Chapter 9

For once I was right. I called Tree and Emily and showed them the portal in the holographic shell of the clock; it was inside the pendulum casing. Although Emma had been in time machines before, she hadn’t really known much about it—the first time she was kidnapped in one, the next time she jumped out of one and the last time she had been brought back by the TCP in one, and had understood very little of what was happening. So, when she found herself standing on the deck of Jemmons’s sloop, fully conscious of what she was seeing, she was amazed.

“But where are we?” she said, looking round at the crackling red and black “sky” of the time continuum.

“In the vortex,” I said. “It’s like a tunnel—when you travel up or down it, you travel through time.”

“The warehouse is still all around us, Miss Emma,” said Tree, “we have simply crossed into another dimension. When we set the machine in motion, we will not move from this spot, although it will appear so. We will remain at these same co-ordinates, in Bristol. This is a time machine, but it is not a time and space machine. That means if we wish to return to Georgian Bath we will have to transport the clock there.”

“I was going to say that,” I said.

“Papa!” called Emily, who had gone below. “Mr Jemmons has tea and there are muffins and butter!”

“That’s another good thing about time machines,” smiled Tree. “Food can never go off in them because it never gets old.”

“So if I stayed in here I’d remain forever young?” said Emma.

“Theoretically,” said Tree.

“Think I’ll take up sailing,” said Emma.

* * *

Getting to a safe house proved to be a complex exercise. Tree owned a houseboat—a converted barge—which he kept on the Avon in Bristol, during the late 1950s. This was back in his arty days, when he had aspirations of becoming a serious painter. Then two things happened that destroyed his career. First Peter Blake, Hockney, and Pop Art exploded on the scene, here and in America, and Tree thought it was just a flash in the pan, and carried on doing his landscapes. And then he got called up to do his National Service. He served eighteen months in Aldershot, Hong Kong, and Malaya with the Army Catering Corps. When he was demobbed in 1962, the kind of traditional art he’d wanted to do had been sidelined.

The upshot of all this was the houseboat he had been living on had remained empty for most of the two years he was away. Tree proposed that they go there to hide out. So, we had to travel back a few hundred years to a time when the industrial estate was just pasture, get out of the machine, carry it up to the top of a nearby hill—which had never been built on—and then go forward in time to late September, 1960.

This is complicated, I know, but all we had to do then was transport the clock to Clifton, where the houseboat was moored. We managed to persuade a local garage owner to drive us there in his van, for two of Tree’s gold sovereigns.

So by lunchtime we were all safely aboard the Mason-Wright houseboat, “The King of Prussia,” eagerly trying on his old beatnik clothes. I chose a pair of baggy black trousers, a black roll-neck sweater, and short black leather jacket. It was all miles too big for me, but I could have passed for a cool late fifties, jazz-loving student type. Tree struggled into an old pair of blue jeans, a black roll-neck sweater like mine, and a duffle coat. Our host, interestingly, had a wardrobe full of young women’s clothes on the boat, too, so the girls were not left out. He explained to us, rather unconvincingly, I thought, that they belonged to a girlfriend. She must have been a very tall one.

So, there we were sitting up on deck in the sun, all wearing shades, enjoying a post-lunch spliff and planning our next move. We must have looked like a jazz combo taking five.

“Maybe I’ll grow one of those goatee beards,” I said, rubbing my chin.

“Well, it would get on mine,” said Emma.

“Maybe a ‘tache like Monsewer De Crapp then!”

“You couldn’t! You haven’t got anything there!”

“Children, please!” said Tree.

“I really dig these clothes,” said Emily.

I noticed with Emily how effortlessly she adopted the attitudes and language associated with whatever costume she was wearing. And she looked good in her fishnets, pink plastic skirt, tight black top and biker jacket—and had even tied her hair back in a fashionable ponytail.

Emma, who was similarly dressed, but had opted for a white woollen jacket, instead of the leather, took the joint from Emily.

“It’s just good to get out of those stupid big dresses,” she said.

“Tree, I know you don’t like talking about it, mate,” I said, “but we have got to start thinking about finding the Castle.”

Tree nodded and gazed across the river.

Emily patted his knee. “It’s okay, Daddy.”

“I don’t know where it is,” said Tree. “It was always freezing there, I know that. It’s on a small rocky island in the middle of an ice sheet. That’s all I know.”

“Sounds like the Arctic,” said Emma, passing me the joint.

“No, I don’t think it was,” said Tree. “Some of the inmates made lenses out of ice and tried to take sightings. On clear days, we could make out people moving about and a coastline.”

“Did you make a map?” I said.

“There was a map,” said Tree, “but I was never shown it. I was not in the inner circle, you see. I—I was afraid to escape. I refused.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of, Daddy,” said his daughter. “You were thinking of me and Mummy.”

“Yes, I just wanted to serve my time and live to see my family again.” He patted Emily’s hand.

I handed him over the joint. He took a deep toke, held it in his lungs, and exhaled.

“I made some sketches while I was there. There wasn’t much to see, I just needed to keep drawing, you understand.”

“Have you still got them?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Can I have a look?”

“They’re just rough drawings I did with some homemade charcoal.”

