Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

He looked at her expectantly, like she might have an answer for him. She shrugged.

  “I don’t know either.”

  “Oh well. Shall we go and see it, then?”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about. He headed off to the gate and down the alley towards the village green. She followed. She had nothing else to do.

  The village was like she’d always known it. Busy, a whirl of heavy traffic and shoppers and the winos on the benches and people lined up glumly at the bus stop. Nothing had changed and there would be no bombardment tonight, and everyone was safe and knew they were pretty much guaranteed to be alive this time tomorrow. She took them in and wanted to shout at them all, tell them they were the luckiest, most privileged generation of people who’d ever existed and none of them knew it.

  Mrs Hudson’s shop was there across the street, and she thought with guilt of the lost Victorian dress. It was in her bedroom, but that bedroom didn’t exist anymore. That dress didn’t exist. Perhaps it was hanging in the shop because in this timeline Rachel had never gone in and hired it.

  The door opened and Mrs Hudson stepped out in an overcoat, turned and saw her. They gazed across the road at each other, cars flitting between them. Then the old lady turned and headed up the hill. Perhaps she didn’t even know her because in this timeline Rachel had never walked into her shop. Rachel didn’t exist.

  “Miss Hines?”

  Geoff Winston pointed up at the flat above the shops on the crossroads, Charlie’s flat. He had a stupid grin on his face. “There it is,” he said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll sign the deeds inside?

  Rachel gazed up at the leaded windows, the ornate, stucco façade that stood guard over the village crossroads, above a modern, sterile franchise bar.

  He waited for the traffic to stop at the lights and walked over to the other side. The ginnel entrance now had a metal gate. He took out a key and unlocked it and they went through. The same back yard and the same stairs up to the apartment.

  She wondered, her heart suddenly beating faster, if Charlie was going to be there, waiting for her.

  But the flat was empty. It didn’t quite look the same as it had in 1940: most of the furniture was different but there were a few things she recognized. Mr Winston was looking out at the view.

  “Fantastic location. Oh, you better have these. One for the door and one for the gate.”

  He handed her the keys. She stared at them in her hand.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s all yours now, Miss Hines. You did know that?”

  She tried to answer but only stammered.

  “And there’s the trust fund to go over,” he said.

  “Trust fund?”

  “Yes. That’s yours now too.” He frowned and grinned and couldn’t hide his happiness for her and that he was the one unveiling it for her. “You have a flat and a comfortable income, Miss Hines.”

  He sat down at the table under the window and indicated she should take the chair opposite. He took files out of his briefcase and unsheathed his fountain pen. Then he noticed a framed photograph on the wall between the two windows overlooking the village.

  “Bloody hell,” he said. “Excuse my French. You’re the spit of her. That your grandmother?”

  Rachel walked over to the photo and gazed in wonder. She’d never seen it before.

  Charlie and a young woman who looked just like her, posing on a tartan picnic blanket, somewhere in the countryside. He was wearing a black suit and tie. Glasses. The woman wore a beautiful black dress, sophisticated, her court shoes curled tastefully to one side, a string of pearls at her neck. They were holding up glasses of champagne and there was a hamper behind them and an iris blue sports car in the background. She couldn’t be certain but it looked like it might have been taken in the mid-sixties.

  The woman was her, but she’d never seen the photograph because it hadn’t happened yet.

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “Well, let’s get to work and sign it all over to you. Now, first up is this...”

  He was chattering away, but she didn’t hear him, still gazing at the photograph, tears rolling silently down her cheeks.

  — 45 —

  THE BELL CHIMED AS Mrs Hudson stepped into the musty clutter of Buygones antiques. Mitch was at his counter, about to pour from his art deco teapot.

  “You timed that well,” he said.

  “Any customers?”

  He shook his head. She flipped the sign on his door to read Closed and locked the catch.

  “Tea would be lovely,” she said.

  “Is this a business call, or...”

