by Winona Kent
And here his voice trailed away, and he was given to silence, as he again wrapped his arms around the woman he adored, and Charlie hid her face, and they stood for long moments, enveloped in sorrow.
“Might Mr. Deeley not travel with you, Mrs. Collins?” Augustus interrupted, gently, with a glance at the clock in the St. Eligius steeple.
11.55. Charlie turned her head, and looked at Augustus. “How?”
“I do not know how,” he admitted. “I know only that I have pondered an endless stream of urgent messages from someone called Nick, on your device. He implores you to return, and speaks of you waiting in Mrs. Foster’s sitting room at midnight. When you will be assisted back to your time. Why must Mr. Deeley be excluded from this journey?”
Augustus glanced again at the St. Eligius clock.
“I confess to a further interference,” he said. “But I have thought upon it, and I believe this meddling will have no ill effect upon the present. Yet it will mean everything to your future, and to the future of Mr. Deeley. By this night’s actions we have already altered the history books, as Mr. Deeley is clearly not destined to spend the rest of his life in an insane asylum. Unless we are very much more delayed and suffer the misfortune of being apprehended by Mr. Reader as the clock strikes twelve.”
Charlie’s mind was a muddle. It was becoming more and more difficult to understand what she knew ought to have made logical sense. She took Mr. Deeley’s hands into her own.
“Will you come with me, Mr. Deeley?”
“For you, Mrs. Collins,” Mr. Deeley replied, “I will go anywhere.”
“Then let us make haste,” Augustus suggested. “There is very little time.”
As Charlie, Mr. Deeley and Augustus ran along the western edge of the Village Green, Charlie faltered.
“I cannot,” she whispered, overcome at last by the poison coursing through her body. “I cannot—”
And she fell, unconscious, onto the cobblestones just beyond the wooden garden gate.
“Tell me what I must do!” Mr. Deeley, shouted, panicking.
“You must wait in the sitting room,” Augustus replied. “Beside the desk. That is all I that I know.”
Gently, Mr. Deeley lifted Charlie’s limp body into his arms. And then, racing against time, he staggered through the garden gate and kicked open the cottage door. He carried her through the kitchen and into the sitting room.
He watched, terrified, as her breaths grew short and laboured.
He knelt on the floor with her, cradling her head, holding her close.
Struggling back to awareness, Charlie grasped Mr. Deeley’s shirt.
Something horrible was going on inside her.
Something had ruptured.
The pain was all-encompassing and beyond anything the laudanum could touch. She could feel its poison coursing through her veins, sapping away her life.
“Please don’t leave me,” she whispered.
“I will never leave you,” Mr. Deeley promised, as the hands of the steeple clock at St. Eligius Church ticked over to midnight.
In the middle of Charlie’s sitting room, grasping her cavalry sword, Mrs. Collins took her place next to the big wooden desk.
On the other side of the Village Green, the St. Eligius clock began to chime the strokes of midnight.
Five…six…
Nick opened the family tree program on Charlie’s laptop.
There.
He clicked on Lucas Adams’ entry.
Saw the square turn brilliant pink.
Saw the smallest of ripples in the room.
Seven…
“Stay in the garden!” Nick warned, waving Sam and Roger outside.
Eight…nine…
There was a commotion in the front garden. A scuffle.
Ten…
Eleven…
He clicked on Sarah Foster’s square.
Brilliant mauve.
Ripples.
Small.
Then growing…
…washing forward like a surging tide…
Yes!
Nick bolted out of the sitting room, nearly colliding with Ron Ferryman as he crashed through the open kitchen door and made a bee-line for the sitting room.
“Don’t go in there!” Nick shouted.
“Wait!” Mrs. Collins called, with urgency. “The bottle!”
As the St. Eligius clock chimed twelve, she hurled the glass bottle in the general direction of the kitchen, missing Ron Ferryman’s ear by fractions of inches.
