Excellence

Russ had forgotten that senior girls at Sally's school were allowed to wear ordinary clothes on Fridays. He had been looking out for Sally in school uniform, and was taken by surprise when she detached herself from a giggling group of young women and marched boldly across the street to take his arm. She mustn't do that, the whole of Staunchbury is watching. Her school friends nudged each other and laughed at some lewd comment.

"See ya later, Sallers!"

"Be careful!"

"Don't do anything I wouldn't!"

"They let you go to school looking like that?" Russ felt like a disapproving parent.

"The short skirt takes some of the attention off my boobs," she giggled softly, hugging his arm so tight that her breasts practically swallowed it whole.

"Some of it. Don't you find the sweater has the opposite effect?"

"I can't hide them, can I?" She stepped away and spread her arms wide. No, she certainly couldn't hide them. "Where are we going? What's in the bag?"

"Just some stuff for Ethel. Nothing important."

Sally pouted. "All right, misery-poo, don't tell me, then!" She laughed. "Is it far?" She took his arm again as they set off. Everybody seemed to be staring. At the two of them. At Sally.

Russ decided it did wonders for one's image, walking down the street with a pretty and startlingly well-endowed girl clinging to one's arm. He allowed himself a sideways glance. Sally bounced when she walked. A great deal. Of course, she wasn't trying very hard to keep herself from bouncing. She was showing off outrageously. They turned off behind the market square and along beside the churchyard. Past that park bench. At least seventy years old!

"Here we are. Sal, are you sure you want to...?"

"What do you think!"

"If anything happens..."

"Nothing will happen, Russ!"

"I might disappear!"

"We both will, darling!" She held his left hand tight, fingers interlocking. The card was in his right hand...

And they walked up Archdeacon Street together, hips just touching, hands clasped tight.

"Is this it? Are we there?" Sally was looking round, her eyes shining. "It doesn't look old."

"It's not old. It's 1928."

"It smells fresher. You can't smell the buses any more. Can't we just walk around for a bit?"

"Later. We have to see the shop first. Ethel's expecting me."

"But not me?"

"I'll tell her who you are."

"It might be better if I stayed outside. If she didn't see me."

"No. We'd better stick together. Until we know how it all works. Without me, you might not be able to get back, or ... anything! Come on."

The bell tinkled and the wooden floor echoed to the tap of Sally's heels. The bell on the counter. Somebody coming. Sally squeezed his fingers, her hand warm and damp.

"Good afternoon, sir. May I help you?"

"Herbert!" Russ found himself lugging the cap out of his pocket. "I'm afraid I walked off with your hat the other day. I'm so sorry."

"No, sir, you can keep it. Miss Ethel bought me another. She's just popped out. She told me to tell you she wouldn't be long." Herbert's eyes kept flickering towards Sally, who was regarding him with frank appraisal. The poor boy ran a finger round inside his stiff collar. He was sweating visibly.

"This is Herbert, Sal," Russ explained belatedly. "Herbert, my girlfriend's sister, Sally."

"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure." Herbert offered a trembling paw.

"Herbert Arthur Sutcliffe Chambers," murmured Sally softly, grasping the boy's limp fingers with warmth and moisture. He gulped and blushed crimson, looking hugely relieved when Sally let go of his hand and went off on a tour of the shop, taking in all the details as if she was going to be writing an essay on it later. What I Did During My Lunch Hour.

"Do you work here every day, Herbert?" Russ felt the need to say something.

"Every lunchtime, yes, sir. I earn enough to pay for my bus fare to get here, and a bit left over. And Mr Ratcliffe is teaching me how to use a camera. And old Mr Spreadbury was teaching me printing in the darkroom until he got poorly sick."

Sally turned from studying a long narrow picture of about five hundred schoolchildren. "Spreadbury?"

"Yes, Miss Sally. You know him?"

"Know him? But I'm from ... no, I just thought the name sounded familiar, that's all." She returned to her school group as the bell tinkled.

