by Mark Morris
But how? How would I do it? After the increasingly devastating physical effects that the heart had been having on me whenever I’d used it, how could I risk using it even once more? Was it simply a case of getting used to it? Did it make you sick for a while until you’d acclimatised? Maybe the answer was to take a full medical team with me next time, who could pull me back from the brink if I went into meltdown? Was that even remotely feasible? I thought again about the older me, and it suddenly struck me that if he was me, he’d know I was having these thoughts right now; he’d remember. So maybe…
I looked eagerly towards the door, half expecting it to open and the older me to appear on the threshold. But nothing happened; the door remained closed. I stared at it until the song on the radio changed to ‘Virginia Plain’ by Roxy Music. Then I sighed and looked back out of the window again.
There was a ghost on the beach.
That was my first impression. There was something out there on the grey sand in almost exactly the same place as the older me had appeared, something white and billowing. I blinked, my eyes readjusting. The patch on the glass that I’d wiped free of condensation was greying up again. I wiped it with the cuff of my sweater.
The ghost was looking up at me. Only it wasn’t a ghost.
It was Lyn.
As far away as she was, her features nothing but a dark blur, I knew I was right. Lyn looked just as she had on the other occasions I’d seen her – bare feet, white nightshirt, heavily pregnant. Her blonde hair flapped like a flag in the wind. I imagined her flimsy nightshirt snapping around her tiny body.
I stared at her and she stared back at me, and then she gave a single, decisive nod.
It was all the answer I needed.
TWENTY-EIGHT
WAR
Clover and I sat on the settee in the room where, over a hundred years earlier, Hawkins had bled to death, and FaceTimed Hope.
Using a small fraction of my new-found wealth, Clover had been out to buy the iPad while I’d headed to the coast to meet Jensen, and had set everything up while I’d been away. Hope was using one of the computers at Oak Hill to contact us. She really had taken to twenty-first century technology like a duck to water.
When her face appeared on screen, grinning and happy and even healthier than the last time I’d seen it, I felt so moved that my throat closed up and I couldn’t speak. For a moment, ridiculously, I thought I was going to start weeping.
‘Wow!’ Clover said. ‘You’ve had your hair cut. You look amazing!’
Hope’s grin became a little shy, self-conscious. She patted her new, stylish bob uncertainly.
‘Is it okay?’ she asked. ‘It isn’t too short, is it? It doesn’t make me look like a boy?’
I was wondering whether this was the first time I’d heard Hope use the word ‘okay’ when Clover laughed.
‘Of course not! It’s fantastic! It really suits you. Doesn’t it, Alex?’
I knew she was prompting me because up to now I’d said nothing. I swallowed to clear the lump in my throat, and nodded, overcompensating for my silence with a grin.
‘Totally. You look beautiful.’
Hope’s grin widened to match my own. ‘Jackie’s hairdresser came to see me. She’s called Cheryl, she’s really nice.’ She leaned forward conspiratorially, eyes sparkling. ‘She’s got a tattoo on her hand. It’s a flower. And she’s got three earrings in each ear!’
Clover smiled. ‘Ladies in this time are a bit different to how they were in your day. How do you feel about that?’
‘It’s cool. That means good.’
‘Are you okay over there on your own?’ I asked.
Hope’s expression suggested it hadn’t even occurred to her to wonder why she shouldn’t be.
‘I’m not on my own. I’ve got lots of friends here. Ed comes to see me nearly every day. We play SIMS. But guess what?’
‘What?’ I said, her exuberance starting to turn my forced grin into a genuine one.
‘Look!’ She leaned back so we could see more of her upper body and lifted her right arm into view. It no longer ended in a stump just below the shoulder. Sticking out of the cuff of her now-full pyjama sleeve was a pale pink hand. It was only when she held it up to the screen that it became obvious it was prosthetic. She flexed the fingers, making the hand open and close.
‘That’s terrific,’ Clover said. ‘How does it feel?’
Hope lowered her arm, her face filling the screen again.
