Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  “Does Olive like eggs?”

  “It’s for you, though,” said Winnie.

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  She smiled to the little girl still peeping round the door, and summoned her to her side. The girl lolloped over shyly and Rachel gave her the egg.

  “Be careful, it’s hot.”

  “What do you say?” said Winnie sternly.

  The girl mumbled something almost inaudible, which sounded like thank you.

  “It’s too hot,” said Rachel. “Tell you what. Let’s put it back in its cup and do this.” She sliced the top off with her knife, revealing a thick, sunny yolk, then quickly sliced the toast.

  “Now these are called soldiers, like Uncle Charlie...”

  “Lieutenant Eckersley,” said Winnie, in case the child got any ideas.

  “And what you have to do is dip them in.”

  She handed a soldier to Olive and they watched as she dipped it into the yolk. She squinted up at Rachel and then at her mother.

  “Eat it, then,” said Rachel. “It’s all right.”

  The yellow tipped toast went into her mouth and she chewed on it with a frown for a few moments, then the taste hit her and she smiled. Rachel pulled her onto the bed so she was sitting beside her and they watched her eating. She didn’t know if Winnie would be offended if she offered her some too, but Olive dipped one and held it out to her mother.

  “It’s not for me, you silly girl,” said Winnie, half blushing.

  “No,” said Rachel. “Have some. Please.”

  Winnie took the slice and ate it delicately and Rachel could see how much she savoured the taste and how rare it was. She patted the bed beside her. Winnie giggled, as if it were an outrageous idea that she should sit down while at work, but she did, and they both nibbled at the toast and egg till it was all gone.

  “Can I ask you a question, miss, if you don’t mind?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Rachel.

  “Is it true you work for the secret service? My mum told me this morning. She said you were very brave. You shot a German spy, another one, before that other one got away.”

  “She shouldn’t have said anything.”

  Winnie dabbed crumbs from the corner of her mouth and shrugged. “I think it’s marvellous, a young woman like yourself, doing a man’s work like that.”

  Rachel shook her head and looked at the striped ticking pattern of the sheets. “I’m not doing anything special.”

  “We all fight the war in different ways, I suppose.” She ran her fingers through Olive’s hair. “Even you, eh?”

  Rachel reached under her pillow for the bundle of photographs. She unwrapped the red silk handkerchief and carefully flipped through them, hiding them from Winnie. There. The photograph of Winnie’s father in his First World War uniform, posing in a studio, possibly in Moseley. His young face so lean and full of hope.

  The man she thought was her father.

  She wrapped up the other pictures and stuffed them back under the pillow.

  Winnie took the photograph, seemed to read it for a moment before her face lit up with surprise. “How did you get this?”

  “The work I do, which I can’t talk about, involves records. Military records. When you mentioned it the other day, I sent an archive request. They sent this.”

  “Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. You don’t know how much this means.”

  Tears sprang to Winnie’s eyes and she stroked the face of the man in the photograph.

  It didn’t matter that he wasn’t her real father.

  And also, now, thought Rachel, it didn’t matter where the photograph had come from. She had it because Olive, this girl here had it in her collection of family photographs – and that might be only because Rachel had gone back in time with the photograph and given it to Winnie this moment. The photograph of Alfred Lewis in his military uniform might exist only in this bizarre timeloop and might never have been taken, that was the scary thing. But there were other possibilities. It might be donated to Olive from another family member, a distant cousin, in the future, and Olive might find herself owning two copies of the picture, whereas in her previous life it had only been one. And in this new future that would stretch out from this moment, she would never realize that the two photographs she owned were in fact the same photograph, the same physical object.

  Rachel stifled a giggle that fizzed in her throat, but Winnie didn’t notice because the door slammed downstairs.

  Winnie stood, wiped her eyes and shoved the photograph in her apron pocket. She took the plate and egg cup, leaving the cup of tea on the tray. “Come on, Olive. Enough now.”

  Rachel padded over to her dressing table and was throwing on her clothes when Charlie’s voice called through the door.

  “Rachel? Are you decent?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He walked in and jolted, averted his eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry!”

  “It’s okay,” she said. She was only putting on her stockings, it was nothing to be shy about.

  He turned his back to her, talking to the wall. “That’s not quite what we regard as decent in this time,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. She clipped the stockings to her suspender belt as quickly as she could and patted down her dress and sat at the mirror to put on her lipstick. “I’m decent now. Unless seeing a woman without her lipstick on is incredibly scandalous.”

  He turned cautiously and peeped through fingers, relieved. “I’ve come to collect you,” he said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Nowhere special. Just want to take you with me.”

  “Excellent, because much as I like Winnie, if I spend another day making tea, I’ll scream.”

  “You won’t be making any more tea,” he said.

  “I’ve been wondering why I told you not to trust Davies, but didn’t tell you why. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Charlie leaned against the wall by the door, his hands behind his back. “Knowing too much can affect the past. Who knows what I might end up changing if I know too much?”

