by E. M. Brown
“Wonderful. And why don’t we crack that bottle of Beaujolais we’ve been saving?”
“I’ll get the dinner on and let you two talk shop,” Caroline said. “Oh, there’s just one thing before you go.”
She crossed the room and sorted through a few pamphlets on an occasional table. She came back with a leaflet and sat on the arm of the sofa where Digby had slumped. “You know how I’ve been toying with the idea of doing an evening class?”
Richie stood before the empty hearth, watching the couple.
“Well,” Caroline went on, “I can’t decide between these two. They’re on different evenings, Mondays and Wednesdays. Mondays it’s pottery, and Wednesdays a watercolour class for beginners.”
Digby gave the leaflet a cursory glance. “Well, which do you prefer?”
Caroline pulled a face. “I’m torn.”
Richie found himself saying, “Oddly enough, I was talking to a friend of Cindy’s in the Bull the other day. She did the pottery course, and regretted it. Apparently the bloke who runs it is a bit of a seedy character, with roving hands.”
“Is that so?” Caroline said. “Well, I was veering towards the watercolour course anyway. I did a little painting many moons ago, before Digby came along. That settles it. I’ll ring and book the course first thing in the morning.”
Caroline moved to the kitchen and Digby said, “I’ll grab another couple of beers and we’ll go through to the study.”
Richie followed him from the sitting room, along the hall to a spacious room overlooking a rising pasture at the back of the house. Digby’s study was stocked with books on three walls, the one facing the door displaying what he proudly claimed was the county’s finest collection of SF paperbacks from the ’fifties through to the ’nineties, when he’d taken against the genre – disgruntled, Richie suspected, at having his masterpiecerejected so often.
Digby removed his suit jacket, hauled off his tie like a man ridding himself of a noose, and opened a few buttons of his shirt, revealing a mat of grey chest hair. He flung himself onto a battered sofa and Richie sat on a comparably careworn armchair. Across the study, Digby’s Apple Mac sat incongruously on a mahogany Queen Anne desk.
“Ed, are you okay?”
Richie looked up from his beer and stared at his friend. “No. No, I’m not.”
Digby swallowed. “Oh, Christ… The test results?”
Richie was momentarily flummoxed. The test results? Then he remembered. “Oh, that… No, no. Everything’s fine on that score.” Last year he’d seen his doctor, complaining of chest pains, and the medic had packed him off to Harrogate General for further examinations. “No, that turned out to be referred pain from a suspected irritable bowel. I’m on peppermint pills.”
“Christ, that’s a relief. So… what’s wrong?”
“You’re not going to believe this.”
“Try me,” Digby said. “Hold on – the thing about story ideas was just what you told Caroline, right? Only, I like to know when to take my writing hat off.”
Richie smiled. “No, I’m not here to bore you with my half-baked ideas.”
“Out with it, then. If you don’t mind my saying, by the way, you look bloody dreadful.” He stopped. “Hell, it’s Sam, isn’t it? You’ve given her the old heave-ho?”
Richie grunted a humourless laugh. “No. I haven’t… but she will.”
Digby frowned. “Sorry, Ed, you’ve lost me.”
How the hell to explain what was happening to him? “You won’t believe a word of this, Digby.”
“So you’ve said. I’m intrigued. Fire away.”
Richie took a mouthful of beer, considered his words, and then said, “I’ll tell you this as it happened to me, Digby. I’ll tell you what happened and see if you can make sense of it.”
“Very well.”
“It was last Friday night… Subjectively, for me, the 13th of January, 2017. I’d just had a god-almighty spat with Anna.”
Digby held up a hand like a bemused traffic policeman. “Whoa! 2017? Anna?”
“I know, it sounds crazy. I’m with you there; it is crazy. I hardly believe it’s happening. But later this year, in July, I meet a woman called Anna Greaves, and in January 2017, we have a row and she walks out, and the same night I see you for our usual Friday night session.”
“Later this year you meet…?” Digby echoed.
“That’s right.”
His friend nodded, playing along. “Okay… but what’s happened to Sam in the interim?”
“Sam will get back from London and tell me, as calm as you like, that it’s all over between us. She’s met someone in London and she’s leaving me.”
Digby was sitting very still, the beer forgotten in his huge right hand, watching him. “Right,” he said at last. “Go on.”
“So Sam walks out, and in the summer I meet Anna Greaves.”
“Let me guess, Ed,” Digby said with an attempt at levity. “She’s blonde, slim, smart, and very pretty?”
“Right on every count. Anyway, we get on fine at first, and then things go belly up.”
“Par for the course.”
“And on this particular night, last Friday – my last Friday, not yours – we row and she packs her things and walks out, and I meet you in the Bull, and…”
“And you proceed to get shit-faced?”
“We both get hammered,” he said. “And I wend my way home and collapse in the hall… And when I wake up I’m in bed, and it’s not Saturday morning in January 2017, but a Monday morning in April, 2016. Now. Today.”
Digby nodded. He took a long drink, then lowered the glass and stared at Richie. “Do you know something, if I didn’t know you better I’d say that this is your way of dramatising an idea for Perkins over at Open Box Productions. Weren’t they casting about for a science fiction series recently?”