“Are they here?”

“They’re in Somerset.”

“Could you get them?”

“Yes, but I don’t think they would tell you much,” said Tree.

“I’d still like to see them.”

“I keep a Morris Minor in a lock-up round the corner. I’ll drive down there this afternoon and get them.”

“I’ll go with you, Daddy,” said Emily.

“We’ll stay the night down there and drive back first thing,” added Tree. “Emily needs sleep.”

“Well, I’m staying here and getting some sleep right now,” yawned Emma.

“I’ll keep you company.”

She gave me a sick look.

“I meant on the boat—not in your bunk.”

* * *

It was hard. I mean knowing Emma was asleep in a cabin not more than a few feet away from me. Once or twice I went and opened the door quietly and looked in on her, as she slept. I wondered what she was dreaming about. Probably De Quipp. Well, whatever it was, it was a long one—she slept right round the clock.

* * *

Late that evening, when she still hadn’t woken up, I decided to go for a stroll along the quayside to collect my thoughts, and put the day to bed. Nowadays, that stretch of the River Avon—the old Bristol Docks—is practically a Heritage site, with re-conditioned cobblestones, gift shops and eateries, but back then it was a pretty rough area. A red light district. And I was soon propositioned by a young lady of the night.

“Looking for business, love?” she said, stepping out of the shadows.

“No, actually, I’m just having a dark night of the soul and I was wondering if Sartre might have been right and I really did choose this life for myself, or whether, as the great medieval thinkers say, everything is predestined. What do you think?” I said.

“I think you need a good—”

Suddenly, we were both distracted by a piercing scream.

It seemed to come from the houseboat.

“Good answer!” I said, as I set off sprinting along the quayside, then broke into a trot and then, by the time I reached the barge, I was walking and gasping for breath.

“Emma! Emma!” I panted.

She came rushing up from the cabin, straight into my arms.

“Steve—Steve! Oh, thank God! There’s someone down there! He—he was touching me!” she cried.

I looked around the deck for something to negotiate with and picked up a marlinspike.

“Maybe it’s Tree,” I said, hopefully.

“It was definitely not Tree,” she said. “He was all sweaty and horrible—his hands were filthy! And he was stinking of beer and fags!”

“It’s just some old tramp,” I said. “Wait up there.”

“No, he was young,” she said, going up the gangplank to the quayside.

“All right, a young tramp then.”

I took a few steps down into the cabin. “Come out of there!” I shouted. No one answered. “I’ll call the police! I’m going to count to three. One-two-”

“All right, all right—keep your hair on,” said someone with a Liverpudlian accent. “I was only lookin’ for somewhere to kip, man—and now there’s all this.”

An unkempt young man, wearing tight-fitting black trousers, a white open-neck shirt and a black leather jacket similar to mine emerged from the galley area, holding up a bottle of milk and a packet of biscuits.

My mouth fell open. God—I recognised him! A tingle wriggled around in the back of my neck.

“Okay,” I said. “Right, well, help yourself to the, um, milk—I’ll find you somewhere to, uh, kip—you scared my girlfriend.”

“Sorry about that like,” he said. “Cheers.”

I stumbled back up the stairs and waved Emma down from the quay.

“What? What?”

“Do you know who that is?” I whispered.

“I don’t care if it’s Prince Charles—get him out of there—now!”

“I think it’s John Lennon,” I nodded, grinning all over my face. “That’s only John Lennon!” I bit my bottom lip. “It is, Em—I swear it is. It’s John Lennon.”

She shook her head. “It can’t be. What would John Lennon be doing in Bristol? The Beatles lived in Liverpool, didn’t they?”

“Yes, and they played in Hamburg,” I said. “But they must have played all over Britain before they were famous. This is 1960—they haven’t made it yet. That guy down there changed the world, Em! That’s the twenty-year-old genius in embryo. And he’s on our boat.”

“Tree’s boat,” she corrected.

“Don’t say anything,” I said. “Let me do the talking.”

“Don’t you always?”

We went back below. Emma smiled at our guest and scuttled through to her cabin to put some more clothes on. I sat down at the small dining table opposite him, to watch John Lennon drinking milk.

“Mind if I smoke?” he said.

“Go ahead, man,” I grinned. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

He gave me a funny look and offered me an untipped Woodbine. I carefully took it out of the packet and studied it, thinking I’d keep it and maybe get him to sign it later.

He lit up. “Are you going to smoke that or eat it?” he said, offering me the lit match.

“I’ll save it,” I grinned, putting it behind my ear.

“Please yourself,” he shrugged.

“Yeah, I’ll please, please me,” I smirked. “What’s your name?”

He thought for a moment. “Er, Johnny, Johnny Silver—what’s yours?”

“No, what is it really?” I said. “Go on—you can tell me.”

“What is this—twenty questions?” he said.

“My name’s Steve Sloane—now, tell me your real name—you’re from Liverpool, aren’t you, Johnny?”

Just then, Emma returned.

“Well, is it him?” she said.

“Who?” said our incredible guest. “Who d’you think I am—the King of Siam or something? Do I look like Yul Brynner with this mop?”

