Escape from Time

By Stacey Lane

The night watchman in an art gallery does not notice that six of the portraits are missing from their picture frames. They have been left stranded on the floor of the gallery and have made a decision to strike out for freedom.
Their escape becomes an adventurous search for security in a home of their choosing. Their diverse historical and social backgrounds and assumptions are compounded when they meet two contemporary homeless men. One is helpful and happy to join them; the other dogs them to exact revenge.
The final destination of the humans, as well as the remaining five portraits, is an ancient manor, once the sixteenth century family home of one of them where they settle in peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stacey Lane
• Release date: May 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781909833487

Book preview

Escape from Time.

Chapter 1

An Opportunity Offered

The old night-porter checked the time on his watch: it was four thirty, and the gallery was silent as clouds ghosted past its high windows. He had almost ended his slow check of the building. Downstairs, he would get a shandy from the fridge, write up his log, and be ready to hand the day over to the cleaning staff.

The art collection was small compared with those in London but it had some interesting portraits. Mr Lubkin, with his terrier at his heels, approached the British section and limped through the small square room in which paintings of the English landscape hung. Further on was a collection of portraits of the wealthy from every period, and of the socially prominent from recent times.

Thirty five pictures normally hung on the panelled walls, in carved gilt or plain wood frames. On this night, the portraits had stepped out of them and filled out in shape to look as they had been in life when the artists had painted them.

They had just finished a dance that stretched the length of the room and the music on lutes and fiddles had come to an end, but there was a shuffling on the wooden floor as the Portraits moved from their positions, and a whispering as they thanked their partners.

At the end of the lines, Sir William Richard Henry Pirie nodded stiffly to his dancing partner. His already haughty features were accentuated by a high, stiff, lace-trimmed white ruff that forced him to look down his nose. He wore a black velvet cap trimmed with a small white feather; in fact, except for his silk stockings, he was dressed entirely in black, in velvet doublet and breeches that ended just below the knee. Throughout the dance his eyes had been fixed on his partner standing opposite him.

Vanessa Carmichael acknowledged his final bow with a curtsey. She had the bright, reddish hair of her Celtic ancestor, which she wore in shoulder length curls, and her dress was vivid blue with an embroidered skirt. It had been highly fashionable when she was painted at the age of twenty three.

Sir William gripped her hand, and was steering her to a dark corner of the room. ‘Do you remember the magic of our last ball?’ he whispered. ‘I have been longing to dance with you again ever since we did the La Volta, my sweeting.’

‘Oh, I’m honoured, Sir William, but don’t you think this might be the wrong time? There are other people besides ourselves to consider.’

They reached a group of four who had been sitting out the dance, absorbed in wistful conversation. A middle-aged man was saying, ‘I wish I could invite you to my home in Cow Lane, near St. Michael’s church. My wife and children would be….’ Tom Burstow broke and off, then said, ‘Oh, what am I thinking of? How silly; they would not be there now. It is two hundred and sixty years too late, but I miss them so much.’

His stout figure suggested, rightly, that he had been a boxer and a useful law enforcer when he was young, but later had become a successful businessman. He wore a skirted, eighteenth century coat that buttoned at the neck and fell to just above his knees, covering his thick thighs, but it bulged across his chest. The bottom of his knee-length breeches and leather-gartered stockings showed just below the hem. Grey, shoulder length hair was tied back in a pony-tail.

‘Do you mean the old St. Michael’s, before it burned down?’ Elspeth Dalkeith, a Victorian lady, asked. Then, not waiting for a reply, she said sadly, ‘And I would love to go back to my home, too, if only there were such a possibility, but of course my dear Andrew has long gone.’

James Boswell, never a keen dancer, sat near the door with his friend and idol Dr Johnson, keeping watch through the crack in the door. A fiddler was already rubbing down his bow strings, about to play a jig; once again, there was a shuffling on the parquet wood floor as the Portraits took up new dance positions. Then, very quietly, Boswell closed the door and flapped his arms in an urgent warning to return to their picture frames.

Perhaps Lubkin heard something of the scramble, because his steps quickened and the terrier’s claws clicked sharply over the floor. When the door opened, the Portraits, complete with musical instruments, were barely settled into their usual positions; except for six who had no time to reach their places at the end of the gallery. Instead, they simply slipped through an open door where they had been standing.

Lubkin sat down heavily to rest on one of the benches in the middle of the room, and loosened his shoe laces. The picture right in front of him was his favourite; he could lose himself in the scene of a husband and wife sitting with their hounds under a tree, enjoying their estate. He started to feel his eyelids drooping, so he got to his feet and wandered through the doorway back to his little office.

