by Andy Conway
“Fine,” she said. “You could see it this afternoon if you like? One o’clock?”
They all looked at each other. None of them had anything better to do.
“Okay,” said Glen. Meet in the Pot of Beer?”
“Excellent,” she said. “See you all later.”
“Ta ra,” said Martyn, following her out.
Esther found her shoes next to the sofa on the landing and he followed her down the stairs to the street below.
“Where we going?” he asked.
“I’ve got to get changed,” she said, indicating her cape and nightie. “Then I’ve got a morning seminar.”
He had a vague memory she’d told him last night they should spend the day together at her student flat.
“Yeah,” he said, as they walked. “Aston Uni.”
He should have become a student, he thought. They paid you about as much as the Dole and you could hang around and be in a band anyway. He’d missed a trick there.
Something in Esther had changed. He wasn’t sure what. She looked annoyed. Was it something he’d said?
“Bit funny, that girl fainting like that,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said.
She was walking quickly now and he was wondering whether to keep up with her or let her go on ahead. Nothing was certain.
“They meet like that in movies,” he said. “You know, movies where couples meet up. It’s always something funny like that.”
“That singer of yours,” she said.
“What? Glen?”
“Yeah, Glen. He’s jealous of you.”
“What? What do you mean?”
She looked at him like he was a child who’d just been told Santa wasn’t real. “You’re more talented than him. He’s not all that great. You could get a better singer.”
“I dunno,” he said. “I’ve not thought about it. He makes most of the decisions, to be honest.”
“Oh.” She seemed disappointed again. Was he saying the wrong things? “You know, you really have got a nerve,” she spat with sudden venom.
What the hell?
“You just think you’re going to come to my place, don’t you!”
He stood dumbfounded in the face of her sudden rage. “No,” he said. “I thought you said—’
“Men like you make me sick!”
She was shouting at him now. An old woman on the other side of the road glanced over.
“What’s going on?” he stammered.
“You utter creep!”
How the hell had they got here? He’d not been paying attention. He’d drifted off for a minute and maybe said something insulting to her without realizing it. He tried to remember the last couple of minutes. There was nothing he could remember saying that could cause this outrage.
“Just get lost!” she screamed.
And she was storming away from him, her cape flying in the breeze behind her, heading for the main road. On the other side, a cluster of people were waiting for the number 50 bus. They were all staring at him.
“Esther? What the hell?”
They were a couple having a slanging match in broad daylight. Except they weren’t a couple.
The old lady was still staring at him, shaking her head in disgust. He knew his face must be bright red. What’s happening? he thought.
He wondered for a crazy moment if he should remind her about the meeting at one o’clock, but he knew that could no longer be happening. It had all seemed to change in an instant, as if an earthquake had hit. He couldn’t work out why. Girls were always confusing, but not like this.
She ran across the road, dodging traffic. He didn’t see if she looked back at him because a giant cream and blue 50 bus came and hid her.
He stood paralysed, watching the bus sail off, heading for town, and remembered he’d meant to go into town anyway, to get tickets for the Ultravox gig. He could have gone with her. If she hadn’t suddenly turned crazy.
He crossed over and waited for the next bus to come, knowing he’d blown it, but with no idea how or why.
— 13 —
IT WAS A SUNNY MORNING, not too cold. August, she thought. Warmer than the frost of winter 2014, from where she’d travelled.
Rachel threw off the quilt and rushed to the window, looking down on Moseley village, already busy with traffic. Several number 50 buses convoying their way through, cream-and-navy-coloured.
The clothes she’d arrived in last night stank of cigarette smoke. A bitter, acrid reek that she could almost feel in her skin, even after showering in the cubicle that had been built into the corner of the bedroom. She threw on some more sensible clothes from her case. She could hear Lorna moving about in the back bedroom next door.
The lounge downstairs had also been altered since 1934, part of it partitioned off to create a cramped cupboard kitchen. The fridge was empty.
Who kept the place running? she wondered. It was obvious that Mrs Hudson owned the flat, but who was paying the bills? Did Mrs Hudson and Mitch travel here from the future and handle things, like time travel letting agents? It was possible. You could go back to 1900 and buy the shop and the rooms above it and then just keep travelling back in time every so often to keep it ticking over. You could probably do it all in a single week, going to a different month every hour and that would be job done forever.
If you had the skills of Mrs Hudson and Mitch.
Rachel shuddered. She was supposed to be more powerful than either of them, but she didn’t think she could manage something like that. She was still never really sure that she could control where and when she ended up. If she used the touchstone and she’d convinced herself that it was definitely sending her to a certain time, it was easy, because she wasn’t in control of it. Knowing that she was the one in control, and that she didn’t even need the touchstone, made it scary and uncertain.
Lorna clumped down the stairs and came into the lounge, a little sheepish. “Morning,” she said.
Rachel tried to control the enormous grin that wanted to crack her face open. Her mum, right here, to talk to and laugh with. Something she thought she’d never have.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing in the fridge at all for breakfast. We’ll have to find a caff downstairs or something.”
Lorna frowned. “You sound like you don’t really live here.”
