by Andy Conway
The vicar’s questions about his past had terrified him. He had learned to pretend he had a past — he had even made up facts about his life — his parents dying in a train locomotive accident, his college degree at a university in New York, to account for the unusual way he spoke, the phrases he found tumbling from his mouth that people found strange — but his past was a blank.
He had awoken one afternoon, standing on a country lane that led to Moseley village, and could remember nothing from before that moment.
And since that day he’d been pretending. He had settled into life. It no longer disturbed him. He had even begun to believe in his fabricated past.
But although his life beyond that moment was a vast, impenetrable fog, there had always been memories breaking through. Memories was almost too grand a word for them: they were impressions, feelings, nothing more. They were too fleeting to fully see, but they would disrupt his consciousness, attacking him with lightning flashes revealing otherworld monsters.
He had lived here happily for fourteen years but he knew he didn’t really belong here. He feared he belonged in that otherworld, with those monsters.
But Arabella, he thought. Arabella would make him belong here.
He wiped his face of soap and patted his throat with a soft towel and examined the man that peered back at him from the mirror.
An empty man who would soon be made whole.
Back in his bedroom he put on his grey suit and straightened his cravat and, just before leaving, he took his favourite red silk handkerchief and tucked it into his breast coat pocket.
As he left the house, he reached for his derby hat and set off to St Mary’s church for the wedding.
3
TOM CONWAY JERKED AWAKE as the train wailed. That sad, mournful sound that also promised adventure. He wiped his face, worried that he might have drooled, and glanced around the long third class carriage, rammed with people and thick with smoke.
Again that strange feeling. That he was being followed. Something that didn’t feel quite right. A haunting presence that had accompanied him all the way on the train from London.
He checked off all the passengers he could see. No one he knew. But still that feeling, insistent, gnawing at him.
Guilt.
Quite possibly. Guilt for what he had to do. The crime he was going to commit in Birmingham.
He glanced up at the luggage rack above. His carpet bag still nestled there, untouched. No one had swiped it. Soon it would be sitting on the shelf of the pawnbroker’s in Sherlock Street, the Jewish broker he’d known from long back, a man who gave you a decent loan for very little by way of deposit.
Again, unable to shake off that feeling of being watched. It is guilt, only.
No, a pair of eyes from the far side of the carriage, watching him. That man in the strange deerstalker hat. No country gentleman, but a shabby genteel city dweller from the East End, of that he was sure. His keen eyes darted away and fixed on the landscape flitting by.
Was he being watched?
No. Just a man, bored, staring, his gaze meeting another man’s and looking away in embarrassment.
Tom viewed the landscape passing by too. Green fields and rolling hills had given way to the stain of the great city and its industrial madness.
Birmingham New Street was the next stop.
He rose, heaved his carpet bag from the rack, and stumbled through the carriage to jostle for a spot by one of the doors, his hand clutching the brass handle.
The familiar sight of the city he’d known long ago. And yet so much changed. It was growing and transforming, shifting its shape, taking over everything around it, swallowing it all, consuming it in its dark, dirty shadow as it spread far and wide.
Here he would do it.
The train was swallowed in the dark tunnel it always passed through just before sliding into the second city, and he stared out at the blackness, smiling at the dim memory of another Birmingham: the Birmingham of the future. The Birmingham of a hundred and twenty years from now. The Birmingham he’d known so well before he’d travelled to this time.
He looked around at his fellow passengers with wonder, knowing that not a single one of them would live to see it. Even their children might never live to see it: a world beyond their wildest imaginings.
He had lived here so long that he barely believed it himself. He could hardly remember what he had escaped from in that dark future — what had compelled him to hide in Victoria’s England. He had always felt more at home here than in that future, but now he wasn’t sure he still had it in him. He’d settled on mid-Victorian Birmingham so long ago as a place where he might retire. He’d always known there would be hardships, but it had been his favourite era, the one he’d researched the most. He’d known enough to give him an edge in the survival stakes. And to see it all first hand, being born, growing so rapidly and with such grandeur. It was an opportunity not to be missed. He had planned to die here, but now he felt he should leave and go back to his own time. The gig was up.
After he did this thing.
The train emerged from the tunnel with a shriek of its whistle and brilliant bright sunlight blinded him for a moment as it eased under the great open glass-roofed cathedral of the station, belching steam.
Here he would commit his crime. Here he would ensure his old friend Daniel Pearce never married Arabella Palmer.
He twisted the brass handle and stepped down onto the platform, clutching the red neckerchief at his throat, and pushed through the crowd, trying to shrug off the feeling of being watched.
4
“... AND FIRST MIRACLE that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; and is commended of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men: and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God; duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.”
Reverend Colmore smiled and gave a wink, which made Arabella titter.
Even in this dim light of the church, Daniel could see a flush of crimson colour her cheeks as she fixed her eyes on him, brazen and bold. She had a spirit about her that no other girl in Moseley had. She would make him normal. That smile of hers would free him from the nightmares forever.
