Teena Thyme (21 page)

For instance, try this one on for size: sixty seconds equals one minute and sixty minutes equals one hour and, whilst there are different time zones around the globe, depending upon the relative positions to the sun at any given time, whilst an hour passes in, say, new York, the same hour passes in, say, London. Okay, that hour may start and finish five hours difference according to the local clocks, but it's still the same hour, when all's said and done, and bugger whether a butterfly flaps its wings in a rain forest in some place I'm never likely to visit anyway.

Meanwhile over in, say Tokyo, the same hour passes, the world spins slowly around on its axis and although we all have bedtimes that are different, we all get twenty-four hours in our day and grow a little older with every sleeping and waking. Get the picture? One hour is an hour long, wherever you are in the world and thus a week is a week and a month is a month. That's a reality for you, if ever there was one. Live a week, lose a week, for the week you've just lived is over and gone forever and only the memories and the scars remain.

Oh yeah? Well, read on...

I came round slowly, voices somewhere in the background, my head feeling muzzy as hell and the bones of my corset digging into every soft piece of flesh they could find.

Corset?

I opened my eyes and looked down. A moment later I sat up, too abruptly as it happened, as whalebone stays jabbed me from every which way bar none.

'Bugger me!' I exclaimed. The voices continued in the distance and I realised it was the radio through in the kitchen, at about the same time that I realised I was now once more fully dressed, back in the outfit I had taken from the trunk and sitting on the old sofa in my recently acquired cottage haven.

I was back - back in my own time. Slowly I exhaled a sigh, partly of relief, partly of wonderment, partly because I was so confused I didn't think I was quite up to doing anything too much just then and sighing seemed a fairly safe way of using up a few seconds while I tried to get my scrambled eggs back into brain format.

Gingerly I reached around behind me and pressed my hand against my bottom. Even through the various Victorian layers I would be able to feel the evidence of my torments, but no, nothing felt tender, nothing felt warm.

Of course it didn't, I told myself. After all, this was now
my
body I was in and it was Angelina's body that had been whipped, abused, tormented and finally thrown through some sort of almost metaphysical barrier, at the same time, it would seem, parting company with my astral self, soul, call it what you will and sending me back to my own time.

Time! I jumped up with a start and wished I hadn't. Muttering curses at whichever masculine nastiness had contrived the design of this corset (it had to be masculine, surely) I staggered across and peered at the old clock. For several seconds the numbers and the hands refused to solidify, but when they did I saw it was just before nine-thirty.

The curtains were drawn still, but even before I stumbled across and peeped out I sensed it was evening, for not even the smallest chink of light penetrated their thick folds. I turned back into the room, doing mental calculations at a rate of knots.

I'd been back in that body for days; quite how many I had no real way of telling, but it was a lot, that much I knew. So what had been happening to this body,
my
body, in the interim? I peered down at myself, but the corset and everything else made it impossible to tell if I'd lost weight, so I found the mirror once more and examined my face as best I could, given the appalling light level.

Everything seemed okay. I looked healthy enough, under all that curious make-up, with no signs of bags under the eyes, sunken cheeks, or whatever else one might expect to find from a starvation diet. So, had my body been working on some sort of autopilot during my mind's absence? Obviously no one else had been involved in whatever survival process had taken place, for there was no way they would have just left me there on the sofa, still trussed up in all that whalebone and stuff, was there?

I sat down again and tried to recall where I had been just before the 'jump'. Bedroom? Down here in the lounge? I furrowed my brow, trying to concentrate and slowly it began to come back.

I had definitely been upstairs in the bedroom, for that was when I tried on the locket. My hand went instinctively to my throat and closed around the warm metal. The locket was still there and I was back here, though somehow I'd managed to shift my physical form down a flight of stairs at some time.

Time! Ye Gods! My parents would be going spare, but then... this was puzzling: why hadn't they tried to contact me, to find out why they hadn't heard anything from me for so long? And why hadn't they ultimately just forced the door and discovered my unconscious body? Or had I somehow managed to function in a normal enough way meantime and no one noticed the difference?

Never take mobile phones for granted, please. In fact, don't take any sort of phone for granted. Nowadays we have so many things made easy for us and, I suppose, even back in the mid-seventies things were pretty easy as well, so not having a phone in the cottage was one mighty drawback as far as I was concerned, especially as I was now faced with two alternatives - spend half an hour getting changed back into my normal clothes, or else risk walking several hundred yards to the nearest phone box dressed as I was.

I opted for the latter. After all, it was dark outside and I had a cape I could throw over my dress and what if anyone did see me? They'd probably assume I was on my way to or from a fancy-dress party; either that or they'd think I was some kind of ghostly apparition. Either way, that would be their problem, not mine.

As it turned out I encountered nary a soul on the way and at this outer edge of the village the street lighting, such as it was, was dim and next to useless, so I would have had to almost bump into someone for them to be able to see how I looked.

My dad answered the phone and I could tell immediately that he'd had a couple of drinks in front of the telly, which was probably just as well, for the ensuing conversation was odd to say the least and the less switched on he was, the fewer awkward questions I might have to field.

'Teen? Wassamatter love?'

'Oh, nothing dad.'

'Getting lonely already? Missing your ole dad, are you?'

'Yeah, course I am,' I said, smiling in the dim light inside the phone box and watching my distorted reflection in the mirror-backed thingy behind the important phone numbers panel.

'Is it a bit scary over there on your own?'

