Out of Time Read online

  James climbed through a ragged wire fence into a house that was leaning sloppily to one side and had completely collapsed in the farthest corner. He went timidly up the back steps, testing one to be sure it would not crumble under his feet. There was no door, so he was able to walk into what had been the kitchen. The floor was littered with rubbish and animal droppings. On a wall hung half a cheap calendar and a torn tea towel. A pipe running down the wall led to a broken sink, with one tap still poised at an odd angle above it. In the sink was a smashed beer bottle and a few fragments of soap. James ran his finger along the ledge above the sink. Someone had made that ledge, had carved it out of wood and screwed supports for it. It had taken a few hours perhaps, and made the owner of the kitchen pleased and happy.

  James went back into the sunlight and began exploring the garden. Although it was now a sprawling mass of overgrowth it was evident that there had once been order beneath the weeds and wild plants. The skeletons of a few sheds still stood at the end of the long garden but they were covered with creepers.

  Later, James walked up the hill to the Ravenswood Cemetery. This was well fenced and in one corner was a group of new graves, topped with red dirt, flowers, and freshly erected headstones. But the rest of the cemetery was old. James avoided the new section and walked through the old. Less than half the headstones were still standing but even on those many of the inscriptions were illegible. Some had headstones that were now a pile of rubble. And many had no markings at all. A rectangle of half-bricks, glimpsed among the undergrowth; a rusting wrought-iron fence enclosing a mess of weeds; plots where there may or may not have once been a burial. James walked among them slowly, sick at heart. He read all of the texts that could be read. A lot were for children; a lot for men and women in their thirties. Some recorded the awful details of accidental deaths: a drowning; collapsed mine shafts; falls from horses. A woman had been killed in a hotel fire. Some of the inscriptions started with the words, ‘Pray for the soul of. . .’, and James did. He didn’t know whether to be angered or moved by the humble acceptance of death revealed in some of the verses: ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away’.

  One phrase recurred again and again: ‘Always remembered’, or its corollary, ‘Never forgotten’. The sadness struck James hard. The people for whom these things were written, some of them as recently as forty years ago, seemed to have been badly forgotten, erased by all, lost from the memories of all people.

  James was reluctant to leave the cemetery without recognising these silent forgotten dead. He lingered along the path. Finally he managed to bring to mind a few verses of one of the only hymns he knew. He hummed, in a little croaking voice:

  A thousand ages in thy sight

  Are like an evening gone,

  Short as the watch that ends the night

  Before the rising sun.

  Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

  Bears all its sons away;

  They fly forgotten, as a dream

  Dies at the opening day.

  My Brother

  by Ellie H.

  My brother’s name is James and he’s three years older than me. He’s fair haired, with a part on the left side, and he’s about a metre and a half tall. I don’t know what colour his eyes are because I’ve never noticed. There’s not much else I can say about the way he looks. He’s just average. I mean, you never think your brother’s good-looking but quite a few girls like him, Jacqui Squire for one, and Frances Wu for another (don’t tell them I said so though).

  James is really dreamy. He gets in trouble for not concentrating and for forgetting things and for not doing things when he’s told. His favourite subjects are Science and History, and he likes skiing (he’s good at that) and reading and movies and tennis and skateboarding.

  Although he can be really annoying (like when he takes my stuff or won’t do his jobs or tries to boss me around) I like him ’cos he’s kind and he’s often very nice to me, considering what a pain it must be to have a little sister. He’s still done some awful things to me though, like stirring mashed potato into my coffee and putting Gladwrap over the toilet bowl.

  One time he was dinking me on his bike and it didn’t have any brakes so when he wanted to stop he told me to put my foot on the wheel and I didn’t understand him so I put my foot in the wheel, in the spokes, and it was a bit of a mess. We both came off.

  The trouble with James, though, is you never know what he’s thinking. When he’s really upset he just goes off on his own and won’t talk to anyone. I hate that. He was like that when our other grandmother died.

  Another thing about him is that he’s good at sharing things (except food!) and he gives me good presents. Last birthday he made me a mobile, with all these people on parachutes floating up and down. It’s hanging in my bedroom now. It’s great. It must have taken ages and ages to make.

  Most of my friends fight with their brothers all the time, and of course James and I have arguments sometimes, but not very often. I think I’m lucky with my brother. All in all he’s a pretty good guy and we’re good friends.

  NANCY LINGERED WELL behind her mother as they approached the escalators. If she was forced to hold hands on the rippled steel serpentine steps, there was no chance to pirouette or stretch or go skittering up and down. But, although Nancy stood three steps above her mother’s cardiganed back, the escalator was too crowded to allow any freedom of movement. It irked Nancy to be so restricted, clammed in by adults. At the bottom of the escalator she took her mother’s hand again without a word.

  It was all so noisy and crowded and full and wonderful. Nancy wandered through the arcades and around the stores and in and out of the little boutiques. She was connected to her mother throughout it all, at times by touch, at times by a bond of sight and instinct. She had been waiting for this day for months, while they worked their way east, dusty and dry with the heat of the inland plains. Though she was sore and tired, she knew that she would roll the taste of this day around in her mouth for months to come. And so she laboured on.

