by Winona Kent
“Unharmed?”
“Unharmed,” Ferryman replied. “For now.”
“We’ve spoken with Thaddeus and he proposes to exchange your suitcase for Betty,” Charlie said.
“He furthermore proposes to arrange a truce,” Mr. Deeley continued. “He will agree to shake hands with you, and bid you goodbye. A gentleman’s agreement, if you will, predicated upon the fact that you and he have arrived at a stalemate, which neither of you can profit by.”
“And Mr. Deeley and I will be there as your principal witnesses, to seal the agreement.”
Ferryman laughed.
“An admirable proposal,” he said, “but I draw the line at shaking hands. It’s a cunning suggestion, the outcome of which is, no doubt, to spirit me back to 1849 to face a judge. Where is this exchange to take place?”
“Clapham South Underground Station,” Charlie said. “Tonight. At half past seven. It’s very public, and there will be no shortage of witnesses in case you’re tempted to do something stupid.”
“The tube station’s a rather large place,” Ferryman replied, finishing his cigarette. “Anywhere in particular?”
• • •
Clapham South Underground station was just up the road from The Slug and Caterpillar and, like Balham, was a preferred shelter for hundreds of men, women, and children each night as the Luftwaffe returned to rain bombs down on London.
It was twenty-five minutes past seven when Charlie, Mr. Deeley, and Thaddeus descended to the southbound platform. It was already filled with shelterers and their bedding, their flasks of tea, their suitcases and books, their knitting and chess games, packs of cards, and household keepsakes. It was very hot, and the pungent smell of too many people in need of a wash and a change of clothes was overpowering.
Standing by the edge, studying the length of the station tunnel, they could not see Silas Ferryman. Or Betty.
A train arrived. No one got off.
A handful of children scampered aboard, presumably to ride to the end of the line, at Morden, and then come back again on a northbound train. An evening’s entertainment.
The train clattered out of the station.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Deeley, “we ought to look on the other platform.”
They crossed over to the northbound side of the station, which was as crowded as the first, but they did not see Silas Ferryman.
Charlie looked up at the clock that hung from the station ceiling. It was twenty-five minutes to eight.
Another train arrived, this one coming north from Balham, on its way into London.
A few people got off and picked a path through the shelterers, to the Way Out, and the escalators.
A small boy, aged about eight, in a knitted pullover and short trousers, tugged on the sleeve of Charlie’s coat.
“Are you Charlotte?” he asked.
Charlie looked around, and down.
“I am,” she said, not recognizing him at all. “Where’ve you come from, then?”
“I’ve come on the train from Balham,” the small boy said. “Mr. Ferryman sent me to find you. He said to look for a man with a suitcase, and a woman with brown hair and a green and white dress, and a tall man wearing a long black overcoat.”
“Mr. Ferryman is meant to be here,” Charlie said, with another glance at the clock. Twenty minutes to eight.
“I’m to tell you that he won’t be coming, as he isn’t happy with your arrangements. But he will be at Balham if you’d care to meet him there.”
“Whereabouts in Balham?” Thaddeus asked.
“In the tube station. On the southbound platform.”
Charlie looked at Mr. Deeley, and then at Thaddeus.
“Then to Balham station we must proceed,” Thaddeus decided.
“Stay here,” Charlie said to the child. “Don’t move from this platform. Promise me.”
“But my Mummy and Auntie will be looking for me.”
“What’s your name?” Charlie asked, kneeling down, so that her eyes were level with his.
“Arthur Barry.”
“Right then, Arthur Barry. I want you to stay here, on this platform, until I come back and tell you it’s all right to leave. Understand?”
Arthur nodded.
“Good. See you in a little while, then.”
She got to her feet, and caught up to Thaddeus and Mr. Deeley at the cross-passage that led back to the southbound tunnel.
“Thaddeus,” Mr. Deeley said. “You cannot proceed to Balham. Not now. I beg of you.”
“Whyever not?”
