by Winona Kent
“I’ll show you,” Charlie said. “Half Windsor, I think…Watch in the mirror.”
She created the knot, sliding it up under his shirt collar.
“There you are…. I haven’t done that since Jeff died. He was hopeless at knotting his tie.”
Mr. Deeley’s own winter overcoat, black and long and what Charlie liked to term “dramatic,” completed his new wardrobe.
“You’re as respectable as me now,” Charlie mused, as they went downstairs. “And you look smashing in a proper shirt and tie. I could easily get used to that.”
• • •
Balham Underground Station looked almost exactly the same as it had the day before, when Charlie and Mr. Deeley had arrived for Nana Betty’s funeral. Except that concrete blast walls had been put up in front of the two entrance buildings—one on either side of Balham High Road—and the station’s white Portland stone facings were stained black by smoke and grime.
Mr. Deeley paused at the top of the stairs leading down to the booking hall in the larger Station Road entrance.
“We are required to purchase some sort of ticket, are we not?” He checked the pockets of his overcoat. “I have some coins.”
He produced them, and Charlie counted them up.
“Five pounds and fifty-five pence,” she said. “I think I’ve got a little bit of money in my bag. Oh. Damn.”
“Is five pounds and fifty-five pence not enough?”
“I think it likely would be quite enough, Mr. Deeley, if our coins were from 1940. But everything changed in 1971 with decimalization. This money won’t mean anything to them.”
Mr. Deeley thought for a moment, then disappeared down the stairs to the booking hall. He reappeared a few moments later.
“There are no ticket checkers in evidence,” he said. “I suggest we avail ourselves of an excellent opportunity to commit a minor dishonesty, Mrs. Collins, and, in haste, descend to the trains.”
As Mr. Deeley had correctly observed, the two wooden passimeters in the booking hall were unoccupied, as was the ticket inspector’s booth.
There were, however, several uniformed station staff lurking in the general area, and so, spotting a solitary ticket machine against the wall, Charlie made a brief show out of pretending to insert some coins and receiving two printed tickets in return.
Then they proceeded to the escalators which, Charlie noted, were made of wood, not metal.
“And this wind,” said Mr. Deeley, “smells like the chimney in your cottage.”
Charlie smiled. It was true. The heady scent of creosote and wood had not been in evidence on Friday.
She had seen black and white photographs of tube stations during the war, crowded with shelterers, a narrow strip of platform beside the tracks kept free for the movement of passengers. Balham’s northbound tunnel looked exactly the same as it had in the photos, except it was midmorning, so there was no one sheltering, only a handful of men and women waiting for the next train to arrive.
Compared to the brightly lit and recently renovated Balham of yesterday, it was dingy and dark, with low-wattage lamps in yellowed shades, and small posters stuck to the walls, all of them seeming to have something to do with food: Ovaltine. Bovril. OXO cubes. Rules about sheltering and reminders about rationing. Dire warnings about eavesdroppers and spies.
Is Your Journey Really Necessary?
“When the bomb drops on Monday night,” Mr. Deeley said quietly, “which platform will be affected?”
“This one,” Charlie replied.
“And will it be the entire length?”
“Almost. Although I think the people sheltering in the middle and at the southern end were able to get out in time. The sludge and debris and water spilled over through a passageway onto the southbound platform, too. But it wasn’t as bad on that side.”
She studied the northern end of the platform, past the big old-fashioned clock jutting out from the top of the curving wall.
“There’s a very famous picture of all the rubble that poured through the breach in the tunnel roof. It’s almost up to the height of that clock, and then it tapers down as it travels towards the southern end of the station. The hands of the clock are stopped at two minutes past eight.”
Mr. Deeley walked slowly past the clock, which at that moment was indicating nearly half past ten. He continued all the way to the end of the platform, pausing at the northern-most cross-passage to study the yawning black mouth of the running tunnel. Then he turned and walked all the way back to the southern end, in deep contemplation.
