My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time

by Liz Jensen

  ‘His death?’ I asked, curious. ‘Shortly after his marriage, & our return to London? A hasty demise indeed!’

  ‘And can you imagine how he passed away?’ she whispered, conspiratorially.

  It was not a conundrum to which I needed to apply my mind for long. ‘In the arms of a whore,’ I said, ‘at an educated guess.’

  ‘Correct!’ she trilled. ‘Dressed in his full parsonic regalia!’ (That poor working girl, I thought, considering the scenario for a moment.)

  ‘And what of Fru Krak?’

  ‘Guess again,’ challenged Fru Jakobsen, attacking her foliage.

  ‘Well, she was a creature of habit. So I would wager she remarried. Her pattern was to kill them or drive them away, was it not? I’d bet fifty kroner that she had more than one husband, after the Pastor.’

  ‘Three!’ cried Fru Jakobsen. ‘Making five in all, including Professor Krak! You genius!’

  ‘It’s not so much genius as observation, for she is of the parasitic persuasion,’ I countered. ‘Being a Fine Lady born & bred.’

  ‘Well, in the end she died alone & fat at the age of sixty,’ finished Fru Jakobsen, ‘from a surfeit of cakes & chocolate liqueurs!’ At which she blushed & crossed herself, & added guiltily: ‘Bless her soul.’

  That afternoon we took a train (that sold coffee! From a trolley! Where newspapers were freely available, & a little plastic rubbish bag hung beneath the table!) to the far-flung town of Roskilde. The Sankt Hans was an imposing building, within whose reception hall we were immediately hailed by a sharp little gent with a distracted air, smelling oddly enough of glue, who with some perspicacity semed to have anticipated our unannounced arrival. He introduced himself as Ivor Winkel, & informed us that the Medical Commandant was currently on holiday in Madagascar observing wildlife ‘such as hyenas, baboons and wildebeest’, but as his ‘right-hand man’ he would be happy to assist us, whatever the nature of our business. He then led us to a large airy room with much furniture, where he gestured us to sit while he settled himself behind a plastic-topped table upon which was sprawled a large & most elaborate miniature stage-set featuring a scenario of chunky, viciously armed warriors, odd-shaped attack tanks, & tiny models of trees, hills & boulders, with a spear-bristling fortress behind. He explained that this all consisted of ‘Dark Elf, from the Fantasy range’. Were we familiar with Warhammer?

  We apologized for our ignorance on the subject, & he sighed that it was of no matter, as many members of the institution were into it, ‘especially those who tune in to voices’.

  ‘Might we conduct some research into a former inmate, Doktor Winkel?’ I asked tentatively. ‘If you have records going back as far as the turn of the nineteenth century?’

  Yes, he supposed we might investigate the archives & indeed if he was clever & pulled some strings (for he had friends in high places if we knew what he meant) he could probably get hold of a key to the archive room, but he warned that once in there, we had best keep a low profile & avoid the nurses, or they’d medicate us or worse, ask questions about how we were feeling ‘in ourselves’.

  Although this was most maddeningly puzzling in a way quite typical of the future, the Doktor proved as good in deed as he was in word. He left us ‘in the capable hands’, as he put it, of the television, & for ten minutes we were transfixed by a children’s programme in which a venomous snake dislocated its jawbone & – gorily fascinating! – swallowed an entire white mouse in one slow & wriggling gulp, before the Doktor returned, having procured the requisite key. He then led us through a labyrinth of corridors, in which we passed many intense-faced people of all shapes & sizes, none of whom gave either us or the Doktor a second glance, until we came to a door marked Archives. ‘If you’re looking for early records, it will probably be on paper rather than CD-ROM,’ Doktor Winkel said knowledgeably. ‘But forgive my haziness about the precise filing system. Would you like to sleep in here tonight, even though there may be the odd rat?’

  ‘Er, I think not,’ said Fru Jakobsen delicately, nudging me in the ribs & shooting me a wide-eyed look. ‘Just leave us the key, if you would be so kind, Doktor. We’ll lock ourselves in instead, & that way we won’t be disturbed.’

  This seemed to satisfy the Doktor, & so without further ado, Helle Jakobsen & I set about hunting for the name Poppersen Muhl in the long narrow musty room that housed the hospital’s archives.

