The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts (24 page)

Earnestine found her voice: “You can’t be me?”

“Really? Why not?”

“Because… you’re nothing like me.”

“I’m older, lost some of my puppy fat, and clearly I’ve grown up, but we’re the same.”

“Ness,” Georgina put her hand on her sister’s arm, “she does look like you, the same sharp nose and red hair.”

Earnestine snatched her arm away: “I don’t have a sharp nose.”

“I prefer regal,” said Mrs Frasier, touching the sharp edge with her index finger.

She considered the three young ladies in front of her and she felt happy. It was such a pleasant experience to see them again, all together, and the need for pretence gone.

“Well, I’ll leave you three alone as I have duties. Thank you for the tea,” Mrs Frasier said. “I remember… so long ago. It’s like one of those fairground exhibits – the Hall of Mirrors. Do you remember them? Of course you do. They make you thin or fat or like an hour glass or… young again.”

“Or old,” Earnestine managed to say.

“I’d forgotten that part of the conversation until now.”

Mrs Frasier nodded and then walked away closing the drawing room door behind her.

“We’ll be going then, Ma’am?” Scrutiniser Jones asked.

“Yes, indeed,” Mrs Frasier said. She put her finger to her lips and then shooed the big man away. He cottoned on. Bright man, she thought, despite his ogre–like frame.

Once the Peelers had gone out through the ruined porch, Mrs Frasier tip–toed back to the drawing room door to listen.

Earnestine was whining: “She can’t be me, oh Gina!”

“She’s as bossy as you,” said Charlotte, brightly. Silly girl, Mrs Frasier thought, she’d have to have words with her as it wasn’t ‘bossy’, just ‘forceful’… but later, when the ramifications of her identity had had time to settle in.

“Lottie! Can’t you see Ness has had a shock?”

Ah, yes, Gina, always the caring diplomat. She remembered… but that was a long time ago, a long, long time ago when she was young.

“Shall I get the brandy?”

“Lottie.”

She heard Earnestine wail loudly.

Young and silly, she thought: a little girl of a mere twenty years, but destined – she smiled to herself at this thought – for greatness.

Was that pride?

Mrs Frasier decided to leave them to it and slipped away.

Scrutiniser Jones held the carriage door open and then Checker Rogers whipped the horses into a canter. They sped through London, not openly yet, but that would come. Soon, very soon.

Their posters were up, bold and decisive, with striking images of noble men looking to the distance and towards a brave new future. Boys and men had been employed to travel round with buckets of glue and brushes pasting their message over adverts and exhortations to visit the theatre or the music hall. True, some had been defaced, but the inexorable tide of words would win through.

Mrs Frasier’s ‘certain matters’ were waiting for her when she reached her new office. There was something refined about the Houses of Parliament, a wood panelled room had been set aside for her with an oak desk complete with green leather surface. There was something positively British about oak. It reeked with the centuries of polishing, a perfume of power.

Her lists were ready on her desk. All these troublesome individuals with their dissenting opinions enumerated in fine ink, a beautiful hand, in neat columns and arranged in alphabetical order: title, name, letters and occupation. A few had a note appended: these were always the first to consider. The ink well on the desk was stocked with fine red vermilion and Mrs Frasier would dip her pen, flick, and then write a single letter.

‘A’ meaning ‘Arrest’.

When she’d finished, she used a wooden rocking blotter dry the ink. She always pondered the little ‘A’s imprinted on the underside of the absorbent paper like so many squashed insects. It was satisfying to do something properly: everything in its place and a place for everything.

The book was shut, the Chief Examiner came and took it away and then, somewhere, all the Peelers went to work, scurrying hither and thither, and thus the names turned into cowering men each pleading ignorance as a defence as they were taken to the Battersea Conveyor Terminal and whisked away.

‘A’ was for ‘Apple’, a bad apple, and soon the insidious cancer would be cut away for good.

Once that was done, there was the rebuilding: suffrage, voting rights, an end to poverty, health improvements, education and so on and so forth. She knew that she would never finish the task she had set herself. Saving the world was not something one did, collected the medal and then had tea: it was a vocation.

It would be never ending, but they had made a good start: out with the old.

