by Ken Webster
YOUR ENGLISH IS APPALLING!. DON’T YOU HAVE ANY OTHER PURPOSE THAN TO LECTURE THIS KIND WITH EXISTENTIALISM AND QUANTUM PHYSICS. WHAT A MEANINGLESS EXISTENCE! BUT IF CIPHER, THEN CIPHER IT IS – IF YOU CAN KEEP UP WITH ME!!
NOT THIS FRQ. RANGE!!
It struck me then that 2109’s defeat would also be my own in the eyes of John Bucknall. No proof: no interest. But I was still enjoying 2109’s failure. Naturally, I would tell John nothing of the above. As it didn’t refer to SPR’s questions he’d not be interested. Strangely I was determined to wait a few days and see if anything turned up. I was clearly confused – one moment celebrating an end to 2109’s boasting and at the next waiting for an answer to SPR’s question. It was rather like Mr Micawber, hoping without reason: more faith than hope, more desperation than faith.
Deb had been working on me to at least try and visit Tomas, and I promised I would as he’d be gone soon. Back at the cottage with Deb’s encouragement I settled down to relax every part of my body slowly and deliberately and looked up through closed eyes at the infinite (I imagined), at the starry, swirling, arched patterns. At one moment I felt I stepped into that vortex but I could not let go. I opened my eyes. ‘Oh, it’s bloody stupid all this.’
I told Deb how it was. She thought I was doing OK and should try again but I made some excuse. I’d be saying mantras next and painting prayer wheels on the wall.
Deb was miffed. ‘You’re just a cowardly hypocrite … after all this, all that’s happened, you still won’t go all the way.’
‘Goodnight, Deb.’
Tomas’s response:
GOODLIE KEN
ME WERT FORJOYD THAT MYNE FELAWE DIDST VYSYT BUT SORRIE THAT HYM DIDST STEYE BUT SHORTLIE METHYNKS THAT WEN YOW TRYEN GEYN THIN YOW WILT STEYE FOR MYNE BESTE ALE AN METE … YEA PREYE YOW THEN MAYHAP AL MEN WYL BILEVE YN YOWRN TYME O OWRN COMMUNIOUN AS FEW DOE TAKE A WORDE O A SHE PREYE TELLE YF YOW DIDST SYGHTS MYNSELVE WYTH HASTE PREYE YOW ALS REPAYE GOODLIE TOMAS O THY SAYME OFFERYNG AS HAN YOWR LASTE AXYNGS ON PAPYR SOE ME DOST KNOWETH WOT BEEST TREWE
LOVE THOMAS
Good Ken,
I was overjoyed that my fellow visited me but sorry that he didn’t stay very long. I think that when you try again then you will stay for my best ale and meat … then perhaps all men will believe in your time of our communication as very few take the word of a woman. Tell me if you saw me … and show me again your last message, so I know what is true.
Love Tomas
38
3 November
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I paced up and down in agitation.
FULL NAME BIRTH DATE DIED
I COULD FILL IT IN!
‘It says “I”. Anything with “I” in it tends to be “one”.’
‘Does it matter who wrote it if it gets filled in?’ I said, still in some agitation.
‘But 2109 wouldn’t fill it in. They’re on our side.’
‘But there are no sides,’ I said, quoting Spike Milligan. ‘We’re all in this together.’
Not for the first time I shouted out in the kitchen, at the room and at nothing: ‘F*** off!’
4 November
Debbie showed Tomas another of the very early messages. It was, I think, the long communication of 16 February in which Lukas described his visit to Chester and Nantwich. Tomas said it was a fake. He didn’t remember writing any of it, though he again said they were his words. We assumed that 2109 may have been trying to ‘help’ us by adding ideas of their own. We therefore doubted the usefulness of all those messages with modern punctuation. This seemed to tie in with most of the substantial problems of language and detail found in those first few messages and would therefore help explain the sudden decline in errors thereafter; 2109 left his communications largely alone.
The same day, 2109 put in a short message asking if we could get Nick Sowerby-Johnson in front of the screen, saying they could trace him better if he was there. Bullshit!
