Tanglewreck (2 page)

‘Girls should know how to cook,’ she always tells me, putting her own extra-large portions of cod ’n’ chips in the microwave. ‘I am preparing you for life.’ Then she doles out a few scraps of meat and bread, and takes her own laden tray into the library
.

I started shovelling the coal and thinking about my mother and father. My father was a scientist who worked at Jodrell Bank on Alderley Edge in Cheshire. He did something with stars. My mother was a painter but she had to spend a lot of time looking after my sister Buddleia, who had a twisted leg from when she was born. My parents and Buddleia had gone to London for something important on the day that they didn’t come back. I don’t know what it was, but it was something to do with the Timekeeper …

‘So you understand, Mrs Rokabye, I must have it, and I will pay you a large sum – oh yes, a very large sum to get it.’

Abel Darkwater clinked his teacup. Silver heard the cake knife hitting the plate as Mrs Rokabye sliced through the Victoria sponge.

‘I will make you rich, oh yes.’

‘Mr Darkwater, I have searched the house from chimney to cellar for the last four years. There is not a cobweb of this
horrible house that I have not mapped. I simply do not know where the clock or watch or whatever it is could be hidden.’

‘You do not, but the child Silver must know.’

‘What on earth does she know? On Mondays she is simple, on Tuesdays she is stupid, on Wednesdays she is stubborn. On Thursdays she is silly, on Fridays she is silent, on Saturdays she is SO cross, and on Sundays she is sullen. Don’t you think I’ve quizzed her day and night since the moment I arrived?’

‘Perhaps you ask the wrong questions, Mrs Rokabye.’

Silver leaned back on her shovel. The funnel of the furnace was acting like a speaking tube – or rather, a listening tube, because she could hear everything they were saying in the library. Quickly, she shovelled some more coal to keep them warm, and then she pressed herself close to the funnel. Bigamist was looking at her suspiciously but he didn’t dare to come closer because of the roaring fire.

Abel Darkwater was speaking again.

‘When the child’s parents so strangely disappeared, her father was carrying the Timekeeper – or so everyone thought. I happen to know beyond a second of doubt that he was supposed to bring the clock to me. But the clock, like the parents, has never been found.’

Mrs Rokabye was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘It is my belief that the watch was stolen from his body and sold. It is probably in Timbuktoo.’

‘Believe me, madam,’ said Abel Darkwater, his voice dry with irritation, ‘if that watch had belonged to anyone else, anywhere in the world, these last four years, I would have known about it.’

‘I realise you are very well connected in the trade,’ said Mrs Rokabye, by way of appeasement, but this only fuelled Darkwater the more.

‘In the TRADE? You call Tempus Fugit a trade? It is a lifetime! It is many lifetimes. What began in the pyramids of Egypt is not done yet. Isaac Newton was a member of our “trade”, as you call it. I have a clock of his in my possession.’ Abel Darkwater looked up, startled. ‘What’s that rabbit doing in here?’

‘He looks after the child,’ said Mrs Rokabye, getting up. ‘Like Nana in
Peter Pan
, you know.’

‘Yes, I do know,’ said Abel Darkwater. ‘There was a crocodile in
Peter Pan
, and a clock. Very important part of the story – now get rid of that rabbit, and listen to me.’

And so Bigamist was not able to impart to Mrs Rokabye his suspicion that Silver was up to no good. He found himself dropped briskly out of the window, then Mrs Rokabye returned meekly to her chair.

In the cellar, Silver crept closer to the funnel. What on earth was Tempus Fugit? She had to try and remember the words. But now Abel Darkwater was speaking again.

‘I buy and sell watches and clocks – the rare, the valuable, the curious. There is only one watch of any interest that has never passed through my hands, and that watch is the
Timekeeper. Now answer me this question, Mrs Rokabye, and answer it well; have you ever noticed any – shall we say – disturbances in Time, here at Tanglewreck?’

‘You mean, like the things I have been seeing on the television? What are they called?’

‘Time Tornadoes.’

‘No, nothing like that – I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night.’

(
You do not
, thought Silver, from the cellar,
you stay up all night watching old films and then you leave me to get up on my own and do the washing up
.)

‘So Time here has not halted at all – even for a few moments, or seemed to be running out? Are some days shorter than others?’