“Then I’ll witter on about the three ordinations,” Reverend Colmore said.
There was more shuffling and nudging behind him from Arabella’s bridesmaids to be. Daniel glanced across at Mr Palmer, who seemed put out. His wife was frowning. They seemed to be of the opinion that Reverend Colmore wasn’t quite taking their daughter’s impending matrimony as seriously as he ought.
Daniel offered a smile to the man who would be his father-in-law in a few days’ time. It was a smile that said Do not worry. He’s only putting your daughter at ease. It will be solemn enough on the big day. Mr Palmer breathed in and nodded and grimaced as if suffering indigestion.
Daniel had first met the man fourteen years ago, calling as a stranger to the village having heard Mr Palmer wanted a tutor for his eight-year-old daughter. He had taught her the rudiments of English and Mathematics, painfully aware of the irony of knowing so much about those subjects while knowing so little about himself. But it was his habit of sketching that had caught her imagination and he had taught her how to draw and paint, discovering his own talent, which had led him into his current profession.
One day, long after he’d ceased to be her tutor and had become a friend of the family, Arabella had ceased to be a girl and had become a young woman. He wasn’t aware of the exact day that it had happened, but by the time he was, he was also acutely aware that this young woman was in love with him. Mr. Palmer had seemed delighted with the turn of events. Daniel was by now a respectable gentleman who taught at the Birmingham Municipal School of Art, which was housed in a grand building behind the very grand art gallery and extremely grand council house and t
hereby shared their grandiosity. And as a man of thirty-five, he was the perfect age for the 22-year-old Arabella.
Daniel was also a man who owned a modest cottage in the respectable and genteel suburb of Moseley. While Mr Palmer’s business was located there, his home was in Balsall Heath. The respectable part of Balsall Heath, he always said, or Lower Moseley, when he was feeling particularly pretentious. It had been respectable, but more recently the teeming mass of Birmingham’s urban poor had spilled into the place and transformed large parts of it. Balsall Heath, he often said privately, was sinking fast, and while Palmer and his wife had accepted their fate, trapped by negative equity, they wanted their daughter to escape. Daniel was her lifeboat.
They might let out their house and flee to Moseley themselves, but for the lack of a few hundred pounds of investment. In a few more years they might have it. But Arabella’s dowry would delay that move for the time being.
“And then I’ll ask you, Daniel Pearce, if you wilt have this woman as your wedded wife, and so on and so forth, as long as ye both shall live. And that’s when you’ll say?”
“I do,” said Daniel. “I mean, I will. I will.”
“Very good,” smiled the vicar, turning to Arabella, who raised her head to meet his gaze. “And then I’ll ask you, Arabella Palmer, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband—”
“I will,” said Arabella, beaming at Daniel. That golden, clear brilliant smile. The smile that would save him.
“Well, don’t be too hasty, my dear,” laughed Reverend Colmore. “Let me ask you if you’ll obey him, serve him, love and honour him first. Your cue is as long as ye both shall live.”
“I will!” said Arabella again.
Daniel smiled. She was the sweetest creature, and she would be his wife soon, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death...
He shivered.
“Then I shall ask Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?”
Mrs Palmer nudged her husband and he stepped forward and blurted out, “I will!”
“Very good,” said the vicar. “Then you face each other. Daniel, you take her right hand in yours, and each in turn, repeat after me. First you, Daniel. I, Daniel Pearce...”
“I, Daniel Pearce...”
“Take thee, Arabella Palmer, to my wedded wife...”
He repeated the litany, wondering at the warmth of Arabella’s hand, thinking she might be finding his hand too cold, wondering if he might mess up the words in two days’ time, and then he listened as Arabella did the same, her voice timid at first, but growing in confidence as she reached the end.
“And then it’s time for your best man to step forward with the ring. Arthur, is it?”
“He’s coming this afternoon,” said Daniel. “He lives in Southsea now.”
They continued without him, and the reverend ran through the remainder of the ceremony right up until the reading of St. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, which he, thankfully, didn’t read.
He shook everyone’s hands afterwards, even Arabella’s, which raised titters from her bridesmaids, and then they walked to the rear entrance because the front entrance was being mopped.
Reverand Colmore sidled up to Daniel as they made their way down the aisle and said, “So you have no family in attendance?”
“I have none,” said Daniel, the old familiar qualm of shame rise up inside him. It was the thing that marked him out from his fellow villagers. He was a man alone in life.
“Well, that will all be mended soon, eh?” the reverend laughed.
“There’s my best man, Arthur. And I have one or two friends in the village, and some colleagues from the school of art who will attend.”
“Good show. Plenty of people for your side of the church, then.”
The reverend squeezed his shoulder and pushed through the rear door to the dark graveyard behind the church.
“And when all this is done and you’re a happily married man, no doubt you’d like to take an active part in my Anti-Steam Tram Nuisance Society meetings?”
