Just One Damned Thing After Another (The Chronicles of St Mary's, #1)

by Jodi Taylor

Mr Dieter Farrell's number two. Built like a brick shi – a very large young man.

Major Ian Guthrie Head of Security and whose unenviable task it is to keep St Mary's safe, despite all their best efforts. Late 30s.

Mr Markham Security guard. Small, grubby and disaster-prone. Reputedly indestructible – which is just as well.

Turk Officially a horse.

The pay is terrible and the conditions are worse, but it's a wonderful place to work – they have some talented people there.

‘Well, this is what I tend to think of as “practical” history, my dear. The secret of Greek Fire? We’re on it. How did a Roman chariot handle? We’ll build you one and you can find out for yourself. What range does a trebuchet have? Exactly how far can you fling a dead cow?

One of his expansively waving arms caught a beaker of something murky that could easily have been embalming fluid, the Elixir of Life, or Socrates’ hemlock and knocked it off the workbench to shatter on the floor. Everyone stepped back. The liquid bubbled, hissed, and looked as if it was eating through the floor. I could see many other such damp patches. ‘Oh, my goodness! Jamie! Jamie! Jamie, my boy, just nip downstairs, will you? My compliments to Dr Dowson and tell him it's coming through his ceiling again!’

I met Mrs Mack who presided over the kitchens. Meals, she informed me, were available twenty-four hours a day. I tried to think why an historical establishment would keep such hours but failed. Not that I was complaining. I can eat twenty-four hours a day, no problem.

‘You name it, we’ve got it somewhere,’ said Doctor Dowson, the Librarian and Archivist who appeared to be wearing a kind of sou’wester. ‘At least until that old fool upstairs blows us all sky high.

divulge one word of what I am about to tell you now, then you will spend the next fifteen years, at least, in an establishment the existence of which no civil liberties organisation is even aware.

I can think of a few examples where such certainty would not be welcomed.’ He looked up sharply. ‘Such as?’ ‘Well, a certain stable in Bethlehem for instance. Imagine if you pitched up with your Polaroid and the innkeeper flung open the door and said, “Come in. You’re my only guests and there's plenty of room at the inn!” That would put the cat amongst the pigeons.’

‘I could do you a wish-list.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Perhaps one day I shall ask you for one.’

‘Blast doors,’ he said, casually. Of course, what was I thinking? Every historical research centre needs blast doors.

‘How do you know something happened?’ He sighed. ‘They’re historians. Something always happens.’

‘Show me a cup of tea and I’ll show you at least two historians attached to it.’

We finished with a tour of the grounds, which were very pleasant if you discounted the odd scorch mark on the grass and the blue swans.

‘Hold on,’ said Chief Farrell. ‘I’m duty officer this week and I want to see if the fire alarms go off.’ They didn’t. ‘That's good, isn’t it?’ I said. He sighed. ‘No, it just means they’ve taken the batteries out again.’ This really was my sort of place.

‘We work in conjunction with the University of Thirsk, whence some of you graduated. We enjoy considerable autonomy, but we are answerable to them for our funding. They in turn answer for us to a small and discreet government body who, as far as I can tell, answer to no one below God.

So that was my card marked; second period on the first day. Way to go, Maxwell.

At this very moment you’re wishing I’d drop dead so you can vanish back to your room and enjoy your own solitary self, doing whatever you do in there every night.’ ‘Well, nearly right. I’m actually trying to vanish to the dining room, but the rest was spot on.’

‘Have you heard?’ ‘Obviously not,’ I said, marking my place with a finger so he would take the hint and go away. ‘Heard what?’ ‘Rutherford's broken his leg.’ ‘What? Is he OK?’ ‘Well, no. He's broken his leg, you daft bat.’

I picked up my McKisack's The Fourteenth Century and hefted it in a meaningful manner.

Did you hear about Stevens?’ ‘Oh, no. What now?’ ‘He wanted Tudor England. 1588 to be precise.’ ‘And?’ ‘He ended up right in the middle of the Spanish Armada.’ I thought quickly. ‘No, that's good. 1588 is the Spanish Armada.’ ‘No, right in the middle of the Spanish Armada. About eight miles off the east coast with the San Lorenzo bearing down on him with all guns blazing as he and his pod disappeared beneath the simulated waves.

