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I made all this up. Historians and physicists – please do not spit on me in the street. Jodi Taylor
‘History is just one damned thing after another.’ Arnold Toynbee
The pay is terrible and the conditions are worse, but it's a wonderful place to work
You can’t miss it.’ A bit over-optimistic there, I thought. I once got lost on a staircase.
Studying history opened doors to other worlds and other times and this became my escape and my passion.
Silence holds no fears for me. I never feel the urge to fill it as so many other people do.
‘So,’ I said, eyeing him closely, ‘maybe it's good there's no such thing as time travel.’ He raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘Or to qualify further, no such thing as public-access time travel.’ ‘Exactly. Although the phrase “time travel” is so sci-fi. We don’t do that. Here at St Mary's we investigate major historical events in contemporary time.’
‘It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.’
‘Show me a cup of tea and I’ll show you at least two historians attached to it.’
Even as I opened my mouth to ask, there was a small bang from the second floor and the windows rattled. ‘Hold on,’ said Chief Farrell. ‘I’m duty officer this week and I want to see if the fire alarms go off.’ They didn’t. ‘That's good, isn’t it?’ I said. He sighed. ‘No, it just means they’ve taken the batteries out again.’ This really was my sort of place.
Surveying myself in a mirror, I looked like an excited, grey sack with ginger hair.
We enjoy considerable autonomy, but we are answerable to them for our funding. They in turn answer for us to a small and discreet government body who, as far as I can tell, answer to no one below God.
Regular soft explosions from R & D didn’t help with the preservation of the building.
‘If it's not too much bother, may I recommend you evacuate the building right now, please.’ Chief Farrell paused from revealing the secrets of the universe and said, ‘Right, everyone out. Immediately. No, not the door, Miss Nagley, use the windows. Move!’ We clambered out of the windows and joined the rest of the unit on the South Lawn. Major Guthrie's team, wearing breathing apparatus, threw open windows around the building. Something greenish wafted out. We all got the afternoon off.
We weren’t assigned a partner because St Mary's believes the best and strongest partnerships are between those who choose each other. Like marriage, I suppose, but with a lower attrition rate.
‘Rutherford's broken his leg.’ ‘What? Is he OK?’ ‘Well, no. He's broken his leg, you daft bat.’ I picked up my McKisack's The Fourteenth Century and hefted it in a meaningful manner. ‘Is he here in Sick Bay or have they taken him away?’
The Chief is still trying to work out how he accidentally managed to override all the safety protocols and Barclay's got a face like a buggered badger. He's a bit depressed, so we’re off to ply him with alcohol before he loses the will to live. Coming?’
I suspect there are married couples who have less intimate physical contact than we did.
I met Big Dave Murdoch, Guthrie's number two, a real gentle giant, calm and polite. ‘Good morning, Miss Maxwell. Today, I’m going to rob, rape, and strangle you. Shall we begin?’
Weasel shot me a filthy look and, at this point, there was no scribbling at all. Major Guthrie threw down his clipboard and walked off. ‘Oh dear,’ I said to a watching Murdoch. ‘No, you’re OK. He's gone round the corner where no one can see him laugh.’
‘Does anyone actually take this bloody exam?’ ‘Not in living memory. That's the whole point. It's an initiative test. They know we all cheat. It's expected. The trick is to look them in the eye and lie right down the line.’ Well, bloody, bollocking hell!
There was no way I would be wandering around medieval Shrewsbury in early spring with no drawers on.
ostensibly to arrest Henry Hunt who was speaking from a cart. The protestors linked arms to prevent this and were struck down by the Yeomanry, who were, apparently, as pissed as newts.
He was such an insensitive pillock sometimes. ‘You’re such an insensitive pillock sometimes,’ I told him. Swallowing
‘Well done,’ I said. ‘I mean it,’ and kicked the insensitive pillock under the table.
The most reliable method, she always insisted, was to measure people's thighs.
As a rough guide, if the thighbone was longer than the shinbone then you were Saxon. If it was the other way round then you were Norman. I have Saxon legs. I peered sideways at Peterson's.
on one never to be forgotten night, midwifery. I am never doing that again!
was so big it was possible he distorted time and space. He had his own gravitational pull, like a blond planet, and he’d fallen for Kal like a sperm whale failing to clear the Grand Canyon on a bicycle. He thought no one knew.
A solitary non-alcohol soaked neuron began to fire.
‘There was – will be – an outbreak of flu. There's one nearly every year, I know, but this one was a killer. And cruel. It took the old and the young. Anyone from twenty to fifty only seemed to get it mildly. Other people, the ones outside that age group, just dropped and died. It was that quick.
A couple of heart-thumping seconds passed before I was able to say, ‘Thank you.’ He nodded, his eyes on the road. ‘And if you pull over now, I’ll give you the blow-job of a lifetime.’ We hit a tree.
‘I’ll bring him back without a mark on him.’ I made the promise in all good faith.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘There's always tomorrow night.’ But there wasn’t. It only goes to show – take your eye off the ball and Fate, Destiny, History, call it what you will, steps up and just pisses all over your chips.
Back inside, I sniffed. ‘We’ve wrecked the toilet. Can’t you smell it?’ ‘Ah, no, sorry. That would be me.’
‘Me,’ said Weasel, thickly. His nose was broken and bloody. ‘What happened to you? You fall over your own feet?’ I swear he blushed. ‘Go on,’ said Murdoch. ‘Tell her.’ Weasel shook his head. ‘He was hit by a flying body part. A bloody leg flew through the air and caught him right between the eyes.’
Being a teacher she obviously did mind-reading as well.
‘Well, for a start, spicy lamb casserole followed by treacle tart and custard, hot showers, warm beds, more beer than you can handle, and probably a bottle of something potent. But of course, if you’re not interested then I’ll just release you back into the wild, shall I?’ Typically from Markham, ‘So, no women then?’ ‘Tim,’ I said. ‘Open the door and throw him out, will you?’
‘You were able to bring it back because it was about to be destroyed. It had no future; therefore it couldn’t influence the timeline because it wouldn’t exist any more. That's it, isn’t
You’ve seen this unit go through historians like laxatives through a short grandmother.
She grinned at me and I caught a glimpse of the girl who’d stood back to back with her husband the
night they threw the Fascists out of Cardiff. She’d be there.
‘We understand, Doctor. And this site is in Egypt, obviously. An unbreakable rule for the future, everyone. Whatever we rescue remains in that country. This is an Egyptian treasure. It stays in Egypt.
The Christians, showing a level of intelligence not normally associated with the religiously fervent, had pushed off.
There might be anything in there – the exact location of Alexander's tomb, the true story of Cambyses’ lost army, even a note from Plato saying to disregard all that Atlantis stuff – he’d had too much cheese late at night.
An intelligent and perceptive man can read these small signs.’ I nodded. ‘Do you think I’ll ever meet one?’
‘I’m sure I saw you in a dress once. You were clean. And smelled good. Sometimes it seems like just a dream.’ He rubbed my arm and then went away to deal with the others.
They’d found my arm. It was between my shoulder and my wrist, exactly where it should have been. I’d been lying on it. I felt a bit silly.
‘Don’t you come near me you devious, double-dealing, underhand, rat-bastard. I’m going to gut you with a rusty breadknife and then stake your honey-covered arse over an anthill in the noonday sun.’ ‘You’re very grumpy today. And after I picked you up out of the sand and brought you into this nice cool pod. How ungrateful are you?’
He was calm and soothing and had a reasonable explanation for everything. No woman should have to put up with that.
