Boom Town

By Vita Tugwell

Petticoat Katie has just about got the hang of keeping eighty-eight monkeys fed, watered and typing trashy novelettes in Piccadilly. Then her on-off paramour disappears from the Cabinet of Curiosities leaving a cryptic telegram and a frustrating gap in her affections.
What she needs is a distraction.
And that's where the People's Petticoat comes in.
Soon she's mixing with occultists in Pimlico and Suffragettes in Mayfair while her housemates go head-to-head in a competition to invent the folding bicycle without, hopefully, blowing up the neighbourhood.
Petticoat Katie & Sledgehammer Girl return for a second hilarious helping of mayhem and peppermints in a non-stop caper bursting with outrageous characters, unlikely inventions and a surprising number of exploding lawns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lee McAulay
• Release date: Mar 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311675071

Vita Tugwell

Vita Tugwell is a 21st Century Suffragette. She lives in England in spite of its dreadful weather and light romantic comedies and partakes, often, of High Tea. She wishes ill fortune upon the person or persons unknown who have stolen her bicycle.Yes, she is currently working on the third novel in the Petticoat Katie & Sledgehammer Girl series, in between chocolate bourbons.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

The explosion rattled the windows of the houses that edged Bedford Square in the north central parish of St Giles-In-The-Fields in London, raising a cloud of pigeons from the roof of the nearby British Museum.

A fountain of earth rose from the neat lawn in the centre of the little park, sending grass and dirt and surprised earthworms showering down amongst the trees and shrubs which blocked the privacy of the park’s occupants from the streets beyond.

The park’s sole resident, an elderly vagrant with an appetite for ardent spirits which had blurred somewhat his experience of reality, roused himself from slumber on a corner park-bench and pulled a copy of yesterday’s newspaper more tightly over his head.

He heard a clanking sound, followed by a muffled thud and what might have been a metal snap-fastener being engaged. Small wheels rumbled on paving-slabs, thud-thud-thud, and an odour of hot metal and methylated spirits tugged at his taste-buds.

On the basis that such things rarely led to good fortune for a man in his position, and having been thoroughly roused by the activity, he waited until the noise of the wheels turned the corner onto the street, then threw off the newspaper. He lifted the small bag of his belongings and shuffled off out of the park in the direction of the railway embankment at Charing Cross, cursing, as he went, all mild explosions and those who produced them, expressing especial rancour at the waste of good meths.

In the silence that followed, a group of shadowy figures glided out of the darkness of the shrubbery and along the smooth tarmacadam paths leading from the park’s gates – one in each corner – to a crossroads in the centre.

An electric light flicked on in the park-keepers cottage, over by the south-western gate to the park. In the small kennel beside the cottage a dog began to bark with a high-pitched urgency that suggested its appetite for alarm was larger than its ability to deal with peril. The upstairs window of the cottage opened in a rattle of ironmongery and the crash of something fragile being knocked off the window-sill, closely followed by a curse, and a silhouette hopping around the room clutching one foot.

The shadowy group crept to the edge of a jagged scar in the easternmost quadrant of lawn. Each member bore a folded mechanical contraption slung over their shoulders, from which protruded little wheels, and one or two of the gadgets were adorned with the jutting triangular blade of a fold-up entrenching tool. A huddle of black-clad figures of youthful flexibility, their faces obscured by black muslin scarves, a murmur of discussion passed amongst them, their voices low and secretive.

The group disbanded in one single flowing movement, smooth as dancers.

One figure knelt to the ground and began to dig. Another figure unloaded a tight backpack and opened its laced-up fastening. Out came petunias in terracotta pots. A trowel, detached from a tool-belt around the figure’s waist, popped the petunias out of the little pots and into a scoop in the ground in one smooth movement.

A third figure, tall and muscular, unstrapped a long tube from its back, grunting with the effort, and pulled a drawstring around the top where a bulbous sack sprung open under the pressure of leaves and branches. The tube rattled off the root end of a little tree, and with two deft twists of a fourth figure’s entrenching tool a baby cedar was pushed into the ground, stamped into place with rubber-soled boots, and swiftly joined by two flanking cabbages.

Before the park-keeper was out of his night-gown and into his boots, the group’s work was finished. By the time he reached the door of his lodge house, lantern in hand and a cry of Who’s there? on his lips, the park was empty. His dog barked from the safety of its kennel, then fell silent.

A handful of shadowy figures glided away along the smooth paving-stones of Montague Place and Bayley Street, a curious bobbing motion their only evidence of propulsion, the pad of their rubber-soled shoes thudding in time with the rattle of tiny wheels upon the pavement.

