Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2 Read online

  It was as if a quarter of a century had been obliterated. All the calm and restful mood went from me as if it had never existed, to be replaced by a ferment of emotions that was the more shocking for being so unexpected.

  I came to a halt, turned away, thinking that if I looked at her any more she would surely notice me.

  The adolescent, the immature, the romantic child . . . I was still all of these, and the sight of Estyll awakened them as if from a short nap. I felt large and clumsy and ridiculous in my overformal clothes, as if I were a child wearing a grandparent’s wedding outfit. Her composure, her youthful beauty, the vital force of her vigil . . . they were enough to renew all those inadequacies I had felt as a teenager.

  But at the same time there was a second image of her, one which lay above the other like an elusive ghost. I was seeing her as an adult sees a child.

  She was so much younger than I remembered her! She was smaller. She was pretty, yes . . . but I had seen prettier women. She was dignified, but it was a precocious poise, as if she had been trained in it by a socially conscious parent. And she was young, so very young! My own daughter, Therese, would be the same age now, perhaps slightly older.

  Thus torn, thus acutely conscious of my divided way of seeing her, I stood in confusion and distraction on the pathway, while the families and couples walked gaily past.

  I backed away from her at last, unable to look at her any more. She was wearing clothes I remembered too well from the past: a narrow white skirt tight around her legs, a shiny black belt, and a dark-blue blouse embroidered with flowers across the bodice.

  (I remembered—I remembered so much, too much. I wished she had not been there.)

  She frightened me because of the power she had, the power to awaken and arouse my emotions. I did not know what it was. Everyone has adolescent passions, but how many people have the chance to revisit those passions in maturity?

  It elated me, but also made me deeply melancholic. Inside I was dancing with love and joy, but she terrified me. She was so innocently, glowingly young, and I was now so old.

  XIII

  I decided to leave the Park at once . . . but changed my mind an instant later. I went towards her, then turned yet again and walked away.

  I was thinking of Dorynne, but trying to put her out of my mind. I was thinking of Estyll, obsessed again.

  I walked until I was out of sight of her, then took off my hat and wiped my brow. It was a warm day but I knew that the perspiration was not caused by the weather. I needed to calm myself, wanted somewhere to sit down and think about it . . . but the Park was for pleasure, and when I went towards the open air restaurant to buy a glass of beer, the sight of all the heedless merriment was intrusive and unwelcome.

  I stood on the uncut grass, watching the man with the mower, trying to control myself. I had come to the Park to satisfy an old curiosity, not to fall again into the traps of childhood infatuation. It was unthinkable that I should let a young girl of sixteen distract me from my stable life. It had been a mistake, a stupid mistake, to return to the Park.

  But inevitably there was a deeper sense of destiny beneath my attempts to be sensible. I knew, without being able to say why, that Estyll was waiting there at her bench for me, and that we were destined at last to meet.

  Her vigil was due to end tomorrow and that was just a short distance away. It lay on the far side of the Tomorrow Bridge.

  XIV

  I tried to pay at the tollbooth but the attendant recognized me at once. He released the ratchet of the turnstile with such a sharp jab of his foot that I thought he might break his ankle. I nodded to him and passed through into the covered way.

  I walked across briskly, trying to think no more about what I was doing or why. The flux field prickled about my body.

  I emerged into bright sunlight. The day I had left was warm and sunny, but here in the next day it was several degrees hotter. I felt stiff and overdressed in my formal clothes, not at all in keeping with the reawakened, desperate hope that was in my breast. Still trying to deny that hope I retreated into my daytime demeanour, opening the front of my coat and thrusting my thumbs into the slit-pockets of my waistcoat, as I sometimes did when addressing subordinates.

  I walked along the path beside the Channel, looking across for a sight of Estyll on the other side.

  Someone tugged at my arm from behind and I turned in surprise.

  There was a young man standing there. He was nearly as tall as me but his jacket was too tight across his shoulders and his trousers were a fraction too short, revealing that he was still growing up. He had an obsessive look to him but when he spoke it was obvious he was from a good family.

  “Sir, may I trouble you with a question?” he said, and at once I realized who he was.

  The shock of recognition was profound. Had I not been so preoccupied with Estyll I am sure meeting him would have made me speechless. It was so many years since my time jumping that I had forgotten the jolting sense of recognition and sympathy.

  I controlled myself with great difficulty. Trying not to reveal my knowledge of him, I said, “What do you wish to know?”

  “Would you tell me the date, sir?” I started to smile, and glanced away from him for a moment, to straighten my face. His earnest eyes, his protuberant ears, his pallid face and quiffed-up hair!

  “Do you mean today’s date, or do you mean the year?”

  “Well . . . both actually, sir.”

  I gave him the answer at once, although as soon as I had spoken I realized I had given him today’s date, whereas I had stepped forward one day beyond that. No matter, though: what he, I, was interested in was the year.

  He thanked me politely and made to step away. Then he paused, looked at me with a guileless stare (which I remembered had been an attempt to take the measure of this forbidding-looking stranger in a frock coat), and said, “Sir, do you happen to live in these parts?”

