THE TIME THIEF Read online

  “By the devil!” he exclaimed. “The Bucket of Blood! Though I’ll warrant they’ve put a stop to the fistfighting!”

  The pub was smoky and crowded, with low beams and an open fire burning at the back, and there were far too many people trying to get served at the bar. The Tar Man instantly felt at home. He took up a position at one end of the polished wooden bar and threw down the coins on the counter.

  “A tankard of ale, if you please, mistress.”

  The barmaid, who was used to tourists shouting their orders in Olde Worlde English, reeled off the names of the different beers she could offer him. Confused, he pointed to the glass of pale amber liquid that his drunken neighbor was nursing in his hands. The barmaid nodded patiently and deposited a pint of lager in front of him. It was only when he pushed all his coins at her and was still ninety pence short of the price that she began to show signs of irritation. She was on the verge of calling the manager when the drunken man slumped over the bar offered to buy him a pint.

  “Are you sure?” said the barmaid, unwilling to let this character take advantage of one of her regulars.

  “A friend indeed is a friend in need,” he slurred, and pulled a five-pound note out of his wallet.

  The Tar Man looked at it with interest. “You can pay with that?” he asked.

  The drunk screwed up his eyes and turned to look at him. “You foreign or somethink?”

  “I am from far away.”

  “Well, welcome to London, mate. Cheers!”

  “Thank you, my friend,” said the Tar Man, and they clinked glasses.

  He took a large mouthful of lager and all but spat it out in shock.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed, then cautiously took another sip and shook his head in delighted surprise. He drank again and smiled broadly.

  “What’s up? You all right?”

  “It’s cold,” breathed the Tar Man. “It’s as cold as a mountain stream!”

  “Don’t they serve beer cold where you come from?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you come from?”

  “1763.”

  “Course you do, mate! Nice scar you’ve got. A real beauty. How did that happen, then?”

  It amused the Tar Man to tell him his life story, knowing that the drunk would remember nothing in the morning. Indeed, soon afterward, his generous drinking partner collapsed onto the bar.

  The Tar Man looked down at him and shook his head. “People haven’t changed for the better,” he said to himself, gulping down more lager, “but some things definitely have!”

  When the barmaid called “Time, gentlemen, please!” at closing time, the Tar Man slapped the drunk man’s face to rouse him. When this had no effect he heaved him up and supported him into the street. He propped him up against the nearest wall and removed his wallet. He slid out the wadge of paper money and slipped the wallet back into the man’s pocket.

  “Never let drink get the upper hand, my friend,” the Tar Man whispered into his ear. “And never let sentiment rule your actions.”

  THAT FIRST NIGHT, IGNORANT OF THE KING’S PARDON AND FEARFUL OF BEING APPREHENDED, PETER AND I SLEPT UNDER THE STARS. WE HAD SPOKEN LITTLE SINCE OUR ESCAPE FROM HAMPSTEAD HEATH AND PETER SEEMED TO ME LIKE A SLEEPWALKER, PRESENT AND YET ELSEWHERE, UNABLE TO COMPREHEND WHAT HAD BEFALLEN HIM. WE HAD ALREADY WISHED EACH OTHER A GOOD NIGHT WHEN I CALLED OUT TO PETER IN THE DARKNESS AND ASKED HIM THE QUESTION I HAVE NEVER DARED PUT TO HIM SINCE: DID YOU CHOOSE TO STAY IN 1763?

  “NO!” HE EXCLAIMED WITH GREAT VIOLENCE, AND THEN, “I HAD TO SAY GOOD-BYE—DIDN’T I?”

  IN THOSE EARLY DAYS I NEVER DOUBTED THAT MISTRESS KATE AND HER FATHER WOULD SOON RETURN FOR THEIR FRIEND. AFTER MANY WEEKS AND THEN MONTHS PASSED, HOPE SLOWLY STARTED TO FADE. I WONDER IF, IN THE END, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER FOR PETER IF HE HAD DESPAIRED OF EVER RETURNING HOME.

