The Search For Pandora's Box by Jim Jennings



  Laurence Swift & The Search for Pandora’s Box

  By

  L. A. J. Jennings

 

  Chapter One

  Introducing Laurence Swift

  He was tired, oh so very tired. His forehead was moist with sweat, his blue tie was yanked awkwardly out of position, his baggy pale white shirt hung out of his belted grey trousers, and his usually smooth blonde hair was a mess after several vigorous tousles. The stench of gasoline that poured from the other participants of the early morning London traffic penetrated his nostrils and made his stomach curl into a little ball with disgust. He had been cycling for such a length of time it seemed like an entire Ice Age, which was ironic as it was one of the country’s hottest summers on record. Today, for instance, it was 35 degrees and promising to rise.

  As he flew past a double-decker juggernaut on his thin, fragile tyres, he cursed bitterly his alarm clock, registering a mental note to destroy it as soon as he returned home. At any rate he would check that there were batteries in it as soon as he got home from work. That was if he ever got to work in the first place.

  As things stood, he was only half an hour late and was not far from his destination, ‘The London Museum of Natural and Ancient History’, where he worked as a tour guide. This was only temporary (as he constantly explained to anyone who showed the slightest bit of interest) while the sales of his books went through a dry patch (a dry patch that had now lasted some five years) and as he waited for a call from the University of Twickenham to offer him his old job back, for once he had been a part-time (and much loved, so he told everyone) lecturer in Classics. In actual fact, he had been a one-time lecturer. The lecture he gave on the Belvedere Torso dragged on for so long that a pregnant woman not only went into labour but had her baby delivered while he was still speaking.

  He loved his job at the museum, but his job didn’t love him. He was always getting into trouble with his employers due to his occasionally poor time-keeping and ‘interesting’ tour anecdotes; he had been in trouble more than once for expressing his own opinion on many of the museum’s favourite exhibits; he told a tour of GCSE students that the pyramids were originally square but erosion had left them the way they were today. He also told them that Julius Caesar was actually called Julius Seizure because of his supposed epilepsy. In addition, he never passed up an opportunity to slate many scholars’ views on the Ancient World, leading to warnings that were once occasional, then weekly, then everyday occurrences, so much so that his boss, Quentin Derry, had told him that if he was late again then he would be late again for the very last time. Yet he wasn’t worried. Laurence Swift was never worried.

  ***

  Laurence Swift was worried, very, very worried. His boss was upset. His boss was angry, annoyed and bemused. Overall, Quentin Derry wanted Laurence Swift out of his life and out of his museum as quickly as possible, preferably without any more damage to its rare antiquities and expensive exhibits. Quentin Derry was Head of Archaeology at the museum and was about to give Laurence his marching orders after the tour guide had carried out his final uninformative tour. Quentin had already told Laurence after he turned up half an hour late for the third time this week that he had wanted a ‘word’, which was unofficial code for ‘you’re fired’ and this was no exception. Ever since Laurence had joined the museum it had been calamity after calamity; he had set fire to the caveman exhibit, encased himself in a block of ice in ‘Frozen World’ and fainted every time he walked into ‘Dino Land’, where he was faced on a daily basis by what was to everyone else a very realistic but obviously fake Pterodactyl. But every day Laurence was confronted by these models and every day he fainted. Even worse, Laurence had insulted Derry’s wife by mistaking her for a model of Genghis Khan. Yet surely, surely, Laurence Swift wouldn’t do anything wrong today. That was the only thought in the mind of Quentin Derry as he barked instructions at idle staff. As they scuttled away to do their duty, Quentin Derry knelt and prayed.