The Accidental Time Traveller (25 page)

‘Well that other girl threw herself in the pond at Friars’ Mill, didn’t she?’ said George.

‘Oh God, you don’t think …?’

He’d already started the van and was turning it around.

I remembered when I’d told them the story of Amy Littlejohn’s suicide, how taken Peggy had been by the details. How she’d repeated them. The little van tore through the night. My teeth were rattling in my head and George was leaning forward over the steering wheel as if he could make the van faster by sheer willpower.

Huge trees loomed big and black around Friars’ Mill making it hard to forget the tragedies that had taken place there. George braked hard, nearly sending me through the windscreen, and then drove very slowly along the road above the mill pool.

‘Of course,’ he said, trying to sound sensible and cheerful, ‘we’ve no real reason to believe she’s here at all. She might really have been out with Lenny and she might be safely at home now, tucked up in front of the fire with a cup of cocoa.’

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’ve probably got everything completely out of proportion and I’m making a fuss out of nothing. Just forget I ever told you anything about it and let’s go home.’

‘I’ll just drive up to the end, just to be sure …’

We couldn’t see a thing. Just the trees and the sheet of water shining an even darker black in the darkness. The water looked cold. And deep.

George hunched over the steering wheel, staring into the darkness.

‘What’s that?’

‘What? Where?’

‘Over there. Something light.’

I opened the window to see better and was greeted with a swirl of rain blowing into the van. But yes, I could see something. ‘Something white, by the edge of the water.’

‘Come on!’ George was out of the van and already climbing over the wall.

He moved quickly through the dark and I stumbled after him, my feet soaked, rain from the trees dripping down on me and small branches whipping my face as I pushed past. George was now racing along a path towards a small clump of trees at the edge of the mill pond. ‘Peggy?’ he shouted. ‘Peggy!’ and he almost fell towards the patch of white.

‘It’s her! Rosie, we’ve found her!’

Thank God, I thought, thank God.

George already had his jacket off and was wrapping it around her. Peggy was hardly conscious. The skirt and blouse that had been so neat this morning were torn and covered with mud. She seemed to have no shoes.

‘Come on,’ said George. ‘We have to get her back to the van, get her to the warm. Come on now, Peggy, there’s a good girl. You can do it. Rosie, you take one arm, and I’ll take the other and there you go. Come on, Peggy, not far. You can do it.’

Between us we staggered with her back along the path, slipping and sliding with our burden.

‘No,’ muttered Peggy, her eyes still closed and her head lolling against George’s shoulder, ‘leave me … just leave me.’

‘Never,’ said George fiercely. ‘We’re not leaving you anywhere until you’re warm and safe.’

George was taking charge. He was brilliant, and we soon had Peggy back by the roadside. ‘Right, stay here and I’ll run and get the van,’ said George.

Peggy was collapsed against me. I put both arms around her in an effort to keep her upright. ‘Come on now, Peggy. Don’t give up now. Please.’

Somehow, we put Peggy in the back of the van and I climbed in there with her. I took my jacket off and wrapped it around her legs. Then I tried to rub some circulation into her limbs.

‘We’re going to the hospital,’ shouted George. ‘Just try and keep her warm.’

I carried on rubbing her hands and arms, talking to her, persuading her to stay awake, to be all right. We drove up to the hospital which seemed tiny by modern standards and all in darkness.

‘Are they open?’ I asked stupidly.

There was a small door with a light showing above it.

‘Night Entrance’, it said. I rang the bell, George pounded on the door, then we almost fell in as the door opened and a nurse in a dark blue dress and a fiercely starched white cap stood in the dimly lit hallway.

‘Well?’ she said.

Then in a blink of an eye she seemed to assess the situation. She reached for a wheelchair from an alcove, pushed it towards Peggy and expertly manoeuvred her into it.

‘She’s been out in the rain,’ I blurted out, ‘all day. She’s pregnant and the father … well the father doesn’t want to know.’

