The Fall

33

‘Exactly what is this danger?’ Nicole asked. ‘I’ll need to warn my friends.’ She glanced back in the direction of the car park where she saw Jud, Sam and Carswell talking together. There too was the tramp she’d seen before, standing not far from them. However, he was taking no part in the conversation, just staring across the river.

‘Vagabonds, cut-throats, rogues,’ William Horbury said as he flicked back his cloak to reveal the pommel of the sword in its scabbard. He rested his hand on it. ‘Known collectively as Bluebeards. We need to be vigilant.’

The man with the bird in his face said, ‘You should try and get everyone away from this place. You can take William’s word for it, there’re some pretty evil-looking characters hanging around these woods.’

‘We could simply get into the bus and the cars and drive away, but you know as well as I do that when the next time-shift comes we’ll find ourselves back in the amphitheatre.’

The eyes in William’s stomach widened. ‘Well, why don’t you show her the way we used to get out of that blasted hole in the ground? Because that’s how we all started, you know? We were in that amphitheatre, as they call it. Then – woomph! – we were in another time. And some of us ended up in other bodies – now there’s a tale I can tell you, young lady.’

Nicole stared. ‘You mean you became fused with William? Like this gentleman became fused with the bird?’

‘Exactly. Talk about a ruddy nightmare. 1908, it were. And me and my fiancée cycled down to that there amphitheatre for a kiss and a cuddle, like. Ivy Marshall, they called her, with all this long black hair – jet black! – stretched all the way down to the back of her knees when she let it all down. Anyway. We were—’

‘Shh…’ William held his finger to his lips. At the same time, he gripped the sword and quietly drew it from the scabbard. ‘Visitors.’

The meeting at the amphitheatre had broken up. Jud was talking to Rolle. Carswell had returned to his millionaire’s launch that still bobbed there on the river, a gleaming white in the sunlight. From the acid expression on the man’s face, Sam Baker figured that Carswell thought that the theory was pretty much shite.

With the sun beating down between banks of cloud, Sam walked across to the visitors’ centre and helped himself to a drink from the vending machine. Someone had chiselled the door open. It didn’t matter. At the next leap back through time, the machine would be magically restored to its original pristine condition; the shelves would be restocked once more with cans. The only thing lacking now was an electricity supply to chill the drinks.

But apart from that, everything would be exactly like it had been at that moment in 1999 when the world went pear-shaped and they began this weird and wonderful ride back through time.

Sam tugged at the ring-pull on a can of Cherry Coke; it was sickly sweet, but God knew he was ready for that sugar rush to his brain. If the machine had stocked Jack Daniel’s whiskey he’d have taken a bottle and crept quietly away to get blasted.

Were they some unlikely squad of time commandos? For want of a better phrase, press-ganged by a beleaguered people somewhere in the future to go back and plug a gap in time? To stop a wholesale invasion by armies from remote history?

Okay, Christ, it was unlikely. Admit it. But he couldn’t figure out any other explanation. And it certainly seemed to make at least a rough fit with Rolle’s warning that criminals and robbers were starting to exploit the ability to travel to different time periods to steal from an unsuspecting public.

For the first time in what seemed like days, he felt a pang of hunger. Which at any rate proved to him, at least, that despite these weird, even downright surreal events, he was still a human being, with basic human needs. There’d be souvenir tins of locally-produced cake and honey in the visitors’ centre. He decided to fill up on some of that while he tried to figure out what he should do next.

William Horbury drew his sword as the stranger stepped out from the forest. The stranger was dressed in a leather biker jacket patterned with silver studs. On his feet were a pair of motorcycle boots; the buckles rattled with every step he took.

‘Mr Bumble, as we live and breathe,’ came the raw Cockney voice from William’s stomach. Mockingly it said, ‘Did your soft comfy bed catch fire or what?’

‘Shh, Bullwitt,’ William scolded. Then he turned to the stranger. ‘Grimwood, what is it?’

‘Those jerk-off bastards are everywhere. They trashed the camp, so I came here to find you lot. Who’s blondie?’

‘The lady is Nicole. She is one of us now; dispossessed; a wanderer; a—’

‘Spare me the fucking poetry.’

Nicole found herself staring at the stranger so hard her eyes felt as though they were going to rip from their sockets and fly at his face.

Her first thought was: he’s black.

But as he walked towards her, scything through the nettles with a stick, she changed her mind.

Not black.

But he’s been sprayed with some black liquid, possibly engine oil.

His face was covered with black lumps. Around the size of her little fingernail, they were a shiny black. And they were moving. The man’s face was seething with them. It was like looking into an ants’ nest or a… a…

Beehive.

