by Andy Conway
About This Book
One touch... and you’re who knows when?
Rachel: the dirt poor girl brought up by her single parent father. Danny: the arrogant rich kid who has everything his wealthy parents can afford.
Two History students who wouldn’t normally mix, but whose lives become entwined when an old gravestone catapults them back in time.
Touchstone explores a city’s dark past: a gritty world of real danger where every action has an unforeseen consequence that can ripple through generations.
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To Norah
— 1 —
She was back in the churchyard in an instant, the sudden rotting smell of the place invading her nostrils, almost gagging her as she gasped a deep breath and was running over soft grass to the wrought-iron gates at the back of the graveyard, stumbling down the slate slope to the gates and pushing them open with a strength she couldn’t have imagined she had.
The same huddle of snotty pauper children with their uncomprehending doll’s eyes watched her run past them and down the back alley, holding her breath against the stench, heading for the chink of blazing light at the bottom.
She darted out and the lights and sounds of Moseley’s village green assaulted her senses, a busy crossroads hub of horse-drawn coaches and electric trams and elegant Edwardians promenading. She ran straight into a couple, wheeled round, shouted an apology and sprinted to her right, up the hill towards the Prince of Wales, gripping her long skirts, the heavy drag of them weighing her down, startled Edwardians darting out of her way, shouting after her admonitions she couldn’t hear over the panting of her own breath inside her head.
Her lungs were burning as she ran past the Prince of Wales and started the easier descent down the hill, legs slowing, growing heavy, breath catching in her throat in desperate panic. She heard the electric tram rumble somewhere behind her, coming from the village green and let out a desperate yelp, tried to quicken her steps. Another few moments and it would be too late.
The tram let out a wail from behind that jolted her. She was so close now. It rumbled alongside her, hissing, grumbling, taunting as it overtook, startled passengers watching her frantic petticoat-jumbled sprint. She saw the house up ahead. Nearly there. And suddenly a bizarre scene erupted from it.
A girl ran out into the street. The tram’s brakes screeched. A young man came flying out of the house after her as if fired from a cannon. The ring ring of the tram bell split their ears. An older man dashed out of the house waving a cane. The girl stopped, wheeled around and saw the tram heading for her. The young man careened across the street to catch the girl.
Rachel ran towards them, panic on her face, arm outstretched, too late, and shouted
‘Don’t!’
Someone screamed.
— 2 —
‘Rachel!’
She shut down her laptop and grabbed her bag, doing a last quick check: mobile phone, purse, bus pass, iPod, then a quick glance in the mirror, a ruffle of her auburn hair and she was out on the landing in a second, feet clacking on the bare floorboards.
She’d hated the lack of a stairs carpet for years, all through school, but now floorboards had become fashionable she’d stopped worrying about it, and she never saw any old schoolfriends anyway, so there was no one to bring round and no embarrassment to feel. Her dad had gone and painted them white, which was better than nothing.
‘Do you want a lift or not?’
Martyn was standing at the foot of the stairs, tapping his wristwatch with a massive finger, looking like a rugby league manager on the touchline.
‘Yes!’ she said, trying to sound sullen, but unable to hide her smile. Her dad was too funny for her to ever get away with being a sulky teenager.
‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Some of us have got proper work to go to.’
‘Very funny, Dad.’
She clumped down the stairs, his amused eyes watching her, always teasing. He called back into the lounge.
‘See you, Mum! We’re off!’
Olive, her gran, emerged from the front room for her goodbye kiss.
‘Ta ra, Nan.’
‘Bye, Rachel,’ she said and gripped her arm tightly, whispering low like it should be a secret from Martyn. ‘Now, do you need any money to take to your uni?’
‘No, Nan. I’m fine!’
She kissed her and followed Martyn out. She had no money, but she didn’t want to take her Nan’s all the time. It wasn’t fair.
Martyn was already in the car, an old banger that wasn’t old enough to be fashionably retro and wasn’t new enough to be useful. Rachel rushed to get in and Olive waved them off from the doorstep.
‘You know I’m only going to the village today?’ she said.
‘What?!’ Martyn bellowed, faking a heart attack. ‘If I’d known that I’d have made you walk!’
‘I’m late, though,’ she laughed.
‘You’ll get fat.’
‘Dad!’
She grinned and punched him.
‘All right, punching the driver. Where’s that ejector seat button?’
‘Very funny.’
They were there in five minutes, the rush hour traffic snaking through Moseley, down St Mary’s Row to the church standing sentinel over the village green. She undid her seat belt and picked up her bag.
‘Have a nice day with all your new posh university friends,’ Martyn joked.
‘They’re not my friends,’ she said. ‘They’re all rich kids. I hate them.’
‘Do you need any money?’
‘No. I’m fine! You’re worse than Nan!’
She kissed him on his sandpaper cheek and climbed out. She waved to him as he drove on through the crossroads then she waited for the lights to turn red so the traffic would stop and she could cross the road. It was busy and she could see the crowd of people already gathered on the ‘village green’.
