Chapter Thirty

At last Blake had snared a girlfriend. True, she was even larger than him: in girth, income, intelligence and humour, but there tingled mutual attraction and he’d long ago cared nothing for the opinions of his peers.

On Severn Beach, seven kilometres to the northwest of Bristol, Blake and Amelia laughed at each others’ red lips; a consequence of the punnet of fresh strawberries sitting between them. Crumbs cascaded from his juiced lips, onto his tartan travel rug, as he indulged in crunching chocolate biscuits.

He’d been out with girls from his school but, thanks to Internet dating, Amelia was his first real hugging, kissing, friend and his love life had elevated to new levels.

He was convinced, by feeling his neck pulse, that his heartbeat now averaged a hundred per minute, possibly caused by the permanent hard on he’d experienced.

Amelia had told him he didn’t need Viagra, but once he’d found them in Uncle Derek’s bathroom cabinet, he couldn’t resist trying one and then another the following day.

He grinned at Amelia, and she returned a pink-toothed crumby smile as if she knew and desired the same post-picnic activity, even though she’d told him sand made her sore last time.

“I love this spot,” Amelia said, waving her chubby arm at the distant Welsh shore.

“Yeah, especially the bridge. It’s so elegant, five kilometres long, you know,”

Blake said, nodding to his right at the Severn Bridge, the source of the ever-present muffled roar of motorway traffic. Actually, the picnic site wasn’t his favourite, there were more stones than sand and often the stench of rotting seaweed assaulted his nose, but not today. He lifted his face and sniffed. He found a metallic odour like an over-scrubbed metal saucepan. Then cheap rose-petal perfume wafted from Amelia and he smiled.

He brought her here last time—and it thus became their place—because it was the closest railway-accessed beach to Bristol. He should’ve paid more to go further.

On the other hand, it possessed the generic beach features: the hypnotic rhythmic ebb and flo of the small waves, and the beached flock of waders and seagulls, mostly black-headed and herring gulls. They seemed to be having ripples of arguments. No wonder they were called a squabble. He amassed collective nouns as other teenagers collected names for spliffs.

“Isn’t that a hot-air balloon on the other side of the bridge?” she said, “Or is this cider making spots appear in my eyes?”

“Yes to both. Hey you can see the burner flame—I can’t hear it though. Tell those lorries to stop for a minute.”

Amelia lay back, her head resting on Blake’s stomach. “This is bliss, lover. I could spend all weekend here.”

“Yeah,” Blake replied, but didn’t share exactly the same desire. He once missed the last train back to Bristol and spent a long hour shivering in the sea mists, midges and menacing local kids while a taxi took its time to come out to him. In fact, looking at the power station to their left, he’d rather spend time at Bristol Zoo, but Amelia had a fear of crowds and apes.

“Blake, can you see that cloud forming on the opposite shore?”

His stomach lurched as he moved her head and he rose up onto his elbows to grab a better view. Across the blue-grey estuary, the Welsh shore was never very clear. He removed and polished his spectacles with his shirt. The shore remained fuzzy. Then he saw Amelia’s clouds, puffs of darker grey mushroomed at random. He heard a low rumble, similar to the bridge traffic but deeper. On Blake’s left, the flock of seagulls, all facing the same way downstream, took off in a noisy crash of wings, obscuring the sky and his view of the estuary.

Amelia struggled to her knees, and Blake thought about standing as a worrying thought sent shivers through him. As the sky gradually cleared, the opposite bank looked fuzzier and the rumbling noise grew.

“This looks bad, Am,” he said.

“Is it an earthquake? Where should we go?”

“That’s the problem, there won’t be a train for ages. If it’s a quake they say we should be out in the open, and we are.”

“It’s a time decoherence thingy, isn’t it?”

“If it is, it could be over already, but even so there’s nothing we can do.”

“We could pray,” she said.

Blake didn’t know she was religious and there she was on her knees, her lips silently supplicating. Hopes of the event subsiding grew as the rumbling diminished such that the bridge traffic noise once more gained prominence. Then the far end of the bridge lifted to double its height, along with its piles and the nearby ground.

Blake opened his mouth to both gasp and tell Amelia to look up from her praying but words refused to come out. He felt the beach vibrating, forcing him to fall, landing in a sitting position, crushing the remainder of their strawberries and biscuits. The rumbling roared in a painful crescendo as he saw the opposite bank impossibly rise as a black cliff. He thought he heard a penetrating scream from Amelia, but his ears had stopped working and his brain rattled, giving him the worst headache.

“The sea!” he yelled, but no one heard. His eyes remained functioning, giving him image stabilization as the rocking beach rattled his body. He wanted to call out to Derek, the only family member who gave a stuff about him. With remarkable presence he whipped out his picture phone, snapped the opposite bank and sent it to Derek’s number.

