One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (9 page)

“We really mustnae leave the bairns too long with Melissa and Susanne,” she said. “Let’s away back to them.”

Emily parked her torch on one of the suitcases, and lifted the front edge of the canvas again. Then, on hands and knees, she peered out into the hall, like a rabbit emerging from its bolt-hole. The singing painter was standing on the scaffolding, his feet wide apart on the planks. He was clutching his stomach with one hand, while the other brandished a dripping paintbrush skyward. He was trying unsuccessfully to sing a high note. Emily shrugged the tarpaulin off her shoulders, and wriggled free. Hettie joined her in the corridor.

“Tonight,” whispered Emily, confidentially, as they walked down the stairs to the entrance hall, “I shall come back with Melissa and we’ll start work.”

“Tonight you’ll be in bed,” corrected Hettie, firmly. “You’ve done more than enough, already. We caused the trouble. It’s only right that we should be the first to take the risk.”

“But, my dear girl, you can’t work on your own,” protested Emily. “I think a better plan would be for the two of us--as we’re the oldest--to come in here together tonight. We can help each other, and if anyone’s going to get caught, it’ll be us.”

“You dinnae have to come,” said Hettie, weakening.

“Pish ... wouldn’t miss this sort of a skylark for anything,” giggled Emily. “I feel younger already. Fifty-five at the most.”

“And what do we do about the bairns?”

“Melissa’s free,” replied Emily.

“They’re at it again, Barthie,” said the stout, elderly woman. She peered round the tubbed bay tree at the edge of her roofgarden and stared down at Randy and Melissa lying sun-bathing, two floors below on the neighbouring penthouse patio.

“Ah, gee,” said Barthie. He buried the top of his tanned scalp even deeper into the comic section of his paper.

“They’ve got no shame, those two,” said the fat woman. “He’s kissing her.”

“Sure.”

“She’s kissing him back. She’s real loose. Oh, gee, Barthie..

“Yeah?”

“He just undid her bra. He really did. Oh, lord, he just took her bra off.”

“Sure, Freda.”

“Oh, papa, you should see this. He’s pushing her down on the sun-bed. He’s kissing her again. Lord, he’s kissing her boobs. She’s biting him. Sure as God, she’s biting him.”

“Yes, Freda, hon.” The paper rustled.

“Oh, goshsakes. Now he . . . he’s pulling down her pants. Right down. They’re round her knees. Oh, God ... he’s looking at her. The hussy, she likes it. She just kicked the pants off. She’s lying there. Oh, Jesus, Barthie, he’s got his hands on her.”

“Sure, Freda.”

“Oh, my, Barthie. He’s kissing her again. All over, this time. Her stomach. My gosh!”

“Yeah?”

“Now she’s got her hands in his swim shorts. God, Barthie. She’s got them off. She’s scratched him. I can just see the marks on his back. Oh, God!”

“Sure... oh, God.”

“She’s got hold of him. That lousy little hooker! He’s on her, now. Christ Almighty, they’re doing it! Here, look . . . come here, look. Jesus, God, they’re doing it. In public, too! Come up here, you lazy crumb. Come here and look.”

Freda beckoned him, wildly. Barthie wheezed out of the canvas chair.

“The glasses ... Jesus ... look here through the glasses.” She held the binoculars toward him.

“Freda, hon,” said Barthie, wearily. “I guess it’s time you and me went inside.”

“You gonna manage, Barthie?”

Barthie pondered. “I guess maybe. But, hon, it’s the second time this week.” Barthie was sweating. He looked forward to the cold of winter, when people didn’t sunbathe on rooftops.

Randy bent over and kissed Melissa’s shoulder. Fluffy blonde hairs along her spine glinted in the sunlight.

“This is how I like to spend my mornings.’*

“But it’s afternoon.”

Randy looked at his watch. “And my afternoons, too.”

A phone buzzed.

“Goddammit,” moaned Randy. He reached out and selected a telephone from the collection on the iron table. “R.A.J. here ...” He continued to caress Melissa with his free hand. “Oh,” he handed her the telephone. “It’s for you.” He lowered his head again and kissed the gentle curve near her armpit. She wriggled.

“Hello, Melissa here. Oh, yes, Nanny Hettie. Yes, of course I will. No, he won’t mind. Certainly. Around four. Good-bye.”

Randy ran his tongue gently along the slim muscle that led him, almost by accident, to her breast. “You taste salty.” He bit her.

