News from Gardenia

by Robert Llewellyn

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said. I felt a chill surge through me. There really was no London, there was just a lake.

  ‘What did you do to it?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, we didn’t really do anything. Nature, I fear, did rather a lot. I don’t remember the city but there are some very old folk who recall what happened. What you see there is the estuary. That’s what we call it now. The present sea levels are considerably higher than in your day.’

  ‘So the centre of the city is completely gone: the buildings, the houses, the streets, are they really all submerged?’

  ‘Oh yes, for many, many years. I know for a fact that the centre of the city was stripped bare as the waters slowly invaded. I know the many treasures stored there were removed and saved, but the estuary engulfed everything else. When I was a very young boy I sailed around with friends in a boat and we saw many of the old buildings still standing, sticking out of the water. I imagine most of them have collapsed by now.’

  It was true. I could see no sign of the massive metropolis.

  I flew on for a while. The river was wider beneath us and I glanced down and saw that boats were using the waterway, some quite large barges being pulled by smaller craft.

  ‘What are they carrying?’ I asked, pointing down to the river traffic.

  William craned his neck to see. ‘At a guess I would say some raw materials picked up from a transport pod. Possibly metals of some sort.’

  ‘Metals!’ I said, my eyebrows raised in surprise on hearing this. ‘So you are importing metals. Does that mean that in some other country there are vast mines and smelting factories belching out toxic fumes?’

  William laughed again. ‘No no, these are metals gleaned from all the deconstruction we’ve been doing for many years. There are small smelting installations dotted about, but nothing on the scale you are talking about. Metal is a very useful material, although I daresay the demand for it has dropped a great deal since your day. We are blessed in some ways that you mined and used so much; in some ways this is a benefit from your era. Again Paula would know more of this, but I believe there are ample supplies for our needs without us ever having to dig any more out of the earth.’ William smiled. ‘So thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ I said.

  In front of me, the meandering river looked familiar: Richmond, Kew, Chelsea, all essentially gone now – the housing density seemed about the same as I’d been seeing all morning. Once again the trees seemed ubiquitous, although I was beginning to notice more and more small fields, all heavily cultivated.

  I’d seen enough: there was no London, there were no cities, the whole place had changed so much I couldn’t take any more in. I stared down at the ground as we flew along, and then another thing struck me, made me question again how all this could possibly work.

  The one thing I hadn’t seen in our trip was open grassland, animals, cows, sheep, pigs. Not a sign of any livestock.

  ‘So wait, don’t you have animals?’ I asked.

  ‘Animals? Oh yes, of course we have animals: rabbits, foxes, an abundance of birdlife.’

  ‘But livestock, domesticated animals, for meat, milk, leather?’

  ‘Oh, I see. No, we don’t eat meat. Well, I never have. We have small compounds here and there where the various breeds of animals are reared and looked after, but they are not killed for their meat.’

  ‘Blimey. So is everyone a vegetarian?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Do you mean does anyone eat the flesh of a dead animal? In which case the answer is no, not to my knowledge.’

  I laughed. ‘A nation of gardening vegetarians. That’s so funny.’

  ‘Why is that so funny?’ asked William. He didn’t sound offended, just intrigued.

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose there were a lot of jokes about vegetarians, which, just so you know, is the term we used for people who don’t eat meat.’

  ‘Isn’t that extraordinary? I don’t think we’d understand such jokes these days,’ said William. He shifted about in his seat a little.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked.

  ‘I admit I am becoming a little uncomfortable; sitting still this long is not something I am used to. My old bones get a little stiff after a while.’

  I checked the time. We’d been flying for nearly two hours.

  ‘I’m so sorry, William, we’ll head back right away,’ I said, banking steeply. William picked up the map, did something on the surface and placed it back between the seats. The blue floating arrow was pointing towards me, so I turned until it was pointing directly ahead and headed back to the hall.

  11

  We landed back in the field next to Goldacre Hall in the early afternoon. There was no one visible as we flew over, no enthralled gathering of locals waving and jumping for joy, and I admit to being a little disappointed.

  I circled around once just to make doubly sure there was no one standing in the way, then gently put down along the bumpy runway.

  As we pulled to a halt my spirits lifted as we could see the farm vehicle bouncing its way towards us with quite a crowd hanging on the trailer behind it.

  I unstrapped and jumped out of the cockpit as soon as I could and ran around the back of the plane, then jumped on the wing to help poor William out.

  ‘Goodness me, I seem to have frozen up,’ he said between grunts as I started to half haul him out. A couple of strong young men joined me and lifted him down and the small crowd gathered around us.

  ‘What was it like, William?’ asked one of them.

  ‘I have to say, the ground beneath my feet has never felt better,’ he said with a grin. ‘But it was wonderful; we have travelled many miles, Gavin has seen many sights, and indeed, I have seen things in a way I never expected to see.’

  Without anyone saying anything, the small group organised themselves, hitching up the plane, climbing back on board the trailer and towing the plane back to where we started.

