Time's Echo

by Pamela Hartshorne

  I hadn’t . . . what was the word? slipped? tipped? . . . plunged back into Hawise’s life since I stood there gaping at Ned Hilliard’s marriage proposal, but I could feel her tugging at my mind, desperate to draw me back. I didn’t want to go. I might be intrigued by her story, and fascinated by seeing Elizabethan life through her eyes, but I was frightened too by the sheer intensity of the experience.

  I clung still to Drew’s idea of recovered memory, but it was wearing thin. It was increasingly hard to accept that a random memory could account for the frightening intensity of my experiences as Hawise. When I thought about films I had seen or books I had read, I remembered atmosphere. I remembered the story, the feel of it. I didn’t know how thin and sour the wine tasted. I didn’t smell the freshly woven rush mats on the floor, the way their sweetness drifted on the air as I crushed them beneath my feet and mingled with the scent of camomile and fleabane strewn among them. I didn’t feel the slight bump in the glaze of the jug’s handle. I might have remembered the clang of the church bells that punctuated the day, and I could easily have remembered what a gown looked like on the screen, but taste and smell and feel . . . how could I remember those in such startling detail from having watched a film?

  But I was resisting the alternative. I didn’t want to be possessed. The very word made me sweat. Possession meant control, and the thought of anyone playing around with the mind I kept so carefully guarded was horrific. I couldn’t bear it when boyfriends tried to get too close, let alone a girl who had been dead for a good four hundred years – if she had ever existed at all.

  ‘Come and have a drink,’ Drew had said, shifting all his bags into one hand so that he could manoeuvre the key into the lock. ‘I could do with one.’

  It was the opportunity I had been waiting for. I was tired of Hawise probing relentlessly at my mind the moment I let my guard down. It was fine when I was teaching, but sometimes when I walked along the streets the air would waver and the thin veil between this time and that would billow seductively. I learnt to steel myself, to fix my attention on the present: something plastic, something electronic.

  It was time to take back control, I’d decided. I would approach the problem rationally, and the first thing was to establish whether or not Hawise was real. If there was no evidence that any of the story unfolding in my head was true, then I would have to accept that she was a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t sure which I wanted her to be: a ghost, or a symptom that I was losing my grip on reality. Either way, I would know what I was dealing with.

  I’d googled what I could about Elizabethan York, but that didn’t get me very far. The library was my next step, but it seemed ridiculous not to make use of a specialist on my doorstep before that, especially when I didn’t understand enough to know what I was looking for. I’d broached the subject carefully, knowing already that Drew wouldn’t have any time for wild tales of ghosts or time-travelling.

  ‘It depends on the period, for a start.’ Drew pushed up his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose as he considered my question. He looked tired too. ‘It depends on where you are, and it depends on what kind of someone you’re talking about.’

  ‘A girl,’ I said. I kept my eyes on my wine, running a finger round and round the rim of the glass. ‘A servant.’ I thought about the clothes Hawise wore, about Francis Bewley sweeping a bow as if to the Queen’s Majesty herself. I couldn’t remember if there had been anything to indicate a specific date. ‘Say in Elizabethan York.’ It felt right. Beyond that, I couldn’t say.

  ‘It wouldn’t be easy,’ said Drew. ‘Not all the records for that period survive. You’d have to be very lucky to be able to trace an individual, especially a girl.’

  ‘Why? Because servants weren’t important?’

  It was what he would expect me to say, but Drew didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Actually, at that period service was a part of almost everyone’s life. Even noble families sent their children to be servants in other households. Servants were part of the family,’ he said. ‘That was the way young people learnt how to behave, how they learnt a trade, how they made connections that would stand them in good stead later in life. A girl in service in a well-to-do urban household would learn how to run a household, how to cook, how to sew, how to treat everyday ailments. She worked with her mistress, rather than for her.’

