[Sins of the Father 01.0] Touchstone

by Andy Conway

  ‘Oh my God,’ she managed to say.

  ‘It’s true,’ he said.

  ‘This is really…’ She floundered for the word, but nothing came. There was no word for it.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘When are we?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He saw the news stand on the green, manned by a shabby old man.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  He walked over. She watched him go, cringing inside, feeling that if they stepped foot in this world something awful would happen. If they stood and stared from the safety of the alley’s mouth, maybe no one would see them. But she didn’t want to be alone so she scurried after him. He grabbed a newspaper from the stand and looked at the front page. It was called the Gazette & Express.

  ‘Hey! That’s threepence.’

  ‘I’m just looking,’ said Danny.

  ‘I’ll give you “just looking” you cheeky…’

  The shabby old news stand man stopped and stared at Danny.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Danny shoved the newspaper back at him and grabbed Rachel’s arm and walked her away, back to the alley’s dark mouth.

  ‘It’s today,’ he hissed.

  ‘What?’

  He frog-marched her back up the alley. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw the news stand man staring after them. There was something about his look that wasn’t right.

  ‘It’s today’s date,’ said Danny.

  ‘Today? That doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Today’s date. But in 1912.’

  They scurried up the alley, heading for the gate to the churchyard.

  ‘Why are we going back?’

  ‘We need clothes and we need money.’

  — 11 —

  They tried not to make eye contact with the huddle of pauper children as they passed. Danny peeked through the church gate. The drunk was still there, sitting at another stone.

  ‘Quick,’ said Danny.

  He pulled the gate open. The hinges whined. Too loud. They ran for it and reached the stone. Rachel touched it first. Danny looked at the drunk. He had staggered to his feet and growled something incoherent. Rachel wasn’t there anymore. Danny grinned at the drunk as he lunged for him.

  ‘See ya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya.’

  He touched the stone and there was a flash of confusion, like he’d been punched and hadn’t seen it coming. He found himself staring at the same spot. The drunk had disappeared. The buzz of traffic was in his ears again.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Rachel.

  ‘I think we’re back.’

  ‘I can hear the traffic,’ she said. ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘We’ve just travelled a hundred years in a split second.’

  ‘1912!’ Rachel screamed.

  They both laughed hysterically. This was crazy.

  ‘1912!’

  They hugged each other and danced around. Then broke away, embarrassed and collected themselves.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ she said. ‘It’s actually true!’

  ‘It can’t be,’ he said. ‘But we saw it.’

  She ran over to another gravestone and stroked her hands along it.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Maybe they all work,’ she said. ‘Maybe this one takes you to a different year!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said.

  But he thought about it. Why wouldn’t others do it? He tried one himself, running his fingers across the stone. They both skipped around, stone to stone, trying every one, but nothing happened. She returned breathless to theirs.

  ‘It’s just this one,’ she said. ‘And we’re the only people who know about it.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It’s our secret, right? No one else?’

  He thought about it. She suddenly felt desperate that he didn’t tell his awful friends. The thought of Jessica using this was unbearable. It looked like Danny felt the same way.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Just us.’

  She smiled and realised he didn’t like his ‘friends’ any more than she did. That’s why he’d been so afraid she might let it slip this morning. He didn’t trust them at all. She felt a thrill of happiness through her whole body.

  ‘We’ll get clothes and old money tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘There’s that junk shop and that fancy dress hire place we can try.’

  ‘We can’t do it in the morning,’ she said. ‘Field trip to the library.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Okay, straight after then.’

  They walked up the path and she found it so weird that the drunk wasn’t still there in the churchyard behind them — he was a hundred years ago.

  — 12 —

  Rachel ran home and rushed to her room, where she paced around, burning with excitement. She’d seen it: her own neighbourhood, exactly as it was 100 years ago. Seen it, heard it, smelled it, touched it. She thought she could still taste it. She lay on her bed and thought of all the things she could do. But would it always be exactly 100 years ago on the other side? If she went through again tomorrow, would the drunk still be there, just as he was when she’d left him, or maybe even earlier? Could she meet herself back there? What if she went back and it were 1940? Or 1936? Or 1966? Or the eighties? Maybe she could go back and see her mum. The thought of that brought tears to her eyes and she fantasised about going back to see her before she’d died, when Rachel was too young to remember anything but a Christmas morning blur; an impression of tinsel, glittering presents under a tree, the scent of pine, a woman in a beige sweater, smiling. It was like a half-developed Polaroid in her mind, maddeningly out of focus, blurred, imprecise, like a familiar melody she couldn’t quite place, always out of reach.

  She went downstairs to the dining table to write up her coursework, but she couldn’t concentrate on it. Martyn and Olive were watching TV across the room. She had an idea suddenly and went to one of the sideboard cupboards and rummaged around.

  ‘What you looking for, Rache?’ said Martyn.

  ‘The old photos.’

  ‘They’re in the Black Magic box,’ said Olive.

