by Winona Kent
Sarah looked truly horrified. Her face fell. “My lovely Anonymous Lady is dead?”
“Yes—some years ago.” Charlie was struggling again. “I’m so sorry…”
“Never to be another Mansfield Park or Persuasion?”
“But she has such a following,” Charlie said. “Everyone knows who she is. People dress up in her clothes and have elaborate teas and dances. Mr. Darcy’s more popular than Jesus…”
“I daresay in London,” Sarah replied, sadly. “But we are somewhat more removed here in the country. News is always reluctant to arrive in a timely fashion.”
“Your lovely Anonymous Lady,” Charlie assured her, “is destined never to be forgotten.”
But Sarah was still unhappy, and would not be cheered as she cleared away the breakfast things.
Charlie poured herself another cup of tea. “This morning I thought I might explore the village,” she said, carefully. “And that manor on the hill…”
“The manor that belongs to Monsieur Duran?” Jack inquired.
“Yes,” said Charlie, with a glance at Sarah.
“Monsieur Louis Augustus Duran,” Tom added, with an atrocious French accent. “Zee most important monsieur in all of Grande Bretagne. Tout alors.”
“Yes,” Sarah replied. “And I wish he would go back from whence he came, tout alors. He is easily the most annoying gentleman I have ever had the misfortune to have discourse with.”
Mary leaned across the table, balancing herself on her hands. “Mama is not fond of Monsieur Duran,” she said, in a very loud whisper.
“So I gather,” Charlie replied.
“He has proposed marriage,” Sarah continued. “Five times. One might conclude, after a less than enthusiastic response to the first two attempts, that a willing wife might better be sought elsewhere. But no.”
She collected the remaining breakfast plates, and carried them to the sideboard.
Charlie was going to say something further, a gentle attempt at persuasion, a hint that perhaps Monsieur Duran might not be as vile and contemptuous as he appeared. And that perhaps Sarah only needed to observe him to arrive at a more measured conclusion. But there was a perfunctory tap at the kitchen door that stopped her.
Jack was seated closest, and it was he who jumped up from his chair to answer the knock.
It was a young woman dressed in a maid’s uniform, holding a large and loosely wrapped parcel.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am,” she said, with a small curtsey. “I am Martha, from the manor. Monsieur Duran has bid me deliver this to you, along with his greetings, and his fond hope that you will agree to attend the ball on Saturday to welcome his father to England.”
She offered the parcel to Sarah, but it was Jack who seized it, and laid it on the table in front of his mother.
“Is there any message you wish me to convey to Monsieur Duran?” Martha inquired.
“No message,” Sarah replied. “But you may convey the gift back to him, as I am singularly opposed to its receipt.”
“Oh no,” Martha said. “I cannot. Monsieur Duran has forbidden me to accept a refusal. If you wish not to acknowledge this token of his absolute affection for you, then you may do as you wish with it. But he will not allow its return.”
“This man is more hellishly annoying with each advancing day,” Sarah said, to Charlie. She turned to Martha. “Very well. You may report to Monsieur Duran that the package has been delivered, with the understanding that I harbor no affection for him, absolute or otherwise. And that there exists no obligation for further discourse upon my part, nor upon his. I cannot state it more plainly. Your task is therefore complete. Good morning.”
“Good morning, ma’am,” Martha answered, with another small curtsey, and then, she was gone.
Jack closed the door.
“What is inside?” Mary inquired, excitedly. “May we see?”
“I am tempted to convey it straight into the fire,” Sarah replied. “Unopened and unseen.”
“Just a quick look,” Charlie suggested, her own curiosity piqued.
“Three times he has sent me an invitation,” Sarah said, undoing the string. “Three times I have refused.”
She unfolded the paper. Inside was a gown, exquisitely stitched, of finest pale silk gauze, with a blue leafy pattern worked in flossed silk, and trimmed with silk netting and blue satin.
“You’ll have to go to the ball now,” Jack said.
“I shall not,” Sarah replied, firmly. “I do not wish to be paraded before his friends like his most recently-acquired horse. Nor do I wish to share his matrimonial bed, which I am certain would be as repugnant as he is. He seeks only to possess me. I would be despised by the entire village if I agreed to become his wife. Or pitied. So there you have it.”
She wrapped the gown up again, and placed it on the sideboard, beside the unwashed breakfast plates.
“Children—it is time for our lessons.”
Chapter 9
Dr. Allen, the psychiatrist-on-call at the hospital, had completed her morning rounds, and her assessment of the patient.
“This character, Mrs. Collins, is intelligent and bright,” she said, sitting with Nick and Sam in the private visitors’ lounge at the sunny end of the ward. “If slightly agitated.”
“Yes, but what about Charlie?” Sam asked.
“Well, for the time being, she isn’t Charlie. She believes she’s Mrs. Collins. So I think you should go along with her. It’s temporary. She’ll come round. But she shouldn’t be left on her own. She’ll have to stay with you, Sam.”
“Can’t you keep her in here?”
“I’d take her home with me,” Nick said, “but I think there might be strenuous objections. Regency etiquette being what it is. Or was.”
“She’s entirely without the foundations of any sort of mental disturbance profound enough to necessitate a prolonged stay in hospital,” Dr. Allen replied. “Rather like old Mr. Abbott who lives over the bakery and for the past two months has insisted he’s King George the Third.”
“Mr. Abbott should have been taken into care years ago,” Sam said.
“But he’s in no danger of self-harm, Sam. And he’s not contemplating harming anyone else. It’s the same with Charlie. She’s quite all right, really…except for her belief that she’s Catherine Collins. It’ll right itself. Keep an eye on her. Are you going to the Quiz Night at The Dog’s Watch next Tuesday?”
“No,” Sam said.
“I might,” Nick replied, good-naturedly. In her other life, Dr. Allen was Wendy, whose husband Bill was quite a good mate of his.
“We’ll see you there, then.” Dr. Allen stood up. “Perhaps if you show her all things that Charlie’s familiar with, something will click.”
“We could take her to the museum,” Nick suggested. “She’s due at work in an hour anyway. Though I suspect they’ll probably give her the day off. Under the circumstances.”
“She’s all yours,” Sam replied. “Bring her back in time for supper.”
It was a ten minute drive along the coast road from the Royal Memorial Hospital to the centre of Stoneford. Nick parked his car in the little visitors’ lot in front of the museum, then went around to the passenger side to unbuckle Mrs. Collins, and assist her out.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, catching sight of the historical sign identifying the building as the old St. Eligius Vicarage. “But this is where my cousin Mrs. Foster is employed! Have you brought me here to meet her?”
“If you see her, I’d be happy to be introduced,” Nick replied, humorously. “Shall we go in?”
Just inside the museum, in what had once been the front hall of the vicarage, there was further sign, welcoming visitors, explaining that admission was free, and pointing the way to the exhibits and the toilets. Nick led Mrs. Collins through to the old kitchen, where Charlie’s desk was, still strewn with papers from yesterday’s projects.
“’Morning, Charlie!” Natalie King, the museum’s office manager, waved
from her desk beside the fireplace. “And Nick! What a nice surprise!”
“Good morning,” Nick replied. “I’m afraid Charlie’s a bit upset…she spent the night in the hospital.”
Natalie’s face fell. “Oh. Oh yes, of course. It’s Jeff, isn’t it. Five years, yesterday. I’m so sorry, Charlie. You mustn’t come in to work today. I’ll manage.”
“Why does everyone insist that I am Charlie?” Mrs. Collins whispered, behind her hand, to Nick. “He must be very highly regarded in the village, for I have heard his name mentioned unfailingly since my arrival.”
“She’s got a touch of amnesia,” Nick provided, to Natalie.
He turned to Mrs. Collins.
“Charlie’s a ‘she’…a sort of nickname. And you look remarkably like her. You must forgive peoples’ confusion.”
He paused.
“Does anything seem familiar…?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” Mrs. Collins replied, “save for the fireplace, which is very similar in shape and size to the one in my cousin’s cottage. But I find my appetite is getting the better of me, Mr. Weller. I was discharged from the hospital with no thought given to sustenance. Might there be something approximating breakfast nearby?”
There was indeed something approximating breakfast nearby.
Nick’s house had originally been constructed as a small chapel on what had once been the edge of the village. Over the decades, the chapel had been transformed from a stone and brick ruin into a tidy living space. And as the village had been modernized, so had the former chapel’s insides. It was now functional and bright, with two bedrooms and an open plan living room, and a loft upstairs, underneath the vaulted ceiling, held up with fine oak beams. It was the perfect sort of place to house Nick, his cat and his research, and his wife and children, on those occasions when they graced him with a visit from London.
Nick unlocked his front door, then stood aside, allowing Mrs. Collins to enter first.
“What an interesting design,” she remarked. “I must admit, Mr. Weller, that from what I beheld on the outside, within I expected pews and a pulpit. I had half a mind to believe you were a pastor. Although given your choice of clothing, I should believe God to have quite a sartorial sense of humor.”
Nick considered his shirt, which today was bright red, with yellow hibiscus flowers. He had an entire closet filled with God’s sartorial sense of humor. His Hawaiian shirts kept him cheerful, even on those days when gloom threatened to descend with the rain, and his leg was aching beyond the reach of his prescription painkillers.
But Mrs. Collins’ attention had turned to more pressing matters.
“Mr. Weller,” she said, quietly. “I do not wish to be indelicate, and, indeed, I find myself blushing as I speak, but I am in need of your convenience. Might you direct me towards it…?”
“But of course,” Nick replied. He led her to the bathroom, beside his bedroom. “There you are.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, observing the toilet, the sink, the bath and the shower. “You are most fortunate. There was a similar chamber at the hospital, very near to where I was confined! I was greatly amused by these clever waterworks.”
She walked to the sink, and turned on the tap.
“There is nothing like this where I live. London would benefit greatly from such an invention.”
She pushed down the flush handle on the toilet, laughing delightedly at the gurgling result.
“And as for this…I was so predisposed by its ingenuity that I undertook a study of it, over and over, last night—ceasing only when a bad tempered woman in a white costume arrived to make known her objections.”
She beckoned to Nick, and then whispered:
“She advised me of its true purpose. And bade me make use.”
Nick left her to it.
And in the meantime, to the accompaniment of numerous flushes and running tap water, he set the table for breakfast: cereal and orange juice, toast and butter, tea with milk.
Mrs. Collins still had not reappeared, so Nick went up to the loft. It was his workspace, an open gallery over the living room which was reached by a short, steep staircase. It was hell to climb, and even more hell to come down again, when he was jousting with sleep and wanting only to collapse into bed.
He’d spent a lot of last night up there with Charlie’s laptop, running diagnostics and watching while rows of code tumbled down the screen in a furious waterfall of letters and numbers. He’d been determined to locate the malware he was certain had invaded it, jumbling its internal workings and scrambling its normally well-ordered bits into a fevered battle.
But his investigation had come up short, and he’d staggered down to bed with more questions than answers.
He switched it on again now, and double-checked the steps he’d initiated in order to try and identify whatever worm, trojan, malware, adware, spyware, polymorphic or metamorphic code had caused it to hiccup the day before.
Whatever it was…it appeared to now be gone.
“Damn,” Nick said, to himself. He hadn’t wanted the piece of coding to disappear. He’d only wanted to isolate it, so he could take it apart and study it.
There was one last place he hadn’t looked: Charlie’s family tree program. The initial pathway, he strongly suspected, of the first contagious infection.
Opening the program, he clicked on the series of names in the tree’s top index, going back, back, back…right the way back to 1825, and Sarah Elizabeth Foster.
