Ahead of his Time

by Adrian Cousins

  11

  Magaluf

  The two interviews were conducted as requested by Roy. The process in this era was very different from my previous interviewing experience in 2019. With no computers or internet, the applications consisted of a typed covering letter and the candidate’s CV. Disappointingly, I couldn’t trawl through Facebook to look up their profiles and see what misdemeanours they’d got up to in their social lives.

  Back in my days as Sales Executive for Waddington Steel, that was always the part which I used to find the most entertaining. Having a candidate sitting across the desk looking all professional, when only a few minutes ago, I’d spotted a cringe-worthy picture of them when pissed in a night club or trying to set light to their farts as they bent double with a cigarette lighter between their legs.

  I recalled interviewing Martin about eight years back; well … eight years back from 2019 and not 1977. He arrived well-turned out in a smart new suit, sitting ramrod straight, although slightly nervous. A few moments earlier, I’d trawled through his Facebook account which, unfortunately for him, had very low-security settings. I was able to access many of his holiday posts which showed Martin and a group of his mates during pissed-up nights in Magaluf.

  One picture had caught my eye, showing whom I presumed was Martin performing a selfie with a girl who’d won the Miss Wet T-shirt competition. He had a bottle of beer in one hand, his other draped over her shoulder, and his tongue poked out at one very visible nipple straining against the wet t-shirt.

  I remember having that picture in my mind as Martin recounted his hobbies were supporting community projects, reading, and occasionally socialising with friends. He didn’t mention drunken nights out and nipple-licking of equally drunk girls.

  With the entertainment mounting, I was intrigued to hear more about his involvement in the local community. Very noble, I thought. Indeed this would demonstrate there was a certain level of maturity, despite the nipple-licking event. Martin talked through how he often supported his local healthcare centre by providing transport for the elderly to attend appointments and collect and deliver prescriptions. Yes, very noble.

  As he was from the generation who daily posted their life story on Facebook, and it appeared in his case to be hourly, I was surprised I could only see one Facebook entry about his community work. That entry I recalled was him moaning about having to fumigate his car after reluctantly agreeing to take his mother’s neighbour up to the Health Centre, as the usual ride had let the old-boy down at the last minute. The picture he’d posted was of him with a plastic peg on his nose whilst wiping the car seat. The caption read, ‘Aftermath of taking that piss-reeking old codger in my car. Never again!’

  Although at the time I was concerned about his moral compass, I did, however, offer the job to Martin. It was a junior role, and we all have to start somewhere, I thought. The other plus point, or actually less negative, was his dodgy Facebook entries were less offensive than most other candidates. The world had moved on in those eight years. Martin had matured, which wouldn't have been difficult based on the low point he was starting from. He’d married, become very competent at his job, and now had followed me back forty years into the past – all regular everyday events.

  Now interviewing in 1977, there was no requirement for the candidate to provide identification for proof of right to work and no DBS checks. I could have been interviewing and potentially employing some nutter or a serial killer. This role’s essential requirement consisted of two main threads. Firstly, would they look good in a brown smock-coat and secondly, could they use a screwdriver. Both candidates seemed more than competent in both categories. However, rather than offering the job to the second candidate who had some previous appropriate experience, I thought this could provide a temporary solution to what to do with Martin – assuming he was capable of using a screwdriver.

  Both DIs returned with the forensic officer just after four pm, and Roy left them in my capable hands. However, after guiding them to the secretarial training suite, they closed the door on me, leaving me stranded in the corridor.

  Last September, when I typed the letter about the Yorkshire Ripper, I’d had a niggling concern about the possible exposure as the author and the potential consequences that could entail. Earlier today, I’d realised my school-boy error of posting them locally, thus giving the letters the Fairfield postmark.

