Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set
Page 51
“That’s a freight train, bab. Goes straight through. Doesn’t stop here.”
Deirdre nodded to herself and sipped at her brandy. She unpinned a badge from her lapel and handed it to Rachel. “Here, have this. By way of a thank you.”
Rachel held it in her palm. A black metal badge with a white CND logo.
“I was at the big rally,” said Deirdre. “In March. From Aldermaston to London. You heard about it?”
Rachel nodded, even though she knew nothing about it.
“The papers said twenty thousand but you could see it was more. Much more.”
“I didn’t know you were an activist,” said Rachel.
“You have to be. Or you’d just go mad. It’s all such a mess. They’re going to blow up the world. The whole world. Imagine it.”
“It’s something to live for,” said Rachel. “Something to fight for.”
Deirdre took her eyes from the clock and looked right into her. It was like someone inside her was shining a light out through her eyes, trying to see the world through them.
“Do you think so?”
“Yes, I do,” said Rachel.
Deirdre smiled and half-laughed again. “You’re a nice person.”
They both looked up at the clock again. Twelve minutes past. The signal box somewhere down the line ding-dinged and the brandy shimmered.
Deirdre knocked back her glass and stood up suddenly.
Rachel reached out to stop her but she was at the door in a moment. “Don’t!”
She sprang up, her chair falling back, and ran through treacle to the door. Too slow, too slow.
A blast of cold air hit her face.
She blinked through fog on the platform.
She saw the shape of a girl running and leaping into the white as the freight train screamed through the station
— 8 —
RACHEL WOKE WITH A jolt and wondered if she’d screamed out loud.
A dream. Nothing but a dream.
Again.
Everything was fine. She was in her bedroom with the reassuring Artex swirls on the ceiling. She could hear her Nan in the kitchen downstairs and smell the faint odour of burnt toast.
“Rachel?” Martyn’s voice up the stairs. “You all right?”
“Yes, Dad! Fine!”
She could hear him paused at the foot of the stairs wondering if he should say something. She swung her legs out of bed and stomped over to the chair for her dressing gown. All is normal. She heard him tramp back to the kitchen. Murmuring between him and Nan. She gripped the chair and blew out, getting her breath back, her heart thumping in her throat.
The sickening sound of the freight train hitting Deirdre Foster’s body. The awful thump and slap and crush of it as she was destroyed in a single second.
Rachel shook her head, trying to rid herself of the sound still in her ears. She doubled over the bin and gagged. Nothing came up.
It was only a nightmare but each time so real the shock of waking sickened her. Twice now. The grandmother she’d only ever seen on photos so real she could smell her perfume.
Rachel was at the table for breakfast ten minutes later, chomping on scraped toast and jam. Martyn came in and out of the kitchen with a slice of toast in his mouth, too busy to sit down. Olive joined her and strained the tea into china cups for them.
“Nan? What was Grandma Foster like?”
Olive exchanged a look with Martyn. “Your mum’s mum? Well, Rachel, I never met her. She died before your mum met Martyn.”
“Was she a member of CND?”
“What?” Martyn stopped. Toast crumbs still speckled over his lips. “CND?”
“You know. Ban the Bomb. Did she go to marches? In the fifties?”
“Why on earth would you think that?”
“I had a dream about her.”
That look between them again. Olive reached out and took her hand.
“Was it another nightmare, darling?”
Rachel nodded at her plate. “We talked in a train station café for a while. She was worried about nuclear weapons and gave me her CND badge. She’d been on a big march. Then she walked out and threw herself under a freight train. It was horrible.”
“Oh darling, that’s terrible.”
Martyn came over and ruffled her hair. “She didn’t throw herself under a train. She died a few years after I met your mum. Cancer. I think she was in her forties. Terribly young, but...”
“In my dream she was more like twenty.”
“There you go then. Just a bad dream.”
“You probably saw her on one of the photographs,” said Olive, “and got her picture in your head. That’s probably it.”
Rachel nodded. “Just a daft dream.”
Twice now. Except the first dream had been after the second. In the first dream, Renee had been all sorry because Rachel had seen a friend throw herself under a train. The second dream had been a flashback.
“Anyway,” said Martyn. “Your Grandma Foster was twenty when she had your mum, so she can’t have thrown herself under a train. If she had, you wouldn’t be here, would you?
“No,” said Rachel. “I suppose I wouldn’t.”
— 9 —
AS SHE WALKED ACROSS sunlit campus lawns, Rachel was aware of the cloud of confrontation before she saw it: it thickened the air so much it almost had a fragrance: an intense musk of resentment. A huge crowd of students clustered around the entrance to the Student Union building and a couple of speakers faced them, standing on the steps, visible even over the placards held high.
Jessica rushed to greet her, breathless, aglow with excitement. “Rachel! Come and see this. It’s sooooo wonderful!”
She let Jessica drag her towards the edge of the crowd where Danny and the others were camped, shouting out encouragement to the speakers. Everyone was laughing and cheering and buzzing with anticipation.
