Time at the Top

by Edward Ormondroyd

  The scent of flowers was very strong.

  She stepped out of the elevator in a daze. Yes, there was a clock, a grandfather one, with hunting scenes painted on its porcelain face. The sunlight came through a window to the right of the elevator. It was a funny kind of window, very tall and narrow, with two sets of curtains: straight-hanging white lace framed by drawn-back red velvet. It was open; all the strange scents and sounds were coming through it with the sunlight, irresistibly drawing her to investigate. She leaned her elbows on the sill and stared out, filling her lungs with warm sweet air and murmuring, “Oh my.” She had never been any closer to the country than the seaside resort in New Jersey where her father took her during summer vacation. But this was countryside, all right: she could just tell, even though all she could see was a portion of hedged-in garden. The hedge was a tall tangle of roses and privet and honeysuckle. Hydrangeas grew under the window, lifting their pale blue pompons to the sill. The grass was badly in need of cutting, and had flowers growing in it. The base of one of the huge trees on the lawn was encircled by a white-painted iron settee.

  ‘I’m dreaming, that’s all there is to it,’ she thought. ‘I’ve fallen asleep over the newspaper. It’s like Alice in Wonderland. I’ll probably try to get into the garden, but the door will be too small, or the golden key will be lost, or something, and there’ll be a little bottle with a label saying “Drink Me,” and a White Rabbit — no, it’s a black cat.’ For a large black tom had emerged from the hedge, and was plowing nose-first through the grass like a ship through waves. The bird abruptly ceased its singing, and began to scold: “Mew! Mew!” ‘A bird mewing like a cat?’ she wondered. ‘Maybe the cat sings like a bird … Oh well, pretty soon Mrs. Clutchett’ll poke me with her broom and say, “C’mon, Susie, help me set the table.” ’

  “Maw-w-w-!” said a cow in the distance; and she wondered why she should dream that. ‘Very realistic of me,’ she thought.

  The elevator door sighed, and trundled shut.

  “No, wait!” she gasped. “Ow!” Springing back from the window, she cracked her head against the sash. Her eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t dreaming — no dream could hurt like that. Through the blur she saw that the elevator was gone. There was no door in the wall. Solid, unbroken wood paneling!

  ‘Oh no, oh no!’ she thought in a panic, searching for the button.

  “Vicky!” a woman’s voice called. “Vicky?”

  Someone was coming. There was no button on the wall, and not enough time to recall the elevator anyhow. But she had no business being here! Quick! Where? The red curtains! She slipped behind the nearest one, and squeezed herself as thin as she could. Fortunately they reached all the way to the floor.

  The footsteps came down the hallway, and with them a curious rustling sound as of long skirts. She could not resist a quick peek. What she saw made her catch her breath. It was a lovely, tall, slender woman with masses of rich chestnut hair piled on her head. Susan, always susceptible to beautiful ladies, felt her heart go out to this one at once: ‘That’s what I want to be like when I grow up,’ she thought. And the woman must be an actress, too. Why else would she be in costume? She had on a grey dress whose skirt came down to the floor; it had a lot of material draped around the hips, but was tightly fitted from the waist up. All she needed was make-up to be ready to step out before the footlights.

  “Vicky?” she called again, stopping by the grandfather clock.

  “What’s the matter, Mama?” Now a girl came running down the hallway from the opposite direction. She was slightly taller than Susan; her hair was a dark coppery brown, and fell in waves below her shoulders. She wore a dress similar to her mother’s except that the skirt was shorter, and black cotton stockings.

  “I just heard the strangest noise somewhere around here!” said the woman in a puzzled voice. “Did you hear anything?”

  “No, I was talking with Maggie. What kind of noise?”

  “Well, it’s hard to say — a kind of rumble, I think it was, and then a thump …”

  “Oh, I expect it was just Toby. Shall I look for him?”

  “No, I don’t think … it sounded like something rolling or sliding. And then a very distinct thump, like — oh, like a bird flying against the window.”

  “It must have been Toby, chasing that catbird — they hate each other so.”

