The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts (6 page)

They had been all the way round, so there was only one item left to ask about.

“And the hansom cab?”

“Oh, its driver’s number changes with this dial, it releases firecrackers to spook any pursuers’ horses and, see this, whatever you do don’t press it. You won’t believe what it does…”

Boothroyd carried on explaining this, that and the quite astounding other, until Earnestine couldn’t widen her eyes any more. When the tour was over, they made their way back to the office.

Earnestine tidied away the cups and saucers.

“Well, my dear?” Boothroyd asked.

“I think we are going to have to start from scratch.”

Boothroyd sighed: “Yes, that’s what we do every time.”

“Where to start?”

Boothroyd shook his head as if this was the great mystery of life.

So, Earnestine rolled up her sleeves as it were and set to. Although this smacked of domestic chores, rather than secretarial duties, Earnestine was not afraid of hard work. The first task, she decided, was to generate some space, so she attacked the massive pile in the centre of the room. Sure enough, she soon revealed a double–sized mahogany desk with a green leather inlay, three drawers on the end of each column making twelve in total. Underneath, she found an upholstered swivelling chair that matched the desk and, around the other side, one in red leather that most certainly didn’t. The room boasted many other piles, so perhaps there was a second desk hidden away.

Meanwhile, Boothroyd himself, spurred on by Earnestine’s attitude, moved some papers from the kitchen to a pile by the door. When he turned round, he gave a delighted cry of wonderment at the revelation of the desk.

“My dear, what can I say? This is just a perfect place for this stack here.”

He picked up the very pile that Earnestine had generated when she’d cleared the desk.

“No, no,” she cried. “They came from there… there is something you can do, and only you.”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Could you, perhaps, identify what we don’t need and dispose of it?”

“Dispose of it!?”

“Yes.”

Boothroyd sniggered at the prodigious thought: “We could have a little bonfire.”

“Surely we can’t let these go outside.”

“You are right, of course. Indeed, there are items, here in this pile, that even you should not see – state secrets. I’ll put… this knight on top to guard them.”

Boothroyd placed a large pewter paperweight, a knight on a horse stabbing a lance into a dragon, on to a small pile by the corner.

“One can move it from there though?”

“Of course, my dear, but no peeking.”

“We could denote other piles with various weights like this… flat iron. Why is there a flat iron here?”

“It holds the–”

But the kitchen door had already slammed shut.

“Sorry,” said Earnestine, but she left the door closed and put the flat iron down upon –
ah ha
– domestic items, perfect. “And the papers we don’t need?”

“We could burn them in the fireplace.”

Earnestine stopped, looked around at each wall in turn: “Fireplace?”

“So long ago, my dear, I can’t remember.”

After dithering, Earnestine looked at the ceiling. There were no papers stacked downwards, Newton’s Law of Gravity saw to that, and so the outline of the room was visible. Sure enough, on the East wall, there was a chimney breast and below, hidden between ‘Chemistry’ and ‘Metric’, she uncovered a fireplace complete with scuttle, poker, brush, tongs, bellows and stand. The fire dog was already rammed with paper ready to burn.

“We could toast muffins,” Boothroyd suggested.

“Have you identified anything that can be burnt?”

“I’m not keen on this.”

“But Mister Boothroyd, if we don’t–” and then Earnestine bit her tongue as she realised why this place was in such a dreadful state: the man was unable to throw anything away.

So she rolled up her mental shirt sleeves, put on her psychological apron and set to work on that problem too.

Mrs Arthur Merryweather

Georgina was hurtling towards her future and the scene that whizzed past her window was one of utter devastation, a sprawling landscape of brown bogs, jutting rocks and skeletal trees bent over by the incessant wind. Dotted here and there were the remains of stone structures, archaeological sites that harked back to a more primitive and ancient time, perhaps the very era when those fossil skeletons of monsters in the Museum of Natural History were clothed in flesh and roamed the moors looking for prey.

Georgina shuddered.

The train joggled from side to side as it went over some points.

She picked up her copy of the Times as a distraction, but the stories of some future calamity held no interest given that she was plunging back to some semi–prehistoric realm.

