PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY

WGAw Registered#: 1279926

CHAPTER FIVE


    Amy was staring. She couldn’t help herself.
    It was like hearing about someone for ages and ages, and then finally meeting them in the flesh. And then stitching together the imagined person with the real.
    This woman was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, Sarah Elizabeth Foster.
    But there was another, rather immediate, problem. Who on earth was Caroline?
    Amy was frantically trying to work out whether she was meant to be a friend or a relation. She knew nothing about Caroline. There were no Carolines in the documents she’d carefully researched and just as carefully noted down in the family history.
    Just as there were no children associated with Sarah, other than the two that had come after her marriage to Louis Augustus.
    Who did these three belong to, then?
    “Children,” Sarah said. “This is your cousin - Catherine Collins!”
    The eldest boy - Tom - stepped forward, and in a remarkably grown-up manner, said, “I am very pleased to meet you, Catherine. And I was very sorry to hear that your husband had died.”
    “Thank you,” Amy replied. A cousin, then. And a recent widow. Piece of cake.
    But that didn’t solve the problem of the children. They seemed to belong to Sarah. They seemed to be related to her. But why didn’t Amy know about them? And who was their father?
    “This is Tom,” Sarah said, introducing them. “The middle one is Jack. And Mary is the youngest.” She turned to Tom. “The last time your cousin and I saw one another, we were your age.” She turned back to Amy. “Have you found everything? Where are your cases?”
    “They were put onto the wrong coach,” Amy said, quickly. “Can you believe it? I’m assured they’ll be delivered as soon as they’re located. But that’s the last time I travel in a coach with the Royal Mail!”
    “Never mind,” Sarah said. “You are easily my size and I have frocks you may borrow. Children - faces and hands. Wash.”
    Jack, Tom and Mary disappeared into the kitchen.
    “I’ll just see to supper,” Sarah said, following them through the doorway, leaving Amy alone in the middle of the sitting room.
    If the three children belonged to Sarah, then it was obvious she had been married before. Two centuries later, having three children meant nothing of the sort. But in Sarah’s era? There were social norms. And very specific rules of decorum and etiquette.
    And if Sarah had been married before, it wasn’t Amy’s fault she hadn’t caught it. Sarah’s marriage banns - published on the three Sundays before her wedding to Louis Augustus Duran - said nothing about her status. Nor his, for that matter. They could have been a Spinster and a Bachelor Of This Parish. Or, just as easily, a Widow and Widower. It was usual for the status of the bride and groom to be stated. But it was just as usual for the information to be omitted.
    And their actual certificate of marriage had been just as vague.
    Well. That certainly explained the lack of information about Sarah. Amy had simply been looking for the wrong surname. Foster was very obviously her married name. She’d been called something else before that.
    Mary re-entered, her face well-scrubbed.
    “Mary,” Amy said. “Show me how clever you are. What year are we in?”
    “Eighteen hundred and twenty-five,” Mary answered, proudly.
    Amy made a quick mental note. The very year.
    “And what’s today’s date?”
    “It is Thursday. The thirtieth of June.”
    Only a month away!
    “And tell me your father’s name.”
    Mary’s face fell. “Father’s not here anymore. He has gone to his great reward.”
    “Was it a long time ago?” Amy tried, sympathetically.
    Jack came through the doorway from the kitchen.
    “She was a baby. And I cannot recall any of the circumstances. Though Tom does.”
    “What was his name?”
    Tom gave his brother a push from the kitchen. “Same as mine, of course. Thomas Aiden Foster. Surely mother wrote to tell you about him? You ought to remember. He was swept out to sea.”
    That explained it, then. Missing, and presumed dead. A widow by circumstance, if not by law.
    “Thank you,” Amy replied. “I’m afraid the shock of losing my own husband has done some very peculiar things to my memory.”

#

    And so it was that Amy passed her first few hours in the company of her grandmother from six generations before, and her grandmother’s children...the peculiar thing being that neither Jack nor Tom nor Mary were Amy’s direct ancestors. Amy was descended from Augustus - the son who had yet to be born.
    She joined the little family at the table in the kitchen- a plain wooden table which was surprisingly similar to the one she had consigned to the squirrels after Steve had died.
    “I must apologise for the hurriedness of this,” Sarah said, as she ladelled out bowlfuls of thick, meaty soup from the iron pot which had been hanging over the carefully banked embers in the fireplace. “If I had known you were going to arrive today, I would have finished lessons early and prepared more of a welcoming meal.”
    “It’s quite all right,” Amy assured her. “I don’t eat much, really.”
    There was bread on the table - freshly baked and crusty and brown - and butter, which Sarah had brought out from a cupboard <explain here how it’s kept>, and milk for the children and tea for Sarah and Amy. <anything else?>
    “So you aren’t at home during the day?”
    It was odd that Sarah would not be. The kitchen fire needed to be kept burning at all times. It was their light and their source of cooking. In the winter, it was the way they kept warm. All of the candles in the cottage that evening would be lit from the kitchen fire’s flames. The woman of the house was employed in housewiferly occupations.
     “I am not at home,” Sarah confirmed. “The Vicar and his wife employ me as their governess. It allows me to stay on here, in this cottage, and to keep my children nearby.”
    “Even though Reverend Hobson pays her next to nothing,” Tom replied, coolly.
    “It is a living wage, Tom. And if I did not have that living wage, I would be taking in washing and you would be sleeping in a hayloft like your Great Uncle George.”
    Or living in the Poor House, Amy thought, remembering Hattie Robinson’s little cottage at the end of the row near the Village Green.
    “I think sleeping in a hayloft would be interesting,” Jack said.
    “Not three hundred and sixty five days a year, though, Jack. And it is very draughty in the winter.”
    Sarah passed Amy a bowl of the hot soup, which smelled wonderful and contained, from what she could see, all manner of chopped up root vegetables, and a little barley, and the meat from an animal she would probably have turned her nose up at, two centuries hence.
    But, she was hungry. And someone else had prepared the meal. And that made it all the more palatable. She tasted it, cautiously - and then tucked in.
    Delicious.
    “Now tell us all about your journey from London, Catherine.”
    “And,” Jack added, hopefully, “were you waylaid by highwaymen on the turnpike to Winchester?”

