Out of Time

by Deborah Truscott

  Silence.

  “Blythe,” I said sharply, “give the phone to Lila.”

  “Sprite,” she announced quickly. “And an olive with a, um—”

  “Toothpick?”

  “And it was in a glass like Lalla’s. On a stick.”

  “Stem.” I paused. “And the cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke,” she informed me sternly.

  By this time Sammy had gotten on the extension and the children sang Happy Birthday to me. It wasn’t my birthday, of course, but in a way it was appropriate. I sang the song back to them, listened to a chaotic account of the day’s activities, and blew them kisses over the phone until Lila bore them off to bath and bed.

  At 8:30 the following morning, after twenty minutes of waffling, I called Holt and Associates, not in the least surprised to find an agent already at work, waiting, it seemed, for my call. By noon a woman named Mary Stein rang the bell at my front door. I answered the door wearing a blue Laura Ashley dress with a calf length skirt which, somehow, had arrived in Pennsylvania during one of my earlier visits from Virginia, and was one of the few dresses I owned in either state. Mary Stein, on the other hand, stood on my threshold in a silk blouse, blue jeans and navy flats.

  Mary was blond, efficient and forty, coolly friendly in a professional, intimidating sort of way. She swept through rooms asking me questions I couldn’t answer about plumbing, heating and wiring, checking things like the number of closets and electrical outlets, making lots of notations on a clipboard. Finally she turned to me and smiled.

  “Well,” she said briskly. “Shall we tour the grounds?”

  And so we did, Mary inspecting the garage and glancing briefly at the garden shed, pacing off the setback of the house from the road, sweeping a practiced eye over the property.

  “Wonderful landscaping,” she said finally, before adding: “Too bad no one’s had time for the garden this spring.”

  I followed her gaze and nodded agreeably.

  By this time she had finished her tour and slipped her clipboard into a large, leather shoulder bag. There would be papers to sign, she said, allowing her to represent the house, but first she needed an appraisal and some other things I wasn’t sure I understood.

  “Would Monday morning around ten be convenient to meet again to review the paperwork?” she asked. “After that, I can begin to show the house.”

  I tried not to sigh. The truth was I had planned to be home with the children by Sunday afternoon, but I told her Monday would be fine and walked her to her car — a Mercedes E350, which gave me a clue to her marketing skills. I watched her glide out the drive, then walked around the house to Uncle Bennett’s garden. I frowned, gazing at the untended beds.

  Now that the impeccable Ms. Stein had mentioned it, the neglected garden nagged at me. The lawn service had done a good job clipping the low boxwood border and raking the gravel walks, but bedding plants had not been part of the contract. On the other hand, the perennials looked healthy. Lilies and foxglove, mingling happily with weeds, were leaping into color. Perhaps, if I raked the mulch a bit, the beds would look a little better groomed. Without bothering to change my clothes I marched across the lawn to the garden shed, looking for a rake.

  The shed was large, about nine or ten feet deep and perhaps eighteen feet wide, solidly built of wood siding with a stone foundation. It stood at the far end of the wide side lawn facing the house and garden, and at right angles to the road. In fact, the left end (as you faced the building) was perched along the embankment just above Skippack Pike. A dense hedge of privet obscured it from the road, muffling the sound of passing cars that would otherwise vibrate through its walls. As long as I could remember, the shed had always been painted white with neat, black trim. Its door, with old-fashioned iron hinges and latch, was located near the right edge of its eighteen-foot face.

  The latch was rusty. I fiddled around until it gave in groaning protest, and the door swung open on squealing hinges. I stepped inside and inhaled the scent of heat and dust. Light entered through the grimy panes of a window near the door. There was a second window further down, but it was tightly shuttered, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Just inside the door, not far from my feet, were stacked several bags of mulch. Beyond them, leaning untidily against a wall, were bags of cow manure, peat and lime. Rickety shelving at right angles to the long rear wall divided the shed nearly in half, leaving a narrow passage past the first window to the far end of the little building. As far as I knew, that side of the shed contained mostly old boxes. I had not really poked around much back there, and I had no idea what the boxes held or what else was stored on that side of the shelves. One day I’d explore with a flashlight.

