Teacups & Tentacles | ONC 2022

2. There's Still Hope

Even though she'd rubbed down the binocular's copper fittings with matt polish, Amelia Tooting-Spur still had the nagging feeling they were far too shiny. And if that was the case, then she was far too exposed behind the lace curtains of the upstairs salon window and her spying likely to be discovered forthwith.

"Poppycock," she said to herself and pressed a lever on the side of the device before lifting it up to her eyes.

With a click and a whirr, one of the five 'distanced' lenses rotated into place, snapping the ear of the newspaper boy plying his trade down on the corner of the street so close, she could see coal dust glinting in the folds.

"Too close. And once again, Amelia, poppycock." Another lever was depressed and the viewing tube of the binoculars went dark as a new lens exchanged places with the previous one. Now a filthy cheek, filthy cap, filthy hair and the top of a filthy jacket joined the filthy ear as the entire side of the newspaper boy's head and shoulders appeared in crystalline sharpness.

With a grunt of approval, Amelia removed her attention from the guttersnipe and sent it up towards the row of three story, white stone-clad houses opposite. A steam driven Glockenspiel decorated the facade of one, and a whirling glass kaleidoscope another. The window she fixed on was on the second floor, a jaunty arrangement of blue-veined tulips in a large vase sat on the window sill.

The vase zoomed within arm's reach.

"Forgot to replace the water again, Gertrude. Tsk tsk." Amelia mumbled, as she slid the copper adjuster on the top of the casing to "background". The vase blurred as the room behind it  lightened and carved itself out with more clarity. 

The massive sideboard covered with all manner of useless curios took up the far wall like the private museum of an indecisive collector. The fluffy tops of ostrich feathers – which Amelia knew to be in a bronze container in the centre of a couch table – and the tasselled pillows of the couch itself were just visible.

With a quick jerk to the right, Amelia focused in on the next window over. A mantlepiece with a stampede of framed sepia portraits around the foot of a magnificent ebony and copper self-winding clock from Featherwinds & Whistleburr came into view.

Amelia began to wheeze like a omnibus engine heating up and pin-pricks ran down both arms as she searched the far left corner for the secret she'd squeezed into place among the portraits the last time her sister, Rose, had dragged her across the street for one of Gertrude's insufferable afternoons at home.  

Was the secret still there, or had it been found and removed? 

 Ah!  Amelia spotted the curved button top of the secret exactly where she'd left it. The omnibus engine of her lungs slowed to a sighing halt and in her mind she saw a moving picture of Gertrude turning the small wooden object over and over in her hand, a crease of confusion furrowing her brow, her head shaking "no" ever so slightly...

Amelia's secrets were meant to stay in their hidey places for years, unnoticed, invisible, until one day the flick of a maid's duster or the tail of a careless cat dislodged it, leaving the mistress or master of the house scratching their heads. What was this now? How had it got there? 

Or at least that's what Amelia hoped. In reality, she'd probably never really know.

One thing she did know for certain and that was at least Rose hadn't insisted on her establishing an afternoon at home herself after the initial dust of her arrival at 12 Rustlespoon Street had settled. Attending Rose's own Tuesday afternoons of drivel with buns was torture enough. As if she had anything to say to the corseted, opera-glass spying ladies of Islington, or them to her.