Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  She waited a long time and had almost finished her entire pot of tea before Charlie walked in.

  She looked up expectantly.

  His face was frozen, like someone who’d just heard of the death of a friend. He placed his hat on the hat stand and sat opposite her. His world had changed.

  “How did you know that?” he said, finally.

  “I’ve already told you.”

  He wrung his hands. She’d never seen anyone actually wring their hands before. “It can’t be right.”

  She put a hand on his. “I know, Charlie. It’s too weird. But listen. How did I know about the Billie Holiday record? How did I know your name?”

  He shrugged and wouldn’t look at her.

  She took a slip of paper from her handbag and slid it under his fists. “And how do I know that these are the exact football scores for the next week?”

  He opened the sheet and read the print-out. He seemed to read it for a long time, as if he couldn’t take in the words, then he stifled a laugh. “So both games on Wednesday night will finish 4-1. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Looks like it. But you might want to put some money on it and test it out.”

  “Betting is illegal,” he said.

  “I know, Charlie. But you know a man who can take your money.”

  He looked in her eyes now. “How do you know that?”

  She smiled and said nothing.

  He nodded. Yes, this woman seemed to know everything. He took in a deep breath, as if he’d been too scared to breathe since he walked in.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “I want to stick around for a week.”

  “Stick around?”

  “Stay here,” she said. “I’ll help you make sure this concert of yours happens on Saturday.”

  “Why wouldn’t it happen?”

  What to say? Should she tell him there was a former friend of hers who might have come to sabotage Charlie’s concert so he could wipe out the existence of an old woman who hadn’t been born yet?

  “Let’s just say there might be some people who don’t want it to happen.”

  Whatever that meant to Charlie he seemed to understand it. He even seemed grateful.

  “I’ll help you,” said Rachel.

  “And what do you want in return?”

  “Your spare bed,” she said. “In return, I’ll make you rich.”

  Charlie looked down at the print-out and the Wednesday night scores that said:

  Third Division (North)

  Accrington Stanley 4-1 York City

  Darlington 4-1 Rotherham United

  “This is utterly bonkers,” he said.

  She patted his hand again. “I know, but don’t worry. The next time it’ll be you explaining it all to me.”

  — 13 —

  AMY PARKER STARED AT the Ogbornes’ carpet and willed it to open up and swallow her whole.

  The tea party amounted to the two mothers chatting conspiratorially while Judy, Mrs Ogborne’s 17-year-old daughter grinned for no reason. Little Amy sat on a creaking wooden chair, examining her white shoes. Harold was across the room from her, staring at her and not saying anything.

  Harold didn’t look like someone who wanted to see Little Amy. He certainly didn’t look like someone who wanted to ask her to marry him. In fact, he looked vaguely annoyed about something.

  The atmosphere felt as thick and inedible as Mrs Ogborne’s seed cake, which had a distinct taste of birdseed and cardboard.

  Amy gazed at the clock on the mantelpiece, watching its slow hand tick round and round, each second feeling like a day. She gazed out of the small window that looked down the narrow side yard, a tantalising glimpse of green lawn beyond it. An even more tantalising glimpse of the apple tree in her own back garden. How she longed to be there now. Alone.

  Her eyes scanned the room for something, anything with which to strike up a conversation.

  The gramophone, with a giant horn and a stack of records wedged behind it.

  “That’s a nice gramophone,” she lied.

  Little Amy’s eyes lit up.

  “We never use it,” said Harold.

  Amy wanted to slap him. He was nothing but a boy with skinny wrists trying to be the man of the house, talking to her like she was his skivvy.

  “Do you have any good records?” asked Little Amy.

  Judy sprang out of her chair and dug them out. Little Amy went to her side and examined them as Judy flipped through them. “Oh! Benny Orphan!” cried Little Amy.

  Judy was winding up the gramophone and putting it on before anyone could tell her no. The crackly strains of I’ll String Along With You filled the corner of the room, Judy and Little Amy swaying side to side, waiting for Benny Orphan’s voice to join in.