“Ouch!” She slapped him. “You’re a sadistic little boy.” She grabbed his arm and bit back. Randy squirmed. “I have to go out and babysit this evening,” she told him.

“Hell,” he said. “I’ll get frustrated.”

“And I’m staying the night at Nanny Hettie’s.”

“Can’t,” said Randy.

“Can. It’s my day off, remember. You’ll have to put yourself to bed.”

Randy sighed, then his face brightened. “You going to arrange a baby-sitter for ME? A cuddly 39-22-35 blonde will do fine.”

Melissa bit him again. He caught her, and they wrestled on the sun-bed.

”Once more, before you go,” he murmured. He slid his hand slowly from her shoulder to her breast, then down to her thigh. And glanced up, curiously, at the bay tree on the neighboring rooftop.

Just before the museum closed for the night, Hettie and Emily walked in through the entrance hall again, and climbed the staircase to the dinosaur gallery. Hettie’s stout figure was even grosser. She was pregnant with the sixty feet of rope she had wrapped round her waist.

“If it’s like this, then we’re glad we never had children ourself,” she muttered.

“What’s the matter?” asked Emily. She carried a large hatbox, heavy with tools and other pieces of equipment.

“It’s that rope. It scratches, and it feels like it’s shrunk, too. We cannae breathe.” Her face was strained.

“Hold out a little longer, my dear,” Emily encouraged. “We’re nearly there. One more flight.”

The dinosaur hall was deserted. The painters had left.

Emily looked quickly along the dusky corridor. There was no one in sight. She held a finger to her lips, then listened. It was quiet. She pointed toward the edge of the canvas sheet.

“Right. Let’s get under it.”

She burrowed her way into the dark interior. Hettie watched the canvas hump until the old nanny was obviously through, then she followed.

“My word, this really is romantic,” said Emily, her nose twitching happily as Hettie crawled into the beam of her torch. “Sort of like being swallowed by the dinosaur.”

She shone her light upward. The stalactite ribs seemed to move in the wavering ray.

“We hope it’s going to be safe in here,” said Hettie, huskily. She gasped as the flashlight moved and rested on the beast’s great head. She couldn’t suppress a shudder.

“Stop it, girl. It’s been dead for two hundred million years.”

“We dinnae care about that,” said Hettie. “Being dead two hundred million years only makes it more dead.”

Emily swung the torch round the tent.

“Everything else is okay. Nobody’s touched the suitcases. Help me unpack.” The cases seemed to contain everything. Cooking equipment, rags, dusters, washing material, blankets, sleeping bags and inflatable mattresses.

Emily adjusted her wandering pince-nez and hung an electric lantern from the ribs of the dinosaur, and switched it on. “Nobody’ll see this through the canvas,” she said.

She unbuttoned her uniform. Hettie was surprised that her friend’s underclothes were a pair of jeans, rolled up above the knees, and a tattered old sweater.

“You’d better change before you get your uniform dirty,” Emily advised. “I put some overalls for you in that pack near the air-bed.”

She took a screwdriver from the hatbox and examined the tail of the monster. “You use the wrench.”

Hettie looked in the hatbox.

“What’s a wrench?” she asked.

Emily moaned, came over and found it for her.

“You use it like this,” she said. “You adjust it by turning this bit until it fits the nuts you want to undo. Now, let’s hurry. We’ve got to get as much work done as possible tonight.”

Hettie fiddled for a while. There was a loud clang.

“Shhh.” Emily’s voice was a stage-whisper. “What’s the matter now?”

“We cannae undo any of the square things. It’s impossible. They’re all much too tight.”

“Here, let me try.” Emily expertly re-adjusted the wrench and fitted it on the nearest nut. It loosened. “There you are, no trouble.”

“Oh.” Hettie noticed that the nuts turned in an anticlockwise direction.

Once she had mastered the technique, the job seemed fairly easy. Whenever one of the backbones was free, they lifted it down carefully and laid it to one side of the tent.

Emily worked quietly away, the perspiration mingling with the dust on her face. She looked like an eccentric professor at work in the burial chamber of a pyramid. The work became more difficult later, when they had to stretch to reach the ascending vertebrae. As the back arched higher, the bones became larger and heavier. Hettie consulted her watch. It was midnight.

“Let’s try a leg. Then we’ll call it a night,” said Emily.