The park-keeper swept the beam of his lantern across the lawns, disturbing nothing with its passage, his eyes scanning where it landed. With a cry that made the dog bark in alarm once more, he dropped the lantern in shock when he turned to where the explosion had been.

A new and rather surprised-looking flowerbed, almost ten feet wide, sat in the middle of the easternmost quadrant of Bedford Square’s lawn. The plants looked as though they were glad to have been abandoned. Beneath them the earthworms took one look at the handiwork of the mystery group and wriggled back underground, raw and pink and no doubt traumatised by their experience.

The pigeons from the roof of the British Museum, however, had other plans.

CHAPTER TWO

At dawn’s early light, a dozen sleeping monkeys awoke in the darkness of their fairground tent to the sound of a half-naked man creeping into their accommodation. The pale skin of his torso was studded with dark patches which had puckered in the chill morning air outside the tent, and the monkeys watched in silence as he closed the tent aperture behind him to keep in the warmth.

He glided between their cages with the smooth silence of a serpent, the gloss of his pony-skin hat the only gleam apart from his eyes. He took a handful of hazelnuts from the pocket of his plaid-pattern trousers and dropped the nuts into the hopper on the front of each cage, soothing noises on his lips.

For a few moments he stood in their tent, his gaze roaming from one monkey to another, never staying long in one place, and his expression suggested he was performing complicated mental arithmetic.

He shook his head abruptly, and a little sadness tugged the corners of his mouth.

A dozen pairs of tiny brown eyes watched the man slink out of the Cabinet of Curiosities, then with a series of contented eeks, the monkeys curled up to sleep once more. Staying up until after midnight typing Shakespeare has that effect, so they say.

The half-naked man padded across the fairground leaving barefoot prints on the grass, the hems of his tight trousers brushing the dew from the tips as they flapped around his naked ankles. He passed amongst the caravans where the fairground’s human attractions lived and climbed the steps to one of the smaller wagons. At the top of the stairs he pushed the upper half of the wagon door ajar and unclipped the sneck on the lower half, then went inside.

On the wagon’s narrow bed lay a small suitcase, open, into which the half-naked man placed a set of throwing knives bound up tight in a calfskin wallet, a pair of socks and a sloshing hip-flask which smelled faintly of gin.

He removed the plaid-pattern trousers, and underneath – those of a delicate constitution are advised to look away now – he was entirely naked. He folded the trousers and put them in the case on top of everything else, then snapped the lid shut and lifted the luggage by the handle, testing not for weight but for movement. To judge by the lack of rattling, the trousers seemed to have held the other items in place.

From a drawer underneath the bed, as if it caused him extreme discomfort, the man removed a pair of acrobat’s slippers and placed them by the door of the wagon. He looked at them for a moment, as if having second thoughts, then turned back to the drawer.

The man took out a pair of plain black trousers into which he wriggled, no underwear beforehand, and fastened the button-fly to the top. The trousers were unfashionably snug.

The half-naked man removed his pony-skin top hat and pulled a sailor’s woollen sweater over his head. The rolled collar attempted to close around his slender neck, but failed, leaving a gap an inch wide all the way round, into which he stuffed a silk paisley scarf. He ran his hands down his torso from his shoulders to his hips, smoothing the sweater against his skin, writhing against the woolly itching.

This is worse than the Bed-Of-Nails, he said out loud, shuddering.

He hung the pony-skin top hat on a peg above the bed and picked up a plain black beret which he smeared onto his head in a single slick movement, then sat on the mattress next to the suitcase and pulled open a tiny drawer at the base of the cabinet opposite.

He removed a set of papers, rifled through them, and took one or two, then stuffed the rest back into the cabinet. From the drawer next to it he took out a tin – which, according to its decoration, had once held Finlay’s Finest Indian Tea – and poured out a handful of coins into the lap of his jumper. He picked out the brass threepenny bits and put them back in the tin, then counted out a specific sum of pounds in shillings and tanners and silver three-pences. He put the remainder back and locked the tin in the dresser.

There was no clock in the little wagon, so how he knew the time was a mystery, but the man stood up with an air of purpose and moved the suitcase to the door. With a shudder and a grimace of distaste, he slipped his feet into the acrobat’s slippers and bent double to tie the laces around his bony ankles. He straightened up and flexed his feet, and something about the movement suggested even those barely-there shoes were too much for comfort.

