A Step Back in Time

Fumbling around in the darkness, my hands encountered what felt surprisingly like brooms and dust pans and brushes that clattered loudly as I knocked against them. Rough walls surrounded me, and something sticky—ugh, not a spider’s web! —touched my hair. Where was I and, come to that, where was my mother? She’d disappeared so suddenly. The door swung open, making me narrow my eyes against a shaft of bright sunlight showing not my mother, Margaret Pole, as I had expected, but the puzzled face of Max Reynolds, Stuart Rhodes peering over his shoulder like a rubbernecker.

“What on earth are you doing, Hannah?” asked Max. Frowning, he gazed at me, probably wondering what on earth I was doing groping around in the dark in the broom cupboard, a place that even I didn’t expect to be in.

Feeling disorientated but coming quickly to my senses, I replied, “Oh, I broke my mug and needed the dustpan and brush. There’s pieces of china around my desk, all over the carpet—”

“You look really pale,” remarked Stuart, a frown puckering his forehead. “Here, give me the brush and I’ll clear it up for you.”

He reached out his hand. I hesitated, picturing my desk and the clean, recently Hoovered carpet with not even a tiny piece of china in sight. The cleaning lady always did a good job, even leaving the long narrow marks of the Hoover attachment on the pile.

“Oh my God. Do you know what?” I said, slapping my forehead with my palm like an actor in a bad comedy as I sidled out of the cupboard and shut the door with a click. “I was in the cupboard putting the brush away, not getting it out.” Because of Max and Stuart’s blank looks, I gabbled on, adding, “I’m losing it,” while throwing my head back and laughing manically.

Both men followed me back to the office, and both stood hesitantly in the doorway as I made myself comfortable at my desk and prepared to finally get on with some work. I glanced at them from the corner of my eye. Max looked so tall and blond compared to Stuart’s swarthy darkness and shorter stature.

“I’m fine,” I assured them, waving airily, trying to cover up how shaky and sick I really felt.

Max prowled around my desk, inspecting the carpet, then looked at me suspiciously. “Hmm. Well, whatever you broke, you did a really good clean up job.”

“Well,” I replied. “I’m a woman—I’m good at cleaning.”

“No sexist comments around here, please,” commented Stuart with a grin.

Max stared at me for what seemed like ages, his green eyes glinting, before saying, “I’d go to the ladies’ room if I were you, Hannah.”

“Yeah,” agreed Stuart. “I’ve got to agree with Max. You look as though you’ve been living in a deep, dark, very dirty cave for about six months.”

Max then put out his hand and picked up a mug from my desk. “Broke your mug did you, Hannah?”

I looked at my favorite mug, the mug that I always used, “World’s Greatest Daughter” imprinted in thick black letters around its smooth surface. Quick as a flash I replied, “I was using a different mug…for once.”

Max shook his head very slowly, very suspiciously, and then, glancing at each other and chuckling, both men disappeared from the doorway.

Hmm, close call, I thought, glancing at the unbroken mug standing so innocently on my desk. Standing up, I made my way to the ladies’ room, taking my makeup bag with me.

The mirror showed a pale face streaked with dust and dirt, and what actually did look like sticky spider’s webs coating my hair like a net. Cringing, I brushed it away, and then, with shaking fingers, splashed my face with cold water. Now I looked totally ridiculous, with black streaks all around my eyes so that I resembled a rather sad looking panda. I took a long deep breath, the sickness abating now, yet still leaving me shaky and disorientated.

What must Max and Stuart have thought? Did they really believe the story about the broken mug? I wouldn’t have thought so, and certainly not with me suddenly appearing from the broom cupboard looking as if I’d stepped out of a horror movie. Thank God Max hadn’t asked to have a look at the broken mug. What would I have done then? It didn’t bear thinking about.

Did I really care what Max thought anyway? Max who didn’t even recognize me from an encounter that we’d once had. Yeah, okay it was years before I worked for him, but to be erased totally from his memory and not even be recognized when I came for the interview was a bit hard to take, even though I knew him straight away! Closing my eyes, I was back there in that hot sweaty night club, my friends pointing and laughing when Max approached me for a dance. I’d had far too much to drink, the wine had been flowing copiously that night, and Max, tall good-looking Max, had appeared, it seemed, from nowhere, grabbing me hard around the waist and pulling me close to him.

