My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time

by Liz Jensen

  ‘To think that I hadn’t a clue what that other object was,’ I mused. ‘The mobile phone. Remember, Professor Krak? You must then have been as discombobulated as I, when you first encountered it’

  ‘I was indeed,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘Do you have one on you, Fergus, by any chance?’ he asked suddenly. ‘I have always meant to continue experimenting with communication across time, for there seems no good reason to me, epistemologically speaking, why this should not be possible, if the caller places himself correctly at the mouth of a Time-Sucker. I have not managed it before, but one never knows when one might be in luck.’

  ‘Och, with the best will in the world, I really can’t see how that would be possible,’ laughed Fergus gently, handing over his device. ‘It’s a compelling idea, Fred, but in reality …’

  But the older man was not to be contradicted. ‘You’re looking at it all wrong,’ he declared, switching on the mobile & waiting for a signal with evident expectation. ‘For time is actually more like space than it is like time, if you understand my drift. The fourth dimension, as it is called. I have read up a little on this matter since coming here: Hawking and Gott are the big names in your era. Clever people, but with all their talk of helixes & matter-anti-matter, they can’t see the wood for the trees! If they knew how much simpler it all was than they presume to transport oneself to the lonely saline seas of the Triassic Age! Anyway, dear boy, just try to see a different time as an alternative location, merely – a philosophical shift sideways.’

  This thought was already giving me vertigo, & it was clear there was no signal to be had (what a surprise!) so I left the two men discussing the importance of getting the house connected to the new electricity grid which had just been established in Østerbro, in the hope that some of the Time Machine’s elaborate routines might thereby be sped up, & went to find Josie, whom I found crouched on her mattress like a little mushroom, looking at the illustrations in the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, her eyes drooping with exhaustion. I told her it was time to sleep, then tucked her into bed & kissed her.

  ‘The best Christmas I ever, ever had,’ she said sleepily.

  ‘Me too,’ I told her. ‘By a long way.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘As long as a piece of string.’

  ‘How long’s that?’

  ‘Three million, nine hundred and twenty-eight kilometres. It’s the longest piece of string in the world, & it’s kept in the royal curiosity cabinet, next to the pea the princess slept on.’

  Satisfied with this thought, she closed her eyes, & I lay down next to her & fancied myself in Heaven. Soon I too was asleep, though I was to be woken later & carried like a big squealing parcel to another bedroom by Fergus, who wanted some fun, & what fun it was, for never have I had better rogering than with him, & never such romance to go with it: here was a man who could make me whimper with pleasure & joy all at once, & scream my head off too. But I feel blushes coming on, so I will spare you further details.

  The Christmas lull was over. Armed with gift-packs of Viagra with which to bribe the men of power, I made arrangements for electricity to be connected to the household, & once the municipal workmen had installed it, & strung the relevant wires from street-poles, Fergus & Professor Krak – excited as two schoolboys – spent many hours encouraging the Time Machine to respond to electrical stimuli. Franz would visit, & make suggestions, & also take time to study Fru Schleswig’s vacuum cleaner, a device now seldom dormant, for it had been revitalized by the new power system, & was being worked as never before, for the normally slothful Fru Schleswig, fired with an unusual energy, had set about sucking the dust from every flat surface, cranny, crack, or piece of upholstery she could find: the similarly re-energized Franz, behaving as though he too had been plugged into a power source, enthused about how he planned to copy its mechanism with a view to setting up shop as an inventor, for he declared himself bored with philosophy, being ‘a doer not a thinker, & not cut out to ponder things in a hypothetical & crabwise manner’. It was a home quite buzzing with innovation & activity, & full of plans, for the flow-chart was to be adhered to, declared Professor Krak, which meant he must make a quick foray back to London to settle the minds of his flock, the telephoning-across-time notion having not yet borne fruit, despite his discovery of a weak signal in the garden, behind the holly tree. On his return, we would finalize our mission in Copenhagen, install Fru Schleswig as mistress of the house, & then make haste for London, where (in my scheme of things) Fergus & I would live happily ever after, amid flowers, champagne & kisses, as in all the best stories, and have many podgy little cherubs to coo over.

