Consider Her Ways (16 page)

Was it just a simple hallucination? – A trick of her mind imposing Arthur's face on an entirely different young man?

She
glanced at him. No, that would not do – he had answered to Arthur's name. Indubitably he was Arthur – and wearing Arthur's blazer, too … They did not cut them that way nowadays, and it was years and years since she had seen a young man wearing a straw hat … ?

A kind of ghost …? But no – he was quite solid; the chair had creaked as he sat down, his shoes had crunched on the gravel … Besides, whoever heard of a ghost in the form of a thoroughly bewildered young man, and one, moreover, who had recently nicked himself in shaving …?

He cut her thoughts short by turning his head.

‘I thought Thelma would be here,' he told her. ‘She
said
she'd be here. Please tell me, where is she?'

Like a frightened little boy, she thought. She wanted to comfort him, not to frighten him more. But she could think of nothing to say beyond:

‘Thelma isn't far away.'

‘I must find her. She'll be able to tell me what's happened.' He made to get up.

She laid a hand on his arm, and pressed down gently.

‘Wait a minute,' she told him. ‘What is it that seems to have happened? What is it that worries you so much?'

‘This,' he said, waving a hand to include everything about them. ‘It's all different – and yet the same – and yet not … I feel as if – as if I'd gone a little mad.'

She looked at him steadily, and then shook her head.

‘I don't think you have. Tell me, what is it that's wrong?'

‘I was coming here to play tennis – well, to see Thelma really,' he amended. ‘Everything was all right then – just as usual. I rode up the drive and leant my bike against the big fir tree where the path begins. I started to come along the path, and then, just when I reached the corner of the house, everything went funny …'

‘Went funny?' Mrs Dolderson inquired. ‘What – went funny?'

‘Well, nearly everything. The sun seemed to jerk in the sky. The trees suddenly looked bigger, and not quite the same. The
flowers in the bed over there went quite a different colour. This creeper which was all over the wall was suddenly only halfway up – and it looks like a different
kind
of creeper. And there are houses over there. I never saw them before – it's just an open field beyond the spinney. Even the gravel on the path looks more yellow than I thought. And this room … It
is
the same room. I know that desk, and the fireplace – and those two pictures. But the paper is quite different. I've never seen that before – but it isn't new, either … Please tell me where Thelma is … I want her to explain it … I
must
have gone a bit mad …'

She put her hand on his, firmly.

‘No,' she said decisively. ‘Whatever it is, I'm quite sure it's not that.'

‘Then what –?' He broke off abruptly, and listened, his head a little on one side. The sound grew. ‘What is it?' he asked, anxiously.

Mrs Dolderson tightened her hand over his.

‘It's all right,' she said, as if to a child. ‘It's all right, Arthur.'

She could feel him grow tenser as the sound increased. It passed right overhead at less than a thousand feet, jets shrieking, leaving the buffeted air behind it rumbling back and forth, shuddering gradually back to peace.

Arthur saw it. Watched it disappear. His face when he turned it back to her was white and frightened. In a queer voice he asked:

‘What – what was that?'

Quietly, as if to force calm upon him, she said:

‘Just an aeroplane, Arthur. Such horrid, noisy things they are.'

He gazed where it had vanished, and shook his head.

‘But I've
seen
an aeroplane, and
heard
it. It isn't like that. It makes a noise like a motor-bike, only louder. This was terrible! I don't understand – I don't understand what's happened …' His voice was pathetic.

Mrs Dolderson made as if to reply, and then checked at a thought, a sudden sharp recollection of Harold talking about dimensions, of shifting them into different planes, speaking of
time as though it were simply another dimension … With a kind of shock of intuition she understood – no, understood was too firm a word – she perceived. But, perceiving, she found herself at a loss. She looked again at the young man. He was still tense, trembling slightly. He was wondering whether he was going out of his mind. She must stop that. There was no kind way – but how to be least unkind?

‘Arthur,' she said, abruptly.

He turned a dazed look on her.

Deliberately she made her voice brisk.

