Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (14 page)

Chapter
XXXVII:

Back
In Schrödinger’s Van – A Rude Awakening

I
considered
whether or not I needed to puke before climbing the fold-down steps at the back
of Schrödinger’s Van.
 
Probably not, I
decided.
 
A night’s sleep would have me
right as rain.

I had just settled into the daybed
when the rear doors opened and a shadowy figure entered.

“Who’s that?” I tried to say, but
thanks to The Lascar’s Best Bitter it came out more like “
Oo
at?”

There was the sound of a match
being struck and a moment later the flickering light of a wall-mounted gas lamp
revealed Sarah’s elongated features.
 
I
noticed for the first time that a fine network of crow’s feet had begun to
develop at the corners of her eyes.
 
I
liked the change. It made her look less forbidding.

“Edith said I should check in and
make sure you’re alright,” Sarah said.
 
“Let’s have a look at that cut on your cheek.”
 
She turned my head toward her and examined
her handiwork.
 
“You’ll have a scar for
the rest of your life.
 
Still, you can
take comfort in the fact that some women find that sort of thing
attractive.
 
Undo your shirt.”

“What’s that got to do with my
cheek?” I asked.

“Who knows what other injuries you
might have?”

So I undid my shirt.
 
At first Sarah’s probing hands moved professionally,
accompanied by the usual queries.
 
“Does this hurt?
 
How about there?”
 
But then they began to stroke my torso in a
way they don’t teach you in nursing school.
 
What is going on here?
I
thought.
 
I got my answer a moment later
when Sarah brought her face down to mine and undid my belt buckle.

“You better stay on top,” I
said.
 
“I wouldn’t want to bleed on you.”

A
s you have
probably gathered, my experience of women is limited.
 
That fact, combined with my still-inebriated
state made the next half-hour a ‘damned close-run thing.’
 
I said as much to Sarah who kissed me and
told me she was ‘sure we would improve with practice.’

“Did Edith really tell you to look
in on me?” I asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” Sarah
said.
 
“I think her exact words were ‘you
get in there and take what’s yours or I’m going to kick you up the
arse
.’”

I
had a fair-sized hangover when I woke next morning,
but I didn’t mind.
 
Sarah was still
nestled beside me and I felt an unfamiliar sense of contentment.
 
For once in my life things were going right.
 
The moment vanished when I heard someone
rattling the back door and a voice shouting “
Oy
, wake
up in there.”

Chapter
XXXVIII:

More
Kinematic Adventures – New Friends – Time For My Close Up

“Y
ou better
have a damned good reason for this, Percy,” I said, when I opened the
door.
 
I would have said more but the stitches
on my cheek were caked with blood and it hurt to talk.

“Get your clothes on mate,” Percy
said.
 
“The new bill at the kinescope’s
got a talking newsreel.
 
No more reading
titles.
 
But that isn’t all…”

“Percy, not to be a spoilsport, but
I have seen pictures with sound before,” I interrupted.

“But that’s not all, we’re in it.”

“What do you mean we’re in it?”

“Us.
 
You and me.
 
I haven’t seen it yet but some of my mates say you can see us clear as
day.”

“Just give me a second,” I said,
stepping back into the van.

“And bring our Sarah too,” he said,
as I closed the door.
 

T
here was no
permanent kinescope in our part of the East End.
 
Instead, a travelling projectionist set up
his equipment in the Bakers’ Hall on Saturday afternoons.

The first showing had just finished
when Sarah, Percy and I joined the queue.
 
There was the usual banter between the people waiting and the people
getting out.
 
“Save your money, load of
rubbish,” and so forth.
 
But the joshing
died down as the departing patrons came abreast of Percy and me.
 
Some of the people turned their eyes away.
 
Others, most of them local hard cases,
slapped us on the shoulders and said things like ‘well done’ and ‘good on
yer
.’
 
A man with several
gold teeth took my hand in his two large hairy paws, looked me in the eye and
said, “Come see me after the show.
 
We’ll
have a bit of a natter.”

“Who was that?” I whispered to
Percy after gold tooth had gone.

“That’s Bennie Sherman,” Percy
whispered back.
 
“You want to watch out
for him.
 
He’s one of the dodgiest blokes
around here.”

T
he lights
dimmed shortly after we had found a place on one of the hard wooden benches
that provided seating in the hall.
 
The
projector whirred in the background, a shaft of light appeared overhead and a
Roman-Helmeted woman appeared on screen holding a trident in one hand and a
shield embossed with the union flag in the other.
 
The accompanying soundtrack began with a
drumroll leading into the opening bars of ‘Rule Britannia.’

Most of the audience had never seen
a sound film before and their reactions ranged from excitement to distress
although in the latter case, the sufferers were all young women who used their
supposed fear as an excuse to snuggle closer to their young men.

