by Andy Conway
Danny thought about it. He saw Amy’s eyes and remembered how he couldn’t take his own eyes from hers. He remembered how soft her hand felt when he’d reached out to shake it.
‘Then or now?’ he said.
They walked up the village to Buygones and stepped inside. It was a pirate’s cave of objet d’arts and old tat, with a strong 1930s retro feel. The owner, Mitch, was a guy in his forties who dressed in 1930s casual. He had a cravat on and a waistcoat and armbands on his shirtsleeves. He was even pouring tea from an art deco teapot and eating from a plate of cucumber sandwiches, cut into triangles. The only anomaly was the laptop on his wooden counter.
‘Hi,’ said Danny, putting on his posh voice. ‘We’re looking for…’
Mitch held up a finger while he finished pouring.
‘Tea?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I can’t drink it all myself.’
‘Er, no. Thanks. Do you do coins?’
‘I don’t want tea either, thank you,’ said Rachel.
‘Old coins,’ said Danny. ‘1912 if you’ve got any.’
Mitch measured him up for a beat. ‘1912, eh?’
‘If you’ve got any.’
‘It’s your lucky day,’ he said, and pulled out a presentation pack of mint condition coins from under the counter. Danny took it and admired them.
‘Full set,’ said Mitch. ‘Farthing, ha’penny, penny, threepence, sixpence, shilling, the florin… And a half crown.’
‘How much are these?’
‘Fifty quid.’
‘What?’ cried Rachel. ‘There’s only about a pound there.’
‘Actually,’ said Mitch. ‘There’s less than a pound. Your halfcrown is thirty pence, florin’s twenty-four, shilling’s twelve pence and the rest make a grand total of… seventy-six and three-quarter pence.’
‘So nearly a quid then,’ said Danny.
‘Not even close,’ said Mitch, who was enjoying himself much more than an explanation of old coins merited. ‘There were two hundred and forty pence to the old pound.’
Rachel rolled her eyes. Bloody geek talk.
‘And this seventy-seven pence,’ said Danny.
‘Seventy-six and three-quarters.’
‘That’s fifty quid in today’s money?’
‘No way,’ said Mitch. ‘But these are. They’re collector’s items. Mint condition.’
Rachel had had enough. She took charge. ‘Fascinating as this is,’ she said. ‘Have you got any not really mint ones that collectors aren’t interested in?’
Mitch sighed and pulled out a grubby old Oxo tin full of dirty coins and plonked it on the counter with a clatter.
‘In there.’
‘Okay,’ said Rachel. ‘See you.’ She turned and headed for the door.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Danny.
‘To get dressed,’ she said. She walked out, the door chiming after her, and Danny started rooting through the coins, checking the dates. He looked up at Mitch.
‘Do you have any notes as well?’
— 16 —
Danny walked into Mrs Hudson’s dark and dingy vintage clothes shop, rattling his 1912 change in his pocket. He had managed to buy a small pile of coins and a few absurdly large banknotes for less than a tenner and Mitch had assured him they amounted to the monthly wage of an average middle class head of household. The shop had that smell he hated; the smell you got in charity shops: dead people’s clothes and stale perfume. He saw a Ruritanian military jacket and took it off the rack and held it up against him to the mirror, admiring himself.
‘That’s not the year you’re looking for.’
He turned, startled. Mrs Hudson was about 70 but there was something in her eyes that appeared younger, and stronger. She didn’t smile and Danny felt suddenly uneasy under her gaze.
‘You’d look very out of place in 1912 wearing that,’ she said.
Danny stared. A long silence. How did she know? Rachel bustled out of the changing room in a tweed walking suit.
‘Oh my god, it’s so heavy! How did they walk around in this!’ She saw Danny and struck a pose, ‘Well?’
‘Er… Yeah. Looks great.’
He looked back at Mrs Hudson. She picked up a gentleman’s suit that was draped over the counter and brought it over to him.