‘You'll find a bottle of brandy in that cupboard. Please fetch it – and two glasses,' she ordered.

With a kind of sleep-walking movement he obeyed. She filled a third of a tumbler with brandy for him, and poured a little for herself.

‘Drink that,' she told him. He hesitated. ‘Go on,' she commanded. ‘You've had a shock. It will do you good. I want to talk to you, and I can't talk to you while you're knocked half-silly.'

He drank, coughed a little, and sat down again.

‘Finish it,' she told him firmly. He finished it. Presently she inquired:

‘Feeling better now?'

He nodded, but said nothing. She made up her mind, and drew breath carefully. Dropping the brisk tone altogether, she asked:

‘Arthur. Tell me, what day is it today?'

‘Day?' he said, in surprise. ‘Why, it's Friday. It's the – er – twenty-seventh of June.'

‘But the year, Arthur. What year?'

He turned his face fully towards her.

‘I'm not
really
mad, you know. I know who I am, and where I am – I think … It's
things
that have gone wrong, not me. I can tell you –'

‘What I want you to tell me, Arthur, is the year.' The peremptory note was back in her voice again.

He kept his eyes steadily on hers as he spoke.

‘Nineteen-thirteen,
of course,' he said.

Mrs Dolderson's gaze went back to the lawn and the flowers. She nodded gently. That was the year – and it had been a Friday; odd that she should remember that. It might well have been the twenty-seventh of June … But certainly a Friday in the summer of nineteen-thirteen was the day he had not come … All so long, long ago …

His voice recalled her. It was unsteady with anxiety.

‘Why – why do you ask me that – about the year, I mean?'

His brow was so creased, his eyes so anxious. He was very young. Her heart ached for him. She put her thin fragile hand on his strong one again.

‘I – I think I know,' he said shakily. ‘It's – I don't see how, but you wouldn't have asked that unless … That's the queer thing that's happened, isn't it? Somehow it isn't nineteen-thirteen any longer – that's what you mean? The way the trees grew … that aeroplane …' He stopped, staring at her with wide eyes. ‘You must tell me … Please, please … What's happened to me? – Where am I now? – Where is this …?'

‘My poor boy …' she murmured.

‘Oh, please …'

The Times
, with the crossword partly done, was pushed down into the chair beside her. She pulled it out half-reluctantly. Then she folded it over and held it towards him. His hand shook as he took it.

‘London, Monday, the first of July,' he read. And then, in an incredulous whisper:
‘Nineteen-sixty-three
!'

He lowered the page, looked at her imploringly.

She nodded twice, slowly.

They sat staring at one another without a word. Gradually, his expression changed. His brows came together, as though with pain. He looked round jerkily, his eyes darting here and there as if for an escape. Then they came back to her. He screwed them shut for a moment. Then opened them again, full of hurt – and fear.

‘Oh,
no – no … ! No … ! You're not … You can't be … You – you told me … You're Mrs Dolderson, aren't you …? You said you were … You can't – you can't be – Thelma …?'

Mrs Dolderson said nothing. They gazed at one another. His face creased up like a small child's.

‘Oh, God! Oh – oh – oh … !' he cried, and hid his face in his hands.

Mrs Dolderson's eyes closed for a moment. When they opened she had control of herself again. Sadly she looked on the shaking shoulders. Her thin, blue-veined left hand reached out towards the bowed head, and stroked the fair hair, gently.

Her right hand found the bell-push on the table beside her. She pressed it, and kept her finger upon it …

At the sound of movement her eyes opened. The venetian blind shaded the room but let in light enough for her to see Harold standing beside her bed.

‘I didn't mean to wake you, Mother,' he said.

‘You didn't wake me, Harold. I was dreaming, but I was not asleep. Sit down, my dear. I want to talk to you.'

‘You mustn't tire yourself, Mother. You've had a bit of a relapse, you know.'

‘I dare say, but I find it more tiring to wonder than to know. I shan't keep you long.'

