Overtime (32 page)

‘Ouch,' said Marco.

‘Sorry,' Guy said, letting go of his ear. ‘What are you doing down there?'

‘I'm looking for my cap,' Marco replied. ‘It fell off when we—'

‘Forget it.'

‘But it's nearly new,' Marco said. ‘It's got a feather on it and—'

‘I said,' Guy repeated, ‘forget it.'

The cart went over a pothole rather too fast, sending everyone up in the air about six inches. There was a cracking sound and a great deal of turbulence. Then the cart stopped.

‘The axle's snapped,' Giovanni said. ‘Now I bet you're glad you decided to have the Fully Comprehensive.'

‘Shut up, Giovanni,' Blondel said, ‘and you, Isoud.'

‘I didn't say a—'

‘Then don't.' Blondel jumped down from the box. The lanterns of Mountjoy's cart weren't far behind. ‘Come on,' he shouted, ‘this way.'

‘Why this way?' Isoud said.

‘Look—'

‘I think we should turn right.'

‘
Look—
'

‘It says on the map—'

They set off at a run, and made the cover of a small thicket just as Mountjoy's cart, heavily laden with dark shapes, failed to notice the obstruction in the road in time to stop. There was a pleasant crunching noise.

‘I think,' Blondel observed, ‘something just ran over Someone's foot.'

Dark shapes spilled out of the cart. Lanterns were waved about, Mordaunt slipped in the mud, fell, impaled himself on a broken spear, died, and was accused by Mountjoy of skiving. Then the lanterns began to head towards the thicket.

‘Oh bother,' Blondel said. ‘Come on, everyone, all except you, of course, Isoud. I expect you want to go that way. The rest of you follow me.'

‘Where the hell are we going?' Guy demanded.

‘Back to the road, of course,' Blondel replied. ‘Use your head.'

‘But—'

‘And when we get there,' Blondel continued, ‘we're going to go up it. That's east-west to you, Marco. It's a one-way street, remember?'

 

‘When are we?' Guy asked.

‘At least it isn't raining,' Blondel replied. ‘Come on, you two, I'll buy you each an ice cream.'

They walked towards the source of the noise and then, subconsciously adjusting their pace to the context, strolled. It is impossible to do anything other than stroll at a church fête, especially if it isn't raining.

‘What happened?' Guy said. ‘I mean, one minute we were running directly at those ... And then, bang! Or rather,' he added, puzzled again, ‘not bang.'

‘Oh look,' Blondel said, ‘they've got a band. Salvation Army, probably. I like silver bands, don't you?'

‘I suppose,' Guy continued, ‘it was because it was a one-way street, and therefore, by implication, there was a no entry sign, and that meant it was somehow linked into the time tunnel network. Does that always happen when you go the wrong way up a—'

‘Probably,' Blondel replied. ‘Personally, I've never tried it before. Have you?'

‘Well, no,' Guy admitted. ‘When do you think this is?'

Blondel looked round with the eye of experience. ‘Twentieth century,' he said, ‘second half, definitely. Of course, the twentieth is a right little tinker to get your bearings in, because you can't go by the clothes. They were always having nostalgia. You could be strolling along looking at the hemlines and the shoulder-pads and thinking, Yes, I know when this is, perhaps there's a new Elvis Presley picture on at the cinema, and the next thing you know you're nearly knocked down by a Datsun. Cars, though, are a dead giveaway. You can date things by cars to within six months, usually.' He stopped, looked round and nodded. ‘1986,' he said. ‘Funny sort of place to end up, 1986.'

‘Is it?'

Blondel nodded. ‘Nothing happened,' he explained. ‘You may not have noticed, but there's a strong tendency when you leave the time tunnels at random to come out at a turning point of history.'

‘You mean like Caesar crossing the—'

‘Yes,' Blondel replied sternly, ‘and keep your voice down. I don't want anybody finding out that was us. I don't know why it is,' he went on, ‘this forever popping up at crucial moments. Maybe they've just got a stronger temporal field than your average wet Thursday in Dusseldorf. Anyway, as far as I can see, nothing of any significance whatsoever is happening here.'

