The Outcasts of Time

by Ian Mortimer

  Catherine puts down the needle and comes over. I back away instantly, cautious of infecting her.

  ‘Are you all right, John?’

  I put a hand to my brow. I am not feverish. ‘I think so. Yes.’

  I let her give me a hug and a kiss. ‘How fare the angels in Salisbury?’

  ‘They are fine. And how fare the angels here?’

  ‘All well. All in bed.’

  I sit down on a stool and look at the window which one day I will see ruined. I try to put the experience of the future out of my mind. ‘Things are bad across the county. The roads and fields are littered with the dead, and haunted by townsmen fleeing the plague. The markets are desolate spaces now – a few upended and broken trestles.’

  ‘Moreton market is flourishing and cheaper than ever. Buyers are scarce so the sellers are only too glad to see customers. I bought serge enough for all the children to have a new tunic for fourteen pence.’

  ‘And what about you? Did you find something for yourself?

  She smiles and looks at me with raised eyebrows. ‘I bought pepper.’

  ‘Pepper?’

  ‘Only a little. Isolda from Wreycombe and I were talking about it, and there it was in the market. The trader knew Isolda and as there were so few folk about, he gave us three ounces for elevenpence.’

  ‘That’s more than a fair price. Does this mean my wife will be coming to me all hot and vigorously spiced?’ I ask, putting my arms around her and kissing her.

  ‘I’m a meal you fancy, then,’ she replies, kissing me back.

  ‘You can hold me to that.’

  She kisses me longer, and I try to pull her down on to the straw by the fire. But she breaks away. ‘Let me make sure that the boys are asleep.’

  She goes through to the sleeping chamber. I sit on the bench and look into the fire, thinking about the vision I have had of the future, of what is to come, and how lucky we have been to escape the plague. I think of the closing of the monasteries and the beating of the tin beam house, the carriages with glass windows and the rich paintings. I think of the troops who hanged William and of Rose in the workhouse. All this knowledge, it is too much. I just want to wash it from my mind, and the only way I know of doing that is to lose myself in her. In my Catherine. The smell of her hair, the feel of her body, the joy of our lovemaking, the sounds of her delight – my satisfaction in her happiness, her satisfaction in mine.

  I look in the direction of the sleeping chamber.

  I hear nothing. There is just a dark space.

  I get up and walk over. Even in the doorway, I hear nothing.

  ‘Catherine?’

  She does not answer. Perhaps she lay down to sleep too? In the dimness I can see hardly anything, and so I head back to the hall, and pick up the rushlight. Taking it back to the sleeping chamber, I raise it to see where she is.

  Our three boys are laid out, on the mattress. Just like Elizabeth Tapper’s two sons. Catherine is hanging from a rope in the corner.

  I scream her name – ‘Catherine!’ – and with it feel all hope flood out into the void of death. Grief slices through my body, and I cry. I strike the walls and the door, yelling to the far side of existence.

  Then I see the light.

  ‘So, you’re alive then?’ says a female voice.

  I am in a long yellowish hall, in which there are two rows of metal beds. My wounded back feels tender, my hand still hurts, but neither of them compares to the pain in my head, and the feeling of grief that has pierced my heart. I turn my head from side to side to try to dislodge it but the pain is fixed within me, hardening by the minute.

  My eyes slowly focus on the shape that is talking to me. It is the face of the woman with the curly black hair and the beautiful eyes, from near the cauldrons.

  ‘That was quite some knock you took from the transporter,’ she says. ‘You stepped right out in front of it, you silly ha’p’orth. It is a miracle that you aren’t seriously injured.’

  ‘Are you an angel? Is this Heaven?’

  She laughs. ‘No, I am Celia and this is Devon.’ She adjusts a bandage which is wrapped around my head. ‘Oldest joke in the world, rhyming Devon and Heaven. Sorry about that. Actually, this is the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. I came with you in the ambulance.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘The ambulance. Big van, bed in the back, siren, red cross on the side. I’m helping out here with the nurses. I had just finished my shift and was on my way home when you saw me at the tea stall. I mean, it’s all very flattering when strange men stop in the street and stare at you – but personally I prefer it if they don’t then get themselves run over. It’s a bit embarrassing. Anyway, I suspect you’re suffering from concussion. The doctors will probably want to keep you in here for a while. They’ve asked me to fill out a form with your details. What’s your name?’

