5. Modern Dress

THROUGH THE GATES OF TIME, Part 5

Roger Drinkworth looked most confused as he muted the television that was adding an unwanted babble to a confusing situation. If this visitor, the one who’d done the right thing and rung the doorbell rather than sneaked in through a closet that didn’t have a key, if he was the man he’d booked to entertain his lovely May who found male erotic displays funny rather than a turn on, then who was the other one? The rather grubby naked man who really ought to at least wear underpants? And now there was an equally naked woman, attractive in her own way, but, how could he put it, scruffy hair and a dirty face?

“Who’s your friend?” he asked the man who’d been booked due to his advertisement as an adult dancer. The term amused him and he was at a loss to know whatever one of those might be because surely all adults could dance? Even himself, who didn’t ever take a turn on a dance floor if he could help it but who could, if pushed and on pain of death, surely dance?

“I said. She just turned up as I was about to ring your bell, don’t you know,” muttered the dancer, Sammy Tuggit was the name he went by though Roger suspected it might be a dancer’s equivalent of a nom de plume. “It’s not on, you know, booking more than one of us sort of secretly,” he added, clearly peeved.

“I did nothing of the sort,” began Roger, “I’ve no idea where this fellow came from, or the woman standing behind you… he just popped out of that closet, and we’ve never even had a key for it.”

“You mean,” said May with a sudden smile, “you booked this fellow?”

“A treat for you,” explained Roger, “He’s decent enough. At least, he said he keeps his pants on.”

Uggah had been observing this exchange until he noticed the love of his life standing in the shadows behind the newcomer and then he exploded into grunts of undiluted affection.

“Magga!” he exclaimed, though it didn’t sound anything like the latinate Magga might be expected to sound if it was pronounced properly.

“Uggah,” she responded, and she slid past Sammy Tugget and ran up to the man in her life and embraced him in a very human way.

And the two of them, strangers in this strangest of all worlds so far as they were concerned, clung together for mutual strength. It looked as though two people who thought they must be going mad seeking sanity of a sort on each other.

“I hid from the rain,” explained Uggah.

“I think he’s talking to her,” suggested Sammy, “I might get a few tips for my act if I watch them!”

“I followed you, my big bad man,” grunted Magga, “I saw you...”

“She obviously knows him,” said May, “I think I know how she feels.”

“I say, old bean,” put in Sammy, “don’t you think you could find some togs for your visitors? They’re starkers and it’s a bit unnerving being in their company, especially his. A fellow can’t help but compare notes...”

“I don’t know who they are or what they might wear when they’re not naked,” replied Roger, “maybe they could go away, maybe back to their own party. I assume they’re from a party? You hear of such things, orgies they call them, plenty of drink and ooh-la-la, that sort of thing.”

“I don’t think they wear clothes at all,” murmured May, “if they wore clothes there would be bits of their bodies that have been covered up and not had so much sun or weather on them. You must know what I mean.”

“Good point. So where have they come from?” mused Roger, “I don’t know of anywhere that even primitive tribal people go around as naked as that! They wear loincloths or something, surely, maybe a bit of leather over their bits, you know what I mean...”

“I’ve no idea, unless there’s such a thing as time travel, don’t you know, and they’ve come from very early in the stone age,” suggested Sammy,

“From the pictures I’ve seen, even cavemen covered themselves up,” murmured May, thoughtfully, “keeping their important odds and sods away from perverted eyes.”

“They didn’t have cameras back then and all the pictures you’ve seen have been recent guesses,” said Sammy slowly, “I’ve researched it for my act, don’t you know, and there aren’t many really prehistoric pictures of people, created at the time as rough drawings on cave walls, and of those I’ve discovered you can’t tell what they’re wearing or if they’re wearing anything at all. You know, images drawn on cave walls, some of them stick men and some of them just shapes that may or may not be clothed. It’s been a bally problem all along, me trying to be authentic while keeping some parts to myself.”

“I rather suspect these two have no idea of clothes,” murmured May, “and if they’re going to hang around for the night we’re going to need to make them decent enough for the kids to see. We’ll have to find something for them to wear. Just a minute.” May smiled at Roger and whispered “I’ll find something,” and made her way upstairs.

“What do you know about, what do we call them? Cavemen?” asked Roger of Sammy, “you say you’ve researched them. Are there any stories of them just popping up from of locked closets, out of the blue?”

“Not that, nothing like closets. Nothing’s really known about that long ago,” replied Sammy slowly, “and most of what we think we know is little more than intelligent guesswork...”

“What are they babbling about?” croaked Magga to Uggah, “and what are they doing here, in the Hellhole? Is this where they live? And what is that… flickering thing over there?” She pointed towards the television set, which, though muted, was very much switched on. It had been an unusually long speech for her and Uggah couldn’t help but admire her sudden verbosity, though he didn’t call it that.

“Don’t know,” he replied. “Sheltering from rain and then...”

Magga nodded. “Here,” she said, “with madmen.”

And that was how Sammy, Roger and May seemed to him. Mad people, like the deranged Shagga from further down the valley. Shagga had been involved in an earthslip after rains had flooded half the valley floor, and his head had been struck by a falling boulder. It was after then than it was noticed that he was completely irrational most of the time and was even seen to swim in the cold waters of the river after dark and swoon mightily whilst lying with his woman, saying all sorts of mad things to her. She soon deserted him and declared that he was, indeed, too mad for her to cope with.

“We go,” decided Uggah after a few moments of considerably deep thought. “Back to valley. Back to nippers.”

“But how? Where?” asked an anxious Magga.

“There.” Uggah pointed at the closet door, the one he had entered the nightmare world of the twenty-first century through, and he walked up to it whilst Roger and Sammy had their attention elsewhere. “Me come here,” he added slyly, “and me go this way.”

But try as he might the door he had so easily come through was immoveable. Locked like Roger said it had always been.

“Hey fellow,” he said when he noticed what the naked Uggah was doing, “that’s locked!”

Then Uggah did what ought to have been impossible. “Locked,” he enunciated in perfect English, “locked, locked, locked,” and he said it as if he knew exactly what the monosyllable meant.

© Peter Rogerson, 24.11.20