Right Place, Wrong Time

inspired by the Dr John song "Right Place Wrong Time"

Big thank you to Stories from the Jukebox for this week’s prompt from Dr John. I do like a song I know then I can be humming it whilst dog walking and things flow.

Photo by Clay Elliot on Unsplash

Right Place, Wrong Time

Betty stood under the large clock tower in the middle of the market square. Something wasn’t right. Things were different to what she remembered. She had stood in this place waiting for George so often that she should know it off by heart but something was wrong. The shop fronts seemed brighter and more garish than she remembered. The cars seemed all wrong; slicker, faster, out of shape. And the clothes! There were girls in trousers, brightly coloured, or skirts so short they shouldn’t be allowed out alone. There were piercings and hair dyed many colours on boys as well as girls. And tattoos on people who did not look like they were sailors or prostitutes or just out of prison. But this was the right place. This was where she met George every week when she finished work.

Although she didn’t remember working today. She couldn’t remember what she had been doing before she got to the clock tower. She looked at her hands. They were gnarled and liver-spotted, wrinkled, pale. There was a gold band on one finger. She wasn’t quite sure which. And a man’s signet ring on her middle finger. She wondered where she’d got them from. Something was wrong but she knew this was the right place. This was where she met George. She knew that for certain.

But the noise. She didn’t remember noise like this. From the cars, from the sky, from huge lorries lumbering by. And the people; shouting, at themselves, as each other, strange noises coming from their heads. Betty was about to cover her ears with those old hands and scream when she felt a gentle hand on hers. She looked down hoping it was George, but this hand was a small, neatly manicured hand. It was resting on those gnarled, liver-spotted, wrinkled hands that appeared to be hers.

Betty went to move a hand. It was the wrinkled hand that moved. The small white hand rested on the hand she was making move. Betty looked across. The eyes that met hers were like those she was used to seeing in the mirror when she brushed her hair. Hazel brown. Liquid eyes George called them. Betty’s hair was always long but this face was framed by a short bob. She didn’t remember having her hair cut. She was sure George would have said something if she had. She didn’t remember him saying anything.

The wrinkle-free hand squeezed the gnarled hand. Betty felt the pressure and realised the old hand really was hers.

“Come on, Nain, time to go home,” the mouth that looked like hers but wasn’t said in a voice that sounded slightly like she remembered her own.

“But I need to wait here for George,” her mouth said in an old, weak, trembling voice.

“Come on, Nain, time to go home,” the patient voice that wasn’t hers said.

“I am in the right place,” that weak, old voice said from her mouth.

“Granddad is waiting for you,” the young voice said. “Come on now.”

It was then that Betty remembered. Just for a fleeting moment. Her granddaughter swallowed hard as large tears slid down Betty’s cheeks.

“You are in the right place. It is just the wrong time, Nain,” said Lisa as she encouraged her dressing gown-clad grandmother to leave her vigil by the clock tower and come back home.

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