  A collection of garden tools hung from the front wall just beyond the first window. I moved toward them and found my way impeded by more bags of mulch, which I moved aside, swearing silently at the lawn service and wishing I had changed my clothes. It was when I was wrestling the last of the mulch out of the way that I heard a noise which seemed unconnected to my own hefting and lifting coming from the far end of the shed. It sounded like the creak of a floorboard, and it was followed by a long second of suspended silence. I froze, bent low over the mulch bag, and reluctantly discounted the idea of heavy-footed mice. Mice squeaked and ran away. This mouse, I sensed, was as frozen to the spot as I was.

  I raised my eyes and blinked into the gloom. A few feet in front of me I saw a pair of knee boots, the right one raised slightly as if in the process of stepping backwards. I straightened a bit and my gaze moved up, taking in white breeches and a loose, rather disheveled shirt. I have ridden horses all my life and I knew these weren’t the sort of riding clothes I was apt to buy at Hamilton’s Boot and Tack. For one thing, the boots were cut too high at the front of the knee and the breeches were the wrong style and material. It’s odd, what the mind seizes on in certain circumstances. Very likely these clothes were somehow attached to a human being who had no business in my garden shed, and all I could do was to make mental notes on equestrian fashion.

  And then the left knee of the breeches trembled almost imperceptibly, as if stressed by the task of balancing on one foot. I retreated a step, allowing light from the dismal little window to penetrate the gloom. For an instant I stood face to face with my visitor. And then I bolted.

  I should have been alarmed for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that a strange man wearing bizarre clothes (and quite possibly armed and murderous) was lurking in my shed without permission. But that wasn’t why I fled. What really unnerved me was a brief sense of familiarity I experienced standing face to face with my visitor in the gloom, a sort of fleeting déjà vu. Even now I cannot quite explain it. And that was the real reason I ran.

  I got exactly 10 feet before I stumbled on a paving stone outside the door and caught the heel of my pump first in the soft, yielding sod of the lawn and then in the hem of my dress. I fell (just like they do in the movies), sprawling to my hands and knees, my heel anchored securely in my hem. Somewhere behind me I heard footfalls, which seemed at first to hesitate, and then approach me. I swore and scrambled crab-like across the lawn until the toe of a boot broke into my line of vision and a shadow fell across the grass. Then a man’s voice, unmistakably British and laced with suppressed amusement, said:

  “Pray, madam. Allow me to help you.”

  Chapter 5

  He stood there with his hand extended, while I floundered around on the grass. Then, as if remembering his manners, he stepped back and actually bowed.

  “Robert Christian Upton,” he said. “At your service, ma’am.”

  As if that cleared everything up.

  I paused in my scrambling, still on my hands and knees, and looked up at him. It was then that I noticed the sword hanging by his left thigh. “This is absurd,” I muttered, not meaning to speak aloud.

  “Of course it is,” he agreed. “But it will seem less so if you allow me to help you to your feet.”r />
  He had a point. I shifted on the grass, unhooked my heel from my hem and allowed him to pull me up. For a moment I busied myself brushing grass from my dress and my hands. When I raised my face, Robert Christian Upton was eyeing me speculatively. But not as speculatively as I was eyeing him.

  “I seem to have misplaced my belongings,” he said abruptly.

  “Right. Where, um, do you suppose you left them?”

  “By that wall,” he said, turning toward the shed. “Over there.”

  Wall? I thought, and smiled a little blandly.

  Robert Upton (or whoever he was) stared for a long moment at the shed. Light was dawning. There wasn’t any wall, only a dense privet hedge. He turned back to me, looking dazed.

  “Where’s the wall?”

  I shook my head and watched as he strode toward the shed. When I caught up with him he was pacing the length of the hedge.

  “There was a wall here,” he told me, his voice rising. “A bloody wall. I’m sure of it.”

