by Mark Morris
Kate. She dominated my thoughts, and I felt sick with anticipation at the prospect of finally bringing her home. As I ascended the stairs to my bedroom on that day towards the end of August 1893, having just said goodbye to Clover and Hawkins, I felt as though electricity was fizzing through my veins. When I took the heart from my pocket, after changing from my Victorian clothes into my twenty-first-century ones, it was as if it too was aware of, and responding to, my almost feverish anticipation. It seemed to thrum with power, to vibrate with eagerness – or maybe that was just me. There was a part of me that wanted to use the heart to zap myself straight over to that little cottage in Wales where Kate was waiting for me, to finally have the lasting reunion I’d been working towards right there and then. But if I did that I wouldn’t have a car, and would therefore have to use the heart to transport us both back to Ranskill Gardens – and I couldn’t spring that on her, could I? Who knew what effect it would have?
So I forced myself to be patient. And instead of jumping the gun I moved forward in time, but remained at the same location – my familiar but ever-changing bedroom in Ranskill Gardens. I timed it so I’d arrive around five minutes after I’d left on the morning of November 2nd 2012.
The first thing I was truly aware of once the room had settled around me was the rushing sound of water. For a puzzled moment, as the familiar nausea swept over me, I wondered whether it was raining, whether the heart had brought me to the wrong time. Then I realised: it was the sound of the shower in Clover’s en suite further along the corridor.
Once the nanites had done their work I moved along the landing to Clover’s bedroom door. There was still a trail of dried mud on the carpet between my bedroom and hers. Not for the first time I wondered whether I’d ever get used to the vagaries of time travel. It was weird to think that while more than eighteen months had passed for me since I’d last seen her – at least in this timeline – it had been nothing but a matter of minutes for her since she’d hugged me and sent me on my way.
Although I could still hear the shower going, I knocked tentatively on her door, and then, when I failed to get an answer, opened it. Her duvet was in a rumpled heap on her bed and her clothes strewn untidily over the seat of a tall-backed wicker chair in the corner between the bedroom door and the door to the en suite. I crossed to the bathroom and knocked. The rush of water stopped abruptly.
‘Hi, I’m back,’ I called.
Her voice, from inside the shower, was echoey. ‘You were eight minutes, not five. I was getting worried.’
‘Sorry. I got held up in Ypres. Bloody Germans.’
Now her voice was sombre. ‘How was it?’
I hesitated. How could I even begin to express what I’d been through? In the end I simply said, ‘Not much fun.’
She was silent for a moment, then she asked, ‘Are you okay?’ More hesitantly, ‘Nothing… missing?’
I briefly considered making a joke of it – Only my sense of humour – but it seemed neither funny nor appropriate. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m fine. I’m going to make some breakfast. It’s been ages since I had a proper full English. You want to join me?’
‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ she said. ‘I’ll be down in ten.’
She padded barefoot into the kitchen almost exactly ten minutes later, her maroon hair still damp. I had bacon under the grill, eggs and tomatoes frying in extra virgin olive oil (my only concession to healthy eating!), beans bubbling in a saucepan and four slices of bread browning in the toaster. I’d set the table and put ketchup, brown sauce, jam, butter, milk and a pot of tea on a mat in the middle. She nodded approvingly.
‘You’ll make someone a lovely wife one day.’
I shot her a grin. ‘Talking of which, I’ll hoover that mud up after breakfast. Don’t want you traipsing it all over the house with your great clodhopping feet.’
The mood became more serious when we sat down to eat and I started to recount what I’d been up to since I’d last seen her. Despite it all, though, I couldn’t help feeling both light-hearted and excited at the thought not only that I’d be seeing Kate later that day, but that I’d actually be bringing her home.
Clover’s playfulness took a noticeable dip when I told her how I’d rescued Hawkins from Newgate Prison and installed him in Ranskill Gardens. She looked around the kitchen, as though mention of him might enable her to glimpse his ghost passing through.
