The Girl Who Lived Twice

by Tina Clough

  She stood in the middle of the living area and slowly turned round. What I’ll do is remove every single thing I don’t positively love and be quite ruthless; just get rid of them, never mind if it was a gift. Once I’ve cleared the decks I’ll reassess what I’ve got left and decide what I need to buy, to make it work. I want the whole to be made up of colours and shapes that work as a whole. When I look through the opening in the wall from the kitchen to this room I want to see a balanced composition, something that satisfies me the way a good work of art does.

  She shook her head and smiled at herself. This was such an unexpected thing to suddenly come into her head, like a change of personality. How come I never realised how important this is? It’s like I’m just beginning to get to know what I’m really like. Maybe it’s taken something like this shock to make me see that I’m not necessarily as others have made me believe I am. Perhaps I’m a different person, but I always allowed others to tell me who I was. My parents used to encourage me to listen to Sarah and let her help me, they made me see myself as timid and not brave enough to speak up for myself and make my own decisions. And I let myself be passed like a parcel from Sarah to Greg and I never stopped to consider if I really needed so much guidance and protection. It’s as if invisible threads anchored me to the perceptions of others. All it takes is a little jerk to break those threads – not that they meant any harm, they were just being protective and I probably encouraged it.

  She started in her bedroom and hours later she realised that the TV news had been and gone and at some stage she must have turned the lights on, it was dark outside and she was hungry. Mad! She headed for the kitchen for soup and bread and decided to make a list of things while she ate, before she forgot all the things she had thought of while she worked. My god, look at the chaos I’ve created. Best continue while I’m on a roll.

  The place was a jumble of things she was getting rid of. There were piles of linen, towels and clothes sliding into shapeless piles, ornaments, crockery and kitchen things covered the bench tops in the kitchen and some framed posters and prints leant against the hall table. She ate her meal and wrote a list: Boxes, extra-large rubbish sacks, take things to the second-hand shop; throw stuff in the clothing bins at the liquor store. This was enough to keep her flat out on Sunday, before and after the airport trip.

  At half past nine it felt like time for a change - she went to check her emails and maybe play a game or two of computer solitaire before going to bed. There was a reply from Brett with some family news and a couple of links to clips on You Tube; they could wait until tomorrow. A spam email offered her a mysterious chance of immense riches if she registered on a website, and then, there it was - a message from someone, whose name she didn’t recognise:

  “My neighbour is an elderly man and he has no computer. He wants to reply to your advertisement in the NZ Herald. He has asked me to send you the following message: My name is Carl Morgan. I think I can help you. My phone number is 09-320 1826. Thomas Livingston.”

  Mia had a funny feeling in the pit of her stomach. This sounded different from all the other lunatics, calmer and more normal. What harm could there be in ringing a phone number? She glanced at the time and decided to do it right away. After half a dozen rings, just when she had decided that there was nobody home, he replied. “Carl speaking.”

  Mia spoke hesitantly. “I am the person, who put that ad in the paper. I hope I’m not calling too late, but I just got the message from Thomas.”

  “No, it’s not late for me. I’m old and a night owl. I must say I’m impressed with that computer mail, very fast! I’m not used to these things. And I didn’t expect you to be a woman.”

  “I would really like to talk to you,” said Mia, ignoring the problem of being, surprisingly, a woman. “Can you tell me briefly what happened to you – just so I know we’re talking about the same thing?”

  “Well, I had a very strange experience a long time ago. It felt as if I was being forced though a narrow pipe of some kind. I remember it got very hot, and it was pitch dark. I thought I’d died, but it took quite a long time. When it started happening I was just walking down the road on my way to work and suddenly everything went black. I thought it was an earthquake, and that I had been swallowed up by a crack in the ground. And then when it stopped I was in a different age.” He sounded gruff and factual, as if he didn’t expect to be believed.

  “That’s right,” said Mia, her voice was trembling. “That’s just how it was for me, only it happened to me in the middle of the night. How long ago did it happen to you?”

  “I’ve been here for 20 years now and I think I’m here for good.”

  Mia thought for a moment, trying to gather together all the theories and questions she had stored up. “How far back in time did you get shifted?”

  He was surprised. “Back? I didn’t go back, I went forward. I was twenty-four years old in 1946 and walking to the tram stop at six in the morning on my way to work. I arrived here in 1985 and found that I was a 63 year-old man. And I can tell you, it wasn’t funny, it was bloody awful!”

  Mia was stunned; the possibility of moving forward in time hadn’t occurred to her – she had assumed that things went backwards. She thought for a second. “I would really like to meet you and tell you what happened to me. We might be able to help each other somehow. Would you mind?”

  “That’s why I asked Thomas about the funny address and he told me it was this sort of computer mail. Thomas is my neighbour and he’s very helpful. Well, he’s really my landlord. I said I thought it was someone looking for a person I used to work with a long time ago and I didn’t show him the ad, I just gave him the address thing. I think he was worried I’d get into something tricky!”

  “I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you did that! I’d love to sit down and talk as soon as you have time. Where do you live, Carl?”