In my heart I knew that 2109 would not save the situation. I should have taken the machine and gently wrapped it in its box, like venerated remains at a religious ceremony. I should have pushed that box into the cupboard under the stairs and tried to forget it was there. I wish. I dreamt so many things. I dreamt it would all work out. At the same time I avoided the right action, I failed to follow my heart. The machine stayed on duty. Worse, part of me kept believing something would come of it.
40
When Carl Jung, the psychologist, was asked on television in 1959 if he believed in God, he answered, ‘I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.’
I watched that programme in about 1970 and was struck immediately by Jung’s confidence, his careful choice of words, his honesty. I didn’t know how or why he knew but there it was. Tomas Harden I knew. I didn’t believe in him I knew him – or something of him, and the fact that I had never seen him did nothing to alter that knowledge. Let’s not beat around the bush. In those months the space-time barrier was annulled almost daily in one direction or another. This conclusion, hard upon my knowledge of Tomas, was inescapable, yet the opportunity to test it scientifically dwindled from the end of October until now, in November. Tomas had but a week or so left to him. SPR had gone quiet. They were waiting for me, perhaps. I would not pester them. If scientific proof were produced tomorrow it would no longer be for myself but for the sake of the face I turn to my fellow humans, and this is a kind of vanity.
Autumn weather, and here I was reflecting on the signs of the fall of the sap, the thinning leaves on the sycamore tree outside the window of the school house. Something in me still called for help – to look at Tomas’s words, his ideas, his history – and this too was a kind of vanity, but I told myself to keep calm. It had to wait. Tomas would soon be gone from his home. This was my quiet obsession. I wanted information: people, places, gossip and ‘goodlie words’ … each and every day.
I pushed the exercise books into the metal locker frames unmarked. How futile this ‘schooling’ was. I could almost taste the frustration; I could feel the guilt those unmarked books gave me. Would the kids forgive my decline in the manner that the eccentric, the frail and the addled are forgiven? Did they say, these children, these students: ‘He’s off his head. Have you heard that a ghost writes to him! (Even Mr Trinder believes it.) He writes back on a computer!’
The books stayed unmarked. I was tired of this pressure to conform and please. One day I would please myself first.
But if the books remained untouched our lives continued to fray. Deb wanted to go away to Oxford to see Robin, take a few pictures and so forth, to get some time to think, to be away from the cottage. She knew that it would probably inhibit communications but she’d keep it to two days or less. There was nothing she really had to go for, except for the going.
7 November
Before dogs go to sleep they turn round as though flattening a patch of grass. It is an echo of their origins as wolves or wild dogs. Alone in my house I rearranged some of my possessions and petted them, walked around, tried to feel as though I was in charge and really ‘at home’. I bathed and then relaxed before the fire with some wine; the kind of thing many people can do almost any day but for me it was like the taste of everyday life of which a prisoner up for parole dreams of. There was no message, no computer screen, nor any reason to do anything but drift, listen to some old records and repair senses which had been nearly burnt out. I drank as necessary.
‘An hour of real pleasure is worth a lifetime of indifference.’ An old teacher once told me that when he tried to rationalize the deplorable state of his marriage. I did not agree, but only twenty-four hours after my night of pleasure, indifference and awkwardness were stalking around.
I met Debbie at the station. She was unhappy with her trip. The film in the camera had been used on nothing much, Robin couldn’t be found and she was exhausted from having to stand up on the train all the way back from Birmingham New Street. I wired up the computer, it was like putting on chains. It was duty at one and the
same time; my weakness and my obsession, and my love.
But my love was for Tomas, not 2109 or ‘one’, or poltergeists, yet to remind me of the grind, of the incubus upon my back there was soon a new message, unheralded, unbidden.
JOHN & NIK & DAVID
YOUR REASON IS NOT A GOOD ONE BUT NEVER MIND IF IT WAS A HOAX THEN WOULD I SPEAK WITH YOU NOW?
