Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  She leaned close to Charlie and whispered in his ear, taking in the pleasant scent of aftershave and an indefinable male odour that reminded her of her dad and felt comforting.

  “The woman behind us is Amy Parker. The woman Danny saved. I think she’s the reason he’s come here.”

  Charlie nodded and patted her knee.

  Then they heard the young girl who was with them talking excitedly about the concert tomorrow. Henry grinned and nudged Charlie. Rachel smiled proudly and hoped the darkness hid the shadow of worry.

  HAROLD RETURNED AND took his seat on the other side of Little Amy. Amy guessed it was her job to make sure he didn’t try any funny business. She would have to keep one eye on his hands and make sure he wasn’t attempting to touch her.

  But what did it matter? Tomorrow he would take her in his arms and dance with her, his body pressed against hers. It didn’t matter at all that they held hands in a cinema. But tongues would wag at one and not the other. She hated society and its absurd morality.

  Harold hadn’t returned with popcorn, nor even asked if the ladies wanted any, so Amy took her purse and whispered to Little Amy that she would be back in a minute.

  She raised herself, edged along the row, made a conscious effort not to look at the strange girl in the front row who’d stared at her so keenly, though she could see the white blur of her face out of the corner of her eye, watching her, judging her.

  She found the aisle and edged up it, careful not to trip on the steps, and she was almost at the top when she saw Danny Pearce.

  AND FROM HIS IMAGINING meeting Amy Parker there, sitting with his arm around her, like the man over there with his arm around his girl, who was hiding her face in his chest at the scary parts, he had conjured her here to him.

  He must be a god.

  And the nausea that grew, the dizziness that fogged his whole head, the lurching in the pit of his stomach, was all the awesome power that coursed through him.

  He could only be a god.

  He pushed himself up from his seat, hands gripping the velvet arms of the chair so tightly he couldn’t let go.

  Amy’s eyes.

  He had summoned her here. His mind, all powerful, the mighty whirlwind of history flowing through him.

  He was a god.

  He reached out his hand to her and a hurricane began to roar through the cinema.

  Women shrieked, people jumped from their seats and scrambled for the exits, the wind whipped the clouds of cigarette smoke into violent, coiling demons.

  And Amy stood, unaffected, frozen in his mighty gaze, her hair whipping gently about her face, as if she were the eye of the hurricane that roared from his fingertips.

  For a moment he doubted himself, doubted the mighty power that coursed through him, from him.

  Amy was hit by the wave of bodies surging for the exits. It carried her away like a river. The mass of humanity became a single force of nature, a flood of people surging for the exit, down the stairs and out through the foyer, screaming people trampled underfoot.

  Danny staggered to his feet as the last of the cinemagoers scattered. Some were still cowering in their seats or lying in the aisles. Others were dashing up the side aisles.

  The smoke demons eddying around him began to slow. The wind abated, calmed and soon there were only the groans of the injured filling the air.

  A woman walked up the steps towards him. She seemed calm, unlike everyone else. His eyes met hers.

  It was Rachel.

  He wondered for a moment if he had summoned her too.

  There was fire in her eyes. A silent fury. He stared into them, curious, almost entranced, as if she were a cobra, hypnotizing him.

  Then she pounced in a flash. A shock of electricity jolted through his bone marrow. A tang of singed hair.

  The floor lurched underneath him and he was sucked into a black hole.

  CINEMA USHERS AND ATTENDANTS were seeing to the handful of people who lay injured on the stairs and in the foyer.

  Rachel felt herself propelled from the cinema as if the tornado were carrying her and it was only when they spilled out into the cold night air that she realized Charlie was gripping her arm so tightly.

  A giant crowd buzzed outside and they pushed through it, confused cries piercing the night air.

  “What on earth was that?”

  “Well if that was them new special effects, you can keep em!”

  “It was a repeat of that tornado from three years ago, I’m telling ya!”

