The Fall

16

The dream was the same.

Sam Baker sat alone in the amphitheatre. Planted squarely in the centre of the stone altar, which in turn stood in the middle of the amphitheatre stage, was a huge wooden cross. Spikes sprouted from the cross like thorns on a rose bush. And impaled on the spikes was the young man with red shoes and a dirty towel tied around his waist.

As he hung there, the spikes punching through his flesh in 20 different places, he looked beseechingly at Sam.

Blood pooled in the bowls scooped out of the stone altar. In a dreamlike way, Sam stood up.

The softly-sung words appeared to leak from the stone beneath his feet. They were so sweetly intoned, the voice little more than a whisper.

He opened his eyes.

People sat in the amphitheatre seats. Instantly there was a kind of startled Oh! sound as people experienced that sharp burst of shock when they realised they were back again.

It was as if every man and woman was attached to the place by a long, long piece of elastic that allowed them so far before pulling tight and jerking them back into their seats.

Following the Oh! there was a moment or so of stunned silence as they absorbed what had happened to them. Then a rising buzz of talk, shot through with glaring threads of panic.

He felt a hand grip his forearm.

He turned to see Zita staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.

‘Sam, it’s gone and done it again, hasn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘There’s no question about it…’ He glanced round. ‘But the only question is: how far have we gone back this time?’

He heard a moan beside him.

Sitting there, dazed, glassy-eyed, was Lee Burton in his Dracula costume. He looked as if he was just coming round from one hell of a knockout punch.

Sam looked for any sign of the massive injuries that Lee had suffered. The doctor’s description had been vivid enough to give Sam a good idea of what he must have looked like. Just hours ago – or so it seemed – Lee had lain in casualty, with tubes running into his arm, nostrils and mouth. Lumpy dressings stained with blood from the bullet wounds were taped to his torso. His left arm had been severed at the elbow. The heart-monitor would have shown the erratic lines of a heart heading into a one-way pattern of defibrillation with the bleeps chattering out faster and faster until there was that one long terminal Bleeeeeeeeee…

But here he was again. Intact.

The white shirt without so much as a drop of blood marking it.

And Lee was looking down dazedly at his two hands resting there in his lap.

Without a shadow of a doubt the mechanism that had dragged them back through time had brought them back whole. Just as they had been when they’d first walked into the amphitheatre at midday, June 23^rd.

Sam quickly examined the knee of his chinos. They were a light tan colour. Earlier, he’d noticed dirty marks there about the size of a penny. It might have been drips from a coffee cup in the café. Now they were gone.

Quickly, he checked his watch. It showed a now-erroneous time and date. 1 pm, June 23^rd.

Maybe this was the hereafter? Maybe they’d go round and round on some kind of temporal fairground ride for ever and a day. Never getting any older, never dying; hell, never even seeing their clothes wear out.

Sam looked down at the centre of the amphitheatre. Jud Campbell was standing there, looking round at the audience, his gold waistcoat neatly buttoned and as immaculate as the first time Sam had seen it. He had one arm slightly raised, his index finger pointing. Sam saw he was counting the audience again. He seemed in control of himself, and when he saw Sam and Zita he waved at them to join him.

‘So it’s happened again,’ Jud said, calmly enough, as Sam and Zita joined him beside the stone altar.

Zita said, ‘But what we don’t know is when are we now.’

‘Hopefully back where we started,’ Sam said. ‘Back to the afternoon of June 23^rd.’

‘You really think so?’ Jud raised his eyebrows doubtfully.

‘I don’t think so, Jud. I just hope so, that’s all. But I reckon we need another run into town so we can buy a newspaper all over again.’

‘The weather looks the same,’ Zita said. ‘Clear and sunny. At least we haven’t been dropped into the middle of winter.’

‘So we’re still in the summer,’ Sam said.

‘But which summer?’

Sam felt suddenly cold, despite the heat of the sun. Which summer, indeed? What if all this went even more haywire?

What if they were whisked so far back they saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex come stomping over the hill, looking for brunch?

