Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  Mitch gave her a weary smil. “Good work, Rachel. Very special evening.” He winked and followed Mrs Hudson out.

  Kath stayed a moment. She said nothing. It wasn’t exactly a look that would kill, more a look that wondered what it might be like to kill, one day, if the fancy took her. She turned and pushed her way through the crowd to the exit.

  Rachel knew for certain that the Kath she knew before this night was now much closer to the Future Kath she’d encountered.

  She sighed and felt suddenly quite tired.

  Charlie was still standing at the edge of the dance floor. He asked with his eyes if she was fine. She gave him a smile and rushed to him, suddenly eager to be in his arms.

  “I want that dance now, Charlie Eckersley.”

  He took her in his arms, just as the band finished the song.

  Everyone stopped and applauded. Lester Johnson came to the front of the stage and took a bow. The band all stood and did the same. The applause rang out all around them. Some men whistled and cheered. Surely it wasn’t over?

  Lester nodded to his men and said something to the pianist. They put their horns to their mouths. Another song. She would get her dance with Charlie.

  But they launched into God Save the King. She thought it was a joke. Even more so when all those sitting down suddenly rose to their feet. For a second she looked around and giggled. Then saw that Charlie was standing erect and singing along with everyone else. This was what they did here: they ended the night standing for the national anthem, standing for the king, without irony, without scepticism.

  The national anthem ended.

  The band took their last bows and filed backstage. The crowd shuffled for the doors. It was over.

  She looked at Charlie. He shrugged an apology.

  “Never mind,” she said. “We can put a record on later and dance to that.”

  Mrs Hudson’s words about not staying the night echoed in her head. But it was the faint echo of a song, and she wasn’t sure she liked the tune anymore.

  — 54 —

  DANNY HAD CHECKED BEHIND them as they ran down Brighton Road. No one had followed. He kept on running with her, slowing his pace a little, calming himself.

  It seemed he’d been able to control it. Use it. Almost as if it were a special power he could unleash when he chose.

  They passed under the dank shadow of the railway bridge and walked. She was breathing heavily. Amy Parker. Holding his hand. Still distraught at her ordeal. Too distraught to wonder at this turn of events: that Danny was taking her home.

  He tried to take his mind off it. Stay calm. Be remote. Float above the situation.

  They turned up Kingswood Road and he checked back. No one following. They were safe.

  He thought about Fenwick’s words. There was no touchstone. This was a talent. It was a skill he possessed. And now this. The ability to unleash a tornado. It was almost as if he was becoming superhuman. Perhaps this had been his destiny all his life. As the book said. Something about a prophet caught up from the Earth in a whirlwind he cannot control, and borne away in a chariot we cannot follow.

  He was a superhero. He could do anything.

  They turned into Newport Road and he caught her looking up into his face. Was it adoration he saw? Was it awe? Perhaps she thought he was her movie hero. She could only think of it in terms of him being dashing. What could she know about the awesome power he possessed?

  They came to her house and she opened the waist-high gate quietly, as if not to disturb the neighbours, closing it after him so it didn’t click, like a burglar. Stealing into her own house.

  He wondered if he should speak out. Make some kind of excuse to enter with her. He said nothing.

  A light was on in the parlour next door.

  Amy slid the key into the lock and stole inside, motioning him to follow quickly. Once he was beside her in the narrow, dark hallway, she shut the door and sighed with relief.

  She stood with her palm to the door for a few moments. He watched her, nothing but a shadow in the dark. The sound of their breathing. Alone together. What was she thinking?

  She came alive again, as if she’d drifted away to another time or place for a moment. She came back to her body and squeezed past him. Should he take her in his arms? Kiss her?

  He followed her down the hall, past the mahogany coat stand, through to the middle room. A couple of armchairs, a sideboard, a dining table with wooden chairs. A door to the kitchen. Another door on the inner wall, open, revealing the stairs to her bedroom. She drew the curtains to the back yard and turned on a lamp. Golden glow. Secretive.