  “But it’s totally calm out here.”

  “Must have been a freak tornado. A small one. It’ll have passed on and done some damage, I’ll say.”

  They pushed through the crowd till they were on the high street pavement. Most of the people were staying, as if someone might walk out of the cinema and offer an explanation. Some on the edge of the crowd had begun to drift away, walking south down the high street, or north to the station and to Moseley beyond it.

  “Did you see it?” said Rachel.

  Charlie nodded and said nothing, but she could see the shock written across his face. He’d seen Danny cause a tornado in a cinema, then he’d disappeared in a flash of blue light, leaving nothing but a scent of fire.

  “Szélkirály,” said Henry. There was a film of sweat across his forehead and his eyes were still staring in wonder at the cinema.

  “What was that, Henry?” said Charlie.

  “Szélkirály,” he said again.

  “Sail Key Rai?”

  “He was Szélkirály.” Henry seemed to realize where he was and to whom he was talking. “Old Hungarian legend. My grandmother told me. The Wind King.” He stared at Rachel now with renewed suspicion. “You know him? You know this man, Rachel. What’s going on? Who are you, really?”

  “Henry, leave her alone.”

  “Who are you, Rachel?”

  “I know him,” she said. “He’s here to cause trouble. I think he’s trying to prevent the concert from happening. At least, I did. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Henry looked at Charlie. “She made him disappear. You saw it too?”

  Rachel looked with alarm at Charlie’s face.

  “I don’t know. It was dark.”

  “Charlie, who is she? What is she?’”

  Charlie put a protective arm around her. “She’s our friend, Henry. I trust her. Totally and utterly.”

  It seemed to be enough for Henry. He took out a handkerchief and dabbed his forehead, nodded and smiled again. It was a forced smile, but it was clear that if Charlie trusted Rachel, then he would too.

  “Let’s call it a night,” he said. “Long day tomorrow.”

  He shook Charlie’s hand, then turned to Rachel and stared at her for a few moments before pulling her close to him and whispering in her ear something that sounded like”See ya, daily bob.”

  She wondered what it meant. Was it another Hungarian phrase or had she just misheard him?

  Henry walked off south up the high street. Rachel and Charlie watched him go until he turned left at the first street.

  “Come on,” said Charlie. “I think we should go home and you can tell me what just happened.”

  DANNY BLINKED HIS EYES open and for a while found himself examining the ornate ceiling of the Kingsway. It was colder than it had been a moment ago, and there was a cloying air of damp that hadn’t been there. He felt sick and his body ached all over, like he’d been hit by a car. He had to get up. He tried, a sharp pain shooting through his chest. What had she done to him?

  Rachel. She’d tasered him, surely? He could still smell the faint tinge of singed hair and wondered if it was his own.

  He’d not noticed the taser in her hand as she’d walked up to him. A nasty weapon. Did it mean he was still attached to the gun and she might still send a few more volts through him? He tried to peer around.

  The silence was sheer. No one was there. He couldn’t even hear the crowd that had run for the exits in panic. Perhaps he’d been unconscious fo
r a while.

  He turned over and tried to push himself up, gasping, his knees shrieking as they took his weight.

  There was a crackling sound.

  He pushed himself to his feet, staggered for a moment, swayed, gripped a velvet covered seat, steadied himself.

  The cinema was empty. He peered around, trying to make it all out in the dark. His eyes must be getting used to it because there was a glow of light. It looked older, shabbier, neglected, cobwebs and dust everywhere.

  He’d travelled, he realized. He wasn’t in the Kingsway cinema in 1934 anymore. He’d flitted to another time. Had Rachel done this to him? There was no taser, he realized. She had sent him back through time. How had she done that?

  He turned and almost fell over again as he recoiled in shock at what was behind him.

  The back row was on fire, flames leaping high and licking the ceiling. It crackled angrily.