My heart still skipped a bit as I remembered his beautiful green eyes staring into mine as we shuffled around the dance floor, the words of the song “You to me Are Everything” still imprinted on my brain even now. He’d whispered sweet things, his breath tickling my ear; that I was beautiful, my dark hair and eyes were gorgeous, that I had a lovely smile, and that he wanted to see me again. His lips were close, tantalizingly close, but we didn’t kiss. I gave him my phone number scribbled on a damp beer mat, which he stupidly kissed with a flourish and put carefully into the back pocket of his trousers. I noticed that a girl, legs grazing her arm pits, long blonde hair falling like a stream over her shoulders, rushed over and clung onto his arm as he strode back to the bar, back to his friends. Huh! Shouldn’t that have been a heads up for me about his Barbies?

I didn’t get a call from him, even though night after night I waited and waited for the phone to ring. It had been difficult working for him at times, especially when he irritated me so unbearably, but I’d never reminded him of that night—it would be too embarrassing, as it had so obviously meant nothing to him. So, knowing full well what sort of a man he was—a man I could never become involved with—and also not wanting to pass up such a good job, I was hopeful that I could put the past behind me and concentrate on the future as boss and personal assistant, and so far it was working fine.

Forcing myself out of dreams of the past and putting them firmly behind me, I stared at myself in the mirror, wondering what on earth was going on in my life now. Was Sarah right? Was I turning into Margaret Pole? Well, not Margaret, but her daughter, Ursula? I thought of the woman who had come out of what I assumed was Warblington Manor to greet me, my mother; well, my mother in a previous life as Ursula Pole. Was that what it was? Had I really lived a previous life? Did I believe in all that stuff? Both Margaret Pole and Warblington Manor looked pretty much the same as the pictures I’d seen of them on the Internet, uncannily so. It couldn’t all be in my imagination, surely.

Oh my God, I suddenly remembered the information that I’d found out when reading about Ursula Pole on Wikipedia. Apparently she had had fourteen children—seven boys and seven girls. Good God, was I going to have to go through her life and give birth to all those children? That didn’t even bear thinking about.

I decided that when I finished work that evening I would go to Warblington Church and have a close look at the ruins of Warblington Castle or Warblington Manor—whatever it was called. I needed to get close to it, touch the stones, and maybe get some vibes. Vibes? What was I on about? Yeah, okay, I was definitely losing it.

I looked intently into the mirror and, with some damp tissue, scrubbed at my face again to get rid of the black marks around my eyes. I applied a slick of lip gloss, and then, taking a deep breath, went back to my desk and tried to get on with some work. Hey, Mrs. Jordan’s will was calling to me—and a dog called Mr. Al Pacino.

**

Needles of hot sunshine burned into my skin as I turned my face to the sun like a flower desperate for light. The area around my eyes felt oddly stiff and sore and I ran my fingers gently over my skin, feeling my cheek, which was puffy and swollen. When I tried to open my eyes, one opened only to a slit. I gazed around, my good eye taking in my surroundings.

I was sitting on a stone bench in a beautiful walled garden. My soft green slippers rested on a paved path surrounded by emerald lawns and oval flower beds that rioted with spring blooms in all the colors of the rainbow—bright pink and red, lemon and orange, a splash of violet and cerise. The smell of freshly cut grass slid into my nostrils.

Glancing down, I noticed that I wore a long green gown richly embroidered with tiny even stitches. Who made this? I thought. Elves, fairies, goblins? Who else could embroider with such delicate stitches? Small hands were needed for this intricate work. The day was far too hot for the gown which was made of a heavy silk, and I felt stifled encased in its thick confines.

I drifted, dreaming, my hands resting on the small mound of my stomach. Then, while caressing the mound, I could feel something inside moving, rocking and rolling, and I became aware of tiny flutters, like the trapped wing of a bird.

The flutters made me breathless, and suddenly, with an almost sickening clarity, I realized that I wasn’t Hannah Palmer any more—a legal secretary working for Max Reynolds, and whose parents were Bill and Marjorie, who had a sister, Claire, and a brother, Ryan, who loved marmite but hated honey, and really enjoyed a glass of red wine and just loved Tamla Motown and the Kooks, and was trying really hard to get into fitness—but that I was Ursula Pole, the daughter of Sir Richard Pole and Margaret Pole, and that I was pregnant, around four or five months pregnant by the look of it. Was this my first child? Or my second, my third—my fourteenth? Oh my God!

