by Alex Scarrow
‘Then, blimmin’ ’eck, you could come with me!’ Mary’s face creased with a gap-toothed grin. ‘How about that? Would you like that? Wales is lovely, Faith. Mountains and valleys. Nothin’ like London.’ She grabbed Faith’s arm. ‘We could both go live in Wales. Would you like that? You and me? We could pinch as much money as we can … save every penny, an’ buy us some tickets away from this miserable city.’
Faith’s tight lips curved, producing a practised-several-times, almost genuine-looking smile. ‘That sounds like a blimmin’ good plan, Mary.’
Chapter 63
15 December 1888, Holborn Viaduct, London
Liam looked down at himself. He was wearing a pair of grey flannel trousers and a white cotton shirt; it was as time-neutral a look as they could get from his Victorian clothes. Maddy as well: just a plain grey skirt and a vanilla-coloured blouse – no frills, lace or bonnet. At worst they’d look like a pair of rather dull nerds in 2001.
Or a rather unimaginative couple.
‘So, it’s Piccadilly Circus, then,’ said Liam. They were heading for London, 2001, instead of New York. Having crunched the numbers, Rashim had come to the conclusion that the charge they could muster was not going to be enough to project them that far into the future unless they compensated on the geo-displacement and aimed for somewhere closer to home.
‘We’ll do a one-hour visit,’ said Maddy. ‘One hour then open the return window at the same place. And a two-hour back-up window for just-in-case. OK?’
Rashim was sitting at the desk. ‘Understood.’
Liam centred himself in his square. ‘Nice not to be going back wet.’ He grinned. ‘That’s a blessed relief, so it is.’
Maddy nodded. She tucked a small digital camera into a clutch bag. There were dozens of digital images of Piccadilly Circus on it, pulled from their database. They had a fair idea how it should look and she could reference those images on the camera. If it turned out to be only a moderately different Piccadilly Circus, then perhaps they were now heading along a timeline that was preferable.
‘Density probe is showing us a consistent all-clear,’ said Rashim. ‘Countdown is now at thirty seconds. Are you two all ready?’
‘Yes, we’re good to go,’ Maddy replied. She’d wanted Bob to go along with Liam. For protection, of course. But his mass was adding too much to the energy cost of displacing them. However, Maddy realized that of all of them, her memories – her programmed memories – were closest in time to 2001. Intuitively she’d have the best idea if London was looking odd, or the way it ought to.
‘One hour,’ she said. ‘Time enough to buy a soda and some tacky I’ve-Been-To-London T-shirt and come home again.’
‘Aye.’
‘And ten … nine … eight …’
She winked at Sal. ‘Chin-chin and toodle-pip, old girl.’ She grinned. ‘That’s the sort of thing they say in England, isn’t it?’
‘Remain still, please, Maddy!’ called out Rashim. ‘… and four … three …’
‘And be careful, you two!’ Sal called out, but her voice was lost in the buzz of energy building up.
‘… two … one …’
2001, PICCADILLY CIRCUS, LONDON
A yard, walled in on all four sides and overlooked by a tall, grey stone building lined with soot-encrusted windows and ledges of surly-looking pigeons. Above them, a pale sky of combed-out clouds. They could both hear the dull urban hiss and rumble of traffic, the melodic cooing of the pigeons watching them from the ledge.
Just then a door opened on to the yard and a middle-aged man wearing trousers, shirt, tie and a dull brown sleeveless jumper took out a packet of tobacco and cigarette papers, sat down on the step and began to roll himself a cigarette.
He noticed Maddy and Liam standing there. ‘All right?’
Liam nodded. ‘Aye. You?’
He shrugged. ‘Middle-bad. But you have to make do, don’t you?’ He tucked a modest row of stale strands of tobacco along the paper. ‘You two new? I haven’t seen you around before.’
‘Just joined,’ said Liam. Joined what exactly … he wondered.
‘Ahh … you must be with the Licence and Trade Monitoring? Or Weights, Standards and Measures Approvals?’
‘The, uh … that’s the one. Started this morning, so we did.’ Liam watched the man lick one side of the paper. ‘You know that’ll kill you eventually, so it will. Smoking.’
