What about us? (24 page)

I held out my arm
but it was bare; the watch had gone, yet I had a vague recollection of it being
there while we were in the light.

“Maybe I loosened
it while I was fiddling with it.  It must have fallen off.” I said.

We walked back to
the bed and started to search for it, but it was nowhere to be found.  The
watch was connected somehow and the feeling that I’d done this before was
growing stronger by the minute.  Perhaps she’d stumbled upon something.  Something
felt right in my mind, but I still couldn’t explain it.  I knew the house was
empty and I also knew that for a while at least, we were safe.  I knew these
things, but I didn’t know how, or why.

I reached for her
hand.  “Come on, let’s take a look at the rest of the house.  There’s no one
here; I’m certain of it.”

She trusted me as
she always did and so we opened each door one by one, peeped inside and once
sure there was no one there, went in.  The bedroom we’d started in had been a
woman’s, but the next one was definitely a man’s.  In the top drawer of the
tallboy was a pocket watch and another pile of money.

Grace counted it
quickly.  “Four thousand pounds...” she said, confirming what we were both
thinking.

Finally, once we
had checked every room in the house, we went back to the sitting room we’d
found downstairs.  The fire was still burning in the grate and it was warmer
than anywhere else.  There was a bucket with coal in it and I put some on the
fire.

“There, we have a
few hours before it’ll go out.

We huddled together
on a rather uncomfortable leather sofa and thought about what we had
discovered.

“I think we’ve gone back in
time.” I said slowly, feeling each word and finding the idea comforting rather
than frightening.

“Well...” she replied, just as
slowly, but for a different reason.  “
That newspaper
in the kitchen said December 10
^th
1888 and it didn’t look that old;
a week maybe, but not well over a hundred years old.”

I nodded before
continuing.  “There’s no electricity, although there is water and gas.  The
clothes, the money, the style of everything in fact, it all screams late
nineteenth century to me.”

“But how?” she
whispered, a note of fear creeping back into her voice.  “And why? Why us?”

“I don’t know, but
it’s almost like I’ve been remembering.  I sense that I know the answer and I
feel as though I’ve done this before, impossible though it sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound
as impossible as the fact that we’re somewhere else, when we’ve no right to
be,” she said, “So don’t go thinking that you’ve gone insane, because I’m way
ahead of you.”

I smiled at her
assessment of our situation.  She’d captured it beautifully and I held her
tight.

“At least we can go
crazy together.” I told her and a muffled giggle escaped from her mouth, buried
in my shoulder.

We must have dozed
off, because a passing noise from outside made me jump.  Despite the fact that
the curtains were still drawn, I could see that the light was changing.  It was
also chilly.

I gently shook
Grace awake.  “I think it’s morning.” I told her as she stretched.  “And we’re
still here, so I don’t think we were dreaming.”

“Oh.” she said,
disappointed.

As she pulled
herself together, I went to the door and listened, but there was still no sound
of anyone else.

From behind me, she
spoke and I could tell from the tone of her voice that she wasn’t happy.

“I’m hungry.  I
don’t cope well with things out of the ordinary when I’m hungry and tired.  I
definitely can’t begin to think about any of
this
,” she said, waving her
hands around the room theatrically.  “At least not until I’ve had a cup of tea
and maybe even a bit of toast.”

I was left in no
doubt as to where her priorities lay.  I also knew that this was her way of
finding something normal in what promised to be a very abnormal day.

“Then let’s go and
see what delights there are to be found in the kitchen.” I said, stretching my
hand out towards her and guessing what she was thinking from the shadow that
passed across her eyes.

“If anyone comes,
we’ll deal with it when it happens.  Let’s just take one thing at a time.  And
right now, tea is what we should focus on.” I said, wagging my finger at her.

I tried to sound
convincing, but I too had been worried about how we would explain our presence
to the household, should we meet them.  Nothing I’d come up with so far had
even the remotest ring of credibility to it.

“Did they have tea
in the nineteenth century?” she asked hopefully.

“Oh yes,” I assured
her, “They most certainly did.”

Having promised tea, I found
myself at a bit of a loss when we discovered that the range in the kitchen was
stone cold.  Grace though, was determined and she took the kettle back into the
sitting room, coaxed some life back into the embers in the fireplace and
plonked the kettle in the middle.  In the pantry there was some almost, but not
quite off milk and when she returned triumphant, we made a pot of strong tea.  Breakfast
however, was a disappointing affair; there was jam, but no butter and the only
bread we could find was stale.  Daylight and a cup of tea certainly helped us
both feel better about our predicament, so despite having to put up with dry
bread, we still managed to come up with a plan.

“So we’re agreed then?” I
asked, as we headed back up the stairs to change into something more
appropriate for the time.

“Might as well I suppose,” she
said, turning to face me and shrugging her shoulders.  “I mean we don’t know
how we got here and we could be whisked back at any time, so it would be a
shame not to; if we can that is.  After all, we can’t stay here.  Someone’s
bound to come home at some point and then what would we say? The only other
option I can come up with is to go crazy with it all and I really don’t fancy
that!”

“We’ve always wanted to go to
Paris,” I reminded her.  “And if we really are in the late nineteenth century,
then we won’t need passports.”

“But there’s the money; I’m
really not happy about stealing it.” she said, still disapproving of this part
of the plan.

“We won’t survive five minutes
anywhere, or any time I shouldn’t think, without money.  We can always repay it
once we’ve sorted ourselves out.”

