by Winona Kent
“But why this place? Why now?”
“I shall give you the only answer I can. You were always going to come here. Nothing in the world could prevent it. And whatever you undertake while you are here, was always meant to be undertaken. There. Does that answer your question?”
Charlie contemplated the fireplace, which Ruby had swept clean, and which awaited its next instalment of coal.
“No,” she said miserably. “Why have I come all this way, only to have Mr. Deeley die? Was that always meant to be?”
“I think not,” Ruby answered. She paused. “Are you absolutely positive he’s dead?”
“Of course I’m bloody positive!” Charlie answered, her voice filling with anger. “I was there. I touched him. I saw them carry his body away.”
She stared into Ruby’s back garden, which, like Betty’s, had been taken over by rows of vegetables and had an Anderson shelter dug into the ground at its bottom end.
“Why did you come and visit me at the museum, Ruby? And why did you give me that piece of shrapnel?”
“Truth be known, Charlotte, I’m a terrible busybody. I do love poking my nose into places where it really shouldn’t be poked. I was impatient. I knew you were going to arrive. I wanted to meet you, in your own time, before you got here. And the shrapnel was a gift. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Well. I hope you were amused. Here I am. Now what? And how did you know I was going to arrive?”
“I belong to a group,” Ruby replied. “A circle of travellers. All with different levels of accomplishments and skills. Some tour the realities. Others hop over the years. Some manage both, which is a very special talent indeed. And we’ve all taken an oath not to interfere with anything that might have a profound effect on anything else. So we tend to tread very carefully. But we have regular meetings, you see, and we discuss things, especially things which affect us personally.”
The kettle let off a shrill whistle.
“Back in half a mo’,” Ruby promised, disappearing into the kitchen.
She returned with the teapot, and two cups and saucers, and a little milk and sugar, and a packet of Jaffa Cakes. The Jaffa Cakes, in fact, looked rather familiar to Charlie.
“Where did you get these? You can’t get them on your ration book, can you?”
“I was going to pop into a shop when I visited you in Stoneford,” Ruby said, confidentially, “but then I discovered, much to my horror, that I didn’t have the right kind of money. So I asked a very good friend who frequents your time to bring me some instead. I’m quite addicted to them. We shan’t tell Betty as she doesn’t know about my time travelling.”
“And you belong to a group…?” Charlie said. “And you discuss things that affect you personally…?”
“Yes. And last month we had a new fellow join us. He claimed he was an accidental traveller—someone who’s ended up in another time, either because of something that happened beyond their control, or because of something someone else did.”
“Much like myself,” Charlie said. “And Mr. Deeley.”
“Quite. Well, my friend, Mr. Jaffa Cakes, first spotted this fellow during one of his excursions back to see me. He’s a jolly bloke, really, Mr. Jaffa Cakes, frightfully good at identifying people like us in a crowd. They got talking, and one thing led to another, and my friend brought him along to one of our meetings. And that was when this new fellow introduced himself as Thaddeus Quinn.”
“Not Betty’s lodger.”
“Very much not Betty’s lodger. I was astonished, as he had the same name as the fellow, and I told him so. He seemed frightfully surprised, and engaged me in a conversation during which we talked quite a lot about the other Thaddeus Quinn. And when I told him where Betty’s lodger was to be found, he couldn’t thank me enough. And he then went on to tell me that the fellow was, in fact, a completely unsavoury character named Silas Ferryman who had cut his wife’s throat and robbed his father-in-law, and was suspected of being someone called the Middlehurst Slasher.”
“So that’s how he knew where Silas Ferryman was. He told us he’d only recently been able to find him. He got the information from you.”
“Oh! Then you’ve met him.”
“Yesterday,” Charlie said. “He invited us for lunch at his hotel in London. That’s why we were there. That’s why….”
She stopped. If they hadn’t met him after Mrs. Crofton’s house was bombed… if they hadn’t gone up to London… Mr. Deeley would still be alive.
