What about us?

by Jacqui Henderson

  I had an intense feeling of déjà-vu at these words.

  I didn’t interrupt or share this with him; I just shook my head to clear the thought and carried on listening to his soft, very confident voice.

  “He will then try to look for a different solution. He will always be searching for a way for you and he to be together and round we will go, again and again and again. This cannot be allowed to continue. I have had a glimpse of this eternal and hopeless circle. I cannot of course hold all the memories of so many different ways that it can be played out, but I know enough to be sure that it is has to stop and it has to stop right now. Time is not a game; it should not be played with just to suit the whims of you two. Even you must see that.”

  He stopped speaking and sat back, allowing me a little while to go over everything he had said.

  Once he was sure I had grasped enough of it he moved in for the kill, literally.

  “I looked up your history before coming to meet you. You don’t appear to have died. Your birth is registered, as is the fact that you go missing on your twenty-first birthday. After that date there are no further sightings of you, nor any knowledge of either you or the young man you checked into the hotel in Lyme Regis with. Death is presumed to have occurred and the relevant note is added to your record in 2011, ten years after your disappearance. You leave no one behind to carry on after you. The line stops with you Grace; you must see that it has to. In fact, it has already ended today. If you are dead, Jack will mourn you, but we all lose people we love or could have loved and so we all move on. I am confident he will too.

  “If it is of any comfort, I doubt that he will ever replace you in his affections, but his energy will be turned to a lifetime of achievement and I know you would be proud; you said so yourself only a while ago. He can have had both lives in one lifetime. He has had five years with you and he has known love, but let him go now Grace. Let him become who he was born to be. If you really love him you must want that for him.”

  To give him credit, he almost had me going along with him, right up until he used that phrase: ‘if you really love him.’ He lost me the moment he said those words, but he couldn’t have known what effect they would have of course.

  Mum had blackmailed me so often with that phrase. She had twisted it and turned it so much that love was nowhere to be found anymore and I was always the one who made the sacrifice or got hurt, just to prove that I did love her. Over the years I tried to do all those things in the pointless hope that one day she would love me back.

  Javier’s voice was replaced in my mind with my Mum’s, just saying over and over again, “If you really loved me you would not tell such lies about him. If you really loved me you would forget all about that nasty nightmare. If you really loved me you wouldn’t say such terrible things. If you really loved me you would do this or that. If you really loved me...”

  The litany went on and on. She never, not once, realised that I did love her. She never saw that I was probably the only person that ever had, but she drove me away just like she drove everyone else away. I saw then that Mum and Javier had more in common than either of them would realise; neither of them were kind. They would both do something for someone else, sure, but only if they got something more in return and that is not kindness.

  I don’t think Javier had ever loved anyone and I don’t think he understood people at all. He must have known quite a bit about me from other people’s memories, but he hadn’t put all those bits together and he obviously hadn’t considered why I am who I am. He came up with a judgement that was based only on my intelligence and then only as it compared to his. I was never going to come out at my best in a comparison like that. But he’d done himself a disservice in that judgement, not me, because there are other ways people can and do learn.

  Love is about being kind and Jack was the most considerate person I’d ever met. I only found the strength to walk away when I discovered what it really meant to be loved, when I realised that Mum could never love me; she didn’t even know how to love herself.

  Jack taught me that, he taught it to me when he gave up everything to be with me. He showed me how to love myself, because he loved me and I taught him the same in return. I wasn’t about to throw all that back in his face; not now.

  I leaned forward slightly, wanting to be sure Javier heard and understood what I was about to say.

  “If you kill me, he will find out and he’ll hate you forever. You will lose him as a result.”

  He laughed at me and my words.

  “I am not about to kill you Grace. I am a thinker, not a murderer. But I am about to lose you and I happen to think, that not everything once lost can be found again. In the future you are dead, because as nature dictates, you died in the past. Wherever and whenever that might be he will have no way of knowing. What is dead must be mourned, but it can never be regained. Jack understands the laws of nature as do we all, even time travellers cannot undo the effects of old age and natural or unnatural death.”

  I sat absolutely still, not having the faintest idea about what his plans might be.

  He leaned forward so that he wouldn’t need to raise his voice and so that I could look directly into his eyes; he wanted me to know that he was being sincere.

  “If I were to kill you Grace, there would always be the chance that he would come back and intervene, as with the car accident. It is a natural impulse of his to want to save you from the things that could hurt you, but that would no doubt just set us off on another endless cycle. You know as well as I do that Jack belongs in the thirtieth century. Whichever point in time you die, naturally it is the past for him. You have no implants that can be traced, no inoculations to boost your system; you are a young black woman and you are alone.”

  His voice was no longer cold. He didn’t mean to threaten me, he was just telling me the facts and it was clear that those facts only held the slightest interest for him.

  However, I couldn’t disagree with any of them. He saw that there was nothing that I could say and so he softly continued.