“You sound as though you’re ordering an Aberdeen fried chicken, not dismembering a dinosaur,” sighed Hettie. But, above her, Emily had already begun loosening the huge thighbone. She grunted. There was a creaking noise.

Hettie looked up quickly, in time to see her dangling from the top of the thighbone as it swayed away from the main structure.

The metal stay supporting it bent slowly, and gently deposited Emily back on the ground.

“Great grief, I thought I was about to become the first person killed by a brontosaurus for two hundred million years,” said Emily.

“Och, you will be if you try doing things on your own.”

“That’s enough, I suppose,” said Emily. Her nose was twitching at a lower speed than usual. She was tired. “It’s hard work filleting a dinosaur.” She looked behind her at a neatly stacked heap of bones, then sat on one of the largest vertebrae. “We’ll wash and then turn in.”

The two nannies cleaned themselves as best they could with the damp sponges Emily had packed in the toilet hold-all. Then they snuggled down in their sleeping bags. A few minutes later they were asleep.

A clattering woke them. It was followed by an off- key rendering of “Granada.” The painters were back in the hall.

“What’s the time?”

Emily fumbled for her glasses and peered at her luminous pocket watch. There was no light beneath the canvas, even in daytime.

“Eight thirty.”

“We’ve got to be away soon,” hissed Hettie.

It took them twenty minutes to tidy up the interior of the tent. Then they washed themselves again, donned their uniforms, and slid out from under the canvas. The public entrances were still closed, so Emily led the way down to the staircase leading to the basement. She walked confidently toward the smell of food in what appeared to be the kitchen. There were several men inside. She poked her head round the comer just as a chef appeared.

“Have you got any jobs going?” she asked.

“Guess not, lady,” he said. “Try later when the canteen manager gets here.”

“How do we get out, then?”

“The way you came in,” said the man.

“I’m lost. I can’t remember.”

The man pointed down the corridor.

The two friends made their way past the tinsmith’s shop and the carpentry bay, to the shipping department. Emily paused. “Wait for me. Just a minute,” she told Hettie. She looked around to make sure they were alone, then she reached through the service window of the office and snatched a handful of paper.

Hettie was horrified. “Emily Biddle, that’s stealing.”

“Borrowing,” corrected Emily. “They’re only sticky labels. I’ve got to have some for part of the plan.”

Hettie pushed open the exit doors and the two nannies stood on the loading ramp, in the morning sunlight.

Emily blinked cheerfully. “I told you . . . it’s going to be easy.” Her face twitched and wrinkled as she grinned. Her pince-nez popped off the bridge of her nose. She twirled them on the end of their cord and started to sing.

“Rule Britannia... Britannia rules the waves.”

Lui Ho looked at the row of mildewing police uniforms hanging along the wall of the Tse Eih Aei sewer headquarters. He hoped the nanny-ladies wouldn’t take too long over the robbery. Not only did he consider the wearing of capitalist uniforms offensive to the People’s Republic, but he regarded the hire fees of five dollars a day as extortionate.

“Line up,” Lui Ho ordered his men, who were changing back into their loincloths.

“Reports, please,” he demanded.

“We walked the beats, like New York policemen, just as you suggested, Comrade Leader. A most enlightening experience,” Sam Ling announced.

“So?” demanded Lui Ho.

“We kept the people away from the museum exactly as planned.” Sam Ling pulled out a notebook and began to read. “Nine forty-five--moved on young couple committing sinful offence on public bench in front of museum main entrance. Nine fifty-one--found same young couple three benches farther along road . . . reminded them of obligation to state. Ten thirty-seven --dispersed small crowd gathered to watch behaviour of the young couple on grass of planetarium. Eleven thirty-eight--stopped car and issued severe warning on dangers of careless driving...”

Lui Ho held up his hand. “You did what?” he asked, incredulously.

“Issued severe warning,” repeated Sam Ling. His moustache smiled at his boss. “A small joke of mine, Comrade Leader. The car was carrying the chief Soviet representative to an emergency meeting of the United Nations.”

Fat Choy blinked the tears out of his eyes and dabbed his handkerchief at the thin line of blood dribbling from his nose on to the front of his police uniform. He sat on the low wall of Central Park, opposite the museum entrance, until the waves of dizziness stopped and he could see properly again.

The five nannies had all arrived and were gathered, like a clutch of white hens, at the bottom of the museum steps.