THE TIME THIEF

Doctors Pirretti, Williamson, and Dyer found themselves alone in the cold, damp garage. There was a stunned silence. Dr. Pirretti was trembling.

  “Did you feel it?” she said. “It was as if an infinitely small crack just appeared in the universe…. What have we done? What have we done?”

  No one replied.

  Then Tim asked very reasonably: “Would you mind getting off me now, Andrew?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Tim,” said Dr. Dyer, getting to his feet. “Nothing personal.”

  “Likewise.”

  “I suggest,” said Dr. Dyer, “that unless we’re all in the mood for a tête-à-tête with Inspector Wheeler, we get out of here as fast as we can.”

  As the scientists retreated hurriedly back to their vehicles, a middle-aged couple in dressing gowns and slippers peered at them through the back door of the post office. When they heard them roar away into the night, they tiptoed over to the garage to inspect the damage.

  “It’s gone!” said the woman, as a police siren grew ever nearer.

  “I told you letting the garage to strangers would be a mistake….”

  “Fancy wrecking a beautiful car like that! What do you think was in there?”

  “I told you, I thought it was a jukebox or something at first, but when I went to have a closer look, I couldn’t tell what it was…. I pressed a few buttons but nothing happened….”

  “You don’t think they were terrorists, do you? It wasn’t ticking, or anything?”

  “Don’t make me laugh! In Middle Harpenden? Who in their right minds would want to plant a bomb here?”

  FOUR

  THE OBSERVER

  In which a gentleman takes a keen interest in an article on cricket

  He was a good half a head taller than most of the folk making their way down Cheapside, and he strode along, carrying a pile of papers under one arm and swinging a silver-topped ebony cane with the other. Clear-eyed and rosy-cheeked, he wore a yellow waistcoat and, to set it off, a handsome blue jacket which was well-cut and had deep cuffs and gold braid buttons. His back was straight and he held his chin high. He was neither young nor old; he was, in short, an English gentleman in the prime of his life.

  The gentleman had walked from the Baltic Exchange, in the city, where he had business, and as he drew closer to St. Paul’s, the intermittent, southwesterly breeze carried to his nostrils the stench of the great river. Although he loved the Thames, he was happy, he reflected, particularly during the summer, that he was not obliged to live too close to its banks.

  Cheapside was less frenetic than usual, which meant that it was still noisy and full of Londoners about their business. Church bells chimed, a Scotsman in a kilt played a mournful air on his bagpipes, and, thundering over the granite sets, there was the regular stream of heavy wagons laden with goods from the port of London. Unusually, however, there was room enough on the sidewalks to saunter and admire the window displays at one’s ease. There were only a couple of street hawkers today: a flower girl and an old crone selling oysters. The gentleman had heard rumors of a bad outbreak of measles in the east of the city and wondered if this was the cause of the comparatively empty streets. It was a warm and humid day and the mellow, late summer sun had persuaded the portly fellow walking in front of him to slip off his wig and stuff it into his pocket. In its place he had put a large pocket handkerchief. The breeze blew it off his head, and the handkerchief landed at the gentleman’s feet. The latter swooped down to pick it up and returned it to its owner. The man, who was puffing and panting on account of the heat, immediately mopped his perspiring brow and then thanked the gentleman most kindly.

  The gentleman inclined his head in acknowledgment, and said: “Mark my words, sir, there will soon come a day when a fellow can walk from one side of the city to the other without spotting a single wig.”

  “I fear it is only the very young who can avoid the wearing of hairpieces without appearing ridiculous,” replied the portly man. “The new fashion for natural hair is too late for me. It is only this confounded heat and my lack of vanity that drives me to show my naked scalp to the world!”

  The gentleman wished him a good day and moved on. The twenty-five shillings a year the gentleman paid his barber for styling his hair were well worth it, he thought, to avoid the torture of melting under a foul-smelling wig all summer. He always had his dark brown hair dressed in exactly the same style—four tightly rolled curls at each side and the rest pulled back into a neat ponytail secured with a black taffeta ribbon. He had never been happy with the idea of putting a wig on a perfectly good head of hair. The best use to which he had ever put a wig was to place a kitten underneath it and push it into the candlelit study of his old tutor at Cambridge. Like a miniature, hairy turtle, the kitten had scuttled and skidded along the polished wood floor, dispersing clouds of white powder as it went. The gentleman laughed at the memory of it; his tutor had shrieked like an old woman who had seen a ghost … but that was long ago.