She’d chosen this fate simply by embarking on a train at Paddington Station, but it wasn’t what she wanted.

She wanted Arthur, her husband, and not some ancient pile in the middle of nowhere, but poor Arthur was lost to her, and, dressed in her widow’s weeds, she was rushing further and further from civilisation. It was hateful, but she would bear it.

In her travelling bag, she had her documentation: a letter from the Merryweather solicitors, Tumble, Judd & Babcock, and her marriage certificate. She hadn’t been interested in the slightest by the description of the property. There was a stipend to claim too. All this was hers, but only if she came to Magdalene Chase in person.

She cared not a jot, she kept telling herself, but the solicitor, Mister Judd, must have known something of the Deering–Dolittle family curse for he had included an item that simply could not be resisted, something that had to be unfolded and pored over, something that needed to be examined in great detail. In short, he had enclosed a map.

So she had resolved many times to put it aside, while she consulted her reference books, traced the railway lines and made careful plans. She’d not shown it to her sisters, because this was hers and hers alone. She often felt she’d lost everything when Arthur was taken from her, so every item of his was all the more precious.

Arthur’s big pocket–watch said half–past four, not long now, but it would be dark when she reached Magdalene Chase. She consulted her
Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide
as if somehow the information would have magically changed to let her arrive at Tenning Halt earlier.

It had not.

So much for that sixpence, she thought. She closed the yellow covers and put it back into her travelling bag.

Another reason she hadn’t told Earnestine or Charlotte, of course, was to save them from any adventure. Earnestine had her new position in a government department and a chance to further the cause of suffrage by example, and Charlotte was enrolled, after much difficulty because of her references, in a new school and she, above everything else, had to learn.

The landscape around the train darkened and looked even more desolate and uninviting. Zebediah Row was firmly in the past.

“Tickets please.”

Georgina dutifully dug out her ticket for the Inspector. The train clattered and swayed at that moment causing the uniformed man to pitch somewhat.

“Tenning Halt,” he said, clipping the card and handing it back. “Next stop, Miss.”

“Oh…” Georgina started to stand.

“Not for a while yet. Stations hereabouts are much further apart than in London.”

“How did you know I was from London?”

“Your ticket Miss.”

“Of course, thank you.”

He moved on: “Tickets please, tickets please…”

The Inspector came back ten minutes before the time Bradshaw had predicted for their arrival.

“There’s no–one to help you, Miss?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“On your own then?”

“I am.”

“You be careful at Tenning Halt.”

“I will, thank you.”

When the train came to a stop, the Inspector deftly manhandled her trunk out onto the platform. He had clearly been trained; Georgina, considering her difficulties with the wretched thing, found this ability quite extraordinary.

“Someone meeting you, Miss?”

“I sent a letter.”

He looked left and right: “There won’t be a porter here now, Miss.”

“I shall be fine.”

“Don’t be tempted to make the journey on your own,” he said. “The moors can be treacherous.”

“I’ll stay here until I’m collected,” she assured him with a smile.

He nodded and lifted his finger to his hat: “And keep away from Magdalene Chase.”

The comment baffled her for a moment, and then she realised it was pronounced ‘maudlin’ like the college in Oxford or Cambridge.

“Oh, Magdalene Chase,” she said. “Why?”

“It’s infested with pixies, Miss.”

And with that, he disappeared back into the bright, warm interior of the train carriage.

Georgina glanced around, nervous of the shadows.

The station sign was damaged, half of it ripped away in some storm: all that was left was ‘g Halt’. The clock above Platform 1 had stopped, frozen at 11:05 with no hint of whether it had been a morning or a night–time disaster.

The train door was only a few feet in front of her, tempting. She could go on to Exeter, Plymouth or Penzance, and then turn back to London and Kensington. She reached out with her gloved hand to the shining brass handle, but she was made of sterner stuff and resisted.

Finally, the train hissed like an angry serpent and jerked away into the night.

Georgina stood by her trunk, alone.

