A Tale of Time City Read Free Page B

leaned forward and breathily inspected her face. “She’s crying. She means it. You got the wrong one by mistake.”
    “Of course I didn’t!” Jonathan said scornfully. But when Vivian found her handkerchief and looked at him with her face mostly hidden in it, she could tell he was beginning to have doubts.
    Vivian did her best to strengthen those doubts. “I’ve never ever heard of Faber John, or Time City either,” she said, trying to stop herself sobbing. “And you can
see
I’m too young to have a husband. I won’t be twelve until just after Christmas. We’re not in the Middle Ages, you know.”
    Sam nodded knowingly. “She is. She’s just an ordinary Twenty Century native,” he pronounced.
    “But I recognised her!” Jonathan said. He wandered uneasily across the office. A sort of darkening to his flickering face told Vivian that he was beginning to suspect that he had been a fool—and he was the sort of boy who would do anything not to look a fool. Vivian knew he would take her straight back to the station and try to forget about her if she could convince him properly.
    So she sniffed away what she hoped were the last of her tearsand said, “I know it says Vivian Smith on my label, but Smith’s a very common name. And Vivian’s quite common too. Look at Vivien Leigh.”
    This misfired a little. Jonathan turned and stared at her. “How do you know her? he said suspiciously.
    “I don’t. I mean—she’s a film star,” Vivian explained.
    She could see this meant nothing to Jonathan. He shrugged. “We could go through her luggage,” he suggested to Sam. “That might prove something.”
    Vivian would have liked to go and sit on her suitcase and clutch the string bag to her and refuse indignantly, but she said with desperate bravery, “Do what you like. Only you’re to take me back to the station if you don’t find anything.”
    “I might,” said Jonathan. Vivian was fairly sure that meant that he would. She tried not to mind too much when Jonathan dragged the suitcase over into a beam of light from the odd-shaped window, where he began briskly unpacking it. Sam attended to the string bag. Vivian spread it out on her knee for him, because that took her mind off Jonathan going into all her new winter underwear, and wished Sam would not breathe so heavily. The first thing Sam found was her sandwiches.
    “Can I eat these?” he said.
    “No,” said Vivian. “I’m hungry.”
    “I’ll give you half,” Sam said, plainly thinking he was being generous.
    Jonathan stood up holding Vivian’s new liberty bodice with suspenders attached to hold up her winter stockings. “Whatever do you use this for?” he asked, really puzzled by it.
    Vivian’s face went fiery hot. “Put that down!” she said.
    “Corsets,” Sam suggested with his mouth full.
    There was a sort of buzzing from outside somewhere. Light came on and swiftly grew bright from all the corners of the room. It showed Jonathan standing frozen by the window with the liberty bodice in one hand and Vivian’s best jumper in the other. Vivian saw that the flicker over his eyes hardly showed in bright light, and that the diamonds on his suit were dark purple. Sam was frozen too, with a third sandwich in his hand.
    “Someone’s coming!” Jonathan whispered. “They must have heard her yelling.”
    “They make regular rounds,” Sam whispered back hoarsely.
    “Then why didn’t you
tell
me? Quick!” Jonathan whispered. He bundled everything back into the suitcase and shoved the lid down. Sam seized the string bag and a handful of Vivian’s skirt with it and dragged. It was clear to Vivian that something frightening was about to happen. She let Sam tow her across the marble floor and round behind the huge carved desk.
    “Hide!” he said. “Come
on
!”
    There was a deep hollow inside the half-circle of desk, so that a person’s knees could swivel this way and that to reach the banks of switches. Sam pushed Vivian into it and dived in