Best Science Fiction of the Year Page 15

  Martin went off into a long-winded explanation of what a tourbillon was and how it worked, how before Breguet, no pocket watch could keep accurate time over a long period because of gravity, which acted as a drag weight on the mechanism, speeding it up or slowing it down by as much as sixty seconds in every hour. Breguet placed the whole mechanism inside a revolving metal cage he called a tourbillon, or whirlwind. The tourbillon kept the mechanism in stasis, twirling it around its own axis like a sidecar on a fairground ride.

  The tourbillon watch was like a planet, spinning in space. In every sense that mattered, it was weightless.

  “Think of a tornado,” Martin said. “A wind itself has no substance, but it has incredible power. It renders everything weightless before it, even massive objects like houses and cars.”

  I zoned out a bit towards the end, not because what Martin was telling me wasn’t interesting, but because I couldn’t see how any of it related to Arthur Rawlin and a possible time machine. Then Martin said something else, something jaw-dropping. I was dragged back into the conversation with a physical jolt.

  “What was that about the notebooks?”

  “Breguet’s notebooks,” Martin repeated. “His doctors always insisted he was senile by then, but according to his son, Breguet was lucid and rational right up until he died. His late writings suggest he had been trying to create a kind of super-tourbillon, a mechanism he believed would eventually enable human beings to travel through time. He called it the time-stasis. I can’t believe anyone would take it literally, quite honestly, but some of the people on the forums believe Owen Andrews made it his mission to put Breguet’s theory into practice.”

  “To make a watch that could turn back time?”

  Martin shrugged. “If you like.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “If it were true, maybe. But I’ve seen some of Andrews’s pieces and they’re just watches. Andrews was gifted but he wasn’t a magician. All that time travel stuff—it’s just the horological equivalent of urban myth.”

  I thought there was something heroic about it, nonetheless—the lone mechanic, pitting himself against logic like a gladiator fighting a tiger. I reminded myself that all the most radical advances in science seem like lunacy before they are proven.

  “It’s a beautiful word,” I said to Martin. “Horological.”

  “Are you still convinced Helen Bostall was innocent?” he asked.

  “More than ever. And I believe Arthur Rawlin thought so, too—that’s why he felt so guilty over her death.”

  “You’re determined to prove it, aren’t you? Through your book?”

  I laughed. “I suppose I am.”

  I didn’t just want to prove it, though—I can admit that now. I wanted to change it. But I wasn’t about to blow my cover to Martin.

  Three days later I performed an experiment. Just one little trip back, five minutes or so. Brain of Britain was on the radio, which made it easy to tell if anything had actually happened. I had a second go at some of the questions, which would have upped my score if I’d been keeping tally, which I wasn’t. It would have been cheating, anyway.

  Jocelyn Bell turned out to be Jocelyn Leslie, an artist. She won a scholarship to study at the Slade, and when her father—a successful Yorkshire businessman of a conservative cast of mind—refused to let her go, she continued to paint in secret, making her own way to London two years later. She enjoyed moderate popularity for a time. Although there were those who dismissed her efforts as ‘primitive’ or ‘naive’, Lavinia Sable, who wrote art criticism for several London papers under the pseudonym Marcus Fell, insisted that in spite of having almost no formal training, Bell’s work showed a keener understanding of European modernism than many of her better-known contemporaries.

  I liked the sound of Lavinia, who apparently attended private views and press gatherings for years as Marcus, with no one being any the wiser. Lavinia was easily interesting enough to fill a book in her own right, but Lavinia was not my mission and after spending a day or two reading up on her I laid the material reluctantly aside and went back to the matter in hand, namely Jocelyn Bell.

  On arrival in London, Jocelyn found work first as an assistant housekeeper at a private boarding school for girls, then as a secretary and assistant to the curator of one of the more progressive galleries on Cork Street. It was here, I’m certain, that she first encountered Leonard Bell, who was friendly with several of the artists represented there.

