by Nina Allan
“These are Breguet’s measurements,” he said at once. “You’ve been working from the drawings he made before he died?”
“The drawings are incomplete,” Owen said. “I’ve had to improvise a little. But yes, the design of the mechanism is taken from Breguet.”
The old man’s expression became suddenly inscrutable, almost stern. “What makes you think you can succeed where Breguet failed? Breguet was a genius. You, young man, are barely out of school.”
Owen flushed. He had secretly thought his machine so fine he had expected Morton to gush unqualified praise, all but bowing down before him in his admiration. He had become so wrapped up in the work he had forgotten himself. “Breguet did not fail,” he said. “He ran out of time. If he had not been so old and so ill he would have completed his work, for sure.”
He felt his flush deepen. He feared that Morton, who was old and ill himself, almost certainly dying, might interpret his remark as a criticism, a young Turk’s sarcastic revenge on his duller master. He was amazed to see that Morton was smiling.
“You’re a brave lad, Owen Andrews.” The old man touched him briefly on the shoulder. “Would you mind if I kept the clock?”
“I would be honoured,” Owen said. “It’s yours.”
* * *
Almost exactly a year from the day Morton had first accepted the commission from Lionel Norman, a second letter arrived, this time addressed to Owen personally. In it, Norman enquired after Owen’s health, delivered a humorous account of an auction he had recently attended in Geneva, expressed excitement over the watch, which, he trusted, must be nearing completion. The tone of the letter was outwardly friendly, but beneath the surface Owen felt sure he could detect an accusatory tone, a warning, even. He reread the letter several times in an attempt to quantify his suspicions more precisely, but came up with nothing.
As before and as always, there was his simple dislike of the man, that instinctive mistrust, and he was reminded of a story he had chanced to read once in one of the pulp magazines Anthony was so keen on, in which the devil, in the guise of a travelling salesman, terrorises the residents of a cheap boarding house. He replied to Norman’s letter with a careful courtesy, stating that although the presentation of the final article was still some way off, the prototype was indeed complete, that Norman was welcome to call at the workshop when he was next in London.
He did not discuss the matter with Angela, or even tell her that her father had been in contact. He felt determined that Norman should intrude on their lives as little as possible. He assumed Angela must feel the same. The only time she referred to her father directly was when she wrote advising Owen they should not try to see one another again until she started at Cambridge.
I think my father has begun to suspect something, she wrote. If he discovers the truth he will make our lives hell, maybe even find a way to destroy us. It is better this way, if you can bear it. There are less than six months to go now, after all.
He resented Norman for interfering, and most of all for the power he still exerted over Angela. But still, he could not deny it would be inconvenient, perhaps even dangerous, to confront Norman directly, especially now. Once the watch was finished, Owen would be paid, and handsomely. With money like that, he and Angela could go anywhere, do anything. Lionel Norman would be unimportant, out of their lives.
He found he thought less and less about what Angela had told him of her father’s ambitions to travel in time. As the weeks passed, the idea became less real, like a conversation they might have had once in a dream. Angela’s letters were the reality, and in the absence of Angela herself, Owen came to rely on them more and more. When towards the end of June a whole week went by without even a single postcard from her, Owen started to worry. He began to listen out for the postman, hurrying upstairs from the workshop the moment he heard the heavy clack and thump of Morton’s letterbox. When another week passed and there was still no word from her, his worry turned to fear. His first thought was that Norman must have found out about them somehow, intercepted their letters. Then he began to wonder if the explanation might be more prosaic – a young Cambridge don perhaps, an unknown rival approved by her father, who had been steadfastly courting Angela’s affections all along.
Owen knew such suppositions were ludicrous, but the thoughts kept swarming through his mind nonetheless, nagging away at his sanity and preventing him from working. What could have happened? Although he had promised Angela he would never telephone the house he found he could no longer help himself. He called on a Wednesday, in the afternoon, when he thought it most likely Lionel Norman would be out. There was no reply, and as he replaced the receiver Owen could not help feeling he had somehow made things worse.
Finally, his endurance was at an end. Owen decided he would travel to Sussex, that he would call at Norman’s house under the pretext of showing Norman the samples of gold he had procured for making the watch case. At least then he would know if Angela was still at the house, and if he was able to be alone with her even for a moment he would try and persuade her to return to London with him immediately.
He caught an eight o’clock train. Although it was early, the air was already humid, the station concourse muggy with the heat of the day before. A bus had broken down in the station entrance, and a mechanic in a fluorescent safety jacket was attempting to restart it, his hands black with grease. A small girl, perhaps seven or eight, darted around him, hopping on and off the kerb in her dusty plimsolls. She had a dirty mark on one cheek and a crooked smile. As Owen watched, she grabbed a wrench from the mechanic’s tool bag and handed it over.
“Not to worry, mate, she’s mine,” said the mechanic. “Got to keep them out of mischief somehow, haven’t you? She’s been crazy about the buses since she could walk.”
