Work Text:
March, 1928
'…And there are spare blankets in the – '
'Linen closet,' chorused Kitty and Teddy before Judith Carlisle, Inspector's Wife, Force of Nature and Ostensibly Impeccable Housekeeper - these things not necessarily in that order - could get to the end of this thought.
'You did say,' said Teddy, and grinned at her. 'You also said,' before Judith could possibly rehash the list again, 'about where to find the girning water, caster oil, towels…Kitten, I've missed something off. What have I missed?'
Here Teddy looked expectantly at Kitty, who, ever helpful, shrugged.
'We'll be fine,' said Kitty.
She gave what Teddy made to be a convincing performance in the face of overwhelming odds. Though, all fairness to Kitty, it wasn't as if they had never wrangled gremlins before. It was purely that Teddy could never recall previously having done so under quite these circumstances. The gremlins - not only the Carlisles' but assorted Blythes' too - flocked to kiss maternal cheeks goodbye and hug paternal shoulders and Teddy took a mental tally; Christopher Blythe was coming out of a fever, which he had thoughtfully passed on to sister Helen. Little Sophy Blythe had, God bless her forever, eschewed the fever but had picked this month to be colicky. Young Iain Blythe's ears were temperamental and achy at best, which left Teddy and Kitty with two malcontent infants, and two children not-quite running temperatures. Toby Carlisle, as the Head Gremlin was nonplussed about being lumped in with the children for the evening, but otherwise, thank heaven, healthy, while half a dozen of his kindred couldn't decide if they had given Christopher his fever or inherited it from him. It was a dizzying cocktail. Some of them, Teddy swore, had given Christopher and co the fever only to be given it back. Strewth.
'You have the number for the Crown Imperial?' asked Faith.
Teddy said he had, and if he didn't know better, he could have sworn the Doc's wife looked disappointed by this revelation.
'And you'll ring if you should find you need another set of hands?' this was from Mara, who somehow managed to look both reserved about the prospect of an evening out and simultaneously elegant. Blue, as ever, suited her.
'We could swap,' said Kitty to her, which was clearly the right answer because it got a laugh and a toss of Mara's golden head. Teddy didn't blame her; Shirley's thespian wife had more than earned an evening away from Iain's everlasting earaches.
Clearly Shirley thought so too; He swatted lightly at Kitty's shoulder and said, 'Not on your life.'
'Oh, well,' said Kitty, 'I'll be sure to tell the gremlin in question your feelings on the matter.'
More laughter among the adults.
Little Rachel Carlisle pulled on the Inspector's arm and said with all the earnestness of ten, 'You will come in and kiss us goodnight, won't you Daddy? Even if it's ages and ages before you get home?'
'And tell us all about it in the morning?' said Tibby before anyone could reasonably answer. The Inspector promised most solemnly, and hefted Tibby up into his arms for a final goodbye kiss.
'And Ima too?' said Tibby, from the safety of this position.
'Of course, Darling,' said Judith. If she sounded mildly distracted. Teddy forgave her; Somewhere along the way, baby Nattie had cunningly wound her arms around Judith's neck and become an implacable stole of limbs and tawny hair.
Oh, it was shaping up to be a memorable night, Teddy was certain of it. The Inspector had begun to whistle a tuneful rendition of some number or other that Teddy assumed to be on that evening's program. A handful of gremlins took it up while Teddy tried and failed to intervene in the vexed case of Nattie Carlisle's fingers and her mother's enmeshed pearls.
High nooooon, high nooooon! The dark of the ni-ight's h-igh noon! Wheezed Christopher with more rhythm than tunefulness. Kitty bit her cheek and Rachel joined in, which meant that Ben followed her. Tibby even climbed out of the Inspector's arms to bolster the chorus. The Doc was looking at the clock and beginning to twitch gently.
'You go on ahead,' said Teddy to him. 'If no one else minds, I mean.'
'Most sensible thing anyone's said yet,' said the Inspector, and hands now free, fished a packet of tickets out of his pockets. 'Take these, Jem, and Judith and I will catch you up, just as soon as Miss Limpet here relents.'
'Miss Limpet,' said Judith with what anyone else might have called pointed emphasis, 'has an understandable aversion to Ruddigore.'