  If Professor Krak was a little nervous about the electrical tweaks he and Fergus had made to the Time Machine, he hid it well on the morning he made ready to leave. Indeed, he had seemed as businesslike as any London Underground commuter preparing for his regular journey to work – though in the hour before he left, however, he had acted a little oddly, for he had locked himself into the Oblivion Room, & from the sounds that then emanated from it, it seemed he was pedalling most frantically upon the bicycling contraption.

  ‘What is he thinking of?’ I asked Fergus, puzzled. ‘He never cared before about his health: why now?’

  ‘Well, my theory is, hen, that he’s gearing himself up for the mission,’ said my love. ‘I reckon that while he’s pedalling, he’s got the Bornean orangutan on his mind. She’s right in his line of vision there. I think it gets him all revved up, remembering what she went through. Poignant, when you think about it. But these eggheads, they’re often a bit daft.’

  ‘He loved her,’ I remembered. ‘When he told me how she died, he had tears in his eyes!’

  When Herr Krak finally emerged, he seemed to carry a whiff of alcohol with him, & there was another smell too, more medical – but he seemed almost gay, & excited about his trip. ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured Fergus (who was looking more than a little concerned). ‘All we have done is improve both speed and accuracy. Which should mean less of a dizzifying landing, with any luck. I beg you, dear friends, fear not!’ he called as he closed the door of the machine upon himself & motioned us to stand back. ‘For trust me, I have done this a thousand times!’

  Whereupon with a whirring & a jarring, followed by a blinding flash and a sharp sulphurous clang, he was suddenly no more, & all that remained of him, when we opened the door, was a puff of smoke & the faintest indentation of his buttocks upon the red velvet cushion of the carriage.

  ‘Famous last words,’ said Fergus at noontide two days later, when Professor Krak failed to turn up as he had been scheduled to. ‘I think we accidentally did something to alter its course. But what it might be I don’t know.’ And he looked most grave.

  ‘It’s probably to do with getting into the Greenwich Observatory,’ I replied. I did not feel too alarmed – for was I not back in my own land & time, and would it really be the end of the world if we were stranded here? Would Love not conquer all? I was drugged with happiness, replete with joy. I did not want to think about all that might go awry. But Fergus did. In the thirty-six hours that followed, he kissed me as much as before, but they were the kisses of a man who was ever more distracted, & who now spent much time inside the machine, fiddling with its innards and sighing & saying ‘och’ in a perturbed fashion.

  Tick, tock.

  Time passed disturbingly fast. Three days on, & New Year’s Eve had arrived. By now we were forever looking at the clock, & calculating how long it had been since Professor Krak’s departure. I was minded to turn the flow-chart to the wall, so out-of-kilter had our schedule become, & so hopelessly off the map had our communal journey wandered. I will confess to you, my precious love, that I have never much enjoyed the turning of the year: too many times the revelry has soured on me, too often, in the past, has a customer’s desire ‘to end the year with a bang’ led me to miss the dancing, & turned the alcohol-fuelled madness of midnight too flatly into the vinegar of morn. And yet, I argued to myself, th
is was to be my first New Year with Fergus, & my life had changed: for that reason alone, it should be a blissful occasion, for had my life not begun afresh, thanks to the blessing of Love? But by now – if I am to be quite honest about it – a nagging worry had incontrovertibly descended, like an atmosphere, & even I, in my so far apparently infinite foolishness, had begun to have dismal thoughts about the continued absence of Professor Krak. Might he have abandoned us here, now the Time Machine was secure? Surely, surely not! When I finally voiced this thought, Fergus fell into a deeper than ever silence, while Franz, who is of a pessimistic nature, merely fuelled my anxieties further by echoing and elaborating on them, using phrases like ‘ultimate betrayal’ & ‘human experimentation’ & ‘hostages to fortune’. It was only Josie, preoccupied with her toy tram set, & Fru Schleswig, now titular mistress of the home, & High Priestess of Vacuum Suction, who seemed contented & unconcerned.

  So despite the best efforts to appear cheerful, it was to a somewhat muted New Year’s Eve meal that we seated ourselves that night. Else, dressed in flamingo pink, & Franz, in a velvet suit, & Gudrun, in red with her scar powdered over, joined us for the flæskesteg I had prepared, for I did not wish my darling one to return to London without ever having tasted our national dish, & savoured the beauty of roast pork & crackling in all its Danish glory. But a sombre meal it was, & the chewing & chomping of Fru Schleswig echoed in the great hall like a bog-marsh in biological upheaval.

