I found that I would have to shift a few dusty old crates. I stripped to my underthings to preserve what was left of my outfit, and by the time I had found what I was looking for, I was as grubby as a sweep’s apprentice, but there it was, large as life. Mr Whybrow’s old sewing machine. I knew he’d used it for mending his own airship, so my slightly more modest affair should be within its capabilities. It came as no surprise to see that it bore the brand, “Dreadnought.”
It only then occurred to me that I’d given no thought as to where I was going to get the material. Well, first things first. I stitched up that rip in my overskirts (fortunately all those pleats made it easy to hide) and then set about searching for some silk. Mr Whybrow had some, but only enough for casual repairs. Certainly not enough to build a whole gasbag. Bother.
I was nothing daunted as I dressed, having first used the fire bucket to wash the worst of the dust from my hands and face. It would only be a minor inconvenience; I knew where I’d seen plenty of silk, and it belonged to someone who’d sooner Customs and Excise didn’t know about it. But I would need the Dreadnought again (I mean the bike, not the sewing machine). And there would be the problem. I could get away with carousing about Caledon in my underwear, but not where I was going.
I was drying my hands on my skirt when I heard the door open above me. A customer was in the shop. I made to hasten upstairs, but at the clunk of the office door, relaxed again. Mr Whybrow was already dealing with her. Voices filtered down to me; blurred at first, but then Miss Creeggan’s distinctive imperious booming made me start. She had wasted no time in speaking to Mr Whybrow Really Quite Firmly. I held back to eavesdrop.
“She might only be a shopgirl, but she’s your shopgirl.”
Mr Whybrow attempted to put some force behind his protest, but a slight stammer told me that he was already resigned to losing. “I’ve given her more than any other shopgirl in town. Her own house, free access to all my building materials, and she’s acquiring an education that’s second to none, by shopgirl standards.“
I was wondering when to go up. I didn’t want to interrupt, although I should already have been in the shop and the longer I left it, the harder Mr Whybrow would be on me.
Mr Whybrow continued. “I’d remind you that it was Miss Bluebird who destroyed the last facility.”
“Oh, was it?” The Fashionista harrumphed. Then she called out, “And you might as well come up, Miss Bluebird. I know that you’re there.”
I went up, embarrassed at having been rumbled. There, as I’d expected, I found Mr Whybrow barely holding his own against a Fashionista whose countenance was every bit as forbidding as an Old Bailey judge when the black cap had been put on his head. Miss Creeggan, of course, was wearing a fantastical gown whose gossamer translucency was like a maelstrom of crystal, to preside over any parts of the room that her personality might have neglected.
The counsel for the prosecution opened up, calling Shopgirl as witness. "Miss Bluebird, what happened to that ruin Mr Whybrow fobbed you off with?"
“It blew up, Miss,” mumbled the witness.
“How?”
“The postman went in there for his pipe and struck a match.”
“And why should that have come to cause such complete destruction?”
I expected Mr Whybrow to step in and protest. “My Lord, the counsel is leading the witness.” But he maintained an awkward silence. Besides, I knew that I had nothing to fear. Even if I hadn’t been inviting trouble by disinfecting the cubicle with an incendiary bomb, Miss Creeggan would always make sure that the blame was directed at anybody but myself.
“I’d tipped in a little bit of petrol for the purpose of disinfection,” I pompously announced, enjoying a scowl from Mr Whybrow. “Mr Whybrow was expecting me to use the facility, even though I’d told him that a huge spider had taken residence there.”
“’Huge’, Miss Bluebird? Can you be more specific?”
How I loved it when whatever I said would be taken seriously, with Mr Whybrow squirming. Besides, he could have been more forthcoming with a usable facility, so I wasn’t really sympathetic towards him. “It was as big as my hand, Miss.” To prove the point, I spread my fingers.
Mr Whybrow was beginning to lose his patience. “You could have swatted it with a rolled up copy of The Times. We keep – used to keep a copy out there.”
“Harry was sitting right above it, sir,” I returned.
“Harry?” Miss Creeggan pinned me to the spot with an accusing glare.
“The spider,” Mr Whybrow tersely clarified.
“The postman regards him as his friend, Miss,” I said. And before Mr Whybrow could add anything of potential embarrassment to myself, I added, “He’s not what you or I would call a gentleman, but it is a public facility, Miss, so he is entitled to use it.”
Miss Creeggan snorted in dismissal, clearly not happy at the idea of my sharing a planet with the general public. She then switched tack and swept a displaying arm towards me, like a defective product she’d returned. “Mr Whybrow, look at her! She’s a lady as refined as any other. With or without maneating spiders in residence, how could you submit her peach bottom to some dreadful old plank which she has to share with the sweepings of the gutter?”