Sam licked his dry lips and closed off those distinctly unnerving thoughts. ‘The upside to all this is that we’re being brought back in one piece. In fact, whatever brings us back also repairs any damage we might have suffered before the last time jump. Do you see Lee Burton up there? There’s not a mark on him. He looks pretty shook up, though.’

‘Hell,’ Zita said, ‘from what we heard in the hospital he’d been reduced to a pile of raw mincemeat; it was only a matter of time before they pulled the plug on the life-support machine.’

Sam gave a watery smile. ‘If this freaky game is the guy upstairs’ doing then at least he doesn’t want to lose any of his players.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jud said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Call it monomania, but I count everything. When I wash my socks I count them, when I peel potatoes I count them. And I always count the people in my audience. When I first counted this lot there were 52. Now there are 51.’

‘We’ve lost one?’

‘Looks like it. And if my memory isn’t playing any strange tricks, I think it was a gentleman who sat just there at the foot of the steps.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Sam said. ‘He was old and carried a walking stick?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m telling you. I remember because he was fiddling with a hearing aid before the talk.’

Zita looked at Sam. ‘That old boy in the car park. He carried a stick and he was complaining that his hearing aid wasn’t working properly. Remember?’

‘I remember. And I’d wager any money that the two were one and the same. I’d also wager that it was the same old boy the ice-cream vendor saw walk into the river to commit suicide.’

‘So don’t do anything too reckless,’ Jud said. ‘It seems at the moment that the rules of the game are that if we’re hurt we come through the next time jump in one piece and as good as new.’

‘But if we’re killed we’re out of the game,’ Zita added.

‘Well, at least it’s good to know some of the rules.’ Sam watched the audience once more filing out of the amphitheatre. ‘But is this some kind of game? And if it is, what’s the object of it?’

‘And how do we win?’

Sam headed across the amphitheatre’s stage.

‘Where are you going,’ Zita asked.

‘I’m going down to the river to talk to our Mr Carswell.’

‘That bastard. What on Earth for?’

‘Right,’ Sam said. ‘He’s a bastard. But he’s one hell of a smart bastard. Maybe he’s got his own ideas about what’s happening.’

‘1978.’

That was how Carswell greeted Sam Baker as he walked briskly towards the boat.

‘Permission to come on board?’ Sam called, but didn’t wait for an invitation before running up the gangplank to the deck, where Carswell stood with his drink in hand.

‘It looks as if you’re coming anyway, Mr Baker.’

Sam glanced back to see Zita following. Jud was hurrying back to his own boat to find his wife.

‘The year of Our Lord, 1978,’ Carswell repeated in such a light-hearted way that Sam thought Dear God, the bastard is actually enjoying this.

‘Shit,’ Zita breathed. ‘That means we’ve gone back more than 20 years.’

Carswell looked at the drink in the glass. ‘More than 20 years and the tonic still hasn’t lost its fizz. Remarkable, hmm?’

‘Damn remarkable,’ Sam agreed with feeling. ‘What are your thoughts about all this?’

‘Time travel?’ He took a drink and appeared to relish the taste with such pleasure that it could have been the elixir of life.

‘Well, what occurs to me immediately,’ Carswell continued, ‘is that in a vehicle-repair shop in the East End of London, not far from where the shining commercial palaces of Canary Wharf will be built in a few years, is one 20-year-old youth with oily hands and blond hair like this – only much thicker – draining the sump of some rich man’s motor while dreaming of bigger and better things.’

‘How do you know the date?’

‘I’ve just listened to the radio. The pop music is definitely late ’70s.’

‘So? It might be a station playing golden oldies.’

‘And, Mr Baker, the DJ just announced he was playing a newly-released single that turned out to be a rendition of “My Way” by none other than the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious.’

‘You sure that was released in 1978?’

‘It was. In the July of 1978 to be precise – the original summer of hate. Although you’d never find me engaging in such a pastime, I could beat you hollow in a pop-music trivia quiz.’ He tapped his blond temple. ‘I retain information. Dates, places, names, even what people say down to every nuance of speech. Not bad for a Cockney boy, is it?’

‘Okay. I believe you.’

