‘Come and look, Rosie!’ yelled Peggy. ‘If you look in through this window, you can see into the kitchen and through into the front room!’
Anxious to please and not wanting to dampen their enthusiasm, I started to walk up the path, but my head was hurting and my legs were like lead. Everything was out of focus. I was ill, I realised, really ill.
‘Can we go home please?’ I said quickly in as strong a voice as I could muster, though I knew it came out as a squeak. ‘Can we go home please? I don’t feel very well.’ Somehow I knew I was going to be ill, and I didn’t want it to be here. I didn’t want to spoil their delight and excitement in their new home.
Suddenly they were all fussing around me, squashing me back into the car. Peggy was holding my hand, rubbing it to get warm. I knew I was icy cold. I couldn’t stop shivering and I couldn’t keep my head up. It felt so heavy. As we bumped along in the car, I felt so sick, I didn’t know where to put myself to get comfortable, but I couldn’t move.
The car had stopped, I think. Hands were pulling me, helping me, trying to support me. Voices swirled above my head. They were telling me I’d be all right soon. That I could lie down. Get to bed. Get warm. Sleep. Suddenly I seemed to fall through all those helping hands. Everything was dark, and I was falling, falling, falling … and somewhere in the darkness, Billy was calling to me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lemons. I could smell lemons. Definitely lemons. But mixed with something else, something woody. And soap. There was soap in there somewhere too. It was a very clean smell, a zesty smell, a familiar smell.
I knew I had smelt it before, long ago, somewhere. But also that it had been near me a lot recently. I realised it had been there, on the edge of my consciousness for a long time. It had become comfortable, familiar. But I knew it belonged to an earlier time too. Not just now.
I struggled to place it. I knew I knew it and that it would make me happy. But I didn’t know why it made me happy. And it seemed such a long way away. Maybe I could try and go towards it. But it was such a long way away, I didn’t think I could reach it. Everything was such an effort, such a struggle …
The smell was closer now. I was breathing it in. It was filling my nostrils, my head. Maybe I could reach it if I tried very hard. If I just tried a bit harder …
‘Rosie! Rosie! Are you there? Can you hear me?’
If I concentrated very hard, I could open my eyes. I flickered them open. There was someone bending over me. Someone familiar. Billy?
‘Rosie! It’s me, Will. Can you hear me?’
Will? Of course. Lemons. Will always smelt zingy and zesty of delicious woody citrus. Billy smelt of sweat and beer and newsprint. This was Will. Will!
I opened my eyes and smiled at him and he was crying.
‘You’re back! Oh Rosie, you’re back!’
And then I was sick. Horrible vile-smelling dribble. Will whipped a bowl over and caught most of it. I closed my eyes again to get away from the smell of it, the awful all over pain and, yes, the embarrassment.
Then there were all sorts of things going on. People talking, testing, beeps of equipment. There were nurses and a woman in a white coat. And my mum was there and Dad. All those people. I opened my eyes and tried to smile at them all. It was nice to see them. But my head still hurt and I felt as though I had the most tremendous hangover so I closed my eyes again. Just for a little while …
But I could still smell lemons and I knew wherever I’d been, I was back.
I was in hospital. I worked that out. A nice twenty-first-century hospital. It had to be. Mum and Dad were there. And even in this one room, I could tell this hospital wasn’t like the one we took Peggy to. But it was Will I had to be sure about. As nurses prodded and poked and measured and tested and asked me how many fingers they were holding up, Mum and Dad were either side of my bed. Mum was holding my hands and I could feel her trying not to cry. Dad was stroking my shoulder, about the only bit of me that was easily accessible.
My head hurt and I felt wretched, but a nurse cleaned me up swiftly and efficiently, and my mother was murmuring soothing things that made me feel safe. They adjusted one of the many drips that seemed to be plugged into me and gradually I calmed down and felt more relaxed.
Will, meanwhile, was standing at the back of the room, leaning against the windowsill, watching me intently. I knew he must have found my parents and then stepped back to let them be close to me in my newly-awakened state. It was hard to keep my eyes open. The light hurt my eyes. My head felt very peculiar – like one of those diagrams for headache tablets where you see a cross section of a scalp in wildly pulsating colours.
