Breaking the Rules

Meredith took another steadying breath as the train rumbled into Conway, giving her a view of the familiar estuary and the castle that held such a prominent place all during her childhood. 

Not long now. 

She toyed with her red silk scarf and relished the old-fashioned quiet of the carriage. That couple in the far corner quietly talking to each other, not lost in a pair of mobile phones. An old man reading a newspaper with evident pleasure, nodding to himself as he folded over to the next article. A woman turning another page of a paperback book without glancing up—must be a good read.

At the table across the aisle from where Meri sat on her own, a younger man was laying out cards for another game of patience. Did he play solitaire merely to ease the boredom of a familiar journey? Or was he using the cards to create a barrier, so that nobody would sit at his table? Perhaps he was shy, not comfortable dealing with people whom he did not already know.

As if the card player heard her thoughts, he glanced over at her. Those blue eyes held her gaze longer than most people did. She swallowed, wondering if he somehow knew that she was breaking the rules. What if the Watchers of Time that her father used to tell her stories about were actually real?

After a warm smile that started in those blue eyes before reaching his lips, the man turned his attention back to the cards. Meri took in a much-needed breath and looked away.

Her fingers touched the old leather briefcase on the seat next to her which held everything she owned apart from the clothes she wore and the hidden money belt cinched tight around her waist with the reassuring weight of appropriately dated Krugerrand coins and a selection of well-researched documents with which she would establish her new identity. 

Not here, of course. After today, she would never return to North Wales. But she felt sure she could resist the temptation since the possible results of a time error caused by accidentally meeting herself could be catastrophic. 

Elsewhere, she would be Meredith, still, but with a different middle name and surname. Perhaps this was a mistake. However, her new birthdate was totally different along with all the other details necessary to identify herself. And, besides, integrated computational systems that might flag up any unusual coincidences in the national database had not yet been invented.

Orienting her expectations to an earlier era when people relied on typewriters and telephones, radios and televisions, Meri wasn’t sure if a computer was yet a concept in most people’s heads unless they watched Star Trek or read science fiction. They existed, of course, but had not yet followed the telephone and television into people’s homes as an everyday object much less behind held in the palm of anyone’s hand. She found it refreshing not to own a mobile phone any more and looked forward to consulting libraries and bookshops rather than relying on search engines.

When the carriage trundled to a halt at Llandudno Junction, she watched the man across the aisle gather his cards and stow them in his haversack before he left the train. She couldn’t help breathing a little easier in his absence.

Nobody else boarded the train, so after checking that the couple chatting, the man with his newspaper and the woman with her novel were all ignoring her, Meri lifted the briefcase to the tabletop and opened it.

One last chance to check that all the levers and dials and switches were set to neutral. Her fingers roved from one spot to the next as she checked, knowing that if she employed her eyes alone, she might glance over something, assuming rather than actually looking carefully.

Yes. Everything was exactly as it should be. 

Meri eased the Instruction Manual out of the roomy pocket above the console, smiling at the familiar typescript, happy that she had decided to pass along the original copy. Though she could have obtained a typewriter and replicated a pristine version of the manual, the effort would have taxed her patience since she was used to writing with instantaneous editing on screens not typing one letter at a time on A4 paper.

She did look forward to obtaining and using a typewriter, though, and all the other gadgets of this era once she settled, but that would be without pressure or stress since perfection would not be required.

As the train began to move away from the station, she closed the briefcase, pressing the latches until they clicked and then spinning the numbered dial randomly to lock it.

Arriving finally at Bangor, Meri disembarked and walked along the platform and up the steps to cross the bridge over the tracks. She ignored the hopeful taxi driver and headed left on leaving the station, walking along the upward sloping pavement toward Upper Bangor.

National Westminster Bank, still open for business, and the assortment of shops she walked by confirmed that she had, indeed, traversed time correctly. Always good to be one hundred percent certain, especially for this most important journey. 

Meri balanced the briefcase on her left hip, hugging it close as a swarm of university students hastened toward her. Freshers’ week meant pranks were more likely, though perhaps less so in the more civilised past than in the unruly future. 

At any rate, she didn’t want to have to pay a ransom or risk the delicate mechanism being disrupted if the briefcase were hurled from one prankster to another. Luckily, they were all absorbed in each other, so she wasn’t even slightly jostled by the throng.

Walking onward, she felt as if she was being pushed by the remorseless tide of time. What was about to happen had definitely happened, so she was only here to recreate this episode not to alter anything.

When Bangor pier came into view, the grey blue ocean beyond with the outlined landmass of Great Orme in the distance, Meri felt the urge to run but kept her pace measured, pausing to make sure her red silk scarf was secured and would not become the sea wind’s plaything.

As she walked on to the wooden planks of the pier, she could almost hear her father’s voice telling her the story that he had repeated so often. Originally, just one of his many stories, only transforming when she was an adult herself into the true to life version.