  ‘John of Wrayment.’

  ‘John . . . ?’ she asks, holding a board with a piece of white paper on it and a writing stylus. ‘I find it hard to understand your accent. Ovreeman? Averyman? Everyman?’

  ‘Of Wrayment.’

  ‘Can you spell that for me, please?’

  I close my eyes. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll put down “Everyman” and we’ll come back to that one if we need to. Next of kin?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your wife’s name is?’

  ‘Catherine.’

  ‘And how old are you, Mister Everyman?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘When were you born?’

  I look at her. Her brown eyes invite honesty and I have no reason to lie. ‘The Wednesday after Whitsun in the fifth year of the reign of King Edward the Second.’

  ‘You mean Edward the Seventh? Nineteen-o-five? So you are thirty-seven years old?’

  ‘If you say so. When were you born?’

  ‘Me? Oh, the eighth of May, nineteen eighteen.’

  ‘And who is your husband?’

  ‘That’s very forward of you, Mister Everyman. I’m not married, actually, although I do have a boyfriend. He’s an American, called Ron. He is about the only good thing to have happened to me since the war began.’

  ‘Why are the French trying to destroy our city?’

  ‘You mean the Germans. The French are on our side – at least, the resistance fighters are. When our chaps bombed Lübeck in March, the whole city was destroyed by a firestorm. So Hitler ordered that all the equivalent English cities should be obliterated. He started with Exeter.’

  I hold up my hand to stop her. ‘I am an ignorant man, Mistress Celia . . .’

  ‘Just call me Celia.’

  ‘I do not know this man, Hitler.’

  ‘Goodness me. How can anyone not know who Hitler is? Your concussion must be bad. He’s the Chancellor of Germany – the leader of the German Third Reich, and he has invaded most of Europe.’

  ‘What are the crosses in the sky called?’

  She stops, leans forward and looks at me. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

  I see two fingers. ‘Two.’

  ‘I’m going to have a word with someone. Back in a tick.’

  I close my eyes. Oh, Catherine, I pray that that was not your fate. Of all the bad dreams, the worst is the one that could be true. Catherine, please, I pray, through tears and on the day of my death, please, don’t have done that. Even though all our beautiful boys be dead, don’t give in to the shadows. Live – remarry, try to be happy.

  ‘And then, will you try to live, John?’ I hear her say in reply.

  And what can I say to that?

  ‘I repent. Though it be too late, I repent of the moment I chose to leave our own time.’

  I look at the ceiling and its strange round lights hanging from thin black ropes, feeling myself shivering in the bed. This is no place to spend my last hours. I have to do the good work that I must attempt, for William’s sake as w
ell as my own. I lean on my elbow and look along the room. There are many men in here, some with their limbs in bandages. A few are accompanied by their womenfolk. Some are young lads. If I am set to die, and the flying crosses are the agents of my destruction, then these men are liable to be killed. The Germans will destroy this whole hospital, killing everyone within it. My presence here is a silent death knell for these people.

  I throw back the covers and, slowly, swing my legs out of the bed. I find my shoes and put them on, my hands shaking even more than they were this morning. I cannot tie the shoes either, even when I have hold of them. I am still trying to tie my second shoe when Celia returns.

  ‘John, what are you doing? You’re suffering from concussion. Get back into bed, you need rest.’

  ‘Mistress Celia,’ I gasp, my pulse beating fast. ‘Did you discover what those crosses in the sky are?’

  ‘They are called aeroplanes. But, John, you need . . .’

  ‘Mistress Celia, I must go now. No one here is safe. Not you, not these poor people – no one can come near me. I am doomed to die today, and if anyone is with me when an aeroplane strikes me, they’ll not be spared. I’ve seen the damage they wreak.’

