The Chronicles of St Mary's Omnibus, page 69
Too late.
‘It is honey,’ he said in amazement. ‘I thought it was. Why is everything covered in honey?’
I turned slowly. He was right. We had honey everywhere. And we had a Professor Rapson who was high in every sense of the word. I had one of those foreboding things. I turned to Peterson who obviously was having similar thoughts.
‘Xenophon,’ I said.
‘Pompey,’ he replied.
Guthrie tried to wipe his hands on his tunic. You can’t shift honey that easily. ‘What are you two talking about? What’s going on here?’
Peterson sighed. ‘Toxic honey.’
Guthrie stared at his fingers in horror. ‘What the hell is toxic honey?’
‘It’s all right, Major. It’s just a touch of mad honey disease. It’s not fatal. Usually. You’ll feel a bit wobbly for a bit, maybe see a few things, but you’ll be fine.’
‘I only tasted a tiny bit.’
‘That’s all it takes, sadly.’
‘But what is toxic honey? And since I’m talking to the history department, tell me in less than one hundred words.’
I marshalled a few facts. ‘Toxic honey. Made by bees using pollen from rhododendrons growing by the Black Sea. Causes disorientation, uncoordinated movements, nausea, and hallucinations. Both Pompey and Xenophon’s armies were infected with the stuff and were defeated. Not fatal. Wears off in a couple of hours. You’ll get a bit giggly. And high. High as a kite, actually. Although not as high as the professor, here. We need to get him down before anyone sees him.’
‘There’s a ladder somewhere,’ said Peterson and disappeared into the gloom.
I turned to Dr Dowson. ‘How did he manage this? In the absence of rhododendrons, bees, hives, and even the Black Sea, how the hell has he managed this?’
‘He was looking for modern equivalents. I understand ragwort can sometimes –ʼ
‘I can hear my hair grow. Oh, wow, I can actually hear my own hair growing.’
‘Yes, you might want to sit down for a bit, Major.’
Doctor Dowson grabbed my arm. ‘Max, we really need to persuade him to come down. Delusions of flying are very common in cases of this sort. Imagine if he tries … We must get him down.’
‘Why would he do this?’
‘Well, who knows, Max? Who knows why the old fool does anything? I used to think that so long as we kept him away from matches we had a reasonable chance of getting him through the working day intact, and now it turns out he can’t even be trusted with a jar of honey.’
He was distraught. Given that he and the professor existed in a state of almost perpetual warfare, an observer might have been surprised at his distress. But I’d seen the two of them standing back to back at Alexandria, facing their enemies together. With nothing more than a converted vacuum cleaner and a milk churn, they’d sprayed flames and defiance, shouting ancient war cries, their sparse hair standing on end, covered in soot, and far more formidable than anything Clive Ronan had been able to throw at us that day. They’d been together, in one capacity or another, nearly all their working lives. I suspected that each would be astonished at the affection he really felt for the other.
And not only that. While Dr Bairstow was able to take a moderately relaxed view regarding St Mary’s joie de vivre, especially after a major assignment, he had zero tolerance for drugs and the use of drugs. Any drugs. At any time. By any one.
And it wasn’t just the professor soaring into the stratosphere. Major Guthrie was leaning against the stacks, singing gently to himself. I thought that was one of the scariest things I’d ever seen. Until a white coat drifted gently down from above. Followed by a tie.
‘Oh, God! Put your clothes back on, you old fool. There are ladies present.’
‘Don’t worry, Doctor, we’ll get him down.’
‘How?’
‘Ian!’ I shook his arm. ‘Concentrate. Do we have some sort of cherry-picker?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Some sort of cherry-picker? How does Mr Strong change the lights? Paint ceilings? Prune trees?’
‘Tree fellers.’
I let my arm fall, mystified.
‘Tree fellers?’
‘Yes. Well, four sometimes, but usually only two,’ and collapsed, giggling, against the shelves.