  —THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GIDEON SEYMOUR, CUTPURSE AND GENTLEMAN, 1792

  TWO

  THE FALL OF SNOWFLAKES

  In which Mrs. Dyer sees something alarming, the Tar Man finds what he is looking for, and Kate contacts Peter’s father

  When Kate walked into the kitchen at the farm, exhausted and utterly overwhelmed by her conflicting emotions, she was immediately enfolded in a forest of arms that refused to let her go. Her brothers and sisters stood on the threshold, huddled around her. Only Sam, the next eldest, held back a little, his eyes too brimful of emotions to risk anything more. The twins, Issy and Alice, covered her with kisses, as she knew they would, while the two youngest, Sean and little Milly, crawled up her legs as if she were a tree trunk. She tried to speak, but couldn’t. When she looked at her mother she saw, etched into her features, despite her current joy, the pain and fear of the preceding weeks.

  But now it was Monday morning, barely a day and a half since her return, and Kate was helping her mother with the milking. She wanted to feel that everything was back to normal even though it was far from it. The calm patience of the cows and the smell of the milking parlor were so familiar and comforting it made her want to cry. Where was she going to find the courage to leave her mother and her brothers and sisters and return once more to 1763? And what if something went wrong? She might never see them again. She almost wished that her father had not brought her home—surely it would have been better to go back and search for Peter straightaway.

  In the blinking fluorescent light, beads of moisture shone on Erasmus Darwin’s broad pink nose as she waited her turn to be milked. Kate stroked the cow’s soft, black ears and admired, as she always did, the length of her eyelashes. The memory of her meeting with the cow’s namesake, the real Erasmus Darwin, suddenly flooded into her head—she recalled how excited she had been to meet the great man in Lichfield after the party had been attacked by the highwayman, and how she had let slip that Darwin’s grandson, Charles, would discover evolution. Peter had been so cross with her afterward! … She smiled at the thought but then, unbidden, another memory rushed in. She pictured the tiny attic room in Lincoln’s Inn Fields where she and Peter had sat sweltering in the heat of a sunny summer afternoon. It was the day of the blood pact and she could hear herself making Peter repeat after her, “I swear on my life that I shall never return to the twenty-first century without you.” Except it was she who had broken that sacred promise. A wave of grief and guilt passed through her but she did not allow herself the release of tears.

  “There,” said her mother, standing up and pushing back a dark curl from her face. “All done. Let’s go and get some breakfast inside you. Megan’s mum sent over some Cumberland sausages; she knows how much you like them.”

  “Can Megan come over later?”

  “Yes, of course she can. Inspector Wheeler promised he’d be finished with you by noon.”

  Kate’s face dropped.

  “I hate having to lie. I don’t think he believes me.”

  “Oh, Katie … I wish we didn’t have to put you through this.”

  “I know.”

  Kate put her arms around her mother’s waist and buried her head in her shoulder.

  While Mrs. Dyer finished up, Kate opened the barn door and stood against it watching the line of peaceable animals pass through. The cows ambled across the muddy yard in their rolling, ungainly way, following the exact diagonal path they always trod. They trooped into the field and she clanged shut the metal five-bar gate behind them.

  Dawn had just broken and a few fluffy flakes of snow floated down from a lead-gray sky. The wind had dropped and the valley seemed eerily still. Kate’s spirits rose a little, for she loved snow. If it settled, she and Sam could make a snowman—at least once Inspector Wheeler and his entourage had finished asking her their interminable questions. With any luck his police car might get stuck in a snowdrift! She twirled round and round, head back, mouth open, hoping that a snowflake would land on her tongue. As she looked up, she had the strangest sensation that the laws of gravity had been temporarily suspended and that the snowflakes were hanging, immobile, in the
column of cold air above her. It must be a trick of the light, she thought.

  “Look, Mum!” she shouted. “It’s snowing!”

  Mrs. Dyer did not answer her but stood, motionless, an anxious expression forming on her face, at the other side of the farmyard.

  “Mum! Look, it’s starting to snow! Mum? … Is anything wrong?”