  “Or.”

  She sat herself down on a velvet-lined armchair and he came over with the tea set, balanced on a silver tray. She said nothing while he poured and stirred and made her tea exactly how she liked it, fascinated by the ritual, smiling kindly, glad of the weight off her feet. He pushed the tea cup to her and she sipped and sighed. Blissful.

  “So,” he said. “What is it now?”

  “I think he’s done it. Properly this time.”

  He was puzzled, then realized what she meant.

  “Fenwick?”

  She nodded and he put it all together and made a silent Oh.

  “A boy,” he said. “First 1912 and then 1940?”

  “You knew?” Harsh now, implying carelessness on his part.

  “I suspected. Couldn’t be sure, though. I was definitely going to raise it at our next meeting. Was there a girl as well?”

  She nodded and sipped again.

  “She came in with him the first time,” he said. “Not the second.”

  “But she has just returned from the Blitz by the look of her. We need to do something about it.”

  Mitch dug into his pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. “Tonight?”

  “At the latest.”

  He called Kath Bright’s number and expected it to go to her ansaphone as it usually did when she was working in the library, but she answered immediately.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s been a breach. We need to meet. Tonight.”

  “Okay... I think I know who you mean. I can be there at six.”

  He hung up and said, “She knows.”

  Mrs Hudson nodded and sipped at her tea again. “What a bloody mess,” she said.

  — Epilogue —

  AFTER GEOFF WINSTON had gone through the deeds, trust fund and her bank details, he’d wished her the best of luck and skipped down the stairs with the air of a man who’d just carried out the most interesting task of his year.

  She’d cried a while longer and then felt ravenously hungry. There was tinned food and packets of pasta in the kitchen but she didn’t want to cook and could smell the various takeaways down in the village.

  In her bedroom — which must have been Charlie’s old bedroom — she opened the wardrobe and found her pair of DMs sitting there, the maxi-dress and velvet Goth jacket she’d thought might somehow pass for Edwardian. How stupid that thought seemed now.

  Next to the boots, a package. Red handkerchief. The photographs. She hugged them to her and sat in the well of the wardrobe for a long time.

  He had bought other clothes for her, modern things, all the right sizes, and she wondered how he’d gone about stocking it. It was all so sweet and kind of him that she felt mean for being so disappointed that there was no letter from him. She wanted a message, but there was nothing, nothing but food and clothes and a place to live and everything she would ever need all taken care of for her.

  An hour later, she still hadn’t eaten, but she’d changed into a pair of jeans and fur-lined suede boots and a cable knitted jumper and felt out of place in modern clothes, and she found herself in the city centre by the Rag Market, crowds of people teeming around her, not seeing her.

  She placed a bunch of red roses on the Blitz memorial, two giant hands coiled in prayer reaching for the sky above a block of black onyx with
names etched in, so many names. She read them all and only recognized two. She kissed her fingers and placed it to one of the names – Webster – a man she’d seen and known, if only briefly, and watched helplessly as his soul became ash.

  She thought about them all for a while, their courage and their sacrifice and all they’d done to give her the life she’d had, and then she left them and went to look for something to eat, something special that would remind her how sweet life was.

  Historical Notes

  FAMILY AT WAR is a work of fiction that weaves its way around historical fact. Several historical resources have been invaluable in giving me a vivid picture of civilian life during the Blitz. The main sources I have used are as follows:

  Angus Calder’s The People’s War (1969) gives an almost forensically detailed account of British life during wartime, and was particularly useful with regard to the reality of air raid precautions.

  George Beardmore’s Civilians at War (1984) was also particularly useful in charting the emotional effects of the war on ordinary people.

  Pete Grafton’s remarkable book ‘You, You & You! (The People Out of Step with World War II) has long been a favourite of mine and I found myself delving into it once more to reacquaint myself with its opening chapters. A restored version of the original full text is now being published online by Pete Grafton at

  http://youyouandyourestored.wordpress.com.