  I try to step past her but she grabs my arm. ‘John, what do you mean? We’re all in danger, every day and every night. We just have to keep calm and maintain the order of our ordinary lives, and stay optimistic.’

  ‘Where’s my overtunic?’

  ‘Your jacket? It’s here,’ she says, pointing to where it is hanging up behind her coat. ‘I had them take it off you . . .’

  I put it on.

  ‘John, what are you doing? You are in no fit state to leave. Your head’s in bandages because you’ve cracked your skull. You’ve lost a lot of blood . . .’

  ‘I am sorry, Mistress Celia. But I cannot have the deaths of all these people resting on my conscience. I need to go to Heaven to plead for my brother’s soul, and to discover what happened to my wife and children.’

  I lurch towards the door. Celia picks up her coat and comes after me. ‘John, listen. You need rest. You need to recuperate. No aeroplanes are going to attack you in here, it is quite safe.’

  I leave the room and start to go down the stairs.

  ‘Do you even know where you are going?’ says Celia as she descends behind me. ‘Listen to me, John!’

  The note of anguish in her voice forces me to stop. I look up at her. ‘Mistress Celia, you are most kind, and I could not bear it if you were to be struck by an aeroplane aiming to kill me.’

  ‘You silly man. The Germans only drop bombs after dark, when the gunners on the ground can’t see the planes to shoot them.’ She looks at me. ‘Do you have anywhere to go?’

  I shake my head. ‘I’ll go to the cathedral.’ Then I think this through a little further. ‘No, no. I cannot go to the cathedral, for if the crosses in the sky see me, they’ll attack the cathedral and all it will take is the slightest knock and that whole vault will fall, and all the stonework on the south of the quire by Saint James’s chapel.’

  Celia descends the last steps to join me. ‘John, listen. You are hurt. You were knocked over by a lorry, for Heaven’s sake. You need looking after.’

  ‘This is my last day on Earth,’ I say, shutting my eyes.

  I feel her put her arm around my shoulders. ‘In that case, you are coming back to have a nice cup of tea at my flat. And then, when you’re ready, we’ll find you somewhere to stay until we can get in touch with your wife and let her know you are safe. There are hostels around the city for people who have been made homeless by the bombing.’

  Celia takes my arm firmly and leads me out of the hospital, across Southernhay and through the cathedral precinct to the remains of the High Street, and eastwards, through the midst of the devastation I saw earlier. We walk past the building that I thought looked as if it had been bitten open by some mighty jaws from the sky. ‘That’s such a shame,’ she says. ‘Everyone loved Deller’s. My father bought me my first glass of wine there on my twenty-first birthday. There was a string quartet playing Mozart, and waiters with bow ties, and all my family and friends were there. The quartet all stopped playing their piece to play “Happy Birthday to You”, and everyone in the café started singing along. It was frightfully funny. And now look at it. So sad.’

  It is impossible to tell where the East Gate was. Nothing stands there now – not even the building that Father Harington told me was where they held dances. Everything is piles of smashed brick and metal on the other side of the street too – until we reach a huge modern building. Celia tells me it is called the Odeon, and they show ‘pictures’ there. We pause outside and she surveys some large colourful images with writing on them, one of which depicts a metal boat with giant muskets attached to its deck. ‘I want to see that,’ she mutters. ‘They say Noel Coward is brilliant. He wrote the script and the music, and stars in it. I was hoping to go with Ron this afternoon.’

  I am about to ask what she means by ‘stars’ but I feel defeated by new meanings. I despair of understanding this age. I just turn and look back to the city. The cathedral rises over it, dominating it more than ever. A little sunlight is breaking through the clouds, and striking the twisted metal in the wasteland between it and us, and it seems to me that we are on the edge of a precipice. The cathedral might have lost its spires, and it might have a gash in the side that could give way at any moment, but still it stands, defiant, as if there was some truth that we who built her knew, and which will always be true.