“But you do know better?”
“I know you’re not pitching me an idea, certainly,” Digby said. “You really believe what you’re telling me.”
“That,” said Richie very deliberately, “is because I’m telling you exactly what happened to me.”
“And you expect me to take it as gospel? You somehow… time-travelled back from January 2017?”
“I know, it’s impossible. I’m somehow inhabiting the body of my younger self, but all my thoughts and memories are those of my 2017 self.”
They sat in silence for a while. Richie stared at his half-empty glass.
At last he looked up and said, “Digby, what the fuck’s happening to me?”
His friend pursed his thick lips and settled his three chins on his chest in contemplation. “It’s psychological, Ed,” he said quietly. “You’ve suffered some… I don’t know what the term would be… mental aberration.”
Richie nodded. “Last week – in my time, that is – I collapsed and was hospitalised for a few days. The medics said it was a ‘cerebral episode,’ and packed me off home.” He paused. “So maybe all this isn’t really happening?” he said. “You, me, this conversation? Or rather, it’s happening in my head.”
Digby smiled. “Well… I know what I’m experiencing, as far as I can be certain of anything. But what didn’t happen, what hasn’t happened yet, is what you said occurs from now until January next year. Sam leaving you, you meeting this Anna, her walking out and you getting arseholed with me on that January Friday night.” Digby tapped his head. “That’s happening up here. False memories, as it were. They seem convincing to you, subjectively. You have these memories, yes, but they have absolutely no basis in fact.”
“So I’m going mad?”
“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” Digby said, uncertainly.
Richie finished his beer. He sat clutching the empty glass, staring down at the carpet.
“Another?” Digby asked, pointing at the glass.
Richie held it out without meeting Digby’s eyes.
While his friend was fetching the beers, Richie reviewed his memories of the inte
rvening nine months. He recalled Sam’s announcement that she was leaving him, the row with Anna… Hell, they were real, branded into his consciousness with real pain and trauma. They were not some make-believe recollections fabricated by his failing sanity.
He recalled what Digby had told him last Friday night, nine months in the future, about Caroline’s affair.
Digby returned and handed him a beer. Richie tipped it into his glass, waited until his friend had seated himself, then said, “At the moment you’re working, on and off, on the synopsis of that ’sixties counterculture series, right?”
“What about it?”
“You pitch it to the Beeb later this year, in August as far as I recall, and next January Jeremy Traverson summons you to London and commissions the series.”
Digby stared at him. He tried not to smile. “Traverson? That –”
“Fuckwit,” Richie got there before him. “That’s what you called him last Friday, when we met to celebrate Traverson commissioning the series. You were as surprised as I was, called him a fuckwit who the BBC rolled out to put the kibosh on anything radical, as I recall.”
“With all due respect, Ed, this doesn’t really prove –”
“When did you intend to send the Beeb your outline, Digby?”
“Sometime this summer, maybe later.”
“August?”
“Maybe.”
“So how did I know that?”
Digby smiled. “An educated guess? Or maybe I mentioned it over a pint?”
Richie shook his head. “No, it’s because that’s when you submitted it.”
“It’s a far from convincing argument, Ed,” Digby said, gently.
“Christ!” Richie said.
“I’m sorry.”
The silence stretched, both men looking anywhere but at each other.
“Okay. Okay…” Richie said, leaning forward. “I’ll tell you something else. Why do you think I told Caroline about the pottery class being run by a seedy type?”
Digby looked nonplussed.“I’ve really no idea, Ed.”
Richie stared at his friend. “It’s because if I hadn’t, then a few months from now Caroline would start the pottery course on Monday nights and she’d meet someone there, and they’d have an affair.”
“Caroline?” Digby almost laughed.
“You recall I said that we both got hammered? Well, you told me that you’d found out about the affair, and you were devastated.”
Digby was shaking his head. “But Caroline wouldn’t…”
“That’s what I thought, but she did.” He pointed at Digby. “Except that now, as she’ll not be attending the pottery class, she won’t meet the arty potter. Why the hell did you think I said what Idid about the instructor?”
Digby sighed. “Because,” he said with infinite patience, tapping his head, “because of what’s going on up here, in that crazy, mixed up cranium of yours.”
Richie screwed his eyes shut and swore to himself.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, near to tears. “Perhaps I’m losing it.” He stopped, staring at his friend, and smiled suddenly.
“What?” Digby said.
“Christ, why didn’t I think of it before? It’s obvious!”
“What is?”
“How to prove that I’m right – that what’s happening isn’t just going on up here.”
“Go on.”
“It’s Monday the 18th of April, right? Tomorrow, Tuesday, Newcastle play Manchester City in the league.”
“Live on Sky,” Digby said.
“And I know the score. I remember the game because we watched it at the Bull.”
Digby narrowed his eyes. “Okay, right…”
“It’s a 1-1 draw,” Richie said. “Unfortunately I can’t recall who scores. But I know the result.”
“You think you know, Ed.”
“Tomorrow, Digby, we’ll watch the match, okay, and if it’s a one-all draw, you’ll believe me?”
