The Man Who Came Back

by Neil Thanet, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Alternative History sci-fi; Dystopian; Fantasy; Fantasy action & adventure; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

On June 1st 1963 Donald Bailey set out on a hiking tour. For twelve days it was mountain and lakes, rivers and fells, healthy exercise and the magic of a starlit campfire. On the thirteenth day they found a cave and decided to explore. A rock fall cut off the entrance and they searched desperately for another way out. Exhausted and battered, they finally scrambled through a small shaft into a strangely changed countryside which was familiar, yet not familiar. From a cottager who fed them and tended their wounds they learnt that somehow they were back in the days of the Civil War. Roundheads and Cavaliers battled desperately across the country and they found themselves involved in the bitter struggle for power. Unwittingly they gave information to a Roundhead spy, which resulted in the death of a Cavalier Commander. He returns from the dead in monstrous form, trying to exact a terrible vengeance on the bewildered pair who are desperately seeking to return to their own time.

Release date: July 31, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 320

Sample

DONALD BAILEY closed his ledger, locked his till; put the necessary books in the appropriate safe; turned multiplicities of keys in safely guarded cash drawers; placed the said keys in the custody of the senior officer, whose duty it was to take them; murmured a polite, ‘Goodnight, sir’, and made his way out of the bank. It was just after five, as the latch clicked firmly and resolutely behind Donald Bailey’s retreating back. Contrary to popular superstition, neither bank clerks nor school masters finish their working day hours ahead of their more obviously work-tied fellows. Bailey took a deep breath in the warmth of that late Spring afternoon. One thing about working in a bank, he reflected, a man usually knew what day of the month it was. Banks and Post Offices obligingly displayed this succinct information on a huge perpetual calendar, which was often of gruesome Victorian aspect.

Donald looked up at the azure dome above him. May, he reflected would have been a nice month if he didn’t have to spend it in a bank. He thought of places where he would like to spend these glorious Spring days centuries before. He thought of leafy forests, bursting with young Spring buds. He thought of jousting, of tournaments, of days in the wild open spaces, of green countryside that had been Merrie England. He thought of falconry, and archery. Was the pursuit of game, he asked himself, tantamount to the pursuit of happiness? He decided that it wasn’t, it was just an excuse to get out into the open air. Pilgrimages, like those Chaucer had written of, had been another excuse to get out. He imagined the jolly companions on their way to Canterbury, regaling one another—he thought of the bawdy yarn which the miller had told, and as he strode from the Bank to the Underground station, he smiled a little at the crude, but nevertheless picturesquely witty fable—scarcely a fitting subject for a pilgrimage!

Bailey paused outside the station, shuddering hesitantly for a minute. Somehow it didn’t seem right, it didn’t seem human, on a day like this, to disappear into the bowels of the earth. On a cold winter’s day, or in the heart of a November fog, then there was something warm and friendly, something pleasant and inviting, about an underground station. But on a glorious May evening there was almost a sacrilegious element in the descent of the well worn stone steps; nevertheless, Donald, with the clock working against him, felt that the time had come. He took a last sniff at the Spring, city air, went across to the ticket office and bought a little slip of pale green card which entitled him to go, with his fellow passengers, below the busy streets of the Metropolis.

Donald had not been at the Bank long enough to bother to get himself a season ticket. It was often the way, he had found from past experience, that to purchase a season ticket was an almost inevitable invitation to fate to move him on to some other branch. Donald Bailey was young, single and versatile, and was frequently asked to carry out relief work. His seniors told him that it was valuable experience, that it would help promotion-wise. Bailey had a sneaking suspicion that the well-drawn excuse was a sop to managerial conscience, and that, in actual fact, the more sedate members of the establishment were making him something of a convenience. He didn’t really mind. It would, he reflected, have been the same anywhere …

It is the unenviable lot of the newcomer, or the comparative newcomer, to be trodden on, with more or less grace and tact by the old hand and the comparatively old hand. There comes a time in a man’s career, thought Donald Bailey, a time which he felt he himself had not reached yet, when the line between comparative newcomer and comparative old hand was very thin indeed, and somewhere about here a man found his feet, and crossed that invisible bridge which might have been emblazoned with that mysterious legend “Seniority”. To have crossed the bridge into the senior camp would mean that in Bailey’s profession, at any rate, a man had “arrived”.

He glided down the escalator, watching those who were too impatient to wait for the machine to descend at its own adequate speed. Of course, whenever Donald Bailey was in a hurry he always ran down the left hand side of a descending escalator, and, at such times, he inwardly cursed, and completely failed to understand those lethargic members of the community who would insist on standing contentedly on the right! The advertisements in their rectangular frames, passed before his eyes in steady procession, like a queue of mute commercial travellers, each imploringly offering his wares to a recalcitrant buyer who was over stocked.

There were interesting little remarks which had been added, no doubt, by aspiring, teenage comedians, thought Donald Bailey. These remarks varied from brief pornographic comments on the lingerie advertisements, to blunt denials, in unequivocal terms, of the merits which other advertisers were claiming for their products. Beside one gleaming tooth paste poster had been boldly scrawled, in thick black crayon, “When I used it all mine fell out!” Beside a milky beverage, steaming invitingly from its nocturnal cup, another wag had written, “It kept me awake all night!” Night, Donald noticed, had originally been mis-spelled ‘nite’, and then, as the would-be wit had realised his error, it had been re-written correctly. Something about that struck Donald Bailey as a little odd. It was not usual to find that the mentality that wrote on walls was capable of observing and correcting a mistake in its creative efforts.