‘I don’t care whether you do or you don’t. By the way, your mobile phones won’t work. That particular communications system won’t be introduced to this country for several more years yet.’ The eyes, still cold and beady-looking, swivelled towards the cabin steps. Again that expression of barely-contained rage flared into his face. He went to the cabin door and snarled down the steps. ‘Is that meal going to take all day, or what?’ He drained the glass. ‘I’m going to change, then eat. See yourselves off my boat, won’t you?’

With that he went down the stairs.

Zita looked at Sam and rolled her eyes. ‘Charming as ever.’

Sam sighed. ‘Come on, we might as well find Jud.’

‘Do you think Carswell’s right about the year?’

Sam nodded. ‘Though I hate to admit it, Carswell’s probably always right.’

‘And insufferably arrogant with it, too.’

‘I’d back you to the hilt on that one.’

‘After we talk to Jud, what then?’

‘Another trip into town, I guess. I think it’s time we tried to find someone who can help us.’

‘Who?’

‘Search me, but we’ll never find anyone unless we start looking now.’

Lee Burton was finally free of the Dracula cape. He’d stood in the hot sun in the amphitheatre car park and fought the button until his fingertips stung, but at last he’d prised the damn thing through the loop of cord.

‘And good riddance to you,’ he told the cape as he stuffed it into a concrete waste-bin. After that he went to the toilet block, where he scrubbed the deathly white make-up and fake blood from his face.

Just minutes earlier he’d come to in the amphitheatre as if he was waking from a dream. Ryan Keith had sat beside him in the Oliver Hardy costume, his plump face running with sweat and staring in a kind of horrified fascination at the people in the amphitheatre, as if they’d sprouted bright green lizard heads from their faces or something. Nicole and Sue were talking to each other in low, worried voices.

But Lee’d had enough, God damn it.

He’d done his best. He’d tackled the robbers. He’d been shot, he’d broken bones in the car crash, his arm had been severed by the train wheels.

Now he was whole again.

Had he passed the test?

If the sun was the eye of God glaring unwaveringly down at him, then the Almighty had seen everything.

But had he passed the test?

Shit. He didn’t care anymore.

He was going to go into town and get well and truly rat-arsed.

After drying his face and hands on paper towels he left the toilet block, then headed off along the access track to the main road, where he knew he’d find a bus stop.

Behind him, the man who sold ice creams was sitting on the ground, his back to the van, his head in his hands. People were milling around the car park. The bus driver was trying – and failing miserably – to start the bus: the starter motor cranked away uselessly.

Lee walked faster.

It was a beautiful summer’s day.

The white church shone bright in the sunlight.

Bees buzzed among the wild flowers in the meadows. And right now, God knew, Lee Burton was going to enjoy life to the hilt. Even if it killed him.

‘It’s 1978… it’s 1978. I heard those people talking down by the river. We’re back in 1978. The month’s July.’ The middle-aged woman walked up the amphitheatre steps. She was smiling with sheer happiness and telling everyone she met: ‘1978. My Frank must be still alive. Isn’t that wonderful? I lost him in 1991. He’d only gone to the bathroom when I heard this bang. He’d fallen back against the door and…’ She went on up the steps, beaming so happily her cheeks looked as tight as balloons.

‘At least someone’s cheerful,’ Sue said. ‘Want one?’ From the packet of her Stan Laurel jacket she’d pulled a packet of cigarettes. ‘Oh, damn. I’ve just realised. If it’s 1978, somewhere I’ll still be in nappies.’

Nicole took a cigarette. Inside the hairy black gorilla suit it felt like a furnace. She threw the gorilla head onto the stone floor. ‘Yeah, and Freddie Mercury’s still alive.’

‘And Cary Grant.’

‘And Peter Sellers.’

‘I never cared for him much.’

‘Didn’t you? I thought he was brilliant in Being There.’

There was a pause, then Nicole blew a jet of smoke through her lips. ‘My God, we nearly had a normal conversation about normal things, didn’t we?’

‘So what happens now?’

Nicole merely shrugged.

They smoked in silence for a moment. Part of the audience had already streamed out of the amphitheatre. The rest sat and talked or stared mutely into space. They all knew now that they’d been dragged back here from whatever they had been doing. Like dolls on a long piece of elastic. They could go only so far before being snapped back into their seats.