  He staggered back down the stairs, realising with horror that he was in 2012, the night the Kingsway had burned down. And he knew now that it was Rachel who’d started the fire.

  Panic flooded his senses for a moment. He was going to burn to death in the Kingsway picture house. He retreated down the rake of steps till he came to the balcony. The fire was raging now at the back of the cinema, the velvet seats a perfect kindling. It was going to roar down the bank of seats towards him in no time.

  He glanced back at the drop to the stalls. Could he do it? It was break his legs or burn to death. And if he broke his legs he wouldn’t be able to crawl out of there.

  The back two rows were a wall of flame now.

  Calm, he thought. You can travel.

  He took a deep, long breath and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the crackle of flame. He thought of Amy Parker. Amy Parker in her ball gown. The photo. He tore it from his inside breast pocket. Amy at the concert, her eyes on the crooner. Amy on 21 January, 1934. Be with her. Go back to her.

  The light faded and he looked up at the wall of fire advancing towards him. It was paler, waning, its angry roar receding.

  A light breeze wafted over him, cool, refreshing, and he found himself standing in a dark alley.

  A hubbub of voices ahead.

  He walked up the alley, dirt creaking under his shoes, and he came out onto the Parade at night, a crowd of people gathered outside the cinema.

  He was back.

  He pulled his collar up and put his head down, shoved his hands into his pockets and walked north quickly, not looking back till he reached the door of the Station Hotel.

  IT WAS JULIE HICKMAN who spotted Henry Curtis leaving the cinema. Clifford and the other Blackshirts had been among the first to flee the cinema and had skirted the edge of the crowd, worried that their prey might escape.

  Julie had spotted the unmistakable outline of Jew Henry over by the roadside. He was chatting with two others: the man he was organising the concert with, and a girl. She looked pretty. Henry hugged her and Julie felt a sudden flush of rage.

  Jew Henry, who’d thought he was the bee’s knees at school and taken that joke of a valentine seriously. As if she’d ever be attracted to an ugly Jew like him. And turned her down too. As if he was something special.

  She called Clifford and signalled, pointing over to where Henry was departing, turning from his friends and walking up the high street, disappearing behind the first building.

  She ran to the pavement and looked up the street but he was nowhere to be seen. He must have turned left up Poplar Road. She ran again to Lashford’s, the butcher’s on the corner. All closed up but the unmistakable stale odour of dead meat and sawdust.

  There. Half way up Poplar Road, his shuffling bulk under a streetlamp and fading again into the darkness.

  Clifford and the others caught up with her.

  “There,” she pointed.

  They ran on ahead, swiftly but softly so their footsteps didn’t sound and warn him. She followed in their wake, her heart beating madly.

  They were on him before she realized. It was absurdly quiet for a beating. At first they seemed to be running and then they were gathered in a scrum and kicking at something on the ground between them. No one cried out or said anything, and Henry hadn’t made a sound other than grunting as their boots stomped him.

  Then there was a cracking sound as his skull bounced off the pavement. She could see a dark pool of ink blooming from under his head. His hat lay crumpled to the side.

  Clifford gave him another kick and something snapped inside him. She thought it must be one of his ribs.

  The men were already fleeing up the road.

  She leaned down to take a closer look.

  Henry stared and didn’t seem to see her.

  “I told you, Jew Henry,” she whispered. “I told you about the storm.”

  Clifford came back and yanked her away and she found herself running into the dark with him, cackling hysterically.

  — 33 —

  CHARLIE HELD HIS ELBOW out and Rachel hooked her hand there as she walked and thought of how no man in 2013 could do that without irony. Here it was perfectly serious and natural.