  Over the past four months, there were no reported arrests for the two murders in West Yorkshire. I’d made the reasonable assumption my letter was treated as the work of some crank or would-be Mystic-Meg. Or perhaps some other charlatan horoscope nut who claimed to be able to predict the future, but hey, I would say that as I have the star sign of Aries. Why they were so interested in who typed it, I couldn’t fathom, unless they believed it was the real killer who’d fabricated a wild story to deflect the murders from themselves and onto Peter Sutcliffe.

  I was sure if they could link the letter to one of those typewriters, there was no way they could connect the letter to me as anyone could have used it. Four months on, my fingerprints would no longer be on the typewriter.

  With the door closed on me, I wandered back to the staff room, reasonably confident that I had nothing to concern myself regarding this particular issue. However, then the obvious occurred to me and produced a cloak of doom that flattened my mood to a new low. The police were not lifting fingerprints, as they already had mine on the letter I sent. Oh, bollocks, I’d been such a pea-brain. I didn’t think about fingerprints when I’d sent the letters. At the time, I was only concerned about the typewriter being traced. I’d not concerned myself with DNA being harvested from the licked stamps and envelopes, as in this era it hadn’t been discovered. However, like a total numb-skull, I hadn’t considered that the paper and envelope were smothered with my sweaty fingerprints. Now all they had to do was fingerprint everyone, and I would be caught.

  Slipping ever further into a melancholy mindset, I considered what else could turn to shit today. As I chain-smoked through a packet of cigarettes, I half expected the forensic officer to be able to pinpoint me as the perpetrator just by flicking his powder and brush around. Yes, I was losing all sense of proportion.

  The situation escalated a few minutes before five when the detectives had finished their work and presented me with a receipt for one of the typewriters they were seizing for further investigation. Roy was stunned, and we discussed for some time how one of our students could have typed a letter about some crime committed hundreds of miles away in Yorkshire. I tried to play down the situation, saying it was probably coincidence and just a school prank which had got out of hand. I was now regretting the decision to send the letter in the first place as it seemed to only have the effect of putting the school under suspicion and not leading to stopping the Yorkshire Ripper as intended.

  With the trepidation of what George had to say at the pub tonight, and then the impending doom of a continued argument with Jenny later, I left school feeling quite depressed. Today really had turned to shite.

  12

  Corona

  The Three Horse Shoes lounge bar was reasonably quiet, with only three other punters enjoying an early evening drink. It was one of the few times I’d ventured into the pub when Dawn and Dennis weren’t perched on their designated bar stools. Ensconced on Dennis’s stool and nursing my pint, I waited for George, trying to avoid thinking about the day’s events. When George arrived a little after six, he wasn’t alone as he’d brought Martin with him.

  “Lad, I stopped by and picked up Martin. Thought it would be good to get him out of the house.

  “Right … okay,” I nonchalantly replied. “You’ll have to drop him off though, as I can’t be late tonight because Jenny is seriously on the war-path. The tanks are on the front lawn, so to speak.”

  “I am here, you know!” interjected Martin. He did look a little brighter today, although he still had that mopey look with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his green parka.

 
“Yeah, sorry, Martin,” I offered with a wave of my hand as an apology.

  “Lad, I presume it didn’t go too well with Jenny last night, then? It was a bit tense in that kitchen when she walked in.”

  “Oh, George, it was a bloody disaster, and she’s seen his car!” I pointed at Martin, who was now taking a butchers around the pub and the few other punters who were sitting at a table near the cigarette machine – he’d probably never seen one of those before.

  “Ah, sorry to hear that, lad. You did sound a bit distracted when I called at lunchtime. I presume that’s been playing on your mind all day.”

  Brian, the landlord, plonked George’s pint on the bar. George turned to Martin, who was now transfixed by the One-Armed-Bandit fruit machine as another punter was slotting five-pence pieces into it and yanking down the arm. He was starting to look like a right weirdo as he stared gormlessly, mesmerised by the wheels as they spun around.

  “Martin, what you ’aving?” asked George, whilst Brian waited with an empty beer mug in hand in anticipation.

