28
Eventually, after we can put it off no longer, Adam and I walk hand in hand back up to his flat and join the others.
‘The carvings are there,’ Adam tells Barney. ‘Just like Orla said they would be.’
‘Did you look at the doors in the antiques shop too?’ Barney asks. ‘Did they have the same markings on them?’
‘Oh, no, we got a bit … distracted,’ I say. ‘The bark of the tree was very interesting, though.’ I glance at Adam. He smiles.
‘Are we all ready to continue?’ Orla asks, from the sofa. ‘Ben, would you like to begin? Perhaps go back to explaining what happened in the war years?’
Adam and I take our place in the armchair again as Ben begins.
‘As I’m sure the two of you have guessed by now, your great-grandparents were working together on a secret project during the later war years.
It was called Project Eden, for all the reasons that Orla has explained already.
I’m assuming you are all familiar with the biblical story of the Garden of Eden? ’
We all nod.
‘When war broke out in 1939, Archie of course already knew the secret that lay between his bookshop and the shop next door. Dotty’s sister, Amelia, ran that shop as a dressmaker’s at the time, but she was fully onboard with everything that happened in Clockmaker Court.
Both your families have been keepers of the secret for many centuries and that’s what they intended to continue doing – keep it a well-guarded secret.
But when the war continued for longer than anyone expected, and Hitler and his forces continued to advance across Europe, Archie decided that they might be able to use the powers of the portal to help defeat the Nazis. ’
Ben pauses to see if we’re all keeping up, then continues.
‘Archie stepped back from his work at the university and decided to fund himself in his own war effort – Project Eden. He needed help, so he enlisted Dotty, who, because she was the youngest in the family, knew nothing of the secrets of Clockmaker Court, only that her sister had a shop there. Dotty was in the WAAF at RAF Duxford – the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force,’ he adds, in case we don’t know.
‘I did know that,’ I tell him. ‘She was one of the first female engineers there. But I thought Project Eden was funded by the government at the time?’
‘Who told you that?’ Ben asks, his dark brow furrowing.
‘A source,’ I reply cryptically, not looking at Barney.
‘I think that’s what Archie told people who asked,’ Ben says, not bothered in the slightest. ‘He couldn’t divulge the secrets of Clockmaker Court, in case, like I said before, they got into the wrong hands.
So he funded the project himself and paid Dotty to come and work with him.
Dotty had joined the WAAF thinking she’d just be doing clerical work at Duxford, but she quickly ended up in a more skilled hands-on role mending the aircraft.
Dotty was bright and clever – the perfect partner for Archie.
So the two of them began their secret war work in the basement of the old bricked-up building.
The perfect hiding place. Very few knew they were there, and anyone who noticed their comings and goings was told it was for the war effort and they asked no more.
That’s what people did back then. So much was at stake, no one questioned someone else doing something secretive.
It’s just the way it was. Archie entered their office from the bookshop and Dotty from the dressmaker’s. So they were rarely seen together.’
‘Wait a moment,’ I say, interrupting him. ‘You’re saying there was an entrance to the basement from my antique shop as well as the bookshop?’
Ben nods. ‘It’s probably still there.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Funnily, exactly where you positioned George’s old grandfather clock.’ He smiles. ‘You must have sensed it.’
‘Perhaps …’ I think about the wall behind the clock in the shop. There is a recess there – that’s why I stood the clock in it. Was that once a secret door?
‘What exactly was this secret project they were both working on?’ Adam asks. ‘You said it was called Project Eden. But we still don’t know what this big secret is that’s down in the basement. Only that we shouldn’t put the two doors back on the cupboard down there.’
Ben glances at Orla. She nods for him to continue.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t already guessed from what we’ve told you tonight.
Maybe your rational minds don’t want to believe, hmm?
’ He looks first at Adam, then me, and then Barney.
‘They were attempting to perfect the art of time travel,’ he says, pausing to get our reaction.
‘Using the ancient portal that has always been in Clockmaker Court.’
‘Wait, this portal is a time portal?’ Barney asks, a mixture of awe and excitement on his face. ‘But that’s only in movies and books … isn’t it?’
‘Most would assume so. But it seems these things actually exist. Like Orla says about the ancient tree, our portal is a gateway into another world.’
‘But how can that be?’ I ask, finding my voice. ‘Time travel can’t really happen. Everyone knows that. It’s impossible.’
