He nearly jumped out of his skin when the front door slammed shut behind him. A candle appeared on the stairs and gradually came closer.
‘Is that you, Mr Jobey?’ called a voice from behind the candle.
The light danced in danger of extinction. When it rekindled AJ saw a well-built man, a long, dark coat softening his bulk; on his head was a battered velvet hat; a woollen muffler was wrapped several times round his neck. His eyes were mole-black and his nose sharply chiselled. A dust-filled cloud followed him as his coat swept the stairs. His mittened hand held the candle close to AJ’s face.
‘Mr Jobey,’ he declared. ‘I have been eager to make your acquaintance, sir.’
Perhaps, thought AJ, all this was the result of some crazy drug he didn’t know he’d taken.
‘How do you know who I am?’
‘I have long been expecting you.’ From his pocket he drew a silver watch on a faded ribbon and clicked it open. ‘Come on, Mr Jobey,’ said the man. ‘The clocks are ticking.’
The man and the candle strode back up the stairs.
Wherever he was, the world AJ knew had just been swallowed up by a different reality. In the meagre light of the one candle, he could see that chunks of plaster had fallen off the walls and parts of the cornice had crashed onto the stone floor of the hall. The bannisters wobbled as AJ climbed the stairs and he wondered if the whole house wasn’t on the verge of collapse.
They came to a landing with three grand doors leading off it and the man with the candle opened the one on the right. It was hard to make out the room’s proportions for it was so dimly lit. What light there was came from the large, elaborate fireplace where, in the grate, an apology of a fire struggled to make a little heat from a few coals. An unmade bed stood to one side, on the other was an armchair that had taken umbrage at the cold and placed its animal feet in the grate so that it sat as near the embers as it could without becoming a part of them. AJ noticed what he supposed to be a stuffed magpie on a perch and he jumped when the bird put its head to one side and studied him with a glint in its ebony eye.
‘This is His Honour,’ said the man, pointing at the magpie. ‘So best you mind your Ps and Qs. There is nothing that His Honour doesn’t know.’
A door on the other side of the room opened and in came a woman dressed in black, a calamity of a bonnet on her head and her clothes looking more fallen to pieces than those of the man who had brought him up here.
‘Mother,’ said the man, ‘I told you to keep the door shut. If you let one of those cats of yours up here I will have its guts for garters.’
‘It’s a sin, it is,’ the woman mumbled into the light, ‘to let a bird come between a mother and her son.’
‘It is a sin for a mother to keep eighteen cats when she knows that His Honour is in perilous danger by her so doing.’
‘Twenty-two,’ said his mother. ‘The Queen of Sheba had her kittens this morning.’
‘So we are stuck betwixt and between. I rest my case, Your Honour.’
The magpie squawked in agreement. ‘A most discerning bird, a most intelligent Pica pica.’
‘Will you be wanting your gruel tonight?’ said the woman.
‘No, not tonight. I will be out.’
‘Out?’
‘Yes. We have a visitor.’ Only then did the woman seem to notice AJ. ‘Mother, would you be so kind as to take him to the closet so that he might change into more appropriate garments?’
AJ followed her to a small room where clothes were laid out on a chair.
He dressed as if in a dream. Trousers, shirt, waistcoat and jacket – all felt soft and luxurious, and curiously warm. Finally he tried on a top hat and found, like everything else, including the boots, it fitted.
‘Come, the hour is late,’ said the man.
A sense of relief washed over AJ as they descended the stairs. There was the front door. For the first time he could see there was another stone face peering down at him with a gaze as unfriendly as its twin on the outside. His nameless host pushed the door open and AJ found that the London he knew had vanished.
‘Where am I?’ he asked.
‘Clerkenwell.’ The man laughed. ‘Can’t you smell the sweet waters of the Fleet River? And there, looming over us, is the monster that is Coldbath Fields Prison.’