I stared at him coldly. ‘Not helping.’
His face changed. ‘Elspeth? I looked for you.’
‘Major …?’
‘I looked everywhere for you.’
‘Don’t give in to the dark side, Major.’
‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Helen, turning up to make things worse.
Above our head, a voice rose in song again.
‘Well I can fly.
‘High as a kite if I want to.
‘Faster than light if I want to.’
‘Don’t touch anything, Helen,’ said Peterson, returning at last, wheeling the library ladder.
‘Why not? What is this stuff?’
‘No!’ we shouted in unison.
Too late.
‘Why is everything covered in honey?’
‘Long story,’ said Peterson. ‘I’m going up. There’s a little platform at the top of the ladder. A bit like one of those airplane embarkation stairs. I’ll get him off the shelves and persuade him down the ladder. You scoop him up at the bottom.’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ said Helen, brusquely. ‘There’s no room for two people up there and I love you so much.’
Silence. No one caught anyone’s eye.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Tim, you take Helen. Dr Dowson, you keep an eye on the galloping Major, and I’ll go and talk to the naked man up there. Miss Schiller, where’s Dr Bairstow?’
‘In his office, as far as I know.’
‘Watch the door. No one comes in.’
Peterson heaved Helen onto the other shoulder. ‘You can’t go up there, Max. You won’t have the strength if he takes it into his head to do something stupid.’
‘Well, you can’t go. You’re wearing the unit’s medical officer.’
‘Yes, did you hear what she said? I have witnesses.’
‘Fat lot of good that’ll do. If she remembers any of this, she’ll never let us live. We’ll all have to join a witness protection programme somewhere.’
‘Someone’s coming,’ said Schiller from the door, because the day just wasn’t bad enough.
‘Quick,’ said Tim. ‘Everyone look normal.’
Guthrie’s legs folded beneath him like wet string.
Oh, great.
Leon had come looking for me. Discharged from Sick Bay, he’d gone to my room and I wasn’t there. He’d gone to the dining room, expecting to find me in a close relationship with a plate full of great British bangers and I hadn’t been there either. After that, of course, he’d just followed the noise.
We regarded him with all the dismay of a politician who has suddenly remembered the existence of the electorate only ten minutes before the polls close.
I wasn’t sure whether his arrival was a good thing or not. We all tend to forget he’s actually second in charge at St Mary’s. Mostly, I think, because he never needs to make the point. What people like Barclay never understood is that the louder and longer you shout, the less people listen. That doesn’t mean, however, that he can’t shout if he wants to.
He summed up the situation at a glance.
Dr Dowson, alternately exhorting the professor to come down at once for the love of God, and then threatening him with some blood-curdling fate should he actually choose to do so.
Ian Guthrie, collapsed in a badly folded heap on the floor and singing something incomprehensibly Caledonian, no doubt involving banks, braes – whatever the hell they are –, and Bannockburn.
And the Chief Medical officer, who appeared to be eating the Chief Training Officer who had a stupid grin on his face and was putting up no sort of resistance at all.
We must have been back all of twenty minutes.
I got a long, slow look. The words seven months could not have been more clearly conveyed, even if they’d been set to music. I got the message. There’s no sex on assignments. That would be stupid and embarrassing. And our shifts hadn’t coincided. So he’d waited seven months and I suspected he wasn’t going to wait very much longer. However, we had other things to deal with first …
‘Speeding through the universe.
Thinking is the best way to travel.’
Correctly categorising everything happening at ground level as irrelevant, he threw his head back and, in a voice in which failure to comply was not an option, called, ‘Professor Rapson, if you would be good enough to join us down here, please. You are causing some alarm and Dr Dowson is distressed.’
Obviously, something got through. The overhead singing ceased.
‘Octavius, my dear fellow …’
I said urgently, ‘He shouldn’t try to get down alone.’
