by Brian Hughes
As for her visits to the toilet, Maude just tried her best to ignore what was happening.
Months became seconds, years became smears.
Oddly enough the experience wasn’t as exhausting as it ought to have been. Her frail old bones were growing younger, her humped spine straightening. The colour of her tresses changed from blue-rinse to auburn, tumbling onto her shoulders.
Eventually the seasons became mere pinpricks of heat and chill.
Whereupon Maude skewed to a halt with a dizzying slam.
Shaking the dervishes from before her eyes she looked around, only to find herself in the cobbled yard of Trotter’s Cotton mill.
She eked a twinge from her back and breathed in deeply.
The vibrancy of youth was creaking through her bones in the manner that sap would rise through an oak tree.
It was a wonderful sensation, all the usual arthritic pains having been relegated to a distant future.
Suddenly the world seemed much less foggy because her cataracts had peeled away. In amazement she stared at the buzzing contraption, the figures still jostling.
Then the countdown began once more in earnest. Fingers of shadow fell across Maude in moving bars.
The workers were pouring from Trotter’s Mill like groggy ants, stumbling exhausted towards the gates where...ah yes.
And there he was.
Benjamin Miller raised one brow flirtatiously towards the giggling seamstress clogging past. The young girl turned her face coquettishly towards the ground.
Right! Maude tightened her lips. So she’d been given a second chance, had she? Well, this time there’d be no Maude Blueberry, housewife and drudge. She wasn’t going to spend the rest of her years surrounded by greedy children and unfulfilled opportunities. This time it’d be Maude Miller, contented and, above all, sexually fulfilled housewife. Maude hoisted her bosoms alluringly, flattened her pinafore and set out at stride. Thirteen seconds later she reached Benjamin Miller and pulled up short.
“’Ello, Ben...and before you ask, I’m not goin’ ’ome for me tea! We’re goin’ on a date!”
We Learn from History...
The marmoset blinked. Down below, the two young lovers bustled into the Rodent House.
Actually that’s not strictly accurate. Maude was dragging Benjamin by one hand, the chandler’s boy not exactly enjoying his educational visit. Greyminster Zoo wasn’t so much a collage of animals as a scribble of rodents. The sort of creatures that, had they not been in wooden cages, would have been shot by farmers.
Maude pressed her nose against the bars of the guineapig pound, pushed a finger inside and felt a sharp yellow tooth nibble its tip.
A memory came back to her. The zoo had been blown up in the Second World War. In subsequent years it was replaced by the crazy golf course.
Maude reached the conclusion that even Hitler had had his good points.
“And where d’ y’ think you’re goin’?”
“Me? I wasn’t goin’ nowhere!” Benjamin sidled back, nervously checking his pocket watch.
“You’ve got another date, ’aven’t y?” Maude prodded his chest with an accusatory finger. “That’s why y’ couldn’t be bothered walkin’ me ’ome or turnin’ up at me weddin’ all those years ago, innit? I bet it’s that strumpet from the packin’ depot! Lizzy buggerin’ Oldham!”
“I assure you, Maude, it’s nothing of the sort...it’s just that...” Benjamin pawed at his cap. “Well...y’ keep on pinchin’ me bottom in public.”
“What’s up with that? You ’aven’t got ’emmerhoids ’ave y’?”
“Watcha mean, ‘What’s up with that?’” Benjamin struggled to regain some authority, slamming the cap across his head and frowning. “It just isn’t done!”
“Loosen up a bit, Ben. In another fifty years time everyone ’ull be at it.”
Maude thought about how society had altered.
“If y’ think a friendly nip on the arse is bad, just wait till y’ see Channel Four! It’ll ’ave y’ spontaneously combustin’ with embarrassment!”
“I for one, Madam, will not be associated with a slut!”
And with that Benjamin walked defiantly off, a dormouse clinging to his shoulder in a desperate bid for freedom.
