What about us? (28 page)

“Grace, I don’t know what
you’re talking about, honestly I don’t.” I told her, genuinely puzzled.

“I’m not an expert mind, but I
don’t think you can take me back to just before the accident.  I know things
now about what happened next and from what you’ve said, it’s not allowed.  So
that means... if you really meant to wipe us out of each other’s minds, you
wouldn’t have come back here as soon as you could; you would have gone back to
then and changed something.  Only you didn’t do that did you? No, you came back
here, to me.” she said, smiling serenely.  “You want me in your life just as
much as I want you in mine Jack and you don’t know how happy that makes me.”

She snuggled into my side and
as always, I found it impossible to argue with her.  She was right and we both
knew it.

We sat there for a while and I
was almost able to forget all the years that had passed, almost able to believe
that we had just returned home from an overnight stay in Brighton.  I sighed
happily and my stomach rumbled.

She laughed; this was something
she understood and knew how to deal with.

“Neither of us are at our best
when we’re hungry.  Let me fix us something to eat and then we’ll get down to thinking
properly.  There must be a way for us to stay together; I won’t accept that
there isn’t.  I mean, you’re suddenly old and I’m not.  Eighty or so years have
passed for you but only a day for me.  We’re neither of us in the right time,
so it seems to me that the impossible is not that impossible after all.  If it
can work against us, maybe, just maybe there’s a way it can work for us.  Funny
old thing time...” she finished softly, getting bits and pieces out of the
cupboard and prodding the range back into life.

“Did you come straight back
here?” I asked.

“What else could I do?” she
said, turning to me.  “I’ve been so scared Jack.  I didn’t know who they were
and I could see that you didn’t either.  If there was anything I could have
done, like if money was needed, well the only place you could send a message to
or find me is here.  The only place I thought you’d come back to is here.  So
by my reckoning, here was where I needed to be.”

I nodded.  Here was indeed
where I’d come straight back to, the moment the opportunity presented itself.  I
watched her silently as she worked.  I’d been starved of this normality for too
long and I found it very comforting.  Grace has a way of instinctively knowing
things and there was every possibility that she was right and that a way could
be found to get us out of the mess I’d put us in.

After we’d eaten we stayed in
the kitchen, which was always a favourite place of ours.  As the afternoon
started to turn into evening, she lit some lamps and we continued sitting there,
holding hands while I thought.  I had been, as she so aptly put it, on the
inside for a long time.  I knew the rules and had had the training.  She felt
sure that somewhere in all that knowledge was an answer.  To locate it, all I
needed was some peace and quiet.

We remained in the warm, cosy
kitchen, with only the clock ticking in the background and in the early hours
of the morning I realised what the answer was.  I thought about it for quite a
while, looking at it from all angles and assessing the risks; not just to us,
but to time itself.  Eventually I saw that there was only one way; I would have
to break the golden rule.  There were no certainties or guarantees, just the
one small chance that it could turn out right.  But was it my decision to make?
While I couldn’t be totally sure what the consequences might be for me, I was
acutely aware that she had everything to lose.

“Do you trust me Grace?” I
asked.

She didn’t answer straight
away, but looked at me with her head to one side, a small smile playing on her
lips.

“With my life, my hopes and my
dreams Jack.” she said, patting my hand and kissing me on the cheek.  “Do
whatever it is you have to do and I shall look forward to seeing you soon;
somewhere, sometime, or even right back here.”

With those words, she told me
everything I needed to know.  But then as she stood up and straightened her
shawl, she held her hand out and made it even clearer, giving me the strength
to endeavour to give us a second chance.

“I love you Jack and I know you
love me.  So the answer to your question is quite simply... yes, I do.”

Part three: Jack

Friday 5
^th
May 2000

I’d received an invitation to discuss my future.  It was very
specific about the date and time and so I found myself sitting at a melamine
topped table in a slightly dilapidated London cafe listening to a fantastic
story.  The old man sitting opposite me was completely unfazed by what he had
been revealing.  In fact he looked serene, somehow certain that I would
understand why he needed my help.  But he was wrong, very wrong.  His request
was ludicrous and I stared at him for some moments, unable to speak.

I was cold with anger.  How
dare he do this and put me in this position? I didn’t care what had happened to
him over the years.  How could I have become this person; this sad old man in
front of me who obviously had no respect for the rule that governed all others?
Whatever it was, I had no intention of allowing it to happen to me.

What’s more, I couldn’t believe
that I’d fallen for his ploy to get me here.  Admittedly I hadn’t known that
the invitation had come from myself, but I doubted that it would cut much ice
with the Board.  In that moment I was as angry with myself as I was with him.  What
on earth had possessed me to think even for a moment, that anyone of any note
would have chosen this godforsaken hole, instead of one of the many meeting
rooms on any of the bases, to share something important?

His whiney voice broke into my
thoughts.

“Don’t you see Jack,” he said,
“You have to save her life, but you can’t get injured; you have to retain your
memories.  Only then can you do whatever it takes to stay here in this time and
have the life
I should have had
.  You have to
believe me when I tell you that the life you can have with her is the only one
that will make you happy.”

I stared at him incredulously
for what must have been a minute.  I was furious and it took me a while to find
the words I wanted to say. 

Eventually I leaned across the
table.  “This is all very touching, but are you really suggesting that I give
up everything I’ve worked and studied for, just because you had two years of
blissful happiness followed by eighty years of loneliness? How do you know it
will last, huh? Answer me that.  You can’t, can you? Because it didn’t happen. 
You don’t have a future together, it doesn’t exist and it never will.  It can’t
and you must know that!