She leant back and the leather of her chair squeaked. She allowed herself a thin cigar, letting the swirling smoke rise to its limits and spread across the ceiling. Outside a ship sounded its horn with a bellowing cry like a bull walrus claiming its territory – commerce. This was the centre, the very axle around which the British Empire turned. Ships sailed and steamed from here all over the world, a world where the sun never set. From this very room messages were influencing Whitehall, soon London, England, the Empire… and the World, why not?

But Rome was not built in a day.

This New World would take decades to construct and she would not live to see it flower. Like those great men of old, who planted trees so that later generations could enjoy an elm lined avenue they themselves would never walk along, or men who designed great cathedrals that they knew they would not live to worship within; so she, a mere woman, would not live to see this bold future, except through the eyes of some bronze statue cast to keep her memory alive.

However, she knew that she could hand the baton on, so to speak, into safe hands.

She smiled, letting the tobacco calm her raging blood. It was delicious. All this effort and finally – and worth savouring – here was this moment of triumph to enjoy with a deep satisfaction.

In the oil paintings around the room, crusty old men stared down at her from the past – disapproving, she thought – and, although they were great statesmen, generals and thinkers, they were all men. She had a picture of a woman on her wall in the future: Boudicca. She would replace these pictures here with those of Cleopatra, Marie Curie, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and…

She laughed aloud.

“Earnestine Deering–Dolittle,” she announced to the empty room.

When she was older, much older, and the years had taken their inevitable toll, she would hand the reins of power to someone younger, but as equally deserving as herself.

Herself.

Miss Deering-Dolittle

Even though Earnestine was alone in her room, Mrs Frasier was staring right at her with an expression of disbelief.

Earnestine washed her face, cupped her hands in the bowl and washed it again and wanted to wash even more, but every time she looked up at the mirror she saw that woman. As her disquiet increased, despair clutched at her heart, so her features became more haggard, older, and then, even more so, Mrs Frasier glared back at her through the mist of moistened eyes.

I am a monster, Earnestine thought, the very person I mistrust – all my life I have been impatient to grow up, to be taken seriously, but all the time I have been striving to become Mrs Frasier.

One must pull oneself together.

Stiff upper lip.

Calm in a crisis.

When all about are losing their heads and blaming it on you… but it was her fault, she was Mrs Frasier. She was the one who arrested… would arrest Mister Boothroyd and Uncle Jeremiah.

No, she must trust herself when all men doubt… she’d be a man about it.

But she felt relegated to a lower form. All her hopes, her dreams of adventure – yes, that word – and expedition. They belonged to someone else. Her life was no longer her own, it had been usurped. Trumped.

She went back to the drawing room to face her sisters again. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you… she would be brave, she decided, and not let it show.

“Can I just ask,” said Charlotte. “Who’s Mister Frasier?”

Earnestine felt not just her lip, but her entire face tremble.

Mrs Arthur Merryweather

“Ness, sit down,” said Georgina taking hold of her sister. “That was a stupid thing to say, Charlotte.”

“Me?”

Earnestine made a strange sound, grief stricken: “No… some man is…”

“Marcus,” said Charlotte, brightly. “Some man called Marcus Frasier.”

Georgina struggled to hold her sister upright: “Ness, I think…”

But Earnestine knees gave way and she sat rather unceremoniously on the floor.

“There’s an obvious question,” Georgina said.

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “Who’s Marcus Frasier?”

“Oh no,” Earnestine wailed in a very un–Earnestine manner.

“Lottie, you’re not helping,” Georgina chided.

“I feel sick,” said Earnestine.

“You’re not in the bun club, are you?” Charlotte asked.

Georgina jerked back from her elder sister: “Charlotte, you are seriously out of order. Of course, she’s not in the ‘bun club’ as you so crudely put it. Clearly she can’t be as she isn’t married.”

“She is now,” Charlotte said, pointing at the door to indicate Mrs Frasier. “She’s married to Mister Frasier.”

“Lottie! She’s not said ‘yes’.”

“But Mrs Frasier has and aren’t laws retroactive now?”

“Lottie!”

“What’s the obvious question?” Earnestine asked.

