While we were there a group of young ladies entered, who by the state of their attire looked like they had had to leave a house suddenly in the middle of the night due to a fire and had spent the evening, judging by their gait and coarse merriment, wandering around Chichester in a state of such distress that they had drunk copious amounts of liquor to alleviate their situation. I was quite shocked when Jill told me this was a Hen Party and it was traditional for ladies to dress and carry on in this fashion the day before they were married. I can only presume in their houses they were not blessed with any mirrors to regard themselves. Some it seemed, by their age and application of paint, were obviously their mothers, who should have been ashamed of themselves and known better than to ape their daughters. I made a mental note that when I marry it would be in my own time, though why that thought came into my mind I am not quite sure.
I noticed while eating that one waiter seemed to take a particular fancy to Flory and without any ceremony started to flirt with her. I had never seen her blush so much. I looked at James for assistance but he just smiled and winked at me, which I took as assurance that no harm would come to her. He was right, though at the end of the evening as we were leaving the waiter came over to Flory, bowed, kissed her hand and presented her with a single red rose! Then he was off without an adieu to serve other customers! Later Jill told me that Italian waiters were all the same and mostly harmless. They reminded me of the German waiters in the cafés around Leicester Square who would spare no expense in flattering single ladies. However, Flory was quite affected for some time and had difficulty accepting that what she thought was a proposal was not genuine.
---~---
J.
I was glad that they enjoyed our company and were beginning to be relaxed with our manners. Jill and I did try to be as formal as we could without laughing too much, but if they noticed us poking fun they usually got their own back in their own period by showing up our manners in front of their friends.
One evening they asked to us to describe what had come to pass in the world since their time. Jill and I tried to make a timeline using YouTube clips on the telly, showing the world leaders and events through the 20th century. They were absolutely gobsmacked with the first landing on the moon.
But what shocked them completely was war. In this land of seemingly plenty for everyone, the endless wars; the huge scales of death; the weapons, the nukes. The saw their own future in the twentieth century and what was in store for their own children and grandchildren. I think they knew that human wars were endless, they were well read and not naive in their outlook or knowledge, but Elizabeth summed up the unease it gave them.
“You know, James, I realise things do not change and there will always be evil and malady, but I do feel that it is better not to know the future because then there is hope. To be presented with the reality of what is unavoidably to come to oneself is not something with which we can become comfortable. It takes away what we might call our free will.”
Then one day it came to an end. The planned engagements failed to materialise. There was no answer on the phone. I feared the worst, death, illness, even marriage. I didn’t even know what time she was in. She could be wandering around lost in my era unable to get home. I scanned through the local papers. Nothing. Jill just stopped me in time from phoning the police to report a missing person by pointing out how the conversation might go.
Me: Hello, I want to report a missing woman.
Police: Where does she live?
Me: In 1873 she lived in Hamgreen Lodge but not now.
Police: So sir, if I may take it that she’s not alive now sir, have you tried the Registry Office?
Me: No, I mean she is alive now but someone else is living in her house now.
Police: So sir, if she doesn’t live there now, where does she live?
Me: When she’s here she stays with me.
Police: And where does she live when she is not staying with you?
Me: Hamgreen Lodge of course.
Police: So sir, if I understand you correctly, this missing person, who seems to be over 140 years old, used to live in Hamgreen but now lives with you except when she doesn’t, when she lives in Hamgreen where she doesn’t live anymore. Have we been partaking in alcoholic beverages or recreational substances, sir?
Not being able to think up a better story that didn’t end up bringing the men in white coats around we tried the county records at Chichester of the 1870s to see if we could find anything. Jill, having saved me from a life of psychiatric care, reminded me that if Elizabeth or Flory approached the Victorian authorities with the same story they would be locked up in no time. We looked through the inmates of the Sussex lunatic asylums. Nothing, though in those days, I imagined they could have just been locked up in an attic somewhere.
We eventually found her. It was a newspaper clipping. A Miss Bicester had left the lodge at Hamgreen to visit her aunt in Chichester but never returned. The paper noted that the subsequent search and investigation did not discover any aunt, though her driver and maid swore they had dropped her off at a small cottage in Chichester and seen her enter the premises. Further investigation revealed no aunt living at the cottage, only an old couple who had never heard of Elizabeth.
This, as Jill quickly reminded me, indicated Elizabeth had come back to our future because we knew the ‘aunt’ was Elizabeth’s fabrication for her first visit to us.
But we had still not got to the bottom of the time shift. Why just us and no one else? It only occurred at certain events where Elizabeth had said people were there who had been present at the cricket club.
I decided to search for records of her cousin’s cricket team at the archives. I eventually found them, the Lord Fotheringale’s Eleven. I then spent time looking through the Chichester archives, in the announcement pages of the local papers and magazines, looking for their names in engagements that Elizabeth was expected to attend. We found five with members of Lord Fotheringale Eleven in attendance, and three of the members appeared at each event, including her cousin Henry.
“So where does this get us, Jim?”
