Past Present Future

by Alexander, N J.

  But the right shoulder? Guardian Angel is on the right side. So what if the tap was on the left, I curiously wondered and typed more key words into my search engine. I scrolled through the results until I found something: three taps on the left is the Devil, the Fallen Angel. Thank the Lord, quite literally, that mine was on the right. But an angel on Halloween? Were there angels on Halloween? That didn’t make sense either. Since when have there been angels with their wings and halos alongside witches, pumpkins and ghosts? Angels are linked to religion and spirituality: Halloween is more commercial and about the wicked. God knows, again quite literally. Wasn’t there supposed to be a drop in temperature with ghosts as well? Not that I would have noticed in there – it was already too cold. At least I wasn’t the only nutter on the planet it had happened to, if nothing else.

  Thinking of Halloween reminded me that we had entered November. So keeping with my Alice in Wonderland theme, I posted a quick Status Update on Facebook…

  11:45 White Rabbit White Rabbit White Rabbit

  I kept the PC logged on, because I intended to spend more time on it later looking at Anthony Hope’s Wall. I picked up my mug, and after three failed verbal cautions, grabbed Blue by the collar, pulled him off the chair and went to see what Richard and William were up to.

  I sat chilling with them in the lounge, watching some crap show that William had put on TV until Dad arrived with Elyse, who came through the door still insisting on pulling her suitcase herself. She looked like a Polly Pocket air stewardess and gave me a quick hug, wrapping herself round my legs – she’d obviously missed me.

  After releasing me she joined William on the sofa. William once again filled Dad in on my ghostly experience, which was greeted with a mocking laugh from Dad and Richard.

  ‘Yes, well for your information. It’s an angel. Three taps on the right shoulder is an angel wanting to get my attention,’ I said, not quite believing that I’d let those words fall from my mouth. But it was too late.

  ‘Where have you got that from? Is that what you were doing in the study…looking it up?’ Richard asked, still laughing at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said defiantly.

  Dad made me run through the whole story, because he could clearly see that I had been affected by it.

  ‘It could have been a member of staff – they’ll have set you up,’ he finally said.

  ‘Dad!!’ I almost screamed at him. ‘There was no member of staff around.’

  ‘They would have been on a pulley, were winched in to tap you on the shoulder and got heaved out of the way again,’ he suggested.

  ‘Are you being serious?’ I said incredulously. ‘Dad this wasn’t some multi-million-pound stage performance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at Halloween…this was just a few members of staff, doing a few extra hours to entertain kids. Plus, from where I was stood, there wasn’t the mechanics to have a pulley system with some silly twit flying around above me. Your theory is impossible…utterly ridiculous,’ I said, feeling infuriated by an explanation which could only have come from the mind of a design engineer.

  ‘Oh well. Must have been a ghost or angel then,’ he said, backing down and leaving me to stew in my own insanity. ‘Well…I’d better get back to your mum. I’ll leave you to the madhouse, Richard,’ he said, as he made a retreat to the front door. ‘Bye you two,’ he shouted over to William and Elyse who, after being reunited for all of two minutes were already in an almighty bust up over the lounge television. Why does Elyse have to scream when they fight? The noise was adding to the cacophony around me.

  ‘Yeah, thanks for bringing Elyse back, Bill,’ Richard said.

  ‘And…thanks for having her last night. Thank Mum for me,’ I shouted after him, then remembered to make Elyse thank him too.

  ‘Thank you Gwaaadaaaad,’ she shouted, before going for another sly kick on William who went into an Oscar-winning performance of a slow, painful death.

  ‘There will have been someone there, you just didn’t see them, that’s all it is,’ Richard said as he closed the door on Dad. He meant well, but I wanted to punch him for it.

  ‘Look, I’m telling you, no one could have moved that fast,’ and, to prove my point, I forced Richard and William into a shoulder tapping improvised role-play session in the kitchen; if nothing else, it separated William and Elyse. Both eventually agreed with me – you couldn’t tap someone on the shoulder and move fast enough into a position without being seen. So at least we’d cleared that point up.

