Chapter 2 Passages in Time #3
He was not sure whether it was kindness or curiosity, but she decided to help him.
It had involved lying to the hospital. She told him that if he explained to the staff that he’d remembered his name and where he lived, they would let him go.
“Say that you woke and remembered everything. Tell them you are a tour guide at Marlborough Mills. Say your wife is away, but that you have a place to stay with me.”
She confirmed with the infirmary staff that she had a room he could stay in (the room he was now in), and that she would be responsible for him. She reassured the staff that he’d attend any outpatient treatment needed, and she would ensure he got safely back home.
The journey to her home brought more horrors – travel in a horseless carriage at speeds he’d never have believed possible, on roads almost as smooth as glass.
Was this really Milton? The skyline resembled nothing he had seen before.
Where were the soot and grime from the chimneys that powered the mills?
Where were the mills? Where were the workers’ houses?
All he could see were large towers of glass and brick.
Rows upon rows of back-to-back houses were gone.
She’d glanced over at him a time or two during the journey, aware of his gasps of fear and horror at what he was seeing. “Perhaps if you were to close your eyes, things would not seem so alarming.”
“I don’t think so, Miss Hale – while travelling at such speed, I need to keep my eyes open.”
By the time they finally arrived at her house, his head hurt worse than it ever had and exhaustion seeped into his every muscle.
He was even too tired to offer more than a token protest when he realised that Miss Hale lived alone.
He had questions for her, but she suggested that he get cleaned up, eat, and then rest – tomorrow was soon enough to talk.
She showed him the bathroom, where more things puzzled and challenged him.
She told him that the glass cupboard was a shower and that he’d feel better once he’d washed away the smoke and grime from the fire.
She pointed out bottles of shampoo and shower gel – liquid soap for his hair and body.
She also gave him a small brush for his teeth and a tube containing what he supposed was something to clean them with.
Finally, she’d placed a large towel and clean clothes on a rail attached to the wall.
The clothes, she explained, belonged to her brother Fred.
He had left a few things at her home while he was on leave from the Royal Navy where he was a radio operator.
He nodded, but had no idea what a radio was, let alone how a person operated one.
Once he worked out how to turn the shower on, he loved it, even if he didn’t understand how it worked.
The warm pulsating water helped ease the ache in his muscles, and the steam lessened the tightness in his chest. The soap was unlike anything he had seen or smelt before, but it removed all traces of smoke and dirt from his skin.
He dried and pulled on the strangely casual garments she left.
They had no fastenings of any description; one just pulled them on – in a way, they resembled his undergarments, but Miss Hale had called the clothes jogging gear.
He’d shaken his head at that. It wasn’t just everything around him that was different; even the language was unfamiliar.
What was ‘jogging’? And the only gears he knew were parts for the engines that powered the looms in Marlborough Mills.
The mill! He needed to know how bad the damage was, and if anyone had been hurt.
Thank God the fire had broken out early in the morning before the workers arrived; casualties would hopefully be few.
What of his mother and sister? How could he find out if they were all right?
He’d asked at the hospital, but all they could say was that they had no record of anyone else being admitted to hospital.
He picked up his pocket watch, the only thing he owned that had belonged to his father.
Miraculously, it was undamaged by the fire.
Five o’clock; he was normally up by now getting ready for the shift to begin.
Was it too early to rise? He couldn’t help it if it was; he had to find out about his mother and sister.
He had to get back to his own time and find out who started the fire.
The voice that had called out to him was familiar – he was sure he knew to whom it belonged but try as he might he couldn’t put a name to it.
He thought he knew why he had been targeted.
His views on worker’s rights and conditions were unpopular with many other mill owners whose own workers were demanding the same working conditions as at Marlborough Mills.
But, which of them would go so far as to start a fire?
He had to find out; as much as the dark and quiet soothed him, he would not find the answers lying here in bed.
But how and where should he begin? He supposed his only choice was to return to the scene of the fire – to return to Marlborough Mills.