AJ was lost in a city he knew like the back of his hand. It was the same place but completely transformed. He tried to make sense of the impossible and failed. He clung to the one thing all humans cling to when everything has gone bottoms up – a name.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
In the flicker of a street light he saw his companion smile.
‘Why, my name is Ingleby.’
Chapter Ten
Ingleby walked on ahead. There was little choice but to follow him, though AJ’s street wisdom told him that whatever century he was in it was unwise to accompany a man who was most probably a poisoner. If this had been the Clerkenwell AJ knew, where the road to Islington was tarmacked, not cobbled, where there were proper pavements, where there was a London bus, he would have jumped on it and gone home. But he wasn’t even sure which direction home might be.
Ingleby stopped abruptly.
‘Mr Jobey, can you walk a bit faster? We have an appointment.’
‘Appointment for what?’ said AJ, jumping back to avoid being covered in mud by a passing horse-drawn cab.
‘If you keep dawdling and staring we will never be done with the business of the night,’ said Ingleby, taking hold of AJ’s coat sleeve.
‘Do you know Mr Baldwin?’ said AJ, playing the innocent. ‘He’s been poisoned.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest, Mr Jobey,’ said Ingleby. ‘There are some in this city – and in yours – who would willingly pepper his dish. A greedy man, Mr Jobey, has many enemies. I am not saying that I would not poison him; I’m not saying that I could not; I am only saying that I did not.’
‘You mean he – Charles Baldwin, QC – comes here?’ said AJ. He was amazed to find himself in this past world, let alone to learn that his boss had been there before him. Still reeling from the news, AJ at first didn’t notice a band of men come marching towards them in a drunken military order of sorts, colours flying, swords drawn. They marched to the beat of a kettle drum. One handed AJ a leaflet.
‘Hockley?’ he said, reading it.
‘Bear-baiting, is that it?’ said Ingleby with interest.
‘Yes,’ said AJ, screwing up the leaflet and stuffing it in his pocket.
‘Not to your taste, bear-baiting?’ said Ingleby, laughing. ‘You can’t use the future, Mr Jobey, to wash clean the past.’
At Chancery Lane they came to the gate to Gray’s Inn. From a ramshackle shed that AJ had never seen before came a gatekeeper, pulling his muffler tight. He nodded to Ingleby who walked on until the gatekeeper called him back.
‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ he said. ‘A man in my position needs to keep his strength up on a cold night like this.’
‘You are a rogue.’
‘Then I’m in good company, Mr Ingleby,’ said the gatekeeper. He weighed the coins that Ingleby put in his hand. ‘How does your magpie do?’
‘His Honour? Middling to fair. Middling to fair, now you’ve robbed him of his supper.’
In the gaslight, Raymond Buildings looked newly built, more upright. Time hadn’t burrowed into it. At number four, the name in gold writing on the door read Groat Stone. Inside, new sandstone stairs, bare of the institutional carpet AJ trod every day, led up to one thing he could place in his time – the black gloss door. Even that had yet to acquire the years of repainting. The layout of the chambers was completely different. This, thought AJ, is what it must have originally looked like. In the outer office were clerks’ tall desks and a small fireplace. Through the glass panes of another door AJ could see an inner office. Here was a large fireplace with a carnival of a blaze in the grate, and behind a majestic desk sat a stern, straight-backed gentlem
an with glasses on his head and glasses on his nose. In the flickering candlelight he appeared to have four eyes instead of two. His face, drained of all colour, glowed bone-white.
Ingleby opened the glass-paned door.
‘This is young Mr Jobey, Mr Stone.’
All four eyes looked up to examine AJ.
‘Here is snuff enough to tickle the nose of even the strongest resistance,’ said Mr Stone. ‘You, sir, are a very mirror in which your father’s face is reflected. And if any querulous soul is in doubt of your paternity then the proof is the charm you have upon you.’
AJ realised that far from feeling terrified – an emotion the situation surely demanded – he was positively excited. If this was real, and so far there had been nothing to prove it wasn’t, then he was in one of the most extraordinary situations that any young man could find himself. This was his beanstalk in the gutter of time.
