Time and Time Again

25

HE HAD KNOWN that he was properly flirting when he played the Chairman Mao quote. And sitting down opposite Bernie Burdette, he wondered to himself how he felt about that. He’d never imagined himself flirting again.

‘Shall we order some more coffee?’ she asked.

‘You have some,’ he replied. ‘Bit coffee’d out, me.’

‘Coffee’d out?’ she repeated, looking puzzled.

‘Ah, yes, army expression. It means I’ve had sufficient.’

‘Oh. Well, I won’t bother either then. We might have a cocktail, though, don’t you think? Since we’ve nothing to do but sit. Cocktails are quite the thing these days, aren’t they? Do you like cocktails?’

‘Sure. What’s not to like?’

As he said it he could hear the phrase clanging about in the wrong century like a great big throbbing verbal sore thumb. Coffee’d out? What’s not to like? Why was he suddenly talking like a twenty-first-century teenager?

‘What’s not to like?’ she asked looking puzzled.

She looked so pretty when she was puzzled. It made the middle bit of her brow wrinkle slightly, just above her nose.

‘Sorry. Mess-room slang again,’ he said. ‘Certainly I like cocktails. As long as they’re very dry.’

‘I like sweet ones, with cherries and grenadine, or dark vermouth. Have you heard of a Manhattan? I’ve just discovered them.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard of it. Although I’m a Martini man myself, if I’m mixing.’

‘Well, I must say, that’s better.’

‘What’s better?’ Stanton asked.

‘You smiling. You looked awfully serious before.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yes, with your newspaper. I noticed. You know, when you weren’t watching me? I wasn’t watching you, and you were frowning all the time. I thought you might be very fierce.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not fierce at all. I suppose it’s just that the newspaper was pretty dull and … well …’

‘I’m not.’

‘No. You’re certainly not dull.’

He was smiling. He could feel it. The corners of his mouth exploring muscle shapes that had seen little use since he’d lost his family.

It occurred to Stanton that he was having fun.

When could he last have said that?

Not for a very long time. But quite suddenly, sitting on the Sarajevo to Zagreb express, a steam-powered express, opposite a captivating Suffragette, in her violet hobble skirt and straw boater with its matching ribbon, he was suddenly overcome by the intense romance of the situation. A steam train, and a pretty girl, on his way to Vienna, in 1914. It was like some beautiful dream, and yet it was real.

Was it all right to have fun? Was it a betrayal?

‘You’re frowning again,’ Bernadette said. ‘Have I become dull already?’

‘No!’ he exclaimed, slightly too loudly. ‘No way! I mean definitely not.’

‘Good.’

What would Cassie think?

She wouldn’t think anything; he loved her with all his heart but she had existed in another universe.

‘So,’ he said, ‘you first. What’s your story?’

‘What’s my story? What a nice expression. I don’t think that one can be army. Do you mean from the beginning?’

‘Well, yes, certainly. Although I actually meant why are you on your way to Zagreb?’

‘Vienna,’ Bernadette replied. ‘I’m going through to Vienna.’

‘Really? I’m going to Vienna too.’

‘Then isn’t it lucky we got chatting?’

For a moment her eyes met his.

‘I’m on a bit of a tour really,’ she went on. ‘I came out to Hungary last year for the Seventh Congress of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance in Budapest. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.’

‘’Fraid not, sounds pretty heavy.’

‘Heavy?’

‘I mean fascinating.’

Stanton was acutely aware that this was the first conversation of any length he’d had since he’d uncovered McCluskey’s betrayal a month earlier. He was out of practice. And in a different century.

‘It must have been fascinating.’

‘It was. Extremely. I stayed on in Budapest till last Easter.’

‘Long congress. Lots to talk about, eh?’

‘There was … uhm, a friend,’ she said, reddening a little at the cheeks. ‘Anyway I finally left last month and took a little holiday, wanted to get away, from myself as much as anything. I’ve been doing a bit of a tour of antiquity. I read classics at Trinity, you see.’

‘Trinity? I went to Trinity.’

