Time travel, however, was not completely eradicated. There was Temporal Tourism – illegal but lucrative. Attempting to hide in another time to escape the consequences of an illegal act in this one was always popular. And every now and then, someone would put something up on the Dark Web, and armed with not even moderately accurate information, a hundred enthusiastic amateurs – for whom death by radiation was something that happened to other people – would beaver away in lock-ups, garages, spare bedrooms and science classes, apparently oblivious to the Time Police heading their way, determined to resolve the situation – whatever it took.
Whatever it took.
Jane
I’m where I am today because of a stuffed seagull. It stood in a glass case under a skylight at the top of the stairs in my grandmother’s house and it frightened me nearly as much as she did. Which is to say – a lot.
My grandmother was thin and brown-leathery and for years I thought she was a witch. Her room was right at the top of her tall, narrow house and she rarely left it, but somehow, she always knew when I’d dropped a cup or if I’d dawdled on the way back from the shops or stopped to buy myself a rare bar of chocolate.
Her voice, with that imperious rasp, would drift down the stairs.
‘Jane, come here at once,’ followed by the tinkle of her bell, demanding my instant presence.
I hated that bell. Nearly as much as I hated the seagull. But not as much as I hated her.
She was only one woman but I might as well have been toiling away in a large hotel, the amount of work she caused. Clean sheets every day. Whole herds of ghastly china animals to wash several times a month. Furniture to be polished – and with the old-style wax polish too, not the permanent spray-shine you can get these days. The windows were to be done every month – because she wouldn’t have stay-clean SmartGlass – and despite most of the rooms being shut up and never used, they still needed cleaning from top to bottom every month. Every now and then I would try missing one but she always knew. I never found out how.
I thought things would be easier after I left school because there would be more time for her insatiable demands, but that turned out not to be the case. There were just more of them. Her insatiable demands expanded to fit the time allocated. She could have had an army of servants and every single one of them would be as overworked and tired as I was.
My grandmother still left the house occasionally. She went to church on Sundays where, presumably, she harangued the Almighty for failing to wipe everyone not white, middle-class or English from the planet. With extreme prejudice. You always felt she was disappointed that God had confined himself to smiting only the firstborn of Egypt when he could, with just a little more effort, have wiped out the entire country. That would have taught them a lesson, wouldn’t it?
On the third Tuesday of every month, she was collected by someone who almost certainly was unable to get out of it and taken to the Social Centre a couple of miles away, where she found fault with everyone and everything, consumed every mouthful of a lunch that was hardly worth eating and was returned home, refreshed, invigorated and complaining every inch of the way.
And then there was the shopping. I visited the shops every day because everything had to be fresh. In vain did I murmur of refrigeration and its benefits. Every day at ten o’clock in the morning I left the house, squeezed tomatoes, inspected fish, sniffed at melons and then lugged the whole lot back home again. Every single day. I actually expected to be doing this for the rest of my life.
Which brings me back to the seagull. Almost every moment of every day was overlooked by that awful bird with its predatory beak and evil eyes. One of them wasn’t set quite right, giving it an evil leer which followed me wherever I went. Apparently, her husband, my grandad, had stuffed it for her as a personal gift – I’m not sure what that says about either of them – and then died shortly afterwards. The two events were probably unconnected, but it was enough for her to enshrine the thing in pride of place at the top of the stairs, where it was an eternal reminder of her dead husband.
And then I dropped the stupid thing.
I don’t know how it happened. Probably I was away with the fairies, which was how my grandmother usually described me. According to her I was a feckless daydreamer – a useless wimp – who would have starved to death on the streets if she hadn’t taken me in. Or perhaps I was more tired than I thought. I only know that as I picked up the glass case to dust underneath – because she’d know if I hadn’t – it was heavier than I remembered and the whole thing slipped out of my hands and crashed on to the floor.
The glass case shattered and the long-time inhabitant just fell apart. Heaven knows how old it was or how long it had been there, but it didn’t take kindly to being bounced off the gleaming parquet (forty-five minutes hard polish every other Thursday). The body hit the floor with a soft explosion of what looked like sawdust and the head skidded off underneath the highly polished walnut chest of drawers (fifteen minutes hard polish every other Thursday – before doing the floor but after cleaning the windows) and out of sight.
I stared, appalled. I had no idea what to do. When I thought of the way she carried on if I so much as dropped a cup, I could hardly begin to imagine what this disaster would earn me. My agitation even caused me to run in small circles as I tried to work out whether I should try to reassemble things – no chance. Or try to hide the evidence – no chance. Or even try to deny there had ever been anything there in the first place. ‘What seagull, Granny?’
Or – and I don’t know where this thought came from – I could simply . . . go. It wasn’t as if I’d never thought about it. I’d done it a thousand times in my dreams. I could grab a few things and leave. And never come back. I remember standing stock-still, suffering all the paralysis of someone whose dream could suddenly come true.
It was Tuesday. She would be gone for hours. I could be miles away before she got back. And then what would she do? What could she do? And she was perfectly capable of looking after herself if I wasn’t there to do it for her.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ said the voice within. ‘Where would you go?’
A good point, I had to concede – Gran always said I was about as much use as boil-in-the-bag ice cream – the venom in her voice robbing the comment of any humour – but compared with staying here with a shattered seagull, starving to death seemed a very viable option. If I remained, my life would hardly be worth living. And besides, I was old enough to go. In fact, I was too old to stay. Whoever heard of anyone my age living with their granny? And she could manage on her own. It wasn’t as if she needed me. She didn’t even like me. Thoughts I never knew were inside me came suddenly bubbling to the surface.
Wimpy Jane was horrified. ‘But I have no money.’
‘There’s the housekeeping. She keeps it tucked in her pillowcase.’