  When he did, with his mellow tone and a smile in his voice, Little Amy gasped out loud. “Oh! He’s so handsome!”

  Harold gazed at her and Amy could see the naked attraction in his eyes, but something else too: a spark of contempt. “He’s one of them Jews, ain’t he? Bit oily if you ask me.”

  “Now now, Harold,” said Mrs Ogborne. “That’s not very polite. Little Amy likes him, as you well know.”

  There was a strong hint in the last four words that were almost delivered with a rolling pin.

  Harold put on a fake smile. “I prefer that Al Bowlly fellah. And he’s English and all.”

  “I don’t think he is,” said Amy.

  Harold looked like she’d slapped him. He didn’t like women who disagreed with him, she thought. “Al Bowlly’s as English as Saint George,” he said, sniggering, as if she was wrong in the head.

  “He was born in Mozambique,” said Amy, simply. “His dad’s Greek, mother’s Lebanese. Or the other way round. I read it in Women’s Illustrated.”

  Little Amy and Judy looked amazed.

  Harold shuffled uncomfortably, as if his armchair had grown spikes.

  “He wanted to go and see that Oswald Mosley today,” said Mrs Ogborne. “I wouldn’t have it.”

  “He’s a sensible politician, Mam,” said Harold. That absurd voice again: a boy pretending to be a man. “The Daily Mail says so. That’s Lord Rothermere, that is. They say he’s the man to fix broken Britain.”

  “He’s more like a broken bloomin’ record,” said Mrs Ogborne.

  Little Amy giggled. Judy laughed.

  Harold’s face went red and Amy noticed his fists go white on his lap. She decided to change the subject.

  “Well, we’ll all be seeing him next week. Benny Orphan. Who’d have thought it; him coming to sing here. Right at the top of our road almost.”

  “I can’t wait,” said Little Amy. “To think, we’re actually going to see him. In the flesh. And he has a raffle every time he performs. One lucky lady gets to stand on stage with him and be serenaded.”

  “You’re looking forward to it, aren’t you, Harold?” said his mother, pointedly.

  “Arr. I suppose so.” He relented a little and seemed to remember that this was going to be his big romantic occasion. “He sings a good tune, I’ll give him that. The posters say that he’s coming with that Lew Stone’s orchestra. Now they are a top quality band.”

  Amy tried not to laugh. Harold Ogborne talking as if he was Britain’s authority on popular music. What was it about being a potential husband that made men puff out their chests and say ridiculous things?

  She gazed out at the garden again, longing for fresh air. “It really is a lovely day out.”

  Mrs Ogborne seemed to take the hint. She patted Mrs Dowd’s hand and said, “Why don’t you come and see the garden?”

  They all trooped out through the dank kitchen. Harold made a show of wanting to stay put in his chair but his mother gave him a warning glare and he sauntered out after them with his hands in his pockets.

  Amy breathed in deeply, like a prisoner in the exercise yard. She wanted dearly to climb over the fence to her own back garden and slam the door shut.

  They trooped t
o the bottom of the garden to see the dirt bed where the daffodils would grow. Mrs Ogborne talked at length about the various flowers and where they might all reappear in three months’ time.

  Little Amy left them suddenly, walking up the lawn towards the house. Was she going to use the privy?

  She stopped dead suddenly and yelped.

  They all looked with alarm. Had she trodden on something sharp?

  Amy rushed to her side. “What is it?”

  Little Amy pointed at the house. “There. Did you see him?”

  Amy followed her shaking finger to the dining room window that looked out down the side yard. “Who?”

  “There was a man, standing there, watching us.”

  The others had gathered around.

  “What is it, girl?” said her mother, a note of irritation in her voice.

  Amy could tell that this meeting had not gone according to the script both mothers had in mind and she wondered if they were going to blame her for it.

  “She says she saw a man, in the house,” said Amy.

