Original: "Ach du lieber Himmel!" Slash.
Summary: Recently back from their latest Steampunk Adventure, gentleman adventurers Drs Eamonn Currie and Conrad August Himmel attempt (poorly) to re-integrate into London high society. with two illustrated plates.
Warnings: Bit over length. Tea-time violence, steam-powered lawn ornaments, live unicorns, and the German language.
Ach du lieber Himmel!
‘Connie, you wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had. Miss Elisabeth Harding tried to brain me over tea with the table-service,’ Eamonn announced, stalking into the small workshop at the back of their flat to address a pair of impeccably-shod feet. The man presumably attached to them was burrowed into a giant mechanical pigeon, which Eamonn took a moment to hope did not represent the latest fashion in outboard boating.
‘Ach du lieber…’ the copper pigeon grumbled. Herr Doktor Conrad August Himmel was welcomed into the better circles of London society by dint of being a renowned inventor, although it was still considered in poor taste that he hadn’t contrived to be a philologist, like a respectable German gentleman. (Eamonn Currie, PhD, late of Edinburgh and the Galápagos Islands, was beyond redemption.) ‘…Really?’
‘Oh aye,’ Eamonn enthused. ‘Dr Boothe-Davies, the great boob, mentioned our latest exploits over tea. The adventure was too much for her heart. When she came back round she was utterly addlepated.’
‘…The poltergeist?’ the pigeon speculated, after another long, skeptical moment. A soot-ringed blue eye came up to regard Eamonn from within the pigeon’s beak. ‘It was haunting a candelabra.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Eamonn begrudged. ‘It didnae bite you.’
The pigeon sniffed expressively.
‘And no, not the candelabra. He meant for me to describe how we killed the kelpie.’ A crash issued from the innards of the pigeon, as though the man and his spanner had been seized by an inspiration to reenact the battle upon the pigeon’s gizzards.
‘Connie?’ Eamonn called, only dimly concerned. A man who had once bested a steam-powered flamingo was hardly to be overcome by a copper pigeon.
”Connie” backed as bidden out from the pigeon’s buffed breast, either coughing out some oily phlegm or muttering to himself in German. It was difficult to say which.
He settled back against a wing to regard Eamonn with the baleful look of a harassed genius permanently resigned to the impositions of idiots. Eamonn, far from being hurt, only regretted that he had never been trained to achieve equal excellence in the art of condescension. Although an eminent ichthyologist and member in good standing of the Royal Society, Eamonn only had his national tendency towards outrage to support him when his opinions on tropical fish were challenged.
‘And did you tell the lady?’ Conrad inquired curiously.
‘I never! It hardly becomes a gentleman to tell a lady what he has done in his shirtsleeves.’
Conrad coughed eloquently into the cogs.
‘Conrad! Cor! What a mind you have!’ Eamonn had the poor taste to redden a shade not quite identical to, but rather too close for comfort, his hair. As usual, Conrad observed with long-suffering tolerance, the same horrifically ginger hair was not only provokingly uncovered, but moreover conflicted with a farcically aquamarine cravat and tartan waistcoat. The entire effect was doubtless calculated to force Dr Booth-Davies to carve out his own eyes with his sherbet spoon. Eamonn’s grasp of fashion was spiteful at best and a menace at worst, but at least Conrad had got him to stop exposing his knees to the unsuspecting public since they returned to London from the Highland kelpie kerfuffle. Conrad would have suspected Eamonn of dyeing his hair red, just to upset people, if he hadn’t empirical evidence that everything was, so to speak, tip-top.
‘But that wasn’t the thing of it,’ Eamonn persisted, coiled as a copper spring, or, given the state of his hair, the angry ghost of abandoned knitting. ‘He didn’t care about the kelpie. Boothe-Davies got it into his daft head to tell her we’d meant to bait a unicorn.’
Conrad raised his eyebrows slowly, looking as self-possessed as ever, even beneath the pompadour the engine oil had made of his hair. ‘We’re professionals. We know the difference between a magical horse and a phantom water-pony.’
‘Well that’s what I said, but it didnae matter, Boothe-Davies was only insinuating that a unicorn wouldn’t come within kicking distance of us. The bloody bastard came over all “Poor Dr Himmel, he wouldn’t have had any trouble with it last year”.’
