What about us? (31 page)

The wine was particularly good
and I was happily savouring it when my thoughts alighted on just one word:
past
. 
I instantly felt foolish; I’d missed something that had been staring me in the
face.  He and the young woman had travelled back to the late nineteenth century
and had lived there for some months.  They had not merely witnessed events;
they had integrated themselves into other people’s lives.  They had meddled.  I
was now certain that those three people were in some way connected to that
period.  Content in the knowledge that my investigations were finally moving in
the right direction, I was able to relax a little and enjoy my meal.

I woke up in a good mood and
enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at the hotel.  Then I read one of the tabloid
newspapers in the lounge and watched the television, which always seemed to be
on.  I knew that the waitress would not be at the cafe until late afternoon, so
I had some time to spend as I wished.  On a whim I decided to go to the local
library.  There are no paper books in my own time, so like eating freshly prepared
food, the printed word is one of my pleasures and I spent hours happily lost
between the pages of fact and fiction, poetry and maps, emerging into the late
afternoon feeling as though I’d been at a feast.

As I walked to the cafe, I considered
what I would say.  I couldn’t expect her to tell me what I wanted to know if I
were merely a customer, so therefore I had to come up with a credible reason
for interviewing her.  I was sure she wouldn’t fall for the same story I’d used
on the young woman’s mother, so this time I would need to use different bait.  Strangely
enough, I settled on the truth, or at least a form of it that she would believe
and one I hoped was also correct.  Once I had everything arranged in my mind, I
went into the cafe and made no pretence about being there for any other reason
than to talk to her.

“Excuse me, are you Vicki
Prentice?” I asked.

“Yes?” she replied, looking me
over carefully.

“You don’t know me, my name is
Jack.  I’m a local historian and I’m writing about Napier Street, near London
Bridge.  Someone at the library told me your grandparents had lived there and I
was hoping you could tell me a little about your family history.”

She visibly relaxed.  “I could,
but I think my granddad could tell you more.” she said, with some relief in her
voice.

“He’s still alive?” I asked.

“Oh yes, he’s very much alive
and most days I pop in and give him his tea before I come to work.  Come back
the day after tomorrow and meet me here at four.  If he’s in agreement, which
by the way I’m sure he will be, he’ll like nothing more than to have a willing
listener.  I’ll take you round to see him, but I need to ask him first; he
won’t like you just turning up, he’ll want some time to prepare for an
important visitor.”

“Thank you my dear.  I’ll be
here.” I said as I left.

I now had a day and a half free
with nothing to do.  I wanted to put some miles between myself and the young
woman and then perhaps I might be released from the images and emotions that had
been plaguing me, not only when I was in her presence, but also because of her
proximity in time.  Also, to be honest, I wanted to take advantage of being on
the planet surface. 

The next day I took a train to
Brighton to enjoy the sea air, safe in the knowledge that my other self  had no
memories of the place beyond the station concourse.  There I felt sure I’d be
able to think more objectively about what I already knew, before adding
whatever Vicki’s grandfather could tell me.  I walked to the Grand Hotel and
was lucky; they had a room available overlooking the sea.  It was charming and
I spent my time watching the tide come and go, letting my thoughts and feet go
where they pleased.

The following afternoon I
arrived at the cafe a little bit earlier than arranged and found Vicki already
waiting for me.

“It was just as I thought.” she
said, coming to greet me.  “Gramps is very much looking forward to your visit. 
I’ve changed my shift today, so I’ll be done here in fifteen minutes.  That way
there’s no need to rush, you can spend as long as you like with him.  I’ve got
an essay to write, so I won’t be in your way.”

She showed me to a window table
and brought me a mug of tea and a slice of fruit cake.

I liked Vicki; she was
protective towards her grandfather.  To her of course, I was a complete
stranger.  Elderly perhaps, but a stranger nonetheless and she was taking no
chances.  I smiled; the concept of the family as a unit had changed a great
deal by the thirtieth century.  While it was not necessarily better or worse,
it was certainly very different.

Henry, as I was instructed to
call him, was as his granddaughter had predicted; thrilled to have me visit.  She
sat us down in the living room of his small and slightly untidy flat, brought
us a bottle of beer and two glasses, then retreated to the kitchen, leaving the
serving hatch between the two rooms open.

“So what would you like to
know?” he asked me.

“Anything that you can tell me
about your life and your family history, but I am especially interested in
anything at all that you can tell me about Napier Street, Borough.” I told him.

I left three hours later,
having been assured that I could return at anytime if there was anything else
he could help me with.  I wrote lots of notes during my visit, but they were
more to convince them about my commitment to the task than through any
necessity.  My implants recorded conversations automatically and information
could be transferred to a thought pod in less than a second, which would give
others the opportunity to hear the conversation for themselves.  But anyway,
making notes helped me focus on the important elements of what Henry had been
able to tell me.

I walked for hours, turning
over in my mind everything that he had told me.  For some reason I had been
expecting to meet Charlie, Henry’s father and I was surprised when he said that
he was the grandson of both Sally Grundy and Winifred Blunt.  I already knew
that the Blunts had owned the local shop and that Winifred, one of the streets
important matriarchs, had befriended the young woman.  Sal and Winnie were of
course long dead, but so too where Henry’s parents.  He was born in 1916, so
that made him eighty-four, but his mind was still sharp.  His father had been
called up to serve his country in a pointless war and had left for The Front
unaware that his wife was pregnant.  Sadly he was killed in action before she
was able to tell him.  Sal had produced one child and one child only, therefore
Henry had no aunts or uncles on his father’s side.