‘Dublin?’

‘No, Cambridge.’

‘Thought so. Where of course they don’t allow women. More fool them. Dublin has since 1904. I was one of the first. You wouldn’t have thought Dublin would be more progressive than Cambridge, would you? It’s 16 per cent women now. Pretty good progress, eh? Only 34 per cent to go. Anyway, I’ve been mooching about in Greece and Crete for the last two months or so and now I’m on my way back to rejoin the struggles.’

‘Struggles in the plural?’

‘Obviously. Votes for women and Independence for Ireland. What other struggles are there?’

‘Ah yes. Of course.’

The two great dividing issues of British life that had been tearing the country apart for the last decade. What other struggles indeed? There were none. Not any more. Not now Archduke Franz Ferdinand was alive and well on 29 June. Britain could carry on fighting with itself.

‘So you’re a Fenian?’ Stanton asked. ‘I thought you said your brother was a soldier.’

‘He is. We don’t speak.’

‘But you’re speaking to me.’

‘I’m not a bigot. I don’t hate soldiers per se. I don’t speak to my brother because he’s with Carson and the Ulstermen. All my family are staunch Unionists, except me. I don’t speak to any of them.’

‘But you’re Southern Irish, surely?’

‘We’re colonial Irish. We’re not of it, we just own quite a lot of it. We’re English and occupy a large part of County Wicklow. Have done since Cromwell. I was brought up there, though, so as far as I’m concerned I’m Irish.’

‘Right down to the accent, eh?’

He said it to tease her. Because he wanted to see her blush again. He was pretty certain that Anglo-Irish landowners wouldn’t have spoken with Irish accents, and whatever girls’ school Bernadette Burdette had gone to would certainly have sweated it out of her if she had.

‘Well, all right,’ she admitted. ‘I did put it on a bit at first. Just because it made the family so angry. But I’m used to it now. I do it without thinking. It suits me.’

‘It certainly does.’

They talked for a while about the Irish Question. And more particularly Ulster. The issue that had brought Britain to the brink of civil war in the previous year and still threatened to. Bernadette, of course, felt passionate about it.

‘They talk about loyalty to the Crown,’ she said angrily, ‘but when it comes to abiding by the Crown’s laws then as far as Ulster’s concerned loyalty can go to hell. You can’t have democracy if people only agree to abide by the laws that suit them.’

‘Well, what about the Suffragettes?’ Stanton asked. ‘And your campaign of civil disobedience and direct action? Isn’t that the same thing? Taking arms against the law because you don’t like it?’

‘Civil disobedience and direct action,’ she said, chewing over the words. ‘Good phrase that. I shall write it down. You have a way with words, you know. And since you ask, no, it’s not the same thing at all. We’re not inciting the army to mutiny, are we? Civil disobedience, as you call it, is a very different thing to running in a hundred thousand rifles at dead of night and trying to start a civil war. But more importantly than that … I thought we were going to have a cocktail.’

Stanton laughed and called the waiter. He ordered a Manhattan and a gin Martini and asked to see the lunch menu.

‘My treat,’ he said. ‘I insist.’

‘You can insist all you like,’ she replied, ‘but I pay my own way with strange men. We’ll ask him to split it and I shall sign for mine. You can do the tip if it makes you feel any more manly. My purse is in my luggage and I never carry coins in my pockets. It stretches the fabric and ruins the line.’

The waiter returned with the menus.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Stanton said, ‘I think you’re going to win on women’s rights. I really do.’

‘It doesn’t look that way at the moment,’ Bernadette replied morosely. ‘Half my friends are in prison on hunger strike and that swine Asquith doesn’t seem to care at all. I think they’re planning to wait us out until we’re all either exhausted or dead.’

‘Well, all I can say is I honestly think you’re going to get the vote, and a lot more quickly than you think.’

‘Really? You do?’

‘Yes, I do, and I’ll tell you another thing. There’ll be a female MP within a decade and a female Prime Minister this century.’

She laughed, but he could see she was pleased he’d said it.

‘And how would you know that, may I ask?’

