What about us? (38 page)

“If it is of any comfort, I
doubt that he will ever replace you in his affections, but his energy will be
turned to a lifetime of achievement and I know you would be proud; you said so
yourself only a while ago.  He can have had both lives in one lifetime.  He has
had five years with you and he has known love, but let him go now Grace.  Let
him become who he was born to be.  If you really love him you must want that
for him.”

To give him credit, he almost
had me going along with him, right up until he used that phrase: ‘if you really
love him.’ He lost me the moment he said those words, but he couldn’t have
known what effect they would have of course. 

Mum had blackmailed me so often
with that phrase.  She had twisted it and turned it so much that love was
nowhere to be found anymore and I was always the one who made the sacrifice or
got hurt, just to prove that I did love her.  Over the years I tried to do all
those things in the pointless hope that one day she would love me back.

Javier’s voice was replaced in
my mind with my Mum’s, just saying over and over again, “If you really loved me
you would not tell such lies about him.  If you really loved me you would
forget all about that nasty nightmare.  If you really loved me you wouldn’t say
such terrible things.  If you really loved me you would do this or that.  If
you really loved me...”

The litany went on and on.  She
never, not once, realised that I did love her.  She never saw that I was
probably the only person that ever had, but she drove me away just like she
drove everyone else away.  I saw then that Mum and Javier had more in common
than either of them would realise; neither of them were kind.  They would both
do something for someone else, sure, but only if they got something more in
return and that is not kindness.

I don’t think Javier had ever
loved anyone and I don’t think he understood people at all.  He must have known
quite a bit about me from other people’s memories, but he hadn’t put all those
bits together and he obviously hadn’t considered why I am who I am.  He came up
with a judgement that was based only on my intelligence and then only as it
compared to his.  I was never going to come out at my best in a comparison like
that.  But he’d done himself a disservice in that judgement, not me, because
there are other ways people can and do learn.

Love is about being kind and
Jack was the most considerate person I’d ever met.  I only found the strength
to walk away when I discovered what it really meant to be loved, when I
realised that Mum could never love me; she didn’t even know how to love
herself.

Jack taught me that, he taught
it to me when he gave up everything to be with me.  He showed me how to love
myself, because he loved me and I taught him the same in return.  I wasn’t
about to throw all that back in his face; not now.

I leaned forward slightly,
wanting to be sure Javier heard and understood what I was about to say.

“If you kill me, he will find
out and he’ll hate you forever.  You will lose him as a result.”

He laughed at me and my words.

“I am not about to kill you
Grace.  I am a thinker, not a murderer.  But I am about to lose you and I
happen to think, that not everything once lost can be found again.  In the
future you are dead, because as nature dictates, you died in the past.  Wherever
and whenever that might be he will have no way of knowing.  What is dead must
be mourned, but it can never be regained.  Jack understands the laws of nature
as do we all, even time travellers cannot undo the effects of old age and
natural or unnatural death.”

I sat absolutely still, not
having the faintest idea about what his plans might be.

He leaned forward so that he
wouldn’t need to raise his voice and so that I could look directly into his
eyes; he wanted me to know that he was being sincere.

“If I were to kill you Grace,
there would always be the chance that he would come back and intervene, as with
the car accident.  It is a natural impulse of his to want to save you from the things
that could hurt you, but that would no doubt just set us off on another endless
cycle.  You know as well as I do that Jack belongs in the thirtieth century.  Whichever
point in time you die, naturally it is the past for him.  You have no implants
that can be traced, no inoculations to boost your system; you are a young black
woman and you are alone.”

His voice was no longer cold.  He
didn’t mean to threaten me, he was just telling me the facts and it was clear
that those facts only held the slightest interest for him.

However, I couldn’t disagree
with any of them.  He saw that there was nothing that I could say and so he
softly continued.

“You saved the world Grace and
in this world I am alive; for that I thank you.  You have done your job and
done it well.  I wish only to allow you to live your life out, as is only fair
under the circumstances.  I also want Jack to live his out, filled with happy
memories of a young love that had run its delightful course, leaving him free
to move on and fulfil his dreams and his own destiny.  Of course, he can only
do that once he has mourned the end of this relationship and of course, your
passing.”

My lips were very dry.  I still
couldn’t see how what he had said added up to me getting anything remotely good
out of this exchange.

“So you plan to do what with me
exactly...?” I asked slowly, without taking my eyes off him for a second.

“I know you have seen amazing
and wonderful things on your journey so far, but I want to show one more.  You
see, Jack is not the only one who found ways to control our destinations so
that we can travel to places other than safe houses.  But that is such a minor
thing.  Let us think bigger, let us imagine the impossible for a moment Grace. 
You have to understand that before we could allow anyone to travel, we had to
understand how time worked and to make sure our rules and methods kept things
the way they should be.  In order to know what would happen if we meddled, if
we changed things, we had to meddle in big events to see what happened as a
result, so we developed the means to return to the status quo before we tried
to change things.  Mankind it seems, must travel the journey step by painful
step, without the benefit of shortcuts, only then do we learn.” he said, sighing
deeply.

This at least helped me
understand some of the things Jack had said about not being able to go back and
smother mass murderers in their cots, but it didn’t help me understand how it
applied to me.  I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“I’m going to be honest with
you Grace.  Whilst the various Jacks have shared many things with me, I have
not shared everything with them and nor should I have, given our respective
roles and positions.  Clearly, with my new knowledge, some changes to our rules
and ways of working need to be implemented.  I have that to thank you for as
well Grace.  Now watch carefully, I think you will like this.”

He made his move, and before I
could get out of the way or stop him, his hand was over mine; holding it firmly
on the table.