But it was Will, not Billy.
The clothes – well-fitting jeans and polo shirt, the decent haircut, a face less lined, less raw-looking, all gave the game away. But even in my dopey state I realised the big difference.
Will was looking at me with an expression of pure love. And concern. No guilt. No worry. No thoughts about a wife and children. Here life was simple. Despite the pain and the doziness, I felt suddenly light-hearted. I slipped away from the pain and back into sleep. But I knew I was smiling.
It was meningitis. What I thought was a cold and sore throat meeting a huge Monday-morning hangover and the stress of a row with Will had actually been a very serious illness. I was lucky to be alive. Apparently, I’d walked up the path to Mrs Turnbull’s and had collapsed at her feet. Literally at death’s door.
‘Mrs Turnbull’s house?’ I asked, a day or so later when I was well enough to talk and was trying to get things straight in my head. ‘Mrs Brown’s house in Cheapside where I’d been staying?’
‘Cheapside? No,’ said Will, exchanging a glance with my mum. ‘No. Mrs Turnbull’s house at The Meadows.’
‘Ah, the new house, George and Peggy’s new house …’
‘Not that new,’ said Will. ‘It’s been there fifty years, one of the oldest on the estate.’
I think I might have had to go back to sleep again before I could work this one out and ask any more questions. My head was seriously confused. Mum and Dad had gone to get something to eat and I was lying in bed watching the sun set while Will held my hand, rubbing his thumb on mine, the way he did.
‘So I haven’t been in the 1950s house then?’
‘No, you’ve been here, in hospital. You went a week ago on Monday afternoon to interview Mrs Margaret Turnbull at The Meadows. You were meant to be doing a feature on fifty years of The Meadows. Do you remember that?’
‘Yes. I got a taxi because my car was at the pub.’
‘That’s right.’ Will looked relieved. ‘And you’d just rung the bell at Mrs Turnbull’s house, when you collapsed. She opened the front door and found you lying groaning on the doorstep.’
‘No, it was Mrs Brown’s house and she gave me tea and cake and I began to feel better. And I stayed there and I thought it was the 1950s house, and I was looking for the cameras.’
‘No, my love,’ said Will, gently. ‘You dreamt that. The doctors said that your memory would be shot to pieces for a while. But you never went into the house. You never got over the doorstep.’
It was too confusing to argue. So I didn’t bother. I just listened to Will’s version of events.
Mrs Turnbull might have been getting on a bit but she was no slouch. Apparently she took one look at me, realised immediately that not only was I very ill, but that it was meningitis. She didn’t mess about, but got straight on the phone and told them precisely what was wrong. The ambulance was there in minutes and had whisked me here. If it hadn’t been for Mrs Turnbull’s quick actions, I would not have lived to tell the tale. Which takes some getting your head around, believe me.
As it was it had been touch and go.
I had been in hospital for over a week, they told me, and Will and my mum and dad – and my brother Dan too –had been at my bedside pretty much all the time.
‘So I haven’t been living in the 1950s?’ I asked Will.
‘No, just nearly dying here in the twenty-first century.’
‘And the farmer didn’t shoot himself?’
‘Not any farmer I know.’
‘And there haven’t been floods and you didn’t borrow a boat from the boating lake?’
‘Not guilty. No floods. No boat. No boating lake.’
‘And … and … you’re not married to Carol? Caz? And you haven’t got three children?’
Will laughed gently. ‘No, last time I looked I definitely wasn’t married to Caz and I have no children at all.’
‘You’re not married to anyone?’
‘No, no one at all.’
‘And it’s all right to love you?’
‘It’s very all right to love me,’ he said, kissing my hand and smiling.
‘That’s good,’ I said and fell back onto the pillows, trying to avoid the sore bits on my head.
The next day my mum was helping me wash, oh so gently sponging me down. I couldn’t wash my hair yet, or get in the shower, but already some of the wires had gone and at least I could put on a proper nightie, and not the hospital issue open-backed thing.
