The Outcasts of Time

by Ian Mortimer

  How can the image itself move? It has to be the very thing itself I am seeing, not a picture. But how can you pipe a view to the wall like that?

  What follows is a moving, talking newspaper. I see pictures of large metal wagons with cannon on top of them, speeding across the African desert, where a British army is fighting a German one. I do not know which is which: the armies do not carry coats of arms, banners or standards as in my day. I see pictures of bombed and wrecked buildings in Germany, damaged by the king’s air force. The sound is loud – much louder than listening to someone speaking in person. Images of destruction and sad people walking in long lines shock me, and fill me with despair for all mankind.

  When the news has finished, the ‘film’ starts. There is a moment of darkness before we hear stirring music played by many instruments from some hidden place.

  ‘This is the story of a ship,’ says a voice. I watch images of how they build modern ships out of metal. I wonder how they can possibly float. I want to ask Celia but there are so many other things I want to ask. I wish there were windows so I could tell if it was growing dark outside, so I could see if there were aeroplanes coming.

  A newspaper is seen drifting on muddy water. Celia leans over and says to me, ‘The headline reads: “No war this year – Berlin emphatic, Hitler is not ready.”’ I watch as this ship, the Torrin, is built and goes to sea. Her captain is a man with a strange accent called Kinross, who speaks so fast I cannot understand more than a few words. He loves his wife, called Alix, very much, and well he might, for she is beautiful. Soon the aeroplanes of the enemy are shooting at the Torrin and dropping fish-shaped objects on her deck, which explode. After a few of these aeroplanes have been shot by men on the deck with cannon, two of these exploding objects hit the Torrin, and she starts to sink. Men throw themselves overboard and hang on to a float in the sea. But the aeroplanes return to shoot them in the water with rapidly firing muskets, even though they are defenceless.

  As the surviving men wait in the water, they all think back to their wives. Captain Kinross remembers talking to Alix about whether there will be a war, and I realise that that particular discussion must have taken place before the war started. Captain Kinross drinks tea and smokes what they call ‘cigarettes’ while overlooking the sea. His wife drinks tea, and so do all the other wives and families of the other sailors who think back on their earlier days as they cling to the float. I see many images of trains arriving at ‘stations’, as Father Harington called them, and people chatting as they travel very fast on them through the countryside, even at night.

  Gradually, I am brought closer to the reality of this war. Aeroplanes drop explosives on ordinary houses, not knowing if there are women and children below. Ships like the Torrin carry great long exploding pipes, called ‘torpedoes’, which can blow up another ship and leave all its men diving into the sea, whereupon the Torrin’s men shoot them with their muskets. I watch many men listening intently as a disembodied voice says, ‘At eleven fifteen the prime minister will broadcast to the nation. Please stand by.’ Shortly after that we all hear a sombre voice say, ‘I am speaking to you from the cabinet room in Ten Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.’

  This is when I notice that Celia is crying.

  The people of today might not live in the luxury of the people of ninety-nine years ago. They might be squeezed together in portions of houses and have the tiniest amounts of land allocated to them by their manorial lords for gardens. They might be incapable of sculpting figures as well as me. But they can create a picture that surpasses any experience from any other time. She is moved by this film. I too am moved. If the cathedral speaks for the achievements of my age, and the hammers of the tin workings speak for Master Periam’s time, and the hundred-cannon ships of seventeen forty-four prove that greatness was possible in that century too, and the railways stand for the ingenuity of Father Harington’s contemporaries, then surely these moving pictures are the proof of the genius of nineteen forty-two. For in this film the feelings of people and their grief are shown as powerfully as in any sculpture – even more so. What does this war mean? Not that some men in flying crosses can destroy something but that some people can create something – an uplifting story, full of ideals and sympathy – even though they live constantly in fear.

