The Time Exile

Bernard had never been born, to begin with. Or, rather, he had - just not yet.

It would be another hundred years before Bernard’s birth - on 9 January 1987 in the maternity ward of an unremarkable Kent hospital - and he would not be around to see it. By 9 January 1987, Bernard would be long dead.

Bernard could never go home.

Bernard would never again sip a Pumpkin Spice Latte in his local Starbucks. Bernard would never again order headphones for next day delivery from Amazon. Bernard would never again email, nor download, nor stream, nor channel surf, nor fly economy to a cheap package holiday on the Costa del Sol. It was touch and go whether Bernard would ever again ride in a car.

Bernard was a time exile.

He couldn’t remember how it had happened - not exactly. One moment he’d been cycling along the banks of the Thames on a dark September evening, on his way back home from his marketing job; the next, he was being hauled bodily from the oily water, gulping down the cold air as his senses reeled. 

He had lain for a moment, blinking up at the night sky, and even in his disorientation he had been struck by the sudden brilliant clarity in which the stars revealed themselves against the velvet blackness. 

“You want to watch yerself,” had growled a dark figure peering down at him. “Ain’t no time to be swimming.”

Bernard had murmured some words of thanks and sat up, rubbing his head and looking around for his bike. Stumbling up from the ground, still half-dazed, he’d been nevertheless aware that something was different - something was off - but hadn’t been able to place it.

Staggering along the waterfront, still in search of his bike, he’d almost been bowled back into the Thames as a horse-drawn hansom cab clattered by, splattering him with liquid filth; he’d turned to see the cab’s driver, clad in black cloak and bowler hat, hurtling forward into the night. 

Bernard’s night did not improve.

Aching, hungry, and caked with grime, Bernard had pulled out his phone to book an Uber but, even as he tapped angrily on the screen in frustration at the phone’s failure to establish signal, he’d found himself roughly pushed against a wall, with strong hands gripping his suit lapels and heavy, boozy breathing in his face.

“Give us yer brass then - else you’ll be grinning at the daisy roots!”

Fearful of his life, Bernard had pressed his phone and his wallet into the hands of his assailant, who had promptly stolen off into the darkness. Even in his discomfited state, Bernard could not help but notice the thief’s outlandish attire; as he glanced about him in consternation, pondering his next move, a policeman dressed smartly in navy coat and old-fashioned helmet rounded the corner.

“Excuse me,” Bernard spluttered. “A man just took my wallet and phone - dressed like something out of Oliver Twist - he’s gone right that way!”

“Your what, sir?” The policeman had enquired in confusion from under his thick brown moustache, scratching his brow as he eyed Bernard suspiciously.

“My money - my phone! He’s taken probably fifty quid in cash, my credit card, debit card…” 

“Have we been drinking, sir?”

“No - he literally just went that way, right before you arrived - well, aren’t you going to go after him, then?”

“Now my lad, no need for that tone,” the policeman had admonished, advancing ominously on Bernard. “I think you and I had better take ourselves down to the station for a little chat.” 

Resignedly, Bernard had let himself be led away. 

***

It had taken Bernard longer that night than he’d have liked to have admitted to begin to realise that he was not now in fact in twenty first century London, but rather in its Victorian counterpart. Of course, he had the excuse that such a thing was utterly fantastical - no, impossible - even as the evidence to the contrary kept building before his eyes. First, the curious cast of characters, alien in both costume and dialect, that he’d encountered within minutes of being pulled from the murky river; then, the assorted array of broughams, clarences and cabriolets that clattered and jolted under the gas light, with not a car in sight; at the police station, the handbills and reward posters that papered the wall, stern black letters frowning down at Bernard as he passed them by in the grim company of his moustachioed policeman; and finally, that time-honoured clue lying silent but inexorable upon the superintendent’s desk as Bernard was ushered into his holding cell for the night - a freshly printed copy of the Daily Telegraph emblazoned incontestably with the date:

“17 November 1865.”

