Definitely not totally recovered. I lay at the bottom of the embankment for a considerable time contemplating that fact and trying to start breathing.
After a while I sat up. The embankment had been fairly high, and the basket and I had rolled a considerable way before coming to a stop in a mass of nettles. As a result, the view was very different than that from the tracks, and I could glimpse, beyond a thicket of alders, a corner of some white wooden structure and a glimpse of fretwork. It could definitely be a boathouse.
I disentangled the basket and myself, climbed up the embankment, and looked carefully up and down the tracks. There was no smoke in either direction, and no sound at all. Satisfied, I sprinted across the tracks, gathered up my etc., looked in both directions, bolted back across, and set off through the woods toward the boathouse.
Adrenaline also tends to clear the brain, and several things became remarkably clear as I trudged toward the boathouse, the foremost of which was that I had no idea what to do when I got there.
I distinctly remembered Mr. Dunworthy saying, “Here are your instructions,” and after that a jumble of Stilton spoons and collars and the All-Clear, and then he’d said the rest of the two weeks was mine to do with as I liked. Which obviously meant that a portion of it wasn’t. And when I’d got in the net, Finch had said, “We’re counting on you.”
To do what? There was something about a boat and a river. And a Something End. Audley End. No, that didn’t sound right. It began with an “N.” Or was that the water nymph? Hopefully, it would come back to me when I got to the boathouse.
It wasn’t a boathouse. It was a railway station. There was a carved wooden sign on the wall above a green bench. Oxford, it said.
And what was I supposed to do now? Oxford had boathouses and a river. But if I’d come through at the railway station, perhaps I was supposed to take a train to this Something End and then a boat from there. I seemed to remember Mr. Dunworthy saying something about a railway. Or had that been the headrig?
My coming through at the railway station might have been due to slippage, and I was really supposed to have come through down at Folly Bridge. I distinctly remembered something having been said about a boat and the river.
On the other hand, I had a great deal of luggage for a boat.
I looked across the tracks to the platform. On the far side of the green bench was a glass-covered notice board. The train schedule. I could look at it, and if Something End was listed, I’d know I was supposed to take the train, especially if one was due shortly.
The platform was empty, at least for the moment. The distance up to it looked high, but not impossible, and the sky was unsullied blue in both directions. I looked up and down the tracks and then at the door to the waiting room. Nothing. I checked the tracks three or four more times, just to be safe, and then sprinted across them, heaved my luggage over the edge, and clambered up after it.
The platform was still uninhabited. I piled my luggage on the end of the bench and strolled over to the notice board. I read the headings: Reading, Coventry, Northampton, Bath. It was very likely one of the smaller stations: Aylesbury, Didcot, Swindon, Abingdon. I read the entire list. There wasn’t a single End among them.
And I couldn’t go into the station and ask when the next train to Something End was. What was it? Something End. Howard’s End? No, that was a novel by E. M. Forster. It hadn’t even been written yet. Something End. There was a pub in the Turl called The Bitter End, but that didn’t sound right either. It began with an “N.” No, that was the naiad. An “M.”
I went back over to the bench and sat down, trying to think. Mr. Dunworthy had said, “Here are your instructions,” and then something about oyster spears and tea with the Queen. No, that had to have been the headrig. And then, “We’re sending you through to the seventh of June, 1888.”
Perhaps I’d better find out if I was really on the seventh of June, 1888, before I worried about anything else. If I was in the wrong time, I had no business going anywhere, by train or by boat. I needed to stay here till Warder got the fix, realized I was in the wrong time, and set up a rendezvous to take me back. At least it wasn’t a field of marrows.
And it had occurred to me, now that I was recovering a bit, that Warder would have set my watch for the time in the past. In which case, it proved absolutely nothing at all.
I stood up and went over to the station window to see if there was a clock inside. There was. It said twenty to eleven. I pulled out my pocket watch and checked it against the clock. Twenty to XI.
In books and vids there’s always a newsboy hawking papers with the date neatly visible for the time traveller to see, or a calendar with the dates marked off with an X. There was no sign of a calendar, a newsboy, or a friendly porter who’d volunteer, “Lovely weather for June seventh, isn’t it, sir? Not like last year. We hadn’t any summer at all in ‘87.”
I went back to the bench and sat down, trying to concentrate. Marlborough End, Middlesex End, Montague End, Marple’s End.
A train whistle (which I instantly recognized as such) sounded, and a train tore through the station without stopping, with a roar and a sudden wind that blew my boater with it. I went running after it, caught it, and was putting it back on when a paper, apparently caught in the same draft, blew against the back of my legs.
I unwrapped myself from it and looked at it. It was a sheet from a newspaper. The Times. 7 June 1888.
So I was at the right time, and all I had to work out was what I was supposed to do now.
I sat down and put my head in my hands, trying to concentrate. Carruthers had come through without his boots and Warder had slammed her clipboard down and Mr. Dunworthy had said something about a river and a contact. A contact.
“Contact Tennyson,” he’d said, only that wasn’t the name. But it had begun with a “T.” Or an “A.” And Finch had said something about a contact, too. A contact.
That explained why I didn’t know what to do. All I’d been told was that I was to meet a contact, and he or she would tell me. I felt a surge of relief. The contact would explain everything.
So now the only question was, who was it and where was he or she? “Contact someone,” Mr. Dunworthy had said. What was the name? Chiswick. No, that was the head of Time Travel. Correction, the ex-head of Time Travel. “Contact—” Klepperman. Ensign Klepperman. No, that was the sailor who’d been killed in the line of duty. Because he hadn’t known what he was doing.
“Contact—” Who? As if in answer, another train whistle blew several deafening blasts, and a train pulled into the station. Spitting sparks and great whooshes of steam, the train came to a stop. A porter jumped down from the third car, deposited a plush-covered stool in front of the door, and got back on the train.
Several minutes went by, and the porter reappeared, carrying a hatbox and a large black umbrella. He extended his hand to a frail old lady, and then a younger one, as they stepped down.
The elderly lady was wearing crinolines and a bonnet and lace mitts, and for a moment I was afraid I was in the wrong year after all, but the younger one had a long, flared skirt and a hat that tilted forward over her brow. She had a sweet face, and when she spoke to the porter, telling him what bags they had, her voice was both softspoken and demure.
“I told you he wouldn’t be here to meet us,” the old lady said in a voice with Lady Schrapnellian overtones.
“I’m certain he will be here shortly, Auntie,” the young woman said. “Perhaps he was delayed on college business.”
“Poppycock,” the old lady said, a word I had not ever expected to hear anyone say. “He’s off fishing somewhere. Disgraceful occupation for a grown man! Did you write to tell him when we were coming?”