I am Cast Adrift in Time

Time passes. Listen! Time passes.

Dylan Thomas - Under Milk Wood

I smiled, for some reason. Bravado, I suppose. 'Why on earth would I want to do that?' I asked.

'Why does anybody kill themselves? Why, because they believe that their lives are no longer worth living, of course.'

'What are you going to do to him, Martin?' Elias' puzzlement would have been comic under different circumstances. Martin James ignored his question.

'Take his daemon from him, would you please, Elias?'

'What?'

'Just as I said. Do not annoy me with your obtuseness, young man. Just do as I say. Take his daemon.'

What? Take Viola away from me? I could not speak, so great was my surprise. Elias took a step in my direction.

'No! Not like that! Do you want him to attack you, Mister Cholmondley? Stay where you are.'

Martin James spoke directly to me.

'Peter Joyce. You know that I will not hesitate to use this weapon again. It is God's tool to use as He wishes as, indeed, am I. If I fire the gun at you, or poor old Jim or the overweight baggage he lives with, it will be a Holy act, a Righteous act, for I will be doing God's will. I have consecrated myself to God, do you see, and I am His willing slave.

'I cannot commit a sinful act, for I am God's agent, doing God's work; and in God there is no sin. Do you understand me? Have I made myself clear to you?'

'You mean that you can do whatever you feel like, and God won't mind?'

Martin James laughed. 'Oh, Peter, it's so much better that that! I cannot do anything that God would need to forgive. I have not Fallen, remember? My Lillian is the proof of it. Did our Lord not say, "Suffer little children to come unto me" and did He not teach that you might not enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless you became as a child? I am God's child.'

He believes everything he is saying. He is completely insane. I knew then that our situation was hopeless.

'Now, Peter Joyce, tell your daemon – she is a lovely thing, isn't she? – to run across the floor on her dear little paws and leap into the arms of our faithful Mister Cholmondley. Otherwise…'

'What are you going to do to her?'

'I promise you, Peter, on my word of honour as a gentleman, that I am not going to harm her. I also promise you, as a servant of God, that I will hurt you and your friends very much indeed if you do not do as I tell you. You know that I mean what I say.'

I had no idea why I was being asked to do this horrible thing. I was revolted by the idea of Elias Cholmondley manhandling my beautiful Viola. What could I possibly do to stop him?

'Peter,' said Viola.

'Yes?'

'Let me go to him. I will not let him hurt you or me.'

'What if he molests you?'

'I will die. I will choose to die. I will slice my throat open with my claws.'

So that was Martin James' plan… 'You're going to make Viola kill herself, and then I'll die too!'

'No, Peter Joyce. That is not what I intend at all, although it would certainly fulfil one of my ambitions – to see you dead. Now; let her go!'

'Please, Peter.'

I have wondered since whether Viola knew what intentions were in Martin James' mind. I did not think to ask her at the time, and it would have made little difference in the end. I picked her up and held her face to mine. We kissed; and I lowered her slowly to the floor. She took one step forward, turned to me and whispered, 'I love you,' and ran, as she had been told, over to Elias Cholmondley's waiting arms. He stooped and picked her up, and as his hands touched her I suffered such a terrible surge of revulsion and sickness that I thought I would die of it.

All this time, in the world outside Jim and Carrie's house – the world of sane, kind, real people – the clouds were flying and the wind was rising; rattling the windows, moaning in the chimneys and casting a soft covering blanket over all other sounds. All other sounds. There was something nudging the back of my mind, trying to attract my attention…

Elias grinned wider than ever as he held my daemon in his cupped hands. He stroked the fur of her back with an obscene familiarity, and I vomited green bile onto the bare floorboards in front of me, acrid-tasting in my mouth and burning in my throat. Burning. Carrie cried out aloud in horror and shame.

'Stop it!' said Martin James to Elias Cholmondley, his face flushed with anger. Elias blenched in sudden fear and held absolutely still. Then – and I realised exactly what was going to happen even as Martin James raised the arm which held the gun – he turned.

He turned, until he was facing a point on the wall exactly half-way between Elias and me. Then he pressed the trigger of the gun, but instead of releasing it immediately as he had before, when he used the weapon to mutilate Jim, he swept the hissing, scorching beam of destructive light down from the level of the ceiling until it reached the floor. The shabby wallpaper crackled, smoked and flared in the deadly purple light, and the bricks behind it cracked and shattered. Slowly, the beam descended and as it came down it cut through the invisible thread that joined Viola to me.

