Anachronist

by Andrew Hastie

  His local library was equally as old. A wealthy merchant’s name was elegantly carved into the stone arch above the door — in case anyone ever forgot who forked out the cash to build it. If there was one thing Josh knew about the Victorians, it was that they were not shy about naming things after themselves.

  He sat down in front of the PC and keyed in the code the librarian had given him; she had wanted to charge him a pound for an hour, but he had managed to charm his way around that. He had a way with women, especially older ones who apparently spent a lot of time talking to their cats and who obviously knitted their own jumpers. He wasn’t a bad-looking bloke or so he had been told, and he was never shy about pushing his luck.

  He began with a search, which thanks to Google’s correction of his dyslexic spelling, served up over half a million results for ‘Assassination’ and ‘Hitler’.

  Scanning down the page he picked a site that he recognised; it was a Wikipedia article about the ‘20th July plot’. The screen refreshed to display a long and wordy article. He scrolled down until he found an image of a blasted meeting room and clicked on it. The picture enlarged to show what was left of a room with most of the ceiling hanging down and a group of German officers in leather coats standing on the shattered debris. There was a footnote that described how there hadn’t been enough dynamite in the briefcase to kill Hitler outright. General Stauffenberg had gone to the washroom to prepare the bomb and then placed it under the conference table next to Hitler.

  Josh went cold. Eddy had been telling the truth.

  The computer made a strange clunking noise, and the screen went black. The librarian behind the desk swore out loud and began hitting random keys on her keyboard and muttering something about ‘useless technology’. Josh turned to look around at the rows of books and decided that maybe they were a better option after all.

  The boy was wandering along the aisles like a lost child when she saw him. Caitlin was busy pretending to reorganise the military history section: the second most popular subject in the library, beaten only by romance novels, which, considering that her typical customers were mildly inebriated ex-service men of no fixed abode, was slightly disturbing.

  The library was not frequently visited by good-looking young men. Miriam on the front desk had tipped her off as though it were going to be the high point of an otherwise dreary day. She and Miriam had an unspoken affinity for games and practical jokes to help the hours pass quickly.

  He wore the universal look of someone who needed assistance, and she was only too happy to oblige.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked as he scanned the spines of a row of books.

  Josh took a moment to check her out. He’d not been expecting to meet anyone under the age of forty and especially not such a pretty girl. She couldn’t have been that much older than him and although she wasn’t his type, she had all the usual trademarks of a goth: piercings, eyeliner, tattoos and a band T-shirt — he was finding it difficult not to smile.

  ‘Yes,’ he managed to croak. His voice tended to fail him when he was nervous. Not that he ever usually got shy around girls. He cleared his throat to make his voice deeper. ‘I’m looking for a book on the War.’

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place!’ she replied chirpily. ‘Which one?’

  ‘Which book? I was hoping you could tell me,’ he replied with a cheeky glint in his eye.

  She laughed, and it was a clear, pure sound that made her eyes light up. ‘No, dummy, which war: First, Second, Boer, Gulf?’

  ‘Didn’t realise there were so many,’ he admitted as he scratched his two-day-old beard and wished he had remembered to shave.

  She gave him a stern look; he could tell she liked a bit of banter.

  ‘Second — anything about Hitler’s assassination on July 20th, 1944,’ he added.

  She nodded and walked off along the stacks. He couldn’t help but admire the way her arse swayed under her skirt as she glided down the aisle, and he only just managed to look away before she caught him. She’d stopped at a sign that clearly read World War II, and pulled a rather large book from the shelf.

  ‘So what exactly do you want to know about the July 20th attempt?’ she asked, flicking through the book.

  They sat down at a reading desk. She was so close that he kept catching the scent of her hair. It smelt of flowers and something more exotic. On her wrist she had a small tattoo; it looked like a snake eating its tail.

  ‘I’m looking for an officer, Stauffenberg,’ Josh said, trying not to stare at her breasts.

  ‘General Stauffenberg,’ she corrected, turning the book towards him to show a full-page photograph of the officer. Stauffenberg looked different in the picture, younger, and he didn’t have the eye patch or the gloved hand. There was an air of nobility about him, and a sense of hope in his eyes. Seeing the picture of him sent a chill through Josh’s spine, as if having it in print made it more real, but he still couldn’t believe he’d actually met him. There was no way he could have changed history . . . There was no such thing as time travel.

  ‘What happened to him?’ Josh asked, realising she was waiting for some kind of reaction.

  ‘Oh, he was shot for trying to kill the Führer, along with a hundred and eighty other conspirators,’ she replied, scanning the text on the opposite page. ‘He would have been a hero if there had been more explosives in the case.’

  ‘It wasn’t his fault. He only had one good hand, he couldn’t hold it properly.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, her eyes narrowing. ‘I didn’t realise you were an expert.’

  Josh knew he might have said too much. She was looking at him differently. He needed to think of something fast, or he would have a load of explaining to do.

  ‘Yeah, you know. In the movie, he was injured, wasn’t he?’

  She was staring directly at him. ‘The film, of course. What’s so important about him anyway?’

