by Andy Conway
“And I suppose that means ending Amy’s life?”
He turned and looked at her now, leaning back against the window sill, trying to look casual. But his eyes were furtive and couldn’t focus on her for long.
“If I’d wanted to kill Amy, I could have done it long ago, you idiot. Or her daughter.”
Rachel felt her throat constrict. She remembered swooning in the hospital in 1966 when Amy Parker was lying dying. Amy’s daughter, Maddy, who looked so much like her mother, had just told Rachel that Danny was the father of her child. Rachel felt the physical sensation of it again: like being at sea and wanting to fall on deck. Danny seemed so blithely unconcerned that he’d fathered a child with Maddy. If he could choose where he travelled, why wasn’t he back in 1966 with Maddy and his daughter? Why was he here with the grandmother?
“What’s more interesting is why you’re here,” said Rachel. “I mean here now.”
“That’s none of your business,” he said.
The door blew open and a few sheets of paper danced around the reception. The young-old woman rushed to gather them.
“I know why you’re here,” Rachel whispered.
He fixed his eyes on her again, surprised.
“It’s obvious what you’re up to, Danny.”
“Do tell.”
“The concert is going to happen,” she said. “I don’t care how many hate mails you write or wreaths you buy or how many Blackshirts you stir up. It’s going to happen and you’ll never stop it.”
He laughed. “I think you’ve really gone and lost your marbles, Rachel.”
“I won’t let you stop it. And Mrs Hudson certainly won’t. You’ll see.”
His smile soured. “Get out,” he said. “Get out and leave me alone. I won’t be bullied by you or that jumped up old bag.”
“You’ve been warned,” she said, stabbing a finger at him.
She flounced out through a swarm of paper flying around the reception, slamming the door behind her.
Strangely, it was totally calm outside.
— 27 —
DANNY STOMPED UP THE stairs to his room and threw everything he had into his suitcase.
So, Rachel was trying to stop him. She was against him and she had the cabal behind her. Fenwick had warned him they would interfere, and he was right. Wherever he went, whatever year he ran to, they hunted him down.
And who were they to do that? He had as much right to use his talent as any of them. To use it in any way he pleased.
If time was not linear. If all time was simultaneous, Danny in 2013 was happening at the exact same moment as Danny saving Amy Parker in 1912, and Danny being arrested as a spy in 1940, and Danny giving Amy’s daughter a fortune in 1966.
If all time was simultaneous, who were they to police it and tell him he couldn’t get involved in other times?
He was other times.
He slipped his Kindle into its secret pocket in the briefcase. They would come looking for him now. Rachel would tell them where he was. He had to get out. Hide somewhere else. Being on the street was risky but staying put was no option.
He stopped and thought for a moment. Why not time travel to another decade? Why not go back to 2013 and then come back again to 1934 for the concert?
No. He’d arrived a week early this time and he’d been concentrating solely on this coming Saturday night. He couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t arrive two weeks too early. Or a year early. He was here now. So close. He simply had to hide away for a day.
He snapped his suitcase shut, reached for his hat and double-checked he’d left nothing at all incriminating in his room.
The receptionist seemed surprised when he told her he was checking out.
“I’ve been called away on business. Urgently.”
“I’m afraid we can’t refund the charge for tonight, as you’ve stayed here past midday.”
She was trying to wring out a few pathetic coins from him. These petty people, squabbling over their small change that was worth nothing in his time.
“I’ll need a forwarding address,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s customary.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Sir. What if something should arrive for you? What if you’ve left something—”
“I don’t give a damn.”
Her stupid mouth opened in an O. She had no pearls but clutched them all the same.
“Nothing’s arriving for me and I haven’t left anything.”
He signed out and handed his keys and tipped his hat. His hand was on the brass door handle to the outside world when she said, “Is it because of the band?”
He turned. “The what?”
“Are you leaving because of the band?”
What the hell was she talking about?
“I’m sorry. I could tell them to stay in their rooms, if you like?”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because they’re coloured.”
Was this some sort of test? Was she working with the cabal? Had she been spying on him, watching him, reporting to them? Of course. She’d told Rachel he was here. She was one of them.
“We’ve never had coloured guests before,” she said.
“Why would I care about that?”
“Some guests would take exception. We have to be very conscious of the feelings of our guests.”
“I don’t care,” he said.
He turned the handle and fled, out into the street, a sudden fierce breeze slamming the door behind him.
He wondered for a wild moment if he should go to Amy again. No. He’d almost been arrested. He needed to keep out of sight, wait for the concert. That was the only moment he had left.
There were other hotels. There were two on Wake Green Road, he remembered. Or perhaps Kings Heath? They wouldn’t find him there. Moseley truly was a village. In Kings Heath he could get lost. The high street was the longest in Birmingham. It was a busy urban centre, teeming with life. He should have stayed there in the first place.
He saw a tram climbing the hill towards him. He ran across the road to catch it. A fierce gust of wind almost took his hat off his head as he stepped on board and headed for Kings Heath.
