Ruby knew something was wrong as soon as she opened her eyes the next morning. Not because of a sixth sense, or anything as silly as that. She knew because Bee was usually an early riser. While she’d stayed in the flat, her chatter with Breno and quiet singing and clinking of breakfast cutlery and pots were the soundtrack that roused Ruby. So when Ruby’s eyes focused on her bedside clock, which clearly read ten twenty, and the flat was silent, she knew Bee was gone. She pretended, for the last few minutes, that her grandmother had overslept. But when Ruby entered the other bedroom she picked up Bee’s hand and it was quite cold. Ruby thought over their conversation, and wished she could know that Bee heard that Ruby loved her. She wanted to talk to her again – to make sure she’d received the message. The certainty that would never, ever happen made Ruby weep.
44
SEPTEMBER 2018
Robert and Odette
As soon as Robert entered the kitchen and placed his trilby on the table, Odette gave him a watery smile and announced she was going to bed. He assumed the tears were because the Conclave had rejected her application. They must have done; he had told them about her therapy.
‘Bad news?’ he asked Claire, once Odette had left.
‘She says she got it, but she has cold feet.’
Robert glanced over his shoulder, to check if Odette was really out of earshot. He was sure she had lied to Claire. She wouldn’t want to admit the Conclave had turned her down. Or perhaps they did offer her something. But it wasn’t the prestigious job she imagined. A support role, safe for people with fragile mental health, that didn’t involve use of the machines. That would make sense.
‘Did she say what put her off?’ Robert asked. He took a seat at the table.
‘Some woman made her feel unwelcome. I tried to persuade her she should take the job anyway. She shouldn’t give up on an opportunity like that.’
‘Don’t lean on her too hard,’ Robert said. ‘Maybe the place is a bad fit for her.’
His guilt had lessened. Odette had wanted this job so much, and it hurt him, of course, that she should be distressed. Yet he was convinced his action was the right one. No job was more important than Odette’s health, and the Conclave clearly thought a history of trauma made you unfit for service.
‘I thought she was more resilient,’ Claire said in bewilderment. ‘She applied herself so well at school and university.’
‘She hasn’t been herself since finding that body,’ Robert said. ‘Since then she’s been… vulnerable. We need to watch over her for a while. And perhaps be a little gentler than we have been.’
Claire removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. ‘You think we’re putting too much pressure on her?’
‘From the best of intentions, my love.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘But now it might be time to pull back.’
*
The day had been long but Odette was too agitated to attempt sleep. Instead she slipped into the front room, where the bookshelves were kept. Following Claire’s unexpected lapse into Kreol, Odette wanted to find the stories they had once brought to England. She finally located them on the bottom corner shelf, dropping to her knees on the rug. Picture books, mostly, which were simple enough for Odette to still understand. She ran her fingers over the illustrations in primary colours and peeled apart the pages that had curled together. Each book took only a few minutes to read. She reshelved the last of them, wishing there were more.
Then a green spine caught her eye. La revanche de Peredur. It was the book she had bought outside the inquest – the old crime story, in parallel French and Kreol. She hadn’t touched it since that day in February.
It fell open at the title page. No publishing house was listed there – and no date of publication. That was odd. But the glue in the spine had grown brittle, and perhaps a page had fallen out.
Her French was sufficiently fluent to read the opening paragraphs. An unnamed woman – referred to throughout as la Mère – challenged drinkers in a bar to a game of Russian roulette.
Odette’s eyes drifted to the Kreol text. A prior reader had circled four words on the page. Get. Disan. Rezilta. Ankar. The words appeared in different sentences, but there must be some connection between them. Why else would they be circled?
Odette took the book to her bedroom. At her desk, she flipped open her laptop, and quickly located an online translator. Get – look at. Disan – blood. Rezilta – results. Ankar – again.
Why would someone circle those words?
