Touchstone Season Two Box Set

by Andy Conway

  “I can’t get through,” I said. “Something’s stopping me.”

  “Perhaps you should go stand at New Street, in the same spot. Maybe that will make it easier.”

  I shook my head. “It looks nothing like it does in the photograph. Horrible busy intersection now, clogged with traffic. You can’t see the street through the buses and exhaust fumes.”

  He paced, twirling his silly waxed moustache points for a while.

  “You’re a photographer,” he said. “You think in visual terms. I thought the photograph would work.”

  “It usually does.”

  “I have an idea. But you’re going to have to come to our time.”

  “The future?”

  I couldn’t imagine being in the twenty-first century. 2017 was a date they only had in science fiction stories. I’d seen 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Gaumont. Would 2017 be like that: all space stations and rocket launches? In forty years, I’d be in my seventies. I couldn’t imagine being forty, let alone seventy. Mrs Hudson and Mitch had never given me any hint that I was still alive in their time. I assumed I wasn’t.

  Because if I was alive in their time, wouldn’t they be asking my older self?

  “There’s a new invention,” he said. “It might freak you out a bit, but it might be just the thing we need.”

  “Is it a time machine?” I joked.

  “You could call it that,” he said.

  A TRAM.

  They had trams back in the city. These were not like the trams of my childhood – rattling charabancs dragged by the net of electric cables that smothered every street, the trams they’d torn out after the war and replaced with fume-belching buses – these were smooth gliding sleek bullets, exactly the kind of thing I expected of the future.

  The tram ran along Stephenson Street and turned up the hill to Corporation Street, crossing that intersection with New Street where Victorians had stood amazed watching Sioux Indians a hundred years before.

  No. A hundred and forty years ago.

  I couldn’t help peering through the windows to see how the city had changed. New Street was now pedestrianised – imagine! There was a new station building all made of shiny chrome. And the people walked around looking at pocket calculators.

  Mitch chattered, distracting me as if he didn’t want me to look too closely. Maybe he thought it would divert me from the mission.

  The tram rode right up Corporation Street and I noticed new shops made of glass. Something called Poundland. Quite a few shops boarded up. They were either closed or this was some new anonymous retail fashion. We turned into Bull Street and there were more glass towers squeezed between the buildings I knew. It knocked me off balance.

  The Gaumont cinema was gone. I got a flash of Colmore Row and Snow Hill station, but it was nothing like the station I knew. The old Edwardian building they were knocking down in 1976 was now a vast concrete plaza edged with glass buildings. Did they not build anything with stone anymore?

  Then we were gliding down a canyon between two great buildings with a grass verge to the side.

  “Are you all right?” Mitch asked.

  I was standing with my palm covering my eyes, staring at my Victorian shoes.

  “I feel a bit dizzy.”

  “Just don’t look at it, if it bothers you.”

  We shuddered to a halt and stepped off onto a platform. I raised my head and took it all in. A dirty collection of platforms not too dissimilar to the old Victorian station I knew. We stepped to the side and joined a crowd of people.

  I gripped my raincoat over my arm, like it was a lifebelt, swiped my straw boater from my head and wiped my sweating brow with my cuff.

  Mitch patted me on the back. “It’ll be here in a minute.”

  I nodded, like I understood, concentrating very hard on not falling over. Deep breaths. Sucking up fresh, cold air.

  A tram came, triggering a chatter of excitement from the crowd around us. We stepped on board and huddled into a corner seat at the rear where we could see the backs of everyone’s heads. They were all dressed in Victorian clothes too. Had those fashions come back or were they sightseeing time travellers like me? Lots of derby hats, a straw boater like mine, a few top hats, some flat caps. Shouting and laughing. A party atmosphere.

  The tannoy chimed and a pleasant female voice said, “Welcome to the Virtual Reality Tour of Birmingham.”

  “What’s that?” I whispered.

  “You’ll see.”

  The tram set off back the way we’d come and a few people cheered further down. I felt us rising, and suddenly the windows lit up.

  “Sit back and take in the sights of Birmingham as it was in the past.”

  “What is this?”

  Mitch patted my arm. “Don’t worry; it’s just a visual display in three dimensions. It’s made to match where we’re riding. We’re going to see a simulation of the city as it was in the Victorian era.”

  So this was his new time machine: an amusement park ride.

  We came up onto Bull Street and through the windows there were no glass buildings, no cars, buses, no people staring at their pocket calculators – just sepia brown streets crowded with horses and carts, the pavements alive with Victorians. Some of them seemed unreal, like cartoons. Others looked like they were from an old film.

  Now it made sense, the crowd on the tram was a fancy dress party, taking a tour into the past.

  “Concentrate,” said Mitch. “When we pass New Street, that’s your moment.”

  I nodded, dug in my pocket and pulled out the photograph. Native Americans riding past the corner of New Street and Corporation Street.

  The woman on the tannoy intoned a soothing commentary about our surroundings but I tried to shut her out. We were sliding down Corporation Street. A horse and cart rode alongside us for a while, then flickered and fizzled away.

  “See it,” said Mitch. “Feel yourself back in that time.”