  Finally, she looked at him. They stared across the expanse of the room. Amy Parker and Danny Pearce. Alone together.

  “You don’t look much older,” she said. “It’s as if you’re a ghost.”

  “I’m not a ghost.”

  “But you’re not real either.”

  “I’m real.”

  An owl hooted out the back somewhere. She suddenly seemed uncomfortable in herself, hugged herself. Did she want him to hug her?

  “You’re not like other men,” she said.

  He said nothing. What could he say? It was true.

  “I knew it,” she said. “Even back then I knew it. Even before the thing with my father.”

  “He was going to kill you.”

  “I know.” She looked at him again. “I’ve just never known how you knew that.”

  He tried to imagine it from her perspective. He’d appeared to her when she was a teenage girl; a stranger trying to spirit her away from her mad father. A stranger who’d saved her life when her father had tried to murder her. And then he’d disappeared. And here he was again, hardly changed, back in her life after twenty years.

  She must have sensed what he was thinking because she said, “Where have you been all these years?”

  He shrugged, smiled. How could he answer that? He’d been in her future.

  “You wanted to take me away,” she said. “Do you remember? You wanted me to run away with you.”

  “I still do,” he said.

  She seemed surprised, and relieved. “Where would we go?”

  He thought of the touchstone. When he’d asked her, back in 1912, to run away with him, he’d thought he could take her to St Mary’s church yard, touch the stone and take her to 2012 with him. But now he knew that couldn’t work. She could never travel through time with him. He could only ever travel through time to visit her life. He couldn’t take her from this time, but he could take her from this place.

  “We could go anywhere,” he said. “Do anything.”

  “You’re so sure of everything. When you’re here it always seems so simple. So right. But then you disappear and I don’t know what to think anymore. Are you going to leave me again?”

  He took a step towards her. “No. I want to stay with you.”

  She looked scared. He walked the five steps across the room to her, which felt like five miles. Would she tell him to go? Would she fight him off, like she’d tried to fight off Benny Orphan? There was pain in her eyes, and doubt and disbelief and also a terrible longing: for answers, for respite, for love.

  He put his hands to her arms. She shuddered. He pulled her close to him. His lips sought hers. She didn’t push him away. She didn’t struggle. He tasted her lips at long last and melted into her kiss.

  — 55 —

  RACHEL AND CHARLIE went backstage and made sure everyone got paid for the night. They congratulated the band and Manny’s army of heavies. Tony Pratt, the guest pianist was mopping his brow, wiping his glasses, red-faced but excited.

  “That was rather spiffing,” he said. “Thank you for asking me, Charlie.”

  Lester Johnson came over and shook his hand. “You did well, sir. Thank you for standing in. It was a pleasure playing with you.”

  The other band members slapped him on the back and he blushed and took out his Conan Doyle book. “I say. You couldn’t all sign this for me, could you? It�
�s all I have with me, and I’d so like a memento of the night.”

  They took turns with his fountain pen and signed their names on the title page, including Charlie and Rachel.

  It was an hour or more before they piled out into the midnight air. A fierce wind was blowing and they rushed to climb aboard Abe’s bus that drove them to Moseley.

  He pulled up at the quiet crossroads of Moseley village and Rachel and Charlie got out, waving to them all. Rachel felt a sudden longing to continue with them, like a girl who can’t bear the thought of the holiday being over. The bus drove on up the hill to take the band to the hotel.

  No one about. Only the wind singing in the trees.

  Charlie took her hand and crossed the road. They walked round the back of Boots to the back yard and up the iron steps, the fierce wind whipping her dress around her knees. Charlie fiddled with the lock and they cowered inside.

  The wind howled all around.

  Charlie looked for some music, put a slow record on the gramophone. Midnight, the Stars, and You. They didn’t dance.

  “You look sad,” he said.