Conrad dismissed the threatened exposure with a wave of a pigeon foot, smiling languidly. ‘He’s just a pest, he won’t have us arrested. Although there’s no need to disparage my taste and suggest that ugly mug of yours would have tempted me when others had failed. I wonder if I should inform him I was thoroughly corrupted before long I resigned myself to your company.’ He poked cheerfully at Eamonn’s thickly freckled forehead--a lingering souvenir of his expedition through the Pacific and much parodied in Punch--and grinned when, despite himself, Eamonn leant into the touch. ‘So?’
‘So I blethered on about how we didn’t see any unicorns in Scotland because the unicorns don’t like the rain. Don’t snigger, it’s not funny. But the lady protested that they must do, since she’d been lead to believe they had an awful fondness for rainbows. Where she got that into her head I’ve no idea.’
‘But about the getting of table-service into yours, Schatz?’
‘Oh, aye.’ Eamonn, suddenly shifty, fiddled with some inordinately complex opera goggles on the table behind. He could only guess that Conrad had designed them as an incentive to accompany him to a German opera again, which Eamonn had so far resisted on the grounds of liking neither the compromised view of the gallery nor the splash zone by the stage. It was almost sweet, given how mortally offended Conrad had been when Eamonn attempted to bring along a parasol to their last German opera, allegedly as defense against some of the more emphatic syllables.
‘Well, I corrected him on the matter of species. But the bloody man persisted in insisting that the so-to-speak requirement to lure a kelpie were the same. So I told them that legend says kelpies actually preferred children. Not quite the same.’
‘Pish, legends. So?’
‘Well, I simply explained that scientifically, it’s actually smallness and vulnerability they’re after, nothing more. So luckily you’re wee enough that it wasn’t any kind of problem.’ Conrad looked distinctly un-vulnerable with his spanner. Eamonn sallied on. ‘Whereupon, the lady rejoiced that if it were a matter of much diminutive size, it meant she ought to have a good chance with the unicorns. And I thoughtlessly reflected that in her case, I didn’t think it should do. Thus, the to-brasting of my brainpan.’
‘Defensible,’ Conrad concluded tightly.
‘Well, how should I know you can’t be honest with a woman!’ Eamonn nattered on. ‘It’s true, one could easily fit three of you in her skirts alone, and that’s saying nothing of her--Connie?’
Eamonn studied Conrad’s narrow look. He had created a system of classification based on the Linnaean, and knew there were only two expressions among Conrad’s extensive repertoire that involved both the narrowing of the eyes and a faint tic in his left hand: Seeking a Heavy Object With Which to Thump You and Get On With Kissing Me. Since Conrad already had a spanner in his right hand, Eamonn deduced it was the latter and lunged forward optimistically.
‘Wrong,’ Conrad observed, and swung. Happily Eamonn, being an exceedingly good scientist, included the possibility of miscalculation in all of his endeavours and was ready to duck, unlike many an unfortunate lolly-headed journalist.
‘Connie,’ Eamonn admonished, using his momentum to grab Conrad about the waist and gently tackle him into the pigeon. He sighed into Conrad’s waistcoat, altogether too at ease for a man who had nearly been brained twice in the same afternoon. ‘I meant to ask. This commission isn’t a boat, is it? It’s horrifying.’
‘No, it’s only for decoration. Much like your head.’ He rapped on the side of Eamonn’s cranium as if to check for echoes. Eamonn only leant unrepentantly into the movement like a great ginger cat. ‘What am I to do with you, Schatz?’
‘Well, that question’s awfully loaded,’ Eamonn averred hopefully, nosing at Conrad’s oily waistcoat.
‘My pistol will be, too, if you don’t learn to behave yourself at parties,’ Conrad smirked, leaning experimentally against the steam-powered pigeon to see if it would tip over under the stress of both their standing weight. It didn’t. ‘Hm. It’s good the neighbours are accustomed to me making a great din in here.’
‘Conrad! Cor!’ Eamonn coloured, looking more than ever like one of Conrad’s strange copper creations.
‘Tsk. Schatz.’ Conrad scrubbed a mischievous hand over Eamonn’s bruised head, murmuring something in German that was either endearments or death threats. It was difficult to say which. And Eamonn, no stranger to danger, found he didn’t care.
