Back in Time for Dinner

Back in Time for Dinner by Chris Green

It is Monday morning, but I am not pressed for time. I am off work. An old Tai Chi injury has flared up, and I have been told to rest. I am sorting out things that, in my busy schedule at the kite repair workshop, I never get around to. I have installed all the Windows updates on the laptop and the tablet, run virus checks, and got rid of the junk. I have arranged for a tree surgeon to take a few feet off the weeping willow in the back garden, switched to a new green energy supplier, and cleared the mouldy vegetables from the back of the carousel. Although on the face of it, my partner Danuta is very thorough in cleaning the house, the kitchen cupboard seems to escape her attention.

I spend the rest of the morning watching On Your Bike on Yesterday, along with a welcome repeat of The History of the Harmonica. I have just turned over to watch Back in Time for Dinner on Now and Then when there is a knock at the door. I let it go. I am not expecting anyone. But Alan, our Labradoodle, starts barking feverishly, so I get up to answer it. Perhaps it is Danuta, home early from her part-time job at the Fridge Magnet Advisory Centre. Perhaps she has forgotten her key again. She was in a bit of a fluster this morning after Alan vacated on the carpet.

‘You need to take him for more walks,’ she had shouted up the stairs.

I reminded her that I had been told to take it easy. Dr Robert was quite clear on this point.

I answer the door to find Eddie Matlock standing there. To say I am shocked would not be an adequate appraisal of the situation. I haven’t seen Eddie since I was twelve years old. Not since the incident with Mrs Pocock’s cat. I do a quick calculation. This would have been 1968. The thing is, the Eddie standing across the threshold with a football under his arm still seems to be twelve years old. He is even wearing the same red Manchester United football shirt that I remember with long sleeves and the number 11 on the back and the same green and white Gola Harrier trainers he was so proud of back then. He hasn’t changed a bit. He has the same lank ginger hair and freckles. And the small mark over his left eyebrow where Nick Peterson punched him outside our house and the blood had run down his face. The same gap between his front teeth, which seems too large for his mouth and makes him look a little goofy.

‘Hi, Chris,’ he says, as if he had seen me yesterday.

There is no hint of surprise on his face. He does not seem to have noticed that I am fifty years older, with a fuller figure, less hair and one or two facial scars.

‘Wanna come down the rec,’ he asks?

Eddie was always the one to organise the kick-arounds. He was the one who owned the football. If his team was losing or if he was having a poor game, he would say it’s my ball and head off home with it, leaving me, Mac, Marty, Mike and whoever else was playing, stranded. He had been the one who owned the Scalextric or the train set. He was the only one whose house we could visit freely. He was an only child, so his parents spoiled him. He was always the first one to have the new trainers or the new football shirt or the new Kinks LP.

Eddie is bouncing the ball now with some vigour, waiting for a reply. I think that going to the rec is a little impractical, as the rec he is referring to is two-hundred miles away. And of course, there is my Tai Chi injury to consider. I ask him to come in for a minute, hoping that the improbable situation will somehow resolve itself.

He comes in and makes his way through to the kitchen. I offer him a glass of Tizer. He remarks on the groovy new bottle. This is the first sign that he might be noticing a time warp.

The phone rings. I let it ring, thinking it might make Eddie feel he is being ignored if I take the call. The phone keeps on ringing and Alan starts barking, so I go into the front room to answer it. It is Danuta to tell me she will be working late. Magda and Kinga have not turned up for work, and things are pretty manic at the Fridge Magnet Advisory Centre. Fridge magnets featured on a lifestyle programme on Sky and there has been a run on them. She says she has to go, as there is a queue of people at the desk wondering what is the best thing to put on their Smeg. I do not get the chance to tell her about our visitor. I wonder momentarily whether Danuta might be having an affair. This is the third time this month that there had been a television-led demand for fridge magnet advice. I dismiss the thought. If she were playing away, there would be other signs, like lingerie catalogues coming through the mail, or new bottles of perfume with inappropriate names like Bitch or Hussy appearing on her dressing table. I make a mental note to phone the centre later to see who answers. Meanwhile, I have to get back to Eddie.