It wasn’t until after Bernard had stumbled blinking into the sunlight the following morning, nursing a thudding headache, that he was prepared to countenance that his situation was anything other than a fevered dream brought on by his ordeals of the previous night. But now the evidence stood stark and irrefutable in the light of day: the swarming streets crowded with waistcoats, frock coats, bonnets and bustles; the soot-faced street urchins running to and fro, darting between carts and carriages; the street vendors bellowing to advertise their wares, from fried fish to hot eels, from pickled whelks to boiled sheep trotters.

As the enormity of his situation had dawned upon him, as the realisation that he was now lost in a foreign land sunk in, with no money to draw upon, no friends to call upon, and no real knowledge of history beyond a GCSE he’d sat nearly two decades ago, two words kept running over and over in Bernard’s mind:

What now?

When his initial panic had subsided, Bernard had found himself sat on the steps of St Paul’s and plotting to leverage his status as a visitor from the future while he looked for a way back into his own time.

Grand dreams of celebrity had unfolded before him - beneath glittering chandeliers, he would impress the cream of nineteenth century London society with his tales of the moon landing and his a cappella renditions of The Beatles’ back catalogue; he’d wine and dine with Charles Dickens in cosy Thameside taverns while revealing, to Dickens’ delighted guffaws, that his first introduction to the great author’s works was The Muppets Christmas Carol; he would tease an approving smile out of Queen Victoria herself while explaining to her the concept of Youtube cat videos over tea in Balmoral. He’d be showered with accolades, met with adoring crowds, fawned on by debutantes - far and away the most eligible bachelor in town. Then, like the Wizard of Oz in his balloon, he’d depart the city he would have made his own - somehow - and return to the embrace of modernity, with a story or ten to tell on the other side. 

Unfortunately for Bernard, things weren’t to be quite so easy as that. He’d soon realised from trying to convince those he met that he was who he said he was that, at best, people simply looked at him askance, shook their heads and then continued to go about their lives without so much as another word to him. At worst, the incredulous reactions of police officers he had provoked with his claims quickly suggested to Bernard that he was at a very real risk of earning himself a one-way ticket to Bedlam.

Bernard decided that, for the time being at least, he needed to set his sights a little lower. One gentleman in particular had proved, if not exactly the most receptive, at least mildly interested in what Bernard had to say for himself. 

“Yer from the future, you say?” Harry Scratchweed, proprietor of Scratchweed’s Travelling Circus, had said as he regarded Bernard with bemusement, rubbing his bristly chin and looking him carefully up and down. “Alright, then - how long’s Pam got?”

“Sorry - who?”

“Pam. Palmerston. How long’s he got in Number Ten then? Don’t care for him meself.”

“I don’t know that…not so hot on politics…erm…but I do know there’s going to be a big war, against Germany…it’s going to be a world war…err…it’s not for a while yet though…”

“Oh aye,” Scratchweed had laughed, sticking his thumbs in his belt. “Those Prussians will be trouble alright, I’m sure. Got anything else?”

Bernard had racked his brains and drawn a blank. Then:

“The Titanic - the Titanic is going to hit an iceberg and sink.”

Met with a nonplussed stare, Bernard had stumbled valiantly on.

“It’s a boat…a big boat…err…don’t think that’ll be for a while yet either though, now I think about it…err…oh!”

Inspiration had struck.

“The American civil war!”

“Yes?”

“And Lincoln! Abraham Lincoln! That must be round about now…he’s going to get…”

“Shot?” Scratchweed had interjected.

“That’s it!” Bernard had cried out triumphantly. Scratchweed laughed again.

“Bit late on that one, I’m afraid. Yer a rum cove, ain’t you? You’ll need to work on your material, I think. Dress it up a bit too. But I’ll take you on, if you like. Just don’t be expecting much in the way of rhino, because I ain’t paying you much.”