She caught her breath.

The three (four, rather, if you included the face that bulged from William’s stomach) spoke quickly together; this was evidently a meeting of men in crisis. As Nicole listened, bemused, making neither head nor tail of any of it, she also found she couldn’t tear her eyes from the man they called Grimwood.

At least, that was, she couldn’t tear her eyes from that face.

Oh, what a face, what a face…

That face was the centre of her universe now. Nothing else existed. Every shred of her attention was locked hard upon it.

Oh, dear God… His face was alive with bees. She saw that now. Dozens and dozens of bees – living, squirming bees, with orange and black striped bodies, shiny black legs, glossy heads, quivering antennae and those rounded insect eyes.

Why don’t the bees fly away?

Why doesn’t he wash them off?

Why don’t they sting him to death?

The questions buzzed with an insectile ferocity of their own.

The bees covered the man’s face as completely as a mask.

They even filled one of his orbits, leaving a sticky white slit that was a mere ruin of an eye.

‘You’ve got a yellow streak up your back, you piece of shit,’ the one she now knew as Bullwitt sneered from William’s stomach. ‘Why did you let them smash up our camp? I bet they took all the food, didn’t they, Mr Bumble? And Mr Bumble stood there and let it shitting well happen. Isn’t that right, Mr Bumble?’

‘No, that isn’t right,’ Grimwood snarled. ‘And stop calling me Mr Bumble.’

‘Mr Bumble, Mr Bumble, Mr—’

‘Shut it!’ Instantly a hum sounded. Wide-eyed with amazement, Nicole realised it was the bees. The bees were buzzing angrily. Somehow their insectile emotions were synchronising mysteriously with those of their human host.

Nicole saw the man’s face even become blurred, as if a thin grey smoke had drifted in front of it. She realised the effect was caused by the sudden beating of the bees’ wings. They beat in fury as Grimwood himself snarled in fury. ‘It wasn’t like before, Bullwitt. It wasn’t just a couple of Bluebeards trying to whip a can of beans or a packet of bleedin’ fags. This time there were dozens of them. They were armed to the teeth. We had to run for our lives – for our fucking lives! – and I’m telling you, never ever call me Mr Bumble again.’

‘Why?’ Bullwitt asked from William’s stomach. ‘Are you afraid I’m going to come out of here and fight you?’

‘For two pins I’d cut you out of there and kick your bloody head through every piece of shit I could find.’

‘Temper, temper,’ Bullwitt chuckled. ‘After all, you don’t want to come out in hives, do you now?’

‘I’ll kill you one day. I promise!’

‘Oh, buzz off.’

‘Be quiet, Bullwitt, please.’

‘But he—’

‘I said quiet.’ William pulled the cloak back over the face, muffling the voice.

‘Don’t listen to Bullwitt,’ William said soothingly. ‘He’s bitter and frustrated.’

Nicole turned from the bird-faced man to the bee-faced man. Just for a second it felt as if her skull had caved in under pressure of the bizarre images she was seeing. It wouldn’t have taken much to send her screaming back to the others in the car park.

But for the moment, she told herself, my duty lies here. These men know something. They might be able to help us.

She tuned in to what William was saying. ‘Is anyone from our camp hurt?’

‘Kylie was clubbed. Caught her here in the mouth.’

‘But she escaped?’

‘Oh aye, got clean away, but she’s well pissed off at losing her front two teeth.’

‘Where have they gone now?’

‘They’re all leaving this time. They’re pissed off, as you can imagine. All our food’s gone; blankets, tents; that big box of cigars that Dixie got. All gone.’

‘Bastards,’ came a muffled voice from beneath the cloak.

The bird wing fluttered from the side of the man’s head. ‘Can’t we all just split up and go home?’ His eyes were large and sad-looking. ‘I mean, just go back to our own times?’

‘Looking like this?’ Grimwood pointed to his own beehive face. ‘I can hardly see myself walking into the Casterton Social and Welfare club for an afternoon’s snooker with a mush like this, can you?’

The birdman shook his head and dropped his eyes to the ground. Even the blackbird head looked down in sympathy.

‘Take heart, Mr Saunders.’ William laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. Nicole was touched to see it was a genuine gesture of affection. ‘We’ve sworn to be brothers now. You have joined a new family, each one of us similarly blighted.’ He squeezed the shoulder and smiled. ‘Divinely blighted, we say. Together we shall survive and prosper and make new homes for ourselves. And look.’ He nodded to Nicole. ‘We have a new sister. Her beauty and her intelligence will enrich our family.’

