by Liz Jensen
We spent a gaudy & delicious hullabaloo of a week on Marroquinta, with much eating, drinking, dancing & singing: while Fergus & I canoodled lovingly beneath the palms, our babe Prince Hamish learned to crawl, shoving fistfuls of tropical sand into his mouth & frolicking on the beach with his sister, who had brought her Spiderman costume with her & was most happily engaged both in entertaining him, & in devising games to play with the other children who emerged from the shade of the pomegranate trees, full of wonder at the mysterious white foreigners who had landed in their midst.
These things I reflected on, beloved one, in that time, & I impart them to you in the belief that they will one day, if not now, make sense to you, if you have not already discovered them, which you probably have, being far cleverer than I, & much quicker on the uptake! I reflected that accidents will happen, & oft those accidents may turn out to be happy ones, despite initial appearances to the contrary. That however ill appears the hand that Fate has dealt you, such as being burdened with a creature such as Fru S, a sprinkle of imagination can transform pumpkins into carriages & pellets of cat-litter to precious stones, & lavatory-cleaners into Afric queens. That wishing upon a star is not the most foolish thing a girl can do in life. And that there is nothing on this wide earth, & in all time, as important as Love. It is worth dying for. But better, it is worth living for, too. And how I plan to live!
‘Where did you go for your holidays, then?’ asked the good ladies of the Sunnyside Kindergarten when we returned to London. ‘You all look fantastic’
‘Somewhere way, way, way off the map,’ said Fergus with a smile.
And now you are dying to know what became of us all. Well, Professor Krak still resides in Greenwich, & makes regular forays in the Time Machine to distant times & places, often accompanied by Fergus, who – just like the monkey Pandora – cannot resist the temptation of bringing back souvenirs to add to his unstoppable collection of ancient artefacts. With the frequent international exhibition of such wares (about which he writes most eloquently in academic journals – and O, did I tell you, reader, about that marvellous brain of his, the size of a pumpkin!) his career has flourished mightily, for reasons I am sure you can surmise – though I beg you, tell no one, for some of his fellow-archaeologists, being somewhat narrow-minded, might consider his visits to the cultures of yesteryear a form of ‘cheating’, & misprize him.
For my own part, having so much to learn about twenty-first-century Britain, I am loath to take up any more joy-riding, but once a year we enter the Portakabin & make speed for Copenhagen, where Franz remains eccentric but contented in the Sankt Hans, the tentacles of Helle & Georg’s beauty empire spread further & wider by the week (even reaching the godforsaken city of Aalborg!), & Else is in a permanent state of pregnancy, for ever since her union with a Russian count (who one day came in to purchase mimosa for his fiancée but, taking one look at Else, decided to switch brides), she is happily breeding a second generation of Østerbro Coquettes. Meanwhile would it surprise you to learn that on the first of such annual visits, the Professor managed to persuade a certain Frøken Gudrun Olsen to accompany us back to London, where she might have plastic surgery to remedy the disfigurement wreaked by Pandora? And that within a few months, her scarred face had become as flawless as her English, & she was seriously considering the Professor’s proposal of a partnership, whereby she might mastermind his various endeavours, & become his wife?
‘Fru Krak the Second!’ she smiled happily, whilst checking the fluctuations of the stock market on her mobile. ‘Well, what make you of that?!’
And the Time Machine? I hear you cry. Can I, too, go for a ride?
Well, here I must disappoint you, reader, for much as I wish you could, Professor Krak – with the sensible Gudrun very much in accordance – has been quite adamant that after all our troubles, the machine, and all the possibilities it offers to the Romantic Travelling Soul, shall not be replicated. ‘There are plenty of unscrupulous characters about,’ he warns, ‘who would not hesitate to abuse my discoveries for financial gain – and worse.’ Indeed, when he employed a private investigator to track down Henrik Dogger, he learned that the dastardly man had already tried to disseminate his time-travel theories – first in letters to famous astrophysicists &, when they failed to reply, by preaching to the converted at Psychic Fayres! Concerned that it was only a matter of time before a rich individual or venturesome organization took Dogger seriously, on Gudrun’s advice Professor Krak had a member of the British underclass break into his lodgings in the distant suburb of Surbiton & erase the thinking parts of his ‘software’. Then, as a further precautionary measure, the Professor jiggled & juggled the coordinates of the Time-Suckers by means of ‘digital re-encryptment’ (please ask me not what that entails, dear one, for you should realize by now that I have not the foggiest clue), in such a way that they might remain permanently undiscoverable. ‘When Fru Schleswig & I found ourselves stranded in Marroquinta, I made an exception to the confidentiality principle, what with being delirious, & the situation constituting an emergency,’ the Professor declared. ‘But henceforth, the secret of time-travel dies with me.’ Gudrun nodded sagely, & patted his arm.
From dust we came, & to dust must we return.
O, precious one, you know what looms now, & so do I, for the final page is upon us, & thus as all stories must, mine now draws to a close – even though in real life it shall continue, as shall yours, beyond these covers & spin like gossamer through the thin air, dancing up & down & whither knows where!
And what is there left to say of myself? Naught. Naught, dear one, for you see before you a happy woman, who possesses all that the human heart could wish for, & more. More! For I have my cherished-for-ever Fergus, the love of my life, & our dear Josie, & Prince Hamish with his chubby fists & ear-splitting yell, & as I write I am swelled up anew, this time with a set of twins, the first of many dozens of rowdy & undisciplined children we shall surely have, my love & I, in this bright shining place that is neither past nor future, nor before nor beyond, nor the back of beyond, but here and now, where Love dwells, and you too have dwelled a while, listening patiently to this tale, in the time before we parted ways, & O, I shall miss you so, sweet companion, so loyal & true! (And how beautiful you are today! How sweetly flushed your cheek!)
But now let us blow a kiss &, as each of us disappears further into the distance, wave our handkerchiefs to one another (O, wipe away that tear, Lottie McCrombie, you sentimental fool!), & from a story which began with real dust, it is to fairy dust that I return, bidding you a fond and tender farewell, with a smile on my lips & a song in my heart, wishing you & those you love a life as joyous as the one I am planning for myself.
But last of all I thank you, thank you, thank you, dear one, for stealing time to spend with me, for you know in your heart, do you not, that my story, for all its apparent unlikeliness, is true, just as a fairy-tale is true, if its listener wishes it so to be! And was it not worth it that you did?
Ah, the power of the heart, beloved reader.
The power of the heart.
O say yes!
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Clare Alexander, Michael Arditti, Polly Coles, Gina de Ferrer, Humphrey Hawksley and Kate O’Riordan for their perceptive readings of the manuscript. And to Carsten, for the real-life love story.
A Note on the Author
Liz Jensen is the acclaimed author of Egg Dancing, Ark Baby(shortlisted for the GuardianFiction Prize), The Paper Eater, War Crimes for the Homeand, most recently, The Ninth Life of Louis Drax,which is to be made into a film by Anthony Minghella. She lives in London.
By the Same Author
EGG DANCING
ARK BABY
THE PAPER EATER
WAR CRIMES FOR THE HOME
THE NINTH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX
Copyright © 2006 by Liz Jensen
Illustrations copyright © 2006 by Peter Bailey
This electronic edition published in 2006 by Blooms
bury Publishing Plc
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise
make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jensen, Liz, 1959–
My dirty little book of stolen time : a novel / Liz Jensen.–1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-40881-361-4
1. Prostitutes–Fiction. I. Title.
PR6060.E55M9 2006
813’.54–dc22
2006005986
First U.S. Edition 2006
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