Touchstone Season One- Complete Box Set

by Andy Conway

  A woman’s voice called out, “I’m just popping out for some milk, Charlie. I’ll only be ten minutes.”

  The woman’s shoes clattered along the corridor and down the stairs and the front door slammed.

  Rachel knew what this was. She knew why she was here.

  She crept out into the empty corridor and along to Charlie’s old bedroom. She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  The same green Lloyd Loom ottoman at the foot of the bed. Charlie was there, propped up, mouth open, wheezing, pale. An old man, his skin pallid and wrinkled, only wisps of white hair on his head. He opened his eyes and his slack mouth twisted into a smile.

  The tears were already running down her face.

  Charlie’s pale eyes glowed. He croaked and tried to say something but it was barely a whisper.

  She went to him and sat on the bed and took his hand in hers. It was as light as a bird’s foot.

  She knew what this was.

  “Rachel,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “Charlie,” she sobbed.

  His other hand came to her face, a pale finger stroking her cheek. “What happened?”

  She realized she must look a state, all cut and bruised. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Why?” she cried. “I’ve not been here for you. I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head, still smiling weakly, and said, “I missed you.”

  He seemed to see his own hand on her face and frowned suddenly, pulled it away, covering his face.

  “What, Charlie?” she asked, puzzled.

  “I’m so old now,” he croaked. “And you are so beautiful. You have never aged for me.”

  She shook her head, took his hand again, kissed it. “I love you,” she said.

  His mouth twisted into a smile. “I always loved you,” he said. “From the moment I found you, by the gravestone. And every moment since.”

  “I wanted to stay with you,” she said. “I really did, Charlie. I wanted to be your wife. But something always came between us.”

  He nodded. “Time.”

  “If I can find another way,” she said, “we could spend a life together. I could make it happen, I’m sure I could.”

  He shook his head, smiling kindly. “We had our life together.”

  “Not enough,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t change it. It was such a wonderful adventure.” He closed his eyes and nodded, as if she’d said something, a deep sigh heaving his chest.

  She kissed his face and felt the life leave him. His smile froze. His hand fell to the bed. He was gone.

  This was how he’d left the world: the morning she’d found the touchstone.

  She sobbed and held his hand for a while, her tears falling on his still warm hand.

  The front door sounded and the nurse’s footsteps came skipping up the stairs.

  Rachel kissed him again and gazed at his smiling face, concentrating, willing herself to the time she wanted. She had to go home now. Back to the life she’d always wanted. She thought of the day, felt the shape of it, the scent of it, she could almost taste it. She relaxed into it — yes, that felt right — and even the door opening behind her, the cry of surprise from the nurse and the bottle of milk smashing on the floor didn’t stop her.

  When she opened her eyes she knew she’d finally done it.

  — Epilogue —

  SHE WAS STANDING IN St. Mary’s churchyard on a crisp spring morning.

  Yes, this was it.

  She glanced all around. The graveyard was empty. The hum of traffic from St. Mary’s Row. She walked to the wrought-iron gate, its green paint flaking, wearing a knot of chains as a necklace. At the end of the white-painted walls of the alley, the slit of the village green.

  A man in a grey trilby hat walked by and for a moment she thought she’d got the wrong year. But he was wearing a short-sleeved blue check shirt with a slim brown tie, distressed jeans, Converse trainers, an iPhone to his ear.

  It was 2014. She could feel it.

  She wiped the tears from her face and noticed blood smeared on her cuff. She probably had a black eye as well as a busted lip. Her jaw was throbbing, her left ear ringing. Fingers cut and bruised. A nail gone black. She tongued a loose tooth. She was a mess. But she was home.

  There was something wrong. Something missing.

  The touchstone.

  It was gone. The same old gravestone that was shaped like a bench or a baby’s cot, weathered and moss-coated, its inscription barely readable — was it Reed or Rees? — was gone.

  There is no touchstone.