“I was hoping something would stand out.”
“There is something. Look at this photo here of the cricket team. The one third from the left.”
“What?”
“Look. Mr Cambio D’Ora. The one holding the cricket bat.”
“Doesn’t look very different from the others, same clothes ...”
“Look at his bat. It’s got a wide flat edge to it.”
“So?”
“That’s a modern bat. Didn’t come in till about the ’70s.”
“How do you know that?”
“You’d be surprised what men show me when they invite me back for coffee”.
I let that one pass and quickly and came up with nothing but a list of Italian websites.
“Nothing much here. Wait, how about this – cambiata l’ora.”
“That looks close. What does it mean?”
“It means ... according to this web dictionary, my god! ‘Changed time’!”
“Let me see. Oh, you’re right Jim. That’s too much of a coincidence.”
I looked up the variant on Google but no one of that name came up. I tried 1870, 1880. Still nothing.
“OK, he’s playing games. It’s too obvious. Maybe it’s an anagram.”
After a while all we could come up with was Marco.
“Maybe we should rearrange the phrase you found on Google.”
I took the phrase ‘cambiata l’ora’ and removed Marco and rearranging the remaining letters came up with Batalia ... Marco Batalia.
We looked at each other. Then we both grabbed our tablets and started googling Marco Batalia.
“I’ve found him!” said Jill, “He’s a lecturer at Manchester University. It must be him or we will have to admit we have gone completely bonkers!”
“What’s his subject?”
“Astrophysics.”
“Well that’s
the right subject. It’s full of stuff on space-time. If it is him we need to get him to reveal himself. I have seen nothing in the journals on time travel.”
“Maybe we should call his bluff by pretending we are Elizabeth and her cousin Henry.”
“Or, I just tell him I’m James Urquhart because when I told Elizabeth and her cousin my name I had the distinct impression my name was already known to them.”
“My god, does that mean you were there before you met Elizabeth and Flory?”
“If I was it hasn’t happened yet ... if you get what you mean.”
“But what did you do to become so infamous?”
“There is only one way to find out.”
I picked up the phone and phoned Manchester. A secretary answered and said that Mr Batalia was not available but if I left my name and number she would get him to phone me back. I took the chance and gave her my name.
Half an hour later the phone rang. I picked it up.
“Mr Urquhart?”
“Yes.”
“What can I do for you?”
If he was our man he was playing it cool. I played my only ace.
“Mr Cambio D’Ora?”
There was silence. Then,
“Mr Urquhart, we need to talk. Can you come up to Manchester? I am in the new building next to the Rutherford Laboratory.”
The next morning we were on our way to Manchester Uni. I took the M6 toll road to avoid Spaghetti Junction. We got into Oxford Street about one and went to the laboratory reception. Mr Batalia was waiting for us. He was wearing a close-fitting grey collarless suit and zipped shirt and had the air of one of those Silicon Valley whizz kids who had made his pile. His accent was that global English of the much-travelled man, though there was an undertone which suggested that it was not his first language. He took us into the canteen and was good enough to treat us to lunch, where he quizzed us on our time-travelling adventures.
“So it seems,” he said, “You just walked into this field and there you were in 1873 in the middle of cricket match?”
“Yes, but the interesting thing is that her cousin already knew my name.”
“That’s because you had already been there two years before in 1871.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I met you there.”
“But what? How? I haven’t been there yet.”
“Correct.”
We looked totally baffled.
“So you see I have to send you back there.”
“You mean if I don’t go none of what’s happened will happen?”
“Exactly. In fact, I need both of you to make it work.”
“So how? Do you have a time machine?”
“Yes, of sorts.”
I looked around. There was nothing I recognised as a time machine, not that I had any idea what one looked like, except the Tardis, of course.
“The problem is that in order to join me I have to join my time nodes to yours.”
We looked very puzzled.
“Look, each of us travels along our own time line at the speed of light. Not slower or faster. If you stand still you travel at that speed.”
“Yes, but if you start to move, you will go faster than light.”
“No Mr Urquhart. Time will slow down to compensate. But there is something else. Note you can only meet Elizabeth at exactly the same time of the year. You can’t meet the day before or the next day simply because the earth won’t be there to meet you. It’s moved through its own space time. You, by the way, Mr Urquhart, cleverly deduced this by asking for her engagements.”
“Yes, but going back over 100 years the sun would have moved as well.”
“I know, I am having difficulty with that. What could be happening is that nodes or resonances have been set up along our time lines and at each of these nodes our time lines are somehow tethered to each other and allow us to oscillate between them at certain times of the year.”
“But,” I said, “why just 1873 and 1871? And more importantly what is the connection between Elizabeth and me?”
“I don’t know. There may be other dates we don’t know about yet. These oscillations could be happening all the time which construct into resonances. Perhaps in most cases they are momentary and people do not even detect the time difference. Most of them may just exist for just a few seconds.”
“But we have been together sometimes for hours.”
Marco thought about this.
“Maybe it’s like gluons.”
