Normal Family

by Don Trowden

  “Marie,” he spoke so quietly that the rest of us barely heard. “You’re alive?” After all these years he didn’t know what to say.

  Marie Lewis didn’t open her eyes. She was safe, probably knew she was with her husband and slept with a smile.

  “I think we ought to get back to Port Eynon,” said Marlene. “There’s nothing more to be done here.”

  “You knew Marie would be here?” asked a dazed Lewis as he carried her towards the Portal. “You knew my wife was alive?”

  “No, not for sure, but when Tertia brought me Schwartz’s journal we both began to suspect she might not be dead, which is pretty much the same thing. Come on, I’ll explain it all later.” She shooed us all into the Portal after carefully resetting the dials for the Lewis mansion cellars.

  Zzzzzp.

  As I walked into the Portal I waved to the redcoats who saluted a fond farewell and more than likely forgot all about time travel and ultraviolet archways, because life is complicated enough anyway.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Marie’s Story and Nelson’s Return

  Marie Lewis was sound asleep.

  In fact she’d slept for nearly twenty-four hours with her family taking turns sitting with her in case she woke up or cried out in her sleep. Bryn stayed the longest, staring at the mother he’d lost when still a baby, usually with Neets sitting close by. He’d gently tried to wake her a couple of times, but as Marlene assured everyone, sleep was the best medicine for what Marie had been through, which made everyone ask the question, what exactly had she been through.

  “Time is really weird,” explained Marlene choosing her words carefully. We were in Lewis’s study sitting in a semicircle round a roaring log fire. The lights were low and we all had something to drink; tea for most of us and a brandy for Lewis. “It doesn’t just go forwards and backwards, it goes side to side and if you want it to, it just stops. A sort of neutral. I found out about the neutral bit by accident in the Olé Grill one day and have to admit I found it quite spooky. It was I who called it Limbo.”

  “You said Schwartz is trapped there,” said Lewis, “so how come you got out?”

  “Good question. The answer is that I intended to go there and had actually stopped Time from within the Portal while I was traveling with this little device.” She held up what looked like a remote control with very few buttons and one dial. “From Limbo I could see everything that was going on, both from where I’d just left and where I was going, and by really concentrating I could even see events in other Times. The only thing was that I couldn’t go to any of them. I was stuck in Limbo, except of course I had the remote control so all I had to do was press the on button and off I went again. It can be a very lonely place because only one person can be in it at a time.”

  “But what made you think that my Mum wasn’t dead?” asked Bryn. “Her horse stampeded over the cliff and into the sea during a storm. We know that.”

  “No, Bryn, you were told that,” I said. “Nobody I’d met actually saw Marie’s horse bolt, but rumors and hearsay became fact over the years. As a detective I find that if there’s no body then it’s often best to start with the assumption that nobody’s dead!”

  “She’s right, Bryn,” agreed Lewis. “I searched up and down the coast for days hoping to get word of Marie, or at least find her body, but there was no sign of her or her horse and one or the other should have been washed up somewhere along the coast.”

  “Absolutely. Then it occurred to me that if Marie hadn’t died then the only person who would have profited from making you think she had was Schwartz. And if that was the case then he had to keep her in a place she wouldn’t be discovered and couldn’t escape from. That way he’d always have a hold over you.”

  Lewis was beginning to get the hang of the trickier parts of Time Travel. “You’re saying that when you tricked Schwartz into jumping into the Portal you’d already set the controls for Limbo and knew he would be replacing my Marie?”

  “No. Inspector Smollett set the controls and with his authority as a copper had to deliver the warning message to stop you entering. If I’d stood in your way you’d have just barged past me.” Lewis nodded. “Anyway, because the Limbo control had been set from outside the Portal, whoever next used it would be stuck there with a one-way ticket.”

  “And my mum, did you know she’d come out of the Portal when she did?”

  “It was a pretty good bet, Bryn,” said Marlene. “I was fairly certain by now she was being held in Limbo and that Schwartz would replace her. Luckily I was right.”