‘Rule Britannia’ was followed by a
trumpet fanfare introducing block-lettered titles reading:

Empire Films Present

NEWS OF THE DAY

The first item was a follow up to
one I had seen at the
Brompton
Road Kinescope.
 
City workers were hanging bunting around the
doors of the House of Commons in preparation for Her Majesty’s upcoming visit.
 
“No
expense will be spared to ensure Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee is the highlight
of the season,”
boasted a voice-over commentator in crisp Home Counties
tones.

“A
less welcome series of events had taken place in East End London’s Gable
Street,”
the narration continued over a shot of a black-clad Osgood
Wellesley riding a chestnut horse at the head of a column of fascists.
 
“Shown
here is Minister of Defense, Sir Osgood Wellesley leading his five thousand
fascist followers on their much advertised march through London’s East End.”

The picture cut to a group of
east-enders overturning a double-decker bus.
 
“Having failed to persuade the
Home Office to ban the march, Communists, laborites and Jews block the fascist
route, resisting the peaceful efforts of the outnumbered police to clear the
way.”

Next was the arrival of the two
armored cars.
“Armored vehicles attempt
to use water cannon to disburse the crowd
,”
 
Cut to Percy and me running out to jam the
treads of the cars with our cobblestones,
 
“
But they are soon disabled.”

And guess what they showed next.
 
Me.

“One
of the men seen damaging the vehicles is believed to be Robert
Liddel
, an American, shown in this photograph.
 
In addition to taking part in the Gable
Street riots, Mister
Liddel
is suspected of causing
the death of Home Office employee Arthur Flowers.
 
A substantial reward has been offered for
information leading to the capture of this wanted fugitive.”

I stood up and grabbed Percy by his collar and Sarah by her sleeve.
 
“Come on,” I said.
 
“We’ve got to get out of here.”

Chapter
XXXIX:

Teary
Farewells – A Hasty Departure

“I
’m surprised
the police aren’t already here,” I said, as Sarah and I followed Percy through
a series of back lanes to his mother’s house.

“The police?” Sarah said.
 
“How would they know where to find you?”

“Benny Sherman, that’s how,” Percy
answered her.
 
“He’d sell his own mother
for a quid that one.”

As if in answer to my fears we
heard the sound of clanging bells in the distance.

“Not a moment too soon,” I said, as
Percy directed us through the back yard of a tannery that sat at the foot of
the street where the
Cowans
lived.

“Bob,” Percy asked, as we reached
the back door of
Cowans
’ house, “Is that true what
they said on the newsreel?
 
That you did
in a bloke from the Home Office?”

“I had no choice.”

“How did you do it?”

“Shot him.”

“With a six shooter?
 
Like in the old west?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well bloody hell.”

I could tell I had just risen six
notches in Percy’s estimation.
 
People
would buy him drinks at the Lascar’s Head just to hear about his friend Bob,
the American Desperado.
 
“Cool as a cucumber he was.
 
Fired from the waist and killed the bugger with
one shot through the heart.”

“D
on’t worry
about packing,” I told Sarah when we got to the Cowan’s.
 
“Just grab what you can.
 
I’ll get the van fired up.”

I
t took me
about ten minutes for me to build up pressure in the boiler.
 
Time enough for Percy to shake my hand and
tell me we I was the best mate he’d ever had and to come right back ‘as soon as
all this lot blows over.’
 
Time enough for
me to stop and wipe something from my eye.
 
Time enough for Max the Cat to get found, run away and get found
again.
 
Time enough for Edith Cowan to
tell me that if I let anything happen to our Sarah she would hunt me down and
geld me.
 
Time enough for Edith and Sarah
to cry into each other’s shoulders.

And finally we were off.

I
t was
getting dark by the time we reached the outskirts of London.
 
I parked the van in the loading dock of an
abandoned brewery.
 
We both fell asleep
with our clothing on.

Chapter
XXXX:

What
Now?
 
– A Timely Rescue – Romani Music –
An Audition

Y
ou know
that final scene in
The Graduate
where Dustin Hoffman has just spirited Katherine Ross away from her own wedding
and they escape on a city bus?
 
And then
they sit in the back seat looking at each other and wondering what happens next?

That’s what it was like when we
woke up the next morning.
 
Yes, we still
had our freedom but what were we supposed to do with it?
 
Finally, for lack of a better plan, we
decided to make for Devon and continue our search for Henry Babbage.

Easier said than done.
 
Schrödinger was sure to have told Alistair
Fox where we were headed.
 
To make
matters worse, the water based paint we had used to cover the van’s side panels
had begun to wash off, partially revealing the
curlicued
letters underneath.
 
We might as well ride
around in a circus wagon as drive a van with “The Amazing
 
Doctor Hades” printed on the side.
 