‘No, every day is the same length.’

(
Oh no, they’re not
, thought Silver.)

‘And have you been disturbed at all by anything, or anyone from the past?’

‘Ooh, I heard about that Woolly Mammoth appearing on the River Thames – is it troo-oo-oo?’

‘Yes, it is true.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

‘And that people have disappeared? In London?’

‘Yes, it is true, though nobody knows why.’

‘I blame mobile phones.’

‘Why is that, Mrs Rokabye?’

‘They emit, don’t they?’

‘Emit what?’

‘Rays – waves, whatever you call it, can’t be good for you, and people are talking on them all the time – all those signals bouncing off satellites. I mean, what’s going on in space? That’s what I’d like to know.’

‘It is true, Mrs Rokabye, that at present we are experiencing strange disruptions in the fabric of Time – once so constant and so certain. People vanish, as you say, Time stands still – temporarily – then it jerks forward far too fast. The best minds are considering it.’

‘Well, thankfully it isn’t happening here.’

‘I am glad to hear it. It is what I expected you would say. Now listen carefully. I believe that the Timekeeper is still here in this house, although you have failed to find it for me.’ Abel Darkwater held up his hand as Mrs Rokabye opened her mouth in protest. She closed her mouth. He continued. ‘So now I have another plan. I would like you to bring the child to London – tell her it is a special treat. I shall provide train tickets and expenses, and you shall both stay at my house. That will give me an opportunity to question the child about the Timekeeper, and, perhaps, if you don’t mind – and please take this money for your troubles – I would like also –’

At that moment there was a terrific crash as Bigamist flung himself down the cellar stairs. Silver missed whatever it was ‘also’ that Abel Darkwater wanted – and she wondered why he didn’t just ask her his questions here and now in the house. She didn’t have anything to tell him anyway. Nobody seemed to believe her, but Silver had absolutely no idea
where the Timekeeper could be. She had never even seen it.

As she swept up the last of the coal to throw on the furnace, she noticed something sparkling in the coal dust. She picked it up carefully, so that Bigamist couldn’t see what she was doing. It was long and thin, like a man’s tiepin, with a sharp pointed end, and it seemed to be made of diamonds. Hurriedly, she dropped it in the pocket of her overalls.

Overhead, she heard the library door open and the floorboards creak as Mrs Rokabye and Abel Darkwater went towards the front door. She sneaked up the cellar steps, past Bigamist, and darted into the library. Quick as a whistle, she stuffed the leftover ham sandwiches and Victoria sponge down her overalls, and filled her pockets with chocolate biscuits. From the window, she could see Abel Darkwater slowly lowering himself into his car. Mrs Rokabye was turning back towards the house, counting the wad of money in her hands.

Silver grabbed the jug of milk from the table, and slipped out past the enraged rabbit and upstairs to her little bedroom that she loved. It was where she felt safe.

The room was high up in the attics of the house. It had a big wooden bed carved in the shape of a swan, and a fireplace, where she always kept a fire burning, fetching sticks from the orchard, so that the room smelled of apples and pears even in the worst of winter.

Silver began to heat the milk on the little fire, and lay out the sandwiches and cake. She would save the biscuits for later.

She looked at the photograph of her mother and father
and sister on the mantelpiece, but she didn’t cry. Instead she said, half to herself, and half to the photo –
Help me to find the Timekeeper
.

The room breathed in. The fire paused in its burning. The milk that had boiled to the rim of the pan bubbled and stopped. It was only the smallest hesitation in time, but Silver knew what she had to do. Something in her and something outside her leapt together and waited in the leaping. She said,
Yes, yes
.

Then the moment landed, and the milk boiled over, and everything was as it usually was, but Silver knew that she had made a promise – to something inside herself and to something outside herself. She would have to find the Timekeeper now, because the Timekeeper had to be found.

Three days later, Silver was in her vegetable garden weeding the cabbages, when she heard Mrs Rokabye calling to her from the house.

It sounded as though Mrs Rokabye was shouting something like ‘Toad in the Hole’, but Silver knew it couldn’t be that, because Toad in the Hole is something to eat and Silver never got anything to eat from Mrs Rokabye.

She’s probably found a frog stuck down the sink
, thought Silver.
I’d better go and rescue it
.

