by Winona Kent
Heart pounding, her breath ragged, Charlie retreated into the jumble of little streets on the eastern edge of the village, purposely complicating her retreat. She was aware, as logic displaced rage and panic, that she had been seen. And she would likely now be arrested for vandalism. Charged, found guilty, and sent to prison.
Disgraced. She’d lose her position on the Committee. Lose her job, her cottage, her self-respect…
Gentle Charlie, who had never lifted a finger against anyone.
Placid Charlie, who’d fallen all over herself apologizing with mortification when she’d accidentally walked out of Asda with a packet of crisps that she hadn’t paid for.
Quiet Charlie, who spent her lunch hour talking to her poor dead husband in the churchyard…
It was a nightmare. It was worse than a nightmare. It was real.
What, oh what, had she done?
Chapter 3
The Dali clock was dripping round to seven. Charlie’s mobile was playing one of Jeff’s favorites—Atlantis—a quiet instrumental by The Shadows that he’d been in the process of mastering when that imbecile had smashed headlong into his car.
Charlie sat at her desk, heart pounding, waiting.
At any moment, there would be a knock at the kitchen door. At any moment, Ron Ferryman would arrive on her doorstep, accompanied by the Stoneford Constabulary, to arrest her and take her away in handcuffs.
Her brain racing, Charlie tapped the screen on her mobile to bring up Nick’s number. She had to warn him. He’d expect her to be here. He’d promised to come over after dinner to sort out her family tree program. He’d very likely already left his house.
But her mobile was not cooperating. Instead of Nick’s number, a photo popped up: a perfect white wax candle in an old-fashioned brass holder.
“Go away,” Charlie said urgently, tapping the screen again.
But instead of vanishing, the clever picture lit the candle’s wick. It flickered momentarily, and then burned with a strong, bright flame.
“Bugger off!” Charlie said. “Go!”
She tried again.
There. But it was only Nick’s voicemail. He wasn’t picking up.
“Nick,” she said. “In case you can’t find me when you get here, check with the Stoneford Constabulary. I’ve done something awful. Hurry.”
Nick was in the process of arriving.
The accident had left him with permanent damage to his right leg. He’d almost become an amputee as he’d been cut from the wreckage. But the mangled mess had been pieced back together by surgeons in an operating theater. He’d been pinned and grafted, and after months of physiotherapy, his leg had been restored to a workable facsimile.
But what he’d gained in stability, he’d lost in velocity, and even with his cane, progress was, these days, frustratingly slow.
If Charlie had lived further away, he’d have driven.
But it was only a few hundred yards.
And so, Nick had walked.
He stopped at the corner of Charlie’s road to check his mobile. And realized that, annoyingly, he’d left it at home, sitting on the little table beside the door.
And it was starting to rain.
And he’d come out without his umbrella.
It was no good. He’d have to go back. He had important information stored on his mobile, data that he needed to resolve Charlie’s computer problems.
Nick turned around, and began the quarter of a mile walk back to his house, passing, in the process, PC Kevin Smith, arriving at the Stoneford Police Station, no doubt intent upon solving some beach hut transgression down on the seashore.
A brief flash of lightning flickered in Charlie’s sitting room window, and a distant roll of thunder echoed off the walls of the Manor Bed and Breakfast, at the top of the hill.
She wasn’t bothered by the lightning and thunder, though Jeff had been petrified. When he was six, a storm had boiled up and rain had poured down in sheets until the drains were full and the roadways flooded. And lightning had struck a small boy, his own age, stone dead on a playing field as he ran for shelter. Jeff had seen it all from his upstairs bedroom window.
Impatiently, Charlie tapped the keys on her laptop.
If Nick was going to be late—and he was, by some twenty minutes now—and if Ron Ferryman was going to take his time reporting her to the Stoneford Constabulary—she was going to get some proper work done. If nothing else, it would distract her from the greatest sin she’d ever committed. Ever. If nothing else, she could bury herself in her passion, like a child who’s been very very naughty, and who’s crawled under the duvet in her parents’ bedroom in a hopeless attempt to escape punishment.
Obediently, her family tree program opened. The little squares representing Charlie’s ancestors appeared in the right order, all the lines connecting in the proper places. There was Louis Augustus Duran, and there was Sarah Elizabeth Foster and there was their date of marriage: July 30, 1825.
In the program, if you clicked on one of the squares, you were taken to an information page that contained all of the things you’d collected about that person. It had photographs, census records, scans of certificates, all the bits and pieces of details from online excursions into registries and databases.
Charlie thought she might review, yet again, the hodge-podge of facts, just to see, yet again, whether there was something she could possibly have missed. She clicked on the square belonging to Sarah Elizabeth Foster.
The square responded with quiet compliance, changing colour as it ought to. But then…nothing.
Charlie clicked again. The screen froze.
“Bastard,” Charlie said, under her breath—for her laptop was, without a doubt, a male.
Undaunted, she restarted the laptop, wishing Nick would hurry up and get there with his fixing skills.