“So, what do you think, Charlotte? Which one’s which?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Have a Jaffa Cake,” Ruby suggested, instead of answering.
Charlie took one from the package, but she wasn’t really hungry. “Thaddeus Quinn—whoever he is—will be killed tomorrow night in an air raid.”
“Will he?” Ruby mused, pouring milk into their teacups, followed by strong tea from the pot. “Sugar?”
“Yes please. And yes, he will be.”
Ruby gave one of the cups a stir, and passed it over to Charlie.
“How do you know he’s going to be killed?”
“Because I saw his grave. In the present. My present. Seventy-three years from now. His headstone says he was killed by enemy action on October the 14th, 1940. And I’ll tell you what else I know. A bomb is going to drop on Balham tube station tomorrow night at two minutes past eight, and it’s going to kill and injure quite a lot of people. And that’s where he’s going to die.”
“Indeed.”
“You don’t sound very surprised.”
“When I first learned about what was going to happen, of course I was terribly upset. The thought of all those mums and dads and little children. We discussed it in our circle, you see. Those who have come to visit us from the future brought it into the conversation. It is all so terribly tragic.”
“And even if you know what’s going to happen, you won’t do anything to prevent people from dying…?”
Ruby shook her head. “We cannot. We’ve taken the oath.”
“Not even if it was someone you knew? Or someone related to you?”
Ruby looked at her. “It can be a terrible thing to have our kind of knowledge, Charlotte. And if supposing… just supposing… we were to interfere… and it all went wrong, we would be left to deal with the consequences, wouldn’t we?”
Charlie didn’t say anything.
“For instance,” Ruby said, “how do you know which fellow is buried in the grave you saw? Is it Betty’s lodger… or is it the gentleman you had lunch with in London?”
“Do you know?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. I couldn’t.”
Charlie stared at the empty fireplace. Ruby’s answers annoyed her. But what she was saying was true. If everyone who had advance knowledge acted upon it, the world would erupt into chaos.
“So,” Charlie reasoned, “if I take any kind of action to try and prevent Thaddeus—whoever he is—from going down into the tube station tomorrow night, then I’ll be guilty of interfering. And I’ll be responsible for everything that follows on from that interference. Correct?”
Ruby said nothing, drinking her tea in silence.
“And yet, you’ve just told me that I was expected here. And that whatever I do while I’m here, I was always meant to do. Also correct?”
“Maddeningly so, but yes,” Ruby relented. “And because of that, you must consider your choices carefully, and make your decisions wisely. And you must always remember the Overarching Philosophy. It may be that you were always destined to cause something to happen. Or it may be that you will change the outcome of something. But, perhaps, the outcome of something was never in question at all, merely the means by which it is achieved.”
“That’s what happened the other night, when the bomb dropped on Mrs. Crofton’s house. Mr. Deeley helped to dig out her two children. I told him he’d changed history by saving their lives.”
“Or,” said Ruby, “perhaps it was alw
ays intended that he would rescue them. Or you might have been right, and he did alter history. Or, their lives were always going to be saved—it was just a matter of who came along to do it.”
“The Overarching Philosophy,” Charlie repeated.
“Yes, We have it written on a board sitting at the front of the room whenever we convene.”
Charlie had a thought. “Did your fair-haired gentleman take part in any of your conversations about Balham? Does he know?”
“He does not know. Our discussions took place before he was introduced to the group.”
“Then I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I still don’t know why I’m here. All I really want to do is go home, Ruby. Back to my life before all of this happened. Back to when Mr. Deeley was still alive. And I don’t know how to do it. This is my third time-travelling journey… and each one has been accidental. None of them has had anything to do with what I wanted.”