‘A new sister?’ Nicole shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t follow.’

William tilted his head to one side and looked at her, smiling. It was almost a secret smile as if he was just about to spring a surprise birthday present on her. ‘Didn’t I make myself clear to you, dear lady? I’m sorry, I do not speak plainly enough, tatter-tongue that I am.’

‘Make yourself clear about what?’

‘My dear lady,’ he told her gently, ‘you are one of us now.’

She looked from the man with the face in his stomach, to the man with the bird in his face, then to the man with bees embedded in the skin of his face and throat.

She shook her head. ‘Oh no,’ she said in a disbelieving whisper. ‘I’m not one of you.’

‘But you are,’ William said, smiling pleasantly as if not wanting to frighten her. ‘You are divinely blighted. But that’s no handicap, you can—’

‘No!’ her voice sharpened. ‘I’m nothing like you. You were fused into other animals during a time-leap. Look at me…’ She stood before them holding out her long tanned arms; she lifted a leg, each in turn. They stretched down from the lycra cycling shorts, long, lean, golden-coloured. ‘Just look. There’s nothing wrong with me.’

There’s nothing wrong with me.

As she spoke that sentence her voice rose in pitch, ending with a tremor as the first sensation of fear twitched her stomach muscles.

‘Please…’ William’s kind smile didn’t falter; his eyes were as compassionate as a saint’s. ‘Please don’t be alarmed. But if I may be so bold?’

Gently he reached out towards her, his movements slow so as not to alarm her. Lightly pinching the neck of her T-shirt between his finger and thumb, he began to ease it down from her throat so as to expose her shoulder.

Alarmed, she was ready to pull away.

He shook his head; again, a gentle movement. ‘Be still, please. Just for a moment. I won’t harm you.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘There, my lady. Tell me what it is that you see there upon your shoulder.’

That hot summer’s day in 1865 wore on. The accidental time travellers – there were about 40 in all now – stayed pretty close to the amphitheatre. Well, it could be said more accurately that they stayed near to what creature comforts those few acres of earth could offer.

They helped themselves to drinks and food from the visitors’ centre. The driver had now given up charging for snacks from the bus’s galley. Every so often he’d pull from his pocket a thick wad of the notes he’d already taken from the passengers (the duty-free beer he’d smuggled in on one Continental trip had been a real money-spinner), then he’d shake his head sadly.

The cash was useless. 1990s currency in 1865? He might as well light a fire with it.

Sam walked round the site, examining the perimeter of the time-shift. It was as if someone had taken an extremely sharp knife and sliced through the metalled road. The 50-or-so-yard section that ran from the perimeter of the boundary to connect with the car park was the same as it always had been: smooth blue-grey tarmac, complete with iron storm-water grates, neatly painted white lines along the centre and a steel sign warning of playing children at the entrance to the car park: 5 MPH MAXIMUM!

Where the road left that 1999 chunk of ground, the metalled surface suddenly ended. Sam had to step off the higher road and down onto a cart track of black cinder that had compacted down as hard as concrete.

When he turned to look back to where the road abruptly ended he could even see a cross-section of it, built up in layers of shale and limestone that was then topped with tarmac. The whole thing looked like a sandwich cake made up of layers of red, white and black sponge.

In the distance a foggy pall of smoke marked the position of Casterton. No doubt domestic and commercial chimneys still smoked richly. Even on a hot summer’s day like this.

After a while Sam returned to the amphitheatre.

Perhaps it was all illusory but at least there seemed to be some sense of safety and security there. Already people, incredible though it might seem, were settling into a kind of domestic routine. Jud and his wife were brewing vast quantities of tea and coffee for their time-travelling companions. Even Ryan Keith seemed to have snapped out of his trance. Still dressed in the Oliver Hardy costume complete with bowler hat, he filled plastic buckets from the visitors’ centre water-storage tank and brought them down to the Campbells’ narrow boat. There they boiled kettle after kettle on their Calor-gas hob.

Only Carswell remained aloof, watching the proceedings from the deck of his launch with a glass of cold beer in his hand. He looked like a Roman emperor dispassionately watching slaves at work. He wasn’t going to filthy his hands by helping out. And he certainly wasn’t going to hand over any of his food and drink, although (and both Sam and Jud had noticed it) a good number of people were growing more and more hostile towards him. Already there was talk of simply going aboard the launch and taking what they wanted.

Sam sympathised. But he thought of the handgun that Carswell had pulled in the bar when the police had tried to arrest him.

There was every chance he’d start waving that gun the moment anyone stepped onto his gangplank.