  Soon the gentleman reached the Chapter Coffeehouse in Paul’s Alley. The coffeehouses around the Bank of England and Guildhall were best if one wanted to catch up on trading and shipping news or talk politics, but it was altogether more agreeable at the Chapter Coffeehouse. Here, booksellers and publishers and writers and thinkers gathered at all hours of the day and night and it was rare if some sharp-tongued wit did not reduce the customers to helpless laughter, or if a serious debate did not deteriorate into a heated fight—which was always more entertaining than philosophy. The coffee, it was true, left something to be desired, but it was here, in this rickety building in a quiet alley near St. Paul’s Cathedral, that the gentleman came for good company and to discover what was going on in the world, and where, if conversation flagged, there was always the well-stocked library to divert him.

  He pushed open the door of the coffeehouse and entered the low-ceilinged room, the first in a series of small rooms which each accommodated their own regulars. The air was thick with swirls of blue tobacco smoke. He walked past the dark staircase in the center of the ancient building and through to the cozy room at the back where he headed for a window seat beneath tall, diamond-paned windows.

  The gentleman flicked out the tails of his jacket before lowering himself, straight-backed, onto the wooden settle. Then he placed his papers on the table in front of him and pulled out today’s copy of The Observer from the bottom of the pile. It was dated Monday, 3rd September, 1792. He also took out a beautiful pipe, carved from a walrus tusk, which had been left to him in Colonel Byng’s will—a memento from a voyage to America some twenty years past, when it was still a British colony.

  The gentleman stuffed the ivory pipe with tobacco from a small leather pouch and lit it with a taper. Then he picked up The Observer and began to read, puffing at his pipe and taking pleasure in blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling. It was a habit he relished, not least because it reminded him of a particular wizard in a book he had loved as a child and longed to hold in his hands once more. As he read, his face took on a more serious expression and he put down his pipe. A waiter brought him a steaming cup of strong coffee, and a jovial old gentleman, a bookseller by trade, leaned over and asked him if he would do him the honor of telling him the latest news as he had just returned from a month in the country and felt singularly ill-informed.

  “Is the talk still all of France, sir?” he asked.

  The French Revolution was now in its third year and much of the news that filtered across the Channel made for grim reading whichever side you were on. Many aristocrats had already fled the country, and since the spring, France had been at war with Austria and Prussia. It seemed that it would not be much longer before England became involved too.

  “The talk is, indeed, still all of France,” replied the gentleman. “But then, the Revolution continues to occupy all our attention, does it not? So you have not heard tell of the August atrocities?”

  His neighbor shook his head. “No, sir, I have not.”

  “The Prussians did
King Louis no service when they swore to destroy Paris if he was hurt. His people now see him as their enemy. A rampant mob stormed the Tuileries Palace these two or three weeks past. It was nothing less than a massacre. The King’s Swiss Guard were butchered.”

  “No! The Swiss Guard?”

  “They were not properly armed, it seemed. Hundreds of the mob perished, too. They say that the gutters were awash with blood. Queen Marie-Antoinette and King Louis and his children are now under arrest.”

  “What is to become of the French King and his family? Will they let them live?”

  “That remains to be seen. They may not have killed the King but it seems they have already killed the monarchy.”

  The gentleman flicked through the pages of The Observer, searching for other news.

  He paused and pulled a face. “A priest escaped his prison cell in Paris, only to be eaten by wolves in the Bois de Boulogne as he tried to make his way toward England and safety.”

  “Poor fellow. Just when he thought he was home and dry.”

  “Yes,” agreed the gentleman with feeling, thinking that he, too, knew what that felt like. He took another puff of his pipe.

  A foppish young man threw himself down on the other end of the wooden seat.

  “Good morning, gentlemen!” he said and helped himself to some of the gentleman’s tobacco. “Don’t mind, do you, my dear fellow? Your baccy has so much more flavor than my poor stuff.”

  “Good morning, Mr. Fitzpatrick, and, as I have told you before, you may purchase the same blend of tobacco from Fribourg & Treyer in the Haymarket whenever you please….”