Ruby leaned forward. “Perhaps that’s what you think, Charlotte. But in fact, you have more to do with it than you know. A one-time occurrence is accidental. If it happens more than once… then there’s something else at work. As for three times…. Well, you’ve got the touch, as Mr. Jaffa Cakes would say. You’ve got the means inside you. All you’ve got to do is learn how to harness it. It’s taken me ages to learn how to master mine. And I still haven’t quite got the hang of it.”
“Then tell me how I can get back to Stoneford, Ruby.”
“It’s different for each of us, my dear. And you cannot go home now. That I must tell you. You must play your part first. But afterwards… perhaps my friend Mr. Jaffa Cakes will be able to help.”
Ruby got up and hunted around in a stack of papers on top of the mantle, and then handed something to Charlie: a business card.
“Here you are. He’s often to be found at Waterloo Station in your time. But he’s here almost as frequently. I’m sure he’ll be popping in again very soon. And when he does put in an appearance, I shall introduce you.”
Charlie looked at the card.
Fenwick Oldbutter. Busker. Musician. Composer. Contemporary Arrangements. Historical Time Pieces.
At the bottom of the card was a phone number and an e-mail address.
“Oldbutter,” she said. “There’s an Oldbutter and Ballcock in Stoneford in my time.” She paused. “They arrange funerals.”
They were interrupted by a rat-tat-tat at Ruby’s front door. Ruby went to answer it.
“Oh!” Charlie heard her say. “Hello. Speak of the devil. We’ve been discussing you.”
Charlie got up, expecting Fenwick Oldbutter. Or Thaddeus Quinn.
She peeked around the dining room door.
It was neither Fenwick Oldbutter, nor Thaddeus Quinn.
Her heart leaped when she saw who was standing in the front hallway, his hands jammed into his coat pockets, looking for all the world like someone who’d just popped round for tea.
“Hello,” he said, spying Charlie. “Betty suggested I should find you here.”
“Mr. Deeley!” Charlie sobbed, running out of the dining room, throwing her arms around him.
Chapter Seventeen
Not knowing what else he could do, or where else he could go, Shaun had walked the several miles back to Betty’s house, following the same route Wendy had taken when she had driven him to the graveyard. He stood now with one hand on the front gate, debating his next course of action. Night had fallen, and the streetlights had been switched on. Yet he could not see any illumination shining through the windows of the house, in spite of the curtains being open. And Wendy’s car was not in evidence on the road.
Shaun opened the gate and walked up the path, then let the knocker drop upon the front door, three times.
There was no response.
He supposed Wendy must have returned to her own house, in Croydon.
Betty’s front door was similar to the front door of Mrs. Collins’s cottage in Stoneford. It had no exterior handle. A key was turned in the lock, which released a mechanism, allowing the door to open inward.
Shaun gave the door a perfunctory push. Locked tight. Of course.
He stood on the path, battling weariness. What he required, most urgently, was a place to sleep. And in the morning, with a fresh mind, he would try and sort out what to do next.
He wondered if, in this altered present, Betty still had an air raid shelter at the bottom of her garden. It would be damp and cold, but better than nothing at all.
He remembered, in the other present, seeing a gate in the high wooden fence behind the shelter. That meant there had to be access behind the garden.
Walking to the end of the block, he turned right, and then walked a little farther, until he discovered a small, unlit lane. Trudging along in the dark, he counted gates, finally arriving at the one he determined belonged to Betty. The latch was on the inside. Reaching over, he released it, and was admitted to a garden not unlike the one he remembered from before.
He could just see, in the darkness, an area with paving stones and large fired clay flowerpots. And a patch of lawn, and a path made out of more paving stones. And, nearly hidden beneath an overgrowth of ivy, a shelter.
Common sense told him he should try the garden and kitchen doors of the house first, in case Wendy had neglected to lock them. But she had not forgotten. The house was inaccessible. And Shaun was not of a mind to break a window, lest he be arrested as a thief. He had once been accused, and very nearly been convicted of, a hanging offence. He had no wish to commit a serious crime now.