#

    The one thing Amy knew she was going to have a difficult time adjusting to - as if being transported back to 1825 was something that happened every day, like taking off in a winter rainstorm and flying halfway around the world and landing in a place where it was sunny and tropical and the beaches were sandy white - was going to bed.
    Amy stayed up late. If she didn’t have to work for a living, she’d have happily carried on with her research until dawn, creeping between the sheets as the sun was rising. She’d have stayed asleep until lunch, risen at leisure, and started her day in the afternoon.
    But the practicalities of earned income had imposed artificial sleeping and waking times. And so it was in 1825 Stoneford, where there was nothing in particular to stay up late for after the supper was finished, the mending done, and conversations had dwindled into yawns.
    People went to bed early. There was a practical reason as well. An absence of light. Once the sun was down, the only illumination came from rushlights or candles. Sarah had a collection of both. But the rushes that had been picked and prepared and dried, then dipped in animal fat, only burned for 20 minutes - ten if you lit both ends at once - and they dripped fat and their light was meagre.
    And the candles that Sarah had for everyday use were made from beef tallow, not the more expensive beeswax that Amy was familiar with. Although, because Sarah worked for the Vicar, there were two lovely cream coloured and honey-smelling candles kept for “best” in a special cupboard in the kitchen.
    And so, the candles were lit from the wood fire in the kitchen hearth, and then the embers were carefully banked once more, and the metal cover fitted over them, so that they wouldn’t go out in the night.
    And the tricky subject of toileting had been approached...and explained...and undertaken.
    Amy’s cottage had a perfectly lovely bathroom that had been added sometime in the 20th century. It was upstairs, and had been created out of a small third bedroom. It had a sink and a toilet, a tub and a shower, everything plumbed and piped, constant hot water. Amy had never given it a second thought.
    Sarah’s cottage had no such convenience, since flushing had yet to be properly invented, and cold water had to be fetched every day in buckets from a common pump near the Village Green.
    Sarah’s toilet was a little brick outhouse in the back garden, suitably removed from the main dwelling, with a thatched roof and a wooden bench with a hole in it, and a cesspit underneath that collected what you left.
    “But if you would rather not,” Mary whispered to her, “there is a pot under my bed.”
    “She is frightened by the spiders,” Sarah confided.
    “Well, I’m not afraid of them,” Amy decided, and gamely went out to confront them, candle in hand.
    The torn up leafs of newspaper which Sarah had provided as toilet paper only added to the overall experience.
    We should, Amy thought, humorously, have some sort of exhibit for this in the museum.
    The complexities of this - and, indeed, how she might find her way back to the 21st century at all - were not immediately obvious to her. And she was unaccountably tired. She would think about it more in the morning.    
    The cottage’s upstairs had three bedrooms. Sarah slept alone in the larger room - the one which was, in fact, Amy’s room in the present.
    The next smaller room - where Amy and Steve had put all their books and magazines and where Steve kept his guitars and his collection of CD’s - was occupied by the two boys.
    And the tiny third room - which two centuries in the future would become Amy’s bathroom - belonged to Mary, who had kindly offered to sleep with her mother, leaving her own bed empty for Amy.
    Moonlight streamed in through the little window, painting the room with a silvery wash. Still wearing her frock, Amy sat on the edge of the bed, testing her mobile.
    The tiny screen searched for a signal.
    Nothing.
    Of course.
    It was ridiculous to suppose otherwise.
    Still... what was that?
    It was, in fact, a faint image... a flickering candle.
    Amy’s heart skipped.
    The flickering candle grew stronger, until the flame was burning steadily and brightly.
    If THAT worked... would anything else?
    Of course not.
    It was impossible!
    But... nonetheless...she tried.
    She slipped off the bed and walked quietly around the room, searching for... what?
    A signal?
    Couldn’t be.
    But it was.
    In the darkness, Amy tiptoed out of the bedroom, and down the narrow stairs. Through the sitting room and the kitchen. And out through the front door.
    She walked down the garden path, her mobile held aloft.
    Defying logic, physics and everything she knew about the transmission of whatever waves were responsible for mobile telephone calls, text messages and commerce on the internet - she was most definitely picking up a signal.

Read Chapter Six here.

Read Chapter Seven  here.

Read Chapter Eight  here.

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