A Park Winter
A Park
Winter
I open my eyes. I am not me, observing, but someone else. I have slid into the body of a young woman, and I’m freezing cold.
My scuffed black boots are embedded in snow.
It’s thick and twinkling like tiny diamonds.
I look down at my dress. It’s long and black and very plain.
My eyes catch sight of my hands. I spread my fingers wide and am horrified at the rawness of the red skin and the dry, ragged nails.
They’re the hands of a scullery maid, or someone whose job it is to scrub with water and harsh soap.
No Fairy Liquid for these hands, or rubber gloves.
I gaze about me. I believe I’m still in Central Park, but it’s very different.
The trees around me are young and spindly, beyond them I see a wide track upon which horse-drawn sleighs glide over the snow.
Elegant women walk side by side in long cloaks and hats, their hands buried in fur muffs.
A man pulls a child on a wooden sled. The child is giggling happily.
A dog trots behind, then gets distracted by a pleasant smell and cocks its leg on a lamppost. My breath fogs on the air.
Above me the sky is a pale, duck-egg blue.
I see no skyscrapers, only trees, shivering in the cold as I am.
I walk through the snow, trying to work out where I am – if, indeed, I’m in New York at all.
I don’t have a muff, only some sort of hat.
I’m freezing. As I emerge over a mound I see on the other side of it a large, frozen lake.
Dozens of people are ice skating: boys in breeches and caps; men in frock coats and hats; women, arms linked, moving slowly over the ice in their long skirts, short jackets and bonnets.
Beyond them an enormous, yellow stone building with three pointed gables stands alone.
It looks vaguely familiar, but I have no idea what it is.
It’s then that I spot a newspaper discarded on a wooden bench. I seize it. It’s The Evening World. To my disappointment I read, New York, Saturday December 7, 1889.
Join the Nellie Bly Guessing Match
And You May Take
That Free Trip to Europe
I have no idea what that means. I do know, however, that in 1889 Cavill is in England. Why has the Law of Attraction brought me here if he is in St Sidwell?
I sit down in frustration. It’s clear to me that I cannot engineer my slides.
I don’t know whether that’s because I don’t know how to, or because I’m not meant to, or because I don’t have something of Cavill’s to link me to him.
Perhaps I’ve been overthinking and Cavill’s presence on the Titanic was nothing more than a wonderful coincidence.
One which won’t be repeated. I slump over the newspaper in despair.
How will I ever see him again? I cannot accept that I won’t. That I can’t.
‘Mary! Mary Connor … !’ I lift my eyes to see a young woman with a red face glaring at me. She’s wearing the same sort of dress as I am, and she’s shivering too. ‘Would you come now please!’ she exclaims crossly in an Irish accent. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’
There’s no point staying another minute in this time and place. Besides, I’m numb with cold.
I close my eyes and will myself home.