I laughed and shook my head. “It’s him,” I said.

Just in that split second I caught a red flash in the back of his eyes—faster than a lizard’s blink. A chill ran up my spine. I had seen that telltale sign before. That was no Beatle—that wasn’t even human! I tried to conceal it and kept smiling.

“Look, we think you look like a singer in a, er, fab band we saw at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. Are you John Lennon?” I said calmly.

He grinned. “I didn’t want to give me real name—Johnny Silver’s me stage name like, but, yeah, since you’re fans—it’s true—I am he,” he said.

“Really?” said Emma, sitting down next to him. “Have you written any good songs lately?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I have, love—so you really dig our music?”

“Yeah, we do,” said Emma. “Is Paul—?”

I kicked her foot under the table. She shot me an annoyed look. I attempted to signal to her that he wasn’t the real John Lennon, by making a slight shake of my head and pointing at him with the hand I was resting my chin on. But our visitor was now looking directly at me.

“What?” she said.

“What’s up, man?” he said, through lips now as cruel as Caligula’s.

Suddenly he stuck an arm out and grabbed Emma by the throat, and then gripped her forehead with his other hand, without even looking at her.

“Don’t move, Sloane!” he yelped, losing the Scouse accent. “You know I could crush her skull with one squeeze!”

“Please!” I said. “Don’t hurt her! I’ll do anything you say.”

“She is with child,” he said. “Your child—mutant!”

I heard light footsteps coming down the stairs. I looked round. It was the prostitute I had met on the quayside a few minutes earlier. Now I could see who she reminded me of—Jody Foster! They had clearly delved into my mind on a previous encounter and fished out a few likes and dislikes. They knew the type of people I was likely to trust, the personal favourites I wouldn’t question.

“Where are the others?” she barked.

“They were not here,” said the male Corrective Measures agent. “We will wait.”

She slapped me across the back of the head. “Where are they, Sloane? Tell us!” She hit me again.

I don’t want to brag here, but I should point out these agents were not humanoid—they were androids from the fourth millennium—and when they hit you, it bloody well hurt. I slumped forward and laid my head on the table, to try and stay out of range.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You are a liar!” screeched the female, pinning my head with her hand and applying pressure. “If you do not tell us I will squash your head into paste.”

“For God’s sake tell them, Stephen!” cried Emma.

“Don’t worry love—they won’t kill us, they need us for research.”

“We do not need you in full working order,” said the female android. “Your ears, nose—these fingers—they are expendable.”

“All right, all right,” I said. “I’ll tell you. But first tell him to let Emma’s head go—and let me sit up.”

She nodded to the John Lennon look-alike and he released Emma’s skull. She let me up.

I rubbed the back of my head. I knew I was in a no-win situation. I had no plan, so I decided to play for time, until I could think of one, or an opportunity presented itself, so I suppose you could call that a sort of plan. It depends what you mean by plan really, doesn’t it?

“There are two others,” I began. “One is very, very tall. The other is young, a young female. She is not so tall really, she’s sort of average height, well, maybe a little below average height. She has hair the colour of gold or some might say it’s more the colour of ripe corn in sunshine. And it kind of moves like a cornfield—you know that way corn moves when the summer breeze passes over it? It’s like an ocean, rolling waves and ripples from end to end of the field. Of course, the individual strands are not as thick as a stalk of corn…”

Emma looked at me incredulously and then at each of the engrossed androids in turn. And shook her head.

I continued in this vein for nearly an hour. You have to remember our captors were androids—half-machines—they were not going to refuse any information I was prepared to reel off. They would be storing it all in their memory chips, collating and processing it, adding little bits here and little bits there to their files, reviewing and revising—cross-referencing—the whole time I was talking. They had never met me before and probably thought it was the way I always talked. Besides, they wouldn’t think it was a waste of time to let me carry on spinning out my tale, like Scheherazade. They would just think they were extracting an excellent statement from me—very detailed and full. Just the way Corrective Measures liked them.

“Coffee?” said Emma.

“Yes, please, Em,” I smiled, breaking off briefly from my discourse. I checked with the droids. They both nodded. “Make that three, love.”

“…so why, you might ask, did we compare him to a tree—we might just as well have compared him to a lamppost or a flagpole. Metaphors are all a matter of personal taste, don’t you think? That was a rhetorical question—you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. I know you’re not here to answer questions—that’s what you want me to do—right? Er, that was a rhetorical question, too—when I said ‘right.’ Um, I think. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes—Shakespeare’s use of metaphor and simile in the sonnet sequence…”

* * *

Two hours later I was still going strong.

“…you see, what the neo-classicists were attempting to do was eradicate all ambiguity and—and wishy-washy woolly thinking and imagery from their writing—”

“But not Pope,” interrupted John.

“Well, true, um, he was into extended metaphor,” I said.

“The whole Rape of the Lock,” nodded Jody, helping herself to another one of John’s cigarettes.

“The whole of ‘The Rape of the Lock,’” I agreed, not too sure about that one. “You see, Romanticism, as exemplified by Keats, Byron et al, at this particular period in the Age of Enlightenment would have been almost incomprehensible to Dryden. He could only see the classical model.”

