If she was an actor, she was a good one. She appeared genuinely fascinated with any and every machine. She spent an inordinate amount of time staring at the fridge and had broken several light switches. He remembered when she’d told the dance instructor at the first rehearsal her name was Jane Austen. She had appeared flummoxed when the instructor accused her of joking.
An odd sound made its way into the courtyard then. A pitter-patter. It came from the roof above. “What is that sound?” Fred said.
Paul shook his head. “No idea.”
“It sounds like—”
“It’s raining, sir!” one of the kids exclaimed. The other students gasped.
They looked at each other, then at the roof.
“How long has it been?” Paul asked him. He pointed to the water falling from the sky.
“Eight months,” Fred replied.
The rain spluttered and dripped in through the cracks of the buildings. It dripped down on old windows and into the foundations. It splattered drops into the pool, radiating waves outward. The kids jumped and laughed, and screams of excitement rippled through the group.
“All right, people, we’ve all seen rain before,” Paul cried to the kids. His words had no effect. Children reacted the same way to rain the world over, with madness. Water fights erupted between pockets of kids. Students leapt and skidded over the wet floor. The elderly volunteer from before, the one whom Tess Jones had said bollocks to, howled at the scene in horror. Fred and Paul herded the kids under the cloisters.
“I think that’s recess,” Fred said. Paul nodded.
They gathered up the students, found a cafeteria across the road, and corralled everyone to tables and chairs. Fred performed a head count. Twenty-four kids. He counted again and got the same number. Someone was missing.
“Where’s Tess?” Fred called to Paul. Paul looked around and shrugged. Fred moved to her friends and asked them, “Where’s Tess?” No one knew. Paul stayed with the students while Fred headed outside into the rain.
There a level of mayhem even greater than what usually accompanied a school excursion greeted him. The rain had apparently put everyone in a jam. The townsfolk rushed back and forth across the roads and pathways, ducking under roofs and under crofts for shelter from the deluge. No one had an umbrella. He turned his head and spotted Tess standing in the middle of the road, staring up at the rain. She had picked the wrong point at which to stop walking.
“Get off the road, Tess,” he called. She turned around. She had been crying. Fred slumped, but smiled at her. “It will be okay,” he said. “Come with me.”
The rain poured down on his head, reminding him of the previous night. Could the woman staying in his house truly be Jane Austen? As ludicrous as it seemed, at least it offered a better alternative than the present one—that she’d pushed him away.
Tess nodded and walked toward him. She picked a somewhat foolish path, straight across the road, into oncoming traffic. Real danger. A car swerved to avoid her.
Fred remembered laughing at a public service announcement that cautioned people to be careful driving if the drought broke. In the strangely calm tones that characterized English bureaucracy, signs and radio broadcasts had announced that driving in newly wet weather could pose a danger, as the car oil that had pooled on the roads could make them slippery, causing serious accidents. Fred had smirked at the time but now had the unique opportunity to watch the prophesied conditions in action.
As the car swerved to avoid Tess, it lost traction and collided with a telegraph pole. It was quite a tame accident by world standards; the car could only have been travelling five miles per hour and gave the pole no more than a bump. The driver was, thankfully, unhurt; he had left his vehicle and was already walking over to reassure Tess.
Tess began walking to the side of the road herself, when Fred observed that the end of a wire from the felled telegraph pole had come to rest in a newly formed puddle on the side of the road.
“Tess, wait!” Fred shouted. She kept walking, so he darted toward her, quickly pulling her back from the innocuous-looking, but rather dangerous, electrified puddle. Distracted by the rain, the chaos of the day, and one or two thoughts of Jane, however, he stepped in the puddle himself.
As he ruminated on the thought that this might have been a bad move, a spark seemed to agree with him. It moved from the puddle and entered Fred’s left foot through his toe, where it shot up through his leg into his torso. It volleyed through the liquid of his chest, tickled the corner of his left ventricle, leapt through his shoulder, danced down his arm, and shot out from his body through his right thumb, then escaped into the earth through the telegraph pole he was now holding. He flew across the street like a bird and came to rest against the iron-latticed window of the building opposite.
Chapter Forty
Jane felt unfortunate to have upset Fred, but it made sense in the scheme of events. She would not see him again. She stared out the window at the back garden, where a glorious sight greeted her. Rain poured down and splashed onto the grass. The yellow foliage seemed restored to green.
A knock rang out at the front door. Jane went to answer it; perhaps Sofia had forgotten her
