Allergic To Time (24 page)

“Something that people in the 70s actually wore, not something that characters from a movie set in the 70s wore,” he shot back at me.

We were only one stop away from the main Glebe tram stop, where I knew we would be getting off. I looked beside me to make sure I had all my belongings in my bag and hooked the strap up over my shoulder. I began to stand up, preparing to head for the exit. Martin looked around, realised where we were and followed suit. As we stood up together and began to walk down the aisle, I turned around and noticed that somewhere along the way a student I recognised from one of Martin’s undergrad classes — one I had tutored — must have gotten on the tram. He was eyeing us suspiciously, looking back and forth between us and raising an eyebrow.

“Oh great,” Martin muttered and turned away toward the door. “I know what he is thinking.”

“Yes,” I replied. “The...err...rumours. About us,” I said, nervously, and looked away without making eye contact. We had still not exactly talked about any of that. There was an uncomfortable silence between us, but thankfully the tram stopped and the doors swung open, forcing us to hurry towards them before they closed again and we were forced to wait for the next stop. We made it out just before the doors shut and made our way down the tram stop steps up towards the exit onto Glebe Point Rd. We had to walk up an incredibly step hill to get there, and I had to stop halfway to catch my breath. Martin kept walking at a slow pace ahead of me, but after a couple of seconds he had to stop for breath as well.
 

“This hill’s pretty tough,” he said, doubling over and panting slightly.

“Yeah,” I said, pausing again and panting for breath myself. “But you’re old.”

“Thanks!”

“Well you are,” I said, in a teasing tone. “I’m still in my 20s. I should be able to climb this thing no hassles.”

“Your lungs,” Martin said, his breathing settling down a bit. “They’re not healthy. They must have been affected by your trip when you were so young…”

That explained why I was in the hospital for so much longer than Martin had been the week before. Why the trip had hit me so hard, despite it being only a relatively short trip through time: barely three months. I nodded, standing up straight. “I thought I just had asthma.”
 

We continued up the hill at a snail’s pace, with Martin ahead of me just slightly. I looked at the back of his head and I allowed myself to smile, pleased that, for the first time in a long time, I felt like I could trust him again.
 

***

Martin’s house was much the same as it had been months — weeks? — earlier. Same old fuddy-duddy brown leather lounge chairs, same old bizarre war memorabilia hanging off the walls.

“Ohhh...” I said, as a thought occurring to me. I sat my bag down and made myself as comfortable as I possibly could on one of his hideous arm chairs. “Do they give this stuff to you? As souvenirs?”
 

He looked confused. “Give what to me?”

“All this crap in your house,” I said gesturing to the walls. “Do the time travellers give it to you? I thought you just had terrible taste! But —“
 

“...No. I collect it.”

“Oh.” I shut up.
 

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I just didn’t know you were so into...warfare.”

“I’m not, really. It’s history. Not just wars. War just happens to be a big part of history.”

“Ah, so it is sort of a time travel thing.” I raised my eyes at him. Maybe, during all these years we had been on the same side all along: we’d both been obsessed with time travel.
 

He shrugged and half nodded. “Yeah, I guess maybe it is.”

“So,” I said, “What time is Fanny meant to be meeting us here?” Even though Fanny had told us she would see us in the morning, she had called the hotel later that evening, saying she needed to meet up with us as soon as possible, that there had been a change of plans. Martin had told her we would meet her back in Glebe, since she was familiar with where he lived.
 

Martin glanced at the time on the wall behind him. “In about twenty minutes.”

“Wonderful,” I said, in a tone which came out far more sarcastically than I had intended it to.
 

Martin looked at me quizzically. “Don’t you like her?”

I shrugged. “I see that you do,” I said, looking down at the floor.

“Yeah, of course I do. We’ve been really close ever since I investigated her case.”

I played with the strap of my handbag, still not looking up. “So are the two of you...?” I managed to glance up at the end of my question to read the look on his face.
 

“Are we, what?”