  ‘Our Franz is lurking in here somewhere, you can be certain of it!’ cried Fru Jakobsen, expertly sliding open the drawers in which documents were kept. ‘Under P!’ Swiftly, she ran her fingers through, throwing up clouds of dust, then stopped & whipped out a yellowed piece of paper. ‘Franz Poppersen Muhl!’ she cried in delight. ‘Good grief,’ she said, tapping the sheet, ‘it says he was a patient here from 1899 until his death in 1980! Do you realize, that means he lived to be a hundred! Private funeral . .. buried in the tomb of the Poppersen Muhl family … invented & patented the dust-sucker whilst a patient… Ah! Look here, it seems that he left all his scrapbooks & diaries! Twenty volumes of them!’

  ‘But look at this place: they could be anywhere!’ I cried, for the room was stuffed to the gills with archival memorabilia. ‘Where to start?’

  ‘Try row twenty-five, shelf ten,’ smiled Helle Jakobsen, consulting the paper again (how clever she was!), & sure enough, high up (stepladder required & found), squatted a row of bulky volumes bound in grey leather. Wobbling on my perch, with Helle Jakobsen keeping the ladder stable below, I pulled one out & coughed as the particles flew: it was dated 1897-8, & labelled in red ink: To London & Back. Did I not recall Franz working on just such a scrapbook in London, in which he made spidery notes & glued in ephemera such as cinema tickets, flyers for pizza deliveries, photographs of historic monuments, & cards from phone booths advertising HOT LESBO CHICKS GO WILD? But Satan’s underwear: twenty volumes! We could never smuggle them all out of here, & even if we could, reading our contraband would take an eternity!

  Flustered by this thought I opened one at random, dated 1923, & read an entry.

  June 25th. My bowels have been giving me gyp again, & I am queased. Heigh ho sweetcorn! I played four rounds of gin rummy with Herr Lagerfeld, then spent one hour & twenty minutes working on the design of my ‘rat suicide’ device. The trapping mechanism still has me stumped. Nettle soup for tea: this will do nothing to improve matters gastric. Mama visited & left a packet of geranium tea, which I threw in the rubbish as soon as she had gone. Papa has sold some more stocks & shares, she says, & they have a new pianoforte upon which she plays Für Elise’ despite her arthritic fingers. We discussed Brahms, & I speculated that science might one day come up with a way of modifying nature, so that crops might glow in the dark, the sea become boiling hot, pigs grow wings, etc. ‘O dear Franz, not that conversation again,’ she pleaded finally, after I had aired my thoughts & predictions on these & other matters futuristic, so we then sat in silence, punctuated by Herr Gunn’s monstrous burping, until she left. Weather mildish. Saw a starling, & fed it some crumbs. In the night Frøken Jette Sørensen died writhing in agony like Madame Bovary after taking an overdose of toilet cleaner, & we all had to say a special prayer for her, even those of us who, like me, do not believe in God, & were not quite sure who Frøken Sørensen was or what she was for. Oh well: another day, another dollar, as they say in the US of A!

  Lord, trawling through pages & pages of such self-absorbed nonsense in the hope of a clue concerning my Scottishman’s fate could take for ever!

  ‘We shall have to settle for taking four or five scrapbooks,’ I decided. ‘From the first few years solely. We will simply walk out of here with them, behaving as though we own the world: that is the way to do it’

  ‘You mean steal them?’ asked Fru Jakobsen, looking mildly aghast, but I could see she recognized we had little choice. ‘But Charlotte skat, how can we be sure to get away with it?’

  ‘Experience,’ I said. ‘For in my Østerbro days, Fru Jakobsen, I am sorry to tell you that as well a
s plying my trade as a harlot, I was also a dab hand at shoplifting.’

  While my refined friend absorbed this shameful fact, I, all a-cough with dust, selected what I judged to be the most relevant volumes, then went in search of a vessel in which to smuggle them out, leaving Fru Jakobsen to riffle through the pages of a scrapbook from 1970 entitled Important Things Life Has Taught Me & Other Reflections. Eventually I unearthed a box in a storage cupboard housing supplies of toilet paper & tampons, & when I returned, found Fru Jakobsen smiling to herself in a most contented & dreamy way.

