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This letter is confidential to Miss Charlotte Mary Makepeace, born approximately 1950 Anno Domini? She has a younger sister called Emma and I believe her home residence to be known as Aviary Hall. Should you find this letter, please do not read but send to Miss Makepeace with great haste.
Dearest Charlotte
I have no way of knowing when this letter will reach you, if it does at all. I do not know if you are the schoolgirl I knew, or a grandmother in some decade that was once as foreign to us both as each other's times once were. I do not even know if this will reach you at all. I will hide it in the most likely looking item of furniture that I can find when nurse is out of the room – it is not our bed, but I can but hope.
I expect that you know by now what I have known all my life, that my days on this earth are few. Please don't be sad about this – I know eternal peace awaits me. (Bunty – who had the bed next to me for two days before she recovered – has decided she doesn't believe in heaven and that – well I can't exactly explain it, but she says the energy we have becomes energy in the air and that energy can haunt those who have wronged us – she's quite sure her father is haunting the man who sold him a faulty motor car. Time will tell which of us is right – but if Bunty is, then every teacher at this school should give thanks this influenza did not take Bunty.)
This letter is to share with you something you won't know, something not even Emily knows. As a child I was always the baby when we played house, even though I was the eldest and should by rights have been the mother. Everyone thought I was just doing it to make Emily happy, and noted what a good, selfless child I was, usually coupled with a comment about how I always helped the little ones learn their scripture. The truth was I just couldn't see myself as a mother – and nor could I see myself as a spinster. No matter how hard I tried, I had no concept of my life as an adult. As I grew older, I realised what this meant. I have never felt sad about it, never tried to plead with God for any alternative. Whether it's because I knew from such a young age, or because I know that He has a plan for me, I've always felt at peace with my fate.
There was one thing I wanted, though, one thing I desperately wanted, and that was to see a changed world, to see what was in the future. I prayed to God nightly; it's selfish to pray for what you want, but I supposed that as it was only one thing, and I always prayed for other people, for Emily and for the poor first, he might not mind. A preacher once told me that most people think God doesn't work miracles any more, but that's because He gives us means to work miracles. Motor vehicles and medicine, he said, would have looked very much like miracles to people in the olden days. Well he knew better than I did, but I felt that as no-one had yet made any invention that would offer what I wanted, maybe God would make an exception.
In my folly, I made other attempts, so strong was my desire. I regret, of course, going to the fortune teller at the fair, and the old woman in the woods who everyone said was a witch, but God forgave my misdeeds and my doubt and more – he granted me a miracle. He granted me a time I would not live to see.
I had all but given up hope by the time I became a boarder. My first night in the bed by the window with the little wheels, I knelt beside it and said a new prayer, giving thanks that I had the opportunity to go to school, and asked God please that Emily would be looked after.
And so, having given up hope, I was shocked, perhaps even as shocked as you, when we switched, when I woke to the aeroplanes thundering overhead. In some ways, I fear I had the better end of the deal, in this new world where food was plentiful and war was a distant memory – or so I thought until I heard Elizabeth and Veronica talking about a new war coming, big enough to destroy all the world. I hope that didn't happen. I have faith it will not.
I woke up early, as always – well, if you consider forty years later to be early. I had washed my face and cleaned my teeth and dressed neatly in my uniform. And then I realised everything was wrong. There was an extra bed in the room and it was cluttered with ornaments and pictures. There was no cedar tree outside the window. My stockings were missing. The girls in the room were different and EMILY. Where was Emily?
“Morning Charlotte,” one of the girls said wearily. “Sleep okay?”
I tried to ignore the panic rising in my body. Her words only half made sense to me, but I understood who I was meant to be. Charlotte. I was being tested, I supposed. I would not fail. And I did not fail, though things were hard. Hardest, of course, was my worry about Emily, but the school also seemed noisier than it had a day and yet four decades before, with fewer rules and of course I had little knowledge of those that did exist.
“You lost, Charlotte?” Janet caught me in the corridor seeming lost and dazed. The whole thing felt surreal to me. “Come on, class is this way.”
I learned from Janet that Charlotte had only just started at the school, which explained two things – why they didn't seem to notice that I wasn't Charlotte (I wondered if I looked like you) and why I seemed confused and bewildered by everything.
The next morning, back in my own time, in the dormitory with just the four beds, and my little sister sleeping beside me, the cedar tree outside, I thought all had been a dream. I hugged Emily that morning, and she grinned. Perhaps I had been a bit wooden with her, in case any lack of maturity deflected from the motherly role I knew she so needed.
But with no knowledge of the previous day's lessons, I quickly discovered it was no dream. That is when I did something else wrong, though this time something you already know about – and if I am to be honest, this is one of the lesser confessions contained in this letter. After history class I lingered in the classroom, pretending to be finishing off something until everyone had gone, and on my way out I took an exercise book from the cupboard. The cover felt rough and made me shiver, but I though that book was how I made a connection with you, with someone I would never, could never, meet.
The swapping in those early days I approached with a sense of awe. Certainly there were scary moments, and I worried for Emily always, and wondered once or twice if this could be the devil's work even though I know – and knew- it was part of God's plan. The rush of it all excited me tremendously. I took in every sight and smell in the grounds and beyond. I regret I did not get to meet more people, but I don't have the courage with people that Bunty or Emily has, but still everything was more than worth every fear, or every regret. Oh Charlotte, I don't know if you can imagine to have wanted something for so long, and then to have it all in front of you. Everything - from the softer sheets on my bed to the sun rising outside was a blessing.