The escalator reached the bottom. Bailey stepped off with practised ease, and made his way towards the platform. He only had to wait two or three minutes for the train. There was something singularly inviting about the pneumatic hiss of the opening doors. Bailey climbed in, surprised to find that there was a seat available. Normally, at a little after five, Tubes were so crowded as to be practically untenable. He remembered his own hesitation outside the station. Perhaps a goodly percentage of the regulars had decided to walk at least part of their journey. Bailey settled down and studied the map of the Northern line, drawn with simple obviousness for the convenience of passengers who used it. He rode for seven stations before alighting, and as he allowed himself to be conveyed up the ascending escalator he glanced at his watch. He still had some time to kill. Angela, he knew, would not be finished her art class yet. He gave up his ticket, wandered off the station, and began strolling towards the coffee bar where they habitually met. As he reached it, thoughts of Angela filled his mind to the exclusion of all else. It was odd how strongly he felt attracted to her, thought Donald, and yet, just as the opposite poles of a magnet attract strongly, so in the sphere of human relations, he mused. Perhaps there was a deeper attraction between unlikes than the superficial cementing of apparent likes. There was a sense, thought Donald, as he strolled into the coffee bar, and sat on a tall, round-topped, chromium stool, in which he was almost ‘square’ by the standards of Angela’s crowd, and yet he himself thought that he was reasonably bright, and an up-to-date man…

The coffee arrived, and Donald sipped it appreciatively. There was something very pleasant about a cup of coffee, something that dispelled the cobwebs that tried to smother a man’s brain when he worked in an ultra-respectable, and efficiently routine profession. Bailey was half-way through his second cup when Angela arrived. Even in that coffee bar she attracted a certain amount of attention. Her shoulder length chestnut hair swirled provocatively around her shoulders, framing a part, intelligent face, the principal features of which, as far as Bailey was concerned, were the emerald green eyes, the cute little snub nose and the full, moist redness of her lips. Without any inhibitions at all, Angela flung herself into his arms and kissed him; then she bounced on to the next stool, with the alacrity of a young, female acrobat. Donald ordered her a coffee and flipped a menu across.

“What shall it be, O starving Chelsea artist?” he grinned.

As Angela looked at the menu, Donald Bailey looked at Angela. The enormous, shapeless black sweater came down below her hips, and would, without much difficulty have made an adequate winter protection for a full grown male gorilla, yet, somehow, on Angela Rivers, it looked gloriously attractive. The dark green ski-pants beneath it contrasted strangely in their seductive tightness with the shapeless old pullover that she insisted on wearing whenever she was in one of her painting moods. As Angela was one of the most promising, aspiring artists that Chelsea had produced for some time, her painting moods were pretty frequent. Bailey was noticing the new paint smears on the battered black pullover. One or two of them were still wet. Angela pushed the menu back towards him, and a dainty, feminine, but well-pigmented hand, indicated a mushroom omelette.

“We’ll have two,” said Don, and gave his order to the girl behind the coffee bar counter.

“You look as if you’ve had a good afternoon,” he went on to Angela.

“Oh, splendid! Absolutely fab!” Angela delivered a five minute lecturette, rhapsodising her latest painting, and the work of two or three of her friends, which, with a kind of ingenuous simplicity, and a beautiful, unspoiled charm, she preferred to her own. They ate the mushroom omelettes, and then Bailey glanced at his watch.

“Do you feel like watching some flickering celluloid?” he asked drily.

“O.K.” she answered.

That, he thought, was typical of Angela Rivers. She was bright, she was modern, she was ‘with it’, she scintillated, she was all charm, and all heart; one of the most vitally alive people he had ever met, and into two simple monosyllables, she could put more warmth of feeling than most people could have put into a Browning love poem.

Arm in arm they left the coffee bar and approached the nearest cinema with a certain amount of trepidation. It didn’t look too bad from the stills and the title, and somehow, taking Angela to the pictures, even on a glorious Spring evening, had become an ingrained habit, as far as Don Bailey was concerned. The film was all right. No more, and no less. As they left the cinema the warmth of the Spring night took them wandering hand in hand by a roundabout route to Angela’s Chelsea flat …

They reached it and went inside. She began rummaging among stacks of canvas, paints and easels to find glasses and a bottle of Chianti. As they sat on the floor, sipping their drinks, Angela said suddenly, “Don, I want to get away from all this … just for a few days. I want to go somewhere completely different, somewhere I’ve never been before.”

“Any idea where, darling?”

“Don’t mind, really—just something different. I’ve got the ‘let’s get away from it all’ feeling.”

“I get that, too, sometimes,” rejoined Don. “How about your art classes? Can you leave them?”

“Oh, yes. Go when you like, stop away when you like—as far as I’m concerned, anyway. I can’t bear things to be a bind.” Angela got up and paced around the room. “I fancy something wild and strange, frightening and beautiful.”

“That’s rather a tall order, darling.” Don raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“Have you ever been to the Lakes?” asked Angela.

“No, I haven’t,” answered Bailey.

“Shall we go?”

With Angela it was just as sudden as that.

“All right.” Don sounded a little more thoughtful. “I can’t just go tomorrow, you know. I can’t swing the bank over as rapidly as you can swing your art classes, but I have got some leave due.”

“How soon can you go?”

She held his hands and looked up at him. It made him think of a very little girl asking her father for something; a present, a sweet, a new doll.

“We’ll go as soon as we can. It will probably take about a fortnight to get things organised. What do they do when they want to find a relief for the relief man?”

She smiled. They had another drink, and Donald Bailey went home wondering how it was he had decided to ask for his leave as soon as possible, and go on a hiking tour of the lakes! It had been the furthest thing from his mind, an hour bef. . .