“I’ve not been here for a while. Only arrived last night, actually.”
“So the suitcase was real then? I thought it was part of your costume.”
They laughed.
“It looked great, mind. I like your hair too. Mallen streak. But very 1940s.”
Very 1980s does 1940s, thought Rachel. But she wouldn’t know that right now, here in 1980.
Rachel went to her handbag and opened the envelope and found a stack of banknotes. She couldn’t help examining them: green one pound notes with Sir Isaac Newton on the back. Strange to see.
“Are you rich, or something?”
Rachel shoved the notes away, embarrassed. “No. this is everything I have. Everything in the world.”
“You should put it in your bank, probably. To be safe, like.”
“Yeah,” said Rachel. “I’d better do that. But let’s get breakfast first.”
She knew there were no cashpoint machines anywhere and that getting money from your bank involved making an appointment. By the end of the eighties the holes in the wall would be everywhere, but here, in 1980, banking was a clumsy, bureaucratic procedure that was anything but instant.
Lorna looked awkward. “I should probably go home and get changed.” She indicated her punk ballerina costume. “I mean, I’m not really dressed for the day.”
“Oh, yes,” said Rachel. “You could borrow some of mine. I’ve got a dress you could wear. We’re about the same size.”
Lorna’s face lit up and Rachel realized she’d never had a friend to offer her kindness like this. Just like Rachel hadn’t. She was just like her mother. And now they could be friends. It was mind blowing.
“Only if you’re sure, like?”
“Definitely! Then you don’t have to slog all the way over to Winson Green.”
Lorna fought her embarrassment. “I could go straight to Uni then. I’d have to phone my mum first, though. She’ll worry.”
“Come on. I’ll show you what I’ve got.”
She took her upstairs and left her trying on whatever she wanted from her suitcase. Lorna came down a few minutes later in a pair of high-waisted tweed Oxford bags, tapered at the turn-ups, and a mauve cavalry shirt.
“That looks great,” said Rachel.
“You’ve got great clothes. Your fur coat’s amazing, and I really love those boots. What do you call them?”
Rachel looked down at her feet with sudden panic. “They’re pixie boots.”
“I’ve never seen them before.”
She realized she’d misjudged a fashion item, come in too early with it. They might not appear on the high street for another year.
“I got them in Paris,” she said.
“Oh, right. Lovely.”
They took the wrought-iron steps to the rear courtyard and walked round to the village crossroads. Rachel couldn’t help stopping at Boots and gazing at the building on the opposite corner.
A car show room on the ground floor. Latticed windows upstairs. Was Charlie there now? Was he still alive? He would be 65 now. She could walk right across the street and ring the bell. Hello, Charlie. It’s me again. I haven’t seen you since you were twenty. You haven’t seen me since you proposed to me fifteen years ago and I just disappeared.
She wondered if he would hate her now. It would probably crush a man: to sort of propose to a girl, hear her say yes, then have her immediately disappear. She’d abandoned him. He would surely hate her?
And yet he’d still arranged for his solicitor to meet her, fresh from her trip to 1940, to hand over the keys to his flat, and a trust fund. It was an old Charlie who’d done that. He would do that in about thirty years from now
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Lorna said. “I love them old buildings like that. Looks like a castle or something. Imagine all the people who’ve looked at that; all them people from history.”
Rachel smiled at her. Maybe this was where she got her love of history from.
They walked up the parade and Lorna squealed at the sight of Mrs Hudson’s costume hire shop.
“Oh, it’s a lovely place, that! Let’s go in and have a look. I love it, I do.”
“No,” said Rachel. She couldn’t cope with walking in there and seeing a Mrs Hudson who might not know her; a Mrs Hudson who’d be 45 years old. “Sorry,” she added. “Need breakfast first.”
“Oh yeah. Sure,” Lorna smiled.
They walked on and popped into Wimbush bakers a few doors up that did hot breakfast sandwiches and coffee. They bought bacon sandwiches, swimming in grease on chewy white sliced bread, and munched on them right there in the street.
“Aw, this is a life saver,” said Lorna.
When they’d finished, she popped into W.H. Smiths and bought a Daily Mirror and they hopped on the 50 bus into town. She didn’t much care about the content — its shock headline of unemployment about to reach a postwar high of two million, thanks to the new Thatcher government and its austerity budget. She just wanted to be sure of the date.
“Isn’t it the Ultravox gig on the fifteenth?” she said, casually.
“Oh yeah,” said Lorna. “At the Cedar Club.”
“We’ve got to go to that. It’s going to be brilliant.”
“Aw, I was gonna give it a miss, actually.”
Rachel couldn’t hide her befuddlement. “Really? You’re not going?”
But it had happened. It was history. She’d always gone to it. How could that have changed?
“Can’t afford it right now.”
If Lorna had always gone to it in the past, how had it changed now? Had Rachel being here, colliding with Esther Parker, somehow changed that?
“I’ll pay,” she blurted out. “I’ve got money.”
A knot of annoyance creased Lorna’s forehead. “Don’t be daft,” she said.
“You can pay me back when you’ve got it. Don’t worry. I really want to go and I’ve no one to go with.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. We so should go.”
