TIME MACHINE CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

A/N The narrative is now changing back to the usual format; I hope the plot's not too slow at the moment. We will be hearing from Robyn again later in the story.

"I don't know what to do" Ben murmured to Dylan as they lay in each others' arms, "If it wasn't for the fact that war was coming, this place would be idyllic. And we'd be safe enough; the attacks on civilians will mainly be in London, so we needn't fear for Lucius or Jess."

"Then what's your problem, Chiltern?"

"These people are mainly lovely and they're going to lose so much when the war comes. They'll lose that calm, sedate lifestyle and become harder, more bitter."

"It'd be character building."

"And if we stay, what do WE do, Dylan? Let all the other guys go off as cannon fodder while we just take off in the time machine? Say 'tough luck, guys, but we're out of here?"

"I've an idea" Dylan said, trying to calm Ben, having felt his lover's heart jittering against him, "It'll be some months before anything starts. Why don't we take our time and decide later?"

"Good idea. Now where were we?"

"If you can't remember I'm kicking you out of bed!"

They eventually drifted into sleep with no bad dreams to mar their night.

Those would come later.

"Can't we just go and check on supplies?" Ethan wheedled the next day.

He added forebodingly:

"There'll be food rationing. I've read about it. We could starve."

"In that case" Cal told him, "We can leave the supplies right where they are for now."

"We need to make sure we can get them NOW" pouted Ethan.

"Ethan, you might not like this. There's no way I'm going to be stuffing myself with private supplies while people will be starving later! We'll vote on it with the others, of course, but I'm voting for not touching the food supplies at all. If we leave here, we'll leave the supplies for the others."

The distance Ethan's lower lip travelled was spectacular but he secretly felt proud of Cal's attitude.

"What's this?" Lloyd asked as he showed Jamie the mini-camera they'd sneaked out of the machine they previous day.

"Dunno… it looks like a kind of hidden camera, but I've never seen one that small."

Jamie prodded a few dials and gasped:

"Look!"

Caleb, Ethan, Jess, Ben Lucius and Dylan in different costumes, in what appeared to be different settings.

"Hey this is topping! I bet they've worked in the theatre before, you can tell."

"Should we give them this back?"

"Eeeeeeh!" was Jamie's response. Mainly because the device was now taking photographs of himself and Lloyd.

"No" he said after a pause, "Let's give it back to them and they might give us a reward. They're dead generous."

"We could slip it into one of the girls' skirts and then we'll get lots of lovely photos of them undressing." Lloyd had a massive crush on Alicia.

"Do you think they're all on the level?"

"I'd put money on it, they're all sound" Lloyd asserted. Those words were to come back to haunt him later.

The two miscreants decided to leave this strange building and did their best to leave it as they found it. But the damage had already been done.

The group had decided to go to the machine and bring back any non-food items to the school.

"Go on Ethan, you can take one chocolate bar" Caleb told his brother.

"Wow, I'll get fat as a pig on that!"

Cal gave him a friendly punch.

"Sarky bugger!"

Dylan scanned the machine's interior. Something seemed to be very wrong.

"It looks like petty thieving more than anything else" Cal said hopefully. He opened the door to the small refriderator. Ethan howled with rage.

"The thieving tw*ts! They took the lot!"

"What's a tw*t please?" asked Lucius.

"A bad word. Clever people don't say it" Ben said gently. Inside he was raging. So they couldn't even leave a gift of food to this school where the people had treated them, the travellers, so kindly.

"Get it reported!" bawled Ethan.

"Seriously? We admit we've arrived in a time machine and risk being locked away as insane, or worse? We'll just have to try to repair the machine between us" Dylan said grimly.

Ben knew in his heart that this was just a bit of petty thieving and minor vandalism at the worst, and that it shouldn't mar their chances of getting home. But his conscience began to trouble him again. He knew what would be expected of every one of them apart from Jess, before the year was out.

ROBYN'S JOURNAL

THE TWENTY EIGHT OF JUNE 1914

Here I am again, dear Journal. Today has been a wonderful day apart from one sad thing. Also, there has been a lot of war talk lately and it has made us all uneasy. Relationships between Britian and Germany are not good. We were talking about how we would cope if the Germans invaded our shores. Lily says she has a sharp hatpin ready for any of the enemy who tried to ravish her. Loiuse says we should use boiling oil as they did in Mediaeval times. And my idea was to make Honey Vinegar stand on the beach, then the Hun would see her and run away in fear.

But the main event of the day, dear Journal, was that lovely Benjamin seems to have come into a windfall. He and Caleb went to see Miss Bateman and proposed hiring a Charabanc to take us to the seaside for the day! Even the relatives of the staff are to be invited; our good cook's little daughter Kitty Seabrook, has talked of nothing else all day, her mother told us.

Vinegar said that Benjamin must have procured his money from an evil source and that she was in a mind not to go. Miss Bateman told her she was not invited (again) and that she could spend the day reading her Bible and thinking how much better she is than all of us. Vinegar again whined that she would tell her mother about how cruel the school is to her. Alicia and I overheard – quite accidentally! – and collapsed into silent laughter.

So, with one of Mrs Seabrook's excellent spreads packed in a picnic basket, off we went, singing all the way. Once we were there, Caleb and Ethan organised two teams for games on the beach. Even Miss Bateman joined in, and we were surprised by her sprightliness when she ran! We were more than ready for lunch, especially Ethan, and then we had another challenge… a sand castle competition. Little Lucius built what he said was a Roman fort. Bless him, how he loves his history! Mrs Bateman declared him the winner; the prize was a box of sweets. Being Lucius, he handed them round to everybody, as he wanted to share. Miss Bateman told him he was a generous boy to give away his sweets and he said "But look at the lovely picture on this tin; I can keep my treasures in here." Later I heard Miss Bateman saying what an excellent job Dr Keogh has done in bringing up Lucius.

Benjamin had paid for us all to go into Brighton Pavilion and we spent a happy couple of hours looking around. There seemed to be an atmosphere between Benjamin and Dylan, I overheard Dylan saying "You're doing this out of guilt aren't you, Ben?" and Benjamin replying: "This is one time when I won't just look after number one." Dylan became very sharp with him, I have only ever heard him be so angry once before, when Vinegar went to him complaining that she was sure she had trouble with her heart. He'd reduced her to tears by telling her she needed to have one put in. The walls of that Doctor's room are far too thin!

Later on the way back to school, little Kitty began to weep. We wondered if it was the disturbing news we'd heard about the assassination at Sarajevo – little Kitty has a very tender heart – then she blurted out that Honey Vinegar had told her the Germans were going to invade and that they ate small children. "What if they come?" she sobbed.

Caleb told her that he just knew that the Germans wouldn't invade our country, and even if they did, they did not eat children. He held her in his arms, and Benjamin sang her a lovely lullaby about a place called Hushabye Mountain. Kitty lay her head on Caleb's chest and went to sleep quite calmly.

I did notice that Captain Spiller, who had leave that week and was at home with his family, was looking at Benjamin in an appraising way as he sang. As did several people on the jaunt.

THE FOURTH OF AUGUST, 1914

Journal, we are at war with Germany. What will become of us all? And Jessica's little baby – what kind of world will it be born into? Journal, I'm afraid.

(