‘Oh, Rosie, I thought we’d lost you,’ she said as she eased the cotton nightie over my head. It was one of my old ones she’d brought from home, I realised, and it smelt of soap and sunshine and warmth.
‘I felt lost. In my head I’ve been away for six weeks or more. I thought I was living in the 1950s. I was working on The News but it was all different. It was very real.’
‘Of course it would be, you were very ill. Your brain was swollen and you were full of goodness knows what drugs. Being somewhere else sounds very sensible to me. Though I think I would have chosen somewhere more exotic than the 1950s. A nice warm bit of foreign coast might have been nicer.’
‘It was … interesting. Do you remember the 1950s, Mum?’
‘Not much. I was born just after the Coronation. I remember wearing hand-knitted cardigans and Clark’s sandals and watching Muffin the Mule and Roy Rogers and Trigger. And your gran wearing a pinny all the time. Except for going to the shops when she would take the pinny off and put a hat and coat on.’
‘Did you eat hearts?’
‘Hearts? Yes, I think we did. I think Gran used to stuff them. Goodness, if you’ve been dreaming about hearts, then you have been having strange dreams. But you rest now. Will will be here soon.’
And so the days drifted by. I spent a lot of time sleeping, dozing, trying to make sense of what had happened to me. Life in the 1950s had been so vivid, the memories were not fading away. It seemed more real than what was going on around me. I knew I was physically back in the twenty-first century, but I think my head was taking a bit longer to catch up.
Mum, Dad and Will took turns to be with me, though no one stayed the night any more. My dad just sat by my bedside and did the crossword. He would read the clues out loud as if I could join in. I was never any good at crosswords at the best of times, and certainly not when I was having great difficulty getting my head to work, but it was very soothing and companionable.
‘It’s nice to have you here,’ I murmured to him one day, half asleep.
‘It’s what dads are for, princess, to look after their little girls, however old they are. And to look after their mums as well. I look after Mum, so she can look after you. It’s quite a good system really.’
‘Mum can look after herself.’
‘Of course she can. And so can I. And so can you. But it’s nicer when we all look after each other, isn’t it?’
I drifted back to sleep and thought about it.
We got into a routine. Morning was hospital stuff, tests and doctors and physio and things, and visits from the consultant, Mr Uzmaston, and the registrar Dr Simpson. Mum and Dad came in at lunch time to be with me all afternoon. Will came in the evening. He’d been off work all the time I’d been unconscious, but was back now. Mum and Dad were doing their jobs long distance for the moment. Dad, who has his own business, was apparently spending the mornings on the phone and computer. Mum – who teaches sixth form – spent the evenings marking her students’ essays and tutoring them via email. Hooray for the internet.
I hadn’t realised they were staying at the flat.
‘Will insisted,’ said Mum. ‘After all, he says it’s your flat. And it’s much nicer than staying in a hotel. Will insists on sleeping on the sofa. It means Dad and I can do some work, and I can get a meal ready for Will when he comes back from the hospital.’
Strange to think of this cosy domestic life going on without me.
The doctors were right about my memory being shot to pieces. I could remember every detail of my time in the 1950s, but was struggling to recall much of what had happened before.
One evening Will was taking me for a walk. This was a big adventure. We were going all the way along the corridor to the small lounge area that not many people seemed to know about. It had wonderful views over the town and tonight we had it to ourselves. The first time we’d walked there – all of a hundred yards, Will had had to bring me back in a wheelchair as I felt so faint and dizzy. But I was getting good at it now.
‘You’ll be running along here soon,’ he said, as I made my way extremely slowly to one of the armchairs and collapsed into it.
‘I wish!’
I was not a pretty sight. Unlike heroines in films who fade away with perfect skin, beautiful hair and full makeup, I looked a mess. My skin was clammy, my hair filthy, with a small shaved patch where something had been done. My body was covered with blotches and I had bruises where so many drips and needles had been in me. Although the nurses and my mother had bathed me, I knew I smelt stale and sour. Yet here was Will with his arm around me, holding me close.
