Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  Grins broke out and they all knocked back their brandies. Clifford gulped his down, felt it sting his throat and the heat bloom through his limbs.

  Davies plonked a sack on the seat. Clifford delved in and pulled out a truncheon. He snatched it out and hid it in his inside pocket before anyone in the pub could see it. The delighted men did the same.

  They waited for a signal from Clifford and then scrambled out, their boots tramping the pavement, marching, hurriedly now. Clifford led them. This was what it must feel like to march alongside Hitler. Marching to glory. Marching to war.

  They passed the girls waiting with their autograph books, and ducked down the side alley, running now.

  He could barely see five yards in front of his hand, the alley was so dark. Should have brought torches. An army should be able to see where it’s striking. There it was: the service dock, just like Harold had said. Waist high, a set of wooden steps leading up to it. The secret back entrance. Hop up onto the bay where they off-load the bread, down a short hallway and into the back room bakery where Benny Orphan was giving a private singalong to the Jewish bakers.

  Clifford took the steps two at a time and was first onto the dock. The men rushed up behind him, truncheons drawn.

  They stormed into the dark hall and the floor echoed with their boot steps. He saw the outline of a table lamp in the gloom. A sideboard. Some chairs stacked up.

  There was something not quite right about it.

  It was the floor. It was wooden.

  They didn’t break through the dark hallway to the bakery beyond it. There was no bakery beyond it. It wasn’t, in fact, a hallway.

  He looked back, too late, as a metal shutter came down. He saw only the silhouette of the man that trapped them inside before everything went black.

  The floor shuddered with life — roared, in fact — and then the earth lurched underneath them as if an earthquake had struck.

  Clifford struggled to keep his feet, but Davies crashed into him and they both fell.

  He had a moment to think it was a repeat of the tornado that had seemingly blown through the cinema last night, before he realized they weren’t in Luker’s at all.

  They were in a furniture removals van.

  — 41 —

  RACHEL AND CHARLIE laughed all the way from the Prince back to Charlie’s flat. Passersby gave them funny looks but couldn’t help smiling, catching their infectious merriment.

  Joshua Goldman would drive the Blackshirts to a very isolated scrap yard owned by a respected member of the Singer’s Hill synagogue, making sure to hit every bump in the road. He would leave the van there overnight, , and head to the concert with everyone else, sure in the knowledge that no one would hear any Blackshirt cries and shouts.

  In the morning, they would be rescued from their ordeal and attended to by a reception committee comprising several star members of the Benacre Street Boxing Club.

  They climbed the iron steps to the flat and burst into the parlour, still giggling at their triumph. Charlie put a kettle on the hob straight away. Before it had boiled they had lapsed into sullen silence, remembering Henry.

  The angry whistle startled them.

  “I’ll get ready,” she said.

  She checked the clock on the wall. They had a little less than an hour before they had to be at the Institute. An hour after that the doors would open.

  “Oh. I got you something,” he said.

  He went to the sideboard and pulled out a crêpe paper wrapped present, handed it to her shyly. She unwrapped it and held a tiny bottle that bore the label Soir de Paris — Bourjois. Perfume. He’d bought her perfume.

  “I got it with the winnings,” he said, scratching the back of his neck.

  “Oh Charlie, it’s lovely. Thank you.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

  He blushed and looked at the carpet. “I’ll put some music on,” he said.

  She left him rooting through his stack of 78s, and took the kettle of hot water to the washstand in her bedroom, stripping naked and soaping herself down, the faint lament of Gee Oh Gosh I’m Grateful drifting up the stairs to her.

  She applied a cloud of Bourjois and made her face up in what she hoped looked tasteful and refined for an average 1930s girl.

  From her wardrobe, she took the slimline blue ball gown with silver brocade that had come from Amy Parker’s storage chest after she’d died. There was a tear at the seam by the collar and she wondered when that had happened. It looked like it had never been worn. She should have stitched it. Perhaps no one would notice in the dim light of the ballroom.