  “I suppose you’re right … Well, I’m sorry I disturbed you for nothing.”

  “Oh, Mama. Maggie says supper is almost ready anyway. Doesn’t the honeysuckle smell just glorious?”

  “Mm, lovely.”

  They moved off down the hallway with their arms about each other.

  “Mama, everything outside is getting so jungly. Why don’t we have a gardener in?”

  “Well, dear,” Susan thought the woman’s voice was a little evasive, “suppose we wait just a bit longer. Mr. Branscomb is coming tomorrow afternoon about the investments, and after he’s gone I’ll think about it …” Their voices faded down the end of the hall.

  ‘Well, that’s funny,’ Susan thought. ‘I never saw either of them before. If they lived up here I would have seen them in the elevator.’ It had come to her that part of the seventh floor must have been converted into a very realistic stage set, and that the woman and the girl had been rehearsing their parts in a play. But no, that couldn’t be it. No stage set that she had ever seen was so realistic that you could hear cows and smell flowers and feel the warmth of sunlight. And if this were the seventh floor of the apartment building, why hadn’t the woman recognized the sound of the elevator? That rumbling sigh was unmistakable after you’d heard it once … Well, it was all very queer. Even as a dream it would have been the strangest she’d ever had.

  She crept out from behind the curtain and began to look for the button again. If that elevator could come up here once — wherever “here” was — it could come up again. But there was no button. And while she was still peering and poking helplessly along the wainscotting she heard the sound of running feet approaching. This time she lost her head. She darted toward the window curtains, changed her mind and stepped back, glanced desperately about for a better hiding place, and at last, without a second to spare, threw her leg over the windowsill and dropped down the other side — falling through the hydrangeas with a tremendous thrashing and crackling. ‘Good grief, what a racket!’ she thought; ‘like an elephant! I hope the bushes cover me.’

  Apparently they did, for the girl’s voice said, right over her, “All right, you naughty Toby cat! Breaking the bushes! Just wait till I catch you, that’s all! And if I don’t, Bobbie will tomorrow, and then see if you don’t regret the day you were born!”

  ‘Now I’ve really done it,’ Susan sighed when Vicky had gone. ‘Although I suppose I could go to the front door and say, “Pardon me, but there’s an elevator in your house that you don’t know about, and I have to use it.” No, no — all that explaining … It’s hard enough to explain when you know what you’re explaining. I certainly don’t have any idea of what this is all about. Well, I’ll just have to wait till it’s dark, and sneak in, and try to get that darned elevator up somehow. Poor Daddy’ll worry when I don’t show up for dinner. And Mrs. Clutchett will be snorting around and making things worse … How am I ever going to explain this to anybody without making them think I’ve gone absolutely insane …?’

  She might as well make herself comfortable for the wait. She snuggled down in the litter of dry leaves, murmuring, “What a day! What a stupid impossible crazy day! I should’ve stuffed my ears with cotton and gone back to bed and stayed there this morning.” Wrapped in blankets, impervious to noise — the idea began to make her feel drowsy. The air was as warm as her own bedclothes; the stirring bushes lulled and hushed, more comfortable to the ear even than silence. ‘It is a dream, really,’ she thought, yawning. ‘I hope I can remember it to tell Daddy …’

  6. The Meaning of Three

  It was dark when she awakened. ‘They’ve let me sleep throug
h dinner,’ she thought. Why should they do that? “Daddy?” she said. There was no answer. Something crackled under her as she shifted.

  Then she remembered. It wasn’t a dream after all.

  She crawled out from under the hydrangeas as quietly as she could, and stood up on the lawn, and then caught her breath with wonder. The sky was ablaze with stars. Where had they all come from? She had never seen more than a few score, feebly competing with the city’s neon; here they were beyond imagining in number. ‘Why, that must be the Milky Way!’ she thought, recognizing that glowing swath overhead from a picture in one of her science textbooks. And in gazing up at it she discovered something else that the city would never have let her find out. The night sky could be heard. It was like the sound of the sea in a shell, only much fainter, as though it had come to her straining ears from as far away as the dimmest star.