  I was helped into the trailer and I scanned the faces to see if Grace was among them. She wasn’t. We trundled across the field and a hazy memory from my past about the smell of the oil seed, the chatter among the people, the clattering of the trailer, reminded me of something. I’m not sure what; it could have been a childhood holiday in Cornwall – we stayed on a farm, a bed and breakfast holiday, and I must have ridden on a trailer pulled by a rattling Massey Ferguson tractor. I wasn’t remembering a specific incident, maybe a feeling of sadness, a realisation that a whole world, a whole way of life had gone. Everything I had ever known had more or less disappeared under an endless forest or a flood of sea water.

  I felt tired and lonely as I watched the happy people climb off the trailer once we’d got back to the gateway to Goldacre Hall. There was no doubting that what I had seen on the flight was amazing, but I really wanted to go home. I wanted a shower with my favourite shower gel; I wanted to check my emails; I even wanted to see Beth.

  The sudden realisation that this was utterly impossible was very deadening.

  I closed up the plane as the people started to drift off. I opened the engine cover just to see how everything was holding up – the engine had been at maximum power for more or less the entire flight. I could see the heat shimmering off the main engine cowling, but everything looked okay and I certainly hadn’t experienced anything untoward during the flight.

  ‘Hello you,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned and was confronted with Grace. Something had changed about her – she looked stunning, somehow groomed but not in an obvious way. I couldn’t describe what it was that had changed, but my heart skipped a beat. She had made an effort, and she had made it for me.

  ‘Oh hi,’ I said, feeling a little gormless.

  ‘How was your flying with William?’ she asked.

  ‘Amazing,’ I said. ‘He is amazing, but what I saw, your world, it’s�
�’ I dropped my head for a moment. ‘It’s so incredibly different.’

  ‘Is it?’ she asked. I was a little taken aback. It was as if Grace didn’t know what had gone on before her time. Surely, I thought, surely she must know how different the world was, even if it was two hundred years ago.

  I knew what was happening two hundred years before my time, well, maybe not in great detail, but the gist. The industrial revolution, the steam engine, the development of cities, canals, all that. Then I thought for a minute. If some bloke had ridden a steam train through some sort of weird cloud and come from 1811 to 2011, I had to admit I wouldn’t have known that much about what it was really like where he came from.

  I smiled at Grace. ‘Yes, it is. For a start there were something like forty million more people living here than there are now.’

  ‘Forty million more!’ said Grace. She stared off across the field. ‘Where did you all live?’

  ‘Well, very close to each other most of the time.’

  ‘Forty million…how did you eat, how did you grow food?’

  ‘Well, I suppose most of it came here from other countries.’

  ‘How?’ She seemed genuinely not to know.

  ‘Ships, planes, trucks through the tunnel. I’m not sure, wasn’t my area I suppose.’

  ‘You brought food here in planes, like this?’ She was staring at my Yuneec.

  I smiled. ‘No, big transport planes, massive great things, jet liners, passenger jets – I don’t know how to describe them. Same basic idea as this only much, much bigger.’

  Grace was shaking her head. ‘I must read more history, I knew nothing of this,’ she said. ‘It must have been terrible.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad,’ I said, feeling slightly defensive for my era. ‘There were lots of good things about it.’

  ‘Sixty million of you crammed together and having to wait for planes to bring you food – it must have been standing room only.’

  ‘No, there was still countryside,’ I said. ‘And fields; we had cows and sheep too, and pigs. Far fewer bloody trees, I know that.’

  ‘Cows and sheep and pigs,’ said Grace. ‘I’m confused. I only came to give you your clothes.’

  She held up my neatly laundered chinos and polo shirt. I was a little disappointed; I suppose I’d hoped she’d come to see me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the orderly pile from her. ‘I don’t quite feel comfortable in these clothes yet.’

  Grace smiled. ‘I think you look very nice in them. Very manly. Your own clothes, well, I don’t wish to be rude but they look a little frail, a little, well, not manly.’

  I put my head to one side, feeling cheeky. ‘Mm, not manly you say. So, after two hundred years of human development, you’re still wrapped up in your gender roles I see.’ I was smiling as I said this, but Grace just stared at me blankly.

  ‘Why did you have pigs and cows and sheep? What did you do with them?’

  Knowing that they were all vegetarian, I decided to lie. I didn’t want Grace to be horrified that we killed the little animals and cooked them.

  ‘Mostly as pets, we had pets.’

  ‘Pets?’ Again she seemed confused by this.

  ‘Yes, animals – sort of like companions, only they don’t speak or ask questions. They are just, well, pets.’

  ‘Animal companions?’ said Grace. Now she smiled, and the smile turned into a laugh. ‘So there were forty million more of you, you ate food from other countries which came on big air ships, and you had companions who were animals.’

  ‘That just about sums it up.’

  Grace shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t wish to be rude, but I am very glad I wasn’t born back then. It really sounds like you’d all gone mad.’

  ‘Well, there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense, even to us at the time; it was a very confusing period I suppose. But when you’re used to things, like, if people are used to wearing these clothes, or people are used to working in gardens, then it seems normal. I’ve never worn clothes like these before, and I’ve never worked in a garden, so it seems a bit strange to me.’

