Chapter 1 #2
to change back, for myself to wake up. I can wait on top of this hill for a long time, I told no one. Surely the disrepair
will repair itself if all I do is wait.
Here are the things I was wearing and had on my person: a pair of white Reebok trainers, white socks, black running shorts and underwear, a white T-shirt with a navy blue line drawing of a cartoon octopus printed across it, my wallet which contained no cash, just two credit cards, a debit card, and various rewards cards; the keys to my flat; the entry fob to my building; my phone; and a tangled pair of headphones.
I no longer had Matilda’s lead in my hand, nor Matilda obviously, but there were long strands of her hair stuck to my shorts, which I brushed off.
I checked my phone. It still had 10 percent battery, but no cellular or Wi-Fi signal. Like a freak, I took a photo of the
view from the hilltop and the photo on the screen looked modern and normal, like I was out on a hike at a nature reserve somewhere—and
you would believe it if the Thames wasn’t right there, bending the same way it always bent, like a familiar guide smiling
at my lostness, saying hello, you’re not supposed to be here right now, please kindly could you leave.
I started to panic again. I walked downhill, I had to move. Everything was so loud! My feet roared with every step and kicked
up dust. I pushed through bulky shrubs and stubborn, slanted trees, and soon there came signs of development, but nothing
I could understand. I passed small enclosures built from rocks, wooden posts, a faint trail carved across a clearing, ivy
that had been cut back, and crude hedgerows. These were signs of life but not my life, not anything close to it. I was trespassing.
Surely I was out in the country or something. I had had a psychotic break and wandered all night.
A woman and two children appeared on the path in front of me—I saw them and they saw me and we all froze.
I gasped. It was like I was seeing humans for the first time in my life.
Their clothes were brown and goldenrod. The woman wore a sort of tunic with deep pockets, sleeves, and a cap on her head.
The two children wore similar tunics, which were essentially rectangular tubes of fabric fitted to them.
But it was their faces—their bodies—that shocked and made me stop.
Their faces were normal. I don’t know what I mean by normal, but that’s the best I can describe it.
Their expressions, their eyes, how they darted, the way they breathed as any other human would breathe, how they blinked—they were like me, like anyone else. I struggled to speak.
They stared at me but kept walking down this simple dirt trail that cut through the thicket. The children looked over their
shoulders and stared longer, until the woman said something to them I couldn’t understand, ushering them along.
“Hey,” I called after them, but the woman pretended not to hear. They walked faster and disappeared. I listened to their footsteps
trampling down the dirt path until they were far away, and yet I could still hear them and their voices, echoing through the
trees as if we were sharing a small, private room. “Hey,” I said again, but quieter this time. I exhaled.
I followed the same path down to the end of the park—of course I couldn’t be sure where the park actually ended as there were
no roads or walls and there was no “park” to speak of, but the trees thinned out and the trail became wider and more solid,
more like a road. There were wooden fences in places now, stones that had been stacked together for purposes I couldn’t assume,
swaths of meadowland that appeared to have been divided up and tamed. There were crops. There was a collection of small buildings
in the distance.
“Shit,” I said out loud. Again my voice sounded so strange. It rattled my brain when it left my mouth, unmuffled, too crisp.
I was acutely aware of the movement of my tongue, how sharp the T-sound sounded. I said shit because this was ridiculous. “What the hell. I can’t—this isn’t—what the.” I stuttered and shook, talking to myself, afraid
to walk any closer to the settlement—to Greenwich! To my flat! I lived over there! My flat, which I couldn’t afford to live
in anymore, with the view of the river, the Waitrose downstairs, the coffee shops, the pedestrian bridge, the pub along the
water. It was right in front of me but it wasn’t there! It wasn’t there!
A man’s voice sounded from behind me. His intonation was like that of a greeting, like saying “hey” but it sounded more like
“hail,” like a guttural tic. I jumped and turned around.
An older man, weathered and red, was sitting on the ground against a fence on the side of the road. He wore almost the same
type of clothes as the woman, only more tattered and wrinkled. His fingernails were long and mangled. He was barefoot. He
sat in a crouched manner, it didn’t look comfortable, but he was smiling at me, teeth all broken. He repeated his strange-sounding
greeting and nodded his head, inquisitive.