“That new album’s all right,” she said. “I’m just not sure about Midge Ure. I really liked the old band, when John Foxx was singer. That song of theirs, Hiroshima Mon Amour. God, that just makes me melt.”
“And The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned too. I love that one.”
“Yeah!” Lorna cried, squeezing her arm.
“So it’s settled then. Let’s go.”
“We could go and have a look if there’s still tickets, I suppose.”
Rachel stifled a sigh of relief. The tickets were only £2.50 each. It might have been expensive to Lorna Foster, but there was no way she was going to let that get in the way of them being there. A fiver in any year was small change to pay for a date with destiny.
The 50 dropped them in a crowded city centre and Rachel looked around in amazement. It was a concrete monstrosity where only cars felt free, people banished to grimy underpasses and crowded pavements. New Street was crammed with cars and buses belching out fumes. There was no pedestrianization to be seen anywhere.
She could barely equate it to the modern city she knew.
“You look lost,” said Lorna.
“I’m sorry. I’ve not been here for a while. It looks different.”
“Really?”
“Only a couple of years,” she said, trying to laugh it off.
“You know, my dad talks about how it used to be. There were some lovely old Victorian buildings they knocked down, like the market hall and the old library. He always says they carried on right where the Luftwaffe left off.”
Rachel remembered skies screaming with fire and shuddered. “Where do we get these tickets, then?” she said.
“What? Now?’
“They might sell out.”
“Cedar Club’s over that way, past the Gaumont. Bit of a walk.”
They didn’t even have ticket agencies. You had to go to the venue to get a ticket.
“Have you got time?”
“Not got a lecture for another hour.”
They set off across town and Lorna linked her arm in Rachel’s. People looked at them as they walked and she wondered if it was because they were dressed a bit different. They were out there, fashion-wise and she realized for the first time that most people just looked drab. Even the youths of various cults, whether they were rockers, punks, teddy boys, skinheads, new wavers — no one looked remotely glamorous.
They were in a recession and she could see it everywhere she looked.
She didn’t recognize most of the landscape as they walked, apart from the police headquarters where D.I. Davies had betrayed them to Bernie Powell and his heavies. They descended into a giant concourse where she was surprised to see the JFK mural. Some kids in flared jeans and long hair were skateboarding.
They emerged and climbed Constitution Hill, a rabble of soot-coated shops that the city centre had forgotten. Half way up the rise was the dingy Cedar Club entrance on a street corner.
They pushed the door open and found themselves in a cramped hallway. Two schoolboys were talking to a couple who were slumped on wooden chairs.
“Look. If we buy tickets, are we gonna get in on the night?” said one of the boys, a short blonde kid who looked about fourteen. His mate, taller with jet black wedged hair, who looked like a miniature John Foxx, hung back and said nothing.
The man slumped on the wooden chair, a grizzled rock school veteran, gave them a nod and said, “If I’m on the door, yeah. And I’ll be on the door.”
The boys looked at each other and took fistfuls of coins out of their bulging pockets. They were given two tickets and walked out, staring at them.
The older man didn’t smile ti
ll the boys were gone. “Hello ladies. How can I help you?”
“Ultravox,” said Lorna. “Any tickets?”
“You’re lucky. Only a handful left.”
“Two, please,” said Rachel.
The man handed over the tickets and took her five pound note. They turned to leave and she hesitated a moment. Should she buy more? Had Martyn got a ticket? He was supposed to be there, but what if it was sold out and he couldn’t get a ticket? What if she’d taken the ticket he was always meant to have?
“What?” asked Lorna.
She didn’t have time to answer because the door opened and Martyn walked in.
He seemed surprised to see them, stopping for a second, startled, then went to push past them and did a double take, looking back at Rachel.
She was already out on the street.
Lorna gripped her arm. “It’s him,” she hissed.
The door closed and he disappeared from view. Rachel smiled to herself. He was going to buy his tickets. He would be there too.
Lorna moved to walk back down the hill, her face reddening. Rachel stopped her. “No, wait.”
“Really?”
“You want to meet him, don’t you?”
It was going to happen. It was going to happen right now. She was going to make it happen.
“I’m gonna die,” said Lorna. She was squirming, like she needed the loo, trying to pull Rachel away.
“Trust me, Lorna. This is meant to happen.”
“Aw, God. I’m gonna die of shame.”
The door opened and Martyn emerged, sliding tickets into his pocket. He stopped, surprised to see them.
“Hi,” said Rachel, smiling brightly.
Lorna turned half away and hid her face under her fringe.
“Hello,” said Martyn warily.
“You don’t remember, do you?”
He stared at her blankly for a moment. “The girl who fainted.”
“Yeah,” said Rachel, pulling Lorna closer to her. “We were both there.”
Martyn glanced at Lorna and didn’t recognize her. He turned back to Rachel. “You all right now? You took a bit of a fall.”
“Oh yeah, fine now. We watched your gig. Both of us. Me and Lorna here.”
He looked at Lorna again. He didn’t seem interested in them at all. He looked tired and wary, even scared.