It hadn’t been a village green for maybe two hundred years or more, but everyone still called it ‘Moseley village’ and they still called the triangular island to the side of the crossroads ‘the green’, which was an historical hangover she found fascinating. Maybe she’d be able to write an essay on it; how the past clung so persistently to the present, and how it was exemplified in this inner city urban ‘village’. Or something.
The lights changed, the traffic stopped and she took a deep breath and crossed over, clutching her bag strap tightly to hide her nervousness. She’d been at university for three weeks now and hardly made any friends on her course, and even though she was the girl who’d lived locally all her life, they made her feel like she was the stranger.
The green was paved now — she’d seen old photographs of when it really had been a green — and contained a few benches, flower beds, the bus stop that led back to her house, low railings that had been put up a few years ago and now had dead flowers hanging from them where someone had died. It was surrounded by shops and busy morning traffic and she tried to imagine what it would have been like in the old days, when it might have been a peaceful little island at the centre of a real village.
Her fellow students were waiting in clusters here and there, the groups that had already formed, and to none of which she belonged, all smoking and trying to look too cool for school. She didn’t get that at all. It was university. No one had made them take a degree in History so why all the pretending that it was all so deadly dull and beneath them.
She stood on her own and tried not to look at the group close by dressed like roc
k stars, the biggest bunch of posers on the course: Jessica, Stacy, Tyrone, Tim… and Danny. He was different to the others, she could tell. He didn’t dress quite as ridiculously as they did, but he was still the undisputed ringleader of their trendy sect, though he wasn’t as crass as them — there were deeper layers to him, and he was the only one who’d ever looked at her and actually seemed to notice her. They hadn’t talked, not outside of vague platitudes when thrown together to discuss something in a seminar group — which was rare because they usually always made sure they were the only ones on their table — but she thought she had a sense for what was inside people and he wasn’t anywhere near as much of a freak as his friends.
She stood alone in her Primark best and wondered if the laughter that had just crackled between them was about her. She shrunk in on herself and scowled. Then Mr Fenwick arrived and they all gravitated towards him. He must have parked his car nearby. He looked stupidly cheerful in the face of their sullen glares and she forced herself to stop scowling and smile so she wouldn’t look like the rest of them. He was a good lecturer and had a sharp sense of humour and must have been slightly younger than her dad but more handsome; reasonably good looking, in fact.
‘Good morning, historians,’ he shouted as they gathered round him. ‘Welcome to our first field trip in the neighbourhood of Moseley. In particular, St Mary’s church round the corner. Let’s go.’
He headed off up the road, stepping off the green and walking up St Mary’s Row past the Bull’s Head pub. They all followed in his wake, and turned into the churchyard further up at the lychgate entrance where the winos usually hung out. The churchyard had a small front apron above the road where gravestones still stood watching over the traffic below, but the main graveyard was round the rear of the church, which was an impressive 15th Century structure with battlements. She realised she’d never been inside it, even though she’d always liked the look of it and the way the battlements of its tower peeped over the Bull’s Head pub and could be seen from the green.
They all huddled around Mr Fenwick on a patch of broken, buckled paving stones and she took up position on the fringe of the crowd.
‘St Mary’s church has been here since the fifteenth century, five hundred years before Moseley even became a part of Birmingham, which was when, Jessica?’
Jessica with her ridiculous hair looked surprised for a second, then shrugged and said ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Anyone?’
They all shuffled uneasily. Jessica and Stacy were smirking. Rachel’s eyes fell on Danny. He caught her staring and she looked at her shoes and didn’t see that Mr Fenwick had noticed.
‘We did this a week ago,’ he said. ‘Danny. Is your memory any better than Jessica’s?’
‘Yeah,’ said Danny. ‘She’s thick.’
Jessica punched him and Rachel stole another glance.
‘So, when did this fine little suburb defect to the sprawling Birmingham metropolis?’
‘1912?’ said Danny.
‘Wrong. Rachel, you’re local, you should know?’
She looked up, surprised, and thought it’s okay to know the answer, this is uni, not school.
‘1911?’
‘Now who’s the thick one, Danny Pearce?’
Everyone laughed. Mr Fenwick indicated the street they overlooked. ‘Now, you all know Moseley for its fine selection of trendy bars. But we’ve got a pub called the Village, a chippy called the Village and everyone calls the centre of Moseley “the Village”. Why is that?’
Danny piped up, smirking to himself. ‘Is it because it used to be a village?’
‘Give him his degree right now! Yes, Danny, Moseley used to be a village. A village built around this fine mediaeval church.’
‘Did it used to be all fields round here, Nick?’
Everyone laughed again and Danny smiled at his own joke. Ben decided to join in. he always did whatever Danny did and thought it made him just as witty.
‘Do you remember it back then?’
Mr Fenwick’s eyes sparkled. He obviously liked the banter.
‘Yes, yes, very funny. Now, long before all the trendy bars opened, Moseley was a tiny village, and some of its villagers would have been buried in this churchyard. Their gravestones are long gone, but some of them remain. Look at your feet.’
