Refrain

Chapter 17: Confession

'What's your blood type?'

That was the first thing Kathleen—Lily—asked me, the moment we left Frankie's house behind and everyone with them—Elgar leading his squad of gaping onlookers, reticent Louis, near-maniac K with his salvos of protestations. Now it was just me and her, and the Thames, silent and sightless, flowing backwards beside us as the night thickened.

I didn't answer. With the sun down, I couldn't even get a good look at her car, only feel its numbing spasms in my skin. The irrelevance of her question unsettled me.

'I'm asking,' she shouted from the driver's seat next to me, clearly and steadily, like an anchor sinking its teeth into the engine's flapping waves, 'because I know a way to annul your contract with us,' her eyes thankfully fixed to the road, she turned he face slightly towards me:

'I can show you.'

'I don't need it,' I shouted back.

She seemed quite capable, the most senior time traveller out of the four I'd met so far; but she, too, was helpless against history's callow limitations, and the roaring, silencing engine of a 1901 vintage car. The situation was comically unfavourable towards the talk she'd promised me for our drive.

Even with her reckless auto racing, when we reached the next town, this time with enough streetlights to announce itself amid the turbid darkness, a good half an hour must have passed. Lily pulled the car in front of an inn, the sticky yellow light excreting out of its dinky windows, like honey yielded from a beehive, and banged her side of the door shut on the second try. I followed her out, and not expecting to find any clue, looked around.

'Where are we?' I asked.

'The nearest town with a train station.'

I stopped in my track, and to the grinding of her heels against the gravel ahead, said:

'I'm not leaving.'

The stones went quiet. 'Whyever not?' she asked. 'It's not like he needs you here. He's fending for himself perfectly. Always has been.'

He's dead, your son. I wanted to reveal to her, through gritted teeth. But an antique clavichord on a distant, rainy night rang through my head, and reminded me of the hands that played it, the voice, so cautiously wistful, 'My mother'. So I swallowed the words back down and held my peace.

'He was born and raised here, you know, my Louis,' I heard her say. 'He belongs here like they all belong here, not a single bit less.'

'Maidenhead, you mean?'

She laughed. 'Not just Maidenhead. This world.'

Sensing the confusion in my silence she continued:

'This world. In us musicians' terms: The Late Romantic Period.'

Late Romantic Period. Starting around 1850. Tchaikovsky, Dvořák, Fauré, Puccini.

Elgar.

The skin grew damp against my spine. 'I'm not sure what you mean.'

'It's exactly as you heard it,' she paused her steps, the small stones huddling in quiet anticipation of her next footfall. 'Believe me. He's my child. That's the context that I felt you need. That we owe you.'

My Louis. Born and raised here. I felt my lungs contract. Either I was mad, or she.

'So K wasn't joking,' I whispered, 'You're actually a murderer.'

'How so?' she replied, unshaken.

'How so?' I took a step towards her. She didn't retreat. 'And not just any murderer.' Infanticide! 'Others in your family, when they travel to the past and spend time there—they worry about losing as little as an hour of their lifespan,' my breathing had gained edges, grown ragged, 'and you let him spend his entire childhood here? A good whole century away?'