by Winona Kent
She dashed across the road, dodging a bus and three cars, followed closely by Charlie and Mr. Deeley.
“Takes me back to school, this,” Jackie said, impetuously, clambering over the island barricade in her mini-skirt. “Pardon my knickers.”
“They are most fetching,” Mr. Deeley remarked as he climbed over the railings himself, and, with practiced but unnecessary chivalry, assisted Charlie.
The line of spectators was three or four people deep on the paved island, and they all seemed to be much taller than Charlie or Jackie, although Mr. Deeley could easily see over their heads.
On the Pavilion side of the road, a striped tent had been erected from the curbside to the theatre’s entrance. A line of policemen stood to the left of this, holding back another throng of spectators. Other police with huge white cuffs directed important-looking black cars to the front of the tent.
A loud cheer came from the crowd as one such car drove up and stopped, and several people climbed out.
“Who is it?” Charlie asked Mr. Deeley.
“I cannot be certain,” he said. “However, I do not believe it is Mendelssohn.”
Charlie turned to ask Jackie, but Jackie had disappeared.
“Can you see Jackie?” she asked Mr. Deeley.
Mr. Deeley scanned the crowd on the traffic island.
“I cannot,” he said.
“Bloody hell.”
Charlie dug her way through to the row of people lining the barricade facing the Pavilion. “Let me through!” she demanded, ducking under arms and cameras and bags, “I’m little! And I’ve lost my mum!”
She reached the front just as another car drew up, and a man climbed out, accompanied by a woman with long blonde hair.
The people around her began to shout and cheer and aim their cameras.
“John! John! Cyn! Here! Over here!”
John Lennon, Charlie thought, all worries about Jackie momentarily banished. I’ve just seen John Lennon. She remembered the plectrum in her bag, and hugged it a little bit closer to her body.
But then. Jackie. Where was she?
And she realized, too late, that she’d also lost Mr. Deeley. Hemmed in by people who were all at least six inches taller than she was, it was impossible to see where he was.
I will not panic. She hated crowds. This was such a stupid idea. I will not panic. Where is he?
Her attention was diverted by a commotion on the other side of the road. Behind the police barricade, beside the blocked entrance to the tube station, very near to the striped tent, a young woman, obviously unconscious, her arms dangling limply, was being handed over the heads of the onlookers. With her heart in her throat, Charlie recognized Jackie’s long dark hair and her short blue miniskirt.
“Oh God—no!”
She was hemmed in on all sides. There was no way to get to Jackie except over the barricade, across the road, and over a second metal fence preventing pedestrians from doing exactly what she was now attempting.
Charlie ran around three stopped cars, two motorbikes, and four policemen. One tried to reach out and grab her. She shook him off, and clambered over the last barricade, and elbowed her way through the crowd until she found herself on other side of the road.
Jackie wasn’t there.
She was, however, about twenty feet away, lying on a piece of pavement where there were no people, other than a well-dressed man who was talking to her, attempting to bring her around, and a policeman who was keeping the area clear of bystanders.
“Is she all right?” Charlie asked desperately, running to Jackie’s side.
“I think so,” the man replied. “She’s still breathing. She’s got a nice strong pulse. She’s not hurt.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ve called for an ambulance.”
“Jackie,” Charlie said, kneeling on the ground beside her. “Remember me?”
Jackie opened her eyes, slowly, and tried to focus on Charlie. “What’s happened?”
“You fainted,” said the man. “Fortunately I was nearby and caught you before you were trampled. I made sure you were carried to safety. You all right, love?”
“I fainted?”
“Yes, love. It can happen to anyone.”
“Where am I?”
“Piccadilly Circus,” the man said. “Outside the London Pavilion.”
“Did I go to work today?”
“Yes, you did,” Charlie said.
“Why am I here?”
“Premiere of A Hard Day’s Night. Remember?”
“I don’t remember,” Jackie said, her face filled with confusion. “Who’re you?”