I gave him a suggestive look. “Are the two of you, you know, ‘extra close’?”

“Oh,” he said, recoiling a bit. “No. No, I wouldn’t want you to think that.”

“Why wouldn’t you want me to think that?”

He shifted uncomfortably, and even reached automatically for his collar, pulling at it a bit. “I don’t...well, I don’t know, I just wouldn’t want you to think I was…acting unprofessionally or anything. I suppose.” He stood up. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

“Sure,” I replied, watching his back turn as he left for the kitchen. I lay back in my seat and sighed. I thought back to what Robert had said, about Martin having feelings for me. I was starting to think that it was all based on this weird obsession Martin had developed with my time travel case: nothing more, nothing less. And anyway! As if anything could ever, ever, happen between the two of us. For one thing: relationships between students and their supervisors were strictly forbidden. Not that we had jobs anymore, mind. But there were other factors as well. I mean, Martin was not even my
type.
He was so serious, and he collected antique war memorabilia, and he was far too old for me, and regardless of that: I mean, he didn’t even like me. He probably just put up with me because he felt some kind of responsibility for me after getting involved with my father all those years earlier. Guilt, or something.
 

He came back into the living room with two cups of tea. I would have preferred coffee, but I took a swig from my cup anyway. It hit my still uneasy stomach, calmly it slightly. Martin cradled his cup between both hands and looked down into the steamy liquid. “You still haven’t heard from Robert?”

I shook my head. “I couldn’t even if he tried to get in contact: no mobile phones, remember? I mean, even if I hadn’t lost mine, Robert doesn’t know how they work, anyway.”

Martin pulled a face.
 
“Sure…” he muttered.
 

“What?” I asked. Even though I hadn’t been eager to linger on the subject of Robert now that we were finally getting along, I was unable to let it go altogether.
 

“Nothing...”

“No, what?” I put my cup down on the table and leaned forward. “Is this still about Rob lying?”

Martin sat up and sighed, frustrated. “Yes it is still about Robert lying!”

“Unbelievable.”

He scoffed. “I would be willing to put good money on that guy being able to use a smart phone.”

I stood up abruptly, knocking my full tea cup off the table and spilling it all over Martin’s hideous rug. “Crap, I’m sorry,” I said, kneeling down to pick the empty cup up but not really sure what to do about the brown liquid pooling onto the carpet. At least it matched the ugly pattern.
 

“It’s okay,” he said, leaving to get something to wipe up the spill. By the time he returned my anger had subsided a bit. As he leant down to mop up the tea, I grabbed him by the arm. “Martin. Just be straight with me okay. About Rob. Do you really have any actual reason for thinking he is lying to us, or is this really just because you don’t like him? Because I have to know.” I was still on my hands and knees on the rug, my head bent over and my jet black hair hanging in a mop over my face. “I can’t stand any more lies.” I sat up and rested on my ankles. Our faces were inches apart from each other.
 

Martin leant back slightly and put the cloth down on the table. “Look, I can’t be certain. I just have a feeling about him,” he said, pronouncing the word ‘feeling’ like he was embarrassed about it. Which he should have been.

“Well, that’s scientific,” I replied dryly.
 

“Come on, don’t you suspect he’s lying, at least a little bit?”

I sat there silently for a moment. Then I took a deep breath and began with, “Well...maybe...”

“See!” Martin exclaimed. Boy, he’d really jumped all over that. I didn’t appreciate that fact that he was taking such glee in the slightest sign that I might distrust Robert.
 

“It’s not that I think he is lying,” I hastened to add. “Really. I don’t. But I will admit that a few things he has said to me have been a bit off, I suppose.” I thought back to some of our conversations in Nelson Bay, a couple of moments where I remembered I’d taken pause at the time, thought that something was not quite right.

“I mean, the most obviously strange thing is that he doesn’t want to track down his family. It’s only been 40 years: some of them might still be alive.” I looked at Martin. “Do most time travellers want to track people down, once they’ve come to terms with what has happened to them?”