On the smooth melamine of her desk, Odette pencilled:
look at
blood
results
again
She rubbed the words into a grey smear with her thumb. The book’s previous owner had been playing at cryptography, sending hidden messages. She wondered who the intended recipient was.
As ever, her thoughts drifted back to the body in the museum. There had been blood tests at the inquest. She sighed, a little exasperated with herself. No matter what distractions she sought, there was always some detail in the film or book or song that reminded her of the case. And now she’d been reminded, she wouldn’t sleep till she’d looked again through her notes on the mystery, for any clue that she’d missed.
Her ring binder was in reach, on her desk, as it had been for months. She flipped to the pathologist’s testimony and tapped her nail on the blood results. The pathologist said the dead woman had bacteraemia. The same bacteria was on the bullets. The bacteria was macromonas.
Odette read the name once more and let out a small cry. The bacteria was macromonas.
Before meeting Jim, Odette hadn’t known that macromonas was associated with time machines. Was it possible the bullets had passed through a time machine? Might they, then, belong to a time traveller? Either the dead woman – or her killer?
Odette closed her laptop and watched her reflection in the dark square of her bedroom window. Zach believed the body was Margaret Norton’s; wasn’t that consistent with a macromonas-ridden bullet? His theory now had extra heft. Odette’s choice, to join the Conclave or preserve her own integrity, grew less tractable. She might be compromised if she was in their ranks. But to ignore this real, physical evidence was immoral too. Claire had told her not to be afraid, which felt like futile advice, because Odette was very frightened of the path that lay ahead. Still, she would have to endure it. She was going to accept the Conclave job.
45
AUGUST 2017
Grace
There was one genie in Grace’s possession that Ruby hadn’t seen, because she kept it beneath the bedroom floorboards. This genie was a book. According to Conclave lore, every time traveller has an acausal book – a volume with no writer, which is passed from silver selves to green selves, and is superstitiously said to reflect something of its owner. The contents are always in the owner’s native tongue and are always bound in a single, unique, unduplicated copy.
Sometimes the contents are little more than word salad with recognisable prosody but no meaning. Angharad, for instance, had a book called Quantum Wombs which she couldn’t make head or tail of. Lucille’s book was a collection of verse titled The Philharmonic Dining Rooms and Margaret owned Daisy, a hefty pseudobiography – which was somewhat opaque but in a literary fashion that could be deciphered with effort.
Grace had received her book soon after the Conclave’s formation, from one of her eldest selves. It was called A Ring of a Very Strange Shape and contained handsomely illustrated allegories, one of which was struck through with fluorescent highlighter. The fables’ relevance to Grace’s life was unclear. She looked for connections to her favourite tales – to the Wyndhams, and Butlers, and Tiptrees already on her shelves – but found none. She resigned herself to not knowing the book’s significance and concealed it beneath the floor of her flat.
But the book had come back to her thoughts the day she met Ruby. Their conversation about favourite stories on the train had brought it to mind. That night, after Ruby had left, Grace rolled back the carpet and prise
d up the wooden panel to examine the book again. It was in pristine condition. Although some acausal books spring into existence with dog-eared corners and the scent of aging lignin, they are oddly resistant to further damage and decay. Grace leafed through the pages. It was as she thought; there were references to mice, and gangs pretending to be clerics, and Punch and Judy men. This book was the words from The Box of Delights in another order.
Grace reread the paragraph scored in yellow. Now she knew her connection to the book was Ruby, she could interpret the words more easily.
A whole village went fishing in a sea of burning garnets. The oldest gave instructions: take this, hold that, stop daydreaming, and don’t take part with the past. Their haul hit the base of the boat with a slap. In the middle of the net was a woman of rubies, red as the heart, who scorched the wood. The oldest said, By law I must dance with you. The woman of rubies replied: What else must I do by law? The oldest replied: You must keep vigil at my death. But, the woman of rubies said, you must do the same for me, and how can that be possible? Because, said the oldest, my life is a ring of a very strange shape.