Without further ado he picked up the suitcase and left the wagon, clipping the lower door into place before the upper portion swung shut on its hinges, and slithered across the fairground towards the nearest Underground station. Had anyone taken note, they would have seen how he placed his feet in a straight line, the little suitcase held dead centre in front of him with both hands, as if he were walking an invisible tight-rope laid on the ground.

The fairground behind him slumbered on, all the animals and human entertainers asleep save for one wiry Burmese mahout having a smoke beside the elephant cage.

CHAPTER THREE

At the rear entrance to Sloth Enterprises Limited (Under New Management) in Piccadilly, London, Petticoat Katie fumbled in her coat pocket for the key to the door of the premises. Known to the Tax Man as Miss Katherine Fellowes, she was a petite woman of delicate build, and she shivered in the light breeze that whistled around the banana boxes piled high in the alleyway around her.

She wore a light jacket over an unstructured dress of the sort favoured by artists and Bohemians, but the boots on her tiny feet were sturdy. Her dark hair hung down her back, half-tied with a green ribbon which she’d saved from a box of peppermint creams, topped with a bonnet so small it was likely she’d only worn the thing to stop the neighbours from talking.

On entering the building, she waved a cheery greeting to the trio of Chinese tailors who worked in the sweatshop on the ground floor, picked up her post from the doormat and climbed the stairs to her office. She threw the post onto her desk and put the kettle on for tea, removing a lemon from her satchel, shortly followed by a small pocket-knife of the sort used by the Swiss Army to carve railway-tunnels through the Alps.

Hello, my darlings! she cried in an absent-minded fashion while she sliced the lemon.

A chorus of happy eeking replied from the large room next door, followed by the rasp of eighty-eight manual typewriters being loaded with the first sheet of paper of the day.

She slumped into the large chair behind the even larger desk which had come with the gift of Sloth Enterprises, Limited. The chair wheels skated across the linoleum just far enough that Katie was able to place her feet on the edge of the desk, which she did, and stared at the heaps of paperwork that overwhelmed the office. Behind her a bookcase groaned under the weight of first-edition paperbacks, each of them atrocious, each typed by one of the monkeys who operated the typewriters in the room next to the office.

The monkeys were the sole employees of Sloth Enterprises, Limited. Since acquiring the business, Katie had seen to their welfare with more compassion than their previous owner, the loathsome Ditto Sloth.

Her initial thoughts had been to offload them onto some remote wildlife sanctuary, but neither of the two gentlemen of her acquaintance to which she applied were able to accommodate her demands for assurance of the monkeys’ welfare. However, after she’d reduced her – ahem – staff by a dozen, she had been persuaded, by those who understood arithmetic better than she, it might be to her advantage to keep the monkeys in employment.

So she did.

She thumbed through the post, shuddering at the sight of so many bills. Accountancy was not her strong point.

Numbers did not come easy to her mind, which was not the best position to be in for the owner of a small business venture, even if said venture had been foisted upon a person unsuspecting. The previous owner, Dr Sloth, took umbrage at the entirely-justified criticism Katie thrust at him one afternoon after reading one of his atrocious novelettes, and dumped the whole business on her while he fled across the Atlantic ahead of his creditors.

Since those events Katie had been the sole proprietor of Sloth Enterprises, Limited. It made a change from her previous employment as a Fortean investigator, a not-very-successful enterprise which had at least had the beneficial effect of introducing her to Mr Scipio Jones, gentleman adventurer, of whom Katie was inordinately fond.

She sighed and finished making the pot of tea. She returned to the desk with a cuppa and began the nightmare task of opening the post, or at least slitting the envelopes, with a paper-knife in the shape of a Nepalese kukri. Maybe later she might remove the paperwork and riffle through it like a card-sharp, suppressing horror and discomfort to the best of her ability.

Or, she thought to herself as the stimulating effects of the beverage began to course through her small frame, I could go for a walk. This in itself was unusual. Her usual exercise regimen extended to crochet and trips to the corner shop for peppermint creams.

She glanced at her wristwatch and after a short spot of mental arithmetic – not her strong point, as has been noted – she finished the tea and left the office, heading for her favourite bookshop with a handful of signed copies of her latest novelettes.

...

Mornin’, Miss Fellowes, said the bookshop owner when she entered his premises. He glanced up from the morning edition of the newspaper where he was checking the football results against a pools coupon and waited until the little bell above the door had stopped clanging before he repeated the greeting.

I’ve brought you some more Penny Dreadfuls, Mr Sutin, said Katie a little breathlessly. She plonked the bundle onto the seat of a chair in front of the counter, as was the norm, and glared at the other cardboard box which took up most of the space. What’s this? she asked.