 I was very firm on this point,
knowing we wouldn’t get very far with nothing but the clothes we were wearing,
which we were also about to steal. 

 “Yes, but it’s such an awful
lot of money.” she said unhappily.  “I’d struggle to repay half that much at
home and there I’ve got a job.”

“Look Grace, if I have done
this before, then maybe the money is here for us to use.”

I was trying to be logical.  Everything
was so strange, yet at the same time it felt ok, normal even, in a bizarre way.

“I can’t even begin to think
about that as a possibility, not right now Jack, it would tip me over the edge
good and proper.  You win.  We take the clothes, we take the money; but only
one pile mind and we get out of here and head for Paris.” she said, opening the
bedroom door and walking purposefully towards the wardrobe.

“Let’s see what we’ve got that
might fit...”

I knew from her tone that the
decision had been made.  Relieved, I left her there and went to see what was in
the other bedroom
.

As I was getting dressed I
noticed that if I didn’t think about it, my fingers automatically moved over
the unfamiliar fastenings.  I mulled over the idea that somehow I’d done this
before.  Logically it was impossible of course, yet part of my mind knew
without doubt that it was not.  Try as I might I couldn’t come up with a
sensible answer and quickly gave up, just letting anticipation take over.  I
appeared to be in a different century and the opportunity to see for myself
firsthand, that which I’d only been able to read about was intoxicating.

We met back out on the landing
about twenty minutes later.  She was wearing a honey brown dress that shimmered
in the light, complementing her dark skin beautifully.

“You look lovely,” I told her,
“But I think you’ll be cold in just that.”

“I already am, the fire went
out ages ago.” she complained.  “I’m hoping that on that coat stand thing
downstairs, there will be something warmer to put over it.  Look, I found a bag
and I’ve put a change of underwear in it.  The knickers are bloody enormous,
but there’s another dress in there, a light shawl and some stockings.  Somehow,
I think it’s going to be a while before we’re across the channel.” she said,
smiling ruefully, “And then god knows how long it’ll take to get to Paris.”

“Good thinking.”

I took the bag from her and
headed back into the other bedroom.  I put another set of clothes in there for
me, plus some trinkets that we could sell in France.  I wasn’t too sure how we
would change money and we’d need some cash if we weren’t going to walk all the
way to Paris.

Holding hands, we made our way
downstairs to the coat stand in the hallway and I took a long, heavy coat and a
hat.

She laughed at me.  “You look
like someone out of a Charles Dickens story.”

“Hah! Well you should see
yourself in that bonnet and shawl!” I retorted.

The laughter made it much
easier to open the front door. 
Then we took a deep
breath and stepped out into the crisp morning air, standing there for a moment
before setting off down the steps into a world we hadn’t expected to find
ourselves in.

We had no idea where we were,
so that was the first thing we had to find out.  A coalman was making a
delivery a few houses down and while he was humping the heavy sacks from the
back of his cart to the hole at the front of the house, I asked him.

If he thought my question
strange, he didn’t show it.  “Lewisham Mansions guv.  Main road’s that way.” he
said, pointing to our right.

I thanked him and we followed
his instructions.

“Do we try to go to Dover?” she
asked.

“I think Dover’s quite a long
way off and I’m not even sure if we need to go there.  If I remember rightly,
Lewisham is a suburb in the southeast of London, which means we should be able
to take a ship from the Pool of London, near Tower Bridge.”

“Ok... and how do we get to
this ‘Pool of London’?” she asked.

“Let’s walk.” I suggested.  “We
can learn a lot just by watching what’s going on around us and then hopefully
we won’t make too many mistakes.”

She agreed, but pretended to
grumble.  “Being twenty-one seems to involve walking more than I’ve ever done
in my whole life before, but I suppose I did get plenty of practice in over the
last few days, so why not?”

“Good for the soul.” I told
her, taking her hand and squeezing it tightly.

We made a few wrong turns, but
thankfully a couple of helpful people put us right before we got too lost and
we were soon on the High Street, which was very different from the streets we’d
come from.  There was bustle and activity everywhere and we were instantly
captivated.  The high pavement gave us a good view up and down the wide, tree
lined road and Grace amused herself for a few minutes, standing in front of
shop windows, marvelling at the items on display while I watched what was going
on around the vegetable market.

We continued walking and once
past the Silk Mill, the High Street became the main road to London, so we just
carried on heading towards the smoke.  I didn’t have a notebook with me, or a
camera.  I didn’t even a pen and I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember
everything.  I hoped I would have the chance to return one day and do justice
to these people and their times.  There was everyone on that road, in every condition
imaginable.

We’d pass large, impressive
houses built on four floors and then a bit further down there would be a dark
alley and what looked like hovels, which were probably home to more people than
any of the big houses.  As we got closer to the city there were fewer fields
and trees, less space between the buildings, more traffic and more noise.

All of life seemed to be
happening there, right in front of our eyes and we weren’t stared at much, so
we couldn’t have looked out of place.  Despite knowing that social assistance
was very limited in that time, the stark difference between those that had
money and those that clearly did not was shocking, as was the number of dirty,
ragged children running about the streets begging for money.  But even with
this knowledge, my exhilaration was not dampened.  I was there, breathing the
air and coughing on it; the air of another century! Nothing could diminish my
wonder.  Even Grace was taking it all in and seemed to have lost her fear.  We excitedly
pointed things out to each other and I explained as much as I could remember as
we walked, wishing that I hadn’t been so lost in the early twentieth century
and had read more about this vibrant and important period of London’s history.