Out of Time (38 page)

One night he dreamed of Kathryn. He dreamed he was back in the community. They were waiting for the townspeople to attack. Events were jumbled. Then they came, the enemies on their ponies and the fight replayed itself. But not his fight, Kathryn’s fight. He saw her drop down from her tree on one of the horsemen below, he saw them fall together, he watched the struggle on the ground, a second horseman falling on her, wielding his knife. Kathryn was up with a swift movement but before the first man could retaliate she had wounded him. He crawled away to die. The second one was tougher and fought back. They were fairly matched but Kathryn was faster and in the duel that followed he seemed to be vanquished. But suddenly, unexpectedly, she fell to her knees and her opponent was on her, thrusting a knife into her chest. Her face was exultant.

The final tableau matched exactly what he had seen that fateful day.

Joe woke sobbing. He ran out of the house, into the street, he ran into the park and to Cat Walk. The furniture had gone, the cars remained.

He did not know how to go on living.

Time has passed since then, time to absorb, to contemplate, to seek out the heart of my experience. Time out of time, two minutes in this world, two years in the other. There lies the paradox.

Time plays games; it pretends to run in a sequence, one minute following another, months, years, piling up in a relentless progression. We are born, we grow old, we die. That’s the logic; but time conceals a genie in the bottle. Time is what we perceive, it alters according to where it is perceived and who is perceiving it. And who knows in what other dimensions it will work its magic? Only one thing is constant, the lifespan of an individual.

There is no explanation of how or why I blundered into a parallel world. None is needed. What happened happened and is happening still. It informs every aspect of my life, it has led me to what I now am, an artist, a sculptor.

As for love? Love never ends, it is constantly renewed in ways surprising and mysterious. And so it has been for me. I have found love again.

I think of the people I left behind. Sometimes I hear Meredith calling from the infinite and infinitesimal country ‘in between’. There is always an in-between, in between dots on a line, in between the blink of an eye, in between life and death.

My arrival in the other world seems foreordained to alter it, a trajectory with all the appearance of deliberate and conscious decisions. But they were not mine, nor Kathryn’s. Other forces were at work. Thus it was that while she thought she was dying to save me, she was dying to save her people; while she thought she was preventing me from venturing into Bantage, she was instrumental in my so doing. Fate is not without its touches of irony.

Perhaps all life is like that. Perhaps there is no free will, perhaps there is a ‘divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.’ It may be so but I have not left the other world empty-handed. I carry in my heart the knowledge that love, nobility and strength of spirit are the essence of our being. What was it Otto said?

‘It’s not comfort we’re after, but the truth. That’s all you’ve got to live by. The truth.’

The End

Also by Ruth Boswell

E
MMY

published by
Routledge
& Kegan Paul

First published in November 2005

by Muswell Press

This ebook edition first published in 2011

All rights reserved

© Ruth Boswell 2011

The right of Ruth Boswell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

ISBN 978-0-9565575-8-2

Cover from a drawing by James Boswell.

www.muswell-press.co.uk