‘Eventually, huh?’ He laughed at that. ‘Least of me worries, wouldn’t you say?’
‘We’ll be heading in now,’ said Maddy, tugging Liam’s sleeve.
‘Hammer-an’-spades! You got a funny accent there!’ The man looked at her. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Boston. United States.’
‘America?’ He was taken aback.
Maddy sensed that might not have been a prudent thing to say. ‘Well … my folks were. You know, originally.’
‘Well.’ His eyes were wide. ‘And they gave you a job in the Ministry of Information? I’d keep all that family ancestry to yourself, young lady. Quite seriously.’
They stepped past him. ‘I … I will,’ she said quickly. ‘Thanks.’
‘Hang on! Did you lie about that?’ He looked up at them. ‘To get the job? You must have had to lie to the Job Commissariat?’
‘I, uh … I may have bent the truth a little,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I guess.’
Liam grabbed her hand. ‘Enjoy your smoke, sir.’ He pushed the door and they stepped into a dark hallway. It reeked of floor polish and disinfectant. At the end of the hallway the faint pearly glow of a pair of frosted-glass doors leading outside.
‘I guess it’s not good to be an American,’ whispered Maddy.
‘Aye, it seems it.’
They made their way towards the double doors, passing an opening on the right that led on to a large office: two long rows of dark wooden desks, with men and women typing away on machines that looked like a cross between typewriters and logic engines, all brass levers and glowing vacuum fuses. The room echoed with the clatter of keystrokes, and the long ring of a telephone.
‘It’s like one of them old black-and-white flicks,’ said Liam.
Maddy nodded. Yes, it was: those old films where every scene was veiled behind a pall of cigarette smoke and every desk lamp seemed to cast its own beam of light through it. Men with trilby hats and trench coats, and every street glistening from a torrential downpour. Noir … she remembered. That’s what they called those old films.
They reached the double doors and pushed them open. At least it wasn’t raining. There was that.
The roar of traffic, the buzz of activity in Piccadilly Circus, took them by surprise. They were three wide steps up and back from a pavement thick with pedestrians. Maddy quickly located and identified the things she expected to see: the statue of Eros, the circular fountain and plinth on which it stood and the steps surrounding it. She noticed the signs pointing out the ‘Underground Tramlines’. The tall stone buildings with classic grand entrances and granite pillars. Signs for Shaftesbury Avenue, Coventry Street, Regent Street. And as she’d expected, yes … it was busy. Hectic-busy.
But none of the garish colour she had in the images on her phone. No billboards, no electronic displays with SANYO or TDK or COCA-COLA dancing across them. No street vendors selling plastic double-decker buses, or Beefeater soft toys.
And no tourists.
Maddy had expected Piccadilly Circus to look a bit like Times Square: clusters of faces of all colours, people taking pictures of each other posing in front of Eros. But this was very different. It was certainly busy, though – busy with cars, bicycles and electric trams. A network of wires spun like a spider’s web above the hectic thoroughfare. The trams, running along rails in the roads, all had connector arms that reached up to wires, and here and there sparks flickered and fizzed.
The cars all appeared to be the same, albeit in a variety of unexciting colours: maroons, browns and greys. Small bubble-like cars with oval wi
ndscreens that puffed thick dark clouds of exhaust fumes. And as many people on bicycles as there were clogging the pavements on foot; they wove round the trams like a school of pilot fish around a whale.
On the side of one towering building overlooking Piccadilly Circus was a giant television screen. Huge. Bigger even than the one in Times Square. But the image was blocky and primitive. Two-tone ‘pixels’ of just black and white. Looking more closely, Maddy saw it wasn’t even a light-based display, but each ‘pixel’ was a disc about the size of a dinner plate, that flipped on a spindle. One side black, one side white.
‘Now this is different to how it’s meant to be.’ Liam looked at her. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Very.’
It felt like a London that belonged to a Britain stuck in 1945. Perhaps the early fifties. She wasn’t sure.
