What about us?

by Jacqui Henderson

  “Thank you.” was all I could say.

  He carefully took it away from me and put it on the trolley. Then he pulled me up off the bed and held me tight as we danced again to ‘our song’. Later, he told me it was an Edwardian song called ‘Honey I miss you, I miss you all the time’.

  I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but that day we walked even more than we had the day before. We left the town and followed the path up and up. Most of the time we could see the sea, but sometimes it was cut off from our view and we contented ourselves with the green rolling countryside and the groups of trees, some already in their splendid yellow and orange autumn glory.

  We walked for miles, then climbed up to the Cap and looked down onto the sea, which was wilder than when we’d stood on the harbour wall, back in Lyme Regis. It was mesmerising, watching the grey and white waves swirl and suck at the shingle beach far below us. Jack had to pull me away, but he didn’t laugh at me.

  It was then that he began to tell me things; small snippets of his life. It was a bit like having the pieces of a jigsaw, but with no picture to guide me.

  I learnt that not only was there no rain where he lived, there was no sea, no trees and no grass. I didn’t get a sense of any weather at all in fact from the way he spoke. That was why he loved being outside so much; being close to nature made him happy and the way he talked about it made it sound almost spiritual. I’d never seen much of either the countryside or the sea, but I always knew it was there waiting for me, if I only I would take the bus or the train and go and find it. But I got the distinct idea that for him it wasn’t.

  He told me about not knowing his parents. Not in sad way, but in a curious way and was surprised that I had absolutely no interest in finding my father and little interest in finding any other members of my family, even though I could if I wanted to. It was like he couldn’t, but I wasn’t sure why. He didn’t say that he’d been adopted and there was no talk of any other family. Neither did I get the sense that he’d been brought up in a home, as several of the kids at school had; usually while they were waiting to be fostered.

  School had been a happy time for him. He’d always loved learning, but again there didn’t seem to be anyone else involved. He didn’t talk about teachers, friends, bullies; no one. He’d travelled a lot, I already knew that, but again he always seemed to be alone. It was all very strange for me. I mean, I choose not to allow people to get close to me, but they are still there, regardless of whether I want them there or not.

  History had always been his passion, but not political history; social history. He wanted to understand how ordinary people had lived through their times. I shrugged, saying that ordinary people probably hadn’t changed that much over the years and as always just tried to get by as best they could, even when things they couldn’t control seemed to be against them. He didn’t laugh at me, but told me that I was more right than I could possibly know, which pleased me. It was also clear that he’d had the whole education thing; he’d been all the way through university, while I’d barely made it to the end of secondary school.

  The day passed so quickly. We walked, we talked and occasionally we sat for a while on the grass or on a bench when we found one. Almost before I knew it and certainly before I was ready, we were back in town and the daylight was beginning to fade. I must have looked sad.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, looking concerned.

  “My day is nearly over. I’m not ready for it to be over yet...” I said glumly, feeling a little like a spoilt child, or at least how I imagined a spoilt child would feel.

  “The day perhaps, but we have the whole of the evening and the night still ahead of us. Hours and hours just for us.” he reminded me, then took my hands and kissed me, right there in the street.

  We didn’t go and wash or anything, we went straight back to the pub. We even sat in the same booth, but this time we ordered a different meal. I had lasagne and he had a thick fish stew, which I didn’t fancy the look or the smell of. He was quiet during the meal. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but I could see by the way his eyebrows were moving that he was deep in thought and I didn’t want to distract him. He often looked at me and smiled, so I knew he wasn’t unhappy.

  Once we’d finished eating, he seemed to be in a hurry to leave, so we didn’t have pudding or sit for ages unable to move. We just paid the bill and then walked out into the soft night air. We headed straight for the harbour wall and I hoped that the sea had calmed down a bit from earlier on. You see, I can’t swim and I didn’t know if he could. We hadn’t gone all the way along it when he turned to me, his voice urgent and excited.

  “Grace, when you said you could love me, did you mean it? Could you love me enough to trust me? To give up everything you’ve ever known, to just take my hand and step off this world, if it was the only way we could be together? Think carefully Grace. Could you?”

  What a question! Could I? I looked at his face, stared deep into his eyes and saw love there; love for me. Then I looked at the black, swirling water. Did he mean for us to end it all, in the hope that there was something on the other side? I knew that to go on without him would be the hardest thing I’d ever done, especially after that weekend. But to die and afterwards perhaps have nothing at all, no time even to miss him, or remember him, hoping that one day he might come back...

  I gulped and looked back at him. He didn’t look like someone who wanted to die. He looked so full of life; it lit him up from the inside. But could I trust him enough to believe that he was talking about living together, not dying together? I thought very carefully. I mean, what did I really know about this man called Jack?