Um, he began, a laconic expression twitching at his lips, It’s a box of Penny Dreadfuls.

From a rival? she hissed. Mr Sutin, how could you?

I have a business to run, he said with a shrug which seemed to raise his knitted waistcoat around his shirt-collar. It’s the latest batch of Mabel Slaters.

Right, said Katie, her demeanour changing in an instant to one of admiration. Might I…?

He shrugged again. Be my guest.

She untied the string which kept the box closed and let the cardboard flaps spring open, then tucked her hands down the sides to grab the cheap trashy paperbacks inside. She squealed in delight at the sight of the garish covers, picking out a copy of each volume with more delicacy than the monstrosities deserved. I do like my Mabel Slaters, she said as she ran a gloved hand down the spine of the topmost book. How d’you think she produces so many? And they’re better quality than mine.

Couldn’t say, said Mr Sutin, tucking his pools pencil behind one ear and reaching into his waistcoat pocket for an Everton mint. Maybe she’s got more monkeys.

She glanced at him sideways. I’m not sure when you’re mocking me, Mr Sutin, and when you’re being serious.

You’ve only been in the business for a couple of months, he said by way of appeasement and popped the striped mint into his mouth. Can’t expect to know everythin’, can you?

Katie stared at the paperback in her hand. On the front was a picture of a milkmaid swooning into the arms of a rugged, semi-naked farmhand while in the background a barn or some other such farmyard outbuilding flamed orange against a darkening sky. She sighed. Even her covers are better than mine.

Can’t say I’d noticed, he murmured. The Everton mint seemed to be proving awkward to negotiate.

Her delight turned to exasperation once more. You don’t happen to know where I can find a good artist, do you? she asked. She felt her mouth turn down at the edges even as she spoke. This business is harder than it looks. I mean, she went on, I have eighty-eight monkeys to feed.

Did you try them at translation, like I suggested?

Still working on that, she admitted. Some time ago the bookseller had indeed suggested to her that she employ her remaining monkeys on literary pursuits of an altogether more wholesome sort than churning out Penny Dreadfuls, and she’d raided the library of a good friend for source material. It hasn’t quite produced the masterpiece I was hoping for, she went on, pondering the effects of the Bhagavad-Gita on the simian brain, But at least they sleep better at night.

Mr Sutin gave the Everton mint a hearty crunch. An’ you were goin’ to put out a magazine, if I remember correct, he said, and leaned across the counter, crossing his arms and fixing her with an astronomer’s stare. The effect was quite startling.

Katie, to disguise her reaction, turned to the row of shiny new hardback books on Mr Sutin’s shelves to her right, and gazed beyond them towards the rear of the bookshop. Therein lay the Fortean section, the second-most popular section of the official stock (after the Penny Dreadfuls), dedicated to subjects more commonly found within the pages of the Fortean Times. She of the lifetime’s subscription to that esteemed journal of the obscure and unusual frequently took refuge in that part of the bookshop.

Whenever life threw her a circumstance she found difficult to reconcile with reality, succour was always readily to hand amongst the publications of those more troubled than she. Often the account of One Man’s Struggle Against Unseen Forces Who Stole His Hair, or a guide to the measures one might take in order to Talk With Angels Like A Pro – to take just two examples of the bookshop’s more elite stock – gave Katie a feeling that there were worse things in the world to contend with than the care and education of eighty-eight monkeys.

She sighed and turned back to Mr Sutin and was relieved to see that he was no longer staring at her, but had returned to his football pools coupon while she’d been lost in reverie. Mr Sutin?

Hmm?

About this magazine, she began. I mean, what sort of thing might I deal with? All the things I’m interested in have already got magazines and journals and periodicals up the yin-yang, if you’ll pardon my Cantonese. She made a mental note to rebuke the Chinese tailors for their profanity the next time she took lunch with them.

Mr Sutin shook his head and squinted at her. Don’t even think about it, he said. The minute you try to make money out of somethin’ you love, you either stop lovin’ it or you don’t make any money. Don’t know which is worse. He sucked his teeth, having obviously finished the Everton mint.

She gave a huge sigh of exasperation and folded her arms across her flat chest. That’s the best piece of business advice anyone’s given me recently, she said. Why does it have to be so harsh?

He shrugged. He nodded towards the box of Penny Dreadfuls on the chair, eviscerated by her enthusiasm, and the small packet of signed copies she’d left of her own. You goin’ to take some of them Mabel Slaters, then?

...

