by Andy Conway
Was Lorna one of the good things about today or one of the bad things?
He smiled to himself as he remembered everything they had in common: they both liked PiL and Bowie and Joy Division. They both wanted to go to Berlin. Actually, it wasn’t much, but somehow it felt like there’d been much more, as if there were lots of other things they shared which they hadn’t talked about.
She was a nice girl. The kind you’d stick with for a long time. The kind who’d be nice to you.
Esther was nice too. But then she was also a bit crazy and would probably stab him if she suspected he’d spent the afternoon with Lorna, having his face made up by her. But Esther was also rich.
He was down to the last mouthful of Mild. He would have to buy another one soon, or go back out into the rain. Glen wouldn’t show. It would be like all the other times. He was never going to get his money back.
Hopeless anger swelled in his throat.
If I get the money tonight, he thought. I’ll ask Esther to the gig tomorrow. Asking her out with fifty quid in his pocket felt infinitely more realistic than with — he fingered the crumpled notes in his pocket — two quid.
It was no use. Glen wasn’t coming. He wouldn’t get his money. He pushed his half pint glass away, also pushing away the thought of another, and turned.
Glen was walking across the bar to him.
A smile broke Martyn’s face and he tried to control it. He always smiled with nervousness when he saw someone he knew and was walking towards them.
But Glen didn’t smile back. His face was stony grey, shell-shocked. The grin fell from Martyn’s face. Something had happened. Something bad.
“What’s up?” Martyn said.
“I’ve been sacked.”
“What!?”
Glen stared him down, almost as if it was something Martyn had done to get him sacked. “They’ve sacked me. And they’re taking me to court.”
“Court? What for?”
“For defamation of character and intent to destroy property.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You remember that old chair we broke?”
Martyn tried to cast his mind back to the ten weeks of rehearsal in the abandoned factory space. It may have been behind Wegs’s makeshift office but he’d always had a feeling that they didn’t actually own the space. There was an old wooden chair, almost falling apart and infested with woodworm. Don’t worry, Mark had joked. It’s the woodworm that’s keeping it all together. It had collapsed one night when they’d put one of the cabs on it.
“You’re kidding me. That chair?”
Glen nodded, his mouth tight, like a mourner’s at a funeral.
Was this another lot of bull? Was he avoiding the trip to Wegs, spinning out another web of lies? But his face was actually grey. No one could act that. Could they?
He stifled a laugh, remembering Glen’s variations on his surname this morning, and here he had actually turned grey. Or was it gr[a]e? Then he remembered his fifty quid and didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to see him.”
“No, mate. I can’t go back there. I need a drink.”
“And I need my money,” said Martyn.
He marched out, not caring if Glen followed. He’d go there on his own and kick the door down and get his money back. He’d waited long enough.
It was still raining outside. He was half way down Holt Street and passing the Old Union Mill, the blare of a live band from inside, when Glen caught him up.
“You’re right. We should go there. It’s not right. You need your money.”
Glen was as pumped up as him now, angry, outraged. Martyn felt a surge of friendship for him, then realized this was what he always did: match your mood, take control, then veer you subtly off course till you ended up doing what he wanted in the first place.
“I’m serious this time,” Martyn said. “We’re going and we’re getting my money.”
“That’s what I said, mate! He’s strung you along for too long. You don’t know him like I do. He’s as dodgy as a nine bob note.”
Martyn laughed. Why did people still say that? Especially young people who barely remembered the old money.
The rain lashed against them as they walked, and it grew fiercer as they crossed the wide open dual carriageway and marched down the long, desolate slope of Cardigan Street, pocked by wastelands and the giant ghost of the Belmont factory. An empty boast of Victorian grandeur.
Glen kept up a steady stream of chatter as they walked, the rain beginning to soak through their overcoats. Martyn could feel it running down his neck.
“I had this brilliant idea for a song today,” he said. “Getting sacked almost made me forget it. We need to find a French girl, though.”
“A French girl?”