  The Birmingham History Forum provided some much needed detail on Percy Shurmer’s life and work.

  ARP. Air Raid Precautions (later named the Civil Defence Service). Set up in 1937, ARP wardens enforced the blackout, managed the air raid sirens and directed people to shelters. In all some 1.5 million men and women served within the organisation during World War Two.

  Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister of Great Britain from May 1937 to May 1940. His policy of appeasement towards Hitler either led to the collapse of Europe or bought Britain valuable time to prepare for the inevitable war, depending on whose view you take. The Chamberlain family were major figures in the Birmingham political scene, hence Chamberlain Square (named after Neville’s father, Joseph Chamberlain) in the city centre, which features in other Touchstone books. Their Birmingham home, Highbury Hall, stands in Moseley.

  Tuesday 19 November 1940. Five days after the infamous bombardment of Coventry, the Birmingham Blitz began in earnest. There had been several air raids on Birmingham before that, with a few hits on the city centre, but on this night 440 bombers dropped 400 tonnes of high explosives on the city, killing 450 people and injuring 540.

  Parachutists. On 13 August 1940, German bombers scattered a large number of empty parachutes over the Midlands and Scotland, and then reported on the ‘New British Broadcasting Station’ that their agents were now safely harboured by Fifth Columnists, some in possession of “electro-magnetic death rays.” British Intelligence knew they were fake as no human tracks were in evidence in the fields where they had fallen. Wild rumours, however, persisted. (Calder, 167).

  BSA. The Birmingham Small Arms factory in Small Heath was bombed by the Luftwaffe on 26 August 1940 resulting in one high explosive bomb and a shower of incendiaries hitting the main barrel mill which was the only one operating on service rifles in the country, causing the unaffordable loss of 750 machine tools but fortunately no loss of life. It was further hit on the two nights that cover this story. Two BSA night-shift electricians, Alf Stevens and Alf Goodwin, helped rescue their fellow workers. Alf Stevens was awarded the George Medal for his selfless acts of bravery in the rescue and Alf Goodwin was awarded the British Empire Medal. Workers involved in the works Civil Defence were brought in to help search for and clear bodies to get the plant back into production. The net effect of the November raids was to destroy machine shops in the four-storey 1915 building, the original 1863 gunsmiths' building and nearby buildings, 1,600 machine tools, kill 53 employees, injure 89, 30 of them seriously and halt rifle production for three months.

  The National Loaf was a bread made from wholemeal flour with added calcium and vitamins, introduced in Britain during the Second World War (actually a year after the events covered in this book).

  The Phoney War. The period from the declaration of war on 3 September 1939, until the German attack on France and the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. For the first eight months of the Second World War, nothing much happened.

  Dunkirk. While now reframed as a national victory, the Dunkirk retreat was a catastrophe for the British Expeditionary Force in France. The first real military engagement of the war saw a German blitzkrieg that, as Winnie says, ended up with the entire British army kicked out of France. It was akin to a boxing match seeing a knockdown and a count of nine with the first punch. After this, a successful German invasion of Britain seemed only days away. For many people in Britain, this was not the beginning of the war, but the end.

  Fish and chips with gravy. This may seem a strange concoction, even extravagant under wartime rationing, but The Wartime Social Survey of November 1940 reported this as being a particular favourite in Birmingham. An ex-hotel chef who found himself managing a factory canteen testified he “despaired of Birmingham's taste in food. He had been all around the world, and catering in Birmingham was the worst in the world. He said the workers in the factories only wanted fish and chips, cream cakes, bread and butter, and brown gravy over everything. They had protested when he made white sauce with boiled beef and carrots... Birmingham people do not understand food.” (Calder, 447)

  No arms, no transport, no equipment. The parlous state of affairs in the face of the threat of imminent invasion of Britain by Nazi forces was recorded by the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, in his diary entries of the 1/2 July 1940.