“The baroque was dead,” said Jody.

“As a doornail,” I nodded, patting her hand, where it lay on the table, next to mine.

“The rococo rules!” exclaimed John, punching the air with his fist.

I smiled and waved my arms about like a conductor. “Light, airy—ephemeral—with the delicacy and grace of a butterfly’s flight, the perfection and symmetry of a shell.”

“Hmm,” sighed Jody gazing off into space. “Like Watteau’s swinger.”

“Well, the word swinger has other connotations these days, but, yes, grace personified,” I smiled. We linked arms and swayed together to the imaginary music we were hearing.

“What’s a swinger?” said John.

“Er, love,” I said to Emma, “do you think you could make some more coffee?”

Jody put her hand over her cup. “Not for me, thanks, Stephen.”

I looked to John.

“Oh, go on then,” he grinned.

“Make that two, love,” I said.

Emma came and snatched our cups off the table, chinked them together, and said to John, “A swinger is disgrace personified, love.” And then she stamped out to the galley and slammed them down on the draining board.

“Er, and so to Lord Byron,” I said. “Byron was a Romantic from the quiff of his mullet to the polish on the toes of his riding boots…um, did you know he had a club foot?”

* * *

In the wee small hours, long after we had progressed to the wine, we retired to the cushioned lounge area and were lying about listening to Tree’s collection of jazz records, and rolling joints. I had totally corrupted the two androids from Corrective Measures. The power of free expression of the self is staggering. In ’60s America, psychologists introduced the concept of the freeing the inner self to the initiates of a convent, within six months over half the sisters had broken their vows and left the institution, and the rest were practising a sort of lesbian version of free worship. It’s true!

“…I like the Parker—it’s freer—don’t you agree, Stevie?”

“Jody, you don’t know what you’re talking about—how can you sit there and say that?” argued John.

“All I’m saying,” said Jody, “is that Bix’s syncopation is more accessible and the Bird’s technique is a natural extension of that. Stephen, tell this creep what I mean for pity’s sake!”

“The Bird flies, man,” I said. I jumped up, stuck my thumb in my mouth, and played the imaginary sax stops up and down my chest with my other hand. “He floats, he flits!” I skipped around the cabin. “He blow that horn like he’s grown a new tongue, cats—it don’t just sing—it makes lurve!”

Jody laughed and clapped her hands. John shook his head and poured himself another glass of red wine.

“You the man!” he said.

“Sit down, you buffoon!” hollered Jody, finally.

“Who you calling a buffoon, girl?” I laughed, throwing myself back down on the bench seat with her.

“I’m going to bed,” said Emma, who had been sitting at the dining table. She padded past us in her bare feet. We heard her slam her cabin door and all fell about laughing.

“So,” said Jody, playing with my hair, “the French existentialists, led by Sartre, were not only saying we had free will, but that we have too much?”

“Too much choice,” I nodded, topping up my glass and Jody’s with more wine. “We don’t know what to do with it all. We walk into a supermarket, we don’t even know what breakfast cereal we want to snap, crackle or pop. That post-industrialism-consumerism complex—that whole Freud-Bernhays thing—has spawned a new religion—shopping! The will has been set free! We can be and do and buy whatever we want! We’re all so free it’s like being in a cage of freedom!”

“I like that image,” said John. “Cage of freedom. Oxymoron. Bravo, mon ami.”

“But we still have Rome,” sighed Jody. “We still have original sin and we still have guilt. We are still repressed by that medieval rack inside our heads—those old philosophers, like Aquinas, still tell us it’s all preordained. The bastards!”

“Well, not Aquinas—he, er, sort of believed in free choice,” I corrected.

“Sorry. I meant that whole Spanish Inquisition—Reformation-Counter-Reformation chain thing—it’s still pulling us, spinning our souls on the wheel of St Catherine! Whipping us to the Cross!” cried Jody, with scary passion. “We’ll never be free! God isn’t dead in our heads, man!” She burst into tears and threw herself against me and pounded me with her fists. “I just want to be who I want to be—I just want to be me! I have to be free! Oh, Steve—set me free!”

I held her head in my arms and stroked her hair. “Shh, shh—I’ve got you, babe…”

* * *

At dawn my students and I were sitting cross-legged up on deck, meditating and composing freeform poems.

“…rain drops Venn diagrams on the still lake,” offered John.

“…the peeled lips of their swastikas speak of rage rage rage!” hissed Jody.

I was worried about Jody.

“…but they also spoke of love love love,” I added, “uh, because love is all you need.”

John opened his eyes and nodded at me. “Cool, man,” he said dreamily.

“…there is nothing you can do that cannot be done,” I went on, “nowhere you can be where you are not supposed to be—it’s easy…”

It seemed to be working.

Jody said, “…all you need is someone else to live in hell with…”

“…there is no one you cannot be if you really want to be somebody—it’s easy…” said John, getting the hang of it.

“All you need is love—la-la-la-la-la! Keep it up!” I sang, conducting them with one hand, while I lifted myself up with my other.

“All you need is love—la-la-la-la-la!” we all chorused.