  They left the clamour of the Parade behind them and strolled towards Moseley, passing the library on the opposite side. She noticed the Hope Chapel squeezed into the tiny space beside it, and the police station. It all seemed so quaint with none of the ugly new buildings that would one day ruin the high street. Every shop they passed had an old-world charm: Harry Legg, corn dealer, Nellie Bright, confectioner; the Premier Cycle Company; a woollen drapers; a ladies’ outfitter called Claude; a milliner, another ladies’ outfitter, a boot repairer. They walked on in silence past the Station Hotel, its windows frosted and curtained, the hubbub of life inside.

  She saw the entrance to the train station opposite and shuddered, remembering 1959. Charlie must have felt it because he pulled her a little closer to him and smiled.

  It felt like such a romantic moment, and he must have felt it too because he looked at her and smiled as they prepared to cross the foot of Valentine Road. She saw the sign for the street and almost laughed. A romantic moment on Valentine Road.

  A cluster of footsteps slapping the pavement. A woman shrieking.

  Rachel cringed. Charlie gripped her closer.

  Shadows exploded from the side street and were on them before they could react. They ran all around them, nearly knocking them over, and straight into the street like a herd of startled gazelle.

  She had only a moment to see their shadowy forms sprint into the park across the road, swallowed by the blackness.

  She recognized them immediately.

  “Dear god,” said Charlie. “Did you see that?” He still gripped her tightly.

  “Wasn’t that—?”

  Charlie peered into the black mass of the park even though they were long gone. “I think it was,” he said. He was fearful suddenly. “I don’t like this.”

  He looked back up the high street. The cinema crowd was still dispersing, people filing into the train station. She could see his mind working out the way Henry had turned and how they might have circled round the block.

  “It’s Henry. I’m sure of it.” He took her hand. “Come.”

  They trotted up the slope of Valentine Road, passing cosy suburban villas with quiet gardens, and came to the five-way crossroads with its tiny island, the giant Methodist church looming over them, imposing and eerie in terracotta gloom.

  They doubled back down Poplar Road, the street dark and foreboding with only the faint glow of the high street at its end.

  Charlie halted and stared hard down the straight line of Woodville Road to their left. “He lives down there. Can’t see him, though.”

  They crossed to the corner to get a closer look, straining their eyes down the dark street to make out his outline shuffling home. Rachel looked behind her, suddenly scared.

  “Oh God.”

  Charlie turned. Rachel pointed.

  Through the gloom they could see the strange art deco hous
e set back from the road and a dark shape lying in its forecourt.

  Charlie ran.

  By the time Rachel caught up, Charlie was on his knees and lifting Henry’s head up. It flopped back and his mouth fell open just like his eyes. Ink oozed from his skull.

  Charlie slapped his face and shook him. “Come on, Henry. Wake up. Wake up, now, chap.”

  Rachel leaned down and took his wrist, feeling desperately for a pulse. But there wasn’t one.

  “Charlie,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  — 34 —

  CHARLIE RAN TO THE high street to find a police officer while Rachel stayed with Henry.

  She stroked his face and whispered a lullaby and felt her tears falling on him. The street was black and silent and suddenly very cold and the whole world was asleep.

  “I’m so sorry, Henry. If I’d known about this I could have stopped it.”

  She heard a faint whistle from somewhere down the street. Eventually, footsteps padded towards her out of the gloom. It was Charlie with a policeman who looked absurdly young — a schoolboy dressed in a policeman’s uniform for the school play — his eyes widening when he saw Henry and the pool of blood.

  “My colleague is coming,” he said, his voice breaking. “He’s calling an ambulance.”

  They knelt around Henry and just stared. There was nothing they could do. Rachel noticed that the art deco building she’d always thought must have been a coffee house or stylish café, was actually a tripe dressers.

  A small crowd gathered. People from the cinema. They must have seen the commotion as Charlie summoned the police and come to see what was happening.

  An ambulance arrived. It looked old fashioned and amateurish, like an ambulance from a silent comedy film. One of the paramedics was smoking a cigarette and she wanted to slap it from his mouth. But she realized he wasn’t even a paramedic. There was no such word as paramedic. He was just a driver.