Miss Charlotte

Charlotte went along some filthy streets and across an area of rough ground. Men leered at her and women cackled from the doorway of a public house. There was a fight going on at one corner, three men attacking a fourth. It was rough and messy, and utterly unlike the heroic deeds of soldiers. The sooner she joined the French Foreign Legion and got out of this hell hole, the better, she thought.

It was dark when she reached the East India Docks. She thought it was probably better to go tomorrow and she thought of returning home, but no! She had run away and that was simply that. She simply had to stay the night somewhere.

As she passed a dark doorway, a sailor spat downwards and then spoke: “Evenin’ darlin’”

“Evening, Sir.”

“You give me a good time.”

“Good time… yes… sorry, but I don’t have a watch. I mean, I beg your pardon?”

The sailor made a coarse gesture, holding the front of his trousers.

“I think not, thank you, good day.”

Charlotte scuttled away and the sailor attempted to follow, but he was far too worse for wear, and stumbled over in that way that Uncle Edgar used to do when his face had turned all red.

She reached a house called ‘El Dorado’ which advertised proper beds. This would have to do.

She pulled the doorbell cord.

An elderly woman opened the door.

“Welcome, welcome,” she said over Charlotte’s head and then she lowered her sights: “What have we here?”

“Please Ma’am, I’m after a room.”

“We’re not that sort of establishment.”

“But it’s late and…”

“What about yer own pander?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Gentleman… Man anyway. Did he hit you? You don’t look hurt.”

Charlotte suddenly had a brainwave and showed the woman her right hand. The vivid red lines were still visible even in the weak gaslight.

“Fair enough. You obey the rules of the house?”

Rules – honestly – they were everywhere: “Of course, Ma’am.”

“I’m Madam Waggstaff: this is my gaff, my rules. It’s a crown to you a night, if you entertain, enough for gin, and you’ll like it. We charge the men three crowns. How old are you?”

Charlotte had money, so she thought she could afford a crown at least and she was glad for once that she wasn’t a man, although she didn’t understand why they were charged more.

“Fifteen,” she said.

“Fifteen!”

“No, I mean sixteen. Or eighteen?”

“That’s old.”

“Twelve.”

“Is that your final offer? Then twelve it is. At least you’ve got the right attitude,” she said, and she opened the door wide. “In you come.”

Charlotte bobbed under her outstretched arm and went inside.

“We’ll take your bag here,” Madam Waggstaff said, and she slipped it off Charlotte’s shoulder.

“Oh, but–”

“No buts. The others are in the drawing room.”

The drawing room was decorated in dark, red colours, dimly lit, and furnished with a chaise longue against each wall. There were four other girls present, who sat around looking sullen and dejected. They glanced up at the new arrival with some loathing.

“Hello, I’m Charlotte.”

“Charlie girl, sit here.”

“Charlotte,” Charlotte insisted as she sat on the edge of a chaise. It was precarious and uncomfortable.

Now that her eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, she saw that the others were all quite brazenly attired. They were clearly of a lower class. Even so, this was something she’d have to get used to in her new life as a soldier.

“I say,” Charlotte said in the way of an opener, “quite a queer sort of a place.”

One girl tried to focus on Charlotte: “Here,” she said. “Have some gin.”

“Jolly good of you,” said Charlotte. She took the proffered glass, turning it to drink from the clean side.

“Bottoms up,” said the girl.

Charlotte took a swig: it tasted of juniper berries and–

“Ahh!” she spat the burning liquid across the room. “It’s cough medicine.”

The girls all squawked with joy, coming to life for the first time since Charlotte’s arrival.

“Quiet!” It was Madam Waggstaff. “We have a Gentleman Caller.”

The girls sat upright, leaning forward and suddenly attentive, as Madam Waggstaff ushered in a portly gentleman with wide whiskers.

“Oh, Madam Waggstaff,” he chortled. “You wicked woman. Wicked, wicked, I see you have a new lovely.”

“Yes, this is… Desiree.”

Charlotte stood and offered her hand: “Charlotte.”

“Oh, and so forward and eager, I like that.”

There was a general groan from behind Charlotte, but Charlotte was used to other girls in class being stupid.