My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time

by Liz Jensen

  I screamed, & so did Spiderman.

  I swung around & there he was.

  ‘Dad!’ yelled Josie. For it was he. Those manly, pirate good looks, that heart-melting smile: I swear I did fall in love with Mr Fergus McCrombie all anew in that split second, & counted myself the luckiest girl in all of Galileo’s galaxies!

  ‘Got you, hen,’ he murmured, hugging me tight, & Josie ripped off her Spiderman mask & hurtled to join us, & Helle embraced Georg who had now come to, & emerged from beneath the lifeless dog.

  ‘I stunned Gnasher here with a dart dipped in a tranquillizer I bought from Mr Bang’s pharmacy,’ explained Fergus smilingly. ‘I shot it from the blowpipe the orangutan brought back from Borneo.’

  ‘Is he going to be OK?’ enquired Josie, all of a sudden going over to stroke its fur, a look of deep concern on her face.

  ‘Sure, hen. He’ll wake up in fifteen minutes with a bad headache.’

  But Josie, tipped over the edge by the plight of the dog, was no longer able to contain the tears she had been so bravely holding back all this while, & she clung to her beloved father like a small monkey, & the three of us remained locked in one another’s arms most hyggelight-cosy for many minutes, babbling incoherently all the while, & squeezing tight enough to kill. O & I cannot tell you, my precious one, what bliss it was for all of us to be so reunited, after our differing ordeals apart.

  ‘Lottie, hen,’ Fergus said in my ear. ‘And Josie. Listen carefully, you two: I swear we’ll never lose each other again.’ And he whipped off his coat & wrapped it round us both for warmth, & then greeted the Jakobsens – who were cheering aloud for joy at being home again – most effusively.

  ‘Let’s get some shelter,’ Fergus then said, & led us into a corner of the garden where, behind the skeletons of some fifteen Christmas trees, lurked his version of the Time Machine. ‘It’s a scaled-down model,’ he said modestly, revealing to us a charming, if a little haphazard construction that tilted somewhat. ‘With fewer specifications, and it’s not as fancy, but the basic mechanics are all there. If I’d only been able to find the ingredients to the catalysing –’ he began, but I hushed him.

  ‘I know how hard you tried,’ I said, and quickly explained about our lightning voyage to modern Denmark – born, I told him, of sheer desperation – & its happy result.

  ‘Schnapps?Schnapps! Of course, of course?he cried, slapping his forehead. ‘I should have guessed: that hip-flask Fred always carries on him! Christ, schnapps is practically a fourth body fluid, as far as the Professor’s concerned!’ Then he stopped & took a step back, scrutinizing me with a sudden, almost scientific interest. ‘You’ve put on weight, hen,’ he said at last. ‘Were you aware of that?’

  ‘I hear that English food makes you swell,’ I said, feeling not a little flustered & defensive, for I had not noticed any changes in my body, save that my breasts seemed even plumper. A soft & most happy smile spread across Fergus’s face. ‘It suits you. Even sexier than ever.’

  ‘And you are even more like a hero,’ I replied, stroking his stubbled jaw & kissing that adorable cheekbone which I had so missed & longed for. ‘But tell me, where is Franz now?’ I queried, coming to my senses. ‘For he ended up in the Sankt Hans.’

  Fergus looked troubled. ‘Well, I’ve been wondering. I had to move out, because I was in the doghouse with the Poppersen Muhls, because Franz told them I sold Josie to a circus. I can’t blame them for giving me the cold shoulder, but it got hell of a difficult, so Gudrun let me crash in the drying-room at the laundry. I took Else with me a week ago to visit Franz’s parents and they were even more edgy than before. Said Franz wasn’t home, and was “taking a cure”. He’d been getting more & more outspoken about the time-travelling, & they weren’t keen on the vacuum-cleaner stuff either.’

  Resolving to visit Franz as soon as we might, our most immediate task was now to find lodgings for the night. Half an hour later Georg was proudly unpadlocking the massive wooden gates of the Authentic Hair Emporium in Christianshavn. Oil lanterns in hand, we ventured into the main warehouse, where we beheld a bewildering assortment of mannequins, stacked in rows, all sporting elaborate wigs, amid multitudinous sacks of human hair (‘from nuns & the dead’, explained Helle reverently) & bundles of mesh & other accoutrements.

