[Swindon, England - 6:42 PM 27/09/1919]
I was on the train headed to Cardiff as it hissed beneath the station roof, steam curling past the window in pale white ribbons that smeared the view of the platform beyond. Men in caps moved through it like ghosts: porters wheeling trunks, a woman tugging two children along by the hand, and a soldier in demobilisation blues lighting a cigarette against the wind that kept sneaking under the iron canopy.
I sat back in the worn second-class compartment and watched it all through the glass.
The carriage smelt of coal smoke, damp wool, and old leather. The seats were upholstered in a faded red fabric that had once been plush and now felt rubbed thin by decades of passengers. Brass fittings lined the door and luggage rack, dulled by soot and a thousand hands. Across from me, an elderly man in a bowler had folded his newspaper into perfect quarters and was pretending not to stare at the cane resting beside my knee. Somewhere further up the coach a child laughed, immediately shushed by his mother.
The second class was comfortable enough, certainly more comfortable than anything I had expected to afford a year ago.
I let my thumb rest against the folded edge of the cheque in my coat pocket.
Three months.
That was how long it had been since the provisional patent had come through.
Three months of waiting, letters, signatures, and finding out that the business of protecting an invention involved more stress and money than I had thought.
Twelve pounds to hire a patent agent who actually knew how to phrase the blasted thing properly.
Another ten to file the complete specification and secure the proper patent.
And, because apparently owning one's own idea was not enough of a burden, a further two pounds every year was required to simply keep the thing alive.
Ridiculous.
As if an idea, once proven yours, ought to need feeding like a hungry dog.
Then there had been the journal.
Twenty-three pounds to have the patent mentioned in an industrial circular, and that only because they had "made an exception", as the editor had so generously put it, seeing as provisional patents were rarely advertised before final grant.
I snorted softly at the memory and looked back out the window as the platform began to stir with the warning signs of departure.
The worst of it, though, had been the nineteen pounds I'd still found myself short.
I had gone, hat in hand, to the union boss of one of the coal-shovelling firms near the docks. He was a man who liked to speak of solidarity while using the dues as a private money chest to back his loan sharking. He'd lent it, of course.
At fifteen percent interest weekly.
That debt still sat in the back of my mind like a stone in a boot.
But it was nothing compared to the weight of the cheque in my pocket.
I reached in and touched it again, just to reassure myself it was still there.
£7,800
The number still seemed absurd.
The cheque was from Brunner Mond, the company that had made the best offer after the journal notice stirred more interest than I had expected. It was for fourteen years of global licensing rights on the patent, with one and a half percent royalties on top.
A fortune.
Taking into account wage growth and inflation, it was the equivalent of a low-income family in the modern day winning a few million on the lottery.
Not just to me but to everyone I had ever known.
The cheque itself was not heavy.
The paper weighed next to nothing.
But it sat in my pocket like a lead weight all the same. Not because I couldn't write and ask for another if i happened to lose it
No.
But because it still did not feel real. A part of me, the part still half convinced that good things were things one woke up from, kept expecting it all to vanish if I stopped paying attention.
As if the train might lurch, the paper might slip loose, and with it the whole impossible future that had opened in front of me went along with it.
After all, things had gone surprisingly easy.
Too easy, one might say.
That was what made this journey feel like the true test.
The hard part, at least in theory.
London. The Patent Office. The final board. The representative Brunner Mond had insisted on sending to sit in on the meeting.
Part of me had worried they meant to steal the idea.
But that was precisely what the provisional patent was for. Chronologically, at least, the invention was mine first. The thought made me smile faintly.
Outside, the whistle blew.
The whole carriage shuddered as the engine pulled against the weight of the train. Yet as the train began to make way after recoaling, I couldn't help but grin. It wasn't like I hadn't had other options if this had failed; it was just nice things were going all according to my admittedly fragile scheming.
I settled deeper into the seat, opening up the newspaper that had sat untouched on my lap as the platform began to slide away.
The Front Page was about British troops finally beginning a complete evacuation of Archangel after we occupied it when the Russian civil war started due to troops threatening to mutiny. It seems the Entente has finally realised that the whites are far too fragmented to actually back without committing large amounts of troops, which is politically impossible. All they'll continue to do now is throw the millions of guns that are left over from the war at them since Britain and France have no use for them now anyway.
There was section bickering about the events happening around it. The signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain at the beginning of the month and, about a week ago, out of protest over Italy's "mutilated" victory, Gabriele D'Annunzio had marched troops into Fiume.
