by K. Velk
Miles realized even in his muddle and despair that the Doctor was right.
“I would have to pay them something…” He sniveled into his sleeve. “But, I, I don’t even know if the money I have is any good.”
“Well, why ever not? Is it English money?”
“Professor Davies gave it to me. He brought it with him when he left England and he had saved it all these years. He wasn’t sure whether it would be any good now.”
“Will you let me have a look at it?”
The Doctor fetched the haversack and Miles unfolded the bills before him.
“Well, those notes are not so old – there’s nothing to keep them from spending. You’re quite flush really.”
“I don’t understand about English money. Is this a lot?”
“Well, it would not be enough to buy yourself, say, an automobile, but it could get you passage back to New York, with a bit left over to pay room and board to the Peppermores til you’re ready to travel, if you’re thinking of going home…”
Miles’ heart sank. “I can’t go back, at least not now, not yet. How much do you think I should pay the Peppermores for keeping me?”
“You do know there are twenty shillings in a pound?”
“I do now.”
“I should think ten shillings would be quite welcomed by the Peppermores and generous for a week’s lodging and a little light-duty nursing. Jack will be back home on Saturday next, and when he returns to Sessions, you can go with him. If you get a position there, you can put the rest of your capital away and live on what you earn.”
“I’ll have to get my bike fixed. If I had the tools, I might be able to fix it myself. I’m not a great mechanic but I could handle a bent wheel.”
Doctor Slade said that there was a bicycle mechanic in Tipton and that, as luck would have it, he would be going over to see him in just a few days himself. If Miles were sufficiently recovered, he would take him and his bike along and ‘have a word.’
Jack returned then and said it was all set with his mother. Dr. Slade offered to give the boys a lift and when they tried to decline he pronounced it too far for Miles to walk. He commanded that they wait while he brought his car around. “It’s a solid little car, but it can be a bit tricky when the humidity is high. I may be a minute. Just have a seat in the parlor and I’ll be right back.” The Doctor ushered the boys through the back of the waiting room and into an over-furnished sitting room with a low ceiling.
“What about my bike?” Miles asked with a pain. “Can we bring it along?” The idea of being separated from his time machine made Miles feel queasy again.
Doctor Slade laughed. “No chance of that I’m afraid! You’ll know why when you see my car, if I can coax it to life.”
Miss Musgrove, the lady who had admitted the boys to the surgery, brought a tray to the low table by the flowered couch where the boys had been deposited. She set it down with cup-rattling jolt. Her expression was as dark as her dress.
“Jack Peppermore, don’t have Doctor lingering at your place. He were up ‘til all hours last night at some strange goings-on over to Oakeshott. He’s got a full day tomorrow and you scamps have cost him his Sunday rest and his tea. Mind now, don’t have ‘im palaverin’ the rest ‘o the day away.”
With a look that defied reply, Miss Musgrove turned on her black heel and left the room. Jack smiled at her back.
“Miss Musgrove is the Doctor’s housekeeper, not his mother, nor his nanny, but you can’t tell her that. Never mind her. Have some tea. It’ll do you good.”
Miles looked at the China cups and saucers and the teapot. He had never been invited or expected to drink hot tea. Tea was for grown ups – grown up women. Jack poured Miles a cup without asking if he wanted any. Miles helped himself to some of the long, thin cookies that lay in a neat row on a pretty plate. They were good, and he realized after his first few bites that he was ravenously hungry.
How long had it been since he had eaten? In one respect, just a few hours. In another, decades – but going backwards. How strange that thought was! Its strangeness made him think of Alice in Wonderland. He knew now how Alice would have felt after falling through that rabbit hole, if she had been actual flesh and blood.
He had to stop himself from snatching at the cookies. He wouldn’t have been half surprised if they had made him start to grow, or to shrink. Thinking about his circumstances worsened his headache and to distract himself, he tried slurping a little of the tea. He was thirsty too, he realized, and powerfully so. He didn’t much like the way the tea tasted, but the steaming heat of it, and the sugar he added to it, were revitalizing. Just as he got to the bottom of his second cup, Dr. Slade came back in. He was holding a bunch of flowers.
