by Oliver EADE
Oh Beetie! Are you already on Paradise Planet in the distant future… with God’s baby growing inside you?
In his head he prayed for her. Despite what she’d done, he prayed for her and for her unborn child.
A young woman in a dressing gown, her hair wrapped with a towel, opened the door. A child’s voice called out from inside:
“Mummy! Who’s at de door?”
The woman’s jaw dropped. From the way her eyes glazed over Gary worried she was about to faint.
“Mary, Holy Mother of Jesus, jus’ look at you, Seamus O’Malley! Take off dat disguise at once!”
Seamus winked at Gary.
“Will you not be letting us in now, Molly... me and my friend, Gary, here?”
Frowning, Molly stepped back and let Gary and Seamus pass on into the hallway.
“Molly, I’m t’hinking you should find yourself a seat before I go spilling de beans, like!”
They followed Molly into a small sitting room littered with dolls and children’s toys, books, journals and a dried-out, droopy plant in a plastic pot. Molly sat down, but Gary and Seamus remained standing. A little girl on the floor, in a blue frock and playing beside a doll’s house, studied them in silence, her wide disbelieving eyes trained on her ageing father and his tears.
“I’ve come back, Molly, my dear. Come back from de future because I love you and Caitlin so much. You were right! Where I come from in London of de future I learned de hard way!”
“Seamus, dose lines on your face, dat hair… are you telling me they’re for real?”
“Molly my darlin’, from wherever I am in my present I’m gonna make a proper pig’s ear of everyt’hing. A mess I can’t out wriggle out of and one you can’t live wid.”
Molly glanced at Gary.
“Who’s he?” she asked.
“I told you, my dearest. Dis here is Gary O’Driscoll, a good Irish boy from London, dough you wouldn’t t’hink so from de way he talks. He’s givin’ me a second chance is Gary.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘de future’? To be sure you’re my Seamus, but what about de other you?”
“Gary… explain!”
“Everything Seamus told you is true, Mrs O’Malley. These specs (he showed her the time-specs) are no ordinary glasses. Not magical, mind you. They just allow me, and whoever I happen to be touching, to travel through time. Only science, Mrs O’Malley. Science of the future... because of experiments they carry out underground one day. For the guy who invents them, the future becomes the past… and vice versa. I’m only beginning to work things out in my head! Not easy to explain.”
“Tell Molly how you found me, Gary.”
Gary peered awkwardly at his feet, wiggling his toes up and down as he tried to think of ways of putting the cruel truth to the man’s wife.
“I… erm… we found him, Mrs O’Malley, on Hampstead Heath. Living rough.”
“The girl, Molly, she’s like de Holy Virgin, I’ll not be lyin’ to you. She is dat beautiful! Never t’hought I’d be seeing de Holy Virgin whilst I’m still breathin’!”
Gary closed his eyes. Each mention of Beetie became more painful than the last, and she was now far from being a virgin, but the time he’d spent with her in the B & B in Golders Green, she was pure then. At least he’d always be able to console himself with the thought that he, Gary O’Driscoll, was Beetie’s first lover.
“He was in quite a state. Tatty clothes. Wild hair and beard…”
“As wild as Hampstead Heat’h itself, Molly my dearest.”
“And… well, he was so alone. Totally alone.”
Molly’s eyes moistened as she glanced at her husband of the future.
“You’ll leave me, Molly, and wid good reason. It’s only after you and little Caitlin put up wid years of crap from Seamus O’Malley caused by de demon drink dat you finally do. You’re loyal, Molly, but there’s only so much a woman can take.”
“Oh Seamus, de other you, de one what’s at work just now, you can warn him when he gets back! Tell him not to change… not to take dat job in London or go near de place. I’ll never leave you, Seamus. Couldn’t bear to. Caitlin, neither! It would break her little heart, to be sure, if she never saw her Da again!”
“I don’t think this Seamus should ever meet the Seamus from the past… your present,” Gary warned. “Been thinking about that, and something tells me this must never happen. The less we do the better. Chaos theory! Seamus of the future and your Seamus together? Too many unknowns. I think…”
Gary’s gaze travelled from Molly to Seamus and back to Molly.