Rattle, clack, thud. Maude’s clogs sparked off the cobbles of Dog Bone Lane. The sound was echoed by horse’s hooves some yards in front. At number eleven Cyril Hardacre was struggling beneath Mrs Winterbotham’s coal delivery. The ribbon of slag rattled into the pavement.
Optimistically Dobbin eyed Maude. She usually welcomed the donkey with a carrot.
Usually, but not today.
“Eh up, Maude. Your old man’s bin askin’ after you.” Cyril walked another sack to the rim of his cart, then watched it topple into the gutter. He straightened himself and drew one hirsute arm across his crown in a grubby smudge. “I ’ear there’s gonna be a weddin’. Ee’s got y’ fixed up with Bertram Blueberry.”
“Over my dead body!” Maude stamped her foot. “I’m not ’avin’ nobody tellin’ me how t’ conduct me own affairs!”
“Now that’s no way for a young woman to act!”
Cyril flapped his grimy waistcoat. Lugging coal about in summer was a head-boiling business.
“You’ve got t’ remember your place Maude Potter. If your old man wants y’ t’ get married t’ Bertie, then you’d better mek the best of it.”
Once again Maude realised how much things had changed.
She thought about Judith. Spoilt cow! If only the young knew ’ow good they’d got it! She didn’t deserve t’ be born!
And Maude certainly didn’t deserve t’ go through the miserable life she’d already been through.
This time she’d be independent and mek ’er own mistakes!
“Tell Father I’ve run away t’ be a nun. Anythin’ other than marry that borin’ git!” She mulled matters over in her head. “No, better still tell ’im I’ve eloped with Benjamin Miller. That should put an end to it once and for all!”
A ticking noise on the edge of her hearing drew her attention towards her pinafore pocket.
She pulled out the sanctimonious box.
“Fat lot of good you turned out t’ be! What sort of second chance is this?”
In disgust she threw the contraption to the ground, bringing her heel down on it.
There was a crackle. Then a fssst. And the casing shattered.
“I’m not having it, you ’ear? ’Istory will not repeat itself! Not for Maude Potter!”
With a swift punt she kicked the box against the wall.
It exploded in a hydrangea of smoke.
“’Ere!” Cyril coughed. “Watcha playin’ at?”
The debris settled. In the middle of the dust, a wafer thin filament appeared to have split the fabric of reality apart. A jagged doodle of light that resembled a crack.
The crack widened, ten fingertips pawing the edges as though somebody was trying to clamber out. A set of hollow features thrust themselves through the gap.
The old man blinked in astonishment.
Maude Blueberry blinked back.
“Maude Potter?” He inched a pair of pince-nez along his nose. “Is that really you, after all this time?”
Enigma Variations
Shock affects people in different ways. Some petrify like hedgehogs stunned by the headlights of a speeding lorry. Others howl uncontrollably, nothing short of a boxing glove being able to bring them round. Others still take it all in their stride.
As far as Maude was concerned, having just faced death, travelled backwards through history and torn reality into strips, the fact that the pensioner before her resembled a dehydrated version of Benjamin Miller had little impact on her senses.
“C’mon in, Maude.”
One crooked hand grabbed Maude by the shoulder. It hauled her kicking into what, if it hadn’t have been in the middle of Dog Bone Lane, would have been an attic.
Spitting machines winked and purred from every shel
f.
“This is Danny, me apprentice.”
“Mornin’.” Danny tugged a forelock, wiped an oily palm across his boiler suit and set about some mechanical contrivance with his screwdriver.
“Ben?” Maude’s brows came down across her forehead. “’Ow come you’re s’ wrinkly and buggered?”
“Oh dear. Now that’s not good...” The old man thrust one finger through the fluorescing rent. “We’ll have t’ do somethin’ about sewin’ that up agen, eh Danny?”
Danny grunted.
Benjamin grinned.
“Yes Maude, it’s me. I see y’ got me present then?” He picked up a teapot from the draining board. “It’s taken a long time Maude. But now we’ve finally got the chance t’ put things right.”
Glug glug glug went the brew into the cups. Maude watched the ceremony without a word.