  “A man?” said Mrs Ogborne. “‘There’s no man in our house.”

  “At the window,” said Little Amy. “Right next to the gramophone. I saw him. He was watching me.”

  “You’re just imagining it,” said her mother, taking Little Amy’s arm and marching her back to the house.

  The others followed and could hear Mrs Dowd whispering threats in her daughter’s ear, telling her not to make a spectacle of herself.

  It was all falling apart.

  Amy followed them all back into the house. There was some more small talk before Mrs Dowd made the excuse to leave and they all looked forward to meeting again next Saturday night at the dance.

  Amy stepped out of the front door and joined Little Amy at the end of the path.

  The two mothers murmured some more to each other.

  “The man I saw,” said Little Amy. “It was him.”

  Amy took the girl’s hand. “Who?”

  “The man I told you about. The one in my dreams. I think he’s a ghost.”

  — 14 —

  RACHEL WOKE WITH A start and shouted, “Dad!” She looked around wildly. Unfamiliar surroundings. Art Deco ornaments.

  Charlie’s flat.

  A taste of déjà vu. She had woken up exactly like this, dreaming about her lost father, when she had woken in Charlie’s other flat. A morning in 1940.

  She would wake up there in six years.

  It was a two-storey flat above the shops. The lounge and kitchen downstairs. One large room with a bathroom off it. And a steep set of stairs leading to a square landing with two attic bedrooms, one facing the front, one facing the back of the shops. She had to be careful not to bang her head on the sloping ceiling when she got out of bed.

  She could hear Charlie downstairs. Music wafting up to her.

  She scooted downstairs and found the bathroom. It was bare and functional and cold. Floorboards, exposed pipes. Not a single thing to decorate it, as if it were the flat’s afterthought. She wondered if it was a 1930s thing or just a single man thing.

  She strip washed against the sink, with cold water, and ran upstairs again to dress hurriedly. Every time she visited Charlie in the future he would have a set of era-appropriate clothes waiting for her, but this time she’d had to sort it out herself.

  This was the time she would have to leave him instructions: a list of dates she would arrive over the next thirty years. She could only tell him of the 1940, 1959 and 1966 dates. It didn’t seem that there were any others after that. She didn’t know of any. She would meet him those three times and then, some time much later, he would leave instructions with a solicitor to gift her his apartment and a trust fund.

  It was an older Charlie who’d done that. Older than the 50-year-old man she’d left in 1966.

  How sad, she thought. For me it’s the last time, but for Charlie it’s all to come.

  She put on her lipstick and walked downstairs to greet him.

  He looked up with surprise. He was sitting doing the crossword at the window table, tapping his fountain pen to the music.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  The words were good morning, but they sounded like Oh, you’re actually really quite pretty.

  He stood up and almost offered his hand to shake, then flapped his arms out as if to say well, here’s my humble abode.

  “Good morning, Charlie,” she said, and she realized for the first time that they were the same age. Charlie was twenty years old, just like her. He’d always been older than her every other time they’d met.

  He made tea in the teapot, using the same tea leaves as yesterday, and rustled up some toasted crumpets. There was a poor sliver of butter and a few dregs of strawberry jam from a jar with a gollywog on it.

  “I didn’t have much in, I’m afraid,” he said. “I don’t tend to eat much, as a rule.”

  He looked a bit thin. She’d put it down to youth, but now she realized he might just be poor. This was Charlie the penniless youth, not the dashing lieutenant or the businessman.

  “I tend to spend my wages on expensive American imports,” he said, nodding to the gramophone record where Teddy Wilson played piano behind Billie Holiday singing If You Were Mine.

  “Where do you work?”

  “I’m bar manager at the Prince of Wales,” he said. “I rather like it. I can start late in the day and the money’s not too bad.”

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I worked there in 2012!”

  Charlie’s eyes bugged out and he almost choked on his crumpet. He coughed and gathered himself.

  “Are you okay?”