Owen smiled his understanding, and passed on to the station concourse. He remembered himself at the same age, perhaps a little older, mucking about on the site after school and begging one of his father’s contractors to let him work the cement mixer. It was one of the old ones, still cranked by hand, and it needed the whole weight of Owen’s small body to get it moving. He had returned home triumphant, the solidifying cement dust caked in his clothes and hair. It was the only time he could remember his mother being angry with him.
“Do you know how much that blazer cost?” she yelled. “Do you think new school uniforms grow on trees?”
She had taught Music and History at the Priory School, and yet she had fallen in love with Ted Andrews, the builder. Crazy about him was what they said in the village, was what Owen heard time and again in the weeks and months after she died. For the first time in many years, Owen had a clear memory of her face, the quick light in her eyes, the loose strands of hair at her temples, the hectic flush in her cheeks when she raised her voice. She had come to him later and asked him gently how it had felt, to work the machine. Then she had offered him a sheet of paper and asked him to draw it for her. While he did, she mended his blazer, sewing shut the rip in the pocket using tiny, overarm stitches in pale grey thread.
The train heaved itself out of London. To the south of Croydon, Owen saw again the waste tracts and abandoned factories, the scrapyards piled high with rusting machinery, the gathered detritus that was the aftermath of war. For the first time, he perceived how vulnerable a city could be to enemy attack, and wondered what might have happened to London if the bombing had continued.
The government had forced a peace because they had proved equal strength, but what if their threat to use nuclear weapons had not been heeded? The newspapers had always insisted it was common soldiers like Tommy Stowells who had won the war with their perseverance and courage. Owen saw now that this was a lie, that it had been traders like Lionel Norman, with their illegal arms deals and industrial espionage, criminals who had acquired the blueprints for jet engines and radar, the contraband, illicit knowledge of atomic power. Thieves who cared for nothing so long as they were paid.
The military research stat
ion at Herstmonceux had been smashed to its foundations, but that had proved only a temporary setback. Buildings and machines could be destroyed, but not the knowledge they contained. And men like Lionel Norman were left alone to conduct their business, even while they were guilty of treason. Even if, in spite of the Armistice, the world they were creating was viler and more dangerous.
As the train drew nearer to its destination, Owen found himself taken over by a growing resolve. Lionel Norman would not have his work, whatever he proposed to do with it. There were other ways of making money. The only thing that mattered was getting Angela away from him.
* * *
There were no taxis at the station entrance and so he was forced to walk. Norman’s house was some distance from the station, perhaps two miles, and his foot always ached worse in hot weather. He leaned heavily on his cane, his weak leg dragging a little as he made his way slowly uphill. He felt uncomfortably exposed, vulnerable to scrutiny in a way he never did in London. The houses on Elizabeth Avenue were large and expensive. Some were modern, like Lionel Norman’s. Others seemed much older, their pale facades gleaming behind granite gateposts. Many of their lawns were cracked and dry, and he remembered Angela telling him there had been a hosepipe ban. He kept looking around for Norman, but the street seemed empty.
Finally the house was in sight. The green Austin was not in the drive, Owen noticed. It seemed reasonable to suppose that Norman was out, though he knew it would be dangerous to take that for granted. He approached the front door, trying to appear confident and relaxed, though the pain in his leg would have made that difficult whatever the circumstances. He could feel the sweat gleaming on his brow. More than anything he longed to sit down, to take the weight off his feet. He rang the doorbell and waited. For a moment he thought he saw someone moving behind the frosted glass panels of the entrance porch, but nobody came to open the door and the house remained silent. He tried the doorbell again, stepping shakily back off the step and gazing up at the windows. He realised there were no curtains, and when a moment later he pressed his face to the glass of the drawing room window he saw that the space beyond was completely empty. The leather armchairs, the sideboard, the whisky decanter – everything was gone.
His breath came hot and fast. The parched garden flickered before his eyes, and Owen realised he was about to faint. He leaned forward, gasping, using his cane for support. As he stared at the ground, trying to bring it into focus, he noticed a folded-up newspaper on the path to the right of the step. He bent slowly to pick it up. It was dated 18th July, three days before.
All that time he had been sitting waiting in London, and Angela was – where? He had been fiendishly outplayed, Owen realised. It was almost as if Lionel Norman had known all along what he was planning, and like a chess player making a knight’s move, stepped in to obstruct him.
Short of breaking into the house, there was nothing more he could do here. It occurred to him that Lionel Norman wanted Owen to break in – getting himself into trouble with the police would provide a timely distraction, an opportunity for Norman to more thoroughly cover his tracks. In this respect at least Owen had no intention of giving Norman satisfaction. He walked, almost staggered towards the gate, wondering how he would ever make it back to the station. He might wait, he supposed, in the hope of hailing a passing taxi cab. But in a quiet residential area like this, he might wait for hours, attracting unwelcome attention all the while.
Somehow, he would have to walk. He leaned against the gatepost, steeling himself. The pain in his foot was excruciating, a lump of steaming lead at the end of his leg.
“Can I help you?” said a voice. “You don’t look at all well.” It was a woman, and for a single breathless second he allowed himself to believe that it was Angela, that she had escaped from Lionel Norman and come back to find him. But of course it was not, could never be. Angela was gone, and this woman was indisputably present: older than Angela by twenty years at least, her fair hair in an immaculate permanent wave, her slim wrists adorned with golden bracelets. She was looking at Owen with an expression caught midway between admonishment and concern.
