A Tale of Time City

She was just putting on her second sock – which had somehow got right under the stone bed – and had only her shoes to find, when the stone door grated open and Jonathan came in. He was carrying what looked like half a birdcage with dishes floating in the air beneath it.

“Oh good!” he said. “You were asleep when I looked in earlier. I brought you some breakfast, so you won’t have to face my parents on an empty stomach.” He was wearing bright green pyjamas today and looking very spruce and confident.

Vivian had a feeling that he was going to rush her into something else unless she was careful. “You’ll have to tell me a whole lot more,” she said. “Or I can’t face anyone.”

“Well, you can’t stay hiding here. Elio’s bound to find you,” Jonathan said, putting the birdcage down on a stone table. “What’s your name?”

“Vivian Smi—” Vivian began, and then remembered that she was Jonathan’s cousin. “Vivian Sarah Lee,” she said. “You thought I’d forget, didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Jonathan said, setting out the dishes from under the birdcage. “Pull up that log over there and start eating. We have to catch my mother before she goes to work.”

There was no butter-pie, to Vivian’s regret, but there were syrupy pancakes that were almost as good, and fruit juice which Vivian thought was even nicer than tinned pineapple. Up to then, tinned pineapple had been her favourite food. After that were slices of strange crumby bread that you ate with slices of cheese. “Why is everyone called Vivian?” she asked as she ate.

“The eldest Lee is always called Vivian,” Jonathan said. “After the Time Lady. Her eldest daughter married the first Lee. We descend from Faber John himself. And we’re the oldest family in Time City.”

He was sitting on the stone bed looking lofty. Vivian could tell he was very proud of being a Lee. “How old is that?” she said.

“Thousands of years,” said Jonathan. “Nobody knows quite how many.”

“That’s ridiculous!” said Vivian. “How can anyone think that Faber John and the Time Lady are still around after all that time?”

“I told you last night,” Jonathan said, “that I’m going by the stories. I think the Scientists have got it wrong – and even they can’t account for the person coming uptime from Four Century to Twenty Century, bringing all the disturbance to history.” He leant forward earnestly. “I know that’s the Time Lady, and I’m sure the stories are right and she’s trying to destroy the City because she hates Faber John. The stories are almost the only history of Time City that we’ve got. The records are terribly hazy. You should hear my tutor swearing about how little we know!” He stood up impatiently. “Are you finished? Shall we go?”

Vivian was still eating cheese and crumby bread. “No,” she said. “And listen here – I’m not going to be rushed and bullied all the time. You caught me on the hop yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I’m feeble.”

“I never thought you were feeble!” Jonathan protested. He hung about, standing on one foot and then on the other, until Vivian had put the last slice of cheese into her mouth. Then he rushed to the door. “Ready now?”

Vivian sighed. “No. I have to put my shoes on. And what about my luggage?”

Jonathan had forgotten about that. “You’d better bring it with you to show that you’ve travelled,” he said. “That gas mask is a wonderfully realistic touch.”

“It’s not realistic,” said Vivian. “It’s real.”

She found her shoes and packed her suitcase yet again, while Jonathan took his grey flannel disguise and hid it in a stone chest. “They’ll be safe there until Sam can sneak them back to Patrol Costumes,” he said. “Oh, and take that label off the string thing. It’ll look pretty funny if I introduce you as V.S. Lee and you’re waving a label saying V. Smith.”

This was true, but Vivian felt a twinge of alarm as the label went into the stone chest too. It was as if she really had lost her name. How am I going to prove to Cousin Marty that I’m me? she wondered, putting on her school hat and her coat. “Now I am ready,” she said.

The house was huge, with a sort of lived-in richness to it. The rugs along the passages had an ugly, valuable look, but they had worn places on them. The banisters of the many stairs they went down had been polished so much that the carvings on them had almost worn away. The stairs had dips in the middle from countless years of feet. People were hard at work putting another layer of polish on them. Jonathan took Vivian on a dodging, zig-zag way down, using four different staircases, so that they never met any of these people face to face, and they came at last to the ground floor. Jonathan let out a sigh of relief. “Now we can let people see us,” he said.

Vivian looked from the coloured marble patterns on the floor to the wide oak stairway, and then to a row of pointed windows – or maybe doors – on the other side. She could see a sloping town square out there with a fountain in the middle. “What is this house?” she said.

“The Annuate Palace,” said Jonathan. “This way.”

He took Vivian along the patterned marble floor to where the space stopped being a front hall and turned into a kind of room full of carved empty frames that were probably chairs. Just beyond an archway, a lady was speaking into what was probably a telephone – though it looked rather as if she was gazing into a mirror and speaking into a magnifying glass. “I’ll be along in five minutes,” she said, glancing at Jonathan and Vivian, “and we’ll sort it out then. Something seems to have come up here. ’Bye.” She put the magnifying glass into a slot by the mirror and turned round, staring at Vivian.

Vivian suddenly felt truly uncomfortable. This lady had the same deeply anxious look that Mum had worn ever since War was declared. And though she looked nothing like Mum, since she had the same folded eyes as Jonathan with the same flicker in front of them, Vivian knew she was a real person with real worries, just like Mum. She might wear yellow and black pyjamas and do her hair in a strange way, but it was not right to lie to her. And here was Jonathan smoothly telling her lies.

“You’ll never guess, Mother!” he said. “This is Cousin Vivian – Vivian Lee! She’s just got here from Twenty Century.”

