Trace Memory

surly-looking youth in a leather jacket. The older man giggled nervously at something the youth had said, and then placed one hand on his shoulder. There was something in the gesture that Michael recognised and understood. The older man was what Michael's father would have called a 'pansy' or a 'powder puff. He knew that much.

'There's pubs like this,' said Michael, 'back where I'm from. In Tiger Bay. Some of the sailors go there.'

'What?' said Jack. 'You mean pubs where they sell beer?'

'No,' said Michael, bashfully. 'You know what I mean.'

Jack looked around the room, inspecting it, and frowned. 'No. I don't,' he replied.

Michael scowled. Was Jack mocking him?

'You do, ' he said. 'Pubs for… you know… men who…'

Jack laughed. 'Oh… I see.

Well, to be honest, I hadn't noticed. But it's true — I do have an uncanny habit of ending up in places like this. Nine star systems and many, many different eras, but it's always the same places, and often with the same faces. We can go somewhere else if you like.'

Michael shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'No, it's all right. We can stay here.'

Jack took another sip of his drink. 'So is there anyone else, apart from your sister? Are you married?'

'No,' said Michael, laughing nervously.

'A girlfriend?'

'No.' Michael paused, his mind momentarily elsewhere. 'Actually,' he said, 'there was a girl, Maggie Jenkins. We only went on one date. I don't know… It didn't go very well. Everyone in the pub kept saying I should take her out, but then when we went out it just didn't seem right.'

'OK,' said Jack. 'And was there anyone else before Maggie Jenkins?'

Michael scrunched up his nose and shrugged. 'There was someone,' he said. 'Someone I worked with, someone I liked, but I could never say anything to them. They were married, and… Well, I just couldn't.'

'And what's happened to them?'

Michael took a deep breath and looked straight at Jack. 'He died,' he said. 'In the accident. But like I said, I could never have told him. Chances are, even if I had he wouldn't have had a clue what I was talking about.' Michael shook his head. And now there's no one. And this thing keeps happening to me. I can't hold on to anything, it's all just slipping through my fingers like sand. What kind of a life is this?'

'It's just the life you've been given,' said Jack, softly. 'The only life.'

They walked back to the hotel a little after eleven o'clock that night. The darker streets of Cardiff were crowded with a night-time rush hour of vagrants and hookers, hustlers and spivs.

Michael could feel the effects of the beer now. He'd eaten and slept so little in what he supposed he should call the last few days that it hadn't taken much to leave him feeling drunk. As they entered the reception of the Shangri-La Hotel, the owner looked up at them and smiled.

'Evening, both. Capital city of Canada. Six letters. Something T something A something something.'

'Ottawa,' said Jack.

'Ah, that's it,' said the owner. 'I always thought it was Toronto. G'night lads.'

They climbed the four flights of stairs, the Shangri-La having been built in a time before elevators, and walked along the poorly lit corridor to the room. As they entered, Jack took a deep breath and clapped his hands together.

'OK,' he said, 'you can have the bed. I don't really need much sleep. I can just… you know… use the chair, or something.'

Michael looked at the rigid wooden chair and then at Jack.

'You don't need to do that,' he said.

FOURTEEN

When Michael woke, he was alone in the room. The whistling of trains leaving the station and the rumble of traffic in the streets outside had been his wake-up call and, looking at the clock on the wall, he saw it was only eight o'clock. But he was alone.

'Jack?' he called. There was no answer.

Michael felt his heart sink. So this was it. Jack had abandoned him in this hotel. He'd sensed something yesterday: a kind of desperation and fear that had been missing altogether from the Jack he'd met in another time. Jack had run away.

Breathing in, Michael could still smell him on the neighbouring pillow. It made him smile, if only briefly. Now, it would appear, he was alone again in another strange time and place.

He was standing beside the bed, slipping into his newly bought clothes, when the door opened, and Jack walked in, carrying a bag filled with groceries.

'Ah, you're awake,' he said.

'Jack…' said Michael, beaming. 'I thought.

'You thought what? That I'd left you? That's crazy talk. I was just buying us breakfast. It's all fairly standard late sixties British fair, I'm afraid. They're still a few years away from discovering the croissant, it would seem.'

'What's a croissant?'

'Exactly.'

Jack placed the bag down on the table and, as Michael stood, he pulled the young man close and kissed him. Michael flinched.

'Are you OK?' said Jack.

'Yeah,' said Michael. 'Of course. I just… It's just…'

Jack nodded.

'I see,' he said. 'It's the morning after, and you're feeling…'

'No, no it's not that. I just haven't… I mean… Before.'

'Really?'

Michael nodded, sitting on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. He still looked puzzled, uneasy somehow.

'Never,' he said.

'I'm sorry,' said Jack.

Michael looked up at him and smiled.

'You don't have to be.' He paused to tie his shoelaces, and let out a short sigh. 'So… What are we going to do today?'

'Today,' said Jack, 'I'm going to ask some questions. And this time, I'm going to get some answers. But first, breakfast!'

As Michael ate, Jack stepped out of the room to use the payphone in the corridor. Listening through the door, Michael could barely hear what he was saying, making out only the occasional sentence, and making sense of none of it.

'I can't. No… No. You don't have to worry about me doing a thing like that. It's nothing for you to concern yourselves with; it might be nothing. I don't know. A few days. A few weeks. What do you mean? The last time I checked, you don't own me.'

Jack hung up loudly, slamming the phone back into its cradle, and then came back into the room.

'Come on,' he said. 'We're going.'

'Who were you calling?' Michael asked.

'No one,' said Jack. 'Some friends. Acquaintances, really. Now come on…'

'Where are we going?'

'You'll see.'

Twenty minutes later, they were climbing the steps to the museum. Michael had seen it a hundred times or more, but still he paused and looked up in awe at the Doric columns and sculpted pediment.

'I've never been here before,' he said.