On returning to the kitchen, there is no sign of Eddie. Just an empty glass on the work surface by the fridge. I scurry around the house, then the garden, but there is no trace of him. He has vanished.

I don’t think I will be able to concentrate on Back in Time for Dinner, so I decide to pop to the supermarket to buy garbanzo beans and taboule. I also notice when I am cleaning out the carousel that we are getting a little low on guacamole and cactus leaf strips. Although Waitrose is not far, I decide to drive. Against advice from my friend Steve, I recently bought an old Chrysler PT Cruiser. It was not until later that I found out that the Honest John website had likened it to a Ford Prefect on steroids. And John’s was one of the better reviews. Which was presumably why it was so cheap. Now, even the novelty of its retro styling has worn off. It seems to get from A to B though, albeit with alarming under-steer on corners.

I have not seen Holly since the spring of 1976, when we had a brief affair. So imagine my surprise when there she is at the delicatessen counter. With her shoulder-length strawberry blond hair and flirtatious smile, she is unmistakable. She is exactly as I remember her. She has not changed a bit. Her eyes still sparkle the way they did, and she still wears the same pale blue eye shadow and a light coat of black mascara.. Everything about her seems familiar. She even has on the cheesecloth top I bought her from Jean Machine and a pair of flared FU’s jeans with a wide Biba belt. I remember our first date. We went to see The Way We Were, and halfway through I said, this film is rubbish, let’s go back to my place. To my surprise, she agreed.

Back then she was studying to be a chef, and around May time, she found herself with a heavy schedule of exams. With Holly busy revising, I had time on my hands, and one night went to the Uzi Bar. I came home somewhat worse for wear with a barmaid called Rosie. Holly found out that I had slept with Rosie when she came around the next day and found her bracelet in my bed. I did not hear from her again.

However, despite the intervening years, she appears to instantly recognise me. And despite my erstwhile infidelity, she greets me with a big hug. She seems keen to catch up. Still in a state of disbelief, I struggle to find the right words to say, in fact, any words at all. When finally I manage to ask her what she is doing now, she says she is studying to be a chef and has a heavy schedule of exams. She works a few hours at Waitrose to help with bills.

I don’t know if Holly becomes distracted by the new range of retro tableware in the store or if she is just spirited away. But while the delicatessen assistant is weighing out my pitted green olives and taramasalata, she disappears. I search the store and even get the shift supervisor to ask for her on the tannoy, but there is no sign of her.

As I drive away from the store, my head is in turmoil. I run through a red light by Bygones, narrowly missing a Murco tanker, and almost mow down an old lady and her Jack Russell on the zebra-crossing by the Fat Elvis burger bar.

I have flicked through enough of the self-help books that Danuta brings home from the community library to know that I have to pull myself together and get a grip. Perhaps Deepak Chopra or Eckhart Tolle do not express it exactly in these terms, but I take this to be the gist of their message. I put a Brian Eno CD on to relax me and take deep breaths. I pull in by the stretch of water by the leisure centre and sit for a few minutes, listening to the calming cries of the coots and the moorhens. I close my eyes and try to gather my thoughts. I tell myself that whatever is happening, I am not in a life-threatening situation. Everything can be resolved in fifty-five minutes. This, according to someone whose name escapes me, is the time it should take to adjust to any new situation over which you have no control.