  Josie broke the silence. ‘Daddy,’ she asked, her brown Fergus-eyes serious. ‘When are we going home?’

  More silence, & then we all spoke at once:

  ‘But it’s lovely here!’ (me)

  ‘Never!’ (Franz)

  ‘I cud eet anutha potato!’ (Fru S)

  ‘What does she say?’ (Else & Gudrun).

  And then we looked at Fergus. ‘Daddy’s working on it, hen,’ he said finally. This statement was followed by more silence, with the round-eyed child wondering why we were all so agitated. Then Fergus spoke again, addressing all of us. ‘My view is that if Fred hasn’t returned by tomorrow, we should leave here under our own steam, without him. I’m familiar with the technology of the machine: I think we should try to make it back to London no matter what. Because something must have happened, to stop him getting back,’ he argued. ‘I know how this thing works now, and –’

  But I cut him short. ‘It’s too big a risk!’

  ‘What’s he say?’ asked Else, Gudrun & Fru Schleswig in unison, but I ignored them & continued in English: ‘What if we land in another time & place, with no way to get back?’

  By now Franz had provided translations for Gudrun & Else, who cried out, alarmed: ‘Over my dead body Charlotte! You’re only leaving if you’ve got a way of coming back. Full stop.’

  ‘It is the most risky of initiatives,’ counselled Franz, first in English, & then in Danish for the benefit of Else. ‘It will end in the worst kind of doom, you mark my words. Best stay here for evermore,’ he finished, eyeing Else to see her reaction. Which seemed to be one of approval.

  ‘She iz alwiz tryin to get rid of me,’ grumbled Fru Schleswig through a mouthful of flæskesteg. A small piece flew from her mouth & landed on a candle, where it sputtered violently, giving off a porky whiff.

  ‘No, listen,’ said Fergus, by now more agitated than I had ever seen him. ‘I don’t deny the risk, but –’

  ‘Min eneste ene, we cannot do it!’ I exclaimed, standing up, the better to stamp my foot – for this was our second ever disagreement, & it was important to give my opinion emphasis. ‘We must simply stay here until there is another way of –’

  But my speech was broken by an almighty crash: the double doors of the dining room flew open, and there before us, blackened with what looked like soot, his clothing hanging off his tall frame in rags, was none other than –

  ‘Well, I’ll be buggered: it’s Fred!’ cried Fergus, leaping up from the table. Gudrun, too, was on her feet immediately, & rushed to where the Professor stood. For a moment we were all exclaiming & laughing with relief – but any optimism we might have felt was short-lived, as Professor Krak (for it was indeed he) had clearly been through a most terrifying ordeal. He steadied himself against the door-jamb, then began sinking to the floor: Fergus caught him just before he hit the ground & Gudrun pressed a glass of red wine to his lips. Unshaven and unkempt, he looked a fright, & smelled of smoke and oil: his once noble head of hair was clotted into a single dark clump. He groaned as though in pain.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said hoarsely, his eyes closing as though to blot out a memory. ‘I thought I wouldn’t make it’

  Josie was watching, wide-eyed. I took her hand & squeezed it: her ‘wee theme park’ was turning frightening.

  ‘What happened, pray?’ I was fair jumping up & down with impatience to know what had transpired to make the Professor’s voyage to London so disastrous.

  ‘It all went wrong,’ he sighed, as Fergus helped him to a chair. Gudrun mopped his brow, & put his hip-flask to his lips for a restorative swig, then swiftly placed a plate of food before him: this he instantly began devouring greedily, like a dog at a plate of offal, employing none of his usual refinement & ceremony. Fru Schleswig watched approvingly. ‘Horribly, grotesquely wrong,’ he continued through a mouthful of flæskesteg. ‘For I ended up not in London, but at the Basilica of Our Lady of Pilar in Zaragoza.’

  Swiftly, I translated for Fergus. ‘Zaragoza!’ he cried. ‘But Fred, that’s a whole rotation and a half beyond where –’

  ‘Indeed it is,’ moaned Professor Krak in Danish, for he was clearly in no state to handle English syntax. ‘And it was in this most unexpected place – never a favourite destination of mine (though the architecture is to be admired) – that I was vilely treated by medieval villains and hurled into a vat of fetid slime. They threw rotten goose-eggs at me, & there was then talk of a public trial, after which I would be hanged as a magician, & my gizzard fed to a species of mountain wolf known as Lupus maximus horribilis. Had I not managed to bribe the prison guard with my laser torch, I would not be alive to tell the tale.’

