The Adventures Of Una Perrson Read online

  THE ADVENTURES OF UNA PERSSON

  AND CATHERINE CORNELIUS

  Michael Moorcock

  I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven. Whether it was love, or the severity of my father, the depravity of my own heart, or the winning arts of the noble Lord, which induced me to leave my paternal roof and place myself under his protection, does not now much signify: or if it does, I am not in the humour to gratify curiosity in this matter.

  Harriette Wilson, Memoirs

  Contents

  INTRODUCTION

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  PART TWO

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  Part Three

  TWENTY-FOUR

  INTRODUCTION

  A note concerning the principal characters and sources of this book.

  THE UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS of Miss Una Persson, the temporal adventuress, have been the chief source for the story which follows. These memoirs, entrusted to me some time ago and constantly added to and modified by Miss Persson, exist partly in the form of notes in her own hand, partly in the form of tape-recorded interviews between myself and Miss Persson, partly as notes taken by me after one of our many conversations. The memoirs, therefore, are discursive and unorganized, but are remarkably consistent in their details and I have used them indirectly in several novels where I have needed to write about the earlier years of this century or, indeed, the last years. Occasionally I have used them to check certain facts found in other published accounts concerning important moments in recent history and in all cases where there have been inconsistencies it has been proven that Miss Persson s record was the most objective, the most accurate.

  Only when the subject of her method of time-travel is raised does Miss Persson become a little vague. That the time-travelling often works profound and subtle changes on her character is undeniable (and there are sometimes physical changes, too) but how she achieved the ability to move easily through the years and centuries and why the changes take place are mysteries I can only hope that one day she will choose to explain. There is no doubt that a few other people share her ability (she has described it as a 'talent') including at least three members of the ubiquitous Cornelius family, that stranger figure Karl Glogauer, Lord Jagged of Canaria, and the doomed Oswald Bastable (whom my grandfather knew so well) and it is fair to assume that she has been responsible for helping some of these develop the talent — Catherine Cornelius quite obviously learned the knack from Miss Persson, with whom she has had a close friendship since adolescence. Most of my knowledge of the Cornelius family comes from Miss Persson s accounts, received in turn from Miss Cornelius; most of my information about that peculiar period of the far future known as the Age at the End of Time also comes from Miss Persson.

  Needless to say, I have often inquired about the reason for Miss Persson's rarely revealing her marvellous talent or, indeed, using it to obvious advantage, and again I have found her answers a trifle numinous; something to do with the creation of 'alternative' futures, with unwanted paradox and the tendency of Time itself to resist anachronistic events by 'spitting out' any time-traveller who might seek radically to change the course of history. This, I gather, is why a good psychic and physical disguise is necessary to the committed time-traveller; and the result is often a form of temporary amnesia where the traveller sinks so thoroughly into the spirit of the age that he or she forgets any other identity or having existed in any other period (indeed, Miss Persson has suggested to me that the ability to achieve this state might even be a crucial factor in the make-up of those who have found it possible to travel through time).

  As for the question of 'alternative' versions of our history, I am afraid that I have neither the intelligence nor the information from which to speculate; I can merely repeat in good faith what Miss Persson has told me — that a very few people are able to cross from one 'alternate' age to another and that few of those do so of their own volition (here I must cite the two volumes edited by my grandfather, published under the titles The Warlord of the Air and The Land Leviathan, for anyone wishing to consider further evidence).

  One last point: the narrative which follows is fiction insofar as I have taken liberties of interpretation, organization and speculation with Miss Persson's records, moreover the selection and therefore the bias is mine. My simple intention has been to make from the material entrusted to me an entertaining book which can be enjoyed as a work of fiction is enjoyed, and I hope that the reader will judge it in that light alone.

  Ladbroke Grove Michael Moorcock

  London

  November 1975

  PART ONE

  DEPRESSION DAYS: TAKING IT EASY

  This may be hard to believe . . . but when you're looking at this little sweetheart you're looking at Miss World. True enough, she hasn't got a proper crown—it's only an old cake decoration. And she is just eight months old. But her Mum, Pauline, will support little Layla's claim that she was born to be Miss World. That is largely on account of her Dad being Mr. World . . . Well, a girl has to make the most of her assets.

  DAILY MIRROR, 3 November 1975

  ONE

  In which we are introduced to our heroines and learn that, having rested and recovered sufficiently from the experiences of their previous adventures, they are prepared to embark upon a new series of excursions into the twentieth century.

  It was light at last.

  Jars of cosmetics rattled and perfume bottles clinked on the dressing table, pushed back towards the white-framed oval mirror by Una Persson's breakfast tray, heavy and steaming, as in some relief she let go of the handles. She crossed to the wide bow windows and jerked a cord, sending the white and black art-deco blind whizzing on its roller to reveal the sunlit shrubbery, the sloping lawn, the broad, shallow river and, beyond it, the green wooded Pocono Mountains. Two days ago the boy scouts had set up their camp on the far shore of the river. The camp was invisible from the house; Una could hear one of the scouts practising dawn bugle calls from somewhere behind the elms near the bend where the muddy Delaware was at its widest and shallowest. The sun rose over the Poconos: another cloudless day. Naked, Una stretched her fine, strong arms and fluffed at her short chestnut hair, yawning. The bugle call faltered, became a series of brief, desperate discords, then collapsed and did not begin again. The birds resumed their interrupted chorus.