And Severed us.

I have written that I had, at the last moment, realised what Martin James' intentions were. I had no time to do anything to thwart those intentions and, even if I had, I could have acted no differently. As it was in Lyra's study before, so it was at Jim and Carrie's house now. Time had run out for us.

The cutting beam swept down and severed Viola from me. Instantly, the scene changed. Martin James, Elias Cholmondley, Jim and Carrie; they all disappeared. Was this death? Was this what Martin James had intended to do to us? No, that could not be right. He had said that I would be moved to kill myself, because I would find that my life was no longer worth living.

The room, as I say, was empty of people apart from myself, but there was nevertheless one other creature there. I beckoned to the squirrel that was sitting on the window-ledge, next to the door. The trees swayed in the wind behind her. 'Viola! Here!' She rubbed her paws together and looked up. There was no recognition in her eyes, no sign of intelligence behind them. 'Here!' I gave a low whistle, as if I were calling a dog. The squirrel's ears pricked up, and her tail too, but she made no move towards me. 'Viola!' There was no response.

I stood up carefully, and walked with slow footsteps across the floor to the window. The squirrel was very alert now, ready to run away if any danger threatened her. I held out my hand out in front of me; offering it as I had all those times before when Viola and I had wanted to be close to one another with her fur next to my skin, touching it. Trembling, I let my hand rest on the window-sill next to the squirrel and she, after a moment's consideration, stepped onto it. I held her in my hands, feeling her warmth, her quick heartbeat, her gentle breathing. I was daring to feel a little hope. Surely a wild squirrel would not have let a human being come so close to her, let alone permit him to pick her up and hold her imprisoned in his hands? Perhaps my fears would be proved false, and Viola – the real Viola – would make herself known to me again. It was possible – maybe likely, even – that Martin James had been wrong and that the deadly ray of light from the gun had not cut Viola and me apart for ever, but only disrupted the bond between us for a little while. I opened my hands and tried to look into the eyes of the creature who rested there. Perhaps she would look back into my eyes, and know me, and we would be restored to one another…

Then the squirrel excreted a pellet onto the palm of my left hand, and I know that all my hope was in vain – no more than wishful thinking. This creature who looked like my Viola was only a common animal. That was all.

I might have squeezed my hands together then, crushing the life from this thing, with its diabolical resemblance to my lost daemon. A great gulf of horror and despair opened beneath my feet. It would be the easiest thing in the world to give up now and throw myself into it, seeking oblivion in death. Why didn't I do that, faced as I was with the loss of all that made me human? I cannot say for sure. Those were dark times, and darker times yet were to come, though I did not know it then. One thing stopped me; staying my hand. I could not kill this innocent creature, for the sake of the being whose form she wore. To do so would have been to accept the mockery of it – that Viola could have gone from me, but that her shape would remain.

There was something else, though, now I think of it. It was clear to me what Martin James had meant to do. He had intended that, with my daemon severed from me and my essential humanity destroyed, I would seek release in death and save Elias and him the inconvenience of killing me themselves. I would be damned forever in Hell if I was going to let them have their way so easily. And there was yet another thing. Where were they? Where was everyone? Had I fainted, and been left behind? But why would Jim and Carrie do that, unless they had been forced to leave, at gunpoint, by Martin James?

That made no sense. Neither he nor Elias would be so stupid as to disappear without making sure that I had been finished off – or finished myself off. It is only in story-books of the most improbable kind that the villain explains the plot in lengthy detail to the hero whom he has captured, and then walks off to leave him to die in a vat of boiling oil or something similar. Of course, the hero always escapes – "in a single bound he was free" – and, knowing now what the bad man means to do, stops him (and usually kills him in a big fight at the end). I did not think that Martin James read story-books of that kind – or any kind for that matter.

I looked around the room. It was Jim and Carrie's bed-sitting room all right, although there were a few small differences that I had not noticed before; a chair moved slightly, a picture displaced. Then I looked at the wall behind me. There was that faded wallpaper – but it was undamaged. There were no scorch-marks on it.

How long had I been lying here? Long enough for the wallpaper to have been replaced, and be worn down again by years of damp and neglect? That would explain the other changes in the room – I noticed that the oilcloth on the floor had gone and that there was a worn piece of floral carpet lying there instead. The light fitting had been changed, and the door-handle was made of blue delft rather than brass.