“Ursula?”

A deep sexy voice brought me out of my reverie, and looking up I came face to face with the very attractive blond gardener who I had spied from the window the last time I had been here as Ursula. He bore such a striking resemblance to the “I’m so great” Max Reynolds that confusion reigned in my mind and I had to take a deep breath to steady myself.

He was clad, as before, in black trousers tied loosely at the waist, and a white shirt that was stretched taut across his muscular chest, his hands resting on his slim hips. He gazed at me intently, then suddenly, with a heartfelt sigh, he sank down onto the bench, saying, “Dear God, Ursula, what has he done? What has he done to your face?”

He grabbed my hands, which looked tiny enveloped in his large ones, and pulled me close. I melted into him, smelling his special familiar smell, not new and clean like the odor I had smelled from Max, but something else, from another time perhaps—horses, hay, and tobacco.

“Who?” I asked him in a panic. “Who has done what to my face?”

“Why, Henry of course,” he replied. Pulling slightly away from me, he frowned, his hands on my shoulders. “Henry, your husband. Have you not looked at your face, Ursula?”

“My husband?” I asked him. “But then how…?” I gestured towards him, and he smiled and pulled back further to look properly at me. I noticed that his eyes glowed like emeralds in his face.

“Yes, it’s wrong. You’re a married noble woman, and I just a lowly gardener. But it began a long time before you were wed. It’s like a drug, our love, like a drug that we can’t give up.”

Gently he laced his fingers with mine, squeezing my hand, his eyes never leaving my face. I smiled and nodded, agreeing with him, imagining—no, not imagining, but knowing, really knowing—what it was like, this affair, this love affair. He pulled me close, so close that my cheek rubbed against his, and I felt his stubbly beard, and knew without a doubt that this wasn’t just an infatuation, but that I had been intimate with this man. That I had kissed his lips, that he had lain on top of me, had caressed me, touched me, made love to me. And I knew his name was Gregory, Gregory Walsh, and that he was thirty-two years old and unmarried.

I knew that he had his father still, but that his mother was dead and lay deep in the earth in Warblington Cemetery. Her stone was in the shape of a heart, engraved with cherished memories, and he went faithfully every week to lay flowers on her grave. Was this child his? Oh, how glad I would be if it were. My free hand was drawn again to my stomach and I rubbed it gently.

“Have you pains?” he asked tenderly. “This is your first time, dear one. Are you comfortable?”

“No, no pains,” I assured him. “I’m very comfortable.” Then I added, “Is this baby my husband’s?”

“You seem to think so,” he replied sadly, and then glanced at me quizzically, narrowing his eyes, saying brusquely, “You have assured me of dates and times….”

I nodded, knowing that I must be careful. I was asking too many questions. I didn’t want him to have even a tiny inkling that I wasn’t really Ursula Pole and that my name was Hannah Palmer, and that I was living a perfectly ordinary life five hundred or so years into the future. What on earth would he say to that? He would think me deranged.

To pacify him, I said, “Henry has vowed he will not strike me again, and with the help of my brothers I do not think he will.”

“Your brothers?” he asked.

“They will defend me, dear Gregory—as will my father.”

We sat in a companionable silence for a while, then Gregory said, “I’ve heard your father call you Little Bear. What does this mean, Ursula?”

“It is the meaning of my name, Ursula,” I told him. “A nickname only.”

He smiled at this, and then, clasping my hands in his, said, “Oh Ursula, with all my being, I too will try to protect you from Henry Stafford. I will not have him do this to you again.”

I gazed at his face, at his lovely, kind face. I knew that his words were pure and true, and when I replied I said, “Oh, Gregory, I know that you will, and feel comforted by this.”

I thought back to what he had said earlier. My first baby—my first one out of fourteen.

My heart sank at what the future would bring and I turned to him again, to Gregory, to put my head against his chest, to feel the wild beating of his heart, to talk to him again and to tell him that I was afraid that Henry would take back his words and strike me again. But he wasn’t there. There was nobody there, only my computer standing on the smooth wooden desk, the tiny cursor beating against the screen, against the words of Mrs. Jordan’s still unfinished will, such a poor replacement for the warm pulse of Gregory Walsh.

Sitting rigidly on the edge of my leather swivel chair, I bent at the waist, my face cupped in my hands, waiting until the sickness passed and the room stopped rotating like a seventies silver disco ball.