“I should let you two talk a while. On your own. I’ll wait outside looking at the bay… watching the birds and the cocklers. Helps me think, the sea does! I’ve one last thing to sort out in my mind, Seamus.”
On leaving the room something occurred to him. He turned to Seamus.
“You could all stay with us tonight, Seamus. Might be the only way you’ll save your family in our present and Molly’s future.”
“But… my other husband…?”
“This is your husband. He’s the same man. Only now he swears he’ll never change for the worse like your other Seamus will, Mrs O’Malley.”
He left the O’Malleys and returned to the sea-front. He had to work this thing out… the ‘killing God’ business. Beetie was right. Killing is wrong! The ‘Holy Virgin’ after all? In accordance with his religion, she’d pretty much told him the sin of murder was unforgivable, but here’s where everything began to go pear-shaped. He’d killed a man at the Hatcheries... for Beetie’s sake. He’d almost killed the taxi driver in the Finchley Road… for Beetie. Now, before being able to close the book on Beetie forever, he was going to kill the man who’d defiled and destroyed her innocence. For sure, their shared love in the Golders Green B & B was genuine. That was innocence. How would he carry out his threat… and did it really matter, killing again? After all, a whole life-time ahead without Beetie would be hell, so, if followed by an eternity of some other kind of hell, did it matter how many evil points he scored by killing the bastard?
The ‘how’ bit? A quick painless death, or slow and lingering?
Somehow it mattered. He both admired and hated God. The more he thought about God, and dispatching the old man to an unknown oblivion, the more he also thought about Beetie and her unborn child, and wished no harm for the little one in their new world. For Beetie’s sake he wished this, and slaughtering the old man would surely taint both of them with evil, for all killing is evil however justifiable.
***
“No Dad, I can’t go to school this morning. Phone them. Tell a porky. Can’t let Cathy out of my sight! I have to meet a guy in Baker Street with Cathy. They’re likely to have computer-enhanced pictures of me and Gary splashed all over the media, anyway. We got caught on security cameras on Saturday. P’raps the school’s contacted the police by now.”
Mike had already explained, at length, the British Museum robbery and the reason for this, together with the gory details of what was going to happen in the Hatcheries and the Terminus in two hundred years’ time. His parents had struggled to make anything of the convoluted saga, but this latest revelation was the last straw for Mike’s dad. He eyed his son with deep suspicion.
“A guy in Baker Street? Mike… you’re not involved in anything unpleasant, ay? I mean, stealing a silly old tablet’s one thing, but young Cathy here? You haven’t been asked to pass her on to someone from Eastern Europe, have you? If you’re mixed up in something like that I will hand you in to the police. I’ll disown you, too, because treating girls like… well…”
The man’s fists sat tight in his lap. Mike, at first puzzled, abruptly burst into laughter.
“Oh Dad!” he exclaimed. “Surely you don’t think I’d get into White Slavery? No, this is nothing to do with Cathy, but I insisted she come ’cos I daren’t let her out of my sight. Except…” The boy blushed. His mind slipped back to the previous night when Cathy slept
in the next room and he’d longed for her to be in bed beside him. He patted her hand. “Except for last night, of course. No, Dad, I’ve gotta take care of her. She’s my responsibility!”
“I love Mike,” Cathy said. “He rescued me and he’s kind and I love him.”
A flash of pride illuminated Mr Bellini’s drawn face.
“Not sure I understand a thing, Mike. Life’s gone all topsy-turvy. So, why are you seeing a guy at Baker Street?”
Oh shit! This is too early in the morning for serious bullshitting. Can hardly tell Dad I’m gonna kill a dirty old man for getting Gary’s girl pregnant. Doesn’t seem right put like that, but as far as I’m concerned the pervy geezer’s outrun his course.
“Well, this guy Redfor, I leant him some clothes… ’cos I needed his suit… the funny shiny red thing I came home in… so I didn’t stand out in the future… and, of course, Redfor would’ve stuck out like a right prick here in modern – I mean contemporary London – shit... where was I …?