  There was a sound behind her, a pop of air, as if a light bulb had blown.

  “Hello, Rachel.”

  She wheeled round, catching her breath.

  Kath Bright was standing over by the safe. Her red hair looked wild as if charged with static, and her eyes were rimmed with shadow. There was something eerie about her.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Kath smiled. “This is our base, Rachel. You know that.”

  Rachel put a hand to her chest. Her heart was beating like mad. It was fine, she told herself. They were supposed to be coming tonight. She’d been waiting for this.

  “Sorry. I didn’t expect you here. How come Charlie lives here now?”

  “He’s renting it. Maybe you told him to?”

  “I don’t think so. This is the first time I’ve met him.”

  “Maybe I’ll go back to 1931 or something and suggest it to him? Who knows? We’re all cogs in Mrs Hudson’s grand plan.”

  There was something about her manner that wasn’t quite right. She had a smile at her lips, as if she knew something funny and didn’t want to share it.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at Newport Road?”

  Kath checked her watch. “Yes. I think we’re there round about now.” She saw Rachel’s confusion. “I’m coming from a different time. Not 2013. Much later. I’ve managed to free myself of using my own little touchstone — the Dovecote. It’s rather liberating. You’re going to love it when you get the hang of it.”

  Rachel glanced at the door. Would Charlie hear her talking to someone and come up to investigate?”Tell me everything’s going to be all right tonight.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Kath. “You’ve done a wonderful job so far.”

  “So far?”

  “Things could change. That’s the problem with time.”

  “But you’re coming from later. You know what’s happened tonight.”

  Kath giggled. “Thing is, if I tell you too much, it might change things yet again.”

  “What’s Danny going to do?”

  A shadow fell across Kath’s face. “I’d ignore Danny if I were you. Just leave him to me tonight.”

  “What’s happened to him? That thing, with the tornado?”

  “It happens.”

  “What do you mean, it happens? Things like that don’t just happen.”

  “Like time travel?” said Kath. Her smile was a sneer now. “There’s a reason Moseley and Kings Heath keep getting hit by tornados and it’s nothing to do with meteorology. Problem is, it’s impossible to know when it’s going to happen.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You change time in 1934 — affect time in a really bad way — and a time wind wreaks havoc in, say, 1931. A girl’s whole existence is wiped out in 2011 and a tornado destroys half the neighbourhood in 2005.”

  “What? That tornado was because of me?”

  “Who knows?” Kath giggled again. “If I were you I’d forget all about tonight. You want your life back and nothing you do here is going to help you. You know that. You need to go to 1980. You should do it now and leave tonight to me.”

  Rachel found herself shaking her head. This wasn’t right. She wasn’t going to leave now, just before the concert. Just disappear and leave Charlie on his own.

  “Danny needs to be stopped,” Rachel said. “He’s not normal. What if he does tonight wha
t he did last night? Someone could get killed.”

  “Just watch out it isn’t you.”

  The shadow on Kath’s face became a viper’s. She lunged.

  Rachel shrank back, covering her face, falling to the floor.

  Water slopped from the enamel wash basin.

  Kath was no longer in the room.

  It had felt like an electric shock. There was a smell of singed hair in the room. It was as if Kath were a moth that had hit a light bulb.

  “Are you all right?” Charlie’s voice from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Yes,” she called. “Everything’s fine.”

  But she knew everything wasn’t fine. Kath, or some Future Kath, had turned against her, tried to kill her. And, if Kath had been the moth, it meant that Rachel was the flame that had burned her.

  She’d thought Danny had disappeared in the cinema. Flitted to another time in a flash of flame. But now she wondered if she’d done it. Just like with Future Kath. It looked like she had.

  But she had no idea how.

  — 42 —

  KATH BRIGHT KNEW THAT things weren’t going to plan. It was in Mitch’s sullen demeanour that was something beyond his Time Flu, and in Mrs Hudson’s frosty impatience.