We tried smearing the sides with mud but it
didn’t seem to help much and it washed off in the rain almost as soon as we had
spread it on.
 
Did I mention it had been
drizzling from the moment we left London?
 
We spent almost as much time pushing the van out of muck-filled cart
tracks as we did driving.

It was during one such exercise in
frustration that Providence came to our rescue in the form of Comanche Joe
Chisholm.
 
We were stuck in a
particularly muddy lane whose rutted surface bore the cloven-hoofed imprints of
many cattle.
 
I was at the rear of the
van with my shoulder against the door and my hands clutching the rear
steps.
 
Sarah was driving, if you can
call it that.
 
She knew only two throttle
positions.
 
All the way out, and all the
way in.
 
The van’s rear wheels would spin
like a dragster’s every time I told her to hit the steam and I was covered with
mud and cow shit from the hips down.

“Take it easy, for God’s sakes,” I kept
yelling.
 
“You’re just digging us in
deeper.”

“We wouldn’t be in this predicament
if you hadn’t got us stuck in the first place,” she shouted back helpfully.

I sat on the rear steps to catch my
breath and wipe the sweat from my face. I was scraping some of the gluey muck
from the soles of my boots when I something moved in the corner of my eye.
 
I looked up and saw a cowboy in a rain
slicker and a high-crowned ten-gallon hat sitting astride a chestnut mare.

I’m
hallucinating,
I thought.
 
 
Right
now I’m seeing Tom Mix but soon it’ll be giant pink bunnies.

“Seems like y’all could use some
help,” the man said in a Texas twang.
 
“I’ll have the boys hitch Sam and Ruby up to the front of your wagon.”

Sam and Ruby turned out to be a
Texas Longhorn Steer and an American Bison respectively.
 
My sense of unreality grew as I watched two
men named Zeke and Ned hitch them to our front axle and urge them forward with
cries of ‘
Hiyaah
,
haah
.’

“You best follow along with us in
case you get stuck again,” Ten-gallon hat man said, once were free.
 
“The rest of our party are fixing dinner up
ahead.”

‘U
p ahead’
turned out to be a malodorous rubbish dump on the outskirts of Basingstoke
where several brightly-colored wagons were circled around a small
campfire.
 
I would have taken the place
for a gypsy campsite except for the presence of a Concord Stage Coach whose
door sported a hand-painted illustration of a charging Bison above the words ‘Comanche
Joe’s Wild West Show.’

“Are you Mister Chisholm?” I asked
ten-gallon hat man.

“Yes Sir, I am.
 
How be you put your wagon over yonder and
come get dry by the fire?”

M
y first
instinct was to refuse Chisholm’s invitation.
 
We were on the run and we didn’t know these people.
 
Maybe they had seen the same newsreel we had
and would turn us in for the reward.
 
But
the fact was Sarah and I were both wet, tired and hungry.
 
We needed a place to rest and this was as
good as any.
 
And besides that,
Schrödinger’s van with its multi-colored side panels looked right at home among
the Roma caravans.
 
It was as close as we
were going to get to being inconspicuous.

Night had fallen by the time we had
parked the van and changed into dry clothing.
 
I stuck a couple of branches in the ground near the smoking fire and
used them as a drying rack for our clothes.

We were far enough from town that
the only illumination came from the campfire and from the stars overhead.
 
The flickering light illuminated a circle of
faces whose olive skins and high cheekbones would not have looked out of place in
on the shores of The Adriatic Sea.
 
Two
men in embroidered red vests were tuning a guitar and a violin to an accordion played
by a third man; dark-haired women in long skirts quietly nursed babies; three
older children played tag around the camp’s outskirts.

“I bet you folks are hungry,” Chisholm
said.
 
“Hang on while I rustle you up
some grub.”
 
He returned a moment later
with two mess tins filled with garlic-smelling goulash.
 
Normally I don’t like garlic but the stew was
delicious.
 
Sarah and I muttered out
thanks and ate like a pair of starved wolves.

“Thanks again,” I said, as I wiped
my tin clean with a crust of bread.
 
“My
stomach was beginning to think my mouth was on strike.”

“You’re American, if I’m not
mistaken,” Chisholm said.
 
“Whereabouts
you from if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Washington State.”

“Is that a fact?
 
Mostly logging up there I expect.”

The interrogation that followed was
gentle but comprehensive.
 
I was
reluctant to answer our host’s questions at first, but his quiet manner was
reassuring and I found myself offering him an edited version of the
circumstances that had caused Sarah and me to leave London.

“You didn’t have much choice by the
sounds of it,” he said, when I told him about killing Arthur Flowers.
 
“What kind of gun did you use?
 
Rifle?
 
Shotgun maybe?”

“Top break revolver,” I said.
 