  “I do,” I said, knowing what was coming. I had raised a hand to cover my mouth, and was stroking my upper lip.

  “I wonder if you would happen to know the identity of a certain person, often to be seen in this Park?”

  “Who—?”

  I could not finish the sentence. His eager, pinkening earnestness was extremely comical. I spluttered an explosive laugh. At once I turned it into a simulated sneeze, and while I made a play with my handkerchief I muttered something about hay fever. Forcing myself to be serious I returned my handkerchief to my pocket and straightened my hat. “Who do you mean?”

  “A young lady, of about my own age.” Unaware of my amusement he moved past me and went down the bank to where there was a thick cluster of rosebushes. From behind their cover he looked across at the other side. He made sure I was looking too, then pointed.

  I could not see Estyll at first, because of the crowds, but then saw that she was standing quite near to the queue for the Tomorrow Bridge. She was wearing her dress of pastel colours—the clothes she had been wearing when I first loved her.

  “Do you see her, sir?” His question was like a discordant note in a piece of music.

  I had become perfectly serious again. Just seeing her made me want to fall into reflective silence. The way she held her head, the innocent composure.

  He was waiting for a reply, so I said, “Yes . . . yes, a local girl.”

  “Do you know her name, sir?”

  “I believe she is called Estyll.”

  An expression of surprised pleasure came over his face and his flush deepened. “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

  He backed away from me, but I said, “Wait!” I had a sudden instinct to help him, to cut short those months of agony. “You must go and talk to her, you know. She wants to meet you. You mustn’t be shy of her.”

  He stared at me in horror, then turned and ran into the crowd. Within a few seconds I could see him no more.

  The enormity of what I had done struck me forcibly. Not only had I touched him on his most vulnerable place, forcing him t
o confront the one matter he had to work out for himself in his own time, but impetuously I had interfered with the smooth progression of events. In my memory of the meeting, the stranger in the silk hat had not given unsolicited advice!

  A few minutes later, as I walked slowly along the path, pondering on this, I saw my younger self again. He saw me and I nodded to him, as an introduction, perhaps, to telling him to ignore what I had said, but he glanced away uninterestedly as if he had never seen me before.

  There was something odd about him: he had changed his clothes, and the new ones fitted better.

  I mused over this for a while until I realized what must have happened. He was not the same Mykle I had spoken to—he was still myself, but here, on this day, from another day in the past!

  A little later I saw myself again. This time I—he—was wearing the same clothes as before. Was it the youth I had spoken to? Or was it myself from yet another day?

  I was quite distracted by all this but never so much that I forgot the object of it all. Estyll was there on the other side of the Channel and while I paced along the pathway I made certain she was never out of my sight. She had waited beside the toll-booth queue for several minutes, but now she had walked back to the main path and was standing on the grassy bank, staring, as I had seen her do so many times before, towards the Tomorrow Bridge. I could see her much better there: her slight figure, her young beauty.

  I was feeling calmer at last. I no longer saw a double image of her. Meeting myself as a youth, and seeing other versions of myself, had reminded me that Estyll and I, apparently divided by the flux field, were actually united by it. My presence here was inevitable.

  Today was the last day of her vigil, although she might not know it, and I was here because I was supposed to be here. She was waiting, and I was waiting. I could resolve it; I could resolve it now!

  She was looking directly across the Channel, and seemed to be staring deliberately at me, as if the inspiration had struck her in the same instant. Without thinking, I waved my arm at her. Excitement ran through me. I turned quickly, and set off down the path towards the bridges. If I crossed the Today Bridge I should be with her in a matter of a few seconds! It was what I had to do!

  When I reached the place where the Tomorrow Bridge opened on to this side I looked back across the Channel to make sure of where she was standing.

  But she was no longer waiting! She too was hurrying across the grass, rushing towards the bridges. As she ran she was looking across the Channel, looking at me!

  She reached the crowd of people waiting by the tollbooth and I saw her pushing past them. I lost sight of her as she went into the booth.

  I stood at my end of the bridge, looking down the ill-lit covered way. Daylight was a bright square two hundred feet away.

  A small figure in a long dress hurried up the steps at the far end and ran into the wooden tunnel. Estyll came towards me, raising the front of her skirt as she ran. I glimpsed trailing ribbons, white stockings.

  With each step, Estyll moved further into the flux field. With each frantic, eager step towards me, her figure became less substantial. She was less than a third of the way across before she had blurred and dissolved into nothing.

  I saw her mistake! She was crossing the wrong bridge! When she reached this side—when she stood where I stood now—she would be twenty-four hours too late.

  I stared helplessly down the gloomy covered way, watching as two children slowly materialized before me. They pushed and squabbled, each trying to be the first to emerge into the new day.

  XV

  I acted without further delay. I left the Tomorrow Bridge and ran back up the slope to the path. The Today Bridge was about fifty yards away, and, clapping a hand on the top of my hat, I ran as fast as I could towards it. I thought only of the extreme urgency of catching Estyll before I lost her. If she realized her mistake and began to search for me, we might be forever crossing and recrossing the Channel on one bridge after another—forever in the same place, but forever separated in time.