‘Ordinarily I would probably agree with you,’ Ben says, nodding. ‘If I hadn’t experienced it myself.’
‘You’ve travelled in time, Ben?’ Barney asks, his eyes even wider. ‘Oh, my … that’s incredible. Where did you go back to, what year? What was it like?’
Ben turns to Barney. ‘I didn’t go back,’ he says. ‘I came forward.’
Again, sensibly, he waits for us to absorb this nugget of information.
‘I came forward when I was a ten-year-old boy, from 1904.’
‘But you just confirmed to Eve a while ago you were a young boy at the end of the war,’ Adam says. ‘Look, guys, if you’re going to spin us this crazy tale, at least get your facts right. There are far too many flaws to this already.’
‘This is correct,’ Ben says. ‘I was ten years old in 1904, when I met Eve’s great-grandmother, Dotty. It was she who brought me forward in time to 1944.’
There’s absolute silence as everyone tries to process this.
‘Wait, if Dotty brought you forward in time,’ I say, ‘that means she must have gone back?’
Ben nods. ‘That is exactly what happened. Archie and Dotty’s secret project was time travel. They were trying to perfect the process of travelling to exactly the right place and right time in history. They thought if they could do that, they might be able to influence the outcome of the war.’
‘That’s crazy,’ Adam says. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘We know that now,’ Ben says. ‘But you must remember that people were desperate back then. Hitler was far too close to invading this country. People would have done anything to stop him.’
‘When you say they were trying to perfect the process – I’m assuming they didn’t?’ I ask.
Ben shakes his head. ‘No, they tried everything. They both travelled back – usually together to begin with, for safety purposes, I think. But later they began to go independently, in case there were difficulties. They tried to control where they went to and when, but the portal seemed to have a mind of its own. I think they might have got it down to the year, but that was it. Most of the time they could only travel back to Cambridge, and if they did end up somewhere new, then it wasn’t the right year.
The time portal, as far as we know, can’t be controlled.
It seems to be a natural phenomenon created by …
well, we don’t know exactly why it’s there and how it was created.
All we know is, it’s definitely there in the basement of number seven Clockmaker Court. ’
‘But why did Dotty bring you here?’ I ask. ‘You said she brought you here from 1904?’
‘She wasn’t supposed to, of course – it was a sort of accident.
When I met Dotty, she and Archie had been experimenting with the portal for a number of years.
But as much as they tried to figure it out using scientific means, they simply couldn’t control exactly where or when you travelled to when you opened the portal and walked through. ’
‘Is that what all those notes and equations were?’ I ask. ‘In all the books we found? All their different ideas on how to control this portal.’
‘I said they were quantum physics equations, didn’t I?’ Barney says triumphantly. ‘I said they related to time travel, but I don’t think you really believed me at the time.’
‘I did believe you, but it was hard to process,’ I tell him.
‘Just like all this is now, hearing that our great-grandparents were apparently time travellers!’ I suddenly exclaim, turning to Adam.
‘Oh, my goodness – the photos! The photos we found of Archie and Dotty. We thought they were in fancy dress, we couldn’t explain it, but they weren’t – they were actually in those years … ’
Adam looks a bit white. ‘Christ,’ he simply says. ‘That’s mad.’
‘When they travelled together, they took the photos for proof, should they ever need it, that it could be done,’ Ben says.
‘You can imagine what it was like trying to disguise a fairly large camera from the forties in Victorian London, for example. People would have been immediately suspicious. It’s not like they had telephones like you young people do today, that they could easily slip into their pockets and then take secret photos on. ’
‘That’s why there’s a darkroom downstairs – so they could process their own photos without anyone seeing them,’ I say, as so many things begin to make sense.
‘Exactly,’ Ben says. ‘They had the proof should they ever need it, but it was their secret.’
‘But how did you end up here, Ben?’ I ask. ‘You said it was by accident. What happened?’
‘Dotty travelled back to Cambridge in 1904 at a time when I was a bit of a rapscallion.’ Ben looks a little ashamed.
‘I had got myself in trouble with some ne’er-do-wells and I was running from them.
I was a decent pickpocket back then, so I’d been recruited by a gang to work for them.
But when they found out I was keeping some of my trophies for myself, they got a tad annoyed, shall we say? ’