I was about to say that I was the sweepings of the gutter but forebore. Instead, I put on a suitably pitiful expression, which Mr Whybrow regarded sourly. He had never seen the part of my anatomy in question, but probably suspected that it was made with steamed teak overlaid with White Stuff, like Old Stumpy. “I’d remind you, Miss Creeggan, that she wouldn’t have had to put up with a hastily-constructed facility, had the previous one not been destroyed by her pie.”
“Which you dropped, sir,” Miss Creeggan completed. Tiring of the evidence, she pronounced sentence, tapping her cane on her palm with the metronomic steadiness of a drummer accompanying an execution party. “Sir, you will provide that girl with something becoming to her station.”
At first, I was about to protest that I wasn’t going to go to the railway station every time I wanted to – but then I realised what she meant. Miss Creeggan was favouring me with a great commanding glare, leaving me a cue to pick up, and with her full support. Emboldened, I replied, “Yes - I want my own facility with pretty pink flowers on the bowl, and nice soft paper. None of that ghastly newfangled medicated stuff that’s like a creased razorblade.”
I thought I’d let my tongue run away with me. Especially with the bit about the pretty pink flowers. Mr Whybrow opened his mouth to protest the harshness of the sentence, but Miss Creeggan got there first. And she was taking me at my word. She jutted an arm to pronounce sentence, and signed the death warrant with a bolt of Fashionista lightning that was as irrevocable as a thunderbolt. “I shall expect the deficiency to be remedied forthwith, sir. Or you shall incur my displeasure.”
With that, she gave a haughty Fashionista toss of her head and stormed out, leaving a silence hanging in the air. That final “stick that in your pipe and smoke it” sort you get when a mausoleum door’s been slammed shut after the coffin of someone you really don’t like has been dumped to rest.
“What were you doing in the cellar anyway?” Mr Whybrow spat, apparently afraid that Miss Creeggan might overhear.
“Something you can’t do for me,” I lied, shamelessly. And with some justification. “I’m not using that yard again.”
“You don’t have to. Stay out of the yard, I’m busy there.”
“Then what am I supposed to use, sir?”
“The cellar, until further notice. And don’t worry about any maneating spiders down there.”
“Oh?”
“The rats have eaten all the spiders.”
I knew there were no rats in the cellar. He was teasing me, and very tactlessly. But before I could deliver a suitable retort, he had already gone and I could only glare at where he had been standing.
Actually, I had come out of the situation rather well. If Mr Whybrow promised something, he always delivered. Eventually. And now that Miss Creeggan had taken an interest, I should not have long to wait.
I allowed myself a tight smile as I checked the shop diary. There was nothing out of the ordinary for the next couple of days; just routine. But I did notice that Uncle Arthur’s birthday was coming up. It seemed a suitable time to make a little offering at his tomb. He had given me a lot of reassurance when I’d most needed it, after all.
Some would call it cheap, or cheating. But I picked him a couple of roses from Bluebird Park, knowing that he’d understand the gesture’s personal significance and thereby, its sincerity. As I carried the blossoms to the chapel, I remarked on a critter rustling noisily in the hedge. Probably a rabbit; I made a note to have a look. Mr Whybrow would not want them tunnelling under the foundations.
I laid the roses on Uncle Arthur’s tomb, making a cross under his name, and gave him a smile of thanks. He’d been a good friend to me in my new life here.
My reverie was interrupted by that rabbit again, rustling the hedge. A particularly heavy rabbit, I thought. And then all was revealed by a howl that filtered through the wall. A particular type of howl, that signified either agony, or –
I dashed outside to find not rabbits, but Jasper doing an impression of one. I’d no personal experience with men in “that” capacity, but having shared a workhouse with a thousand others, I knew what he was doing. But it was his companion that caught my eye. That pirate woman of recent acquaintance, and this time in a far less spectacular uniform.
Jasper must have heard my approach. He dropped his lady like an unwanted sack; she emitted a startled squeak as she crushed what I hoped was a stinging nettle.
Grinning sheepishly, Jasper turned to me, clumsily fumbling his trousers up with one hand while concealing his modesty with the other. “’allo, Miss Bluebird – uh, this is a lady wot I met at that dance. Just givin’ ‘er a bit o’ moral support, like, you know what I mean?”
I had never felt more in command of my faculties as I paralysed him with an icy glare. “That sort of moral support is usually termed a ‘knee-trembler.’” I glared at the pirate woman/maid or whatever she really was. “Not even an Easterman maid – an agency girl.”
Jasper tried to approach me, but his trousers had got twisted and he nearly fell. “Now look, Miss, it ain’t like wot you fink – “
That did it. I hurled every ounce of my being into a kick that intersected where Jasper’s legs did. He folded in two most satisfyingly, unleashing a bellow that cut the air like a fourteen-inch shell passing overhead.