  ‘My grandad left me a medal and it’s got his name on it,’ he said, tapping on the picture of Stauffenberg.

  ‘You mean your great-grandfather?’ she said with air quotes. ‘Wouldn’t your grandfather have had to be a hundred and twenty to have fought in the Second World War?’

  Josh didn’t usually screw up so badly. There was something about her that was putting him off his game.

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t in the war. He was a detectorist. You know metal detectors?’ Josh mimed someone sweeping the floor and listening to imaginary headphones. ‘Every Sunday he’d be out in some field or other. Even went on holiday to France just to scope the battlefields.’

  ‘So he just happened to find a medal that was awarded to the German general who tried to kill Hitler?’ She was obviously not convinced.

  ‘No. Swapped it for something — a rare Roman coin I think.’

  The trouble with a lie was that it had a tendency to take on a life of its own; once you started it was very hard to stop. He would have to stay on his guard — she was very sharp.

  ‘So do you think the war would have ended that day if he had succeeded?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe. Doesn’t matter now, though, does it? The past is the past. You can’t change it.’

  She unconsciously stroked an old pendant she wore round her neck. It looked like a dragon. ‘Twentieth century isn’t really my cup of tea.’ There was a tinge of sadness in her voice.

  ‘So what is?’ he asked, relieved to move away from the subject of the medal.

  ‘Ancient history. The library of Alexandria — the greatest centre of learning the ancient world had ever seen. I’m studying it at Uni.’ There was a light in her eyes as she spoke. He liked the way her whole face glowed when she talked about something she was interested in.

  ‘I’m currently writing a dissertation on Sun Tzu, the Chinese general that wrote the Art of War.’

  There had been girls like her at school: smart, geeky girls, who didn’t bother too much with the way they looked and tended to prefer books to boys. He hadn’t paid too much atte
ntion to them; they were too hard to get to first base with and generally made him feel stupid. This one, however, was unusual to the point of making him forget what he was supposed to be doing.

  ‘So, Caitlin . . .’ he said, spending too much time looking at her name badge, and it was obvious he was more interested in what was rising and falling beneath, ‘do you have anything on ... medals?’

  ‘Do you want to see them?’ she asked as he continued to stare.

  ‘What?’ he coughed, trying not to blush.

  ‘The band. They’re playing tonight in Highgate. They’re kind of a fusion of indie and hiphop.’ She pointed straight at her breasts. The word INFINITUM was emblazoned across her T-shirt in an old-fashioned script that wound through the gears of a clockwork device.

  ‘Yeah, maybe,’ he said, trying not to sound too keen.

  ‘As for the medals. That’s known as numismatics — you’ll want the coin and medal collectors directory.’ She pulled down a thick book from the top shelf and leafed through the pages, turning it towards him and pointing to a section entitled ‘Coin & Medal Dealers — W.W.2’.

  ‘I’m assuming you want to sell it,’ she sighed as she handed him the book. ‘I’ll be in The Flask from 8 o’ clock,’ she added as she walked off.

  Josh took Caitlin’s advice and used the public phone in the library to call a couple of the local dealers. He could tell from their questions that the medal was worth a lot more than Eddy had quoted. Apparently, a similar one had gone for nearly £200,000 a few years ago.

  He dropped the calls each time they started asking awkward questions about how he had come to own it — that was going to be a difficult thing to explain unless he could invent a better story than his granddad’s fictitious metal detector.

  He lost track of the next hour looking at the grainy black-and-white photos of World War II. There was something unreal about the haunted faces of the men that stared back at him. They were like deleted scenes from a movie, one that he had never seen. He was beginning to wonder if he had imagined the version in which Hitler had died in 1944.

  When he looked up, it was nearly 1pm. Lenin’s deadline and his mother’s lunch fought for priority as he ran for the exit.

  ‘No running!’ the cat lady screamed as Josh cleared the non-fiction section and vaulted over the ‘newly arrived’ display. He was out of the door before she could say another word.

  8

  Hospital

  The front door of their flat was ajar when he got home. The wood had splintered around the locks from the force of someone kicking it very hard.

  ‘Mum?’ he called as he shoved through the door, and then again louder when there was no response: ‘MUM!’

  He listened intently, holding his breath. There was no answer. Various scenarios ran through his mind as he ran down the hall: she had been taken ill and the paramedics had to break in, or there had been a gas leak and the firemen had rescued her — but the gas had been cut off weeks ago . . .

  When he saw the state of the living room, it all started to make sense. Like a CSI crime scene, each step he took uncovered more signs of mindless destruction: the breaking of a mirror, the scattered pieces of a cheap vase of silk flowers, a photograph of his gran ripped out of its frame. Small things of sentimental value that gave him all the clues he needed. Lenin had been to collect and had brought some of the Ghost Squad along with him. Mum must have tried to bar the door, but they had kicked it in and then swept the flat for anything of value.

  He searched the other rooms, but it was much the same. The television was gone, and so was his mother.

  On the mirror above the gas fire they could never afford to put on was message scribbled in thick black marker. He recognised Lenin’s handwriting.

  DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID!

  Which was exactly what Josh wanted to do. Very badly.

