The Last Letter

by Kirsten McKenzie

  Sarah walked past him, her familiarity with the space the reason she could walk with such confidence. She flicked the ancient Bakelite switch, and yellow light flooded the basement of The Old Curiosity Shop. Shelves lined the walls, bowing under the weight of old crates, filled to the brim with old stock, spare convex glass for oval frames, crystals for lustre vases and coils of chain for chandeliers.

  She steeled herself for Brooke’s reaction, gazing at the floor rather than the bewildered major in the middle of the room.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Brooke spun round, his hand reaching uselessly for his rifle, which he’d laid to one side once they’d entered the warehouse, never for a moment thinking he’d need it.

  ‘As I said, not an earthquake. Now, before you completely freak out, which I’m already doing enough for both of us, can I suggest you take a deep breath and just come upstairs with me. We’ll have a cup of tea, and I’ll explain.’

  For a man so abnormally in control of his emotions, Brooke’s eyes were wild. ‘What is this magic?’

  ‘Please, just come upstairs, and I’ll explain everything. It’s not witchcraft or magic, it’s just, well to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what it is, but can you come up? Please?’ Giving him no time to answer, she turned and walked up the stairs, hoping he’d follow.

  Brooke made his way slowly behind, warily eyeing the naked electric bulb, each footfall hesitantly taken. Stepping into the shop, he froze. The scant light from the fluorescent tube in the shop window disguised most of the shop with draped shadows, hinting at unfamiliar forms, reinforcing the nightmare he’d just entered.

  Another wash of light fell down the stairs as Sarah tugged on the pull cord at the top. Brooke looked up, shielding his eyes from the unnatural sunlight above. Still protecting his eyes, he followed Sarah upstairs.

  Emerging into the shabby lounge, his hand protectively covering his eyes, he walked straight into Sarah’s frozen form.

  Oomph

  Reaching out, Brooke stopped her from falling.

  ‘Oh,’ her only response, her voice breaking with that one word.

  Forgetting himself, forgetting the implausible situation he found himself in, his first instinct was to worry – to worry about Sarah, the state she was suddenly in.

  ‘What’s wrong,’ he asked.

  ‘Someone’s been here,’ Sarah cast her arm around the room.

  Brooke looked around the room, taking in the tiny pieces of Sarah’s life. It looked untidy, but hardly messy. An old clock adorned the papered wall, books haphazardly filled the bookcase. Books the colours of parrots, every cover a rainbow. The furniture was neither here nor there, more fabric and filling than he was used to, but still identifiable as furniture. Apart from everything being so colourful, he could have been in any time.

  ‘How can you tell?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s not how I left it,’ and she pointed to the bottom of the bookcase, ‘There, see the atlas? It’s the wrong way round, spine facing in instead of out. She walked through to the tiny kitchen, subconsciously moving rolls of cling film and foil back into their respective places in an open drawer, before backing out, and making her way to her bedroom. Scanning the room, she saw signs everywhere that someone had had a good rummage through her things. Her eyes flicked to her bedside table; the pile of books waiting to be read was still there, but something was missing. Sarah racked her brain, before her heart sank – Isaac’s gold nugget and his letter. Walking dumbly to the bedside, she placed her hand on the void where the letter had lain, ‘Oh Isaac, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Who is Isaac?’

  Brooke had followed her, his discomfort growing. Loitering in a young lady’s bedroom was not something he was entirely comfortable with.

  Turning to reply, she finally remembered the situation they were now in.

  ‘Isaac was a friend from long ago. I had a letter for his mother which I was meant to send on to his family, but it’s gone. Someone has taken it,’ Sarah replied.

  Brooke was really none the wiser, but the whole day wasn’t panning out as he’d imagined, so he thought it best to take one thing at a time.

  ‘You promised me a cup of tea,’ he eventually replied.

  ‘Oh, yes of course,’ Sarah replied, but didn’t move. ‘Do you think I could just get changed before I do that?’