Chapter 2

Break Out

When the door softly clicked shut behind them, the six Portraits found themselves in a long, bare corridor. The walls were in cream gloss paint and the floor was fitted with rough brown coconut matting. At the opposite end, a wide stone staircase with wrought iron banisters led down to a semi-basement area used for cataloguing and restoring pictures. They crept down and looked around. Fluorescent lighting showed pictures two or three deep, stacked against the walls between filing cabinets. There were doors into more secure storage rooms and cupboards.

Without thinking about it, Sir William had taken the lead as the six tiptoed out. Now, when everyone stopped, he looked at them over his ruff, weighing up the situation like a general reviewing his troops. Besides himself, Vanessa and Tom Burstow, there were three others: Julian Fawcett, a young twentieth century editor in a publishing firm, who was dressed in fawn-coloured flannel trousers, a pale green shirt with a silk scarf knotted round his neck, a patterned pullover and a tweed sports jacket; Elspeth Dalkeith, the Victorian lady in her late forties; and Dilys Pettigrew, who was a young, already well known broadcaster and travel writer.

Elspeth’s dress, with its padded skirt, long, lace-edged sleeves and high neck had been slightly old-fashioned even when her portrait was painted in 1850. Her hair was scraped into a tight pleat, her back was straight as a board and her lips were thin. She had been her husband Andrew’s very efficient business manager.

By contrast, Dilys looked confident and relaxed, with a direct expression in her grey eyes. She was dressed as if for a spin on her motorbike in an all-leather outfit of jacket, trousers and tight cap with earflaps, and goggles perched on the top of her head.

Sir William was not impressed by the sight of any of them. Tom Burstow also wondered how they would get on together in the present circumstances. It was clear to him that they all had to sink or swim together, but it was Sir William who muttered, ‘God’s life. What a motley crowd I have here.’

Then he said aloud, bowing low to Vanessa, ‘Lady, I wish we had no part in this company.’

‘But we are all in same situation, Sir William. We have all made a dash for freedom, even if it was unplanned.’

Julian Fawcett fingered the pipe in his pocket thoughtfully. ‘Yes, it was a lucky chance that might never have happened. We must figure out what to do now, as we couldn’t go back.’

‘No, we certainly couldn’t even if we wanted to. I heard the night warden lock the door we escaped through,’ Elspeth told him.

‘You will allow me to decide how to deal with this.’ Sir William’s words were clipped. ‘Burstow, you are our look-out and bodyguard. Fawcett, your knowledge of the present time will be useful. We must go quickly after proper consideration.’

‘It is too early in the morning now,’ Elspeth said. ‘The exit doors of the building will all be locked. We can no more go outside than other people can come in. We must wait until they are opened by the scullery maids in an hour’s time.’

Tom and Julian nodded in agreement. ‘We must think of a way to get out without being noticed.’

Then the enormity of what they had done burst upon them all. There was silence as they began to realize the astounding fact that they did not exist any longer as flat paintings created by different artists and moved about at the whim of the Director. They had snatched their freedom to leave the gallery like ordinary viewers. Julian sank onto his haunches, others leaned against the wall. Elspeth spread out her skirt on the floor and sat on its horsehair padding.

‘What on earth are we talking about? We can’t leave here; we are no more than canvas characters from the past. Anyway, wherever could we go?’

They looked in surprise at Vanessa’s high-pitched tone of voice.

‘I can understand you are confused, my dear. We all are, but we have just been dancing on the floor in the gallery, as we do every week. That must mean something. Let us think about that now we are here,’ Elspeth replied.

‘I, for one, feel like the man I was when Van der Meulen painted me. His intention was to express my personality as well as my wealth and social rank. As Mistress Dalkeith implies, there is some kind of life in me. I am not prepared to return to my frame ever again,’ Sir William said.

‘The picture frames have always felt like cages to me. I constantly feel like a wild animal at the zoo in Regent’s Park, with spectators walking about staring at me. I certainly shan’t go back if I have any choice in the matter.’

‘I felt imprisoned, too. Viewers in the gallery always reminded me of the people who came to my gaol when I was a young man. There were many rogues among them, but still they took delight in seeing unfortunates like me getting our just deserts,’ Tom told them. ‘They were bad memories I would rather forget.’ When he had been a thief-catcher early in his working life, he had sometimes accepted a bribe to allow a man to escape, or even joined a gang’s activity himself.

‘It seems we are coming to an agreement,’ Dilys said. ‘What’s your opinion now, Vanessa? Would you like to accept the challenge and come with us, instead of going back to the gallery? Assuming it’s still possible, that is?’

‘I admit I would like to find my real life self, even if that is asking an awful lot,’ Vanessa replied. ‘I felt as if I had a