Georgina couldn’t think. She felt utterly flustered.

“Will I be a bridesmaid?” Charlotte asked.

Georgina ignored her: “We have to find Uncle Jeremiah.”

“Isn’t he in the future?” Charlotte said. “We could go there. Use the Temporal Engine.”

“We could,” said Georgina. Earnestine looked pale; perhaps something to occupy her mind was just what was needed. “Couldn’t we? Ness? You’re in charge of the Derring–Do Club.”

Earnestine’s retort was without expression: “Mrs Frasier is now the ranking officer.”

“Ness?”

“If I was supposed to, then Mrs Frasier… I’d have told myself.”

“You might meet Marcus Frasier?” Charlotte suggested.

Earnestine glared at Charlotte.

“Perhaps we’re meant to,” Georgina said quickly.

“We have to do something,” Earnestine agreed.

“That’s the spirit.”

“We could talk to Captain Caruthers.”

“Yes, that would be sensible,” Georgina agreed. “The men will know what to do.”

“That wasn’t quite what I meant.”

Charlotte had an idea: “Perhaps Captain Caruthers knows Marcus Frasier.”

“Oh do be quiet, Lottie!” Georgina shouted.

“I was only trying to help.”

“Perhaps, Lottie, you should stay here,” said Georgina.

“No,” Earnestine said, “otherwise she might run away and join the French Foreign Legion or a bordello. Or we might discover that she’s our great grandmother.”

“That’s settled then,” said Georgina, “we’ll ask the men.”

They collected their bags and Earnestine’s umbrella, and set off.

Their assumption was that Captain Caruthers would be at his Club, or at least they’d have information as to his whereabouts, and a Hansom dropped them off outside. The front of the building was like a Greek temple and inside the lobby was the most austere of libraries, lit by shafts of sunlight from a skylight and with a silence that stunned the motes of dust floating in the air into immobility. The Porter behind his desk considered them as both unwelcome and unbelievable.

“Good day,” Earnestine began, but a ‘shhh’ of a finger raise made her quiet. He pointed to the exit.

Earnestine stood and folded her arms.

He pointed again.

“We are here–”

This was too much and he quickly shuffled them across the marble floor to a room marked ‘Ladies Drawing Room’. It was a waiting room with chairs with backs designed to make sitting with a bustle difficult and persuasively suggesting that a ‘message left’ would be more beneficial than a ‘female waiting’.

“Captain Caruthers, please,” Earnestine said.

“He may be in.”

“He is in.”

“I will check.”

“If you check and come back to say he isn’t here,
then we will check.
”

The man’s expression of utter horror was a brief picture before he fled.

A clock ticked with an interval that seemed far too long for a mere second.

Captain Caruthers came in smartly, followed by Lieutenant McKendry.

“Miss Deering–Dolittle, Mrs Merryweather, Miss Charlotte, how can I be of service?”

“You know about matters,” Earnestine said.

“I beg your pardon.”

“I was away for five days and you were… consorting with Temporal Peelers, so we have questions.”

“Yes,” said Charlotte. “For instance, do you know Marc–
Ow!”

Georgina smiled sweetly at the Captain as if she had done absolutely nothing untoward.

“Is there somewhere we can go to discuss matters?” Earnestine asked.

Captain Caruthers hesitated: “This is the Ladies Drawing Room.”

Earnestine simply waited.

“There’s the Wellington Room,” McKendry said. “Ted’s the porter.”

“Mac, they are young ladies… oh, very well.”

They went back into the hallway. Ted the Porter had their gloves and umbrella ready in a jiffy, so he was wrong–footed when they went up the wide flight of stairs.

“Just taking them to the Wellington,” said Caruthers breezily, “don’t worry, it’ll all become legal in 1920 or so, I expect.”

“Captain,” said Ted, “Lord Farthing–”

“Yes, we’ll be out before his cronies arrive.”

The Wellington Room had a number of red leather arm chairs clumped around small tables under the watchful eye of the Iron Duke himself, who stared down from a tall portrait over the mantelpiece. Caruthers directed them away from the door and across the open space of the marble floor to an area behind a display cabinet. Charlotte gazed up in wonder at all the weapons and military exhibits.