  “You saved the world Grace and in this world I am alive; for that I thank you. You have done your job and done it well. I wish only to allow you to live your life out, as is only fair under the circumstances. I also want Jack to live his out, filled with happy memories of a young love that had run its delightful course, leaving him free to move on and fulfil his dreams and his own destiny. Of course, he can only do that once he has mourned the end of this relationship and of course, your passing.”

  My lips were very dry. I still couldn’t see how what he had said added up to me getting anything remotely good out of this exchange.

  “So you plan to do what with me exactly...?” I asked slowly, without taking my eyes off him for a second.

  “I know you have seen amazing and wonderful things on your journey so far, but I want to show one more. You see, Jack is not the only one who found ways to control our destinations so that we can travel to places other than safe houses. But that is such a minor thing. Let us think bigger, let us imagine the impossible for a moment Grace. You have to understand that before we could allow anyone to travel, we had to understand how time worked and to make sure our rules and methods kept things the way they should be. In order to know what would happen if we meddled, if we changed things, we had to meddle in big events to see what happened as a result, so we developed the means to return to the status quo before we tried to change things. Mankind it seems, must travel the journey step by painful step, without the benefit of shortcuts, only then do we learn.” he said, sighing deeply.

  This at least helped me understand some of the things Jack had said about not being able to go back and smother mass murderers in their cots, but it didn’t help me understand how it applied to me. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

  “I’m going to be honest with you Grace. Whilst the various Jacks have shared many things with me, I have not shared everything with them and nor should I have, given our respective
roles and positions. Clearly, with my new knowledge, some changes to our rules and ways of working need to be implemented. I have that to thank you for as well Grace. Now watch carefully, I think you will like this.”

  He made his move, and before I could get out of the way or stop him, his hand was over mine; holding it firmly on the table.

  Chapter twenty-four

  The only way I can describe what happened next, is if you imagine an out of body experience. It was just as people have written; I was floating outside of myself. I was most definitely me. I could even feel the pressure of Javier’s hand on mine, but next to me was a perfect image of us sitting there, with the table between us and both of us leaning forward, his hand on mine. He was smiling and I looked startled. For a second I wasn’t sure which of us was real and which of us were the ghosts. Then everything began to move, but it was all wrong, because things started going in reverse.

  All I could hear was the usual whooshing and whistling of the shimmer, but somehow, that too was not right. I saw myself stand up and go backwards towards the stairs. The waiter was walking away backwards with a glass of whiskey on a tray, while other people were leaving the lounge instead of arriving. Thankfully, I suppose because Javier was the driver and I was the passenger, we only saw the things that had involved him. We didn’t go upstairs, so he didn’t get to see what I had done up there.

  Suddenly I panicked as a terrible thought pinged into my mind. I understood that it didn’t matter what I had done. I knew why he had let me go upstairs alone; it was all being undone and in a moment none of it would exist. I watched myself return and stand dripping in the foyer with a wet Javier. I watched us leave and begin the backwards walk to the cafe in the rain. Then I saw something that I couldn’t have seen for myself at the time when we’d arrived at the hotel, but neither could Javier, because it had happened behind us. Jack was there with two others; a man and a woman. I didn’t recognise either of them. They went into the restaurant on the other side of the foyer and Jack dodged behind the doorman, so that neither Javier nor I would have had any chance of seeing him.

  I saw all of this in a split second. I didn’t understand what he was up to, but I didn’t want Javier to see it. I had to get his attention quickly and the best way to do that was to appeal to his vanity; he liked to feel clever.

  “What are we doing?” I asked, with as much panic as I could muster. It wasn’t difficult given the circumstances. “Surely we are breaking the Golden Rule!”

  He just smiled. “No my dear, we are not. We are almost outside time; we do not exist in the same moments that we are witnessing. We can influence nothing, nor make contact with anyone, but we will remember. There was never going to be any point in our undoing say, ‘the discovery of the Americas’ and then not be able to compare the two realities. We had to witness what would have happened without Columbus and once we realised that another navigator or explorer would have taken his place, we then had to be able to undo what we had meddled with.

  “So you see, the Golden Rule remains intact and untroubled. Everything is going back to how it should have been. See, there is the waiter bringing our coffee, but I have not arrived yet. I am behind you and he is confused, but soon he will not be. There will be just one of us to serve and it will be me. I will wait for Jack. I will tell him that you decided to end the relationship for the good of the future and that it was your own choice. He will be sad that you did not wish to wait for him, but he will understand that this life is not the one you would choose for him. You don’t actually have a choice in any of this, but it means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Many years ago I promised to ensure that he would be able to fulfil his potential and I always keep my promises. Now hold tight.”

  The whooshing intensified and sounded right again and I realised that this was the journey where he planned to lose me. I just prayed that whatever Jack was intending or had been intending to do, he had made it to our room and had seen my clues. Presumably he too had been wiped out of that moment, so I prayed even harder that he would remember them.

