Simon Clark - The Fall

He shook his head; again, a gentle movement. ‘Be still, please. Just for a moment. I won’t harm you.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘There, my lady. Tell me what it is that you see there upon your shoulder.’

That hot summer’s day in 1865 wore on. The accidental time travellers – there were about 40 in all now – stayed pretty close to the amphitheatre. Well, it could be said more accurately that they stayed near to what creature comforts those few acres of earth could offer.

They helped themselves to drinks and food from the visitors’ centre. The driver had now given up charging for snacks from the bus’s galley. Every so often he’d pull from his pocket a thick wad of the notes he’d already taken from the passengers (the duty-free beer he’d smuggled in on one Continental trip had been a real money-spinner), then he’d shake his head sadly.

The cash was useless. 1990s currency in 1865? He might as well light a fire with it.

Sam walked round the site, examining the perimeter of the time-shift. It was as if someone had taken an extremely sharp knife and sliced through the metalled road. The 50-or-so-yard section that ran from the perimeter of the boundary to connect with the car park was the same as it always had been: smooth blue-grey tarmac, complete with iron storm-water grates, neatly painted white lines along the centre and a steel sign warning of playing children at the entrance to the car park: 5 MPH MAXIMUM!

Where the road left that 1999 chunk of ground, the metalled surface suddenly ended. Sam had to step off the higher road and down onto a cart track of black cinder that had compacted down as hard as concrete.

When he turned to look back to where the road abruptly ended he could even see a cross-section of it, built up in layers of shale and limestone that was then topped with tarmac. The whole thing looked like a sandwich cake made up of layers of red, white and black sponge.

In the distance a foggy pall of smoke marked the position of Casterton. No doubt domestic and commercial chimneys still smoked richly. Even on a hot summer’s day like this.

After a while Sam returned to the amphitheatre.

Perhaps it was all illusory but at least there seemed to be some sense of safety and security there. Already people, incredible though it might seem, were settling into a kind of domestic routine. Jud and his wife were brewing vast quantities of tea and coffee for their time-travelling companions. Even Ryan Keith seemed to have snapped out of his trance. Still dressed in the Oliver Hardy costume complete with bowler hat, he filled plastic buckets from the visitors’ centre water-storage tank and brought them down to the Campbells’ narrow boat. There they boiled kettle after kettle on their Calor-gas hob.

Only Carswell remained aloof, watching the proceedings from the deck of his launch with a glass of cold beer in his hand. He looked like a Roman emperor dispassionately watching slaves at work. He wasn’t going to filthy his hands by helping out. And he certainly wasn’t going to hand over any of his food and drink, although (and both Sam and Jud had noticed it) a good number of people were growing more and more hostile towards him. Already there was talk of simply going aboard the launch and taking what they wanted.

Sam sympathised. But he thought of the handgun that Carswell had pulled in the bar when the police had tried to arrest him.

There was every chance he’d start waving that gun the moment anyone stepped onto his gangplank.

‘Where’s Rolle?’ Sam asked Jud, who was carrying a steel pole along the deck of the narrow boat.

‘He left a couple of hours ago. He said he had to go somewhere, and that he’d be back later.’

‘Has he been able to tell you how we can get out of the amphitheatre during time-jumps?’

‘No. At least, not clearly. I think that’s going to take a lot more work yet on our part.’

‘That’s not particularly encouraging. What happens when we make the next time-jump?’

‘I think more people will die, Sam. Here, take this.’

Jud leant out from the boat and handed Sam the steel pole.

‘What’s this?’

‘We’re building a barbecue.’

‘A barbecue!’ Sam laughed in disbelief. ‘You’re kidding?’

‘No. We’re going to eat out tonight.’

‘Where did you get the food for 40 people?’ Sam took the pole. ‘Wait. Don’t tell me, you do this trick with five loaves and some fishes.’

‘Carswell poured scorn on the people here in the amphitheatre. He wrote them off as just a bunch of ignorant halfwits. But we have a retired butcher among our number. He and another man cornered a sheep up on the hills. I lent him my sharpest kitchen knives and, hey presto, we’re just about to roast a whole sheep. Coming?’

‘You bet.’

In a way Sam wondered if they were wasting their time (and on every occasion he used the word ‘time’ in a figure of speech that word would clang back at him). It was possible that at any moment they’d be whisked farther back in time again.

Then they’d find themselves sitting back in the amphitheatre seats. The travel reps in fancy dress. Jud Campbell pushing that pin into his collar.

But the people were actually enjoying themselves. For the first time on this roller-coaster ride into history he heard laughter. They gathered wood for the fire. On the river bank Jud, helped by Sam, rigged up a spit on which the sheep could be roasted.

The time-shift didn’t come that evening. As the sun sank behind the hills they lit the fire, then roasted the sheep. Sam couldn’t remember ever tasting anything as delicious as those hunks of mutton he held in his hands. Perhaps every nerve-ending was making a desperate grab at normality. The barbecue, eating, talking to the others, all smacked of normality.

At one point Jud had carved him another hunk of sizzling mutton and said, ‘You know what you were talking about earlier? About there being a reason for all this? Being sent back through time to save humanity. Well…’ Jud handed him the plate, his eyes twinkling in the firelight. ‘I believe you, Sam. I think you’re on the right track.’

‘Hell, it’s a relief to hear someone say it. Carswell dismissed me as some kind of crackpot. He’s taken to his boat and looks as if he’s going to stay there until hell freezes over.’

‘That’s his problem. And no, I don’t think you’re a crackpot. What we must do is sit Rolle down the next time we see him and find out how he manages to navigate through time.’ Jud looked up at him. ‘You know, I think it’s our only hope.’

That was as far as the strand of conversation went. After that they joined the others sitting on the slope overlooking their fire with the still-sizzling mutton. It dropped spits of fat that ignited in pops of blue flame in the glowing embers. Everywhere there was a delicious aroma of cooking meat.

At last people returned to the bus or to the cars to sleep. Jud made up a bunk for Sam in the spare cabin on the boat. Zita slept on a bed-settee in the boat’s lounge area. And in the corner of the cabin sat a television. It was completely useless now. A piece of lifeless plastic and circuitry. For Sam, however, it was still a potent symbol of the life he’d left behind. After saying goodnight to the others, he found himself lightly touching the top of it, feeling that cool plastic beneath his fingertips. Bizarrely, it was reassuring. Perhaps reassuring in the same way a devoutly religious person would feel when entering a church or synagogue or mosque. Although there was no electricity to feed the set, it still seemed to hum with its own magic power.

Again he realised how bizarre it was, but he wished he could switch on the television. Even if it was just to see a string of old TV ads that he’d always written off as banal. It would be like seeing the smiling face of an old friend again.