“Miss Musgrove! I forgot all about these. Would you put them in some water? They won’t last long, but they ought to go another day.” Miss Musgrove reappeared like a dark cloud and claimed the flowers.
“Interesting chap, fellow called Lightfoot, is in the neighborhood for the summer,” the Doctor said. “He’s a folklore expert from Oxford. He and his daughter have taken Oakeshott for the summer. They invited a few of us locals up for a Midsummer’s Eve bonfire last night and his daughter gave me those flowers with instructions to hang them over the front door and to wash my face in the dew that they collected this morning. Supposed to bring me luck. Oh well. I’m afraid I’ve missed the chance. Miles, you sit up front with me.”
The car was a two-seater and Jack was directed to squeeze into the “dickey seat” that opened where the trunk should have been. There was clearly no room for his bike, Miles had to admit. The engine made a putt-putt sound, like an elaborate toy. “Hold onto your hats!” The Doctor yelled as he put the car noisily in gear, and Miles was off on his last, short journey of that long journeying day.
9. Meet The Peppermores
Miles’ misgivings about foisting himself on strangers melted away as the Doctor called hello to Mrs. Peppermore and Jack’s sister, Susannah. Both women were standing on the broad stone step before the door of another place fit for a storybook or a Christmas card. The Peppermore’s cottage was a low, white building with roses over the entrance and squat green shutters flanking small windows.
Susannah Peppermore was three years older than her brother making her twenty or twenty one. And she was beautiful – maybe the most beautiful woman Miles had ever seen. Her light brown hair poured in soft waves over her straight shoulders and framed her oval face. Her eyes were deep violet, and bright as though lit from within. With the roses around her head she looked like an old fashioned magazine advertisement for soap. It was hard to believe that her gaze was directed at what was, for her, a blank and dark scene.
She put her hand out in Miles’ general direction. “I’m Susannah.” He gaped. After a moment, she added, “I’m sorry about your accident, but I’m very pleased to meet you.” When another few moments passed in silence, she laughed. “No matter what you may have heard about blind people, we don’t bite.”
“Oh sorry.” His clammy hand embarrassed Miles, but he tried to shake hands in the firm way that his father had taught him.
“Poor Miles has lost a lot of blood today,” the Doctor offered.
“Well, welcome Miles!” Mrs. Peppermore said loudly, pumping his hand in her turn. She was a stout woman whose brown hair had gone mostly grey. She leaned heavily on a wooden cane. “Come and sit down! You’re pale as a ghost! I can see most of that blood down your shirt! What a day you must’ve had. Come in. Come in!” She clumped inside and they all followed.
“How’s he doing, Doctor?” Miles caught a glimpse of the Doctor’s expression as he absentmindedly answered the question, “All right, I think. Considering…” His attention was not on Miles’ poor head, but on Susannah’s beautiful face.
Dazed as he was, the bit of Miles’ mind that was still functioning wondered again if Susannah Peppermore could be the girl he had been sent to find. Could it be? The thought made his head hurt and he abandoned th
e effort. He was exhausted and hungry. He would think about it later, or tomorrow. Fortunately, Mrs. Peppermore’s next question was about food. Did the Doctor think Miles should have something to eat? The cottage smelled of something appetizing. The Doctor said it would be good for Miles to eat if he now felt hungry. Hungry was almost all that he felt. Mrs. Peppermore invited the Doctor to “have a plate as well,” but he declined.
“Miss Musgrove would never forgive me if I came home having eaten some other lady’s Sunday dinner.” They all laughed over this and before Miles knew what was happening Doctor Slade had said he would look in the next day and taken his leave.
Miles was then quickly settled with Jack at the big table in the cottage’s main room. Mrs. Peppermore took the covers off of steaming dishes and spooned their contents onto the boys’ plates. She cleared her throat as they plunged their forks into the potatoes and Jack took her hint. He folded his hands, giving Miles a look out of the corner of his eye. Miles did the same.
“Would you like to say grace, Miles?” Mrs. Peppermore asked.
The McTavishes were not grace-sayers. “Uhh. Maybe it would be better if Jack did?”
