Time and Time Again (22 page)

And yet here he was with his bundle of newspapers in his hand, that fateful date upon them, and there was nothing of much significance at all. The headline beneath the
Herald
masthead was
THE CALIFORNIA GOES ASHORE NEAR TORY ISLAND
with the sub headline,
Bow of Anchor Liner Is Injured and Two Holds Are Full of Water
. This was the story that had been squeezed into a tiny corner of the edition locked in the hard drive of Stanton’s computer. No one had been killed or even injured, the seas were calm, the accident had occurred quite close to Ireland, six British destroyers were attending the scene and it was reported that
should
an evacuation be thought necessary it was predicted that this could be effected easily and without any danger to crew or passengers.

That was the main story the morning after Archduke Ferdinand visited Sarajevo. A maritime accident with not a single loss of life. In this new twentieth century that Stanton had caused to come into being, Monday 29 June 1914 had been a
spectacularly
bad day for news.

It was surely only the still resonating loss of the
Titanic
two years before that made the story front-page news at all. That earth-shaking maritime disaster had been without doubt the biggest story of the century thus far. Even in Stanton’s own century the
Titanic
story had resonated down the decades. Despite war and genocide without parallel, people had still felt the distant aftershocks of that strangely compelling disaster. Now, because of Stanton, there was every possibility that the story of that icy night and the loss of those fifteen hundred lives would
remain
the biggest story of the century. A benchmark for drama and tragedy that the remaining nine decades of the century would fail to match.

Because of him.

He was the reason that the journalists of the world were drumming their fingers on their desks that morning instead of struggling to report the scope of a killing that would cripple a century.

He felt proud of himself.

The death of the girl still cut him deeply but he knew in truth that it wasn’t his fault. The simple fact was that he had been
there
and that he had
not
been there before. Tipping the girl or not tipping her, both would have caused
some kind
of an effect that had not occurred in the last version of the century. Whatever he did would have consequences he could never second-guess.

He had to move on.

And at least now he was relieved of the awful anxiety of the butterfly effect. History had taken a new course and he was as much in the dark about the future as anyone else.

He made his way along the train to the dining car and ordered coffee. He would have wine with lunch, Austrian wine. He wanted to celebrate. He wanted to tell someone. He wanted to shout out to the entire train, ‘Yesterday I saved the world!’

Although, of course, he hadn’t saved the world yet. There was the second part of his mission. The tough part. Assassinating the Kaiser. But there was nothing he could do about that for the moment. Not till he got to Berlin. All he could do was sit back, relax and watch the beautiful rugged countryside of Bosnia Herzegovina roll past the window.

The dining car was three seats wide with four-person tables on one side of the corridor and tables for two on the other. Stanton had chosen a single seat but the train wasn’t full and there was nobody at the larger table opposite. He almost had the carriage to himself, until he heard from behind him the rustle of satin and caught a whiff of scent. A moment later a woman took a seat by the opposite window.

‘Thank you,’ she said to the accompanying porter in English. ‘This’ll be just grand.’

An Irish accent. Cork, he thought, though perhaps accents had changed so much since the future that he couldn’t be sure.

‘I’ll take a cup of coffee certainly,’ the woman went on, ‘but nothing to eat for the time being, thanks all the same.’

Oi’l take a cup o’ coffee.

T’anks all the same.

It was a nice voice. Some accents just sound friendly, always have, always will, it didn’t matter what century you heard them in.

Stanton pretended to concentrate on his newspaper but stole a glance nonetheless. He was certain he could risk it unnoticed. He was, after all, trained in surveillance. If he could stake out fundamentalist insurgents he reckoned he could sneak a look at a pretty woman.

She had a book to read. In fact, she had several, plus notepads and pencils. She had pushed away the cutlery in order to make space for them.

Stanton wanted to talk to her.

For the first time since arriving in the twentieth century, in fact, for the first time since the death of his wife and family, he craved company. Female company. Perhaps it was the relief of having performed successfully the first half of his mission.

Or just possibly it was because she was rather beautiful.

Or if not beautiful, highly striking. Pretty would perhaps be a better word than beautiful. The hair was pale strawberry beneath her hat and she had classic Irish eyes, green with that tiniest downward turn at the outer edge. Smiling eyes they called them, although the same turn on a mouth would make a frown. There was a hint of freckles too. Her mouth was small, it certainly wouldn’t have been considered a beautiful mouth in the decade Stanton had come from, a decade where for some reason women had taken to pumping up their lips to look like shapeless inner tubes. The teeth weren’t quite perfect either, but then nobody’s were in 1914. He liked it, it lent character.

And she had placed herself opposite him in a near empty carriage.

Stanton pulled his thoughts up short.

He stared hard at his newspaper.

She hadn’t placed herself opposite, the waiter had. Doing that irritating thing that restaurant staff often did, clustering their customers together despite there being plenty of space.

Besides which, what did it matter where she sat?

What the hell was he thinking about?

This was the second time in less than a day that he’d been struck by feminine beauty and the first time had turned instantly to tragedy.

Still, he stole another glance.

She was in her late twenties or early thirties. Not much younger than he was. Travelling alone. Such a sweet face.

He poured himself another cup of coffee and, putting aside his
Tribune
, tried to focus on his German-language newspaper. He was on a mission, active service. He shouldn’t be thinking about girls. Besides which, he was in mourning for his wife. He resolved not to look again.

Then the woman spoke.