Things only soured when Emily and you – meant to be me – went into lodgings. I know that must have been scary for you. Believe me I tried to stop it happening – I lay down on the floor beside the bed to sleep but then Nurse Gregory caught me and I tried to stay awake but somehow I forgot myself and slept. I had considered swapping with Emily, but even though I was sure that it only worked with us two, I couldn't take the risk of her being all alone in a strange time, with neither of us to take care of her. Her welfare is my only worry now – but she's grown up so much in the past few months. I think she will be all right.
But at that point I worried. I worried I might never find my way back, and I worried for you Charlotte, who would be an old woman by the time you reached your own time again. But if I am honest, part of me felt relief, as if this was a definite reprieve. So though that worry never left me, I increasingly embraced this new freedom in this new time. I'm sorry to say some of my work was not of the best standard, and I hope you did not suffer for that too much. I was out of class every moment I could, into the world outside, lying on the grass watching these aeroplanes overhead, or watching the visitors that would sometimes walk to the school entrance.
Whether it was because of this or whether, thinking me as young as you, they simply wanted someone to boss around, I don't know, but Janet and Vanessa started to include me in a plan. I fear even you Charlotte will think me fearfully naughty – oh, I don't mean because you lack standards yourself, but simply because things are different in your time. But Vanessa said all the girls did it at least once. And so we prepared to sneak out one Thursday and head into the town.
(Please don't tell anyone about this, Charlotte. I don't want to get them into trouble.)
Vanessa lent me money for the bus fare – she said it didn't matter so much because her father gave her everything she needed, and she understood without parents I would find things like this hard. We sneaked away, keeping lookouts, crouching behind hedges, until we reached the road.
It was only a small town – not London, I think I'd have died had we gone to London. But everything around was so big, there were so many buses and cars, and not looking like I knew them either. We drank milkshakes and listened to music, and I think we got away with it... I hope no-one finds out, because, I would simply hate for you to bear the blame for my misdeeds. But at the same time I’m not sorry I did it. I savoured every one of my days in your time, but that one, and one other, stand out.
Elizabeth found me, sitting outside after finishing my prep for the day, twiddling stems of thick grass between my fingers. She sat down next to me. She was in one of her quiet moods – or at least I thought so initially. Then the question came, almost out of the blue, so sudden that it took me a while to process it.
I started to stammer some sort of denial, but she repeated it again, with emphasis. “Are you Charlotte,” and then I had silent tears in my eyes, and it took me a few seconds to realise I was crying and smiling at the same time. It's funny – you wouldn't think it was possible.
I shook my head. “How did you know?”
“Oh I've suspected for the longest time. But I didn't expect it – it seemed impossible. So who are you?”
“Clare Moby,” I said, words I quickly realised meant nothing to her. But I didn't know how to add to them.
“Clare.” She said it like it was a new name to her, though in the future there must still have been people called Clare. Then she was silent. We sat there, for a while, I twirled long grass round my fingers. I felt her looking at me, and it was a look I remembered from before. The same longing, guilty way Bunty watched Susannah back in my own time. I didn't fully understand it – I'm not sure I do even now – but I had this sudden feeling that I wished they could meet.
She caught my gaze and stopped, hurriedly. Her skin flushed red. “Where are you from?” she asked quickly.
“It's hard to explain. I go to school here – but in a different time.”
Elizabeth was all excitement, peppering me with questions. It was because she read so much, I suppose – but she wanted to know what the past was like. She wanted to know about the war and troop movements and did people really wear those dresses – no, that was the Victorians. I suppose I disappointed her – talking only about slight changes in the school uniform and how we couldn't have milk and sugar with our porridge (I never thought I'd be happy about eating porridge until I visited your time). I think she expected me to know about the sort of things you learn in history, because it was history to her, but to me it was my life. I could no more tell her about what she wanted to know than she could tell me about what was happening with Russia and America.
“I can tell you one thing,” I said. She leaned her head close to me and I don’t know why, but instead of whispering into her ear, I turned my head round and kissed her on the mouth. She blinked nervously and then clutched my sleeves, holding me in that position, moving her lips against mine
It’s probable that was a sin of some description. But it didn’t feel like it then, sitting on the grass, both of us looking directly at each other. Elizabeth wore an expression of shock, but the corners of her mouth turned just so slightly upwards into the hint of a smile.
“I’m glad you came here,” she said, and turned and ran back to school. I watched the soles of her feet upturned as she ran, and then I followed.
Five days later, I woke up in 1918.
A few days ago, Emily showed me the presents that Miss Agnes Chisel-Brown gave to you, the toys that had been Arthur's. When we unwrapped that solitaire board, I thought that was what all this had been like. Each of us as those cold, glassy marbles in our own clean wooden hollows, being moved around, between your time and mine, between school and lodgings, and all the others moved around in their own lives.
Now I realise it wasn't solitaire at all, but a game of spillikins, where each of us – you, me, Emily, even Bunty, Vanessa, Janet, Elizabeth, Susannah, and more besides, we're all those narrow straws and it is oh so hard to move without in turn moving those around you. I hope every time we moved made a difference to your life. It certainly did to mine.
Yours, in all times, with love
Clare Moby