Time and Time Again

16

THE ORIENT BAR was thick with cigarette and cigar smoke. Stanton breathed deeply. Inhaling was almost as good as having one yourself and didn’t break any vows. He ordered a second Laphroaig, The drink measures served at the Pera Palace were generous but he didn’t feel at all affected. His whole situation was so intoxicating that he wondered if mere alcohol would ever do it for him again.

Since returning from his eventful morning in the old town, he’d been back to the suite twice to check on McCluskey. She seemed to be coming good slowly and he didn’t think she’d suffered any serious injury. Of course, in 2025 he’d have taken her straight round to casualty for an MRI scan but that not being an option the best he could do was draw the curtains tight, advise rest and hope she didn’t have any delayed traumas. He guessed that it would be at least a couple of days before he could move her, which worried him considerably, since having exposed himself so recklessly to fellow members of the British community he was anxious to get out of town.

It turned out he’d underestimated the old professor’s recuperative powers.

‘Hugh! Order your old mother a Bloody Mary, won’t you?’

McCluskey was standing at the door. She’d got up, got herself dressed, found the lift and made straight for the bar like a homing pigeon. And there she was, in her floor-length dress, making a passable impression of an Imperial English lady, her hair done up in a bun at the back to cover her wound. She looked pale but she’d put on some lipstick and a bit of blusher to help with that, and although her walk wasn’t exactly steady, she was certainly on her feet.

‘Jesus, prof,’ Stanton said as McCluskey walked towards him, holding on to chairs for support, ‘you were out cold for ten hours, you need to be in bed.’

‘Hugh,’ she replied, her eyes shining despite her weak condition, ‘I’m seventy-two, I don’t have a lot of time. I am embarking on the single greatest opportunity that any bonkers old historian has ever been granted and I am not going to spend the first day of it in bed.’ Reaching out for the support of the bar she leant forward and hissed into his ear in a robust stage whisper, ‘Hugh, Sweetlips. We are in nine – teen – four – teen!’

‘Excuse me, sir,’ the barman interrupted before Stanton could tell her to shut up, ‘but I’m afraid ladies are not accepted at the bar. Madam is welcome to take a seat at a table.’

‘Bloody Mary s’il vous plaît, garçon!’ McCluskey said, turning her back on the man and tottering towards a table.

‘Plain tomato juice,’ Stanton corrected, ‘and some water.’

He hurried over to join her.

‘Professor, you have suffered a concussion.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ McCluskey replied. ‘My head feels like the council are digging it up and laying drains.’ She reached into her handbag, the same vast container that she’d brought from the future and which Stanton now noted was antique and had clearly been chosen to pass muster in an earlier age. She pulled out a little blister-pack of Ibuprofen, popping four out of the foil.

‘Prof, please,’ Stanton hissed.

‘Oh come on, Hugh, nobody’s going to notice.’

‘We don’t know what people are going to notice, professor. Now shut up and listen to me.’ Stanton paused in what he was saying while the waiter delivered McCluskey’s tomato juice. If she noticed the absence of vodka she thought better than to complain about it.

‘Cheers,’ she said.

‘Never mind cheers! What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I’ve told you. I’m not hanging about in bed while—’

‘I don’t mean here in the bar. I mean here in 1914!’

‘Ah, yes … bit naughty that. Sorry.’

‘Naughty. What you’ve done,’ Stanton went on, struggling to keep his voice low, ‘is betray every principle you’ve been claiming to hold since the day you brought me into this business. For five months you’ve been talking about a world reborn and a second chance for humanity and saving all the millions of soldiers in Flanders’ fields and the prisoners in Russian gulags and it turns out the whole thing’s been just a cover for you to go and see Pygmalion.’

‘No, Hugh! Really. I promise. It’s always been about the mission … but when it came to the moment I couldn’t resist—’

‘Crap! You’d been planning it from the start: getting ID made for yourself, renting that bloody pantomime frock.’

‘No! It was only in the last week or two. As time got near … I was thinking two could fit in a sentry box, so why not?’

‘Why not? Why not? Christ Almighty, you could have ruined everything before it even began. You might just as easily have knocked me out of position as get yourself into it when you were fighting with that drugged-up Turkish girl.’

‘God, her!’ McCluskey said with a smile. ‘I’d forgotten about her. Anyway, I didn’t knock you out of position and we both made it through so no harm done, eh?’