The allegory was telling her what her silver selves told her: she was going to end up with Ruby. Sleeping with Ruby had, indeed, felt like completion. But amidst the usual symptoms of infatuation – the short attention span, the dwelling on Ruby’s appreciable charms, the desire to be desired by her – Grace was panicking. Fate was closing in, and she wanted, for just a little while longer, to be only her, without Ruby in the picture.
For it seemed to Grace there were only two ways a couple could survive stretches where one partner was either dead, or yet to be born. The first was to rework one’s understanding of binding commitments, and accept a degree of openness in long-term relationships. The second was to maintain a single partnership which admits no others even after one partner dies – because that partner continues to exist in the past, and is thus still reachable. Grace leant towards the strictly monogamous, fundamentalist approach. She believed this solution was both elegant and romantic – while it was theoretical. Now that reality approached, Grace was frightened. The days before time travelling, when Grace was free to fall in love with any woman or man she met, were officially over. Ruby was it. After her, there was no one else.
*
The following evening Grace was due to leave 2018 for 2075. On arrival in the future she reported for her psychological debriefing with Dr Siobhan Joyce. Grace completed her psychometric tests speedily and was content to chat while Siobhan recorded her scores.
‘What brings you to 2075?’ Siobhan asked.
‘The new replication sites, in Cuba. I’m going there to help.’
‘Oh! Lovely. Any other plans?’
‘Ruby’s due to die this week. I should be with her when it happens.’
Siobhan paused in her scoring.
‘How do you feel about that?’
Grace worried that her ardour wouldn’t survive Ruby’s death. The fever of Grace’s thoughts, which made Ruby relevant to any disparate subject, was new; it might be destroyed by seeing Ruby old and frail. And because Grace felt promised to Ruby, she wanted to hold on to their attraction. If it dissipated Grace didn’t feel free to extract herself. The future was set.
But Grace had no wish to explore such issues with Siobhan. The Conclave’s psychological services were oversensitive to these kinds of doubts and anxieties, reading into them the signs of burnout, or incipient breakdown. Grace gave a more nonchalant reply.
‘I’ll have to go to her deathbed at some stage. Might as well get it out of the way.’
‘Like a dental appointment,’ Siobhan mused.
‘Or a smear,’ Grace suggested.
Siobhan returned to the psychometric scoring.
‘Doesn’t that ever worry you?’ Grace asked.
‘What?’
‘When we start to see people’s deaths that way. An unpleasant inconvenience, to tick off the chores list? A date we write in the calendar so it doesn’t slip our minds?’
‘Mm. I’d call it an adaptive strategy.’ Siobhan came to the end of her score sheet. ‘All your psychometrics are fine. You’re good to go.’
Grace went to her apartment, to pick up the wings she’d need for her flight. They were in her dressing room among her pilgrim heels and go-go boots, which had been dulled by a layer of dust. She strapped the box of wings to her back.
I could fly straight to Cuba, she thought. Be as nonchalant as Siobhan thinks I am. Pretend I forgot to look at the calendar, and Ruby’s death escaped my notice. Leave it for my silver selves to do. There’s no rush. There’s the rest of my life to turn up at Ruby’s death bed. I could spend a little longer without Ruby in the picture.
On the balcony the yellow sky awaited her. The doors could be left open when she departed. In her absence the apartment had grown stale and needed airing. She flung herself from the balcony and spun three times through the air before she pulled the cord. A wing’s breadth of twenty-four feet shot out from her shoulder blades. The current caught her and she began to glide. Buildings below her righted themselves. One of them contained Ruby.
Ruby, who had been there when Grace died, sixty years before.
It was fair to repay the favour. If Grace’s feelings changed so be it. Seeing Ruby die, and being changed by it, would remind her she was still human, and not yet Siobhan, or Margaret, or even her own silver selves with their casual disregard for death. Seeing Ruby die, Grace would feel something. With this thought Grace looped in the sky, the streets disappearing and reappearing through layers of cloud.