“We have a letterbox in front of the shop,” I told him frostily, as soon as he was able to register sounds. “I suggest you use it in future. That way you won’t have to come inside.” I was about to leave when I remembered his companion, lying entangled in the hedge and looking up at me as defenceless as a rabbit on a butcher’s slab with the cleaver poised over its neck. “I see you found the organ grinder, Miss.”
Turning on my heel, I flounced off, eight stone of corked volcano. My valedictory pun had been genuinely unintentional; it might just raise a smile on my face when I’d cooled down, but I held out no prospect of that for weeks and weeks. Now that I’d seen how capriciously Jasper used women, I wanted to tear, rend and dismember things. It was not that I’d been remotely fond of him, it was rather that I detested being treated as if I was stupid enough to fall for every sickly-sweet line that came my way, like a get-rich-quick scheme hawked from a street corner, with my heart as the stake.
At the shop door, I paused to gather myself up with a couple of deep breaths. It was a pity that Miss Creeggan had not lingered to see how I’d handled the situation. I think she’d have approved.
I went in to find Mr Whybrow with a customer, whom I swiftly summed up as a relatively normal-looking lady who’d just gone in knowing what she wanted, and having found it, was just paying prior to leaving.
“These skeleton ear pendants are perfect,” she told Mr Whybrow, beaming as she pirouetted, making the delicate silver bones tinkle. “Halloween Gothic with craftsmanship! Oh, I don’t suppose you sell halloween masks to go with them?”
I thought it was time I justified my presence there. “Halloween masks, Miss?” I looked hopefully from face to face.
“I’m afraid we don’t do the masks,” said Mr Whybrow, apologetically.
“Ah, well, I’ll just settle for the ear pendants, then. Good day, sir.”
I dropped a curtsy as the lady left. Alone with Mr Whybrow, I wanted to tell him what I’d just seen, but I knew that if I started, the volcano would erupt. Instead, I seized on the immediate context as a refuge. “I wonder if we should offer halloween masks, sir? If there’s a demand, perhaps we should get more into the spirit of the occasion?”
“You don’t need a halloween mask,” Mr Whybrow replied. He was about to add something, but never got a chance to. He had picked precisely the wrong moment to attack my very femininity. The one thing I could not change. The cork blew out like a cannonball, and the volcano spent itself in a single eruption of St John's Revelation proportions. I picked up the first thing I could reach, which was a ring guage – you know, one of those conical things jewellers use for sizing rings. They’re designed not to flex with changes of temperature and to resist rings being hammered down onto them, so they’re made of solid steel and are very heavy for their size.
I stormed out, my very soul screaming. I know that I’d never be most people’s idea of a lady, but did he have to attack my looks as well? He’d even begun to smile as he was speaking – he was treating the matter as a joke, which made the sting all the sharper.
When I reached my house, the first thing I did was look into a mirror. Was I really so hideous? I’d never thought of my face as countess-grade material, or even an equal to those porcelain-faced figures I’d seen in old portraits, but everything was where it should be, in sensible proportions………..
No. What was said, was said. And Mr Whybrow was not given to making emotional judgments about women; what he said, he meant. Suddenly, the walls around me seemed ephemeral. A peculiar, spiritual feeling, and easily explained. I did not belong.
It had all been a dream. Despite all my efforts, I was still an outsider in a fantastical land of beauty and craziness that I had come to love.
I’d probably get fired anyway. He wouldn’t forgive what I’d just done. Not on top of the trouble I’d recently caused over that wretched convenience.
Through swimming eyes, I thought I saw the top of the mirror changing shape. No, it was not my imagination. I already had an idea what it was, but coming on top of all the other trauma, I was too shocked to move. I could only watch as spindly legs rose above the top of the mirror, followed by two lens-like eyes, followed by six more –
HARRY!
That was it. That was IT. I could stand no more. I flung the mirror onto my bed and fled the house, wishing I could flee from my own skin while I was at it. Forgetting my own immediate peril of dismissal, I took shelter in the shop. There, I found a note lurking in the Lamson tube. I opened it with some dread; I knew what he’d be saying, it was purely a matter of how he did so.
Well, he was obviously in the workshop if he’d used the Lamson, so however I took it, however I handled my shame, would be known to myself alone.
The handwriting was a little askew, but that was to be expected from a man who’d been concussed. But it was still elegant as ever, and it still stopped my heart.
“What I meant was that I don’t allow my staff to drop their standards for the sake of a silly manufactured custom. Your looks are in no doubt and never were.”