“What is it?” asked Rachel. “What’s happening?”
Danny blushed slightly when he saw her but grinned and reached out and squeezed her arm.
“We’re having a protest against the nuclear train,” he shouted.
“The what?”
And she saw now that the placards said Ban the Bomb, Not in Our Backyard and End Nuclear Madness, CND logos emblazoned across them.
“There’s a freight train that passes through here every week and it’s carrying nuclear waste,” said Danny.
“It’s not nuclear waste,” chided Jessica. “God, Danny, how many times? You never pay attention to the details.” She linked arms with Rachel and pulled her closer. “It’s spent fuel from the nuclear power plants at Hinkley and Oldbury. They take it to Windscale for re-processing.”
“Windscale?”
“Where they had the big bloody nuclear accident,” said Danny. “Worst in Britain.”
“All of this spent fuel,” said Jessica, “is put on freight trains and they’re going through Birmingham at night. No one will admit to it. They come through Barnt Green to Kings Norton, then along the freight line through Kings Heath and Moseley. And they do it at high speed too.”
“If there’s ever an accident, we’ll all be strumming our harps on a cloud,” said Danny. “The whole of Kings Heath and Moseley would be a giant crater.”
Rachel felt hot suddenly, mouth dry, head swimming. She wanted to get out of the crowd. She’d dreamed about Deirdre Foster sitting in Kings Heath station telling her about the giant CND demonstration, and now this. It was a coincidence, nothing more. It had to be.
But she knew now that the train Deirdre had thrown herself under was this nuclear train. She knew that Deirdre’s act had been a protest.
“Are you all right, Rachel?”
She pulled away from Jessica. “I’m fine. I feel hot.”
A speaker standing on the steps finished off his speech with a flourish and the crowd roared approval.
Rachel peered over the heads and placards to the steps and saw the speaker turn and talk to the redhead woman standing on
the podium beside him.
A sudden blast of frost hit Rachel’s face.
The redhead woman looked out over the heads of the crowd and her eyes met Rachel’s.
“Oh God.”
“Danny, I think we need to get Rachel out of here. She looks like she’s going to be sick.”
Rachel heard Jessica’s voice as if from a neighbouring room.
The redhead woman stepped down, into the crowd, and began pushing her way through. She was coming.
“Oh God, it’s her,” Rachel said. “It’s Kath Bright.”
“Who?” said Danny.
“Quickly, Danny. She’s going to faint!”
“She was with you, in 1966. She’s a traveller too.”
“Is this your dream again?”
“Danny! Get her out of here. Now!”
Kath Bright pushed closer through the crowd, a shark cutting through water, and call out.
Rachel couldn’t hear what it was, panic flooding her soul.
Danny dragged her out of the crowd and they were running, stumbling across juddering acres of lawn, tripping over stone steps into the Physics building. Cool corridors, like stepping into a refrigerator. She flopped back against a wall, a sudden desperate need to lie on the marble floor, just lie with her face on the cool marble, just for a while, until she felt better, but she knew it would be improper.
“Rachel, what are you talking about?” said Danny.
She was aware of his hands on her shoulders and wondered if he were about to kiss her. Not now. Please not now. Not if I’m going to be sick.
But his eyes were full of concern and not a little fear.
“You were with her,” she mumbled. “In 1966. She was up to something. She works in the Central Library, here in the present. But she knows about the touchstone.”
“Rachel,” he said. “Are you telling me that a woman who was in your time travel dream is here, right now?”
She smiled and wondered where she found the strength from. “Why not? You are.”
Danny nodded and chewed it over. “Yes. You put me in your dream so why not her? She’s probably just some harmless woman. It probably means nothing.”
“She recognized me. She wanted to tell me something.”
“Come on.” He gripped her arm and marched her down the corridor.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you home.”
She looked back over her shoulder at the door of bright light. Beyond it was the demonstration. Beyond it was was Kath Bright, looking for her.
“Why aren’t we going that way?”
“I don’t think that’s wise,” he said, gripping her wrist so tightly.
They were out of the other side of the building and across campus soon enough and she realized he was pulling her to the University train station. On the sunlit peace of the platform, he sat her down on a bench and put on a brave face.
“You look better. The colour’s back in your cheeks.”
“I feel better. We should go back.”
“No. You’re not working today.”
She didn’t disagree with him. She didn’t have the energy. Maybe he was right.
The train came and they climbed aboard and she was sitting opposite him in a sun-soaked compartment and vaguely wondering why they were catching a train home when the train didn’t go to her house. Wasn’t the Moseley station derelict, just like the Kings Heath station? There was no train to her home. But Danny seemed to know what he was doing and she felt faint and tired.
She closed her eyes and felt the sun warm on her face and on her arms and throat and gently through her chartreuse summer dress.
She heard a ticket inspector come through and Danny bought two tickets. It was nice of him. He was such a considerate person; nothing like the Danny in her dreams. She drifted, the rhythm of the engine lulling her into trance.