“I’m Charlie. We met in your shop. I came to your flat with Mr. Deeley.”
“I don’t remember.” Jackie said again. She looked at the man. “Who’re you?”
“Tony Quinn, love. What’s your name?”
“Jackie Lewis.”
Why doesn’t Jackie remember me? Charlie thought. “Did you hit your head when you fell?” she asked.
“She didn’t,” Tony replied. “I caught her before she went all the way down.”
“What year is it?” Charlie asked her.
Jackie thought, but came up blank. “I don’t know.”
“But you do know your name?”
“Yes. Jacqueline Elizabeth Lewis.”
“And when were you born?”
“January the 23rd, 1941.”
She tried to sit up, but Tony Quinn made her lie back down on the pavement. “You stay like that, love, until the ambulance comes.”
“What’s happened?”
“You fainted, love. Outside the London Pavilion.”
“I fainted?”
“Yes, love.”
“Where am I?”
“Piccadilly Circus,” Charlie repeated.
“Did I go to work today?”
“Yes, you did.”
“Why am I here?”
Charlie looked again at the well-dressed gentleman who was kneeling on the pavement beside Jackie, holding her hand.
“It’s some kind of amnesia,” she said. “But it doesn’t make sense…she knows her name and her birthday. She just doesn’t remember anything that’s happening right now.”
“My sister had this,” Tony Quinn said. “She was coming down with something, her body was fighting some kind of infection, and she was terribly worried about her son, who was having a bit of trouble at school…she woke up in the morning and couldn’t remember a thing from Monday onward. Exactly the same as this. We’d say something to her and she wouldn’t recall it two minutes later. No retention at all. She asked the same questions over and over again. We thought she’d had a stroke, but the doctor at the hospital said no. Called it something very technical. Let me think.”
He paused.
“Transient global amnesia. She recovered from it completely. But she never did get her memory back from that week.”
“What’s happened?” Jackie asked for the third time as the ambulance finally arrived.
• • •
The ambulance had gone, speeding away with its blue lights flashing and its bell ringing. Tony Quinn had climbed into the back with Jackie, vowing to see her safely to the hospital—something he deemed far more important than attending the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night and meeting the Beatles for the fourth or possibly the fifth time.
“Anyway,” he said as the ambulance door closed, “McCartney owes me ten quid from the last blast we were at. See you again, I hope, Charlie.”
And he was gone, along with Jackie.
Charlie stood alone on the pavement. The crowds had thinned considerably, and it was dark. All of the Beatles had arrived and gone inside, along with a procession of celebrity friends. Traffic was flowing normally again along Coventry Street.
“Anyway,” she repeated, to herself. “Mission accomplished. Accidentally, but nonetheless accomplished. Mum has met Tony Quinn. My half-sibling will be born.”
She looked for Mr. Deeley, but couldn’t find him.<
br />
A terrible thought came over her…what if he had tried to go back to their present, without her, got lost somewhere along the way, and couldn’t find his way home? She might never see him again. He might be lost forever, wandering in time. And what if she couldn’t get back either? She’d never tried to deliberately travel by herself. She’d left all that experimentation to Mr. Deeley.
Her common sense told her she should stay put, and wait here at Piccadilly Circus until Mr. Deeley reappeared. But, for how long? It might be hours. Days.
Years.
She might end up like one of those waifs they sang about in folk songs, wandering in solitude, waiting in vain for a lover who never came back.
She was, indeed, wandering in solitude. Almost without noticing, she had wandered all the way back to Oxford Street, to the hamburger restaurant where she and Mr. Deeley had met Fenwick Oldbutter.
It was open, its warm yellow lights beckoning through large plate glass windows.
Charlie went inside, and sat down, half expecting Fenwick to reappear and congratulate her for a job well done.