‘Well now,’ said Liam, ‘we know for sure the Jack-the-Ripper thing has caused a change.’
Maddy looked at her watch. ‘We’ve got fifty-six minutes left. Let’s split up. Get what you can, any newspapers, magazines, books you can lay your hands on. Back here in fifty minutes, OK?’
Chapter 64
2001, Piccadilly Circus, London
Liam decided the plaque above the grand building in front of him looked promising enough: INFORMATION RESOURCES CENTRE (DEPT OF INFORMATION DISSEMINATION).
He took the dozen steps up and pushed his way through a heavy wooden revolving door and stepped into a cavernous foyer beyond. He saw several concentric circles of benches round a cluster of newspaper stands in the middle. Most of the seats were already occupied with men and women, even some children, flipping through rustling broadsheet newspapers.
He spotted long tables beyond, glowing reading lamps evenly spaced along them; they were mostly occupied by people reading newspapers or books. To his left was a counter and a young woman busily filing index cards in an organizer.
He wandered over and stood in front of the counter for a moment, before finally coughing into his balled fist for her attention.
She looked up. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’
Liam offered her his best lopsided smile. ‘Ah, that’s all right.’
‘How can I help you?’
‘Well now, I’d like to have some information.’
‘Information?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well …’ Bemused exasperation on her face, she laced her fingers and leaned forward. ‘How about we try and narrow that down just a little bit?’
Liam laughed softly. ‘Aye, might help. I’m after history books, recent history, that is.’
‘All right …’ She nodded. ‘Wonderful start! How recent?’
‘Hmmm … last century or so.’
‘Or so?’
‘Last century, then. Nothing too specific, you know … general history, world history.’
She looked at him through a drooping tress of mouse-brown hair. ‘Just arrived from another planet in another galaxy, have you, sir?’
‘Aye. Who knows … I might even choose to stay.’
Her turn to laugh. ‘Well, I have academic reference texts or general information texts.’ She glanced at his puzzled face and decided to clarify that. ‘With nice pretty pictures or without?’
‘Oh, pictures! Please.’
‘Pictures you can colour in?’
‘Uh?’
She chuckled, raised a hand to cover her mouth. He noticed she had braces on her teeth. ‘Just teasing you, sorry. Let me quickly check my info-veedee for some suitable lend-outs.’
He noticed a pale blue glow lighting her face from below and her fingers began to tap at a typewriter keyboard. He leaned forward over the counter and noted a small cabinet the size of a cigar box; one glass side glowed blue, like a small television set. Two metal brackets held a large oblong magnifying glass screen between the young woman and the mini ‘television’. She adjusted its hinges slightly; the tiny screen loomed large in the lens, glowing blue with white text.
‘That’s a veedee, is it?’
She looked at him. ‘Veedee? You know, visual display?’
‘Ahh, that’s a computer down there, I suppose?’
She looked at him quizzically. ‘Compute-er? What an odd word.’ She cocked her head. ‘You really are from another planet, aren’t you?’
‘That’s what me mother used to say about me.’
She looked back at the magnified screen. ‘We have The Revolutionary Century: A History of Socialist Britain. That’s a bit heavy-going, I think. How about Two Worlds: The Free Man and the Profit Slave? That’s quite a good read.’ She looked up at him. ‘And it’s got lots of pictures too.’
‘Aye, that one sounds good.’
She tapped a key. ‘There, requested it.’ He noticed her sneak a furtive glance up at him, then her eyes darted awkwardly back to the lens screen. ‘Now, umm … let me see … what other works can I recommend for you?’
‘Good to see a library so well used,’ said Liam, looking back at the rows of eager readers, the gentle whispering rustle of pages being turned.
‘It’s the news-sheets,’ she replied. ‘Everyone wants to know the latest on what’s happening.’ The teasing smile at the edge of her lips dropped for a moment. Very suddenly she looked drawn and worried. ‘It’s all so terrifying, though, isn’t it?’
‘Terrifying?’
‘The blockade! The Americans shipping in all those atomics for their French friends?’ She pressed her lips together. ‘You can’t help wondering how this is going to end up, can you?’