  “Oh, err … bottle of Peroni please,” he offered back over his shoulder as his head moved rhythmically with the arm of the fruit machine.

  “Sorry, sir, did you say a bottle of Pernod?” questioned Brian, who had a baffled, bemused expression across his face.

  “Oh … what? No, no … I’ll have a bottle of Corona then,” Martin threw back but was still transfixed on the Bell-Fruit machine.

  “I’ve got orange or cherry-aid, which one? They’ve both passed their Fizzical- ha-ha.”

  I could see it would take a long time for Martin to fit in here. He looked confused as Brian held up the two bottles of fizzy drinks. I interjected to end this mayhem before Martin made an irreversible time-travel cock-up. “Brian, he’ll have a pint of Skol.” I shot Martin a look to shut his mouth as he turned and performed a fish-like impression.

  “Oh, okay. Wish you’d make your mind up. It’s a bottle of Pernod, then orange aid, now a pint of Skol,” Brian muttered, as he put the two glass bottles of fizzy drink down and reached for a pint glass.

  Drinks in hand and peeling Martin away from the one-armed-bandit’s hypnotic motion, we gathered in George’s favourite bay window-seat.

  “Right lad, let’s bring you up to speed. What I believe, talking to the lad ’ere last night,” George nodded to Martin, who was in the process of necking the pint in one gulp – I guessed he needed it. “After your accident on 12th August 2019, you died, and Martin ended up in a coma or something like that, as he can’t remember anything past the accident, only snippets of being in a hospital. Then, what I reckon is, he died on 16th January 2020 when he failed to recover from the coma.”

  I’d worked that much out myself. Martin said nothing as he repeatedly pushed the centre of his glasses back as he tipped his head forward and leaned in. George was obviously speaking in hushed tones, as the content of this conversation for any normal person was ridiculous.

  “Yeah, I’ve got that. What else did you discuss?”

  “Right, well. You time-travelled for a reason, and we both know what that was.”

  “What was that then?” Martin interjected.

  “Not now,” we both replied in unison, as we turned and looked at Martin. He squinted and pushed his glasses up his head again. This certainly wasn’t the time to explain to Martin that I’d saved my best friend in 2019 from suffering child abuse, and she’d now become my adopted baby-daughter.

  “So, lad, I reckon the lad here has time-travelled for a reason too. All we have to work out is what that is. In the meantime, we need to work out what we do with him. As we said yesterday, he’s not slotted into another Martin Bretton’s life.”

  Although George and Martin had not come up with much during their conversation yesterday, there seemed to be nothing worse happening to add to my already disastrous day.

  “You said your stepfather had exactly the same name but died in the year 2000. I think you need to tell us a bit of history about him, like where was he in 1977, i.e., now?” I asked.

  “Mum and Dad met at the Mandela concert at Wembley in ’88. I was only a baby, but Mum went to the concert with some friends, and she met my dad there. Apparently, Mum was separated from her friends, bumped into these two American guys and spent the whole concert with them. One of those guys became my stepdad.”

  “So, your stepfather was an American?”

  “Who’s Mandela?” George interjected.

  “What? You’re joking, right? Everyone knows who Mandela is!” Martin blurted out.

  “Hang on, hang on.” I slid a pound note across the table. “George, can you get the drinks in. I don't want one, but Martin has necked his down already.” George looked at me and nodded, knowing that I’d have to get Martin’s head straight about living in a different world.

  “Martin, look, I know this is all nuts, but you’re living in a different time. Mandela was a political prisoner who’d not come to world attention in 1977. Peroni and Corona beer were not commonplace in pubs. You’re going to have to work hard every day at this, as I still do five months after arriving here. Okay? Do you understand me?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I still can’t get my bloody head around this and that I’m actually here.”

  “Well, mate, you are, and you’d better start getting used to it. My life is a billion times better than it was in 2019, I can tell you. Well, it was until Sunday.”