“Yeah. Maybe there’s a French department at the Uni. Maybe there’s an exchange student.”
“Why French?”
Martyn wondered why he was even bothering to ask him this. He was only being drawn further and further into Glen’s fantasy world.
“I’ve got this idea that we have a girl onstage with us who repeats our lyrics. But in French.”
“What? All the lyrics? Everything?”
“Yeah. We’d be like a duo. Me singing in English, her in French. It’d be exotic.”
“Right.”
“We just have to find a French girl.”
“Yeah.”
“And you know what you should do with the money? Once you’ve got it back off Wegs.” Glen said. “Get a fretless bass.”
“A fretless?”
“Yeah. Fretless bass is the sound of the future, man. Listen to Mick Karn.”
There he went again, trying to make the whole band sound like Japan. Sure, he was going to take what was left of his redundancy money and sink it into a fretless bass, instead of clothes, food, bus fare, some new shoes that didn’t let the rain in.
“We should have got this money from him the day they chucked us out of the space.”
“I know,” said Glen. “I told you not to leave it. He chucked us out before we’d used up all the time we’d paid for. He owed us it there and then.”
“Me. Owed me.”
“Aye. I tried to tell you, you can’t trust him.”
“You’re sure he’s there?”
They turned at the Woodman pub and the imposing bulk of the old Curzon Street station building.
“I left him there tonight. Right after he sacked me.”
They walked on. He could feel the rain soaking through his trouser legs now.
“What are you gonna do?”
“I dunno. Something. Sign on. More time for the band, eh?”
He was grateful for the two seconds of shelter as they walked under the railway bridge and turned down Fazeley Street. He was tired now, beaten down by the rain and the wind. They reached the old warehouse building and sheltered in the doorway. He slumped back against the wall, panting. Glen looked like a drowned rat. A drowned, peroxide blonde rat.
“Listen. You wait here. I’ll sort this out.”
Martyn almost laughed. Here came the bull. He wanted to go lie down somewhere warm. Hunger gnawed at his belly suddenly and he wanted to throw up the half pint of Mild.
“These are horrible people,” Glen said. “I hate them and I don’t want you to meet them. You’re too nice a person. And anyway, it’s my fault this happened. I feel guilty. So I’m the one who needs to sort it out.”
Martyn nodded and slumped down to his haunches. He was too weak to argue. His overcoat was starting to smell like the old, dead man who’d been its previous owner. He pulled the collar up around his face and breathed the warm muggy air inside.
Glen went inside and Martyn heard his footsteps up the granite steps. There was music pounding from somewhere inside. Another band rehearsing? It was funny how your mood could change so quickly. He’d been ready to kick the door down, turn Wegs’s desk over and punch him sil
ly, but now he just wanted to sit down for a bit and get his breath back. A bath would be nice. He could go home to his mum’s instead of staying at Mark’s tonight. She was always glad to see him. She’d run him a nice, warm bath.
He thought of Glen coming back down and handing him the money. If it happens, he thought, I’ll call Esther straight away and ask her out to the gig tomorrow. If he doesn’t, I won’t. It all rested on Glen now. He would be the one to decide.
After a while, Glen’s shoes came scraping down the granite steps, echoing in the stairwell, and the door opened. Martyn got to his feet.
“He’s not there. He went out.”
Defeat flooded him. He’d known it all along. Glen’s eagerness to come here was too good to be true. He’d known it would end like this. He stared at Glen’s face in the gloom. It didn’t matter. He would come back on his own. He would track down Wegs and demand the money. He could even do it tomorrow morning. He didn’t need Glen’s help. Every time Glen helped you it all went wrong. He was the Anti-Midas.
“We’ll get your money back,” said Glen. “I’ll make sure of it. He can’t hide from us forever.”
The rain was still lashing down. He could stay sheltered here with Glen, or just let it soak him through some more.
“Back to the Pot?” said Glen, cheerfully.
Martyn shook his head. “Nah. I’m going home.” He could walk on and get the 50 on Digbeth, only a block away.
