“Well, nearly everything. The sun seemed to jerk in the sky. The trees suddenly looked bigger, and not quite the same. The flowers in the bed over there went quite a different colour. This creeper which was all over the wall was suddenly only halfway up and it looks like a different kind of creeper. And there are houses over there. I never saw them before it’s just an open field beyond the spinney. Even the gravel on the path looks more yellow than I thought. And this room… It is the same room. I know that desk, and the fireplace and those two pictures. But the paper is quite different. I’ve never seen that before but it isn’t new, either… Please tell me where Thelma is… I want her to explain it… I must have gone a bit mad…”
She put her hand on his, firmly.
“No,” she said decisively. “Whatever it is, I’m quite sure it’s not that.”
“Then what?” He broke off abruptly, and listened, his head a little on one side. The sound grew. “What is it?” he asked, anxiously.
Mrs Dolderson tightened her hand over his.
“It’s all right,” she said, as if to a child. “It’s all right, Arthur.”
She could feel him grow tenser as the sound increased. It passed right overhead at less than a thousand feet, jets shrieking, leaving the buffeted air behind it rumbling back and forth, shuddering gradually back to peace.
Arthur saw it. Watched it disappear. His face when he turned it back to her was white and frightened. In a queer voice he asked: “What... what was that?
Quietly, as if to force calm upon him, she said: “Just an aeroplane, Arthur. Such horrid, noisy things they are.”
He gazed where it had vanished, and shook his head.
“But I’ve seen an aeroplane, and heard it. It isn’t like that. It makes a noise like a motorbike, only louder. This was terrible! I don’t understand, I don’t understand what’s happened…” His voice was pathetic.
Mrs Dolderson made as if to reply, and then checked at a thought, a sudden sharp recollection of Harold talking about dimensions, of shifting them into different planes, speaking of time as though it were simply another dimension… With a kind of shock of intuition she understood, no, understood was too firm a word she perceived. But, perceiving, she found herself at a loss. She looked again at the young man. He was still tense, trembling slightly. He was wondering whether he was going out of his mind. She must stop that. There was no kind way but how to be least unkind?
“Arthur,” she said, abruptly.
He turned a dazed look at her.
Deliberately she made her voice brisk.
“You’ll find a bottle of brandy in that cupboard. Please fetch it and two glasses,” she ordered.
With a kind of sleepwalking movement he obeyed. She filled a third of a tumbler with brandy for him, and poured a little for herself.
“Drink that,” she told him. He hesitated. “Go on,” she commanded. “You’ve had a shock. It will do you good. I want to talk to you, and I can’t talk to you while you’re knocked half-silly.”
He drank, coughed a little, and sat down again.
“Finish it,” she told him firmly. He finished it. Presently she enquired: “Feeling better now?”
Hi nodded, but said nothing. She made up her mind, and drew breath carefully. Dropping the brisk tone altogether, she added: “Arthur. Tell me, what day is it today?”
“Dy?” he said, in surprise. “Why, it’s Friday. It’s the er... twenty-seventh of June.”
“But the year, Arthur. What year?”
He turned his face fully towards her.
“I’m not really mad, you know. I know who I am, and where I am, I think… It’s things that have gone wrong, not me. I can tell you”
“What I want you to tell me, Arthur, is the year.” The peremptory note was back in her voice again.
He kept his eyes steadily on hers as he spoke.
“Nineteen-thirteen, of course,” he said.
Mrs Dolderson’s gaze went back to the lawn and the flowers. She nodded gently. That was the year and it had been a Friday; odd that she should remember that. It might well have been the twenty-seventh of June… But certainly a Friday in the summer of nineteen-thirteen was the day he had not come… All so long, long ago…
His voice recalled her. It was unsteady with anxiety.
“Why... why do you ask me that about the year, I mean?”
His brow was so creased, his eyes, so anxious. He was very young. Her heart ached for him. She put her thin fragile hand on his strong one again.
“I think I know,” he said shakily. “It’s... I don’t see how, but you wouldn’t have asked that unless… That’s the queer thing that’s happened, isn’t it? Somehow it isn’t nineteen-thirteen any longer that’s what you mean? The way the trees grew… that aeroplane…” He stopped, staring at her with wide eyes. “You must tell me… Please, please… What’s happened to me? Where am I now?
Where is this… “My poor boy…” she murmured.
“Oh, please..
The Times, with the crossword partly done, was pushed down into the chair beside her. She pulled it out half-reluctantly. Then she folded it over and held it towards him. His hand shook as he took it.
“London, Monday, the first of July,” he read. And then, in an incredulous whisper: “Nineteen-sixty-three!”
He lowered the page, looked at her imploringly.
She nodded twice, slowly.
They sat staring at one another without a word. Gradually, his expression changed. His brows came together, as though with pain. He looked round jerkily, his eyes darting here and there as if for an escape. Then they came back to her. He screwed them shut for a moment. Then opened them again, full of hurt and fear.
“Oh, no... no…! No… You’re not… You can’t be… You... you told me… You’re Mrs Dolderson, aren’t you…? You said you were… You can’t... you can’t be Thelma…?”
Mrs Dolderson said nothing. They gazed at one another. His face creased up like a small child’s.
“Oh, God! Oh-oh-oh… I” he cried, and hid his face in his hands.
Mrs Dolderson’s eyes closed for a moment. When they opened she had control of herself again. Sadly she looked on the shaking shoulders. Her thin, blueveined left hand reached out towards the bowed head, and stroked the fair hair, gently.
Her right hand found the bellpush on the table beside her. She pressed it, and kept her finger upon it…
At the sound of movement her eyes opened. The venetian blind shaded the room but let in light enough for her to see Harold standing beside her bed.
“I didn’t mean to wake you, Mother,” he said.
“You didn’t wake me, Harold. I was dreaming, but I was not asleep. Sit down, my dear. I want to talk to you.”
“You mustn’t tire yourself, Mother. You’ve had a bit of a relapse, you know.”
“I dare say, but I find it more tiring to wonder than to know. I shan’t keep you long.”
“Very well, Mother.” He pulled a chair close to the bedside and sat down, taking her hand in his. She looked at his face in the dimness.
“It was you who did it, wasn’t it, Harold? It was that experiment of yours that brought poor Arthur here?”
“It was an accident, Mother.”
“Tell me.”
“We were trying it out. Just a preliminary test. We knew it was theoretically possible. We had shown that if we could, oh, dear, it’s so difficult to explain in words if we could, well, twist a dimension, kind of fold it back on itself, then two points that are normally apart must coincide… I’m afraid that’s not very clear…”
“Never mind, dear. Go on.”
“Well, when we had our field distortion generator fixed up we set it to bring together two points that are normally fifty years apart. Think of folding over a long strip of paper that has two marks on it, so that the marks are brought together.”