  “What, when I arrived at your doorstep?”

  “Yep, and now everything seems to be unravelling.”

  “I’m sorry what I said to you on Sunday. You know … about everyone hating you back there … y’know … at work and stuff.” Martin looked away from me, breaking eye contact. I presumed he was feeling a little embarrassed, although he had no reason to be.

  “Martin, don’t be. You were absolutely right in what you said. Over the last few months I’ve changed so much, and the Jason you knew back then was a right tosser. What you said was true.”

  Martin raised his eyebrows, nodded and smiled for the first time in two days. “Yep, you were.”

  “Yeah, alright. You don’t have to look so smug about it.”

  George re-joined us at the table with Martin’s pint. I nodded that I’d put Martin straight on a few things, and we carried on.

  “So, Martin, your stepdad was an American. When did he come to the UK?”

  “Dad worked for BP and was seconded over to complete a two-year contract in the late ’80s. That’s when he met Mum and didn’t go back. They married in 1990 when I was just two years old.”

  “Do you know where he was in the late ’70s? Presumably, in college in the States, I guess?”

  “No, he was fifteen years older than Mum, so he’d be in his early thirties. Probably about the age I am now. I don’t know what he was doing then, although he would have been living in America at the time. I remember him saying that he never found the right Gal, as he put it; then the first time leaving the States and within his first week here, he met the woman of his dreams.”

  “Well, that seals it, lad. Your father is in America now.”

  “Fricking hell! My dad’s there right now, isn’t he? And we’re the same age … fuck me!”

  “Mind your language. There’s no need for that, d’you hear?”

  “Sorry, George,” I said.

  “Not you lad … ’im.” George thumbed towards Martin.

  “Yeah, I know, but I thought I would say it for him until he gets the hang of it.” I grinned.

  “Oh, I see. Well, I’ve only met two time-travellers, and they both have mouths like sewers.”

  Martin pointed at me and laughed. “You should’ve heard him at work! Every other word he uttered was either Fuck, or Bollocks. We all reckoned he’d got Tourettes!”

  “Tour-what?”

  “Forget it, George. Right, let’s get back to it.” Now checking my watch, concerned I really needed to get going soon. I had the grovel-to-Jenny path to crawl along tonight, s
o being super late was only going to add shards of broken glass to that already super-tricky path to squirm across.

  “What about your mum? She’d presumably be of school age now. Is that in Enfield? That’s where you come from, isn’t it?” I questioned Martin as he proceeded to gulp down his second pint.

  “No. I was born and raised here in Fairfield.”

  “Thought you said this lad worked for you? Didn’t you know anything about your staff?”

  Martin choked and snorted beer down his nose. “Ha!” He wiped his nose and table with the sleeves of his parka, both arms performing a synchronised movement to clear the mess he’d made. George screwed up his nose at the revolting sight as I just shook my head, whilst Martin just smirked at me as he continued to swirl the spat beer in a circular motion with his sleeve.

  “George back then, or future then, I … how shall I put it without you chastising me for my language … I was a—”

  “A right tosser – that covers it,” Martin blurted out and grinned.

  I pointed at Martin. “Yup, that about covers it.”

  “Oh right, okay, lad. Carry on about your mother.” George shot me a confused look. I shrugged, guessing I’d have to go into greater detail with him at some point about my not so wonderful previous life.

  “As I said. I was born in Fairfield and went to school here. The same one as my mum did … the City School.”

  “You went to the City School, really? And your mum, when was she born?”

  “1961. She’d be … err … sixteen now.”

  I glanced at George, both of us raising our eyebrows.

  “Fricking hell, my mum is still at school!”

  “Martin, what’s your mother’s name.”

  “Sarah Bretton.”

  I thought for a moment. Nope, I didn’t know a Sarah Bretton. “No, that’s presumably her married name. What’s her maiden name?”