His mother put up a hand and clutched her jetty black hair. “Oh Great Time! Are the Lees back already then? I meant to air Lee House first!”

“No, she’s on her own. Viv and Inga sent her back because World War Two has just started,” Jonathan explained.

And here am I standing here letting him lie! Vivian thought uncomfortably. But she had to join in the lying after that, because Jonathan’s mother turned to her with a worried smile. “Of course! That war comes up about a third of the way through Twenty Century, doesn’t it? Has it turned out worse than they expected?”

“Much worse,” said Vivian. “London’s been bombed quite a bit already. They think there’s going to be gas-attacks and an invasion soon.” Though all this was quite true, it somehow amounted to a lie. Jonathan’s mother turned pale. “They’re sending all the children away from London,” Vivian said, hoping that would make her feel better.

“You poor child! And my poor brother!” Jonathan’s mother said. “Why does everything have to happen at once? Of course you must stay here with us until your parents are recalled. And we’ll find you some proper clothes. I suppose you’ve nothing but those awful things you’ve got on.”

Vivian looked down at her coat and her best skirt rather indignantly, but she did not need to say anything. Jonathan’s mother turned back to the telephone-thing and pressed a knob in the wall beside it. “Elio,” she said. “I need you at once. Can you come to the hall?” She said over her shoulder to Jonathan, “Will you take care of Vivian today, my love – and show her around and so on? She’s bound to feel very strange after five years in history. I’ve got a crisis on in Agelong. Someone’s sent out the New Australian Grammar to Malaya nearly a century before it was invented and I’m going to be all day sorting it out.”

“I always have to do your dirty work!” Jonathan said, pretending to be annoyed. “You’re never here at all!”

“I know, my love,” his mother said, looking more worried than ever. “I’ll try to get the day off tomorrow, I—”

But here a door slammed open across the room and a tall anguished-looking man came storming out in a swirl of grey robes. He was followed by a pale respectful-looking man in sober fawn-coloured pyjamas. Jonathan’s mother instantly turned more worried yet.

“What’s this? What’s going on?” asked the storming man. “You can’t take Elio away now! I need him.” He glared at the pale man, who looked at the floor respectfully. He glared at Jonathan, who looked back as if he was used to it. Then he came right up to Vivian and glared at her. “What in Time’s name is this?” he said. His pepper-coloured hair was scraped into a knob on top of his head, and his eyes stared out of deep hollow sockets, looking agonised. He was so alarming that Vivian backed away.

“It’s little Vivian Lee, Ranjit,” Jonathan’s mother said in a guilty, soothing way. “Your niece. The Lees have had to send her home because Twenty Century seems to be getting quite dangerous, and she’ll have to stay with us. Their house is shut up, remember? I wanted Elio to see about a room and some clothes for her.”

“But she’s too big!” the anguished man said, still glaring at Vivian. “This girl is not the right size!”

Vivian stood limply, looking at the floor like the pale man. It was almost a relief that he had realised she was not the right Vivian. Now she would not need to lie any more. But she was very scared about what they would do to her now they knew.

“She was six when she went away, Father,” Jonathan said. He did not seem in the least alarmed. “That was nearly six years ago. Think how much I’ve changed since then.”

“So you have,” said this alarming man, turning his glare on Jonathan as if he did not think the change was for the better. “I see,” he said. “She grew.” And to Vivian’s great surprise, he turned to her again with his anguished face relaxed into a charming smile. The hint of anguish still there in his hollow eyes only seemed to make the smile more charming. He held out a long, knobby hand for Vivian to shake. “I believe that to be Twenty Century custom,” he said. “How do you do, my dear?”

“Very well, thank you,” Vivian managed to say. Relief seemed to have taken her voice away at first. No wonder Jonathan thought I’d better have breakfast before I met his father! she thought. I might have fainted without.

Jonathan’s father turned round, saying, “I need Elio back in five minutes exactly,” and went away in the same storming way that he had come, with his robes streaming, and banged the door behind him. Jonathan’s mother took pale Elio aside and began telling him what she needed. She seemed quite flustered, but Elio nodded calmly. He had a little square thing in his hand and punched buttons on it respectfully as Jonathan’s mother talked. It must have been a way of taking notes.

“What do I call them?” Vivian whispered urgently to Jonathan while his mother talked.

“Call who what?” said Jonathan.

“Your parents. Auntie what? Uncle which?” Vivian whispered.

“Oh, I see!” Jonathan whispered. “Her name’s Jenny Lee Walker. You’d better say Jenny. He’s called Ranjit Walker. Most people call him Sempitern, but you’re supposed to be a Lee, so you could call him Ranjit.”

Ranjit, Vivian tried out to herself. Uncle Ranjit. It was no good. She just could not imagine herself calling that alarming man anything. Jenny was better. She could manage that. But she did wonder if Jonathan was very brave, or just mad, to think of deceiving either of them.

Jonathan’s mother – Jenny, Vivian told herself – turned back to them, smiling. “That’s all seen to then!” she said. “Leave your coat and hat and your luggage here, Vivian dear, for Elio to see to, and run off and enjoy Time City with Jonathan – Or—” She looked worried again. “Do you need anything to eat?”

“No thanks,” Vivian said, and once more found herself lying by telling the truth. “I had – I had sandwiches to take on the train.”

Then they were free to go back along the coloured marble floor. Vivian went feeling rather shaky, but Jonathan walked with a bouncing, lordly stride, smiling broadly. “There! We got away with it!” he said. “I knew we would. This way.”