  The gentleman continued to scan the newspaper. Suddenly he froze, all his concentration focused on a small article on the second-to-last page. His companions looked at each other, amused and intrigued by the expression on his face.

  “You seem shocked, Mr. Schock!” said the young man, peering over the gentleman’s shoulder at what appeared to be a story about cricket. “Pray don’t keep us in suspense! What fascinating tidbit have you discovered? What is so amazingly shocking to so shock Mr. Schock?”

  Without bothering to react or even to say good-bye, Peter Schock, for it was he, leaped up, gathered his papers and rushed out into the street, where he hailed a hackney coach and instructed the driver to take him to the Blue Boar, the coaching inn at Holborn, from whence he caught the first stagecoach to St. Albans.

  PETER NEVER BLURRED AGAIN AS FAR AS I AM AWARE. IT WAS AS IF, WITHOUT MISTRESS KATE, HE DID NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY FORCE. IT WAS ONLY AFTER WE SETTLED INTO HAWTHORN COTTAGE AND LIFE HAD TAKEN ON A QUIETER RHYTHM THAT THE PANGS OF HOMESICKNESS STARTED TO ASSAIL HIM. HE ALSO FELT THE ABSENCE OF MISTRESS KATE MOST KEENLY. ANYTHING WHICH REMINDED HIM OF HIS FORMER LIFE WAS APT TO TRANSPORT HIM TO AN INNER, SOLITARY WORLD WHERE I COULD NOT FOLLOW. HE DESPAIRED OF EVER SEEING HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS AGAIN, AND FOR MANY WEEKS HE SOUGHT ONLY HIS OWN COMPANY. ON SOME DAYS SCARCELY A MORSEL OF FOOD PASSED HIS LIPS. PARSON LEDBURY AND YOUNG MASTER JACK WERE OF GREAT SUPPORT TO HIM AT THIS TIME AND DID MUCH TO LIFT HIS SPIRITS AND COAX HIM TOWARD A SUNNIER FRAME OF MIND. BY DAFFODIL-TIME, THE FOLLOWING SPRING, THE WORST WAS OVER. PETER BEGAN TO TAKE PLEASURE IN LIFE ONCE MORE, AND I WAS GLAD.

  —THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GIDEON SEYMOUR, CUTPURSE AND GENTLEMAN, 1792

  FIVE

  ALTERED SKYLINES

  In which Kate and Mr. Schock make a surprising entrance into the eighteenth century, Peter steals a can of Coca-Cola, and the Tar Man makes a useful discovery

  The coach arrived at its destination at half past seven. Peter Schock then hired a horse and galloped the eight miles of dirt roads between St. Albans and the tiny hamlet of Middle Harpenden. The setting sun cast long shadows over mile after mile of harvested fields where wiry-stemmed poppies pushed their way through stubble and earth baked hard by summer heat. An excellent rider, as was only to be expected from a gentleman, and one schooled so attentively in his youth by Gideon Seymour, Peter sat easy and straight-backed on his mount, whose hooves kicked up clouds of dust with every stride. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, searching for the first sign of that place where his life would, he believed, be changed forever….

  He was in a fever of anticipation, scarcely daring to hope that after twenty-nine years, his heart’s desire was about to come true. He had thought of a thousand reasons why no one from his century had come to rescue him, but mostly he feared that his companions had not survived their journey home and that the antigravity machine had been damaged or destroyed. Sometimes Peter worried that Kate and her father had, like him, become lost in time and were stranded in a foreign century. He never doubted, however, that they would come to find him if they could. But now, oh joyful day, Kate and his own father had contrived to travel back in time and he would soon learn the reason for the long delay. It seemed to him that he had been waiting for this moment his entire life. Exiled in a different time, now, God willing, Peter Schock, child of the twenty-first century, was about to return home as a grown man. His heart raced and his mouth was dry. It had been decades since he had thought about the M1 motorway but now he did—and how he resented the long hours he had spent traveling barely thirty-five miles. When, at long last, he reached Middle Harpenden, he asked for directions to the vicarage where, The Observer had reported, the two strangers were staying until it was decided how best to proceed.

  The long gravel path that led to the vicarage was lined with apple trees, and their branches were weighed down with an abundant crop of russet fruit.