  She walked to the spot where it had stood. There was no sign that it had ever been there, no indication of the turf having been dug up. It was just on overgrown patch of grass surrounded by crooked gravestones a hundred years old.

  There is no touchstone. You are the touchstone.

  She left the spot, staring back at it as she walked, before turning and quickening her step, ducking under an overhanging branch as she came to the corner of the church where the broken gravestones formed a buckled pavement.

  They had stood there, the whole class, that morning — the morning Charlie died — and Mr Fenwick had paired her with Danny. Had it happened? There was no touchstone.

  You are the touchstone.

  She looked down at the tip of someone’s headstone, between her shoes. Arabella Palmer, who departed this life August 16th 1876. Her age had been underneath, but the stone was broken off at that point and she could only make out the word YEARS and the top of the number. It could have been 8, or 38. She remembered how much she’d hoped it was the latter.

  She walked down the slope of path to the lychgate and emerged onto St. Mary’s Row, traffic flashing past, the old familiar shops. It was 2014. She could feel it.

  A sudden fear gripped her. She wanted to run home but she was scared. Scared that she might try the key in the door and it wouldn’t fit. That her Nan, again, wouldn’t recognize her. That her father, Martyn, would shout at her to get away from them, that deadness in his eyes: the complete lack of recognition for her.

  She hesitated. The traffic stopped at the pedestrian crossing, a green man walking. A driver stared, accusing. She shrugged and shook her head. It wasn’t me. And she wondered if she now had the power to change traffic lights.

  The lights beeped rapidly and the traffic pulled on up the hill, and she found herself staring at a faded sheet of paper in an A4 plastic wallet, Gaffa-taped to the pole, just above the control box. A colour photo, washed out, but recognisable. Her school graduation photo.

  She edged closer and read her name under the large print of the word MISSING. There was a description of her and it said she had disappeared on that same Saturday morning in November 2011.

  Her heart quickened and she thought she might choke on it, thumping in her throat.

  She’d done it.

  She choked back tears, doubled over, hand on the traffic light’s control box to steady herself, hyperventilating. When she could breathe again her sense of triumph was overwhelmed by a wave of guilt.

  A girl emerges, bloody and dirty, on a street. No one has seen her for years. She was thought long dead. She appears, blinking, panicked, and runs home to her shocked, bewildered parents.

  Rachel knew of several such girls. She vaguely remembered them from news reports. She remembered the names of the men who’d abducted them and held them captive in basements.

  She was like those girls. She had appeared, bloody and dirty, on a street. She could have her old life back now. But this bitter taste of guilt. She could have saved those girls. She could have saved them before they’d even been abducted. But she’d only saved herself.

  She wiped her eyes and shook her head and tried to dismiss the thought, remembering Mitch and Mrs Hudson forbidding her to change anything but her own destiny.

  Danny had done that, with Amy Parker, and it had taken Rachel’s life from her.

  She tur
ned and ran up the hill, ran for home.

  By the time she reached the house, she was gasping for breath and her legs felt like lead.

  A car in the drive. Her heart sank. An iris blue MGB Roadster. No. It couldn’t be. Don’t let it be the other Martyn, the one with Charlie’s sports car, who’d never known her. A man’s head bobbed up and ran a sponge across the hood. Martyn. Thinner, greyer-haired. He glanced at her approaching. Did a double-take. Froze.

  And it exploded in his eyes, like the stars that had exploded in her own eyes when she’d turned night to day.

  Recognition.

  She had no time to even think that Charlie had somehow given this Martyn his old car. Of course he had. He’d known him. Befriended her family all those years in order to help her get this life back.

  “Rachel?” Martyn gasped.

  The sponge slid across the hood of the car.

  “Dad.”

  This time he screamed it, with a yelp of animal pain. “Rachel!”

  “Dad!” she cried.

  And she ran into his arms.

