by Mike Ashley
None of this was going on as I tramped along under the leaden sky. The future was for me as commonplace as a field.
I began to worry, wondering how I was to get back. I could imagine the wrath of my father, the tears of my mother, the endless jibes I would get from Salleen and Therese. I turned around and walked quickly back towards the bridges, forming a half-hearted plan to cross the Channel repeatedly, using the Tomorrow and Yesterday Bridges in turn, until I was back where I started.
I was running again, in danger of sobbing, when I saw a young man walking along the bank towards me. I would have paid no attention to him, but for the fact that when we were a short distance apart he sidestepped so that he was in front of me.
I slowed, regarded him incuriously, and went to walk around him . . . but much to my surprise he called after me.
“Mykle! It is Mykle, isn’t it?”
“How do you know my name?” I said, pausing and looking at him warily.
“I was looking for you. You’ve jumped forward in time, and don’t know how to get back.”
“Yes, but—”
“I’ll show you how. It’s easy.”
We were facing each other now, and I was wondering who he was and how he knew me. There was something much too friendly about him. He was very tall and thin, and had the beginnings of a moustache darkening his lip. He seemed adult to me, but when he spoke it was with a hoarse, boyish falsetto.
I said, “It’s all right, thank you, sir. I can find my own way.”
“By running across the bridges?”
“How did you know?”
“You’ll never manage it, Mykle. when you jumped from the bridge you went a long way into the future. About thirty-two years.”
“This is . . .?” I looked around at the Park, disbelieving what he said. “But it feels like—”
“Just like Tomorrow. But it isn’t. You’ve come a long way. Look over there.” He pointed across the Channel, to the other side. “Do you see those houses? You’ve never seen those before, have you?”
There was an estate of new houses, built beyond the trees on the Park’s perimeter. True, I hadn’t noticed them before, but it proved nothing. I didn’t find this very interesting, and I began to sidle away from him, wanting to get on with the business of working out how to get back.
“Thank you, sir. It was nice to meet you.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir’,” he said, laughing. “You’ve been taught to be polite to strangers, but you must know who I am.”
“N-no . . .” Suddenly rather nervous of him I walked quickly away, but he ran over and caught me by the arm.
“There’s something I must show you,” he said. “This is very important. Then I’ll get you back to the bridge.”
“Leave me alone!” I said loudly, quite frightened of him.
He took no notice of my protests, but walked me along the path beside the Channel. He was looking over my head, across the Channel, and I could not help noticing that whenever we passed a tree or a bush which cut off the view he would pause and look past it before going on. This continued until we were near the time bridges again, when he came to a halt beside a huge sprawling rhododendron bush.
“Now,” he said. “I want you to look. But don’t let yourself be seen.”
Crouching down with him, I peered around the edge of the bush. At first I could not imagine what it was I was supposed to be looking at, and thought it was more houses for my inspection. The estate did, in fact, continue all along the further edge of the Park, just visible beyond the trees.
“Do you see her?” He pointed, then ducked back. Following the direction, I saw a young woman sitting on a bench on the far side of the Channel.
“Who is she?” I said, although her small figure did not actually arouse much curiosity in me.
“The loveliest girl I have ever seen. She’s always there, on that bench. She is waiting for her lover. She sits there every day, her heart filled with anguish and hope.”
As he said this the young man’s voice broke, as if with emotion, and I glanced up at him. His eyes were moist.
I peered again around the edge of the bush and looked at the girl, wondering what it was about her that produced this reaction. I could hardly see her, because she was huddled against the wind and had a shawl drawn over her hair. She was sitting to one side, facing towards the Tomorrow Bridge. To me, she was approximately as interesting as the houses, which is not to say very much, but she seemed important to the young man.
“Is she a friend of yours?” I said, turning back to him.
“No, not a friend, Mykle. A symbol. A token of the love that is in us all.”
“What is her name?” I said, not following this interpretation.
“Estyll. The most beautiful name in the world.”
Estyll: I had never heard the name before, and I repeated it softly.
“How do you know this?” I said. “You say you—”
“Wait, Mykle. She will turn in a moment. You will see her face.”
His hand was clasping my shoulder, as if we were old friends, and although I was still shy of him it assured me of his good intent. He was sharing something with me, something so important that I was honoured to be included.
Together we leaned forward again and looked clandestinely at her. By my ear, I heard my friend say her name, so softly that it was almost a whisper. A few moments passed, then, as if the time vortex above the Channel had swept the word slowly across to her, she raised her head, shrugged back the shawl, and stood up. I was craning my neck to see her but she turned away. I watched her walk up the slope of the Park grounds, towards the houses beyond the trees.
“Isn’t she a beauty, Mykle?”
I was too young to understand him fully, so I said nothing. At that age, my only awareness of the other sex was that my sisters were temperamentally and physically different from me. I had yet to discover more interesting matters. In any event, I had barely caught a glimpse of Estyll’s face.