Half an hour later, Mr Bellini’s eyes were glazed over and Mike was still talking. A nudge from Cathy reminded him. She pointed to the clock.
He’d only just taught her how to tell her the time using a standard clock-face the night before. A bright girl, he reckoned…
To think she and those other girls were to be turned into zombies by freaky Atlanteans!
“Cathy’s right. We’d better be going, Dad. I’ll just have a word with Mum first.”
Mike ran upstairs. Mrs Bellini was still in bed. She’d been crying.
“Gary’s such a strange young boy,” she said. “He’s like an old man, at times… and too clever by half. Why can’t you get a normal friend, Mike? Having Gary in your football team hasn’t helped him!”
Mike sat on his Mum’s bed.
“Nothing wrong with Gary, Mum! He’s a really good mate who happens to be brilliant. Not his fault. And he’s not so clever at everything. Not into words. Always needing my help when he gets himself in the shit, too! Relies on me a lot, does Gary.”
“What about his religion?”
“Oh, we have great times talking about religion. When he says he thinks he’s turning into a lapsed Catholic I just tell him I’m thinking of becoming a lapsed atheist. We have fun together… and he’s helped me get a girlfriend!”
So where are you off to now?”
“To meet a bloke.”
“A bloke?”
“Yeah! At Baker Street station. Dad’ll phone the school.”
“I’m frightened, Mike. Frightened I may never see you again.”
Mike kissed his Mum. He hadn’t done this for such a long time; wasn’t normally a sentimental sod, but something inside urged him to.
“Don’t be silly, Mum! Got a daughter as well now! Thanks for agreeing to take Cathy in, you and Dad. She can tell the time already… after one little lesson from me. She’s pretty switched on, though I’m not so sure I want her beating me in exams at school. Not in English, anyway!”
Mrs Bellini smiled through her tears as she ruffled her son’s hair, but when Mike had left he knew she she’d been right about them never seeing each other again.
They arrived early outside Baker Street station, so Mike decided to pass the time by giving Cathy a short lecture on Sherlock Holmes:
“He was dead clever... like Gary! Made deductions from observation, he did… like he got villains to trap themselves in evidence. ’Course, he didn’t actually exist, but they put up a memorial plaque for him anyway. Sad ending, though, struggling with the bad guy, Professor Moriarty, and falling to his death from a waterfall in the Alps. What a way to go, though, don’t you think? Bloody romantic! All that water rushing past you as go flying through the air... weeeeee… splash!... ugh!”
“Don’t die, Mike,” Cathy pleaded. “I don’t want you to die. In the Hatcheries people were dying and disappearing all the time. I tried not making friends in the end. It hurt too much to lose them.”
“Don’t worry, Cathy,” he said, stroking her hair. “No plans for dying yet.”
None-the-less he was scared, though if God the man had been able to see into his mind with that fancy science stuff of his, the bastard would’ve been even more scared. Moriarty vs the legendary Holmes in a final death struggle, ay? Cathy’s silken hair slipped between his fingers and he gently caressed her, determined to savour the glorious experience of having a girlfriend for a teeny bit longer. He prayed God wouldn’t be armed with a mag-stunner, for being pushed off the platform stiff as a manikin into the path of an oncoming Jubilee line train was far less romantically appealing than the Great Detective’s final bow out.
A tap on the back! Mike turned round. Redfor… alone! He was carrying a large silvery attaché case.
“What’s that… and where the hell’s God?” Mike asked.
“This is your future, Mike. Yours and Gary’s. And Cathy’s. God’ll explain. He’s waiting for you on the platform.”
Mike’s heart started to race. A bomb? Should he give himself up to the police and hand in the case? He couldn’t bear the thought of poor Cathy getting blown up as well… without him ever kissing her properly like Harry Potter and that pretty Chinese actress with a Glaswegian accent. Why should he trust Redfor when all the others, including Beetie, had deceived him and Gary?