  The photograph in my hand. The Victorian street racing by. The fourth of November, 1887. It was racing towards me. I wanted to close my eyes to concentrate but I forced them open, staring, drinking it in, trying not to blink.

  We dipped down the slope and I could see it ahead, the intersection with New Street.

  Mitch took his hand from my arm, releasing me – unanchoring me. The corner of the street rushed towards me and I turned to my right to catch it.

  On the curve of the corner, the shop sign H. Greaves with its sloping blind, and next to it Cornish.

  There.

  Dizzy.

  Falling.

  My eardrums burst and I tasted tin on my tongue, like I’d been punched. A cold blast of air.

  Lying on the street. My hands grazed.

  “Here, what the blazes!”

  Rough hands dragging me up. A policeman. Walrus moustache.

  “You’ll get yourself ruddy killed falling here!”

  Pulling me out of the street to the corner. A boy darted past to pick something up.

  “Oy!” yelled the policeman. He slapped the boy round the ear and took the thing he’d snatched from the street. Handed it to me.

  “Here you are, sir.” His eyes bugged out as he saw it.

  My roll of banknotes.

  “You nearly lost that, sir.”

  “Thank you,” I croaked, shoving it into my pocket.

  “Now stand well back.”

  I could see the boy, a shabby-suited, flat-capped ragamuffin, rubbing his ear and scowling on the corner of New Street and Corporation Street, under the blind and the shop sign that said 36. H. Greaves.

  Another policeman on the other side, pushing people back, bodies standing in the street the pavement was so narrow.

  A gang of boys over there. A man with a grey beard and a Gladstone bag. I looked at the photograph in my hand.

  The same scene.

  The only thing missing was the Indians riding by. And the young chap in the light suit and straw boater. I glanced around to find him, expecting
to see him joining the tableau.

  The photographer was directly in front of me, bending over his box on a tripod, loading a plate, covering his head with a black blanket.

  Hysterical laughter fizzed in my throat. Standing behind him, holding the photograph he was about to take. These moments of time never to be repeated.

  I was there. I’d done it. I was in 1887.

  Catching my breath, trying to breathe deep and slow, knowing I’d faint if I didn’t calm down. A sudden growling in my stomach. Ravenous hunger. I looked behind me. There was no ramp to the shopping centre. A great ornate building sloping down the hill of Stephenson Street. The old Exchange building. I’d almost forgotten it. But I’d grown up with it there and seen it demolished ten years ago.

  I felt sudden excitement. The urge to run around and drink it all in: the city as it used to be. Always this sensation. Always this need to close your eyes and count to twenty and tell yourself you’re here for a reason, not your own curiosity.

  But, oh God, it was such a beautifully grand Victorian city. And they’d just knocked down as many of the beautiful buildings they could and replaced them with Brutalist concrete. When you could go back and see it all like this, you realized what a crime it was.

  It was cold. I felt it through my thin suit. Across the street, the straw boater man still hadn’t arrived, and I could hear excitement up the street. The roar of the crowd far up there. The ringing of hooves echoing off the buildings.

  Then I realized.

  I pulled the photograph from my pocket to look closer.

  The man in the summer suit and straw boater.

  It was me.

  I cried out with astonishment. All this time staring at the photograph and I hadn’t recognized myself!

  The procession was coming. A band blasting out a hideous brass cacophony. I had to get across the street. Get into the photograph.

  The policeman was holding us back. I dodged him and ran across to the other corner and took my place beside the grey-bearded man with the Gladstone bag.

  The cheers rippled through the crowd like a wave, just ahead of the open carriage that headed the procession, drawn by two white horses walking at a snail’s pace. One man held the reins, with a top-hatted footman standing behind him.

  The man driving the carriage wore a royal blue frock coat with a pale brown Stetson, and from under his white beard he smiled broadly, his eyes resting on me for a moment.

  Buffalo Bill.

  Behind him came a broad open wagon that housed the Cowboy Band, with their deafening brass fanfare. And then a long parade of cowboys on horseback. Some of them waved their pistols and rifles in the air. One of them spun a lasso above his head. That woman smiling benignly. Was she Annie Oakley?

  After the cowboys came the Indians, led by one man imperious on a white horse, a handsome face with bright eyes that shone like sapphires, though they could not have been blue. He had the poise of royalty and everyone around me fell silent as he passed. This must have been Red Shirt, the chief who had so impressed Queen Victoria.

  Then came the genuine Sioux Indians riding four abreast in their buckskin breeches and war shirts decorated with multicoloured quillwork, eagle-feathered war bonnets shining brightly above their heads.

  And behind them the women. I scanned them for the face I might recognize. Somewhere in their midst was Katherine Bright, the woman I’d come to investigate.

  A commotion.

  A chestnut brown horse was skittish, panicking, and its rider was struggling to control it. Another Native woman struggled to reach over to pat the horse and hold its reins.

  Her red hair, unmistakable, though she was dressed just like all the other Native women. She might easily pass for one of them if you hadn’t expected to find her among them.

  And. Oh.

  She was beautiful.