  “But what if you’d been wrong?” asked Lewis with just a tiny hint of menace.

  “I wasn’t, but if I had been then we’d still have trapped Schwartz,” Marlene pointed out. “But I was right and, Mr. Lewis, you have your wife. Bryn, you have your mother. And, ladies, you have your sister back. So we’re all winners.” The Jones sisters smiled.

  “Especially me,” said Marie Lewis from the doorway. “It’s good to be home.”

  She looked a bit frail, I thought, though for someone who’d lived in Time Limbo for around sixteen years she probably looked pretty good. Nothing that a visit to the local hairdresser wouldn’t put right, if they have such things in 1734. Her closest family ran to Marie, fussing round her and almost carrying her to a chair near the fire.

  “I’m not ill,” she laughed, “I’m just tired. I’ll be right as rain as soon as I’ve had a cup of tea and something to eat. Then I suppose you’ll all want to know how I disappeared and how I kept my sanity.” Her face clouded slightly. “But first some food and something to drink.” She brightened again.

  She wasn’t exactly spoon-fed, but her older sister, otherwise known as the housekeeper Mrs. Blodwyn Jones, brought her a variety of delicious foods in several small dishes. “Not too much in one go, Marie,” she said. “After all, you haven’t eaten for sixteen years and one should never eat too much on an empty stomach.”

  Marie smiled as she ate slowly, watched attentively by her family and friends.

  While Marie ate and got to know her family again, my Inspector Smollett and I returned to the 21st century. Lewis and his redcoat brother-in-law had suggested that Inspector Smollett should take back the treasures Schwartz had stolen from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and discover them, because shipping all the loot back and just dumping it would have been asking for trouble, and trying to put everything back where it came from would have taken years. So they reckoned this was the best solution all round. Let someone else do the donkey work – sorry, Pedro – and let Smollett take the credit.

  Sorting out all Schwartz’s plunder had taken ages and a large pile worth a small country had been set aside for my Inspector. It now lay in a corner by Lewis’s Time Portal and was ready to go with Smollett and me back to the future, so off we went.

  Once back, the Inspector decided to hold a press conference in a cave near Tunbridge Wells where he and I had apparently traced a gang of international art thieves, or at least all their treasure. Unfortunately the thieves had escaped, but the journalists had a field day talking to me, photographing the loot and making Inspector Smollett an instant hero. One journalist even asked whether I was the girl from the top of Nelson’s Column and when I told him I was actually from Camelot and a qualified wizard – well almost – he got very huffy and flounced off. Some people don’t know the truth when they see it and he had no idea how close he came to being turned into a rabbit.

  That evening at a special ceremony Smollett was made a Chief Superintendent, I was made a fuss of and then we both went back to Port Eynon because even my newly promoted Chief Superintendent wanted to hear Marie’s story.

  “I’m not sure what Schwartz intended,” said Marie after she’d finished eating her first meal in years, “but far from trying to kill me, in a way the night I disappeared he actually saved my life. Did he have a first name by the way? If he did I never heard it.”

  “No, Marie,” said Lewis. “He chose the name
Schwartz because it means black and that was the color of his heart. For 16 years I’ve believed he killed you and to me he’ll always be a murderer.”

  The looks on our faces said it all. We were all more than a little dubious about the wrecker’s good side, even though I’d told them pretty much the same thing after reading his journal.

  “Oh, I know it’s difficult to believe,” she said, “but it’s true. I was riding back from visiting friends near Rhossili and decided to return along the headland. A silly thing to do I know, especially as it was obvious a storm was brewing, but I thought I’d get back in plenty of time and I knew the path well enough. I was making good time and had ridden past Mewslade when the wind picked up and the rain started. I suppose I should have dismounted and walked, but I wanted to get home to my husband and baby.” She paused. “Could I have another cup of tea, dear?”