‘It feels like a real arm, except lighter. I’ve been practising with it. Do you want to see what I can do?’
‘Yes!’ Clover and I said in unison, as if competing to see who could be the most enthusiastic.
Hope looked down at something beneath the lower edge of the screen. Her arm reached out and she appeared to be fumbling with something. Unconsciously she bit her bottom lip, face pensive as she concentrated.
We waited patiently. A moment later the tension left Hope’s face and she beamed; it was like watching the sun come out from behind clouds.
‘Ta da!’ she said, and this time when she raised her prosthetic hand it was clutching an apple.
Clover whooped and clapped.
‘That’s fantastic,’ I said.
‘Hold on,’ Hope said. A little jerkily she raised the apple to her mouth, tilting her head down to take a bite. She managed to sink her teeth in, but the contact dislodged the apple, which tumbled from her grasp.
‘Whoops!’ she said, but she wasn’t upset. ‘I think I need a bit more practise.’
‘You’re doing brilliantly,’ Clover said.
‘This time next week you’ll be able to pick your nose with that new hand of yours,’ I told her.
Hope giggled. ‘Jackie says I might be able to come home next week. Ed asked if he could come and visit me when I was home. Can he? Please?’
From her beseeching expression and tone of voice you might have thought I’d already said no – though if truth be known, I was wary. This was what my encounters with the Wolves of London had done – made me suspicious of everyone, including Hope’s new friend, Ed, and his mother, Jackie. But we couldn’t wrap Hope up in cotton wool forever. Besides which, Clover was already saying, ‘Of course he can! Tell him he’s welcome any time.’
‘Yay!’ Hope said, waving her arms – her real one and her prosthetic one.
When the time came to say goodbye I suddenly found my throat tightening up again, my emotions threatening to spill over. Hope might be coming home next week, but if what I was planning to do later today worked out it might be months before I saw her again – and if things didn’t work out there was the possibility I might never see her again.
But I couldn’t give an inkling, either to Hope or Clover, of what was going through my mind. I had to hold it together, stay casual.
‘You keep practising with that hand,’ Clover said.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘And by this time next week I want to see you…’ I thought for a moment ‘…catch a ball with it.’
‘If I do, can I have my ears pierced?’ Hope asked quickly.
Clover laughed. ‘We’ll see. Though not till you’re at least twelve.’
Hope wrinkled her nose. ‘When’s that?’
‘In about five years.’
‘Five years? That’s forever!’
Still laughing, Clover said, ‘Tell you what, I’ll take you shopping for some new clothes. How’s that?’
Hope’s dismay quickly evaporated. ‘Can I choose them?’
‘You can. But I have to like them too. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
I wanted to add that I’d take us all out for the best meal we’d ever had when she was home, but I couldn’t bring myself to promise something I might not be around to deliver – besides which, the thought of a celebration, though God knows Hope deserved one after all she’d been through, seemed like a betrayal of Kate somehow. Daft as it was, it suggested to me it would be a sign I was forgetting my youngest daughter, abandoning her
.
Instead, therefore, I said, ‘We can’t wait for you to come home.’ I hesitated, then added, ‘We love you and miss you.’
Clover gave me a curious look, though whether that was because my words made it sound as if we were a couple, or because I’d never actually told Hope I loved her before, I had no idea.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked me after we’d said our goodbyes and Hope had gone.
I nodded. ‘Fine. It just… it gets to me now and again, you know?’
I felt sure she’d guess my intentions from my tone of voice or the expression on my face, but she simply nodded, then leaned across and kissed me quickly on the cheek.
‘Don’t beat yourself up about it. All you can do is your best. Do you fancy ordering out for pizza?’
I shrugged. ‘Yeah, whatever.’ But I felt guilty, knowing that if things worked out the way I wanted them to, I wouldn’t be here to eat it. ‘Do you mind ordering it? I’m going to lie down for a bit.’
I expected her eyes to narrow, expected her to ask: What are you up to? But she just nodded, smiled.