He was about to make her gasp with his confident predictions of women taking their place alongside men in the industrial process, something which, in the previous version of the century, was set to occur within a mere two years, by which time women would be earning sexual equality and the vote with every rivet they hammered in and every aeroplane they produced.

But that would take a war. A massive war. The very war he was bent on preventing.

‘Oh well,’ he replied rather weakly. ‘I just think it has to happen, that’s all.’

‘Well, we must make our dreams big, mustn’t we?’ she said. ‘And I must powder my nose.’

While she was in the lavatory, Stanton reflected on the slightly unsettling thought that if his mission was a success, history would inevitably see much slower progress towards the emancipation of women. The Suffragettes had been taking direct action since 1905 and got absolutely nowhere. It was the Great War and the Great War alone that had been the game changer. Stanton doubted that Professor McCluskey had thought that one through.

The cocktails arrived and they ordered their food. The quality and taste of food, or at least expensive food, in 1914 was something that Stanton was still getting used to. It was so different and so much better than anything he’d ever experienced in his own century. Tougher sometimes but better, the tastes more alive. It was as if food had been in monochrome and had suddenly appeared for the first time in colour.

‘Shall we have some wine?’ Stanton asked.

‘Of course,’ Bernadette replied. ‘Dutch courage.’

And she looked him in the eye again as she said it.

‘So we’ve had enough about me for a moment,’ she said, taking a substantial swig at her Manhattan. ‘What about you?’

Good question. What about him?

And the strange thing was, it took him by surprise. It shouldn’t have, of course. She was bound to ask, but having gone four weeks without having had a proper conversation with a soul, he just wasn’t ready for it. And before that, since Cassie’s death, he’d scarcely spoken to anyone but McCluskey, and they’d rarely spoken on personal matters. He’d got so used to emotional isolation, explaining himself to no one, that he didn’t know where to begin. He struggled to remember the back story Chronos had supplied him with.

‘Well, I’m in from the colonies,’ he began. ‘Australia.’

‘How interesting. Sydney or Melbourne?’

‘Neither. The Western bit. Perth. They ignore it even over there.’

Chronos had decided on Perth for its isolation. Less chance of people knowing it or knowing anyone from it. And it explained his loner status. Perth, after all, was the loneliest city on earth.

‘And I was in the army when I was younger,’ he added. They’d also agreed he’d have some military background, going on the theory that a lie is always better if it contains elements of truth.

‘Where have you served?’ Bernadette asked.

‘Pakistan, I mean, Northern India and a bit in Afghanistan.’

‘Fascinating. The far-flung patches of red, eh?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

‘And your family?’

‘Miners. Gold, actually, which is why I’m in a position to swan about the place in first-class carriages.’

‘Sounds like quite an exciting life,’ Bernadette commented. ‘And why are you “swanning about”? What’s an Australian miner doing on a train in Bosnia?’

What should he say? His back story had been planned for casual conversation. He’d presumed he’d never get into the more intimate kind, which was silly. He was only thirty-six, he was going to live a long time yet and he was bound to share confidences with someone sooner or later. And now it seemed that it had happened sooner. He was having a chat with an attractive woman over lunch. The sort of circumstance where commonly, if one liked the person enough, you generally got to know each other a little.

But what could he say? He couldn’t tell her who he was or where he’d come from. But he didn’t want to lie either. He liked her, he was enjoying his time with her, he wanted to share. He wanted to tell her something real about himself.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘and please don’t let this cast a downer … I mean, make us gloomy. But I suppose I should tell you that the most significant thing about me is that I was married with two children.’

‘Oh, goodness,’ Bernadette said. ‘How do you mean “was”?’

‘Well, I’m afraid I lost them. All three, a year ago in a motor accident.’

It felt good to tell her. It was the most significant thing about him. Not that he was a time traveller from another century, but that he had loved Cassie, Tessa and Bill and he had lost them.