— 28 —
SHEILA SUTTON CHECKED the room after he’d gone but he’d left nothing. It was a shame to lose a proper guest by accepting the coloureds but she was already calculating the profit it would mean.
He’d been the only guest in the hotel anyway, and she could now give the coloured band a room each instead of having two of them double up. She would add a surcharge for the late inconvenience. The woman who’d booked them on the telephone had sounded American, and she could tell money was no object. She had a nose for these things.
Strange. The woman who’d called on Mr Pearce had sounded American too. As had Mr Pearce. But only sometimes. The odd word that was mispronounced or used inappropriately. It was all the fault of those Hollywood movies that were on at the cinemas every day.
The postman trudged up the path towards her, smiling his impertinent smile. Who did he think he was to presume to smile at her?
“Afternoon, Miss Sutton,” he sang. He slapped something down on her reception counter. Not a letter, but a handbill announcing Benny Orphan playing at the Moseley Institute. “What do you think of that, then?”
He was a cheeky oaf. A common labouring ruffian with ideas above his station.
“I’ve heard all about that,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I have the band staying at my hotel.”
“Staying here, eh?” He whistled. “A coloured band. Very exotic.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying, Fred Foster, but I won’t stand for it.”
“Well, how about you come along to this here concert, then?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“With me, like.”
He was actually asking her out. The impertinence of it. How dare he?
“Fred Foster. I wouldn’t go
to that concert with you if you were the last man on earth.”
She couldn’t hide the smile of triumph as she said it, but it annoyed her that he only laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“Ah, all right. There’s another girl I’m thinking to ask. Vivian Hunter. I bet she’d like a dance.”
“I’m sure she’s more your sort.”
Fred Foster laughed again. He really didn’t seem to understand that he was a common ruffian who had no place talking to the likes of her. He and Vivian Hunter would be well suited.
“Well,” she said. “I take it you haven’t come to deliver that.”
He smiled his insolent smile and took a letter from his sack. “Letter. Not for you, though.”
She took the manila envelope and read the address with sudden interest. To Mr D. Pearce. c/o The Alcester Lodge Hotel.
Fred Foster tipped his cap and walked out with a cheery, “Afternoon then.”
She could hear him whistling some awful dance tune half way up the street as she flipped the envelope over and read the return address, scratched into a neat corner. Miss Amy Parker. Newport Road. Now this was interesting. Amy Parker was the woman whose father had gone mad and tried to kill her. Everyone knew about that. Died in Winson Green Insane Asylum. Syphilis, people had whispered.
Amy Parker carried the mark of shame with her and swanned around Moseley as if she were a respectable member of society. And here she was writing letters to mysterious men in hotels.
She tried to peek through the tiny gap of envelope that was ungummed, but could see nothing inside. It was possible, of course, that Mr Pearce would call back for it, so she would have to leave it intact. Although she should, by rights, return to sender.
But first she went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
It looked like an easy envelope to steam open.
— 29 —
KATH BRIGHT RANG THE bell and waited on the iron landing. A hot day in summer. She had been working all day at the gleaming new library in Centenary Square. They had abandoned the old concrete monolith that had been the Central Library since the 1960s and shifted the books over all summer, before opening the doors with a great media fanfare.
Many people hated the brutalist architecture of the old library, and she did too. But she felt a strange fondness for it, now that it was going, and would be torn down. It was where she’d spent her youth, borrowing fiction from the first floor and then later the second, and then music from the Music Library on the third floor, taking albums home to copy. She’d discovered folk music there, and jazz and classical. Then she’d moved up to the History floor, and later Local Studies, devouring and marvelling at the resources they had. It had seemed inevitable that she would go and work there in the end. Its brutal concrete floors had represented the strata of her learning.
And in a short while it would be gone.
Everyone loved the new library. Everyone except the people who’d always used the library. And the librarians. The regular library customers couldn’t find anything, because it was laid out like a department store, not a library. And the staff were all depressed because they had to work under a phalanx of Council-hired commissars whose sole purpose seemed to be to make sure nothing worked properly and no one enjoyed the place. Staff morale was at rock bottom. She wasn’t sure she would stay there much longer.
“You’re late.”
Mrs Hudson threw in a smile to convince her she was joking, but she was annoyed, nervous, scared. Kath could tell. Here was something threatening her life, her existence. She could be unmade, and the sudden space she left in the world would ripple through time and unleash a tornado that would rip the neighbourhood to pieces.
Mitch was on the sofa drinking luminous orange water, his skin still shockingly pale, setting off his handlebar moustache.
Mrs Hudson poured Kath a cup of tea.
She put her bag down and joined Mitch on the sofa, patting his knee. “You look better,” she lied.
Mrs Hudson gazed up at the poster for Benny Orphan, and Kath noticed a framed sepia studio portrait of a young 1930s couple right next to it.
“Your parents?” she asked.
Mrs Hudson nodded. “I’ve wanted to go back there many times,” she said. “To see the moment they fell in love, had their first dance. A lot of people joked about it for years afterwards, apparently: how Benny Orphan’s visit to Moseley had caused a population boom. There were so many people who traced their parents’ romance to that night.”