“Now,” I said, backing away, towards the hatchway, “keep adding verses and don’t stop, till I get back.”

I swung down the last few wooden rungs of the hatch stairs into the main cabin, pleased with myself, and found Emma lounging full length on the sofa bench, reading a paperback and sipping coffee.

“Hallelujah! Give me black coffee!” I cried, clapping my hands and rubbing them together.

We could just hear John and Jody singing their improvised version of “All You Need is Love” right over our heads.

“In the pot,” said Emma, without taking her nose out of her book.

I poured myself a coffee and went over to join her on the bench. She was forced to move her feet slightly to make room for me, and tutted.

“Well, aren’t you going to say anything?” I said.

“Morning, Sloane.”

“No, I meant about that,” I said, pointing my finger up at the ceiling.

“You mean, The Temple of the Seventh Day Sloanites? Yeah—tell them not to chant so loud, I’m trying to become one with this book.”

“Emma, last night they were going to crack open our heads like eggs—now they’re singing hippie anthems and making up avant garde poetry. I’ve converted them!”

“Yes, but into what?” she said. “I think I liked them better when they were psychopaths.”

“Well, I think I did a pretty good job,” I said, a bit miffed. “What you reading?”

She flashed the cover in my face and carried on reading.

“Hm, Lucky Jim,” I said. “Isn’t that supposed to be funny?”

“It’s hilarious,” she said, without lifting her eyes off the page.

“Then why aren’t you laughing?” I said.

“I’m laughing in my mind. Now, leave me alone—go and sacrifice a goat or something.”

I was not put off—I had just converted two aggressive automata into peace-loving poets—I was on a roll.

“What first attracted you to me, Em?”

“Your silence.”

Undeterred, I said, “I wonder what love is.” I clutched my coffee cup to my heart. “They say love grows and it can die, but it can’t be organic, can it? ’Cos the lover still lives on. Is it merely a bio-chemical reaction? I ask myself. Or just an instinctive animal urge, over which we have no control, no say in the matter? Can this be all there is to love? I think not. I think love is like a faith, a faith in the one you love.”

Emma heaved a huge sigh and turned the page.

“I have faith in you, Em. A faith that cannot be shaken or broken. I will never give up my faith in you. Because I love you.”

“The baby is not yours, Stephen—it’s Matt’s,” she said, without interrupting her reading.

I drank the rest of my coffee in one, got up, walked stiffly out to the galley, and smashed the mug in the sink. I charged back in.

“Matthew bloody Turner! How could you sleep with that shithead—that bird-brained, fish-faced, ass-licking, little shite of a pratt? How could you?”

“I thought he was your mate,” she said, finally looking up from her bloody book and smiling sweetly at me.

“Mate? Mate? I hate the little tosser! I hate him! I hate everything about the slimy, two-faced bastard! You slept with Matthew Turner? I hope you showered all the slime off afterwards! Do you realise you’re carrying the seed of Matthew Turner? Men like Matthew Turner shouldn’t be allowed to breed—they should be castrated at birth! That’s a point—when’s the little shit’s birthday? I could fast forward to the day he was spawned and go round to the maternity unit and do it myself!”

“But you told me you wanted good old Matt to be your best man,” said Emma. “Oh, my mate, Matt will do it—Matt’s so cool—Matt this, Matt that. Do you really want him making his speech in a squeaky voice?”

“This is all one big joke to you, isn’t it?” I yelled.

“Do you still love me now?” she smiled.

“No—I do-bloody-well-not! You two-timing, little tart! I hate you! I hate you—I hate women!”

“Well,” said Emma, “so much for your unshakable, unbreakable faith. That was short and sweet. He’s declared a fatwa on me and all my kind.” She returned to her paperback and calmly read on.

“You should have told me all this before—I’ve made a right dickhead of myself chasing round after you. The Duck was right, there’s plenty more where you came from, Gummer!”

Emma turned another page.

“And another thing—I never trusted you—oh no, I knew there was something going on between you and that slimy creep Turner. I knew it. I knew you two were at it!”

“Well, you were wrong then, because I made it all up.”

“Hey?”

“The baby is yours and I have never had an affair with Matthew Turner,” said Emma, looking up at me with her head tilted to one side, eyebrows arched.

“What? You expect me to fall for a line like that?” I laughed.

“No, I couldn’t care less what you think,” she shrugged. And went back to her book.

“You made it up?”

“If you say so, Stephen.” She read on.

“Why?”

“I wanted to test that unshakable, unbreakable faith you had in me. I have to admit it was much stronger than I imagined—it lasted all of three seconds longer than I thought it would,” she said. “I’m flattered—not.”

“That’s not fair. Come on, Em—you—you said the worst thing you could possibly say to a guy,” I said. “All right, you put me to the test and I took the bait and—”

“You failed miserably.”

“I admit I fell for it. If it had been anyone other than Matt Turner—”

“What difference would it have made who I’d shagged?”

“Well, Matt’s my best mate.”

“Your best mate? A minute ago you were going to jump in your time machine and de-bollock him at birth!”

“Yeah, but that was just a normal male reaction.”

“Sloane, there is nothing normal about you.”