‘Now for you,’ she said. ‘This, I think. Much less conspicuous.’
She looked Danny in the eye again. He took the suit and rushed to the fitting room, relieved to escape her glare. It was like she’d looked right through him and seen everything he was thinking. It made him shudder. He threw the suit on and admired himself in the mirror. He looked rather dashing, if he did say so himself, and he realised he wanted to make a good impression on Amy Parker when he saw her next.
— 17 —
They walked gingerly through the churchyard, awkward in their costumes, hoping no one would be around to see them. They’d both covered up with overcoats so they didn’t look too strange on the way to the church and had their hats in carrier bags.
‘Do you think she believed us, about making a student film?’ said Danny. ‘There was something funny about her.’
‘Funny? She didn’t crack a smile once.’
‘I don’t like her,’ Danny muttered.
‘She gave you a discount as well.’
They reached the gravestone and took their hats out of their bags, put them on, took off their overcoats and stuffed them into the bags. Danny shoved both carrier bags under a nearby bush. Rachel was glancing around making sure no one could see them: two Edwardians standing in the local churchyard at night.
‘Okay,’ said Danny. ‘Let’s do it.’
They were through to the other side in an instant, still amazed at the sharp contrast in background noise, and smell. There was no drunk there this time. The churchyard was as empty as it was in the present, a hundred years from now.
They pushed through the creaking wrought-iron gate and she noticed for the first time that it was cleaner in this year. She hadn’t noticed it the first time. There were no children to stare at them in the alley, but the stench was just as powerful. They walked swiftly down to the door of light at the end and emerged onto the green and stood, looking around in wonder at it all: alive and bustling as it was a hundred years ago: a busy crossroads with its Edwardian throng, horse-drawn carriages rolling this way and that, a line of carriages pulled up where the bus stop was now, and a cabman’s shelter built right there by the side of the road, the electric tram sailing through the crossroads, heading for the city, and beyond it, the cityscape with only church spires intruding on the skyline.
No one looked at them. They were right at home. Danny held out his arm and let Rachel take it and they set off up the street. The Fighting Cocks pub looked exactly the same but the further up they walked, the more the buildings changed. The bookmakers on the corner was a grocer's. Where the two supermarkets now stood were a row of imposing Victorian redbrick shops with their wares out on the street and colourful hand-painted signs with ornate designs. They passed a fishmonger, a baker, a tiny WH Smith's newspaper agents, a watchmaker, a linen draper, another greengrocer, with violently hairy forearms, a china and glass dealer, a boot maker, and then they saw that Lloyds Bank was still there on the corner. They crossed Woodbridge Road and admired the imposing Shufflebotham's Stores on the corner with the turret above and a fleet of vans outside, and as they walked past more shops, she couldn’t help but stare at all the people: a man with the most enormous set of bright red whiskers, wearing a cricket cap; a lady with a pale face and velvet dress who held a handkerchief to her nose; a one-legged old soldier with a grey beard holding out his military cap. Danny threw a coin in there and the old man nodded and croaked
‘Thank you. God bless you, sir.’
Danny looked embarrassed, not at all the smug expression she’d expected. She squeezed his arm and then regretted it. They walked past the Prince of Wales pub and on over the crest of the hill and
began to descend down to Balsall Heath. Everything was so different she now realised, even though they were the same streets. Most of the houses were different, the paving stones on the pavement were different, the drainage grids, the pavements were lower, the kerbs smaller, more rounded, the road surface different, the road markings, the lamp posts, the lack of road signs; nothing was the same and if nothing was the same, how could it be the same place?
Danny crossed over to the other side and she didn’t ask why. He seemed to have a plan of some sort. They walked on and he eventually stopped a hundred yards short of the Brighton Road crossroads, beyond which the street seemed to thicken with life, hazy in the distance, as if Balsall Heath were seething with anger. He nodded at a terraced house across the road.
‘That’s her house.’
She stared and tried to imagine how many people had lived there in the past hundred years and wondered who lived there now, back in her present.