‘He won’t. I’ll get him down. Go and see Dr Bairstow who is looking for you and none of you want to be found here. Dr Peterson, please help Major Guthrie to his quarters. Miss Schiller, if you could assist Dr Foster to hers, please. Go now. Dr Dowson, you will remain.’
He began to climb the library ladder.
As I sped thankfully away, the last thing I heard was the professor’s faltering footsteps on the metal staircase. ‘Occy, my friend, what is all this?’ and then I was out of earshot, never doubting for one moment that all would be safely resolved.
I raced up the stairs, arriving, hot and sticky in the Boss’s office. Mrs Partridge frowned disapprovingly, but she always did. I flashed her a grin, just to annoy her, and bounced in to see him.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Dr Maxwell, welcome back.’
‘Thank you, sir. Nice to be back.’
He looked me up and down. ‘You appear to be remarkably unharmed.’
‘I am.’
‘If a little sticky.’
‘Honey, sir.’
‘Of course,’ he said, as if chatting with a honey-covered expat from the Bronze Age was the most natural thing in the world, which, of course, at St Mary’s, it was.
‘I understand that in addition to a successful assignment, you have managed to prevent Mr Markham contracting cholera.’
‘My talents are limitless, sir. Something I was planning to bring up at my next performance appraisal.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be appropriate to bring it up at someone else’s, would it?’
‘Since I feel certain that by then, any credits you may have earned will be more than outweighed by corresponding debits for damages incurred, I remain unalarmed by this threat.’
‘I’ll leave you to enjoy your false sense of security, sir.’
As I was oozing out of the door, he said, ‘Very satisfactory work, Dr Maxwell.’
Beneath my outer layer of honey and dust, I glowed. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Twelve hours.’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘The usual recovery period. Twelve hours to sleep it off and then complete recovery. Please convey suitable reassurances to Dr Dowson.’
I gaped. How does he know these things?
I dithered outside the Boss’s office. I could smell sausages. And fish and chips. And all the other favourites so carefully chosen to welcome us home. There would be chocolate mousse. And pancakes. And Mrs Mack’s chicken tikka masala. The noise from the dining room was as tempting as the smell. Oh God, I really wanted a sausage. And no, that’s not a metaphor.
But …
Heroically, I made my way to my own room, where, with luck, something nearly as good would be waiting for me.
Everyone has their fantasies. Some of them quite wide-ranging and varied.
Comprehensive.
Imaginative.
Detailed.
I was looking at about eight of mine all at once.
The room was dim. Somewhere in the background I could hear Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. That was for me. In private moments, he always called me Lucy. The girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
He’d pulled my old table to the foot of the bed and laid it with a cloth I could barely see, the table was so stacked with good things.
Not one, not two, but three boxes of my favourite chocolates sat invitingly open. Behind them, two (because one is never enough) tall sundae glasses of chocolate mousse. Plates of smoked salmon, pink and curling. A plate of sushi. A jug of margaritas stood next to two frosted glasses. And in the centre, the second star of the show, a colossal plate of crisply roasted sausages, done just the way I like them, with all the scrummy black bits still attached.
I say second, because the real star of the show lay stark naked on the bed, grinning like the naughty boy he intended to be, and monumentally, magnificently pleased to see me.
He linked his hands behind his head and leaned back on the pillows.
‘Well, Lucy, what shall we do now?’
Later – much later, actually – when I could finally string two words together, I asked, ‘Who’s Elspeth?’
He was silent for a little while and then said, ‘You must know the name. Elspeth Grey?’
I did know the name. Elspeth Grey was the very first name on our Board of Honour. The names of those who have died in the service of St Mary’s. She’d gone off to 12th-century Jerusalem and never come back. That bastard Ronan had got her.
I nodded, unsure whether to say any more. This was Leon’s nightmare – that one day I wouldn’t come back, either. This why he wanted me out of here. I thought of the quiet and contained Ian Guthrie. All those years and I’d never guessed. I heard again the pain in his voice.