As grudging and formal as ever, but that was his style. And nowhere, a mention of my future, which I found hardest to believe, but I knew him that well. If Mr Whybrow had intended to fire me, he’d have done so.
It occurred to me that even at that moment, he would have been awaiting a response from me. Oh, damn him! He’d probably taken himself up to the workshop precisely to let me be alone to consider my reply!
Tears pricked my eyes as I picked up the pen. You might at least give me the reassurance of telling me so, once in a while crossed my mind. But it was I who had got hold of the wrong end of the stick and clobbered him over a perfectly innocent remark. Instead, I simply wrote, “Thank you, sir.” It said it all, and he would have known that.
What I did not expect was his reply, which came back instantly.
“Please be ready to leave in ten minutes.”
My heart stopped again, but this time with less of a thud. So that was how he’d do it. Soften me up a little so that the axe didn’t hurt so much when it fell. So be it.
Well, I’d brought nothing with me but the clothes I’d stood up in. Ten minutes was somewhat generous of him, by a factor of nine minutes. I tried to forget that I was returning to my house for the last time, as I returned to my house for the last time and changed back into my workhouse clothes somewhat briskly, to deny myself the chance to brood and generally collapse into tears. In fact, I don’t think I’d have cared if Harry had reappeared and danced a hornpipe in front of me as I divested myself of all the elegant, comfy finery that Mr Whybrow had given me, to replace it with workhouse sackcloth.
I was just straightening up my hair when a knock came at the door. It could have been Jasper or his paramour, I was beyond caring. I must have taken longer to change than I’d thought. When I opened the door, I found Mr Whybrow standing there. He was sporting a plaster, but otherwise he might have been about to ask my help with modelling something. He took in my workhouse garb with puzzlement.
“I had in mind something brighter, Miss Bluebird,” he said, nodding to my drab dress.
So he was letting me take a gown back with me to the workhouse. Very generous of him, and it would be useful if the chance came to leave it again, although I did not see that happening.
He continued, “It’s time I showed you something of the world, although I’d be surprised if you wanted to go anywhere in that workhouse malarkey.”
The truth began to dawn. “I’m not fired?”
For an instant, I was ready to floor him again for teasing me so tactlessly, but I refrained. Maybe I’d just been taking too much for granted. Mr Whybrow put me out of my misery once and for all with a mildly astonished shake of his head.
“Good Lord, no. Why on earth should I do that? I can hardly fire you for misinterpreting something. No, Miss Creeggan thinks I don’t treat you as a lady. So I’m going to show you some of what’s involved, that’s all.”
Again, that enigmatic hanging-in-midair. I suspected that there had to be downsides to being treated as a lady, and he was going to concentrate solely on those. “You make it sound like an ordeal, sir,” I chanced.
“Oh, it’ll be terrible, I’m sure. But you’ll survive. Now, would you mind getting changed into something more appropriate for one of the world’s great centres of art and couture?”
Ooh, could he just once give me a straight answer? Without giving me a chance to reply, he closed the door between us. Not knowing, of course, made it harder for me to decide on what was “more appropriate.” I was more used to being told what I’d be modelling (“Dress for emeralds/rubies/amethyst etc”) and making my selection accordingly. My mind raced as I ransacked my wardrobe for something becoming to his plans. One of the world’s great centres of – where could he have in mind? And what did women wear at such places?
The obvious choice just sprang out at me. A day dress by our local Miss Terry Lightfoot, with its own merry little matching bonnet.
I was equally anxious not to keep him waiting, so when I finally emerged onto the street, it was with a twinge of nervousness.
“Will this do, sir?”
Mr Whybrow cut me a sweeping bow. “Admirably, Miss. A splendid choice. If you’re quite ready? We’ll need to wait a little for the airship.”
Our own airship tower was just around the corner and we did not have long to wait. We took the Sumie K, with me wondering where he had in mind as destination as we sailed over Caledon. But he did not volunteer any information, and I did not ask. It was a delightful reminder to me that I’d not used the public airships since I overcame my fear of flying. I just sat, soaking up the breathtaking views of SouthEnd and Kintyre as we ploughed onwards at the Sumie K’s leisurely pace.
The trip was short, and I was almost sorry when Mr Whybrow signalled our arrival. We got off, walked to a small dock and just waited. Wherever he had in mind, it was not Caledon. I sensed no tension from him while we waited; any acrimony had been left behind. But then, he hadn’t shown any, anyway.
I’d never been on water before, and now began to worry that I’d disgrace myself by being seasick. But the Kitty Heart proved a stable vessel while winding in and out of the channels, and once out to sea, the waves were a rocking sparkling blanket and the air enlivening.
That left me free to wonder about our ultimate destination. And that, Mr Whybrow obstinately kept to himself.
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