Henry had married his childhood
sweetheart Susan on his return from the Second World War and in 1947 they had a
daughter, Patricia.  She went on to marry one Victor Prentice and they in turn
produced a son in 1971, but he died a year later.  Vicki was born in the
December of 1977, almost three years before the young woman who was soon to
die.  I mentioned her grandmother’s name to Henry, in case he knew of a link,
but Dottie Gibson meant nothing to him.  I’d asked if I could see some family photographs
and Henry was pleased to provide some, but it quickly became obvious that his
daughter Pat was not the other woman in the street at the moment of the
accident.  His wife had been dead for more than twenty years, so it couldn’t
have been her either, nor was his son in-law the young man that I’d seen as he
faded alongside the old woman.

Henry’s story went some way to
explaining why Vicki would vanish from existence in a few weeks time, at the
same moment the young woman dies.  When she and my other self travelled back to
1888, they meddled with events.  I presumed that both Sal and her sickly baby Charlie
had not been meant to survive the winter.  It seemed that the young woman’s
ineptitude at knowing how to keep house in those times and her subsequent
kindness had prevented the event from happening and as a direct consequence, a
young mother and her son had continued to live beyond the time they were meant
to.

I knew that on the rare
occasions that these anomalies happened, time had a way of dealing with them. 
So why hadn’t they fallen victim to an accident or illness shortly after my
other self and the young woman left Napier Street? Why had they thrived and why
did the family continue until the year 2000? In fact, right up to the point
where I didn’t meddle.

We knew what happened when big,
fixed events in time were tampered with, but perhaps we’d not spent enough time
looking at what happened when small, almost inconsequential events were changed. 
I knew that my other self had meddled on other occasions.  The first had been
when he’d saved her life.  The second was when he’d inadvertently taken her on
a time journey, a journey she had no right to undertake and one that she wasn’t
in any way equipped for.  Only small things changed perhaps, like giving the
unfortunate Sal a job and literacy, but it was becoming apparent that tiny
pebbles can create ripples that travel much further than one thinks they should
be able to.  I put the thought aside for another time; there would need to be a
discussion with the Ethics Team once this mess was sorted out.  But first
things first, I reminded myself.

Henry had been able to do more
than just tell me about his grandmother; he had a trunk.  “Family heirloom.”
he’d said proudly, as he took me into his small bedroom.  He waved for me to
sit on the bed and called Vicki to come and help move the piles of old
newspapers that were stacked on top of it.

 “Granny Sal said that there
was this couple in the street.  Odd they were, in that they didn’t really fit
in.  She never said why, just that they didn’t fit in, not properly.  Anyway,
they came just before Christmas one year and the woman, coloured she was, took
Gran on like a scullery maid.  She fed her and me dad.  ‘Kept him alive and
made him strong.’ Gran always said.  She also taught Gran to read and write. 
‘Reading is a gift’ she’d say and she loved to read stories to me when I was a
small lad.  Then as soon as I was able, she’d sit me at the table and get me to
read the paper to her when I got home from school.  Always had a book in her
hand or in her apron pocket.” He chuckled at the memory before continuing.

“Told me over and over that
reading is what marks a person, gives ’em choices that they don’t have if they
can’t read.  The coloured woman had given her that and she was always
thankful.  Anyway, by spring they were gone.  Just like they’d arrived, they
disappeared, leaving no word or nothing.

“Between them, my two Grans
packed everything up for them in case they came back.  There wasn’t much; some
clothes, some ornaments, a few personal bits and pieces and lots of paper where
they’d been writing a book.  There was also well over three thousand quid in
cash, which was quite a lot of money in them days.”

He paused to look at me.

“That’s a lot of money to just
leave in the house,” I said slowly.

“It is these days, let alone
then.” he said thoughtfully, agreeing with me.

“Anyway, they never came back
and everything was put in this trunk.  Me granny Winnie, me Mum’s Mum, she died
before the war.  First war I mean and me Mum and that trunk came to me Gran’s
when she married me dad.  Granny Sal guarded that trunk like a bleeding terrier. 
Woe betides anyone who wanted to go poking around in there!

“She used some of that money to
set herself up in a little shop; that’s when we left Napier Street and moved
here.  ‘Something for you to have later,’ she used to say to me and within two
years she paid every penny back with interest.  ‘I won’t have it said that Sal
Grundy is a thief.’ she said.”

Leaving Napier Street was good
thing too; it was completely flattened during The Blitz, with a terrible loss
of life.  So many of the families had been friends; we’d all grown up
together.”

He shook his head sadly before
moving back to the topic that interested us both.

“’Course I never knew me dad;
he never came back from the Front.  He was dead before I was born.  Gran and Mum
kept the shop, as did Susan and me after the second war.  Pat’s got it now.  Vicki
here of course has other ideas and good for her too I say.  But anyway, that
little shop did what my Gran used to say it would.  ‘You’ll see.’ she used to
say, ‘This family will amount to something after all, despite the bad blood on
your grandfather’s side.’ She would never explain what she meant by that, but
the fact he was never mentioned other than in that way and also that she’d been
so young when she had me dad; well, over the years Susan and me, we put the
story together.

“This trunk saved the family
again during The Depression I can tell you.  Gran let us sell a few of the
trinkets and other things out of it, but she kept a log of what was taken and
made sure it was put back with interest.  After Gran died, there seemed little
point in keeping it for strangers who must have been dead themselves by then; they
were older than her after all.  Over the years of course, the money’s been used
up, but somehow, neither me Mum before me, or meself now, could just throw the
trunk away; might be worth a few bob I daresay.  Vicki will have to make that
choice when I’m gone.  Pat and I have already settled that, she don’t want this
lolloping great thing gathering dust in her attic.” he said, patting it proudly.