My guardian angel, disguised as someone’s aunt. Owen’s thoughts tumbled haphazardly through his mind like leaves of dropped paper. There are stranger things in life.
“I don’t suppose you could call me a taxi?” he said, trying to straighten his back. “I came here to keep an appointment, but the person I was meant to be meeting seems to be out.”
“If you think I’m leaving you out here in this state, you’ve got another think coming,” she said. “Can you manage?”
She offered him her arm, and Owen found himself taking it, leaning his full weight on her as she steered him away from the entrance to the Normans’ place and up the driveway of the house next door. Her own, Owen assumed, a mirror image of its neighbour, only without the scrubby expanse of the Mermaids’ Garden to the rear. The woman was glad not to have to be bothered with it, probably, for how could anyone hope to keep such an unruly domain in order? She brought him inside, and Owen all but collapsed on to the wide, cream-coloured sofa in the spotless living room. His sweat-stained, dust-defiled presence seemed an affront, though the instant relief of most of his pain was like a miracle. He exhaled audibly, tears in his eyes.
“Hold on a moment and I’ll bring you a drink,” said the woman. She left the room, and Owen was glad simply to be there, unobserved. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the sofa cushions, relishing the sensation of weightlessness. Higher than the Hurricane, he thought, and he must have dropped off for a second because when he next opened his eyes the woman was back, a tray with two glasses of what looked like lemonade and a plate of frosted buns on the low table in front of him.
He reached for the lemonade, surprised to discover that he was, after all, ravenous and parched. The drink, tart and delicious, brought him back to himself.
“I apologise,” he said. “It must be the heat.”
“That, and the fact that you were clearly in agony,” the woman said. “My older brother has a club foot. They’ve tried innumerable operations but if anything they’ve made things worse. The problem with doctors is that they only know what they’re doing half of the time. The other half, you might as well pray to God, and I’m sure you’re well aware of how useless he is. What on earth are you doing here?”
“I came to see Angela,” Owen said. “Angela Norman, from next door.” He could not see the point in lying. It seemed ungrateful, somehow. And there was always the chance that this woman might know where Angela was.
“They’re gone,” the woman said softly. “The house is packed up. The removal men came a month ago.”
“That can’t be true.” The words burst from him, unbidden. He had received Angela’s most recent letter just three weeks before. She had spoken of the house, the street, the Mermaids’ Garden, the lack of rain. There had been no mention of moving – she would be moving soon enough, to Cambridge. And yet the house was empty.
“She seems like a nice girl. I never did take to him, though. The father, I mean. Too fond of splashing his money about. No wonder his wife left him.”
“I thought she was dead,” Owen said, distracted.
The woman snorted. “Dead, my foot. Caroline left him. She’s in France now, I think.”
France, Owen thought – remembered – and a wave of relief overcame him, hit him so hard he found himself imagining it as real, an ocean wave striking his chest and throwing him backwards, laughing, overbalancing him in the sun-spangled water. Himself and Anthony, on Dawlish beach, chasing a kite.
If anything happens, that’s where I’ll be, Angela had said. 17, rue de Durel, Sommières. Angela had prepared him for exactly this eventuality. How could he have forgotten?
“Thank you,” Owen said. He feared he was beaming.
“No need. Now, I’ll call that taxi if you’re feeling better.”
“Much better.”
“You’ll take these buns for the jo
urney? They’ll only go stale otherwise.”
* * *
It was only later, at the station, that the strangeness of the encounter came home to him. The woman had taken him into her home, she had seemed unsurprised to discover why he was there. It was almost as if – yet the idea was preposterous – Angela had told her to expect him.
He saw from the timetable that he had just missed a train, that there was half an hour to wait before the next one. He went to the station cloakroom to use the toilet. His face in the mirror was filthy, streaked with sweat and dust. His shirt stank, and there was a dirty, map-shaped mark on the breast pocket of his blazer. He scrubbed at it ineffectually with a dampened paper towel, splashed water on his face, smoothed back his hair. The pain in his foot had lessened to a dull throb. Now that he knew for certain that Angela was no longer in Sussex, he was desperate to be on his way back to London.
In order to pass the time before the train came, he searched idly through the books on a stall that had been put out beside the refreshments kiosk, spy stories and romances, ancient-looking recipe books and manuals for birdwatchers. Most were in poor condition and some were without dust jackets. None held much interest, and Owen was about to turn away when one caught his eye, a novel entitled An Unknown Country, by an author he had never heard of called Sylvester John. The cover showed a dark-haired, lean-faced man reading a letter, while in the background a creature that looked like a giant octopus seemed to be in the process of devouring a factory.
Peter Strickland never wanted to be a spy, read the text on the inside flap, but when his brother Harry is kidnapped his life begins to spiral out of control. As a maniacal dictator seizes power in Germany, a team of rogue scientists open the gateway to a new kind of terror. As millions flee the alien armies and the hell of the labour camps, for Peter Strickland the nightmare is only just beginning...
