Chapter Six: Authorised Personnel Only (if you please)

   Joseph L. Bandyford was a young man who was destined to do great things, he was a doer, fated to be feted ... better than feted, exalted! 

   He strolled over to the large window of the airship and looked out over the verdant rolling hills, and patchwork farms of Tuscany. Charming, beautiful, stupendous! He thought. A wide grin stretched over his pale face.This was why I joined the European Grande Alliance of Airships and Dirigibles! This was the only place a young foreigner could really see Europe and earn a wage in Napoleon’s Europe. 

   He left home after the British lost at Waterloo, and sought a way away from the depressed and depressing homeland. No sir, he wasn’t going to sit at home and complain about the French soldiers, the post-war economy and the ostentatious new architecture Napoleon had going up all over London. 

     He was going to escape all that. 

   He was going to see the Empire and make his fortune doing it! To some, like his father, he was considered a wastrel and a traitor to King and Country, but in his mind he was an adventurer taking advantage of what destiny offered him. Joseph was the youngest son in a family of five, three older brothers and a sister. His eldest brother won himself a great reputation in the Navy, and the other two fought well in the Army and Cavalry respectively. His sister fortuitously married a gentleman pastor, and then? Then there was him. 

   He had just come of age to join the King’s Aviators when the war was decidedly, and definitively lost at Waterloo due to the timely intervention of Milhaud’s Cavalry Corps of Cuirassiers crushing blow to the Allied line. Joseph frowned, and that as they say, was that. No more war glory left for him.

   Joseph walked across the polished floor and opened the great glass and iron door, and stepped out onto the observation deck. He quickly glanced outside, and seeing it to be unoccupied, he walked out and took a deep breath of fresh air. 

   This really is fantastic, he thought. Who would’ve thought I’d be the first in our family to fly on an airship of this magnitude? Yes, they were French airships, but what wasn’t French that was worth anything nowadays? This was the New Age of Peace, and someone had to make an effort to get along, right? 

   He leant out over the banister and watched the ship's long shadow slide over a farmstead below and tried counting the cattle before they slipped out of sight underneath him. Smiling contentedly again, he supposed he really ought to get back to work. He moved back into the ship, and strolled on by the flight deck, he paused, and loitered over the register, noticing that they would be docking at Florence that evening. Florence! He could barely contain his obvious excitement when one of the ship’s blue and gold clad officers walked out into the corridor and spotted him. ‘Bandy!’ Joseph swore under his breath, he hated being called that. 

   Joseph came to attention, ‘Sir! Yes, Sir!’

   ‘Bandy, what are you doing out here when we have paying customers in there?! Joseph cringed. ‘Get back to your post and don’t let me catch you lazing on company time again, do you understand?’

   ‘Sir! Yes Sir!’ Joseph gave a smart Aviator salute and spun on his heel to go.

   ‘Oh, and Bandy?’

   ‘Yes Sir?’ Table five would like a refill of cognac.’

   ‘Yes Sir.’ Joseph gathered up his rolls of cutlery, tea-towels and clean glasses and walked towards the dining room.

                                                             ***

   The restaurant was bustling with gentlemen, ladies, and Officers from all around the Empire. There was drinking, and smoking, and laughter as people, young and old revelled in the new form of transportation now open to the public. The room was decorated in elegantly carved friezes depicting battles won long ago by Greek and Roman armies, large green ferns stretched their leaves towards the grand windows, and exquisite chairs and tables lay upon different tiers, covered in lavish carpets won in the North African campaign. 

    On this ship there was only one class, First. 

    Toasts were being noisily given at a table of mostly British tourists who were preparing to dine at their accustomed early hour, and Joseph slid between them with the practised silent agility of an excellent waiter. 

    On the second tier, at a corner table, with an excellent view off the port side sat a heavy-set man, who, despite Joseph’s friendly protests, preferred to dine by himself on regular dishes of foreign delicacies, followed by a moderately expensive cognac, an unpretentious cigar, and a bowl of real Italian gelato. 

