‘Yes, that’s what I was thinking too,’ Alfie said quickly putting a book called Raffles the Master Thief behind his back. Well, it was best to be prepared and who better to tell you how to break into places without getting caught but the master thief Raffles, even if he was a fictional character. ‘Hold on a minute, I thought Merlin was simply a mythical magician not a real one like Houdini or Robert Houdin, Houdini’s hero?’
‘Not Merlin the Magician from King Arthur’s Court, you Champagne Charlie, John Joseph Merlin, the clock and automaton maker from the seventeenth century!’ Scarlet laughed.
‘Yes, yes, I knew that, I was just joking, you know me, always the court jester,’ Alfie said covering his tracks, and badly.
‘Well, wait until the next full moon, I would imagine that is when the thief will appear on the Greenwich timeline at the striking of Big Ben at midnight,’ said Scarlet hoping all this wasn’t simply pie in the sky and her imagination wasn’t leading her up and down the garden path. Scarlet was picturing two moondials in different times running in perfect sync with one another. But the truth was, the first time the thief had travelled back in time night had turned into day, even though the full moon may still have been in the heavens. Of course during the day it was almost invisible to the naked eye.
‘When this story ends we should turn it into a book. It’s funny, don’t you think that the magical dragonfly timepiece is in Merlin’s Mechanical Museum? After all, Merlin was said to be magical in the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,’ grinned Alfie making up a myth on the spot so as to make his confusion of the two Merlins not a moment earlier, almost as if he meant every word of it.
‘Yes, I do think it’s funny. You don’t suppose that the two Merlins are related? Perhaps John Joseph Merlin made the timepiece himself, although I know he had a partner, James Cox. Maybe he was the one who originally made the watch Wilbur calls home,’ Scarlet muttered thinking out loud as her steam-powered analytical engine got up a good head of steam.
‘Quite possibly!’ Alfie said without giving it any thought at all, simply agreeing with his sister who seemed to have it all figured out, or at least she imagined she had. But time was full of numbers and numbers often made up codes and codes often lied. Da Vinci often hid his work in secret codes that only a mathematical genius like Pythagoras or Archimedes could figure out. Charles Babbage had created both the analytical and difference engines with the help of Countess Ada Lovelace in the early part of the nineteenth century. Cracking the time code was not going to be easy, even with the help of the Antikythera mechanism, a device Scarlet imagined helped Pythagoras and Archimedes travel in time. Cracking an egg over your big sister’s head, on the other hand, couldn’t have been easier.
‘Alfie, what was that for?!’ Scarlet exclaimed as Alfie cracked the egg on her head, spun on his heels and headed for the door as if he really were the notorious villain, Spring-Heeled Jack.
Alfie then stopped at the doorway to admire his handy work. ‘Scrambled eggs, scrambled brains more like. Well, I owed you that for the ice-cold water you poured over my head and for pushing me to the ground, and that’s for any further indiscretions you will make in the future, just to be on the safe side,’ Alfie replied grinning from ear to ear like a cut-throat pirate of the high seas, or low seas in this case, as at this point in time the Thames was at low tide.
Wilbur tried not to laugh but he couldn’t help himself. Luckily Scarlet could neither see his face nor hear his voice, otherwise he would be in the same boat Scarlet was imagining Alfie was in and one that had just sprung a leak!
‘I’ll skin him, I’ll boil him alive, I’ll spin him on the Catherine wheel, I’ll stretch him on the rack, I’ll, I’ll make him wish he’d never been born!’ Scarlet growled turning as red as Jupiter’s giant beauty spot as she dreamt up as many medieval tortures as she could!