  Percy Shurmer was a British Labour Party politician and postal worker. Shurmer was a tireless campaigner for working class people and, after the war, was responsible for the annual Christmas party at the Town Hall that hosted 1000 under-privileged children, and his fund to provide hobnail boots for poor children who needed shoes. He lived at 40 Belgrave Road, Balsall Heath all his life. In the 1945 General Election, he took the Sparkbrook seat from Conservative MP, Leo Amery. His surname is, in fact, an old English surname.

  Wapping. This incident is referred to by ‘London Boy’ as a story everyone was familiar with in Wapping (Grafton, 27).

  I don’t think there’s ever been a zoo in Muswell Hill. This little exchange pays tribute to a classic TV comedy sketch, now long forgotten and, alas, not immortalised by YouTube. It was from a comedy show by Antoine de Caunes and featured a man in a video hire shop being interrogated by a Nazi officer desperate to trick him into revealing his true identity.

  Auschwitz. Rachel is wrong here and her memory of history lacking. Although the Nazi camp was operational from May 1940, it began its pursuit of the ‘Final Solution’ in September 1941.

  Treason and treachery. The crime of ‘treachery’ was rushed through the statute books in order to secure a conviction of ‘treason’ against enemy operatives who were not British nationals and, technically, could not be expected to be loyal to the British crown. The offense was created in 1940, suspended in 1946 and repealed in 1973. Sixteen people were shot by firing squad or hanged for treachery. Only one woman was convicted of this crime and did, indeed, escape the death penalty. Dorothy Pamela O'Grady was sentenced to death but on appeal the sentence was commuted to 14 years’ penal servitude. Prosecuted as a saboteur, not a spy, she was found to be making drawings and detailed maps of the coast and caught in the act of cutting some telegraph wires.

  Miskin King. A ‘miskin’ (West Midland and Welsh regional dialect) was a dunghill or dungheap; a midden. Percy Shurmer became known the Miskin King “because of his campaign against landlords who instead of providing rubbish bins just erected a lean-to shed-like structure in back yards adjacent to the outside toilets and wash houses, and all the rubbish from the houses was just dumped in these. He was often know
n to attack these miskins and demolish them.” (Birmingham History Forum).

  Leo Amery was the Conservative MP who stuck the knife into Neville Chamberlain with his “in the name of God, go!” speech, ushering in Winston Churchill as war prime minister.

  A coup against Churchill. This largely happened during May 1940, after Churchill had become prime minister. Chamberlain and Halifax’s attempts to undermine him by suing for peace with Italy are dealt with in Roy Jenkins’ biography, Churchill, John Lukacs’s Five Days in London, and more recently in the film Darkest Hour.

  Wednesday 20 November 1940. The following night 200 bombers returned for another heavy raid, dropping 118 tonnes of explosives and 9,500 incendiaries, causing widespread damage. The main bus depot in Hockley was among the buildings hit, destroying or damaging 100 vehicles.

  Clifford Lees is an entirely fictional character, so there is no such story in the archives of this traitor being executed. His name, though, is part borrowed from British fascist, Arnold Spencer Leese.

  Moseley police station. To the best of my knowledge, this police station was not actually bombed during the Blitz. But it was certainly standing there in 1912, where it is listed in Kelly’s Directory, and was not the new building that currently stands there.

  Rats. While this never happened in Moseley as far as I know, a similar story was relayed to me by witnesses who saw it happen in Digbeth, Birmingham, during an air raid. The story has always stuck with me and I transplanted it to Moseley for the sake of fiction.

  Thursday 21 November 1940. During this eleven-hour raid, large numbers of incendiaries were dropped, starting over 600 fires. The water supply system was badly damaged by bombs, causing three fifths of the city to lose mains water supply, fire fighters therefore had to draw water from the city's canals.

  3. ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD

  Dedication