  ‘We are planning to transform the premises into the headquarters of a chain of beauty salons,’ declared Georg proudly, as he gathered wigs & mannequin-limbs & threw them into the huge wood-burning stove to make a fire. Soon we had lit it, & it blazed fiercely, & our makeshift lodgings soon felt most hyggeligt.‘Our business is going to be a success this time,’ said Herr Jakobsen proudly – but how he was able to evoke an image of future wealth with such confidence was a bafflement to me, until Helle asked, ‘Remember my trip to the public library, Charlotte?’ I replied that I did indeed, her visit there having taken place only two days ago, give or take a century. ‘Well, I did a little investigating on my own account. It seems that we will have opened three new premises by September 1898, & a fourth before the year is out –’

  ‘So is that why you were so relaxed on our trip to modern Copenhagen?’ I asked her, warming my hands by the fire, where my two McCrombies were now attempting to grill waffles. ‘Tell me, is that why you went to the cinema, & filed your nails, & shopped in Magasin, when I was going out of my mind with anxiety?’

  She smiled benignly.

  ‘In part. But mostly it was because I had already looked into yourfuture, min skat,& seen that it was good. That you & this dear gentleman here would be reunited, & have all those things you dreamed of.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Do you remember a volume of Franz’s entitled Important Things Life Has Taught Me & Other Reflections?

  ‘Yes! In the Sankt Hans.’

  ‘Well, it was clear from that. It seems you & Fergus came to visit him in his old age, & many times before that, as did Georg & I.’

  I did not know what to say for a moment, for I felt quite dumbstruck. Fergus took my hand & squeezed it reassuringly, but I could not be restrained.

  ‘Fru Jakobsen, I am glad indeed to hear this, but nonetheless perplexed! Do you mean to say that you learned I would not be parted from Fergus for ever, as I so feared, & yet you uttered not a word to me on the matter, to set my heart at rest? You calmly allowed me to endure all that suffering & anxiety?’

  ‘Well, I thought it best,’ said Fru Jakobsen with finality. To my surprise, I saw that Fergus was nodding in approval, clearly having fathomed something I had not.

  ‘Well, kindly explain yourself then, madam!’ I cried, feeling suddenly quite overheated. Helle patted my hand.

  ‘Well, skat’she said. ‘The fact is that being no expert on philosophical matters, I was merely applying a measure of prudence. Might you not have behaved differently, had you not experienced the sense of urgency, & gone to the lengths you did to discover the ingredients of the catalysing liquid? Might things then not have transpired otherwise than they did?’

  ‘The Grandmother Paradox,’ said my future husband knowledgeably. ‘Professor Krak talked about it. It’s never been resolved.’

  ‘But if Franz says in his diary that we visited him –’

  ‘Franz was a madman, according to his doctors,’ said Helle Jakobsen gently, adjusting her shawl around her shoulders. ‘He could have imagined everything I read there. Your visits could have been but wishful thinking.’

  I considered for a moment.

  ‘And was there more? About what will happen?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling. ‘Much more.’

  ‘Then I beg you, tell us nothing of it!’ I said quickly, for I had become most averse to anything horoscopic.

  ‘I’m in agreement on that one,’ said Fergus. ‘Who wants to open their Christmas presents early?’

  ‘Me!’ said Josie.

  ‘You already did, last time we came to Denmark!’ I said, poking her with my toe & making her squeal.

  ‘Personally, I want to
see for myself what the future holds in store,’ said my beloved man, kissing me & placing his outspread hand on my belly, where – Satan’s knickerbockers! – I now felt a sudden & distinct kick.

  Some months later, back in London, I was occupying the sofa in a state of advanced fecundity with a tangled cobweb of yellow wool across what used once to be my lap (for I was learning to knit), when the telephone rang.

  ‘I know you can barely move, but can you get that, hen?’ asked Fergus. ‘I’m up to my elbows in plaster of Paris here,’ & he was indeed, for he was fabricating a cast of a Greek button, circa AD 800, so I picked up the receiver & said in my now fluent English that this was Mrs Charlotte McCrombie, who did not wish to purchase a new kitchen, sample a cable package, win a free trip to Disneyland, or answer any kind of questionnaire about her spending habits.

  ‘For Fanden,can this actually be little Frøken Charlotte?’ came a voice in Danish on the other end of the line. A voice I had feared I should never hear again!

  ‘Professor Krak! You are alive! What joy! And I am married to Fergus, & very soon to be a mother!’

  ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘I hope to meet the new addition to the family very soon!’

  ‘O, Professor! Hurra!Can this really mean that you are finally returning to us, sir?’

  ‘That is indeed my plan,’ he replied. ‘But I still have no means by which to leave Marroquinta – delightful though it is – with the Mother Machine destroyed. Have you & your clever husband an alternative, my dear?’

