The Terminus (27 page)

“Huh! He would, wouldn’t he, the dirty old pervert!”

“Mike, under no circumstances must Gary meet God.”

“Who the hell are
you
to order us about?”

“I’m not ordering, Mike. I’m warning. I’m hoping. Like you
lot say,
praying
. There’s so much neither of you understands yet. As for
Beetie, she’s the sweetest girl who’s ever been. One day you’ll regret your
unkind words about her, I’m telling you.”

“If I don’t bloody understand why can’t you explain?”

“God knows Gary better than you think, Mike. What he’d do,
how he’d react. He wants to protect him.”

“Protect the boy he did the dirty on? Oh, he’s even sicker
than I thought. Where is he, by the way?”

“You’ll meet up tomorrow, you and God. I’ll be there
outside Baker Street station, 10 am, only
don’t
tell Gary whatever you
do. Leave
him
to me. Okay?”

“What about Cathy?
She
’s sticking with me. I’m not
letting her out of my sight until all you creeps have safely buggered off for
ever into the future in your flipping jumbo-sized flying saucer.”

Redfor chuckled.

“It’s
essential
Cathy’s with you, Mike. She’s a part
of God’s plan, too. Just now, call your parents. The last thing God would want is
your parents worrying...”

“Doesn’t care much about poor Gary, does he?”

“And please warn Gary’s parents he’ll be back… with yet
another surprise.”

Mike raised two fingers at the back of Redfor as the man
from the future left the house, then picked up the phone. Moments later, he was
holding it at arm’s length whilst his dad yelled at him from the other end of
the line. He waited for a gap in the tirade before trying to get in his bit
about Cathy and bringing her home. He hadn’t even given thought to the sleeping
arrangements…
or
clothes. He only knew girls had to buy loads of stuff,
accessories, make-up etc. She’d need all of these, and
he’d
do the
schooling bit. Become her personal tutor.

In the end he did a deal with his dad. He’d only return
home if he could bring Cathy. Half an hour later Mike found himself reunited
with his parents. His dad softened as soon as he set eyes on the girl. No
further angry words were uttered.

“I’ll become
famous, don’t you t’hink now? Seamus ‘Houdini’ O’Malley! ‘We’ve lost him, we’ve
lost him,’ I can hear dem screamin’. Perhaps dey’ll be worryin’ their medicines
shrank me down. Dey’ll be shakin’ out de bed linen, peekin’ under de pillows. I
t’hink…”

The Irishman’s verbal outpouring stopped when he caught
sight of a child staring at him as he and Gary sat on the number 32 bus to
Clontarf on Dublin Bay.

“De pyjama look. Latest fashion!” he said proudly, showing
off the sleeves of his Royal Free Hospital pyjamas.

“Mummy, can I wear my pyjamas, too, next time we take de
bus?” the boy asked the lady beside him.

“Don’t be paying any attention to him, Malachy. And don’t
slouch! Sit up straight! To be sure, you’ll end up looking like an old man
before you can read or write!”

Seamus chuckled.

“Gary, I should never have left dis city. Molly was right.
Dublin’s de best place in de world. Even in de days when de Liffey was full of
junk and when Nelson t’hought he still owned her stuck up there on his perch in
O’Connell Street. Molly never wanted to come to London. Never fitted in. Said
no one talked to her. Here in Dublin dey never stop talkin’ to you.”

“Think she’ll recognise you?” asked Gary.

“Greyin’ hair? Wid more lines on my face dan there are in
de Holy Bible? Oh, dey say it’s in de eyes, my boy. In de eyes. She’ll look
into dem and she’ll say, ‘take off dat disguise at once, Seamus O’Malley!
Enough of your jokes.’ ‘Molly,’ I’ll say, ‘life’s never a joke. Life’s…’” Tears
filmed his sad eyes.

“He’s cryin’, Ma! Look!” the little boy remarked.

“Malachy, what did I say jus’ now? Leave him alone!”

“Everything’s gonna be all right, Seamus. The time-specs
will give you and Molly a second chance. It’s the least I can do for you!”

The Irishman wiped his tears and a smile found its way into
the sadness darkening his face.

“No, Gary. Not de time-specs. De Holy Virgin and de Holy
Father are givin’ me second chance.”

He peered at Gary.

“I will see her again, won’t I? De Holy Virgin?”

Gary didn’t answer. He turned his face to the window,
fearing he, too, might disgrace himself with tears. Would he ever see
her
again?
If he did, what would he say? She, an expectant mother by an old man? Funny,
but somehow he could never get angry with Beetie. He’d rather destroy the whole
world than be angry with her.

Destroy the whole world?