The estuary water should be going out to sea, like before a tsunami, but he couldn’t tell if the normal flow was exceeded. The noise from the earth movements opposite hurt not just his head but he could feel his lungs begin to vibrate. He remembered his geography teacher telling the class that if people were around during some the big quakes millions of years ago, they’d have been killed by the noise rupturing their lungs. He folded his arms as if that would help. He found he couldn’t breathe out properly, like during his asthma attacks. Panic setting in, and yet more under control after his other weird experiences, he wondered if he’d put his puffer in the knapsack that morning. Never mind, he thought as his eyes registered the black cliff opposite rise further and the sea now definitely coming towards him; a wave ten or more metres high. This was it, the end. He rolled on the shaking ground to hug Amelia, amazed at grains of sand leaping up and bouncing. He wanted to say something momentous but his headache overwhelmed him. He felt hot, like flu; pins and needles in his fingers—he tried to look at them but as he felt Amelia’s arms hugging him he blacked out.

* * *

The return of consciousness jabbed at his brain and tormented his body. He couldn’t open his eyes so this could be death. He had no control over any of his muscles and yet he felt as if the black wave that had ploughed into him was throwing him around. Perhaps his eyes were already open but he was too deep underwater to see light. Although he couldn’t control his muscles they fought against the forces that gyrated him as if he was trapped in a giant washing machine. With supreme effort he extended his left arm and cried out: “Amelia.”

No reply. No Amelia; she must be out of reach or in her own demented whirlpool. Just a moment, if he was underwater all this time how come he could breathe? The question didn’t apply—he wasn’t breathing. Maybe he should attempt it.

Ah, he was blacking out once more….

* * *

There, he heard his own wheezing, so although he felt exhausted and hadn’t tried putting any muscles to work, he guessed life remained a possibility. With his eyes shut, his ears registered animal scuffling noises that developed into approaching sniffing. He must have been washed up on the beach—his hand beneath him could feel sandy grit. He felt no fear; it had all been beaten out of him and so didn’t register the need to wake up properly. The disaster teams would arrive sooner or later. In any case he should stay immobile to prevent exacerbating medical problems. Nevertheless, the approaching animal, probably a dog, meant he might need to employ defence or avoiding action.

He couldn’t feel any sun on his face, but to avoid possible danger of blindness he rolled onto his stomach, and opened reluctant eyelids. Inches from his face glistened a black nose. Before Blake had time to yell or pull back, the dog licked his face.

“Kur, stop that,” he said, but the dog’s excitement or more likely, enjoyment of tasting twenty-first century sea-salt continued its greeting.

Blake found that in spite of agonizing pulled muscles, he could manipulate his body into a sitting position. It was Oqmar’s cave.

He found himself hugging the dog before his eyes detected the fleas and lice, or his nose smelled unmentionable crud in Kur’s coat. Past caring for his own safety and astonished to be alive, if indeed he was, he continued the mutual embrace.

Blake pondered his situation. Uncle Derek told him that when he was in this cave last time, he’d gone back twenty thousand years. He didn’t know what to believe.

After all, how could he know what it would feel like to travel back in time? The cave, Kur, and Oqmar could easily have been around in the twenty-first century, but carbon fourteen and other dating evidence was too compelling, apparently.

“Kur, why am I back here? I’ve no mini-sphere this time.”

The dog, presumably saline satiated, had curled up in Blake’s lap, an eye looking up at the long lost friend of its master.

“Perhaps my previous journey here created a path, like lightning that repeat-travels along its initial ionized path.”

Blake shooed Kur so he could heft himself to his feet to check out the place, finding he’d landed, if that was the right image, in the larger cave. If he’d arrived another metre to his left he might have fallen down the sphere’s hole. Instinctively he looked up, painfully—rubbing his neck; everything seared him with pain—to see blue sky through the exit hole.

So, he’d arrived back in time but after the mini-sphere had left, possibly many years later.

“Are you Kur, or Son of Kur?”

It must be the original dog or he’d have been more aggressive.

“Let’s go find Oqmar.” At the sound of his master’s name, Kur released a short woof, turned and trotted through to the smaller chamber. The brighter light illuminated sketches on the walls. Blake smiled at the illustration of the sphere, and what must be him with his spectacles and exaggerated jacket and jeans. He looked down—different jeans, trainers and jacket.

Kur waited for him at the bright entrance.

“Hang on a minute, Kur.” Blake wanted to reflect on his extraordinary experience. Pity Amelia hadn’t come through with him. She might have freaked out at all this. but he would have enjoyed comforting her and travelling through this new stage in his inverted existence.

What sort of life was he facing? Assuming Oqmar and his village helped him out, he was likely to starve with no big Macs and no hospitals to keep him alive beyond one score years and ten. Hey, he could invent ice-cream! Excellent.

He felt in his pocket and fished out his mobile phone. Wet, it probably didn’t work, but he tried anyway. No signal. He tapped in a text message to Amelia and a last one to Uncle Derek.

“Back 20k yrs. Put me down as inventor of wheel. Blake.” He hit Send. Maybe an orbiting sphere will pass the message on.

The phone slipped out of his fingers onto the sand. Retrieving it he found the packet of gum he’d left last time. It looked like insects had tried to nibble at the foil but given up. Laughing at the irony of not expecting to return and wondering if that linked him to here, he unwrapped a stick and popped half in his mouth. Kur sniffed back but refused the half Blake offered.

“Very wise, Kur, you shouldn’t get into bad habits. Now, take me to your master.”