“O…kay, if it’s one-all.” He nodded. “Then I’ll have to rethink the ‘Ed Richie is a madman’ scenario.”
Richie smiled. “Thank you. That’s all I wanted to hear.”
“I’ll see you at the Bull tomorrow,” Digby said. “But not a word of this to Caroline, hmm? She sometimes worries about you, you know?”
Richie grunted a laugh. “She told me earlier that I should pop the question to Sam.”
“We discussed it the other night. You could do worse, you know, far worse. But of course you’ll do no such thing. That wouldn’t fit into your subconscious, self-destructive impulse.”
Richie recalled, dimly, that years ago Digby had broached this topic when very drunk. Now he said, “You think I’m self-destructive?”
Digby shrugged, uncomfortable. “It’s something Caroline once said to me. And I must admit, going on the evidence…”
“The evidence?”
“How long have we known each other, Ed?”
“Over thirty-eight years. At least, I’ve known you that long. You’ve known me nine months less.”
Digby smiled. “At any rate, a hell of a long time.”
“So?”
“So you know I wouldn’t say anything to hurt you. But I must say…” He paused, licked his lips, and went on, “Ed, you have this self-destructive impulse when it comes to women. You drive them away.”
“I drive them away?”
“I know you’re going to deny it. But I’ve watched you. Every time – every time, without fail – you undermine your relationships so that, eventually, your partner can’t take it any longer and they walk out. But it’s your fault, Ed, and I’m sorry to have to tell you this.”
Richie shrugged. “Okay, a couple of times… I admit it.”
“Every time, Ed. How many woman have you lived with over the years? I lost count after a dozen. And they all end up leaving because of how you destabilise the relationship.”
“‘Destabilise’? You sound like a marriage guidance counsellor, Diggers.”
“I’ve had to be, on occasion. Except that you’re never there.”
Richie cocked his head and stared at his friend. “Meaning?”
Digby said, “Sam, Hilary, Marsha, Pam, Emma… they all spoke to me, at the time, told me how you treated them.”
Richie swallowed. “You should have tried living with them,” he quipped. He shook his head. “But what about Sam?”
“You’re still with Sam,” Digby said. “But even she’s mentioned things… to Caroline, not to me.”
Richie felt sick. “Things… about me?”
“About how you treat her. It’s small things, not so much cruelties as an inability to open up, to show your emotions. She thinks you’re apathetic, about her, about your relationship.”
“I had no idea.”
“Of course not… consciously.”
He stared at his friend. “But subconsciously?”
“Subconsciously,” Digby said, “you’re punishing yourself for what happened all those years ago. And that might even be the reason for what you think is happening to you now.”
Punishing myself, Richie thought, staring down at his half-empty glass.
He wassavedfurther soul-searching by Caroline, calling them to dinner.
FOR THE REST of the evening they kept off the subjects of the missing nine months, and Richie’s self-destructive impulses, but he ate without really tasting a thing. Conversation revolved around work, mutual acquaintances, and politics – but Richie’s attention wandered, and a dozen times he found himself trying to work out what might be happening to him.
By midnight he was more than a little inebriated, and he was willing to consign the events of the day, and his conviction that he’d somehow slipped back in time, to some unaccountable mental aberration. Even this acceptance, thanks to the alcohol, was painless.
Only later, after taking a taxi home, did he consider what Digby had said about his punishing himself.
He sat in his study in the early
hours, staring out at the moon-silvered countryside, and thought about Anna and their final altercation. Had he manufactured her discontent, by adding sultanas to the meal, by giving her the Bulgarian wine – and then goading her, and saying nothing to make her stay?
And Sam, Hilary, Marsha, Pam, Emma and all the others?
He was too drunk to recall the details of their departures, but perhaps he had been responsible.
But Sam?
He thought he’d loved Sam.
But if he were subconsciously undermining his own peace of mind…
No!
He made his way to bed.
He would wake up in the morning, he told himself, and everything would be back to normal. It would be January 2017, and Anna would have walked out on him, the latest in a long line of unsuccessful lovers. And it would be the first day of the rest of his life.
He slept the sleep of the hopelessly inebriated and woke with only a slight hangover at nine in the morning.
He rolled over and kept his eyes shut tight. When he opened them, he told himself, he would look out and see a snow-coated land, and it would be January again, in the year 2017.
He sat up, opened his eyes, and swore to himself.
The sun was shining across rolling farmland shy of snow, and lambs gambolled in the meadows. Sam’s play-scripts still sat on the bookshelf.
Richie found his mobile and got through to Digby.
“Diggers?”
“Ed, how are you?”
“What’s the date?”
Digby sighed. “Tuesday, April the 19th, Ed. 2016. See you tonight for the match?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Ed, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Richie said, and cut the connection.
He sat on the side of the bed and stared down at his hands.
He had another three weeks to endure before Sam returned, and left him, and then he would be alone again. Three weeks of knowing what she would say, of anticipating that sick-to-the-stomach sense of rejection.
He stood up and moved towards the bathroom, then staggered as a sudden, searing heat passed through his head.
Blinded by a flash of bright white light, he fell forward, unconscious.
From the Guardian, 20th June, 2015