  He held her and kissed her and moaned and yelled and called out to his Mum, and she must have come running out of the house because someone else hugged her, and Martyn shouted, “Where have you been?” a dozen times but she didn’t answer, her face buried in his chest. There would be time to make something up, or tell the truth, or plead amnesia or... something. It didn’t matter.

  She was home and she was the village girl again, the girl who’d been born and had a father.

  And that was enough for the moment.

  Thank you

  ... FOR BUYING AND READING Touchstone Season One.

  And thank you for buying the entire season. That’s the end of Touchstone’s first season, but more Touchstone stories are coming in Touchstone: Season 2 and Touchstone Origins.

  If you enjoyed it, please do spend a minute to give it a review. You won’t be seeing adverts for Touchstone books on billboards or station platforms, but a simple review can be just as effective to an independent author like me.

  Here's the link to post your review on Amazon UK.

  And on Amazon.com

  Next in the Touchstone saga

  Touchstone Second Collection:

  Season 2 Books 1-3

  Jack the Ripper, Sitting Bull, Arthur Conan Doyle, Buffalo Bill and the Peaky Blinders all star in this, the second season of the hit time travel historical fantasy saga.

  "Touchstone saga at its best. Absolutely brilliant and highly recommended.”

  In the fallout from Touchstone Season 1’s epic finale, villains Danny Pearce and Kath Bright find their way in hostile worlds, blind to their true identities, struggling to atone for sins they can’t remember.

  " As gripping as ever! Couldn't put it down.”

  From the streets of Birmingham to the sidewalks of New York, from the slums of Victorian England to the Great Plains, the Touchstone world reaches epic scale.

  Collects the first three novels of Touchstone Season 2 and the prequel short story Buffalo Bill and the Peaky Blinders, previously only available in the anthology, New Street Stories.

  Contains the following titles:

  1. Buried in Time [1888]

  2. Bright Star Falling [1874-1887]

  3. Buffalo Bill and the Peaky Blinders [1887]

  4. Bright Star Rising [1887]

  Read it now

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  Sign up for Andy Conway’s New Releases mailing list at andyconway.net to get a free copy of The Reluctant Time Traveller.

  Acknowledgements

  TOUCHSTONE WAS FIRST conceived in 2005 as a television drama serial and a good many people discussed its premise, various script drafts and contributed to its development here as a series of novels. Paul Woolf, a TV developer of some genius and a flatmate of several years, read the earliest drafts of Touchstone 1: The Sins of the Fathers and discussed it keenly, offering many suggestions that allowed me to hone the story. Francois Gandolfi, Elisabeth Pinto and Pip Piper were involved in the earliest attempts to develop the property as a drama series. Screenwriter Jason Arnopp also read early drafts of the first two episodes and was sufficiently excited about Rachel and Danny's time travel adventures for me to pursue the story.

  For Touchstone 3: All the Time in the World, several people made significant contributions to my understanding of Birmingham as it was in 1966: Roger Dangerfield, whose memories of the Salford Bridge area of Gravelly Hill were crucial to chapter 40; John Johnston, who talked fondly of Gigi’s Café and the Prince of Wales as it was in 1966; Terry Pearson, whose 8mm cine film of Kings Heath village in 1960 is now on Youtube and is so good I simply described it through Rachel’s eyes; and the MACE (Media Archive for Central England) film of ATV Today reporter John Wilford conducting voxpops outside Birmingham Town Hall in 1966, which opens the book.

  It’s unusual to thank other writers for their inspiration, but I feel that Touchstone 4: Station at the End of Time is something of an homage to several screenplays that had a profound effect on me and insisted on being recognised right from the outset of conceiving Touchstone. So I’d like to pay tribute to Peter J. Hammond, whose second serial of Sapphire & Steel has stayed with me for 34 years, since first creeping me out in 1979. More recently Ira Steven Behr, whose standout The 4400 episode, A Life Interrupted was never far from my mind while writing this. And, somewhat surprisingly, Noël Coward’s screenplay for Brief Encounter haunts that episode as much as Richard Parker haunts the now non-existent Kings Heath station.