  Blodwyn Jones motioned to Neets who hurried off to the kitchens and returned with a steaming cup. She had no intention of missing any part of Marie’s story.

  “Lovely. You’ve no idea how good a cup of tea tastes after all this time.” She put the cup and saucer down. “I was just going past Paviland when I saw a beacon on the headland and knew it had to belong to the wreckers. Nobody in their right mind would put one there unless they wanted to bring ships onto the rocks.” She touched her husband’s hand. “I decided to find out for myself before telling you, dear, just to make sure. After all it might have been a false alarm. Unfortunately, it wasn’t and I was soon surrounded by Schwartz’s thugs.” She sipped her tea.

  “Just his thugs?” said Lewis. “Wasn’t Schwartz there himself?”

  “Oh he was there, though he kept in the background so I didn’t see him at first. Mind you I was trying to turn and gallop away, but some of the wreckers grabbed my horse’s bridle and were trying to make me dismount. I managed to break away by using my whip, but they blocked the path, forcing me towards the cliff. Then I saw Schwartz.”

  “That would have terrified me,” I said. “Weren’t you scared?”

  “Not at all, dear. You’re Tertia aren’t you?” said Marie with a bright smile. “My sister has told me what an excellent teacher you’ll make and how the children love your stories. Come and sit beside me and I’ll carry on. The exciting bit’s about to start!”

  We all leaned forward.

  “I could see Schwartz standing by the cliff edge near a place I believe he called the Leap of Faith, but it was so dark and stormy I couldn’t really see him clearly, let alone see beyond him. However, it looked as though he was standing in a sort of rainbow archway, except it had only one color and that was a sort of vibrant purple. I saw him fiddling with something and then the wreckers started to shout and fire their guns in the air, scaring my horse and making it bolt straight for Schwartz. I couldn’t control my terrified mare and Schwartz stepped aside at the last moment. It was then that I saw the cliff edge and the incredible drop to the rocks and sea below. I could see the spray and hear the waves crashing far below, but I also knew I couldn’t stop and that I was going to die. Then I was falling through the colored archway and everything went still. I was no longer on the cliff and there were no wreckers. In fact there was nothing.”

  “You’re saying that Schwartz saved your life, mum, by sending you through his Time Portal,” said Bryn.

  “He and his men drove my wife through the Portal like a lamb to the slaughter.” Lewis was incensed. “It was no accident and certainly no act of kindness by Schwartz.”

  Marlene nodded in agreement. “That’s what I thought probably happened, Marie. I couldn’t see how you, an experienced horsewoman, would be careless enough to go near the cliff edge on such a bad night. I also didn’t think Schwartz would have killed you. He’s a nasty piece of work, but he’s not stupid. You would have been found and the trail would have led back to him eventually. Besides, he supposedly loved you. A Time Portal was the obvious answer. I just wasn’t sure at first whether he’d sent you to another time period or whether like me he’d discovered Time Limbo and sent you there.”

  “Well, I had no idea where I was, or how I was going to get out. I just knew I hadn’t been dashed to pieces on the rocks.”

  “What was it like in there?” asked Neets with the sort of curiosity normally associated with me.

  Marie thought for a bit. “For a start I didn’t feel as though I had a body and yet I could see it and could also see my horse, but both were almost ghost-like. It was as though I was thinking things ought to be there and so they were. The other thing was Time. It didn’t really seem to exist although I had a sense of Time passing, but not in months, or years… just as time.”

  “What could you see?” inquired Marlene.

  “That was the strange thing. At first I could see nothing really, just myself and my horse as shapes in a sort of greenish mist. I could see Schwartz looking at me, or rather looking at the Portal archway and laughing. I didn’t want to see him anymore after that, so amazingly he just disappeared. Then I found that if I concentrated I could see anything I wanted, as though I was looking at a moving painting.”

  “Ah, PortalVision!” said Marlene. “A little invention of mine. Sorry, do go on.”

  “I think you can guess what I looked at mostly. I saw my son growing up to became a young man and I watched my husband help the village establish itself. Above all I saw their sorrow and knew I hadn’t been forgotten.”

