Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  Each time the game went end to end she felt sorry for the poor players. They looked exhausted out there on the wide-open acres of space.

  She became aware of Maddy, behind her, suddenly taking an interest in the game, edging closer to the television, her fists clenched, whispering, “Come on, England, come on.” She thought it strange because Maddy had never seemed to be interested in the tournament before now. Maybe it was the stress of the funeral. It could make people act strangely. She’d seen it before. You expected everyone to be sad after a funeral and they usually went all silly and got drunk and laughed a lot. It must be the relief.

  There were only seconds to go.

  “Come on, England!”

  The commentator said something about Germans falling to the ground with cramp. They attacked the England goal with another floating ball but it was brought out harmlessly. The referee was looking at his watch.

  “It’s all over!” said the commentator. Then “No.” The referee waved them on.

  England cleared the ball out over the halfway line. Hurst was all alone. He ran at the German goal.

  “Some people are on the pitch!” said the commentator.

  They could see them at the top of the screen. Fans running on.

  “They think it’s all over!” said the commentator.

  Hurst belted the ball at the German goal and it shook the back of the net.

  “It is now!” said the commentator.

  The kids, the men, the women all jumped to their feet and she was in the middle of it, strangers hugging her, everyone laughing, screaming, even gloomy Stan. Charlie grabbed hold of her and kissed her.

  England had won the World Cup.

  — 48 —

  IT TOOK A WHILE FOR the players to walk up the steps to receive their medals and the trophy. Bobby Moore bowed to the Queen and shook her hand and turned to the crowd and held the Jules Rimet trophy aloft to a great cheer, then he kissed it as he walked away.

  The bedraggled players walked back down to the pitch and a brass band broke into the national anthem. Everyone on Moseley village green stood to attention and sang along to God Save the Queen and she was startled at first because she’d never seen anyone do this in her life and here everyone did it, including the children.

  When it was over, Charlie came to her side and put his arm around her and whispered close, “You know, even though I knew the score, it still felt bloody marvellous experiencing it.”

  “I think I felt the same way,” she said.

  “We’ve got a few hours of sunshine left,” he said. “Let’s pack the picnic basket.”

  He took a pile of sandwiches and pork pie that hadn’t been eaten and she wrapped them in paper. They popped back to the flat for his picnic basket and he suggested she might want to change, but she glanced at the space on the wall where the photograph had been and said she was fine.

  As they got in the Roadster and headed south for the Lickey Hills, she wondered if that little glance at the wall would bury itself in Charlie’s unconscious so that one day in the future, when he came to put the photo up, that would be the place he chose.

  She tied a silk headscarf over her hair, put her sunglasses on, and felt like Grace Kelly as she sang along to The Byrds’ Turn Turn Turn on the car radio. The roads were clear. Everyone was indoors celebrating England winning the World Cup. It was as if the city and the country were theirs alone.

  They were there within twenty minutes and this was what she loved about Birmingham so much – you could be in the countryside in no time, although she barely ever took the opportunity. She remembered trips up here with her dad when she was young. Had she been here with her mother? She couldn’t remember. She’d died too young. She had only a blurred vision of a Christmas morning. Every other memory she had was with her dad, the little boy she had left behind just now.

  They trudged up to the toposcope on Beacon Hill and the sun was still brilliant and bright and she took her shoes off and felt the warm blades of grass between her toes.

  Charlie talked about the history of the place and she smiled because her father had done the same.

  “There was an observation post up here during the Blitz,” he said. “I came up here a few times. I helped build that toilet block over there.”

  They went back to the car and laid the blanket out and opened the picnic basket and munched on curling sandwiches. She realized that since all this had begun, from the day Danny had discovered the touchstone and she’d begged to tag along on the adventure, there hadn’t been a single happy day, and this, finally, was a moment of complete bliss.

  And yet she felt so sad too.

  After they ate and drank ginger beer, he took out the Dansette and hooked it up to the car’s engine somehow, and put on the Wayne Shorter record.

  They listened and tapped their feet to the first track and then when the second track began he stood up and held out his hand.

  “Would you care to dance?”

  “Oh, Charlie. I don’t really know how to dance.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll lead.”

  She let him pull her up and hold her close, one hand holding hers, the other on her hip, and he pressed his chest to hers and rocked slowly from side to side.

  She was awkward at first, not sure where to move her feet but she gave in to the sway of him, his weight leading her so that the slightest movement in his body told her where to go. He held her close and she closed her eyes and relaxed and was one with him, their bodies sashaying this way and that, slowly slowly slowly quick quick slowly slowly slowly. She felt his breath on her neck and breathed in the musky aftershave smell of him and felt safe and protected.

  It seemed like they danced for hours, then the track finished and he pulled away from her and kissed her hand and they sat down again and didn’t talk, just listened to the music continue as the sun slowly sank.

  Her first ever formal dance, she thought. Such a shame that people didn’t do that anymore.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” he said. He stood up and dug around in the boot of the car and pulled out a camera. “It’s brand new. Very clever. Canon FTQL. Japanese, I’m afraid, but everything seems to be these days.”