  The whooshing stopped and we sprawled heavily into soft, cold mud. We’d been sitting when the journey started, but now there was nothing to sit on. He’d planned all this of course, because he pushed me away from him and lunged forward to snatch my bag from my lap. The bag contained a lot of stuff, but most importantly, as far as he was concerned anyway, it had the watch and my money in it. He stood up and tucked it under his arm. He may have had a brain the size of a planet but he was no gentleman. He left me sitting there, winded and frightened.

  “Goodbye Grace, welcome to your new home.” he said and then left me, taking my bag with him.

  As his shimmer faded, I became aware of the most horrible noises around me and a sort of burnt chemical smell. My bottom was wet and my fingers were squelching in the mud. It was night, but the sky was lit up by flashes. I could hear men shouting and swearing. In the distance someone was screaming and nearby there was whimpering. I don’t know if it was cold, but I was shivering.

  I didn’t have much time to wonder where I was. The ground shook and my mind instantly focused; call it survival instinct. The whistling I could hear in the air had nothing to do with his shimmer and it was heading my way. I didn’t even stand up; I pressed the button on the watch on my arm. My fingers were thick with mud and I was shaking badly, so it was a bloody miracle that I managed it.

  He’d dumped me in ‘no-man’s land’, sometime during the First World War. I saw it all too clearly as the shimmer enveloped me and took me away from the pointless carnage and death that I could do nothing to change, or save anyone from.

  I was hysterical as I landed on the floor in the kitchen of a safe house somewhere in the city of Bath on the 24th October 1900 and I lay there for a while, sobbing. It felt as though everything inside me had been ripped to shreds; my heart, my lungs, the whole kit and caboodle of what had been me was in pieces. He had treated me as though I was a ‘thing’ that could be disposed of once it was no longer useful.

  “I am not a thing!” I screamed to the empty room.

  That someone who Jack admired so much could see me in this way, hurt me more than I would ever have thought possible. I was so angry with Javier and so hurt by the unfairness of it all. I had to get the pain of it all out of my system, otherwise it would fester and I could never be strong again. Only once there was nothing more to cry about and no tears left did I sit up and look around me.

  We’d never been to Bath. We’d planned to go there after Moscow, but of course we hadn’t made it. I knew that soon the house would burn to the ground, but that was fine. There would be enough time for what I needed to do and the first things I needed were a hot bath and a good night’s sleep. I was weak and empty, but I’ve always been practical. I had to be; Mum rarely was.

  I woke up mid morning, hoping the servants wouldn’t arrive until late afternoon, as had been the case at all the other safe houses I’d ever visited. The kitchen was well stocked and after several cups of tea and some toast I pulled myself out of my misery. Jack would never think of looking for me there, but hopefully nor would anyone else.

  I had a quick wash and opened the wardrobe door. As always there was a selection of dresses; something for all shapes and sizes. I put on quite a bit of the underwear and a petticoat or two and then got everything else ready. After some digging I found the bag that was always there somewhere. This time it had been under the bed and I packed it with as much as I could squeeze in. What didn’t fit me could be altered later, or sold.

  I found a couple of hat boxes on the top of the wardrobe and shoved some hats and gloves into them. I had to do this properly; I had to look like I belonged there. I took the larger of the handbags and had a quick shufty around the house, taking some small bits and pieces that could either be passed off as treasured family items or sold later for a reasonable price. I took the watches and all the cash from both bedrooms, separating the money between two other handbags and for good measure
shoving a wad into my corset. Then I lugged everything downstairs and left it all in a neat pile by the door. Finally I got dressed and threw a thick, expensive looking shawl around my shoulders and rammed a hat on my head.

  I took a deep breath and went outside, where some children were playing in the street.

  “Who wants a penny?” I called out.

  Three of them ran forward.

  “Go and find me a cab and I’ll give you a penny each.” I told them, then went back inside and waited.

  The cab took me to the post house, from where I was able to take a series of carriages to Lyme Regis. It took me the best part of a week to make that journey and there were a few uncomfortable nights in various inns along the way. The jolting and jarring of the wooden wheels along rutted and pitted tracks and roads was unbelievable and more than once I wished I’d learnt how to ride, although that probably wouldn’t have been much better.

  There was an inn in the centre of Lyme and I made that my base for a few weeks. Of course I was an oddity; my colour and my slightly strange speech, not to mention my inability to understand everything about day to day life. But I was no longer a beginner at this sort of thing and the period itself I knew quite well from my time in Napier Street. So my mistakes were minimal and easily explained by me being ‘foreign’.

  I wanted the house that Jack and I had stayed in, but it was not for sale. With the help of Mr Wright, the legal bigwig in the area, the man who owned it was given the opportunity to name his price, which he did at three hundred pounds. I paid it willingly and I also paid for the family renting it to move somewhere else, with the first three months of their new rent paid for by me. It gave me a bit of a reputation and a bit more mystery into the bargain. Of course I was meddling good and proper, but after what Javier had done to me I didn’t give a fig about his rules.