“Okay,” said Glen. “See ya tomorrow. Don’t forget the gig. At the party.”
Martyn laughed. The ‘gig’. Playing in a bedroom at someone’s house party. “Yeah. See you tomorrow, Glen.”
They parted, walking in opposite directions. He looked back and watched Glen sauntering up the street, head back, a little too jaunty.
— 20 —
DANNY HAD TAKEN A BLACK cab from the ramp on New Street and chuckled to himself all the way back to Moseley. He felt good in his new clothes. Stylish. They gave him a sense of power, superiority.
Night and rain fell as the cab snaked through Highgate and Balsall Heath. He knew Rachel was here, somewhere, and puzzled over how to find her. He couldn’t sense her at all. He couldn’t remember if he had ever been able to. Perhaps it wasn’t a power he would ever develop.
He yawned and closed his eyes and felt himself lulled into pleasant slumber by the rattle of the diesel engine, the gentle rocking of the suspension and the hiss of rain, drifting off for a few moments.
Amy pulled away from him, smiling shyly and averting her eyes. It was cold in the graveyard suddenly and she seemed to cower in his embrace for warmth.
She dug in her handbag and pulled something from it, pressing it into his hand.
“I had this made,” she said.
A brooch. Elegant filigree engraving. A zephyr. Ornate lettering. Was it a D and an M? On the reverse, Queen Victoria and a clasp. An old penny.
He frowned, wondering what it was.
“You’re here, mate.”
The taxi driver.
Danny looked around, startled. They were parked up by the Bull’s Head. He paid him and stepped out onto the village green, blinking into the downpour.
He grinned, realizing there was one person who could lead him to Rachel. He looked up at the latticed windows above the car showroom. Of course.
Charlie.
If Rachel was going to be anywhere, she would be with Charlie. She’d sought him out in whichever year she happened to travel to. This would be no different. If she were anywhere, she would be up there now, with Charlie.
And if she wasn’t with him, she would be, just as soon as Danny walked in there and killed him.
He walked over to the other side of the road and slipped into the dark ginnel that no one noticed. He found the cramped back yard and stood at the door to the upstairs flat.
It was Charlie who’d handcuffed him in 1940 and sent him away from Amy. He remembered screaming in the back of the car, a swarm of rats all around them, tied up, begging them to let him free.
It was Charlie who’d bullied him into returning right after Amy’s funeral in 1966, and spent the night sitting in the armchair with a revolver. It had seemed like he was only protecting them from Bernie Powell returning with his heavies, but Danny had known it was to keep him in the flat until morning.
But that was before he’d developed his powers. Now it didn’t matter if Charlie had a gun. He’d summon up a tornado to crush him before he could pull the trigger.
And he would be, what, sixty-five years’ old by now?
He giggled at the thought of Rachel seeking out her old man lover. He’d be at death’s door anyway.
He laughed and then he blew a kiss at the door and it flew open, almost knocked off its hinges.
He stepped inside. Footsteps came running. A man at the top of the stairs, balding, wrinkled.
“Hello, Charlie,” he said.
The old man ran. He was still sprightly for a pensioner.
Danny climbed the stairs and came to the corridor at the top. Charlie had run that way, scooting towards one of the bedrooms.
“Time for retirement, Charlie!”
He was going for his gun.
Danny strode down the corridor, laughing to himself.
Charlie stepped out. Thick glasses, a cardigan. Out of shape. Older, much older. The light hit his glasses and glared.
He lifted his revolver.
Danny fluttered his fingers like a stage magician and Charlie cannoned down the corridor as if pulled by a bungee rope. He hit the door to the living room and collapsed in a heap of old bones, the gun skittering across the floorboards.
Danny stood over him. Pathetic old man. Not so cocky now he was at the end of his meaningless little life.
“Where’s Rachel?” Charlie croaked.
“I was hoping you might be able to tell me,” said Danny.
“You do anything to her, I’ll kill you.”
“No,” said Danny. “I doubt it.”
