13. A Strange Interference

THROUGH THE GATES OF TIME Part 13

“I think we’d best get out of here before he decides to invite a priest in to exorcise us,” half-joked Roger.

“Do you think he’d do that?” asked May, “he doesn’t look crazy enough to believe we really are ghostly apparitions, especially as he doesn’t seem able to see us.”

“Oh, misses, he’s mad enough for most things,” said Gwennie, who was half way to the door in order to bring a glass of brandy for Ivan Spainhour, her master, “he does things you wouldn’t like to think of to me, and he’s a married man with a lovely wife.”

“Who are you talking to, girl?” demanded the man who looked as though he might have turned an odd shade of off-white and holding his neck as though it might snap if he didn’t keep a firm grip on it. Roger, seeing the difficulty his grip on the starched collar seemed to be causing the man released it and turned towards the closet door, noting that it was exactly the same as the closet in his own front room with the single exception that this one had a key in its key-hole.

“Sorry sir,” whimpered Gwennie in response to her master, “it was that lady over there, the woman with her kids...”

“I’ve had enough of this nonsense!” roared her master who seemed relieved that whatever had been restricting his breathing had stopped, “it may be Christmas day, girl, but you can leave this house forthwith! I won’t have such insolence in my own front room, and from a sluttish harlot like you!”

That was too much for Gwennie, who burst into tears at the prospect of being without employment and, worse still, without a roof over her head as she was a resident servant with a small room of her own which the future would see converted into a bathroom.

“But sir,” she protested, tearfully, “I ain’t done no wrong! I let you do stuff to me the madam wouldn’t like to hear about...”

“You mention that and I’ll have you sent to the mad-house for telling foul lies!” grated the man, “just you see if I don’t! While you’re under my roof, trollop, your flesh is my flesh to do with as I please, and you know it, and if you should chance to breathe one word out of place, well, you know the wretches you’ll be living with then, weeping and dribbling and howling half the night long!”

“I’ve never heard such self-serving wretchedness in all my days,” grated Roger, and he faced the weeping girl. “Go about your business, my dear, and I’ll sort this out,” he ordered, having no idea how he would do anything of the sort.

It was Magga who led the way because, when she moved from her place standing behind May it seemed that the man of the house could see her whilst the rest, even Roger, were invisible to him.

“What wretch are you?” he asked in a trembling voice, “what foul creature from the dark realms? What emissary from Satan?”

Magga just stood there, staring right at him for a moment from what amounted to point blank range, and then she slapped his face. Not hard enough to do any damage, but quite easily hard enough for him to feel the sting. It seemed that not only could she hear him cursing her but somehow she had a good idea what the curses meant.

“You witch!” shouted Ivan (for that was his name), “I’ll make sure you never breathe again!”

But his threats were in vain, for Magga suddenly contrived to do the improbable. With one arm she lifted him up where he stood, lifted him in a seemingly impossible one-armed grab that seemed to Roger to be totally unrealistic, bearing in mind the man appeared to be carrying a fair sized stomach, and flung him into his chair, which was several man-sized steps away. But she managed it with apparently no difficulty at all.

All the while this scene was being enacted Gwennie stood there, open-mouthed, still on her way to fetch the brandy that her master had ordered before he cruelly dismissed her from his service.

“Cor,” said Frodo, “now that’s what I call a woman!”

“I told you we girls could do more than you boys!” gasped Apple in wonderment, staring in awe at the stone-age woman.

“Now you two, just stop it before you start,” said May sharply, needing to keep a tight control of her imaginative twosome.

Roger turned back to the closet door and grabbed hold of the handle, which had the key in its hole just below it. In a moment of mental clarity he slid the key out and dropped it into his trouser pocket while the pompous Ivan was otherwise occupied, rubbing his flaming cheeks and wondering what insanity had replaced the harmony of his Christmas day.

“It’s time for us to go,” he said, “and let the world of that oaf go back to normal.”

“And the servant girl? What of her?” asked May, “if we hadn’t chanced to find ourselves here instead of in our own living room none of this would have happened, she’d be unhappily sitting on his knee being canoodled with and he’d be his stuffed-shirt bossy self. We must own up to some responsibility.”

“Right,” grunted Roger, and he released the closet door handle and stomped to where Ivan sat cowering in his chair, wondering what manner of creature had lifted him with such tremendous ease, a creature that, to him, looked no more than a scruffy waif, more like a workhouse inmate than a human being.

Roger angrily glared at the man and saw the mark left as Magga had slapped him, and pinched some of the flaming cheek between forefinger and thumb, squeezing hard. And as he did so the other’s eyes opened wide as if he had suddenly seen him. It crossed Roger’s mind that the pain he was inflicting on a man he already despised at least had some useful effect if he could actually see who was tormenting him.

“What manner of fell creature are you?” he stammered.

Roger grinned at him. “You won’t understand me if I tell you,” he said, glaring at Ivan, “but the truth is I am from your future and I have seen how you treat that poor girl. If anything is fell or evil in this house, it is you. Didn’t anyone explain to you that young women are as human as you? Or if not as human, more human? Here is my warning: if you mistreat this girl again, or cast her onto the streets, then I will return!”

“There is no way a creature from the future...” began Ivan, but he dried up.

“Ah, the paradox,” growled Roger, “think upon it, ponder it and tell me what this is?

He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, and switched it on.

On his screen was an image of himself and May, and in that room they seemed even brighter than life surrounded as they were by the sober monotony of a Georgian lounge.

“Magic...” breathed Ivan, “the devil...” he added.

“No devil, but a twenty-first century mobile telephone,” grinned Roger, and he released his grip on the man’s cheek. “Fare thee well,” he added, and he led the two children, May and Maggi through the closet door, locking it behind him with the key he had stolen earlier.

“Any trouble and let me know,” he said rather meaninglessly to Gwennie as he disappeared.

A few steps later and they emerged the other side of the cave, night was falling on an African valley long, long ago, and Uggah was standing there, staring miserably at the dreaded Hellhole.

© Peter Rogerson 02.12.20