She had a faraway look. Kath and Mitch both watched her, not wanting to disturb her. Kath took a sip of tea and spilled some on her saucer.
Mrs Hudson came to. She gave Kath a sour look.
“Sorry,” said Kath.
Mrs Hudson continued, “I suppose we’re here to talk about this Jez person, though, and what’s going to happen at Newport Road. Though I still believe it can’t be as vital as the dance centre.”
“This Jez doesn’t seem harmful,” said Mitch. “I mean, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, so there’s no intention on his part. He visits this old man once a week; he sees his dead wife in the house.”
“Sees her here, or travels back in time?”
“He’s travelling, of course, but he doesn’t know it. So he thinks he sees her ghost in the house as it is. Sometimes he thinks he’s been teleported back into the past. He’s entirely passive in the process.”
“He won’t be for long,” warned Mrs Hudson. “They all start out thinking they’ve seen a ghost or suffered a timeslip. Then they learn how to control it. Then they start to exploit it, like Danny Pearce.”
Kath felt a sudden urge to defend him. “I don’t think he’s—’ She stopped herself.
“Travelling to the past to sting half the bookmakers in the city? Getting his face in the papers for it? Delivering the winnings to the daughter of this Amy Parker woman so she could have her face on television? I’d call that exploitation.”
Kath stared into her teacup and felt her blood boil. She was always beating her down when it came to expressing her own opinion on anything. It was starting to annoy her. Mrs Hudson sat here judging every new person who discovered their time talent. She practically drove them into Fenwick’s arms with her hostility. If she hadn’t done that, Kath might have saved Danny. She’d sensed in 1966 that he only wanted to do what he felt was right and was far from evil. No one was evil.
She felt a tight thrill in her belly. Tomorrow she would see him again. She imagined getting to him before the others, convincing him to come clean about his intentions — convince Mrs Hudson that he wasn’t there to stop her parents falling in love.
But what was he there for?
She felt the cold blade of malice chill her heart at the thought of Amy Parker. Why was he so fascinated by her? She knew it was jealousy. She knew she’d fallen for Danny a long time ago.
“If it’s worthy of your attention, Katherine?”
She looked up into Mrs Hudson’s glare. “I’m sorry?”
“Is all this preparation boring you? Would you prefer to storm right in there and mess it all up?”
Kath placed her teacup down on the side table. She wanted to slam it but was afraid it would break. “I don’t have to listen to this,” she said, getting up.
Mitch reached for her. “It’s all right, Kath. She didn’t mean—”
“I’m sick of the implication that I’m new to this and I mess things up.”
“I didn’t mean that, Katherine,” said Mrs Hudson, trying to hide the irritation in her voice. “Please sit down.”
“I didn’t storm in there in 1966 and mess things up. I followed your instructions to the letter and things got out of hand. It was not my fault.”
“I know, I know,” said Mrs Hudson, more kindly now. “I do apologize. I’m terribly irritable over this and I meant no harm. I was simply suggesting that we might all mess this up if we weren’t prepared.”
Kath hovered, dearly wanting to flounce out and slam the door behind h
er. She’d been on the verge of blurting out that Rachel too was plotting her own sting on the bookies, so it wasn’t as if Danny was the only one.
She swallowed it and sat down.
Mrs Hudson apologized again and continued with the meeting. They discussed the possible harm that Jez might be causing and how that might connect with the concert, running through their plan of action for the next day.
Kath heard the words, but inside her burned a bright coal of resentment. She would definitely get to Danny before them. She would warn him, plead with him, bring him into their fold. She was a better judge of character than Mrs Hudson. She’d show her.
— 30 —
AS THE TRAM SAILED into Kings Heath High Street, Danny felt panic coursing through him like the crackle of the electric cable above them.
He hadn’t researched Kings Heath and was going there blind. He liked to go prepared, knowing his options: where to stay, where to eat and drink, where to make money. Going off the map disturbed him. He had no idea what hotels and guest houses there were in Kings Heath.
He peered at the surroundings. The left side familiar, the right side all new, except for the library. Wait. The Station pub they’d just passed. The sign said Station Hotel.
He got off at the Parade, the row of shops set back from the road, with the Kingsway cinema all gleaming and new and bustling with life. In 2012 someone had set fire to it, leaving the black rafters exposed like a burnt skeleton, the rest boarded up and covered in posters. And mysteriously, someone had scrawled in bright orange paint on the hoardings outside: Who Burnt Me Down?
A place to hide, he thought.
He looked up and down the road, a busy high street crowded with shoppers. He could walk south into the heart of it, but he decided to go back to what he knew. He walked north.
There was a man selling newspapers outside the train station entrance. A sudden sickening lurch of déjà vu. Something about the station there. Something bad. Something that had already happened. He couldn’t quite picture it, but he didn’t lose the qualm of nausea until he’d walked on past it and was at the door of the Station Hotel.