“Hang on, I’ll show you.”

“Heavy
sonovagun
,”
he said, turning the Adams over in his hands after I had returned.
 
“Reminds me of Jesse James’s Schofield.
 
Don’t suppose you ever handled a Colt?”

“You mean a Colt
single-action?
 
Too expensive where I
come from.
 
I shoot an Italian copy.”

“Italian?
 
Huh!
 
That’s
a new one.
 
Tell you what,” he said,
pointing to a heap of debris just beyond the edge of the campsite.
 
“Why don’t you head on over yonder?
 
I’ll be with you in a tick.”

A full moon had risen and I was
able to make my way to the garbage pile without difficulty.
 
Chisholm showed up a few moments later
carrying a western holster and a Colt single-action army revolver.

“Here,” he said, giving me the
holster.
 
“Let’s see what you can do.
 
Aim at that old mirror over there.”

This was different from shooting at
the range where people pretty much leave you alone.
 
Having someone watch made me nervous.
 
I felt like I was auditioning for something
but I wasn’t sure what.

Still, a gun is a gun and a target
is a target and I made up my mind to give a good account of myself.
 
I adjusted the gun belt so that the top of
the holster was level with the heel of my hand and took several slow
breaths.
 
Take your time
, I said to myself.
 
No point in being fast if you
miss.

Then I experienced a phenomenon I
had previously only heard about.
 
My muscle
memory took over and my body acted instinctively.
 
I felt my right hand streak downward and bring
the Colt to my waist where my left hand was already waiting to cock the
hammer.
 
I squeezed the trigger as soon
as I felt the sear click into place.
 
The
crack of the shot and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the clearing.
 
The six gun rolled back in my hand and the mirror
burst apart in a sparkling cascade of fragments.

It was hard, but I restrained
myself from punching the air and shouting ‘
Yesss
!’
 
I wanted to give the impression this was the
way I shot all the time.

I glanced over at Chisholm who was
regarding me with pursed lips.
 
“
Whyn’t
we head back over to the camp?” he said.
 
“We might have some things to talk about.”

“You might be wondering how I come
to be sitting in a field in England with a bunch of Roma,” Chisholm continued,
once we had returned to the fire.
 
“Don’t
call them Gypsies by the way,” he added in an undertone.
 
“They don’t like that.”

Whenever I remember the next few
minutes I think not only of Chisholm but also of the three Romani musicians who
were now playing a ballad whose slow rhythms added a lyrical counterpoint to
the cowboy’s story.

It turned out that Chisholm, Zeke
and Ned had come across the Atlantic with one of the several Wild West Shows
that toured England after Buffalo Bill’s command performance for Queen
Victoria.
 
“We were never big like Bill,
mind you,” Chisholm said.
 
“We stuck to
the smaller towns.
 
No royalty where we
went.”

The tour was going reasonably well
until they played three very successful days in Burton-On-Trent after which Erastus
Widmerpool
, their promoter, took off with the gate
along with any other funds he could lay his hands on.
 
“
Sonovagun
better
hope he never crosses my path again,” Chisholm said.
 
“So there we were, just the three of us with
a passel of animals to feed.”

“Why didn’t you sell the animals
and use the money to buy tickets to The States?” I asked, regretting the
question as soon as I saw the shocked look on his face.

“We’d never do that,” he said.
 
“Them animals got a right to get home just as
much as we do.
 
No, we decided to stick
it out.
 
No choice.
 
Instead of running our own show, we rented
space in the midway of any local fair we could find.
 
Me doing the patter, Zeke with his rope
tricks and Ned showing off the animals.”

“So how do the Gyp.., sorry, Roma
come in?”

“They were working the same circuit
we were.
 
Doing some fortune telling,
playing their music and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down.
 
Got themselves into trouble this one time and
we got them off.
 
Told the local sheriff
they was Indians who didn’t know any better.
 
The sheriff didn’t really believe us but he didn’t have room for so many
people in his lockup so he let them go so long as they promised to stay with
us.”
 
Chisholm paused for a sip of black
coffee before going on.
 
“And they kept
their word.
 
Mostly because they saw the
advantage of seeming legit.
 
In return,
they play the Indians in our show’s big
finalee
.
 
Get themselves all made up in war paint and
attack the stagecoach over there while we hold them off.”

“How’s it working out?
 
Are you making money?”

“Could do a lot better, which is
why I’m telling you all this.
 
One of the
things people expect to see at a Wild West Show is a sharpshooter and Zeke, Ned
and me can’t shoot for beans.
 
Not a one
of us can hit the broad side of a barn.”

“And you’re thinking about me?
 
Don’t let what you saw over at the dump fool
you.
 
I’m no Sundance Kid.”

“Don’t have to be,” Chisholm
said.
 
“Here’s how we’ll do it…”