  ‘But how did you get back?’ asked Fergus, when Franz had provided the translation. It was most evident that he was thinking now of his daughter, for I knew him inside out. O, had I only insisted that he not come on such a dangerous undertaking! Had I only forbidden it! Gently, he drew Josie to him & stroked her dark mop of hair.

  ‘The Professor stinks of poo,’ she whispered.

  The Professor took another gulp of wine & thence continued in English. ‘The Basilica is close to the meridian. I located it, & the Time-Sucker, using my little GPS machine, which miraculously survived my dunking, & managed to trigger the Magnetic Memory Imperative just in time. That is the closest shave I think I ever had – and there have been many!’

  Poor Fergus: I could see his brain working up a storm-cloud of dark thoughts. ‘But Fred, can you put your finger on what exactly went wrong with the mechanism?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Could it be to do with the electrical element we introduced?’

  ‘Most certainly,’ replied Professor Krak, wiping his mouth and nodding his gratitude to Gudrun who was doling out more potatoes, which he attacked ravenously.

  ‘A disaster,’ murmured Franz, whom I had by now dubbed the Crown Prince of Pessimism. ‘To think, that if I had not returned here before now, I would be trapped in London for ever, a slave to my own miserable fate! And now the machine has failed you, & you are trapped here, just as I was, there!’

  ‘It has not failed us, foolish boy!’ snapped Professor Krak through a mouthful of pork. ‘It is simply in need of some adjustment, which I am perfectly capable of performing once I have made some rudimentary calculations. Bring me a pen,’ he barked, and Franz obeyed, whereupon Professor Krak proceeded hastily to scribble a tangle of numbers and diagrams on the white tablecloth. Fergus joined him, & soon the two men were lost in technical conversation. In subdued mood, the rest of us cleared the table; when Else, Gudrun & Franz had
left, Fru Schleswig, Josie & I prepared for bed: by the time the clock struck midnight & a new year dawned, the men had repaired to the basement where they continued their discussions within the body of the machine and began what Professor Krak called the ‘reconfiguration process’. And in such a manner did another New Year’s Eve that did not match up to expectations draw to a close, thus confirming my theory that some festivals are never what they are cracked up to be.

  The next morn, feeling no familiar male warmth next to mine, I descended to the basement to find Fergus & Professor Krak still working inside the machine. They looked exhausted, but triumphant; neither man had slept a wink, but the atmosphere had changed: Professor Krak looked relieved, & Fergus, weary-eyed & his face covered now in the most delightful stubble, folded me in his arms. ‘I think we have cracked it, hen,’ he smiled with pride, & I forgave him the disappointment of last night, which was none of his fault, & I fell in love with him all over again.

  ‘Then you, Professor Krak, must have hot water, & some breakfast, & then sleep,’ I insisted. ‘I shall run you a bath instantly, for it’s high time you got rid of that Castel Gandolfo reek from your clothes, & restored your hair to its usual glory. It’s New Year: make it a day of rest after your ordeal.’

  An hour later, all was peaceful again. Imagine us there, gentle reader, if you will – for it is the last time you will see us assembled in such a happy scene. Look: Fergus is dozing in front of the cedarwood fire, with a sleepy Josie tucked in his arms; Professor Krak is in the bathtub recovering from his filthy dunking in the vat; & Franz, who has returned, is reassembling the vacuum cleaner after having dissected its components – (‘See here, Fru Schleswig: your intake & exhaust port, your fan, your clutch actuator, your motor, & your canisters, all working to obey Bernoulli’s Principle, by which as air speed increases, pressure decreases; is it not a marvel, the way the pressure differentials cause the suction?’) while she in turn is boasting to him (preposterously) that she taught me the alphabet when I was three, & herself once read ‘an oringe-cullered booke, with one hundred & fortee payges & the wurd turnippe in the tytle’. Else is away preparing her shop for the New Year Sale & I, meanwhile, am at work with needle & olive thread, taking in one of the many robes Fru Krak had left in her wardrobe, so that it will flatter my curves & prompt my lover to grope me even more than he already does. Can such peace last? I think you know the answer to that by now.