What about us?

by Jacqui Henderson

  She was lost for a moment in a reverie of her own past; clearly they had been happier days for her. She slowly returned to the present and considered my question seriously for a moment.

  “Are you telling me it might be his side that’s got the money?” she asked incredulously, clearly surprised that any of the candidates for fathering her child could have come from anywhere other than the gutter.

  “You must understand I can’t give names.” I replied carefully.

  “Of course, but we could always do a DNA test, that’d sort it out wouldn’t it?” she said, realising her chance for something different was slipping away.

  “Yes of course.” I assured her as I stood up to leave. “We’ll be in touch.”

  As I left, I heard her say to no one in particular, “I’ve always wondered if there was any point in having that useless slut of a daughter, but maybe there was after all. Hah, maybe there was...”

  I wondered how much of the conversation she would remember by the time her daughter returned home and how much blame would be wrongly laid at her feet, as though any child should be held responsible for being born. That at least would not be a problem in the future. I found that I was genuinely sorry for causing the young woman even more suffering. She seemed nice and clearly had more than enough to deal with already.

  As I walked I realised that I was becoming frustrated. My investigations were not going as planned and time was of the essence; so much depended on me. I decided to move on to the waitress, but what was the link?

  I had to get away from there and put the awful interview behind me, so I walked in the general direction of the West End, with the idea of finding a more vibrant and cosmopolitan place to spend the evening. I found a small bistro tucked away in a side street near the British Museum that looked inviting, so after a moment’s deliberation I went in and was shown to a nice table by a window. The menu looked promising and I selected onion soup to start, followed by cod baked with tomatoes and black olives served with rice and a rather nice red burgundy from the wine list. As I waited for my food I let my mind wander back to the day of the accident.

  Three people were going to cease to exist at the time of the young woman’s death. They may or may not know each other and they may or may not know her, yet in some way they are connected to her and to an impossible future; a future that was not my past. But it had been his; I had seen it in his memories

  The wine was particularly good and I was happily savouring it when my thoughts alighted on just one word: past. I instantly felt foolish; I’d missed something that had been staring me in the face. He and the young woman had travelled back to the late nineteenth century and had lived there for some months. They had not merely witnessed events; they had integrated themselves into other people’s lives. They had meddled. I was now certain that those three people were in some way connected to that period. Content in the knowledge that my investigations were finally moving in the right direction, I was able to relax a little and enjoy my meal.

  Chapter nineteen

  I woke up in a good mood and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the hotel. Then I read one of the tabloid newspapers in the lounge and watched the television, which always seemed to be on. I knew that the waitress would not be at the cafe until late afternoon, so I had some time to spend as I wished. On a whim I decided to go to the local library. There are no paper books in my own time, so like eating freshly prepared food, the printed word is one of my pleasures and I spent hours happily lost between the pages of fact and fiction, poetry and maps, emerging into the late afternoon feeling as though I’d been at a feast.

  As I walked to the cafe, I considered what I would say. I couldn’t expect her to tell me what I wanted to know if I were merely a customer, so therefore I had to come up with a credible reason for interviewing her. I was sure she wouldn’t fall for the same story I’d used on the young woman’s mother, so this time I would need to use different bait. Strangely enough, I settled on the truth, or at least a form of it that she would believe and one I hoped was also correct. Once I had everything arranged in my mind, I went into the cafe and made no pretence about being there for any other reason than to talk to her.

  “Excuse me, are you Vicki Prentice?” I asked.

  “Yes?” she replied, looking me over carefully.

  “You don’t know me, my name is Jack. I’m a local historian and I’m writing about Napier Street, near London Bridge. Someone at the library told me your grandparents had lived there and I was hoping you could tell me a little about your family history.”

  She visibly relaxed. “I could, but I think my granddad could tell you more.” she said, with some relief in her voice.

  “He’s still alive?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, he’s very much alive and most days I pop in and give him his tea before I come to work. Come back the day after tomorrow and meet me here at four. If he’s in agreement, which by the way I’m sure he will be, he’ll like nothing more than to have a willing listener. I’ll take you round to see him, but I need to ask him first; he won’t like you just turning up, he’ll want some time to prepare for an important visitor.”

  “Thank you my dear. I’ll be here.” I said as I left.

  I now had a day and a half free with nothing to do. I wanted to put some miles between myself and the young woman and then perhaps I might be released from the images and emotions that had been plaguing me, not only when I was in her presence, but also because of her proximity in time. Also, to be honest, I wanted to take advantage of being on the planet surface.

  The next day I took a train to Brighton to enjoy the sea air, safe in the knowledge that my other self had no memories of the place beyond the station concourse. There I felt sure I’d be able to think more objectively about what I already knew, before adding whatever Vicki’s grandfather could tell me. I walked to the Grand Hotel and was lucky; they had a room available overlooking the sea. It was charming and I spent my time watching the tide come and go, letting my thoughts and feet go where they pleased.

  The following afternoon I arrived at the cafe a little bit earlier than arranged and found Vicki already waiting for me.