They all looked down and saw that the path was made of broken gravestones. A general ‘Ewwwww!’ went up. Rachel found herself looking down at the tip of someone’s headstone, between her Primark pumps. Arabella Palmer, who departed this life August 16th 1876. Her age had been underneath, but the stone was broken off at that point and she could only make out the word YEARS and the top of the number. It could have been 8, or 38. She hoped it was the latter.
Mr Fenwick led them round to the rear of the church and the overgrown graveyard. Moss covered headstones leaned at various angles, some broken. Bushes and weeds had reclaimed the scarcely visible paths. There were some impressive monuments with sculpted angels and readable inscriptions, but most had faded with age. Some wealthy people had been buried here, but no one for a very long time. It was a neglected inner-city museum that few people visited except for winos and bored schoolkids and History students on field trips.
‘Luckily for us,’ he shouted, ‘the graves that still exist here are from the last hundred and fifty years. That means they’re all people who lived in Moseley when it was a heavily populated satellite of Birmingham. So we can find out lots of things about them in the city archives and it will all be deeply fascinating and turn you into semi-professional local historians. So, I want you to choose a project partner…’
They all started pairing off noisily and Rachel glanced around in panic. She knew no one was going to pick her.
‘… pick a name off a gravestone. That person is going to be the subject of your local history research. Danny, come here.’
Danny sloped over to him.
‘You can partner Rachel for your project. Maybe she’ll knock some sense into you.’
Rachel looked up at Danny with a hesitant smile, just in time to see Jessica shoot her a vicious look. Danny ignored her and walked off down the graveyard, hands in pockets. Everyone started to spread out and Rachel followed Danny down to the bottom end, close to the green wrought-iron gate that led to the back alley.
— 3 —
Danny found himself drawn to a gravestone that was shaped like a small bench or a baby’s cot; its edges blurred by time, the inscription faded. Rachel joined him and sat on it, trying to decipher the words that had been chiselled in over a century ago.
‘I’m not sure if it’s Rees or Reed,’ she said. ‘It’s practically worn away.’
Danny was sitting behind her, not paying attention, leaning back, his hands absently roaming the surface of the gravestone.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an evil hangover, so can you just sort it out yourself and not bother me with it?’
‘We’re supposed to do this project together,’ she snapped.
‘We will,’ he said. ‘But if you could just get the name, I’d be very grateful.’
She turned away, seemingly stung by his arrogance, not realising how much it was hurting his head just to be out in the sunlight.
‘You and that lot over there think everything’s here for your own personal amusement,’ she said. ‘Well I don’t a give a toss. I think you’re all a bunch of—’
He didn’t hear the end of her sentence. His fingers touched something warm and her voice sounded like it was coming through a tin funnel, then his ears blocked.
He looked over, surprised, thinking she was playing a joke, but she wasn’t there. The shock was so instant that he didn’t notice the thing he would always notice first every time afterwards: the noise. It was as if the constant hum of traffic that was always there wherever you were in the city, had been ripped away. It was like your ears suddenly blocking while you were flying, so you had to swallow to pop them clear again.
‘You shouldn’
t sit there. It’s someone’s grave.’
He looked up, startled, into the clear green eyes of Amy Parker.
‘Hello, I’m Amy Parker. Who are you?’
She held out her hand and he shook it and wondered why he couldn’t speak or move his feet or take his eyes off hers.
‘I’m… Danny,’ he croaked. ‘Danny Pearce.’
‘And where do you live, Danny Pearce?’
‘Er, Chantry Road.’
‘I’m sure you don’t,’ she said.
There was something not right about this at all. He palmed his ear to make it pop, flexed his jaw, but nothing happened. He had the sickly sensation of being trapped in a bell jar, hypnotised by her eyes.
‘What?’ he managed to say.
‘I live at 12 Alcester Road and I know most of the families on Chantry Road and I’ve never heard of you before.’
A voice barked from the other end of the graveyard and that was when the slightly unusual became utterly weird.
‘Amy!’
Fear flashed in Amy’s green eyes.
‘I have to go, Danny Pearce.’
Danny looked away from her eyes for the first time and it all flashed on his overloaded senses; so many things all in a sudden breathless rush, like a TV info burst, most of the details of which he would only remember later. He saw that Amy was dressed in a black gown of the type that any middle class girl attending a funeral circa 1912 might wear. He saw a bearded man marching towards him dressed in a frock coat and a top hat, brandishing a cane, wide eyed and angry, a speck of spittle at the corner of his mouth. He saw a cluster of other people around a grave in the distance, all in Edwardian costumes, and a priest in a flowing white smock that billowed in the breeze. And he remembered later that the graveyard was not overgrown, the lawns were well kempt, the stones were not tilted and weathered but many were bright and new. And as he saw all of this he slumped back on the gravestone, shock and panic overloading his senses.
The man grabbed Amy’s arm.
‘Who is he?’ he barked. ‘Is this the one?’