    Joseph liked this man. His quiet, inoffensive manner, his kind familiarity, and definitely his generous tips at the end of every meal, made him a pleasure to serve, and, thought Joseph, perhaps he might even become a friend. The heavy-set man gestured to Joseph with a wave in the air of his small, round spectacles. Joseph hurried up the stairs to his side and gave a little bow. ‘Yes, Monsieur Tigullio?’ The man smiled. ‘Joseph, have you got the correct time?’ This was a game they played out every evening, as it gave Monsieur Tigullio an opportunity to indulge in producing his elegant Breguet pocket-watch and admire its perfect time keeping. Joseph glanced across the room at the large wall-clock ‘Yes Sir, it is exactly a quarter past six.’ ‘Oh-ho!’ Replied Monsieur Tigullio. ‘I’m afraid your clock is running precisely two minutes slow.’ Smiling, Joseph nodded. ‘Yes sir. I will have it corrected presently, thank you Sir.’ Tigullio smiled a bigger smile. ‘Not at all Joseph, not at all. Tell me, is there a telegraphic service aboard?’ Joseph inclined his head, and nodded. ‘But naturally Sir.’ Tigullio pursed his lips in thought, and then pushed himself away from the table, and got up. ‘Very good.’ He said. ‘I will need the telegraphic machine in my room at exactly twenty-five past eight, can you have that arranged for me?’ ‘Certainly Sir,’ Joseph pulled out a notepad and made a quick note. ‘And may I enquire where you will be sending the telegraph?’ ‘Oh, I don’t expect to be sending any telegraphs Joseph, with any luck, none at all, just bring me the machine if you please.’ Tigullio pressed a generous coin into Joseph’s palm and, with a wink, headed for the guest quarters with a chuckle, muttering to himself, ‘Good lad, that Joseph, good lad!’

   The telegraphic machine was something to behold. It was a prime example of French Technology at its most modern. Napoleon had put considerable resources into the Engineering Corp to develop it in aid of the war effort, and, though ultimately successful, they were limited in use due to their delicate nature and generous bulk. 

   They had only now come into their own as a means of communication between the Foreign Office and the new provinces throughout the Empire and, of course, for the extremely rich. The on-board variation of the machine sat upon a large trolley in a beautifully polished mahogany and brass cabinet. It had glass cylinders of varying shapes and sizes protruding from the top, and shining wires coiled from within each. 

   Joseph carefully manoeuvred the trolley down the hall, passed small groups of people dressed in formal-wear for the continental dining hour, and turned into the smaller wood-panelled corridor designated for guests’ living quarters while on ship. Stopping in front of Monsieur Tigullio’s door he straightened his coat, checked the wall-clock for the time, pressed his hair down over his scalp and gave two quick knocks. ‘Come in, come in!’ Came the reply. Joseph slid open the door, gave a polite salute, and slowly spun the trolley round so that he could back into the room. 

   The guest suite was decorated simply with only the most necessary, yet elegant furnishings: including a wardrobe, bassinet, writing desk and a traveller’s chest. What Joseph wasn’t prepared for were all the personal items that had been set up in the room. 

   There was a large bronze sextant on the writing desk surrounded by different sizes of hourglasses, a silver telescope was positioned at the porthole in the wall and chrome and brass compasses lay strewn over elaborate naval charts upon the bed. ‘Ah, Joseph, wheel it over here by me, will you?’ Monsieur Tigullio was seated in a bright yellow upholstered easy chair situated beside the writing desk. He had an odd metal monocle in his left eye and he was squinting at the backside of an ostentatious gilt Baroque table-clock. He glanced up at Joseph and at the Telegraphic machine. ‘Very good Joseph, just a little closer to the table if you please.’ 

   The rays of the setting sun were coming in through the window and illuminating the deep glaze of the cabinet and causing the glass tubes to sparkle in deep golds and reds. ‘What a beautiful device, eh Joseph? Beautiful!’ Monsieur Tigullio repeated, while he pushed his spectacles back onto his nose, and bent over the machine to examine the exposed workings in detail. 

   He frowned and started muttering quietly to himself, removing a side panel in the machine. Joseph coughed into his hand. ‘Sir! Oh Sir, it’s ship policy that only authorised personnel operate the Telegraphic Machine ...’ Monsieur Tigullio looked up. ‘Mmm? Oh? Yes, that seems to be a reasonable regulation.’ He paused for a moment, thinking, and then continued. ‘Listen Joseph, you know me, I won’t bring harm to your machine, not if I just study it for a wee bit will I?’ Joseph was about to respond that he was unfortunately not able to acquiesce, when he thought he felt an odd vibration in the floorboards of the room coming from beneath the bed. 

   Monsieur Tigullio glanced over at the bed and got up, stepping next to Joseph. ‘Joseph,’ he said, almost into the boy’s ear. ‘You run along, and I promise you nought will come of my experiment.’ Joseph looked up from the trembling floorboards. ‘Experiment, Sir?’ Monsieur Tigullio took him by the arm, and started leading him to the door. ‘Now Joseph, don’t you worry!’ He laughed a hearty laugh. ‘Here’s a little something for your trouble.’ He dropped some silver pieces into Joseph’s hand, and without waiting for a response, pushed Joseph into the corridor, and closed the door after him with a click. 