‘Well, what do you think?’ she said, quite out of the blue.

Stanton looked up and glanced around, imagining that she was about to be joined by a companion.

‘No, you,’ she went on, looking squarely at Stanton. ‘I was wondering what you thought.’

Oi was wondering what yez tort.

Such a lilting accent and quite pronounced. He wondered whether she didn’t affect it a little, feeling that a smartly dressed woman who could afford to travel first class would in this age have been brought up to speak less colloquially.

‘Excuse me?’ Stanton said. ‘Thought about what?’

‘Me, of course,’ the woman went on, ‘or what else have you been thinking about since I sat down?’

‘Well, I …’ He was completely taken aback. Stanton was a handsome man and not unused to female attention but even in the twenty-first century he couldn’t remember being called out in such a way. He expected it much less in a time when women most certainly didn’t address strange men in public. ‘I can assure you, miss …’ he began.

‘Oh, don’t deny it and make me look a fool,’ she said. ‘Be a gentleman and admit it, why don’t you?’

Stanton struggled to reply. She’d thrown him completely.

‘I don’t believe you caught me looking,’ he said finally.

‘So you
were
looking then?’ she replied, affecting a semi-comical frown, like a prosecution barrister leaping on an inconsistency.

‘I don’t say that. I don’t say that at all. I only say I don’t believe you caught me looking. Be a lady and admit it, why don’t you?’

She smiled and her eyes seemed almost to laugh.

‘Ah,’ she sighed, ‘now, being a lady is never something I’ve been awfully good at.’

‘So you admit you didn’t catch me looking?’

‘I never said I
had
caught you looking. I merely said that you
were
looking. And were you?’

He knew that denial was pointless.

‘Well, perhaps a bit.’

‘
So
, to get back to where we began. What did you think?’

Now he was really flustered.

‘Well, I … how did you know I was looking at you if you didn’t catch me?’

‘Oh come on, Mr …’

‘Stanton.’

‘Mr Stanton, how much of an expert in human nature does a lone woman who’s sitting opposite a lone man on a train have to be, to know that he’ll steal a glance? I don’t say you thought
much
, mind you. You might not have been interested at all. Or you might have thought, “Bother, wish she’d been blonde like those lovely Viennese girls.” But you thought
something
.’

She looked at him with those very slightly hooded eyes, twinkling emeralds they were, framed beneath wild strawberry blonde tresses.

‘All right,’ he admitted. ‘I have in fact been thinking about you since you sat down. And what I was thinking, I had no business to think, because I was thinking how very … nice, you looked.’

‘Nice?’

‘Yes. Very.’

‘And why had you no business thinking that? I think it’s a lovely thing to think.’

Oi t’ink it’s a lovely t’ing to t’ink.

‘Well, you know … a lady sitting alone and …’

‘Oh yes, of
course
, because you didn’t know I wasn’t a lady, did you? Shall I tell you what
I
was thinking?’

‘Uhm, yes, that’d be great.’

‘Well. First of all, I thought you looked nice too. But on its own that wouldn’t have made me speak to you. There’s a lot more handsome men in the world than there are interesting ones, and to find one that’s both is rarer still, and to come across one when you’re sat alone on a train with hours and hours to go is a blessed miracle. I’m Bernadette Burdette, by the way.’

‘Very pleased to meet you, Miss Burdette,’ Stanton said. ‘What made you think I might be interesting?’

Her nose wrinkled slightly in thought.

‘Well, now. You have an interesting
face
but that can be deceptive. I suppose mainly the newspapers. Any man who is able to read the news in two languages and chooses to do so can’t be a complete bore, can he? Particularly a soldier. Soldiers aren’t usually the most sophisticated people in my experience. Certainly not my brother’s comrades anyway. Or my brother for that matter.’

‘How on earth did you know I was a soldier?’

‘Oh, just your bearing, I suppose. And when I heard you order, you
sounded
like a soldier.’

‘Heard me order? You mean, you …’

‘Oh yes, I’ve been in the carriage for a little while. In a seat at the end. I had them move me to this one.’

Stanton tried to take stock. What was going on? Was she hitting on him?
Did
girls in 1914 hit on guys? For a mad moment he wondered whether in some way she was on to him. A mysterious female spy on a train who knew about his mission. But that simply wasn’t possible. Perhaps she just wanted to talk to him.

And he knew that he wanted to talk to her.

‘Might I join you?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps we could even have a bit of lunch together.’

‘Well, I’m afraid that depends,’ she replied. ‘First you have to pass the test.’

‘Test?’

‘Where do you stand on female suffrage?’

He should have guessed it, of course. There was one issue and one only that dominated the thoughts of independently minded women in the early summer of 1914.

‘I’m afraid I couldn’t lunch with a man who didn’t consider me of equal value as a member of society. It’s a
very
strict rule.’

Stanton decided to lay it on thick.

‘I think the fact that the women of the world are denied the vote—’ he began.

‘Except in glorious, wonderful New Zealand,’ she interrupted.

‘Except as you say, in New Zealand … is crazy, illogical, unjustifiable, imbecilic and deeply immoral. That is where I stand on the issue of female suffrage, Miss Burdette.’

‘In that case, I think we must certainly have lunch,’ she said. ‘And I’d be obliged if you’d call me Bernadette.’

‘After all,’ Stanton added, ‘women hold up half the sky.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, gulping, ‘that is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard
anybody
say. Let alone a man. Call me Bernie.’

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.’