The program opened as before, but she wasn’t going to tempt fate a second time by visiting Sarah Foster’s square. Instead, she chose the square belonging to Lucas Adams, an ancestor of her distant cousin, Morris Adams.
Lucas had distinguished himself by joining the Royal Navy on his 19th birthday, then subsequently spending the next seven years either drunk or AWOL. He’d finally married, at age twenty-six, on shore leave in Portsmouth, listing his home as “The Sailor’s Rest.” And then he’d promptly shipped out again, leaving poor Fanny on her own and, not surprisingly, with child.
His history following his discharge from the Navy was murky, but Charlie suspected he’d taken up smuggling in Christchurch. And also, quite possibly, he’d become a member of the King’s Press Gang.
So intent was Charlie in tracking Lucas Adams’ less-than-stellar career at sea, followed by his even less-than-stellar career ashore, that she was completely unaware of the brilliant flash of lightning just outside her window. But she couldn’t ignore the ensuing explosion of thunder, as loud as an avalanche of boulders crashing down a mountain of mythical proportions.
Startled, she couldn’t know at all about the red sprite that which, at that instance, was leaping up from the vortex of thunderheads gathered over Stoneford, shooting a sparkling spray of particles into the universe.
She did, however, see the second blaze of lightning that forked down to the ancient oak in the center of the Village Green, sending a jet of charged particles showering across the roof of her cottage.
The sitting room went black. Her laptop, plugged into the wall, blinked off, then flickered back to life as its battery cut in.
Stunned, sitting in the dark, Charlie waited for the roll of thunder to fade, and for her heart to stop racing, and for the blood to stop pounding in her ears.
That had been uncomfortably close.
Seconds later, the lights came on again. On her laptop, the family tree program recovered. Lucas Adams’ page reopened. So did Sarah Foster’s page, changing into quite a lovely shade of lilac that Charlie wasn’t certain she’d ever seen before.
But beyond the laptop—beyond the desk—something else was going on.
Charlie stood up.
This wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be.
But it was.
She stretched her arm out, so that her fingers touched the threshold between Now and Then.
And as her fingertips dimpled the quivering transparency, it rippled, like the surface of a vertical pool of water.
On the pavement beyond the cottage gate, in the driving rain, Nick had, at last, arrived.
So had PC Kevin Smith.
And so, it seemed, had Ron Ferryman, in his black BMW.
Good evening, gentlemen,” Nick said, pleasantly, raising his umbrella to accommodate the three of them. “Quite a light show tonight!”
“I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to wait outside,” PC Smith replied, in his best policeman’s voice.
“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” Nick replied, good-naturedly. He’d been at school with Kevin. The two of them had been quite good friends for a time, especially after Kevin had been prescribed spectacles, which made him an easy target for non-spectacled bullies.
“Out of the way, Weller,” Ron Ferryman said, reverting to Nick’s last name, as he often had during their youth.
Nick had been at school with Ron and Reg Ferryman, too. He’d never particularly liked either of them, especially after they’d attempted to set up a junior extortion ring that involved pocket money and lunches, and occasionally Kevin’s stolen spectacles.
“And what business do you have with Charlie?” Nick inquired.
“I’m here to witness the arrest your cousin, Weller. Stand aside.”
“For what?” Nick asked, flabbergasted.
“Break and enter, for a start. Malicious damage.”
“We are talking about Charlie…?” Nick checked.
“Apparently so,” Kevin said, looking distinctly unhappy.
“I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding,” Nick said. “Let’s see what Charlie has to say.”
And before Ron Ferryman could object, and while Kevin was thinking of a reason why this should not be so, Nick unlatched the little wooden gate, and walked up the garden path to the blue painted front door.
Inside the cottage, Charlie had abandoned her laptop and was desperately trying to ring her cousin on her mobile.
“Nick! Nick!” she said, frantically tapping the little screen, as the transparent, vertical wall of ripples raced towards her. “Help!”
Outside the cottage, oblivious to the transformation going on inside, Nick knocked on the blue-painted door with the handle of his cane.
Inside the cottage, hearing Nick’s knock, Charlie tried to run to the kitchen to let him in.
But her progress was prevented by the transparent wall of ripples, washing over and around her, like a bath of warm, liquid jelly. She was trapped—suspended—like an insect caught in liquid amber.
Outside the cottage, Ron Ferryman shoved Nick aside and tried the door handle. It was unlocked.
Kevin interjected himself between the door, and Ron.
“I believe Nick should go in first,” he suggested. “A friendly face.”
“We don’t want a friendly face,” Ron fumed. “We want an arrest. Followed by a prosecution. Followed by a swift execution.”
Nick ducked between the two of them, and went inside.
“Only me!” he announced, walking through the kitchen.
“PC Kevin Smith!” Kevin added, from the doorstep. “Stoneford Constabulary! I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Lowe, if you wouldn’t mind!”
“And don’t think you can run away this time,” Ron added, sourly.