  Leonard Bell was actually Leonid Belayev, a Russian émigré and a member of the radical socialist group based in Camden called the Four Brothers. The group was founded in the 1890s and, unlike many similar loose associations that fractured and splintered at the outbreak of war, the Four Brothers remained intact as a group well into the 1920s.

  At some point during 1924, Edwin Dillon began attending their meetings.

  Here at last was the breakthrough I’d been searching for. Jocelyn Leslie married Leonard Bell in 1902. They had one son, Malcolm, in 1903, although letters sent by Jocelyn to a friend in Manchester reveal that differences were already making themselves felt between the couple and by 1905 their marriage was over in all but name. Leonard Bell kept in close touch with his family, though—I think he was probably still living under the same roof for some years after he and Jocelyn separated, a fact that would almost certainly have led to gossip amongst the neighbours. Not that Jocelyn or Leonard gave much of a damn for bourgeois convention. They remained friends, and when Leonard eventually began a long-term affair with another woman, the woman quickly became Jocelyn’s friend, also.

  That woman—and you can imagine my satisfaction when I was able to prove this for sure—was Irene Wilbur. There were in fact several dozen letters from Leonard to his lover, preserved amongst Jocelyn Bell’s papers at the Women Artists Forum in Hammersmith.

  As a bonus, the letters also revealed to me the identity of Malcolm Bell’s soon-to-be fiancée: Louise Tichener.

  Frustratingly, I was never able to find out much about Irene Wilbur herself, and I can only assume her willingness to go along with the murder plot had more to do with her wanting to protect Leonard Bell than with any active animosity towards Helen Bostall. The true identity of Dillon’s murderer also remained hidden from me, although I’m more or less positive it wasn’t Bell himself. Leonard was a hardened activist—he would have known better than to put himself directly at risk.

  After weeks of rooting around in various archives of obscure research papers, I came to the conclusion that the most likely suspect was a much younger man, Michael Woolcot, who seems to have known Dillon when he was living in Manchester. The two had some sort of falling-out—either in Manchester or soon after Woolcot’s own arrival in the capital. So far as I know they were never reconciled, although mysteriously there was one final meeting between them, in a Camden public house, just ten days before Dillon’s murder. The meeting was remarked upon by a moderate socialist named West, a journal ist who wrote a satirical column for an independent newspaper called The Masthead, lampooning many of the personalities associated with the more extreme wing of the movement.

  They say that if you sup with the devil you should use a long spoon, West wrote in his January 20th column, just one week before the murder. Judging by the outbreak of cosy camaraderie at The Horse’s Head last Thursday evening, it would seem there are those who set little store by such sage advice, even those we might consider our elders and betters. West goes on to reveal the identities of both Dillon and Woolcot, referring to the latter as ‘an upwardly mobile cur of the Belayev persuasion’ and to the meeting itself as ‘a council of war.’

  Which can only beg the question, West writes, of who exactly is at war here, and with whom?

  Whether the police were ever made aware of West’s column, or possessed enough insider knowledge to make head or tail of it, I have no idea. Leonard Bell was questioned briefly, along with two dozen or so other regular and irregular members of the Four Brothers group, though
the comrades’ universal disdain for the official forces of law and order would have meant the chances of anyone letting anything slip were practically nil.

  Helen Bostall’s ticket for the boat train was forward-dated to February 3rd, a date that turned out to be less than a week after Dillon’s murder. It seems likely that someone—someone friendly with Leonard Bell or one of his cronies—knew about Helen’s travel plans. For Bell’s plan to succeed, it was crucial that Dillon be killed well in advance of Helen’s departure for the continent. I believe it was Dillon’s meeting with Woolcot, staged by Bell as an opportunity for reconciliation, that set the stage for the murder. No doubt Woolcot had been instructed to arrange a second, more informal meeting, to take place at Dillon’s flat.

  Putting all the evidence together, it finally became clear to me that it was those ten days that formed the crucial time period, the ten days between Dillon first meeting Woolcot at The Horse’s Head, and his eventual death.