He nodded. “Definitely,” he said firmly. “They are usually desperate to find anyone they still know. If they are lucky enough have anyone still alive on the planet.”

I nodded slowly, reluctantly. I thought back to Nelson Bay again. “But then, there are the less obvious things. This probably isn’t going to sound like much, but when we were in Nelson Bay, last week, or three months ago, or whatever. He asked me if the weather was ‘always like this here’. It’s not like the WEATHER could have changed much in 40 years...” I trailed off a bit, thinking about that strange exchange.

Martin was staring back at me thoughtfully. “So what did he mean by that?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, it was weird,” I admitted. “He was really quick to change the topic, as well.”

“I bet he was.”

I sighed disapprovingly. “Fine, if you think he is lying,
why
do you think he is? What reason could he have for pulling this hoax on us? He has nothing to gain.”

Martin pulled a face. “Isn’t it obvious?”
 

I shook my head. “Err, no?”

He stood up and dusted off his knees. “He’s working for them.”

“Oh come on,” I objected. “For my father?”

“Your father, John Raymond,
them.
Think about it Anna: why didn’t they kill you that day in the hospital when they had the chance? Because I’m sure they don’t have any qualms about killing anyone. If Robert had been a real time traveller they would have disposed of him in a heartbeat. They can’t have them walking around, talking about it.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but he had a good point. Why hadn’t they shot us that day in the hospital? I mean, wasn’t that the entire point of the secret ward, and having the medical staff in on the secret? So that no one ever woke up, and escaped from the joint?
 

But I didn’t say anything. I still didn’t want to cross the line, admit any real doubt over Robert, out loud. Martin might have made some valid points, but they still didn’t discount my original gut feeling I’d had when I had first seen him lying there in that hospital bed: I had known beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was telling the truth.

Hadn’t I?

Martin returned to the kitchen to put the cloth away, and as I was about to stand up, I noticed something shoved under the lounge I had been sitting on. It only caught my eye because it was 70s style red knapsack, the sort that Robert had told me he’d been carrying the day he’d travelled through time...

I looked around quickly to see if Martin was coming back into the room. I didn’t know if I would have time to pull it out and go through it without Martin catching me. I leant my head back down and looked at the bag again. But why would Martin have that here, if it really were Robert’s? And hidden in such an obvious place. Then I remembered: hidden in plain sight. I started to reach my hand under the seat.

“Anna,” Martin called, coming back into the room. I quickly snatched my hand away and tried to look innocent.
 

“Yes?” I asked.
 

“Fanny is just about to get off the bus on Glebe Point Rd. I’m just going to walk up to meet her: she doesn’t like walking around the streets on her own at this time of night.”

I nodded. “I’ll just stay here. I’m still not feeling well after all those Jack and Cokes,” I replied quickly.
 

“Okay.” Martin grabbed his jacket off a coat rack and shoved his arms into the sleeves. “We’ll be back in about fifteen minutes or so.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

He left and shut the door behind him. I watched out the window until he was out of eyesight, and then I reached back under the seat for the bag as fast as I could move, tearing the buckles apart and upending the contents onto the floor.
 

I was praying that it just be a coincidence, that Martin just happened to own a bag that looked like this, and that it was just misplaced under the lounge room chair. The contents scattered out before me and I took a long look at them, trying to take it all in - the contents of the bag and the situation were overwhelming me.
 

I glanced out the window quickly and told myself to calm down. I had fifteen minutes to look through the items, so I had to be methodical and do it properly.
 

Right. I ran my hands through all the stuff that had fallen out onto the still damp rug, sorting and separating them. There were bits and pieces: key rings, cigarette lighters, notepads. There was also an old leather wallet, so that was the first thing I reached for. I looked at it. There it was: an ID sticking out over the top. I took a quick breathe before I snapped it open to see who it belonged to.

Robert’s driver’s licence. So it was his bag.I dropped the wallet onto the floor in shock. My heart was beating faster than I thought possible. Why the hell did Martin have this in his house?