I did not understand why this should be. I did not see how I could have slept for years and years and woken up in the same place as before, like someone in a fairy-tale. So, rather than give up and kill this false Viola, and then myself, I determined that I would find out what was going on. That was what saved me in the end, I have decided, rather than a desire to thwart Martin James or preserve the life of a wild animal.

I dropped the squirrel into my coat pocket, next to the notebook which I had been meaning to show Jim once we had got the Ridgeworth Steamer running. Oh yes, was the car still standing in the back garden? I opened the door to the kitchen and looked out of the back window. No, the Ridgeworth had gone, together with my tool-bag. That was not so surprising, really. The house's new tenants would have disposed of them years ago. I shook my head and went back to the bed-sitting room. After taking one last look around, I opened the front door of the house and walked out into the street beyond and from there down to the Botley Road. If I had slumbered, or been in suspended animation, for many years I had come back to life on a day that was remarkably similar to the one in which I had brought my tool-bag here. The weather was unchanged – sun and wind and fast-moving clouds. That was not so unusual, though. The weather was often like this.

I crossed to the 'bus stop on the other side of the road and waited. The 'busses ran a frequent service, even on Sundays, so it was not long before one turned up and stopped at my signal. 'Funny,' I thought, 'they've changed the colour of the autobusses.' The ones I were used to were red and green, but this one was painted in blue, with gold coachlines. The 'bus was normal enough inside, though, and the conductor took my threepenny fare to the centre of town perfectly happily. I climbed the stairs to the upper deck and took a seat at the front, by a window. Oxford looked very much the same as it had an hour or two before, or however long it had been. The houses and gardens were unchanged, the trees and shrubs in their gardens grew as colourfully as ever, the grass still needed cutting. Only the presence of rather more advertising hoardings than I remembered – selling cigarillos, ale and washing soap – gave evidence that this was a different Oxford from the one I had woken up in that morning.

(You may be wondering at this point how I was feeling in myself, with my daemon taken from me. Perhaps you are trying to imagine how you would feel if you were put in that situation. I think the best way to describe it is this: have you heard of limb memory? It's what amputees get; they can still feel their missing arm or leg, even though the nerves, muscles and fibres which used to be there have disappeared. It was like that for me. I would keep turning to Viola, or trying to speak to her – for it felt in some way that she was still there – only to find that I had been fooled by a false memory of her presence. Every time this happened, my heart endured a new stab of pain. I cannot keep on coming back to this continuing misery as I tell you my story or it would go on for ever, so please keep in mind what I have said here as you read it. I was incomplete; and tortured by my loss.)

I got off the 'bus in Cornmarket Street. It had been almost empty and I had been glad of that. I was afraid, you see; afraid that the other passengers would see me and know me for what I was, a non-person. Not human. I remembered how it had been when I first encountered Miss Morley in Cropredy. She had carried a false daemon then – a common house-cat – just as I was carrying a squirrel shaped like my lost Viola now, and it had given off a profound sense of wrongness, like a bad smell, that had made me feel sick and ill. What if I was doing that now? Would the good citizens of Oxford smell me, seize me, and kill me, as an obscene travesty of a man? Had I too become like Miss Elspeth Morley?

So I did my best not to come too close to anyone else as I turned out of Cornmarket and into Shoe Lane. I was going home, I thought, to a place where I might find shelter and, I hoped, understanding.

I walked past the shop twice before I recognised where I was. I had to stand, and look up at the roofs (for the upper stories of a shop never change, whatever may have been done to the shopfront) to make sure that I was standing in the right place, in front of the right premises. I even walked right up Shoe Lane, to the Talbot Inn, and back down to the shop. Yes, that was about the right distance. The distance was right, but the shop was not. Signwritten on the board above the door, which was now painted blue as the autobus had been, were the words Shoe Lane Shoes. And in the windows, standing on their boxes, were dozens of pairs of boots, clogs and sandals. I stared at them, lost in utter confusion.

A woman was passing. She stopped and said to me, 'They're shut, young man. It's Sunday.' She shook her head in amusement.

'Excuse me, Goodwife,' I said. 'Has that shop been there long? Didn't it use to sell clocks?'

'You've got a long memory,' she said. There's not been a clock shop in Shoe Lane for years and years.'

'How many years?' I said. 'I've not been in Oxford for ages, but I used to like looking at the clocks in the window when I was a boy.'

'Oh, I don't know,' she replied. 'Five, six years at least.'

'Thank you,' I replied, and she carried on walking slowly down the lane, her dog-daemon trotting at her heels.