  “It was just as I thought.” she said, coming to greet me. “Gramps is very much looking forward to your visit. I’ve changed my shift today, so I’ll be done here in fifteen minutes. That way there’s no need to rush, you can spend as long as you like with him. I’ve got an essay to write, so I won’t be in your way.”

  She showed me to a window table and brought me a mug of tea and a slice of fruit cake.

  I liked Vicki; she was protective towards her grandfather. To her of course, I was a complete stranger. Elderly perhaps, but a stranger nonetheless and she was taking no chances. I smiled; the concept of the family as a unit had changed a great deal by the thirtieth century. While it was not necessarily better or worse, it was certainly very different.

  Henry, as I was instructed to call him, was as his granddaughter had predicted; thrilled to have me visit. She sat us down in the living room of his small and slightly untidy flat, brought us a bottle of beer and two glasses, then retreated to the kitchen, leaving the serving hatch between the two rooms open.

  “So what would you like to know?” he asked me.

  “Anything that you can tell me about your life and your family history, but I am especially interested in anything at all that you can tell me about Napier Street, Borough.” I told him.

  I left three hours later, having been assured that I could return at anytime if there was anything else he could help me with. I wrote lots of notes during my visit, but they were more to convince them about my commitment to the task than through any necessity. My implants recorded conversations automatically and information could be transferred to a thought pod in less than a second, which would give others the opportunity to hear the conversation for themselves. But anyway, making notes helped me focus on the important elements of what Henry had been able to tell me.

  I walked for hours,
turning over in my mind everything that he had told me. For some reason I had been expecting to meet Charlie, Henry’s father and I was surprised when he said that he was the grandson of both Sally Grundy and Winifred Blunt. I already knew that the Blunts had owned the local shop and that Winifred, one of the streets important matriarchs, had befriended the young woman. Sal and Winnie were of course long dead, but so too where Henry’s parents. He was born in 1916, so that made him eighty-four, but his mind was still sharp. His father had been called up to serve his country in a pointless war and had left for The Front unaware that his wife was pregnant. Sadly he was killed in action before she was able to tell him. Sal had produced one child and one child only, therefore Henry had no aunts or uncles on his father’s side.

  Henry had married his childhood sweetheart Susan on his return from the Second World War and in 1947 they had a daughter, Patricia. She went on to marry one Victor Prentice and they in turn produced a son in 1971, but he died a year later. Vicki was born in the December of 1977, almost three years before the young woman who was soon to die. I mentioned her grandmother’s name to Henry, in case he knew of a link, but Dottie Gibson meant nothing to him. I’d asked if I could see some family photographs and Henry was pleased to provide some, but it quickly became obvious that his daughter Pat was not the other woman in the street at the moment of the accident. His wife had been dead for more than twenty years, so it couldn’t have been her either, nor was his son in-law the young man that I’d seen as he faded alongside the old woman.

  Henry’s story went some way to explaining why Vicki would vanish from existence in a few weeks time, at the same moment the young woman dies. When she and my other self travelled back to 1888, they meddled with events. I presumed that both Sal and her sickly baby Charlie had not been meant to survive the winter. It seemed that the young woman’s ineptitude at knowing how to keep house in those times and her subsequent kindness had prevented the event from happening and as a direct consequence, a young mother and her son had continued to live beyond the time they were meant to.

  I knew that on the rare occasions that these anomalies happened, time had a way of dealing with them. So why hadn’t they fallen victim to an accident or illness shortly after my other self and the young woman left Napier Street? Why had they thrived and why did the family continue until the year 2000? In fact, right up to the point where I didn’t meddle.

  We knew what happened when big, fixed events in time were tampered with, but perhaps we’d not spent enough time looking at what happened when small, almost inconsequential events were changed. I knew that my other self had meddled on other occasions. The first had been when he’d saved her life. The second was when he’d inadvertently taken her on a time journey, a journey she had no right to undertake and one that she wasn’t in any way equipped for. Only small things changed perhaps, like giving the unfortunate Sal a job and literacy, but it was becoming apparent that tiny pebbles can create ripples that travel much further than one thinks they should be able to. I put the thought aside for another time; there would need to be a discussion with the Ethics Team once this mess was sorted out. But first things first, I reminded myself.

  Henry had been able to do more than just tell me about his grandmother; he had a trunk. “Family heirloom.” he’d said proudly, as he took me into his small bedroom. He waved for me to sit on the bed and called Vicki to come and help move the piles of old newspapers that were stacked on top of it.

  “Granny Sal said that there was this couple in the street. Odd they were, in that they didn’t really fit in. She never said why, just that they didn’t fit in, not properly. Anyway, they came just before Christmas one year and the woman, coloured she was, took Gran on like a scullery maid. She fed her and me dad. ‘Kept him alive and made him strong.’ Gran always said. She also taught Gran to read and write. ‘Reading is a gift’ she’d say and she loved to read stories to me when I was a small lad. Then as soon as I was able, she’d sit me at the table and get me to read the paper to her when I got home from school. Always had a book in her hand or in her apron pocket.” He chuckled at the memory before continuing.

  “Told me over and over that reading is what marks a person, gives ’em choices that they don’t have if they can’t read. The coloured woman had given her that and she was always thankful. Anyway, by spring they were gone. Just like they’d arrived, they disappeared, leaving no word or nothing.