‘Very well, Mother.' He pulled a chair close to the bedside and sat down, taking her hand in his. She looked at his face in the dimness.

‘It was you who did it, wasn't it, Harold? It was that experiment of yours that brought poor Arthur here?'

‘It was an accident, Mother.'

‘Tell me.'

‘We were trying it out. Just a preliminary test. We knew it was theoretically possible. We had shown that if we could – oh, dear, it's so difficult to explain in words – if we could, well, twist a
dimension, kind of fold it back on itself, then two points that are normally apart must coincide … I'm afraid that's not very clear …'

‘Never mind, dear. Go on.'

‘Well, when we had our field-distortion-generator fixed up we set it to bring together two points that are normally fifty years apart. Think of folding over a long strip of paper that has two marks on it, so that the marks are brought together.'

‘Yes?'

‘It was quite arbitrary. We might have chosen ten years, or a hundred, but we just picked on fifty. And we got astonishingly close, too, Mother, quite remarkably close. Only a four-day calendar error in fifty years. It's staggered us. The thing we've got to do now is to find out that source of error, but if you'd asked any of us to bet –'

‘Yes, dear, I'm sure it was quite wonderful. But what
happened
?'

‘Oh, sorry. Well, as I said, it was an accident. We only had the thing switched on for three or four seconds – and he must have walked slap into the field of coincidence right then. An outside – a millions-to-one chance. I wish it had not happened, but we couldn't possibly know …'

She turned her head on the pillow.

‘No. You couldn't know,' she agreed. ‘And then?'

‘Nothing, really. We didn't know until Jenny answered your bell to find you in a faint, and this chap, Arthur, all gone to pieces, and sent for me.

‘One of the girls helped to get you to bed. Doctor Sole arrived, and took a look at you. Then he pumped some kind of tranquillizer into this Arthur. The poor fellow needed it, too – one hell of a thing to happen when all you were expecting was a game of tennis with your best girl.

‘When he'd quietened down a bit he told us who he was, and where he'd come from. Well, there was a thing for you! Accidental living proof at the first shot.

‘But
all
he
wanted, poor devil, was to get back just as soon as he could. He was very distressed – quite a painful business. Doctor Sole wanted to put him right under to stop him cracking altogether. It looked that way, too – and it didn't look as if he'd be any better when he came round again, either.

‘We didn't know if we
could
send him back. Transference “forward”, to put it crudely, can be regarded as an infinite acceleration of a natural progression, but the idea of transference “back” is full of the most disconcerting implications once you start thinking about it. There was quite a bit of argument, but Doctor Sole clinched it. If there was a fair chance, he said, the chap had a right to try, and we had an obligation to try to undo what we'd done to him. Apart from that, if we did not try we should certainly have to explain to someone how we came to have a raving loony on our hands, and fifty years off course, so to speak.

‘We tried to make it clear to this Arthur that we couldn't be sure that it would work in reverse – and that, anyway, there was this four-day calendar error, so at best it wouldn't be exact. I don't think he really grasped that. The poor fellow was in a wretched state; all he wanted was just a chance – any kind of chance – to get out of here. He was simply one-track.

‘So we decided to take the risk – after all, if it turned out not to be possible he'd – well, he'd know nothing about it – or nothing would happen at all …

‘The generator was still on the same setting. We put one fellow on to that, took this Arthur back to the path by your room, and got him lined up there.

‘ “Now walk forward,” we told him. “Just as you were walking when it happened.” And we gave the switch-on signal. What with the doctor's dope and one thing and another he was pretty groggy, but he did his best to pull himself together. He went forward at a kind of stagger. Literal-minded fellow; he was half-crying, but in a queer sort of voice he was trying to sing: “Everybody's doin' it, do –”

‘And
then he disappeared – just vanished completely.' He paused, and added regretfully: ‘All the evidence we have now is not very convincing – one tennis-racket, practically new, but vintage, and one straw-hat, ditto.'

Mrs Dolderson lay without speaking. He said:

‘We did our best, Mother. We could only try.'