Fenwick did not reappear. A waitress did, however, and Charlie ordered a hamburger and a cup of tea, realizing, as she did, that she had absolutely no way to pay for it. Her collection of coins would be as foreign to the cashier as French francs or American dimes and quarters. There was an American Express sticker on the door, but she didn’t have an American Express card. And the banks hadn’t yet introduced their credit cards to England.
Her burger arrived, and her tea. Charlie added a squeeze of ketchup from the tomato-shaped dispenser and waited.
Two cups of tea later, and a plate of chips, she was still waiting. With an extremely guilty conscience, she contemplated making a run for it without paying for her meal. She’d never done anything like that in her life. It was a horrible thing to consider. But she’d already cheated the Underground. And she was thinking about cheating again.
And then what? Assuming she wasn’t nabbed by the police…what? Go back to Stanhope Gardens and wait for Marianne to show up? Deliver the news about Jackie…ask if she could spend the night in her bed?
She was summoning up the courage to bolt when, at last, she saw Mr. Deeley.
He was looking very jaunty in his John Stephen tie and Hardy Amies waistcoat. He glanced through the big glass window, smiled as he spotted Charlie, then opened the door and came inside.
“Where have you been?” Charlie asked him as he sat down.
“I might ask you the same thing,” Mr. Deeley replied, amused. He turned to the waitress who had arrived at Charlie’s table almost as quickly as he had. “I shall have the same things to eat as my friend. Many thanks.”
“I can’t pay for any of this,” Charlie whispered, when the waitress was out of earshot. “Old money.”
“Old money,” Mr. Deeley replied, removing a £10 note from his trousers pocket. “Happily, I can.”
“Where did you get that?”
“I shall relate what happened after you abandoned me,” Mr. Deeley replied.
“I was trying to find Jackie!”
“You left me alone,” Mr. Deeley said, sounding slightly miffed. “I had no choice but to negotiate my way out of the crowd. Whereupon I crossed the road, and joined another crowd—albeit with a greatly reduced number of participants—and, within some moments, I discovered myself to be inside the building.”
“Which building?” Charlie asked.
“The building where the film was to be shown.”
“The London Pavilion? You were inside the London Pavilion?”
“Indeed.”
“How the hell did you manage that, Mr. Deeley?”
His meal arrived and he paid the waitress, who brought back his change on a china plate. Infuriatingly, he paused to drink his tea and add hot mustard and ketchup to his hamburger before continuing the tale.
“I cannot say for certain,” he replied inscrutably. “In any case, I went into the cinema, and saw that there were empty seats, and so I availed myself of one, and sat down to watch the film. It was very good, by the way. Have you seen it?”
“I have,” Charlie said. “Four times. And where did you get the £10?”
“After the film finished, I found I was in need of the gentlemen’s toilet. And so, after asking for directions, I repaired to the facilities, whereupon I found myself standing beside a Beatle.”
“You met a Beatle in the loo?”
Mr. Deeley finished his tea.
“And I engaged him in conversation about the film, and about being chased by a large number of screaming females through a railway station. I also asked him how he managed to disappear from the bath.”
“John Lennon. You met John Lennon in the loo. You talked to John Lennon about A Hard Day’s Night.”
“I did, in fact. And then I explained our circumstances, that we had only recently arrived in London, and that we were, unhappily, without sufficient funds for a meal. He gave me that £10 note.”
“You spare changed John Lennon in the loo for ten quid.”
“And I told him we had one of his plectrums.”
“What did he say?”
“He was amused. He gave me another.”
Mr. Deeley removed the plectrum from the pocket of his trousers and held it out in the palm of his hand.
“He just happened to have it with him,” Charlie said.
“He did. And three more. Imagine that.”
Charlie smiled.
“He wished me good fortune for the future, and I wished him the same, and we parted as friends. He struck me as a very nice fellow.”
“Mr. Deeley,” Charlie said. “You have no idea, do you?”
“Do I not…?”
