Liminality

It really is like looking into another world, Bryony Thomas thought, as she gazed out of the train window. A fantastic universe you can’t enter, on the other side of the glass. Like the land of reflections, behind a mirror, all manner of imagined horrors lurking beyond the quicksilvered portal’s narrow field of view.

Dark bellied, fluffy clouds, like a smartphone-enhanced photo, marched in phalanx across the wispy blue. Fields rolled, farmsteads and rivers slid by. What was that train-trip line from Philip Larkin? “All sense of being in a hurry gone.”

As Bryony mused on the ordinary world, speeding past, out of reach behind the window, she felt a most peculiar sensation. A cool breeze, like a fresh spring morning, suddenly flowed like liquid over every part of her. Its frigid touch was under her clothes, on her face and hands, as though she were wearing nothing at all. She glanced around the premium standard coach. The man diagonally opposite was glued to his phone; the lady by the window engrossed in her reading. No-one but her seemed to have noticed the cold draught. Ah well, she thought. Must be the air con, playing up. Better to be a tad too cool than too warm.

Sitting back, Bryony allowed her mind to float on liminality. The untouchable world; the portal that would open only when the train stopped, and she would be able to step once again out of suspended animation, back into her life. What had she been missing, while her day was on hold? Since that strange moment of winter, she found herself contemplating whatever might lie beyond life, on the other side of that final curtain, that land from whence no-one had ever returned. We are all just a heartbeat away from drawing that curtain aside, and making our final bow.

With an effort, she shook away the morbid train of thought. The physical train of coaches was slowing, and this was her stop. It had been a pleasant few days in London, visiting her daughter in her spacious new flat, shopping together, walking the South Bank, browsing the used book stalls beneath the city skyline.

The train slowed almost to a standstill. The man diagonally opposite put away his phone, rose, pulled on his jacket, grasped his holdall and headed in front of her for the door. There was a slight jerk as the train stopped. The door button lit up green; the man pressed it and stepped forward.

Later, Bryony would mentally replay the events of the next few seconds and try to make sense of them. It must have been a freak accident; the man missing his footing and getting his ankle wedged between the retractable step and the lip of the doorway, then his weight continuing forward, the sickening, crunching snap of bone, his cry of agony, railway staff rushing from all directions. She had found herself gawping helplessly as the train manager assessed the situation, making calls on his walkie-talkie. The ambulance was there in what felt like seconds, driving right onto the platform. The man was stretchered away and the station resumed its routine, save for the distorted apology over the tannoy, for the late departure of the 14:17 to Manchester Piccadilly. The whole drama had taken little more than ten minutes. Bryony cursed her own selfishness, for the uppermost thought in her mind was, “That could have been me.”

Surprised at how quickly she got over the shock of the platform experience, Bryony remembered she needed to call into her bank on her way home. She checked her watch. Well within business hours. It was a short walk from the station to the windy high street; the heavy, double-glazed door thudded softly to, behind her, blocking out the autumn afternoon’s cold gusts, and she found herself in the warm, quiet, carpeted ambience of the bank’s hall. How different banks are now, she thought, from the old days of glass partitions and trying to decide which line would move fastest. Now it was all self-service via computer or mobile. Hardly anyone visited banks any more, which was why so many branches had closed.

Then she felt it again. The cold air, as though from the bottom of a deep, moss-lined well, winding itself around her, next to her skin, front and rear, just like on the train.

“I believe I may be able to assist you.” Spoken directly into her ear, very close. A mature, female voice, with a hint of an accent she couldn’t quite place. Precise enunciation, textbook perfect. People didn’t speak like that, these days. That was it - the voice sounded archaic, Victorian even. And the words had formed a statement, not a question. “Can I help you?” might have been more fitting, but that wasn’t what Bryony had heard.

She looked around, and drew in a sharp breath. At the wall ahead and to her left, a woman was in the act of inserting her plastic card into an automated teller machine’s slot. Or she may have been withdrawing it. Bryony couldn’t tell, because the woman’s hand appeared frozen in mid-act. Not only her hand, her whole self was immobile, locked. A strand of black hair, beneath the woman’s red beret, that looked for all the world as though it had been swaying in the slight draught from the air con, held fixed as though encased in clear glass.

To Bryony’s right, a smartly uniformed bank employee had started to walk toward her and was now paused in mid-step, impossibly so, as neither of his feet was touching the floor with sufficient purchase to support his weight.

It was as though the local flow of time had come to a standstill. Like when a train slows to a halt, and you become one with the outside world again.

“Now you are beginning to understand,” said the close voice. Bryony turned to her left, feeling not even mildly apprehensive. The speaker was a tall lady, immaculately dressed in a skirted tweed business suit, topped off with a dark grey fedora, from which a single, long feather curved elegantly backward. “Please, sit.”

The woman gestured in the direction of two chairs and a table, which looked oddly incongruous against the bank’s subdued purple colour scheme. The chairs would have blended perfectly into the parlour of any rural vicarage, with their green floral upholstery and prim white antimacassars. The table was circular, ornately carved with a single supporting rosewood column and a rippled, round base. Bryony sat, and the woman took her place opposite. She did not waste time.

