About Seeds of Time 3: Final Curtain
by G.S. Wiley
33 pages
/ 13000 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-792-3, 1-60370-792-1
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, epub, Sony-optimized pdf
In the final instalment of the "Seeds of Time" series, former Front of House Manager Simon is trying to come to grips with his new role as theatre director, and with his ex-partner Adrian's attempts at reconciliation. All of that takes a back seat, however, when he receives a very unexpected visitor from 1948.
Can James make a new life for himself in the twenty-first century? And will Simon find the "true love" he was promised by gypsy Madame Esmeralda's potion?
Sample
One of the best things about being in a relationship, apart from the regular sex and the permanent Saturday-night plans, is not having to go on dates. Specifically, not having to go on first dates with strangers.
This benefit came back to me abruptly, as I sat in the Old Vicarage pub with my pint of bitter, waiting for my latest blind date to show up. He was Carl Scarsden, a friend of my friend Fiona’s, a tour operator and part-time historical re-enactor at the Jorvik Viking museum in York. He was what Fiona had come up with when I’d begged her not to send me on another date with another actor with no concept of time, and no concept of conversation about any topic other than himself.
Still, even if he wasn’t an actor, Carl Scarsden wasn't exactly punctual. I sat in the pub waiting for him, watching a couple laughing at an electronic trivia game and a group of men tossing darts at the board in the corner, and tried not to feel sorry for myself.
I’d been trying not to feel sorry for myself for nearly a year now. That was how long it had been since my ex-boyfriend and erstwhile fiancé Adrian had married the mother of his child, and how long it had been since I’d seen the other man in my life, James Bradley. The man who just happened to live sixty years in the past.
“Hello, Simon?”
A man stopped in front of my table, and I looked up from my pint and my self-pity. “Yes. Hi.” I held out a hand, which Carl Scarsden shook with a bone-crushing grip. He looked like a Viking re-enactor, all right, down to the bushy blond beard and the rosy red cheeks. “Nice to meet you,” I said, and I tried to put some genuine feeling into it.
After my last encounter with James in 1948, I’d spent months trying to track down our mysterious “matchmaker”, otherwise known as Madame Esmeralda and potentially also as Miss Esme Purdue. I could find no trace of her anywhere. It was like she’d never existed. After a few months of pointless searching, I began to think that maybe she hadn’t.
It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that I’d made everything up. I'd been under a lot of stress at the time, and people can do odd things under stress. It wasn’t completely out of the question that I might have imagined going back to post-war England and meeting an extremely attractive and very likeable vicar. But then how, I wondered, could I explain the 1940s clothes I’d brought back with me the first time, and how could I explain going back a second time, six months later?
This wasn’t something I could discuss with Carl Scarsden, or with any of the other dates I’d had lately. I hadn’t even mentioned it to Fiona. The last thing I needed was her thinking I was cracking up. She was sure to blame it on Adrian or on my new job.
About two months after my last trip to see James, our theatre director Jackson Bartlett got a better offer and went off to teach would-be Fellinis at some film school in Genoa. The board didn’t want to hire a new director in the middle of the season -- by which, of course, they meant they didn’t want to pay for one -- and, since I’d been Jackson’s assistant director on his last production, “An Ideal Husband”, they didn’t see why I couldn’t take over the top job.
“I’m not a director,” I tried to explain, but they didn’t want to hear it.