  I scrambled on to the end of the Today Bridge, and hurried across. I had to moderate my pace, as the bridge was narrow and several other people were crossing. This bridge, of the three, was the only one with windows to the outside. As I passed each one I paused to look anxiously towards each end of the Tomorrow Bridge, hoping for a glimpse of her.

  At the end of the bridge I pushed quickly through the exit turnstile, leaving it rattling and clattering on its ratchet.

  I set off at once towards the Tomorrow Bridge, reaching for the money to pay the toll. In my haste I bumped into someone. It was a woman and I murmured an apology as I passed, affording her only a momentary glance. We recognized each other in the same instant. It was Robyn, the woman I had sent to the Park. But why was she here now?

  As I reached the tollbooth I looked back at her again. She was staring at me with an expression of intense curiosity but as soon as she saw me looking she turned away. Was this the conclusion of the vigil she had reported to me on? Is this what she had seen?

  I could not delay. I pushed rudely past the people at the head of the queue and threw some coins on to the worn brass plate where the tickets were ejected mechanically towards the buyer. The attendant looked up at me, recognized me as I recognized him.

  “Compliments of the Park again, sir,” he said, and slid the coins back to me.

  I had seen him only a few minutes before—yesterday in his life. I scooped up the coins and returned them to my pocket. The turnstile clicked as I pushed through. I went up the steps and entered the covered way.

  Far ahead: the glare of daylight of the day I was in. The bare interior of the covered way, with lights at intervals. No people.

  I started to walk and when I had gone a few paces across the flux field, the daylight squared in the far end of the tunnel became night. It felt much colder.

  Ahead of me: two small figures, solidifying, or so it seemed, out of the electrical haze of the field. They were standing together under one of the lights, partly blocking the way.

  I went nearer and saw that one of them was Estyll. The figure with her had his head turned away from me. I paused.

  I had halted where no light fell on me, and although I was only a few feet away from them I would have seemed as they seemed to me—a ghostly, half-visible apparition. But they were occupied with each other and did not look towards me.

  I heard him say, “Do you live around here?”

  “In one of the houses by the Park. What about you?”

  “No . . . I have to come here by train.” The hands held nervously by his side, the fingers curling and uncurling.

  “I’ve often seen you here,” she said. “You stare a lot.”

  “I wondered who you were.”

  There was a silence then, while the youth looked shyly at the floor, apparently thinking of more to say. Estyll glanced beyond him to where I was standing, and for a moment we looked directly into each other’s eyes.

  She said to the young man, “It’s cold here. Shall we go back?”

  “We could go for a walk. Or I could buy you a glass of orange.”

  “I’d rather go for a walk.”

  They turned and walked towards me. She glanced at me again, with a frank stare of hostility. I had been listening in and she well knew it. The young man was barely aware of my presence. As they passed me he was looking first at her, then nervously at his hands. I saw his too-tight clothes, his quiff of hair combed up, his pink ears and neck, his downy moustache. He walked clumsily as if he were about to trip over his own feet, and he did not know where to put his hands.

  I loved him; I had loved her.

  I followed them a little way, until light shone in again at the tollbooth end. I saw him stand aside to let her through the turnstile first. Out in the sunshine she danced across the grass, letting the colours of her dress shine out, and then she reached over and took his hand. They walked away together, across the newly cut lawns towards the trees.
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  XVI

  I waited until Estyll and I had gone and then I too went out into the day. I crossed to the other side of the Channel on the Yesterday Bridge, and returned on the Today Bridge.

  It was the day I had arrived in the Park, the day before I was due in Geneva, the day before Estyll and I were finally to meet. Outside in the yard, my driver would be waiting with the carriage.

  Before I left I went for one more walk along the path on this side of the Channel and headed for the bench where I knew Estyll would be waiting.

  I saw her through the crowd: she was sitting quietly and watching the people, dressed neatly in her white skirt and dark blue blouse.

  I looked across the Channel. The sunshine was bright and hazy and there was a light breeze. I saw the promenading holidaymakers on the other side: the bright clothes, the festive hats, the balloons and the children. But not everyone blended with the crowd.

  There was a rhododendron bush beside the Channel. Behind it I could just see the figure of a youth. He was staring across at Estyll. Behind him, walking along deep in thought, was another Mykle. Further along the bank, well away from the bridges, another Mykle sat in long grass overlooking the Channel. I waited, and before long another Mykle appeared. A few minutes later yet another Mykle appeared, and took up position behind one of the trees over there. I did not doubt that there were many more, each unaware of all the others, each preoccupied with the girl who sat on the bench a few feet from me.

  I wondered which one it was I had spoken to. None of them, perhaps, or all of them?

  I turned towards Estyll at last and approached her. I went to stand directly in front of her and removed my hat.

  “Good afternoon, miss,” I said. “Pardon me for speaking to you like this.”

  She looked up at me in sharp surprise. I had interrupted her reverie. She shook her head, but turned on a polite smile for me.

  “Do you happen to know who I am?” I said.