Nicole pushed back her long blonde hair. She felt peculiarly calm. She guessed the real description of her condition was that she was resigned to what had happened.

It seemed only a few minutes earlier that she was on a burning quest to save the life of old Mr Thorpe who lived next door. She’d jumped off the bus in York and had run through the streets in her stupid gorilla suit, all the way back to Invicta Parade. She’d pounded on the door until Mrs Thorpe had opened it. She’d been surprised to see Nicole standing on the step in her gorilla suit, but that surprise had turned into something close to shock when Nicole had dramatically demanded to see Mr Thorpe. In any event, it turned out he’d just walked down to the local supermarket for a loaf of bread.

Nicole had been running down the street, drawing honks from passing drivers and shouts from school kids, when suddenly she wasn’t running anymore.

She was sitting in the amphitheatre again.

Cooking in that damned ape suit.

What do you do in a situation like this? she asked herself. Do you sit and wait and hope that whatever’s clogged the arteries of time frees itself?

Do you go out and make the most of it? Drink, laugh and love until the cows come home? Or do you find some professor – the loony kind with the wild and woolly hairstyle – who can straighten all this out for you?

Or do you throw a rope over a tree branch and end it all? Suicide. It seemed such a simple and elegant solution to everything.

Suicide.

There was a rope, she knew, in the luggage hold of the tour bus.

Why it was there she wasn’t sure. To tie more luggage onto a roof-rack? Or maybe it was supplied by the National Euthanasia Society of Great Britain for just such a crisis as this. When your boyfriend leaves you pregnant and penniless. Or you’re fired from your job, maybe. Or if the universe turns all contrary on you and flicks you back through time like a child flicking a tiddlywink button.

She found herself grinning. Yes, that’s it. The answer to all my problems.

She plucked a length of white cotton from the black furry leg of the gorilla suit; almost idly, as if she’d just made an everyday decision like what to eat for lunch or what blouse to wear on a date.

‘I’ll be back in five minutes,’ she told Sue – which was a barefaced lie, of course. Then she went to find the rope.

The Range Rover started at the eighth attempt. ‘Thank the Lord for that,’ Zita said.

‘What else do we need to thank the Lord for?’ Sam Baker asked, pushing the mobile phone into the glove compartment. (When he’d tried dialling, out of curiosity, all he’d got were the clicks and hisses of static.)

In the back of the car Jud leaned forward. ‘At least there’s less electrical interference this time round.’

‘Is that a good sign or a bad sign?’ Sam asked. ‘Until we know what the hell’s happening we could keep rolling back through time until we reach Year Zero.’

‘That’s, hopefully, what we’re going to try and find out.’

Zita powered the car through the car park exit onto the track that led to the main highway.

A moment later they all felt a bump in the road. ‘The roadway was on two levels,’ Zita said. ‘I didn’t notice that before, did you?’

Sam shook his head. ‘The road surface is different, too; it’s pebbles that have been rolled into the road tar.’

‘So it looks like we’ve left the road of 1999 behind for the road of 1978.’ Jud Campbell looked through the back window. ‘See the grass? It’s far longer here, too.’

Zita glanced in the rear-view mirror. ‘At least we’re starting to see the extent of the land area that’s made the jump with us.’

‘Roughly, my guess is it comprises the amphitheatre at the centre, the car park, visitors’ centre, a chunk of river, a few acres of grassland and a hundred yards or so of access road. As far as I can guess, the church lies just inside the affected area.’

They passed Lee Burton, who was marching hard along the road, head down, his expression set in determination. Sam didn’t suggest stopping to pick him up. No-one else did, either.

They joined the main road to town.

In the back, Jud said quietly, ‘This time I think we’re going to notice one or two changes.’

The driver never asked Nicole Wagner why she needed access to the luggage hold. He simply pushed a button on the dash, then went back to jabbing the pre-sets on the bus radio. The sound of the Bee Gees’ ‘Stayin’ Alive’ filled the bus.

Inwardly Nicole was grinning as she climbed off the bus in her gorilla suit. The luggage-hold doors hissed open on their hydraulically-driven supports. There lay the orange nylon rope, neatly coiled on top of a suitcase.