When Meri found him at the far end of the pier, leaning on the railing, puffing on his pipe as he gazed out to sea, her heart jumped up into her throat.

She had somehow not prepared herself for how young her father would be. A quick calculation told her that, chronologically at least, he was the same age as her.

Raven black hair, not the familiar white thatch. He stood taller, also, not weighed down by the years he would later carry. He tapped his pipe on the railing then cradled the bowl in his palm, reminding her how, even after he stopped smoking, the pipe often occupied his restless hands. When she saw his handsome profile, she could see why her mother had fallen in love.

But Meri must forget who he was now, forget who she was to him, even forget who she was entirely. She needed to be the woman with the red silk scarf and the leather briefcase, nothing more.

“What a lovely view,” she said in deliberately accented English as she approached, though they would normally speak Welsh to one another.

He glanced toward her, those dark eyes evaluating her. She could almost read the questions in his mind. Student? Staff member? Visitor? Local? “A lovely view indeed,” he echoed, turning back toward Great Orme.

“They say it is a sleeping dragon,” Meri said hesitantly, as if trying out newly discovered local lore.

“A pair of them,” he agreed, “there’s Little Orme hidden beyond.”

A gust of wind tugging her red silk scarf reminded her to ask, “There is a tea room?”

He gave her a smile. “You’ve walked right past. I’ll show you.”

Always helpful, of course, that was a core part of his personality. And the devastation of failing to help someone he loved making the impulse all the more prominent at this juncture in his life.

“Gracias,” she replied, as if the Spanish bubbled up naturally, then, “thank you.” 

Tucking the empty pipe in his jacket pocket, her father led the way back around the building at the end of the pier to the entrance to the tea room. 

“Good to be in out of the wind,” Meri said as she smoothed her red silk scarf before ordering, “Tea for two, please.”

No pretence needed to look awkward as she made the payment with coins when she was used to flashing her mobile.

Once they were seated at one of the small tables, he asked, “Visiting?”

Meri nodded and smiled, gave her prepared speech about travelling from Barcelona, then careful to turn the conversation back to him, “And you live here?”

“I am a teacher,” he said simply.

“Professor?” she questioned with a look of admiration.

He shrugged and nodded.

“Intelligent then,” she remarked as the waitress deposited a tray with the makings of tea.

While they sorted out cups and saucers and how much milk and sugar that they each required, Meri studied his face, thought she could read there the burden of grief on him right now.

She let him redirect the conversation while they drank tea into recommendations of what she should do while visiting North Wales, answering politely and expressing an interest.

But when the teapot was empty, Meri returned to her earlier remark. “You must be intelligent to be a professor.”

Again, her father shrugged. “Perhaps only clever and obstinate.”

She recognised the dodge and gave him a smile before saying, “Perhaps you could solve this puzzle.” Lifting the briefcase to the tabletop, she spun the dial to treble seven and unlatched the two clasps before swivelling it around so that he could see the contents when she opened the lid.

His eyes widened as he gazed into the briefcase but he didn’t reach to touch anything inside.

“There are instructions,” Meri informed him, “but they are only in English.”

Without looking up, he suggested, “You could get them translated.”

“But then the secret would be out,” she explained.

He stared at her, obviously at some loss about what was going on.

“Siete, siete, siete,” she said, then translated, “seven, seven, seven. That is the code to unlock the briefcase.”

Frowning now, he opened his mouth but closed it again when he failed to find any words.

Meri smiled. “On my travels, Professor, I have been looking for someone intelligent and brave who might enjoy this gift. Intuition tells me you are both.”

“What is it?” he asked.

She looked around as if making sure nobody else could hear, then told him, “A time machine.”

He studied the interior of the briefcase again, a glimmer of hope perhaps already dawning.

“Seven, seven, seven,” Meri repeated while showing him five fingers on her right hand and two on her left so that he would also have the visual memory. Rising from the table, she remembered watching the magic flickering of his fingers when he showed her how to do sums in her childhood. Though tempted to sign some words to him now to express things that she could not tell him, she resisted. It would only confuse him and delay her departure.

“Gracias,” her father managed to say before she waved, turned and walked away.

As Meri made her way back down the pier to Bangor, she glanced at her antique watch and decided to go straight back to the station and to get the first train heading east out of Wales.

No need to linger now that she had delivered the gift.

Besides, she knew from the story that her father told what would happen next.

He would study the instructions as thoroughly as if he was going to have to take an exam about them. He would rebel against the stipulation that major life events could not be altered, but then grudgingly see the sense and accept it.

He would change his mind over and over until finally, on what should have been his first wife’s next birthday, he would figure out the best timing and travel back and visit her for a few hours, tell her everything that he never got to say before she died.

Then, his guilt at not being there to rescue her diminished somewhat, her father would finally let the ice around his heart begin to thaw, eventually allowing the woman who would become Meri’s mother into his life.