian tools and farm implements, as well as a large fake cow being milked by a huge fake milkmaid and an enormous fake horse being shoed by a giant fake blacksmith.

  Stuart hurried toward the next door, and paused. There was a small brass plaque screwed
to the central panel:

  THE NUMISMATOLOGICAL ROOM

  ENDOWED 1922 BY

  HORTEN’S MIRACULOUS MECHANISMS

  He pushed open the door and found himself staring at the view he’d seen earlier in the photograph: the glass cabinet containing Roman coins, the array of coin-filled cases beyond. Behind them was a tall row of display boards, showing HOW MONEY IS MADE, with cartoonish illustrations.

  Stuart walked around the display and caught his breath. Beneath the window stood three large, old, coin-operated machines.

  He walked toward them, feeling as if he were moving in slow motion. They were situated on stone blocks, roped off from the rest of the room, and a sign on the wall above them read:

  VINTAGE COIN-OPERATED MACHINERY

  FROM A VARIETY OF BEETON

  BUSINESSES, MANUFACTURED BY

  HORTEN’S MIRACULOUS MECHANISMS.

  COLLECTED AND DONATED

  TO BEETON MUSEUM

  BY MR. ANTHONY HORTEN.

  DO NOT TOUCH!

  Stuart read the sign again, scarcely able to believe his eyes. Collected and donated by Mr. Anthony Horten! It was as if Great-Uncle Tony were standing right here, grinning, giving him the thumbs up, and urging him onward.

  Three machines, thought Stuart.

  Three numbers needed for the safe.

  And all at once he knew, with utter certainty, that this was where he would find the combination.

  He ducked under the rope and climbed onto the stone blocks.

  To his left stood the movie theater toffee machine. It was a square metal box on legs, with the words CHOOSE OUR CHEWS! stamped on the front, and a picture of a toffee with a bite taken out of it. There was a slot for a coin at the top and a hole for dispensing the toffees at the bottom.

  The machine on the right was identical in appearance apart from the wording, which read:

  BICYCLE TIRE REPAIR KITS

  In the center stood the machine from the fairground. It was much more eye-catching than the other two: the lettering was in yellow and red, the bell at the top had been brightly polished, and the giant mallet was glossy with black paint. At the base of the machine stood something that looked like an iron mushroom, a little more than a foot and a half high, and behind it there was a diagram of a stick man hitting the mushroom with the mallet. ARE YOU A WEAKLING OR A MUSCLE MAN? ONLY THE TRULY STRONG CAN RING THE BELL! was printed next to the diagram.

  Stuart looked around to check that no one had come into the room, and then he stepped forward, already feeling for a threepence in his pocket.

  According to the order of photos in the book from the library, the movie theater toffee machine should come first.

  He pushed the coin into the slot and pulled the lever. There was a brief rattling sound and then the slither of something coming down a chute, and a loud thud as it reached the bottom. He reached in and removed a small paper bag. Inside it was a solid, slightly sticky clump of toffees, immovably welded together by heat and time. Hurriedly, Stuart had another feel around inside the hole, but there was nothing else there.

  Shoving the bag into his pocket, he took out another threepence and moved quickly across to the machine on the right, the one that dispensed bicycle tire repair kits.

  And then he paused, reaching out a disbelieving hand. The slot for the coins had been covered with a thin strip of metal. It was held tightly in place by two large screws. Desperately, uselessly, he pried at them with his fingernails. He could have yelled in frustration.

  Suddenly, he remembered the tools in the Victorian room. He ducked under the rope again and raced back there.

  It was empty of visitors. The tools were fixed to the wall in fan-shaped arrangements. He could see a display of hammers and one of chisels, and finally, with a leap of the heart, he spotted an entire array of screwdrivers of different sizes, with age-darkened blades and smooth wooden handles.

  They were just out of his reach.

  He stood on tiptoe, but they were still too high for him so he looked around for something to stand on and saw that the large fake milkmaid was seated on a three-legged stool.

  She was fixed in a sitting position, so he lifted her up (she was surprisingly heavy) and propped her headfirst against a wagon wheel. Then he grabbed the stool and climbed onto it. He could now reach the screwdrivers. Each was fastened to the wall with a pair of plastic loops. He pulled at the handle of one of the largest. The loops snapped easily—far more easily than he’d expected—and he found himself wavering backward, stepping into midair, sticking out a hand to break his fall.

  And what broke his fall was the milkmaid’s backside. She lurched forward, shoving the wagon wheel with her head, and at that exact moment the curator and Stuart’s father entered the room.

  Stuart, lying on his back, clutching the screwdriver, could see exactly what was going to happen, and he could do nothing, nothing to stop it.