So. I had been asleep, or whatever it was, for more than six years, and in that time the Middlewich Bank had reclaimed its mortgage, thrown Mistress James and Emily out and sold the place to a seller of shoes. If it had been a weekday, I would not have been surprised to find Elias Cholmondley still working behind the counter; but what had happened to Martin James? Wouldn't he have inherited the shop instead of me? I still did not understand what had happened.

In a daze, I made my way back up to the Cornmarket. There was no place for me here any more. I did not see how there could be a place for me anywhere in this world. For a wild moment I wondered if I had become a ghost; but the hard paving-stones under my feet and the warm wind in my face and the fact that the woman and I had conducted a perfectly normal conversation convinced me that that could not be so.

I stopped and looked around. The Cornmarket was nearly deserted, as were all the shopping streets this Sunday afternoon. I was tired – another reason to believe that I was not a ghost – and I needed to sit down. I could find a seat here; or I could go where I always went when I needed to rest, and think. I headed down in the direction of the High Street, Magdalen Bridge and the river.

To my utter astonishment, there was a turnstile at the entrance to the Botanic Garden and I had to give a blue-liveried attendant sixpence before I could gain admission. He was being kept busy, for the Garden was full of people picnicking and walking up and down between the glasshouses and under the trees. It was much more crowded than I remembered. I suppose that people, having paid to get in, stayed around for longer in order to make sure that they got their money's worth. In my time, you wandered into the Garden whenever you felt like it and stayed there for as long or as short a time as you liked, whether it was only five minutes or all day.

This was not what I had wanted to find. I had wanted to be left in peace, to think about what I was going to do. Would I seek help from a doctor, or would I try to make my way in this strange world as I was? Or would I throw myself off Magdalen Bridge and end the struggle for ever? No. Don't let him win, said the voice that would once have been Viola's. I passed through the Garden, taking a well-known path, seeking a well-known place.

Where was it? There was the tree, with its low-hanging branches laden with leaves and brushing busily against the ground in the wind, and there was the bench I knew so well, but where was Lyra's plaque? Oh no. They could not have done this. Not this. Not such a terrible thing as this; to destroy Lyra's memory and sweep away all that was left of her. The tears sprang to my eyes. Funny, wasn't it? This was the first of all the dreadful things that had happened to me that day – or in all those lost years – that had had the power to make me cry.

I looked back towards the bench. A woman was sitting there; a small slight figure. She was wearing a long wine-red cotton frock over black lace-up shoes and her greying hair was tied back at the nape of her neck with a piece of black velvet ribbon. In her hands she was holding a little brown-covered book which she was reading, with her glasses perched half-way down her nose. A shopping bag full of books stood on the bench next to her and her daemon rested in her lap. I approached the woman and gave a low cough to attract her attention.

'Please, Goodwife, could you tell me something?'

She looked up, annoyed at being disturbed in her reading.

'If you like, yes. What would you like to know?'

'There… there used to be a plaque, set in the ground, just there.' I pointed.

'Down there? When was that?' the woman asked.

'A few years ago. Five years, maybe.'

'What sort of plaque? All the trees and shrubs here have tie-on labels attached to them. Do you see? There are no plaques in the ground.'

The woman's voice sounded strangely familiar, as Martin James' had. Whose voice was it?

'No, Goodwife, this was a different kind of plaque. It was a memorial.'

'There's never been a memorial plaque here, so long as I can remember. Who was it a memorial to?' Whose voice?

'Lyra. P-professor Lyra Belacqua.' I had become suddenly short of breath. The woman's face turned white with anger.

'Lyra Belacqua? Is this some kind of stupid joke? Did the underscholars give you money to do this? I shall call the Proctors. Who are you? What is your name?'

But I hardly heard her speak. An extraordinary, indescribable, overwhelming feeling of expectancy had overtaken me. I knew now that something very terrible, or marvellous beyond belief, was about to take place. She looked up from her book and for the first time I saw her pale-blue eyes looking into mine, and she saw my face clearly for the first time too, and I saw hers. Our eyes, I say, met and we each saw the other plain; and knew the truth. The wind swirled around us, but the leaves of the trees ceased their motion. The people walked in the garden with their children, but their arms and legs were frozen in mid-stride. The clouds stopped moving in the sky, and the grass beneath our feet became hushed and still.

Lyra spoke first, and her voice was suffused with wonder:

'Peter? Peter Joyce? Peter, can it be you?'