‘Poor Hawkins,’ she said. ‘He was a lovely man. A bit stuffy and… contained, but underneath it he was one of the kindest men I’ve ever met.’ Her eyes suddenly grew dewy and raising both hands, she used the tips of her fingers to swipe her tears away.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
She gave a brisk nod. ‘I’m fine. It was just you mentioning him like that. Caught me unawares.’ She looked around again. ‘You know, sometimes I find it hard to believe he was here in this house, that he walked through these rooms, that his voice echoed from these walls. It seems so unfair we can’t just use the heart to go back and… save him.’
‘I know. But we can’t. Time wouldn’t let us.’
‘Stupid time,’ she said with some vehemence. Then she smiled thinly, as though at her own childishness.
I took a bite of toast. There was silence between us for a moment. Then I said, ‘Hey, guess what I did after rescuing Hawkins and getting him settled in?’
‘Have tea with Queen Victoria? Punch Hitler in the face?’
I smiled. ‘Remember the day I got that note and went to McCallum’s house and ended up getting arrested?’
She looked blank for a moment, then her eyebrows shot up, stretching her eyes wide. ‘That was the day you turned up and took me back to 1895! My God! Is that where you’ve just been?’
‘About…’ I looked at my watch ‘…forty minutes ago I was in Victorian London, saying goodbye to you and Hawkins.’
She raised her hands again and pressed her fingers to her forehead. ‘Wow. Mind blown. For me… well, so much has happened since then. It seems like a lifetime ago.’
‘The blink of an eye,’ I said. ‘All of it. Just the blink of an eye.’
She looked at me as though I’d said something profound. Or as though she was about to say something profound. Then to my surprise she reached across and took one of my hands between both of hers.
‘What you’ve been given is an amazing gift,’ she said. ‘And I know it’s caused a lot of grief, but it’s also something you can use for great good. Something you have used for great good.’
I shrugged, embarrassed, and also a little uneasy. I couldn’t help but think of people who’d suffered, even died, because of their association with me and the heart.
‘I do my best,’ I said inadequately.
‘I know you do.’ She squeezed my hand as though literally trying to press the conviction behind her words into my flesh. ‘And that’s all you can do. You’re a good man, Alex. Don’t ever lose sight of that.’
She broke the connection between us, turned her back and bustled away to make more tea. It was an odd moment, and one where I felt there was a hidden meaning behind her words, perhaps even something she wasn’t telling me. But I didn’t pursue it, because… well, because I felt afraid to, I suppose. Sometimes, instinctively, you don’t want to lift the lid of the box to see what’s inside. You just get a feeling that you shouldn’t.
While she was making more tea, I took the opportunity to run up to the office and grab my laptop. I returned to the kitchen and cleared a space on the breakfast table, then opened the laptop up and started Googling car hire places.
After a couple of minutes Clover drifted across with a couple of steaming mugs. She put one down on my right, then moved behind me as she sipped hers, looking over my shoulder.
‘How’s it feel?’ she asked after a second or two.
I glanced at her. ‘How’s what feel?’
‘To know that today, after all you’ve been through, all your searching, you’ll finally be getting your little girl back for good?’
‘Wonderful,’ I said automatically. Then, although I’d been thinking about it all day, the reality of her words hit me, and a warm glow of well-being rose up through my body. The grin that burst from me was a release of unadulterated joy.
‘No, bollocks to that. It’s better than wonderful. Better than anything. It’s the best feeling in the world.’
‘I’m glad,’ she said. She squeezed my shoulder. ‘So when are you heading to Wales?’
‘We,’ I said. ‘You’re coming with me.’
I thought she was being coy simply because she hadn’t wanted to seem presumptuous, but she said, ‘No, this is your day, Alex. Yours and Kate’s. You’re bringing her home, and that’s a big deal. It’s special. So it should just be the two of you driving back together. You need the time and space to get reacquainted. You deserve that. You’ve earned it.’
I swivelled to look at her. ‘Don’t be daft. We’re in this together. We have been from the start. Whether you like it or not, you’re part of this family now. And Kate will love you. I know she will.’