Scary? Scary isn't even in it, I thought. 'N-no, it's okay,' I said. 'Bit weird without a telly, but that'll be sorted soon. I just... well, I know this'll sound daft, but I was... well, I was writing a letter and I suddenly couldn't remember the exact date. You know how it is, what with all the excitement of moving and I don't even have a newspaper here to check.'

'You're as daft as your mum,' he chuckled, and told me the date, asked me if I'd remembered to put my head on before coming out to the phone and then we exchanged a few more jocular pleasantries, most of which I could barely give any real attention to before the pips went and I was able to excuse myself by saying I had no more change.

After the line went dead I stood there, phone still clutched in my hand, staring at nothing in particular, my brain whirring like a dervish trying to make some sense of things, which sounds really wet considering I had the problem of time-hopping to make sense of to begin with. However, this latest information possibly put a completely different complexion on the situation. Finally I replaced the receiver, pushed my way out of the phone box and set off back towards the cottage.

It had to have all been just a dream, that was the most obvious and rational answer. How else could it be that I had spent something around a week back in eighteen thirty-nine and yet, according to what my dad just told me and the evidence of the clock in the cottage, barely five minutes had elapsed back here in nineteen seventy-five? No wonder I hadn't looked undernourished and no wonder nobody had worried about my protracted absence - in this era I hadn't been gone anywhere!

Back in my bedroom I slowly divested myself of my clothing and slipped into a comfortable nightdress, pulling my thick dressing gown on over the top, and then another peculiarity struck me. I fingered the locket and gave it some thought, but nothing suggested itself to me other than the obvious.

When I had 'awoken' back in time, I assumed that the locket and clothing I was wearing in my own time had played some part in my transportation and then assumed that both locket and clothing had at some time had some association with Angelina, my poor ancestor. However, now, as I stared at the clothing I'd just removed, I realised that if the locket had been hers, the clothing could not possibly have been.

Fair enough, allowing for age and nature and waistlines thickening and bosoms maturing and the like, sure, the Angelina I had been might well have developed into a different looking woman eventually, but no way did or could anyone of around twenty manage to grow another eleven inches during her remaining lifespan. No, those clothes had fitted me closely enough and yes, maybe the skirts were a trifle on the short side, but whoever had originally worn them had to have been at least six or seven inches taller than Angie.

So whose clothes were they? I shook my head, suddenly feeling very tired and confused and decided it wasn't worth taxing my brain any further that evening. Tomorrow was, after all, another day, and daylight often made the most complex problems seem so much simpler than they were during the hours of darkness. I drew back the covers, slipped between the sheets and, still wearing my dressing gown over my nightie, was asleep in the twinkling of an eye.

17
.

A dream?

So, was that all it had been after all? A vivid dream; a dream so realistic that... whatever, it certainly made more sense than believing I actually had travelled back over a century, no matter how flawed the theory might be when examined closer.

For a start, research shows that there's a definite correlation between dream time and real time, apparently with some sort of average of twice as fast in dreams as it is in the reality of the dreamer's outside world. Believe that, and I'd have to have slept at least three days, and I knew for certain I hadn't done that. On the other hand, research is one thing, real proof is another and so many solid theories in so many fields have been exploded later by further investigations.

I decided, after a morning of proper pondering, to try to forget the whole episode. Yeah, like I could forget I had two legs, that my new shoes pinched, that it hurt if you put your hand under scalding water. In other words, easier said than done. But I did try.

That afternoon I took a decision; not a mind numbing, life altering decision, but one I thought was sensible in the situation. Whilst it was highly unlikely that I could ever prove whether I had actually time-travelled, or whether the entire experience had just been some sort of dream or hallucination, there were some things I could do, starting with a little project which, although it might require several days at least of my time, would not be entirely wasted as the results could likely be incorporated into my various history projects and maybe, ultimately, a university thesis, assuming I did manage to get the uni place I was working towards.

I considered, therefore, embarking upon a little family tree investigation. We nineteen-seventies Thymes knew next to nothing about our ancestors much beyond the age of my grandparents, and where Hacklebury and any other Hackleburys sat in the equation was an even greater mystery.

However, we don't live in the dark ages and there have been layers of paperwork and entire tribes of bureaucrats bent on documenting our every move since even before the first guy thought of dipping an ostrich feather into sooty oil, so what I didn't know had to be out there and available somewhere.

Given my recently inherited wealth, the possibility of upsetting my tutors at school wasn't as daunting as it might otherwise have been and besides, a quick letter saying I was somewhat under the weather with an unspecified bug would be sufficient to earn me at least two weeks' breathing space.

I started with the local libraries and the copies of various parish registers and then progressed to the Registrar of Births and stuff, trailing around all the immediate offices and filling out numerous request forms and paying over more search fees than you would believe possible. If anyone starts harping on about the good old days, they ought to try searching for information through a system where just about everything was 'handraulic' and sweated over by a myriad late middle-aged ladies in faded cardigans and with permanent bad hair days.

After ten days my original two week estimate was more than just beginning to look woefully inadequate. I'd managed to obtain copies of my grandparents' marriage and birth certificates - on both sides of the family - and gone one generation further back on my mother's side, tracing my great grandmother Wilhelmina back as far as her marriage to one Gerald Locke and then Gerald Locke back as far as his parents, Wilfred Thyme and Anne Smith, a surname which promised little in the
way of random records fishing.

However, this was interesting in itself, in that there were Thymes on both sides of the family tree, which meant I was a pure Thyme descendant with some Smith in me somewhere. Of course, various wars, epidemics and suchlike had carried off various twigs and even entire branches of families during the period I was researching, so rooting out a comprehensive family history was always going to be unlikely, and so a different tack was now required and I turned my attention towards the name of Hacklebury.