  He set it up on a rock and fiddled with a setting, checked the viewfinder.

  “The nifty thing is it’s got a 10-second delayed action timer.”

  He rushed over and slumped down to her side and they both smiled at it. She tried not to think about making the exact same expression as on the photograph she knew so well but she couldn’t help it. The camera whizzclicked and the photo was taken.

  Had it been the same photograph? Would it be slightly different? What would have happened if she’d decided to change her dress, or looked the other way?

  He took her hand and looked into her eyes suddenly. He’d been thinking about what to say; she’d heard his mind grinding it over for the last hour.

  “Rachel,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. About us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I want you to stay this time. Not go back. Stay here. With me.”

  She didn’t know what he wanted. Was he asking to marry her? Could she do it? She loved him, but she didn’t know if he was just a substitute father for her. Could she stay and live with him? Live through the sixties and seventies and eighties with him, a man thirty years older than her? Did she mind that? He was handsome and such a good man and going back to the present, a present without him, scared her.

  “I’d like that,” she said. “I’d like to stay.”

  And she suddenly found herself laughing. Charlie’s frown broke into a smile and she put her arm around him and kissed him on the cheek.

  They packed up the picnic things and put them in the boot of the Roadster and he drove to the tearooms at the bottom of Rose Hill, saying they should have a last cup of tea before they drove back, but it was closed. So they drove back to Moseley with the top down, and the sun was sinkin
g as they hit a deserted Kings Heath high street, her head against his arm as he drove, humming along to Walk Away Renée on the radio.

  He thought she was sleeping, but she was wondering what she’d agreed to. Were they a couple now? Did he mean he wanted her to stay for another fortnight? And what of the things that had already happened that she still had to do? They both knew that she would give him the Sports Almanac and the list of dates she would appear, so he could be waiting for her. This had already happened in 1934.

  She didn’t want to think about it.

  He parked the car up and they climbed the stairs to his apartment. She fell on the sofa and closed her eyes while he pottered in the kitchen.

  “A nice cup of tea will perk us up,” he called.

  She felt dizzy. She must have caught the sun. It had been such a hot day.

  “Yes. Tea,” she moaned.

  It had been only this morning she’d woken here, with Danny in the flat, waiting for the waiting to end and the funeral to begin. A million years ago.

  The wooden toggles on the window blinds were blowing in the breeze and tap tap tapping against the panes like a wind chime.

  She would just lie a little longer like this, then have a nice cup of tea. Would he ask her to share his bed tonight, or would he want to marry her first?

  She had agreed to stay here, in 1966, in the long, hot summer of England’s past.

  No more going back to the loneliness of the present. It was all going to be fine. She had...

  — 49 —

  IT WASN’T THE RAIN lashing on the window that woke her with a start. She had almost fallen off the sofa but had jolted awake just in time. A door had slammed. The door to the street downstairs. Had Charlie walked out?

  The window was dark. It was the middle of the night. Her bare arms shivered. Something wasn’t right: the smell of the room perhaps; the shift in temperature; an indefinable taste of something on the edge of her mind. She sat up and looked around groggily as a woman’s footsteps click-clacked up St Mary’s Row.

  The Dansette was sitting in the corner of the room with the Wayne Shorter album on it. That was strange. She hadn’t remembered Charlie setting it up again when they’d returned. She thought he’d left it in the boot of the car.

  Something wasn’t right.

  She looked around in panic, noting the furniture, some of which had changed.

  It wasn’t Charlie’s flat in 1966.

  It was Charlie’s flat in 2012.

  It was her flat.

  She jumped up and swooned uneasily, reaching to steady herself on the sideboard. The letter was there. Charlie’s letter to her. Had she imagined the whole thing? Had she dreamed herself back to 1966?

  No, she was wearing the black dress. Her black court shoes had been kicked off over there, and her handbag was there too. She rummaged in it and found her precious stack of photographs. She was wearing exactly what she’d worn for the funeral and the cup final. She had been there.

  She stumbled over to the picture on the wall: the photograph of her with Charlie on the picnic blanket. Still there, exactly as it had been.

  Exactly as it had happened only hours ago.

  She peered out of the latticed window at Moseley village at night. The modern Boots was across the road. Baggeley’s Chemist opposite. Drunks fighting over taxis under a monsoon. She was definitely back in 2012. Something inside her shrivelled up and died.

  She said, “Oh no,” and then, “Charlie.” Then she dropped to the floor, her legs crossing to one side under her, just as they were on the picnic photograph.

  She had no memory of walking out to the touchstone, but she must have done it: she must have walked out of Charlie’s flat in 1966 and walked to the churchyard and come back to the present. She had been tired but they hadn’t been drunk. Had she been sleepwalking?

  Somehow, in the night, she must have got up from the sofa, put her shoes on, reached for her handbag and walked out, leaving him, walked over to St Mary’s churchyard and gone through.