Had he just screwed up because of the girl? Failed to keep
his eye on the ball, like in soccer? Mike was right. He was useless at soccer,
useless at life. So… God had had
his
eye on the girl all the time. But
London of the future was going to be destroyed anyway. There again, Beetie and
the old man’s child might be all that would remain of the human race should
Teeth allow her to live on and some day reach that paradise world. Good for
God, huh? But why should the pain of it be so bloody unbearable?

“Gary?”

“What?”

“You were dreaming, Gary boy! Would dat be about de Holy
Virgin, now?”

Gary nodded.

“Pray to de Holy Father for her. He’ll listen to a good
Cat’holic like yourself, for sure he will!”

Gary wasn’t clear about what he was any more. Catholic or
lapsed, like Seamus? Out of spiritual earshot of the true God? London
schoolboy, no longer a virgin, or time-traveller belonging to nowhere? But
human… most definitely human and not Atlantean.

It was a short walk from the bus stop to the O’Malley
family home. The tide was out, and a few cocklers, bent forwards, still as
statues, shared a puddled mud flat stretching to the far horizon; a
sand-tableau speckled with humps of stranded seaweed and strutting, screaming
seagulls… and all of this submerged at high water as London would be in two
hundred years.

Oh Beetie! Are you already on Paradise Planet in the
distant future… with God’s baby growing inside you?

In his head he prayed for her. Despite what she’d done, he
prayed for her and for her unborn child.

A young woman in a dressing gown, her hair wrapped with a
towel, opened the door. A child’s voice called out from inside:

“Mummy! Who’s at de door?”

The woman’s jaw dropped. From the way her eyes glazed over
Gary worried she was about to faint.

“Mary, Holy Mother of Jesus, jus’ look at you, Seamus
O’Malley! Take off dat disguise at once!”

Seamus winked at Gary.

“Will you not be letting us in now, Molly... me and my
friend, Gary, here?”

Frowning, Molly stepped back and let Gary and Seamus pass
on into the hallway.

“Molly, I’m t’hinking you should find yourself a seat
before I go spilling de beans, like!”

They followed Molly into a small sitting room littered with
dolls and children’s toys, books, journals and a dried-out, droopy plant in a
plastic pot. Molly sat down, but Gary and Seamus remained standing. A little
girl on the floor, in a blue frock and playing beside a doll’s house, studied
them in silence, her wide disbelieving eyes trained on her ageing father and
his tears.

“I’ve come back, Molly, my dear. Come back from de future
because I love you and Caitlin so much. You were right! Where I come from in
London of de future I learned de hard way!”

“Seamus, dose lines on your face, dat hair… are you telling
me they’re for real?”

“Molly my darlin’, from wherever I am in my present I’m
gonna make a proper pig’s ear of everyt’hing. A mess I can’t out wriggle out of
and one you can’t live wid.”

Molly glanced at Gary.

“Who’s he?” she asked.

“I told you, my dearest. Dis here is Gary O’Driscoll, a
good Irish boy from London, dough you wouldn’t t’hink so from de way he talks.
He’s givin’ me a second chance is Gary.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘de future’? To be
sure you’re my Seamus, but what about de other you?”

“Gary… explain!”

“Everything Seamus told you is true, Mrs O’Malley. These
specs (he showed her the time-specs) are no ordinary glasses. Not magical, mind
you. They just allow me, and whoever I happen to be touching, to travel through
time. Only science, Mrs O’Malley. Science of the future... because of
experiments they carry out underground one day. For the guy who invents them,
the future becomes the past… and vice versa. I’m only beginning to work things
out in my head! Not easy to explain.”

“Tell Molly how you found me, Gary.”

Gary peered awkwardly at his feet, wiggling his toes up and
down as he tried to think of ways of putting the cruel truth to the man’s wife.

“I… erm…
we
found him, Mrs O’Malley, on Hampstead Heath.
Living rough.”

“The girl, Molly, she’s like de Holy Virgin, I’ll not be
lyin’ to you. She is dat beautiful! Never t’hought I’d be seeing de Holy Virgin
whilst I’m still breathin’!”

Gary closed his eyes. Each mention of Beetie became more
painful than the last, and she was now far from being a virgin, but the time
he’d spent with her in the B & B in Golders Green, she
was
pure
then. At least he’d always be able to console himself with the thought that he,
Gary O’Driscoll, was Beetie’s first lover.

“He was in quite a state. Tatty clothes. Wild hair and
beard…”

“As wild as Hampstead Heat’h itself, Molly my dearest.”

“And… well, he was so alone.
Totally
alone.”

Molly’s eyes moistened as she glanced at her husband of the
future.

“You’ll leave me, Molly, and wid good reason. It’s only
after you and little Caitlin put up wid years of crap from Seamus O’Malley
caused by de demon drink dat you finally do. You’re loyal, Molly, but there’s
only so much a woman can take.”