Well, Bernard had thought. It’s something. 

That was how Bernard had come to tour the northern towns - from Leeds to Liverpool, Manchester to Macclesfield - under his new guise: Professor Predictor. From the stage, he’d regaled audiences with fantastical stories of instant communication across continents and of war and travel in the skies; he’d encouraged their imaginations to take flight by describing to them the day when there would be a complete library in every person’s pocket and a black president in the White House. 

Of course, nobody had believed in the slightest that the Professor really was a time traveller, or even a fortune teller - but the crowds were good-humoured and game, for the most part, and it was a living while it lasted.

But just over a year later, the man from the future was yesterday’s flavour, and Scratchweed had informed Bernard it was time to make way for Percy the polka-dancing pony, and move on.

Wondering whether he would ever see his century again, Bernard had rumbled southwards once more, travelling third class on the Express, and swigging from a bottle of Glenlivet as he passed scattered fields and grimy towns. 

The past really is a foreign country, he’d thought as he gazed desolately out the window. And I don’t exactly speak the language.

Instead of rising to the top of society, he’d found himself precariously treading water at the bottom. Celebrity had not come knocking; it had passed on to the next street. Neither was he able, he found, to make an impact on anything around him. Bernard had long resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t really sure how anything in his world had actually worked - re-creating the inventions he was now without, or even trying to explain them to the scientific titans of the age, was well beyond him. Not that he was likely to wrangle an audience with anyone of consequence any time soon.

Bernard had allowed himself a wry, bitter smile. People often dreamed of changing the world - he couldn’t even make a difference in one where he had a hundred-and-fifty year head-start on everybody else.

That night, in desperation, Bernard threw himself beneath the gloomy waters of the Thames in conscious imitation of his first night in Victorian London, clambering dripping onto the bank only to note with grim resignation that his surroundings remained unaltered. The only thing that had changed was that his clothes were now drenched.

Bernard had then crouched by the riverside, breathing heavily and looking up again at the same clear night sky that he’d lain beneath over a year ago. Try as he might, he could not explain nor rationalise his situation - but then, he realised with sudden clarity, he’d never really been able to explain life in the twenty-first century anyway. Perhaps there was something almost comforting in knowing that everything that would happen to the world around him from now until his death was a foregone conclusion. Like the great river itself, which flowed relentlessly forward, history would continue in its inexorable course, unchanging - perhaps the right word was pre-determined. It was almost, Bernard thought, like watching a re-run of a cozily familiar TV show. 

The next morning, Bernard decided, he would look for work at the East London docks. Good, honest labour, loading and unloading the wares of ships from every corner of the globe in return for whatever his bosses would pay him.

Perhaps one day he’d set out to see the nineteenth century world - he’d breath deep from the fresh, clean air while streaming along under an East Indian sunrise, or cruising the pristine fjords of Norway. Or perhaps he’d try and look up his great-grandparents - if he could manage to remember any of their names. 

For now, it was enough to get by. On the plus side, he didn’t have to worry about global warming, or COVID-19. The world wasn’t going to end anytime soon - the sun was guaranteed to rise in the morning. And Bernard had worked out that, thankfully, he’d be too old by the time World War One finally rolled around to be forced to take up arms and head to the Front.

Picking himself up from the bank, and heading off in search of a bed for the night, which he’d pay for with the last shillings in his pocket, Bernard had whistled a cheerful music hall ditty that he’d picked up from touring with Scratchweed. He reflected as he did so that, even when the appointed time came for him to shuffle off his mortal coil and depart the new world in which he’d found himself, life after death was assured - decades after everyone else around him was dead and gone, Bernard would live again. 

He smiled and cast one last look heavenward. The stars shone serenely above the city, just as they would over a hundred years hence on the night of his birth.

As he headed into the London night, Bernard knew one thing for certain above all: his best days were yet to come.