Trapped in the undulating transparency, unable to move, Charlie saw Nick enter from the kitchen. She saw the expression on his face and noted that he dropped both his cane and his umbrella as he tried to grab her.
She experienced the oddity of his hand passing right through her arm, as if she really wasn’t there at all.
And then…he wasn’t really there at all either.
And the warm, liquid jelly was thinning, dissipating, melting away…
Gone.
Suddenly unsuspended, Charlie grabbed the edge of the desk to prevent herself toppling to the floor.
It was the same desk as before. However, it no longer held the accoutrements of her life.
And the sitting room—which was still her sitting room, with its familiar fireplace, and windows, and broad wooden planked floor—was suddenly plain. It was bereft of the little rugs she’d scattered here and there, the curtains, and the put-together-yourself IKEA furniture she and Jeff had slaved over.
In its place was furniture that was unfamiliar, yet not strange, because it was similar to the furnishings she’d seen in historical photographs and museum displays.
The last of the day was disappearing beyond the window where, before, the spider plant had lived. Charlie stood in the dimming light, not quite able to accept what had just happened as fact, yet unable to summon anything from her cache of life’s experiences to account for any of it.
She was no longer in 21st century Stoneford.
She had arrived somewhere in its past.
Chapter 4
Charlie took a tentative step forward.
The desk—her desk—was missing all of its familiar bits and pieces. Melting clock and laptop, scribbled notes on scraps of paper. Nubbed down pencils and pens permanently running out of ink. Pamphlets and newsletters.
In their place was a brass candlestick, set with a tallow candle that had burned halfway down, its solidified drippings puddled on the lip of the holder. And beside it, an open book, bound beautifully. Next to that, a bare wood pencil, knife-sharpened to a writing point, and a square of rubber, worn down at one corner from use.
Charlie took another step, terrified of what might happen next.
She glanced behind her.
No surging ripples. No quivering transparencies.
The sitting room was extraordinarily quiet.
And silent.
The floorboard creaked, making her jump.
What had just happened?
And where was Nick?
Where, for that matter, was she?
Charlie risked a third step, and peeked at the book lying open on the desk.
It was a journal…a diary. Filled with neat rows of pencilled handwriting. And at the top of the page…a date. The 30th of June, 1825.
She caught her breath.
1825.
She swallowed.
This wasn’t possible. It couldn’t have happened. She’d read about it in novels, seen it in films and on television. Speculated about it with Natalie, over tea and mid-morning biscuits.
Joked about it with Nick, over geraniums and fizzy water.
Sprites and tachyons. Electrical discharges. Subatomic particles.
“Nick,” she said, very quietly. “I don’t think we’re talking about hypothetical events any more.”
Cautiously, Charlie walked through the doorway that led to the kitchen.
It was familiar, but not familiar. Her plastered walls and stone floor and deep-set windows were the same. There was a sideboard. And a table and chairs.
It was her table, solid and made from hand-hewn wood.
She paused to touch it, lovingly.
Jeff had been a stickler for formal eating: knives, forks, spoons and plates, cloth napkins and drinking glasses. Everything had to be properly laid out, an adjunct to his edict for balanced nutrition. Always, there would be the prescribed portions of carbohydrates and proteins, a green salad, fruit or cheese for dessert.
They’d always sat at that table, discussing their days over soup. What had gone wrong, and right, and what their plans were for tomorrow, and next week, and next year.
Without Jeff, Charlie had
reverted to tins and jars, boxes taken out of the freezer, things heated up in glass bowls in the microwave.
Poor table.
She’d moved it out of the kitchen and into the back garden. It had been there ever since. With each changing season it had become more and more weatherbeaten, a repository for broken bits of flowerpots and empty nutshells from the squirrels.
And here it was, newly built, barely scratched.
Charlie glanced at the place where the AGA should have been. It wasn’t there, of course. Its alcove had reverted to its original function—a fireplace.
And the fireplace was actually in use, in spite of it being July.
There was no visible fire, but there were banked embers glowing hot underneath a hole-studded brass dome. A curfew—she remembered that from her historical research. From the French phrase couvre-feu, which meant, literally, “cover the fire”. The time for blowing out all lamps and candles.
A lidded pot, simmering something that smelled like stew, hung from an iron crane above the curfew.
Charlie crept towards the kitchen door, wondering, with a good deal of trepidation, what she was going to find when she opened it.
As she approached the door, she realized that something else—besides herself—had survived the journey from there to here.
Her phone.
She’d been holding onto it as the warm jelly had swallowed her.
And its little screen was still On, and displaying Nick’s number.
Worth a try. Why not.
She gave it a tap.
The screen seemed to be thinking for a moment, as if it, too, had been confused by what had just happened.
No signal.
Of course.
What was she thinking? This was 1825.
Charlie switched her phone off.
And then very cautiously, she opened the kitchen door, and looked outside.
Her front garden seemed not to have changed at all. A path led down to the wooden gate in the stone wall. Brilliant wildflowers nodded red, orange, blue and pink, fragrant in the evening air.
Charlie followed the path to the gate.