  Confusion fled across Brooke’s face, but ever the gentleman he left the room, pulling the door behind him. He briefly considered making tea for the two of them, but after surveying the kitchen for any sign of tea-making facilities, he’d given up, and had taken refuge on the couch. Finding a newspaper, the most recognisable thing in the place, he settled in to read the September 2015 issue of the Antique Trades Gazette. He tried hard to ignore the date, to focus instead on the feature article detailing the new offices Sotheby’s would be opening in Mumbai, India. His mind drifted back to India trying to recall a place called Mumbai, but its name escaped him. His breath escaped him also when Sarah emerged from her room, jeans clinging to her legs, an olive hued T-shirt tight across her chest, and her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her clothing was as surprising as the ease with which she wore it.

  She looked nervously at Brooke, fully aware that an English woman wearing trousers was about as far away from the norm as her cellphone was from the Morse code machines used by the postal services in his time.

  Ever the poker face, he merely asked again for a tea, and retreated to the comparative safety of his newspaper. As Sarah disappeared into the kitchen, he hazarded a glance at her buttocks, hugged by the denim of her jeans. Just as I imagined.

  ‘There’s no milk, but I’ve plenty of sugar if you need some,’ Sarah called out.

  ‘Sugar’s fine,’ Brooke replied, flushing at the possibility she caught him admiring her shape.

  With mugs of tea in her hands, she moved with the confidence of a woman comfortable in her own space. She’d grown, filling the space around her. Gone was the hesitant Miss Williams, her cautious approach to the world her overriding persona. In its place, a woman who carried herself well, who strode with confidence. Even her voice seemed to have grown in stature.

  Sarah sipped her tea, grimacing at the lack of milk, but it at least gave her something to occupy her hands as she considered what she was going to do now.

  Brooke made it easy for her, by starting their necessary conversation, ‘Miss Williams, this is indeed a peculiar method of arranging a moment alone with me. We could have gone to a play, or the opera, or even a walk. Yet here I find myself, what, I can’t even bring myself to say it, but this newspaper says that it is true. That I am in the future?’

  Sarah nodded. How on earth do you explain to someone that you’ve skipped them forward a hundred and fifty-odd years?

  ‘Then I think you’ve some explaining to do, Miss Williams.’

  ‘It’s Lester, Sarah Lester. Sorry. There was actually a Sarah Williams, Simeon’s sister, just to make things confusing, but I’m not her ...’

  ‘Lester? As in Albert Lester? You’re his wife?’

  Sarah spat out her tea, convulsing in laughter, ‘Sorry, no. He’s my father. Jesus, married to him! That’d make him laugh,’ she continued laughing into her mug, shaking her head at the absurdity of his question.

  Brooke pondered her answer, ‘That explains his peculiar obsession with you, and those around you. But ... does that mean that he’s come from the future too? But he’s been advising the Viceroy for several years.’ Then the penny dropped, and fear washed over him, ‘What of the future, what happens? Both of you alluded to trouble in India, what do you know? What’s in your history books that I’m yet to live through?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure that I should tell you. Probably we should try and figure out a way for you to get home, before I do any further damage,’ she said.

  ‘And what of your friend, Miss Bolton? Are you to tell me that she is from this time? Her odd manner and exuberant excitement would indicate it was so ...’

  ‘Trish! Oh my
God, I completely forgot about her,’ Sarah’s eyes widened as she considered the fate of her friend. This was turning into a complete disaster.

  ‘This place, it is yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And downstairs, a shop? Also yours?’

  ‘Yes, a shop, The Old Curiosity Shop, an antique shop. It was my father’s – Albert’s – but when he disappeared, I took over. Jesus, everything’s a disaster, the shop, Trish, you being here ...’

  ‘Come now, me being here isn’t entirely a disaster is it?’ Brooke placed his mug on the table, stood up and stretched. Standing there, looking down at Sarah, he felt an overwhelming sense of calmness descend. He’d been in worse situations than this, none so odd, but certainly worse. His life wasn’t at risk, no one was firing at him, nor was he being pressed to send his men into battle. For the first time since he was a child, he could just be.

  ‘May I suggest something a dash stronger than tea, and then you can fill in the gaps for me?’ Brooke said.

  ‘We should be trying to work out a way to get you home,’ Sarah’s face crinkled with worry.