Mrs. Peppermore’s look darkened and Jack didn’t waste any time. “Lord make us grateful for this food and bless it to our use. Amen.” It took one breath. Miles made a mental note to remember the little prayer. Jack was going back to his job in the morning and Miles would be alone with Mrs. Peppermore and Susannah until the following Saturday. In his new, nearly friendless state, he couldn’t afford to get on Mrs. Peppermore’s bad side.
10. Help
Miles woke to discover that the previous day had not been a dream. No, of course not, he thought, deflating with a sigh.
A little daylight came up from the stair-hole into the slant-ceilinged attic bedroom he had shared with Jack. Jack, however, was nowhere to be seen. Miles smelled bacon and heard Mrs. Peppermore and Susannah talking in the kitchen below. He had to get to the bathroom, desperately. That meant, he thought with an inward groan, a trip to the privy behind the house.
The realization that 1928 was going to be like one long camping trip then penetrated deep into his shaken, sore head. No indoor plumbing, no electricity, at least not at Peppermore’s cottage, and worse, no Wi-Fi and all that goes with Wi-Fi. How would he stand it? People said, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” and maybe that was true, but what a crappy deal!
Only because he had no other choice, Miles swung his feet out of bed and looked for the clothes he had left heaped on the floor. They had disappeared.
His nearly exploding bladder overcame his reluctance to call downstairs. “Uhm. Excuse me, Mrs. Peppermore? I think my clothes are gone?”
“Monday’s wash day, lad!” she shouted back. “And you could never have appeared in that bloody shirt. You keep to bed today and rest.”
“I’m feeling OK,” he lied. His mouth felt like it had been stuffed with cotton overnight and the sound of his own voice was like a jackhammer in his aching head. “I would really like to get up.”
“Do you need the chamber pot? It’s under the bed.”
“The what?” He could hear her cane and heavy footsteps advancing across the floor below.
“The chamber pot! To answer the call of nature!”
“Oh. Oh no. I’ll come down. I’m fine. I just need my clothes.”
“Well, I suppose it’s a lot to expect a boy to sit in a dark bedroom on a fine summer day just because of a little bump on the head. You’ll find some of Jack’s old things in the dresser. You can wear those til your own are dry. You can keep them, come to think of it. Jack will never button into them again.”
Miles pulled the sticking dresser drawers open and rifled through the few neatly-folded contents. He quickly came across a pair of pants, too big for him and with a button fly, which was especially awkward under the circumstances. A collarless shirt, mended many times with careful sewing, hung on a peg next to the dresser. He put it on and rolled the sleeves to his elbows. The pants threatened to slip down over his bony hips. He had to descend the ladder-like stairs clutching the waistband.
“Good morning Miles,” Susannah said brightly. She was cranking the handle of a barrel-like wooden contraption that had been set up near the sink. “How is our patient today?”
“OK, I guess. I was just going to run the bathroom…” It was some consolation that at least she couldn’t see him.
“Well, that would mean a run to the inn. No one hereabouts has a bathroom. Had you one in America?”
“Oh. Yes. It’s just what I always called it – the bathroom, I mean, the outhouse or whatever. You know what I mean. Anyway. I’ll be right back.” He made it to the little building just in time and was so much relieved that he felt for a moment that the other challenges of the day were likely to be minor in comparison. He returned to the kitchen to find a place had been set for him at the big table.
“Have a seat and we’ll get you something to eat. Then we’ll see about getting some braces for you.” Braces? She couldn’t mean for his teeth? Dr. Klein had said Miles had the straightest teeth of any boy in Dallas County.
He was not consulted about what he might want for breakfast (again something that never happened at home). He feared runny eggs. Runny eggs filled him with horror. His parents always required him to at least taste things served to him at other people’s houses, but a bite was sufficient to comply with their rule. He sensed that Mrs. Peppermore would not approve the one-bite approach.