A shadow fell over her face and she felt a draught, the skin on her arms puckering at the cold.
“This is your stop, lady.”
A ticket inspector leaning over her, shaking her awake. Where was Danny?
She jumped up and reached for the door, peering out at an icy station platform at night.
“You’ll catch your death without a coat, love,” said the ticket inspector.
She stumbled onto the platform and he slammed the door shut behind her. There was a whistle and the train pushed on with a hiss of steam.
She looked around in panic, feeling naked, exposed.
The station sign, in giant letters, told her she was at KINGS HEATH.
— 10 —
RACHEL PUSHED THE DOOR and fell into the rest room.
Renee looked up from polishing a glass and frowned. “Good God, girl. You look frozen.”
Rachel rubbed her bare arms.
“I know you young uns like to show more flesh these days but that’s just silly, girl.”
“I lost my coat on the train,” said Rachel. “I think it was stolen.”
“Oh. my Lord. You need a brandy, bab.”
And she was pouring one and bringing it over, pushing her towards the radiator.
“You stand there and get this down your neck, bab. You look like you’ve got frostbite, you poor thing. Fancy that, bloomin thieves stealing a girl’s coat in weather like this!”
Rachel sipped at the brandy and felt its liquid warmth burn all the way down her throat.
A whistling. Clear and shrill, haunting, carried on the wind. A man somewhere on the platform, whistling in the dark. The man in the bowler hat who’d scared her.
It’s the same as before, she thought. Renee was polishing a glass, I ran in, scared by the man who was whistling, I ordered a brandy, then Deirdre walked in. This is not a dream. This is more than a dream. I’m here to stop you doing this, Deirdre Foster. If this means anything, it means I’m here to stop you. That’s the only reason it can be.
She clenched her fists in sudden determination. If she stopped Deirdre Foster jumping in front of the nuclear train, then perhaps she might escape this nightmare. That was what she had to do. Was that what she had to do?
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, bab. To be expected, I suppose. Must have been a terrible shock for you.”
“Yes, it was. This is nice, though. Warming me up. Thank you.”
“There. The roses are coming right back to those cheeks.”
The brass handle turned slowly and the door creaked open.
Deirdre Foster walked in.
Rachel watched her keenly. The glow in her eyes and the half smile on her lips, like she was trying to stop herself laughing out loud at a fond memory: the distracted euphoria of a woman who’d decided to kill herself, to make a protest to the world.
“Could I have a brandy, please?”
Renee checked the clock on the wall above the Ease the Strain — Go by Train poster, even though she knew it was within licensing hours and had only just served Rachel one. She reached for the bottle of Coronet and poured a measure.
“Just served one for the lady there. Poor girl had her coat stolen. Can you imagine? In weather like this. World’s coming to a right old end and no mistake.”
Deirdre turned and examined Rachel with real pity. She shrugged off her orange plaid peacoat and hurried over, wrapping it around Rachel’s shoulders.
“Here, have mine.”
“I couldn’t let you do that.”
“Please. I don’t need it. Honest.”
That smile again. Beatific. Serene. Knowing she was going to die in the next few minutes.
This was an opportunity: to befriend her, get her to talk, maybe somehow find a way of changing her mind.
“Thank you,” Rachel said, reaching out and holding Deirdre’s wrist. “It’s really kind of you. Won’t you be cold yourself?”
Deirdre instinctively pulled away, but Rachel pulled her closer, feigning faintness.
“I’m really warm,” said Deirdre. “I don’t need it.” She glanced at the clock.
“This is very kind of you,” said Deirdre.
“You’ve been kind to me. The world’s a nice place.” Oh God, that was rubbish, Rachel thought. I’ve got two minutes to convince her not to end it all and that’s the best I can come up with?
“I don’t think it is.” Deirdre glanced at the clock again and called out to Renee. “The next train is at twenty-past, yes?”
“That’s right, bab.”
“But there’s one at twelve minutes past too?”
“That’s a freight train, bab. Goes straight through. Doesn’t stop here.”
Deirdre nodded to herself and sipped at her brandy. Her fingers stroked her belly and Rachel knew what was inside her. Her mother.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking but, are you... expecting?”
Deirdre flinched and hugged herself, as if suddenly feeling the absence of her coat. She bristled, offended, and then slumped, as if she’d decided that it didn’t matter.
“Yes. Three months now.”
“A girl.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just have a feeling.”
“Well, I don’t know how you could.” Deirdre shook her head and then she shuddered. Was she cold? She shuddered as if ridding herself of a thought that polluted her head and then she let it go and shrugged. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, anyway.”
Rachel knew why it didn’t matter but she couldn’t answer. Deirdre’s strange repetition of ‘anyway’ threw her. How unusual it sounded, and also so beautiful and childish it made her want to cry.
Deirdre glanced at the clock again.
Rachel knew if she stayed like this, it would happen all over again: Deirdre Foster would stand up and run out of the door and she wouldn’t be able to stop her.
The second hand crawled around the clock face, counting off Deirdre Foster’s last minute on Earth.