Daniel wavered, “Well, I’m not entirely sure about my feelings on—”
The reverend laughed and slapped him on the shoulder again. “A joke, my boy. I’m sure you’ll be far too busy making children and enjoying the company of your beautiful new wife to bother about an old fuddy duddy like me campaigning about a few tram lines through our village.”
“I see,” said Daniel, allowing himself a smile. “You know, as ugly as they are, I do think a steam tram through the village will be a great benefit, Reverend.”
“The future calls us, I suppose, and will have us do its bidding whether we will or no.”
“Quite.”
“But dash it all, this is Moseley,” he said. “If we give in to this we’ll end up part of Birmingham, and none of us wants that.”
There was polite laughter from Mr Palmer and his wife, and Daniel stepped back, allowing them to say their last words to the vicar before the big day.
He turned, ready to leave, and scanned the sunlit graveyard. It contained a handful of headstones, the land only acquired as an extension of the graveyard a decade ago. He gazed, entranced, as if the gravestones were singing to him.
Something odd. A strange feeling.
He caught Arabella, beaming her beautiful smile at him, not listening to the chatter of her parents, and he shrugged off his eerie mood. She sidled up to him and whispered, “What’s wrong, my husband to be?”
He took her hand and said, “Nothing, my wife to be. Someone just walked over my grave, is all.”
Her hand slid into his and she whispered, “I hope it’s a great many years before you have such a thing, Mister Pearce.”
Her bridesmaids giggled and her father cleared his throat and Arabella stepped away from him. In two more days he could her hand as much as he liked.
Reverend Colmore bid them all good day and they filed along the shaded north side of the church, emerging happily into warm sunlight, filing through the lychgate.
That feeling of surprise again. He always felt it when he came here. He expected to see a war monument next to the lychgate, but there wasn’t one. There never had been one. It was as if there was a different Moseley, somewhere in time, of which he had a distant memory, somewhere on the other side of that fog of amnesia that cut him off from his true past.
He bade Mr Palmer and his wife a pleasant day, and gave Arabella a peck on the cheek, at which her bridesmaids tittered once more, then touched his derby and walked down the slope of St. Mary’s Row, thinking that the next time he walked out of this church he would be a married man.`
Always that sensation of surprise as he approached the village — that the western side of the road was a wall of trees and not shops; that it was a T-junction and not a crossroads. He’d thought it the first time he’d arrived here, the day of his ‘awakening’, and in fourteen years he’d never managed to shake it off.
Since that day, the village had become smarter. The triangular patch of grass that had been the village ‘green’ was now paved around, with low wrought-iron railings shielding the grass. The pavements that ran along the shops, though, were still wooden.
Joe Rees held court on the green, selling his papers. “Terrible murder!” he yelled, waving a copy of the Birmingham Gazette. “Terrible murder in Highgate!”
Daniel waited for a soda merchant to pass, his horse clip-clopping up the hill, and crossed over to the green.
“Morning, professor!” Joe sang, touching not his cloth cap, as he did with every other gentleman, but the brooch he wore on his lapel. Daniel had given it to him the day he’d appeared in Moseley village: an old penny that someone had turned into a brooch, with an engraving of a zephyr blowing wind from furious cheeks and the letters D and M in ornate filigree.
“I don’t suppose you’ll let me buy that back?”
“No fear, sir. It’s my lucky charm.”
Daniel smiled indulgently and Joe winked. The shared conspiracy of o
ld comrades. Joe had been the first person Daniel had met when he’d arrived in Moseley. Then, a boy, now a young man, just as impish, but having made a success of the business at which he’d promised to thrive. The brooch had indeed brought him luck. But every time Daniel saw him, he felt a keen longing to snatch it from him, as if it might reveal the secret of his past.
“Murder, you say, Joe?”
“Arr, poor woman cut to ribbons,” said Joe, wincing.
Daniel handed over a shiny silver threepence and caught the flash of Victoria’s profile as it disappeared into Joe’s dirty paw. “And an Illustrated Police News too,” he said.
“Won’t be nothing about that, yet. It’s this Saturday’s edition. Might be in next week’s, I’ll bet.”
“That’s fine. I’ll catch up on last week’s murders,” Daniel smiled.
Joe handed over Saturday’s edition and Daniel glanced quickly over its lurid drawings of murder and dismemberment. It was ill befitting a man of his station, but he had always found the broadsheets, with their blocks of text, so dull. It had always seemed right to him that newspapers should have pictures, so the Illustrated Police News was his secret delight, and he wondered for the first time if this might be the last time he bought it. Perhaps his wife to be would not allow it in the house.
Joe handed him his penny halfpenny change with a cheery, “Thank you, professor.”
Daniel tucked the Illustrated inside the Gazette and rolled it into a tight baton, tucking it under his arm as he walked back over to the pavement.
He stopped dead. The wide gap between the new, taller Bull’s Head pub and the row of shops that led to the old Fighting Cocks Inn seemed to him suddenly eerie. He stood and stared at the wrought iron gate at the rear of the graveyard. Again, that shudder of recognition. That intimation of disaster.