I stretch my legs with a gentle stroll around the park. A few joggers are out taking their early evening exercise and one or two people are walking their dogs. When I notice that the black collie-retriever bounding towards me looks a lot like Barry, I think I must be daydreaming. A lot of dogs look alike. I make a quick calculation. Barry would be 35. He would have died years ago. The dog barks excitedly as he approaches. He nuzzles against my leg and then stands on his hind legs with his front paws against my chest, licking my arm affectionately. I identify the heavily chewed black leather collar and the gouge on his neck where the fur is missing, the result of Barry’s tussle with a Staffordshire Bull Terrier in the Gordon Bennett Inn car park. I hear a loud whistle and Barry goes bounding back across the park. I call out to the disappearing figure of Janice in the distance. Janice seems not to hear. I call again. She does not look around. She is a hundred yards away. Yet I feel sure it is her, even though to the best of my information, she moved to Spain shortly after we split up in 1993. The tie-die green denim jacket and the hennaed hair give it away. This is how Janice would have looked in around 1993. She has a Discman on. Probably the one that she used to listen to her Joni Mitchell CDs on. I stumble on a patch of rough ground, and before I know it, she and Barry are getting into the black Orion that Janice and I bought together at the car auction. I remember bidding nervously. Neither of us knew much about cars. We had bought it for £550. I haven’t seen an Orion in years; they were not renowned for their durability. This one, though, seems to be running well. It moves away with a healthy purr. I look back. My car is parked too far away to think about driving after her.

The irregularities of space-time are disturbing. Supernatural forces should remain in the realm of the fanciful. But this temporal upheaval is seemingly real. It is happening now, and to me. I am scared. I feel like vomiting. My hands are shaking. Have I unwittingly uncovered a portal for parallel worlds, been sucked into the hypothetical wormhole? I have read about such things in speculative fiction, but not given it much credence. It takes a heap of deep breathing and another fifty-five minutes of consolidation before I can get up from where I am crouching. People are coming up to me and asking me if I am all right. A gnarled old crone with a Bichon Frise attempts to call an ambulance, a scarecrow with a limp offers me a pull on his hip flask, and a rangy Goth tries to sell me some ketamine.

No amount of Pranayama breathing, philosophical principles or stress management techniques could prepare me for my next encounter. Returning to the Chrysler and noticing that the fuel gauge is low, I stop at the BP filling station. There, at the adjacent pump, someone is putting fuel into a black Fiat Uno. I recognise the registration plate instantly. It is the Fiat I owned in 1997. It takes a split second. I do a double-take, before I recognise that the figure in the brightly coloured paisley shirt and combat fatigues bears an uncanny resemblance to me, as I would have looked twenty-odd years ago. Slimmer and with considerably more hair. A chill runs the length of my spine. This is not like looking at old photos of oneself or a video. This is watching a real living, breathing human being in real-time.

Reality is a fragile concept. Albert Einstein called it an illusion, but a very persistent one. But even this statement suggests there is room around the edges of reality for leakage. Facing myself over a few feet of garage forecourt defies any rational explanation. I am frozen to the spot. I am unable to move. I watch as my doppelgänger feeds fuel into the tank. I study his mannerisms and his gestures in slow motion, and one by one, acknowledge them as my own. I recognise the flick of the neck, the squint against the light showing the lines etched on the forehead, the nervous shifting of weight from one foot to the other as he stands. I remember buying those red Converse All Stars cut-offs from Clic Sargent. My heart races. I feel a tightness in my chest. No doubt about it; the individual I am looking at is me. Amidst the inner turmoil, rational questions like why hasn’t my 1997 personification noticed that the petrol is a little pricey try to find a place in my consciousness. These are swept away by a tsunami of blind panic as I sense my whole life collapsing into a single moment.

My doppelgänger replaces the nozzle in the pump, and as he does. he appears to look right at me, or right through me. Could it have been that he does not recognise me? Or to look at it another way, should that be, I do not recognise me. No one knows exactly what form their ageing will take. It is not something you give a lot of thought to. But of course, Eddie had recognised me, and Holly had recognised me, despite my having changed significantly. And my smell must have been the same to Barry, although this in itself was inconclusive. Barry was always what you might call a friendly dog.

My other swivels round. I think he is about to come over. I feel my legs buckle. This is not like one of those dreams where you dream about a past episode, and the texture of the scenario as it unfolds is surreal. This is in clear focus in the here and now. I am watching myself in an everyday situation in broad daylight. He does not come over. He seems to hesitate in mid-stride and turns to walk in the opposite direction towards the BP shop.