  Una turned to look at Catherine Cornelius who was peacefully asleep in the midst of white sheets and primrose pillows; she was undisturbed by the sunlight which fell on her fair skin, reflected in her gleaming, near-white hair, the silver filigree rings on the fingers of her exposed left hand.

  Reflecting that she was pleased with the world this morning, Una concluded that she must be bored; then she smiled: she was becoming far too interested in the minute details of her momentary states of mind. She opened the windows and took a deep breath. The air was already very warm. In the bed Catherine stirred, drawing her hand under the sheets, awake but unwilling to wake up. Una went back to the breakfast tray, lifted it and carried it to the bed, placing it carefully near the edge, climbing back in, pulling a sheet up to her waist, reaching forward and taking the tray again to lower it onto he
r lap. She began to pour herself a cup of coffee, noticing how its smell blended so well with the smell of Catherine's skin. She unfolded the Briggstown Examiner and without glancing at the headlines turned at once to the funnies page.

  By the time Una had read 'Krazy Kat' and The Katzenjammer Kids' Catherine was on one elbow glancing over her shoulder to see how Tarzan and Flash Gordon were doing (Una had known that this would draw Catherine out of her sleep—Tarzan and the smell of coffee).

  'Coffee?'

  Una smiled as she poured another cup. Catherine rubbed at her head and sighed, trying to focus her eyes on her favourite strip. She nodded and then kissed Una's shoulder before taking the offered coffee in an unsteady hand. The cup rattled in the saucer. Catherine sat up and began to drink, her large blue eyes staring bleakly at the window. The sheet fell away from her breasts. She opened her mouth in a wide yawn.

  ‘Is it Tuesday?'

  'Yes.' Una looked at her watch. ‘It's early. Not seven.'

  'Oh, shit.' The tone of despair was profound.

  'You were asleep by eight,' said Una good-humouredly. 'You've had eleven hours.'

  It took Catherine a short while to make sense of this statement but when she did understand it she was relieved. 'Oh, well. . .'

  'You missed the boy scouts.'

  Catherine licked her lips. 'What?'

  'They were playing their bugles. Do you want the paper?'

  Catherine accepted the Examiner. Her expression was rapt as she followed the adventure strips (she could only rarely see what was amusing about the joke strips). She sipped her coffee. She relaxed; she came to life. She finished the coffee and handed the paper back. 'That's better.'

  Una folded the pages slowly, glancing at the news. 'They had a fire yesterday, in town. The general store. Not a lot of damage. There's a German rival to Ford. A popular car within the reach of everyone's pocket.'

  'Bullshit,' said Catherine, and then, self-consciously, 'Life's too bloody short for bullshit.'

  Una had not really been listening. 'Go back to sleep, if you like. I've . . .'

  ‘Sorry, but it is a bit early.' Catherine hugged her, kissed her cheek. Una scarcely flinched. She returned the kiss.

  'Have you any plans for today?' Catherine swallowed the remains of her coffee.

  'Not really. Maybe finish off the bit of writing I started.'

  'Your "memoirs"?'

  'And you?'

  'I don't know. Read, I suppose. Lounge on the lawn. Improve my tan.' Catherine held her arms in front of her and inspected them. She was already very brown. 'Are you all right?'

  'A trifle bored.'

  'You're sure that's it?'

  'Yes. Why?'

  'You seem distant.'

  'I am. But it's just boredom.'

  'As long as you're not brooding. Proper holidays always are boring, of course. That's what they should be, shouldn't they?'

  Una laughed. 'I know.' She was grateful for Catherine's common sense which so often saved her from her moods of morbid introspection. Una hugged her friend, this time with spontaneous affection. Catherine looked vaguely surprised, but she was pleased. She sighed.

  As Una got up Catherine asked, 'Do you feel like another Adventure, then?'

  'I suppose I do. I'm trying to curb the impulse. I swore I'd have a good long rest.' She opened the door to the landing. 'I'll see what a lukewarm shower does for me.'