  There were other sounds too. The grass was full of crickets, who were chirping and rustling as they moved about through the stems, so that the whole lawn whispered with them. She was sure she heard frogs nearby. And suddenly in the distance a train said, “Way a wayyy oh-h-h-h-h,” sweet crescendo, sad diminuendo.

  ‘If I lived here,’ she thought, ‘I’d never go to bed, never. I’d just sit outside all night and look and listen …’

  But she simply had to go back: her father would be worried sick by now, and furious with her for making him worry. All the windows of the house were dark. It was a very large house, she noticed now, tall and narrow and with a profile reminiscent of a castle. She would just have to hope that everyone was asleep, and that she could find an unlocked door. Slowly she began to grope her way through the shadows.

  ‘Wish there was more moon,’ she thought after five minutes of blundering. ‘There seem to be hedges all over the place. Ouch! Thorns. Well, here’s an opening. That sounds like frogs — must be a pond nearby.’

  She was right. At the next step there was no ground under her foot; she sprawled forward clutching at the air, and slosh! — she was under. Fortunately the water was only waist-deep, and she was on her feet again immediately. The bottom was squdgy. Something cold and soft slithered across her bare knees. She shuddered, and scrambled up the stone bank.

  “They’ll all be ruined,” she muttered, taking off her clothes and wringing them out. “Stupid place for a pond!” But she didn’t want to stand about naked while they dried, so she put them on again. They clung to her, and her shoes squelched with every step. It was a good thing that the weather was so warm. What if it had been March here too? The very memory of the wind and sleet she had left behind — how long ago now? — made her shiver.

  In another ten minutes she was clear of the hedges and shrubbery, and had found a flight of wooden stairs against the dark bulk of the house. She crept up them one step at a time, testing each tread for squeaks; and thank goodness! there was a door at the top, with a handle that turned easily and quietly.

  ‘Now,’ she thought, standing in the interior darkness, ‘which side of the house am I on? I’m all mixed up. This might even be the wrong floor … I know, I’ll listen for the grandfather clock. It was near the elevator.’

  Room after room, all caves of shadow; windows that pretended to be doorways; doors that hid themselves in the darkest corners; sharp-cornered furniture everywhere. She groped along inch by inch, hardly daring to put her hands out for fear of knocking something over, and wincing at every move for fear of striking her face against some unseen projection. She could not hear the clock anywhere.

  Eventually she found herself at the foot of a staircase. She felt her way across the bottom stair; encountered the newel post, all knobby with carving; felt her way around that, and met a table top; put her hand on something cold that gave under her touch; and crash! — the sound of a metal object bouncing on the floor. Not very loud, actually, but loud enough.

  She crouched, suffocating.

  A door opened softly upstairs. Pause. Then a whisper: “Toby!”

  Pause.

  “Toby?”

  “Meow!” said Susan, with all the realism she could muster.

  A long heart-pounding silence; then the upstairs door softly closed again.

  She remained motionless for a few more minutes, to make sure that all was quiet above, then straightened up. Suddenly, somewhere to her left, a sweet melancholy chime struck the quarter hour.

  ‘There it is!’ she thought, sagging with relief. As quickly as the dark permitted she went toward the sound, discovered a doorway, and — yes! it was the hallway, all right. Up ahead was the dim patch of light that must be the window, and beyond it she heard the clock solemnly knocking each passing second on the head with its pendulum.

  ‘Now for the button — there must be a button.’

  She began to run her fingers over the wainscotting. There was no button. The wood seemed to be glowing somehow. Brighter and brighter — her shadow loomed and wavered on the paneling—

  She whirled around.

  There stood Vicky in a nightgown, holding a trembling candle aloft and staring at her round-eyed with fright. She seemed on the verge of screaming.

  Susan hissed, “Now don’t yell or do anything silly! I’m not a ghost.”

  “Are — are you a burglar’s accomplice?” Vicky faltered.

  “Of course not. I’m just lost, that’s all. Soon as I can find the elevator I’ll go away. Do you know where the button is?”

  Vicky stepped backward. “Button? What button?”

