The seat is empty.

I am not there.

They think she’s mad

Or perhaps she dreamed.

They pat her hand and offer counsel

And no one – ever – looks for me.

I am there, on my imagined shore.

Trapped between times.

Between existences.

And I am late for my appointments.

Second Sight

There was a time tunnel at the stately home. Corinne knew it well because she had been there before. A dark leafy passage, it ran between the car park and the open area of gravel in front of the house. She paid her fee and walked through it, moving from the present into the past as she stepped from a cloak of green shade and into the sunlight. At once she saw the crowds milling around: tourists like herself wearing ordinary clothes and the people around them, who purported to come from Tudor times, wearing ornate velvets and silks or home-spun rags – some barefoot, some with intricate ruffs and elaborate jewellery.

She loved it. It was so easy to imagine yourself in the past. If it wasn’t for the ordinary people who had just climbed out of cars and coaches, she would find it totally convincing. And she wanted to be convinced; to lose herself in the past; to forget her loneliness and anger for an afternoon at least. It had worked last time she came. For several hours she hadn’t given a single thought to him – the man she had thought of as her lover, until she had caught him cheating.

She wandered towards the moat where a narrow bridge led towards the house itself and turning right, instead of going on into the dark, panelled rooms, she walked alongside the water where a peacock strutted and flirted its tail proudly, enamoured by its own reflections. A group of Tudor people stood there. They were playing some kind of Elizabethan game on the grass and seemed unaware of her curiosity. They were there, after all, to be stared at. One of them, a man, looked up suddenly and caught her eye. He doffed his velvet cap and gave her an elaborate bow, smiling impishly. She laughed.

That was nice. It was friendly. She felt attractive – something her lover’s insults had made her doubt – but not threatened. There was no way he was going to talk to her, not unless she approached him more closely and even then he would talk that wonderful mock-Shakespearean language which these people managed to improvise.

She was very impressed with the way they did it. It showed how talented they were, how completely they had entered into the parts they had chosen to play. Something she needed to learn to do. To play the cool, independent, confident woman of the world. Then, with or without a man, she could hold her head high.

Still managing to smile cheerfully, she walked on, leaving them to their game. Round the back of the house it was all very busy. She was heading towards her favourite places: the dairy, the kitchens, the dimly lit, dusty barns where they wove and spun and dyed their wool and did all the everyday things of life when lives were real and proper and self-sufficient, in a time when people made everything themselves. The dark shadowy areas, lit by candles and stray beams of sunlight from the high windows, filled her with excitement, inspired her. She loved to see the people chatting, gossiping, laughing round the smoky fires. She spent a long time staring at them as they worked. Then at last, overwhelmed with sudden, unexpected sadness that she was not part of a community such as this, she turned away, threading a path out of the crowd, and headed up towards the orchard to the part of the garden which was deserted. No tourists came here, because nothing ever happened. There was nothing to watch. It was empty, a place to think.

Slowly, trying to imagine herself wearing a long velvet gown instead of her usual trousers and loose sweater, she walked into the trees – and stopped in surprise. There were things going on here after all. She could see a group of Tudor-dressed people in the distance. They were talking together quietly, urgently, and she found herself wondering if she was going to catch them out talking modern English or did they, even here away from the crowds with no one to watch and listen, still keep to the parts which they had so carefully constructed for themselves?

The grass was soft and damp under the trees. They didn’t hear her coming. She walked slowly, not hiding her approach, but drawing near to the group she began to feel inexplicably nervous. There was no one else around and they were clearly talking about something personal and secret. She wondered suddenly if they would welcome someone watching them. She paused, pretending to examine the leaves on a damson tree nearby, trying to look casual, wondering whether to bring out the sketch book which she always brought everywhere with her. She groped in the haversack on her shoulder and produced the small pad and pen and, perversely perhaps, given her suspicions about their preoccupation with themselves, began to move towards them.

The group shifted. There were five men. They were talking, then shouting. Two of them walked apart, throwing insults at one another. She couldn’t hear them properly. In fact she couldn’t hear quite what language they were using, but if it was acting it was a very persuasive show of a quarrel.

She stopped, leaning against the trunk of a tree, regretting that she had come so close, wanting suddenly to turn back towards the house to the noise of ordinary people talking and laughing, to the children screaming as they chased the peacocks. It was growing very hot. The sun beat down between the trunks of the trees, but her eyes kept being drawn back to the scene ahead. She was as trapped by it as were the participants, and in a way as involved. The voices grew louder. She could almost feel the heat pouring off the men. One of the two was waving his arms about. She watched his face growing red as he gesticulated, fascinated by the way the feather on his jaunty cap shuddered around his face, curling beneath his chin. Even as she thought about it, he tore off the cap and threw it to the ground, seemingly beside himself with rage.

The man next to him suddenly had his hand on the hilt of the sword which had been hidden by his cloak. She caught her breath.

Stepping away from the tree a little to show she was there, she moved closer still, hoping that one of them would catch her eye and acknowledge her presence, perhaps with another good-humoured bow to defuse the atmosphere around them. But they didn’t see her. Two of the men lunged towards the one who had the sword, as he drew it with a rasp of metal from its sheath. They pulled at his arms, his clothing, trying to restrain him, but his anger had overwhelmed him. He swung the sword for a moment over his head and the man who had broken away stepped back, his red face suddenly white. ‘No,’ he shouted. ‘No!’