   Leo Tigullio quickly locked the door, and removed the naval charts from the bed. Underneath them was a large collapsable mirror made up of four smaller mirrors all connected together by semitransparent hinges along the middle. The mirrored pieces were of different primary colours and they had an opacity that seemed to devour the sunlight in the room. He quickly finished pulling off the side panel of the telegraph machine, and after a brief glimpse inside he reached into the cabinet and carefully extracted a handful of tightly wound wires attached to a glass coil. That’s what I need, he thought to himself. 

   The floor of the room began to vibrate again, this time with a regular pulse that was accompanied by a faint thrumming sound, like a harp being played from far away. Leo took the wires and coil, and manipulated them in such a way that they were connected to the individual hinges of the mirrors with the coil in the exact centre. Having done that, he rotated the handle that activated the telegraphic machine, and watched as the surface of the mirror began to lose its opacity, shimmering brightly with the same vibrating cadence he felt beneath his boots. 

   Leo clicked his tongue. He was satisfied. He put on his coat and spectacles, grabbed a scarf and a red wooly hat from an adjacent wardrobe, and turned over two of the hour glasses sitting upon the small writing desk. He pulled the hat over his ears, and made a quick note of the time from his pocket-watch into his diary, and then he climbed up onto the bed. Then, at precisely twenty-eight past eight, he carefully stepped onto the mirror laying atop the bed, and slipped inside of it, and away.

                                                        ***

   Outside the room, Joseph remained concerned about the welfare, of not only the precious machine, but also of his job. He hesitated outside the room, and then paced back and forth, stopped himself, and discreetly pressed his ear up against the door. He exhaled, not realising he had been holding his breath. He heard nothing suspicious ... he supposed Monsieur Tigullio and his experiment were perhaps nothing to become unduly excited over. Joseph straightened up as a young, French couple stepped out of their cabin, laughing as they passed him by on their way to the restaurant. Joseph watched them turn the corner and tapped his boot on the floor, deep in thought. Tigullio was a gentleman after all. He nodded, and started to smile again, what was he concerned about? Having reassured himself, he stepped away from the wall and turned to leave, just as the wall clock chimed half past eight. An incandescent light suddenly flashed beneath the door followed by a faint popping sound, and the acrid smell of sulphur. A small cry pierced the door, that sounded exactly like ‘Oh - my - God.’

   Joseph froze.

   Alarmed, and now imagining the telegraphic machine in ruins, he quickly knocked at the door. There was no reply from within. He knocked again, and still not receiving a response, he pulled a small, gold key from his belt, unlocked, and slid open the door. 

   There in the upholstered chair next to the desk sat Monsieur Tigullio. 

   He had an odd metal monocle in his left eye and he was squinting at the backside of an ostentatious gilt Baroque table-clock. ‘Ah, Joseph.’ said Monsieur Tigullio, ‘You’ve brought me the telegraphic machine, no doubt, and not a moment too soon!’ Monsieur Tigullio pulled out the monocle, and put the Baroque clock on the desk facing Joseph. It was exactly twenty-five past eight.

   Joseph’s eye twitched and his brain paused. He took a step back to appraise the situation, and after careful consideration, thought it best if his brain just stopped altogether.This certainly won’t do, thought his brain. It will not, and can not happen. So, it did a mental override, and sent a fresh signal back down the cerebellum to Joseph. Joseph received the signal, and with a quick shake of his head and a self inflicted whack to his cranium, started the gears turning somewhere just beneath the surface of his scalp, causing them to catch and whir back to life. 

  Joseph opened his mouth to protest the implausibility of the misplaced minutes, but when he summoned the air from his lungs to pass through his oesophagus and over his vocal cords, nothing came out but a squeak. His brain did another quick check. What was this? Everything in this boy ought to be functioning superbly. He hadn’t been drinking, and he wasn’t an idiot, it thought. Try again! Joseph opened his mouth for attempt number two, and this time with some success, he heard himself quite clearly say ‘Yes Sir.’ Well no, that wasn’t right either. In fact, it was the opposite of what he had intended. 

    Honestly. 