‘Sure. What do you fancy?’
‘Anything. Hawaiian?’
‘Hawaiian it is. Coleslaw?’
‘Sounds good.’
It was a relief to trudge upstairs, to be on my own. I thought if I’d stayed with Clover any longer she’d have heard how hard and fast my heart was thudding and would have asked me what was wrong. As it was, I was panting raspingly by the time I got to my room. Mostly stress, I supposed; despite my aching knee I felt more exhausted now than I’d done after plodding back up the cliff path to the café that morning. I tried not to think about what might happen when I used the heart, based on what had happened so far. I tried instead to focus on the positive – on how fit and healthy the older version of me who had appeared on the beach had looked; on the encouraging nod that Lyn (who up to now had been nothing but a help and a guide) had given me.
It had been that nod that had finally decided me; that nod that, both at the time and now, seemed like the best vindication I could hope for.
I had to use the heart. Had to. There were no two ways about it. I couldn’t sit back and wait for fate to intervene, if it ever would. I had to see the visions I’d had as a warning, however inaccurate, of what would happen if I did nothing. What was that saying? Faint heart never won fair maiden? I felt strongly that if I was ever going to see Kate again, I had to gamble with the most precious thing I had: my life.
I felt bad about keeping Clover in the dark, but I couldn’t risk her muddying the waters with her protestations, not now my mind was made up. I closed the door of my room and crossed to the bed. Lifting the edge of the mattress, I pulled out the sheaf of papers I’d secreted there, glancing guiltily at the door as I did so. I felt as if I was thirteen again and afraid my mum would discover my stash of dog-eared Fiestas and Knaves. The memory gave me a pang of nostalgia for a time when life was simple and relatively carefree.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I began to look through the loose sheets of paper. They were all copies of the front pages of British newspapers on the outbreak of World War One. I’d found them on the internet yesterday and printed them out. Here was the stark declaration on the August 5th 1914 edition of The Times: BRITAIN AT WAR; here was the Daily Herald: WAR DECLARED BY BRITAIN AND FRANCE; and here the Birmingham Gazette: ENGLAND AND GERMANY AT WAR.
There were more – all conveying, in slightly different terminology, the same grim news. I stared at them, tried to absorb them, in the hope they would get me into the right mind set, help make my journey easier.
Knowing I didn’t have much time, that all too soon Clover would be shouting up the stairs to say that the pizzas had arrived, I spent no more than five minutes looking at the papers. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do – though perhaps I wouldn’t need even this amount of preparation; perhaps, if all this was truly meant to be, simply picturing the date in my head would be enough to allow me to arrive at my chosen destination.
Standing up, I crossed to the desk against the wall on which my computer stood, and grabbed a pen from the plastic desk tidy just beyond the mouse mat. At some point in the future I’d have to travel back to buy all this stuff for the house – a house which, simultaneously, I had yet to purchase but which I’d owned for at least the past one and a quarter centuries.
Such thoughts, mind-boggling though they were, were a comfort. Surely my mere presence in this house, combined with the fact that I owned all this stuff I was yet to buy, was proof that I would survive the coming journey; otherwise, how could it exist?
Trying not to think beyond the logic of that, I scribbled Clover a note on the back of the sheet of A4 printed with the front page of The Times from almost a century before:
Dear Clover
I’m really sorry, but I’ve had to go. I know you’ll think I’m stupid and reckless, but I don’t think I’ve got a choice. And I’ve seen enough evidence to make me confident I’ll survive using the heart again – how I don’t know, but I’m sure that somehow I will. And if I don’t, then it’s possible that this reality will dissolve, and you’ll be a completely different person, and you may never even read this note in the first place.
But if you do read this note, I hope you won’t be too angry with me (though I suspect you will). Look after Hope, and hopefully I’ll see you again. Sorry about the extra pizza.
Lots of love
Alex xxx
PS If I don’t see you again, let me just say that you’ve been a brilliant friend, and that I feel privileged to have known you. I couldn’t have got this far without your amazing help and support.