  ‘I know, but I can’t see it.’

  Olive was already at her side, looking for something to do. You could never do anything without her appearing at your side to help you. ‘They’re on the other side, love.’

  She looked in the other cupboard and pulled it out: an old Black Magic box from the 1960s. She placed it reverently on the dining table and took off the lid. It was crammed full of old snapshots, faded photos of distant relatives, all jumbled up in no particular order.

  ‘We should really get a photo album for these,’ said Olive.

  She’d been saying that Rachel’s entire life and it had never happened yet, and now Rachel quietly noted the idea of buying some nice albums and those little mounting stickers for Nan’s birthday. It would be a nice project for her. She emptied the photos out, scattering them all over the table.

  ‘That’s the old house,’ said Olive, picking up a creased black and white snap. It showed Olive as a girl posing with her parents outside the old house. ‘That was during the war, that was.’

  Rachel flipped the photo over and read the pencilled inscription on the back.

  ‘1941.’ She picked up another. ‘Who’s this, Nan?’

  A woman posing in front of the old house, a baby in her arms. The baby was mostly a white over-exposed blur and you could only tell it was a baby by the way she was carrying it. The woman was plump and frowning.

  ‘That’s my grandma. Grandma Lewis.’

  Rachel looked at the back. ‘Mary Lewis, with baby Winnie. 1913. Winnie was your mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the family used to own that big house?’

  ‘Oh yes, we were very posh.’

  Rachel gazed at the photo of Mary Lewis, frowning to herself. She knew what she was going to do back in 1912 now. She went through the photos with Olive
, listening to all the stories about her relatives who’d lived in Moseley the last 100 years or more, and chose a small stack of a dozen or more to take with her.

  — 13 —

  She sat on the steps in Chamberlain Square, her back to the early morning rush of office workers, sketching out a family tree in her notebook. She always liked to sit in the south-west corner next to the sculpture of Thomas Attwood that lounged across the steps, hidden away, a secret, his sheets of bronze paper flying across the steps behind him. It had always made her feel close to history, as if she were sitting with this man from the past, he writing on his sheet of paper with his quill; she writing in her notebook. As if they could co-exist, side by side, through a space of 150 years. And now it was more than an idle fantasy. It was real. She really could do that. Perhaps she could really go back to 1832 and see him become the first MP for Birmingham. The possibilities had been buzzing inside her all night and she couldn’t think of anything else.

  The council house clock tolled ten so she put her notebook and stack of family photos in her bag and twisted to her feet and said ‘Bye, Thomas.’

  She turned to see the cluster of students outside the Central Library block and Mr Fenwick arriving to greet them. She climbed the steps and joined the group, nodding and smiling to Danny. Mr Fenwick had just finished speaking when she got there and turned into the sixties concrete and glass building. They all followed him in, through the foyer and up the series of escalators, snaking up to the sixth floor and the Local Studies section. It felt strange to be coming here for work, when she’d come here so many times for pleasure, just to read and look things up for her own amusement, since she’d been about twelve.

  He took them round the department and pointed out the various resources and they all split off into their project pairs and spread out to claim different desks in the acres of book lined space. As soon as Nick had pointed out the computers that stored all the local newspaper facsimiles, Danny had sat straight down and looked one up. When the front page splashed across the screen he grinned like he’d invented it himself. It was the Birmingham Gazette & Express they’d been looking at last night. She felt a thrill go through her. Here it was on a computer screen and she’d seen it only last night, the real thing, freshly printed.

  ‘It’s just mad, isn’t it,’ she said.

  ‘So, I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘We don’t do this Rees/Reed or whoever it is. We do her instead.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Amy Parker. The girl I met when I went through the first time.’

  He had his notebook out, and opened it to his page of notes and sketches. He was good. Better than she’d thought. Rachel looked down at her notebook page with her scribbled inscription of the gravestone details. It suddenly seemed feeble and tiny and dwarfed by his effort. Even his notebook was twice the size of hers and seemed to be a great canvas for inspirational broad brush strokes. Hers a tiny secret depository of spidery meanderings no one could read.

  ‘But she’s not one of the names in the churchyard,’ she said, and she knew as she said it that it would make no difference. They’d be doing their project on this girl he was so fascinated by.

  ‘So what?’ he said. ‘Just tell Nick we’re doing this instead. He’ll let us. He likes you.’

  He got up and headed for the information desk.

  ‘No he doesn’t,’ she said. But he’d already gone.

  The woman behind the information desk was in her thirties and had red hair. Danny looked at her name badge, which said Kath Bright, and turned on the charm.

  ‘Excuse me… Kath,’ he said. ‘Can you help me?’

  ‘I’ll try my best,’ she said.

  Rachel joined them and wanted to vomit. He was practically undressing her with his eyes and she was encouraging him.

  ‘If I wanted to find out all about a person from a hundred years ago,’ he said. ‘Where would I look here?’