The eggs appeared and were, thankfully, scrambled past the point even of glossiness. There was also some bacon, a big piece of bread cooked in the egg pan, and a mug of tea. At home, where Consuela forced Miles to eat something before leaving for school he would stab his spoon into a bowl of cereal just enough to silence her. This egg breakfast was huge for him, but he had to admit that it was tasty and satisfying, as he found again that he was ravenously hungry.
Funny about this hunger, he thought as he chewed the hunk of bread. Usually when he was nervous or worried he had no appetite. And he’d never been more nervous or worried in his life than he had been in the last twenty four hours – but here he was with a stomach like a bottomless pit.
“We seem to be out of butter, love,” Mrs. Peppermore said, approaching the table with a little plate of something. “Would you like a bit of lard for your bread?”
Miles managed not to gag. “Oh. Uh. No thanks. That was good. I’m fine.”
“Nothing like a good breakfast to fortify a person, I always say. More tea?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Nice to have a lad back in the house, even if it is like feeding a regiment,” she said as she poured. “Keep eating like that young Master McTavish and you won’t need braces to keep those trousers up.”
She handed him a pair of suspenders. They had button holes at the ends, not snaps, and he figured out before he made a fool of himself that there must be buttons sewn on the inside of the waistband of the pants. Just as he got himself buttoned and tucked in, under the embarrassingly motherly eye of Mrs. Peppermore, Doctor Slade appeared.
“Good morning all! Working hard as usual, I see. Won’t keep you but a few minutes. Glad to see young Miles up and around. Come and let me have a look at you!”
Doctor Slade sat Miles down in one of the kitchen chairs and shined a bright light in both eyes. Then he unwound the long bandage he had wrapped yesterday around Miles’ head and gently pried off the gauze patch that covered the stitches. The doctor’s face betrayed little but Miles noticed an unpleasant mess on the gauze.
“Hmm. A bit of suppuration there, but not too bad, not too bad,” the Doctor said with practiced cheerfulness while he felt the undamaged bit of Miles’ head for signs of fever. “Miles, tilt your head back for me, can you? I need to douse the stitches with a bit of something. The doctor extracted a brown glass bottle of something from his bag and tipped a bit of it onto the wound. It went on like water but then burned like fire.
“Owwwowwwowwow!” Miles hand went involuntarily to the stitches.
“No! You mustn’t touch the wound! It’s already a bit infected.”
What poisonous, outdated treatment might this be? Miles clenched his fists and writhed. Fortunately, the burning passed as quickly as it had come. It must be some kind of antiseptic, likely safe enough, but if leaches appeared from the Doctor’s bag…
“That ought to knock down the infection, but I’m afraid you’re in for a bit of a scar. It shouldn’t be too bad after a bit – just the thing to make you a romantic character.”
Miles thought he wouldn’t mind that, but he doubted his parents would agree. How would he ever explain it to them? Would he ever get the chance to try? The Doctor took out another gauze pad and rewrapped the bandage.
“The good news is that, though you’ve got a terrific egg there, I don’t believe you are concussed. The human brain sits in a kind of fluid and that keeps it remarkably safe, even from blows like the one you got from that tree limb. And the frontal bone of the skull is amazingly strong.”
The clock on the mantle chimed and Mrs. Peppermore rose with a groan.
“Thank you Doctor, if you’ve no particular instructions for Miles, we’ll see you tomorrow. You know we work to the clock here or work is neglected.”
“Well do I know it. I’ll be off. I did have a bit of business with Miles before I go, though. Will you walk me to my car, Miles?”
Once outside, the Doctor pulled four coins from his pocket. “I thought I’d spare you an errand to the bank and I knew you were anxious about your position with the Peppermores.”
Doctor Slade explained that two of these coins, which were called “crowns,” should be given to Mrs. Peppermore for his week’s stay with them. Miles insisted on fetching his haversack to get the Doctor some money. He asked the Doctor to take the right amount for the change and to pay something for the doctor’s bill.
“Offering payment for what had been offered gratis may bit reckless of you under the circumstances,” the Doctor said, taking two pounds, “but I won’t pretend that a country doctor can afford to waive all his fees. Consider yourself paid in full for all services rendered to date and until we’re done with your head wound. But if you don’t get work and find you need this back, just ask. How are you getting on here?”