‘Good,' said Guy, and added, ‘you mentioned something about an ice cream ...'

Blondel nodded, borrowed five pounds from Giovanni - or rather, borrowed the use of his Beaumont Express Card - and wandered off in search of the refreshments tent. The Galeazzo brothers found a hoopla stall, which they proceeded to strip bare. Guy and Isoud sat down under a chestnut tree.

‘Well,' Guy said awkwardly, ‘here we are.'

‘Yes,' Isoud replied.

‘Um,' Guy continued, feeling it would probably be easier as well as nicer to try wading through waist-high custard, ‘about this future of ours. The getting married and everything.'

‘Yes,' Isoud said. Expressing oneself in unhelpful monosyllables in the course of extremely embarrassing conversations is a woman's prerogative, Guy remembered, and the thought struck him that his father had probably had a conversation like this, or else he wouldn't be here. And his father, and his father before him, right back to the period of human history when it was socially acceptable to crack girls over the head with clubs and drag them off by their hair. It was a wonder the world was populated at all.

‘Don't get me wrong,' Guy went on, ‘but, well, in a sense ...'

He realised that he hadn't the faintest idea what he was going to say next, and was just about to change the subject and point out a perfectly ordinary tree on the other side of the green when Isoud turned to him and said ‘Oh, Guy!'

There you go, monosyllables again. I think all the bride's lines in the wedding service are made up of monosyllables. Follows.

‘Yes, well,' he said, ‘like I was saying, we really ought to consider -'

‘Kiss me, Guy.'

‘Sorry?'

‘I said,' said Isoud, with just a touch of residual personality showing through, ‘kiss me.'

Guy wanted to say, Hold on a minute there, I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, because what I was going to say was that now that we've found out how flexible and adjustable time is, perhaps we won't have to get married after all, and since neither of us is desperately keen on the idea ... But since he'd been taught not to speak with his mouth full, he didn't.

‘Hello, you two,' Blondel said, grinning at them over a mobile barricade of white froth. ‘Thought so.'

Isoud detached herself, leaving Guy realising what a rock must feel like when there are limpets about. She blushed prettily, said something about having a look at the white elephant stall, and skipped away, for all the world, Guy reckoned, like a radiantly happy electromagnet.

‘Have an ice cream,' Blondel was saying. ‘So Isoud showed you the family photograph album, did she?'

‘Gug,' Guy replied.

Blondel shrugged his shoulders. ‘Took me a long time to find you,' he went on. ‘Well, to be honest, I wasn't looking all that hard, what with searching for the King and everything. Still, better late than never, I suppose.'

‘Hold on a minute,' Guy said. There was ice cream all over his nose, but he didn't care. ‘You mean you . . . you
chose
me specially? I thought it was just a coincidence or something.'

‘Hardly,' Blondel replied. ‘I don't want to sound rude, but if I'd had a free and unrestricted choice of assistants, I think I'd probably have chosen someone who's a rather better shot. Not that you've done badly,' he added. ‘Just the reverse. But you see what I mean.'

‘Yes, I see,' Guy lied. ‘You mean, Isoud and me, it's been sort of, fated ...'

‘If you like,' Blondel replied. ‘That is, we knew the ending, all we had to do was reconstruct the plot a bit. Your ice cream's melting all down your sleeve, by the way.'

‘How long has it been -' Guy winced; the word was so bloody
fey,
‘- fated, then?'

‘Ever since we got the photographs back from the developer,' Blondel replied. ‘That's one of the weird things about living in a timewarp. You get the photos back centuries before they're taken and sent off, rather than the other way round, which I believe is the usual way. So we knew it was going to be you Isoud would fall for, it was just a case of finding you. And while you were handy, of course, you might as well make yourself useful in the quest.'

‘I see.'