  At the end of the day, all art is a matter of stirring the emotions, in the hope of touching the soul of mankind. I am struck by these people’s feelings on hearing that a loved one is well, or that a husband or wife is not coming home. I am with them when a heartfelt departure is made. I am impressed by their fortitude and honesty. I realise that so many of the things that have impressed me down the years are unimportant. It is not that women can now read the Bible and tell their husbands to be more merciful or kind; it is not that they can read the telegram that says ‘your husband is safe and well’ or ‘your husband is dead’. What is important is what does not change – that mothers and wives are so happy when they hear that their sons and husbands are alive that they run around the house yelling for joy; that men do their duty in the face of great danger not purely for themselves but for all their community. I am touched by these people’s strength of spirit, which is as great as ever it was in my day.

  Finally, Captain Kinross and a few of his shipmates are rescued. He gives a short speech to say farewell to those who have survived. He pays tribute to his ship, and to its crew, over half of whom have been killed. He says, ‘If they had to die, what a grand way to go.’ Those words ring in my ears and resound in my body, in my mind and in my soul. It is as if I have been waiting five hundred and ninety-four years to hear them.

  The lights come up in Screen One, and I see that many other people have also been moved by this picture. Some are holding pieces of white cloth to their faces, some are just staring at the screen, and some are looking down as they wait in the queue to leave.

  Ron is the first of us to speak, when we are outside. ‘When I saw the poster, proclaiming that this was the greatest film of our time, I was sceptical. I mean, come on. Noel Coward only did it to keep the British chin up. I’m sure he’d rather have spent the war in a bar in the Caribbean. But I have to say, that was the best movie I’ve seen for years – and the best one about the war, full stop.’

  Celia clears her nose on a white cloth and pushes it up her sleeve. ‘Well, now that we’ve watched so many people drinking cups of tea, shall we go and have one ourselves?’

  ‘Capital idea, as you Brits say,’ says Ron. ‘But as Deller’s is out of action – albeit only temporarily, we hope – let’s go to that little place in North Street. John, are you coming with us?’

  I stop. ‘No,’ I say, and my voice is barely a whisper. I clear my throat. ‘No, I’ll be leaving you now.’

  ‘John, are you feeling unwell?’ asks Celia.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it your head?’ asks Ron.

  ‘No.’

  I look up into the sky. I cannot see or hear any aeroplanes.

  ‘Come and have some tea, you’ll feel better,’ says Celia.

  ‘Mistress Celia,’ I say, taking her hand, ‘you know that all is not normal with me. You know that I’ve skipped across time like a stone skips on water. Six times, to be truthful.’

  ‘And I want to quiz you all about my great-grand . . .’

  At that moment, the siren starts to sound, with its wailing crescendo of foreboding.

  I keep looking at Celia.

  ‘That’s a cheek,’ she says, looking up briefly. ‘They’re not meant to drop bombs by daylight.’

  ‘This is not planned,’ says Ron gravely. ‘It’s a tip-and-run raid. They’ll be aiming for the centre of
the city. We must go to the nearest shelter, now.’

  ‘Look after her, Mister Ron.’

  ‘John, don’t be daft,’ says Celia, reaching for my hand. ‘You have to come too.’

  I pull away from her. ‘Lovely, kind Celia, I need to be as far away from you as possible. Look after one another, both of you, not just now but always.’

  ‘Well, if that’s the way you want to play it,’ Ron replies. ‘But we must be off.’

  I hold out my left hand to him. He shakes it.

  ‘Thank you for taking me to the picture, Ron.’ Then I turn to Celia. ‘Go with God. Praise and please your husband, and be as good a friend to him as my wife Catherine was to me. And he’ll praise and please you in return. And when you look on your picture of Father Harington, remember he was a good man, and his goodness runs in you.’ And with that I bow to her, and walk quickly away.

  I hear the approaching sounds of the first aeroplane. The walls around me here are all echoing with the steady grinding note. I pause on a corner, wondering where I should go, and am standing in the street when the sound becomes deafening. There is a huge flash of light and I hear the most almighty boom of an explosion and the immense shock in the air as the whole city quakes. A huge aeroplane appears above a building and goes over the street. There are shouts of defiance from some pedestrians but the noise of a collapsing building and the screams of people drowns them out.

  That one will be just the first of many, I know. Within seconds I hear the next. It is flying up the estuary towards the city. It is followed by the noise of Hell.

  There is only one thing for me to do now. I go to the rubble-strewn space near what used to be Market Street, and here I kneel down. When the bomb falls on me, it will hurt no one else. It will be nowhere near the cathedral. My hopes of performing a good act have gone. All I can hope for is a quick death, and for no one else to suffer, nothing else precious to be destroyed.

  I cross myself and start to pray for the souls of the departed – Catherine, my sons, my brothers and my parents. I pray too for the souls of Master Ley, Rose in the workhouse, and Father Harington and his sister. And I pray for Celia and Ron. I yearn for them to be safe and happy.

  Aeroplane after aeroplane mangles the air above my head, some dropping their deadly cargo in the southwest corner of the city, some in the east. The ground reverberates with every blast and the sounds of crashing masonry resonate around me as I kneel. The wailing siren continues. But although I know that the time has come for my soul to depart from this world, to be reunited with that of my wife, the bomb destined to kill me does not come.

  I look up at the dark clouds. ‘Have you forgotten me? You said you would come for me on the sixth day. Leave me not to endure a seventh.’

  The only answer is another explosion and the sounds of more sirens as self-moving carriages race through the streets. I can hear shouting, growing more and more urgent, and screams as another house collapses.

  ‘I am ready!’ I shout, with my arms outstretched. ‘Receive me now.’

  ‘Oi, you, what the blazes do you think you’re doing?’

  I look up. A man in a dark tunic is standing over me. He has a round metal hat on his head and a short hand-held musket in his belt. ‘Get yourself to a bloody shelter, now.’

  I can barely speak. ‘I am destined to die tonight,’ I say, ‘and I will not attract the falling bombs to the shelter. It is all the goodness I can do.’

  ‘Well, mate, get up off your arse and go and help out with the blaze at Holloway Street. There’s a dozen people unaccounted for down there.’

  The old hollow way was just outside the South Gate. In that direction, a huge column of black smoke is rising against the grey clouds. I thank the man, get to my feet and hurry down to where the gate once stood, hearing people crying and yelling, and the shouting of orders. I make my way past one burning building, where there is a corpse on the steps. Further on, there is another body lying in a pool of blood by the side of the road. Men in uniforms with helmets and a long hose from a large wagon are running as they fight the deafening blaze inside a nearby house. I hear more sirens ringing out and run on, past rubble in the street where a building has collapsed. Two more self-moved carriages come past me but they have to turn off down a side road, unable to proceed past the collapsed building.

  When I reach Holloway Street there is so much thick smoke billowing from the burning line of houses that the flames themselves are hardly noticeable amid the blackness, mere tongues of orange here and there. Men in uniform with hoses are forcing a stream of water up on to the roof, which is ablaze. Many people are standing around watching, and I see too there are men on the roof of an adjacent building, beating at the flames. Those on the ground are shouting at them to come down; others are just looking on in horror.

  I continue walking towards the houses, seeing one doorway in particular with smoke billowing out of it. A man emerges from it with a tunic wrapped around his head.

  ‘Has anyone seen Missus Brown?’ I overhear someone say. ‘I think she is still in there.’

  ‘Oh Lord, I pray not. She is looking after two of her grandchildren this week, Christopher and Frederick.’

  An upstairs window explodes with the heat inside. Then another. There is a huge noise from the burning – of roaring flames and crashing glass.