‘Has she taken anything? Tried to do anything to harm herself or the baby?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Her name?’

‘Peggy Brown.’

‘Wait here please.’

She disappeared with Peggy along an oak-panelled corridor. I followed. The nurse turned. ‘I asked you to wait there,’ she said, and vanished with Peggy.

So George and I waited. There was a bench. No coffee machine. It was very quiet. The floor gleamed. It all smelt sharply, cleanly of disinfectant and polish. Where were the drunks? All the usual chaos of casualty late at night?

George was pacing up and down. ‘Is she going to be all right, Rosie?’ he asked anxiously.

‘I’m sure she will be,’ I said, though, like the nurse, I wondered if she’d taken anything.

‘She’s always been really nice to me.’

‘Yes, I remember you saying. Helped you get the job.’

‘Yes and sort of looked out for me when I started. She’s a really good sort, you know.’

‘Yes George, I know.’

We waited. Eventually the fierce nurse came back. George and I leapt to our feet.

‘I’m pleased to tell you your friend is in no danger,’ she said crisply. ‘Neither is her unborn child. Though whether that will please her I cannot say. She is severely chilled and in a state of shock, but otherwise seems unharmed. We shall probably keep her in for a few days.’

I gave her Peggy’s name and address.

‘Date of birth?’ asked the nurse.

‘September twentieth,’ said George quickly. ‘Same as mine, only she’s six years older, so she’s twenty-six.’

‘Wouldn’t it be easier if her parents did all this when they come up? I’m sure they’ll be here as soon as we tell them,’ I asked.

The nurse snapped the folder shut.

‘They can visit tomorrow between two and three p.m.,’ she said and must have seen the horrified look on my face because she added, ‘Tell them if they telephone between seven-thirty and eight o’clock in the morning I shall still be here and will tell them how she is. But I’m sure’ – and she almost smiled – ‘that she’ll be fine and at home before the end of the week. Goodnight.’

And so we went.

Back in the van I really wanted a cigarette.

‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a fag have you, George?’

‘No, never smoked. They always told me it would stunt my growth and as I’m so skinny to start off with …’

We almost laughed. But I had to go back and tell the Browns that their daughter was a) pregnant, b) by a married man, c) was in hospital, and d) they couldn’t see her until tomorrow afternoon.

By the time George dropped me off it was very late, and then the poor lad had to get the van back to the yard and walk home.

‘What if we hadn’t found her?’ he asked, looking frightened, young again.

‘But we did, George – and that was because you refused to give up. You probably saved her life.’

He looked pleased and then with a final ‘Goodnight’, drove off. I took a deep breath and went into the house.

‘Peggy?’ said Mrs Brown sharply as soon as she heard the door click.

‘No, sorry, it’s me,’ I said, going into the sitting room.

The fire had died down, but the Browns were still sitting by it. They normally had their last cup of tea and a biscuit at about nine-thirty, but that was hours ago and they’d clearly just had another. The room was chilly but they were waiting up, waiting, worrying, for Peggy.

‘Where is she? Where’s Peggy?’ said Mrs Brown, worry making her angry. ‘Has something happened?’

‘She’s fine. But she’s in hospital.’

Mrs Brown leapt to her feet. ‘What’s happened? Has there been an accident? Tell me! Why is she there?’

So I told them the whole story. Well, not the bit about Lenny, but everything else. I’d thought about this in the van coming home, and I’d decided it would be much easier if they knew before they got to the hospital. If I told them, then at least Peggy wouldn’t have to. I thought it would make it easier for everyone. I hoped so.

I probably didn’t tell it as well as I could. It was late and I was tired, but I did my best to be gentle. When I told them Peggy was pregnant, Mrs Brown gave a little cry, her hand on her mouth. When I told them the father was Henfield, Mr Brown’s right hand clenched into a fist and he pushed it repeatedly into his other hand, as if practising for Henfield’s face.

