Fragments (Out of Time) Read online

  Simon had tried to explain early English currency. In 1971, the UK and Ireland had adopted decimalization, so that everything was based on units of ten and one hundred. That made sense. Pre-Decimalization money, the sort they’d be using, did not. Twelve pence in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound, half-pennies, farthings, half-crowns and tanners and dozens of other coins and bills had left her completely and utterly lost.

  She’d have an easier time keeping their cover story straight than their money. They decided to keep the backstory simple. She and Simon were newlyweds, now living in America. They’d seen the photograph of Evan, Elizabeth’s uncle, in the paper and had come to collect him.

  The real trick for their cover story had been finding a compelling reason Simon wasn’t serving his country in the war. By 1942, every able-bodied man in England under the age of 51 would have been in the service. Special exemptions were given to a few categories of men, including those in the employ of a foreign government. That meant Simon was a professor working with the American government on some top-secret projects for the Department of Substitute Materials, whatever that was. The simpler the story the better. Luckily, without computers and long distance calls being rather expensive, it was doubtful anyone would or even could do much checking up on them. They were also counting on the fact that the hospital beds were at a premium and the administrators would be inclined to release Evan without much ado just to free one up.

  A penumbral eclipse that would allow the watch to activate was just three days away. Simon and Elizabeth planned to arrive in London on September 18, 1942, the day the photograph of Evan was taken. A return eclipse was less than a week later. It all sounded doable. Even though she knew it was dangerous, Elizabeth couldn’t hide her excitement. Given the chance, who wouldn’t want to travel in time? See history as it really was? In spite of the dangers they’d faced and the ones she was sure would surprise them this time, she counted herself incredibly privileged to be able to go. Even though he blustered on about the risks, she knew Simon felt the same way. Deep, deep Marianas Trench down.

  The night before the eclipse Elizabeth woke from a strange dream. Memories of it disappeared like smoke as she got her bearings. She rolled over to snuggle up to Simon, but his side of the bed was empty and cold. She slipped on her robe and headed down to the study. The light from inside stretched out into the hallway.

  Simon sat reading in Sebastian’s overstuffed club chair and he lifted his eyes from the pages when she padded in. It wasn’t unusual for him to get up in the middle of the night and go into his study at home and read until the early morning hours.

  “What are you reading?”

  He held up the book for her to see. “Churchill.”

  Elizabeth read the spine. “The Gathering Storm. That sounds ominous.”

  “It was. It is.” He closed the book and set it aside. “Are you sure about this?”

  Elizabeth thought about it. She owed him and herself that. “Yes. Are you having doubts?”

  Simon let out a sigh. “Plagues of them,” he said as he stood. “And yet, I think we’re doing the right thing. As insane as it is.”

  “Those are the best kind of things.” She took his hand. “Come back to bed. Churchill can wait.”

  They went to bed and managed a few hours of sleep before the day came. Simon finished his preparations, leaving Elizabeth in charge of packing. The smart time traveler travels light, but smashing everything two people would need for an entire week into one leather valise was easier said than done. Somehow, she managed it though. Her pocketbook, a simple shoulder bag, was crammed with money, coin purse, papers, handkerchief, small pad and pencil stub, lipstick, compact and a vintage Victorinox Swiss Army Knife.

  Elizabeth had never been one to wear much jewelry, but she did slip on a long silver necklace with a small key as the pendant. It had been a gift from Teddy, the watchmaker, and it just felt right to wear it when they traveled. Other than that, the only bit of jewelry needed was the wedding ring she was supposed to wear as part of their cover, which Simon had promised to take care of, but still hadn’t produced.

  The suitcase packed, Elizabeth looked at herself in the mirror. A woman from the 1940’s looked back. Her hair came down just below her shoulders in large lazy waves. The clothing was simple. She wore a blue cotton floral print dress, sensible, clunky brown Mary Janes and a tweed overcoat. She’d meant to ask Simon to draw the seam of her nonexistent stockings down the back of her legs, but in the rush of the coming eclipse, she’d forgotten.