  Could there be a wall along the neighboring piece of property? Puzzled, I followed the hedge along the embankment for about fifty feet, past the edge of the lawn and into a field where the privet gave way to a thick tangle of forsythia and abelia. Then I stopped. A low, sporadic outcropping of fitted stones broke through the earth near the foot of the brushy growth, paralleling the embankment and bordering the field.

  Robert Upton came up beside me. “Where’s the rest of it?” he asked.

  I turned, and followed the hedge back toward the house. At the garden shed I stopped and contemplated the stone foundation. The foundation that supported the side of the building closest to the road was on a line with the remnants of the wall along the field. It was composed of the same sort of stone fitted in the same sort of way. I had never noticed any of this before. In fact, I had never been in the neighboring field, and I had certainly never paid attention to the foundation of the shed.

  I looked at Mr. Upton curiously. “There hasn’t been a wall here for years,” I said slowly. “I mean, there probably was, once, long ago. But I think the stones were used to build this.” I pointed to the shed’s foundation, my eyes on my visitor, and watched his face turn grey.

  “But I was just sitting on it,” he said unsteadily. “There was no hedge. I know there wasn’t. Just an embankment and a low stone wall above the road. I had just dismounted—”

  Dismounted?

  “—and I was…” His voice trailed off and he spun around frantically. “This shed wasn’t here, either. And there was a tree nearby, and some shrubbery. A thicket.” He looked at me. “It’s so beastly warm for October.”

  October? I stared at him, bemused.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked.

  “I rode out from Philadelphia,” he said distractedly, then added, “along the Germantown Road…”

  At the word Germantown, something in my mind clicked heavily into place.

  “Oh,” I said faintly, and took a step away from him.

  My guest seemed to notice this. “You are not discommoded by the battle, I hope. Truly, ma’am, I mean you no harm … ”

  Somewhere deep inside my brain, one synapse made contact with another. I looked at the man in front of me, registered his dress, his demeanor, the way he spoke, and deep inside I felt a flutter of unease.

  “Are you quite well, ma’am?” he asked.

  I cleared my throat. Meanwhile, synapse connected to synapse. “The Battle of Germantown.” I whispered, “was fought in October of 1777.”

  Robert Upton stared at me as if I was from Mars. “Well, obviously,” he said. “Tis scarcely three weeks past!”

  I sucked in my breath.

  The thing is, I knew about Battle of Germantown for three reasons. First, I have a degree in history and until I had Sammy I taught American history at James Monroe High School. Second, Lila’s knowledge of arcane historical tidbits essential to a romance writer (like the Reforms of 1832 or the name of George the Second’s wife) has rubbed off on me. And third, years ago Uncle Bennett told me in wonderful and probably highly imaginative detail about George Washington’s retreat to Valley Forge along this very road. A retreat that came perhaps two months following his loss at Germantown.

  And my guest believed the Battle of Germantown was a topic of current events.

  I swallowed, and tried to smile. “Mr. Upton—”

  “Lieutenant-colonel,” he corrected me.

  “Yes, well,” I began again, eyeing him. “Perhaps you should come into the house with me.” I paused. “Colonel Upton.”

  “No,” he said, and I heard an edge of panic in his voice. “I have to find my mount. And my coat. I took off my coat and I … and I…”

  He stared at me, and I felt hugely sorry for him. Perhaps, over a cup of tea, he’d compose himself enough to tell me something useful.

  Like who to call to come get him.

  *****

  From the moment I encountered the Colonel in my garden shed I began the gradual process of taking things at face value, which I suppose is understandable, given the general parameters of my life. After all, I’m Lila’s daughter and Cameron’s wife, so if a Martian walked in the front door with insect eyes and reptilian skin, I’d probably offer to take his ray gun and pour him tea. My point is that the people in my life, flesh and blood and earthly, are often as strange as anything anyone could make up, so what happened in the garden shed wasn’t much weirder than anything else I’ve experienced. Different, maybe, but no less believable.