  I hear my brother’s voice: ‘I knew that I was going to die today. It was a good thing to know. For this way I knew I could make something of my death.’ And I hear too Captain Kinross: ‘If they had to die, what a grand way to go.’ I answer them both in speaking to God. ‘Lord, I am ready. Just let me do this one good deed to help the folk of this city.’

  I take off Father Harington’s old upper tunic and hold it in my right hand, ready to put it over my mouth. People are shouting around me. I feel a hand on my shoulder and I just shrug it off, I do not even turn. A moment later, I run forward and enter the smoke-filled building, crouched low.

  The heat is intense. My eyes sting; I can see next to nothing. There is a terrible noise of wind rushing through the structure and the crackle of flames burning furiously, and the heat of the fires below and above. In several places in the darkness are roaring pockets of flame that, as the billowing smoke swirls, suddenly burn brightly. I look into rooms and see them in just white, yellow, red and orange, coughing and choking on the eye-cutting smoke. Upstairs, balls of fire emerge suddenly out of the darkness and lick across the ceiling. I recall the houses we set alight in France, and how they roared into infernos as we watched them.

  On the first floor I can find no one, and so proceed up to the second floor. I inch my way forward on my knees in the scorching darkness. The smoke here is angry and the flames, when they appear, move so fast. On the second landing I come to a door, which is shut: I reach up and feel for the handle. The heat of it immediately burns my hand. With my eyes shut, I try to open it using my tunic. But still it does not open: it is locked. I get to my feet and use my shoulder. Still it does not open. Choking and spluttering, I draw back and kick it hard, repeatedly, until it gives way.

  Inside the room is aglow. Part of the roof has collapsed, and the brightness of the flames shows me that this is where the old woman and her grandchildren were. She is dead, flames swarming all across on her clothes and hair. One of the children, an infant, is also dead, lying alongside her. The other child, who is about nine years of age, is on the far side of the room. He is alive, crying, trapped beneath a fallen beam, which is itself burning. He holds his arms out to me as if I can pull him out from the disaster. I go to him and hold his blood-covered hands, and look into his eyes. I have seen that expression of pleading terror before, in Lazarus.

  ‘I am here to help you. What is your name?’

  He cannot hear me. His crying turns to screaming. Still he holds his hands out to me.

  I try to lift the beam off him but it is far too heavy. I shout to him to stay still, and that I will have him out of here soon, but the smoke gets to me and my coughing
and blindness make me flounder as I search frantically. I see a chair in the smoke and, smashing it against the floor, I draw from it a length of wood about three feet long; I jam this under the heavy timber in the hope of lifting it off him but it barely moves more than an inch or two. Then the lever snaps, leaving the timber to fall back on him, forcing a cry of agony from him.

  And his eyes close.

  This is what it means to sell your soul. You want to empty your bones of time. What does that mean? It’s not that you want to die. You want never to have lived.

  ‘Why could you not let me save this one poor boy?’ I look up at the rolling flames. ‘Why, in all these centuries of struggling and suffering – why have you not let me do one good act? Why have you denied me?’

  The heat now is unbearable. I scream with the pain of it scorching my skin. I remember the story of the Protestant martyr, Anne Askew, burning for her faith. Endurance, everything in life is about endurance. Through the door I can see the whole stairwell alight, and high flames rushing through, striving to reach Heaven faster than me.

  I fall to my knees, and cough again as the smoke and flames rise in a furious black and orange rage all around me. I lie on the floorboards beside the dead boy. I take his hand in mine, hoping he will lead me safely into whatever death holds for us.

  My sleeves are on fire.

  And now I hear the voice. The voice of Faustus. The voice of my conscience.

  ‘Do you still believe the will of man is the will of God?’

  It is steady amid the heat and fear. I try to reply with an equal calm. ‘This cannot be the will of God. This is the will of man – they are not the same.’ But my hair is burning, my skin weeping with my own fat. ‘What more do you want from me?’

  ‘If this be the will of man,’ says the voice, ‘and you are a man, is this not your will?’