  ‘Miss Lester ... Sarah, it could be I’m here for good. Wouldn’t it be best if I were prepared? You had the luxury of knowing the environment you entered – I should receive the same benefit, yes? But in the meantime, a whisky would help immeasurably ...’

  THE TRADER

  With Robert en route to India, in a first-class cabin on the uppermost deck, Samer traveled north. Apart from his business interests, the intermingling of faiths intrigued him. He envied his friend his travel, and not for the first time, chastised himself for not travelling with him. Travel was the world’s greatest broadener of the mind. There was still time. He’d conclude his business here, then find a berth on the next vessel heading to India. From there ... well, perhaps it was time to go home. His parents were elderly. They wanted him married. The family line must be assured.

  Liverpool greeted him damply, and without enthusiasm. If he’d had have described the city in a letter home, he would have described it as ‘dark’. Dark streets, dark stone, dark faces. There was none of the pearlescent marble he associated with Italy, or the refined palate which was daily Parisian life; nor was it the mass of humanity which London served up, where every person was cut from a different cloth.

  Checking into the Midland Adelphi, Samer left his luggage with the porter, and strode off to find Brougham Terrace, the site of the first mosque in England.

  The path outside 8-10 Brougham Terrace was thronged with people, a sea of black outside of a building which seemed to glow an ethereal white against the bleak backdrop which formed the rest of the street. Three dark doors contrasted with the pallor of the white stone building.

  Standing on the edges of the crowd, he asked an Englishman what the fuss was about.

  ‘He’s opening an orphanage here. For a Mussulman, he’s doing some good things for this city. Those poor sprites have no chance on the street, so it’s good someone’ll look after them,’ he explained, before turning back to his own companion to carry on their discussion about Lancashire’s monumental cricket score against Gloucestershire.

  Samer tried to peer through the crowd. He was impatient to see the mosque, to feel a connection with home, to be among like-minded men. To escape from his perpetual pursuit of profit.

  England’s watery sun split through the clouds, showering the mosque with a rare burst of light, which lit up the white building, as if the hand of Allah Himself had blessed the building. And Samer felt in himself a peace; a knowing that he was meant to be here, in Liverpool, for this very moment.

  If only Robert had been filled with such peace, for his time in India was the complete opposite of what Samer was experiencing.

  The voyage from England was uneventful, the company on board as diverse as always, a smattering of officers, wives, beautiful young women like his daughter, being sent abroad for betrothal and procreation – a hotchpotch of minor titles and complex history. A handful of religious missionaries, and returning Indian royalty, aghast at the dreadful weather they’d experienced in Britain, anxious to return to their sprawling homes where shadows danced behind screens scented with jasmine, and food came in a thousand different flavours.

  The passage through the Suez Canal had been tranquil. He much preferred this route instead of the cheaper one through the Arabian Gulf, which was still fraught with danger, regardless of what his business partner thought.

  Landing ashore in Bombay, he stretched his rubbery sea legs. The caterwauling of the port assailed his ears. His sense of smell was bombarded by a thousand different scents – sandalwood and saffron, cardamom and cloves. Unwashed men and the world’s detritus lapping at the Bombay docks, all combined into one pervasive odour, one peculiar to ports everywhere.

  ‘Mr Williams?’ asked a dark native man, dressed in a stark white dhoti. How the Indian people kept so clean in this teeming mess of humanity was a perpetual mystery to Robert, whose trousers were already smeared with dust from a passing cart, and his starched collar sweat-stained.

  ‘Yes,’ Robert replied.

  ‘I am sent to take you to your accommodation,’ the man replied, in his idiomatic speech common to those educated under British rule, but raised by families who were not.

  Robert settled into his carriage, his handkerchief held to his nose, in a vain attempt to obstruct the smell. It was a pointless exercise, and as they got under way he lowered it, his eyes drinking in the kaleidoscope of colour Bombay excelled in delivering. Such a contrast to the stark black and white of Samer’s Liverpool.

  ‘Where do you take me?’ Robert asked, increasingly aware they were not going in the direction of the Great Western Hotel, his preferred accommodation in the city.

  The driver ignored him, intent on the road, or on purpose, Robert couldn’t tell. He settled back into the black leather seat, fiddling with his signet ring, the black onyx matching his mood. He called out to the driver a second time, but the driver did nothing more than spur the horse faster, causing innocent bystanders to leap from the path of the carriage.