The only way I can describe
what happened next, is if you imagine an out of body experience.  It was just
as people have written; I was floating outside of myself.  I was most
definitely me.  I could even feel the pressure of Javier’s hand on mine, but
next to me was a perfect image of us sitting there, with the table between us
and both of us leaning forward, his hand on mine.  He was smiling and I looked
startled.  For a second I wasn’t sure which of us was real and which of us were
the ghosts.  Then everything began to move, but it was all wrong, because
things started going in reverse.

All I could hear was the usual
whooshing and whistling of the shimmer, but somehow, that too was not right.  I
saw myself stand up and go backwards towards the stairs.  The waiter was
walking away backwards with a glass of whiskey on a tray, while other people
were leaving the lounge instead of arriving.  Thankfully, I suppose because
Javier was the driver and I was the passenger, we only saw the things that had
involved him.  We didn’t go upstairs, so he didn’t get to see what I had done
up there.

Suddenly I panicked as a
terrible thought pinged into my mind.  I understood that it didn’t matter what
I had done.  I knew why he had let me go upstairs alone; it was all being
undone and in a moment none of it would exist.  I watched myself return and
stand dripping in the foyer with a wet Javier.  I watched us leave and begin
the backwards walk to the cafe in the rain.  Then I saw something that I
couldn’t have seen for myself at the time when we’d arrived at the hotel, but
neither could Javier, because it had happened behind us.  Jack was there with
two others; a man and a woman.  I didn’t recognise either of them.  They went
into the restaurant on the other side of the foyer and Jack dodged behind the
doorman, so that neither Javier nor I would have had any chance of seeing him.

I saw all of this in a split
second.  I didn’t understand what he was up to, but I didn’t want Javier to see
it.  I had to get his attention quickly and the best way to do that was to
appeal to his vanity; he liked to feel clever.

“What are we doing?” I asked,
with as much panic as I could muster.  It wasn’t difficult given the circumstances. 
“Surely we are breaking the Golden Rule!”

He just smiled.  “No my dear, we
are not.  We are almost outside time; we do not exist in the same moments that
we are witnessing.  We can influence nothing, nor make contact with anyone, but
we will remember.  There was never going to be any point in our undoing say,
‘the discovery of the Americas’ and then not be able to compare the two
realities.  We had to witness what would have happened without Columbus and
once we realised that another navigator or explorer would have taken his place,
we then had to be able to undo what we had meddled with.

“So you see, the Golden Rule
remains intact and untroubled.  Everything is going back to how it should have
been.  See, there is the waiter bringing our coffee, but I have not arrived
yet.  I am behind you and he is confused, but soon he will not be.  There will
be just one of us to serve and it will be me.  I will wait for Jack.  I will
tell him that you decided to end the relationship for the good of the future
and that it was your own choice.  He will be sad that you did not wish to wait
for him, but he will understand that this life is not the one you would choose
for him.  You don’t actually have a choice in any of this, but it means nothing
in the grand scheme of things.  Many years ago I promised to ensure that he
would be able to fulfil his potential and I always keep my promises.  Now hold
tight.”

The whooshing intensified and
sounded right again and I realised that this was the journey where he planned
to lose me.  I just prayed that whatever Jack was intending or had been
intending to do, he had made it to our room and had seen my clues.  Presumably
he too had been wiped out of that moment, so I prayed even harder that he would
remember them.

The whooshing stopped and we sprawled
heavily into soft, cold mud.  We’d been sitting when the journey started, but
now there was nothing to sit on.  He’d planned all this of course, because he
pushed me away from him and lunged forward to snatch my bag from my lap.  The
bag contained a lot of stuff, but most importantly, as far as he was concerned
anyway, it had the watch and my money in it.  He stood up and tucked it under
his arm.  He may have had a brain the size of a planet but he was no gentleman. 
He left me sitting there, winded and frightened.

“Goodbye Grace, welcome to your
new home.” he said and then left me, taking my bag with him.

As his shimmer faded, I became
aware of the most horrible noises around me and a sort of burnt chemical
smell.  My bottom was wet and my fingers were squelching in the mud.  It was
night, but the sky was lit up by flashes.  I could hear men shouting and
swearing.  In the distance someone was screaming and nearby there was
whimpering.  I don’t know if it was cold, but I was shivering.

I didn’t have much time to
wonder where I was.  The ground shook and my mind instantly focused; call it
survival instinct.  The whistling I could hear in the air had nothing to do
with his shimmer and it was heading my way.  I didn’t even stand up; I pressed
the button on the watch on my arm.  My fingers were thick with mud and I was
shaking badly, so it was a bloody miracle that I managed it.

He’d dumped me in ‘no-man’s
land’, sometime during the First World War.  I saw it all too clearly as the
shimmer enveloped me and took me away from the pointless carnage and death that
I could do nothing to change, or save anyone from.

I was hysterical as I landed on
the floor in the kitchen of a safe house somewhere in the city of Bath on the
24
^th
October 1900 and I lay there for a while, sobbing.  It felt as
though everything inside me had been ripped to shreds; my heart, my lungs, the
whole kit and caboodle of what had been me was in pieces.  He had treated me as
though I was a ‘thing’ that could be disposed of once it was no longer useful.

“I am not a thing!” I screamed
to the empty room.

That someone who Jack admired
so much could see me in this way, hurt me more than I would ever have thought
possible.  I was so angry with Javier and so hurt by the unfairness of it all. 
I had to get the pain of it all out of my system, otherwise it would fester and
I could never be strong again.  Only once there was nothing more to cry about
and no tears left did I sit up and look around me.