  She nodded, afraid she might cry if she spoke. “I just thought of Henry.”

  He slumped onto the sofa. “I can’t believe I’ll never see him again.”

  “I’m so sorry, Charlie. When will the funeral be?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. This week, I imagine. Will you come?”

  She shook her head. “I have to go.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  Now it was his turn to look sad.

  “But I’ll see you soon. In 1940, in fact. In the middle of an air raid.”

  “An air raid?”

  She bit her lip. “There are a few things I need to tell you about the future. I shouldn’t. In fact I’ve been told not to. But, well... I sort of already have. So now I have to do it.”

  A sudden look of realisation lit his face. “The football,” he said. “It’s Saturday. I didn’t place those bets.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re going to make a lot of money. But like I said: try to lose some too. Bernie Powell’s going to become a very powerful and very dangerous man. You need to milk people like him gradually. Then you’ll have enough money to become a bookie yourself. Don’t worry; it’ll be legal by 1961.”

  “I’m going to become a bookie?”

  “Yes, after the war.”

  “There’s going to be a war?”

  She got up suddenly. “I’ve got a list of dates to give you. It’s in my room.”

  She rushed out and up the stairs to the back room. The list was tucked in her jacket pocket. The names of the people he needed to befriend: Amy Parker, and Rachel’s ancestors: her grandmother and great-grandmother. There were only two dates: one in 1940 and one in 1966. He would be waiting for her both times. It had already happened.

  She wondered if she should include the 1959 encounter? Had it really happened? She wasn’t sure of the exact date anyway. No. She would leave it. It had been an accidental meeting.

  Her night dress was on the bed. Could she stay the night? Could she stay the night with Charlie? If anything had happened between them, he had never let her know.

  The wind howled at the skylight. The thought of Future Kath made her shiver. She rushed out of the room, like a child afraid of ghosts, and back down the stairs.

  He was standing at the window, looking out at the night.

  “Here,” she said, holding out the slip of paper.

  He took it, read the dates. “Is that all?”

  She shook her head. “There might be others. Those are the ones I know for now. I’ll need clothes both times. Meet me where you first found me.”

  He nodded and stared at the dates. This was it, she thought. For him it was the beginning, but for her this was the end. She had done everything she had to do. She would never see him again.

  “I need to get my life back,” she said. “Danny changed something in the past. He saved Amy Parker’s life and now I haven’t been born. Something in her life has cancelled out mine. If you can help me... well, it’s going to mean a lot to me. I can’t do it without you.”

  “I’ll do anything,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  She had found herself here in 1934, as if washed up on a strange shore, and he had taken her in, and she’d known this was the time she would set all of this in motion, set him on the long path of helping her for the rest of his life. She would decipher this collision of Amy Parker’s descendants and how it would somehow wipe out her existence. But she knew that the answer lay somewhere in 1980. Just like Mrs Hudson’s parents tonight, Rachel’s parents were supposed to meet at a dance, and Amy Parker’s granddaughter, Esther, would get in the way.

  She had to go there and stop Esther and get her life back. But surely she could stay here with Charlie just a little while longer?

  She had a terrible swelling in her throat. “Can I stay the night?” she asked.

  It was as if someone had said it for her. She hadn’t meant to say it at all.

  “You can stay as long as you like,” he said.

  “Can we have that dance now?”

  He smiled. The record had finished. He went to the gramophone and the stack of 78s and searched for another.

  He stayed there, kneeling, listening to an orchestral introduction, scared to stand up and face her.

  She smiled bitterly. Mildred Bailey was singing Give Me Time. This was all the beginning for him, but for her it was the end. He had kissed her before. Kissed her three times. Held her in his arms. Asked her to stay with him forever.

  Mrs Hudson had told her not to stay the night.

  She could stay the night with him. Would it be such a scandalous thing? Would the sky fall in?

  She felt a sudden acid stain seep through her.