  So inviting the Colonel inside for tea seemed entirely logical, and after some cajoling on my part I got him to agree. He sat at the table (which had belonged to my Tipton grandmother) and tried not to stare at the kitchen, which, though antiquated by my standards with its ancient and comfortable appliances, undoubtedly seemed (from his obviously delusional point of view) like something out of Buck Rogers. There were two features, however, that given his state of mind might have been familiar to him: plank floors (instead of tile) and a large, old fireplace with small baking ovens built into the chimney face and an ancient iron pot hook hanging over the hearth.

  We didn’t say a word. I stood at the stove — vintage mid-twentieth century electric — and waited for the water to boil, uncomfortably aware of the Colonel’s gaze. What he saw was a thirty-two year old woman with brown hair and green eyes wearing a blue grass-stained dress, its torn hem hanging almost to her ankles. It could have been a lot worse. I could have been wearing jeans or shorts, which, in his current state, might have agitated him even more. Thank God for small favors.

  The water finally boiled. I poured it into a pewter teapot, added tea bags (their tags hanging unattractively from the lid), and carried the pot to the table where it joined a matching sugar bowl and creamer. I would have made coffee if the house possessed a coffeemaker, which it didn’t. Uncle Bennett always boiled his coffee in an old-fashioned coffeepot on the back burner of the stove, a talent I never mastered. So I sat across from the Colonel and poured tea into our cups.

  The Colonel stared as if he had never seen tea bags before.

  “Sugar?” I asked serenely.

  He shook his head, a single, brief jerk, and watched carefully while I added sugar and milk to my own tea. He waited until I raised my cup before he gingerly lifted his.

  “It’s not poison,” I told him.

  “No, I suppose not,” he said. And then he smiled.

  He was dusty, a trifle disheveled and he needed a shave, but he was attractive, with dark hair, a straight nose and square jaw. He was also slim and broad-shouldered, and even through his shirt and breeches (or maybe because of them) I could tell he was hard-muscled. He didn’t have the magazine cover looks that Cameron did, but when he smiled his eyes crinkled pleasantly and there was an engaging crease from his cheekbone to his jaw. I judged he was around Cameron’s height (six feet) and age (thirty-eight). And I noticed he looked tired.

  I smiled back, wondering what hospital he might have
escaped from. “I think there’s some pound cake somewhere,” I said, rising from the table. I could feel his eyes boring holes into my back all the way to the pantry. I found the cake (only two days past its expiration date) and carried it to the counter where I removed it from its wrappings, placed it on a serving plate and sliced several thin pieces. Then I brought it to the table, fetched two dessert places, forks and napkins, playing the perfect hostess.

  “What was that?” the Colonel asked.

  “What was what?”

  “That transparent … paper … the cake was wrapped in.”

  “Cellophane,” I told him, trying not to sound surprised. Someone, somewhere, was probably looking for him.

  The Colonel’s eyes never left me. “Have you no servants?” he asked abruptly.

  I lifted a piece of pound cake with a flat cake knife and placed it on a plate. “No,” I told him. “I don’t.”

  “Rather unusual, isn’t it? A lady serving herself in her own kitchen? For lady you are, despite your, ah, unusual gown and manner of speaking.”

  I set a plate in front of him. “Do you think so?” I asked mildly.

  But he didn’t answer, his gaze fixed instead on the china. “Such odd tea things,” he mused, more to himself than to me. “The saucers are impossibly shallow.”

  So what? I stared at my cup and saucer until a light suddenly went on in my head. Once upon a time, tea was poured from pot to cup (often a handleless cup), and from there (if the tea was especially hot) into a deep saucer one could actually drink from. The logic here, if I recalled correctly, was that the saucer exposed a larger surface of tea to air, thus cooling and dissipating heat more efficiently. Hence, one often had a dish (not a cup) of tea.

  I was amazed he knew this. In fact, I was amazed I knew this, but then I have Lila-the-romance-novelist in my corner, supplying me with all sorts of obscure factoids. But what resources did my visitor have? Was he an historian, museum curator, antiques appraiser? How many people on this planet know about 18th century tea service? I paused for a moment, considering. If not delusional, he was, at the very least, a fine actor. Either way, he had an impressive command of detail.