What about us? (18 page)

The storm diminished and as
always, the heat began to lose its intensity.  A cool breeze came in the open windows,
touching us gently and freshening everything up as it passed through.  The light
began to fade, but I knew we wouldn’t be going out to dinner anytime soon, if
ever.

After a long while he turned to
face me.  He gently took the empty cup from my hand and put it on the floor,
then held my hands and looked at me carefully as he spoke.

“Your memories... exactly how
important are they to you?”

“They are only important
because they tell me that my life with you was real.” I told him honestly.

He nodded.  “I understand that,
really I do.  I feel exactly the same about mine.  But, and think carefully
Grace, is there anything you’d give them up for?”

I thought for a moment,
choosing my words carefully.

“I’d give up this life I’ve had
with you only and I mean
only
if there was a chance to have another.”

“But what if that other life
had none of those adventures in it, what if it was a mundane, ordinary life?”

He spoke slowly, but his gaze
never wavered.

I smiled.  “Oh Jack, didn’t you
hear a thing I said earlier? Weren’t you listening to me at all?”

He looked confused, so I went
on, trying to find the right words.

“This
me
had all those
adventures with this
you
, or the you that you were, anyway.  Like you
say, sometimes something remains somewhere.  But this life of ours caused you
to suffer for a hundred and forty something years.  That’s not right, the price
is too high.  If you’d known that at the beginning, you might have made a
different choice.”

“I might have Grace, but do you
trust me enough to put it to the test? If there was a way that a second chance
could be had, do you trust me enough not to waste it?”

Now there was a question and a
half.  I stared for a long time into those watery blue eyes.  There was
something bright burning there, something deep inside him had come back to life. 
I saw hope, but in my own mind there were other questions that needed answering. 
In the time that he’d been without me he’d changed, of course he had.  But had
he become the kind of man who would have preferred not to suffer from acute
loneliness for all those years? And if so, didn’t he have the right to try to
avoid it a second time round, if indeed a second chance was possible? Wouldn’t
I want that for him, isn’t that what love is supposed to be about?

My mind was in turmoil; there
were so many things to think about.  The first were all about him.  But then I
thought, what about me? And what about us? My happiness was something that he’d
always tried to put first.  Even all this nonsense today had been his way of
trying to do the right thing.  He’d been wrong of course, but that didn’t
change the fact that he’d tried.  That told me something and I realised that it
was only about trust, plain and simple.  I trusted him more than I’d ever
trusted anyone in my whole life, but it was more than that though.  It was such
a huge responsibility for him; he knew that if he was wrong, I had the most to
lose.  In fact, I would lose everything.

I remembered the first time I
took his hand and stepped into the unknown.  I’d never had any regrets and I
also knew that I would do it again.  Whatever had to be done next... well, the
decision had already been made.  I trusted him then and I trusted him still.  The
risk was high, but the prize was worth having.  It was easy really, when you
came right down to it.

I smiled again.  “I do.” I
said, with breathless anticipation.

“Then we need to write a letter. 
It will have to be in my language, but you will probably have a better idea of
the words that we should use.  Let me explain my plan...”

He stretched as he spoke and I
listened carefully to what was being proposed.  After all, a lot was at stake
for both of us.  But once he’d finished explaining, I agreed that it was the
only thing we could do.

Part two: Jack

Friday 5
^th
May 2000

I’d been in the cafe for more
than half an hour and my initial curiosity was turning to frustration.  My tea
had gone cold and the waitress was eyeing me in a bored way.  I pulled the note
out of my pocket for the hundredth time to double-check the instructions.  It
definitely said this particular street, this particular cafe, this particular
date and time and it specified a window seat.  It also mentioned a proposition
for me to consider.  Then, just as I was thinking about leaving, the door
opened and a courier came in.  He looked around the almost empty cafe and then walked
towards me.

“Excuse me, are you Jack?” he
asked.

I nodded and he pulled an envelope
from the bag slung over his shoulder, gave me a grubby pad and pointed with his
dirty index finger where to sign.  I scrawled my name in the space and he left. 
I signalled for another cup of tea and carefully opened the envelope.

Inside was a letter and two
thought pods.  I already knew that someone from my own time would be making
contact with me, because I’d received the unsigned note in 1938.  It had been
written in my mother tongue and I was wondering now, as I had then, why they
couldn’t come in person and what might be so urgent that it couldn’t be dealt
with back at the base in our own timeline.  To say I was intrigued was an
understatement.

I’d also received a summons
from Javier, my boss and mentor, but I’d chosen to respond to this instead.  It
was probably going to cause me trouble, but I rationalised my decision with the
thought that he of all people would appreciate this captivating situation and
once I’d explained it all to him, I was reasonably confident he would forgive
me.

I carefully picked up the pods,
one in each hand, holding them gently between my index fingers and thumbs.  There
was nothing unusual about their small size and hard roundness and as I held them
my curiosity fired up again.

The waitress seemed to be as
interested as I was as she replaced my cold mug of tea with a hot one. 
Realising that with something to listen to I could be there for a while, I
happily dealt with my hunger and ordered sausage, egg and chips.  Food was one
of the pleasures of my job, although many of my colleagues disagreed, not trusting
the inoculations to keep them safe from the consequences of some of the things
that the past served up.