  She noticed her hand was shaking ever so slightly as she applied her lipstick. “But do you think he suspects something?”

  “He might. But he won’t say anything. At the end of the day, he knows I’m working for our side. He’ll bury any dark thoughts he has and just get on with it. I guess we’re all doing a little something like that.”

  “I’ve been thinking. Would it be possible for you to recruit me to the service for real, so I can really do some work? I think I’d be good at it. It’s just that I don’t really exist and have no records. We could invent some cover story about my records being lost or something, or pick out someone my age from the archives who’s died young and get the birth certificate. That would cover it, wouldn’t it?”

  “You want to work here?”

  An insane desire to devote herself to war work. To atone. Could she ever do enough to make up for what she had nearly done last night, the awful crime she had almost committed. How could she explain that to Charlie, the man she’d almost sentenced to death?

  “We all have to do our bit,” she said, “and I’d like to do mine.”

  “You’re not scared after last night?”

  “Well, the rats freaked me out a bit, but no, I’m not scared.”

  She went to the wardrobe and opened it, scanning the rail for something, and then forgot what it was. The bundle of her clothes lying on the floor of the wardrobe. Her DM boots standing there, as if her body had disintegrated.

  She remembered the man lying in the street. Just his body in a grey suit, all perfectly normal and present, except for his missing head. This pair of boots standing empty was the opposite of that. It was hilarious, really, when you thought about it.

  She snorted and stopped her mouth with her fist.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  She wiped the snot from her nose. “I’m sorry, Charlie, it’s nothing. Just a funny thought. I�
��m ready now. How do I look?”

  She turned and presented herself to him. He gazed at her with a funny look and she thought she’d made a mistake again. Was something about her appearance scandalously out of fashion?

  “You look... wonderful,” he said. But in a sad way, as if her looking wonderful was a bad thing or something he didn’t care for at all.

  “Oh. Good,” she said. “I think this era suits me. I’m going to enjoy it.”

  He smiled sadly and said, “Let’s go.”

  She reached for her coat and was about to put it on when Charlie rushed forward to take it from her. He held it aloft so she could back into it.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You say that as if it’s strange.”

  “It is,” she said. “No one does that.”

  “What a terrible place the future must be if a man can’t help a lady on with her coat.”

  She followed him through the lounge, calling goodbye to Winnie and Olive. They walked down the carpeted stairs and she stepped out into the back yard.

  He was about to close the door when he slapped his forehead. “Hold on. I’ve forgotten something I need. Wait here.”

  She walked alone up the dark ginnel, humming a half-remembered tune. Not really a tune at all, she just felt she should have music in her head, even tuneless music. She came out to the village green and waited by the alley’s dark mouth, the cold biting her face.

  Moseley village was a lively, bustling crossroads again, so many people shopping or stopping to talk, and it all looked so normal, so peaceful, despite its sandbags and ARP wardens and public information posters warning of careless talk and imminent peril. A tram rattled through the crossroads and headed for the city. The sky was as grey and cold as a gun barrel and she couldn’t help thinking everything looked black and white, like she’d always seen it on photos and in films. But movies had never portrayed the smell of it: the tinge of cinders and fried bacon and something rotten, which made her want to heave.

  The smell of frying flesh. Sergeant Webster burning, and Clifford too. A human barbecue.

  She heaved again and clamped a hand over her mouth and nose.

  How did they carry on every morning after the devastation they suffered every night? She didn’t know how they could face it so bravely.

  Charlie’s boots echoed up the ginnel behind her. She realized she’d left her stack of photographs under the pillow and hoped Winnie wouldn’t go through them. She’d have to collect them later. Couldn’t leave them lying around like that.

  She didn’t ask what Charlie had forgotten. He took her hand and they walked across the green. He turned up the alley between Barclays Bank and Watts & Co. photo-frame manufacturers, dirt and cinders scraping under their feet. They came to the green church gate and he pushed it open with a great creak.

  He was taking her to the church after all, though hopefully not dropping her off to make endless cups of tea all day, while he went around checking bomb sites and doing exciting things.

  “Where are we going?” she said.

  He gripped her hand a little tighter and led her up the shale slope. The touchstone was a few yards away. She pulled against him instinctively.

  “Where are we going?” she said.

  “We’re not going anywhere, Rachel,” he said. “You’re going. You’re going home.”

  She tried to break free but his grip was firm.

  “But I don’t want to go home!” she cried.

  “You don’t belong here, Rachel.”

  She was twisting and turning, his gloved hand almost crushing her fingers.

  “I don’t belong there! I don’t exist there! I don’t have anything to go back to!”

  He shook his head and pulled her closer and closer to the touchstone.

  “I want to stay here and fight, with you!” she cried.

  Tears were rolling down her face now and he tried to gently shush her.

  “I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you,” he said. “I won’t let you put yourself in danger here.”

  “But we have the list, Charlie. We know how to stay out of danger.”

  He shook his head. “This list tells me there’s another raid tonight. Eleven hours of it. Incendiaries. Over 600 fires across the city. That’s going to happen tonight. How can I let you stay here, knowing that?”