The young man was evidently enraptured by the girl, and as we watched her move through the distant trees my attention was half on her, half on him.
“I should like to be the man she loves,” he said at last.
“Do you . . . love her, sir?”
“Love? What I feel is too noble to be contained in such a word.” He looked down at me, and for an instant I was reminded of the haughty disdain that my father sometimes revealed when I did something stupid. “Love is for lovers, Mykle. I am a romantic, which is a far grander thing to be.”
I was beginning to find my companion rather pompous and overbearing, trying to involve me in his passions. I was an argumentative child, though, and could not resist pointing out a contradiction.
“But you said she was waiting for her lover,” I said.
“Just a supposition.”
“I think you are her lover, and won’t admit it.”
I used the word disparagingly, but it made him look at me thoughtfully. The drizzle was coming down again, a dank veil across the countryside. The young man stepped away suddenly. I think he had grown as tired of my company as I had of his.
“I was going to show you how to get back,” he said. “Come with me.” He set off towards the bridge, and I went after him. “You’ll have to go back the way you came. You jumped, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” I said, puffing a little. It was difficult keeping up with him.
As we reached the end of the bridge, the young man left the path and walked across the grass to the edge of the Channel. I held back, nervous of going too close again.
“Ah!” said the young man, peering down at the damp soil. “Look, Mykle . . . these must be your footprints. This was where you landed.”
I went forward warily and stood just behind him.
“Put your feet in these marks and jump towards the bridge.”
Although the metal edge of the bridge was only an arm’s length away from where we were standing it seemed a formidable j
ump, especially as the bridge was higher than the bank. I pointed this out.
“I’ll be behind you,” the young man said. “You won’t slip. Now . . . look on the bridge. There’s a scratch on the floor. Do you see it? You have to aim at that. Try to land with one foot on either side, and you’ll be back where you started.”
It all seemed rather unlikely. The part of the bridge he was pointing out was wet with rain and looked slippery. If I landed badly I would fall; worse, I could slip backwards into the flux fluid. Although I sensed that my new friend was right – that I could only get back by the way I had come – it did not feel right.
“Mykle, I know what you’re thinking. But I made that mark. I’ve done it myself. Trust me.”
I was thinking of my father and his wrath, so at last I stepped forward and put my feet in the squelching impressions I had made as I landed. Rainwater was oozing down the muddy bank towards the flux fluid, but I noticed that as it dripped down to touch the fluid it suddenly leaped back, just like the droplets of whisky on the side of the glass my father drank in the evenings.
The young man took a grip on my belt, holding on so that I should not slip down into the Channel.
“I’ll count to three, then you jump. I’ll give you a shove. Are you ready?”
“I think so.”
“You’ll remember Estyll, won’t you?”
I looked over my shoulder. His face was very close to mine.
“Yes, I’ll remember her,” I said, not meaning it.
“Right . . . brace yourself. It’s quite a hop from here. One . . .”
I saw the fluid of the Channel below me and to the side. It was glistening eerily in the grey light.
“. . . two . . . three . . .”
I jumped forward at the same instant as the young man gave me a hefty shove from behind. Instantly, I felt the electric crackle of the flux field, I heard again the loud roaring in my ears and there was a split-second of impenetrable blackness. My feet touched the edge of the time bridge and I tripped, sprawling forward on the floor. I slithered awkwardly against the legs of a man standing just there, and my face fetched up against a pair of shoes polished to a brilliant shine. I looked up.
There was my father, staring down at me in great surprise. All I can now remember of that frightful moment is his face glaring down at me, topped by his black, curly brimmed, stovepipe hat. He seemed to be as tall as a mountain.
v
My father was not a man who saw the merit of short, sharp punishment, and I lived under the cloud of my misdeed for several weeks.
I felt that I had done what I had done in all innocence, and that the price I had to pay for it was too high. In our house, however, there was only one kind of justice and that was Father’s.
Although I had been in the future for only about an hour of my subjective time, five or six hours had passed for my family and it was twilight when I returned. This prolonged absence was the main reason for my father’s anger, although if I had jumped thirty-two years, as my companion had informed me, an error of a few hours on the return journey was as nothing.
I was never called upon to explain myself. My father detested excuses.
Salleen and Therese were the only ones who asked what had happened, and I gave them a shortened account: I said that after I jumped into the future, and realized what I had done, I explored the Park on my own and then jumped back. This was enough for them. I said nothing of the youth with the lofty sentiments, nor of the young lady who sat on the bench. (Salleen and Therese were thrilled enough that I had catapulted myself into the distant future, although my safe return did make the end of the story rather dull.) Internally, I had mixed feelings about my adventure. I spent a lot of time on my own – part of my punishment was that I could only go into the playroom one evening a week, and had to study more diligently instead – and tried to work out the meaning of what I had seen.
The girl, Estyll, meant very little to me. She certainly had a place in my memory of that hour in the future, but because she was so fascinating to my companion I remembered her through him, and she became of secondary interest.