  “I live in Eden Terrace, in a flat at the back of a house, granny-flat I think they call it now. It’s not very big, but I’m comfortable here. Thomas is the man who owns the place; he lives in the big house at the front.”

  Mia wrote down the address, realising that she would find it easily. “I know where that street is, it’s in that funny pocket of small industries and offices down the slope beside the top of Mt Eden Road, light industry with a few houses still left. I went there last year with Greg to see someone at a panel-beating place.

  She thought quickly of the mess in the apartment, of taking Sarah and James to the airport, and how time might work out best. “Would it be all right if I come and see you mid-morning? I’ll bring some biscuits and we can have a chat?”

  Arrangements were made, and she put the phone down and sat there feeling quite stunned. This was going to be interesting, but it was nearly surreal to find that there was someone else it had happened to. She went and got the pad from the dining table. She turned over the page with the list of her superfluous belongings, and wrote a few of her thoughts down and then took the pad to the bedroom, when she went to bed. As she sat in bed reading her book things occurred to her and she jotted them down to make sure she’d remember all she wanted to ask Carl. She read until her eyes shut, blinked them open for just long enough to turn the light out and went to sleep.

  Sunday morning was a blur of activity. Up and down in the lift with bags of cast-offs and then off to the charity clothing bins at the liquor store car park, a quick visit to the supermarket to beg some cartons and to buy biscuits and a fat roll of large plastic rubbish bags. Then back to the flat to fill boxes with the better china, ornaments and anything else a charity or second-hand shop might want. More clothes and linen went into large black rubbish bags, and soon stacks of boxes were lining the passage and piled-up bags made an untidy mountain in the corner by the front door. She stood back to consider. It would take at least several carloads to get rid of this lot, and then she would need a trailer to shift the rejected furniture – a problem to ponder. I’ll ask Sarah and James if the Salvation Army shop
in Birkdale is still open – there’s certainly nothing I can do about it right now.

  A quick wash and change, then Mia grabbed the pad and the biscuits and ran down the stairs to the car park. Ponsonby Road was busy as usual, the cafes tables on the pavements full of locals, talking and reading the paper, their dogs tied to their chairs. It’s like a village in a city, she thought. I bet half these people know each other at least by sight and all their dogs know both them and each other by smell. A few minutes later she found the turning she wanted, Nikau Street - short and steep with the back of the TV3 building on the right, round a couple of corners and she was there.

  The main house was a large old-fashioned villa with a deep veranda across the front and down one side, and a tall picket fence lined with neglected-looking roses. There were two letter-boxes on the gatepost. Mia parked on the street and walked down the drive past the side of the big villa. The garden went a very long way back and Carl’s granny flat was a small cottage at the far end. As she approached a short and stout old man with a shock of white hair came to the open door. “You must be Mia. Come on in, I’ve got the kettle on.” He shook her hand and ushered her in before following her. He looked tanned and fit and his handshake was firm. The front door opened straight into a kitchen/living room, with 1940’s oak furniture, some nice rugs and a couple of landscapes in heavy frames. It looked comfortable and homely. Through a door to another room, she could see a cat sleeping on a neatly made bed.

  “Coffee or tea?” asked Carl, busying himself with kettle and cups. Mia put her bag and keys on the arm of the sofa and came to stand next to the kitchen bench. “Coffee thanks – milk and one sugar. I brought some biscuits.” She ripped opened the packet of Tim Tams and Carl handed her a plate to put them on. It was obvious which armchair was his. The table beside it was laden with books, his reading glasses, a metal ashtray full of bits and pieces and a small radio. Over one arm of the chair hung a neatly folded tartan rug, ready for a chilly evening. Mia sat down in the second armchair and realised that now they both faced the blank screen of the TV. She stood up and moved her chair a bit, so she and Carl could look at each other.

  “That’s better,” said Carl approvingly. “The chair is that way because the last person who visited was Thomas – we watched the rugby together. He’s my only visitor these days, apart from you now.” He stirred his coffee and looked searchingly at her with faded blue eyes.

  “Now then, young lady! You start and I can ask you questions as you go and then I can tell you how my life has been and you can ask me things. If that sounds like a good idea to you?”

  An hour later they were back in the kitchen end of the room, making another cup of coffee. Mia felt bemused and slightly surprised at how open she had been ; she had told Carl absolutely everything, including her plans to change several aspects of her life this time round. There was no doubt whatsoever that Carl and she had both been wrenched from their lives to another “strand of time” as Carl called it. He had laughed at her expressions “That Time” and “This Time” when she used them. “That’s a good one. This Time and That Time - I like that. I haven’t bothered to find words for it, but it’s good to have a proper phrase when you talk to someone about it.”

  “Carl, it’s so strange to sit here with you and talk about it as if it’s normal. I haven’t been able to tell anyone, in case they’d think I am mad or something. I know it’s real and that I’m not mad, but I cannot figure out how to put it to someone else, so they’ll believe me.”