  ‘You know, I think Franz had rather a good life here after all,’ she said. ‘For the thoughts expressed here are not the conclusions of an abject creature who felt that his life had failed. On the contrary. I would say that in the Sankt Hans, our delicate young friend transmogrified into a wise & fulfilled man, with much to live for.’

  Glad though I was to hear this, & keen to see the evidence for myself (for I will admit to some surprise at this notion!), the reasons for Fru Jakobsen’s assessment would have to wait for a later juncture, it now being urgent to make away forthwith. It was with some relief that we discovered Doktor Winkel nowhere to be found, so we left the key dangling from a warrior’s spear atop a Dark Elfin tower with an anonymous note of thanks, & made a speedy exit, returning to Roskilde train station & thence to Østerbro, stopping only to purchase a mushroom & pepperoni pizza with extra olives from the Turkish gentleman on Nordrefrihavnsgade, that we might set to work on our researches straightway, without the distraction of hunger-pangs.

  Once at our lodgings, we settled down with diaries & victuals. ‘No rest for the wicked!’ smiled Fru Jakobsen, still bearing vestiges of that earlier, dreamy look on her face. Quite unlike me (for I was all agog to learn what had befallen my Fergus), my elegant friend seemed in a state of quite mystifying unhurriedness, & resolutely determined to ‘enjoy her evening’, as she put it, & to this end she drew from her handbag two small bottles of flying-machine Rioja & poured us each a glass, raising hers in the air with a jaunty ‘skål’, & declaring that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. What spirit of lassitude had suddenly possessed her, for helvede?

  Stifling my annoyance at my companion’s inexplicable nonchalance, I devoured my half of the pizza (Fru Jakobsen, meanwhile, took her ladylike time) & began to read furiously, skipping & jumping my way through Franz’s aches, pains, hopes, passions & disappointments, past drawings of suction mechanisms & sketches of the Time Machine & lists of favourite meals, most of which seemed to involve white comfort food such as tapioca, potatoes, whipped cream & cauliflower, all the while keeping my eyes skinned for a single name: Fergus. At last, I found an entry.

  ‘Ha!’ I cried. Fru Jakobsen languidly set aside her pizza & sat on the bed next to me. ‘Listen to this!’ I said, & read aloud.

  4 January 1898, Østerbro:

  Calamity! Did I not predict that things would go most horribly awry? Yes indeed I did! And now they have, & I know not what to do, & Mama has gone to see Herr Bang to ask for some special soothing potion for my nerves, for I have not been myself since my return from London, & now this, this … Words cannot describe the psychic turmoil that has been engendered in me! Anyway, Charlotte’s beau Fergus McCrombie, who should have returned to London, materialized on the family doorstep at a MOST inauspicious time, rightin the middle of luncheon (a flæskesteg, my favourite). Fortunately it was I who answered the bell, it being the servants’ afternoon off. He was quite unkempt, his face injured & scarred & his arm in a sling & he insisted most vociferously that I must come to his aid. It seems that after I had escaped via the ventilation shaft as instructed, Mr McCrombie had been assaulted by thugs whilst the others – namely Professor Krak, Charlotte and her mother & the child Josie – had time-travelled back to London, leaving him becalmed in what he (rather insultingly, to my mind) referred to as ‘history’. He is most determined to return, but the Mother Time Machine is now smithereened, & the house in Rosenvængets Allé permanently occupied by the Pastor & his bride.

  Lord, what a jinxy palaver! I had him clean up, then begged Mama to let Mr McCrombie stay with us, & came up with a story of sorts about how he had missed a ferry-boat to Harwich & sold his daughter to a travelling circus, at which Mama looked most concerned & sceptical so I flew into a rage, & remained in that state until she said, ‘Please anything you like, dear Franz, so long as you calm down,’ & so we gave Mr McCrombie one of the spare rooms, & I asked Father the next morn to let our English friend, who is in fact apparently Scottish, teach me more of his most agreeable if vocabulary-laden language, as my fluency had fallen away since my coming home, & he looked doubtful but then I started to blub. Papa, having a low tolerance for unmanly men, said hastily, ‘Very well, whatever you want, my boy, take it easy now, remember your nerves.’ But I was by then in a genuine state of anxiety, & my stomach could barely stand it & my bowels became disturbed in diarrhoeic fashion. Is there no end to my troubles?

