Ruby Red

Page 19

 

  Poor Robert. But at least he didn’t look like a drowned body. Some ghosts thought it was fun to go around looking the way they did when they’d just died. Luckily I’d never yet met one with a hatchet in his head. Or without a head at all.

  Mrs. Jenkins knocked at a door. “We’ll just look in and say hello to Madame Rossini. She’ll want to measure you. ”

  “Measure me? What for?” But the room Mrs. Jenkins let me into gave me the answer. It was a sewing room, and in among the fabrics, clothes, sewing machines, tailor’s dummies, scissors, and rolls of thread, a plump lady with a lot of sandy hair stood smiling at me.

  “’Allo,” she said. She had a slight French accent. “You must be Gwyneth. I am Madame Rossini, and I look after your wardrobe. ” She held up a tape measure. “We can’t have you traveling in time in zat dreadful school uniform, n’est-ce pas?”

  I nodded. My school uniform really was dreadful, today or any other time.

  “There’d probably be a riot if you went out in the street like zat,” she added, wringing her hands, tape measure and all, at the sight of it.

  “I’m afraid we have to hurry. They’re waiting for us upstairs,” said Mrs. Jenkins.

  “I’ll be quick. Can you take that jacket off, pliss?” Madame Rossini put the tape measure around my waist. “Wonderful. Now the ’ips. Ah, like a young colt! I think we can use most of what I made for the other one, with maybe some leetle alterations ’ere and there. ”

  By “the other one” she must mean Charlotte. I looked at a pale yellow dress with white lace trim hanging on a coat stand and looking like one of the costumes for Pride and Prejudice. Charlotte would have looked lovely in that.

  “Charlotte’s taller than me,” I said. “And slimmer. ”

  “Yes, a little bit,” said Madame Rossini. “Like a coat ’anger. ” I couldn’t help giggling. “But that is no problem. ” She measured my neck and my head as well. “For the ’ats and the wigs,” she said, smiling at me. “Ah, how nice to make dresses for a brunette for once. You must choose colors so carefully for red’eads. I’ve had this lovely taffeta for years, a color like sunset. You could be the first that color suits—”

  “Madame Rossini, please!” Mrs. Jenkins pointed to her watch.

  “Mais oui, nearly finished!” said Madame Rossini, scurrying around me with the tape measure and even measuring my ankles. “Men, always in such a ’urry! But with fashion you cannot ’urry. ” Finally she gave me a friendly pat and said, “We will meet again soon, my little swan-necked beauty!”

  She herself had no neck at all, I noticed. Her head seemed to be set directly on her shoulders. But she was really nice.

  “See you soon, Madame Rossini. ”

  Once we were out of the room again, Mrs. Jenkins walked faster, and I found it quite difficult to keep up, even though she was wearing high heels and I had my comfortable dark blue school shoes on.

  “Nearly there. ” Yet another long, long corridor lay ahead of us. It was a mystery to me how anyone could ever find her way around this maze. “Do you live here?”

  “No, I live in Islington,” said Mrs. Jenkins. “I leave work at five and go home to my husband. ”

  “What does your husband think about you working for a secret lodge with a time machine in its basement?”

  Mrs. Jenkins laughed. “Oh, he has no idea of any of that. I had to sign a secrecy clause when I took the job. I can’t tell my husband or anyone else what goes on here. ”

  “Suppose you did?”

  “I’d be fired, plain and simple,” said Mrs. Jenkins, sounding as if she didn’t like that idea at all. “Anyway, no one would believe me,” she added cheerfully. “Least of all my husband. He has no imagination at all, bless him. He thinks I work on boring files in an ordinary set of legal chambers all day— Oh, my word! The file I had out—I just left it where it was. Dr. White will murder me. ” She looked undecided. “Can you find your way without me from here? It’s only a few yards. Left around the corner, then the second door on the right. ”

  “Left around the corner, second door on the right. No problem. ”

  “You’re a darling. ” Mrs. Jenkins was on her way, at top speed. How she did it in those high heels I couldn’t think. Well, now I could take my time over the last “few yards. ” At last I could look at the paintings on the walls properly, tap a suit of armor (rusty), and run my forefinger cautiously around a picture frame (dusty). As I turned the corner, I heard voices.

  “Wait, Charlotte…”

  I quickly retreated back around the corner and leaned against the wall. Charlotte had come out of the Dragon Hall, with Gideon behind her. I’d just had time to see that he was holding her arm. I hoped they hadn’t noticed me.

  “This is all so embarrassing and humiliating,” said Charlotte.

  “No, it isn’t. It’s not your fault. ” How gentle and friendly his voice could sound!

  He’s in love with her, I thought, and for some silly reason, that made me feel a slight pang. I pressed even closer to the wall, although I’d have liked to see what the two of them were doing. Holding hands?