I settled into my chair and
gingerly unfolded the letter.  It was handwritten and the large, scrawly
letters were spidery and a little shaky.  It was also familiar, but I couldn’t
quite place it.  The first few words made me gasp with shock and I almost left
it and the pods on the table and fled.  But how could I not read on?

Jack

I am confident that in writing
to you, we are not breaking the golden rule.

I have enclosed two pods as
you will already have seen.  The first one contains the records of almost six
years work.  They are mainly fragments and are not in any particular order,
which will tell you something of my life; for as we both know, you currently
work methodically and sequentially.

The second contains a single
conversation, recorded during the course of a Sunday in Paris in 1912.  This conversation
is between myself and Grace.  You have not met Grace yet and you will have to
decide very soon whether you will or not.  I recommend that you listen to this
one first.

Both Grace and I trust that
you will make the best choice and we do not want you to let your conscience
alone force you into making a particular decision.  You will understand soon
enough and I wish merely to confirm that should you choose to let events take
their natural course, she will of course die.

This fact need not trouble you;
it would just be one more death that you witness and you have already witnessed
so many since joining the HG Unit.  The only difference will be and it is an
important difference, that this one will not be remembered, because this letter
and those pods that you are currently holding will not exist.  Without Grace
they cannot.

We are giving you a second
chance and we trust that you will use it wisely.

Jack and Grace

I read the letter probably
twelve times.  My tea remained untouched and the food grew cold on the plate. 
I picked up the second pod and held it.  Did I want to listen to it? Did I want
to know what was said in this conversation?

I found several interesting
points in this letter from my future self. 
The first
was that his working methods had changed considerably and I guessed that this
had something to do with the mysterious Grace.

The second was that he was
almost, but not quite, breaking the rule that governed all others.  Again I
guessed that this woman had something to do with it and wondered what on earth
could have pushed this man so far away from the one I knew myself to be.

Thirdly, it intrigued me that
he spoke so confidently for both of them.  I could not even begin to imagine
being in such a relationship; where one person could trust another enough to
give up their own voice.  She was giving her life to him, to me in fact and I
didn’t understand why.

I could just get up and walk
away.  After all, doing nothing was a viable option I told myself.  I didn’t
have to witness this death and what would be the point, if I wouldn’t remember
it anyway? However, I couldn’t ignore the fact that part of me, quite a big
part of me, wanted to see this woman who seemed to have such a hold over my
future self.

I wondered what
Javier would have to say if I followed this course of action.  My boss relied
heavily on me to bring relevant and objective information from the past to inform
the policy and ethics teams.

“Sequence is important
to understanding.” he often told me.

Did letting the
great man down, not matter to this other me?

He must be in trouble I
reasoned; why else would he have written to me? He must want something to
change.  But what? The more I tried to think logically, the more curious I
became, as of course he would have remembered himself being at this point in
our life.  It’s strange, thinking of yourself in plural.

I sighed and activated the
thought pod, letting the voices flood into my mind.

“There are times Grace, when
I enjoy my job.  Mornings like this are one of them.  What do you recommend I
order?”

I listened to the entire
conversation, then replayed her last words several times, trying to find a
catch or some kind of clue in them; a message even.  But all I found was trust. 
The simple way she answered his, or rather my, potentially life ending question
with just
“I do”
was breathtaking.

I paused, wondering how I
became the kind of man a woman like Grace could love.  Or more than that, the
kind of man she could believe in and trust so completely.  I thought it
unlikely that I could ever love a fool, and decided that she must have found
good reason to feel that way about me.  That they loved each other was crystal
clear, but what they wanted from me was not.  The thought that crept in next
was... did I want to be that man? After all, I had a choice.

Perhaps
they couldn’t help me with the question I needed an
answer to.  Perhaps I needed to find it for myself.  Slowly, it began to form
in my mind.  Was I prepared to let a very bright future go, one I had spent
years preparing for? And was I prepared to turn my back on everything I had
always thought to be important and made sacrifices for, in order to spend time
and not very much of it by all accounts, with the unknown Grace?

Before I’d even begun to think
those thoughts through, another appeared in my mind with alarming clarity.  Just
supposing for a moment that I was prepared to walk away from everything, would
we have to repeat the story that I’d just been told, or could it in fact be
different?

I felt sure that my being in
the cafe was a small difference that my future self had already fixed.  He
hadn’t been here, but he’d probably been somewhere else on this street.  That
brought me to another series of questions: why here, why now and why a window
seat?

I put the pod next
to my stone cold mug of tea and pushed the congealed plate of untouched food
aside.  I couldn’t see through
the
window, so I rubbed it with my hand to clear some of the condensation and
looked out.  I saw a woman walking down the street and somehow, I knew the
voice that I’d been listening to was hers; something radiated out from her.  She’d
just rounded the corner and was bundled up in ill-fitting clothes; a baggy coat
over some sort of uniform and was walking slowly, looking at the ground.  She
began to cross the road and in that same moment I saw a car approaching.

I pushed the chairs out of the
way and scrambled to the door.  There was a crash of china behind me and the
waitress shouted something, but there was no time to stop.  I was on the
pavement, running faster than I had ever run before.