“Hi,” I said.
Eh?
I walked tentatively toward him. I looked down the road, then back at him. He was still smiling, pointing at me now. He spoke
a full sentence and truly for the life of me I couldn’t understand him.
Hah-eel been fareh yeh?
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve just come from the park and I don’t know what—”
Koonst ow spekest thow ayngleesh?
“I don’t know what’s going on.” My voice mumbled off.
I stood next to the man and gripped the fence.
I had to hold on to something to steady myself.
Everywhere I looked, everything I heard, dismantled my senses, and I was afraid I would pass out.
Time travel? How could my mind so easily make such an assumption when just saying hello to a stranger was overwhelming.
The old man kept speaking to me, asking something, repeating himself. He noticed my trainers and pointed at them and said
something loudly. I said sorry again, shook my head, that was all I could do. I closed my eyes and leaned against the wooden
rail. The sun bore down on us. The man’s voice sounded as if we were inside a soundproof recording studio. Everything that
made up the essence of him—his rugged breath, the wetness in his speech, the movement of his clothing—strummed illegible rhythms
right inside my ear and I winced at the sharpness.
“Where am I?” I demanded. My voice was too loud, I couldn’t get a grip.
Eye ben marvey-loos yeh shoes thow kanst understant?
“No. Where am I? Where are we?”
Been boath stuk hey-er outen ah wey. Ha ha.
“Greenwich?” I said and pointed down the road. “Greenwich?”
Grenwych?
“Greenwich.”
Gren ich?
“Greenwich.”
No—Grenwych.
“OK, Grenwych,” I said, trying to imitate him.
The man laughed. And surprisingly, despite my panic and the world that was spinning too loudly, too lush, too green, something in my heart floated up.
We had communicated, just barely, but we had communicated.
Contact. Greenwich. I had said it wrong, or wrong to him, and he had corrected me.
Oh my God. I smiled. I laughed. Oh God, oh God.
The old man kept talking, now even faster. His language was thick and coated in heavy-sounding syllables that dug deep into
the dirt. He pointed at my shoes again, he patted his cheeks and laughed. He pointed at the octopus print on my shirt. His
gnarled yellow fingernail. All I could do was smile and apologize while I tried to think what to do next.
Al hayle! the old man suddenly yelled. Al hayle! He waved his arm at someone behind me and called again. I turned.
Two men were coming down the road. They were younger—they looked about my age, both were dressed in the same sort of tunic
and rags as the old man but cleaner. Again the normalcy of their faces was the only thing I could focus on. Their faces were
the sorts of faces I would see on the tube. Just two young men, with whole lives, features, and quirks behind their eyes.
They saw me and looked puzzled, almost wary.
The old man called them over and they approached slowly.
It was my clothes that set me apart from everyone.
I started to worry. I had no means of explaining myself.
Even if I knew what I needed, I wouldn’t know how to say it.
I could say “Greenwich” again in that strange way the old man had said it.
I could point. I heard the old man say it again when he spoke to the men.
All three of them talked back and forth.
Their language was strange and barbed, slurred into each word, sounding almost German, but with an Italian inflection, each voice with its own life, tics, timbre.
One of them gestured to me. The old man kept laughing about something.
One of the young men coughed—that was weird because coughs sound the same in any language, to any ear.
He cleared his throat and spit. He wiped sweat off his face with his tunic.
It seemed unreal. Their faces, their gestures, and how they moved felt so natural and recognizable, but I couldn’t understand a word they said and I had nothing to say for myself.
They were unplaceable and so was I. I had no home, no reason, no sense of time.
No life. I felt it all slipping out from under me again.
One of the men addressed me directly but his words, this language, was like an offering of slop I could only shake my head at, step back from.
I was more passive with the two young men.
Something about being closer to them in age, I felt a self-consciousness I hadn’t felt with just the old man, a more desperate admission of purposelessness.
I wanted to fall in line, but I didn’t know where the line was.
The man asked me a question. I said sorry what and he asked again. He stepped forward. There was a seriousness in his tone,
a hint of aggression. I hesitated.