Jonathan’s father turned round, saying, “I need Elio back in five minutes exactly,” and went away in the same storming way that he had come, with his robes streaming, and banged the door behind him. Jonathan’s mother took pale Elio aside and began telling him what she needed. She seemed quite flustered, but Elio nodded calmly. He had a little square thing in his hand and punched buttons on it respectfully as Jonathan’s mother talked. It must have been a way of taking notes.
“What do I call them?” Vivian whispered urgently to Jonathan while his mother talked.
“Call who what?” said Jonathan.
“Your parents. Auntie what? Uncle which?” Vivian whispered.
“Oh, I see!” Jonathan whispered. “Her name’s Jenny Lee Walker. You’d better say Jenny. He’s called Ranjit Walker. Most people call him Sempitern, but you’re supposed to be a Lee, so you could call him Ranjit.”
Ranjit, Vivian tried out to herself. Uncle Ranjit. It was no good. She just could not imagine herself calling that alarming man anything. Jenny was better. She could manage that. But she did wonder if Jonathan was very brave, or just mad, to think of deceiving either of them.
Jonathan’s mother – Jenny, Vivian told herself – turned back to them, smiling. “That’s all seen to then!” she said. “Leave your coat and hat and your luggage here, Vivian dear, for Elio to see to, and run off and enjoy Time City with Jonathan – Or—” She looked worried again. “Do you need anything to eat?”
“No thanks,” Vivian said, and once more found herself lying by telling the truth. “I had – I had sandwiches to take on the train.”
Then they were free to go back along the coloured marble floor. Vivian went feeling rather shaky, but Jonathan walked with a bouncing, lordly stride, smiling broadly. “There! We got away with it!” he said. “I knew we would. This way.”
He swung towards the line of pointed windows. They clearly were doors. One in the middle flapped aside to let them out, as if it knew they were coming – or Vivian thought it was opening for them, until she saw that two people, a man and a woman, were coming in from the square outside. Vivian stopped politely to let them come in first. But, to her astonishment, Jonathan took no notice of them at all. He went on walking through the opening as if the two people did not exist. And to Vivian’s utter horror, he walked straight through both of them, the man first and then the woman, as if they were made of smoke.
“How – who – how did you do that?” she gasped, as the man and woman walked past her through the hall, looking quite whole and undamaged. “Who – who are they?”
“Those? You don’t want to take any notice of those,” Jonathan said. “They’re only time-ghosts.”
Vivian’s still-shaky legs nearly folded under her. “Ghosts!” she squawked.
Jonathan took Vivian’s elbow and towed her down a bank of stone steps into the cobbled square outside. “Not really ghosts,” he said. “Time-ghosts – and you’re supposed to know about them, so don’t make such a noise! This square is called Time Close. All the important people live here. That’s Lee House over there where you were supposed to have been born.”
How can anyone get used to ghosts? Vivian thought, looking where Jonathan pointed. Lee House was the tallest building on the right-hand side of Time Close. It confused Vivian a little because it was built mostly of metal in a most modern-looking style, and yet she could see that it was very old from the gigantic flowering tree trained up the front of it. The tree had reached the straight metal roof and bent across it, and gone on to trail huge branches over the newer houses on either side. And these houses were built of mellow pink brick and weathered old wood in a way that ought to have been ancient. More confusing still, the Annuate Palace, when Vivian turned to look back at it, was simply a very large house built in a style she had never seen before.
“Then tell me about these ghosts, if I’m supposed to know,” she said.
“Time-ghosts,” said Jonathan. “They happen because the City keeps using the same piece of space and time over and over again. If a person does the same thing often enough, they leave a mark in the air, like the ones you just saw. Habit-ghosts, we call them. There’s another kind called once-ghosts – I’ll show you some of those later. They get made—”
But the explanation was interrupted by Sam, who came shuffling gloomily away from the fountain in the middle of the Close. He was in orange pyjamas today and his shoelaces were trailing off both feet. “I got caught. I got hit,” he said, sighing gustily. His face was rather blotchy, as if he might have been crying. “I was tired,” he said. “I took the keys back this morning instead.”
“Oh no!” exclaimed Jonathan. His lordly air vanished and he looked horrified. “I told you not to! You mean they found out?”
“No, I covered up,” Sam said. “My dad came in just as I was putting the keys back, and I pretended I was just taking them that moment for a joke. But he hit me and locked his study. We won’t be able to get at them again.”
“That’s all right!” Jonathan said, much relieved. “We won’t need the keys again. I got V.S. passed off as Cousin Vivian, so we’re quite safe.”
He was far too relieved to show any sympathy for Sam. Vivian felt she ought to make up for it by being sorry for Sam herself, but she was too worried on her own account. This meant there was no chance of forcing Jonathan to send her back to Cousin Marty by the way she had come. She would have to make them send her through another time-lock – and soon. She knew she could not pretend to be Cousin Vivian for long. Someone was bound to find out.
Jonathan did not seem to be worrying about that at all. “Tie your shoes up,” he said confidently to Sam. And when Sam had done so, with much heavy breathing and some cross muttering, Jonathan led the way through an archway in the lower corner of Time Close into a big empty square beyond. “This is Aeon Square,” he said, waving a lordly hand.
There were huge buildings all round the square. But Vivian was a Londoner and used to tall buildings. What impressed her more was that, in the same confusing way as the buildings in Time Close, the ones which should have been ultra-modern seemed to be the oldest there. There was a great turreted place that might have been a department store filling all the right-hand side of Aeon Square, and it was made entirely of glass – glass twisted and wrought into a hundred strange futuristic shapes. But Vivian could see, even from this distance, that the glass was pitted and worn and obviously as old as the hills, while the nearer buildings with stone towers looked much newer.
“What do you think of it?” Jonathan said, clearly expecting her to marvel.
“It’s not much bigger than Trafalgar Square without Nelson and the lions,” Vivian said, refusing to be overawed. “But it’s awfully clean.” This was true. There was no soot or grime. The sunlight slanted on clear grey stone and sparkled green on the glass, or came dazzling off the golden roofs and domes that crowded up from behind the buildings at the end of the square. Vivian looked up into the soft blue and white sky as she followed Jonathan across the wide space and found no chimneys and no smoke. “Why is there no smoke?” she asked. “And don’t you have pigeons?”
“No birds in Time City,” Sam said, stumping along behind.
“And we don’t use fossil fuels,” Jonathan said, striding ahead. “We use energe functions instead. This is Faber John’s Stone.”
Right in the middle of the square, there was a big slab of bluish rock let into the whiter paving-stones. It was very worn from being walked on. The golden letters that had once made up quite a long inscription had been almost wholly