Across The Border

Across the Borders of Time

It was time that I called upon my old school friend, the writer Norris Chandling, who at the age of fifty-seven had turned monk, and now resided in the oak-panelled recesses of a timeless, scholastic hive in the ancient town of Kindersly-Dorlin, close to the northern econo-caustic powerhouse that is the university city of Durham.

I was directed down an echoing rectum, heavy with the scent of Martin Sheen's patent wood polish and noisy with the rasp of Polish wood-workers putting the finishing touches to a refurbishment of the ladies' dormitories. For this Anglo-Sexist monastery had for many years born the torch of modern progress in admitting nuns into its sanctified walls, even allowing some of them to be un-bricked and given the freedom of the cloisters. Furthermore, to prove that even the most enduring of taboos had no place there, the elders had recently permitted writers of Classic Realist Fiction to be enhabited and tonsured.

I knocked at the door and the door reluctantly admitted me. Norris sat with scratching quill at his desk, his back towards me and his front away from me, pouring words from every orifice.

“Lovely to see you after all these years, dear heart of my heart.”

“And salutatious out-gushings to you too, Norris.”

He continued writing for a moment without turning round. The moment lengthened to minutes, then hours and then into an Age and finally to time spent waiting for the main course to arrive. The silence was only punctuated by the occasional punctuations of his nib.

As the temporal tape-worm elongated itself I began to feel rather awkward and finally I became aware of words issuing from the Italicised font of my throat.

“Perhaps I'll come back later when you've finished the sequel to your current Whodunnit.”

Norris agreed. “'Whodidn'tdoit' is going to outsell everything. Why don't you check out the library? It has some fascinating and exceedingly valuable antiquarian first editions.”

I slithered away down corridors lit only by burning tapirs. I wondered how such cruelty to rare South American animals could be permitted in a Place of God.

The library was unpopulated save for a couple of London tramps trying very hard to find yesterday's news on their i-pads.

I approached the librarian but kept a safe distance. “Would I be permitted to look at the fascinating and exceeding valuable antiquarian first editions?”

“Over there.” The librarian pointed to a bookshelf empty but for a few tattered copies of Jack Schaeffer's “Shane”.

“Where are the books?”

“Oh, they'll be back sometime, I'm sure. Because we nurture the higher levels of Openness, Trust and Borderlessness, we allow the general public to borrow any number of books and bring them back at their leisure. Always think the best of people and they won't let you down.” This last italicised sentence was chirruped in high-pitched tones reminiscent of Jiminy Cricket, as voiced by Cliff Edwards, forgotten star of Disney's Pinocchio and uncredited singer of “When you Wish upon a Star”.

I sat down with a copy of “Shane” and started reading of how a mysterious horse-man had rode into town one day, his eyes clear-blue as the North Dakota sky, his face lined with an unimaginable sorrow that made him irresistible to women. I thought I'd rather like to be that man. But then my attention was arrested by a strange contraption that stood in a forgotten corner of the library. After bailing out my attention so that it started to float again, I was captivated by a sparkling glass and chrome device resembling a Wellsian time-machine crossed with a game of “Mouse-trap”. A strange mating indeed!

A Spinning Jenny rotated on an articulated Blow-down Flange which seemed somehow to be advancing a series of silver balls along an elevated Fusible Piston-valve Reverser, with the result that an almost invisible arterial glass tube was conveying a steady flow of mercury just above the room's skirting board.

I ran to fetch Norris, who knew about these things. When I arrived at his room it seemed that we were back in the 1950s, because there stood before me a winkle-pickered young man in an Edwardian frock coat, his hair a blond, brylcreemed slug. This is what happens to the usual temporal boarders when you enter the timeless cloisters of a progressive medieval monastery. Norris's shoes pointed the way and it was clear that The Game Was A-foot.

Norris pinged out a magnifying glass from his Swiss-army flick-knife and together we crouched down to follow the mercury trail through the ancient cloisters, lurching uncertainly from left to right like two post-neo-liberal investigative socialists.

The trail led us with a certain inevitability to the Nun's Dormitory. A small caravan stood in the corner beyond neat rows of beds. Very little light escaped into the room because the curtains were lined and drawn as an Abbott's death-mask. Dark forms moved behind the caravan's frosted glass and the the steady slap of a string bass suggested that a debauched rock n' roll party was in progressive progress within.

I looked at the ground and shook my head from side to side. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This is what comes of allowing time to slip back to decadent ages past. Nuns making free in caravans. It won't do, it won't do at all.”

Norris' eyes narrowed into rugby-ball ellipses, but they quickly sprung back to thoughtful orbs.

“And it seems somebody doesn't like what's going on and is trying to poison the female novices. I think it's time we paid a visit to Mr. Presley.”

“You mean Elvis?”

“He joined as a trainee librarian a few weeks ago. What better disguise for a Reactionary Mercury Poisoner of Young Nuns than that of International Hip-Wiggling Super-star?”

He knocked on the door. The music stopped with the zroop of a needle hastily whipped from vinyl.
The door opened and the legendary blue-sueded singer looked out.

“Y'all want somethin'?”

I drew myself up to my full height but couldn't think of anything to say and sagged back again to floor level.

Norris interjected but also fell back to earth. “We wish to search your caravan for evidence of mercury,” he bridled, moustache bristling with investigative zeal.

“Ain't no silver juice here, boy. Just me and er, I think her name is Rose and a couple of her friends. But I tell ya what, this old caravan has been shakin' so much it's turned my Sea-men green.”

There came a flurry of female giggles from the depths of the little fibreglass shell.

“We'll examine this thoroughly,” said Norris and flicked a geiger-counter from his Swiss-army flick-knife.

True enough, there were green deposits on the floor of the caravan and the geiger-counter purred its agreement with what our eyes were telling us all too clearly.

“Well, I'm baffled,” said Norris. “Sorry for the intrusion, Mr. Presley. Please resume your spiritual pursuits with the young ladies.”

But as we were leaving, he turned to fire one more plaintive inquisition at the lean hipster.

“Elvis, why can it never be two for the money?”

We strolled back through timeless wood-panelled corridors of uncertain age in uncertain ages, Norris cogitating on the recent events, if they were indeed still recent.

“It really was green semen, after all. A bit like the Green Death slime stuff they had in that Doctor Who story. But that was a 1970s Jon Pertwee story, so Elvis wouldn't have known anything about it in the 1950s.”

“Mind you, when monks are being poisoned it's usually the Abbott...”

“...or the Costello, if it's in the 1950s...”

“...and they were nuns, anyway...”

“Perhaps you should stick to your Classic Realist Whodidn'tdoits. They may be rubbish, but at least they're British rubbish.”

“It beats Creative Writing.”

I snaked an affectionate arm around my old friend's shoulder and slid it further into the fathomless inner lining of his frock coat. But when I withdrew my arm I noticed small beads of silver sparkling beneath my finger nails.

To Be Continued...(in heavy italics)