“I’m twenty-three years old and
about to get clearance to join the Historical Gathering Unit; the elite unit no
less.  Have you forgotten that too? I’ve been given the chance to work under
the one and only Javier Santurnini, who has personally selected me.  Remember
that old man? They were your dreams too and if you think I’m going to walk away
from that opportunity, well you can just think again.”

I sat very still, watching him
to see if what I’d just said had had any effect.  There was the hint of a smile
around his mouth, but it was condescending, mocking me.  I didn’t wait to hear
if he had anything more to say, I just let rip.  I didn’t want him to be in any
doubt about my feelings on the matter.

“You’ve obviously had a
miserable life.  You haven’t fulfilled your ambitions and ultimately, you
didn’t even get her.  You’re just sad and bitter and I’m not going to let you
ruin my life too.  You think that by telling me all this, you’re offering me a
second chance.  Well let me tell you, I’m not going to waste it and end up like
you.  Have you taken a good look at yourself lately? You’re hardly an
inspiration, are you?”

He looked at me with a strange
expression on his face, something akin to disgust and pity rolled into one.  In
some ways, it was worse than the pathetic expectation it replaced.  I had to
get away from him, even though I knew that our business was not yet concluded.

This shouldn’t be happening to
me I thought, as I stood up slowly and made my way to the toilet.  I needed to
be on my own and I needed time to think.

The waitress raised an eyebrow and
looked at me at me sympathetically as I walked past.  Perhaps she thought he
was my grandfather and had been lecturing me about something.  I smiled back.  If
only that were the case, I thought ruefully.  Of course she wouldn’t have
understood very much of what we’d been talking about, even if she had been
listening.

But he wasn’t my overbearing
grandfather, he was me, my future self and I didn’t like who I appeared
destined to become; it left an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Everything
I’d ever aspired to was now in jeopardy and I was furious.

I sat down in the cubicle and
put my head in my hands.  He had broken the golden rule.  Not just any rule,
but the ultimate unbreakable one.  I sighed; something was going to be said
about that and I just knew there would be some suffering on my part as a
result, which really pissed me off.  On top of that, there was his insistence
that I break another primary rule.  He wanted me to intervene, to meddle once
again with events, or fate, or whatever you want to call it.  But look at what
had happened to him as a result of his meddling.  I’d not yet seen or heard
anything that made me think his original ‘good deed’ had been in any way
sensible.

There was however, one
indisputable fact.  He, or was it I,
had
intervened,
had
meddled. 
Did that make it a fixed point in time, a reality so to speak? And did it mean
that I would have to follow blindly and repeat it, or did I have a choice in
the matter? That was the sixty four million dollar question.  Was my future his
past? Had it already happened, or was it still unknown? I spent quite a while
trying to analyse it, but got absolutely nowhere; there was not enough
information to even hazard a guess.  But I did know that I wanted to be able to
choose; I didn’t want to have my bright future just snatched away from me.  I
was twenty-three, with everything still ahead of me.  If and it was a big if, I
were going to give it all up, it would have to be my decision.

I left the toilet, mulling over the idea of a second chance.  Did
such a thing exist? And if it did, was I going to risk taking it? There were
too many questions and not nearly enough answers.  I preferred working with
facts, but at this point there were too few.

There was a strange silence in
the cafe when I returned.  It hadn’t been empty and I hadn’t been gone that
long, but it was too quiet.  I looked around.  Everyone was on their feet,
staring at something that was happening outside in the street.  I made my way
to the window and saw a young black woman, crumpled and still, lying on the
ground.  In the middle of the road was a car at the wrong angle and it was easy
to see what had happened.  It appeared that the choice had been made for me and
that I now had the answer; his meddling was not a fixed point, so my life might
still turn out as I’d hoped it would.

My future self turned round to
face me.  His eyes and voice were filled with sadness.

“You stupid, stupid boy.  You’re
letting her die.  I can’t know of course, but I think you’ll come to regret
this day.”

The waitress was standing by
the door with her hand over her mouth, when she vanished.

He vanished too, but then of
course he never existed.  I’d been trained to spot these changes, or shifts in
time, so no one noticed the shimmer except me.  What surprised me was that two
other people in the street also vanished and ceased to be.

All of this was pushed from my
mind as a wave of memories hit me.  They hadn’t faded with him, so everything
the old man had known, seen, felt or thought was now mine.  A surge of emotions
from his life filled me and I bent double as if the air had been knocked out of
my lungs.  Knowledge that I had not earned, which although vague and a little
dreamlike, was now jumbled up with my own.

I blindly fumbled with the door
of the cafe, desperate to get outside.  I watched the paramedics put the body
onto a stretcher and pull a blanket over her head, but of course I already knew
she was dead.  As my head began to clear, I saw that my other self’s existence
had been linked to her; he’d vanished at the precise moment she died.  I was
free.  But while I was free to pursue my ambitions, I would never be completely
free of him. 

I sighed deeply.  Now I
understood the need for the golden rule.  He had lived more than eighty years
beyond my own twenty-three and now I knew what would happen during that time.  Although
it was his past, it was my future.  But now of course, there was a paradox; it
hadn’t happened yet.

I also understood the price of
my ‘so called’ second chance.  “It’s always best to get unpleasant things over
and done with quickly.” I muttered to myself, but this saying was not one I
knew, even though it was somehow familiar.  I sighed again, knowing that it
must be one of his, or worse, one of hers.

I went back into the cafe and
calmly returned to the privacy of the toilet.  With a deep sense of
frustration, I lifted my wrist and set the timepiece for home and the meeting I
would have to have with my boss.  This wasn’t going to be the one I’d been
expecting to have with him and I feared it would tarnish the golden future I’d
mapped out for myself.