“I s’pose you’re wonderin’ what’s goin on?” Clink, clatter, grind. The teaspoon stammered round the bone china rim.
“What meks y’ think that?” It was beginning to dawn on Maude that, regardless of everything else, this wasn’t how she’d imagined her final hours to be. “It’s perfickly normal t’ be dragged backwards ninety odd years and then walk into somebody’s apartment in the middle of the gutter, innit?”
“Let me explain, Maude...” Benjamin lowered himself into his armchair. “For fifty years I was married to Elizabeth Oldham. A more cankerous, cold ’earted woman you’d never meet.”
He stirred his tea again, obviously concentrating on some deeper issue. Eventually the spoon was laid to rest on the saucer, Benjamin fumbling for a chocolate Hobnob.
“It was somethin’ y’ said, Maude, all those years ago, what got me thinkin’. ’Bout Channel Four. Made me realise that you either ’ad the power of prophecy, or some sort of time machine.”
Maude opened her mouth to speak. Then she realised that she didn’t have anything to say.
“Any’ow, after Liz’s death, I thought, ’appen it was me ’oo gave y’ that machine. And if that was the case, then p’raps I could return t’ the day when things went so badly wrong.”
This time Maude’s mouth caught up with the words.
“Why didn’t y’ tell me?” She ground her teeth together angrily. “Now look! I’ve broken the machine, torn reality and you’re an old biddy whilst I’m a young woman.”
“To be ’onest Maude, the machine wasn’t meant for you. I don’t know ’ow you came to ’ave it.”
Grunt, struggle, grunt.
Benjamin battled with his chair, the sagging seat reluctant to give up his tired old frame.
At length he crossed to a cupboard behind the hatstand.
“’Ere it is! Danny and I ’ave worked for years on this. I was goin’ t’ test it out this afternoon.”
“Oh no, y’ don’t!”
Suddenly Maude was on him. She grabbed the box and wrestled it angrily from his grip.
“If anyone’s going to ’ave another chance, it’s goin’ t’ be me!”
“Let go! It isn’t primed yet!”
A tussle broke out. The sort of tussle that Benjamin was destined to lose from the outset.
“You always were a stubborn one, Maude. That’s always bin your undoin’!”
The box came away from Benjamin’s grip. Maude held it up before her eyes. “’Ow’s it work then?”
From inside a steady whine was growing, rattling the spiders from the rafters. Danny looked up as several ornaments goose-stepped along the daido.
“Give it back, y’ stupid woman. It’s already pre-set t’ go back twenty-one years. That’s when Liz passed away. I thought it’d be best t’ meet up then.”
A sudden flash. A splash of colour.
And everything, from Maude’s perspective, was hurtling backwards once more. It was all reminiscent of some Keystone Cop movie (all rights reserved Bob Monkhouse 1902) being rewound in its projector.
Once Upon a Time
The journey from old age to youth had been exhilarating. The journey from youth to toddler-hood, however, wasn’t nearly as pleasant.
Things tended to shrink. The ground rose up with alarming ferocity.
Suddenly the world was full of kneecaps and beatings and headmasters with lofty windows and pointed noses.
Not only that but Maude’s brain was growing smaller. She could hear the memories popping one by one.
Knees became ankles, ankles became the dusty carpet.
Thoughts became ideas and then finally just impressions.
Eventually the whole of Maude’s world was a small balloon of amniotic fluid, with a rhythmic beat.
It could have been her mother’s pulse.
It could have been Mrs Bragg’s boots crossing the threshold of 10 Dog Bone Lane.
Whatever it was, Maude wasn’t conscious of it anyhow.
Snarled up in her umbilical cord, Benjamin’s box ground to a halt, shuddered once and then started to slowly count down once more.
“3,282,522,403...3,282,522,402...”
There are many things that come before a fall.
Pride for one.
Stupidity for another.
In Maude’s particular case her father had a hand in it somewhere.