  ‘Take your pick,’ she said, smiling a little too warmly for a librarian. ‘We’ve got a whole floor of resources. How much do you know already?’

  ‘Well, we’ve got a name, an address, and the year. She’s about my age in 1912, I think.’

  ‘Well, you could start with the births and deaths fiches. Once you know the birth date you can buy a birth certificate from the register office round the corner; same with a death certificate. Then you can take it from there.’

  ‘Thank you, Kath. That’s very helpful.’

  Kath smiled and went to fetch the box of fiches for him. He turned to Rachel.

  ‘I’ll look up Amy, you look up her father. It’s Parker, 12 Alcester Road.’

  Rachel stared at him with disgust.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Old enough to be your mum.’

  She walked off to get a fiche reader. Mr Fenwick was there leaning over Jessica and Stacy, trying to show them how to use it, which seemed to be difficult, largely because they were so stupid.

  ‘No, look, you’ve put it in the wrong way. Flip it over. You see?’

  ‘And we have to look through all that lot?’ said Stacy.

  ‘Won’t take you long. You’ve got your year.’

  Rachel coughed and he turned to her.

  ‘Er, Nick?’

  ‘Rachel.’

  ‘If we’ve got an address, right, and a year, is there any way of finding out who was living there then?’

  He looked at her curiously but didn’t ask why. ‘I’ll show you.’

  He walked off to the other side of the Local Studies section, round the corner. Jessica pulled a face and put on a Brummie accent.

  ‘Nick? If we’ve got an address, roit, and a year, roit…’

  ‘Did you see her shoes?’ said Stacy.

  ‘My god, she must have got them at the Rag Market.’

  Nick strolled into a row of stacks lined with directories and Rachel followed.

  ‘Normally you’d look in the Census, but if you know the address, and it’s within the last hundred years, you’ve got these little beauties. Kelly’s Directories.’

  He stroked his fingers along the rows of red and black books. Rachel picked out the Directory for 1912 and started leafing through it.

  ‘Go to the Streets section and you can find out the head of the household.’

  ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘Twelve, Alcester Road. Mr Richard Parker.’

  ‘Why are you starting from an address anyway?’

  She looked up into his eyes.

  ‘Er, we’re not doing the name from the grave. We’re doing a girl called Amy Parker. We know she lived there in 1912.’

  ‘You’re supposed to do someone buried in St Mary’s.’

  ‘We’ll do a great project, I promise.’

  He looked over his shoulder and leaned in closer.

  ‘Don’t. Tell. The others.’

  He tapped his nose and she walked back to find Danny. He was staring at the white-on-black text on the enormous fiche reader screen.

  ‘The father’s called Richard Parker,’ she said. ‘Have you found Amy?’

  He had that look again. Almost like when she’d come back to find him sitting on the gravestone.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  He pointed at the screen. She leaned over him to look.

  ‘She dies in three days’ time.’

  — 14 —

  The Register Office building was a short walk away, behind Broad Street. Rachel sat in the waiting lounge while Danny paced.

  ‘Won’t it cause a rift in the space time continuum?’ she said.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I dunno. That’s what it does in films. You stop her from dying then we come back to the present and find out the world’s run by monkeys and we’re their pets.’

  ‘That’s Planet of the Apes, stupid.’

  ‘Could happen.’

  ‘She looked healthy to me,’ he said. ‘It can’t have been a disease or anything.’

  ‘He recognised you.’

  ‘What?’


  ‘That newspaper bloke. He recognised you.’

  ‘How could he? I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘He looked like he’d seen you.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘So is travelling back in time by touching a stone.’

  He looked around. Had anyone else in the waiting room heard that? There were only a couple of young mothers too busy with their new babies, and a podgy guy in a pork pie hat and a goatee beard, but he was staring into space, shellshocked, red eyed. No one was listening to them.

  ‘Keep it quiet, eh?’

  The desk clerk signalled him. He rushed over and took the two A4 envelopes. He sat down with her and handed her one. They both opened them and pulled out the green death certificates.

  ‘What does yours say?’ he said.

  She checked Richard Parker’s name and the panel where it listed the cause of death. ‘General Paralysis.’

  ‘What’s General Paralysis?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But whatever it is, he gets it in the City Asylum.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What does Amy’s say?’

  He handed her the certificate. She stared at the single word in the column.

  Murder.

  — 15 —

  They got off the bus at Moseley village and she followed him across the green.

  ‘She’s good looking, isn’t she?’

  ‘What does that have to do with it?

  ‘If she was a minger you wouldn’t be thinking of saving her.’

  He turned, offended. ‘A girl is going to be murdered and we have the ability to prevent it and all you can say is it’s because I fancy her?’

  She laughed suddenly, not even hearing his words.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘We were right here. Last night. A hundred years ago.’

  He looked around at it all with her. Moseley village as it was today, remembering how it had been then.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It’s bizarre.’

  ‘Do you keep thinking it’s not real?’