“Emma, it’s in our genes, love—we’re programmed to react that way—haven’t you heard of the harem-castration syndrome? It’s been around since the dawn of time. Guys want to mate with as many females as possible and try to stop the rest of the lads in the tribe getting a look-in. It’s all perfectly normal and healthy,” I said. “That’s why I was behaving a bit off with you. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it, darling. Love? You didn’t think I meant it, did you? All that stuff…”

“Don’t simper, Stephen.”

A voice called down from the hatch. “Hey, man, like, is everything okay down there?” It was John. “We thought we heard someone screaming.”

“The coffee was a bit hot!” I shouted up. “Go back to your meditation!”

“Uh, cool. Uh, actually, Steve, Jody, and I thought we’d go and find ourselves now, if that’s all right with you.”

“Find yourselves?” I said. “Where?”

“Wherever it’s at, man,” said John.

“It could be within us or without us,” said Jody.

“Yeah, like far out or all in the mind,” said John.

“What do you think, Steve?” said Jody. “Can we make it?”

“Well, I don’t know, it’s a wild and wacky world out there, you guys.”

“Yeah, but, um, you know, er, if we can kinda like tune in, man,” said John. “We just might stand a chance, don’t you agree?”

“Go for it, man.”

“Hey, wow—like love and peace, man!” cried John.

“We knew you’d understand, man,” said Jody. “So long, Steve, love and peace, man. You, too, Emma.”

“Yeah, love and peace,” I said.

“Just do it,” said Emma.

We heard them tramping up the gangplank and chattering excitedly as they left on the voyage of self-discovery we call life. Yeah, it was kind of funny hearing them express themselves like that, but kind of touching, too.

“You know, in my own way, I think I really helped those kids,” I said.

“Steve, don’t kid yourself,” said Emma. “You turned them into Sloane clones—their lives are going to be hell.”

I thought about that. “You may just have a point there. I’ll go and call them back.”

“Oh, leave them alone!”

“Yeah, you’re right. Em, can’t we stop all this fussing and fighting now? Can’t we be friends again?”

“I am your friend, Stephen,” she smiled. “But I love Travis.”

“But you can’t mean that, love,” I said. “It’s so—so irrational—we’re expecting a baby together. We still have issues here.”

“I love Travis De Quipp. End of story.”

“Look, will you please just try something for me a minute?” I looked round for a pen and paper. I found a desk diary and a biro on a shelf. I tore out a note page from the back and handed it to her. “Here, take this pen and paper and try to focus in on your subconscious feelings for Travis.”

“My subconscious feelings for Travis?” she said, pulling a pained expression. “What do you mean?”

“It can mean anything you want it to mean—I just want to prove to you how irrational our emotions can be. This is classic market research, trust me,” I said.

“Anything?”

“Whatever comes into your head when you think of Travis,” I nodded. “Don’t think about it—just let your pen flow over the paper.”

She drew a long cigar-shape and passed it to me.

“What’s that supposed to be?” I said.

“You tell me,” she said, sucking the pen.

“Well, let me see, it could be a, um, it looks like a, um, what the hell is it?” I said. “It looks a bit phallic.” I ripped it up. “You did that on bloody purpose!” I said.

“Got a bigger piece of paper?” she smirked, and went back to her book.

I stormed off up the stairs. Just as I got to the hatchway, a big black Norton motorbike, with two people astride it, zipped up in leathers, wearing goggles and black helmets—one big, one small—drove onto the quayside, mounted the end of the gangplank, and bounced down onto the deck. The tall driver switched the roaring engine off and the little one jumped off the back and lifted her goggles up.

“Steve!” she cried, running to throw her arms around my neck and kiss me. “Oh, I missed you.”

“Emily, Emily,” I smiled. “How did it go?”

Tree dismounted. “Don’t ask,” he said.

“They blew up Daddy’s farm!” cried Emily excitedly.

“Oh, no. What happened?” I said. “Come below—I’ll put the kettle on.”

“They blew up everything—even the wood shed!” said Emily. “They even blew up the car! They would have blown us up if Daddy hadn’t remembered his old Norton—they locked us up in the barn with it, and Daddy got it going and we smashed through the door like James Bond! Then we rode over to Taunton and bought all this biker gear—isn’t it just the coolest?”

“Yes, yes—you must tell us all about it,” I said. I turned her round and faced her down the steps. “Later.”

I stood aside to let Tree go next and patted him on the back.

By the time I got down to the cabin, Tree and Emily had removed their helmets, unzipped their leathers and were lounging on the bench seats. Emma was already putting the coffee on, so I sat down at the dining table. Then Emily stood up and gave me a little fashion show on the pretence of following Emma out into the galley. I heard her chattering away, telling Emma all about their narrow escape in Somerset.

“So what happened?” I asked Tree.

“They were waiting for us,” he sighed. “Either they got very lucky or someone tipped them off.”

“Tipped them off? How? I mean—who?”

“Wish I knew.”

“We’ve had a couple of visitors here, too,” I said.

“Here?” He looked around. “Where?”

“Don’t worry—they’ve gone—I got rid of them,” I said.

“When was this? You didn’t tell them where we were, I hope?” said Tree.