  I nodded, remembering Mistress Beckwith, and the firmness with which she had run her household. My mistress – Hawise’s mistress – had worked just as hard as anyone else. She would have been agog at the notion that she might sit and eat sweetmeats while her servants waited on her hand and foot. So at least my sense of Hawise’s role in the Beckwiths’ house was consistent with historical fact, but it didn’t get me any closer to proving whether or not Hawise herself had really existed.

  ‘Why do you want to know all this anyway?’ asked Drew, eyes narrowed, and I looked away.

  ‘Oh . . . ’ I said vaguely. ‘I was just wondering what you would do if you wanted to find out about someone who wasn’t famous, that’s all.’

  I could tell he was still puzzled. ‘It would help to know the parish where she died, whether or not she married, that kind of thing. You might be lucky and find a will in which she’s mentioned. Members of the civic elite are more likely to be in the council records – those do survive – but you usually only come across other individuals if they break the law in some way. The records I’m working on at the moment are an exception to that.’

  I made one of those noises that mean ‘Go on, I’m listening’. I taught a range of noises like that to my students. If you can use your ums and ers correctly, you sound much more fluent.

  ‘The wardmote courts were local courts that enforced environmental regulation,’ he said, unconsciously slipping into lecture mode. ‘They were held twice a year, around Easter and Michaelmas, and they dealt with ordinary people and ordinary concerns: who’s mending the streets, who’s not disposing of their waste correctly, who’s a noisy neighbour, and so on. Householders are listed, along with an order to, say, pave the street in front of their doors, or clean the gutter; and they would have to pay a fine if they hadn’t complied by the following court – although most of them did.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ I leant forward, frowning with concentration. ‘Do you think I might be able to find . . . my servant girl . . . in your records?’

  ‘Very doubtful,’ said Drew. ‘For a start, only a decade or so of these records survive, so unless you’ve got a very specific date in mind, you’d have to be very lucky to find one individual. The vast majority of those mentioned are men too. There were some female householders – usually widows – but the few women mentioned are either presented for antisocial behaviour of some kind or for breaking petty market regulations. Even then, they’re usually referred to as someone’s wife. If your servant girl is respectable, you won’t find her in these records.’

  I was disappointed. It didn’t sound as if Drew could help me after all. I sat, chewing the edge of my thumb, wondering if I could at least ask him to search his records for Mr Beckwith or Ned Hilliard, but I didn’t know how to do that without telling him about Hawise, and I had no idea how to do that without sounding completely mad.

  Drew’s unnervingly keen eyes were still fixed on my face. ‘What’s all this about, Grace?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘At least . . . No, nothing.’ Of course I couldn’t tell him. Drew was a historian. He was sane, he was rational. He didn’t believe in ghosts or reincarnation or regression.

  And neither did I. Not really.

  ‘Where’s Sophie?’ I decided it was time to change the subject before Drew started asking too many searching questions that I wasn’t ready to answer. That I couldn’t answer.

  ‘God knows,’ said Drew with a sigh. ‘She stomped off earlier. Apparently I am selfish, controlling, completely extra – whatever that means, but it’s not good – stupid, uncaring and . . . I forget the other thing. Basically, I’m a bad father.’r />
  ‘Oh, dear,’ I said. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Asked her where she was going. More fool me.’

  He sounded so defeated, I had to fight an absurd urge to put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Is she still with that group she talked about?’

  ‘The Temple of the Waters.’ Taking off his glasses, Drew nodded and rubbed his hand wearily over his face. ‘She spends all her spare time with them now – at least when she’s supposed to be with me. It’s harder when she’s staying with her mother out in the village, but Karen says she’s always down by the river, performing little ceremonies. She’s worried about Sophie too, but what can we do? Sophie’s fifteen. We can’t lock her in her room.’

  I thought about Vivien’s warning. Not all spirits are good spirits or safe spirits, she had said. There was no point in telling Drew that. He was worried enough as it was.

  ‘It’s difficult,’ I said sympathetically. ‘I can see why you’re concerned. I don’t suppose there’s much I can do, but if I can help . . . ’ I trailed off, feeling useless. What could I do, after all? When was I ever a help when it really mattered? Lucas’s face flashed into my mind, and I closed my eyes against it.