It crashed to the floor, shattering into pieces, as Ron Ferryman lunged at Mrs. Collins.
But it really didn’t matter.
Because something else was beginning to happen. The furniture, carpets and curtains were starting to change, to dissolve…
The transparent wall of ripples pulsed forward, eddying like the surface of a vertical whirlpool.
And as Nick watched from the safety of the kitchen, it swallowed the sitting room.
And Mrs. Collins.
And Ron Ferryman.
Kneeling beside the wooden desk in Mrs. Foster’s sitting room, Mr. Deeley wrapped his arms around Charlie, and listened as the last bell in the St. Eligius tower chimed twelve.
The sitting room was beginning to change. A raging waterfall was surging forward, cascading and tumbling, a deluge of thundering spray.
Swallowing hard, Mr. Deeley shut his eyes.
He hugged Charlie close.
And waited.
Chapter 37
The room in the Intensive Care wing of the Royal Memorial Hospital was crowded with monitors. Each of them flashed and beeped as it recorded a vital function of the patient who lay, unconscious and unresponsive, on a nearby bed.
Beside the bed, Fliss, the Acute Care nurse who had been assigned to Charlie, checked her blood pressure and respiration, her heart rate and oxygen levels, the various drips and drains, noting them all in her hour-by-hour logbook.
“How is she?” Nick asked, his face lined with worry. He’d been at her bedside since she’d been brought in. He’d notified her family. Her sister and brother in London had asked for regular updates. Her parents were on their way from Portugal.
“She’s stable,” Fliss replied. “No better…but no worse.”
“Patients in deep coma have been known to recover completely,” Sam added, quietly. “Mind you, patients in mild coma have died without ever regaining consciousness.”
“I love your optimism,” Nick said, testily.
“Just being realistic. Part of my training, I’m afraid.”
“This world could sometimes do with a bit less of that realism,” Nick said, taking Charlie’s hand and holding it gently in his own. “Come on, Charlie. We need you. The hedgehogs need you. The Village Oak needs you.”
Fliss finished the last of her hourly notations.
“Sometimes,” she said, “it helps if you play a favourite song. Music seems to touch a different part of the brain than the spoken word.”
Nick pulled his mobile out of his jacket pocket, and switched it on. He searched his music library, found what he wanted, and then placed his phone on the pillow next to Charlie’s head.
It was a song that The Shadows had recorded decades earlier. One of their earliest compositions, credited to their manager but later revealed to have been written by Hank Marvin, with help from his band-mates.
“My favourite,” Charlie’d once told him. “Jeff’s too.”
The pounding introduction on guitar and drums filled the hospital room. The twanging lead line on Hank’s red Fender Strat seemed to synchronize with the illuminated peaks and valleys and blips on the monitors.
F.B.I.
As Nick and Sam watched, Charlie stirred. There was a flicker of something behind her eyelids, a fleeting glimpse of a small awareness, so brief and so tiny that it might almost have been imagined.
The music filled Charlie’s mind.
She was sitting on a white linen picnic cloth on the grassy hillsi
de, surrounded by wildflowers and butterflies and misty trees. She could see a herd of sheep grazing nearby, and, in the distance, Stoneford Manor.
She was sitting alone. But she could see Tom and Jack, with their home-made kites, and Mary, picking buttercups with Sarah.
It didn’t seem real to her. It was more like a dream.
It was as if she wasn’t quite there.
And that music…that lingering familiar tune…where was it coming from?
Not from her phone. She hadn’t even brought it with her. She’d left it…where had she left it? She couldn’t remember.
Her gaze shifted, and she saw Mr. Deeley, lovely Mr. Deeley, strolling across the face of the hill, on the footpath that had been worn into the turf by generations of travellers.
She waved.
But Mr. Deeley didn’t see her.
Surprised, then frustrated, she tried to get to her feet…but was held back by a deep pain in her abdomen. Not the same pain as before. Something different.