I shook my head. “No way, man. I just persuaded them to get a life. And they left.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” I said. “Mind you, it took me all night to talk them round.”

“I think I need to ask you a question,” said Tree sternly.

“Yeah, I understand. Go ahead,” I said.

“What did you borrow off me at Knebworth?”

“A Tibetan hat,” I said.

Tree smiled and reached out his hand. I stretched over mine and gave him five.

“They must be tracking us somehow,” said Tree. “The net’s closing. You might have seen two off, but they’ll be back as sure as eggs is eggs. We’d best leave as soon as we can.”

“Yeah, tempus fugit. Did you manage to save the drawings?” I said.

He put his hand inside his leathers and pulled out a bundle of papers, and tossed them on the coffee table.

“Nice one!” I said.

I slid off my seat and picked them up, and began leafing through them. They were mostly interiors—sketchily drawn scenes of men and women sitting around in what looked like an ancient dungeon—there were a few others of inmates exercising, but they were all enclosed by walls. I was disappointed. And then I found two, right down the bottom, that were exactly what I had been hoping to find—they showed the view from a cell window—one looking towards a distant coastline, which seemed to curve around like a horseshoe, and the other from a completely different viewpoint.

I held it up.

“Where were you when you drew this?” I asked him.

He took it from me and looked at it for a moment or two. “That’s looking east,” he said. “I was recovering from frostbite—that’s the view from the infirmary window.”

I sat down next to him and pointed. “What are these outlines, here and this flat-topped one here?”

“Islands,” he said.

“I was hoping you were going to say that,” I smiled.

“Why—how does that help us?” he said.

I fetched the diary from the shelf and took the biro out of my jacket pocket and showed him. “Because it means we can do this,” I said. I drew a crude aerial idea of the Castle, set on an ice sheet, with a wavy line for the coast and the two islands in their relative positions. “It’s rough, I know, but we can get it much better by really studying these two drawings, and any more I may have missed. We can make a map.”

Emma and Emily brought the coffees in.

Tree shook his head. “I still don’t see how a bad map is going to help us to find the Castle,” he said.

Emily gave her father his coffee and sat down next to him. Emma put mine on the coffee table and then sat down on the coffee table next to it, picked up my scribble, quickly discarded it, and began turning over Tree’s drawings, one by one.

“We are agreed the Castle is somewhere in the British Isles?” I said.

Tree nodded, wearily.

“But we don’t know where and we don’t know when?” I said.

Tree nodded and rubbed his eye. I could see that the memories were almost too painful for him to even think about. I turned my attention to Emily.

“Emily, do you remember you once told me your father believed the Castle to be in our distant past—in an Ice Age?” I said.

“Yes, Stephen, I do.” She looked to her father. “That’s what you said, isn’t it, Daddy?”

Tree nodded and sighed. “It is in the past,” he said.

“You mean the Castle is in the past?” I said.

“Yes,” sighed Tree.

“How do you know?” I said.

“Steve, stop pressing,” said Emma. “Can’t you see Tree’s upset?”

“No, it’s all right, Emma,” said Tree. “Stephen’s right—we must try to find that evil place and get poor Roger out.”

“And Jools,” said Emily.

“The Duck is quite capable of taking care of himself,” said Tree. “It’s Roger Jemmons I’m worried about. He has been a good friend.”

“There’s been no sign of the Duck,” I said. “I think we can assume the worst, Tree. I’m afraid I haven’t told you everything.”

Everybody’s attention immediately focussed on me. I told them the whole story, more or less, though leaving out the bit about my, uh, brief emotional attachment to Miss Parker or the Princess Mormagleea, or whatever her name was.

“Are you sure that wasn’t the real Jemmons in that attic?” said Tree. “The way you tell it, it sounds to me as if he could have been attacking Bentley not you. He might have known Bentley was a traitor.”

“Oh, he meant me all right,” I said. “Damn near had my head off.”

“Do you believe all this stuff about a princess? It sounds far-fetched to me,” said Emma, to the others.

“And why would she dress up in a nurse’s uniform and nurse you? It sounds a bit kinky to me,” said Emily, pulling a face. “Did she wear thigh boots?”

“Emily!” said Tree.

“Look, what am I—an unreliable witness? I’m only telling you what I saw and heard,” I said.

“Travis is in danger,” said Emma, thinking aloud. “We have to find this place.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everybody—it’s the key to this whole mess. Something is going down and the Duck’s at the bottom of it as usual,” I said.

“Well, I think Julian and Travis have been very brave,” said Emma. “You’re the one who’s been completely useless in all this.”

“What? Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you—if loverboy’s involved it can’t be dodgy, can it?”

“Travis has more honour in his little finger than you’ll ever have,” said Emma.

“Weren’t you listening to a thing I said? They set me up—they’re as thick as thieves!”

“They probably just wanted you out of the way, while they rescued this princess, because they knew you’d be absolutely useless!” she said.

“Emma-Stephen-please,” said Tree. “We must not allow personal rivalries to cloud our judgement. It’s plain what must be done. We must go to the Castle and—and rescue whoever needs rescuing, if anyone does need rescuing—I mean, if we can find the place, which I very much doubt. Stephen and I will purchase some more suitable clothing and leave as soon as we work out where it is we’re going.”