'You mean bloody minded cheek,' said the Inspector, occasioning another bout of laughter from those in the know. Teddy thought about preserving small ears, decided the damage had probably been done aeons ago, anyway, and resumed the gremlin-wrangling with Judith.
'Kitten,' he said over his shoulder, 'do me a favour and find some nice, tempting nibbly thing in the pantry, will you? And bring it here?' Off Kitty went, dark head bobbing conspiratorially.
Said Mara, mildly, 'You'll spoil their dinner,' which wasn't wrong, but Teddy was choosing his battles.
Mind, because it was Kitty he'd sent, and not, say, feverish Helen, she came back with some lovely, sticky, jammy concoction that while almost certainly tempting, was going to doom Judith Carlisle's dress, never mind the pearls, before she'd got out of the house. On the other hand, Nattie half-twisted round to grab at said jammy, sticky pastry, which gave Teddy enough leverage to unburden Judith of her small hostage-taker, and cart her, jammy pastry and all, into his arms.
'Have a lovely time!' called Kitty after them as she waved them off into the night.
It was cool for March, the air cold as it crept between trouser leg and sock. This did nothing to deter the gremlins flocking around Kitty, leaping and waving in their turn. She shut the door with a click, and Teddy relaxed against a nearby wall.
'Now what?' he asked of no one in particular.
'Now,' said Kitty, 'I have an article to write up, which I will be doing in the kitchen. Shoo me out whenever your gremlins need dinner.'
'Kitten,' said Teddy warningly.
'Deadline!' Kitty said, and brandished a pencil at him.
Teddy was not entirely sure from whence she had procured it. He was thoroughly sure that love for gremlins or not, he was privately cursing reporters and their upstart ways into next year. Doubly so reporters who pulled double-duty as the unsolicited younger sister he had never asked for. He thought about cursing Doc Blythe for taking said upstart reporters in in the first place, but didn't on the basis that without Jem's fondness for waifs and strays Teddy would himself still be at the mercy of local boarding houses. Nattie jabbed a jammy hand in the vicinity of his neck, and Teddy resigned himself to being hopelessly outnumbered.
'Right,' said Teddy. 'Well, when you've met the deadline, Kitten, do me a favour and look in on us, will you? Make sure I'm surviving and all that?'
'You enjoy it,' said Kitty, which did not at all answer the question.
Neither did the chorus of 'Circus! Circus!' the gremlins had started up. Teddy had half an idea that Ben had started it, but it could just as easily have been Helen (unlikely) or Christopher (possible) or, well, any of the Carlisles. They frothed and foamed at his ankles, pulling on trouser legs and scrabbling for his elbows.
'All right,' said Teddy, relenting. 'But Toby has to help out with the elephants. He makes an excellently-sized elephant, now.'
Squeals of horror and dissent. Rachel said with utmost derision, 'Toby is circus-master.'
Teddy gave Toby an appraising look, half-expecting muttered excuses about this-or-that school assignment. But Toby shrugged and said, 'Circus Master it is,' and swung Ben up onto his shoulders, singing as he went;
Van Anburgh is the man who goes to all the shows,
He steps right into the lion's den and tells you all he knows!
The rest of the gremlins shortly joined in, so that the words were soon ricochetting off the house more noisesomely than melodically.
The HYEna in THE next CAge..
Jam-free fingers probed at Teddy's elbow and he looked down to find a concerned Rachel frowning at him. 'Doesn't that one get…scary?' She practically squirmed around the last word, and Teddy joggled Nattie so that she was tucked under one arm, the better to get the other around her sister.
'Better go make them stop, then, Niblet,' he said. 'Word is I do an excellent Elephant Ride.'
'The best,' said Rachel, and they went, arms linked into the tumult of the Carlisle sun-room.