He had thought about calmly starting a tornado inside his skull, just to see what would happen. He had an idea it would be very messy. But he felt anger rising inside him. This wasn’t going to be calm at all. Perhaps the anger was a tornado starting inside himself. Perhaps he might become a tornado.
Rachel had stopped him being with Amy Parker. She and Charlie had prevented them being together at every turn. Who did they think they were to stop him and Amy? They thought they were the goddamned time police or something. Who were they to stop him? He was a god. He could do anything he liked. It was time they knew that.
“Hold onto your hat, Charlie,” he said. “It’s about to get very messy indeed.”
— 21 —
“HELLO THERE,” SAID Deirdre. She looked Rachel up and down and frowned.
This was the moment: the moment of recognition. And now she would scream.
“Hello,” said Rachel.
“Thanks for looking after Lorna last night. It was very good of you.”
She didn’t recognize her.
“Oh. It’s no bother.”
“We used to live in Moseley.”
“Oh?”
Deirdre was twenty years older than the girl in 1959, her hair was shorter, muddy brown with flecks of grey. Her glasses were large, and huge earrings bobbed at the side of her face. There was a CND badge on her jacket, just as there had been back in 1959.
“Yes. Lorna still seems to think we do. Always going back there. I do worry about her getting back here on her own, what with all these things you hear about in the news, so I was very relieved to hear you were putting her up for the night.”
“I was happy to. We’ve had a great day together.”
“Well, we can return the favour. You must stay the night. It’s awful out there.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
She smiled again and went back to the kitchen.
Rachel fell back onto the sofa.
Deirdre Foster hadn’t recognized her at all. But of course, she wo
uldn’t remember her from the café. She’d returned to the same point in time after that and distracted her once more, so their talk in the café had never happened. But surely she would have remembered the final time? They had fought their way out of the tea room, and Rachel had jumped onto the tracks in her place. Surely that had caused this timeline to happen — the timeline where Deirdre lived and gave birth to Lorna.
Or had any of it happened?
It was outside time. UnTime, as Kath had called it. A nightmare at the end of time. Her head swam. It had felt real, and she knew with absolute certainty that, even though she might never have met Deirdre Foster in 1959, that somehow she had saved her from suicide, as if the whole episode had taken place in Deirdre’s unconscious mind and Rachel, a figment of her unconscious mind, had won over against the dark thoughts that had gripped her.
“You’re staying then?”
She jumped and looked up at Lorna, peeking round the door, grinning with excitement.
“What? Oh yes. If you want me to?”
“Course I do. We’ll go to my room after tea and play records, okay?”
Rachel nodded. “You have to let me help with the tea though.”
“Come on, then.”
She followed Lorna through to the kitchen where the radio was playing There, There My Dear.
“We’ll get the tea on, Mum,” said Lorna.
“I was going to put my sweetcorn casserole on,” said Deirdre. “Are you vegetarian, Rachel?”
Rachel remembered the bacon sandwiches she’d bought this morning. She looked at Lorna, shocked. Lorna winked and shook her head.
“I love veggie food,” said Rachel.
Deirdre leaned against the window and directed the girls on assembling the casserole. Lorna peeled and sliced the potatoes, while Rachel opened the cans of tomatoes and sweetcorn and then sliced the onions.
“You know, Rachel,” said Deirdre. “You do remind me of someone. We haven’t met before, have we?”
Rachel wiped her eyes and sniffed. “I don’t think so.”
She noticed the CND poster on the wall proclaiming a rally on the 21st of September at RAF Greenham Common. It must be the first one, she thought. Deirdre was heading there. She would have no idea how it would grow and grow and women from all over the world would camp there for a decade until the missiles were gone. It struck her again, just as it had in 1934, how ordinary people living humdrum, normal lives were stepping into the tide of history and altering its course. And it came back to her, something her Nan had said about Lorna’s mum. As soon as her daughter was married and had a baby, she ran off to Greenham Common with all those other feminists and was never seen again.