This decision made, he rose and left the bedroom to head slowly down the stairs, being careful to make no noise and disturb his benefactor.
He intended to leave a note thanking her for her help, but as he stepped off the staircase, he realised he needn’t have been so quiet, for his hostess was up.
She was looking at another of those strange windows he had seen at the hospital, staring intently at something written on it.
She turned at his step.
“Good morning, Mr. Thornton. Did you manage to get some rest?”
“A little. I’m glad you are awake. It means I can thank you for your help instead of just leaving.”
“Leaving? Where are you going?”
“I have to return to the mill – the answer to what is going on has to be there.”
“Mr. Thornton, you won’t get near the mill. It will be closed off.”
“I have to get back home. I need to know if my mother and sister are safe.”
“Your mother and sister – you speak of Hannah Thornton and Fanny Watson?”
“Watson – so my sister married him then?”
MJ sighed. It seemed her guest still believed he was John Thornton. She wasn’t humouring him by going along because she had the power to ease his distress about his family.
“Your mother and sister are safe. Come here, I’ll show you.” She patted the sofa next to her. He moved to join her but stopped when he realised how immodest her clothing was.
“Miss Hale – I cannot sit in such close proximity to you. While I suspect what you are wearing probably passes for clothes in the twenty-first century, it certainly does not in the nineteenth.” He glanced at her bare legs. “Your near-nakedness embarrasses me and should shame you.”
“Mr. Thornton, this IS the twenty-first century and my clothes are acceptable, so I feel no shame. However, I can see that as a nineteenth-century gentleman, you are embarrassed and so I will go and change into something less revealing. There is a tea bag in the mug and the kettle has just boiled. Milk is in the fridge--that is the white thing in the kitchen. Help yourself while I change out of my shorty PJs and into something less revealing.”
He was so busy trying to work out what a teabag might be that he missed the fact that she had called him a nineteenth-century gentleman.
Chapter Three
MJ wondered if she was losing her mind. It wasn’t that she had taken a strange man into her home; her parents, God bless them, had always said she’d been collecting waifs and strays for years.
It was that she was even entertaining the notion that this man could, as he claimed he was, be from the nineteenth century.
The idea sounded insane, but there were things about him that pointed to his being a man out of time.
It wasn’t just his incredible likeness to the image of John Thornton hanging in the Milton art gallery – lots of people had doppelg?ngers – or his strange way of speaking and his unbending manners; such things could be learned.
It was his complete bewilderment at his surroundings and his terror at everyday sights and sounds.
Surely even the most feted thespian in the world couldn’t be that good of an actor.
Take now, for instance. He stood in front of the fridge, opening, and closing the door, his expression one of complete confusion.
Those were the things that kept her awake the previous night until she could stand it no longer and got up to study her research on John Thornton. This puzzled her even more — she knew she needed to share this research, and not just with the man in her kitchen.
“It’s called a refrigerator. It keeps food fresher longer by keeping it cold. It works better with the door shut,” she added as he opened and closed the door again.
“How is it so cold?”
“I’m not a scientist, but it has to do with a gas that circulates throughout it. The motor is electric. And before you ask, that’s a type of power.”
“I know about electricity; I attended a lecture by Faraday about electromagnetism – amazing man.”
“Faraday? Did you meet other Victorian scientists?”
“Several. After my father’s death, I had to enter the business and was unable to continue with my studies. But I enjoyed attending lectures. Many scientists give lectures here in Milton, and I am often in London on business.”
“Of course you are,” MJ muttered.
“Is that sarcasm, Miss Hale? We are not used to that in the North.”
“No, it’s not. I was just thinking that a businessman such as you would often travel to the capital.”
“Indeed, I have only lately returned from the Great Exhibition.”
“The Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace?”
“Yes, that one. I suppose you will have seen the great glass palace built to house it?”
“Sadly, no – like the mill, it was destroyed in a fire many years ago now.” MJ watched as Mr. Thornton’s flawless complexion paled.