  I couldn’t help thinking that if ever there was a time for a group hug this was it, but Port Eynon people are obviously made of sterner stuff, which is probably why they just smiled at each other. Time for a group smile then.

  “The only way I could guess how many years had passed was by watching my Bryn grow up,” Marie continued, “but I think I’d have gone mad if I’d only watched my family, and soon found that if I concentrated I could look into pretty well anywhere in Time I wanted.”

  “PortalVision again,” Marlene said proudly. “I really must get round to taking out the patent.”

  “I saw some amazing things, but of course I could do nothing to help events, or warn people of impending danger. I saw what looked like a castle with lots of knights.”

  “Camelot. I was there,” said Neets holding up a hand. Bryn was holding onto the other one.

  “I know, dear. I saw you. In fact at one time or another most of you seem to have been there.”

  “I wasn’t there,” muttered the newly promoted Chief Superintendent Smollett.

  “You wouldn’t have liked it, my friend,” said Lewis. “Very muddy.” He turned to his wife. “There’s one thing I’m not sure about, Marie, I still remember you exactly as you were the day you disappeared. I’ll never forget how you looked. And yet you now seem about five years older than you did then. No years older I could understand, or even sixteen years, but five seems strange.”

  “Perhaps I can answer that,” said Marlene. “The Time Portal is a very weird device and it affects people in different ways. An old friend of mine called Lancelot, for instance, went through a Portal and changed from being a gaga old man to a young knight with long wavy hair. You, Marie, only aged the number of years you thought you were in Limbo, or thereabouts. You, Mr. Lewis, have aged far less than the sixteen years you should have, although you probably haven’t noticed. You’ve been through the Portal so many times it’s kept you young, which doesn’t happen to many people.”

  “Bottle it and sell it,” I said and meant it.

  “I wish I could, dear. The fantastic thing is that you both don’t only look years younger than you really are, but you’ll also live that much longer, just like Lancelot.”

  “Are you saying we haven’t lost sixteen years of being together?” said Lewis in surprise. “More like four or five years and the rest will be added on?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “But what about Schwartz?” asked Bryn. “Won’t the same thing that happened to mum be happening to him, and won’t he be looking for a way out?”<
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  “Put yourself in his shoes,” said the wizard. “Unlike Marie, he has no one to love and no one to love him. All he’ll be able to do will be to watch other people and he won’t be able to influence them or get involved in any way. For him that’ll be the greatest punishment of all and I rather think the years will literally drag by. The one thing he could lose will be his sanity. As to him getting free, only the few of us in this room know about Time Limbo and the fact that to get him out someone else would have to take his place.”

  “I almost feel sorry for him,” said Neets. Although after what Schwartz did to our families as the Black Knight I suspected the key word was almost.

  “Then there’s the fact that someone here was working for Schwartz.” Marlene paused. “That’s true isn’t it, David?”

  The kitchen boy spun round as though he’d been hit, but regained his composure almost immediately and the stupid grin creased his face once more. “I’m sorry I’m a bit slow and silly, Miss. I didn’t understand everything you said.” His strong country Welsh accent made him sound so innocent. “Shall I go and make some more tea and sandwiches?”

  I could see Marie was about to say how nice that would be, but Marlene raised her hand. “No, that won’t be necessary, David. I also think you’re a lot cleverer than you make out. What is your last name? Does anyone here know?” There were lots of shrugs and head shakes. “That’s what I thought, though I’d hazard a guess your full name is David Schwartz and that you’re the wrecker’s son.”

  David stared at Marlene and looked as though he was going to deny everything with a flood of indignant words. Then his face changed and dull friendliness became a look of determination.

  “Like father, like son?” said Marlene.

  David backed towards the door, hitting Bryn as he did so and grabbing Neets round the neck. “If anyone tries to stop me I’ll hurt her.” The words were tough, but I could hear a tremor in his voice.