A massive hurricane in Florida had killed 600 people.
An announcement that D'Oyly Carte returns to the West End.
As well as some bits about parliament debating the currently ongoing nationwide rail strike.
The nation had only not halted due to the government mobilising mass amounts of volunteers and soldiers to keep essential journeys running. It was why there were currently nine people squished into this compartment which was supposed to seat six.
I really needed to sit down at some point and just write out as much as I could remember, but for now my puny brain would have to do. I pondered for a few moments, the only two events I could remember was the evacuation and the thing with Fiume. And even then not exact dates. Though they both did happen around now, so nothing seems to have changed all that much yet. I shrugged and went back to reading the less important articles.
The train had been so packed that it had taken almost twenty minutes to unboard, but soon enough I was down from the carriage, cane finding the platform with a familiar tap as steam rolled in white sheets beneath the iron arches.
Cardiff station was both louder and quieter than it usually was. Porters shouted over trunks, whistles cut the air, boots rang against stone, and somewhere a newspaper boy was already crying out the evening edition before the ink had likely dried.
And then I saw her.
Kitty stood a little apart from the rush of passengers, hands clasped in front of her coat as though she had been trying very hard to appear patient. The moment her eyes found mine, all that careful composure vanished.
She crossed the platform in a breath.
Then she was in my arms.
The force of it nearly knocked the cane from under me, and I laughed despite myself, one hand catching her round the waist while the other steadied against her shoulder. Her cheek was cold from the station air, her hair smelling faintly of lavender and the city wind.
For a moment neither of us said anything.
We simply held on.
When she finally drew back, it was only far enough to look at my face, searching it the way she always did when she feared the answer might not match the hope.
"Well?" she asked.
My attempt to put on a solemn expression failed since I could not help the grin that broke across my face. Without a word, I reached into my inner pocket and carefully drew out the folded cheque.
Her eyes dropped to it. I placed it in her hands.
She unfolded it slowly, almost reverently, as though afraid rougher handling might tear the impossible number clean off the page. The station noise seemed to fall away around us.
Her lips parted slightly as she read.
"Seven thousan…" She looked up at me, then back down as if the figure might have changed in the second glance. "Good Lord."
"Oh, and don't forget that doesn't include the one and a half percent royalties," I said, unable to keep the pride from my voice.
She stared for another heartbeat, then let out a breath that was almost a laugh.
"That's not money," she said faintly. "That's uh…"
I smiled, but as I looked at her properly, I saw it.
Not disbelief exactly, but something quieter.
A tension I had seen before in her and never quite been able to name. The kind of worry that did not come from malice, nor from some immediate fear, but from the slow strain of holding two contrary truths in the same heart for too long.
She loved me.
That much I had never truly doubted when it came down to it.
But there had always remained the other truth: the life she had been expected to want, that she had been raised to want. Her father's world.
They weren't rich; at least compared to even some of the less wealthy families in the city, they were not even close. But her father's job as the foreman for one of the larger flour mills in the city meant that they never had to worry about him getting injured or about the expense of one of them getting ill.
But more than that, unlike in America, the British class system worked a lot differently. The lower class were generally those who worked day to day for a wage; if they didn't work that day, they didn't get paid…unskilled labour essentially.
The middle class was made of bankers, engineers, foremen, shopkeepers, and even some of the poorer industrialists…jobs which people saw as of a higher standing in the community, jobs where one's day-to-day labour wasn't required but they still had to make a living.
And the upper class was made of the larger landowners and the nobility, though they too were essentially just landowners but could also include those from the families of the older and wealthier industrialist families. So essentially, those who didn't ever have to really work.
But it wasn't even as simple as that, because even if you hit it successfully, you probably would still be judged as part of the class you were born in for the rest of your life even if you gained or lost a huge amount of wealth. And how people perceived you had a humongous influence on opportunities, trust and connections.
And when it came down to it, her father didn't hate me; he just wanted for her a husband who could provide without caveat or question, both financially and reputationally.
For months now, perhaps years, those two things had lived uneasily beside one another in her.
Me.
And the life she had once imagined.
Now, as she looked down at that cheque, I could almost see the first real light at the end of that long tunnel of uncertainty. Not greed but relief. It was the first glimpse of a future where both her desire for love and her family's demand for practicality no longer stood opposed.
Her fingers tightened around the paper.
"Teddy", she said again, softer this time, "thi…"
I took a slow breath.
"Yes," I said.
(Author's Note: Congrats you guys now get two chapters a day while royal road's writathon is going on until may.)