Perspective

It’s best if I avoid history books. All of them, really, but the ones with pictures in are especially dangerous.

I forget myself at times, of course, because it doesn’t always happen, it doesn’t even mostly happen, and I get it into my head that I can look away in time if it does start happening. And sometimes I can, other times I can’t. And anyway, there’s pictures all around me: posters for movies, advertising, packaging, kids’ toys. There are just so many places to come across images of the past.

The first time I did it I was twelve, and I didn’t really get what it was. I just knew that I was a kid like any other kid, except that I had a bit of a thing for history. I liked playing history games, reading history books, dressing up – all this harmless stuff. I could sit for hours, absorbing the middle ages, all those old-style paintings and sculptures; everything from blankets to vases to old buildings. I felt as if I could walk inside them, lapping up the blue-black shadows, staring at the textures and intricacies of ancient brick.

This one time, a picture caught my eye: a figure on horseback; imposing, compact, stern, eyes set deep in his head, a wispy black beard, a furred hat, a pale blue sky in background. The next minute I was out there on the ancient steppes, feeling the cold breeze against my neck, watching men move around on the backs of short, sturdy ponies; firing arrows off in quick succession, moving against each other with blades drawn.

A few seconds later I was back at my desk, tempted to call it imagination. I read the caption below the picture. Genghis Khan. But his skin had felt so real, and the horse moving under him, the wind, the cold light, the sounds of men and horses. Like being there.

And being there again: thrust into the midst of a Regency ball…

…. In the thick of a medieval harvest…

… the path of a stomping, towering T-Rex…

It kept happening. Sometimes. Random times. Triggered by history books, or by something on TV – it was nice to meet you Albert Einstein, Marilyn Munroe; less so to meet you Jack the Ripper, even for that very brief flash of time – by a poster I might see at a bus stop.

I remember sitting there in that car, staring right at him as the presidential motorcade rocked on through the crowds. I tried to make my mouth scream the word, “duck!” but nothing came out.

Or in America, 1865, where I did my best: “No, I don’t think I feel like going to the theatre tonight”; but he must have changed his mind later, after I was gone, because I don’t seem to have changed history. I have a feeling I can though. And I know that’s dangerous. I think it must be possible, because:

#

I was fifteen. Sitting in the lounge in the summer sun, looking through an old photo album. I guess I should have known better, I just didn’t think it would count.

Well, I came across that picture of us all gathered around for my sister’s birthday party. And we were all about to blow out the candles. And I remember, on that day – being about six then – I was angry with my sister, jealous of all the attention, and of the way she was lording it over me. A picture of me with a little scowl on my face while the rest of the partygoers were laughing. I remember, thinking: I’d just like to ruin the whole thing.

And then suddenly, back there, in that six-year-old body, with my hair in pigtails, in that frilly red-and-white dress. Fifteen and six, all at the same time, and a part of me old enough to be fearless, the other part young enough to be hurt and angry and spiteful. I’m not sure which me it was – how much of each me – that reached out with one arm and swiped that birthday cake right over.

There’s a picture now, in our photo album. A toppled cake, icing and cream all over the place. Candles have ignited a couple of serviettes. One little girl wailing and crying; another with a soft, secret smile on her face.

#

You could call it a gift. It might have been a gift, even a superpower, if I had any control of it, if I understood it, what it could and shouldn’t do. What it meant. Instead, I have chaos.

And so, of course, when I came across these old letters of my great-grandmother’s, up in the attic, the last thing I should have done was read them. And I shouldn’t have sat there, staring at this old, sepia, edge-faded photograph of a man whose face attracted and intrigued me. I should have known better, been careful.

But suddenly: a room, a table covered in a lacy table-cloth, and the same man is sitting right across from me, his eyes searing into mine. There’s such an urgency and passion in the way he’s looking at me. But he still stands up and tells me that it’s better he leaves.

I say, “Wait.”

He turns.

I say, “Don’t go.”

“We both know there’s no future in this for either of us.”

Future, I think, if only you could know what’s going to go down in the future. I say, “I don’t care,” and I have no idea what I’m doing, not who he is or why there’s no future in it. I feel as if I’m controlled by another person’s emotions. And they’re strong. And I guess there is a very good reason why she should restrain herself in being guided by them; but I don’t have that reason, I just have the feelings, and the wanting, and these words that I can say: “Please don’t leave me.”

He says, “I can only bring you shame and ruin.”

“I don’t care.”

“I can’t offer you marriage.”

“I know.”

“Only regret.”

One day, and for the rest of my life. But it’s a few decades too early for that. “No,” I answer, “there won’t be any regrets.”

#

Well, there are.

Fast forward – leap backwards, it all depends on your perspective – to a sunny afternoon, a bed of white sheets and white quilts. His body and mine – hers, mine, both – in perfect, sweaty, panting union.

Fast forward to scandal – every eye that looks at me looks away. A married man - right there under the nose of his wife – no shame – what manner of upbringing…? The shrill words of a mother – a great-great grandmother – blasting her/me for what we’ve done, for those illicit beautiful nights that are now everybody’s business.

Fast forward again, standing at his side, stoic, hard-faced. Let them judge us. Let them. Love will see us through. And even though we both know just a little bit by now that it won’t, we hold on, we stare them down. We won’t be judged and socialised out of our love. A hand in another hand, squeezed tight for strength and comfort. We’ll outlast them. We’ll survive them all.

#

But herein lies the problem. That man was not my great-grandfather. He was not supposed to be my great-grandfather. And everything is changing, the attic, the view out the window, the clothes that I have on. I’m here and I’m not here, there and not-there. As if these two centuries can collide, as if they’re stitched together just for the brief pocket of matched times.

As if…

And I scramble down that ladder – those are not my rings on my fingers – into a lounge that has different carpet, the same wallpaper, different furniture, different pictures. And there’s music coming down the hall that I don’t recognise.

A boy walks down the hall. A stranger. “What’s up?”

And I stare.

“Yeah, I’m not talking to you either.”

“Who…?”

“You’d better not have eaten all the mashed potatoes.”

Who?

A room that’s not my room – though the carpet is the same but the rug is different, the walls have been painted pale peppermint green – all these different things all strewn around. I go for the mirror, though I already know what I’m going to see. She’s there in the glass, looking right back at me, a face that isn’t mine.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work