The Tea Machine

by Gill McKnight

  “So?” Sangfroid did not like discussing Millicent’s marriage prospects, slim as they were. She wondered at her escaping marriage so easily though. Where Sangfroid came from marriage was a social necessity for the upwardly mobile and always advantageously arranged. Matchmaking was a very lucrative industry.

  “Because Millicent wouldn’t entertain the thought, I stepped up to the mark,” Hubert said morosely. “Godfrey Trenchant-Myre was a business acquaintance of my father’s. The Trenchant-Myres were a well-respected family, and it seemed the simplest thing to pledge my troth to Sophia. Of course, our families were delighted. It made the last few weeks of Papa’s illness happier.” He stared moodily into his glass; always a bad sign in those who couldn’t handle their drink. Sangfroid decided to push it a little more before setting Hubert on a homeward path.

  “I’m not sure I understand what you feel so bad about?” It was a lie. If she’d have been betrothed to Sophia, she’d have volunteered for a suicide squad at once.

  “Because I love Weena.”

  Sangfroid stared at her companion, unsure what to say. This little man dressed in blobs of brown tweed had just told her he was in love with a squid? A dirty, big, evil, melt-your-face squid. His round, flushed face with his high, cerebral brow that curved back into his receding hairline shone in the firelight. He looked like he might cry. Clearly she was not going to get any sense out of him in this state. The conversation had swerved into an area Sangfroid had no idea how to deal with, and she bet Hubert would forget his confession by tomorrow morning. She dearly hoped he would. Any more talk would only be embarrassing; best to duck this and move on.

  “Come on, sport. Home with you.” Sangfroid hauled her companion to his unsteady feet. “Where do we pay?”

  “I’ve a tab.” Hubert led the way out. His head was bowed, and he wobbled and wove a little, but she kept a firm hand on the small of his back and guided him towards the door. “I say, it’s not really that far, do you mind if we walk home?” He sounded despondent.

  “Sure.” A walk in the night air was just what her cramped legs needed. It would be nice to experience this weird little city first hand. She was drunk, too. And she didn’t care if it all was a hypno-therapeutic-thingy the squid were playing on her mind. Whatever it was, and wherever she was, it was damn fine.

  They stepped from the Prometheus onto slick, wet pavements, the heels of their boots slapping out loud in the night air. The streets shone waxy under the yellow lamplight that cut crazy patterns across the puddled cobblestones.

  “You see,” Hubert spoke up as they strolled along. “Every time I went back, I spent more and more time conversing with Weena.” He was determined to complete his confession. Somehow, now they were free from the smoky confines of the club, Sangfroid didn’t mind. The fresh air made her head lighter and clearer, and everything looked and smelled exciting and different. “She’s so smart, Sangfroid. So intelligent and sweet, and those blighters were hurting her. She always knew when I was coming, and she’d help me understand things. Not just in the lab, but about her world and the way it worked.”

  “Wonderful.” Sangfroid was more interested in her surroundings than in squid talk. She already knew how smart the squishy buggers were. Hadn’t they decimated her entire unit and then turned the Amoebas into a barbecue? She stopped to pull at a privet hedge and sniff the wet foliage. “Can you eat these?” Her tongue gently tapped the dark green leaves.

  “I’ve never tried. Anyway, Weena and I…slowly we became friends, and then, somewhere along the way, I fell in love.” Hubert cried and flung out his arms to embrace the night sky. This was different. Hubert had been almost apologetic up until now. Sangfroid smiled. The fresh air was having its effect on Hubert, too. She perfectly understood. This was a wonderful night. The brandy had been superb and plentiful, and now it charged through her blood like a thousand chariots. Hubert was drunk and happy, and Sangfroid had the feeling this did not occur often enough for this compact little man.

  “Love is a mighty good thing, Hubert,” she said, noting the slight slur in her voice. A happy slur. “Never be ashamed to love. Even if it is inter-species. And a deadly species at that.”

  “The female of the species is always deadlier, Sangfroid. Everyone knows that. I used to be terrified of women. In fact, I still get a little nervous, especially on Sophia’s paleobotanical nights.” His face darkened.