  She grabbed the suitcase and went to look for Simon. She found him in the living room going over their papers one last time. He looked every inch the part in his wool trousers, oxford cloth shirt, brown sweater vest, jacket and fedora.

  “You should wear more hats,” she said.

  Simon turned to her and smiled as he tugged on the brim. “I actually quite like it. Are you ready? If you have any doubts—”

  “I don’t.” She took his hand in hers. “It’ll be all right.”

  “One last thing.” Simon reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two simple gold rings.

  “Those look familiar,” she said. They looked remarkably like the bands they’d used in New York when they’d first traveled back in time, when they’d first fallen in love. Of course, those had been fake gold and these were definitely not fake.

  “Yes,” Simon said nervously. “Don’t they?”

  He slipped the ring onto her finger and her heart skipped a beat. Even knowing it wasn’t real, they weren’t really married, just the image of him putting the ring on her finger made her feel flushed. Simon quickly put on his own before busying himself with the watch and making sure the coordinates were properly set for the arrival. “It’s nearly time.”

  Elizabeth stared at the ring and felt a smile tug at her lips. It wasn’t just similar to the one from New York. It was the same ring. The big old softy. “Simon?”

  He held the watch in one hand and took hold of hers with the other. He studied the ring on her finger for a moment before looking at her with such a mixture of regret and longing it made her heart ache.