Charlie shook her head. She took out the plectrum that was in her bag, and placed it in Mr. Deeley’s palm, beside its twin. She took his other hand in hers.
“Do you think we could go home now…?”
• • •
It was still a hamburger restaurant. But its wooden tables and chairs had been replaced by bright plastic, and the waitresses had been replaced by a long counter, with an equally long lineup of hungry patrons queuing in front of four cash registers. There was music coming from somewhere, and the lights were glaringly bright.
“This seems a much simpler process than our previous journey,” Mr. Deeley remarked. “Easy when you know how.”
“Let’s find a posh hotel and spend the night in London,” Charlie said. “It’s probably too late to get a train back to Middlehurst anyway.”
“Will it have a very large and comfortable bed, with feather pillows and a bath which is big enough for two?” Mr. Deeley mused.
“I think that could certainly be arranged.”
“Then do arrange it, Mrs. Collins. I am feeling particularly amorous after this day’s adventures.”
Charlie smiled, and kissed him. “Can’t wait.” She paused. “I wonder who my mum’s son or daughter will turn out to be.”
“If it is a descendant of mine, he or she is bound to be indescribably fascinating.”
Charlie laughed, and took out her mobile. “I must look up transient global amnesia. Mum’s never mentioned any of this to us.”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Deeley said, “it is better that she has not ever recalled this day. How will you arrange for our hotel?”
Charlie searched on her mobile and rang a number.
“We’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” she said.
She put her mobile back in her bag.
“Easy when you know how,” she said, plucking the two plectrums out of Mr. Deeley’s still open palm.
More from Winona Kent
Persistence of Memory
Combining the language, humor, and manners of Jane Austen’s era with charming characters and colorful storytelling, Persistence Of Memory is a mystery, a love story, and a speculative novel about accidental time travel.
Charlie Lowe has two obsessions: saving the Stoneford Village
Green from unscrupulous developers, and researching her ancestor, Louis Augustus Duran, whose mysterious origins perplex her.
When a freak lightning strike and a rogue computer virus send her back to 1825, Charlie discovers she must persuade a reluctant Sarah Foster to marry Duran, or two centuries of descendants—including herself—will cease to exist.
Unfortunately, Louis Duran turns out to be a despicable French count who spends his days impregnating a succession of unfortunate housemaids and attempting to invent the first flushing toilet in Hampshire.
A hopeless romantic, our heroine does her best to encourage the happiness of those who surround her—but will she be able to mend a matrimonial wrong, restore the Village Green to its rightful owner and, of foremost importance, conclude the tale in the company of the gentleman with whom she was always meant to be?
Skywatcher
Robin Harris grew up watching the 60s spy show Spy Squad, starring his dad, Evan Harris. So when the police deem the mysterious death of a Russian woman with rainbow-colored hair a suicide, Robin knows better.
Robin soon finds himself in the middle of an awesome plot that seems to be lifted directly from one of his father's old Spy Squad episodes, and, as he discovers, his father really was a spy. Now Robin and his brothers have inadvertently walked onto the scene of a real life-and-death spy drama, and as far as the free world is concerned, Robin's entrance into the family business comes not a moment too soon.
Cold Play
Jason Davey ran away to sea after the death of his wife, finding work as a contract entertainer aboard a cruise ship, the Star Sapphire. But when faces from his past come aboard as passengers, Jason's routine week-long trip to Alaska becomes anything but relaxing.
Jason's wife once worked for Diana Wyndham, a beautiful and eccentric actress. And hard-drinking ex-rocker Rick Redding once toured with a band Jason has strong ties to. Now Diana occupies one of the ship's luxury suites, and Rick dwells in the stateroom next door. Between them, they may know more about Jason's secret past than anyone suspects.
Jason narrates his—and the Sapphire's—story with drama, humor, and a touch of the supernatural as he tries to survive a trial by fire and ice on the journey to Juneau, Skagway, and Glacier Bay.