“It is very unsettling, owning the knowledge of what is yet to come,” he said, returning to where Charlie was standing. “Nearly seventy people will die. Men and women. And very small children… and my son.”
He paused, looking sad.
“Is there nothing we can do to save them?”
Charlie looked at him. “I don’t know what we can do, Mr. Deeley. If we tell the stationmaster that no one should come down here to shelter on Monday night, he’d want to know why, and if we told him, he’d want to know how we knew. And then, he’d probably have us arrested as German spies.”
“Perhaps a note, written anonymously…?”
“We’d be interfering with history, Mr. Deeley. And there’s no guarantee anyone would take an anonymous note seriously. Would you?”
“We might still be able to save Thaddeus. If we were to delay him….”
“But if we interfere… if we stop him from sheltering down here on Monday night… what then? Perhaps Betty will end up marrying him, instead of Pete. And then what will happen to Auntie Wendy? And Nick, and his two sisters? Pete was Auntie Wendy’s father. She might end up not being born at all, and then neither would Nick. And then where would you and I be, Mr. Deeley? It was Nick who brought us back to the present when you and I first met, in 1825. If we’d stayed in that time, you’d have been a fugitive on the run in France… and I’d have died a horrible death from a burst appendix.”
“But your mother will be born, regardless. That will not change. And neither will the identity of her father. That has already been decided.”
Mr. Deeley took her hand, and held it in his own.
“I cannot bear to contemplate that you are my great-granddaughter, Mrs. Collins. It is impossible. And it causes me such great unhappiness. In truth I would rather take my leave of you now, and not ever see you again, than have to live with the knowledge that I cannot ever hope to marry you.”
“Oh, Mr. Deeley, please don’t say that. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps Cornelius is Thaddeus’s father after all, and not you. It was just a guess on my part.”
A sound like the emptying of a large drain echoed at the far end of the platform. The wind began to pick up. Moments later, a red 1938-vintage train rattled into the station.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Deeley… I just don’t know what we can do. And I don’t know why we’re here. Perhaps the gentleman we’re meeting for lunch will give us some answers.”
Chapter Ten
The interior of their carriage was completely unlike the flashy red, white, and blue Northern Line train they’d taken from Waterloo to Balham the day before, with its bright blue seats and yellow poles. Everything was painted green. The window-frames were made of varnished wood, and the windows themselves were covered with anti-blast mesh, with a small diamond-shape cut out, presumably to allow passengers to see the station names. The seats were upholstered with a scratchy red and green moquette, the floor appeared to be made out of the same slatted wood as the escalators, and there were peculiar round knobs dangling from the ceiling on stiff stems.
“What are those?” Mr. Deeley asked, watching, fascinated, as they swayed in a coordinated dance while their train clattered through its tunnel.
“They’re for the passengers who have to stand in rush hour. Something to hang onto.”
Because it was Saturday, the usual office workers were at home, and their carriage was sparsely populated. Two gentlemen reading newspa
pers. A solitary woman nodding off. Farther down, a tired-looking mum with two children, and two more men, both sitting facing forward, with their heads leaning against the windows, dozing.
“They all seem so exhausted,” Charlie said. “I suppose I would be too, if I was woken up by air raids every night.”
Mr. Deeley picked up a frayed pocket Underground map that a passenger had left on his seat when he’d got off at Kennington. He studied it as the train drew into Charing Cross, clattering along its long curved platform. The woman with her two children got off. Two men got on, sitting across from one another at the far end of the carriage.
“I am disappointed we will not be passing through Trafalgar Square,” he said. “Is it named after the battle?”
“It is. And it’s got a huge column, with a statue of Horatio Nelson at the top. I’ll show it to you later, if we’ve got time. It’s a very popular meeting place.”
“Strange to think that a monument of such historical significance exists now, commemorating an event which occurred when I was fourteen years old. And that there is an Underground station directly beneath it. What would my friends from Monsieur Duran’s manor make of it all, Mrs. Collins? Ned Rankin, and Mrs. Dobbs?”