Having said that, Maude’s pride hadn’t exactly helped matters much, condemned as she now was to live her life in all of its drudgery for the rest of eternity.
Given the opportunity, most people would try to sort out those mistakes that ruin our lives.
Time on the other hand often has different plans.
There is an old saying. Exactly how appropriate it is in this instance, it’s hard to tell. But I’m going to use it anyhow because, frankly, I can’t think of any other way to end our unfortunate tale.
We learn from History that we do not learn from History.
The Beginning
Intermezzo the Ninth
“Right,” said Lucy, pushing back her chair and standing up with an amicable smile. “I really ought to be going.”
“Going where?” said the stranger as enigmatically as he could.
“Home, for my tea...via the shops.”
Lucy tugged her long coat from the chair back and slid her arms into the sleeves.
“It’s been...interesting. I think.”
“You can’t go yet,” said the stranger. “There’s only one item left. And you still haven’t found your inspiration.”
“An empty jam jar with a candle stub in it?” Lucy stopped in mid toggle. “I somehow doubt that I’ll find any inspiration from that.”
“But you might,” the stranger persisted. “It’s difficult to know where inspiration has its routes.”
“Perhaps, but having listened to all your other stories I somehow doubt this one’ll make any difference.”
“But you are going to stay anyhow,” said the stranger with resolve. He looked up from beneath his hat brim, the sudden flash of his white teeth catching her off guard. “Admit it...you can’t leave without knowing the last tale, no matter what you might think of the rest.”
For several moments Lucy stood perfectly still.
Then she gently sat down again and breathed deeply in.
“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know why, but somehow I feel I ought to see this thing through. So...what’s the story behind this then?”
And she stared into the jar with resignation.
The Photographer’s Ghost
Haunting the First: The Ghost of Christmas Present
Beer twisted up towards the rafters. It was accompanied by screams. Tankards span across the Smoking Lounge as customers stumbled into one another. To put it another way, the Old Bull and Duck was in an uproar. (Editor: Nothing new there then!)
Through this melee strolled the ghost. He rolled a skull across his shoulders in the fashion of Uncle Stanley’s famous cap.
He pursed his lips, muttered, ‘Boo’ and sent a drunkard diving for cover beneath an upturned barrel.
Behind the bar Mr Plum st
opped drying the glasses and studied the chaos. “Buggerin’ Nora! Not again?”
“Third time this week, eh Landlord?” Albert Doyle scratched his head with one stubby finger. “This boggart o’ yours ain’t doin’ your business much good, is it?”
A balloon burst above the mantelpiece and several brasses fell into the bottle bin.
Although the room was bustling with activity, it wasn’t difficult to work out where the ghost was standing. It was slap-bang in the middle of the billiards’ table, spinning its dismembered head on the tip of one finger.
“If it carries on like this,” Mr Doyle continued, wiping the froth from his lip. “Y’ won’t ’ave enough customers left t’ keep the place open!”
“Don’t I know it?”
The only reason it was busy tonight was because of the Greyminster Glee Club’s Annual Jamboree. (Editor: Sounds like the do I was at the other night.)
“I s’pose I’d better do sommet about it!”
“Ooh Maude! It’s comin’ for me!” The brandy glass trembled between Clara London’s shrivelled fingers. “It’s all cold and clammy. Just look at the damn thing!”
The ghost screwed its head back onto its neck and blew the old dear a kiss.
A scream shot up from her corner.
Not that anyone heard it. It would have been difficult to hear an elephant bellow with all the commotion.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” Cedric Plum climbed onto a keg, holding a candle in a jam jar. “If I could just ’ave your attention for a moment?”
Hmm…obviously not. Arthur Bracket’s Zimmer frame hurtled past at full pelt. “If you’d all stop panickin’, I’d like t’ get this matter sorted!”
(Editor: I wish he blooming would!) The welsh dresser toppled forward with a crash.
Undaunted, Cedric tugged on his asbestos gloves. He’d bought them from the Paranormal Investigators on Applegate in case of an emergency.