“Hang about!” said Emma. “You’re not leaving me here—I’m going with you.”

“And me,” said Emily, taking Emma’s hand, in an act of sisterhood.

“Don’t be daft,” I said. “You’re both pregnant!”

“Oh shut up!” said Emma. “We’re only a few months gone—we’re not invalids!”

“Yeah!” said Emily.

Tree and I looked at each other in dismay.

“Well,” said Tree. “It’s probably all academic anyway—it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever find the place. It’ll be like looking for a needle in every haystack in England.”

“Then let’s get started,” said Emma.

I folded my arms, leaned back, and smiled at her. “Go on then—what’s your plan?” I said.

Emma turned to Tree. “Tree, you said the Castle is in the Ice Age—do you have any idea which one?”

“Which one?” said Tree. “Well, I don’t know.”

“Then what made you think it was in an Ice Age?” she asked.

“There were woolly mammoths—”

“Mammoths?” I said.

“Big hairy elephants, dear,” said Emma. She turned her attention back to Tree. “That does sound like the last Ice Age. The woolly mammoth is believed to have died out some eight thousand years ago, though the last Arctic incursion had receded by about twenty thousand years ago and lasted around ten thousand years. So that means the Castle is almost certainly situated in a time window somewhere between 30,000 and 20,000 years ago. The Late Pleistocene.”

“How do you know all this?” I said.

“Saw a Discovery Channel programme about it,” said Emma. She turned back to Tree. “Do you think, with your artistic training, that you and Emily could look at the drawings Stephen picked out—and this one I found of what looks like another view of the ice sheet—and visualize a map?”

“Let me see that,” I said.

Emma ignored me and passed the sheet to Emily.

“We can try, can’t we, Daddy?” said Emily, taking the drawing from Emma. “I know how to transcribe perspective drawings into plans—Mr Wren showed me.”

“Sir Christopher Wren?” I said.

“Who else, silly?” said Emily.

* * *

Emma had taken charge and I knew from that moment on I would be taking a backseat. It was my own fault. I’d been trying to be sarcastic when I asked her if she had a plan, not relinquish any control I might have had! She had us all organised within minutes. She quickly sussed that Emily had more idea about technical drawing than her father and got her to work alone on the rough map. Meanwhile, she had Tree drawing her a plan from memory of the Castle, on which she herself worked intensively and sensitively with him. I was detailed to make coffee, but once I’d done that, I was just standing around with my hands in my pockets. I watched Emma as she talked to Tree or checked on Emily’s progress, encouraging them with a word of praise here, a smile there.

It started off innocently—I was admiring her—but it developed into something a bit more voyeuristic, when I fixated on the way her calf muscle curved into the neat scroll of her heel, or the way her sweater tautened each time she twisted round to speak to Emily, or the way her hair fell across her face and she let it stay there for a few moments before lazily pushing it aside with her hand, which, to me, was, uh, very attractive. And then, of course, there was her mouth—I loved Emma’s mouth—and her eyes, but especially her mouth. She had perfect, smooth, full lips—in fact, she had actually modelled an entire range of lipsticks, from red through to blue—I still had the magazines with the adverts hidden behind my wardrobe—believe me, I have spent hours poring over those close-ups. I find it extremely erotic the way her lower lip pouts, while the upper lip sort of juts up proudly and you just get this glimpse of her teeth through the very suggestive gap between her—

“—Sloane!”

“What? Oh—Em.”

“Stop leching,” she said. “Can’t you find something useful to do?”

“I wasn’t leching. Leching.”

“Why don’t you go and clean the time machine or something?” she suggested.

“Clean the time machine?” I said. “It’s not a car—no one sees it, it’s in another dimension.”

“I know—” she said, suddenly having another idea, “why don’t you go and buy up as many Ordinance Survey maps as you can find?”

“We just need the coasts, Emma,” said Tree.

“Only the ones with coastlines,” added Emma.

“Uh, and what do I use for money?” I said.

“Here, take my credit card.” She dug in her jacket pocket and passed it to me. “Give me your hand.” I gave her my hand and she wrote her PIN number on my palm. “This is the number. Oh, and get some more cigarettes—you know my brand. Anyone else need anything?”

“I’d like some pistachio ice cream please,” said Emily.

“Tree?” prompted Emma.

“We need tobacco and papers, Stephen,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “There aren’t any cash machines yet—this is 1960. You haven’t got a bank account!”

“Oh. Well, can’t you use the time machine?”

“You want me to use the time machine to go shopping?”

“Is that a problem?”

“Of course it’s a problem,” I said. “I can’t just jump in and—”

“Oh, please don’t make a fuss, darling,” she sighed.

The word “darling” shut me up instantly. I smiled sweetly at her.

“All right, I’ll go.” I stooped down and kissed her cheek. “I’m doing this for you, darling,” I said.

She inclined her head towards me and we exchanged one of those intimate looks only those who have had something going would understand.

“We have got to have a long chat,” I mouthed.

“Not now,” she mouthed back, and turned away.