Mr. Deeley looked, in desperation, at Charlie.
“It may be,” Charlie said, remembering what Ruby had told her, “that we were always destined to cause something to happen. Or it may be that we will change the outcome of something. Or, the outcome of something was never in question at all, merely the means by which it will be achieved.”
She looked at the clock. Fourteen minutes to eight.
And there was a train coming. She could feel the wind. She could hear its peculiar muffled roar, far down the tunnel.
“Thaddeus,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “There’s an air raid in progress. And a bomb’s going to drop on Balham High Road at two minutes past eight. It’ll explode at the north end of the station, above the cross-passage between the northbound and southbound platforms.”
Thaddeus took this in, the look on his face grave.
“The tunnel roof will collapse and rubble and water and sewage and gas will pour into the station. Nearly seventy people are going to be killed.”
“And this bomb will destroy both platforms?”
“Only the northbound side. The southbound side will be virtually untouched.”
“Then I will go,” Thaddeus decided. “I’ll be safe on the southbound platform.”
The train emerged from the running tunnel and rattled to a stop. The guard in the last carriage pressed the button to open the doors.
Thaddeus stepped aboard the first carriage. He placed the suitcase on the slatted wooden floor and sat down beside it.
Mr. Deeley looked at Charlie. “We must go with him. Who knows what Silas Ferryman might do? You said it yourself, Mrs. Collins. It may be that we will change the outcome. That is why we are here. It is to save Betty. And perhaps Thaddeus, too.”
He followed his son aboard the train, then turned around.
“Will you come with me?”
• • •
The train drew into Balham Station, slowing as it passed the rows of shelterers, some sleeping, some sitting with their backs against the curving platform wall, chatting or reading.
Charlie checked the clock again as she stepped onto the platform with Thaddeus and Mr. Deeley. Twelve minutes to eight.
She made note of the openings in the platform wall, which mirrored the ones on the northbound platform. Here, at the south end, was a cross-passage. And then midway along were the two exits to the Way Out, protected by heavy watertight doors, leading to the escalators and the stairs. And then, at the north end, another cross-passage. The cross-passage.
One of the two watertight doors at the Way Out had been pulled shut. Charlie remembered the reasoning behind their installation. There were water pipes buried under the roads around the station, and the fear at the start of the war had been that if those pipes were damaged, the water would cascade into the booking hall and down the escalators, and flood the lower level and the tracks.
They had not considered what would happen if the roadway itself collapsed onto the platform, on the other side of the watertight doors.
She glanced at the clock.
Eight minutes to eight.
A few last-minute stragglers were making their way onto the platform from the booking hall upstairs. Someone wearing a London Transport uniform was pulling the last watertight door closed.
And then she saw them. Silas Ferryman. And Betty.
They were standing just beyond the cross-passage at the other end of the platfo
rm, almost at the mouth of the running tunnel.
“Mr. Deeley!” Charlie said. “Thaddeus!”
Six minutes to eight.
They ran down the perilously narrow free space along the edge of the platform, Thaddeus in the lead.
“This man told me you wanted to see me,” Betty said, looking confused. “He said you had a message of vital importance. And then he dragged me out of the house and locked me in a shed. I don’t understand what’s going on, Thad.”
“Forgive me for not introducing myself earlier,” the fair-haired gentleman said to Betty. “I am Silas Ferryman. You may have heard of me.”
“I swear I have not,” Betty answered, close to tears, gasping for breath, holding her middle. “And if you do not allow me to sit down, Mr. Ferryman, I shall faint. I am carrying a child, in case you failed to notice.”
“Sit down then,” Ferryman replied. “Your usefulness to me is at an end.”
Betty sank onto the platform, bracing her back against the white-tiled wall.
“And so,” Thaddeus said, to the fair-haired gentleman, “we meet again at last, sir. Face to face. I have brought your suitcase.”
“Put it there,” Ferryman directed, indicating the spot on the platform where Betty was sitting.