Warnings: Bit over length. Tea-time violence, steam-powered lawn ornaments, live unicorns, and the German language.
Ach du lieber Himmel!
‘Connie, you wouldn’t believe the day I’ve had. Miss Elisabeth Harding tried to brain me over tea with the table-service,’ Eamonn announced, stalking into the small workshop at the back of their flat to address a pair of impeccably-shod feet. The man presumably attached to them was burrowed into a giant mechanical pigeon, which Eamonn took a moment to hope did not represent the latest fashion in outboard boating.
‘Ach du lieber…’ the copper pigeon grumbled. Herr Doktor Conrad August Himmel was welcomed into the better circles of London society by dint of being a renowned inventor, although it was still considered in poor taste that he hadn’t contrived to be a philologist, like a respectable German gentleman. (Eamonn Currie, PhD, late of Edinburgh and the Galápagos Islands, was beyond redemption.) ‘…Really?’
‘Oh aye,’ Eamonn enthused. ‘Dr Boothe-Davies, the great boob, mentioned our latest exploits over tea. The adventure was too much for her heart. When she came back round she was utterly addlepated.’
‘…The poltergeist?’ the pigeon speculated, after another long, skeptical moment. A soot-ringed blue eye came up to regard Eamonn from within the pigeon’s beak. ‘It was haunting a candelabra.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Eamonn begrudged. ‘It didnae bite you.’
The pigeon sniffed expressively.
‘And no, not the candelabra. He meant for me to describe how we killed the kelpie.’ A crash issued from the innards of the pigeon, as though the man and his spanner had been seized by an inspiration to reenact the battle upon the pigeon’s gizzards.
‘Connie?’ Eamonn called, only dimly concerned. A man who had once bested a steam-powered flamingo was hardly to be overcome by a copper pigeon.
”Connie” backed as bidden out from the pigeon’s buffed breast, either coughing out some oily phlegm or muttering to himself in German. It was difficult to say which.
He settled back against a wing to regard Eamonn with the baleful look of a harassed genius permanently resigned to the impositions of idiots. Eamonn, far from being hurt, only regretted that he had never been trained to achieve equal excellence in the art of condescension. Although an eminent ichthyologist and member in good standing of the Royal Society, Eamonn only had his national tendency towards outrage to support him when his opinions on tropical fish were challenged.
‘And did you tell the lady?’ Conrad inquired curiously.
‘I never! It hardly becomes a gentleman to tell a lady what he has done in his shirtsleeves.’
Conrad coughed eloquently into the cogs.
‘Conrad! Cor! What a mind you have!’ Eamonn had the poor taste to redden a shade not quite identical to, but rather too close for comfort, his hair. As usual, Conrad observed with long-suffering tolerance, the same horrifically ginger hair was not only provokingly uncovered, but moreover conflicted with a farcically aquamarine cravat and tartan waistcoat. The entire effect was doubtless calculated to force Dr Booth-Davies to carve out his own eyes with his sherbet spoon. Eamonn’s grasp of fashion was spiteful at best and a menace at worst, but at least Conrad had got him to stop exposing his knees to the unsuspecting public since they returned to London from the Highland kelpie kerfuffle. Conrad would have suspected Eamonn of dyeing his hair red, just to upset people, if he hadn’t empirical evidence that everything was, so to speak, tip-top.
‘But that wasn’t the thing of it,’ Eamonn persisted, coiled as a copper spring, or, given the state of his hair, the angry ghost of abandoned knitting. ‘He didn’t care about the kelpie. Boothe-Davies got it into his daft head to tell her we’d meant to bait a unicorn.’
Conrad raised his eyebrows slowly, looking as self-possessed as ever, even beneath the pompadour the engine oil had made of his hair. ‘We’re professionals. We know the difference between a magical horse and a phantom water-pony.’
‘Well that’s what I said, but it didnae matter, Boothe-Davies was only insinuating that a unicorn wouldn’t come within kicking distance of us. The bloody bastard came over all “Poor Dr Himmel, he wouldn’t have had any trouble with it last year”.’