  ‘So, are you going to let it drop for a bit,’ Richard asked; now sounding like Maddy.

  ‘Okay, I will. But…you don’t think that something bad is going to happen do you? Am I being warned about something? What about that text? Do you think they’re connected?’

  ‘No!’

  Yep, he was definitely sounding like Maddy and so I went to fetch William and Elyse’s uniforms from the study chair instead.

  So much for being organised, I thought to myself as I re-ironed them, but this time placed them on the chair in the hall. I then slid myself in front of the laptop in the garden room – I did not want to creep back into the study. My theory was that if I was sat only a few feet away from the lounge door, I wasn’t exactly excluding myself.

  I logged on to Facebook and left a few notes on my Wall about the shoulder tapping, and effectively forced Maddy into a written declaration, on Henry’s life, that it wasn’t her who did it, and within four minutes she sworn on her Wall that it wasn’t her.

  I then clicked onto Anthony Hope’s Wall.

  Just clicking on his Wall had my tummy in fluttering knots. I could see a link he’d posted for some event he was performing at that weekend. I clicked on it to open it up fully so I could read all of the text. At the very bottom it said: Catch the flippin’ frog – Next Time 13th Dec – log it.

  ‘Catch the flippin’ frog.’ I said the words back again.

  This statement only seemed crazy if it wasn’t directed at me. It had me wondering whether he had just given me an opportunity to meet up with him in a few weeks’ time. He’d given me a venue, a date, and ample time to organise getting there. Why else would he use such a stupid line to forward sell an event?

  But merely thinking about seeing him sent a sexual wave through my body as I imagined the venue and thought about what I would wear for the occasion. But then reality kicked in because how the hell would I sneak off to some venue in London unnoticed by Richard? Even something five weeks away wasn’t remotely possible – he may as well have been in New York for all it was worth. But then could I do it, if I really tried to engineer it? I didn’t know.

  But why would he be interested in me? Why would a man who could take his pick from any twenty-something groupie be remotely interested in me. But then why wouldn’t he think it easy for me to get somewhere on a particular date – my Facebook made me look like a socialite from my pictures. How was he supposed to know that I’d only stepped foot in a lap-dancing club once in my entire life, and yes, I did have photos of two other clubbing nights with the Maddy, Lorna and a couple of other friends. But their timing had been unfortunate, in so far as, I had barely been in a club since having William and Elyse and both occasions were since signing up to Facebook. All in all, my Facebook gave an unintentional edited version of my life.

  I wrote a message on my Wall.

  It would be lovely…if only I could escape at the drop of a hat…

  Again, this was a message that would only make sense to him if he was watching me.

  I felt Richard slide into the bed next to me and his hand wandered onto my thigh, as he moved his head close to my ear. I felt his warm breath which was minty from his toothpaste.

  ‘Do you fancy a shag then?’ he said.

  Ugghhh! My head screamed.

  ‘No, I’m really tired. Sorry…night – love you,’ and I turned my back to him.

  ‘What is wrong with you,’ he said, annoyed.

  ‘Nothing. I’m just tired. Go to sleep,’ I replied, and someh
ow I don’t know how, I managed to sleep dreamlessly that night. Like a boxer knocked out for nine, I came round the next morning on ten, fighting fit and desperately biding my time to get onto the laptop for a slightly longer run than a few minutes. However, having William and Elyse around, I knew I was probably going to have to battle for this one. I also knew, at the very worst, that William and Elyse were back at school in a couple of days, having finally got to the end of half-term. But the angel thing was still bugging the life out of me.

  I wanted to know what I should be paying attention to. I guess I was hoping that it would lead to an overall explanation for everything strange that had happened. At this point, I had a theory about which direction I should be aiming at. I hadn’t even got the patience to get showered and dressed, in case I missed a quiet, harmonious moment away from William and Elyse. I was like a junkie waiting to get hold of my fix.