  He clenched his fists, angry with himself for spending so long at the library. He couldn’t think of anything other than what Lenin had done to his mum, how scared she would have been when they broke the door down and went through her things. How he should have been there to protect her.

  He lashed out, kicking the coffee table over — where the hell was she now?

  Mrs B will know.

  Heart hammering, he sprinted across the hall and pounded on Mrs B’s door.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said as soon as she had managed to undo all of the various locks on her front door. ‘There was a terrible commotion earlier, and then the ambulance came. They’ve taken her to Bart’s.’ She had that concerned look of someone who actually cared.

  ‘Bart’s? Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, one of the nice young men said to tell the next of kin.

  ‘Thanks, Mrs B.’ He turned to leave and then thought of something else. ‘Will you look after something for me?’

  ‘Of course, dear.’

  He handed her the medal still wrapped in newspaper.

  ‘It’s all we have left, and I think your place is safer than ours.’ He nodded to the door opposite and the footprint-sized hole in the middle of it.

  ‘Ooh. Is it precious?’ she asked, starting to unwrap it.

  He placed his hand over hers. ‘It’s just one of Great-grandad’s old medals.’

  She looked a little disappointed and put it into one of the pockets of her apron.

  A thought flew into his mind. ‘Mrs B, do you remember much about the war?’ he asked.

  ‘Cheeky boy, I’m not that old. I was only twelve when it broke out.’ She smiled, remembering something. ‘It was a very exciting time for a child.’

  ‘So you remember the day it ended?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, her eyes glazing over, ‘VE Day. Eighth of May, 1945. We had so much fun that afternoon. The whole street came out for the party. It was the best day of all. That was the first time I met my Sydney. God rest his soul.’ Her eyes were full of tears, and Josh wished he had time to hang around for one of her stories.

  ‘OK, thanks. I’ll give Mum your best.’

  ‘You do that, love,’ she replied, squeezing his hand.

  St Bartholomew’s, or ‘Bart’s’ as it was more affectionately known, was one of the oldest hospitals in Britain. Based in the heart of London, its gothic architecture made it feel more like an asylum than a place for healing the sick. Josh hated all hospitals; the smell of sickness, and the chemicals they used for cleaning, always reminded him of death.

  It reminded him of Gossy.

  He’d gone in to visit his friend after the crash. The surgeons and their machines had managed to keep him alive for little more than a week. Josh had sneaked in to see him when his parents had stepped out. Gossy was lying in the bed with tubes and wires attached to various parts of his body, but it still looked like him, if a little beaten up. His head was wrapped in bandages, but his face was unscathed. The machines beeped and pinged while the respirator next to the bed breathed for him, and Josh sat there, trying hard to think of something to say. When he moved closer to the bed, the monitors registered a slight change in Gossy’s heart rate.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to his friend.

  For a second Gossy had opened his eyes, the bright blue irises staring right into his. He would never forget that look, the way his pupils were nothing more than tiny black dots. It was a haunting, vacant look of seeing but not seeing — and he knew his friend had gone.

  Josh had been so scared he’d run out of the ward.

  Gossy died two days later.

  Josh made his way along the corridors full of people looking dazed and confused. Hospitals were strange places; they were so massive, so imposing that you felt immediately lost the moment you stepped inside one. They were places of beginnings and endings, but for Josh they were where you learned some awful truth about one of your own.

  Instinctively, he found his way through the maze of corridors to his mother’s neuro ward and there he paused at the door. There was always a moment, just before he saw her, w
hen he would convince himself it wouldn’t be too bad this time, that she had just had a mild relapse. Her MS had been slowly worsening, and the doctors had started making noises about something called ‘secondary progressive’, which was another way of saying she was never going to get any better.

  She was asleep when he walked in to the ward, her arms and hands drawn up onto her chest where the muscles were locked in spasm. An IV drip ran into her thin arm. He inspected the label — intravenous steroids — they would be trying to help her body back from the edge. The skin was pale and waxy: a sure sign she had suffered terribly. He knew the signs so well now, probably better than most of the doctors. There were no visible cuts or bruises, so he had to assume that Lenin hadn’t harmed her in any physical way. He wouldn’t have — he wouldn’t dare.

  A nurse walked over to check the monitor on the other side of the bed. She smiled at him in that way that said, ‘Sorry about your mum,’ and then wrote on her chart.

  When she spoke, he could hear the trace of an Eastern European accent.

  ‘Your mother will be sleeping for most of the day. I would come back later. We will look after her.’

  He checked the time on the clock at the nurse’s station. It was 1.40pm and visiting finished in twenty minutes.

  ‘I’ll stay if that’s OK?’

  ‘Sure. You’re a good boy,’ she said sincerely, and then walked over to help another patient.

  No, I’m not, Josh thought. I’m the one who got her into this.

  If he had gone straight round to Lenin this morning, it would all be different. That bloody medal — all he had to do was give it to Lenin, and this would never have happened. It was Eddy’s fault for telling him what it might be worth — that kind of money changes lives.

  He had seen a way out, a chance to get a better life for the two of them. Now he would have to sort Lenin — he had gone too far this time.