Mr Stone was writing in a large book that lay open on his desk. Methodically he changed over his metal-framed glasses so that the pair from the top of his head found themselves on his nose and the pair on his nose found themselves on the top of his head. He put down his pen, closed the book, stood and went to the fireplace. From a jar he took a clay pipe and lit it.
‘You are wondering, Mr Jobey, about the door.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you know the rhyme about the magpie?
‘No.’
Mr Stone took the pipe from his mouth.
‘One for sorrow,
Two for luck;
Three for a wedding,
Four for death;
Five for silver,
Six for gold;
Seven for a secret,
Not to be told;
I will tell you the secret that is not to be told. Old Jobey, your grandfather, possessed a door to an unimaginable future. It had never been opened in living memory. Years ago it was believed by those who knew the door existed that by the twentieth century the world would have been destroyed. That was until in 1809, when Old Jobey, whose fortunes were dwindling, decided to look for himself. He took no notice of my warnings – far from it. I told him I feared he could be walking into the abyss. He was a stubborn man – he never listened to advice. He went through the door and discovered he could profit handsomely by trade with the future. Not being a young man, he took a partner, a Mr Samuel Dalton, and it was then that two greedy men started to break every rule.’
‘There are rules?’
‘Every game has its rules, Mr Jobey,’ said Mr Stone. ‘And it is a rule of time travel that you do not do business with the future. It is forbidden.’
‘Who by?’ asked AJ.
‘By gravity, by the laws of physics. The future has, by its very nature, to remain unwritten, always to be a blank page. When your grandfather handed the key to your father, Lucas, it was already too late. His fate and the fate of his family were sealed. And there lies the sorrow.’
‘What about my father?’ said AJ. ‘Is he still alive?’
‘Three for a wedding, four for death. Your father was murdered. The mystery of who murdered the Jobey family remains, as far as I’m concerned, unsolved. An innocent girl was sent to the gallows for it and the door has stayed unlocked ever since. We were only lately informed of your existence.’
‘Who by?’ asked AJ. ‘By Mr Baldwin?’
‘No, not Charles Baldwin,’ he said with distaste. He carried on. ‘According to Old Jobey’s will, the house in Clerkenwell, with all its goods and chattels, is to be inherited by the first-born Jobey of each generation. That first-born, sir, is you.’
AJ felt the key in his waistcoat pocket.
Mr Stone relit his pipe. A whirl of smoke hid his features. ‘The door must be locked by a Jobey, and locked forever, from this side or the other. The question is, Mr Jobey, on which side do you belong? Here in the past or in the future?’
Chapter Eleven
‘Can I think about it? I might want to come back and look around.’
‘I would urge you, Mr Jobey, to return to your own time and stay there,’ said Mr Stone. ‘Lock the door behind you when you leave and put the key through the letterbox.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’
Mr Stone looked at AJ as if he were a simpleton.
‘Have you ever heard of Janus, Mr Jobey?’
‘No,’ said AJ.
‘He is an ancient Roman god with two identical faces, one that sees into the future, the other into the past. The guardian of doorways, he does not take kindly to those who cross Time’s threshold. Old Jobey, your grandfather, paid no heed to my words of advice. He found he had a lucrative trade with the twentieth century. He sent his son there when he became too infirm to go himself. Too late he decided to lock the door. He wanted Lucas back where he belonged. But the damage was done and the key lost.’
AJ shivered.
‘The two stone faces above the door.’
‘Yes, Mr Jobey, one on each side. They are there to remind all who hold the key of their duty to the past and to the future. I advise you to do as you are told. It is for the best.’ He handed AJ a small box. ‘It has been a pleasure to meet Old Jobey’s grandson. Please accept this very fine snuffbox as a token of our gratitude for bringing the key back to its rightful place.’