“Oh Seamus, de other you, de one what’s at work just now,
you can warn
him
when he gets back! Tell him not to change… not to take
dat job in London or go near de place. I’ll never leave you, Seamus. Couldn’t
bear to. Caitlin, neither! It would break her little heart, to be sure, if she
never saw her Da again!”

“I don’t think this Seamus should ever meet the Seamus from
the past…
your
present,” Gary warned. “Been thinking about that, and
something tells me this must never happen. The less we do the better. Chaos
theory! Seamus of the future and your Seamus together? Too many unknowns. I
think…”

Gary’s gaze travelled from Molly to Seamus and back to
Molly.

“I should let you two talk a while. On your own. I’ll wait
outside looking at the bay… watching the birds and the cocklers. Helps me
think, the sea does! I’ve one last thing to sort out in my mind, Seamus.”

On leaving the room something occurred to him. He turned to
Seamus.

“You could all
stay with
us
tonight, Seamus. Might be the only way you’ll save your
family in our present and Molly’s future.”

“But… my other
husband…?”

“This
is
your
husband. He’s the same man. Only now he swears he’ll never change for the worse
like your other Seamus will, Mrs O’Malley.”

He left the
O’Malleys and returned to the sea-front. He had to work this thing out… the
‘killing God’ business. Beetie was right. Killing
is
wrong! The ‘Holy
Virgin’ after all? In accordance with his religion, she’d pretty much told him
the sin of murder was unforgivable, but here’s where everything began to go
pear-shaped. He’d killed a man at the Hatcheries... for Beetie’s sake. He’d
almost
killed the taxi driver in the Finchley Road… for Beetie. Now, before being able
to close the book on Beetie forever, he was going to kill the man who’d defiled
and destroyed her innocence. For sure, their shared love in the Golders Green B
& B was genuine. That was innocence. How would he carry out his threat… and
did it really matter, killing again? After all, a whole life-time ahead without
Beetie would be hell, so, if followed by an eternity of some other kind of
hell, did it
matter how many evil points he scored by killing the
bastard?

The ‘how’
bit? A quick painless death, or slow and lingering?

Somehow it
mattered. He both admired and hated God. The more he thought about God, and
dispatching the old man to an unknown oblivion, the more he also thought about
Beetie and her unborn child, and wished no harm for the little one in their new
world.  For Beetie’s sake he wished this, and slaughtering the old man
would surely taint both of them with evil, for all killing
is
evil
however justifiable.

***

“No Dad, I
can’t go to school this morning. Phone them. Tell a porky. Can’t let Cathy out
of my sight! I have to meet a guy in Baker Street with Cathy. They’re likely to
have computer-enhanced pictures of me and Gary splashed all over the media,
anyway. We got caught on security cameras on Saturday. P’raps the school’s
contacted the police by now.”

Mike had
already explained, at length, the British Museum robbery and the reason for
this, together with the gory details of what was going to happen in the
Hatcheries and the Terminus in two hundred years’ time. His parents had
struggled to make anything of the convoluted saga, but this latest revelation
was the last straw for Mike’s dad. He eyed his son with deep suspicion.

“A guy in
Baker Street? Mike… you’re not involved in anything unpleasant, ay? I mean,
stealing a silly old tablet’s one thing, but young Cathy here? You haven’t been
asked to pass her on to someone from Eastern Europe, have you? If you’re mixed
up in something like that I
will
hand you in to the police. I’ll disown
you, too, because treating girls like… well…”

The man’s
fists sat tight in his lap. Mike, at first puzzled, abruptly burst into
laughter.

“Oh Dad!” he
exclaimed. “Surely you don’t think I’d get into White Slavery? No, this is
nothing to do with Cathy, but I insisted she come ’cos I daren’t let her out of
my sight. Except…” The boy blushed. His mind slipped back to the previous night
when Cathy slept in the next room and he’d longed for her to be in bed beside
him. He patted her hand. “Except for last night, of course. No, Dad, I’ve gotta
take care of her. She’s my responsibility!”

“I love Mike,”
Cathy said. “He rescued me and he’s kind and I love him.”

A flash of
pride illuminated Mr Bellini’s drawn face.

“Not sure I
understand a thing, Mike. Life’s gone all topsy-turvy. So, why
are
you
seeing a guy at Baker Street?”

Oh shit!
This is too early in the morning for serious bullshitting. Can hardly tell Dad
I’m gonna kill a dirty old man for getting Gary’s girl pregnant. Doesn’t seem
right put like that, but as far as I’m concerned the pervy geezer’s outrun his
course.

“Well, this
guy Redfor, I leant him some clothes… ’cos I needed his suit… the funny shiny
red thing I came home in… so I didn’t stand out in the future… and, of course,
Redfor would’ve stuck out like a right prick here in modern – I mean
contemporary
London –
shit
... where was I …?