On her return to the offices of Sloth Enterprises, Katie made another pot of tea and set to opening the post with renewed determination. After only two envelopes she gave up, and sat back in her chair to contemplate potential subjects for a magazine.

Of her own hobbies, crochet and Penny Dreadfuls, neither appealed to her as a periodical.

Indeed, she was already acquainted with the pages of Crochet Weekly, with its free projects to Crochet Your Own Royal Adulterer (choice of HRH Prince Rupert, His Excellency the Duke of Dalarna or Crown Prince Leopold of Schleswig-Holstein). As to its rivals, the up-market Hooked! was more to her taste – or rather skill level – as she was inclined to compare her half-hearted efforts with the elaborate, stringy serious-minded constructions in the magazine’s artful photographs.

Penny Dreadfuls, it has to be said, had lost some of their gloss in her esteem since they had become her main source of income. The idea of producing a magazine dedicated to those of her rivals, and her own paltry output, gave her the shakes. Even contemplating such a publication made her teacup rattle on the saucer in trepidation, and she shook her head to clear it.

Next door in the typing room, her authors were on their tea break. The noise of typing had been replaced by the sounds of banana skins unzipped by tiny nimble fingers and a low eeking conversation amongst the monkeys much like general office chit-chat anywhere in the metropolitan world, although Katie often wondered what they could possibly find to gossip about.

She rose from the chair and tiptoed to the door of the monkeys’ room. Peeking through a gap between door and frame, she watched them for a few moments, until a wave of sadness washed over her at their plight. It can’t be much fun being cooped up in here all the time, she thought. She pursed her lips. Even I don’t like it that much, and I can always go home, or visit friends.

At the thought of friends, her mind automatically skipped to her housemates. The redoubtable Miss Victoria Templeman, commonly known as Sledgehammer Girl on account of her manner and bearing, and Darius Fitzgerald, a man of sultry looks and such sparse build he made even Katie feel substantial, shared lodgings with her at 36a Centaur Street, Waterloo. Both were inventors of some note who nonetheless earned their crust at Mr Ansible’s Bicycle Workshop not far from the office in Piccadilly, and spent much of their spare time in the cellar at Number 36a, tinkering.

Might I produce a magazine on bicycles? thought Katie, although the notion did not appeal to her much.

The minute she thought of bicycles, her mind flooded with images – most unusually, not of athletic young men in snug-fitting garments pedalling themselves to a healthy glow, but of Victoria up to her elbows in soapsuds on the parlour rug mending punctures – and the subject paled.

In addition, Katie had spent far too many evenings accompanying her housemates to lectures at the Royal Society to even contemplate the subject of inventions. There were few athletic young men in the audience at such lectures, as she often noted, and those who might fall into one or other of those categories – young or athletic – tended towards an unhealthy complexion and even more disturbing social skills.

With a ting-ting-ting! from a grandmother clock on the wall of the typing room, the monkeys ended their tea break and returned to typing. Katie watched them for a few more minutes through the gap in the door-frame, her mind on the paperwork strewn across her desk, and resolved to engage an accountant.

In the meantime, she had work to do.

CHAPTER FOUR

Petticoat Katie arrived at the Cabinet of Curiosities in Marylebone with a paper bag filled with bananas for the monkeys, and was surprised to find the fairground on edge.

What’s the matter, Mary? she asked the formerly-Bearded Lady. Where’s Mr Camembert?

Gone to France, said Mary. Her accent, a mixture of Hungarian and north London, mangled both the vowels and the consonants when she spoke. She had a faint shadow of stubble around her jawline and across her upper lip which gave her face a sullen expression at odds with her usual fresh demeanour. In one hand she held a large china jug of the sort which is normally accompanied by a bowl and a domestic wash-stand and perhaps a little folded towel in the guest rooms of those dwellings whose owners liked to consider themselves more salubrious than the masses.

France? said Katie. She tried to hide her disappointment, but decided she couldn’t be bothered. Why?

Mary shrugged. No idea. One of the mahouts saw him this morning, and he told George to keep an eye on the monkeys.

George? said Katie, incredulous. She began to pace outside the Cabinet of Curiosities, her feet stamping on the dirt at the entrance. You mean the Barker? The man who shouts for a living?

Mary nodded. Her command of the English language might not have been perfect, but she understood emotions well enough, and Katie was expressing hers like a lighthouse expresses the message of Here-Be-Dangerous-Rocks. Mary hugged the china jug to her chest.

Well! said Katie. She tucked the bag of bananas under one arm. With the other, she gesticulated in the air. "Isn’t that just like him! Going off without so much