That internal grin widened. At that moment she realised, in a disconnected this-doesn’t-affect-me kind of way, that it felt like she had a grinning clown locked away inside her head. The clown grinned and grinned behind his cherry-red nose. Of course, it wasn’t a real grin – it was only painted there as a mask to conceal the real expression of despair and helplessness beneath.

Right now, she acted on autopilot. Someone else pulled the strings that moved her arms as she picked up the coil of rope and walked slowly towards the trees.

This was the right thing.

She was certain of it. So what if the stress of recent events had triggered a self-destruct mechanism?

Putting her head through a noose was the simple and elegant solution to all her problems.

A tiny voice in the back of her head protested. Perhaps it was the shock of what had happened to her – the backward skip through time – that was to blame; maybe the shock had screwed up most of the people in the amphitheatre, too; they couldn’t think rationally; perhaps if she only took the time to have a coffee and think things through she wouldn’t take her own life.

But no…

The voice was too small and far too feeble.

In the distance now she could hear the Bee Gees song pumping from the bus. ‘Stayin’ Alive’? Wasn’t that an exquisite irony?

In the back of her head the clown’s grin grew wider and wider. He began to rock backwards and forwards, quivering with a manic laughter. The rope felt good and strong and thick in her hands. Now she only needed to find a tree with a branch sturdy enough to hold her weight.

William Bostock was arguing again with his wife of 30 years. They’d habitually yelled at each other at least once a day since their only daughter had run away from home ten years earlier. Not that the daughter’s story had turned into high melodrama. They had never tracked her down to a whorehouse where she cavorted furiously for the price of a heroin fix.

No, nothing that purple. Daughter Tina had run only as far as Pontefract, where she’d found work on a Woolworth’s check-out. Now she was married to a quantity surveyor and lived in a comfortable house overlooking the racecourse.

But her leaving had thrown William’s and Marion’s relationship out of kilter. There was some marital problem that neither could even identify, never mind resolve.

Instead they yelled.

Now William followed Marion away from the amphitheatre. He was a short, sturdy man in a cream polo shirt and polyester trousers; above his belt a beer belly blossomed (already heading for that fat-man fold-over that would in time obscure his privates when he looked down at himself). Lately, he’d begun to notice his own body odour or, to put it a little more plainly, his armpits stank of sweat: a sharp, stale smell that enveloped him in an aura of armpit stink. At first he found himself walking faster to outpace the smell. When he found that didn’t work he began to slosh huge amounts of aftershave onto his chest and armpits. Now stale-sweat smells mated with Superdrug Sport for Men to give birth to a truly potent odour that made people pause and look at him as he walked by in the street.

Marion Bostock was a short, plump woman of 50 with large breasts that had grown soft and pudding-like over the years. On her nose rested thick brown-rimmed glasses that gave her the look of an owl, or so William thought. An ever-staring, ever-judgemental owl that criticised everything he did.

The eyes were still huge as she snarled at him, ‘I told you I never wanted to come on this holiday, didn’t I? I knew – I just knew it would end in disaster.’

‘How the hell could I foresee this?’ he said, feeling his cheeks burn. ‘Rain, yes. Losing our suitcase, yes. But not this, you stupid woman.’

‘Stupid, am I?’

‘Of course you bloody well are. All you want to do is nag, nag, nag… It’s the only time you’re happy.’

‘The only time you’re happy is when you’re with your cronies with a drink inside you.’

‘Too bloody right.’

Instinctively they headed away from other people to where they could yell at each other in relative privacy. ‘And I haven’t forgotten you hit me on the bus, William Bostock. I’ll never forget that.’

‘Well, you were driving me—’

‘But to hit me? You do realise that’s the first time you’ve raised your hand to me?’

‘Marion, I—’

‘And it will be the last, d’you hear? The last!’

By this time they’d entered a clump of trees some way from the amphitheatre.

‘Oh, shut up,’ William said. ‘I’m sick of hearing you… day after day after—’

‘You’re sick of hearing me?’

‘Yes. Bloody sick.’

‘That’s rich.’

‘But true.’