“What?”
“You know, the things that exchange between fundamental particles and keep them bound together. So as long as you are interacting with the other time node, the longer you stay. As soon as you move away, the nodes break apart. Hey, I could call them ‘timeons’ or ‘chronons’.”
“Chronons! Do they exist?”
“No idea, but Zweig invented his quark long before it was found, and as for Higgs, they didn’t find his god particle for over 40 years. I could be on the lecture gravy train for years.”
“Ok Einstein, but what about the phone calls?” Jill said, “There are no mobile transmitters in 1873.”
“I know. But radio waves travel at the speed of light. So they only travel through space, they do not travel through time. You know light doesn’t shine on something unless it has something to shine on. I mean a light ray or radio wave takes no time to travel from one object to another but also more importantly it won’t travel to the other object unless it knows it is there.”
“So how does it know it is there?” Said Jill.
“Eh? Oh, it only knows it is there because it is already connected.”
“So”, I said with the beginning of headache, “Somehow my phone is connected to me!”
“Well,” said Jill, “that would explain it. I always thought Jim’s phone was surgically attached to him in some way.”
“Correct. So in order for you to come with me I have to ...”
“Connect to our time line!” I interrupted, beginning to see his point.
“No, Mr Urquhart, your timeline can’t join mine. But I think I can fool it by putting you both in stasis so you are invisible in mine and could move through my timeline undetected.”
“How you going to do that?”
“The electromagnetic fields of your timeline must be contained.”
“How?”
“We start with schoolboy physics. We put you in a Faraday cage.”
“But from what I can remember those only stop electric fields. What about the magnetic component of the radiation or even the earth’s magnetic field?”
“I’m trying all the tricks. Copper for RF and mu-metal for slowly changing magnetic fields like the Earth’s.”
“Mmh. You’ve obviously put some thought into this. Do you know what you are doing?”
“Haven’t a clue. All I know is that this time travel is happening.”
“So what do we do in 1871?”
“We go to Urquhart Castle.”
“What, the one in Scotland?”
Jill looked at me in mock surprise, “I didn’t know we had a castle, Jim.”
“You don’t,” said Marco, “It might have belonged to your ancestors once but those days are long gone.”
“So how is our surname linked to this castle now?”
“I don’t know. But it might just be another contribution to strengthening the node resonances.”
“Ok, so what do we do at our ancestors’ castle?”
“First we go to the hunting lodge at Brachla near the Loch where we will meet Elizabeth’s cousin Henry.”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because I meet you there that day with Henry’s shooting party.”
I mentally put my hands up in surrender.
“And why do I need to see Henry?”
“Because he told me at Hamgreen Cricket Club, the day you were there, that he had just met some scruffy individual talking to his sister who claimed to be the James Urquh
art whom he had met in Scotland at his shooting party and he had good reason to know that it could not be true. Luckily, he pointed you out to me and I could immediately tell from your clothes you were out of your time and when you got your phone out that clinched it. By the way, what did you actually say to the Bicester sisters?”
I decided to let that one pass.
“So to preserve the continuity I have to meet him in Scotland in 1871?”
“Yes, and if we don’t do this everything could collapse.”
“When is it going to happen?”
“I don’t know exactly”, he said, “Which means there is some urgency in preparing you for your trip back to 1871.”
“And how you going to hide such a stasis box containing me and my sister in 1871?”
“Come and see. I have had an excellent idea.”
He took us into an adjoining laboratory.
“My god!’ I said, “How much did that cost?”
He turned with a grin –“It’s amazing what you can raise through crowd sourcing if you target the right audience.”
---~---
Chapter Four
E.
Life had returned almost to normal for Flory and me, but I could not get him out of my mind.
“I’ve been thinking, Flory, about James’ first appearance.”
“Really Elizabeth, I thought you had completely forgotten about him.”
“Do not tease, Flory. You remember Henry was quite taken aback when he met James?”
“Yes, Elizabeth. I was quite shocked by his manner. You think it is not a coincidence that Henry knew the name?”
“I think, Flory, we should go and talk to our cousin to see what he knows.”
“Yes, and question him closely. I believe he is staying up at Lurgashall; we will send a messenger ahead to tell him we are coming to visit.”
When we arrived he was waiting on the drive. Henry had obviously just been out shooting because he was still wearing an old sack jacket and his favourite baggy green cord trousers which he wore for a bit of “rabbiting” or, as Flory called it, shooting little defenceless furry animals with a blunderbuss. He took us in without removing his muddy boots and treated us to an afternoon tea. It was what I would call a typical gentleman’s house. Antlers on the walls, paintings of race horses, tableaux of game forlornly laid out on kitchen tables and a faint lingering smell of stale cigar. Its permanent fixture was Jennings, a retired butler, who each morning decanted a large sherry for visitors in the hall and retrieved it about teatime. This was known as ‘Jennings’ Jolly’ and if visitors wished to have any cooperation from him they were advised to leave the ‘Jolly’ alone.
Out of Time Page 6