  “Tell me about it. So what’s with all those ladies?” she asked. “They were so damned nosy.”

  “Millicent was badly caught out. She had no idea Sophia had informed half of London’s polite society that she had a “gentleman” caller. As you probably know, Sophia has a deep set neurological condition with seeing you as female. Her nerves just can’t take it, so she redefines you as male. The little ladies of her inner circle will, I’m afraid, share a similar disposition. They simply cannot cope with a true life archetypal fierce woman warrior such as yourself. You will always be a handsome, debonair major in the Prussian Dragoons because that’s what they want to see.”

  “And on some level, that’s what they want for Millicent.” Sangfroid felt a little more sober. “A gentleman admirer, maybe an engagement, and a suitable marriage.”

  “Well, yes. They are all despairing spinsters with barely a farthing or good feature between them. I’m sure they only attend Sophia’s ludicrous evenings for the decent supper Millicent lays on for them. She is the blue-eyed baby to them, a sort of favoured niece, if you like. She is wealthy and wise, and all she needs is a good husband to be truly complete, and that’s what the little ladies want to see.”

  “Sophia’s hardly a little lady.” This was cruel, but Sangfroid held her fully responsible for this evening’s fracas. To have arrived in the Aberly house with only Millicent and Hubert present would have been a totally different and much more pleasant experience.

  Hubert sighed. “Sophia has her own cross to bear. Don’t be too harsh on her. Over the years since our betrothal, she has taken up a role in our little family circle. She is the speck of sand in our well-oiled cogs, and sometimes it is good to feel a mild hesitancy in the streamlined running of things. It makes one appreciate the machinery better when it does run right.”

  Sangfroid had never heard such a “well-oiled” criticism, but stayed silent. Sophia was Hubert’s intended, even if he was having an extra-curricular romance with a Colossal space squid. Who was Sangfroid to pee on the pompa? Hubert and Millicent had so far offered her nothing but friendship and security in this weird world. She would let it ride for a while and see what developed. After all, there could be worse things than playing a dragoon major from the Prussias or the Urals or wherever, for Millicent’s lady friends. They had been a little swoony around her. Sangfroid liked that.

  Hubert stopped dead in the street, so that Sangfroid bumped into him almost bowling him over. He recovered himself and looked up to the stars pushing through the overcast sky above. They were small tinny specks. “How disappointing they look from here once you have travelled among them. You are so lucky Sangfroid, to be born when and where you were, in whatever timeline that was.”

  “The stars may be mysterious to you, but your world is just as strange to me. I mean, these Urals where I’m supposed to come from. What are they?”

  “Oh, just a wild, expansive place where nothing ever happens. But it sounds exotic enough to explain you away. I do think Millicent was quite clever there. And that brings me to my original question. I haven’t forgotten, you know. Mind like a steel trap.” Hubert went to tap his temple with a forefinger but poked himself in the eye instead. “What are your intentions towards my sister?” He drew up to his fullest, slightly lopsided, height.

  “Is this your street?” Sangfroid easily steered the conversation to safer waters. She didn’t want to talk about her “intentions.” As far as she was concerned, she had none. She barely knew the woman who had landed her in this insane situ
ation, even if her brother spoke with assurance of a possible connection. The idea of a future with Millicent left an unexpected bubble of warmth in the pit of her stomach, however. A bubble that expanded every time she saw Millicent or spoke to her or thought about her. It made her blood heat and her step lighter, but then again, that could just as easily be the brandy. Either way, she wasn’t prepared to think about it anymore than that. She loved Millicent, but it was her business. A business that scared her blind.

  “So it is! This is my street!” Hubert said in wonder and wobbled around a corner, and Sangfroid followed. “Number five, I think.”

  A row of hansom cabs lined up outside number five. The horses stirred impatiently in their traces, and the drivers huddled on the pavement smoking and talking with each other. Bemused by the gathering, Sangfroid and Hubert mounted the steps to number five Christie Mews. Before they reached the top step, the door was flung open and a fretful Edna greeted them. “Oh sir, am I glad to see you.”