Silver shut the gate on to her little garden so that the hens couldn’t get out, and walked towards the kitchen. She could smell food – hot food, which was very strange.

Mrs Rokabye was standing at the low kitchen door, smiling. It was a horrible sight; the corners of her mouth were drawn up towards her eyebrows, and her eyebrows were pulled up towards the hairnet she always wore in the house. She had been practising smiling all morning, but it was not nearly for long enough.

‘Welcome, dear child!’ she said. ‘Come and eat your lunch while I tell you something very exciting.’

Silver came slowly into the kitchen. It was not a modern kitchen at all. It was enormous, like a bus depot, and it had a
stone floor, and a huge iron oven, and a long wooden table with long wooden benches placed on either side. There were hooks from the ceiling for hanging hams and herbs. There were two stone sinks side by side with plate racks nailed on the wall above them. There was no fridge, no washing machine, no dishwasher, no lino, no TV, no nothing at all, except what had been put there four hundred years ago. Oh, and there was Mrs Rokabye’s microwave, sitting on its own at one end of the twenty-foot long oak table, where twenty servants had eaten every day, when the house had been a great house.

The microwave looked very out of place in the old kitchen, as though a Martian had left it there and gone back to Mars.

Today, though, Mrs Rokabye was not heating up Ready-Meals for One in the blue microwave. She was bending over the great oven and lifting out a huge tin dish of sausages cooked in egg batter.

‘Toad in the Hole!’ she said, placing it on the table in front of the hungry and amazed Silver.

Quickly, she washed her hands and sat down, as Mrs Rokabye cut two portions with a gleaming knife.

‘You never said you could cook,’ said Silver.

‘I have been very busy,’ said Mrs Rokabye.

‘You’ve been here for four years.’

‘Is it really four years? All that dusting I’ve had to do – the place was a shambles, as you know. Well, well, four years, how time flies – tempus fugit, as Abel Darkwater would say.’

‘What?’ said Silver, her mouth full of delicious sausage.

‘Tempus fugit,’ said Mrs Rokabye. ‘It means “Time flies”.’

‘What language is that?’ asked Silver.

‘Latin, I think,’ said Mrs Rokabye. ‘You must ask Mr Darkwater yourself. Ask him tomorrow – for that is my wonderful news!’

While Silver ate seconds and thirds of Toad in the Hole, Mrs Rokabye told her of their trip to London the very next day.

‘We will have a picnic on the train. We will stay in Mr Darkwater’s magnificent house – nothing like this – all modern inside, and we will be taken to a musical in the evening. Mr Darkwater loves children and all he asks in return for his kindness is that you talk to him as though he were your own father. If he asks you a question – any question, do you hear me – if he asks you a question you must answer it.’

‘What if I don’t know the answer?’ said Silver.

‘I am sure you do know the answer,’ said Mrs Rokabye. ‘All questions have an answer.’

Silver wondered if that was true, but there was no point asking Mrs Rokabye. Privately, Silver thought that the answer to some questions was another question.

‘Be ready to answer,’ said Mrs Rokabye, ‘it will be better for everyone that way. Then we shall all have a lovely time.’

She said it still smiling, though by now the strain was beginning to show, like somebody desperately trying to hold on to the edge of a cliff by her fingertips.

She turned away to get Silver some chocolate, but really to give her face a chance to relax into its customary scowl.

As she stood with her back to Silver, relaxing and scowling, she didn’t realise that she was reflected in the polished metal door of the Chocolate Cabinet. Silver could see the real look on her face, and she knew that nothing had changed.

The Chocolate Cabinet was where Mrs Rokabye kept her supplies of caramels and cake bars. The cupboard was made of steel and fastened with a metal padlock of the ferocious kind. Silver was never allowed in there.

Carefully, and with something like pain, Mrs Rokabye took out two tubes of Smarties, then put one back, then took it out again. She reminded herself that she was a nice kind lady, at least for the next twenty-four hours, and she guessed that a nice kind lady would not be mean with her sweets.

‘London!’ she said brightly, forcing pleasure and happiness into her voice, like the ugly sisters forcing their feet into Cinderella’s slipper. ‘London! We are going by train at eight o’clock in the morning and we will have a lovely time.’