I determine that in 1997, I would have been with Saskia. We were happy back then in our second-floor apartment overlooking the park. At weekends, we would take the children to the pool or go walking in the woods. I remember Saskia and I going to see As Good As It Gets at the Empire, and thinking how appropriate it seemed. Our contentment was, of course, not to last. I went to see Saskia’s commemorative cherry tree in the park recently. Someone had tied a ribbon around it with a bow. It made me feel neglectful of her memory. I have lost touch with Natalie and Josie. They would have left school long ago. At least none of them are in the Uno parked at the neighbouring pump. Their presence would have cranked my present nightmare up another notch.

My other emerges from the shop with an evening newspaper. I read the headline. It is about Diana’s death. Something about a mystery white car in the Alma Tunnel. As he passes, he seems to look directly at me, or through me again. He can be no more than twenty feet away. He gets into the car. As he winds down his window, I detect a hint of recognition…. I don’t detect a hint of recognition…. I’m not sure. My mouth opens to call out to him, but no words come. He drives off. The exhaust from the Fiat is still blowing, exactly as I remember it. I put the pump back without putting any fuel in the car and set out to follow him.

He turns left down Hegel Avenue. I used to live on the Philosophers’ estate. I lived there for over fifteen years, and it occurs to me that wherever we are headed is a run that I made many times. I think back to the types of journey I would have made in the Fiat in 1997. Mostly because of the Fiat’s unreliability, these would have been short journeys. To and from work. To the shops at Kierkegaard Court. Where would I have been likely to have been going at six in the evening? I would usually be back in time for dinner. But sometimes I didn’t finish until late. Perhaps I would be going to visit Mick or Charlie. They both lived in the Schopenhauer Court flats. I might have been going to pick Saskia up from work. I try to recall if she had her own car back then. Memories of her come flooding back once again. We pass the Occam’s Razor pub, where we used to sit out on summer evenings for a couple of halves of Old Poets.

The exhaust of the Fiat in front of me is now belching out black smoke. We seem to be heading back on ourselves as we fork right into Rousseau Gardens. A Brimful of Asha (On the 45) reads a poster outside The Codfather takeaway. This surely is an old poster. Shouldn’t they have taken it down? We pass the Mahatma Gandhi Primary School where Natalie and Josie used to go, and then right at the Karl Marx roundabout. It begins to dawn on me where we are headed. Usually, I would have turned left at the Karl Marx roundabout, taking me home along Darwin Road. Turning right means we are ………..

I wake up in the Lewis Carroll Memorial Hospital. I have sustained multiple head injuries in the accident. I can’t remember much about the actual collision, but after a few sessions with Dr Trinidad, I recall a little about the events leading up to it. An overweight elderly man driving an ugly black Chrysler was tailgating me. It was a model I had not seen before. It was shaped like a hearse, and its registration plate was in an unusual format.

I first noticed this sinister character with his receding hairline and unsightly facial scars at the BP filling station. My attention was drawn to him because he was behaving strangely. He stood there at the pump pointing the fuel hose into the air. He stared at me the whole time I was filling up. For a second I thought he seemed familiar, but I could not place where I might have seen him. The more I contemplated this, the more I imagined I had been mistaken. I put my imagined recognition down to the intensity of his gaze.

When I pulled off, he got into his car without putting any fuel in, and started following me. He kept his distance at first. I took a right at the Karl Marx roundabout into Nietzsche Avenue and ducked into Spinoza Crescent to make certain that he was really tailing me. He was closer now. I slowed down to give him the chance to overtake, but he stayed behind. I sped up trying to lose him, but the Fiat was not very fast. The last thing I remember, I was driving down Descartes Drive. He was tailgating me. Right up against my bumper, driving like a madman.

…… heading for Descartes Drive, where years ago I was rammed by an old maniac in a forties-style gangster getaway car. About fifteen years ago. I was trapped in my…. Fiat Uno.

Copyright © Chris Green, 2024: All rights reserved

An earlier version was posted in 2021 as Back in Time for Tea