  Richard eventually disappeared into the garden with William for a kick around. For once, I was grateful for the overzealous approach to what should be a hobby. But William and Elyse being separated meant that Elyse would play happily without tormented interruption.

  I put the soft broom back into the utility room and brought the laundry basket into the lounge and sat sorting socks into pairs, whilst watching Elyse play with her dolls for a bit. After a while I disappeared into the study and hit the search engine on the PC.

  I typed in my words:

  Anthony Hope + Bible + Angels + Nicole

  The old PC was playing up again, so I had to delete my words and start again. But it then turned to black. I cursed it and had to patiently wait for it to return to normal. But this was my theory: angels are biblical, and one way or another they had started cropping up left, right and centre in my life recently, which had started after my iPod had that funny glitch. So I was starting to wonder whether there was anything in the Bible, any passage that referred to an Anthony or even a Nicole, which would give some kind of link to us. Perhaps there was something in there that was relevant to me at this point in my life.

  I was fully aware that it was a crazy thought, but everything I had ever considered to be the norm was getting turned on its head.

  A few moments later my screen was full of cached results…

  A Hope’s novel: Anthony Hope

  Simon Dale by Anthony Hope

  Anthony Hope author of Simon Dale

  I laughed. My search enquiry had pulled up some book by an author with the same name as my Anthony.

  I looked at the words in my search bar…

  Anthony Hope + Nll

  This is what had been left on my search enquiry after it started to play up; most of my letters were missing.

  It wasn’t quite the tiny cryptic message in the Bible I was hoping for. But, out of curiosity I decided to click on one of the cached results.

  Buy this book online: An historical novel written in 1898 involving the Actress and Courtesan Nell Gwyn.

  I felt myself shiver.

  This was weird, very weird: a man called Anthony Hope wrote a book about an actress and courtesan.

  I had trained as an actress, and technically, I was a courtesan, although I was not living in the court of a king. But like “cuckold”, “courtesan” isn’t a word used nowadays. The fact that Richard was still married to his wife made me a courtesan, well sort of, as a courtesan is a woman who takes the place of the wife and Richard was in the top two per cent of the UK earners, so he could be referred to as a person of high social standing. So…that fact qualified me as the modern equivalent of courtesan as much as it shamed me to admit.

  I was starting to think that my computer had played up deliberately. It was like having a ghost in my laptop. My life had taken a crazy turn. I didn’t know about Halloween – but I definitely seemed to have bats in the belfry.

  It was as though I was no longer in the driving seat. The way I saw it was: you just didn’t get tapped on the shoulder by Mr Nobody, and then go and discover a book written by a man with the name Anthony Hope that was about a courtesan and a trained actress; life didn’t happen that way.

  I knew Maddy would love my latest nonsensical shit and this was yet something else I couldn’t discuss with Richard. I probably should have set up a box-file labelled “issues requiring discussion with Richard”, along with another, labelled “stuff I can’t get my head around”. I didn’t want to hedge a bet on which would end up the fullest.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  After discovering the Anthony Hope novel I needed to know more about the story which I considered as natural curiosity. All I wanted was a short summary of the plot; a synopsis. I wanted to see if the only coincidence was the author’s name and Nell Gwyn’s profession. But it was easier said than done, and all I’d found were links to sites that enabled me to purchase the book and the odd site, which would allow me to read it online. I couldn’t be bothered to wade through those; I wanted to know quickly. If there wasn’t a synopsis, surely there must be someone in the world who had reviewed this book at some point? I stole my eyes away from the screen for an instant and caught a glimpse of William through the shutter-slats, climbing over the field fence, he was obviously nipping to see the neighbour’s little boy.

  I turned back to the screen and decided to just search for Anthony Hope – the author’s name. I’d finished typing that in as Richard walked into the garden room with one of Elyse’s dolls perched on his shoulder.

  ‘Ooh…look, I have an angel on my shoulder,’ he mocked as he held the doll in place.