  Touchstone 5: Let’s Fall in Love for the Last Time owes a tremendous debt to Pete Grafton’s remarkable book ‘You, You & You! (The People Out of Step with World War II), which has long been a favourite of mine. I found myself delving into it once more to reacquaint myself with its opening chapter. The numerous accounts of the appalling and cynical actions of the CPGB, particularly over the battle of Cable Street, have been transferred from that book to my imagined world of Moseley in 1934. A restored version of the original full text is now being published online by Pete Grafton at http://youyouandyourestored.wordpress.com

  Likewise with the portrayal of Benny Orphan, who, though he bears a superficial resemblance to Al Bowlly, is entirely a fictional creation, not least in that Al Bowlly, by every account of the day, was a thoroughly decent chap. I know of no entertainer of the 1930s who staged a nightly raffle in the manner of Benny Orphan and must stress again that it is entirely a fictional invention of my own.

  One real person who appears in the story is Anthony Pratt, a keen pianist who lived in my own neighbourhood of Kings Heath, and who would later go on to invent the board game Cluedo. I know of no evening when he stood in for a jazz pianist, nor that he ever played with a visiting swing band, but I couldn’t resist giving him a chance to star in this fiction and hope that it is viewed entirely as the affectionate portrait it was meant to be.

  In Touchstone 6: Fade to Grey, my good friend Danny Lamb provided much needed research support and was always on hand to answer my questions about 1980. Andy Yearwood’s account of the Kings Heath High Street night-turns-day incident was included here as soon as I heard it from him. It really happened, he insists, and I believe him. But then, I can never resist a good local supernatural story, especially one that so exactly ties in with the mythological universe I’ve been creating over my own series.

  Jez Collins’s work with the MACE archive allowed me to track down Janine Wiedel’s 1979 photography project, Vulcan’s Forge, which rekindled a great many memories of Smith’s Forgings. Janine photographed me at the time (a schoolboy hanging around outside, waiting for his stepdad to finish work and drive him home to a certain canal cottage in Winson Green) but I didn’t make the book and probably exist only on a contact sheet in her archives. The book proved useful in filling in the details of what the factory actually did, though, and it is a valuable historical document of the Midlands industries wiped
out by Thatcherism.

  In a novel inspired by so much music, it would be negligent on my part to not single out a few artists whose work directly inspired whole chapters and storylines. Steve Strange’s Fade to Grey, of course, inspired much more than the title of this novel. The startling imagery of John Foxx was hugely inspirational, not just in Hiroshima, Mon Amour, but many different songs across his oeuvre. It’s not just Lorna Foster’s youthful exuberance that sees him as a modern poet. I share her view. And Richard Jobson and the Skids’ ambient album, Strength Through Joy, in particular a short piece of music called The Bell Jar, directly inspired Rachel’s recurring dream scene, to the point that my work is merely an attempt to create a story that would closely fit the music.

  There are real people mentioned in this book, and some real human tragedies that are referred to. I would like to make it clear that this was not an attempt to sensationalise or crassly co-opt those real tragedies into a fictional universe for the sake of it. Throughout the series I’ve tried to face the very real moral question of what human suffering one might try to prevent if one could go back in time. It feels appropriate that my main character, Rachel, would consider the moral dilemma of using her gift to help only herself rather than others.

  A very special thank you to George Bray at PomPom Vintage, Connecticut, USA for permission to use her styling and photography for the cover of Fade to Grey. Thanks also to the friends who donated family photographs to populate the Touchstone family tree.

  Across the first season as a whole, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Sallyanne Moss, Martyn Nelson, Claire McKinney and Stuart Smith, who repeatedly gave their time (and their vintage wardrobes) to help with staging the cover photographs of all the books.