  ‘Actually, there is something,’ said Drew and my eyes snapped open. ‘I know it’s a lot to ask,’ he said, unusually hesitant, ‘but would you go out with her sometime? Have coffee or go to a film or something?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Sophie likes you. She thinks you’re cool.’

  I was fascinated by the way he could smile without curving his lips. I couldn’t decide whether his eyes were blue-grey or grey-blue, but they gleamed in a way that set a little tingle tingling inside me, while the warmth spread outwards, deepening the creases in his face and hovering tantalizingly around his mouth.

  I shifted self-consciously, aware all at once of the Toda earrings dangling against my neck and the jade pendant at my throat. I’d pulled back my hair and clipped it up with a beaded comb before I went out to teach, but as always by that time of the day most of it was falling messily around my face.

  I pushed it behind my ears as I glanced down at the crinkled silk tunic I’d bought from a charity shop for a couple of pounds. With it I wore a vintage waistcoat that had been an even better bargain, at fifty pence, perhaps because it had two buttons missing. As an outfit, it was cheap and comfortable, but . . . cool?

  ‘I don’t feel very cool,’ I said.

  ‘To someone like Sophie, you’re exotic,’ Drew said.

  I couldn’t help laughing. ‘You make me sound exciting!’

  ‘You are exciting,’ he said.

  His voice was quite level, but when his eyes met mine, there was a sudden, perilous silence. I was the first to look away, uncomfortably aware that my cheeks were hot.

  ‘You’ve got a confidence that she can’t imagine having in a million years, right now,’ Drew said as if the moment had never happened. Had he even noticed? I wondered. Or had I imagined it, like I was imagining so much else right now?

  ‘I just think that if you told her about your travels, about working in Indonesia, she’d be interested and flattered by your attention.’

  ‘I can hardly invite her in and then bore her to death by telling her about where I’ve been!’ I protested.

  ‘I can’t imagine you being boring,’ he said. He leant forward, fixing that acute gaze on my face. ‘Please, Grace,’ he said. ‘I’m at my wits’ end with Sophie. Her mother and I are too conventional, and too close to her to have any influence at the moment. She’s lonely and she’s looking for a role model. I’d rather it was you than Ash.’

  ‘Ash?’

  ‘Ash Vaughan.’ Drew sat back. ‘He was a student of mine once – one of those who are a little too clever for their own good. He dropped out in the end, and I for one wasn’t sorry to see him go. But the next thing I heard of him, he was leading this cult that Sophie’s got herself tangled up in. The “Temple of the Waters”.’ Drew practically spat out the name. ‘It’s a load of bollocks, but try telling Sophie that.’

  I chewed my thumb. I’d offered to help, and I meant it, but I didn’t want Drew thinking that he could rely on me. I didn’t want to let him down, the way I had let Lucas down. Guilt rolled through me as the memory spun in its familiar cracked groove.

  Practical things – those I could do, but be a role model? Drew could hardly have picked on anyone less suited to the task!

  Look out for Sophie. Vivien’s words stopped the record that played so relentlessly in my head, and I thought again about what she had said about Drew’s daughter. I didn’t like the idea of Sophie being led astray. She reminded me too much of myself at fifteen.

  And Drew was sitting there, watching me with quiet desperation in his eyes. He wasn’t asking me to save Sophie, I realized, just spend a bit of time with her. A coffee, a film, that was all. Neither was a great commitment, and I had offered to help.

  ‘I don’t think I’d be much of a role model,’ I said, ‘but I’ll try.’

  Clouds brooded in the distance as I sat down to write my lesson plans for the following week. It was unseasonably warm for that early in May, and I had all the windows wide open to air the house while I could. No matter how often I cleaned it, I couldn’t get rid of that faint whiff of rotting fruit.

  I cleared a space for my laptop on Lucy’s desk. I’d avoided her study up to that point, unable to face making sense of her paperwork. God only knows how she ever found anything. As far as I could see, her filing system amounted to little more than throwing everything on the desk, which was covered with papers and books and bills. I had to push them into a tottering pile to make room for my computer.