She struggled to stand…but succeeded only in getting to her knees. She waved again.
Surely he could see her now.
Surely.
Mr. Deeley stopped walking. He looked at Charlie.
But as he stood looking, Charlie collapsed back to the ground, struggling to breathe.
She fought to stay conscious as Mr. Deeley ran towards her.
Reaching her at last, he dropped to his knees, and as she lost her battle with consciousness, he leaned over her, kissing her, tenderly, on her lips…
In the hospital room, Charlie lay on her back, her eyes closed.
Mr. Deeley was kissing her, and she wished the kiss never to end.
The monitors beside her bed registered a skip in her heartbeat, an increase in her respiration…
Her eyelids flickered.
“Fetch the nurse,” Sam said urgently, to Nick.
Charlie opened her eyes, and was momentarily confused. She could see him…and yet…
“Mr. Deeley,” she whispered, uncertainly. “Are you here? Or are you there…?”
Chapter 38
It had been a month.
And while Charlie had been recovering in hospital, the Village Oak had staged a small recuperation of its own.
According to Mike Tidman, who had visited his favourite patient daily, its condition was beginning to stabilize.
Meticulously excavating the contaminated soil from the roots on the north, east and south sides of the tree seemed to have halted the progress of the poison. Mike’s workers had layered the roots with a mixture of charcoal and microbes, to help break down the herbicide that still coursed through the oak’s vascular system. Then, they had brought in truckloads of fresh, clean topsoil to replace what had been removed.
It was only the west side of the tree that still needed attention. The ground had not been broken in order to maintain the oak’s stability. A scaffold was being built to support the roots in the new soft soil. And once the props were in place, Mike’s crew were going to finish the job.
In the meantime, there had been no more showers of dead leaves from the spreading branches. And the beginnings of tiny buds could now be seen, the promise of new and sustained life.
Charlie walked the short distance from the museum to the Village Green, where Nick was waiting by the low stone wall.
The reporters and politicians were long gone. The Tree Protectors had wandered home. The triangular patch of grass at the heart of Stoneford had returned to its quiet contemplation.
The green was not, however, deserted.
In the corner closest to Poorhouse Lane, Reg Ferryman, in a bright blue hard hat, was consulting with his brother’s contracted workmen. Ron Ferryman himself had not been seen, or heard from, since the night of July the fourth, when he’d been witnessed running into Charlie’s cottage.
A bulletin had been issued for his immediate arrest. The ports and airports had been alerted.
Next to Reg, two bulldozers stood by in readiness, all tires mended and re-inflated, ready for duty. The battle for the Village Green might temporarily have been put on hold by the tree’s near-miraculous recovery, but there was nothing to stop the development of the land at the end of Poorhouse Lane.
“Have you brought it?” Nick asked.
“Indeed I have,” Charlie replied.
“Then let’s do this. It’s about time.”
They walked together, to the little gathering at the edge of the green.
“Good morning,” Charlie said, to Reg. “I don’t actually believe you have the legal right to proceed on this project, Mr. Ferryman. So I think it best that you cease your operations, in order to avoid a lengthy, and costly, court case challenging your purported ownership.”
“Mrs. Lowe,” Reg replied, in an amused voice. “And upon whose authority might you be acting?”
“Upon my own authority, Mr. Ferryman,” Charlie replied, unfolding the fragile piece of paper she was carrying, and allowing him to read it. “See the name on the deed?”
Reg squinted at the ink-quilled signature.
“And who’s John Harding when he’s at home, then?”
“He’s my great grandfather,” Charlie said. “Nine generations back. I have the documents that establish the line of descendancy. And this piece of paper proves the Village Green and that land at the end of Poorhouse Lane belong to my family. Not to yours.”
Reg Ferryman roared with laughter. “It’s a forgery!” he exclaimed. “The deed was destroyed in a fire in 1825! We all know that, Mrs. Lowe. Even you!”