Liam decided to play along. ‘Aye, it’s pretty bad, there’s no doubting that.’
‘My mum says,’ she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘my mum says if the French get those missile bits and pieces and decide to put them together, it could end up leading to an atomic war.’
‘War?’
She nodded. ‘Atomic.’ She mouthed the word as if it was a curse not to be spoken out loud. As if merely saying the word would open the gates of Hell for Satan and his hordes to pour through.
‘It’s so frightening. Mum says we could all end up dying if that happened.’
Liam shrugged that off. ‘Ah, now I’m sure something like that won’t happen. What’s in it for the big fellas at the top if they let something daft like that happen? Hmmm?’
She fiddled absently with the index folder in front of her. ‘No, I suppose not. I suppose it all looks more frightening than it really is. It’ll all turn out all right in the end, won’t it?’
‘Of course.’ He nodded. ‘Always does. Everyone sees sense in the end.’ He smiled. ‘They always do.’
She raised that teasing, flickering smile again, and continued browsing through catalogue pages on the lens screen. ‘Anyway … so do you, uh … you live in London? Only you sound Irish or is it Scottish?’
‘Irish.’
‘I see. Are you, uh … visiting? Or do you live in London, or something?’
‘Just visiting.’
‘Uh-huh.’ That sounded to him more like a disappointed ‘oh’.
She tapped the keyboard in silence for a moment, the soft blue glow on her face flickering with screen refreshes. Finally she looked up, her lips playing with words silently for a moment before picking one or two to start with. ‘I … I … don’t normally …’ Her face flushed pink.
‘Don’t normally? What?’
‘I wonder …’ she continued, her eyes firmly locked on the lens screen, far too embarrassed to look up at him and meet his eyes. ‘Whether you’d care to … care to have some tea and brancakes?’
‘Tea and …?’
‘Brancakes. Lunchtime? With me?’ She dared a glance up at him. ‘I have a lunchbreak coming soon, at one. I eat it outside by the fountain.’ She laughed nervously. ‘Sometimes I feed the pigeons with my cakes if they’re too dry, though.’
‘I …’ Liam was pretty sure his cheeks looked as red as hers did now. ‘I … well, uh … I’m awfully sorry, I have to run along. I’m only passing.’
She turned and hurried away from the counter through swing doors and out of sight.
Maddy managed to pick up half a dozen discarded newspapers and shove them under her arm. She was beginning to think she looked like some mad bag lady – like that old vagrant in Times Square with his tarpaulin-covered shopping trolley and all that bin-rummaging.
The people in Piccadilly Circus seemed far too preoccupied to care about her, though.
Watching the comings and goings, the exhaust-spewing bubble cars, the hundreds of people on bicycles, some of them so overburdened with things she wondered how they didn’t topple over. She was reminded of images of Beijing, of Mumbai, of Havana. There was an exciting, almost frenzied, whirlwind of chaotic activity going on all around her. But like those places, looking closely, she’d begun to note a threadbare quality to everything: a stiff-lipped impoverishment hidden away behind broad smiles and exuberant ‘how-do-you-do’s. A make-and-mend place of limited resources.
The cars all looked old, patched up, held together in places with tape, ribbon and rope. So many items of clothing seemed to sport discreetly sewn patches. At first she’d thought it might be some sort of fashion thing – a particular passion for elbow patches. But she noted thread giving way on shoulder seams, trousers worn tissue-thin at the knees, shoe leather worn to a rough suede.
They’re really struggling. Britain’s poor.
She was about to grab another discarded newspaper left on a bench near the fountain surrounding Eros, when a church bell – at least that’s what it sounded like – gave an ominous single claaaang. She looked up towards where it seemed to have come from and saw that the large television screen had a logo slowly crawling across its black and white pixel blocks. Maddy recognized it as the clock face of Big Ben. And beneath it: SRBBC1 – LUNCHTIME NEWS.
She noticed how many people in the bustling space turned to look. The trams continued, of course, the bubble cars rattled on, but the bicycles pulled over, the pedestrians stopped and turned. All those who could stop seemed so very keen to view the screen and listen to the news.