  ‘So Fergus had his wits about him enough to escape, & make it to the home of the Poppersen Muhls, thank Heaven!’ cried Fru Jakobsen, adding in a lower voice: ‘But Lord above, that young Franz never ceases to whine, does he?’

  ‘My greatest concern is that the Time Machine has indeed been destroyed,’ I said, feeling my heart sink even lower, ‘thus confirming our worst fears!’

  ‘Read on!’ commanded Fru Jakobsen. ‘Let us see what your young man does next!’

  So I whizzed & flipped through many more pages of complaints about mysterious & possible life-threatening aches, & pains, & bacteria, & vacuum-cleaner sketches, in search of my future husband’s name, but did not see it until I spotted that he was now called ‘our Scottish friend’.

  January 5th. Our Scottish friend has insisted that I take him to visit Else, for he is convinced she has information that might assist him in devising a means by which to return to London. Until now he always seemed to me quite a sane man but now he has started to talk about rebuilding the Time Machine himself–

  (O, my brave & ingenious sweetheart, I thought: I remember cursing your interest in the Time Machine’s innards, but now do I thank Heaven indeed that you paid it the attention you did!)

  – & will not listen to my protestations, which are well-founded enough, but tells me by way of reply that Charlotte always called me the Crown Prince of Pessimism, & now he understands why! I was somewhat insulted but agreed to walk him to Else’s flowershop, & besides I could not say no, for he was in quite a state of anxiety & I feared that if I did not obey him I might suffer, the Scottish race having a well-known propensity for violence. At the florist’s, where I played the part of translator, we apprised Else of Fergus’s plight & the loss of Charlotte, at which she was much horrified & pained, & she said we must instantly call on the services of Gudrun Olsen, for it was she who had supplied most of the materials for the Time Machine.

  (O my fellow Østerbro Coquette, how bright you are!)

  So we all went to the laundry where, surrounded by steam, as in a sauna, Fergus, with myself interpreting, once more explained the situation, & begged Gudrun Olsen to recall what manner of materials Professor Krak had bade her supply for him. Seeing our Scottish friend’s desperation, she began to write a list, which heartened him greatly, though she said she feared she could not remember it all, but he claimed to have had a good look at the machine before it was smashed. What had him stumped, however, were the four mysterious ingredients ofthe secret catalysing liquid: could Gudrun remember purchasing any bottles?

  ‘Aha, the catalysing ingredients! He has thought of them already, creature of genius that he is!’

  The next few entries did not mention Fergus at all, & indeed there followed a section consisting merely of calculations concerning the physics of dust-sucking. Then:

  January 21st. O, fantabulosa: my cherished project, the Original Poppersen Muhl Dust-Sucker, has come closer to reality today! These good tidings come via our Scottish friend, with whom I have finally (after
some wrangling, I assure you: they can be tough bargainers these futuristic types) struck a deal. Being far more mechanically-minded than I, he has agreed to share his expertise & assist me in constructing a prototype (see diagram, & note in particular the placement of the outer clutch actuator in relation to the exhaust port – a touch of brilliance if I say so myself): I in turn have undertaken to help him procure the various materials he needs with which to construct a new Time Machine, & thereby return to London, a subject on which he speaks with increasing frequency & desperation. He at first wished to build the thing in parts, in his bedroom at Mama & Papa’s, then assemble it on site. But when I had explained my parents’ opposition to anything they deem ‘eccentric’, we settled for a side-room at Gudrun’s laundry, until such time as the structure can be moved & fully assembled beneath the holly tree in Fru Krak’s garden on Rosenvængets Allé – this being the one location apart from the cellar that is straddled by the Time-Sucker, or ‘worm-hole, as our Scottish friend calls it. When I questioned him about how he hoped to keep such a thing hidden, he revealed that he had gathered together a host of old Christmas trees which had been left in the street for collection, & thus added fifteen fir trees to the garden on Rosenvængets Allé – which the couple never seemed to enter – in the space of a week. As soon as he was ready to move the Time Machine there in sections, Fergus said he would circle the contraption with them, thus camouflaging it from view.