  Pity flooded my heart. She’d been banished, sent to a far-flung corner of the earth. She had suffered. She had crawled a million miles through dirt and pain.

  I felt an overwhelming desire to help her.

  And then she was gone and the parade was over, only a band of leafleters surging through the crowd pressing flyers into every hand. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. At Aston Lower Grounds. The first show starting tomorrow.

  The people who’d been jammed against me now stepped into the street, dispersing. The photographer on the opposite corner packed away his camera, smiling to himself.

  “This is him.”

  “This one, Herbie?”

  I stumbled. Something knocked me hard.

  The little boy with the cap. His friends surrounding me. I looked for the policeman, but he was far up New Street.

  “What ya mean, stealing from our mate Herbie, here, eh, mister?”

  The tallest of them, right in my face, a vicious snarl of hate. He could only have been twelve years old, they were all children, but violence came off them like the stink of beer.

  “What do you mean?” I said, trying to raise my voice, to draw attention to what was happening. “I didn’t touch him.”

  No one noticed. Was I invisible?

  The tall boy shoved me in the chest again. “You took his money. You need to give it back.”

  “I didn’t take anything. He tried to steal my money.”

  “Prove it,” he spat. “Let’s see it.”

  They were going to mug me. There was a razor in his hand. I hadn’t seen him take it out. My throat clammed up. Fear and adrenalin flooding me.

  I was too aware of the raincoat over my arm. I needed to free it, so I could punch. Then, like I hadn’t made the decision myself, I threw it over his head.

  And I was running down New Street, pushing and dodging through the crowds.

  I’d punched him too. So fast I hadn’t seen it myself. Thrown the raincoat over his head, punched him, and shoved them aside. A tangle of fallen bodies.

  But they were behind me. Chasing me through the crowd. That I knew.

  I didn’t look back.

  Tearing down New Street, aware that at the bottom I could turn right into the markets, or left onto the High Street.

  There, a policeman up ahead. I could run to him. He would stop this.

  Two men in cloth caps between him and me. Their eager eyes spotted me, saw prey, saw the commotion rolling through the crowd in my wake.

  I sprinted right and found myself running down a steep hill. Not the street I’d expected to see. No, that street was built in the sixties. But there was no Rotunda now. No concrete underpass leading down to the markets.

  Was this Spiceal Street? The spire of Saint Martin’s the only thing I recognized down there. And the Nelson statue before it, in the middle of the street that widened out into a square. I ran down, past a pub called The Lion & Lamb, wild thoughts of taking sanctuary in the church.

  The pavements alive with people. Flower girls in tattered shawls. Market traders. Bowler-hatted gentlemen. A few in top hats. Every shop had a blind drawn over the pavement. They screened me from my pursuers. But I heard them pounding behind me.

  My ridiculous straw boater. A beacon, leading them to me. I thought of throwing it. But the summer jacket, just as bright and conspicuous. It made me a swimmer oozing blood in a sea of sharks.

  Veering to the left, past Nelson. Not the church. God would offer no protection. A street to the left. Moor Street. I could hop on a train and escape? Glancing up, I recognized nothing. No station. Had it been built yet?

  On, down the crowded pavement above which the street sign said Bull Ring. Lost. All of this was gone.

  American Fresh Meat Company, Birmingham Coffee House, a hop merchants, a milliner, a chemist. Three golden balls hanging above the street, a pawnbroker.

  None of these could offer me escape.

  A baker’s on the corner. An alleyway to the left, arched.

  I ducked in and stopped short.

  Golden Court.

  A narrow, grimy alley of hovels. An old slum right in the city centre.

&
nbsp; I pushed on, looking for a way out. Stinking, thick with human grime, dodging startled urchins in rags, old women and men huddled in the gloom like dazed opium smokers.

  My chest burning, I nipped into a back yard, closing the gate behind me. No one in the yard. Laundry flapping on a line. The stench of ordure, cabbage and something rancid, something dead.

  Doubled over, trying to breathe, I retched into my hand, dry heaving.

  Footsteps gunning down the alley. Tearing past.

  I crouched to my haunches. I didn’t want to play anymore. I wanted to go home. I’d failed.

  I could go home right now. Flit back in time. Go back to 1976.

  Thinking hard, holding my breath, I wished myself back. I didn’t want to be here, in this stinking cesspit, being hunted by psychopathic children. Home, with my wife, kissing the head of my beautiful daughter.

  I thought of her, till I could almost smell her skin.

  No good.

  It wouldn’t come. Fear could dampen the skill. This was why I needed photographs and images so much. I could focus on them and shut out everything else. If I’d brought a photograph of them with me – Sandra and the baby – I could get back to them.

  Stupid stupid stupid!

  I was stuck here.

  More clomping boots down the alley, racing past the gate that hid me. Shouts and calls. They were all around.

  I was trapped.

  The gate creaked open. I looked up with fear, springing to my feet, ready to punch and kick and claw my way out of there, glancing around for a weapon, a stick or something.

  A man staring at me, topless, his braces hanging from his trousers. Thick moustache.

  Not the yard gate. The back door. He’d come out of his house.