Conrad dismissed the threatened exposure with a wave of a pigeon foot, smiling languidly. ‘He’s just a pest, he won’t have us arrested. Although there’s no need to disparage my taste and suggest that ugly mug of yours would have tempted me when others had failed. I wonder if I should inform him I was thoroughly corrupted before long I resigned myself to your company.’ He poked cheerfully at Eamonn’s thickly freckled forehead--a lingering souvenir of his expedition through the Pacific and much parodied in Punch--and grinned when, despite himself, Eamonn leant into the touch. ‘So?’
‘So I blethered on about how we didn’t see any unicorns in Scotland because the unicorns don’t like the rain. Don’t snigger, it’s not funny. But the lady protested that they must do, since she’d been lead to believe they had an awful fondness for rainbows. Where she got that into her head I’ve no idea.’
‘But about the getting of table-service into yours, Schatz?’
‘Oh, aye.’ Eamonn, suddenly shifty, fiddled with some inordinately complex opera goggles on the table behind. He could only guess that Conrad had designed them as an incentive to accompany him to a German opera again, which Eamonn had so far resisted on the grounds of liking neither the compromised view of the gallery nor the splash zone by the stage. It was almost sweet, given how mortally offended Conrad had been when Eamonn attempted to bring along a parasol to their last German opera, allegedly as defense against some of the more emphatic syllables.
‘Well, I corrected him on the matter of species. But the bloody man persisted in insisting that the so-to-speak requirement to lure a kelpie were the same. So I told them that legend says kelpies actually preferred children. Not quite the same.’
‘Pish, legends. So?’
‘Well, I simply explained that scientifically, it’s actually smallness and vulnerability they’re after, nothing more. So luckily you’re wee enough that it wasn’t any kind of problem.’ Conrad looked distinctly un-vulnerable with his spanner. Eamonn sallied on. ‘Whereupon, the lady rejoiced that if it were a matter of much diminutive size, it meant she ought to have a good chance with the unicorns. And I thoughtlessly reflected that in her case, I didn’t think it should do. Thus, the to-brasting of my brainpan.’
‘Defensible,’ Conrad concluded tightly.
‘Well, how should I know you can’t be honest with a woman!’ Eamonn nattered on. ‘It’s true, one could easily fit three of you in her skirts alone, and that’s saying nothing of her--Connie?’
Eamonn studied Conrad’s narrow look. He had created a system of classification based on the Linnaean, and knew there were only two expressions among Conrad’s extensive repertoire that involved both the narrowing of the eyes and a faint tic in his left hand: Seeking a Heavy Object With Which to Thump You and Get On With Kissing Me. Since Conrad already had a spanner in his right hand, Eamonn deduced it was the latter and lunged forward optimistically.
‘Wrong,’ Conrad observed, and swung. Happily Eamonn, being an exceedingly good scientist, included the possibility of miscalculation in all of his endeavours and was ready to duck, unlike many an unfortunate lolly-headed journalist.
‘Connie,’ Eamonn admonished, using his momentum to grab Conrad about the waist and gently tackle him into the pigeon. He sighed into Conrad’s waistcoat, altogether too at ease for a man who had nearly been brained twice in the same afternoon. ‘I meant to ask. This commission isn’t a boat, is it? It’s horrifying.’
‘No, it’s only for decoration. Much like your head.’ He rapped on the side of Eamonn’s cranium as if to check for echoes. Eamonn only leant unrepentantly into the movement like a great ginger cat. ‘What am I to do with you, Schatz?’
‘Well, that question’s awfully loaded,’ Eamonn averred hopefully, nosing at Conrad’s oily waistcoat.
‘My pistol will be, too, if you don’t learn to behave yourself at parties,’ Conrad smirked, leaning experimentally against the steam-powered pigeon to see if it would tip over under the stress of both their standing weight. It didn’t. ‘Hm. It’s good the neighbours are accustomed to me making a great din in here.’
‘Conrad! Cor!’ Eamonn coloured, looking more than ever like one of Conrad’s strange copper creations.
‘Tsk. Schatz.’ Conrad scrubbed a mischievous hand over Eamonn’s bruised head, murmuring something in German that was either endearments or death threats. It was difficult to say which. And Eamonn, no stranger to danger, found he didn’t care.