Two minutes to eight.
Thaddeus placed the case at Betty’s feet.
As he did this, the fair-haired gentleman pulled from his coat pocket a very large knife. In one swift movement, he drew it across Thaddeus’s neck, slashing arteries and veins, causing a gush of blood to spray out and splash the white tiled wall red.
Betty screamed as Thaddeus staggered and crumpled to the platform. And in that same moment, Silas Ferryman seized Charlie’s arm and dragged her through the cross-passage, into the northbound side of the station.
“You’ll do instead of Betty,” he said. “Thank you for being so helpful. You may now assist me in making my escape.”
He pulled her along to the edge of the platform, past the shelterers, the knife held to her throat.
“Please let me go,” Charlie pleaded.
She could see Mr. Deeley following close behind her, unable to act. One wrong step to their right would mean certain death on the electrified tracks.
“The watertight doors are shut. The trains aren’t running under the river. You can’t go anywhere.”
She could also see the big old-fashioned clock, with its Roman numerals. Eight o’clock.
“We’re going to die,” she said, quietly, desperately. “In two minutes a bomb’s going to drop on the roadway above. The tunnel’s going to collapse. Everything that’s up there—sewers, water lines, ballast, earth—will come crashing down here and nearly seventy people will be killed. Please. Please, Mr. Ferryman. Let me go.”
Silas Ferryman stopped, looked at her, and then smiled. “If you know this will happen,” he said, “then surely we can employ your time travelling skills to extricate ourselves.” He tightened his grip on her arm. “Do it. Now!”
“I can’t! I don’t know how!”
Charlie saw a look of doubt pass across Ferryman’s face and then… she felt his fingers loosen. She twisted away from him. And then Mr. Deeley was behind her, pushing her along the platform.
“Run!” he shouted. “All the way to the other end! Now!”
Charlie ran. Halfway to the Way Out sign, she heard screams and a commotion. She stopped and spun around, aware that Mr. Deeley was no longer behind her. Far, far down the platform, she could see that Silas Ferryman had tumbled into the pit beneath the railway tracks. And that Mr. Deeley was racing as fast as he could towards her, but he was holding his arm, and it was dripping blood.
She turned to run back to him.
“No!” he shouted. “Leave me! Save yourself!”
His voice was lost in the thunder of a cataclysmic explosion. The lights flashed out. And then the station was filled with hysterical shouting and the sound of gushing water and the smell of gas and sewage and the thunder of cascading earth. In the utter darkness, panicking shelterers pushed and shoved Charlie, desperate to escape. She fell, and was immediately stepped on, not once, not twice, but many times, so that the breath was trampled from her body. She tried to crawl away but her hands met wet earth and gravel and then her arms were buried by it, and then the top of her head, and then the weight of it pressed her face onto the concrete platform and her nose and mouth were filled with it… and then… and then….
Chapter Twenty-Two
Wendy had given Shaun enough money to pay for a ticket on the Underground, there and back again, and a little bit extra, just in case.
She and Nick had offered to come with him but Shaun had politely declined. It was a journey he wished to undertake on his own.
It was a journey he needed to undertake on his own.
He stood on the northbound platform at Balham tube station, waiting for his train, reading the huge trackside ads for travel to Bournemouth, and extending a mortgage, and brewing a delightful and very special green tea.
Walking a little further to the north, he could see that there was a gap where no ads were pasted to the curved white wall at all. Indeed, the wall itself was discoloured and peeling, with black cracks and water stains showing through the plaster. The dark stains seemed to mimic almost perfectly the outline of the iron rings from which the Underground tunnels were constructed.
Turning around, he saw that he was standing directly in front of what might have once been a cross-passage to the other platform. Except the opening had been blocked off and a locked doorway installed, with signs warning about the need for caution when entering the electrical switch room, and dangers of shock.
A man wearing a London Underground tie and a navy blue pullover was standing nearby.
