by Andy Conway
Danny grinned triumphantly.
This cannot happen. It has to end here and now.
“It’s no use, Rachel,” he said. “You can’t escape.”
“Leave her alone, Danny.”
She saw now that Danny wasn’t holding Deirdre captive, he was standing between them, protecting her. Protecting her from Rachel.
“You know Danny?” Deirdre asked. She was looking from Rachel to Danny and back again.
“How do you know him, Deirdre?”
“He’s a member of our CND branch,” said Deirdre.
And this was when Rachel realized. It was Danny who’d convinced Deirdre to throw herself in front of the nuclear train. He had been here in 1959, slowly insinuating himself into her confidence, putting the idea in her head. That was why she’d discovered that her grandmother had died before she could give birth to Lorna Foster. Danny had gone deep into Rachel’s past to wipe out the one thing that could stop her father, Martyn, meeting the woman who would be Rachel’s mother. That was what he’d been doing here, and that was why she’d found herself back here again and again, looking for a way to correct his crime.
She looked into Danny’s piercing blue eyes and saw not the sweet, kind Danny who’d been her friend, but the evil, scheming Danny who’d been against her right from the start: working to stop her in 1912, 1940, 1966 and now 1959. Working to get his own way.
Danny reached out to her and put on his best concerned voice. “Rachel, you’re not yourself,” he said. “The doctors are here and they’re going to take you back. It’s for your own good.”
She could see the doubt in Deirdre’s eyes. Rachel was insane. Of course she was: she’d just stabbed a policeman in the neck with a cake knife.
The tannoy crackled, gave a shriek of feedback, and a voice announced: The patient was seen last night at six-thirty. He had evidently had a congestive attack, and was thin, pale, pulse weak and unconscious. He recovered somewhat and will have a dose of Calomel.
Rachel shook her head. “No, no, no. I won’t let you do this to me.”
“I can’t let you get away, Rachel.”
She fixed her eyes on Deirdre. “Don’t listen to him. He wants you to kill yourself. If you throw yourself in front of that train, I won’t be born. That’s what he wants.”
Deirdre was shaking her head now. “You said they were government. They wanted to stop me. Stop the protest.”
“I know,” she said helplessly. “I had to say that to make sense to you. But don’t you see? I’m your granddaughter. That little girl inside you is my mother. If you do it, I’ll stay trapped here. That’s what he wants!”
She saw it in Deirdre’s face — the growing certainty that she was listening to a madwoman — and in Danny’s smirk, cementing her doom with every word. But she couldn’t stop herself now.
“I know that doesn’t make sense to you, Deirdre, but believe me, I know of a time where you don’t do it. You carry on living and you have a beautiful daughter and she has me.”
Deirdre was shaking her head now, cowering behind Danny. “Get away from me,” she said. “You’re crazy.”
“You’ve got to believe me, Deirdre. How else would I know you’re pregnant?”
Danny put a comforting arm around Deirdre, shielding her from the madwoman on the platform.
“She escaped from Winson Green Insane Asylum last night. It’s not her fault.” He turned to Rachel and put on his best sympathetic face. It was totally believable. “Rachel. You need help.”
She felt herself sinking. She was going to faint. She was going to wake up in a padded cell. She was going to fail yet again. She was going to be trapped in this cycle forever.
Doctor Ferguson’s voice came over the tannoy again, echoing over the station at the end of time. The patient is fading rapidly. Responds to no treatment. I fear the end is near.
No.
She was not going to be trapped here. She was going to die, trapped in Richard Parker’s insane mind. She was going to die inside him. She might never have existed outside him. Her whole life had been an illusion. She was nothing but the ghost of an insane delusion.
A fierce wind whipped through the station and the fog cleared, revealing a group of figures clustered on the opposite platform.
Parker, Powell and Renee watched her. Fenwick was there. Martyn and Olive had joined them. Doctor Devaz behind them. The wardens from the asylum. They had come to take her away again. Her two nightmare worlds finally conjoined.
And behind Danny, something no one noticed. Deirdre had backed away, out of reach, right to the platform edge.
The signal box ding-dinged. The steel rails hummed. The nuclear train was coming.
— 31 —
“RACHEL! PLEASE?”
She looked across the track at her father. Her grandmother was in tears. Their poor mad girl had escaped from the asylum.
“Let us help you, Rachel,” cried Olive. “It’s for your own good.”
They looked like they wanted the best for her. They looked like they loved her. They looked just like her father and his mother; the people who’d raised her and been there her whole life. They looked just like that.
But it didn’t make sense, she told herself. Every day she’d woken from the recurring nightmare of this station, woke to her perfect life with Dad and Nan, and now they were here in that nightmare pretending to be real.
“Please, Rachel,” said Martyn. “Come back over here. We’ll make everything all right.”
She shook her head. “No. If I’m ever going to get back to you, I have to go back to where I lost you.”
The nuclear train was coming.
Deirdre gazed longingly up the track, knowing she could jump again if she wanted to. Whatever happened here, she would always jump.