I thought about the young man a great deal. He had gone to such pains to make a friend of me, and to include me in his private thoughts, and yet I remembered him as an intrusive and unwelcome presence. I often thought of his husky voice intoning those grand opinions, and even from the disadvantage of my junior years, his callow figure – all gangly limbs, slicked-back hair and downy moustache – was a comical one. For a long time I wondered who he could be. Although the answer seems obvious in retrospect it was some years before I realized it and whenever I was out in the town I would keep my eyes open in case we happened to meet.
My penance came to an end about three months after the picnic. This parole was never formally stated but understood by all concerned. The occasion was a party our parents allowed us to have for some visiting cousins and after that my misbehaviour was never again directly mentioned.
The following summer, when the time came around for another picnic in Flux Channel Park, my father interrupted our excited outpourings to deliver a short speech, reminding us that we must all stay together. This was said to us all, although Father gave me a sharp and meaningful look. It was a small, passing cloud, and it threw no shadow on the day. I was obedient and sensible throughout the picnic . . . but as we walked through the Park in the gentle heat of the day, I did not forget to look out for my helpful friend, nor for his adored Estyll. I looked, and kept looking, but neither of them was there that day.
vi
When I was eleven I was sent to school for the first time. I had spent my formative years in a household where wealth and influence were taken for granted, and where the governor had taken a lenient view of my education. Thrown suddenly into the company of boys from all walks of life, I retreated behind a manner of arrogance and condescension. It took two years to be scorned and beaten out of this, but well before then I had developed a wholehearted loathing for education and all that went with it. I became, in short, a student who did not study, and a pupil whose dislike for his fellows was heartily reciprocated.
I became an accomplished malingerer, and with the occasional connivance of one of the servants I could readily feign a convincing though unaccountable stomach ailment, or develop infectious-looking rashes. Sometimes I would simply stay at home. More frequently I would set off into the countryside on my bicycle and spend the day in pleasant musings.
On days like this I pursued my own form of education by reading, although this was by choice and not by compulsion. I eagerly read whatever novels and poetry I could lay my hands on: my preference in fiction was for adventure, and in poetry I soon discovered the romantics of the early nineteenth century, and the then much despised desolationists of two hundred years later. The stirring combinations of valour and unrequited love, of moral virtue and nostalgic wistfulness, struck deep into my soul and made more pointed my dislike of the routines of school.
It was at this time, when my reading was arousing passions that my humdrum existence could not satisfy, that my thoughts turned to the girl called Estyll.
I needed an object for the stirrings within me. I envied the romantic poets their soulful yearnings, for they, it seemed to me, had at least had the emotional experience with which to focus their desires. The despairing desolationists, lamenting the waste around them, at least had known life. Perhaps I did not rationalize this need quite so neatly at the time, but whenever I was aroused by my reading it was the image of Estyll that came most readily to mind.
Remembering what my companion had told me, and with my own sight of that small, huddled figure, I saw her as a lonely, heartbroken waif, squandering her life in a hopeless vigil. That she was unspeakably beautiful, and utterly faithful, went without saying.
As I grew older, my restlessness advanced. I felt increasingly isolated, not only from the other boys at school, but also from my family. My father’s work was making more demands on him than ever bef
ore and he was unapproachable. My sisters were going their own separate ways: Therese had developed an interest in ponies, Salleen in young men.
Nobody had time for me; no one tried to understand.
One autumn, some three or four years after I started school, I surrendered at last to the stirrings of soul and flesh, and attempted to allay them.
vii
I selected the day with care, one when there were several lessons at school where my absence would not be too obvious. I left home at the usual time in the morning, but instead of heading for school I rode to the city, bought a return ticket to the Park at the railway station, and settled down on the train.
During the summer there had been the usual family outing to the Park, but it had meant little to me. I had outgrown the immediate future. Tomorrow no longer concerned me.
I was vested with purpose. When I arrived at the Park on that stolen day I went directly to the Tomorrow Bridge, paid the toll, and set off through the covered way towards the other side. There were more people about than I had expected, but it was quiet enough for what I wanted to do. I waited until I was the only one on the bridge, then went to the end of the covered way and stood by the spot from which I had first jumped. I took a flint from my pocket and scratched a thin but deep line in the metal surface of the bridge.
I slipped the flint back in my pocket then looked appraisingly at the bank below. I had no way of knowing how far to jump, only an instinct and a vague memory of how I had done it before. The temptation was to jump as far as possible, but I managed to suppress it.
I placed my feet astride the line, took a deep breath . . . and launched myself towards the bank.
A dizzying surge of electric tingling, momentary darkness, and I sprawled across the bank.
Before I took stock of my surroundings I marked the place where I had landed. First I scraped a deep line in the soil and grass with the flint, pointing back towards the mark on the bridge (which was still visible, though less bright), then I tore away several tufts of grass around my feet to make a second mark. Thirdly, I stared intently at the precise place, fixing it in memory, so there would be no possibility of not finding it again.