  Before either of them could say what was on their minds, the blue light came. It snaked up his arm and down hers and they were both frozen as time and the world shattered around them.

  ~~~

  It was dark, in the forest at night dark. They’d planned on arriving at night in a secluded section of St. James Park near Buckingham Palace. It was one of the few places in London that offered some cover and, at night, it wasn’t likely to be too busy.

  “Are you all right?” Simon asked as he held her elbow to steady her.

  It took Elizabeth a few seconds to unscramble her brains. “You?”

  “Yes,” Simon said as he looked around to make sure their arrival had gone unseen.

  They weren’t alone in the park, but they’d landed in the middle of a copse of plane trees obscuring them from view. Luckily, it was so dark that unless they’d landed smack on top of someone it was doubtful they would have been seen anyway.

  Simon studied her face, assuring himself she was steady enough and stepped away from the cover of the trees. He walked out onto the path and Elizabeth followed.

  He took a few steps in one direction before stopping. “Strange sensation. It’s the same, and yet, it isn’t.” He turned around to get his bearings and must have seen something he recognized. “It’s this way, I think,” Simon said pointing toward a path that disappeared deeper into the park.

  The “it” was the Ritz. One of Simon’s conditions was that if they were going to do this, they were going to do it in style. She’d survived her trip to Grey Hall, so she was pretty sure she could deal with the Ritz. It was a strange awakening, realizing that there were levels of posh she’d thought existed only in books and fairy tales. But then, before Simon, she’d thought the Best Western in Amarillo was the height of luxury. Maybe her frame of reference was a bit askew.

  As though Sim
on could hear her thoughts, he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. The moon was bright enough to light their path and they made their way down the wide colonnade to the northern edge of the park. After a few minutes, they emerged onto one of London’s main thoroughfares, the Mall. Elizabeth had seen it in documentaries and footage of processions from Buckingham Palace which was just up the road. But it certainly didn’t look like this.

  Even though it wasn’t really all that late, just after nine o’clock if all went as planned, it was difficult to see. She’d read about the blackout, but nothing prepared her for the reality of it. Even before the war, the Air Ministry issued strict regulations regarding lights at night. Every window was covered; every streetlamp and outside light was kept off. The goal was total darkness so that enemy planes couldn’t use ground landmarks to navigate to their targets. In the world before GPS, if all the pilots saw below was a featureless darkness, they’d have virtually no way of knowing if they were over their intended target or not.

  The blackout was serious business and heavy fines were levied for letting even the smallest chink of light escape into the night. The result was a city plunged into total and complete darkness, save for the moon when it broke through the clouds. There was absolutely no ambient light, not from windows or streetlamps or even cigarettes. Or cars.

  She heard the car before she saw it. It was as black as the night around it and it was nearly on top of her before she realized how close she’d come to it.

  “Be careful,” Simon said. “They can barely see us.” As if to illustrate his point, two more large army trucks sped past like hulking metal shadows.

  The streets were bustling with people, but there was an odd hushed quality to it, like everyone was holding their breath. It reminded Elizabeth of the blackout she’d experienced after an earthquake in Southern California a few years back. London had that same dreamlike feeling to it.

  Elizabeth stood on the sidewalk and had to pause a moment to take it all in. Her eyes had finally adjusted to the darkness. The skies were fairly clear and in the distance she could see several large, silver blimp-like things hanging in the air with long tethers keeping them in place.

  “Barrage balloons,” Simon explained following her gaze. “They keep the bombers from flying low. The higher they have to fly, the more difficult it is to target effectively. It might look a bit odd, but they are pretty damn useful.”

  She listened for the drone of a fighter plane and watched for the shaft of light from a searchlight on the ground, but none came. At least, not yet.

  As they walked up the Mall and turned off onto the side streets toward Mayfair and the hotel, they saw more and more people. The few pedestrians became a stream and the random car became many. Bicyclists darted in and out of traffic in the darkness. One narrowly escaped being clipped by a passing car. Forget the bombs, the blackout itself was dangerous.

  The blackout gave everything a surreal quality. Add to that, tall piles of sandbags that created makeshift bunkers around a huge anti-aircraft gun emplacement and Elizabeth felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air.

  An older man in a dark blue uniform and wide-brimmed helmet with a large “W” stenciled on it walked down the street, inspecting each building he passed. “Best get inside,” he said to them. “I have the feeling Jerry’s restless tonight.”

  “Warden,” Simon said with a nod.

  Just as it was before, that first contact with someone from the actual time period grounded her in the new reality. Before that, Elizabeth felt like she was walking around a set where everything was just a façade. It was the people that made it all real. How those people adapted to hardship and how bizarre and frightening things became everyday occurrences had always fascinated Elizabeth. Now, she was going to get a chance to see it play out first hand. Except for the dark and the giant gun, everything seemed almost normal.

  The buildings they passed were mostly large four and five story buildings, lots of them hotels, with impressive gray stone fronts and elaborate black wrought iron railings and embellishments. They had a timeless elegance about them, except for the one with an enormous bomb crater carving out the bottom two stories.