  ‘You’ve never worked in a garden?’

  ‘Well, I’ve planted some bushes in our front garden. Not that my house is there anymore. We flew over it today; nothing there.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Grace, looking concerned. ‘Your house is gone?’

  ‘Well, not just mine, pretty much every house in existence from my day. I suppose you don’t need them now, just a waste of space and materials.’

  ‘This all seems so normal to me,’ said Grace, again staring off over the field, a field that I now realised had once been a housing estate on the outskirts of Didcot. Of course, before that it would have been a field, and before that it would have been woodland, so, in the long term, nothing changed that much. I looked at Grace as she stared off into the distance. She was a little brusque, she was maybe even a little sharp, but she was also very beautiful. Dark skinned, slim with a strong neck, broad shoulders and a slender frame. She didn’t look like Beth, but there was something about her countenance that reminded me of Beth a little. Beth who had been dead for so long it was impossible to imagine.

  ‘Can I say something, Grace?’ I asked.

  She turned to me and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I was kilometres away. Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘Oh, I just wanted to say thank you for being so kind to me. I have no idea what has happened to me and it’s been very confusing to be here. It makes no sense, but I am grateful that you are being so calm and kind to me. It must be kind of odd for you too, I’m guessing.’

  ‘It is very unfortunate, for you I mean,’ she said, putting a hand gently on my forearm. ‘Very unfortunate, but you are not the first.’

  ‘Sorry?’ I said. I stared back at Grace, trying to understand what she had just said.

  ‘You are not the first to appear like you just have. It has happened before.’

  ‘What! Someone’s come here from my time you mean, someone else in a plane?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘A long time ago.’

  12

  Before I flew through the freaky cloud, I had regular day-mares about the end of the world. It was a bad habit and not one I shared with anyone, even Beth.

  I don’t know if these grim fantasies played out in my imagination because of all the information I was party to regarding the energy crisis and the increasing tension around limited global resources – it may just have been a part of those times.

  And yet here I was, two hundred years into the future, and everything was fine. Well, fine-ish. It was certainly very different: strange, quiet, peaceful but somehow very disturbing.

  There were signs of incredible technology, amazing developments in every area I’d seen. But there seemed to have been a catastrophic drop in population, a total lack of anything that resembled schools, hospitals, universities. They just didn’t have them anymore. The people seemed healthy – I hadn’t seen anyone who looked ill, disabled or even overweight. The ones that had survived could clearly live for a ridiculously long time and they generally seemed fairly happy. But it didn’t add up. The more I saw, the less it added up.

  This was all confusing enough, but then to find out I was not the first person to come through the cloud, from the distant past. Someone else had done so…

  This piece of information was so huge I couldn’t speak for some time after I heard it.

  It wasn’t until I was in the kitchen of the Oak House with Grace that I managed to say anything.

  ‘Grace, please explain. I don’t understand.’

  She stopped still and I could see she felt awkward; she made it clear she felt she shouldn’t have said anything.

  ‘I think it is best you speak to William or Mitchell about this. I reall
y know very little. You must be hungry.’

  A clever move on Grace’s part, as I was ravenous. I nodded with enthusiasm, ‘Yes, I am pretty hungry.’ All I wanted was a bacon sandwich with tomato ketchup splashed all over it on mass-produced sliced bread.

  I knew all I was going to get was some slightly hippy vegetarian food. I mean that was fine, I often ate vegetarian food willingly – in fact Beth and I were more or less veggies, though we sometimes had chicken or fish. When I worked in the States I’d sometimes get a burger or barbecue ribs and then feel overstuffed and guilty, so it’s not like I was a meat glutton. But in this world, well, they just didn’t seem to have meat.

  ‘You can cook can’t you?’ she asked with a look of mild concern.

  ‘Well, yes, after a fashion. I’m no master chef,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure I can help.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, looking slightly more concerned. ‘Well, I would like to go and work with the children for a while. We normally do some reading at this time of day.’

  I pondered for a moment. ‘Oh, right, you want me to cook, like, a whole meal?’

  Grace looked at me with a puzzled smile. It was enchanting. ‘Well, that would be very good if you could. Normally Mitchell would be cooking, but today has been a little disrupted.’

  ‘Making my runway,’ I said, nodding. ‘Yeah, sorry about that.’

  Grace didn’t react to what I’d just said, which left me feeling a little deflated. She started piling ingredients on the table.

  ‘I have some pulses here, some bean curd, some beautiful tomatoes, some leeks, some Jalhaffa.’

  ‘Blimey, what’s that?’

  Again Grace looked at me like I was mentally deficient.

  ‘Jalhaffa?’ she said. ‘Surely you had Jalhaffa?’

  I shook my head. Grace sighed a little and carried on. ‘There are jars of nuts in the cupboards and there is a blending machine over there.’ She pointed to another stainless steel-looking device on the counter top. ‘And you will find many other fresh herbs and beans in the kitchen garden outside the south door.’ This time she pointed behind her to a corridor I hadn’t noticed before.