AJ knew when he was being fobbed off. There was more going on here than some pathetic story about some old Roman geezer he had never heard of who held a grudge about being Time’s bouncer. He found his hand had instinctively tightened round the key and he made up his mind not to let it go.
‘So that’s it?’ said AJ. ‘You want me to lock Jobey’s Door and post the key back. Then what?’
‘Nothing,’ said Mr Stone. ‘All will be as it should be.’
‘But the key is rightfully mine, you said so. Goods and chattels and all that.’
‘Ah … rightfully yours until you pass it back through the door. Then, by the terms of your grandfather’s will, it reverts to the custody of Groat Stone. It will be destroyed and the future and the past will have no more inconvenient leakages. And you, Mr Jobey, will not be tempted to repeat the fatal mistakes of your grandfather and father.’
‘Hold on a minute. In my life I’ve never had much chance to dream, and the dreams I have had have amounted to nothing. Now I’ve come across the improbable impossible, you want me to come over all Boy Scout and hand the key back to you? For a snuffbox? You must be joking.’
‘I am sure the past has little to offer a young man of your talents.’
Mr Stone returned to his desk and his four eyes returned to the book in which he had been writing.
‘I think you’d be surprised,’ said AJ.
Outside the sun was lazily rising as London washed the sleep from her eyes.
‘Bloody hell,’ said AJ. ‘Who would believe this?’
He looked back at the long slab of buildings he had just left. Overhead, the scrawl of gulls, white against a grey sky. The bells of St Clements rang and clerks in hats and mufflers rushed through the gate to work, just as they did in his own time. The difference was the absence of the electronic jungle. Here life was raw, rude and real.
‘What year is it? I mean, here?’ asked AJ as he and Ingleby set off towards Farringdon Road.
‘The year is 1830. The old king, George, died in June and William is our new king. The Duke of Wellington is prime minister.’
‘Where does Charles Dickens live?’ asked AJ.
‘Never heard of him. And if you are going to tell me something about the future I would rather you didn’t. I have always been superstitious: hats on beds, shoes on tables. The future isn’t for knowing.’
By now the streets were beginning to fill with bustle and clatter. This was the same London AJ knew, had always known; the same and yet it was a foreign country.
‘Mr Ingleby,’ called someone in the crowd. ‘Mr Ingleby, wait.’
Coming towards them was a young woman. Though walking quickly she didn’t wave or run but seemed confide
nt that her voice alone would attract Ingleby‘s attention.
‘Miss Esme,’ said Ingleby. ‘What finds you up so early?’
‘Mr Ingleby, I was on my way to your house. It is my father. He has been taken ill and is asking for you.’
‘Asking for me?’ said Ingleby. ‘Why on earth does he ask for me?’
‘There is something he wants to tell you. I don’t know what it is. He has been feeling unwell for several days but yesterday morning he came down with a fever so severe that he took to his bed. By the afternoon he was complaining of pains in his stomach and that he found breathing hard. Mrs Meacock called for Doctor Seagrave to come. He did, and bled my father to no good effect, and now he is worse. The doctor doesn’t think he will see the day out.’
‘What does the doctor think ails him?’ asked Ingleby.
‘He cannot be sure but he says the symptoms are similar to those found in cholera.’
‘Cholera?’ repeated Ingleby. ‘I hope for all our sakes that the doctor is wrong. So far London has been spared that disease. It seems unlikely that your father should be its first victim in the city.’
‘I agree,’ said Miss Esme. She looked Ingleby straight in the eye and said, ‘I believe he has been poisoned. Last night he became more agitated. I sat with him and twice he tried to leave his bed saying that he would not rest until he had spoken to you and only you. Mrs Meacock said he was delirious and we should ignore him. This morning he pulled me close and whispered, “Bring Ingleby – do it now.”’
AJ could tell that Ingleby was torn. He had been given his orders and they were to take AJ back to the house in Clerkenwell. It was obvious that he wasn’t keen to visit a man who was suspected of dying of cholera. AJ wasn’t keen to be late for work but an experience like this didn’t happen every day.