But I’m in control of all of this, Rachel thought. And Kath Bright’s words came back to her. It is not cold. You are not here.
She didn’t feel cold at all. It was true.
There’s a very easy way out of there.
She looked across at her father and Olive, still begging her even though she couldn’t hear the words coming from their mouths. She could see Parker and Powell and Fenwick, all staring at Deirdre, their eyes bright with triumph, willing her to jump.
There’s a very easy way out of there.
This station was no more real than the perfect 1959 world she’d created. It was all a dream. She needed to get back to her real life: the flat above Moseley village which Charlie had left to her. She could make it happen.
She could see the train coming now, hurtling down the track.
There’s a very easy way out of there.
The wind whipped Deirdre’s hair. She was going to jump again. It would always happen. Unless... unless... unless...
Rachel smiled suddenly. It was so simple.
— 32 —
HER SHOES HIT THE GRAVEL and she almost twisted her ankle. Staggered. Righted herself.
They were all shouting from the other platform but she couldn’t hear their voices anymore.
Martyn cried out, howling in pain.
Olive screamed, hands to her face like the Edvard Munch painting.
Danny yelled, vicious, fists white. The face of a man having victory snatched from him.
Rachel tottered across gravel onto the other track.
The nuclear train flew at her like a bullet.
She heard one voice cry out as Deirdre shouted, “No!”
There was a second or two where Rachel watched the train hurtle towards her, knowing she could no longer jump clear, knowing she was going to die, wondering what if I’m wrong? What if this is all a delusion and I’m really mad and I’m killing myself?
The train cannoned towards her and she caught an instant of the cab driver’s horrified face it was a fraction of a second frozen in time before the monster devoured her with the fury of all hell it hit her and she dissolved into nothing and everything and indescribable agony her whole body one screaming uni
verse of pain and then bliss and lightness and she was flying down a street with steel rails beneath her and a girl with blonde hair ran from a house right in front of her and cried out Don’t! and died under the wheels of a tram and her father screamed at her dying face waving his cane in the air as a policeman apprehended him spittle frothing at the corner of his mouth he saw her and called out to her as they held him down in the street and she flew on and on and on stars flying past her into her through her all sound collapsing in on itself as enormous silence consumed her and the whole world died
The patient died in convulsions which lasted one hour. Slight abrasion by right eye obtained in a fall off his chair when seized with the convulsions — unimportant.
Died at 6.40 p.m. Attendant Weycham present.
— Epilogue —
SHE WAS COLD AGAIN. It took a long time to become aware of herself again, aware enough to be able to feel her own body. When she did, she was able to shiver.
She stayed in darkness for a long time, not moving, not knowing if she could move. Cold. And the sound of a distant humming. It felt vaguely familiar.
Birdsong. There were birds singing.
Her eyelids prised themselves apart as if someone had chiselled an ancient tomb open. Light seeped in. A dull blur of yellow white green. She blinked through water.
Am I drowning?
Felt a tear roll along her temple.
Am I alive?
She swallowed and it felt like someone had flung an iron bucket full of razor blades down an empty well. Her eyes blinked open and gazed into the giant mouth of a lily.
Am I in Heaven?
She stared into the lily for an age, listening to birdsong, feeling nothing, knowing this was afterlife and eternity.
Except that sounded like a car in the distance. A sputtering engine rattling away down a street. Were there cars in Heaven?
She became aware of a wet patch on her hip and shifted slightly. Her body cried out in pain. This didn’t feel like Heaven. Shivering now, goosepimples blooming over her arms.
I am cold.
The stamens of the lily assaulted her nostrils suddenly. She wanted to sneeze. She shifted, tried to move. Her body aching all over. So much pain.
She nudged her head back and realized she was lying on the floor and staring right into a bunch of lilies dotted with early morning dew.
Footsteps coming towards her. Footsteps on stone.
She turned, tried to move. Couldn’t. Tried to swallow. Razor blades all down her throat again. She coughed.
The footsteps stopped.
She had to get up, she knew. She was terribly vulnerable here. She tried to roll herself over and realized she was lying on grass. She tried to raise her neck to look around, blinking, blurred, trying to focus. Grass and a bunch of lilies by her head. Gravestones.
She could see the man, nothing but a grey smudge in the sunlight. He had stopped at her cough and now he continued. Then he stopped again and she knew he’d seen her.
He stopped and stared for a moment, trying to process what he was seeing. A woman lying in a graveyard.
“Oh my God,” he said, and she thought she recognized his voice.
She coughed, spluttered, tried to raise her head. Just enough to see him rush to her with sudden urgency.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Something familiar about his voice. A young man. He crouched by her, raised her gently. She was nestled against his thigh and focussing now. A churchyard full of gravestones. She looked up at the walls of the church.
“It’s Moseley,” she croaked. “St Mary’s”
“Are you all right, madam? What’s happened?”
He pushed her up into a sitting position and she blinked into his face and recognized the teenage version of the old man she’d known. He was wearing a grey baggy suit with turned up trousers, a knitted tank top and tie, and his hair was Brylcreemed flat.
“I’m alive,” she said, and she nearly laughed, nearly cried.