Clover crinkled her nose into an expression that indicated she’d been moved by my words, but didn’t entirely agree with them.
‘That does mean a lot to me,’ she said, ‘but honestly I’d feel awkward. And not because of how you’d make me feel, but just because… well, because I would.’ Before I could respond, she rapped me on the shoulder and said quickly, ‘Besides, if I don’t come with you I’ll be able to get Kate’s room ready for her. It’ll be weird for her to arrive at a strange new house, won’t it? But if she’s got a lovely room waiting for her, it’ll make it much easier for her to settle in. She can have Hope’s old room. I could go back to your old flat and fetch some of her stuff…’
She tailed off, breathless and bright-eyed. Again I couldn’t help thinking there was something off about her manner, something she wasn’t telling me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked her.
She laughed. ‘Yeah, course I am. Why?’
‘You’re not in any trouble? You’re not being threatened, or…’ Then it struck me what it could really be. ‘You’re not feeling as though you’re in the way? A spare part? Because Kate’s coming home?’
She laughed again, though the way her eyelashes flickered made me feel I’d got pretty close to the truth.
‘Course not. I just… I want to give you some space, that’s all. Whether you want me to or not, I want to. It’s important to me. You do understand, don’t you?’
‘Yes, sure,’ I said. ‘But don’t ever feel you’re not welcome here.’
‘I won’t.’ She thrust her flat palm in front of my face like a teacher demanding a pupil spit out his chewing gum. ‘So hand over the keys to the flat.’
‘I haven’t got them. Frank’s living there now, remember.’
‘No problem. I’ll give him a call, tell him to put the kettle on and get some decent biscuits in.’
An hour later I was on my way to Wales in a hired Chevrolet Cobalt. It was a long time since I’d driven and it felt strange at first, the car responding more eagerly than I could initially cope with, which resulted in me stalling at a set of traffic lights in central London and spending an embarrassing twenty seconds re-starting the damn thing with horns blaring behind me. Once I’d been behind the wheel for ten minutes, though, I started to get the hang of it, and by the time I hit the A40 heading out of London I was cruising. It was a typical November day – cold and murky, the sky, streets, buildings and even people looking grey and drab, and somehow indistinct, like a charcoal drawing smeared by damp. But enclosed in my spotless, clean-smelling metal box, with the heater and the radio on, I was happy. I sang along to a bunch of songs from the ’80s and ’90s I only half-knew and didn’t even like that much – Sting and Queen and Michael Jackson – and kept glancing at the sat nav as it counted down the miles. At around the halfway mark, on the M6 somewhere near Stafford, I stopped at a service station for a piss, a ham-and-cheese Panini and a cappuccino. I did it only because I didn’t want to arrive at the cottage hungry and dying for the loo, though the entire time I was out of the car I found myself itching to get back into it again.
It was mid-afternoon when the sat nav finally informed me I’d arrived at my destination. I parked in the same lay-by I’d parked in the last time we’d been here and cut the engine. There was a part of me that wanted to leap straight out of the car and run up to the cottage, but I forced myself to sit tight for a few seconds so I could compose myself. I gripped the steering wheel to try to stop the trembling in my hands and took several deep breaths in a vain attempt to quell my churning guts. Now I’d finally arrived at this point, not just geographically but after a journey that had not only taken several years of my life but had also spanned centuries and turned my previously held notions of reality on its head, I was finding it hard to believe that it was over, that this was finally it.
And okay, so it wasn’t really over. There were loose threads all over the place, and I still had the long shadow of the Dark Man stretching over me. But my search for Kate, and more specifically my desire for us to be reunited, and to resume our life together as a family, which had been my driving force for so long, was something I was now finally on the verge of turning into reality.
I turned my head and looked at the unassuming cottage perched halfway up the bleak rise of wind-swept fields that surrounded it. The white walls looked grey under the sloping slate roof; the windows were featureless black squares.
The lack of light and life gave me a sudden quivering pang of concern. What if they weren’t there? What if they’d packed up and gone? What if they’d been taken?
