by E. M. Brown
He pulled out the desk drawer and found a cheque book. He looked at the last stub, and found that he’d written a cheque for ten pounds on the 20th of April, 1995. But how long ago might that have been?
A wallet sat beside the Amstrad, containing two credit cards and twenty pounds in ten and five pound notes, and…
With shaking fingers he pulled out the photograph of Annabelle, not yet ripped in two by the jealous Laura. He stared at the fey girl-child, then raised the photo to his lips and kissed it.
He sat down and stared at the computer screen. If the house suffered a power cut while he was out, then he would lose everything he’d written to disc that day. He reached out for the mouse and saw that there wasn’t one. His hand hung in the air, bereft. How the hell was he to go about saving his work on the disc and closing the contraption down?
He read a few lines of the text glowing on the screen, then scrolled to the start of the play and began reading. From time to time he paused to alter a line, cut unnecessary dialogue or insert better, pithier phrases. The play was not without merit – in fact, it showed distinct promise – but it was terribly overwritten. It was one of the many efforts he’d finished but filed away without sending off to be summarily rejected.
Perhaps, when he was shunted away from this body and this time, he’d bequeath himself a rewritten play that was saleable… thus changing history.
He tapped away forthe next hour, rewrote the ending to his satisfaction, then played around with the keyboard until he worked out how to save the file. He recalled how paranoid he’d been about losing work back in the ’nineties – and rightly so, on a device so primitive – but for the life of him couldn’t recall how to copy the disc or back it up.
He left his room and tapped down the narrow, uncarpeted staircase to the equally bare hallway. A jacket he recognised hung alongside half a dozen others on a wall-rack opposite the door to the living room. He was shrugging on the frayed corduroy jacket when the door opened and a vaguelyfamiliar face looked out at him: male, Asian, mid-twenties… But what was his name?
Then he had it, as if from nowhere: Az.
“Oh, Eddie… I was just about to see if you were in. That was Tash on the phone, wondering where the B.H. you were.”
“Tash?”
“Tash,” Az said. “Get a grip. Tash, your boss. You were due to start at one.”
“Bloody hell. Lost all track…” Richie temporised. “I was busy… Look.” He stopped, knowing how daft he’d sound – but ploughed on anyway, “What’s the date?”
“The 19th.”
Az made to close the door, but Richie said, “Of?”
The young man gave him an odd look. “May.”
“And it’s ’95, right?”
“Riiight…” Az leaned against the door-frame and stared at him. “Look, if I were you, Eddie, I’d go to fewer of those parties. They’re no good for your head.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Look, one more question. Who am I seeing at the moment?”
Az gave a crooked smile. “I think you should be seeing one of my tutors in the psychology department, Eddie. But as for women…” He shook his head. “Pass. I think you’re between them at the moment, but don’t quote me on that.” He made to close the door.
“Thanks, Az. See you around.”
The door re-opened a fraction and the young man peered out. “I’m Isfan, Eddie. Az moved out a month ago. Seriously, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Richie said, colouring as he hurried from the house.
He turned right along the street and headed towards the main road. He was late for his afternoon and evening shift at Waterstones, but he was damned if he was going to turn up. He’d buy a paper, find a pub, and try his best to recall the minutiae of day-to-day life back in May 1995.
He bought a Guardian at the corner off-licence and entered the smoke-filled bar of the White Horse. That was another thing he’d forgotten about 1995: the smoking ban had yet to be imposed, and the non-smoking British public was still endangering itscollective health with passive inhalation. As he ordered a pint of Fuller’s and glanced around the crowded room, he noted another difference. There were perhaps thirty drinkers here, mainly men, and not one of them was in heads-down communion with his mobile phone.
Richie found a table by the window and enjoyed a long mouthful of beer. He read his way through the Guardian, finding it an odd experience. He recalled some news stories from the time, while others were as lost as the small events of his everyday life. He read a lengthy report on the Russian paramilitary troops’ massacre of civilians in Chechnya, and another of the car bomb in Oklahoma City, USA, which had claimed more than one hundred and sixty victims.
He wondered what Digby would have made of the news; over the years, he’d spent many a happy hour in the pub, dissecting the news with his best friend.
He was thinking that he should get in touch with Digby when it hit him.
In 1987, Digby had completed a long science fiction novel he’d been working on for three years. A Trove of Stars was, Digby claimed, ground-breaking hard SF in that it combined cutting-edge, up-to-the-minute cosmological speculation with penetrating character insight. A Trove of Stars, he predicted, would take the world by storm.
He’d handed the hefty manuscript to Richieone evening in the Malt Shovel in Islington, full of hope, and over the course of the next week Richie had read it and made copious notes.
The following Tuesday night he’d presented the ms to Digby, along with his critique.
They had long been in the habit of commenting on each other’s work. Their respective strengths had complemented each other’s weaknesses: Digby excelled at characterisation, and Richie was a dab hand at turning a tight plot.
One thing they had agreed on, however, was total and brutal honesty: what benefit was faint praise when what a piece needed for improvement was constructive, no-holds-barred criticism?
That night in the Malt Shovel, Richie had told his friend that A Trove of Stars was a mess, a flabby, overwritten monster with leaden pacing and tedious longueurs where the author took needless time out to tell the reader about the characters’ states of mind.
Digby had read Richie’s notes with an increasingly stony expression; at one point Richie thought he’d even seen tears in his friend’s eyes. Richie had expected a certain amount of objection from Digby, the odd argument about aspects of his criticism, but not blanket denial.
When Digby finished reading the notes, he looked up at Richie and said, “I don’t agree.”
Richie nodded, sipping his pint. “About?”
“All of it.”
“All of it?” Richie tested a smile on his friend, to see how he might react. Digby remained stony-faced.
“You don’t understand,” Digby said. “What I’m trying to do here is bring the concerns of the modern psychological novel to the hidebound format of hard SF.”
Richie had restrained himself from accusing his friend of talking pretentious bollocks. He tried to formulate a diplomatic response. “Well… I think that’s partly the problem, Digby. You see, in my opinion, while there’s lots to admire in the novel – the ideas are first rate, and the line-by-line writing is good – in places the characterisation is weak.”
“Weak?” Digby sounded incredulous. “Where, for instance?”
“Okay… How about here, the twenty-page passage from page two hundred? You have Ellory meeting Varda on the shuttle, and when they return to Mars they begin an affair.”
“So what’s wrong with that?”
“Well… Ellory is two-timing his girlfriend, Lani, but you fail to show what he feels about this. He’d feel some guilt, remorse – but you don’t even go into why he felt he needed the affair.”
“I do.” Digby leafed through the manuscript. “Here. The passage about how Lani had treated him on their last landfall.”
Richie tried not to smile. “But it comes over as shallow, Digby. It’s schoolboy reasoning. And until now, you’ve
built up Ellory as a seemingly complex, caring individual. But that passage shows him as a shallow, self-centred fool. It’s inconsistent writing –”
Digby had surprised him by saying, “But… but it’s based on how I felt when I met Elspeth…”
Uneasy, Richie had gone to the bar for another round, and when he’d returned to the table, Digby had vanished.
He’d phoned Diggers the following day, expecting to find his friend hungover and conciliatory, but Digby had slammed the phone down on him.
Hurt, Richie had left it a week, then phoned again. Digby hung up at the sound of his voice. The following week he wrote to Digby and apologised for his harsh assessment of the novel. I know what it’s like to have something I believe in trashed in that way. God knows, it’s happened to me… On this occasion, perhaps I was wrong. Can I read it again, try to understand a little more what you were intending?
His concession had elicited no response, and he’d gone round to Digby’s grubby Finchley flat. He’d wanted to say he was sorry, that he was wrong – and that it was stupid to let ten years of friendship end like this.
But Digby had slammed the door in his face – and when, a week later, Richie tried again, he was told by one of Digby’s erstwhile flatmates that his friend had moved out without leaving a forwarding address.
Over the course of the next few months, Richie had dropped into the pubs they’d frequented together in the hope of bumping into Digby, but it appeared that he’d moved away from the North London area, or that he was scrupulous in avoiding their old haunts.
Richie had thrown himself into his own writing over the next few years, lost himself in doomed relationships, and continually regretted what he saw as his friend’s unconscionable desertion.
The hiatus would come to a welcome end next year, May 1996, when Richie would bump into Digby Lincoln in Piccadilly Waterstones. He’d spot the smartly-dressed Digby, in beige chinos and a suede jacket, staring at the ranked titles in the sci-fi and fantasy section – perhaps pondering, Richie thought, what might have been.
His first urge had been to greet Digby like the long-lost friend he was – his second, to be more circumspect, fearing another rejection. Timidly, he had advanced to Digby’s side and said, “Diggers…?”
Digby had started, then stared at Richie, his eyes narrowing with some indecipherable emotion. Then he’d returned his gaze to the glossy covers.
Just when Richie could stand the silence no more, and was about to turn and walk away, Digby said, almost inaudibly, “I’m sorry.”
“No,” Richie found himself saying, relieved. “I am. I was wrong. I… I shouldn’t have been so…”
Digby interrupted. “You were right, Ed. Every word of it. I was an arrogant, pretentious bastard. Your criticism was right, especially about…” He shrugged. “And the longer it went on, not seeing you… the harder it was to get back in touch and apologise. Christ, Ed…”
“How about a pint?”
Digby smiled. “How about several?”
Now, drinking his pint in the White Horse, Richie recalled the feeling of swelling relief, the sensation of walking on air, as he left Waterstones with his old friend and wandered along the road to the St James Tavern.
Over what turned out to be an all-day session at the St James and several other watering holes, they caught up with what they’d each been doing over the past eight years. Diggers announced that last year he’d married a wonderful woman called Caroline, an administrator for the NHS based at St Bartholomew’s, and he worked as a freelance technical writer, doing okay financially but feeling far from fulfilled creatively.
Richie told his friend that he’d muddled along from one dead-end job to the next to subsidise his writing, and had sold a few minor radio plays to the BBC but was still waiting for the big break.
After that they’d seen each other every week, sometimes twice a week, for sessions in central London. A few months later, Richie started selling radio plays to a producer at Bush House on a regular basis, and he’d put Digby in touch with the woman. Within a year they were both selling radio scripts to the BBC, and had got back into the habit of vetting and criticising each other’s work. If anything, the hiatus had cemented their friendship: they’d been inseparable ever since.
Digby’s reaction that night at the Malt Shovel had puzzled Richie on and off over the years, but in his relief that their friendship was back on an even keel, he’d pushed his concerns to the back of his mind.
Now, finishing his first pint and ordering a second, it came to Richie that he’d been a blind, ignorant fool. Why hadn’t he seen Digby’s rage for what it had been – not indignation at criticism of his novel, but reaction to Richie’s criticism of Digby himself?
Back in ’86, Digby had been seeing a trainee lawyer, Elspeth, and as far as Richie could see was serious about her. Then, at a New Year’s Eve party in Hackney, Richie had introduced Digby to a woman called Hester – who Richie had met casually for drinks once or twice – and had been amazed when Digby had announced, a few days later, that he was seeing Hester.
“So you’ve kicked Elspeth into touch?”
Digby had looked uncomfortable. “Not yet…”
And for the next few months he’d proceeded to string both women along.
And that evening in the Malt Shovel he’d reacted badly to Richie’s assessment of his central character, Ellory, as shallow.
He took a mouthful of bitter and shook his head.
What a fool I was, he reflected; what a blind, ignorant fool…
HE LOOKED UP as a group of half a dozen youngsters – at least, that was how he thought of them – entered the pub, laughing and joking. They congregated at the bar and ordered drinks. Some of the faces were familiar, others not so. A couple wore the black shirts of Waterstones staff, out for a lunchtime session, and the company’s black and white plastic badges on lanyards around their necks. He recognised the others as regulars at the pub.
They saw him, fetched their drinks from the bar, and muscled in around the table – four young men and two girls in their late teens. He’d forgotten the names of most of them, though they’d been workmates and drinking companions in this very pub after work.
“You’re in the shit with Tash.” This was Jill, and Richie recalled that for some reason she had disliked him intensely.
A plump girl with bright red dyed hair touched his arm. “What the fuck, Ed? You were due in at one. Tash went ballistic. She had to cover for you.” Her name-tag identified her as Debs.
Jill said, “You could’ve phoned in, you know?”
“Well, I forgot.”
“What happened?” Debs asked.
Richie looked up from the newspaper. “I was ill.”
“Not too ill to drink, though?” Jill said.
He hoisted his pint. “Hair of the dog.”
“She’ll have your balls,” Jill said, “the next time you’re in.”
“She’s welcome to them,” Richie murmured, and turned his attention to the paper.
He wished they’d go away and leave him to his beer, but it appeared that they were entrenched for a session. When he came to the end of his pint, he picked up the empty along with his paper and moved to the bar. He found a high stool at the far end, bought a third bitter, and sat drinking with his back to the Waterstones crowd. Let them think him a miserable bastard…
He’d have a couple more pints here, then go for an Indian at a place he recalled around the corner, then he’d pop into a few of the pubs along the high street and get well leathered, return to his room and sleep through the night and hopefully through much of the following day. By then, he suspected, he’d be pitched back again to… when? He was thirty-five now and it was 1995. So would his next port of call be at some point in the ’eighties, in his twenties? Jesus, he had that to look forward to… working in various dead-end jobs while living in filthy bedsits around north London.
Debs appeared smiling at his side and touched his arm. “Ed… you oka
y? It’s just… you don’t seem yourself.”
He smiled at her, and he vaguely recalled that they’d been friends, though never more than that.
“I’m fine, Debs. Really, just tired and hungover.”
She hesitated, her bottom lip trapped between her teeth. “Ed, you doing anything later?”
He smiled at her again. How to put her off without being offensive? “To be honest, Debs, I plan to get royally shit-faced and then descend into oblivion.”
“Oh.” She pushed her face into a drink and looked away.
He returned to his paper, hoping she’d leave him.
“Hey,” she said a minute later, “guess who I bumped into last week?” She held up her left hand, as if this should have told him something. He stared at the bandage around her wrist and shook his head.
“So I was in A&E after slicing myself – accidentally, of course – and I saw your ex there. Helen.”
“Helen…”
“She fixed me up, asked how you were.” Debs laughed. “Same as ever, I said, getting pissed and writing.”
“Helen.” He felt dizzy, then sick. He stared at the girl. “When did you say this was?”
“Last week. I–”
“Last week, and it’s the 19th today?”
“Yes. So…?”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Ed?” She stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Oh, Christ…”
He slipped from the stool, knowing that he was about to vomit, and rushed towards the toilets.
He made it just in time, ejecting five pints of foul-smelling gruel into a hand-basin, then moving to the next and splashing his face with refreshing cold water. He braced his arms against the basin and stared at the unfamiliar reflection of the young man he’d been.
Helen Atkins…
He’d met Helen in a Camden nightclub in late ’94, and it had been the start of a torrid on-off-on affair that had lasted almost five months. Its beginnings had been inauspicious and unlikely, in that he loathed nightclubs – only going this time because he was drunk and the Waterstones crowd had dragged him along – and the short, stocky girl who insisted on dancing with him till throwing-out time had not been his type at all. Helen was his height and broad, with a round face, an English rose complexion and a devastating smile. She was from Bolton and worked in accident and emergency at St Thomas’s, had a Northerner’s down-to-earth stoicism and a nurse’s industrial sense of humour. (“I only picked you up, Ed, ’cos I was gagging for a good shag.” “And was it good?” “So-so.”)