Nothing there. Nor there. And then…as the cursor landed on Sarah’s square…the screen flickered uncertainly.
Sarah’s square flashed a brilliant mauve.
And there was a very subtle ripple in the loft beyond his desk and the laptop…a lapping crease in time and space which Nick just managed to catch out of the corner of his eye.
Was that his imagination?
His pragmatic mind wanted him to believe it was.
His pragmatic mind suggested that a second visit to Sarah Elizabeth Foster’s square would be the ideal scientific response.
And so, he clicked again.
Again…the flicker.
“You bugger,” Nick said, under his breath.
This was clearly no ordinary virus.
And Mrs. Collins was, at last, emerging from the loo.
“Oh that I had the comfort of one of those in London!” she exclaimed. “I should not wish to leave my house ever again!”
She spied the table, set for breakfast. And the remote control for Nick’s TV, which he’d inadvertently left beside the sugar bowl.
“What is this curious device?”
Nick hurried down the impossible stairs.
“It switches on the TV.”
He demonstrated, to Mrs. Collins’ astonishment.
“This button changes the channel, and this one adjusts the volume.”
“Look!” she said, excitedly, as a program about antiques began showcasing collectors’ chamber pots. “The very same as the one underneath my bed in London. But a hundred and forty pounds! Goodness. I paid nothing like that for mine. And it’s from Wedgwood. These little people know nothing about your convenience, Mr. Weller. You must advise them immediately, before they squander a small fortune on outmoded pottery!”
Chapter 10
So, in spite of Monsieur Duran’s very persuasive gift, there would still be no contemplation of marriage, no discussion of it whatsoever. Not even an opportunity to approach the subject delicately and from the standpoint of a perfectly convenient Grand Summer Ball.
As Sarah and the children departed for the vicarage, Charlie set out for the manor, deep in thought and in a very poor mood.
On television, in books, in films, whenever travel in time was embarked upon by fictitious adventurers, the prime directive was always clear: never interfere.
Because if one interfered, even to the smallest extent, one risked altering the future exponentially. Everything that happened, everything that was recorded as having happened, wa
s set in stone. Otherwise, how else could she—Charlie—have existed in Stoneford two hundred years from now?
She knew what Nick would say. He’d argue quantum mechanics and throw chaos theories at her, and make her brain hurt with the possibility of parallel universes and paradoxes. And then, at the opposite end of the argument, there was Jeff’s simple logic. We are who we are, and where we are, because something happened, or didn’t happen, in the past. It doesn’t matter how we got here, it matters that we got here.
And she knew what Sam would say, too. Hang the complexities. Do what needs to be done.
Sam had very little patience for Charlie’s ancestral adventures. Whenever they had conversations about history, she’d made it very clear she would much rather have been talking about multi-bladed mechanical scarificators and bloodletting cups than birth, marriage and death records from 1851.
Only one question really needed answering. If you were to find yourself transported back in time…and if you were faced with resolving a dilemma…should you act, or not act?
And what if the answer was that you had to act, in order to cause the future to happen? What if you were the lynchpin upon which everything else hung? And if you didn’t act, would you cause history to change, and not necessarily for the better?
Charlie was descended from Sarah Elizabeth Foster and Louis Augustus Duran—of that she had no doubt whatsoever. It was written in the parish books, and in the census results, the marriage and birth certificates, the school records, the lists went on and on.
And if she did not interfere, none of those ancestors would come to be—and neither would she.
It was simple. They had all existed. She existed. Therefore, her interference was not only expected—it was mandatory.
She stopped to think further.
Nick would argue she couldn’t be in two places at the same time. There was only one of her, and if she was here, now, she couldn’t also be in the future, where he was. Therefore, if she messed up, and made the wrong decision resulting in the wrong reaction…then she might never actually inhabit the future. Which wasn’t an altogether displeasing solution, considering what she knew awaited her, two centuries on.