  “Why, whatever’s wrong, Edna?” Hubert dumped his overcoat into her waiting arms and weaved across the hall towards his laboratory. Sangfroid set her top hat on Edna’s head and gave her a wink that made her jump.

  “It’s the ladies, sir. They won’t go home until they meet Miss Millicent’s gentleman again. All their carriages are waiting for them, but no one will be the first to leave. And Cook is fed up making tea and cake and has gone to bed.” She was close to tears.

  “But the ladies have already met Major Sangfroid,” Hubert said, turning a little too sharply towards the parlour and almost unbalancing. The tintinnabulation of ladies voices could be heard from behind the great mahogany doors.

  “More of ’em came afterwards, sir. Many more. They won’t go because the others have already met the major, and now the rest want to meet ’im, too.” Edna was wringing her hands.

  “Don’t worry, Edna. We’ll sort it out.” Sangfroid felt sympathy for the girl though she couldn’t understand why she was in such a fret. It was only ladies after all. Nosy, little, spinstery ladies. She’d give them something to talk about!

  “We’ll see to it. You go on to bed, Edna,” Hubert instructed her kindly.

  “Oh, thank you, sir.” She bobbed a clumsy curtsey and disappeared as quickly as she could.

  “Come on.” Hubert’s face had lost its melancholy sheen and taken on the look of a reckless man. Sangfroid had seen that look many times in the Parabellum the night before a battle. It was a thing of beauty, that ephemeral moment when the rationale flees, but despair has yet to arrive and take up residence. It was the void of chance where anything could happen if a centurion was brave enough to act and not think. A place where life and death were played out on the dice and, in the morning, on the face of the enemy.

  “I’ve got your back, matey.” She gave Hubert an imperial salute. “Mithras, give strength to our right arms!”

  “Right arms!” Hubert shouted and gave a sloppy salute back.

  Sangfroid braced herself, then swung both parlour doors open with great aplomb and a mighty crash. In a happy daze, she took in the whole room in an instant and saw Millicent sitting bolt upright with eyes hollowed out by tiredness and ennui. Beside her, Sophia was tight-lipped and seething. And around them perched a black-frocked murmuration of paleobotanists, twittering gossip and tidbits over their china cups. The room fell silent as she and Hubert entered.

  “Ladies!” Sangfroid sailed into the parlour, her arms spread wider than an ascending eagle. This set off a whirl of excited trills. She puffed up her chest under their adoring gaze. She’d spin them a yarn they’d never forget. “Let me tell you all about the Urals, with its vast and wild expanses,” she declared loudly, “and amphitheatres full of mighty lions!”

  CHAPTER 11

  “Amphitheatres full of mighty lions! Mighty lions?”

  Why were women’s voices so much shriller in the morning? The thought rumbled through Sangfroid’s mind as the window drapes were torn open with such rattling bad humour as to split Cerberus’s heads apart. It felt as if all the hammers of Vulcan were pounding in her skull. Her eyelids flickered against the cushions where she lay face down. She carefully inched her head upwards. Then the full splendour of morning fell through the window and cut into her squinted eyes like shards of glass, and she prayed Vulcan would deliver the killer blow right there and then.

  “Mighty lions!” Millicent shrilled again for added measure. Her decibel output had to be equal to the biggest, meanest, most bastard commanders Sangfroid had ever served under. How did she do it? She was tiny. A wee, wee, tiny thing. Where was all this noise coming from?

  “You preformed the dance of the Urals.” She continued to screech like all the Harpies of Thrake. “Do you even know where the Urals are?”

  “Augh. Ack.” Were the only sounds her acrid throat could utter.

  “What on earth got into you last night, apart from too much brandy?” Millicent ground out the words, cold and hard. “It was shameful. No, shameless.” She must have thought about this, as there was a moment of blessed silence before she cried, “Shaming! In fact, it was all three.” She was not to be appeased. Millicent sailed over to her hearth and began to savagely shake coal on the embers, creating a new avalanche of hell in Sangfroid’s head.

  “Ack.”