  She sat in the dark and listened to the hail on the windows. A car passed through Moseley village and wiped its wash of orange light across her wall.

  What if she hadn’t done that? What if she’d just materialized back to home, without going through the touchstone? Was that even possible?

  Her dress wasn’t wet.

  She staggered to her feet and padded through the flat to her bedroom, just as she’d left it. She fell face down on the bed and wept into the pillow thinking about poor Charlie and how she’d abandoned him.

  — 50 —

  IT WAS STILL RAINING in the morning, Moseley village grey and sodden. She checked the calendar. Yes, it was July 2012. A glorious British summer.

  Her mood was lighter. There was no need for tears or despair. It would be easy to just walk across the road, touch the gravestone, and be back with Charlie in 1966 or whatever year it happened to choose for her.

  She kept her black dress on, threw a raincoat over it and walked across the road to the churchyard, entering through the upper lychgate, her court shoes clopping on the flagstones.

  The graveyard was empty. She approached the touchstone and held out her hand and readied herself to feel that same rush of displacement.

  Nothing happened.

  Her fingers fidgeted all along the edge of the old moss-coated stone but there was no dizziness, no flash of light, no popping of the ears as there always had been before. It was just an old gravestone in an old graveyard like millions of others and Charlie was lost to her.

  She slunk back, the drizzle dragging down her hair, cold and miserable. She didn’t know what to do so she got the next bus into town and headed for the library.

  — 51 —

  KATH BRIGHT PAUSED in her work, filing another batch of directories that were making the trip to the new library building taking shape in Centenary Square a hundred yards away. She had found herself glancing at the CCTV monitors habitually since returning to work, ready for the appearance of either Danny or Rachel.

  Danny had not appeared so far, but she spotted Rachel floating up the escalators and heading for her reception desk.

  “Michael, could you take over the desk for me for a minute. Thanks.”

  She was already walking away, disappearing behind a stack, knowing that Michael would be puzzled and exasperated but would not ask why.

  She hid, wondering how long she’d have to wait till the girl disappeared. It was ridiculous. She dug out her mobile and called Mrs Hudson.

  “She’s here. At the library.”

  There was a pause as she listened to the old woman breathing. “Has she seen you?”

  “No, I’m hiding. But I can’t get Michael to cover me for too long. She might be here for hours.”

  “Can you pretend to be sick and sneak out without her seeing you?”

  “I could, Mrs Hudson, but I don’t want to. It doesn’t make any sense. She might not have seen me in ’66 anyway.”

  “But she might have, Katherine.”

  “And if she did, she’ll have recognized me from now. So she knows.”

  There was another long silence as the old woman breathed and then sighed harsh static. “Let me think about it,” she said. “We might have to risk telling her.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But not just yet. Let’s meet tonight, with Mitch. We’ll discuss it fully.”

  — Epilogue —

  RACHEL APPROACHED THE reception desk, rain dripping off her face, barely looking up at the man as she asked for the fiches of the Evening Mail from July and August 1966.

  The man pulled a wodge of tissues from a box. “Here,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She wiped her face and neck.

  “Take some more if you need them.”

  “I think I need a towel,” she said and forced a smile.

  She took the box of fiches to a free reader and searched through the papers from the date she’d returned. When she reached Tuesday’s paper, she gasped w
ith surprise.

  There was a picture on the front page of a young woman with a blonde beehive hairdo, beaming with joy. She was standing outside a bookies holding a splay of betting slips like a winning hand. There were cameramen all around, a boom microphone just above her head, photographers and TV crews.

  It was Maddy Parker.

  The story told how the Mystery Punter who’d predicted England’s successful road to World Cup victory had handed the winning tickets to her mother on her deathbed along with the direct telephone number of a local TV news reporter, with instructions to call him before claiming the winnings. His identity was still a secret but it was rumoured that Mrs Parker’s recently deceased mother, Amy, had saved the life of the Mystery Punter when he was younger. His whereabouts were still unknown and he seemed to have left the city.

  She felt sudden dread, scared now for Charlie’s sake, and rushed across to the shelves where the lines of red Kelly’s Directories were stacked. She pulled down the 1967 edition and leafed through it.

  If Maddy had claimed the money, Charlie was at risk. Powell had said he would kill him if it happened.

  His shop was no longer there in 1967. Her stomach flipped over and she thought she might vomit right there.

  She flipped to the Residents section and found his name. There, still in the apartment. She dropped the book at her feet and pulled down 1968 and skimmed through the pages. Again, he was still there.

  She pulled down 1980, the final volume, after which they must have ceased publishing them. Charlie was still there, still alive. She slumped to the floor, like a balloon deflating, her tears of relief falling onto the red fake leather binding. Charlie had lived. He had somehow survived.

  She floated back to the fiche reader and carried on scanning through the newspaper archives, not sure what she was looking for until she found the report on Bernie Powell being sent down for racketeering. And a few days later D.I. Davies also arrested and sent down for corruption.