‘Elspeth?’
And I shivered.
Like the Windmill in WWII, St Mary’s never closed – always humming with activity and, occasionally, strife. Well, now it didn’t so much hum as roar. Historians raced from the Hall to the library and back again, dragging printouts or clutching data-sticks, reviewing and organising our data, identifying areas for further study. Trying to pull the whole shapeless mass of information into something useable was a bit like eleven bickering historians stuffing a duvet into its cover while wearing boxing gloves. In the dark.
Tired-looking techies swarmed all over the pods, complaining their typical techie complaints because we’d actually used the things instead of leaving them pristine and virginal on their plinths. (The pods, I mean, not the techies.)
I reported daily progress to the Boss, as did Leon.
Apart from the first twenty-four hours when we hadn’t left my room (and why would we?) we didn’t have a lot of time together. It didn’t seem important at the time. We had a whole future ahead of us.
We did talk occasionally of our new life together. Since he’d already borne the revelation that I couldn’t cook with equanimity, I gave him the rest of the bad news.
‘Not that keen on housework, either.’
‘We’ll get someone in.’
‘Really? You’d be all right with that?’
‘I’ve seen you fashion a weapon out of two pieces of toilet paper and a paperclip. There’s no way I’m going to be trapped in a small flat with an angry woman who has access to a vacuum cleaner.’ He put his hand over mine. ‘It really will work, you know.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I do know that, really. And if you changed your mind and didn’t want to do it then I’d be really disappointed. It’s just … I’m …’
‘Of course you are,’ he said, following this without difficulty. ‘But everything will be fine. Yes, there will be days when doors will be slammed and pots will be thrown. But I promise you now, you’ll never have to hide in a wardrobe again.’
As a child, I’d spent a lot of time at the back of my wardrobe, eyes squeezed tight shut, hoping and praying that this time – this time – I would open them to the snow-covered trees of Narnia and safety. It never happened.
I nodded. ‘I am looking forward to it. Not leaving St Mary’s – that’s not going to be fun, but …’
‘You’re not saying goodbye for ever,’ he interrupted. ‘We’ll still see them. They can come for Sunday lunch. Not all of them at the same time, of course, we won’t have enough chairs. We can meet them in the pub. You’re not cutting them completely out of our lives. Remember, they’re my friends too.’
‘You’re right. I don’t know why I’m worrying because I do have a fall-back position. If things don’t work out for us, Professor Penrose has offered to take me on.’
He regarded me severely.
‘Is it not enough that you bounced that poor man all around the universe without threatening his declining years as well?’
‘You can’t blame me for setting up a first reserve.’
‘I’m so glad to see you’re approaching this new phase of your life with total commitment.’
‘He was very keen.’
‘He was very concussed.’
I glared at him.
‘One day you really must tell me why you think I’m so unattractive to other men.’
‘It would take much longer than one day.’
‘It’s not just Professor Penrose, you know. The world is full of men who find me irresistible.’
‘Really? Well, I’ll be blowed.’
‘After that last comment – unlikely.’
Everything had changed on our second visit. By our calculations, the war was well into its tenth year now and the Trojans were suffering. Long years cooped up behind their own walls had taken their toll. The arrival of their allies had more than tripled the population. The streets were packed with Lydians, Carians, Phrygians, Lycians, Thracians, and many more, all noisily pushing their way through the crowds and filling every roadside tavern and eating-place.
The rural areas were much less haphazard than during our first visit. Almost every square inch was under cultivation. Livestock no longer roamed free, but were confined and carefully guarded.
Our olive grove was still there, but someone had assumed ownership, pruning the trees and scything the grass. Three haystacks, carefully built around central poles, now stood between the tavern and us.
We had thought long and hard about returning to our original sites. Surely our sudden reappearance would provoke at the very least, gigantic curiosity, if not outright hostility. We were foreign – we left – the war came – and now we were back. It wasn’t hard to imagine their suspicions.