“Don’t like the way you say ‘my future’,” Mike informed the man, eyeing the silvery case with suspicion. “Death can be a future, too.”
Redfor laughed.
“Stop being melodramatic. Just take the thing! To the Terminus. The others will be waiting.”
“Others? Teeth and Arthry? What makes you think I’ll ever want to see any of them again?”
“It’s the only way, Mike. God chose you specially. You and Gary. This is not a game!”
“Damned right!” Mike’s fingers curled around the mag-stunner in his pocket.
“Return to the Terminus ten minutes after you left. Should be just about right, God reckons.”
“Not sure I’ll agree to anything God thinks is right.”
“Hurry, Mike! Here! Take this!”
Mike’s unease was obvious as he took the case from Redfor.
“Jubilee line. Northbound. End of platform. Must go and find Gary now. Always told God he should have made a third pair of time-specs. ‘Two’ll never be enough’, I used to say!” Redfor chuckled, turned, saw a bus and ran for it.
“Feels pretty heavy!” Mike said to Cathy, showing off his biceps as he lifted the case up and down a couple of times.
“What’s inside?” she asked.
“Haven’t a clue!”
Perhaps he might use the case as a weapon against God, he thought, as they descended the escalator. It was made of a strange material similar to that of the Pentatron tablet and he wondered whether this might serve as a shield against a mag-stunner. Or maybe he should slam the thing across God’s face… like sending Professor Moriarty spinning to his death with one mighty blow; no need for a mutually fatal struggle. He reached for Cathy’s hand.
Mike recognised at once the old man with a beard standing at the far end of the platform. How he hated him… but to kill him? Doing a thing’s a whole lot different from thinking about it. He racked his brains for reasons to spare the man as he walked slowly towards him, Cathy by his side. God was old. Nature would do the job herself pretty soon, time-travel or no time-travel. And Cathy hated violence. She’d already told him. After all, he couldn’t risk doing anything to put her off… not whilst they were still getting acquainted. Horribly messy, too, God being hit by a train, and if the specs failed him he’d end up in clink and unable to kiss Cathy properly if banged up, and…
He was only a few feet away when he looked up and straight into the old man’s eyes.
No! He couldn’t kill him!
“Thanks, Mike. Sorry, but it had to be you. After all these years, I knew you were the only one.”
To do his own killing? The poor sick old bastard, thought Mike. No, I shan’t. Not
if he’s asking me to. I can’t kill. I may be an atheist, but I’m thinking of lapsing, so I can’t!
“Why?” he asked. “Did you force Beetie, promise her something… or what? Gary’s my best friend. He’s so screwed up now I don’t know what to do to help. Like his life’s come to an end, and all because of you, you dirty old man!”
“Beetie tried to tell you, Mike, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Tell me what?”
“The baby’s Gary’s. He’s gonna be a dad.”
Mike glanced briefly at Cathy, at his feet and the advertisement hoardings: designer shoes, home insurance and the Royal Ballet.
“What?” he asked again.
“Beetie’s child is Gary’s.”
Mike stared at God.
“You… you said… at the Terminus… in the future… you said she’s expecting your child.”
“Come closer, Mike. Don’t you recognise your friend?”
Mike stepped right up to within inches of the old man’s face and those bright eyes that twinkled mischievously in the underground light.
“Oh my God!” the boy exclaimed.
The man laughed.
“Correct! Gary O’Driscoll. The initials at the bottom of agenda reports at committee meetings when I was… or going to be… Chairman. G.O.D. Yeah, I always knew you were the one person who might one day help me.”
“Jesus, God… I mean Gary… what the hell are you up to?”
“Like we keep telling you, Redfor and me, this is no game. Listen carefully! Take the case to Arthry. In the space-craft! The Belindaron.”
“To that jerk? After what he’s gonna do to Gary’s… I mean to your girlfriend?”
“Arthry? He’d never harm Beetie. Why do you think he offered to flog her himself? Won’t touch the girl, and he’ll kill anyone with his bare hands who so much as lifts a finger against her! You must arrive at the right time, though… before the Chairman discovers he’s been betrayed.”