Somewhere along the way Circus gave way to Ma-Jong, which, the rules eluding the younger children, ended in Sophy, Nattie and Iain sucking the pieces while Teddy fretted that they would choke and Simon Carlisle explained a version of Dominoes that bore no resemblance to Dominoes as Teddy had ever played it before. Simon won, Sophy almost swallowed her Ma-Jong piece, Christopher won the second round, and Teddy finally detached Ma-Jong pieces from various infants. This led to tears, but at least he had pre-empted several premature demises. Iain wouldn't stop sobbing though, causing Teddy to suspect his ears were playing up. Helen refused to lose a third round of Dominoes, Rachel concurred, and someone (Tibby?) got out Jetan. No one being clear on the rules, and the rulebook possessing all the usefulness of a chocolate teapot, this ended in frustration all round, by which point Nattie was keening in sympathy with Iain and Sophy beginning to fret. Christopher and Rachel were plotting the untimely demise of the unfortunate inventor of Jetan with disturbing thoroughness and acuracy, and Teddy, while generally feeling he should discourage premeditated murder, couldn't bring himself to disagree with the sentiment.
In the face of a dozen protestations – he was definitely counting the wailing infants – Teddy sent what gremlins he could to get ready for bed. He stuck the kettle on, and subsequently a hot water bottle on Sophy, which seemed to soothe her slightly. Kitty was still meeting her deadline, so he deposited Nattie in the arms of an unsuspecting Toby when he reappeared in striped pyjamas. He then banished Kitty and her article to the far-off shores of the Inspector's office in the interest of feeding assorted gremlins. Judith Carlisle had had the foresight to leave something appropriately thick and warm bubbling on the hob, which meant all Teddy had to do was stir around a still-fussy Sophy, cradled awkwardly against his shoulder, and then ladle things into bowls. It smelled gloriously of onions, garlic, parsnip and a hefty dose of chicken.
In the event though, Helen had no appetite because of the fever, which meant that Rachel decided she was similarly not hungry. Since what Rachel did Tibby did, and Ben did what both sisters did, this lead to a gremlin mutiny. The vexing thing was that having let Helen off of her meal for perfectly good medical reasons as per Faith's feed a cold but starve a fever adage, Teddy felt hard-pressed to argue the others out of their recalcitrance. Add to this the various Carlisle gremlins still ill enough to be short an appetite and it was considerably easier to write the meal off as a bad job.
To that end he marshalled the troops and processed them upstairs, dividing up rooms as best he could. He stuck the babies in the nursery and Helen in with the Carlisle girls. Christopher went with them since where Helen went, he did, and after that it was easy. Or that was the theory. In practice Christopher and the girls wanted an instalment of something called Hamish and the Magic Mirror that sounded like Mara's invention, assorted Carlisle boys wanted Teddy to read out of The Magical Land of Noom, and the babies just wanted to be held and paced with, preferably simultaneously, lrsving Teddy himself wishing for several more hands than he was presently possessed of.
Then Toby surfaced to ask if he could sit up and read a little, 'Once the others are asleep, obviously.' This last said somewhat sheepishly.
Teddy acquiesced on the basis that at Toby's age he himself would have done the thing anyway, irrespective of the parental dictate. He also seized the opportunity to hand Nattie off to her brother again, on the grounds that Toby could both read and settle her. Toby appeared to think this over, then shrugged around his sister, and padded away down the hall. He had swapped the Van Anburgh's Menagerie of earlier for the no less lyrically alarming song about nightmares that was so popular with the Inspector and the Doc.
When you're lying awake, with a dismal headache
And sleep is tabooed by anxiety…
Teddy left Toby to it. He puttered back to the nursery to check Sophy and her hot water bottle, and concluded they were in harmony. He then plucked a grizzling Iain out of his cot, hoisted him onto his shoulder and so armed, returned to Christopher, Helen and the Carlisle girls ready to navigate the wonderful world of Hamish and his mirror. Iain could do the sound-effects. Specifically, Iain could do the mournful, distraught sound-effects of whatever conflict-causing scenario Teddy's addled brain conjured up.
Iain was still grizzling – Mara would have called it girning – at the story's end, so Teddy scooped the baby back up and went to warm oil up on the hob. He had a sort of idea Faith had mentioned warm oil as a possible solve for little Iain's ears.
You're a regular wreck,
With a crick in your neck…
Came Toby's fluctuating voice. The song needed a baritone, and he wasn't quite that, or not yet.
'At least,' said Teddy to Iain as he dosed the first problematic ear – cue more wailing – 'it's topical, eh?'
Iain gave what was presumably another wail of commiseration. Down the hall, Nattie seemed to have acquiesced to the strains of her brother's imperfectly rendered patter-song. This made no sense, but then, Gilbert and Sullivan never did make sense, if anyone asked Teddy. Also senseless was Iain's sympathetic response to Nattie, because irrespective of Teddy's labours of love over his young ears, he subsided directly as Nattie did. This was nothing to sniff at, because Sophy appeared to have remembered her colic.