He walked back to the Anderson shelter and, remembering the Swan Vestas in the pocket of his trousers, took one out, and struck it against the side of the box, the way Mrs. Collins had shown him.
From the outside, the shelter seemed no different.
But standing just inside its half-buried entrance, allowing the flame to burn down to his fingers and then striking another, and another and another, Shaun realized that the inside was very different indeed.
A little staircase had been constructed, containing four steps and a handrail, creating an easy way down from the garden. The whole of the shelter’s corrugated walls and ceiling within had been given a coat of white paint. And a carpet lay upon the floor. A rug of oriental origin, Shaun guessed, recognizing a very old Persian pattern he had once seen in Edwin Watts’s shop, Antiques Olde and New, in Stoneford.
Upon the back wall of the shelter hung a photograph of a smiling, grey-haired woman wearing a crown and a blue satin sash, and, standing beside her, an elderly gentleman, very tall, wearing a military uniform. The current Queen of England, Shaun remembered, and her consort. The Queen was called Elizabeth, but the prince’s name escaped him. He made a mental note to look it up on Mrs. Collins’s iPad later… and then corrected himself.
In this time and place, Mrs. Collins no longer existed.
He forced himself to concentrate, pushing to the back of his mind the unreality of a life without her. He was inhabiting this time and place temporarily. He would find a way to return to her.
Underneath the framed photograph of Queen Elizabeth was a well-worn armchair, with a cushion, and in front of it, a matching hassock which, he assumed, had given comfort to Betty’s feet, allowing her to raise them up from the draughts upon the floor.
Beside the armchair was a small table, upon which were a stack of books and a lamp. Curiously, Shaun tried the switch, and was surprised when it came on. This shelter had been provided with the means for electricity.
He extinguished his match.
Sitting in the armchair, he saw that what Betty had created for herself was a private room, completely separate from her house: a place of contemplation and peace. There was a little bookcase, and its shelves were crammed with all sorts of books and magazines. On top of the bookcase sat the very old device which, in 1940, had provided the music that Betty had been dancing to when he and Mrs. Collins had first arrived.
Beside the bookshelves were a small electrical heater a
nd a chest, and on top of the chest sat a smaller case, which, oddly, seemed familiar to Shaun. He had no idea why. He was positive he had never seen it before.
He got up from the armchair to investigate.
The suitcase was made of some sort of stiffened board, dyed black, with brown leather reinforcements along its edges and corners. It had a brown leather handle, and two latches with locks and leather straps to help keep it securely closed.
Curiously, Shaun unbuckled the straps, then tried the first latch. It was rusty and stiff, but not locked, and after considerable manipulation, he was able to slide the lock piece sideways and release the mechanism. He applied the same diligence to the second latch, and then lifted the lid.
It was clear the case had not been opened in many years. It smelled of damp and mildew. But the two objects that were inside had been preserved from the elements, and so were virtually untouched.
The first object was a small yellow and black box bearing the legend: Made in Great Britain. A Kodak Camera. Popular Brownie.
Mrs. Collins had told Shaun about photography. She had special books that she kept in a cupboard in their cottage in Stoneford, filled with little paper pictures from her childhood. She had explained about film, and had shown him the strips of plastic that contained the opposite images from the ones on the paper. She had shown him the device she had called a camera, too, and had taken it apart to explain how it worked, in the time before people were able to capture pictures on their phones.
The device inside the box did not resemble the camera Mrs. Collins had shown him in any way, shape, or form.
This device was shaped like the box which contained it. It had little glass windows embedded on its front and side, and seemed to be made of some kind of heavy cardboard covered with a fabric resembling leather. It was not leather, however; Shaun knew the difference.
He put the yellow and black box aside, and considered the second article.
This was a cardboard container that he recognized as the receptacle for a wartime gas mask. He had seen them before, in the Blitz display at Stoneford Museum, and again in the restaurant at the hotel where he and Mrs. Collins had eaten lunch, tucked under tables and beside chairs.