  If Helen Bostall could have been persuaded to bring her journey forward— to leave London soon after New Year, say—then Bell would either have had to shelve his plans, or risk being exposed as complicit in Dillon’s killing.

  Regardless of Dillon’s fate, Helen Bostall herself would have been saved.

  If only someone could have told her, I thought, and almost immediately afterwards I thought of Arthur Rawlin. Had he tried to use the watch? I wondered. If so, he had obviously failed.

  As to why Bell wanted Dillon dead in the first place, the reasons remained obscure to me. All I could think was that it must have been down to some intricate power struggle within the Four Brothers. Truth be told, I didn’t care much. Not then.

  I knew from the start that the best place to approach Helen would be at one of her suffragist meetings. The very nature of such gatherings meant there would always be new faces in evidence, strangers who might turn up for a couple of meetings and then disappear again. It ought to be relatively easy to mingle with the women without drawing undue attention to myself. The main thing was not to go overboard in trying to fit in. I chose clothes that were unobtrusive rather than authentic: the three-quarter-length coat I normally wore to court hearings in winter, a dark, paisley-patterned skirt I hardly ever wore but couldn’t bear to throw out because I liked the material so much, a pair of black lace-up shoes. Plain clothes, in every sense of the word.

  By now you’re either wondering what on Earth I’m talking about, or if I can possibly be serious. Which is fine.

  I kept putting off the actual—journey? I told myself I needed to do more research, which was at least partly true. To keep myself safe, I had to know that particular bit of Camden well enough to be able to walk around it blindfold, if need be. But mostly I was just scared. Scared in case the watch didn’t work and scared in case it did.

  Five minutes and a hundred years were not the same thing. What if the watch refused to bring me back, or marooned me in a time that was not my own?

  I wanted to know though, I wanted to see. The closer it came to the date I’d set myself, the more impatient I felt. Impatient with my fear. Impatient with my delaying tactics. When Ray phoned me the night before to ask me if I was going to some private view or other his agent was organising, I almost bit his head off.

  “Are you okay, Dottie?” he said. He hadn’t called me Dottie for years, not since we separated.

  “I’ll be there, don’t worry,” I said, not answering his question and not knowing if I’d be there, either. “I’ve got a lot on at work, that’s all. Say hi to Clio for me.”

  Clio is Ray’s daughter, the child he has with Maya. I should make more of an effort with Maya, I suppose, but it’s difficult. We’re such different people, and although chumming up with her ex-husband’s new wife seemed to work for Jocelyn Bell, I’m not sure it’s for me.

  Clio, though. She’s eight years old and a miracle. I could never tell this to anyone, not even Martin, but occasionally it breaks my heart that she isn’t mine.

  There is a lever inside the watch, a silver pin that slides from side to side inside a moulded slit—imagine the back of an old wind-up alarm clock, the little lever you use to engage the alarm function, or to turn it off. There is no clear indication of what the purpose of this lever might be, and when you first engage it, nothing seems to happen. Say ‘nothing happens full stop’, if you like. I won’t mind.

  I once had a conversation with Martin, years ago when we were kids, about whether ghosts existed. When I asked Martin if he believed, he said it didn’t matter. “If ghosts exist, they’ll go on existing whether we believe in them or not.”

  It’s the same with this. And if I tell you that what time travel reminds me of most of all is the time before my illness, I wonder will you believe that either? The time when I was so in love with numbers—when I could listen to numbers conversing the same way you might listen to music, when I felt the thrum of numbers in my blood, intricate as a crystal lattice, sound and rhythmic and basic as the beat of a drum.

  I turned the lever, and the rush of numbers filled my head, blazing in my veins like alcohol, like burning petrol. The music of the primes, du Sautoy called it, and I could hear it again. I closed my eyes and counted backwards. I could feel the boundaries of reality expanding, unfurling. Bobbing deftly out of reach of my hands, like a toy balloon.

  I ducked under the boundary wire and followed. Time filled me up, chilly and intoxicating.