Dropping the note on the bed, where Clover would see it as soon as she walked in, I took a deep breath, then put my hand into the pocket of my hoodie and wrapped my fingers around the heart. What I was wearing was entirely unsuitable for where, or rather when, I was going, but I was banking on the fact that if all went to plan I’d arrive in this house – in this exact spot, hopefully – as the owner, and so (courtesy of a future me, who would have fixed it up for his past self) would have a full set of clothes and a full identity, appropriate to the era, all ready and waiting.
Would I have servants? Would anyone else be in the house? Would a 1914 version of Clover be waiting for me, as she’d been waiting for me in 1895?
Fuck it, I thought. No more questions. Just do it.
I held the heart up in front of my face.
August 5th 1914, I thought. August 5th 1914.
Last time I’d closed my eyes and pressed the heart to my forehead. Should I do that again?
But last time I’d nearly died, so why follow the same pattern? Why—
The shift was effortless. I was aware only of the room momentarily darkening and blurring around me, as if with the onset of night. What I wasn’t aware of were things moving around, of the decor changing. And yet after I’d blinked, as if to rid my vision of a smeary clot of matter, my eyes refocused and I realised that the room had changed.
The walls were now covered with a dark green, patterned wallpaper. The furniture was darker and heavier too, though many of the pieces I recognised from the three months I’d spent here at the end of 1895. There were more pictures on the walls – mostly landscapes in oil. Again, I recognised some of them from my previous occupation, whereas others were new.
The radiators had been added since 1895, but although they resembled the heavy, cast-iron ones with the embossed Art Deco-like design, which warmed the house in the twenty-first century, they weren’t the same.
What else? The house seemed quiet, and the dimness outside the window suggested it was either dusk or a particularly murky summer’s day.
But what about me? How had I fared this time? Tentatively I flexed my muscles, took several breaths in and out. I felt fine, but then last time I’d initially felt fine too. I looked at the heart in my hand. It hadn’t changed. Moving slowly, as if what I held was unstable, I placed the heart in the pocket of m
y hoodie.
The instant my fingers broke contact with the heart my body was wracked with the most excruciating agony. I collapsed to my knees, unable even to scream. Wave after wave of pain flowed through me, as if I was being struck again and again by lightning. I felt as if my limbs, my organs, my blood was on fire. As my muscles spasmed and cramped, I fell forward onto my face.
I started to vomit, and just before my vision faded I saw that the vomit was bright red, that I was puking up nothing but blood. It was happening again, except this time it was worse, and I was alone, and even if the emergency services were to magically appear, as they had done before, I doubted they would have the resources, the technology, to save me.
Although the pain was so terrible I could barely think, deep down inside I was nevertheless aware I had made the most appalling mistake, and that I would never see either of my daughters again.
A terrible numbing coldness crept through me, superseding even the pain. I knew without a doubt that the coldness was death, and that its advent was now undeniable, inescapable.
Kate, I thought as the coldness opened up like a vast maw, rimed with black frost, below me. I felt myself unravelling like a thread as I tumbled into it.
I was dying…
I was dying…
I was dead.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In January 2015 our daughter Polly was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was naturally a massive shock for us all. As I write these words she is two days away from completing a six-month course of chemotherapy, with three weeks of radiotherapy to follow in September. I can’t express how grateful I am – indeed, how grateful we all are – to our many, many friends and work colleagues for their incredible love, support and understanding these past six months. I don’t want to name names for fear of leaving anyone out, but we have been inundated with so many gifts and good wishes and offers of help that not only has it been wondrously overwhelming, but it has also made us realise how amazingly blessed we are. Thank you to the medical staff in the Oncology Dept at St James’s Hospital in Leeds, and particularly to the nurses in the Teenage Cancer Unit, all of who are lovely. Huge thanks also to everyone who sponsored my wife Nel on her 10k Race For Life run and enabled her to raise over £6,000 for Cancer Research.