  Scandal, rumours, gossip. Amy Parker. The bastard child she’d had. A girl called Maddy. The rumour that it was the crooner who was Maddy’s father. Benny Orphan?

  But it wasn’t Benny Orphan. She knew it, suddenly.

  Charlie stood and faced her, smiling bravely. His smile fell when he saw her face. “Rachel? Are you all right?”

  She tottered. A wave of nausea swept through her. She knew it now. This was the disturbance Mitch had detected: the time crime, the violation.

  The violent wind that had rattled at the window panes suddenly went silent.

  She knew with absolute certainty that it had disappeared, sucked through a vortex, to wreak its havoc in 1931.

  It wasn’t Benny Orphan at all, even though they would gossip about it for years.

  It was... Oh God.

  “Rachel? What’s wrong?”

  Oh God. It was the worst thing that could happen. It was...

  Charlie’s face was fading. The room disappearing, crumbling, melting. She reached out for him. Hold me. Keep me here. But she knew it wasn’t Charlie disappearing. It was her.

  Charlie lunged across the room and reached for her but she never felt his touch.

  She felt a blast of wind hit her face. Like the first gust of a tornado, cool on her skin, which was burning up.

  Then the floor fell away from under her and Mildred Bailey wasn’t singing Give Me Time anymore.

  — 56 —

  DANNY WOKE ON THE FLOOR, his neck stiff, his shoulder aching. The putrid smell of damp ash made him choke. He gagged and sat up, blinking.

  His pin-striped suit was creased. He shivered inside it, huddled himself up to stay warm. Blew on his hands. A spot of rain on his face.

  He looked up at a grey sky. Charred rafters a net enclosing. He was in the Kingsway again. After the fire. He looked around him at the burnt out shell of the building and leapt to his feet with sudden panic.

  His legs were still asleep. He nearly fell. Pins and needles swarming down his left leg. He steadied himself, bent double, trying not to vomit.

  He had been in Amy Parker’s bed. Woken in the morning with her. The blissful intimacy
of first love. Excited talk about running away together. Getting married somewhere. The whole future before them. He would stay in 1934 with her. They could live out their lives together.

  She had gone downstairs, singing a love song, and he’d listened to her preparing breakfast in the kitchen as he’d dressed and smiled at himself in the mirror. His mission finally accomplished. Knotting his tie, slipping his jacket on, wondering if it was too formal for breakfast. He must go back to the Station Hotel and get his suitcase. His Kindle hidden in the lining.

  Smiling at his own face in the mirror. You’ve done it, mate. They all tried to stop you, but you’ve beaten them.

  Then he had fallen through.

  Fallen through decades and landed on a carpet of sodden charcoal.

  He stood up and breathed slowly, trying to think himself back to her. He could do this. He could go back to her bedroom and be there before she’d even realized he’d gone. Go back to that exact moment.

  Nothing happened.

  The photograph. The photograph still in his pocket.

  He shoved his hand into his inside breast pocket, pulled out the photograph and handbill for the concert. Amy’s face a beacon in the dim light of the dance hall, just beyond Benny Orphan’s right shoulder, gazing out at him with a face of rapt wonder.

  He thought himself back to her. Back to that morning. Back to her house on Newport Road.

  Nothing happened.

  He cried out, his scream echoing off the burnt walls. She was lost to him. He would never get back to her. He’d abandoned her just at the moment he’d promised to marry her. She would greet him years later with the wounded suspicion of the abandoned woman, and that bitterness would curdle into outright hate. There was nothing he could do about it.

  A surge of vomit assaulted his throat and he fell to his knees, spewing it out, choking, gagging, retching out bitter bile.

  By the time it subsided, his tears were falling onto the burnt carpet.

  He lurched to his feet and clambered through the scorched and blackened debris, stumbling through to the old foyer. The walls were painted with soot but most of it was intact. Slashes of daylight through the slats across the doors.