Barclay's got a face like a buggered badger.

Stevens was devastated. Grant and Sussman rushed him to the bar for emergency treatment. Nagley and I did his packing for him and spent an enjoyable half hour dreaming up a series of elaborate and painful deaths for Bitchface Barclay, as she was everlastingly known.

‘Good morning, everyone,’ said Major Guthrie, trying not to grin evilly and failing.

‘Your primary survival strategy will always be running away, which brings me to the running schedules you will find in Appendix C. Those of you who have hitherto avoided our jolly cross-country sessions,’ he smiled unpleasantly, ‘will be sorry.’ Oh, bloody hell.

Now I got to know the security section rather well. As well as you usually get to know people who have their hands all over you five times a week. I suspect there are married couples who have less intimate physical contact than we did.

The final exams loomed ever closer. Not long to go now -the culmination of all our hard work. Unless you were Sussman, of course, in which case you’d barely worked at all.

Then, in the afternoon, we had to go out and find ourselves a body. A number of volunteers lay scattered around the place and we had to find one. They had a label tied to one arm with a list of symptoms and injuries so we could diagnose and treat. With my usual luck, I fell over Izzie Barclay.

‘This is an emergency. I must deal with it at once.’ I stepped away to the outside tap, filled a bucket with ice-cold water, and emptied it all over her. She screamed and shot to her feet, soaked to the skin. It was bloody excellent.

And it's not as if you actually set her on fire, which is what I would have done. You put her out. Don’t expect any gratitude from the rest of the human race.’

The others were strangely evasive about their own plans. I suspected they all had their contingencies stashed away around the countryside. I could only hope they weren’t planning something similar. It would be a bit of a bugger if no one at all got on the transports.

‘How did you get back?’ ‘Found a stream and followed it down.’ ‘How did you find the stream?’ ‘Fell in it.’

There were no flashing lights, no calendars with the dates peeling away, and no dramatic music.

I’m St Mary's: if hitting someone didn’t solve the problem, then drinking tea would.

I could take the panel off and have a look. Then I could shrug my shoulders and replace the panel. There were tea bags with more electronic know-how than me. I could see no way round it. I was fucked.

When you’re fucked, you’re fucked. Things really can’t get much worse.

If I was going to die alone and abandoned I was buggered if I was going to do it on stewed apple.

Spend some time on the roof looking for signs of human habitation – although if I found any, whether I would run to or from was a good question.

‘It was fine. Ate, read, worked on the tan. Thought about St Mary's best kept secret. I’m impressed, I’m really impressed. I didn’t have – none of us had – the slightest idea about this. How has St Mary's kept this quiet over the years?’

We have to try to gauge it so you’re close to running out of supplies but haven’t yet struck out across country to search for help. When were you planning to go?’ ‘I wasn’t. I knew you wouldn’t let me starve.’ ‘No one likes a smart arse.’

If there is an opposite of a good bedside manner then Helen Foster has it.

I looked pointedly at the smoke detector. ‘No.’ ‘I took the battery out years ago.’ I got the feeling Chief Farrell was fighting a losing battle with smoke detectors and fire alarms.

‘Have you had sexual relations or exchanged bodily fluids with anyone outside this timeline?’ ‘Sadly, no. Nor anyone in this timeline either.’

After a while, she flipped her dog-end out of the window. There was a squawk from outside. ‘I keep telling you, Peterson, don’t stand there. Idiot! ‘

They were anti-poverty and pro-democracy which did them no favours at all in the eyes of authority.

I liked Tim Peterson. He wasn’t nearly as bad as Kalinda Black who was tall, blonde, and terrifying. She looked like a Disney Princess, spoke with a broad Manchester accent, and, rumour had it, drank the blood of newly qualified trainees to keep herself young.

Peterson threw himself into his seat, put his feet up, and declared me in charge. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get on with it or we won’t be back in time for the footie.’

Nothing makes you stand out more than looking like a tourist, or a foreigner, or an enemy spy; none of these being good looks for inoffensive historians looking for a quiet life.