  They traveled a few more blocks before making a left.

  “Piccadilly,” Simon said.

  “Why aren’t there any street signs?” She’d noticed early on that nothing was marked. Whenever she went to a new town, she always did her best to get the lay of the land, but here it wasn’t going to be easy.

  “They were all removed at the start of the war, in case of invasion. Why make it easy for the enemy to find where they want to go? Anyone who’s supposed to be here knows where everything is.”

  “Except me,” she said, pulling her coat more tightly around her.

  “That’s why you’ve got me,” Simon said with a smile and then looked ahead and nodded. “Ah, there it is.”

  He gestured toward a block-sized building that appeared to have been transported directly from Paris. A huge arcade served as a covered walkway and ran the length of the building. In the darkness, she could just make out an unlit set of Broadway-like lights above the first arch that spelled out “THE RITZ.”

  Sticky tape crisscrossed the glass windows and doors and blackout blinds kept any light inside. The doorman was an older gentleman, his suit a little threadbare. Elizabeth noticed a helmet and rucksack next to the door. Probably working double duty in the home guard. Elizabeth had read that all fit men between the ages of 18 and 51 were serving their country. That left boys and old men to do everything else.

  She smiled at the doorman as he opened the main door to the lobby for them and they stepped inside a dark vestibule with large black drapes keeping the bright lights from the lobby away from the open door.

  Moving from the dark entryway into the lobby was like Dorothy landing in Oz. The muted grays and blacks outside were replaced by vivid colors — blazingly bright candelabra sconces, enormous vaulted marble walls and an ornate gold and red carpet were a shock to the system. Cigarette smoke drifted up through the open domed ceiling and into the grand staircase spiraling several stories above.

  The room was packed. The lobby was a knot of uniforms, expensive suits and stylish dresses. No hoi polloi here.

  Simon led Elizabeth to a relatively quiet corner and put down their suitcase. She was glad for the break. They hadn’t walked very far, and yet, her sensible shoes were doing unpleasant things to her feet. She managed to slide out of one just a touch and wiggle her foot to get the blood flowing again.

  “Wait here,” Simon said. “I’ll see what I can do about a room.”

  Elizabeth looked at the crush of people near the front desk. It didn’t look promising. “Good luck,” she said and watched him navigate his way through the crowd.

  “He’s gonna need it,” a voice said behind her with what was clearly not a British accent. It sounded mid-western.

  Elizabeth turned around and saw, leaning against one of the marble columns, a man in a dark gray suit lighting a cigarette. He slipped the lighter into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of Lucky Strike and offered her one.

  “No, thank you,” Elizabeth said.

  The man took a deep drag of his cigarette, put the pack away and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. He was nice looking and the sort who knew it too, but not in an “I’m too sexy for your air-raid” sort of way, just a casual confidence. He had a square jaw, short black hair and a dark complexion. He was, literally, tall, dark and handsome. “You’re American. It’s nice to see a fellow Yank.”

  She’d only been gone from America for a few days, but hearing his accent was strangely comforting. Little familiar things must have meant so much to the soldiers who were away from home for years at a time. Elizabeth smiled and tried to get her rogue shoe back on.

  He held out his hand. “Name’s Jack Wells. Chicago.”

  He seemed genuine enough and he had a nice smile. Her two litmus tests for people were their handshakes and their smi
les. He passed on both counts. “Elizabeth We—…Cross. Elizabeth Cross. Texas.” She was really going to have to get used to saying it.

  “Newlywed?” he asked, as he leaned back against the pillar. “Hell of a place for a honeymoon.”

  “Simon and I, well, it’s sort of family business.” The shoe was getting away from her now. She tried to look casual as she reached out with her toe to drag it back. “We’re only here for a little while.”

  “Aren’t we all?” he said, his smile fading just around the edges.

  The sincerity and hint of pain in his voice made her forget the shoe for an instant and that was all it took. A large group of men passed by and the one in the lead stepped on her sensible shoe and took a header right onto the plush oriental carpet. What happened next was a blur. The man on the ground rolled over and pulled a long-nosed pistol from beneath the huge pile of medals on his chest and pointed it right at her. Before she had a chance to react three of the other men had stepped between them and leveled ugly and enormous sawed-off shotguns right at her head.

  Chapter Six

  Elizabeth’s arms shot up over her head in the most immediate surrender ever. “I’m sorry!”

  The men with the guns were shouting at her in some language she didn’t recognize. The one she’d tripped had been helped up and was in turn yelling at them and waving his pistol around like he was going to shoot out every light in the room. People near them chattered in excitement. Next to her, Jack had his arms raised too, but he looked incredibly unconcerned and maybe even a little amused.

  The one she’d tripped looked like something out of a Mel Brooks movie, which would have been hilarious if her heart weren’t lodged in her throat. Her life, which was more of a short than a feature, flashed before her eyes. The man jabbed his gun toward her and berated one of the men at his side. The large golden starburst medals on his chest dangled from ribbons almost as bilious as his uniform. Epaulets the size of dinner plates with long fringe shook as he straightened his back, re-holstered his gun and regained his composure with a haughty flourish.