Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  Don’t be lonely there, Rachel, in your own time. Come to me.

  Yours,

  Charlie.

  — 15 —

  THE LIMOUSINE SEEMED to glide along like it was floating on air. It either had no wheels or he was more drunk than he thought. They were cruising through Birmingham city centre on a Wednesday night in 1966 and he tried to remember which buildings were still present back in his own time. The Rotunda gleamed in the distance and a song about Summer in the City played on the radio.

  “Ooh! Turn it up!” shouted Carol. “I love this track. It’s groovy!”

  Danny laughed. She’d actually said groovy. She was squeezed in next to him, her mini-skirted hip pressing against his thigh and he breathed in the intoxicating scent of her perfume. For a moment, he thought of how she might be an old woman or even dead in his own time. He had begun to calculate her age but pushed the thought away. He didn’t want to think about death, only life and possibilities. And money.

  “Don’t worry! We’ll get in! The Opposite Lock is the best new nightclub and we’re on the guest list!” called Lashford, sitting on the other side of Carol.

  “They do chicken,” shouted Carol. “In a basket! Let’s have chicken in a basket!”

  “And champagne!” cooed the other woman, sitting opposite, her legs crossed at an angle, smoking on a cigarette and holding it at an angle. Everything about her was at an angle.

  “Danny here’s buying!” laughed the other man, a councillor friend of Lashford’s.

  “Yes, let’s do it,” said Danny. He felt rich and privileged and part of an elite.

  “One thousand, seven hundred and fifty quid!” cried Carol, nudging her thigh against his.

  “And the rest!” shouted Lashford. “If England win it.”

  “How much?” asked the smoking brunette with the angles.

  “£350,000,” said Danny, unable to suppress a giggle. He was drunk.

  Her eyes widened through the fog of cool and he sniggered. It was the look on their faces. To anyone in 2012 it was a good sum but not a lottery jackpot, not a set-you-up-for-life sum. But he knew that to these people it was a decent annual wage, 175 times.

  “But only if England win it,” said Lashford, “which they won’t with that clown Ramsey in charge.”

  Danny laughed again. It was hilarious that there were people in the world who didn’t know that Alf Ramsey, Sir Alf Ramsey, was the most successful England manager in history. They didn’t hear the words 1966 and immediately see Bobby Moore lifting the Jules Rimet trophy. It was kind of ridiculous.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny,” snapped Lashford.

  “I’m sorry,” sniggered Danny. “I’m not laughing at you, really. I’ve just got the giggles.”

  “It’s the winning all that money,” said Carol, linking her arm in his. “I’d be a bit giddy and all.”

  “When do you collect it?” asked the angular brunette through her cloud of blue smoke.

  Danny waved a hand dismissively. “I needn’t bother. The mayor says it’ll all be back with the bookies anyway.”

  Carol laughed and pushed against him. They were getting hysterical. Tears were springing to his eyes.

  “I’ll remind you that the mayor is a very intelligent man,” said Lashford. “And he paid for the champagne you’re both so drunk with.”

  Danny held a hand up in surrender but couldn’t stop his laughter. “I’m sorry.”

  “He’s doing important things here,” said Lashford. “Building a city of the future.” He waved his hand out at the cityscape they were floating through.

  Danny choked again. “Not the Bull Ring?”

  “The biggest shopping mall in Europe,” said Lashford. “State of the art.”

  “Sorry, Lashford. I don’t mean to laugh, but in ten years’ time the Bull Ring is going to be the joke of Europe. In thirty years they’re gonna tear it down. It’s embarrassing!”

  “Stop here.”

  The car pulled up and Carol fell forward on her knees.

  Lashford jumped out and they all craned around to see what was happening. The door to Danny’s side flew open and Lashford dragged Danny out like he was an empty suitcase.

  He felt the hot night air sweep over him as he hit tarmac with a crack.

  Lashford’s fat fist grabbed his collar and tie and yanked him up to meet his other fist coming down hard on his jaw with a crack.

  He was looking up at the limo and Carol staring confused, still on her knees. He tasted silver foil in his mouth and realized it was blood. Lashford must have hit him but he hadn’t felt it. He laughed.

  Lashford slammed the door and walked round to the other side.

  “What the hell?” shouted Danny.

  But it was drowned out by the slam of the other door and the car sailing away.

  He scrambled to his feet and shouted after them, sudden anger flooding his veins. “What do you think you’re doing? Do you know who I am? I can buy every one of you!”

  The car was gone and he was standing on an empty stretch of road. The city was silent. He panicked, went for his wallet. His betting slips. Safe. He put them away and looked all around. No one at all.

  After brushing himself down and loosening his tie he set off walking in what he thought was the route to Moseley.

  — 16 —

  RACHEL READ THE LETTER five times before she realized the stylus was crackling in the run-off groove. She went over and picked it off the vinyl and turned off the Dansette. She walked around in circles for a while, then put the album away and slid it into the stack of albums she’d been working her way through.

  She looked around the flat and wondered how much she should prepare. She thought fleetingly of taking the right clothes and realized it didn’t matter: Charlie would have the right clothes for her. He always did. And he would know she was coming, because some time in the future she would tell him the precise date and time to expect her. She had already done it.