  Outside one store she paused and, stretching her head back, looked up at the gleaming building impossibly high above her. It swayed against the clouds, and so did she, watching it. It made her dizzy. It was too much to absorb. She straightened up again and shook her head to clear the confusion, refocusing on the brisk masses of people passing her in the street. Then, suddenly realising that her mother had disappeared into the throng, she panicked and looked sharply around her. In the crowded distance she thought she saw the familiar grey knitted cardigan, and scurried after it, only to find to her embarrassment that it was a black man in a ski jumper. She looked about her, wondering which way to turn next. She was frightened, not only because she was suddenly alone in the alien city, but because she knew her mother would be angry at their getting separated.

  She decided on a likely direction, towards a huge array of neon signs. She hurried towards the store, not recognising it as one that they had already been in.

  At the entrance she stood confused, a whirlpool in a river of people. Another flash of grey sent her rushing into a different shop, but she lost it in a flurry among the crowd. She continued through the store to the rear entrance and, turning right, ran along a narrow, colourful, busy street, dodging between pedestrians. At the next intersection she went with the crowd, which took her to the left. Halfway along the block she passed two policemen who were standing idly, watching the traffic. Having absorbed through her ears, her nose, her skin, her parents’ suspicion of policemen, it did not occur to her to ask them for help. She had never known anyone to approach a policeman voluntarily. She ran on, pale-faced and panting.

  Within ten minutes she was six blocks away from her searching mother. As her mother scoured the streets in one direction, Nancy giddily floundered in another. She had joined the tide of the lost. Like a microscopic form of sea life, a glimmer at the edge of the wet sand, she was picked up by the hurrying throng, dropped again, picked up and tossed around. As night fe
ll, she collapsed into a bus shelter at the edge of a small park. She closed her dry, sore eyes and sat dully in a corner of the bunker.

  I’VE GOT A new game. It’s called Frankie. Sometimes I know it’s a game and sometimes I don’t. But even when I don’t, I still do.

  Frankie is at nights, outside my window. He watches me when I’m looking at him, and sometimes when I’m not. When I’m getting undressed I turn my back now, so he can’t see all of me. Sometimes he tells me to stand closer to him, and I always do, but not for very long, because I get sick of it and he doesn’t seem to know what to do next. Other times he makes me break something, or eat something, or throw something away.

  When I first realised that Frankie was there, I thought he was friendly. I’m not sure now. He keeps changing his expression. You could never call it friendly, though some days he doesn’t seem to mind. He reminds me of someone, I don’t know who.

  Frankie talks to me and knows what I think. Of course it’s only a game, but still. And it’s only at nights. In the daytime he’s so different. He’s still there, sort of, but his nose is the end of a branch, where it’s been sawn off, and his mouth is leaves, and his eyes are the buds on the ends of twigs. I look at all those bits then and try to imagine how they could be a face at nights, but it’s hard. I can sort of see it, but only when I try, and it doesn’t work much then. You know how you see a photo of your parents when they’re young? You look and you look and you can just see the traces of them in their faces as kids, but you have to concentrate. You can’t look away. That’s how it is with Frankie.

  When I’m in a good mood I joke around with Frankie and I deliberately try to scare myself. Because, don’t forget, I know he’s not real. When I’m in a bad mood he scares me though. He looks mean. He won’t let me off.

  I know Frankie’ll keep changing and eventually he’ll fade away. The leaves will spread or the bough will grow or the buds will flower. I know it’ll happen, and it’ll be good then, but in a way I don’t want it to. I’m sort of comfortable with old Frankie. He’s someone to have there, someone to hang around with. He’s my face at the window.

  MR WOODFORDE’S MACHINE had acquired a kind of horror in James’ eyes. The sense of disintegration he experienced when he used it was so frightening that he had trouble nerving himself to handle the machine at all. He began to wonder if he had left a bit of himself behind each time he came back from the past. He felt that he was not being reassembled quite correctly. Parts of him did not seem to match up properly. When he took a shower he gazed solemnly in the bathroom mirror, convincing himself that his nose was off-centre, and there were too many gaps between his teeth, and one nipple was bigger than the other.

  Nevertheless, he felt obliged to use the machine. He knew he had access to an extraordinary power. He felt it would be a waste not to use it, almost a crime. He was sure that if anyone else had it they would be using it all the time. So on a quiet Sunday afternoon, the day after going to the park with Sybil and Max, he forced himself to go through the procedures again.

  This time he was more organised. Although his real interest was in people and events that had personal meaning for him, an obscure sense of duty urged him to undertake a ‘proper’ historical exploration. It was as though his teacher, Mrs Chalmers, was in the room and looking over his shoulder. He felt obliged to go back into history. He had always been fascinated by the Mayans. He had done a school project on them, read a few books about them and had a picture of their temples on his wall. So when he had to choose a place it seemed obvious that it should be Central America. After some study he decided on 16° 50’ 0”, 90° 0’ 0”. For a date he chose 795 AD, arbitrarily nominating June 16 at 1130 hours.