  Carl nodded. “I know! I have the same problem, and apart from the very first year, I haven’t told anyone but Thomas, and that was only after knowing him for a couple of years. He bought this place when I’d already been in residence for about twelve years, and he let me stay. That was four years ago.”

  “Did he believe you? Or was he too polite to say?”

  “Oh well, who knows? He says he believes me. I don’t know that he does, but it was the first time I had told anyone since things went really wrong in my first year in this time strand, and I might not have made a very good job of explaining it to him.”

  Mia pricked up her ears. “How did things go wrong back then?”

  “Ah well, I haven’t told you my story properly yet, have I? You see, you’ve gone backwards in time, so you know exactly what’s happening, you know who everyone is and how things work. I went forward by about 39 years I think it was, and it was like landing on another planet.”

  “Heavens, you poor man,” said Mia. “I never thought! I suppose you found you had friends and family and you didn’t even know who they were!”

  “Yes, I had friends and a job that I didn’t know how to do, and I’d been married and was widowed. It was probably really lucky that my wife had died. Think of the complications! I didn’t know who my in-laws were or what my wife had been like, or if we had children – nothing! Turned out I had a car that I couldn’t drive, though I had a legal licence. I didn’t know how to get from A to B, had never seen a TV – I was completely lost!” He made a wry face at the memory. “The only good thing was that I woke up in what was my house then, which was a bit of luck, because if I had been materialised back on the street, where I was when it happened, how would I have known where I lived? As it was I didn’t know where to go to work or where the shops were or anything. And all the money had changed, too, so it was like a foreign country.”

  Mia was shocked. “You poor thing, it must have been like living in a nightmare. I never thought of how difficult that would be. How did you cope?”

  Carl looked her in the eye, cleared his throat and said: “I ended up in the loony bin for nearly two years. They decided that I must have had some sort of catastrophic breakdown and somehow lost my memory. You see, when I realised what year it was, and that I’d lost near on forty years of my life, probably for ever, I really thought I’d go mad, in fact, I didn’t know if had perhaps lost my mind and my memory! My mind thought I was a young single man just starting out on the main part of life, and then suddenly I was near retirement in a body ready to slow down and take it easy.”

  Mia was horrified “And I suppose nobody believed you?”

  “No, of course they didn’t – not that I blame them! I stayed at the mental unit and let them treat me and then resumed my life with some support. By selling the house – that’s the house my wife and I had lived in for thirty-odd years, I made quite a lot of money, which is invested. I sold the car too and just kept enough furniture for a couple of rooms as you can see. Now I rent this and live on the pension and the interest from that money. I do very well, but I have no friends.”

  “What about your family or your wife’s family?”

  “Good lord, no, my wife’s family thought I was mad! They didn’t want anything to do with me, when I came out. Turned out I didn’t have any family of my own by that stage, apart from some nieces and nephews, and they were the same. Couldn’t be bothered with a mad old uncle. My wife and I had no children, so there was nobody really. Friends were no use, I didn’t even recognise them when they came to visit at the start. I never went back to work, of course, came out a pensioner.”

  Mia felt her eyes fill with tears. “Oh, Carl! I can’t bear to think of how ghastly it was for you - how on earth you managed to cope is beyond me. Compared to you I’m having an easy time.”

  “Well, you know, it’s not been bad the last 15 years or so. And I’m very comfortable here and I have money enough to do what I like. I read a lot and I watch documentaries and films. I grow tomatoes and bits and pieces in summer. Every now and then I write some little things and put them in a drawer - it entertains me and keeps my mind busy. And I’ve learned to cook too. I’m a pretty good Italian cook these days, you know! And Thomas – he’s a nice friend to have and we get on really well.”

  Mia’s mind was racing ahead, finding questions to ask and things to discuss; this was more intriguing than having been moved a year backwards in time. “But that means that though your body is 84, yo
u feel mentally only 45? Or am I getting confused? I hope it’s OK that we talk about it?”

  Carl reached across to pat her arm. “Of course it is, I’m glad to have you to talk to! Well that thing about what age my mind is, that’s been a bit of a poser for me. I feel that I have only experienced 45 years, yes, that’s right. But my mind isn’t your average 45-year-old’s mind, because the old brain inside my head has actually lived through the full 84 years, as has the body – as you can see!”

  He paused while Mia thought this over and added: “You know the funniest thing though, is that in That Time as you call it, I was a heavy smoker, but I’d never drunk anything alcoholic in my life. When I sorted myself out in This Time I found I had no desire to smoke at all, and when I was released from the loony bin I realised I liked wine! Which again proves that the body had lived through changes, which I can’t remember. Interesting thing, this time shift thing.”

  Suddenly Mia realised that it must be well past lunchtime. “I have to go now, but you must come and visit me, Carl. We can’t leave it here – I feel as if you’re family now, in a different way from ordinary family.”

  Carl took her hand in both of his. “You are such a good girl, Mia, and so well balanced. I never thought I’d find anyone else who’d been moved to another strand of time – I think we’re very lucky to have found each other. You must come and have dinner here one night and I’ll cook you something special.”