  The landing was bright with light from the huge window which ran almost from roof to floor on two levels of the big wooden house. The bathroom, pink, black and silver in a local decorator's idea of art deco, was comparatively dark. The plumbing began to groan as Una turned on the hot tap for the shower; a spurt of steaming hot water was immediately followed, as usual, by a gush of tepid, rusty liquid. Philosophically, Una stepped under it. The business man who had originally bought the place as a summer retreat had crashed with all the others in 1929, before he could make the improvements he had planned. As his chief creditor, Una had inherited it and had left it pretty much as she had found it. If he hadn't made his thirty-storey jump a little ahead of the fashion Una would have given it back to him. She felt it was only right, therefore, not to make any radical changes. The poor man had no other monument. She finished her shower and began to dry herself with a large brown bath-towel, singing a song which, in another of her roles, she had made popular. This led her to wondering what had happened to her old lover and manager Sebastian Auchinek who, by now, must have become mixed up in the Zionist politics that would cause him so much anguish in the years to follow. She considered this mood of sympathy a dangerous one for her at the moment and tried to stop the process of association which brought memories of other lovers, other romantics, other victims. It would be much healthier, for one thing, if she considered herself a victim; after all, so many had betrayed her. On the other hand it was rather difficult to sustain that attitude of defensive bitterness, although it was an attitude which had enabled her to make her last escape to this haven. She must be in a healthy state of mind, of course, if she was thinking in these terms; it meant that the holiday had done what she had intended it to do—it had restored her sense of perspective. As yet, though, she was not sure that she welcomed the restoration. It would mean giving up that comfortable ambience of conspiracy which she had been sharing with Catherine, who had taken this holiday for the same reasons as herself—because she had become, as she put it, pissed off with men. It was probably more important for Catherine to maintain her cynicism, since there was far less of it in her character than was sometimes good for her. There again perhaps it was equally unhealthy to take towards Catherine an attitude of maternalism which surely indicated a lack of respect for Catherine's own identity. Checking herself before she went any deeper into such questions, Una burst again into song, this time a bawdy revolutionary ballad concerning the inadequate sexual proficiency of some soon-to-be-forgotten Mexican general. It never failed to make Catherine laugh and now, as Una swept grandly back into the bedroom, Catherine enthusiastically joined in the chorus with an accent which only Spaniards found charming. She was standing by the window, wrapped in a silk kimono tied around the waist with one of the ex-owner's yellow cravats. Una donned pants and bra with a flourish, climbed into a pair of jazzy lounging pyjamas, still singing, and strode to where the tray lay upon the bed. Picking up the tray she marched out of the room, down the curve of the stairs and through the long, wide living room to the kitchen, washing the dishes under the impetus of what remained of the final verse and was able to dry the last cup with an 'Ole which was decidedly off-key.

  Her note-book was on the kitchen table where she had left it the night before, having written a couple of pages after Catherine had gone to bed. She controlled the slight sense of panic she felt on realizing that she had left the clasp unlocked. She went to the cupboard where she kept the key, took the key down and locked the book. Through the kitchen window she could see the dusty Duesenberg parked near the back door. The Duesenberg was also part of her inheritance. Later, in the nineteen-fifties, she would give it to Catherine's brother Jerry. She considered a drive in the hills, but the thought produced an agorophobic twinge and she decided that it would not be a good idea. It was not really agorophobia at all, she told herself, but an unwillingness to meet anyone, no matter how briefly; an encounter with one of the residents of this period and place would require a disguise and she still did not feel fit enough to relish such artificiality for its own sake. At this, she became reconciled to enjoying the rest of her retreat and she wandered back into the living room to take down one of the late-nineteenth-century bound volumes of Life magazine (in those days a sort of American Punch) and continue through the French windows, out onto the sweet-smelling lawn where butterflies were already at work on the bright assortment of roses, hollyhocks and sunflowers. There was a movement in the shrubbery: she caught a glimpse of a deer galloping through the broken fence and into the forest on the other side. And that, thought Una with satisfaction, was what 1
933 had to offer that you wouldn't be able to get in 1983 (indeed, by 1980 this particular stretch of the valley would have been flooded to make a boating resort and nearby Briggstown itself would be under water). She sat down on the battered wrought-iron bench in the middle of the lawn. The bench's white paint was peeling to reveal a more durable layer of green. As she leafed through the dusty pages of Life, Una picked unconsciously at one of the larger blisters until the grass beneath was littered with little white spots, like confetti.

  From inside the house came the sound of the pianola being pedalled, a Strauss waltz which lasted only a few bars before Catherine became bored. There was silence, then Una heard the familiar sounds of selections from The Merry Widow, Catherine's favourite. Una realized that she had left her cigarettes in the kitchen.

  For some reason Una chose not to go back the way she had come and instead walked right round the house to the kitchen door, getting her cigarettes and lighter from the table and leaving again, passing the windows of the living room where Catherine, still in her kimono, sat with her knees pumping up and down at the pianola, her lips soundlessly forming the words of the song she was playing.

  Life lay open on the bench, but she ignored both as she wandered on down to the river bank, lighting a cigarette and looking to see if there were any signs of the scouts' tents, but they were well camouflaged. Save for a glimpse of khaki, they remained invisible. Something organic and tangled went past, drifting swiftly on the current. Una shivered and refused to look at it. She took a deep drag on the Sherman's and then threw the thin brown cigarette into the water. The music had stopped.

  Turning, Una saw Catherine come wandering down the lawn towards her. So that Catherine should not catch sight of the disappearing refuse on the river, Una walked rapidly back, calling, 'Hello!' She said: 1 saw a deer!'