  The wheel trundled across the room and hit the cow, the cow leaned on the blacksmith, the blacksmith toppled onto the horse, and the horse keeled over sideways, hitting the floor with the most enormous crash. There was another smaller crash as one of its back legs dropped off, and then a final, tiny clatter as it lost an ear.

  The silence seemed to go on and on.

  “Hello, Dad,” said Stuart.

  CHAPTER 20

  Stuart and his father didn’t talk much on the way home.

  Stuart hadn’t been able to think of a believable explanation for the horse-smashing incident, so he had simply said, “I’m really, really sorry,” to the curator and, “It was an accident,” both of which statements were true.

  His father had silently written out a check.

  The curator had stood in the front entrance and watched them leave. He hadn’t actually said, “Go away, you disgusting vandal and never darken these doors again,” but he might as well have done so.

  Halfway home, it started to rain heavily.

  “I really am really, really sorry, Dad,” said Stuart, dripping, as they turned the corner onto Beech Road.

  “I know you are,” said his father. But he looked worried, as well as soaked. When they got into the house, Stuart saw him pick up the phone right away.

  Stuart went to his room and flopped on the bed. He felt exhausted. He had wrecked the museum and humiliated his father, and all he had to show for it was a bag of inedible toffee.

  He took it out of his pocket and looked at it.

  He’d been certain that each of the museum machines would provide him with a number, but what number could he extract from an unmarked paper bag containing a large brown lump—one huge toffee where there had once been a handful?

  And then, all of a sudden, he seemed to hear a chirpy voice: You put in threepence and you got a little bag full. Always exactly the same number of toffees. Lorna, the woman in the blue glasses at the bingo hall, had told him that. And then her friend, Vi, had chipped in with the precise number. A dozen. She’d said a dozen!

  So if the first number was twelve, and he had to guess at the other two, how many goes at the safe would it take before he got the combination right? He fetched his calculator, tapped out 29 × 29, and groaned. That was still far too many. And in less than a week’s time, Uncle Tony’s house would be demolished, and the safe lost forever, crushed under tons of rubble.

  He had to sneak back into the museum. Secretly.

  He had to sneak back, undo a couple of screws on one machine, and then swing an enormous great hammer in order to ring a very large bell on the other. Secretly.

  And if he didn’t manage it he would never find the workshop, and more than that, he would never find out what had happened to Great-Uncle Tony or to Lily.

  It was then that he remembered the scrapbook Leonora had given him. He reached down and pulled it out from under his bed, brushing dust balls from the cover.

  He looked again at the first photograph, of Great-Uncle Tony holding the threepences, and then he began to turn the pages. The first few pictures
were all of children: of Lily, presumably, and her little sister Leonora, of Tony and his big brother Ray— Lily and Tony always grinning, fighting, shouting, jumping, a blur of energy and action, Leonora always holding a book, looking shyly at the camera from behind thick spectacles, Ray always serious and slightly disapproving.

  Photograph followed photograph; gradually the children grew up. The boys acquired mustaches, Lily smoked a daring cigarette, Leonora held up a certificate from Saint Cuthbert’s Training College, showing that she’d qualified as a teacher. There were flyers from Tony’s magic shows and ecstatic reviews of his performances, and pictures of Lily in glamorous costumes, and on the final page of the book, crumpled and slightly torn, was the yellowed newspaper clipping that had fallen onto the road the day before.

  Stuart smoothed it out. It was the top half of a page from the Beeton Advertiser of September 1940.

  It showed a photograph of Great-Uncle Tony and Lily, holding hands and grinning hugely at the camera. He was wearing a tin helmet with a W on the front, and she was in nurse’s uniform.

  BEETON CELEBRITY TO MARRY

  “Teeny-Tiny” Tony Horten and his lovely assistant Lily Vickers pose together after announcing their engagement. Speaking to our reporter yesterday, Mr. Horten (who is also a volunteer air-raid warden for the Beeton Park area) said—

  Stuart heard a soft noise, like a sharp click. And then another. And another. Stuart hauled himself up and went over to the window. April Kingley was standing on the sidewalk holding a handful of pebbles.

  “Go away,” he mouthed through the glass.

  She shook her head and threw another one.

  Stuart opened the window. “What do you want?” he asked as rudely as possible.

  “Did you know you’re being watched?” asked April.

  “Yes,” he said. “By you.”

  She shook her head. “Seriously. There’s a man about forty years old, a bit fat, dressed in green trousers, with no distinguishing features apart from a white dove that keeps flapping around wherever he’s hiding. Which is currently behind the hedge at number twenty-two. He turned up not long after you got home covered in mud again. And then when you went off with your dad a bit later, he was sneaking along about fifty feet behind. Incidentally, why were you covered in mud for the second day in a row?”