  Should she turn everything off in the flat? Would she be gone a long time? Forever? Did it matter if she never came back? Or would she come back at exactly this night?

  She left the letter on the sideboard and reached for the only thing she felt belonged to her: the stack of photographs she’d taken with her. It was the only connection she had to her old life. She slipped the stack in her pocket and walked down the stairs to the street.

  Moseley village was still lively, music throbbing from the Bull’s Head pub, drunks staggering, shouting, singing, fighting over taxis while the rain sheeted down. She walked swiftly up St Mary’s row, ignoring them all, crossed the street, and entered the churchyard through the lychgate.

  Had anyone seen her? It didn’t matter. She walked around to the rear graveyard, down the path, moonlight glinting off the gravestones, cold rain slamming into her face. It was hailing now. The stones stung her bare arms and she ran to the touchstone, not even looking around one last time to make sure no one was there before reaching out to touch it.

  The air sucked from her mouth, her ears popped, she staggered backwards like a punch to the gut and a moment of no breath, winded...

  “Rachel?”

  The deluge had been switched off and the night air was warm. A man was standing by the gate, lean, in a sharp suit, slim tie, glasses.

  “Charlie!”

  She ran to his arms, to her sanctuary.

  — 17 —

  DANNY SNIGGERED TO himself as he trudged through Highgate’s empty streets, remembering how dangerous it had been in 1912: the gangs of Edwardian street toughs with their flat caps and empty eyes. He laughed hysterically and let out a yelp that echoed back to him off factory unit walls.

  Adrenalin, he thought. It must be. He’d expected to feel pain, anger, depression. Wasn’t that how you were supposed to feel after a fight? But he felt marvellous. He was buzzing. It was all hilarious: stupid Lashford Piplatch with his limo and his fisticuffs. He had taken his punch and come through and was laughing.

&n
bsp; Could he go back to the guest house? Was this the kind of thing that Lashford would laugh about in the morning? Was it all harmless fun? If he stayed out all night would Lashford laugh and say, “Don’t be stupid, lad! It was only a fight, you daft mare!”

  Or if he went back there would he find his suitcase in the front garden, or go to his bed and be dragged out of it in the middle of the night when Lashford staggered in from the nightclub?

  Sod him, he thought. He wasn’t going back.

  He shivered with the cold and pulled his jacket collars up and considered his options. There were no hotels or guest houses, he knew that already. Could he walk into St Mary’s churchyard and go to the touchstone and slip back to 2012? It would be easy. But if he did, could he be sure that he could get back here, to 1966? He needed to collect his money in the morning or it would all have been a waste of time, and the touchstone was unpredictable. He could come through again in the morning and find himself in 1959, or 1980 or 1873.

  He had to stay. It was his money. He’d earned it. He was going to stay here and claim it no matter what.

  He’d thought he might sleep in the churchyard, and it wasn’t until he’d almost reached Moseley, walking past 12 Alcester Road where Amy had lived in 1912, where he’d rescued her from her crazy father, that he realized what he should do.

  He hadn’t intended to go to her yet, not without the money. He’d wanted to surprise her, play the big shot. He knew she would be old now, but still, he could maybe make amends. It wouldn’t seem strange to her that he was here again looking exactly the same and promising a fortune that he’d won by predicting the future – she had surely realized when he’d appeared to her again in 1940 that he wasn’t of her time.

  He turned back, past the old tram depot and walked down Brighton Road, the border of Moseley and Balsall Heath. The streets so silent, though it was barely after eleven. He turned right up Kingswood Road then left into Newport Road and found the house, memorized from the photo he’d taken of the page in Kelly’s Directory 1966 in the Central Library.

  He pushed the waist-high gate open and knocked the door, the harsh metallic rap of the knocker echoing in the street. A light went on in the hallway and he stepped back a few paces so as not to look too imposing, holding his breath, wondering how old she would look now.

  The door creaked open and she stood there in a quilted dressing gown, gazing at him with un-comprehending eyes.

  He caught his breath. She looked so beautiful.

  “You,” she said. “You’ve come back.”

  They stared at each other for an age. How could this be her? Back in 1940 she’d been full of anger at him and he’d noticed the lines around her eyes, the fading of her looks; had been unable to avoid the feeling of disappointment: that she was no longer the beautiful young girl he’d fallen in love with in 1912. The line from the Philip Larkin poem he’d read in an A-level class had come back to him: their beauty has thickened. That word had been exactly appropriate for Amy Parker in 1940. Her beauty had thickened.

  But she was different now. Not as young and as beautiful as she had been in 1912, but younger than in 1940; less careworn, still beautiful, even glamorous. How had this happened?

  “Maddy! Who is it?”

  The cry came from behind her, in the shadows of the house, and it curdled the glitter in her eyes. She looked afraid now.

  Slow steps shuffled up the dim hallway and the outline of an old woman emerged from the murk, and as Danny stared in horror, he saw that this old woman was Amy, and realized that this other Amy must be her daughter.