  I thought about all the strange things I’d seen since meeting him and all the very odd things he’d said, as well as all the things he hadn’t. I was also sure that I knew enough about him to know that he wasn’t talking about a suicide pact and that whatever it was he had in mind was tied to all the things I didn’t know and all the things he hadn’t explained. Therefore his question was simply about love and trust; something I did know about. I knew a lot about it because of him; so really, it was the easiest question in the world to answer.

  “Yes Jack, I could. As long as you were there with me, I think I could do anything.”

  He looked at me for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly and smiled.

  “And I believe that with you at my side, I too could do anything.” he said.

  I didn’t need to answer and I didn’t get the chance to. He kissed me on the forehead, then moved away slightly and fiddled with his watch.

  “Take my hand...” he whispered.

  I understood that it had to be my choice all the way and I wrapped both my hands around one of his, curling them tightly around his fingers, wondering what was going to happen next. I think I may also have stopped breathing.

  Chapter seven

  I know you do it all the time, but you must remember your first time, when you were surrounded by that fine mist full of thousands of twinkling stars that are just out of reach. Everything suddenly seems so far away, as though in a dream, but you’re wide awake at the same time. All your senses are hyper and screaming, because it’s so wrong... yet so lovely.

  Anyway, the whooshing noise was deafening and everything swirled around me really slowly, yet there was the sensation of moving faster than I’d ever done before, while at the same time standing still. Perhaps the whole thing took less than a second, or perhaps it took minutes, there was no way of telling. The mist evaporated as quickly as it had arrived and I realised that we were in a room.

  Jack led me to a sofa, still holding my hands. There was a coal fire in the grate and thick curtains over a large window. The room was warm, almost too warm and it was full of things; ornaments, knick–knacks, pictures, small tables and plants in china pots and it smelt of some rich cloying perfume that was a little stale. There were chairs of all sizes, all in different patterns and they all seemed slightly overstuffed.

  The light was wrong too.
Then I realised that the wall lamps had flames in them and the ones on the tables flickered too and had no wires. There was no telly in the corner, or any sign of a stereo. My eyes took all of this in so quickly. I could see and recognise these things, but I also knew that it was all wrong... everything was wrong.

  “Oh Jack, oh Jack...”

  I think that’s all I was capable of saying, over and over again. I could see everything, but I understood nothing.

  He pulled up a chair and sat in front of me, still holding my hand, giving me time to get my breath back and allowing my brain time to slow down.

  “Ready?” he asked gently.

  I nodded.

  “I come from the future,” he said slowly, watching me carefully. “From the thirtieth century. I don’t belong in your time, that’s why I’ve never been able to stay around for long. I’ve only ever been visiting, if you like.”

  “Oh...” was all my dim-witted mind could come up with, but he smiled and didn’t make me feel stupid.

  “My job is to observe and collect history as it happens, so perhaps that makes me a bit like a journalist. We do this so that we can understand ourselves better and learn from our past mistakes.”

  I still wasn’t able to say anything. I just nodded, to let him know that I was trying to follow what he was telling me. He was clearly relieved that I wasn’t about to have a panic attack and went on slowly, choosing his words carefully.

  “Dreadful things are happening in my time, the consequences of which have pushed us to the brink of extinction. We have to understand how we arrived at this situation, in order to try and make our future better. Just like you explained about your relationship with your mother, we also have to make choices and we are trying to make better ones by using as much information as we can to guide us.”

  “That sort of makes sense...”

  The voice was a little hoarse, but it was definitely mine.

  “Why don’t you just read it, like we have to?” I asked.

  “Because the information will always be tainted by the writer’s viewpoint. Generally speaking, history is written once it’s already history and no longer a current event. The writer’s view is not what we need. We need the facts, not someone else’s ideas and conclusions.”

  As he spoke he became quite animated. His face seemed lit from within and I realised that this was his passion.

  “Give me a for instance please.” I asked.

  “Guy Fawkes.” he said, quickly supplying me with one. “Was he a terrorist or a religious freedom fighter? What did he think and what did the common man think? Those are the views that help us understand why what happened, happened and then what happened next. It’s not unusual for those in power to react in some way, sometimes brutally and sometimes they take up the cause themselves. Basically they do what they perceive they must in order to maintain control. But one way or another, the ordinary person is behind what those in power do.”

  I looked at him. It sounded plausible, but to be honest I’d never given it a great deal of thought before.

  “And what if you disagree with what happens next?” I asked. “Do you try and change things?”

  I wondered what kind of strange reality I’d been living in, if history was always being chopped and changed about by people like him. But would I even know?

  “We’re not supposed to meddle,” he said. “In fact, with the big events it’s almost impossible to meddle. You see the past is real; it happened. It’s the future that’s uncertain, unformed if you like and it’s totally dependent on the present. So in a way, it doesn’t exist. We’re always in the present, but we’ve developed a way to revisit the past.”

  I looked around the room again. “So... this is the past then?” I asked, as the shock began to change to wonder.

  “Yes. We are in southeast London and it is December 18th 1888.”

  He was still looking at me carefully.

  “Oh...” I said again.