“Don’t bother to ask questions,” she began. “That would just slow things down. I know what they are anyway so I’ll answer them all, and plenty more you haven’t thought of yet. I’m the Guardian of your Moments. Those moments when your life could go one way, or another. Everyone has them. Near misses that could have been serious accidents, if you like. The times you look back on and think, ‘Well, at least I’m safe now.’ The thing is, you’re not. Not without me, that is.”

Bryony frowned, and almost trespassed her interlocutor’s injunction against asking questions, although she didn’t get chance to do more than draw in a breath.

“You see, Bryony, those moments aren’t done with you. They persist, and they can end differently. It’s the same for everyone. In your case, you rely on me to safeguard those moments and deliver you unharmed to continue the remainder of your life. The man you saw on the train today has lived that moment an infinite number of times without any mishap. This time, for whatever reason, his Guardian arranged an alternative outcome. Oh, I could find out the details, but there would be little point. The trail of cause and effect for even one human life is so vastly complicated, it’s not even worth contemplating the interplay of two. Bring in a third life and… I think you see where this is leading. There were over a thousand people on that train.”

Bryony’s eyes shot wide open as she remembered the first cold sensation. “You mean…”

“Right on all three counts,” the Guardian smiled. Bryony was aware, without really attaching much importance to the observation, that the woman’s lips were no longer moving. “Yes, the cold breeze means I’m not far away. You’ve noticed it before but not paid it much mind. And, second yes, that was a turning point. A Moment. There is a weak railway bridge where the train track passes over a highway; the railway people have to keep the trains well separated, so as not to exceed the weight limit. They will replace the bridge but they haven’t yet, for economic reasons. If it were to collapse, you and everyone else aboard the train would die that day. And right on the third point - I saved you, and I will go on safeguarding you at that moment as long as I am authorised to do so. Ah, I sense that you would like to know which authority it is, to whom I answer. I am sorry, but that information is beyond the limit of this conversation.”

Bryony sensed she was being given time to think. To make what sense she could, of all of this. Beyond the bank’s glazed doors, the whole high street appeared as fixed as a painting, a red bus obliquely stopped while pulling out from a stop; a dog obediently and permanently sitting while its owner stayed paused in the act of attaching a leash to its collar.

“No,” smiled the Guardian, “the whole world is not frozen. It’s a local effect, full suspension of time within this room, then a kind of gradient outside as you move further away. Life is pretty normal on the other side of the street, but we’re not seeing that, because the information coming to us from over there has to obey the rules I’ve set for the space around us, so it slows down and stops. Aha - I see you’re ready for me to explain to you why our little meeting today is taking place. It’s only fair that you should know. You see - and I’m sure you will see when you think it through - none of us Guardians can guard forever. We have to move on, and hand over. There are lots of reasons for that, principally that none of us is immortal. There are many benefits to the job. You’ll get to meet lots of people in all sorts of situations and all kinds of time streams. Well, you are quick on the uptake, and I sense you will relish the challenges of this line of work. What? Learning the tricks of the trade, like locally slowing up time, and influencing stuff like collapsing bridges? Those are the easiest parts. Do you remember learning to walk, as a small child? Probably not, and I’m certain you don’t recall learning to move your fingers by sending impulses along your nerves to your muscles. Yet, you did it, and you think nothing of the achievement now. If you accept the assignment, you will leave this meeting fully empowered. There will be an overlap period of perhaps a century, after which I shall bow out and you’ll be in full charge. Not on your own, because we are never that. You will meet many more of us, and I’m sure you will be uncommonly good at having conversations like this one.”

The words, “I accept,” were barely out of Bryony’s mouth, before the twee table-and-chairs melted into nothing, and she found herself standing just inside the bank’s doors as they heralded her arrival with a soft thunk.

“May I help you, madam?” asked the smartly uniformed young man, now fully connected with the floor. As he approached, Bryony found his full life history open to her, like a book she had just finished reading, written with tremendous clarity and ease of recall. Thomas Alton Middlewich had been born just a few miles away and, at the age of ten, narrowly avoided being run over when the brakes on his bike had failed and he had found himself in the path of an oncoming car, whose driver thankfully braked in time. Through the slightest exertion of her will, Bryony found she could place herself inside that vehicle as it hurtled toward young Thomas, his wide eyes ballooning larger as he faced what he surely thought would be his end. Bryony knew that every control, every mechanical part of that car was hers to influence as she saw fit. She blinked, and she was back in the bank. Thomas - whose name she didn’t have to explain how she knew, because it was on his lapel badge - cheerfully helped her reactivate her newly issued debit card, and she turned to leave.

At that moment, there was a tap on her shoulder. Turning, she was surprised to see a liveried footman, resplendent in full regalia. “No-one but you can see me, ma’am,” he said, quietly. He proffered a silver salver, bearing a flamboyantly handwritten, deckle-edged card. It read, “Welcome to your new role, Bryony. In all probability, you shall not hear from me again, until the time comes for you to pass on your august responsibility to Thomas Alton Middlewich, when you once again visit this particular juncture of space and time. Pending that moment, discharge your duty with diligence and good judgment.

-The Authority.”