  ‘Piss off – it’s not funny,’ I said dryly.

  ‘God…lighten up! Where’s the carefree, happy, smiley Little N gone? Anyway, what are you looking up now?’

  ‘Nothing,’ and as quick as a flash, I’d hit the minimise button at the top of my screen.

  ‘Nothing?’ he repeated, but I knew that he didn’t believe me.

  He disappeared into the kitchen to read the papers and I clicked on the maximise button to pull the full screen back up and I headed for an encyclopaedia article.

  I took a few seconds to look at an old black-and-white photo of Anthony Hope, the author; it must have been taken while he was anything from late twenties to his forties. He had a distinguished face and had lost most of his hair, but what was left showed that he had once been dark-haired.

  Died in 1933 of throat cancer at the age of seventy.

  Throat cancer? I touched my throat. I’d had a bad throat since Halloween – it had started late afternoon that day.

  So was I being haunted by the ghost of Anthony Hope and not an angel?

  I read about Anthony Hope being the son of a vicar; he’d received a knighthood, and was clearly a clever man having been educated at Oxford. But I still couldn’t find the synopsis.

  I was sure I’d heard of Nell Gwyn so I typed in Anthony Hope + Nell Gwyn.

  Loads of entries for Nell Gwyn came up, so many that I almost felt foolish not knowing anything about her. But then I wasn’t much of an historian. After skim reading a few articles I found out that she had been the mistress of King Charles II. Considering that the book was “an historical novel”, as in a story mixing historical facts with fiction, I took it that the character, Simon Dale, was a fictional man, on the basis that he failed to be mentioned in any historical articles on the Internet in connection with King Charles II and Nell Gwyn.

  I took a break, and made myself and Richard a mug of tea. While the kettle boiled I pondered whether in this book Nell was the King’s mistress, and the protagonist Simon Dale was some kind of fictional extra-curricular love interest. But I couldn’t tell from the bits and pieces I’d found whether I was right to assume that Nell took the role of both the actress and courtesan in the story. I poured the milk into the tea thinking that really I needed to buy the book which would be far easier than attempting to scrape bits together online. But then, owning a book with Anthony’s name slashed across the front probably wouldn’t be such a good idea.

  I put the mug of tea on
the oak coffee table, within reach of Richard, and gave him a prod. He had taken one of his catnaps and was flat out of the sofa with his jaw slackened. Blue was in the same sleeping position. They looked like a pair of corpses and here I was Googling dead people. Elyse was sitting at Richard’s feet, brushing her doll’s hair.

  I sat back at the laptop and re-typed Anthony Hope one more time, just see if there was anything else I could find and then stumbled across one of his famous quotes:

  Economy is going without something you do want in case you should, someday, want something you probably won’t want.

  I found the words arresting and as I was about to read on I felt a draught behind me.

  ‘Why have you just crept up behind me, you made me jump?’ I said, annoyed. My nerves were still jangling from the other day without Richard peeping over my shoulder.

  ‘I didn’t creep up behind you, I just wanted to see what you are looking up now and what has you so engrossed?’

  ‘You did creep up - you’ve even got your reading glasses on,’ I argued. ‘Anyway, I’m looking up an old novel called Simon Dale. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘No…Why on earth are you looking that up?’

  ‘Just am. I think it’s pretty much a long-forgotten book about a fictional man and an actress stroke courtesan.’

  ‘So why are you interested in it?’

  ‘Told you, I just am…no reason.’

  ‘Strange. Look, Nicole, you have been acting really odd lately, are you okay?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ I lied again; this was starting to become a habit.

  ‘Are you going to get off that thing soon?’

  ‘Yes in a minute…I am nearly finished’ I said, thinking I’d definitely slipped into Wonderland. The plot was different but the madness was all there.

  Richard left me to it and I logged onto Facebook. After the comment I’d left only the day before about not being able to escape at the drop of a hat – I wanted to see if the living Anthony had left anything at all since then which acknowledged the impossibility of anything happening between us.