‘Oh my,’ Bernadette said. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

‘Look … Bernie,’ Stanton went on, ‘I’ve been grieving for a year now. Consumed by a ferocious and ravenous grief that eats away at me day and night but never seems to finish me off. But they’re gone and I’m here. And talking to you I was pretending for a minute that I wasn’t the loneliest man in the world. Pretending that I could just chat for a while without, well, without all the emotional baggage, so to speak …’

Her eyes were wet with tears.

‘Emotional baggage?’ she whispered. ‘Gosh, you really do have a way with words, don’t you?’

‘Anyway, what I’m saying is, would you mind if we carried on talking about you for a bit, because I was really loving that.’

‘Well,’ Bernadette said, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, ‘you’ve come to the right girl because I love talking about me.’

And she did. Through three courses and a bottle of wine. She told him about her childhood and her feminism and her trip to Greece. She skirted over her time in Budapest, when it was quite clear to Stanton she’d had her heart broken, so he changed the subject and turned the conversation to the previous day’s events in Sarajevo.

‘Thank goodness those Serbs didn’t pull it off,’ Bernadette said. ‘God knows what sort of mess Europe would be in this morning if they had. It’s obvious the Austrians are spoiling for an excuse to cut Serbia down to size and the Germans are egging them on.’

‘You know your geopolitics,’ Stanton said.

‘Geopolitics?’

‘Uhm … international affairs.’

‘Well, it doesn’t take a Bismarck to see how the cards are stacked at the moment. Russia would have come in for the Serbs, which would have brought in the French and that would have been that. We should consider ourselves very lucky the man that got away missed and killed his own comrade. If he’d been a better shot we might have been facing the real prospect of a European war this morning.’

‘True enough.’

‘Funny how the other man disappeared like that,’ she mused. ‘They got all the rest. Rounded up five of them besides the dead chap. What did it say in the papers? Big fellow. Over six feet? Moustache and sideburns. In his thirties. You’d have thought he’d stand out like a sore thumb. All the others were skinny pastyfaced kids. That Princip boy who got shot was only nineteen. You’d have thought a six-foot Serbian would be easy enough to spot.’

‘Well, of course, he’s only a Serbian when he opens his mouth. Otherwise he could be any big chap with whiskers. Could be me.’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Something tells me you wouldn’t have missed.’

The miles had rolled away as they chatted and quite soon their train was pulling into Zagreb station.

‘Now then,’ Bernadette said, getting up, ‘we must both change trains for the Vienna Express but I don’t want you to help me.’

‘Really?’

‘No. What’s more I don’t think we should travel together from now on.’

‘Oh,’ Stanton said and he didn’t try to disguise his disappointment. ‘I’d rather hoped we might.’

‘You see, the thing is,’ Bernadette went on, ‘I don’t want you to get bored with me. People do sometimes. I’m quite intense.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘We also have to consider the possibility that I might get bored of you.’

‘Well, that’s blunt.’

‘Look, Hugh. We’ve just spent nearly five rather lovely hours together. There’s ninety minutes to be spent in the waiting room at Zagreb then a further half a day on the train to Vienna, into which we get rather late. That would make almost twenty hours together, which is quite a lot for new acquaintances, and you see, I want us to have something left to talk about because …’

‘Because what?’

She was blushing again, more deeply than ever. Her milk-white cheeks were crimson. She took a deep breath.

‘All right. Here we go. It’ll be past ten in the evening in Vienna and we’ll both have to find a hotel and it seems to me that it would cosier and certainly more economical if we roomed together. There. I’ve said it. What do you think?’

Stanton didn’t even reply. He was too taken aback. He’d known that things might drift that way. A man and a woman getting a little tipsy together over lunch always might end up in bed together. It was the bluntness that took him aback. It would have been bold even in 2024.

‘To be frank,’ Bernadette went on quickly, ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since you said that thing about women holding up half the sky. I have never in my whole life heard anyone say anything remotely so lovely or so true. Quite honestly, I think I’d want to sleep with any man who came up with it. Even if he wasn’t such a dish.’

Stanton had never before had cause to be grateful to the memory of Chairman Mao Tse Tung. But he was now.