“Interesting, that,” he said, to Mr. Deeley, noting his interest in the wall. “This tunnel was badly damaged by a bomb in World War Two. You can clearly see the repair works, where the paint is lifting, due to water ingress. And that cross-passage was blocked by the rubble. It was never re-opened.”
Mr. Deeley looked at the wall again. And then, he followed one of the black stains up, and up, to the curved ceiling of the tunnel.
And then….
…He remembered.
The same way he’d recovered the fragment of a memory earlier that morning.
Except that this was the part before the fragment.
He could see the clock suspended from the roof of the platform tunnel.
One minute past eight.
And he could see Mrs. Collins, trying to reason with the man who had deceived him, and who had killed his son, cold-bloodedly and without any remorse.
He heard her tell Ferryman about the bomb that was about to drop from the sky, and he heard Ferryman demand that she use her time travelling abilities to remove them from the station. He heard her response. And then he saw Ferryman pause, and a look of doubt cross his face. And he saw, in that moment, that Mrs. Collins had pulled herself free from his grasp.
And, in that moment, Shaun raced to her side, and dragged her away, and pushed her along the platform.
“Run!” he shouted. “All the way to the other end! Now!”
Driven by the knowledge of what was about to be, she fled. Shaun prayed she would have enough time to reach the southern end of the platform, far away from the devastation. But Ferryman now had hold of Shaun’s arm, and the two of them were in very great danger of falling over the edge of the platform.
“What about you, then? What are your time-travelling skills like? Surely you can get us out of here?”
“I cannot, sir. My ability to travel in time is as hopeless as Charlotte’s. There is nowhere you can run. She told you the truth. We have only moments to live.”
“Now then!” said a man in a uniform, who had been alerted by the commotion on the other platform, and had come through the passageway after Ferryman. “Now then… let’s not have any of this! We’ve got Germans trying to kill us outside. We don’t need y
ou down here helping them! Put that knife down.”
“I dare you,” Shaun said, to Ferryman, “to use that knife against me. Go on. Show me how much courage you have now. You have achieved what you wanted, the death of the man who pursued you in the name of justice. The death of my son. My grief and anger know no bounds. I am consoled by the fact that you will be dead in less than a minute yourself.”
“Then you shall have your wish,” Ferryman replied, raising the knife.
Shaun heard screams as he deflected the knife with his free arm, its blade slicing into his skin. But the deflection caused Ferryman to let go. Shaun pulled away, at the same time kicking Ferryman backwards, tumbling him over the edge of the platform.
“Don’t move!” the man in the uniform shouted at Ferryman, who had slipped into the pit underneath the electrified middle rail. “For God’s sake—the tracks are live!”
Shaun raced after Mrs. Collins, his arm dripping blood. He saw her stop and turn towards him.
“No!” he shouted. “Leave me! Save yourself!”
• • •
Fenwick Oldbutter was where he promised he would be, occupying the buskers’ pitch at the foot of the escalators in the tube station at Waterloo. He was a little man, about fifty years of age, with round, wire-framed spectacles. He wore black trousers and an old-fashioned pullover vest, underneath which was a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
Shaun waited while he finished his hour, playing a battered fiddle with exceptional skill, his violin case open on the floor in front of him for the collection of coins. And there was a rather large collection. The music sounded Celtic, very old, and would not have been out of place, Shaun thought, in a tiny Irish pub with impossibly low ceilings and rounds of Guinness on its tabletops.
“There we are,” Fenwick said, at last, transferring the day’s take into an old-fashioned drawstring bag, into which he added the musician’s ID card issued by London Underground Limited. He laid his fiddle lovingly into its case and closed the lid. “You are Mr. Deeley, I presume?”
• • •
Fenwick Oldbutter’s lodgings were in Belsize Park, in north London. He occupied a very large house on a tree-lined road, the sort of house that would have suited a renowned actor or a member of Parliament, or perhaps a distant member of a less auspicious branch of the British royal family.