  “We can use it to help us.”

  “I can’t use the list, Rachel. Like you said, if I try to change history, look at the mess it creates.”

  “No. Don’t do this.”

  “Danny saved one girl’s life – one insignificant teenage girl out of thousands in this city – and that wiped out your life. I could save thousands of lives with this list but how much damage would that cause? How many other lives would be wiped out, like yours?”

  “Please don’t do this to me,” she moaned.

  “Rachel. Trust me. You’ll be safer there.”

  He sat her on the gravestone but she balled herself up and refused to let her arms free. He was glancing around to make sure no one could see them. The churchyard was empty. She was sobbing now, all the horror of the previous night finally coming out of her, retched up in chunks.

  “But I want to stay. Please let me stay.”

  “I can’t, Rachel. You have to go back.”

  “There’s nothing there for me.”

  “I’ll make sure you’re fine,” he said. “Trust me. I’ll tell everyone here that you were ordered back to London this morning.”

  “But you’ll get in trouble, for Danny.”

  “I’ll live,” he said. “We’ll dismiss him as an escaped lunatic somehow. It’s not far from the truth.”

  He hugged her and she cried against his chest for a while. He looked about him, at the cemetery, the wrought-iron gates, the war. He looked so desolate and wretched.

  He gave her his handkerchief and she wiped her eyes. She was going home.

  He took something else from his pocket and handed it to her. A black pebble with hieroglyphs.

  “This was Danny’s. You’d best take it with you. I have no idea what it is.”

  “I couldn’t begin to explain it,” she said, shoving it in her pocket. Her own phone was gone, incinerated.

  Charlie frowned. There was so much between them.

  “Keep yourself safe, Charlie,” she said.

  He smiled and she knew he was thinking that she was the only person who might know if he survived all of this. But she didn’t know. She hadn’t been to his future yet, nor even his past, although to him that had already happened.

  “It makes me wonder what the point is,” she said. “Why have this thing if we can’t do any good with it?”

  “Perhaps we can. We’ll see.”

  He didn’t sound confident. He was as lost and confused as she was. It was all hopeless. His arm that was around her shoulder eased off and his gloved hand stroked her back. He was letting go of her. It was time.

  “I’m going to see you soon, aren’t I?” she said.

  “You already have,” he smiled.

  She shuddered. “Too weird.”

  “Go on,” he said. “Before someone sees us.”

  “Thank you, Charlie. I’m glad you’re here for me.”

  They stood up and he stepped away from her. She sniffed and took in a deep breath, readying herself to touch the stone at the exact spot that would send her home. She looked back to him – one last time, remember this – and smiled.

  Charlie rushed towards her suddenly, held her in his arms and kissed her. Startled, she faltered, touching the gravestone to keep her balance. The delicious musky taste of his lips on hers and a swooning that swept up through her body from her feet right up to her throat.

  CHARLIE STEPPED BACK to see Rachel’s body ripple like he was watching her through a fire and then she wasn’t there anymore.

  He stroked his lips, resisting the urge to touch the stone exactly where she’d touched it, to follow her, chase her, and tell her he lo
ved her. But he watched the space where she’d been for a while and then trudged away to the gate, murmuring, “Too weird.”

  — 44 —

  SHE SNATCHED HER HAND back, as you would when you thought your fingers were being burnt, and looked around to see a bright sunny day. The smell of death was gone and the grind of traffic was a constant drone in the air.

  She was back.

  She slumped and wept into Charlie’s monogrammed handkerchief. Why had he sent her back to this? Where would she go? What could she do now that she didn’t have a life?

  “Rachel Hines?” he said.

  A man was standing over her and she thought it was Charlie and that she hadn’t returned at all. But he was in his fifties, smart.

  She searched his features for some sign that it was an older Charlie. Of course, he might know when she would appear and come to meet her. He might have waited all these years for her to come through.

  But it wasn’t Charlie.

  “Yes,” she said. I’m Rachel. That’s me.”

  He watched her compose herself and then offered his hand. She shook it uncertainly.

  “Geoff Winston,” he said. “I was worried you wouldn’t be here. It’s been so long since we had Mr Eckersley’s instructions.”

  What was this about?

  “He instructed me to wait at the top of the alley, by the gates there. You didn’t come. And then I heard you crying. Are you all right?”

  She wiped her eyes. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry. It’s been a bad week.”

  He nodded and smiled and seemed amused by it all.

  “When did he tell you to be here?” she asked, finally.

  Geoff Winston looked at his wristwatch. “About... ten minutes ago.”

  “I mean, when did he give you this instruction?”

  He chuckled at his mistake and seemed surprised that she’d even ask. “A year ago.”

  He’d survived the war. He’d lived on to a ripe old age. She totted it up quickly. He must be about ninety-five.

  “It’s all been a bit of a mystery to us in the office. I don’t know why he didn’t instruct you to come in for a meeting instead of telling you to be here.”