  While I waited for it to boot up, I looked down at the back yards below. Sophie had gone back to her mother’s, I knew, and Drew was out. I’d knocked on his door as I passed on my way home, to suggest a Friday-night drink, but there had been no answer. I wondered where he was.

  Not that I cared. I was leaving soon anyway.

  Drew’s garden was hidden by the extension, but I could see into the yard that matched Lucy’s on the other side. The neighbours there had evidently decided to make the most of the unexpected warmth and were celebrating the weekend with a barbecue with friends. Someone was telling a funny story, but I couldn’t catch any details. There would be a great whoop of laughter and, just when it was tailing off, the storyteller would say something else and they’d be off again, until they were breathless and gasping with it.

  I smiled, but maybe I was feeling a little wistful. It felt like a long time since I had laughed like that, laughed until my stomach hurt. Nobody likes to admit that they’re lonely. There seems to be something shameful about it, although I know that’s stupid. I’d always prided myself on my independence, but that evening, yes, I was lonely, and I thought about Hawise and how much she had missed her friend Elizabeth.

  The computer screen was glowing expectantly. Pushing Hawise from my head, I clicked to bring up a new document and typed Past Continuous. Then I stopped to twist up my hair and fasten it with a clip. Down below, the laughter was getting more hysterical. It was starting to get on my nerves.

  Setting my fingers back on the keyboard, I wrote: Uses of the past continuous. 1: An ongoing action interrupted by a single event. E.g. What were you doing when you heard about . . . ? Disasters were good to practise that exercise: 9/11, earthquakes, Princess Di’s sudden death – any number of terrible events burnt into the collective memory.

  I was walking back to the room when the tsunami struck.

  I typed instead: I was watching television when the telephone rang.

  I couldn’t concentrate. There were no apples in sight, but the odour of a wet autumn orchard clung to the inside of my nostrils. In spite of the heat, the air was taut. I kept thinking of a bow being drawn back, of gut and muscle quivering with strain. I looked over my shoulder. The room was empty.

  Of course it was.

  I forced my eyes to focus on t
he screen. 2: Action interrupted by specific time. E.g. This time last year I was working in Jakarta.

  On Christmas Day I was digging on the beach with Lucas.

  It was very close. I wiped the sweat from the back of my neck.

  3: Parallel actions, I typed. Two actions in the past happening at the same time. E.g.

  I stopped. I couldn’t think of a sensible example.

  While I was holding onto the rail, Lucas was drowning.

  I could feel the room crowding in behind me. I didn’t want to look round again. I knew there was nothing there, but still I found myself holding my breath.

  Music thumped from an open window further along the street, and in the distance a siren whooped and wailed a warning.

  ‘Bess . . . ’

  The name rippled out of nowhere, brushing against my cheek like a breath, and I sucked in a scream as I swung round, dislodging a file and sending a whole sheaf of papers cascading to the floor.

  Of course there was no one there.

  My heart was knocking painfully against my ribs as I turned back to the table, and I nearly screamed again when I saw what had been lurking under the file I knocked aside.

  An apple squatted there like a malign slug, fat and soggy and suppurating with mould. It was the kind of apple you find in the long grass under a tree, its crisp outline sagging as its skin puckers and browns and it rots from within. I stared at it, my breath coming in staccato puffs, my mouth open to avoid breathing in its putrid stench. There was something malevolent about it, a wrongness that made the air around it thicken and waver.

  The apples I’d found around the house had been creepy, but this . . . this was something else. I couldn’t bear to pick it up. I had to find a dustpan and brush in order to carry it down to the wheelie bin in the front garden. I didn’t know what else to do, and at least then it would be out of the house. Gagging with revulsion, I threw it in and let the lid smack back into place.

  My hands were shaking as I made my way back to Lucy’s desk. In the garden below the funny story had finally come to an end, but the party was still going strong. Glasses were being refilled, jokes told. I watched them for a while, longing to be able to join them. I could tell them how frightened I’d been by an apple, and we would all laugh together.