  “Between them, my two Grans packed everything up for them in case they came back. There wasn’t much; some clothes, some ornaments, a few personal bits and pieces and lots of paper where they’d been writing a book. There was also well over three thousand quid in cash, which was quite a lot of money in them days.”

  He paused to look at me.

  “That’s a lot of money to just leave in the house,” I said slowly.

  “It is these days, let alone then.” he said thoughtfully, agreeing with me.

  “Anyway, they never came back and everything was put in this trunk. Me granny Winnie, me Mum’s Mum, she died before the war. First war I mean and me Mum and that trunk came to me Gran’s when she married me dad. Granny Sal guarded that trunk like a bleeding terrier. Woe betides anyone who wanted to go poking around in there!

  “She used some of that money to set herself up in a little shop; that’s when we left Napier Street and moved here. ‘Something for you to have later,’ she used to say to me and within two years she paid every penny back with interest. ‘I won’t have it said that Sal Grundy is a thief.’ she said.”

  Leaving Napier Street was good thing too; it was completely flattened during The Blitz, with a terrible loss of life. So many of the families had been friends; we’d all grown up together.”

  He shook his head sadly before moving back to the topic that interested us both.

  “’Course I never knew me dad; he never came back from the Front. He was dead before I was born. Gran and Mum kept the shop, as did Susan and me after the second war. Pat’s got it now. Vicki here of course has other ideas and good for her too I say. But anyway, that little shop did what my Gran used to say it would. ‘You’ll see.’ she used to say, ‘This family will amount to something after all, despite the bad blood on your grandfather’s side.’ She would never explain what she meant by that, but the fact he was never mentioned other than in that way and also that she’d been so young when she had me dad; well, over the years Susan and me, we put the story together.

  “This trunk saved the family again during The Depression I can tell you. Gran let us sell a few of the trinkets and other things out of it, but she kept a log of what was taken and made sure it was put back with interest. After Gran died, there seemed little point in keeping it for strangers who must have been dead themselves by then; they were older than her after all. Over the years of course, the money’s been used up, but somehow, neither me Mum before me, or meself now, could just throw the trunk away; might be worth a few bob I daresay. Vicki will have to make that choice when I’m gone. Pat and I have already settled that, she don’t want this lolloping great thing gathering dust in her attic.” he said, patting it proudly.

  “No more than I do and I don’t even have an attic!” Vicki interjected, trying to look cross with him but failing. “I’ll sell it and everything in it as soon as it’s mine, just you wait and see. I’ll be queuing up on Antiques Road Show!” she threatened.

  “It’ll be yours to do with what you will, so there’s no point in getting on your high horse with me now.” he said fondly, before turning to me again.

  “Anyway, take the papers that are in it; there might be some interesting things there for you. I read them all years ago and it’s all a bit humdrum. What they did during the day, who they met, what they saw, that sort of stuff. I think they were planning a history book. Funny thing to do, writing history as it happened...”

  He chuckled and I smiled with him, grateful for the bundle that he thrust into my waiting hands.

  “There’s a list in there too, never
could make sense of it. It’s addresses all over London and then next to each one of them are two dates, always eight days apart. I never went to any of them mind and as far as I know, neither did Gran.”

  “That is strange.” I said, agreeing with him, although to me it was obvious that it was a list of safe houses. Of course I couldn’t share this with him, but later I found my assumption to be correct. There in neat handwriting were several safe houses in London between 1890 and 1970. He, my other self that is, had provided for her as best he could, which gave me a strange sense of satisfaction that I couldn’t explain.

  Thanks to Henry I now knew and understood how Vicki was linked to this enigmatic young woman, but it didn’t explain in any way why two other people were due to cease to exist at the same time as her and her entire family, although not her father of course. Something was eluding me. Not only did I not know what it was, I didn’t know how to go about locating it. I missed my old friend and mentor Javier; his razor sharp mind would have been excellent for solving a conundrum such as this. His death was so pointless and the world had been made poorer as a result, but even in these unusual circumstances, he would have been the first to say: “Never meddle.”

  These thoughts brought me full circle. The other me and Javier had grown old together, because in that timeline he’d not been murdered. When my other elderly self went back to the London of 1889 to find her again, his only regret was the disappointment our friend and mentor would feel at his desertion. In that moment I understood why he’d selected a younger incarnation of himself. By choosing me to unburden himself to, he’d hoped to spare Javier. We didn’t know each other at that point, although we knew of each other. At the age of twenty-three I’d only met the great man in passing and was not yet a part of his team, so had not been selected for preferential training.

  I’d finally found something in that other me that I could relate to, that I could understand. I suspected that he had somehow prevented the twenty-seven year old version of himself from arriving at the cafe and when I searched his memories, I found that he’d sent himself a note containing instructions that seemed to come from Javier, asking him as a personal favour to observe the street in which the accident takes place, but three days later. Understanding this didn’t help me solve anything else of course, but it did put my mind at ease. There had not been, nor would there be, the danger of three versions of myself converging on the cafe in a few weeks time.