  Peter Schock pulled hard on the reins and he sat immobile on his weary horse, staring at the red-brick house that he hoped sheltered his own father and his long-lost childhood friend. Had they been looking for him all these years? Would he even recognize them? His father must be seventy now, at least, and Kate, too, would be in her middle years. She could never have married, for The Observer referred to her as Miss Dyer…. He wondered why. She had been so bright and pretty and there would surely have been no shortage of willing suitors….

  When, with an effort, Peter tried to picture his father’s face, a fleeting image came and vanished as soon as it appeared. Memory is a disobedient servant, he thought. And then, would they recognize him? Was he the same person? The boy that he had been when they last saw him must still be a part of him, for the adult does not just discard the child that he was. Surely when you behold the child, the promise of the man is plain for all to see? They would recognize him, at least, would they not? He could not bear it if he were as a stranger to them—or, worse, if they did not like what they saw…. Peter frowned and pushed back his hair distractedly. But then again, he had finished his growing up and lived his entire adult life away from them—in another time, in another world.

  The horse whinnied, bored with having to stand still for so long, and took a step nearer to the garden. It lowered its long neck over the half-open gate into the flower borders and started to eat a clump of orange marigolds. Peter wondered if he would have been a different man if the Tar Man had not taken his place on Hampstead Heath and he had, instead, grown up in the twenty-first century. Is your identity formed, he asked himself, by the basic nature you are born with or by what happens to you in life? He found the thought strangely distressing that, in different circumstances, he could have become a different person.

  He stroked the horse’s neck absentmindedly, too deep in thought to notice it munching noisily, and unaware that the animal was demolishing a fine display of late summer flowers. He realized that over the years he had thought less and less about his own time—to the extent that the twenty-first century now seemed like a dream to him, or a far-off foreign country that he had visited long ages ago. In most ways, double-decker buses or space probes seemed as improbable as dragons or unicorns. Now he looked, behaved, and sounded like an eighteenth-century gentleman. In all respects save one he was an eighteenth-century gentleman. Could his father and Kate accept him for who he had become? Suddenly, Peter lost all his courage and was seized by the overw
helming desire to turn back, to return to London and pretend that he had never clapped eyes on today’s newspaper.

  Just as he was about to pull on the reins and dig his knees into the horse’s sides, the sound of footsteps crunching in the gravel prompted him to recover himself. And although he felt things as keenly as ever he did, the intervening twenty-nine years had certainly taught Peter Schock, if not how to master his feelings, at least how to conceal them when he needed to. He jumped down off his horse, put on an easy smile, and strode confidently forward to greet the gentle-looking soul who walked toward him.

  “Good evening,” replied a wispy-haired man a foot shorter than Peter Schock. He wore a white dog collar and a hessian apron tied around his middle. He held a pair of garden shears in one hand and a gardening basket overflowing with dead rose heads in the other. “As you can see, sir, I am cultivating my garden … and what more pleasurable task could there be on such an evening? It seems that your horse, too, is enjoying the fruit of my labors….”

  Peter turned around, aghast, as he realized that his horse had already demolished half of the good vicar’s ornamental display.

  “I am so sorry!” he exclaimed, yanking the horse’s head out of some nasturtiums. “How can I make amends … ? I …”

  The Reverend held up his hand and smiled.

  “Do not trouble yourself, my dear sir; the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. I saw you arrive…. You seemed more than a little preoccupied and uncertain whether to stay or go. May I be of any assistance? I am Mr. Austen, the vicar of this parish.”

  “How do you do, Reverend,” replied Peter Schock. “In truth, I hope that I might be of some assistance to you. I understand that a certain Mr. Schock and a Miss Dyer are currently lodging with you in somewhat unusual circumstances. I hope that I may be able to shed some light on the matter.”

  “In which case you are most welcome, sir!”

  Peter Schock was led into a comfortable, airy drawing room, painted a delicate shade of duck-egg blue. A generous picture window looked out over the gardens. The vicar’s roses, in a jug on the windowsill, shed their petals onto the cream damask sofa which stood beneath them. Peter brushed away the petals and perched on the edge of the lumpy sofa while he listened to the story Reverend Austen had to tell him. His nerves tingled as he wondered whether the sound of creaking floorboards directly above was due to the footsteps of his own father. It was all he could do to swallow a few sips of tea while the slab of Madeira cake, brought in by the vicar’s buck-toothed teenage daughter, remained untouched on its pretty china plate.