"Russell!" Ethel came in, whipping off her hat. Her hair gleamed in the gas lights. "I was held up at the station. The train was nearly five minutes late! Disgraceful!" She dropped a bulky parcel on the counter and shrugged off her coat. "Herbert's been looking after you? I'll go and put the kettle on. I thought perhaps we could go out and see if..." The flow stopped as she caught sight of Sally and she folded her arms across her chest. She looked at Russ with an expression of appeal and dismay.

Russ stammered an introduction. "This is Sally. My friend's sister."

Sally advanced, holding out her hand. "Russ has told me all about you!"

Ethel was doing her best not to stare, and failing spectacularly. She shook hands, then resumed her round-shouldered, arms folded pose. She forced herself to say something. "Let's go through into the room. I need a cup of tea, if nobody else does."

"You two go ahead." Sally smiled engagingly. "I'll pass on this one. I've got to be back at school by half past one. Herbie can talk me through all these pictures."

Herbert gulped and almost melted into his boots. Ethel grinned, staging a recovery. "Come on, Russell!"

"I should have warned you," said Russ, as soon as they were alone in the back room. "Sally's a bit overwhelming. I'd expected her to be in her school uniform..."

"She's at school? She looks like a woman!"

"She's seventeen. Another two years to go."

Ethel tried to make sense of all this, then gave up in confusion. "And she's so ... I mean, she's..." Her voice failed her and her hands took over. She stood with them cupped about a foot ahead of her chest, biting her lip and flushing deeply. Her hands dropped to her sides. Russ found himself staring at Ethel, certain for the first time. No doubt about it, Ethel was no slouch in the breast department herself.

He found himself explaining. "I don't know where Sally gets her bras made, I'm sure she can't get them in Marks and Sparks."

Ethel sat down, then jumped up immediately as the kettle began to whistle at her. Russ followed her into the little kitchen. "I'd hoped we could have gone for a walk again," she ventured, pouring boiling water into the teapot and waving away the steam.

"We can. I'll have to take Sal back, then I can come back here. We'll have the whole afternoon."

"Take her back? To school? Where does she go?"

"The Girls' Grammar."

"But that's only a hundred yards! Can't she find her own way back? She's big enough."

"I need to be with her ... I mean, she gets nervous on her own. Scared of being mugged. You know how it is these days..."

"Which days, Russ?" She was busying herself with teacups and saucers. Must bring her some nice mugs next time. "You were trying to explain something to me the other day. It was too far-fetched to believe, of course. But there's something decidedly odd about you. And this ... woman."

"Girl."

"Woman, Russell. She makes me feel about twelve years old." She poured the tea. "Oh, dear!" Trouble with tea leaves again.

Tea bags. Put some on the shopping list. "I told you. I know it's hard to believe. But I seem to be able to travel between now and the past. I mean now and the future. God knows how, but it happens. To take Sally back to school, I need to hold her hand. That's how we got here today. Holding hands."

"You held hands in the street?"

"So did we, the other day."

"I know. I still feel shame when I think about it. I blush for shame." She demonstrated what she meant.

"Ethel, please!" Russ reached for her. She was rigid and unresponsive, but yielded after a few seconds, soft and warm against him. Very soft. Very big.

"Russ. If you can hold hands with Sally and take her back to school, why can't you do the same with me?"

"Take you to school?"

"No. Take me back to 1990 or wherever you said it was you came from."

"1999."

"What's the difference? Is she still alive?"

"Who?"

"Princess Elizabeth. The Queen?"

"Yes, she's fine. Charles and Di got divorced, of course, before the accident; and Andy and Fergie. All the others have been divorced as well: Margaret — she liked a drink, like the Queen Mum, she's getting on for a hundred — and Anne — she'd probably make a good Queen..."

"Russell! Wait! Who are all these people? I was asking about the baby Princess."

"The Royals, of course. You did ask me!"

"The Royal Family? How do you expect me to believe anything you say, when you tell me things like that? Where's your machine?" she asked abruptly.

"Machine?"