It felt good to be himself again, a kid, thought Alfie as he flew down the stairs and out onto the bustling street. The adventure was exciting, like a storybook brought to life, but it was all getting a little too serious for a boy who made it his business to get into mischief. When Scarlet calmed down even she saw the funny side of it. There would be plenty of time to grow up, plenty of time, or so she imagined. It was a pity the Victorians hadn’t agreed with this sentiment, sending children up chimneys and down mines, some younger than Alfie. Mr and Mrs Potts now being in their late thirties knew all too well how quickly the halcyon days of childhood disappeared into the mists of time. These days would soon be replaced with dull, dreary, boring, repetitive working days which had you wishing you could return to the Land of Make Believe, as if simply by making a wish upon a shooting star… tick tock, tick…
33
The Time Wasters’ Society
Scarlet in her wisdom decided to visit the Library of London to read everything she could about time and chronometers. Time could be mean. Take Greenwich Mean Time for instance, which is what the Time Thief was already imagining he was doing. Old Father Time was as mean as they come and once your time was up there was no arguing with the old boy. When you wanted time to fly by it dragged and when you wanted it to drag it flew by. Time was as capricious as both Old Father Time and Mother Nature. Greenwich Mean Time was the time all other countries lived by, well, all apart from Standard Time which the Americans used, the Americans who thought they owned time. After all, the Americans did own Times Square so they probably owned time too, or so Scarlet imagined. But did they own a clock as big as Big Ben? she wondered. She thought not, although if they could have bought it she imagined they would.
There was so much information on the subject of time it would take Scarlet a hundred lifetimes of reading and even then she still would not have read half the books on time and chronometers. So she decided to take notes – a brief history of time if you like – so at least she would be well grounded on the theories of time if she ever met Old Father Time. Then at least she could hold a decent conversation with the old curmudgeon. She might even be able to persuade him to stop time while she tinkered with it or at least slowed it down. If time came to a standstill while she kept moving she would be able to catch the Time Thief. Surely this would make Old Father Time happy, so much so he would agree to her briefly stopping time.
There were so many people in the library who were old she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised to bump into Old Father Time, who was obviously waiting for some of them to clock off! As her attention waned, first she wondered how many books there were in the library and then the combined time it had taken to write them. Both of these wonderings were of course a complete waste of time, and ones she was sure were not worthy of one single wondering of Alice in Wonderland’s many fantastical wonderings. ‘Wonderings’ – there probably wasn’t such a word in the dictionary. She could find out, after all there must be a dictionary in the library somewhere, but with so many books and shelves stacked so high they looked like mountains it would take a year to find it.
That was it, she couldn’t read one more word on the subject of time. ‘What’s the time, Mr Wolf?’ she said under her breath. Scarlet looked up at the great clock on the wall, the one that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Paddington Station, and not even looking at the position of the hands of the clock decided it was time, time to go! Even the word TIME had lost its appeal, so much so that the longer she stayed in the library the slower time appeared to pass. It was the old illusion of time working its dark magic. Scarlet was beginning to envy Stone Age man in that time had little or no meaning for him. Back then time was recorded by the simple passing of the giant sundial and moondial in the heavens above. Later, as time moved on, time was recorded on giant stone monuments like Stonehenge which, according to myths and legends, had been built by giants with the help of their architect Merlin the Magician, who had carried them all the way from the Emerald Isle, the land of the faerie.
‘Procrastination is the thief of time!’ Scarle
t exclaimed looking all about her as if she imagined the Time Thief was hiding behind a bookshelf. Then she stood up and, as if she were at a meeting of the Chronometers’ Society: ‘Gentlemen, the time has come for actions for they speak louder than words!’ She then slammed the weighty book she was speed-reading called The Alchemy of Time shut, causing dust to fly everywhere as everybody in the library looked up and glared. Some of the antiquarian scholars in the church-like building who appeared to have skin like an old leather-bound book even SSSSHHHHHED her! Scarlet had a good mind to SSSSHHHHH them back! But she thought better of it and simply marched out of the library like a clockwork toy soldier with her head held high. After all, she knew something they didn’t, in fact she knew several somethings they didn’t, one of which was time was not for wasting, as clearly at this moment in time she had interrupted the annual general meeting of the Time Wasters’ Society!
‘Alfie, pack an overnight bag, we’re running away!’ Scarlet exclaimed pulling her brother’s leg.
‘Where are we running too?!’ Alfie exclaimed looking puzzled.