‘Where’s Rolle?’ Sam asked Jud, who was carrying a steel pole along the deck of the narrow boat.

‘He left a couple of hours ago. He said he had to go somewhere, and that he’d be back later.’

‘Has he been able to tell you how we can get out of the amphitheatre during time-jumps?’

‘No. At least, not clearly. I think that’s going to take a lot more work yet on our part.’

‘That’s not particularly encouraging. What happens when we make the next time-jump?’

‘I think more people will die, Sam. Here, take this.’

Jud leant out from the boat and handed Sam the steel pole.

‘What’s this?’

‘We’re building a barbecue.’

‘A barbecue!’ Sam laughed in disbelief. ‘You’re kidding?’

‘No. We’re going to eat out tonight.’

‘Where did you get the food for 40 people?’ Sam took the pole. ‘Wait. Don’t tell me, you do this trick with five loaves and some fishes.’

‘Carswell poured scorn on the people here in the amphitheatre. He wrote them off as just a bunch of ignorant halfwits. But we have a retired butcher among our number. He and another man cornered a sheep up on the hills. I lent him my sharpest kitchen knives and, hey presto, we’re just about to roast a whole sheep. Coming?’

‘You bet.’

In a way Sam wondered if they were wasting their time (and on every occasion he used the word ‘time’ in a figure of speech that word would clang back at him). It was possible that at any moment they’d be whisked farther back in time again.

Then they’d find themselves sitting back in the amphitheatre seats. The travel reps in fancy dress. Jud Campbell pushing that pin into his collar.

But the people were actually enjoying themselves. For the first time on this roller-coaster ride into history he heard laughter. They gathered wood for the fire. On the river bank Jud, helped by Sam, rigged up a spit on which the sheep could be roasted.

The time-shift didn’t come that evening. As the sun sank behind the hills they lit the fire, then roasted the sheep. Sam couldn’t remember ever tasting anything as delicious as those hunks of mutton he held in his hands. Perhaps every nerve-ending was making a desperate grab at normality. The barbecue, eating, talking to the others, all smacked of normality.

At one point Jud had carved him another hunk of sizzling mutton and said, ‘You know what you were talking about earlier? About there being a reason for all this? Being sent back through time to save humanity. Well…’ Jud handed him the plate, his eyes twinkling in the firelight. ‘I believe you, Sam. I think you’re on the right track.’

‘Hell, it’s a relief to hear someone say it. Carswell dismissed me as some kind of crackpot. He’s taken to his boat and looks as if he’s going to stay there until hell freezes over.’

‘That’s his problem. And no, I don’t think you’re a crackpot. What we must do is sit Rolle down the next time we see him and find out how he manages to navigate through time.’ Jud looked up at him. ‘You know, I think it’s our only hope.’

That was as far as the strand of conversation went. After that they joined the others sitting on the slope overlooking their fire with the still-sizzling mutton. It dropped spits of fat that ignited in pops of blue flame in the glowing embers. Everywhere there was a delicious aroma of cooking meat.

At last people returned to the bus or to the cars to sleep. Jud made up a bunk for Sam in the spare cabin on the boat. Zita slept on a bed-settee in the boat’s lounge area. And in the corner of the cabin sat a television. It was completely useless now. A piece of lifeless plastic and circuitry. For Sam, however, it was still a potent symbol of the life he’d left behind. After saying goodnight to the others, he found himself lightly touching the top of it, feeling that cool plastic beneath his fingertips. Bizarrely, it was reassuring. Perhaps reassuring in the same way a devoutly religious person would feel when entering a church or synagogue or mosque. Although there was no electricity to feed the set, it still seemed to hum with its own magic power.

Again he realised how bizarre it was, but he wished he could switch on the television. Even if it was just to see a string of old TV ads that he’d always written off as banal. It would be like seeing the smiling face of an old friend again.

Moments later Sam lay on the narrow cabin bunk, feeling the tilt of the boat under him as the current gently pulled at the hull. A night-bird called from somewhere across the water. In the distance a dog barked; the sound had a near musical quality that shimmered on the air. Despite everything, he felt a strange kind of contentment that he’d never experienced before.

It might just be eating the first square meal in God knew how long.

Or it might be a feeling of kinship that he was developing with his fellow time travellers now he sensed they were on some kind of quest together. Where it would lead he just didn’t know.

He heard a female voice singing. Perhaps it was one of the tourists strolling along the banking in the moonlight. She sang the old hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. He couldn’t explain why, precisely, but at that moment it seemed hugely appropriate.

Hearing the words, sung as softly as a lullaby, he drifted off to sleep.