  Around them, other carriages crowded the road, jostling for space with rickshaws pulled by men who looked too malnourished for such labour, yet they kept pace with his larger carriage pulled by a horse better cared for than these disposable servants of the Empire.

  ‘We arrive,’ the driver announced, swinging down from his perch, opening the door with one hand, simultaneously unbuckling the luggage from the rear of the carriage.

  Warily, Robert alighted. Nothing in this street was familiar. Noticeably he was the only European on a street laced with ribbons of red. The street was strung with red lanterns, so quintessentially oriental, one could only be in a Chinese enclave.

  Grabbing the loose dhoti of his driver, he questioned him, ‘Where have you brought me? This is not my hotel. You will take me to my hotel.’

  The little man struggled out of Robert’s grasp, leaping back onto the carriage.

  ‘Madame Ye waits for you inside. You come to see her. She will explain,’ he sang out, whipping the horse into speed, scattering the silent Chinese men loitering in the street outside the home of the oriental woman.

  THE INVALID

  Price reported in at the station, asking, as always, if there’d been any sightings of Sinclair, although, today his heart wasn’t in it. There were other more pressing matters on his mind.

  Sergeant Jock Crave was manning the front desk, his ever-present pipe barely a hindrance to his daily tasks. Legend had it that Crave had subdued and arrested someone once, with his pipe still firmly clamped between his lips. It didn’t even go out.

  ‘No sightings, Price – ain’t likely to be any now,’ he prophesied, before adding, ‘There’s a letter here for you, though’.

  Price took the letter from Jock, before walking through to the back room where the daily tasks were set. Standing by the doorway reading it, he noticed Greene sitting on the far side of the room. The lad’s shoulders
were square, and his chin held high. A different sort of light shone in his eyes.

  ‘Morning, Greene,’ Price said, ‘Something’s different about you today. Can’t pin it down.’

  Greene’s face lit up like a firework, ‘It’s Una, sir.’

  ‘Una?’

  ‘Una Neville, the girl from the boat. You know – the one we saved.’

  ‘Oh yes, Miss Neville. How is she doing?’ Price had all but forgotten the young woman they’d dragged from the chilly waters of the harbour. That seemed like a lifetime ago, his mind on the contents of the letter in his hand.

  ‘Miss Neville wanted to thank me for saving her ...’

  ‘That’s good,’ Price interrupted.

  ‘But that’s not all she wanted. She’s asked if we could meet for a cup of tea, so she can thank me in person. This weekend. She was coming out here to join her aunt and uncle, so her aunt would be with her. I can’t believe it.’

  Price smiled at the younger man, ‘I’m pleased for you. See what happens when you save someone’s life.’

  ‘What’s in the letter?’ Greene changed topics as fast as the seasons changed in this new country.

  Price looked at the paper in his hand. Unknowingly he’d folded it over and over, until it was as small as a calling card. ‘Oh, orders. Seems I’m no longer required in Bruce Bay. As I told young Colin, there’s no gold left in those hills. Most of the miners are making their way north, wreaking havoc as they go, like a plague of locusts. I’m being reassigned to the Bay of Plenty. There is plenty of trouble there, which needs to be quelled. Heaven knows what is going on. Living with the Maori need not end in bloodshed, but sounds like that’s what I’m wading into.’

  Greene’s good mood was evaporating with the knowledge his unofficial mentor would be leaving him.

  ‘But what about Sinclair, and your friend Sarah?’

  ‘We have to face the truth that Sinclair has gone. Where? I know not. Whether Sarah is still alive is unclear – I’ve come to believe she’s not. Sinclair would not drag a woman around with him this long. She’d just be a hindrance.’ Sadness flashed across Price’s face. He felt a certainty as to the fear he’d just voiced, and realised that the thought had been at the back of his mind the whole time he was chasing Sinclair down country. Sarah would most surely have been a liability to Sinclair. She was not the sort of woman to go quietly; to remain quiet. She was strong and strident, so like Annabel that, despite Annabel’s protestations, they were most certainly cut from the same cloth.