  Her mother neither moved nor spoke and then Kate heard an unearthly sound behind her, horribly loud and deep, an unrelenting, throbbing noise which she felt in the pit of her stomach. Fearful of what she might see, she pressed the palms of her hands over her ears and whipped around. Yet there was nothing unusual as far as she could make out—apart, perhaps, from the cows, which would normally have reached the other side of the field by now. Instead, they were still all clustered around the gate and every single one of them was looking directly at her. Then she noticed that none of them was moving at all—not even a twitch of a tail. The huddle of black and white cows fixed their unblinking gaze on her, and all the while this awful, piercing sound drilled into her.

  But when Kate looked back at Mrs. Dyer for reassurance, she saw that her mother was, just like the cows, motionless, seemingly frozen, and, in a deeply distressing way, elsewhere.

  “Mum!”

  Horrified, Kate ran over to Mrs. Dyer. Something was very wrong indeed—she was not responding.

  “Mum, please! What’s happening?”

  Kate reached out to shake her, but the instant she touched her mother everything was transformed. She experienced a sensation similar to opening the door of a quiet, air-conditioned train and stepping out onto a bustling station platform: one moment you are cocooned and safe, the next you are buffeted by waves of noise and activity. All at once the volume was turned up: The cows were mooing, her mother was speaking, the cold wind was blowing, and the snow was falling. She was a part of the world again, and she brushed aside the small voice in the back of her mind that asked why, if there was something wrong with her mother, did she suddenly feel so different?

  Kate scrutinized her mother. She did not look ill.

  “Are you all right? What happened to you?” asked Kate. “You were acting really weird!”

  “I was!” exclaimed Mrs. Dyer. Kate watched her mother pass her hands over her eyes and shake her head as if to clear her mind. Then she said: “I’m all right—low blood sugar or something…. For a minute, I thought … Oh, never mind, let’s go in and get some breakfast inside us.”

  Kate kissed her mother’s cheek. “You’ve been working too hard what with me and Dad being away. I think you were about to faint. It was really strange—almost like you were moving in slow motion.”

  The cows were still mooing and pressing up against each other, their hooves churning up the mud next to the gate.

  “Look,” said Kate, pointing at them, “you’ve even spooked the cows.”

  As they were walking back to the house, the newspaper boy arrived. He was a couple of years ahead of Kate at school.

  “It’s you!” he grinned. “We all thought you was a goner!”

  “That’s nice!” laughed Kate.

  “Look,” he said, opening up the front page of their newspaper and pointing to a photograph. “You’re famous! Here, you can have that one, too, I’ve got a spare. Bye! Don’t go getting lost again!”

  Kate and her mother spread out the newspapers on the table. They looked at the first. The news of her return had not made the front page, owing to an England soccer star’s divorce, but there, on page two, was Kate in her old school photograph. Kate was appalled.

  “Oh no! You let them use that photo?” she exclaimed.

  Then she noticed the puzzling and bizarre headline above it and quickly scanned the article. The news reporter had asked Inspector Wheeler if he would like to speculate on what could have happened to Kate Dyer to have made her lose her memory. A traumatic event of some kind? An attempt to conceal the truth? … The Inspector had replied that, despite extensive investigations, all their lines of inquiry had turned up one blank after another; he therefore could not afford to leave any stone unturned. The reporter had clearly taken him at his word.

  “Oh no,” said her mother as she saw the headline. “Your father and Dr. Pirretti are going to go mad when they see this….”

  It read: POLICE STUMPED: WAS MISSING GIRL ABDUCTED BY ALIENS?

  It was early afternoon and a wintry sun shone down on London from a cloudless sky. There had been a hard frost that night and the puddles were still iced over and the wind was bitter. The Tar Man, however, sat warm and at his ease, his long legs stretched out beneath a window table at The George, a former coaching inn, a stone’s throw from London Bridge. His fingers were draped over the fascinating black radiator beneath the window ledge and were periodically withdrawn when they grew too hot.

  The Tar Man found that he preferred to sup his ale in taverns he had frequented in his previous existence. The George Inn was one such, and it had changed surprisingly little. All the stage-coaches between London and Canterbury used to stop here, and there were rich pickings for any highwaymen prepared to tackle the guard and his blunderbuss. The George Inn still had its pretty, galleried balconies that overlooked the large cobbled yard, but gone were the noise and bustle, the passengers clamoring for food and the drivers shouting at the stable lads to bring water for their horses. It was here that the Tar Man liked to meet the highwayman, Doctor Adams, so called on account of his habit of dislocating the shoulder of any victim who proved uncooperative. He would, however, generously push back the arm into its socket before taking his leave for, as he freely admitted, once he had deprived his victims of their valuables, they would be hard-pressed to pay for a doctor afterward.

