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And once again, I was running.
I was always bloody running.
Over the years, I’ve run from Jack the Ripper; blood-crazed dinosaurs; a crowd of Cambridge citizenry hell-bent on indicting me for mirror-theft and witchcraft; Assyrian soldiers; you name it, I’ve scampered away from it. With varying degrees of success.
But – the point I’m trying to make here – is that I’ve always known what I was running from. I rarely knew what I was running to – I’m an historian and we don’t always plan that far ahead – but I usually knew what I was running from.
Sadly, not in this case. In this case, I was running for my life and I didn’t have a bloody clue why.
This next bit is difficult. We all need to pay attention, because I’m not sure I understand it myself.
I’m an historian. I work for the St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research. We investigate major historical events in contemporary time. It’s time travel, OK. Using small, apparently stone-built shacks known as pods, we jump to whichever time period we’ve been assigned, observe, document, record, do our best to stay out of trouble, and return to St Mary’s in triumph. Our pods are small, cramped, frequently squalid, and the toilet never works properly. For some reason, they always smell of cabbage, but they’re our pods and we love them.
Following the death of Leon Farrell, I accepted the position of Deputy Director of St Mary’s and put in for my last jump. For sentimental reasons, I chose France, 1415, the Battle of Agincourt. As usual, we – my colleague, Peterson, and I – pushed our luck and this time we really pushed it too far.
Peterson was badly injured in the attack on the baggage train. In an effort to draw our pursuers away, I hit him over the head with a rock (unconventional treatment, true, but I was trying to save his life at the time), rolled him under a bush where the rescue party would be sure to find him, and ran like hell in the opposite direction. As far and as fast as I could, until someone stabbed me through the heart. A fatal wound.
I gave it all up without too much regret and commended my soul to the god of historians, who, as usual, wasn’t concentrating, because I fell forwards, not into oblivion as expected, but onto someone’s hairy Axminster carpet, instead.
Still with me so far?
Mrs Partridge, PA to the Director of St Mary’s and, in her spare time, the Muse of History, snatched me from my world and dumped me, confused and in pain, into a different one. This one. Pausing long enough to inform me I had a job to do and to get on with it – she departed. Because God forbid she should ever make things easy for me. I thought I’d been saved. And yes, I had, but only in the way that turkeys are saved for Christmas.
In this new world, it was me who had died and Leon who had lived. He had not handled my death well. I thought she’d brought me here for him. To save him. To comfort him. I got that wrong.
Leon and I had a painful and confused reunion during which I slugged him with a blue plastic dustpan. Long story.
Anyway, the upshot was that I was here now, living in this new world which closely resembled my own. Although not in every way, as I would soon discover.
Leon and I, strangers to each other, and scared to death of making a mess of our second chance, agreed to take things slowly. We would start a new life together in Rushford, away from St Mary’s, and see what happened.
What happened was more pain, more confusion, and a very great deal of running away.
Now that I’ve written all that down, I’m not sure I believe it myself.
The point is, though, that I thought I was safe. That, finally, I’d come to rest. The phrase, and she lived happily ever after, comes to mind. Although in my case, and she lived, is the important bit. The other part, happily ever after, is always a bit of an optional extra for me. But, my plan was that I would live quietly with Leon. I’d paint, he’d invent things, and we would finally have a peaceful life together.
We had one day. Not even that. We didn’t even make it to lunchtime.