   Joseph knew he had already delivered the telegraphic machine. He ignored his protesting brain and came to the conclusion that he was tired and confused, yes, that had to be it. All this flying round the Empire in this ship following orders day in and day out, had finally taken its toll. He leant back, and rested upon a trolley. Trolley? THE trolley! Spinning around on his heel, Joseph was shocked to find himself leaning up against the trolley containing the telegraphic machine! He reached out and made an ineffectual grab at it and … looked up into the eyes of a reasonable facsimile of a dashing young waiter. A waiter, who, after a scrutinising so thorough, he had to admit, even his own mother would happily swear before a Royal Tribunal , that it was none other than he, himself, Joseph L. Bandyford.

   Joseph, or rather the other Joseph happily wheeled the telegraphic machine next to the table with the clock, engaged Monsieur Tigullio in conversation, accepted his tip and was pushed out the door ... just as it had already happened. But, but I’m right here! Thought Joseph. He turned back round, to find Monsieur Tigullio pulling wires out the side of the machine. 

   ‘Hey!’ He said, or rather mouthed, as no sound found its way from the back of his throat. ‘Monsieur!’

   Monsieur Tigullio paid him no mind, it was as if Joseph were invisible. Joseph watched, aghast, as Monsieur Tigullio uncovered the mirror upon the bed, put on his coat, spectacles, wooly hat and scarf, turn over two of the hour glasses and made a quick note of the time from his pocket-watch in his diary. Monsieur Tigullio climbed onto the bed, and at precisely twenty-eight past eight he stepped onto the mirror and? And he slipped inside of it… 

   Inside the mirror! 

   No, no, no, thought Joseph. People don’t just step into mirrors! He was sure of that, not ever!

   Joseph was frightened. He had no problem admitting his fear, and he backed toward the door, and then, he stupidly stopped. Hey! Thought his brain. What the Hell do you think you’re doing? Go! Get moving! Get Out! But curiosity got the better of him. He took a deep breath, and slowly shuffled back toward the mirror. Bending over it, he gave it a poke with his finger. It felt like a mirror. A glowing, throbbing, magic mirror, but a mirror nonetheless.

   He just didn’t know what to make of it. Joseph scratched at his head in frustration, when  he was interrupted by a noise outside the door … he froze. But, that had to be him ... again. This is madness, he thought. Joseph tried really hard to consider the situation, and couldn’t come up with any sort of conclusion that his solid British education could account for. ‘Well,’ he said to himself. ‘One doesn’t learn from standing idly by, so ...’ He took a deep breath. ‘There is nothing for it but to follow in Monsieur Tigullio’s footsteps.’ Joseph climbed up onto the bed and carefully put one foot, and then the other, upon the mirror. He closed his eyes, and ..?!

   Nothing.

  Nothing happened. He opened an eye, and squinted down at his immaculately polished boots. He looked on either side of the boots at his reflection and gave a little hop. 

   Still nothing. 

   He knelt down. He tapped at the mirror, pushed at it, knocked on it, and then sat on it.

   Nothing.

   He couldn’t understand it. What was he missing? He wondered what it was he had just witnessed, and then he remembered! The telegraphic machine! ‘Idiot.’ He muttered to himself.

   Reaching over, he gave the handle a little spin. The mirror began to hum.  Joseph felt the mirror begin to vibrate, slowly at first, and then with a persistent ever quickening pulse. His reflection seemed to separate from the surface of the glass and then it disappeared completely. He stared. This is madness, and I’ve learnt quite enough for one day!’ Thought Joseph. He was still curious about what had happened to Monsieur Tigullio, but curiosity was exhaustible, and not worth this ... this was too much.

   Joseph turned and started to get up off the mirror, and almost instantly he felt a vacuum beneath his shoes. Trembling, he pushed upon glass, and found it felt liquid. Time to panic! He frantically grabbed at the bed as the mirror turned black beneath his boots and started pulling him in. An incandescent light flashed from within the mirror’s depths, blinding him. ‘Oh - my - God!’ He yelped, and he disappeared with a distinct, yet faint popping sound, followed by the acrid smell of sulphur.

   It was exactly half past eight.

                                                      ***

     Being a cat is good, being two cats is even better. Now I know, strictly speaking, it isn’t possible to be two cats, but Principessa Pesca and Oliver were so inseparable they may as well have been one cat, or so they believed.

   Francesca always thought of them as brother and sister; the cats naturally didn’t care what she thought, being cats, but loved her all the same. As far as they were concerned, they considered themselves, rather more husband and wife, and rather less brother and sister. 