‘No harm done yet,’ Stanton said. ‘But the fact that I was able to get a bleeding, semi-conscious old woman in what was basically a mini skirt out of that cellar, across Constantinople and into a hotel without being arrested for indecent assault was a bloody miracle. I thought very seriously about just knocking you off and leaving you there. I should have left you there. I’m responsible for the fate of the entire British army. You should be disposable collateral.’

McCluskey’s face fell.

‘Disposable collateral? That’s a bit harsh, Hugh … I know what I’ve done is wrong but … 1914. I just couldn’t resist.’

For the first time in all the years he’d known her McCluskey actually looked contrite.

‘Now, look,’ Stanton said. ‘The truth is we have both been screwing up. Our most important duty is to leave no trace on history until we’re in a position to change it and neither of us are doing very well.’

McCluskey’s mood lightened immediately.

‘Really?’ she asked. ‘How do you mean we’ve both screwed up? What have you been up to, my boy? Not been making a beast of yourself with the belly dancers in the bazaars, have you?’

‘As it happens I prevented a terrible car accident. Saved a mum and her kids.’

‘Ah,’ McCluskey replied, avoiding his eye, clearly all too aware of the resonance of this in Stanton’s own past life. ‘Well, you had to do that, didn’t you? Of course you did.’

‘Yes, I did. But if that family now decides to take a holiday in Sarajevo and bump into someone who bumps into someone and somehow changes the course of the Archduke’s day …’

‘Pretty bloody long shot, Hugh.’

‘All events are long shots until they occur. That’s what chaos theory’s about.’

Stanton decided he wouldn’t share the details of the rest of his morning’s adventures with McCluskey. He felt foolish enough about the near catastrophic confrontation in the cafe as it was.

‘So you listen to me,’ he went on, ‘I want you to go back to your bed and lie down again. You’ve had a massive blow and need to rest as much as possible. We leave town tomorrow and I don’t want you keeling over on me at the station with some kind of cerebral haemorrhage.’

McCluskey’s face fell.

‘Leave town? I was thinking we could have a day or two in Istanbul. Constantinople, Hugh, in the dying days of the Ottoman dynasty. Think of it! The mystery, the magic. We can’t just walk away from that.’

‘We can and we must.’

Stanton was uncomfortably aware that the young men he’d nearly had a punch-up with were soldiers. Officers who would, in the way of the British army of the period, have plenty of leisure time. Leisure time they might very well choose to spend right where they were sitting, in the bar of the Pera Palace Hotel.

‘We have four weeks to get through till our appointment in Sarajevo,’ he went on, ‘and we need to draw as little attention and make as little impact as possible. So, my plan is to leave Constantinople in the morning and head to Britain, where we’ll stand out least. What’s more, spending four days on a train is as good a way as any to avoid leaving any footprints. Once in the UK we’ll lie as low as possible for a fortnight till we make the trip back.’

McCluskey frowned. There was a pocket on her dress, from which to Stanton’s astonishment she now drew rolling papers and a pinch of loose tobacco.

‘Jesus,’ Stanton hissed. ‘You can’t roll a fag here!’

‘Why not? I’m an eccentric English lady. There’s no law.’

‘There’s convention! We are trying not to draw attention to ourselves. We are on a mission.’

‘But actually that’s the point, isn’t it, Hugh?’ she said, reluctantly putting the tobacco back in her pocket. ‘You’re on a mission. I’m not. You don’t need me. In fact, let’s be honest, a gouty old drunkard like yours truly would be a liability. Why not leave me here? I’ll be fine. I’ve got a million quid in forged Imperial Bonds sewn into my knickers and quite frankly the minute this Nurofen kicks in I’m ready to party.’

‘No, that’s not going to happen,’ Stanton said firmly. ‘Not for another couple of months anyway. Not till I’ve done what you sent me to do. Every step either of us takes, every breath we draw, in some small way changes the future from the one we know, from the template we’re relying on to guide our actions. The only changes we want to make are the ones we’ve planned on making in Sarajevo and Berlin. Now, granted, you staggering around Constantinople taking in the sights is unlikely to change anything significant. But to be honest, you’re a loose cannon at the best of times. I don’t know what you might say or what you might do, particularly half concussed and ordering vodka for lunch. So I’m afraid you’re coming with me.’

‘But—’

‘And I am telling you now that until we’ve succeeded in preventing the most catastrophic war in all history, you are going to do exactly what I say. Because if you don’t – and please listen very carefully to this, professor – I’ll shoot you and dump you in the Bosphorus.’