  His research through books and maps told him that this should take him to the ancient city of Tikal, in Guatemala. And with little further thought – and with no thought for any practical difficulties – he sat at his desk and started keying in the date.

  It was fear of the sensations that he must once again experience that filled his mind. The fear crowded through his awareness, pushing all else to the corners, then crowding into the corners too, till there was no room left. And when at last he pressed the ‘Enter’ button he was disgusted to find that his fears and memories were not exaggerated. It was an awful, lurching experience again, that this time lasted for several minutes. When it was over, he was too dizzy and sick to see or care where he was, until three or four more minutes had passed. Then he began to notice things.

  He realised that the air was different. It was rich and sweet, flooding the senses. He was standing among trees, looking out at a vast city. It was full of exotic stone buildings gleaming in the morning sun. A hubbub of noise, human noises, was beating away steadily, though he could not quite see its origin. But a step forward gave him a better view, over a stone wall, and he saw a kind of market spread in front of him. He was first struck by the number of people in it, then by how different they looked. For one thing, they seemed small. No-one here to rival the tall Americans at the Research Centre, or even his tall father, the Director. For another, they were all very brown, their skin glowing with a tan that might have been enhanced by oil. The men wore headdresses and cloths that were tied around their waists and between their legs. The women had dress-like shifts and long hair tied back. The children seemed to wear the same costume as the men, though some were naked.

  The noise was terrific. There was shouting and laughter and chatting and arguments. Some kind of nobleman, more elaborately dressed, was carried past in a litter. A dog-like animal, tied to a stake in the ground, was being fed by a child. James began to notice details, to sort out the full and complicated picture that was before him. Goods were spread across the ground and on stalls, from one corner of the concourse to the other, and people wandered among them comparing, examining, negotiating. He saw a man buying a small woven basket from among a collection tied to a pole, and James strained to see how he paid for it. Something changed hands – perhaps some small coins – but he could not see what they were. He started to look more closely at the array of goods on display. They seemed to be mainly foods of all kinds. Fruits, beans, seeds, carcasses of freshly killed animals, smoked meats, herbs in baskets. Many were varieties that he did not recognise but others were familiar. Some were obviously types of bread and there were many kinds of melon, pineapples, avocados, strawberries and tomatoes. As well, he recognised potatoes, sugar cane, and sweet corn.

  Yet many of these foods were different in shape, size and colour from the way James knew them. The pineapples and tomatoes, in particular, were smaller than the ones from the Defence Forces’ canteen. The tomatoes were more orange than red. There were rabbits hanging in a shaded corner of the concourse, but they had dark tails and long ears, and they looked quite big.

  James turned his attention to his own position. He was standing among rich, dark, exotic trees in an uncleared patch of rain forest or jungle. The wall in front of him was about chest high. Made of stone, it seemed old and neglected. Although it was cool among the trees, the early morning freshness was starting to go, and the sun was beating onto the paved road of the marketplace. Insects, mainly mosquitoes, were beginning to find James and to swarm around him.

  He took another step forward, a little further out of the shade and shelter. At last a realisation of his difficulties began to dawn on him. He was wearing blue denim jeans and a T-shirt with a frog on it. He was blond, fair-skinned, blue eyed: the complete opposite of these people. He spoke English and no other language. Starting to sweat, he looked down at his hand, seeking visual reassurance of what he was holding in a tight grip: Mr Woodforde’s machine. He moved it slightly, so that his thumb was better placed to hit the Return button if things got out of control. Then he took a deep breath and walked to the wall.

  He expected to be noticed at once, but because the wall came up so high on his body he was still concealed from the marketplace. He waited a moment, then put the machine on top of the wall to free his hands, levere
d himself up, grabbed the machine and dropped to the ground on the other side.

  For the few seconds that this took he did not have time to look at the people in the marketplace, but as he landed on the stone pavement, facing the wall, he felt a prickling in his back and a dryness in his throat. He gripped the machine even more tightly, taking care to align his thumb with the Return button again, before turning to face the Indians.

  A silence had descended over the market: a silence so sudden and complete that it was hard to believe a clamour of voices had filled the air a moment earlier. Sweating all over now, not just in his hot hands and wet armpits, James looked up at the Mayans.

  They were all frozen, all quiet, gazing at him. Most had drawn together, had sidled across to each other, so that James was now standing alone. One, a man of about twenty, still on his own, caught James’ eye and quickly, almost guiltily, scuttled into a group. A large highly coloured bird suddenly flapped into the sky from a wall behind a pottery stall. Triggered by its movement a number of similar birds arose from other points along the concourse and flew to join it. They clustered and perched on a branch of a tree away to James’ left.

  The machine, and its silent assurance that it could extricate him instantly, gave James some confidence. Not a lot, but some. He moved a metre forward. There was no response among the Indians. Even a baby, about twelve months old, sitting on the ground nearby, gazed at him with unwavering concentration. James took another step. Then, to his own surprise, in a high nervous voice, he said:

  ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble. My name’s James. I just wanted to visit you.’