‘Do I smell?’
‘We-ll, I’ve known you smell sweeter.’
‘Oh Will, you’re so kind and patient.’
‘You’ve been very ill. You need looking after. Don’t think you’re quite up to killing dragons at the moment.’
That rang a bell. Jamie talking about redundant dragon slayers. Something about being able to kill my own dragons …
‘Will, did we have a row just before I was ill?’
‘Shhh. It doesn’t matter now.’ He gently stroked my lank hair.
‘We did, didn’t we? I can remember! You wanted to go to Dubai. You wanted a big television. You’re not going to Dubai, are you? Are you?’ I could feel my voice rising in panic.
‘No sweetheart, I’m not going to Dubai. But don’t worry about things now.’
Suddenly scraps of the row came back to me. Will telling me I was selfish. Me telling him he was a big kid with no sense of responsibility …
Was that true?
I thought of Billy. Billy had taken on the responsibility of marriage and fatherhood when he was seventeen, and had made a brilliant job of them. Was Billy just Will in different circumstances? If Billy hadn’t had to get married and had had plenty of money, would he have just wanted fast cars and big televisions?
I called the gadgets Will had a passion for his toys. But why not? He had no need to grow up, so why should he? If he was like Billy, then he would grow up when he needed to.
‘You asked me what I wanted for the future. If I wanted children.’
Will put his finger gently on my lips.
‘There are lots of things to talk about. But not now, not yet. First thing is to get you better. Then we will have all our lives to sort things out. Just a few days ago, the chances of that looked slim. Take it gently, Rosie. We have all the time in the world. And I’m not going anywhere.’ Then he grinned and laughed at me. ‘And you’re not exactly running marathons yet, are you!’
He helped me up and I started the slow hundred-yard totter back to my bed.
But slowly, I got better. I know I owe a huge debt to the medical team who saved my life, but my immediate undying gratitude went to the two student nurses who helped me have a shower and wash my hair. Bliss! You just feel so much more human, don’
t you?
And I was allowed more visitors. I’d had scores of cards and flowers and get-well messages, and now the doctors thought I was up to a few more visitors. First to come was Caz, who bounced into my room, with an aura of fresh spring air around her.
Her blonde highlights gleamed, and when she smiled she showed perfect even white teeth. I thought of Carol and her crooked smile.
‘Caz, did you ever wear braces on your teeth?’
‘Oh God yes! From twelve to fifteen, just the age when you’re most self-conscious,’ she said, helping herself to some of my grapes. ‘Dentists have a lot to answer for. Ruined my social life.’
‘Not really?’
‘Well no. But I do remember that I had the braces off when we went into Year Eleven, and I could finally flash my winning smile at Will.’
‘And it worked.’
‘Oh yes. However, not for long, which only goes to show that dentists can give you perfect teeth but cannot also be responsible for finding you a life partner.’
‘But what if you had?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well,’ I was struggling here, ‘but what if you’d got pregnant and you and Will had got married, could it have worked?’
‘Well, we wouldn’t would we? I mean I didn’t get pregnant. If I had, I would have got rid of it. And the thought of marrying Will aged seventeen. Um no. Let’s not go there, Rosie. I know you’ve been ill, but that is just bizarre.’
I wasn’t giving up. ‘Seriously, think about it. Could it have worked?’
‘Oh Lordy, I don’t know. Basically I would say no, because Will and I – though I love him dearly as a friend of course – would drive each other mad. But, if you really want to be serious for a moment, I suppose, yes, in a parallel universe sort of way, it might have worked.
‘I mean, arranged marriages work, don’t they? Will is a decent bloke, not given to wife beating or eating babies for breakfast. Give or take the odd all-night poker game and a passion for football, he has no seriously bad habits that I know of. So yes. I suppose, in your bizarre hypothetical situation, if Will and I had been forced to marry, we might – if we’d both tried hard enough – have made a reasonable fist of it. But honestly, I’m so glad we didn’t.
The Accidental Time Traveller Page 27