‘We’re running away to the past, I would imagine, although who knows, perhaps we may be running forward to the future!’ Scarlet replied. ‘The truth, whatever that may be, is we’re meeting Billy tonight. We’re going to break into Merlin’s Mechanical Museum to steal the dragonfly timepiece, the one that in theory will enable us to travel through time.’
‘Ah yes, silly me, how could I forget, send me to the Bloody Tower, Your Royal High-and-Mightiness, and be done with it,’ Alfie said bowing and scraping in front of his sister. ‘In that case, as I will be losing sleep over it, I better get some shut-eye now!’ And with that Alfie promptly dropped to his knees, curled up on the floor like a cat and instantly fell asleep with a big grin on his face the Cheshire Cat would be proud of.
‘Alfie Potts, I swear you could sleep standing on your feet on a ship in the middle of the Battle of Trafalgar cuddled up to an hourglass like a ship’s boy!’ Scarlet tutted as she pulled the covers off Alfie’s bed and placed them over him, then left the room to the sound of her brother snoring like a warthog!
Tick tock, tock, tock, you see, the tock was louder than the tick, as here the grandfather clock tried to make itself heard over the racket young Alfred ‘The Not So Great’ was creating without even knowing it! It seemed awake or asleep this boy could make enough noise to wake the dead!
34
It’s Time!
‘It’s time,’ Scarlet groaned tapping Alfie on the shoulder.
‘Okay, I’ll be with you in two ticks,’ Alfie mumbled.
‘I know you, Alfie Potts, no sooner my back’s turned you’ll be off to the land of nod with your security blanket wrapped around your shoulders. So you’ve got one tick, no more, no less,’ Scarlet grunted roughly pulling the bed covers off Alfie so he was forced to curl up in a ball, although as he was already on the floor she couldn’t push him out of bed. ‘So you’re not going to play ball, little brother, well I am,’ snapped Scarlet ticking her brother off. Of course this fell on deaf ears, so in an act of sheer frustration Scarlet rolled her brother along the floor as if he were a log (and after all he was certainly sleeping like a log!) as if she were doing no more than rolling up an old carpet. Now, a magic carpet would have been a nice mode of transport instead of walking – more wishful thinking!
‘Ouch, that hurt, why can’t adventures take place at a respectable hour, like midday?’ grunted Alfie getting slowly to his feet.
‘Look at it this way, Alfie dear, you’re getting good practice for when you become a night watchman!’ Scarlet scoffed trying not to yawn.
‘Night watchman, what, clockwatching, babysitting Big Ben? I want to be a secret agent,’ Alfie snorted.
‘Do you think secret agents and spies sleep on the job? Like cat burglars all they get is the odd cat nap,’ Scarlet replied pulling the rug from underneath her brother’s dreams.
‘You may not have noticed but I’m not a cat, not even a cat burglar like our thief,’ Alfie yawned putting his clothes on back to front.
‘No, clearly you’re not a cat because a cat has got more sense than to walk out onto the street with its coat on back to front!’ Scarlet said taking Alfie’s jumper off and putting it back on the right way around.
‘I’m not going to wake Wilbur, it’s safer that way,’ Scarlet whispered looking over to the dolls’ house where Wilbur was away with the fairies sleeping like a baby. In truth he was sleeping in the cot in the dolls’ house. Another truth was there was such a thing as a Shakespeare cot, a fold-away cot that both Scarlet and Alfie had slept in many moons ago – not that many moons as it happens in Alfie’s case. ‘If you act like a baby I’m going to treat you like a baby!’ Scarlet could hear her mother cry putting Alfie her little brother in the cot when he acted up. The last time Scarlet remembered this happening was two years ago when he was seven!
Some small time later (for unless they had travelled briefly back to the past it could not have been some small time earlier!) they had arrived at Greenwich where they met Billy and from there they made their way to Merlin’s Mechanical Museum. Now the museum appeared to pop up here, there and everywhere as if by magic, like travelling museums often did – a sort of pop-up museum. This was only to be expected given the fact the name Merlin was in the title of the museum.