  Charlotte seemed inconsolable. “Phantom symptoms! I could sink into the ground. I really did think it was going to happen any moment—”

  “That’s exactly what I’d have thought myself in your place,” said Gideon. “Your aunt must be crazy to have kept quiet about it all these years. And I really do feel sorry for your cousin. ”

  “Oh, you do, do you?”

  “Well, think about it! How on earth is she going to manage? She hasn’t the faintest idea. … How will she ever catch up with all the things you and I have been learning for the last ten years?”

  “Yes, poor Gwyneth,” said Charlotte. Somehow she didn’t sound really sorry for me. “But she does have her strong points. ”

  Oh. Well, that was nice of her.

  “Giggling with her girlfriend, sending text messages, rattling off the entire cast list of films—she’s really good at that sort of thing. ”

  Not so nice after all.

  I cautiously peeped around the corner.

  “I thought as much when I first saw her earlier today,” said Gideon. “Hey, I’m really going to miss you. ”

  Charlotte sighed. “We had fun, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, but think of all the new opportunities open to you, Charlotte! I envy you that! You’re free now. You can do anything you like. ”

  “I never wanted anything but this!”

  “That was because you had no choice,” said Gideon. “But now the whole world’s before you. You can study abroad, you can go on long journeys, while I can’t be away from that damn … from the chronograph for more than a day, and I spend my nights in the safety of the year 1953. Believe me, I’d happily change places with you!”

  The door of the Dragon Hall opened again, and Lady Arista and Aunt Glenda came out into the corridor. I quickly withdrew my head again.

  “They’ll regret this yet,” Aunt Glenda was saying.

  “Glenda, please! We’re a family, after all,” said Lady Arista. “We must stick together. ”

  “You’d better tell that to Grace,” said Aunt Glenda. “She’s the one who got us all into this mess. Protect her! Ha! No one in possession of their senses would believe a word she says! Not after all that’s happened. Still, it’s not our problem anymore. Come along, Charlotte. ”

  “I’ll see you to the car,” said Gideon.

  I waited until the sound of their footsteps had died away, and then I ventured to leave my listening post. Lady Arista was still standing there, rubbing her forehead wearily with one finger. She suddenly looked as old as the hills, not her usual self at all. The ramrod-straight, ballet-teacher look seemed to have deserted her, and even her features weren’t as composed as usual. I felt sorry for her.

  “Hello,” I said quietly. “Are you all right?”

  My grandmother straightened up at once. Everything about her
seemed to slip back into place and stay there.

  “Ah, there you are,” she said, inspecting me. Her critical gaze went to my blouse. “Is that a dirty mark? Child, you really must learn to take a little more pride in your appearance. ”

  The intervals between episodes of time travel differ from one gene carrier to another, unless they are controlled by the chronograph. While the observations of Count Saint-Germain led him to conclude that female gene carriers travel back considerably less often, and for shorter periods, than their male counterparts, our experience to date does not allow us to confirm his findings.

  The duration of uncontrolled time travel episodes has been shown, since observations were first made, to vary from eight minutes, twelve seconds (the initiation journey of Timothy de Villiers, 5 May 1892), to two hours, four minutes (Margaret Tilney, second journey, 22 March 1894).

  The window of time provided by the chronograph for travel is a minimum of thirty minutes, a maximum of four hours.

  It is not known whether uncontrolled visits to periods within a gene carrier’s own lifetime have ever occurred. In his writings, Count Saint-Germain assumes that it is impossible because of the continuum (see Volume 3: Laws of the Continuum).

  Moreover, the chronograph cannot be set to take gene carriers back to periods within their own lifetimes.

  FROM THE CHRONICLES OF THE GUARDIANS,

  VOLUME 2: GENERAL LAWS OF TIME TRAVEL

  NINE

  MY MUM HUGGED ME as if I’d been away for years. I had to assure her over and over again that I was perfectly all right before she finally stopped asking.

  “Are you okay too, Mum?”

  “Yes, darling, I’m fine. ”

  “So everyone’s fine,” said Mr. de Villiers ironically. “I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. ” He came so close to Mum and me that I could smell his cologne. (Kind of spicy and fruity with a touch of cinnamon. I felt hungrier than ever. )

  “Now, what are we going to do about you, Grace?” Those wolflike eyes were firmly fixed on Mum.

  “I told you the truth. ”

  “Yes, at least so far as identifying Gwyneth’s gene is concerned,” said Mr. de Villiers. “But we have yet to find out why the midwife who so obligingly falsified her birth certificate sixteen years ago suddenly chose to go away in a hurry today, of all days. ”

  Mum shrugged. “I wouldn’t assume that every little coincidence is so important, Falk. ”

  “I also think it’s strange that if your baby looked like arriving two months early, you chose to have her at home. Any sensible woman would go to a hospital the moment the labor pains started. ”

  “It simply happened too fast,” said Mum, without batting an eyelash. “I was just glad the midwife could come right away. ”

  “Hm. Even so, surely you should have gone to hospital directly after the birth to have the baby examined. ”

  “We did. ”