‘I’ve walked past this so many times,’ she said.
‘I know. Too weird.’
‘So, what’s the plan?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ he said.
He looked at a loss and she was disappointed in him for the first time. She’d thought he’d have it all worked out and know what to do.
‘You must have thought of something. We’re here now.’
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I’ll knock on the door and say “Hi, Mr Parker. Your daughter’s going to be murdered on Saturday and you’re gonna cark it in the loony bin next month, probably because it’s you that killed her. Oh, did I mention I’m from the future?”’
She looked up and down the road.
‘Might work.’
‘I need to talk to her, alone,’ he said. ‘Find out stuff.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like why she’s so scared of her dad.’
‘Maybe she knows he’s going to kill her.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t that. It was something else.’
‘Look!’ He followed her gaze up the street. ‘It’s the electric tram.’
She was delighted. It came speeding past them, faster than she thought it could ever travel, then slowed abruptly and stopped a hundred yards away.
‘I wish we had trams still,’ she said. ‘Better than the buses.’
Danny was looking back at the house. ‘I’m gonna go round the back. Try and talk to her. You stay here, keep an eye out.’
‘Okay. I’ll phone you if anything happens.’
He looked at her like she’d escaped from the loony bin herself.
‘What?’
‘Rachel. Seeing as the mobile phone mast won’t be built for another ninety years, I don’t think you’re going to get much of a signal.’
She reddened. ‘I was joking,’ she said, hoping he’d believe her. She watched him cross the road and walk up a side street a few doors away.
— 18 —
Danny walked round to the rear of the row of houses, which were all fenced at the back. He counted off to number 12 and peered over the chest high wooden fence, looking up at the windows of the house. A figure was at one of the rear windows, brushing her hair. He recognised her immediately and his mind flooded again with memories of their brief encounter.
She disappeared from the window and he breathed again. He looked around in panic for some small stones, scooped some up from the grass verge and started throwing them at the window. The first four missed and slapped the wall. The fourth hit the window with a dull crack. She came to the window again, peering out curiously.
He waved and wondered if she would be scared and call her father. Then he saw the recognition flood her face. She waved back. In a moment, he’d skipped over the fence and padded down the garden. Her window was above the outhouse and he scooted up the drainpipe. She opened her window as he stood up to face her.
‘Hello, Amy Parker,’ he grinned, panting from the sudden exertion.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.
‘I came to see you. To talk.’
‘I’ll be in frightful trouble if my father sees you.’
He frowned. How was he going to explain this to her? She would never believe him if he told her. ‘Is your father ill?’
‘Why do you ask that? You’re a very forward man, Danny Pearce.’
‘Do you mind that?’
She smiled for the first time. ‘No. I should, but I don’t. Why is that?’
‘Because you like me?’
‘I’m sure I don’t even know you.’
It was true, and he had more important things to tell her, but he couldn’t help feeling drunk in her presence.
‘And I don’t know you,’ he said. ‘But I feel like I do.’
‘Yes. Yes, that’s exactly how it feels. It’s very odd. Can you come back again? On Saturday? We’re away tomorrow.’
‘Saturday,’ he said. He had no idea what time she would be murdered on Saturday.
She frowned again. ‘I have the oddest sensation when I see you.’
‘What is it?’
‘I can’t describe it. The other day, at Mr Rieper’s funeral, when I first saw you. It was as if you’d travelled a million miles, just to see me.’
He took her emotion eagerly, as if it were a love letter. ‘Yes. I felt that too.’
‘What does it mean?’ she said.
He had an idea. ‘What if I’d been sent here, somehow, to… To protect you.’
‘From what?’ she said, but he could see in her eyes that she knew what, that she already suspected it herself.
‘Yes. What if something terrible was going to happen and I was sent here to stop it happening?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
He reached out and touched her hands, resting on the window sill. ‘You feel it too. I can tell.’