“There was indeed a fire in 1825,” Charlie said. “But it did not destroy the deed. That’s a piece of misinformation which I intend to correct.”
“And how do you know that? Were you there?”
Charlie, wisely, said nothing.
“Bit suspicious, that,” Reg said, turning to address the contractors. “All of a sudden, this mysterious piece of paper comes to light? You can make anything these days on a computer.”
“You’re welcome to look it up at the Land Registry office,” Charlie suggested. “You’ll find the other half of this deed—the official registration—in their historical archives. It took a lot of hunting, especially as it seems to have been deliberately misfiled, and would never have been found at all but for Nick’s persistence. The two sides match up exactly. We’ve had them verified.”
“As I said,” Reg repeated. “You can make anything these days on a computer.”
“But not,” Nick said, “a DNA match.”
“Eh?
Nick took back the piece of paper. A precautionary act.
“See this?” he said, pointing out the rusty brown stains at the paper’s top edge. “Blood. Belonging, we think, to my ancestor, Artemus Weller, a notorious smuggler in 19th century Hampshire. Mysteriously disappeared in 1825. Most believe he was murdered. We’ve had the blood analyzed, and it’s a definite match back to me.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Reg said, suspiciously.
“Why don’t you tell us, Mr. Ferryman? You’ve already acknowledged that Charlie’s family once owned the land. We think you’ve known all along that Charlie’s ancestor gave the deed to Artemus as payment for an outstanding gambling debt. And that your ancestor, Lemuel Ferryman, murdered Artemus in cold blood in order to steal the deed and claim it as his own. This small patch of blood here—”
Nick paused, to point out one further stain, at the bottom of the paper.
“—is not related to me. However I propose that if we were to extract a vial of your blood, Mr. Ferryman, and have it analyzed, we might find a very good DNA match to you.”
“Proves nothing,” Reg maintained, although he was clearly unsettled by Nick’s accusations. “And where’s that piece of paper been all this time, then, eh?”
“Here,” Charlie said. “Under your very nose.”
One of the workmen—perhaps he was a foreman—stepped forward. His name was Aldous Reader, and his ancestors had lived
in Stoneford for generations.
“I think,” he said, “that you ought to reconsider your plans, Mr. Ferryman. I think that you ought to at least seek legal counsel before going any further. I’m not prepared to order my men to undertake work on what could be an illegal jobsite.”
“Now is probably not the most opportune time,” Charlie added,” for you to make a grave error in judgement, Mr. Ferryman. Especially as your brother is currently a wanted man. And the tabloids are only a phone call away. They like a good scandal.”
“I’ll see you in court,” Reg promised angrily, whipping off his hard hat. “There’s still the matter of you breaking into Ron’s office and vandalizing his computer.”
“Looking forward to it,” Charlie replied. “Without your brother to testify, I don’t believe there’s any proof that was me. Since the fingerprints the vandal left behind were far too smudged to be of any use.”
Reg Ferryman stormed off without looking back.
“It’s amazing what comes to light when you start digging around in your past, isn’t it, Mr. Ferryman?” Charlie called after him, with a satisfied smile.
A little later on, while Charlie was tossing scraps of her baguette lunch to the pigeons, Nick paused to watch the completion of the wooden scaffolding that was going to brace the Village Oak during its final stages of rehabilitation.
And as was his habit, he took out his mobile, and checked for messages.
Naomi’s birthday had been an unqualified success. And the car she’d been hinting about had, of course, been delivered. Smiling, he downloaded a picture of his eldest daughter removing her L plates. She had passed her driving test. His life as a father was never going to be the same.
There was a second message.
Nick had to look twice at its sender, and at the date.
How could it be from Charlie? Charlie was just over there, sitting on old Emmy Cooper’s favourite bench. The one that had been fashioned out of a limb severed from the Village Oak after the famous lightning strike of Wednesday, June 1, 1825.