Teddy secured Iain in his Moses basket and went in search of the littlest Blythe. So, hot water bottles were out. He'd move on to a warm bath and see if that didn't help. He was drawing the water when Helen manifested in the doorway, all tumbled gold hair and sleep-puffed eyes.
'My pillow's too hot,' she said. Teddy stuck the back of his hand against her neck, mentally adjusted for the fact that he was holding a hot and colicky Sophy, and decided Helen's temperature was up anyway. He tried, ineffectually, to remember what he was supposed to do in this circumstance. Stick her in the bath, he supposed, with Sophy and hover on the nearby doorstep in case anyone started drowning.
Helen said, 'I've tried counting sheep but they just go boing! as they hop over the pasture fence, and it doesn't work at all.'
There were several pertinent questions here, to Teddy's mind, starting with where on earth the pasture fence came from, seguing gracefully (as he thought) into why the sheep were jumping over it, and in which direction, and followed up with why they made noise – boing! or otherwise – as they so jumped. He said none of this. He gestured towards the bath, and said, 'Why don't you hop in with Sophy? She might like to have her sister for company. I'll be out on the landing if you need me, yeah?'
Helen snuffled and presently warm arms coiled around Teddy's middle. Helen mumbled something indistinct against his chest that might have been thanks, but might just have easily been the medically correct thing to do with Sophy. It could go either way with Helen. This was the child who had named her latest porcelain doll, a lanky over-tall thing with dangly arms and a chitinous gown, Leptospirosis.
Teddy went, steam pricking his nostrils, half an ear tuned to the gentle plashing of the girls in the tub. What he properly needed was Kitty, because she could actually sit on the edge of the tub and better supervise the watery proceedings without compromising anyone's young modesty. On the other hand, Teddy didn't much fancy leaving the girls completely unattended to go conjure her up.
In the event, Kitty saved him the trouble by clambering up the stairs two at a time and all but tripping over Teddy's ankles in the process. Teddy became painfully aware of this when the ensuing chaos sent something hot and liquid lurching onto his knees.
'Sorry,' said Kitty, recovering. She dropped down next to him and stuck something thick, warm and milky-smelling in his hands. Tea, he realised seconds later than he reasonably should have.
'Deadline met?' he asked brightly.
'No,' said Kitty and she shook her head, sending unruly curls swinging. 'I just had this feeling you needed it.'
'Your journalistic instinct is on fine form,' said Teddy, and grinned.
'Hardly much of a story,' said Kitty. She leaned back on her hands and said speculatively, 'Grousing Gremlins Conquer Constable…would it sell, do you think?'
Before Teddy could answer, wails from a nearby room signalled the wakefulness of one or more gremlins. This turned out to be Ben, nightmare-laden and scrubbing sleep from his eyes as he wandered slipper-shod onto the landing. He elbowed his way onto Teddy's lap with what Teddy made a healthy disregard for scalding liquids. He smelled of residual fever, cloves and lemon. He snuggled over-warm against Teddy's chest and said drowsily, 'Teddy sing?'
Kitty beamed at him. She said, the merciful ministrations of seconds ago forgotten out of mind, 'Teddy will very definitely sing.'
Teddy, encumbered with toddler and tea, briefly contemplated the murder of one Catherine Foster, police reporter. He must have solved enough cases by now to pull the thing off convincingly.
'Sing?' asked sleepy-eyed Ben, and reality reasserted itself.
There would be no murders (he'd miss Kitty) and Teddy would end by singing. Or he would if he could come up with something nice and normal that was neither about Van Anburgh's animals nor the practices of nightmare-riddled Lord Chancellors. No joy. Teddy sipped his tea, and hummed a non-committal variation of Van Anburgh in the lion's den.
'I think it's supposed to have words,' said Kitty, ever helpful.
'I tell you what,' said Teddy, shifting. 'It's officially your turn. Your story will be better for the respite. Ben, how do you feel about Kitty singing for you?'
Before Ben could register assent, he was tumbling gently into Kitty's lap.