She flinched with sudden panic and looked behind at a sound. ‘You can’t stay here. Come again, Saturday.’
She went to close the window.
‘Wait,’ he said. He took out his mobile.
‘What’s that?’ she said.
‘It’s a camera,’ he said, pointing it at her. ‘Stay still.’ He snapped her.
‘You’re playing a silly joke on me, Danny Pearce. I’ve a good mind not to speak to you at all.’ She closed the window and shooed him away.
‘You have to,’ he said.
She put her hand to the window pane and he placed his own against it. Her eyes were full of fear and wonder. Yes, something bad was going to happen. She knew it. He watched her walk back across her room and disappear into the house. He jumped down off the outhouse roof and crouched against it, looking at his mobile and the shadowy image on the screen: Amy Parker’s ghostly face.
— 19 —
Rachel loitered on the corner, trying not to look shifty. A few people passed by: a man who tipped his hat to her, which she thought was sweet, another who ignored her, which she was disappointed by, and a couple, the woman averting her eyes, the man shooting her a dirty look. She wondered if there was something about her costume that was inappropriate. The dress was a good length, she wasn’t showing any ankle, and it had a high collar so her neck was hidden. She thought she looked quite staid, but knew it was an era where showing your knees would be the same as walking topless down the high street.
A labourer sauntered towards her in rough, plaster-coated overalls and heavy boots, slumped and exhausted from what must have been a backbreaking day of work. She watched him closely, taking in every detail of his clothing, fascinated, and glanced up at his eyes, which shone a piercing bright blue from his dirty face. He lifted his cloth cap. She nodded. He passed. Then he stopped and turned.
‘Even,’ he said, and she was confused for a moment, then realised he’d mumbled a ‘good evening’ to her.
‘Hello,’ she answered warily, looking around to see if anyone else was on the street. They were pretty much alone.
‘Cold night for it,’ he said.
‘I’m warm enough, th
ank you.’
He looked up and down the street and she began to feel uneasy. He stroked his chin and she heard the crackle of his stubble.
‘How much a turn?’ he mumbled.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘How much?’
‘You what?’ She was looking over his shoulder now at the side street that Danny had gone down, desperately hoping he would appear.
‘I’ve got a florin for it,’ he said. ‘Where’s your nest?’ He took her arm and started to shove her off the street. ‘Come on, darling, let’s not hang around.’
‘Get off me!’ she wailed, but her voice caught in her throat and it came out as a strangled cry that no one heard. She hit out at him, swiping him on the nose. He pulled away, shocked, glaring.
‘Do one,’ she spat, with sudden venom. ‘Now!’
The menace in his face turned to confusion. This wasn’t what he was used to. There was something very different about this girl. He backed away and his confusion turned to anger as he scampered off, spitting out a last retort. ‘You little bitch.’
She caught her breath, realising how nasty it had almost been and was still gasping when Danny emerged from the side street and crossed the road to join her.
‘I’m gonna kill that Mrs Hudson,’ she said ‘She’s given me a 1912 tart’s outfit. I’ve had all sorts asking me how much.’
Danny didn’t seem surprised. ‘Well, we are on the edge of the old red light district,’ he said. ‘In fact, it was a big area for prostitution until very recently.’
‘Oh thanks,’ she said. ‘You’re a real gent.’ She noticed movement over his shoulder. ‘Is that him?’
Mr Parker had emerged from his front door and was walking down the garden path, wearing a top hat and black overcoat. He opened the gate and crossed to their side of the street and strolled north, heading towards the city.
‘That’s him,’ said Danny. ‘Come on. Let’s follow.’
Rachel dragged him back. ‘Why?’
‘Because I think he’s our murder suspect.’
— 20 —
Danny and Rachel set off to follow but were immediately taken by surprise when he stopped walking and stood at the tram stop opposite the tram depot only a hundred yards from his house. They slowed, wondering what to do, then heard the tram rumbling behind them, roaring down the slope from the village. Danny quickened his pace.