RECOGNISE THAT I EXIST WITHOUT NUMBERS, COLOUR OR SOUND (THEREFORE) ANY QUESTIONS RELATIVE TO THESE ARE NO USE TO YOU, ONE IS A GREAT POWER THAT MUST BE OBEYED AND ANSWERED IF HE SHOULD CALL. I WILL GIVE NO INSTRUCTIONS AS YOU ARE OF NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY. I MAY OBSTRUCT IF THIS IS MY DESIRE.
THINK: IS YOUR LIFE REALLY LIVED WHEN YOU ARE AWAKE OR ASLEEP. YOU ONLY KNOW WHAT IS TRUE WHEN YOU CAN CONSCIOUSLY BE IN BOTH ALL YOU BELIEVE IS YOUR REALITY ALONE!
‘That’s not much use,’ said John Bucknall after I had dictated it to him down the telephone. For all I said that I didn’t care I was feeling really stupid and small.
‘That’s not much use,’ the telephone voice rattled around my lifeless brain. We made some vague arrangement to call each other, the details of which I didn’t remember too well. The impression I got was that he’d call us. I wasn’t going to call him. I’d had quite enough. Maybe he felt the same.
The weather was turning cold. It was nearly a year since the phenomenon had begun and we were little further on in one sense but in others very richly endowed. Only our weariness and the drawing in of the year darkened our sight of these things.
41
10 November
The ‘cart tygre’ swung across the road to Meadow Cottage and tucked in behind Frank’s small, rusting Toyota. Frank, Debbie, Dave Lovell and Emrys, an old school friend, were there. I hadn’t been expecting anyone but Frank. There was a good fire in the grate and good conversation amid the usual disorganization and chaos. Frank, Debbie and I decided to take a walk to talk over the latest events.
After an hour we rested a little on Windmill Hill and looked towards the village. I could see the church spire and the pine trees on the motte. It looked a friendly, sheltered place. I felt closer to Tomas here than at the cottage somehow. It was a safe distance, close enough to know you belong but far enough to allow for reflection.
The coldness of the wind was deflected by my GPO greatcoat and I wanted to stay and watch over the Meadows and see the thick, grey clouds build up over the Welsh hills. Conversation moved on to 2109. Frank had a copy of their latest. 2109 had said we ‘all needed a break’ and I agreed, but how? They said they would hold Tomas’s time almost still relative to ours. An impossible idea. Yet they had successfully interfered with his communications before, and in late August and early September had for a few days cut him out altogether. If 2109 could provide a respite it would be gratefully accepted. They said that two months could be given to us ‘to do what we wanted’. Nothing was too crazy anymore.
There was a pause in the conversation then Frank leant closer to me and wondered aloud whether the fact that 2109 were able to do this might suggest that they were inventing the whole business. It was an old argument and he didn’t expect an answer, he knew what I felt about Tomas. Talk subsided for a few seconds.
2109 were also asking us to let a little of the story into the local papers. They said it was to get the right sort of help. If I did decide on this course of action I hoped that we would get some other researchers interested. Frank and Debbie voiced misgivings. Meanwhile the shadows were lengthening and the sky turning mottled pearl and slate grey.
T can imagine that this mound was once an outpost for the village motte, I can almost see the Welsh gathering across the marsh, preparing to raid cattle,’ I said.
I think that that little mound, its position and its two sentinel elms evoked the past for all of us. The feeling grew steadily that we were at the end of something that weekend, a part of our lives was behind us that had been so intense that we had to allow it room to settle more easily in our minds, to become more properly part of us.
Debbie was worried about Tomas. If he continued to write then shouldn’t we keep up with him? ‘Of course,’ I said, but I hoped that he would stop. A rain shower squalled across the big field and we moved off. It was time for tea; a rainy English Sunday at four in the afternoon.
About 9.30 P.M. Deb found a scrap of paper I had left on the work top. It bore Tomas’s writing. He had not stopped yet. His interest in cars was being developed and I had got as far as describing the fire in the engine.
felawe ken
preye telle wy cartygre dost na growith to hot wyth thy grete fyr for certs yow pepel wal be brent by thy unavoidaunt hete o thy forneys
Fellow Ken
Please tell me why the ‘cartygre’ does not get too hot with the enormous fire, for it is sure your people will be burnt by the unavoidable heat of the furnace.