  “Enjoy your meal, Sir.”

  One of the bar staff placed a large plate of fish and chips in front of him, golden brown and crunchy. There was a steaming mound of green peas on the side. The Tar Man devoured it with his eyes first. At that time of day, the low winter sun hit the windows of the modern office block opposite and its rays were reflected back through the casement windows into the dark, wood-paneled room. A narrow beam of sunshine passed through his glass of ice-cold beer and cast a pleasing amber glow on his succulent meal. The Tar Man licked his lips. And fresh peas, too! How the devil did they manage to grow garden peas in the middle of winter! He was beginning to warm to the twenty-first century.

  While he ate, the Tar Man’s gaze fell onto the cleanly swept yard with its rows of wooden tables and benches and curious outdoor heaters like giant mushrooms. He took another gulp of beer and looked at the scene outside. It amused him that all these people would choose to eat under the open sky when they could be sitting here in the bar. Something made him look twice at a girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen who was walking past his window. She settled herself at a bench underneath one of the heaters. He watched her pull open a packet of what he had only that morning discovered were crisps. He did not care for them. They hurt his gums. The girl took a swig from a red-labeled bottle. What was it about her? She was very pretty—she had olive skin and large, expressive, dark eyes, and her silky black hair was cut short like a boy’s—but it was more than that. Her clothes, which the Tar Man found ugly in the extreme, like most of the fashions paraded on London’s streets, were deliberately ripped and baggy and drab, yet her outfit could not disguise her natural grace. But what caught the Tar Man’s attention above all was the professional way in which she scanned the yard before she sat down, as if she were making a careful mental note of who sat where, who was worth a second look, and where the nearest exit was to be found. He recognized a kindred spirit. They belonged to the same tribe, he and this girl; he was certain of it.

  The Tar Man ate the last morsel of fish and pushed away his plate contentedly, although his gaze kept wandering back to the yard. Four youths walked by carrying pints of beer and chose to sit at the table adjacent to the girl. She had taken out a paperback book from her pocket and was poring over it, popping crisps mechanically
into her mouth as she read. The youths were all loud and intent on having a good time, but one of them, the leader of this little gang, was more full of himself than the rest. He was tall and blond and kept looking over at the girl and after a while started to imitate her, hunched up over a book, in order to win her attention. His mates laughed; the girl did not react. Then the youth reached over and tried to grab her book. Before he could touch it, she swung her arm up sharply, without even raising her head, and knocked his wrist out of the way. He could not stop himself from crying out—she was wearing a chunky metal bracelet, and she had hurt him. She continued to read. His mates, on the point of laughing, stopped themselves when they saw the thunderous expression on his face. He shouted something at the girl. The Tar Man could not make out the words he used, but by the reaction of the people seated at tables around them, they were ugly. At first the girl did not move but then she coolly raised her head and looked up at the boy. Whatever it was that she said to him, all his mates burst into spontaneous laughter, spluttering their beer into the air. The blond youth kicked out petulantly at the girl’s table, causing her bottle of Coca-Cola to wobble from side to side. The girl’s hand shot out to steady it and calmly went back to her book. The Tar Man smiled appreciatively. She had spirit and knew how to handle herself. A thought came to him: Could this girl be the guide he was seeking?

  After a few minutes, he observed her gather her things together and walk toward the inn, squeezing through the rows of benches. She slid past a large, burly man whose generous rear was jutting out over his bench. He was staring deep into the eyes of an attractive woman opposite him as if the rest of the world had ceased to exist for him. The Tar Man did not have a clear view, yet he was certain that the girl had taken something from his back pocket. She had chosen well—of all the customers in the yard he was the easiest target. Then he saw her tap the big man on the shoulder, whisper something in his ear, and point at the table of youths. The big man immediately got up, felt in his trouser pocket, and, finding it empty, tore across the yard like a charging bull elephant.