"Your Time Machine. After you told me where you'd come from, I started reading a book about it. You sit in a machine, and the lights flash..."

"Not necessarily. There's no machine. In fact, I think all that does it is this card." He dug into his pocket and held the card out to show her.

"That's one of ours. It looks like it, anyway." She reached out for it but he put it back into his pocket.

"I have to hang on to it. It's probably the only one that works."

"But we've got thousands of them, look..." She reached up to a shelf and opened a small box. There, inside, were perhaps a couple of hundred cards, identical to his own. Just don't get them mixed up, that's all!

"It's only my card, I'm sure. If it was all of them, we'd have people popping backwards and forwards the whole time. I found this one in my coat pocket. There was another one stuck in the picture frame."

Ethel nodded. "That's right. We always tuck a card in the back of the frame. There's one in the picture frame we repaired for you."

"Did you? I didn't see it."

"You wouldn't. It's between the mount and the backing board. You can only see it when you take it apart." Ethel sipped her tea. "What's a bra?"

"What?"

"You said something about Sally getting her bras from Marks and Sparks. Not Marks and Spencer?"

"It's what we call it."

"Strange. Is a bra something to do with the way Sally sticks out so far?" Ethel was toying with a teaspoon, trying to collect floating tea leaves from her cup. She was smiling with a tight little embarrassed expression on her face.

"Don't you wear ... I mean, don't you have bras? Brassières? Like a kind of elastic belt thing that goes round your chest, under your boobs, to hold them up."

"Hold them up?" Ethel gasped. "My ... what did you call them?"

"Boobs. Boobies. Tits. Mams. Knockers. You know?"

Ethel shook her head and ran a hand down her chest. She pressed it against herself and it sank in quite a long way. "I don't know. It's all so strange. But Sally's so ... sticking out, and big and round. I'm big, I know, compared to the other girls when we were at school, but my chest doesn't stick out like Sally's." It all came out in a rush at the end, as if she was frightened of becoming embarrassed and grinding to a halt.

There was a knock on the door at the top of the steps. Sally's head appeared.

"Hi. I suppose we'll have to be getting back, won't we?" She sounded as if she would prefer it if Russ suggested bunking off for the afternoon.

Russ glanced at Ethel and nodded. "I'll have to go. I shall come back."

"I'll come with you."

"You can't. We'd disappear. Or more likely, it wouldn't work if you were watching us. Please! I'll be right back."

"But I want to know what happens."

"We'll try it one day. Not now, though, okay?" Russ bent and kissed her on the soft, hot cheek. She gasped softly.

"You mustn't, no!"

"Don't mind me," giggled Sally. "I'm broadminded." She came right in and stood at the top of the steps, looking around the cluttered room. Grief, Sal, we can see right up to your stocking-tops!

"I'll be going now!" Russ scrambled up the steps and hustled Sally out into the shop: a backward glance showed Ethel's outraged expression. "Come on, young lady!" He took the girl's hand and half dragged her to the shop door.

"Bye, Herbie!" she called. Poor Herbert seemed to have suffered a harrowing experience. He was leaning back against the wall with a glazed expression.

"What did you do to Herbert, apart from re-christening him?"

"He's nice!" They hurried down Archdeacon Street, Sally bouncing exaggeratedly as she half trotted to keep up. "I was chatting him up. He's ever so slow."

"Slow? He seemed bright enough to me."

"He's intelligent enough, but when I tried to get him to ask me out, he just clammed up. I thought we could go to the pictures or something."

"Sal, you can't! This is 1928!"

"That's all right. They had pictures in 1928. Couldn't I borrow your card and come back on my own one night? One night when you weren't using it, perhaps?" She was finding it hard to sound wistful while trotting down the street with her outsized breasts bouncing around like watermelons under her sweater. Despite her bra, too big for Marks and Sparks.

Russ came to a halt and reined her in. She stood panting by his side, her chest heaving. They both fixed their eyes on the cast iron plate on the wall that said Archdeacon Street.

And it was now, again.