46
SEPTEMBER 2017
Ruby
September came, and with it autumn. Around the crematorium the trees were bronze and burgundy. Inside, Ruby sat in the front pew. She was dressed in black silk, held together with pearl buttons. Dinah was also at the front – with Henry, who Ruby had never met before, at her side. The mourners, row upon row of them, awaited the eulogy. To Ruby’s sadness and disappointment Grace was not among them. It had been a month since they saw each other.
Mrs Cusack, Bee’s friend, stood among the lilies at the lectern. Both Dinah and Ruby had declined to speak. Neither believed they could provide a reading without breaking down. Dinah’s grief was fluid and seeping. The hair that framed her face was stiff with salt water. Her breath juddered. I’m an orphan, Dinah had said that morning. I’ve been orphaned. Inwardly Ruby protested that she had been orphaned too. It was Bee who’d mothered her. Ruby could never voice in Dinah’s hearing that Bee was the true parent to both of them. That would be cruel, she knew. But she still felt her loss was as great as Dinah’s, and resented the expectation that she would be less affected.
They’d agreed that Mrs Cusack would be the best person to speak at the funeral. She’d known Bee for decades – longer than Dinah had been alive – and her advanced age made her practised at funerals. She was a monochrome column in her mourning dress and veil. Her voice was steady as she addressed Bee’s neighbours, the village shopkeepers, the dog walkers Bee knew from her morning constitutionals, and the worshippers from Bee’s church. The only people missing were the pioneers.
‘Bee rarely mentioned her scientific career,’ Mrs Cusack said, from the lectern. ‘But her silence was not from shame at her departure.’
Next to Ruby, Dinah stiffened. During their preparations for the funeral, Dinah had insisted the eulogy should focus exclusively on Bee’s later years. But Ruby was gratified that Mrs Cusack swept aside this restriction.
‘Her family wanted to live outside that particular shadow, and she deferred to their wishes. My friend lived alone after raising her family – excepting her long-time companion, Breno, who was third of his line and will be making his new home with Bee’s daughter Dinah. Those of us who were lucky enough to be Bee’s neighbours will all remember her ability to spin a good yarn. I will be forever thankful for the kindness she showed during my mother’s final months, because she relayed all the news of the village wh
en my mother could no longer leave the house, and read novels to her when the print finally grew too dim. Bee showed me compassion when my mother departed, because she understood grief. The loss of her beloved husband early in their marriage was always present in her mind. Both Barbara and Antonio believed in the life to come, and it is a great consolation to me – as I’m sure it will be to you – that they are now reunited.’
They were reunited before, Ruby thought, remembering how Bee had tricked herself into thinking Tony was at her bedside. A delusion, but a happy one, that Ruby hoped took fresh hold at the moment of Bee’s death. Mrs Cusack returned to her seat. The coffin rolled through the velvet curtains to the sound of Scott Walker. Ruby accepted then – not a second before – that she would never see Bee again.
*
It was on the walk to Bee’s house that Ruby saw the stranger. An elderly woman stood among the sand dunes, the tide going out behind her, while the mourners progressed along the road. She wore a pastel pussy-bow blouse with a large patent handbag. Her short hair was ash-blonde and carmen-rollered.
She was Margaret Norton.
Ruby broke away from the mourners. She removed her funeral heels so that she could walk across the sand, and felt the grains rise between her toes. Margaret did not come to meet her halfway.
‘Why are you here?’ Ruby asked her.
‘To express my condolences.’ Margaret smiled and blinked slowly.
‘Is that all?’
‘No. I came to speak to the executor of Barbara’s will.’
That was Dinah. If she were confronted by Margaret, there would be a scene.
‘Surely you don’t think you’ll inherit anything?’ Ruby asked.
‘No, I don’t expect to be a named beneficiary. My aim is to ensure any stolen property in Barbara’s estate is returned to us.’
‘Stolen property?’
‘By which I mean atroposium.’
The Psychology of Time Travel Page 19