  He nodded and took a sip of his tea to clear his throat.

  “Excuse me,” he said. But when you say things like that it sounds like something from Buck Rogers. I can’t believe we’ll still be drinking in pubs in 2012. Won’t we have flying cars and food pills and such?”

  “I’m afraid there are never flying cars and food pills,” she laughed. “Even in 2013, we’re still waiting for them.”

  He stared at her with awe and she knew he wanted to ask her more about the future and everything life had to offer in the twenty first century.

  The doorbell rattled.

  “I bet that’s Henry,” he said.

  He went to answer the door and Henry bustled through saying, “I come bearing glad tidings...”

  He broke off when he saw Rachel sitting at the table and stared with amazement for a second, then his face broke into one giant grin.

  Charlie came in behind him, shoulders hunched with embarrassment.

  Henry took his hat off. “Well, good morning, Miss Hines. What a pleasure it is to see you back here.”

  “Rachel’s staying for a while,” said Charlie. “She wants to help us with the concert.”

  Henry took a seat at the table and kissed her hand. “How marvellous! Welcome aboard,” he said. “May I?”

  He indicated the last lone crumpet. Charlie nodded and Henry attacked it.

  “You were saying?” said Charlie. “Something about glad tidings?”

  “‘Oh yes,” said Henry through a mouthful of crumpet and jam. He pulled a slip of thin paper from his coat pocket and laid it on the table.

  It was printed Post Office Telegraphs and there were white strips of text that seemed to have been typewritten in capitals.

  ALL GOOD FOR SAT 27 JAN PLEASE BILL AS LESTER JOHNSON & HIS COLOURED JAZZ ORCHESTRA IF YOU CAN PAY, FEED & HOUSE THEM

  “And you call this good news?” said Charlie.

  “We’ve got the band,” said Henry.

  “We have to pay for new posters, and pay the band. And organize food and housing for them.”

  “Charlie,” said Henry, pouring himself tea. “We were going to pay Lew Stone’s band anyway. These guys will be cheaper.”

  “Do you think the hotel will have these men? You know, being... coloured?”

  Henry shrugged. “It’s a theory we’ll hav
e to put to the test.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” asked Rachel.

  The two men seemed surprised she’d asked. “Because people here are bloody ignorant,” said Charlie.

  “And why do you call them coloured?”

  Again they looked at her as if she was mad. “Why wouldn’t you?” asked Charlie.

  “Where I come from,” she said. “It’s a bit rude to say coloured.”

  “Really? What do you say?”

  “Well, black.”

  Charlie choked on his tea. Henry looked at her curiously. “We really don’t use that word,” said Charlie. “It’s very impolite.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Where I come from, it’s the opposite.”

  Henry looked suspicious. “Where exactly are you from, Rachel?”

  She looked at Charlie. What lie to tell? In 1940, Charlie had told everyone she was his niece from the country, but that wouldn’t work now. Henry knew he had no niece. She remembered Mitch’s advice.

  “I’m actually from America,” she said.

  “America!” cried Henry, delighted. “Which city?”

  “Er, New York.”

  “You don’t sound like an American. But you don’t sound English either.”

  “Upstate New York. There are actually more American accents than you hear in the movies.”

  Charlie prodded the telegram. “Can we tell him to wait until we’ve got money from the takings?”

  “The band we can pay at the end of the night,” said Henry. “The posters, I’m not so sure. He’ll want the money up front. I’ve got a couple of joeys, if it helps.”

  “Well, we’re buggered then,” said Charlie. He looked at Rachel and blushed. “I’m sorry. Excuse my language.”

  She smiled and shrugged it off and reached for her handbag. “I could give you the money.”

  They looked at her like she’d said I’m from the year 2013.

  She pulled a handful of banknotes from her purse.

  Henry and Charlie stared open mouthed. “Dear God,” said Henry. “Where did you get so much money?”

  Rachel laughed shyly. “Is this a lot?”