  They waited at the foot of Newport Road by the telephone box, which was the only place you could loiter on a quiet neighbourhood street like this without drawing immediate attention.

  “Someone coming out,” said Kath.

  Mitch put his opera glasses to his face. “Neighbour,” he said. “Woman.”

  “What’s she wearing?” asked Mrs Hudson.

  “Ball gown.”

  “Well, what a surprise.”

  Kath hated this. The tension was unbearable.

  They had come through together. It was easy when she travelled with Mrs Hudson and Mitch. She sort of closed her eyes and hung onto their coat tails and they took care of it. Perhaps that wasn’t how it was and she did all the work, but it helped her to think of it like that. No needing to walk up to the Moseley Hall hospital grounds, climb the fence and walk up the wooden steps of the Dovecote.

  Mrs Hudson checked her watch and tutted. “Anything yet?”

  “No one’s emerging,” said Mitch.

  “I meant your feelings,” she snapped. “Are you feeling anything?”

  Mitch shuffled uncomfortably. “I don’t know why it is. It’s just... not the same as I felt last time. It was off the charts then.”

  “And now?”

  “Nothing. Not a sausage.”

  Kath spotted activity far up the road. “Hold on,” she said.

  Mitch peered through his opera glasses again. “Looks like the whole family coming out. Hefty mother, ferret-faced teenage son, looking rather self important, and younger teenage daughter. They’re all dressed to the nines.”

  “Well, is it obvious now?” snapped Mrs Hudson. “Everyone is off to the concert and nothing is going to happen here.”

  “I don’t know why I don’t feel anything,” said Mitch. “Strange.”

  “Shall we go, then, and do what we should have been doing all along?”

  There was nothing more to do. Mrs Hudson had been right. They had to head for the concert.

  “Let’s go,” said Kath, patting Mitch on the arm.

  As they walked up Newport Road, Kath wondered how she could get away from them and somehow get to Danny before they saw him. If she did that she might be able to help him. Surely she could pull him back from the brink, make Mrs Hudson see that he was all right? She had sensed it so much, sharing the flat with him in 1966. They didn’t know him like she did.

  They walked past the house, from which Mitch still sensed nothing.

  “Shouldn’t we contact Rachel?” she said. “I mean, we sent her off to organise the concert, so we should maybe give her some support?”

  Mrs Hudson looked at Mitch.

  “Let’s check the venue first,” he said. “Hopefully she’ll be there.”

  “Along with everyone else,” said Mrs Hudson.

  — 43 —

  SID HAYE ARRANGED HIS papers on the head table in neat configurations. They had to be just so.

  Agenda paper.

  Sheaf of notes outlining his speech (five pages).

  Fountain pen.

  Handbill for concert poster (to be used as a prop for when he came to the part of his speech where he dismissed the bourgeois social-democratic approach to anti-imperialism).

  Glass of vodka.

  He took his fountain pen and scribbled a note in his speech: joke about Benny Orphan being just like Trotsky?

  He rearranged the desk again. It didn’t seem right.

  He mentally went through his speech one last time and calculated the order of each prop, left to right.

  Leonard, to his right coughed, sucked on his pipe and said, “Sounds nice and busy down there.”

  The hubbub from the pub below promised a great crowd. Sid looked out at the rows of empty wooden chairs and imagined them full to heaving. Imagined his words flying out above their heads, whipping them into revolutionary frenzy. Lenin at the Finland Station.

  He took a deep breath. “Let’s open the doors, shall we, comrade?”

  Leonard nodded, blew out tobacco smoke and jumped off the low stage. His footsteps clattered as he made his way across the empty function room.

  Sid could see the faces of the first few through the glazed doors, knowing they would be queued right down the stairs and out of the pub to the rear yard.