Trying not to let my concern burgeon into panic, I fumbled open the car door, crossed the road in a staggering run and pushed open the gate in the black stone wall that surrounded the house. If I’d had any spare breath I would have shouted Kate’s name, but my guts were so cramped, and my chest so tight, that it was an effort simply to breathe. By the time I reached the cottage sweat was pouring off me. I fought the urge to hammer on the door, and instead knocked with at least a semblance of composure.
I palmed sweat from my face and tried to stay calm as I waited. I was about to knock again when the handle first jiggled, and then turned…
Followed, moments later, by the door slowly beginning to open.
I resisted the urge to shove at it, and instead stepped back warily. The door opened like a sleepy yawn, seeming to take an age. And then a small figure leaped into the widening gap, shouted, ‘Boo!’ and started roaring with laughter.
The tension fell away and I laughed too.
‘Were you scared, Daddy?’ Kate yelled. ‘Did I make you jump?’
‘No, I wasn’t scared,’ I said – and she started to frown. ‘I was terrified! I thought you were a ghost.’
She whooped and started laughing again. I grabbed her, scooped her up and blew a raspberry on her neck. She wriggled frantically, her laughter turning into gleeful shrieks.
The door opened wider, to reveal Paula/Maude Sherwood standing there, grinning. She snapped on the light switch beside the front door. ‘She wanted to surprise you. I hope you were duly surprised.’
‘I was,’ I said. ‘I was so surprised that I nearly ran away, jumped into my car and drove all the way back to London.’
‘You can’t do that, Daddy!’ Kate cried.
‘Can’t I? Who’d have stopped me?’
‘I would. I’d have chased you down the road and caught the car with my magic lasso and made you stop.’
‘Really?’ I looked at her, wide-eyed. ‘Can you really do that?’
‘Yep,’ she said, nodding vigorously. ‘And I can spin round, look. Put me down!’
This last command was delivered in a voice so imperious it warranted no refusal. I put her down and watched as she twirled around so vigorously she almost fell over.
‘Wow!’ I said.
‘She and Hamish have been watching
re-runs of a show called Wonder Woman this week,’ said Paula drily.
I laughed again. Looking at Paula, it was astonishing how different she was from the young woman – Maude – I’d met in Victorian London, how quickly and completely she’d adapted to the twenty-first century.
I must have been a very good teacher.
I went into the cottage and Paula put the kettle on. Adam and Hamish came through from the front room, where they’d been watching TV. There was a lot of gooey, floury mess on the kitchen surfaces, and even on the floor, and pots piled in the sink and stacked up next to it. Paula saw me looking and said, ‘The kids have spent the morning making buns in honour of your arrival.’ She grabbed a big round cake tin from the kitchen counter and opened it, tilting it towards me to display the contents. I saw a pile of lavishly and messily decorated buns. Kate poked one topped by a dollop of dripping green icing that had the word ‘Dady’ shakily depicted in chocolate sprinkles.
‘That’s your one, Daddy,’ she said proudly. ‘I made it myself. Only you are allowed to eat that one.’
‘Yummy,’ I said. ‘I’ll have it with my cup of tea.’
When the tea was poured, Adam, Paula and myself sat around the kitchen table while Kate and Hamish, both of them carrying plates on which a couple of buns apiece were sliding about precariously, went through to the front room to watch TV.
‘She’s all packed up and raring to go,’ Paula said.
I sipped my tea. ‘Thanks for looking after her.’
‘It’s been a pleasure,’ said Adam. ‘Genuinely. As you can see, she and Hamish get on like a house on fire.’ He hesitated. ‘I hope the kids can stay friends. Once we’re all back in London, I mean.’
‘Of course.’ I looked from him to Paula. ‘You’re staying in the twenty-first century then? You’re not going back?’
‘How can we,’ said Paula, ‘after seeing what this century has to offer? The advancements in technology and medicine and education, the opportunities for women, the cleaner air…’
I smiled. ‘Many people think there’s a lot wrong with the modern world, that we’re on the verge of destroying it because of our technology.’