“I’m sure they’d be as astounded as you, Mr. Deeley. The London of now is nothing like the London of their time. In fact, the London of now has barely anything in common with the London of my time.”
Their train was on the move again, back into its running tunnel, on its way to Strand.
“What is this place called Piccadilly Circus?” Mr. Deeley inquired, again consulting the map. “Are there dancing bears and other exotic beasts?”
Charlie laughed. “It’s very famous intersection. The traffic used to go in a circle, which is how it got its name. From the Latin. And there’s a fountain. It was erected in 1892 and on top of it is a winged statue that most people call Eros. Although officially it’s supposed to be his brother, Anteros. The Angel of Christian Charity.”
“Not the Greek god of love…?” Mr. Deeley mused. “He who smites maids’ breasts with an unknown heat…?”
Charlie gave him a look, and Mr. Deeley smiled. It was a smile that lasted all the way through Strand and Leicester Square, to Tottenham Court Road, where they got off the train and rode another noisy wooden escalator to the surface.
At the top, there was a passimeter. And a uniformed inspector, checking tickets.
“Um,” Charlie said.
Mr. Deeley thought for a moment.
“Allow me,” he said.
He approached the barricade.
“Hello,” he said.
“Morning,” the inspector replied. “Ticket please.”
“We, how you say? Viatores. Visitings.”
Charlie put her hand up to her mouth and bit her finger. Mr. Deeley’s foreign accent was atrocious.
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. Here is denarius.”
He held out the coins from the pocket of his overcoat.
The inspector peered at Mr. Deeley’s 5p, 10p and 20p pieces.
“Have you got a ticket?” he said, very slowly, clearly and loudly, as if Mr. Deeley was deaf.
“Tikkit…” Mr. Deeley said, turning, befuddled, to Charlie. “Tikkit. Quid est tikkit?”
Charlie stared at Mr. Deeley, and then offered the man in the uniform her own collection of coins.
“Tikkit?” she suggested.
“No, not a ticket.” The inspector was clearly losing his patience. “Look, I don’t know where you two are from but you need to have our money, or a ticket, to travel on the tube. Where did you begin your journey?”
“Ah,” said Mr. Deeley. “Sic. Buenos Aires.”
“No, mate. Which station on the Underground?”
Mr. Deeley looked at Charlie again. “Quod est station?”
“Tottenham Court Road,” Charlie replied, with a perfectly straight face.
“That’s this station,” said the inspector. “Where did you get on?”
A queue of weary travellers was forming behind them.
“Where did you get on?” he repeated.
“I’m really sorry,” Charlie said. “We got on at Balham. My friend was having a little joke. We haven’t got tickets.”
“I’m not in a mood for jokes. Or for time-wasters. Does your friend speak English?”
“Unaccountably well,” Mr. Deeley confessed. “My most sincere apologies.”
“Pay up then, and be on your way.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Deeley, “and therein lies our dilemma… as we are without appropriate funds.”
The ticket inspector gave Mr. Deeley a suspicious look.
“You’ve got a very dodgy way of speaking for an Englishman,” he said. “Come on, then, let’s see your identification cards.”
Mr. Deeley glanced at Charlie.
“We haven’t got our identification cards,” Charlie said. “We lost everything in an air raid. Ration books, gas masks, the lot. I’m so sorry. Please let us go. I promise we’ll pay next time.”
The inspector was clearly of two minds. “You’ve given me very good reason to suspect that you may, in fact, not be telling me the truth and that you may, in fact, be in this country illegally….”
“We’ve come from a little village in Hampshire,” Charlie said. “It’s called Stoneford… and it’s our first time in London. We’re really very sorry for causing you such trouble….”
“Go on, mate,” said a tired-looking man, in line behind them. “Let ’em through and then we can all get on with our day. If they was German spies Hitler would have made sure they had enough money for their fares. None of this mucking about.”