   The cats liked Paris, they liked the alleys filled with innumerable rodents to pounce upon, and they loved the fast moving currents of the Seine with the fishermen who left them bits of fish to eat after the morning catch. Together, they adored the markets filled with people who tossed them the crusty, unwanted ends of baguette, and how their French apartment was really, rather nicely placed right in the middle of this grand city. 

   Everyone knows a cat appreciates location as much as you or I. If you were to ask them to decide upon any personal dislikes, the cats ponder a while, and eventually Oliver would tell you they did not like the other cats very much. Peaches, for she preferred the name Peaches, might mention the French cats that made fun of their accents, and their particular appreciation of pastas, pestos and polenta. In the end, though, the thing they liked least of all was noise. So when Francesca threw one of her very noisy tantrums, what you saw if you were paying attention were two tails, one orange, the other grey, racing after one another to escape. They ran out of her room, under the tables, over the stacks of journals, and up the books, to hop over the flower boxes with too many carnations, and out the window into the quiet and cool sleeping city.

   It is commonly thought cats can see in the dark. This isn’t exactly true. They can see as much as you or I can in a room with the windows blackened, the candles unlit and your eyes squeezed shut, which if you ever tried, is not at all. A cat can, however, see tremendously well when there is just the teensy, tiniest amount of light. That small spot of luminescence changes everything for a cat. 

   Tonight there was a teensy, tiny amount of light. The window shutters were closed all over the city, the curtains were drawn against the night air, and candles were long ago snuffed, so that the citizens of la belle Paris could sleep in peace. Paris was to all intensive purposes quite black. There were no brightly lit boulevards, just the occasional torch guttering in the distance. The city was as tranquil and dark a city, as a city could be, but to Peaches and Oliver it was a night they could see into. 

   Peaches stretched, yawned and twitched her right ear, swivelling it first to the left, and then to the right. She heard a horse whinny two streets over, a rat skittering in a gutter just across the way, and nearer still, she could clearly make out the gentle snoring of Uncle Rudolpho as the snores fell, and then rose again, in a gentle crescendo that kept time with the summer cicadas chirping in the deserted streets. 

   A soft thud upon the roof alerted her of company. Not bothering, or needing to turn her head, she noted Oliver was casually strolling up behind her to confiscate her perch. He often did this, being a rude cat. He carefully swivelled his bottom in a calculated manoeuvre that caused her to give-way to his excessive bulk. Oliver now happily took advantage of the warm spot she had created among the broken roof-tiles, and Peaches stepped away, glowering at him as he ignored her, sniffing the cool night air. Oliver yawned and gazed out over her head with his round jade eyes. The city was at its most beautiful at night.

  This moonless night certainly accentuated the millions of stars twinkling far above the city, and it outlined the disorderly silhouettes of the crooked edifices with their broken chimneys, and the dangerously steep angles of the ancient roof-tops. The cats, however, were in their element. What to do? They wondered. Where to go? Shall we see if we can find some delectable scraps in the alleys? Scare some mice? Perhaps hunt for some nice big rats? The possibilities were endless in a city this size. 

   The cats thought. They thought and pondered, and wondered and contemplated as they listened to the sleeping city, and before they had made up their minds, the last thing they had expected to happen, happened. The window they had not long exited from betrayed some movement. 

   The curtains were pushed aside, and they were surprised to see the bottom half of Francesca carefully find its way over the box of carnations, and onto the roof with a soft bump. She was dressed head to toe in black. Standing up, and quietly stretching, she gazed out into the velvety darkness and the bright spots of light in the sky above her. ‘More beautiful than all the world’s diamonds.’ She whispered under her breath. She let her eyes adjust to the darkness, and began to brush off the soil from the flower-box, when she noticed the two staring felines. ‘Ciao amore,’ she whispered to the startled cats. ‘I have an appointment to keep, and not much time to keep it, so ...’ She winked at them. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I really must be going!’ She couldn’t, however, resist a little pat for Oliver and tummy-rub for Peaches. That done, she stepped lightly over them, and rummaged in her shoulder bag for the Specchio. Holding it close to her nose she whispered at it. ‘Ready?’ The mirror pulsed gently in her hand. ‘Darling, you know that sneaking out into the middle of the night to meet young men is a speciality of mine.’ Francesca rolled her eyes and groaned. ‘You promised you wouldn’t embarrass me!’ ‘Embarrass?’ The mirror turned three shades of violet. ‘Darling, you haven’t seen anything yet!’ Francesca noisily sighed, waved at the two cats, and disappeared into the night.