“I hope so,” he said. “Have you been attacked, or fainted or... something?”
She shook her head, but it hurt too much, so she nodded once. “You’re Charlie,” she mumbled.
“What?”
She smiled. She knew what this was.
She was back in the world again. Back in time again.
It was 1934 and she was meeting Charlie for the first time.
5. LET’S FALL IN LOVE FOR THE LAST TIME
Dedication
To Richard Matheson
— 1 —
HENRYK KERTÉSZ HEARD the wail of a train and the hiss of steam, and felt a terrible sense of foreboding. A premonition of death.
He paused as he entered the station and wondered why he should feel this so strongly. He was not a superstitious man. Even though he attended synagogue in the city, he wasn’t really a believer, and regarded it as merely a social event through which he could keep in touch with other Jews.
The station was a grand arch of steel and glass and rather busy for a Sunday, men in overcoats and trilbies, woolen scarves, their leather shoes shining; women in cloche hats and their skirts swirling daringly mid-calf even in this cold.
A newspaper vendor kept guard over a small snow-drift of headlines about Hitler.
Henryk shuddered and tried to shake off the feeling. Why would the wail of a train and the hiss of steam, two harmless sounds he heard almost every day, fill him with such dread? The English had a phrase for it: someone has walked over your grave; and in German it was Death walked over my grave.
He plodded on and went through the barrier, flashing his ticket stub at the uniformed man — again the sense of dread — and that was when he saw the gang of Blackshirts.
They looked eerily futuristic in their buttoned up black shirts with no ties. The men all cheekbones and moustaches; the women all blonde curls and pale venom.
He scurried on past them, staring at the floor, hoping to avoid their gaze.
“Curtis!”
He flinched, carried on walking.
“Henry Curtis!”
He stopped and turned. The entire gang was looking his way, a gaggle of blue-eyed malice. One of the girls had called him. He saw her now and it took him a few moments of vacant staring before he recognized her.
“It’s you! Jew Henry! The big clever dick!”
The men stepped forward to flank her, their fists whitening. One of them snarled, “Do you know this Jew boy?”
She was gleeful with spite. “I went to school with him! Jew Henry, the school swot!”
Henry found himself laughing and tried to stop himself. It was a dangerous thing to do; to laugh at a gang of Blackshirts. They tended to want to be taken seriously and frowned on being ridiculed, especially by young Jewish men.
The bruisers accompanying his ex-school friend stiffened some more and their fists became even whiter.
Henry was sure that he could handle any one of them — one on one — in a fair fight. But Blackshirts didn’t really play like that. It would be him against ten of them, and although he might dish out at least three bloody noses, he would very quickly disappear under the boots of the other seven, no doubt with the girls joining in.
Henry raised his hat and bowed. “Good day to you, Julie Hickman. Still the same charming girl, I see.”
Her grin of malice soured with hate. “Watch your mouth, Jew boy!”
The men stepped forward and he ducked as one threw a punch at him. He scooted back. They sprang forward.
“Your days are over, Jew!” she shouted.
He decided to dispense with dignity, turning and running full pelt for his platform.
The Blackshirts chased him. All of them. Including the women.
He knew that if he didn’t catch the train, he would suffer the beating of his life. But other passengers were running for the platform too, turning and wondering what all the commotion was behind them.
The train was leaving.
He pushed through, their fists p
unching empty air behind his head. At least one of them kicked him and he staggered momentarily, his backside stinging. Do not fall. If you fall they will be on you.
A whistle.
He pounded for the train already pulling out. His hand gripped the brass handle, turned it, pulled the door open, a jump and he was riding the train.
A hand grabbed at his sleeve and he turned to see one of the Blackshirts running alongside him. Henry knew that if he fell now, they would have him, the entire gang of them running alongside.
He shook him off and kicked out.
The Blackshirt crumpled, his mouth exploding teeth and blood. Two of his friends tripped over him. The rest stopped and shook their fists, spitting their hate.
Julie Hickman shouted after him, “Adolf Hitler is coming for you! Oswald Mosley is coming for you!”
Her hateful face shrank as the train pulled out of New Street station, through the cluster of Birmingham city centre, and he didn’t get his breath back until it pulled into peaceful, quiet Moseley.
— 2 —
THE PAIN WAS UNBEARABLE. Her whole body felt like it had been used as a football. But she was smiling.
“Can you stand up, madam?”
Rachel grinned into his face, even though she could see it was disturbing him. Of course it was: he had never met her before, even though she’d met him many times, through different decades that were still to come.
He was Charlie, the man who had been there for her — a safe embrace in the Hell she’d been living since she’d been lost; Charlie, the dashing lieutenant in 1940 who’d kissed her right here by this gravestone as he sent her back to 2012; Charlie, the sharp-suited, bespectacled, sports car driving 50-year-old businessman who’d ‘sort of proposed’ to her in 1966; Charlie, the overcoat-clad matinee idol who’d embraced her for a brief moment in 1959 — a nightmare 1959 that might have been all in her head. A 1959 that had almost destroyed her.