  Leonard opened the door with some ceremony and the first few piled in, making for the front row seats. He nodded to familiar faces: long-serving party members, one or two old faces who hadn’t been so active of late (a few stern reminders of revolutionary duties in order), a man he’d never seen before (undercover policeman?). They took their seats, scattered here and there in the acre of chairs.

  No one else. Had Leonard opened the side door downstairs? He must have. Where were the rest?

  Leonard stood at the open door, peered down the stairs and shook his head.

  Sid felt the blood rush from his face. He scanned the faces and counted them. Fourteen in all.

  What was going on? Where was everyone?

  He stared at his desk and his eyes fell on the handbill and Benny Orphan’s smiling face.

  — 44 —

  AMY PARKER KNOCKED the door to the Dowds. It seemed like a lifetime ago she’d knocked the same door, to call on Little Amy and ask her about her ghost. She had been fraught then, thinking herself crazy, but now she knew her own ghost was real.

  Still, he won’t come, she thought. Her letter to him had gone unanswered. Her eyes had fallen to the doormat every morning, and every afternoon returning from work, but no letter had come.

  Had she written the wrong words?

  I do wish to see you. But it is not safe for you to call on me at my home. Too many prying eyes. But your suggestion to meet at the concert meets with my approval.

  Was it too cold, impersonal? Too suggestive? Was he disgusted with her? She didn’t think he would be. But she didn’t really know him. Three, four brief encounters in 1912, and now another couple, 22 years later, in which they’d barely exchanged a word. She didn’t know him at all.

  The door opened and Little Amy smiled proudly.

  Amy took her in. She looked absolutely divine in a floor-length silver ball gown, fake fur stole, her hair permed tightly in a bob. Harold Ogborne did not deserve her.

  “You look wonderful,” she said.

  “I feel like a princess!”

  “And you shall go to the ball,” said Amy, thinking only to kiss a frog after all.

  She followed her inside to the front parlour. Mrs Dowd had on her Sunday dress and a little make-up. It was the first time Amy had seen her with make-up.

  “My, don’t we all look the bee’s knees,” said Mrs Dowd, lighting a cigarette and taking the ceremonial bottle of sherry from the glass cabinet.

  She poured a thimble
full into two tiny crystal glasses and caught Little Amy’s hopeful glance.

  “I suppose you think you should have a tot too, Little Amy?”

  “I don’t think I want to be called Little Amy anymore. I’m grown up now.”

  Mrs Dowd exchanged an amused glance with the older Amy and frowned. Amy could tell she was thinking But if we call you ‘Amy’, we’ll have to call Amy ‘Old Amy’.

  “You’re a long way off twenty-one, young madam,” said her mother, pouring a third tot. “But I guess you’ll be a woman soon enough, arr.”

  They all sipped and practised looking sophisticated.

  “I still can’t believe I’m actually going to see Benny Orphan,” said Little Amy. “I mean, really him.”

  Mrs Dowd chuckled. “I think Harold might get jealous tonight.”

  “Oh, mum.” Little Amy tried not to blush, but it made her face go even more crimson.

  Someone rapped at the door.

  “Talk of the devil,” said Mrs Dowd. She pushed herself up, groaned as her knees creaked, and shuffled up the hallway.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about Harold,” said Little Amy. “I’m not sure I want to go and live in that house after...”

  Amy stared with surprise.

  Little Amy’s lips were pursed with sudden determination, as if she’d been thinking it over for a long time.

  “Why don’t we not think about that tonight,” Amy said softly. “Let’s go and dance. With real men. Not ghosts.”

  Little Amy nodded.

  The Ogborne family’s footsteps came tramping up the hall.

  Little Amy stood up, took in a deep breath and put on a fake smile.

  — 45 —

  THE MOSELEY AND BALSALL Heath Institute ballroom was laid out much as Rachel remembered it from her first nights out drinking. For her it had been the Moseley Dance Centre, hosting Friday and Saturday night soul and disco nights. An ironic retro treat that had run for twenty years or more and been the Moseley drinker’s weekend last resort until late licensing had finished it off.