‘I have to listen to you moan about work every time you come home.’

‘It’s a treadmill at that factory; it’s—’

‘You moan about it, you say you hate it.’ Her eyes flashed, passionate with anger. ‘But you never stop talking about it.’ With that she turned and walked briskly along the path through the woods, her soft, pudding-like breasts no doubt bouncing heavily up and down as she went, thought William bitterly, picturing the way they moved independently of her when she marched away angrily like that. Which was one of her favourite tricks.

‘Where are you going now?’ he sneered. ‘Home?’

‘Somewhere you won’t find me.’

He ran after her. His leg muscles were so tight he ran stiffly, his legs hardly bending at the knee at all. Anger – sheer, blazing anger – had caused every muscle in his body to tense until he felt he was running in a suit of armour.

‘Marion—’

He meant only to grab her by the arm to turn her round. Whether she thought he was going to slap her again he didn’t know. In any event she got one in first: a surprisingly muscular slap that caught him across the forehead and eye.

He lurched back, the eye stinging, filling with tears.

He found he could hardly see.

She raised her hand again. Alarmed, he stepped back, but some obstruction wouldn’t allow his foot to move. With his balance gone he tripped backwards and sat down hard on the earth floor.

Suddenly, even under the canopy of branches, everything seemed over-bright to William. A great rush of energy surged through him.

With it came rage.

An awful tidal wave of rage that swamped all reason, all logic, all conscience.

He jumped onto all fours and crawled like some fast woodland animal, his eyes swivelling left and right as he searched for something in the dirt.

Got it, got it, got it!

The words machine-gunned through his head.

Got it! Goddit-godditttt!

Ahead lay a pebble the size of a tennis ball.

It was brown and shiny and – God, yes, yes – hard. Hard as flint.

He grabbed it in his right hand, jumped to his feet.

His wife had stopped to stare at him, her eyes ridiculously huge behind her glasses.

Old Granny Owl.

Crimson flashes burst in front of his eyes.

Old Granny Owl, come here!

He didn’t so much run at her as pounce.

In fury he swung the hand that gripped the pebble down at her.

Clunk…

Quite a gentle sound, really. Like someone patting a baby’s pillow for its head when it was laid down to sleep at night.

Gurfff…

The grunt came from her mouth like a fart.

Old Granny Owl!

He hammered at her head with the pebble.

His arm blurred with speed.

It all seemed so effortless and easy to William.

Thud-thud-thud…

Marion staggered backwards until she clunked against a tree trunk and couldn’t retreat any farther.

She looked up with what seemed to him a kind of gormless surprise at the pebble coming down again and again.

William watched as if he stood outside himself as her forehead split under the hammer-like blows. The wide expanse of creamy forehead just opened like cracks appearing in a frozen puddle.

Her soft pudding breasts wobbled to the rhythm of the blows.

Blood gushed in a thick red stream down her face. Some poured into her mouth. It bubbled as she made that farting sound with her lips.

Still he beat.

The lenses of the owl glasses shattered.

But still – amazingly to William – they stayed on her face. He hit again. Slap in the middle of that bloody forehead. Only this time instead of the soft thud there was a sharp crack. Like someone snapping a bamboo cane.

Instantly she dropped at his feet.

And then she lay still. Knees together and bent, arms down by her side.

He was grunting for breath; his chest felt empty of everything – not just air, but bones and guts and lungs and heart.

He looked up.

What he saw didn’t register at first. Because it was an impossible sight.

At least, impossible here in this patch of trees in Yorkshire, England.

Maybe he was dreaming. He blinked.

The image remained.

A gorilla with a coat of shaggy black fur stood on the ground watching him. In its hands it held an orange jungle creeper that snaked up into the branches.

He glanced down at the lifeless body of his wife, the smashed owl glasses still perched primly on her bloody face.

Then he looked back at the gorilla holding the jungle creeper.

This time his powers of recognition came back to him. What he really stared at was a girl in a gorilla suit holding a rope, as if she was going to climb into a tree. What was more, she was one of the four travel reps on the coach. They’d all been in fancy dress.

He glanced back at his dead wife.

And he knew he couldn’t allow the girl to leave the wood.