  The old woman – Amy Parker – glared and her eyes bulged. “You!” she shrieked.

  “Amy?” he said.

  “Get away from us!” she screamed, and her scream exploded in the street like a bomb. It pierced the night and knocked him back with its force. “Get away from us!”

  He was staggering backwards, fumbling with the gate’s latch.

  “Get away from us!” she shrieked.

  She lunged at him and the younger woman held her back.

  “Mum! No! Don’t!

  She was crying too, this younger woman who was Amy’s daughter.

  He fell backwards over the gate and banged his knees, scraped his shin and wondered how his face could cause so much distress in these two women.

  “I’ll kill you!” Amy screamed.

  He turned and ran down the street as hall lights flashed on all around, her screams snapping at his heels.

  — 18 —

  RACHEL LINKED HER ARM in Charlie’s and leaned against him as they walked down the dark alley, her free hand holding onto his arm. It felt so safe and she wanted to stop and press against him in the darkness and to be held by him.

  But he walked on, leading her carefully through to the bright street lights of the village green.

  “You’re wet,” he said. “What happened?”

  “It’s raining in 2012. It rains all the time!”

  He went to continue walking across the green but she held him back, wanting to take it in. No sandbags or Government posters, no blackout with kerbstones painted white.

  “When are we?” she said.

  “It’s 1966,” he said.

  She looked up at his face, clearer now in the glow from the streetlights.

  He was older. He must be fifty now, but he looked very good on it, perhaps even younger than when he was in the army in 1940, with his greased back hair and his moustache. Now he looked more comfortable inside himself, like a man who’s found the suit that fits him like a second skin. Only the glasses made him look old, but they gave him a distinguished air. The slim fitting suits of the sixties were the perfect look for him.

  “You look... well, Charlie.” she said. “You look really well.”

  He smiled and led her across the green. It was fenced off with railings and there was an entrance to an underground public toilet at the crossroads corner. All the shops and pubs were dark except for a café further up St Mary’s Row that looked open.

  They crossed the road to the dark mouth of the ginnel entrance, which wasn’t gated off. She had to walk behind him through the narrow blackness, her hand on his shoulder, till they came through to the back yard and he opened the door to the flat. She thought how strange it was that she’d walked out of the same flat moments ago and was now walking back into it forty-six years ago. A short walk to the past.

  She followed him up the stairs and looked all around it, comparing it with her own version of the flat, noting which furniture he’d kept and the things he hadn’t bought yet. She was grinning for the first time in months and he stood and watched her, smiling uncertainly.

  “It’s good to be back,” she said.

  And she knew he thought she meant coming back to the flat she’d stayed in in 1940, because he didn’t yet know he was going to leave this flat to her. She would have to tell him to do all of that, but not now. Sometime soon, when she had to face the thought of leaving him again.

  “Get yourself dry,” he said. “There’s a towel in your room and, you know, clothes and things.”

  She ran to the spare bedroom and dried herself quickly and pulled the first dress out of the wardrobe. She’d be able to see all her Sixties clothes in the morning.

  He had poured them each a brandy when she returned and she didn’t refuse it. She didn’t feel sick from her binge earlier. Maybe the touchstone was also some sort of hangover cure. She kicked her shoes off and curled up on his sofa and hummed along to more Wayne Shorter.

  “You’ve got me so into jazz now, Charlie. I never knew I would like it so much. I was playing this. Well, obviously, you know. Your letter.”

  He frowned and she put her hand to her mouth.

  “You don’t know,” she said. “You haven’t written it yet.”

  He laughed. “Apparently not.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say for the best.”

  “You can tell me anything,” he said.

 
; “Even about your future?”

  He thought about it and nodded. “Yes, even that.”

  “If I’m going to tell you all these things, going to tell you all the times I’m going to meet you, then I suppose I should write them all down.”

  “It will happen,” he said.

  She nodded and decided to not tell him she now lived in his flat. It sounded vulgar, like she was hinting he should give it to her. She wanted it to be entirely his own idea, not something she’d put in his head.

  “For the moment, it’s just good you’re here.”

  “It’s made me very happy,” she said.

  “But there’s a problem.”

  “Oh?”

  He sipped at his brandy and winced. “It’s Danny.”

  “What about him?”

  “I’m afraid he’s here too.”

  — 19 —

  WHEN HE REALIZED WHERE his feet had taken him, he was emerging from Church Road facing the line of mock Tudor buildings at the top of St Mary’s Row. He stopped, doubled over, catching his breath. A car sailed past and he caught the concerned face of an old woman.

  He thought of turning left and going to the guesthouse – his case, his clothes, everything but what he stood in – but he turned right and headed for the village.

  He paused at the lychgate to the church. He could go back home, to 2012. But the money, the money, the money. £1,750 to collect in the morning as soon as the bookies opened around the city. But who was the money for now? He didn’t care. It was his money. No one was going to keep it from him. Especially not a total weapon like Lashford Piplatch. He could sleep in the churchyard.

  He looked down towards the village. A young couple crossed the road, the man leading the woman, giggling, breaking into a half run even though there were no cars passing. They walked into a shop front that was illuminated.