With one hand on the saddle and the other about her waist, Jherek smiled happily as he was jolted mightily up and down; he came close to losing his seat upon the back of the beast. "Ah, Mrs. Underwood, I am delighted to hear it. At last!"
14. A Scarcity of Time Machines
A fresh dawn brightened Bromley. Taking his leave of the Rose and Crown , having risen early to complete his business and be as swiftly as possible on his way, Mr. Wells entered the High Street with the air of a man who had, during the night, wrestled with a devil and thoroughly conquered it. This return to Bromley had been reluctant for two reasons; the first reason being his own identification of the place with everything unimaginative, repressive and stultifying about England; the second was that his business was embarrassing in that he came as something of a petitioner, to save his father from an appearance in the County Court by clearing up a small financial matter which had, for many months, apparently escaped his father's attention. It was because of this that he had not been able to condescend to Bromley quite as much as he would have liked — after all, these were his roots. His father, as far as Bromley was concerned, had been a Failure, but the son was now on his way to being a Great Success, with five books already published and several more due to appear soon. He would have preferred his return to have been greeted with more publicity — perhaps a brief interview in the Bromley Record — and to have arrived in greater style, but the nature of his business made that impossible. Indeed, he hoped that nobody would recognize him and that was his main reason for leaving the hostelry so early. And the reason for his air of self-congratulation — he felt he was On Top of Bromley. It held no further fears for him. Questions of minor debts, or petty scandals, could not longer plunge him into the depths of anxiety he had once known. He had escaped from Bromley and now, by returning, he had escaped from the ghosts he had taken with him.
Mr. Wells gave his stick a twirl. He gave his small moustache a flick (it had never grown quite as thick as he had hoped it would) and he pursed his lips in a silent whistle. A great sense of well-being filled him and he looked with a haughty eye upon Bromley; at the milkman's float with its ancient horse dragging it slowly along, at the newspaper delivery boy as he cycled from door to door, doubtless blessing the dull inhabitants of this dull town with news of dull civic doings, at the blinds still closed over all the familiar shop windows, including the window of Atlas House where his mother and father, intermittently, had brought him up and where his mother had done her best to instil in him the basic principles of Remaining Respectable.
He grinned. These days, he didn't give a fig for their Respectability. He was his own man, making his own way, according to his own rules. And what different rules they were! His encounter on the previous evening, with that strange, foreign young man, had cheered him up quite a bit, now realized. Thinking over their conversation, it had occurred to him that The Time Machine had been taken for literal truth by the stranger. That, surely, was a Sign of Success, if nothing was!
Birds sang, milk-cans clinked, the sky above the roof-tops of Bromley was clear and blue, there was a fresh sort of smell in the air, a sense of peace. Mr. Wells filled his lungs.
He expelled his breath slowly, alert and curious, now, to a new sound, a rather less peaceful sound, in the distance. He paused, expectantly, and then was astonished to see, rounding the bend in the High Street, a large plough-horse, lathered in sweat, foaming a little at the mouth, eyes rolling, galloping at full tilt in his direction. He stopped altogether as he saw that the horse had two riders, neither, it seemed, very securely mounted. In the front was a beautiful young woman in a maroon velvet dress covered in bits of straw, mud and leaves, her dark red curls in disarray. And behind her, with one hand about her waist, the other upon the reins, in his shirtsleeves (his coat seemed to have slipped down between them and was flapping like an extra leg against the horse's side) was the young stranger, Mr. Carnelian, whooping and laughing, for all the world like a stockbroker's clerk enjoying the fun of the roundabout ride at a Bank Holiday Fair. Its way partly blocked by the milkman's float, the horse balked for a moment, and Mr. Carnelian spotted Mr. Wells. He waved cheerfully, lurching backwards and barely managing to recover his balance.
"Mr. Wells! We were hoping to see you."
Mr. Wells's reply fell a little flat, even to his own ears: "Well, here I am!"
"I was wondering if you knew who could make me a time machine?"
Mr. Wells did his best to humour the foreigner and with a chuckle pointed with his stick to the bicycle supported in the hands of the gaping delivery boy. "I'm afraid the nearest thing you'll find to a Time Machine hereabouts is that piece of ironmongery over there!"
Mr. Carnelian took note of the bicycle and seemed ready to dismount, but then the horse was off again, with the young woman crying "Woe! Woe!" or possibly "Woah! Woah!" and her co-rider calling back over his shoulder; "I am much obliged, Mr. Wells! Thank you!"
Now five mud-drenched police constables on equally muddy cycles came racing round the corner and the leading officer was pointing at the disappearing pair, shouting:
"Collar 'im! It's the Mayfair Killer!"
Mr. Wells watched in silence as the squadron went past, then he crossed the road to where the delivery boy was still standing, his jaw threatening to detach itself altogether from the rest of his face. Feeling in his waistcoat pocket, Mr. Wells produced a coin. "Would you care to sell me one of your papers?" he asked.
He had begun to wonder if Bromley had not ceased to be quite as dull as he remembered it.
Jherek Carnelian, with a bemused expression on his face, watched the oar drift away through the weed-strewn waters of the river. Mrs. Underwood lay in fitful slumber at the other end of the boat (which they had requisitioned after the horse, on attempting to jump a fence a good ten miles from Bromley, had deposited them near the river).
Jherek had not had a great deal of success with the oars, anyway, and he was scarcely sorry to see the last one go. He leaned back, with one arm upon the tiller, and yawned. The day was extremely warm now and the sun was high in the sky. There came the lazy sounds of bees in the tall grass of the nearest bank and, on the other side of the river, white-clad ladies played croquet on a green and perfect lawn; the music of their tinkling laughter, the clack of mallets against balls, came faintly to Jherek's ears. This world was so rich , he thought, plucking a couple of small leaves off his battered jacket and inspecting them carefully. The texture, the detail, were all fascinating, and he wondered at the possibility of reproducing them when he and Mrs. Underwood returned home.
Mrs. Underwood stirred, rubbing at her eyes. "Ah," she said, "I feel a little better for that." She became aware of her surroundings. "Oh, dear. We are adrift!"
"I lost the oars," Jherek explained. "See — there's one. But the current seems adequate. We are moving."
She did not comment on this, but her lips curved in a smile which might have been described as philosophical rather than humorous.
"These time machines are much more common than you thought," Jherek told her. "I've seen several from the boat. People were riding them along the path beside the river. And those policemen had them, too. Probably thought they would follow us through Time."
"Those are bicycles," said Mrs. Underwood.
"It's hard to tell them apart, I suppose. They all look very similar to me, but to your eye…"
"Bicycles," she repeated, but without vehemence.
"Well," he said, "it all goes to show that your fears were groundless. We'll be back soon, you see."