  ‘They want it blown up,’ says Celia, turning and following my gaze. ‘Some of the councillors say that the German pilots are using the cathedral as a guide to line up on the houses in the east of the city, so we should blow it up ourselves, to save our houses. Madness, isn’t it? Like throwing a priceless heirloom on the fire to stop it being stolen.’

  Celia and I resume walking. Ten minutes later, we arrive at her house. It is one in a row: three storeys high and built of red brick. There is a protruding bay of windows at the ground floor and the floors above. Unlike the glazing I saw at Father Harington’s house, which was made up of many small panes in a sliding frame, these windows are made of large single sheets of glass.

  ‘I’m at the top,’ explains Celia, ‘but first we’ve got to get past Missus Harbottle. She’s about ninety and lives on the ground floor. She owns the place. She doesn’t approve of women living by themselves. So, after she realises I’ve come home accompanied, she’ll prop her door open and wait until you’ve gone, and then tell me off, knowing exactly how much time you’ve been here.’

  ‘She sounds a most moral woman.’

  ‘Ssshh.’

  Celia unlocks the white-painted door and I slip inside after her. The hallway is covered with a plain cream-coloured fabric, and so is the staircase, which is on our left. To the right is an open door. Seated in a large brown cloth-covered chair in the corner of the room, and looking out through menacing black-framed eye windows, is an ancient-looking woman. Skin sags from her face. Her lips, however, look unnaturally red, as if she had painted them.

  ‘Is that a man with you, Veronica?’ she asks.

  ‘It’s Celia, Missus Harbottle. This is John Everyman. He has been wounded.’

  ‘House rules, my girl. Not under my roof.’

  ‘Mister Everyman is only coming in for a cup of tea,’ says Celia. ‘He was run over this morning. He has only just come out of hospital – as you can see from his bandages. You would not refuse an injured man, would you?’

  Missus Harbottle peers in my direction. ‘Tell him to come closer.’

  Celia nods at me, and I walk closer. I stand directly at the foot of the chair, looking down at the old woman. There is a fine sweet-smelling dust on her face.

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Thirty-seven. And he is married.’

  ‘So you’ve got to know him quite well already then?’

  ‘Missus Harbottle, I drew up his notes in the hospital.’

&
nbsp; The old woman nods. ‘Very well. He may come in for a cup of tea. But I expect him to be out within the hour.’

  ‘Thank you, Missus Harbottle,’ replies Celia.

  We ascend a flight of stairs past various doors on the landings and the first floor. At the top there are two more doors: Celia opens the right-hand one. The room beyond has a sloping ceiling on one side, where there is an alcove with a window set into it, facing the back of the house. A small table with two seats is against the wall on my right; there is a fireplace in the wall opposite with a container full of coal. Against the wall to my left is a large cream-coloured metal object which has various levers and numbers on the front, and beside that, a deep white sink with taps over it. In front of the fireplace, hanging from the ceiling, is a frame supported on a rope, with several garments draped over it, drying. There is also one of those round white lights on a thin rope, like the ones I saw at the hospital.

  ‘I’m sorry about Missus Harbottle,’ says Celia, taking off her coat. ‘She is a terrible bore. And if she had any sense she’d realise it’s futile her trying to prevent Veronica and me ever taking our knickers off.’

  ‘Knickers?’ I ask.

  She makes a strange expression at me, widening her eyes. ‘Are you sure you’re married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She reaches up to the rack above her fireplace, pulls down a white garment with lace around the hems, and tosses it to me. I catch it and fumble with it until, holding it up by the sides of the largest aperture, I understand. Hurriedly, I hand it back to her.

  ‘Why, Mister Everyman,’ she says with a smile as she places it on a shelf, ‘I do believe I’ve made you go red. There’s no need to be embarrassed. I recommend you tell Catherine to buy a pair.’ She claps her hands together. ‘I promised you a cup of tea. That’s the next thing on the agenda.’ She walks over to the door and moves a tiny black lever set in a round black box in the wall, and the light in the middle of the room turns itself on.

  ‘How does that work?’ I ask. I go to the box, and turn the lever back, and the light goes off. I turn it again, and the light goes on.

  I turn it off again. And on again, marvelling at it.