The inspector looked at Charlie and Mr. Deeley, and then relented.
“Out you go, then. Next time I won’t be so lenient.”
He stepped aside, and Charlie and Mr. Deeley were free to leave.
“My utmost apologies,” Mr. Deeley said, as they climbed the steps to the street.
“Never mind. We weren’t arrested. They’re all a bit on edge…you saw the posters. Everyone’s a potential spy.” They reached the surface. “And where did that come from? Buenos Aires…?”
“Are you not in awe of my knowledge of world geography, Mrs. Collins? I have used your clever device for many more things than perusing newspapers and watching the YouTube.”
“That wasn’t Spanish, though, was it?”
“It was Latin. At last, I have found a use for the classical education inflicted upon me by the very aged and imaginatively diminished Reverend Hopwood Smailes.”
Charlie laughed.
“Hic est a pretium in via,” said Mr. Deeley. “Here is a busy road.”
“Stop showing off.”
“Were you not required to study Latin at your school?”
“I was not,” Charlie replied. “Thankfully.”
She looked around, trying to get her bearings in the damp, misty morning. It was not the London that she knew. In their present, in the time they had come from, this intersection was the site of a massive and ongoing construction project to accommodate the new Crossrail station. It was all demolition and hoardings and detours.
Here and now, there was very little that Charlie actually recognized. Just up Tottenham Court Road, she could see the Dominion Theatre, which appeared now to be a cinema—but it was closed, perhaps because of the air raids.
Across Oxford Street she could see a posh-looking Lyon’s Corner House restaurant. In front of her stood tall, ornate lampposts, topped with filigreed metalwork. The bollards and traffic lights, and the posts the traffic lights were mounted on, were all painted with broad black and white stripes, presumably to aid navigation in the dark when the blackout was in effect.
Oxford Street itself was crowded with boxy-looking motorcars and red and white double decker buses. And over the way, the pavement entrances to the tube station were swathed in anti-blast concrete blocks and black and white painted corrugated steel, the familiar Undergrou
nd roundel propped reassuringly on top.
“Which way, Mrs. Collins?”
“To our right, I think.”
They crossed over Charing Cross Road and began to walk east, in the direction of the British Museum.
“I do not like the smell of London,” Mr. Deeley decided. “It is nothing like what I had imagined.”
“Nothing like what I’d imagined either, Mr. Deeley.”
“This is the smell of coal. And things which have been burned. It reminds me of last night. Buildings which have been demolished. Broken bricks and gunpowder.”
They walked together along New Oxford Street, past walls pockmarked by shrapnel, and defiant, hastily printed signs: Business as Usual, Mr. Hitler… Bombed But Not Beaten. And everywhere underfoot was the crunch of crumbled bits of brick and glittering tiny fragments of glass. They passed roads they could look down and see gaps in, like teeth that had been knocked out of the neighbourhood’s mouth. And bits of buildings with their ends lopped off raggedly, exposing rooms with furniture but no outside walls. The remnants of peoples’ lives, lost in the smouldering grey smoke.
“What are these things in the sky?” Mr. Deeley asked, pausing to look back towards central London.
Charlie looked too. Over the city hung hundreds of floating, silvery objects, suspended in midair like a flock of giant birds.
“Barrage balloons,” she said. “They’re meant to prevent the enemy planes from flying in low.”
“I should think they are there also to provide reassurance to the people living underneath them,” Mr. Deeley said, thoughtfully. “I did not know that there existed a power so great as to cause this much destruction.”
“And there’s worse to come,” Charlie said, sadly. “One day I’ll tell you how World War Two ended. The Battle of Trafalgar pales by comparison.”
“In the time we came from,” said Mr. Deeley, “is there still much of this to be seen?”
“Not much,” Charlie said. “Everything was rebuilt. Or torn down and new buildings put up in their place. I was born too late, but my mum remembers bomb craters and walls propped up with timbers and big empty plots of land where offices and houses used to stand, well into the 1960s.”