I tried my best to explain that the engine is encased in a metal jacket filled with water and the water is pushed round by a pump. I didn’t try to explain the pump. Where do you stop?
He continued about an hour later, on the same piece of scrap paper:
yow art amoost wyse wyght brothyr ken for yow maketh alle sympal for myn rekonyng o thise engenes as yow calle theym bot me wylt nat telle anodyr o thyse thyngs yow speke or theym wyll han me for jakke gaumercie me aske namo o thise gagdyts me thynks/ wot han yow o me preye
Tomas
You are a most wise man, brother Ken, for you make all things simple so I can understand these engines as you call them, but I will not speak of these things to any other person or they will have me for a lunatic. I ask no more about these gadgets. What do you want to know of me?
Tomas
I did not ask him anything nor did I tell him that 2109 were planning to ‘hold’ his time.
Later that evening as Deb sank quietly beneath the bedcovers she turned to me and said, ‘I saw Tomas again. He was asleep in a chair. I kissed his forehead. He stirred a little and spoke in his sleep. “Katherine?” I felt so sad. He’s still missing her.’
I felt Deb’s sadness for perhaps a second but I smoothed the pillow for her and directed my thoughts towards sleep. I mumbled, ‘You only dreamt it anyway, Deb. People dream all sorts of stuff.’
Were we to believe that as measured in our time, at or near midnight 10 November 1985, Tomas would fall asleep before his fire only to awake, stir the embers and it would for us be a new day sometime in January 1986?
I printed the 2109 message of 10 November out on Monday break time, but I was impatient, grumbly, ill and now, with the bell rattling in the corridor, short of time. I showed Peter the message. He was puzzled but pleased and swooped upon the first point, about press coverage: ‘How about Neil Bartlem? Yes? He’s a good man. I shall ring him.’
In a moment the decision was taken: the Tomas story would go into the local press.
42
Between July and November Tomas had managed to sketch parts of his village. It was something I was keen to see done as it gave a great deal of historical detail which could be looked into at a later date. The main details were culled between 10–31 October but it was 13 July when we first received something relating to his village. It was an outline of his house. This quiet period in mid-November allowed us time to sort through the material concerned with his village and its inhabitants. As we got a better feel for what Tomas’s life was like I felt like a glider pilot beginning to circle upwards. I was conscious of my field of vision expanding, thanks to the information that Tomas gave us. There are many dozens of points of interest but the only conclusion I draw is that it is not the village I recognize, the village I walk from end to end and through and through.
Debbie, in one of her ‘dreams’, saw something of the village and she wrote about it. I think it is a good starting point: this is why. After I had struggled with the maps of the village Tomas had left me and failed to match them up to the present a good friend said, ‘Use your imagination, recreate his world view! What were maps there to show? Was it t
he linear relationships between places? Do you expect scale like an Ordnance Survey map? Or do you expect he will draw what is important to him? Would the lie of the land be changed, or do you think he would draw important places larger than others? In short, look through his eyes!’
Debbie’s account (below), whether symbolic or real, gave me confidence to ‘look through his eyes’:
‘… As Tomas’s departure drew closer so did our friendship; the stubborn chauvinist I had first met, his tasteless humour and criticism of my ill manner, had long gone, leaving a very open and real relationship. Although one would say it was special because of the circumstances of our relationship, I think that it was also special because it was almost as if we were the only two people in existence at times. It is perhaps hard to explain why but because of this it was a very personal relationship.
‘Tomas was leaning back in his chair with his feet resting on the kitchen table, busy carving away at something small in his hand. As soon as he heard me behind him he jumped up and greeted me in the usual way, always with an enthusiastic hug. It amused me that we would always greet each other with the same lines. It became a comforting ritual.
‘“Pray, maid, how fare yow this day?”
‘“Me fares fine.”
‘He always laughed at my reply. It must have meant something to him other than I intended. Perhaps it was the way I said it.