  Quickly, I apprised Fergus of the situation, & in an instant he had wiped the plaster from his hands, procured a pen, & was deep in technical conversation with the Professor, clearly as overjoyed as I to discover our friend still so emphatically in the land of the living.

  ‘Right, Fred,’ Fergus finished, after much excitable jibber-jabber about stellar schedules, fault-matrices & exotic matter. ‘I’ve got your exact coordinates noted, so just stay put on the island. I’m glad to hear Mrs Schleswig has landed on her feet with the Sultan. Though I’m delighted to have her as a motherin-law, of course, don’t get me wrong, she’s always welcome here. Oh, horror there on Lottie’s face … yes, I’ll be happy to bring some spare parts for the vacuum cleaner, no problem. The baby’s due next month, so we’ll be with you –’ Here he broke off, & enquired of me, ‘When shall we say, commandant?’

  ‘As soon as I’ve got my figure back.’

  ‘You heard that, Fred? Yes, still the same lassie. Anyway, once that’s achieved, we’ll get the fake Portakabin transported back to Greenwich Park, & we’ll be with you faster than you can say quantum physics.’

  If you have never visited the Afric isle of Marroquinta in the year 1000 AD, dear reader (and I’ll wager that you have not, as it features in none of the holiday brochures that regularly thud upon your doormat, with titles such as Top Destinations or Paradise Breaks), let me acquaint you with a few of its curious & most exotic delights, as witnessed by the McCrombie family on its first foray to that tropical Nirvana. The entire ‘nuclear’ clan, now numbering four – for yes, I had by now given birth to a marvellous child (though O, the pain! Have you passed that female rite of passage yet, dear one? If not, do not hurry yourself, for nothing in this life can prepare you for the physical agony of passing a three-kilogram infant through an orifice designed for quite happier purposes!), & was looking quite marvellous on it, if I may make that brief boast – arrived at eventide, landing softly & without undue nausea upon a deliciously warm & sandy shore, where a full moon, a deep golden yellow, hung above the rim of the horizon & the sky shone with stars so dazzling they seemed to come from a sky quite other than any we had known.

  Within moments of sighting water, Josie was busy a-splashing on the shoreline & hunting for shells while I, with the sleeping heir in my arms (be impressed, for young Hamish now weighed fifteen kilograms), breathed in the soft & salty breeze & marvelled at the liveliness of the waves, so different from the home life of our own dear Baltic, while Fergus consulted his compass, & established our bearings. ‘South by south-west,’ he pronounced, ‘which means we head in that direction, hen – hey, hang on a moment – look? He was pointing to the middle distance where all at once, beyond a fuzz of trees, a huge & most magical-looking palace appeared before us, shimmering white in the moonlight.

  ‘Hell’s bells, it’s twice the size of Harrods!’ I cried, erecting the three-wheeled buggy, & strapping the babe within – whereupon he awoke & began a cheerful burble which – our child being a genius – featured syllables from a multitude of languages including Danish, English, Italian, Farsi & Chinese, though as yet conjoined in no particular order. Excitedly, we followed the line of the beach until we came upon a pebbled road which led into a steamy & most succulent jungle, where night-birds hooted & a glorious smell assailed our nostrils. ‘Frangipani,’ declared my knowledgeable Fergus, inhaling deeply, then plucking two white flowers from the tree above us, one for me & one for Josie. (O, Mr Romantic!) Thus perfumically decorated, we reached a clearing from which there spread an empty road as wide as Strandboulevarden: here (good gracious!) a troupe of camels wandered in swaying fashion along its glittering white cobbles in the direction of the palace. We followed them: colonnades of high pillars materialized alongside the highway, with small shiny-leaved trees from which hung ripe pomegranates, & there now drifted towards us, mingling with the frangipani blossom, a smell like cinnamon, or opium, but sweeter. After some ten minutes we arrived at a pair of carved wooden gates, where stood several huge black-skinned sentry-men in cowrie-shell armour, some of whom set about tethering the camels while two others opened up the great doorway, & waved us in with their long palm-fronds in the direction of a courtyard, where –

  ‘Fred!’ yelled Fergus. For who had appeared before us but the tall, gangling, unmistakable figure of Professor Krak! Josie at once flew towards him & hugged his legs, & I could not but laugh aloud, for how very altered he was, with his bushy beard & his vividly red & blue tunic of zig-zaggy stripes & polka dots – quite different from any former garb he had sported, including Fru Krak’s pink sea-horse gown! His skin looked weather-beaten, bronzed by the sun to a darker shade, but he seemed in vibrant good health & much rested, & had more flesh on his bones than in olden times, which suited him greatly.