‘Honestly,' Blondel continued, chuckling quietly, ‘you should have seen Isoud's face when she first saw the picture. Talk about hornfied disbelief Still, I think she's just about come round to the idea.'

‘Thank you very much.'

‘Don't mention it.'

‘Yes,' Guy said, ‘that's all very well, but it still doesn't explain why you dragged me out of my century -'

‘You were just about to be killed,' Blondel interrupted. ‘Remember?'

‘Was I?'

‘Didn't I mention it? Oh yes, you wouldn't have stood a chance if I hadn't ... well, there we are. Couldn't have you getting killed before the wedding, it would have messed things up terribly. Not,' he added, ‘that anyone wants you to get killed after the wedding, needless to say.'

Guy frowned. ‘Not even Isoud?' he said. ‘I still don't think she's likely to have changed her mind that much. She doesn't have a terribly high opinion of me, I reckon.'

‘And that,' Blondel replied, ‘is a prerequisite of a successful marriage, as far as I can tell.'

Guy thought about it for a moment, considering all the examples in his experience of happily married couples. Yes, he definitely had something there.

‘Even so,' he persisted, ‘if it was fated, why did you have to go to all the trouble finding me? Wouldn't I have just turned up anyway?'

‘Probably,' Blondel replied, ‘but it might have taken ages, and I've always been particularly keen to get the wedding over and done with. Partly,' he said, grinning, ‘because I have this rooted aversion to mashed potato, but mostly because, in the wedding photograph you haven't seen, the man giving the bride away at the wedding is Richard Coeur de Lion.'

Guy choked on his ice cream. Blondel patted him on the back.

‘So you see,' he went on, ‘I've been quite shamelessly fiddling about with your destiny for my own purposes, just like you were going to say yourself. Hope you don't mind. Anyway, you'll understand what I'm getting at when I say that I'm not a believer in long engagements. Ah, here she is.'

Isoud was walking back, holding a lampshade, a sink tidy and a colander. It's started already, Guy said to himself. A door marked No Entry would go down very well at this juncture.

‘Come on,' Blondel said, ‘let's go and have a look round the sideshows. I think we can all afford an afternoon off, in the circumstances. No, Guy, I'd stay clear of the rifle range if I were you, there's a man in a cap just over there and I don't think he'd be too ...'

‘Blondel? What's the matter?'

Blondel was staring, so hard that his eyes were almost circular. His mouth had fallen open and his face was wet with sweat.

‘What is it?' Guy said.

‘Look,' Blondel croaked, and pointed.

Guy followed the line of his finger, and saw one of those rubber inflatable castles designed for children to bounce up and down on. It was doing good business, as far as Guy could tell, and the proprietor was throwing two little cherubs off it for trying to puncture the inflatable bit with a penknife. ‘So?' he said.

‘Look,' Blondel repeated. ‘Are you blind or something?'

Guy looked; and noticed that there was a pattern of little teardrops painted all down the side. And he began to wonder.

Blondel had broken into a run. The proprietor, seeing him coming, let go of the two little cherubs and stared at him. A policeman on duty in the beer tent came out, wiping his mouth. Guy looked across at Isoud, and ran after him.

‘Here,' said the proprietor, ‘you can't go on it, it's just for the kids. Here ...'

Blondel was standing in front of the moulded rubber gate. The musical attachment stopped in the middle of the tune it had been playing and then started to play something else. Guy recognised the tune at once. He'd heard it a lot lately.

Blondel waited for a moment, counting the bars for the start of the vocals. Then he sang:

The policeman stopped dead in his tracks and let his hands fall to his sides. Everything was quiet, except for Blondel's voice, soaring away into the clouds and ranging outwards in every direction, until it seemed to fill the entire world.

Guy felt like a diver who has miscalculated and can no longer hold his breath and is still a long way from the surface. The air seemed to tighten unbearably round him, crushing him until he could feel his ribs and the sides of his skull being driven inwards. And then, from somewhere a long way down inside the inflatable rubber castle, a voice sang: