‘Her name’s Amy,’ he went on. ‘Amy Stelanko and she’s from Iowa and Dad doesn’t like her but I do. Her dad, she calls him Pop, works over here, except they’ll be going back when I’m in the Upper Sixth.’
Gavriela’s friend Jane from Imperial had married the boy she went out with at school, and remained happy. So Gavriela took Brody seriously, instead of dismissing a teen romance.
‘Things will be tough,’ she said. ‘When she goes back.’
And at a time when Brody would be concentrating on his A-levels, or should be.
‘I do want to go to Uni, Gran,’ he said. ‘Mr Stelanko said that if I apply to Cornell or somewhere, then he’ll help me.’
‘Living in a foreign country, that’s really tough.’
‘Oh.’ Brody sank in on himself. ‘Right.’
For the first time he looked like the sulky teenager his father had been.
‘Which means you’ll need my help,’ said Gavriela. ‘And you get that under one condition.’
Brody’s face cleared.
‘You need to bring Amy round here,’ Gavriela went on. ‘I want to meet the thief who stole my grandson’s heart.’
Blushing and laughing, Brody agreed.
Amy turned out to be a wonderful girl, pretty and smart and interested in psychology, and who listened, wide eyed and riveted, as Gavriela told her about meeting Sigmund Freud a long time ago. Then she told Amy she was welcome to come back any time, and she meant it.
When the end of summer came, Gavriela’s sense of heartache grew large as she realised just how much Brody’s presence had brightened her world. With a shock, as he came into the drawing-room dressed in T-shirt and jeans on the evening before leaving, she realised he had turned from a boy into a muscular young man during just six weeks.
‘I’m over two stone heavier,’ he told her. ‘Fourteen kilos, and hardly any fat.’
Clearly the weights and the milk had come at just the right time in his development. They talked over the logistics of getting his boxed-up weights sent home, then the conversation trailed off, until Gavriela found herself saying. ‘We’ve talked about your future, but there are some things I’d like to tell you about. I mean my past.’
‘Dad says . . .’ Brody shrugged his now-bulky shoulders. ‘He says you had a tough time of things, and won’t ever talk about it.’
Gavriela guessed Carl had worded it differently.
‘There’s a great deal I’ve never been able to share,’ she said. ‘My war work was classified, but people are starting to learn about Alan Turing and Enigma, though much of it will stay secret for a lot longer than—’
‘Bletchley Park?’ said Brody. ‘You mean you worked there?’
‘We called it BP, and I certainly did . . .’
It felt good to pass the memories on.
Gavriela stayed away from Carl’s wedding at the start of October. Brooding more than usual, she wondered if Carl might have another child, and if so, whether he would treat this one more kindly. That night in bed, as she closed her eyes, her hands wrapped around her book, she saw in her imagination the note she had written while asleep on a previous notable night, when she learned of her great-niece’s abduction.
That was when dear Rupert was still alive, and he had taken her to the SIS outstation on Chester Terrace, the mansion overlooking Regent’s Park. Its parquet flooring was dug up during renovation, allowing her to hide the note and photograph intended for an unknown future recipient. You will see three. You will be wrong. G P.S. Pass it on! κ∞ = 9.42 ; λ∞ = 2.703 × 1023; μ∞ = .02289
That was the note, she remembered as she descended into sleep, which she had wrapped around an old photo of herself with Ilse, to act as a form of identification – to the extent her actions made rational sense. It was Ilse’s granddaughter that Dmitri had kidnapped, and it seemed right to use that picture, though the name would likely mean nothing to whoever read it in the future.
The next morning, Gavriela realised she had done it again.
She awoke with the same notebook open atop the bedspread, and a new message written inside. The cruel thing was, the handwriting looked as if she had penned the letter prior to her stroke.
Dearest Lucas,
How wonderful to have a grandson! My words will seem very strange, since we do not know each other and I speak from your past. Still, I must ask you a favour, and be assured it must be this way. Even banks can fail over time, although it is to be hoped that some familiar names survive, so I am forced to contact you in this indirect way, with the hope that you will feel curious enough to investigate as I tell you.
Please, my grandson, look under the parquet flooring, in the right-hand outer corner as you look out the window at the park. Love, Gavi (your grandmother!) X X X
If Carl named a future son Lucas, then that would be the final indication, to Gavriela’s satisfaction, that she was not insane, that this phenomenon of information propagating backwards in time was real. This letter seemed to be a logical piece in a very illogical puzzle.
She had hidden the previous note and photograph, information that might prove useful against the darkness, beneath the floor in an out-station of the Secret Intelligence Service. It was the safest of locations, yet it had also seemed insane – how would the intended recipient even find the thing? This new letter was more explicit, to the extent of naming an unborn grandson.
It carried other implications: that she might never see the new baby, and in any case would never get to know him as an individual.
Should I have gone to the wedding?
Somehow, this unknown Lucas – he would be Lucas Woods, she presumed – would need to receive this letter, which in turn would enable him to retrieve the secreted note and photo. Not knowing what else to do, she folded up the new letter and tucked it inside Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the book she had been reading when she fell asleep.
How do you send a message to the future?
Runes could be carved in stone with relative ease, the advantage of such angular futharks, the alphabets. But what was the modern equivalent of scratched lines?
‘There’s nothing simpler than a bit,’ she muttered.
There was a tap on the bedroom door, and Ingrid looked in.
‘I thought I heard you say something.’
‘Nothing important, but I am awake.’
‘Let’s get you to the bathroom, then.’
Accepting Ingrid’s assistance was better than using a bedpan or commode. It seemed so unfair that you could fight for so long and life would come to this; but fairness was not a characteristic of the universe, only of humans at their best.
Philosophy while you go to pee.
When the humdrum details were finished and she was settled in her wheelchair, wrapped in her dressing-gown and ready for breakfast, Gavriela made a detour into her ground-floor study – Rupert had called it his writing-room – where her Compaq lay switched off.
During operation, at any instant, every location in the computer’s memory register would be either true or false, one or zero. Right now, while it was off, the state was what Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, called mu.
It was nothingness; it was neither-nor.
And it struck Gavriela as more profound than she had first thought.
‘Gabrielle? I’ve poured your tea.’
‘Ich komme jetzt, Ingrid.’
‘Also gut, Frau Doktor.’