12. A Georgian Sojourn

THROUGH THE GATES OF TIME Part 12

Assumptions made in ignorance can be the very devil, and the one made there and then by Roger was one of those.

His assumption was really quite rational. He’d assumed that the rocky cave entrance he’d come out of was, in every possible respect, the same rocky cave entrance that he was about to enter and that it would lead directly into his front room, and it transpired that it would and it wouldn’t. And if that’s confusing think how confusing it was to be Roger, May and the two children and a fifth figure unnoticed by them for the moment, and find themselves leaving the dusty, spidery and almost unpleasant other side of the closet door and enter into a room, bright with reflected sunlight from the snow outside windows that were nothing like the nice big windows of 10 Portland Crescent where there hadn’t been even a suggestion of snow.

But then, though the room had certain similarities to the one they were familiar with, it was very different. The aforementioned windows were different, the furniture was different, the décor was different, the floor was different, the lighting was different, the radiators had gone and been replaced by a blazing open fire, and the man sitting on a rather ornate armchair was most certainly different.

“Crikey!” exclaimed Apple, “where’s the telly gone?”

“Double crikey,” gasped Frodo, “what’s happened to the windows?”

“Oh no,” sighed May, “Georgian. This is all Georgian. Georgian furniture. Georgian lighting and a Georgian man sitting in his Georgian armchair in our Georgian front room.”

“And no Georgian PlayStation,” moaned Frodo.

They had spoken those words and would have expected the elegant Georgian man to have heard them and leapt out of his socks at the intrusion of four twenty-first century people appearing from nowhere in his Georgian front room, but he took no notice of them. Instead, he rang a bell.

He pulled on a chain and in another room they heard a bell ringing. They could hear what was going on, but it seemed that the man in his Georgian armchair and wearing very old fashioned clothes indeed couldn’t hear anything that they were saying to each other.

It was up to Frodo to test it out.

“Hey mister,” he said, “we’re only over here!”

But the figure with his starched collar that seemed to want to stretch his neck into his chin and wearing a very proper and sombre expression on his very sombre face apparently was unaware that a young boy had said anything, though he did frown for a moment as though a whisper on the wind had momentarily touched him with its breath.

The door opened, apparently in response to his tugging of the bell, and a young woman with a flustered face and busy smile came in.

“Yes sir?” she asked, nervously.

“Ah, Gwennie,” said the man in a voice that was as stretched and strained as his neck.

“Yes sir,” she said, nervously.

“What day is it, Gwennie?” he asked with a smile on his face. Not so much a nice smile, thought May, as a slimy one…

“Why sir, its Christmas day, and I’m cooking the goose for you and the mistress,” replied Gwennie.

“You’re a good girl, Gwennie. The mistress is visiting her aunt at the moment and won’t be back for this hour.” he said, rather more softly and certainly less strained.

“Yes sir. I know sir,” she murmured hestitantly.

“Will you sit here, with me?” he asked.

“Crikey! There’s only room for one!” exclaimed Apple, “they’ll break the chair if she tries to squash in next to him!”

“Yes sir,” Gwennie replied, but the expression on her face suggested that the words would have been rather more negative if she’d spoken her mind. But she was obviously an obedient servant and she sat delicately on his knees as though it was something she did every day.

“Do you like Christmas, Gwennie?” asked the man, “does it mean much to you, a baby born to the virgin… are you a virgin Annie?”

The girl looked at him, and laughed a sweet, tinkly laugh as though the man had come out with the best joke of the century.

“You know the answer to that, sir,” she said, “you of all the men in the world,” she added.

“Of course I do,” he grinned, “and shall we explore it again?”

Then Gwennie looked shocked as if he’d suggested something outrageous though from the tone of his voice he was expecting a compliant positive reply.

“What, sir? With these people looking on?” she asked, and gazed directly at Roger, May and the two children. She could plainly see them even if her Master couldn’t.

“Why? What people?” he asked, peering into the room, “I can’t see anyone. Have you been at the brandy again, Gwennie? You know what it does to you, you naughty girl!”

“No sir, look! It’s a man and two ladies and two kiddies! But they don’t half look daft, dressed in daft clothes...”

Two ladies, thought Roger, and he couldn’t help looking around and saw what the maid had seen. Besides May there was the woman from the Shadow people, still dressed in one of May’s nighties, though by then it was stained with traces of mud. He hadn’t been aware of it, but she must have slipped into the cave with them. He shook his head.

Meanwhile, the man in the chair, the maid Gwennie’s master, stared directly at him. An angry expression crossed his face, but he seemed to be looking through him.

“What trickery is this, Gwennie?” he snapped, “making out that there’s a large party spying on me in my own lounge! I see nobody!”

“But sir, over there, look… they’re standing by the cupboard door as solid and alive as anyone! Though one of the ladies has a grubby face!”

The Georgian gentleman, his face lined with sudden anger, pushed her off his knee so that she stumbled onto hers, and stood up. Then he walked towards his unwanted visitors, a look of fury masking his face, until he was inches away from Roger.

“There’s nobody here! See!” he snapped, “you’re in for a good hiding young lady, for trying to use me like this on Christmas day of all days! Where’s my switch!”

Roger had never approved of the way some men treat women and he was suddenly angry at the idea that this overpowering and overwhelming brute of a man with his sophisticated accent might inflict pain and possibly even injury on one he saw as an apparently overstressed and misused servant.

So he thrust one hand out and grabbed hold of the man’s arm. At least, he tried to grab hold of his arm but instead he found his hand closing on the starched crispness of a Georgian collar.

And he squeezed.

The man quite obviously felt that even though he still couldn’t see who it was.

“Hey, let go!” he tried to bellow, but the hand on his throat squeezed the words into a pathetic whimper.

“Listen, squire,” hissed Roger into his ear, “I don’t care who you are or what you think you are, but ladies are ladies even if they’re menial servants, and you treat them as such. Right?” Then he released his grip and watched as the man staggered back towards his chair.

“Did you see that?” he gasped, “the way … they said there had been ghosts in this house, and now I know they spoke truly! I was touched by a spirit of the dead! I was manhandled by a ghost! Fetch me a brandy, girl, and … and … and have one yourself!”

© Peter Rogerson 1.12.20