‘I wouldn’t imagine it’s that well guarded, they’re hardly keeping the Crown Jewels in there,’ Billy laughed trying to find the easiest way into the museum. ‘I think it’s best we find a window on the first floor and get in that way, although where on earth your dragonfly brooch timepiece is kept I wouldn’t like to say. We will just have to scout around and hope we find it. I wouldn’t say it’s a needle in a haystack because there aren’t any haystacks in this neck of the woods!’
‘What about Threadneedle Street?!’ Alfie chipped in feeling like Oscar Wilde at this witty remark.
‘Trust old big head to think of that,’ Scarlet spat, needling her little brother who this time around chose to treat her like the Invisible Woman, supposedly Charles Dickens’ mistress.
Billy then disappeared around the back of the museum and ten minutes later was back. ‘I’ve found a way in. There’s a window I’ve managed to open with a little gentle force. I don’t suppose too many thieves have got the imagination to steal an automaton. If we get caught I’ll say it was my idea, we just wanted to see the mechanical marvels but we couldn’t afford to pay the entrance fee,’ whispered Billy, trying to make light of breaking the law and paying the price.
Scarlet laughed nervously at Billy’s joke, such as it was. She liked Billy. He had a kind face, she couldn’t imagine him ever getting into trouble like so many of the libertines that filled the streets of London after dark, unlike Billy the Kid, the notorious gunslinger from the Wild West, and Alfie the Outlaw, the East End Mud Slinger from Old London Town. Mind you, if they got caught they would all be in trouble, but not serious trouble. She was sure Billy could never have stolen the watch he was accused of stealing.
Ten minutes later they were inside the museum after Billy had given Alfie and Scarlet a leg up and they had jumped from the open window onto the floor of the museum.
‘We’d better close the window, we don’t want to arouse any suspicion,’ said Billy, being the last one to jump as he joined his accomplices on the floor of the museum.
‘Have you any idea where this dragonfly might be kept?’ Billy said keeping his voice down and his eyes peeled for a night watchman.
‘Yes, in Mother Nature’s box of trinkets,’ Alfie beamed, although the joke fell flat as imaginary tumbleweed blew across the floor.
‘No, I don’t know where the dragonfly is kept now but I’ve got an idea. Let’s go into the gift shop, they must have a brochure or catalogue of what is in the museum and where everything is,’ Scarlet said using her head.
‘You’re a smart cookie,’ Billy
replied patting Scarlet on the back, who then turned as red as an English Tudor rose.
‘Cookies, I could do with a midnight snack,’ Alfie said rubbing his stomach.
‘One of these fine days, Alfie Potts, your stomach will get so big it will combust like the infernal combustion engine.’
‘It’s internal combustion engine,’ Alfie replied separating the facts from the friction, sorry fiction, no, I was right in the first place!
‘Not according to Mother and Father, they hate steam trains, say they’re noisy, dirty, filthy beasts, mind you sometimes they say that about you too, little brother,’ Scarlet smirked as she located the gift shop.
‘It must be our lucky night, it’s not even locked and look over here, a guide to the museum,’ hissed Billy opening the door and walking into the gift shop.
‘Let’s see,’ Scarlet said almost snatching the brochure out of Billy’s hand in her excitement to find where the dragonfly brooch was being kept. ‘Sorry,’ she added. ‘Look, look, here it is, the dragonfly brooch watch, it’s on the second floor, up the stairs, come on,’ Scarlet said trying to locate the stairs.
‘Nice of the museum to tell the thieves exactly where to find their best treasure,’ Billy quipped making it sound like they were taking part in a treasure hunt inside the museum.
‘Over here,’ grunted Alfie pointing to a staircase. Quickly, but as quietly as the three blind mice, they hurried up the stairs. Due to the darkness they were almost blind. They certainly could not turn the lights on for fear of attracting attention.
‘You go that way, I’ll go this way and, Billy, you keep an eye out for any guards. Come on, Alfie, there’s no time to waste.’
‘Yes, very amusing I must say, no time to waste and we’re looking for a watch. Ever thought of being on the stage, sis, sweeping it!’ Alfie chortled.
The Clock People Page 21