  Yes, but what’s it like? I can hear you asking.

  Like a triple slug of Russian vodka that’s been kept in the icebox, that’s what it’s like.

  I started going on practice runs. Just silly things: walking past my front door in the middle of last week, going to a concert at the Barbican I’d wanted to attend when it was actually on but happened to miss. I thought that getting the timing right would prove difficult, but in fact the mechanism was extremely accurate, once you got the hang of it. I found it mostly came down to imagining: knowing where you wanted to be and forming an image of the place and time inside your mind. This sounds irrational I know, but that’s how it was.

  I spent a lot of time in Camden, just walking around. You’d be surprised how little it’s changed. Even when houses, whole streets have been torn down and built over, the old shadows remain.

  The city has a shape. You can sense it, if you feel for it, even if you’re sleepwalking and perhaps especially then, London’s presence wrapped closely around you like a blanket.

  The suffragist meetings took place in rooms about the Quaker meeting house, on Bentley Street. During the day it was mostly quiet, but in the evenings things livened up considerably, mainly because of The Charlady, a public house and pie shop on the corner of the street opposite. I went in daylight the first time, just to be safe. Muggings were common then in this part of London and I saw no point in exposing myself to unnecessary risk.

  You think of the past as cleaner, but it really isn’t. Horse shit, engine oil, smoke, blood, piss, beer, the rotting detritus from the market, piled at the kerb. Not London as it might be in a theme park, but a London you’d recognise instantly, just from the stench. Cars are creeping in already: hackney cabs and omnibuses, gentlemen’s conveyances. And the bikes—the thrilling tring of bicycle bells, boy couriers speeding along. Oi Miss, get on the pavement, why dontchyer? Bleedin’ ’eck. A flower and matchbox seller, a puckered scar across one cheek and her left hand missing. I reach into my pocket to find the right coins, then remember I don’t have the right coins, not at all. Exactly the kind of stupid blunder I’m supposed to be on guard against. The peddler gazes at me with tired eyes and I look away in shame. The next time I come I bring her a paper packet of corned beef sandwiches but she is no longer there. Not in the same place, anyway. I remind myself of what I’m here for, and move swiftly along.

  Another time, I stand in a shop doorway opposite and watch the women arrive for their meeting. I’m amazed to find that I recognise some of them, from the letters I’ve read, from the blurred photogra
phs in the Women’s Studies archive in the British Library. One of them, a young poet named Kathleen Thwaite, is accompanied to the door of the meeting house by her husband, Austin Gears. I know that Kathleen is to die in 1937, on a protest march against Franco’s fascists in Madrid. It makes my heart ache to see her, and the urge to do something, to warn her in some way, is all but overwhelming. I turn quickly away, hoping to catch a glimpse of Helen Bostall instead. On this occasion at least she appears to be absent.

  Has my being here, even to stand motionless in the street, altered things somehow, and for the worse? I push the thought away. It is coincidence, that’s all. She will be here next week, and if not then, the week after. It need not matter.

  The next time, I file inside the hall with the other women. No one talks to me or takes particular notice but many smile. I feel accepted as one of them. More than that, I can imagine myself as one of them. Almost as if I have experienced this life, this version of my life anyway, this Dora Newland who attended suffragist rallies in Hyde Park, who conducted furious arguments with her uncle about being allowed to travel down through Italy with another woman friend. Casting Henry—dear Henry, who indulged our every whim when we were children—in the role of domineering guardian makes me smile.

  We sit on hard wooden chairs in the draughty space—three small attic rooms that have been converted into one larger one—and listen to a Mrs Marjorie Hennessey tell us about her experience of studying politics at the Sorbonne. She is an impressive woman, commanding and authoritative, and I cannot help wondering what happened to her, how come she failed.

  So many women. It is depressing to consider how many of us have been discouraged, disparaged, forced to reconsider, turned aside from our dreams.

  I want to rush up to Marjorie Hennessey and tell her not to give up, not to drop by the wayside, not to fall silent.