'Helen and Sophy are in the bath,' said Teddy rising. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the bathroom as he said it. 'Keep an eye on them, yeah?'
'And what,' asked Kitty, as she struggled to accommodate the toddler perched precariously on her knees, 'will you be doing?'
'Haven't thought that far,' said Teddy.
He hadn't either. How he subsequently came to be at the kitchen table writing longhand about the first of the season's snowdrops first called Galanthus in 1753, was a thing he never afterwards could explain. Teddy supposed it had something to do with his mother, who had loved her garden, and never had the time for it now. Though, gun to his head Teddy had no real memory of the journey from upstairs landing to Carlisle kitchen, much less what detour had landed him with the materials necessary to write anything, much less anything coherent. There are twenty species…All Teddy was sure about was that he was still sat there, writing, especially late-blooming this year, only appearing after the vernal equinox, when Kitty descended on him.
'All gremlins,' she said, 'have been wrangled successfully.' …First spotted by the lychgate to Old St John's graveyard…A soapy jab to Teddy's shoulder brought him up sharply. He wondered, obliquely if this was what he routinely did to Kitty, stumbling upon her mid-story.
'Gremlins,' she reiterated, 'are wrangled.' Then, appearing to see the nonsense on snowdrops for the first time, 'What's this?'
'Nothing,' said Teddy, even as Kitty dived for it. Teddy made a grab to deter her, but it was half-hearted and ineffectual because even addle-brained and sleep-deprived Teddy recognised the futility of deterring Kitty from a trail that had caught her fancy.
'Oh,' she was saying now in tones that made Teddy's soul quail, 'Oh, The Chronicle will love this!'
'Will it?' asked Teddy, despondently. He could not for the life of him see how ramblings on snowdrops led to publishable columns. No matter. Kitty's lemon-scented, soap-spattered hands brandished his scribbling like a victor's flag.
'They will,' said Kitty, almost-sing-song in her enthusiasm. The soap bubbles were beginning to leapfrog from Kitty's fingers to the paper, smudging the ink. Kitty did not appear to notice. She said,'We can give you a weekly column. And a clever name. Something botanical. Like…' here she gesticulated inarticulately in Teddy's direction.
'It's your project, Kitten,' he said. 'Far be it from me to tread on your toes.' Kitty verily scoffed. She rattled the paper in his direction, sending soap and ink flying and said, 'I don't speak nature.' But she hummed anyway and said, as if to prove that she could, 'Jack Daw, or something.'
'Pine,' said Teddy. 'Jack Pine. I thought you were going for florals?'
'Much better!' Kitty said, and clapped her hands.
Before Teddy's gut could commit to a sense of sheer dread, the door swung open and in came the Inspector with Judith, the Doc, Faith and the others bringing the smell of nascent greenery and pines with them. Not before time, either.
'Everything all right?' asked Faith, taking in what must surely be the perplexing tableau of a crowing Kitty and his own discomfited state of existence.
'Teddy,' said Kitty, before Teddy could say anything at all, 'is going to write for The Chronicle.' The Doc guffawed, the Inspector looked alarmed, and Teddy made faint but ineffectual noises of protest, see further the uselessness of deterring a persistent Kitty from her goal.
'Your gremlins,' he said instead to the incoming party, 'have muddled her brain.'
There was laughter all round as coats were shed and scarves unwound. Mara squeezed his shoulder in thanks, and Faith said something broadly appreciative. Mindful of gremlins the Inspector began to sing at hushed decibel what sounded like This particularly rapid unintelligible patter is seldom understood, so it doesn't really matter!
And didn't that just sum the evening up, Teddy thought. Dominoes, magic mirrors, and botanical ramblings that Kitty was even now turning into a column. Judith Carlisle, a thousand times bless her, stuck a cup of warm, spiced tea in front of Teddy. It smelled of cinnamon and sugar, and was the colour of ripe horse chestnuts.
He sipped at it gratefully, listening with half an ear as the others dissected that evening's production. It felt good after the chaos of the evening to let someone else order the universe. Even if ceding control meant newspaper schemes and operettas revolving with improbable prominence around Basingstoke, manners and aristocratic ghosts. Mad, improbable scenarios, but none more mad and improbable than the certain knowledge he'd do it again when they next asked. That was just the way the mad, improbable world turned.