  ‘Dear friends, what a delightful reunion!’ he beamed, ruffling Josie’s hair & shaking our hands heartily, & then praising the babe who (his lungs being most forceful) now roared his delight & kicked out lustily in an enthusiastic greeting. ‘Come, let us present you to the Sultan, who has been my saviour here,’ said the Professor, ‘& you can also be reunited with his delightful queen, Fru Schleswig – who, as you will see, has quite found her element!’

  We followed him along cool stone hallways & corridors, through courtyards & enclosed orchards of oranges, lemons and kumquats, past fountains & pools littered with sweet-scented rose-petals of sunset pink & yellow. Good grief, our eyes were fair a-pop! Finally we came upon the throne room where the great black Sultan sat, dignified as a sculpture hewn from granite: he stood upright as we entered, & I gasped to see him in all his two-metre immensity, then gasped again, for there, beside him, was enthroned a similarly imposing humanoid creature, who looked mightily familiar! It was only in that moment that I realized it was but scale that had hampered Fru Schleswig’s chances of romance in the past, for next to the Sultan she looked quite an acceptable size, & even seemed to take on what might be construed as a version of femininity, clad as she was in a diaphanous garment of scarlet silk encrusted with sequins & festooned with jewellery.

  ‘O Fru Schleswig, what a strange new world!’ I cried, as she waved a ring-bedecked hand to greet us.

  ‘What a strange new world!’

  ‘Tiz new to u,’ she said. The smell of marzipan wafted from her gigantic bosom. ‘But I bin here mor than a twelvmunth. Oi lykes it, & oi am stayin.’

  ‘Dear madam, meet your grandson, Hamish Georg Schleswig McCrombie,’ I said with a curt
sy, quite unable to hide my delight at my mother’s transmogrification – for did I not always tell you, dear reader, that aristocratic blood flowed in my veins? The good woman who begat me being now a veritable queen, does that not entitle me, as the offspring of royalty, to call myself Princess Charlotte? Yes, dear one, it does indeed, & you may now kiss my hand! Ah, how one’s deepest aspirations have the knack of coming true, if one but looks the other way!

  Upon which happy thought I thrust the infant Prince Hamish at the mountain of silk & jewellery-clad flesh that was the monarchess, where he soon disappeared into her many pillowy layers, gurgling most happily. While the Queen of Marroquinta sat back in her throne & jiggled the babe on her knee, with Josie leaping about in excitement next to her, the Sultan welcomed us most warmly in his clicking Afric tongue, & then impressed us by uttering some Danish.

  ‘Min kone,’he said, pointing to Queen Schleswig. (‘My wife,’ I translated for Fergus & Josie.) ‘Meget tyk?(‘Very fat.’) ‘Spise mere, bliver tykkere?(‘Eat more, get fatter.’) ‘Det er godt?(’That’s good.’) Queen Schleswig beamed. ‘See?’ she said, reaching for a chicken leg proffered her on a platter by a servant. ‘Thatzthe manne for me.’

  Not just the man, but the life, too, dear reader – and a life she very much enjoys to this day, for the royal Queen of Marroquinta, aka Fru Fanny Schleswig, opted to stay contentedly put on her distantly doomed Afric isle, & who can blame her, when instead of making do with a chilly annual dog-bath on Classensgade, she can sprawl naked on a chaise-longue by the Sultan’s turquoise-encrusted lily-pond, licked slowly by camels tempted by the marzipan she has smeared liberally all over? It seems that at long last Fru Schleswig has finally found her niche in the universe, & it is a life that well suits her, for the Marroquinns appreciate her in a manner no Dane would ever do, this being a land where fat is highly prized, not least by the adoring Sultan who showers his fleshy white queen with jewels (‘roobiez, saffyrez & emrelds, I’ll hav u no, & no skimpin on the golde settinges, neither’), & once every full moon, in the temple where the sacred vacuum cleaner is housed, she performs certain intimate & ancient rites (to the music of ‘Tragic Johanna’, as chanted by the Grand Marroquinta Choir), for Queen S, being partial to getting drunk, has profited from some of Franz’s ideas & devised a jneans of converting its pipe & canister system for distilling purposes, thereby producing a most tasty alcoholic spirit not dissimilar to our native akvavit.And every night the royal couple feast on delicacies such as Stuck Roast Pig, Fricassee of Flying Fish, Persimmon Roulade & Jellyfish Pie, & though communication is minimal between them, are words not superfluous, when you are tucking into such fare, & drinking yourself into happy oblivion by the light of the silvery moon?