  “Up, you ne’er do well. Up.” Millicent’s full attention turned to Sangfroid, now that the drapes had been ripped apart and the fire battered to buggery. “How dare you defile my mother’s Chesterfield with your drunken prostrations! Arise, you vulgarian and drag your sorry carcass to the dog’s bed, it will suit you well.”

  Sangfroid creaked to a sitting position and found she had indeed defiled Millicent’s mother’s Chesterfield by passing out on it face first. There were drool marks on the vermilion silk cushions. She vaguely remembered Millicent stomping off to bed not long after Sangfroid began regaling the ladies with phantom stories of her service in the Prussian Dragoons and Ural life in general. They’d loved it! And yes, there had been a dance. A little bip-boppy thing she had picked up during some downtime on a starship circling the Wolf-Rayet nebula. The ladies had clapped along in time. It had been a wonderful evening. Wonderful. But now her face itched, her eyes burned, and her head felt like it had been kicked around a bear pit for bait.

  She tried to apologize. It was usually the quickest way to make a woman happy and, hopefully, quieter.

  “Ack,” she said, then coughed and tried again. “Sorry.” She needed water. Just enough to drown in.

  “Sorry? Sorry?” And Millicent was off again. “You sat there and lied to those ladies. Blatantly lied.”

  “No.” Her voice might be croaky, but it was warming up nicely with her growing irritation. “I sat there and embellished to those ladies. Embellished on your lies.” And she was on her feet stumbling for the door. She could not bear an argument this early in the morning, and Millicent knew that. Except…except, she hesitated, how could she know that? But her head was too fuzzy to think it through. She had a weird synergy with Millicent; she could acknowledge that much. Millicent was spooky for Sangfroid to be around. It felt as if she lived inside Sangfroid’s head half the time. She generated feelings that pushed and pulled Sangfroid in all directions at once, and that did not mix well with a hangover. She drew herself up to her full, impressive height. “Excuse me,” she said as formally as possible, “while I go and drown myself.”

  “There’s a wishing well in the garden.”

  Sangfroid would have loved to slam the door on the way out, but she was an old pro at hangovers and knew not to make that rookie mistake. The hallway smelled of cooked bacon, and it made her stomach protest, which seemed to be the morning’s theme. She met Hubert coming carefully down the stairs. He looked a lot sprucer than Sangfroid felt in that he’d had a shave and managed to wet down his hair, but he had the eyes of a suffering man.

  “Mornin’,” Sangfro
id rasped.

  “Ack,” Hubert rasped back, then cleared his throat and pointed to the stairs. “Toilette, wash, stuff. Left, end of corridor. Your clean uniform is set out.” With that he limped off towards the breakfast room.

  Hubert had directed Sangfroid to his father’s suite of rooms. The washstand was neatly laid out with the late Mr. Aberly’s personal grooming tools. It was an astonishingly kind gesture on Hubert’s behalf. The water was tepid but Sangfroid stripped and washed thoroughly, then turned her attention to the curious array of implements set out on the dresser before her. Quaintly antiquated as it was, Sangfroid soon found her way around the manicure set. Frontline troops were resourceful, and she had a thousand uses for anything pointy. She liked the cologne. The sharp cedar tang did a lot to refresh her pallid sinuses and sting some colour back in her flesh. She pulled on her freshly laundered and thoughtfully mended uniform, satisfied to be back in her own skin.

  When Sangfroid stepped out onto the landing, she felt revitalized and ready to face breakfast. The door to Hubert’s bedchamber lay ajar. Sangfroid hesitated. The multimetre Hubert had removed from the Amoebas sat in full view on a bedside table. What else had he purloined? And how might this kleptomania affect both their timelines?

  Sangfroid nudged the door open a little farther with the toe of her boot. She hesitated at the threshold and gave the room a cursory glance. She felt guilty for snooping, though it turned out she was right to do so. She noted at least two more objects that she would hazard weren’t from this world. One she knew to be a bio-thermometer—she’d seen enough of them in the medical wards—and the other was the small gyroscope that had so entranced Millicent on her first visit.