  Both my mind and my voice were a bit wobbly, to say the least.

  He waited while I considered everything that he’d ever said to me. Not what he’d just shared with me, but everything. Slowly a question formed in my mind.

  “So are we going to your time, to ask if we can stay together?” I asked hopefully, thinking stupidly about the old Star Trek movie with the whales.

  “No, we can’t.” he answered sadly.

  “They wouldn’t let us I suppose...”

  “No. It’s just not possible. You see time travel, just like a train or a car, can only go to a place where there are tracks or a road; you can’t just go anywhere you fancy. You can’t exist in my time because it’s the future. It hasn’t happened for you. For the same reason, my people can’t look into the future and decide what we should do in our present. It hasn’t happened yet, so there is nothing to see. We can only look to the past to guide and inform us.”

  I thought about what he’d said and what it really meant, while he quietly watched me, letting me take it all in at my own speed.

  “So does that mean...” I said slowly, “That we can live together in my time? After all, it’s your past. Would they let us do that?”

  “No, I don’t think they would. Time travel is not something everyone does and I’m sure most people wouldn’t even want to. The rule is; we are all supposed to live in our own time, not exist in the wrong time. While it’s not possible to meddle with the big things, maybe you could change small things and that wouldn’t be right. Also, if you are not living your life in your own time, perhaps the future will be different as a result.”

  My head was beginning to thump and I thought about the idea of a future without Jack living his life in it as he was meant to. It seemed wrong to me and I looked at this lovely man in front of me, realising that my life would also be a lot less bright without him in it and made myself focus on what he was saying.

  “To live in the past would also mean that you’d have knowledge of the future. Information that didn’t exist yet would be in the wrong time and that could be a bad thing. So no, they don’t allow us to go when and where we please, just for fun. Part of having this job is agreeing only to visit; to witness, observe and record, then return to our own time to share what we have seen and learnt. There are strict rules and I’m currently breaking just about all of them.” he said, with a wry smile.

  I realised then that he was explaining all this to me so that I would understand why he had to leave and why I wouldn’t be able to see him again. He wasn’t allowed to live with me in my time and I couldn’t live with him in his.

  “I see... I think.” I whispered slowly.

  Just then a horrible thought occurred to me.

  “Will you get into trouble for sharing this with me, for helping me to understand why you have to go, even though you love me?”

  I searched his face as I spoke. I didn’t want him to suffer because of me, but now I knew something about the future; something I had no right to know. From what he’d said, I felt sure he’d be in trouble.

  He kissed me slowly and I realised I was crying.

  “But what about us Jack, why can’t there be an ‘us’?” I blurted out.

  It seemed to me that just when I thought I’d won the lottery, I’d gone and lost the winning ticket. Added to that of course, was that I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing and hearing. In all the confusion, it took me a few moments to understand properly what he was saying.

  “I’m not leaving you Grace, but we’ll have to live life on the run. They will be looking for us, for me especially. But time is a funny thing and it might be years and years before they realise I’m gone. We might have a whole lifetime together, but we will have to keep moving, without staying anywhere or anytime too long. That way there’s less chance that we’ll do something that might be noticed. Would that be enough of a life for you Grace? Seriously, you’d be living like a wanted criminal, except you haven’t committed a crime. You don’t have to say yes, I will understand and I will t
ake you home.”

  “Yes!” I said immediately. How could I not? How could I not shout it out at the top of my voice, over and over again? “Yes!”

  All of a sudden we were giggling uncontrollably, tears pouring down our faces, unable to say a coherent or sensible word, let alone a whole sentence. We laughed until we were weak from it, almost in pain.

  Once we regained control of ourselves, we sat for I don’t know how long, wrapped up in each other’s arms until the fire was barely a glow and noises from outside began to intrude. I’d been given the best birthday present ever. I had no idea how we were going to live this life on the run, or how I was going to cope with different places; never mind different times, but I wasn’t going to do it alone. Jack was going to be with me and I was going to be with him. Somehow it would all be alright. I was sure about that, absolutely certain in fact.

  He turned my face to his and kissed me, but then as he pulled away, he became serious.

  “Before we go any further, I need to be sure you really understand some important things.”

  “Ok, I’m listening.” I said, struggling into a more comfortable sitting position, one where I could see him clearly and he could see me.

  “We can go back right now, to the very second we left...”

  I shook my head. That wasn’t an option as far as I was concerned and was about to say so.

  “No, don’t interrupt, hear me out.” he said

  I closed my mouth and listened.

  “If we carry on from here, throw ourselves into the hands of fate or whatever, then you have to know that if they find me, or if anything else happens to me, you will be alone; stranded in the wrong time. Don’t just shrug your shoulders Grace; think about it carefully before you make your decision. You see, normally when we leave our time, we may only be away for an hour, or a day. To be away for a week, or more, is rare. When we return we appear back at the same moment our earlier self is leaving and the two shimmers prevent us from interacting with ourselves, so to speak.