  “The elevator button. Oh, I forgot — you don’t know about the elevator, do you? Look, I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I’m not crazy, really. Why do you keep staring at me like that?”

  “Your clothes.”

  “Well, what’s the matter with them? They’re just wet, that’s all. I fell in your pond.”

  “It’s not the wet …”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Susan burst out after a moment’s silence. “You act like I was a freak or something!”

  “It’s your clothes,” said Vicky. “They’re the oddest I ever saw.”

  “Well, that nightgown of yours is pretty hilarious, too,” Susan retorted. “And what about those dresses you and your mother were wearing this afternoon? I never saw such funny old-fashioned clothes in all my life.”

  “Why, they are not old-fashioned! Mama just bought that dress a month ago!”

  “You mean for a play? Is she going to be in a play?”

  “No, of course not — just to wear. Don’t you know what people wear?”

  “Certainly I know what people wear!” Susan said in exasperation. “And I know perfectly well that people don’t wear clothes like that any more. In the Gay Nineties, maybe, but not in 1960.”

  The other girl retreated a step, and the candle shook violently in her hand. “I think you’re mad. I didn’t say anything about 1960. I mean right now. This year.”

  “What do you mean, this year?” said Susan, beginning to feel a bit frightened. “I’m talking about this year. It’s 1960.”

  Vicky shook her head.

  “Well then, for goodness sake, what year is it?”

  “Don’t you really know? It’s 1881, of course.”

  “Oh!” Susan gasped. The shape of the house! The design of the dresses! The funny curtains by the window! All the oddities she had noticed in the last few hours clicked into place in her mind. “Eighteen — eighteen — oh no! What’s happened? Where am I? What street are we on?”

  “Street? It’s not a street, it’s a country road.”

  “All right, all right, but what’s it called?”

  “Ward Lane.”

  Well, that sounded right — or almost right. “But where’s the city?”

  “Don’t you know? It’s about five miles from here.”

  “Five miles!” Susan moaned, clutching her head. “Oh, am I lost! Am I ever lost! Listen — when I got on the elevator I was in the city, on Ward Street, and it was 1960!”

  “Nonsense,” Vicky said
faintly. “Things like that can’t happen.”

  “I know they can’t! Look, I don’t want to argue: I just want to go back. I’m here whether it can happen or n—” Striking herself dramatically at the word here, she felt something hard in the pocket of her skirt. “Look!” she continued excitedly, “I can prove it — about being from the twentieth century, I mean. You know about dimes and quarters, don’t you? Well, here, look at the dates. Oh, go on, take them, I’m not going to hurt you!”

  Vicky hesitantly took the coins and held them close to the candle flame. “What funny designs they have! Oh! This one says 1953! 1945! 1960 — oh, my goodness! 1960! You — maybe you are from the twentieth century. But it’s impos — how could you possibly get here?”

  “I’ve been telling you, I came in the elevator. Do you know what an elevator is?”

  “We may live in the country,” Vicky said, “but we are not backward.”

  “All right, I’m sorry. I didn’t know whether they’d been invented yet. Anyway, I got on this elevator where I live, just across the hall, and it let me out here instead of where I thought I was going, and then it went down again and I can’t call it back. You know, I’m beginning to think the stupid thing wants me to be here.”

  Vicky gave a sudden start. “Wants you to be here?”

  “Oh, I know it sounds silly — it is silly. I just can’t think why —”

  “No,” Vicky whispered. “No. It isn’t silly.” Her eyes were widening again, and the candle in her hand shook so much that it almost guttered out. “I just remembered something. The well! It must be the — yes, it has to be! It worked! Look, you don’t have to go back right away, do you?”

  “Well, I ought —”

  “Look,” Vicky interrupted with growing excitement, catching Susan by the sleeve, “you can’t go back now, I simply must talk with you. Really, it’s essential. Come up to my — are you hungry? I’ll get something to eat. And we’ll have to get those wet clothes off you. Oh, my heavens, talk about —! I was right, I was right — it’s perfectly true, Maggie doesn’t know what she’s talking about! Here, wait, don’t move a step, I’ll be right back!”