When I told them how we’d found Peggy by the mill pond Mrs Brown went white. ‘Silly, silly girl,’ she said. ‘I should have known, I should have realised …’ Her eyes were full of tears, but her mouth set firm like a trap. I told them about the hospital and what the nurse had said.

‘She really is going to be all right,’ I said.

‘And the baby?’

‘That’s all right too.’

They didn’t say anything. Like the nurse at the hospital, I didn’t know if that was good news or not.

Mr Brown looked up at me. He looked old suddenly, old and small. ‘It seems to me that you’ve done our Peg a great service today. If you hadn’t looked for her and found her, she could still be out there now, and who knows what state she would be in.’

Mrs Brown gave another small strangulated cry, more of a gasp really and quickly choked back.

‘… so we are very grateful to you. Thank you, Rosie, thank God you were here.’

Suddenly Mrs Brown started bustling with the tea tray. ‘You’ll be wet and cold yourself. I shall make you some cocoa, then you must have a nice hot bath even though it’s so late. That doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all.’

She was busying herself in order not to think, I could see that. As she put a cup and saucer down on the tray, she knocked the milk jug flying. I thought she was going to cry.

‘Now now, Doreen,’ said Mr Brown soothingly as he came back with a cloth. ‘No use crying over spilt milk, is there? What’s done’s done and now we have to think what to do next.’

I made the cocoa myself and went upstairs and peeled off my wet and grubby clothes. As I felt I had a special dispensation, I ran a bath. I used every last drop of hot water and luxuriated in the warmth creeping back into my bones. When I finally got to bed, the light was still on downstairs and I could hear the Browns talking. They would probably be up all night, and it was still a long time until they were allowed to phone the hospital.

Peggy came home from hospital three days later. She came on the bus. Her dad went to meet her at the bus stop.

While he was gone, Mrs Brown fussed back and forth in the kitchen. She had cleaned the house from top to bottom and had prepared the meal with extra care. There were lamb chops and mint sauce. She had chopped the mint fiercely. She’d made an apple crumble – Peggy’s favourite – with the stored apples. Everything was under control but she couldn’t settle. It was as if she were expecting a hugely important visitor, not her own daughter whom she had only just seen at visiting hours.

When Peggy walked in I thought there’d be a big welcome. But to my surprise, Mrs Brown just said, ‘You’re back then,’ and went to strain the potatoes.

Conversation was stilted and awkward, with many silences. I could hear Mr Brown’s false teeth slipping slightly when he chewed.

‘Lovely meal, Mum, thank you,’ said Peggy, her eyes pleading for a response, for some relaxation from her mother.

‘Well, I never trusted hospital food,’ said Mrs Brown, getting up and taking a dish out to the scullery, almost unable to look at her daughter.

Peggy and I did the washing up. ‘It’s all right, Peggy, I’ll do it if you want to put your feet up.’

‘She’s not ill now,’ snapped Mrs Brown, and Peggy just shrugged. We washed up in silence, suffocated by the atmosphere around us. Then there was a ring at the door.

George shuffled in looking even younger than usual. He was carrying a bunch of primroses. He carried them awkwardly, as if they belonged to somebody else. He was not used to such gestures. ‘I brought these for you, Peggy.’ He blushed. ‘I just wanted to know you were all right.’

‘Thank you, George,’ said Peggy giving him the first smile I’d seen since she was home. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘Yes, George,’ said Mr Brown, ‘Mrs Brown and I, well, we can’t say how much we want to thank you. If you hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened.’

‘Well, it was Rosie really, I just drove the van.’

‘We know what you did, and we’re very grateful.’

‘Well, as long as you’re OK now, Peggy.’ George was shuffling his feet trying to come up with an exit line. ‘So I’ll see you at work then shall I?’

‘No,’ snapped Mrs Brown. ‘She won’t be going back there. Never.’