‘She’s only got a minor title. Baronesses are one step up from commoners.’
‘She’s below you, queen.’ He donned the earphones and passed her a cigarette. They had played with radio sets since they were children.
‘What can you hear?’ she asked.
‘Storms. Singing. Footsteps. Someone singing in another language.’
‘Give over them earphones,’ Lucille said. ‘You have them to yourself all the other nights.’
‘It’s no fun without you. Besides, I get scared. You mock, but I do. Some of the voices are spooky. Like a ghostly voice’s calling my name. George! George! Hey! Get your ghosty hands off me!’ He protested as she wrested the earphones from him.
She snapped them onto her own head. ‘I can only hear whispering.’
Electronic noise drowned the words. The noise ceased. As clear as a tuning fork, she heard a Cornish voice say: Tinned sardines and fruit with evaporated milk. Lovingly decanted. Bee’s voice; Bee’s words.
‘What is it, queen?’ George was at once serious. He cupped Lucille’s face, wiping a tear from her cheek with his thumb. ‘What did you hear? Tell me.’
‘I was imagining things,’ she said. ‘Do you ever do that? Convince yourself you’ve heard something in the static?’
‘All the time.’
‘I just feel so guilty,’ Lucille confessed. ‘Bee’s going to be left behind. And I’ll still be carrying on there, year in year out.’
‘I do wish you’d leave,’ George said. ‘But we both know you won’t. Do you know what that means?’
‘What?’
‘You have to make the Conclave better, from the inside.’
She laughed. ‘How do I do that? The place never bloody changes. It can’t.’
He lit another cigarette. ‘You’ll have to think of something.’
8
JULY 2017
Ruby
Ruby still wanted to talk to Grace directly, to hear it confirmed that the dead woman was Granny Bee. Without much hope, she contacted the Conclave. She requested a meeting with Grace ‘to follow up on their recent conversation’. The Conclave said they’d get back to her. At least it wasn’t an outright refusal, although there was no guarantee Grace would comply. Now there was nothing to do but wait. Ruby did all of this without Bee’s knowledge. Bee didn’t want to contact Grace until she had a new discovery to offer the Conclave. But Ruby couldn’t wait that long to hear if Bee was in danger.
A week passed, and Ruby’s anxiety about Bee’s safety didn’t wane. It affected her sleep. She spent too long each night googling Grace on her phone. A pirated set of video installations, made by Grace some years ago, caught Ruby’s attention because of the title: Death and the Time Traveller. Ruby clicked on the first of the series, which yielded an interview with a newly recruited barrister in 2030, yet to take her first trip. She was filmed in black and white, perching at the edge of a slouchy leather sofa. At her side was a pot of aloe vera. Other than that the room was featureless. Grace, unseen behind the camera, asked Fay what she was looking forward to about time travel. Fay responded that she would meet her father for the first time since his death.
I want to give him books, ones he’d like, that were written after he’d gone. I want to show him photographs of the people he wouldn’t get to meet, and the events he wouldn’t get to witness. I want to ask his opinion on current affairs. I want to give him family gossip. I want to compare failings, because now I’m an adult I know what my failings are, and perhaps we could find common ground.
Her wistfulness touched Ruby, who had the strange sensation of recognising Fay’s face, but not being able to place where from. She discarded the thought. In 2017 this woman must still be a child; Ruby could only be confusing her with someone else.
The video cut to a later interview, after Fay had taken her first few trips, and been reunited with her father. She spoke rapidly, half laughing.
It was so good. I thought I was starting to forget what he looked like. But as soon as I saw him I realised the memories were inside me, waiting to come back. I talked till I went hoarse and the best thing was how happy he was to hear it all. We planed wood. In the garden, listening to Radio 4. He was a furniture restorer, did I tell you that? No? When I got home I burst into tears. My hands kept trembling. I’ve been back to see him a couple of times, and I’ll stay whenever I’m in his timeline. The funny thing is, the other time travellers – I’m thinking of Teddy Avedon in particular, he’s been showing me the ropes – they keep telling me that it’s green to be so excited. They mean I’m being gauche. Teddy says I’ll get used to seeing dead people. But I think he’s wrong. Whenever I visit my father, the trees in his garden are young again, and so is he. I will never take that for granted.
The screen cut to black. Grace spoke through the darkness, pointing out that Fay may have an interesting perspective on death. As a specialist in time travel law, over which the Conclave had sole jurisdiction, Fay would be defending clients against the death penalty. Fay reappeared, in the same chair.
In the twenty-first century, where I come from, the English legal and judicial systems value fairness. But Conclave justice is different. It has more in common with medieval Europe, or colonial America, or twenty-fourth century Britain – because it values divine judgement more than fairness. They implement something called trial of ordeal. This is a very ancient, religious ritual, where the accused has to take a painful or difficult test. If they pass, the judge takes it as a sign from a higher power that the accused person is innocent. But if they fail, then that’s a sign they are guilty. For time travellers, the higher power is fate. All time travellers have experienced trying, and failing, to change a course of events at some point in their career. So their faith in fate is very strong.
I don’t present any evidence as part of the trial. But if the defendant is found guilty, I’ll use both the evidence from the initial investigation and the defendant’s own testimony to negotiate their sentence. The judge doesn’t award any custodial sentences. The guilty party pays a fine to the injured party, or if the victim’s dead, the family can dispense a corporal punishment. Anything from head shaving up to execution. Most time travel legislation derives from the twenty-fourth century, which is pretty bloodthirsty, I can tell you. That’s why the Conclave thinks blood revenge is a mitigating factor in sentencing for murder.
The film then jumped forward to an older Fay, recently returned from maternity leave. Her eyes were ringed. Through yawns she said she was happy to be back at work.
Being a lawyer sounds like a desk job, but my caseload covers a full three centuries, so I have to skip about from decade to decade to get everything done. During my maternity leave I really missed travelling. I suppose it’s like having wanderlust? Time lust. It feels weird now if I don’t have that flexibility of where and when I go. I have friends and family in other timelines that I don’t have here, so… yeah. While I was with the baby I couldn’t see those people. (Grace asks a question, inaudible to the viewer.) No, I never doubted they still existed. It was more like we were in separate lives. With the next baby my partner’s going to take leave instead. I don’t want to be away from my job that long again.