He stopped stroking my chest and raised his eyes to me. “You’re teasing me.”
“I’m not. And if we need to go further, to other countries, we fly on aeroplanes. You could be all the way over in Spain within three hours.”
“No, now I know you’re lying,” he said, playfully slapping me on the chest.
“I don’t know how to explain it. After the war, everything changed. Technology developed quicker than ever and the church had less say in things. The last, or next, one hundred years are hugely different.”
“What war?”
I wasn’t sure at first how much I should reveal, thinking perhaps that to know might somehow change things, but given that he would be in his 50’s by the time the First World War started I could see little harm in telling him the truth, and so I gave him a rundown of events as best I remembered them from what I was taught at school. He sat up and listened intently as I recounted stories of the Wars, the rise of the Third Reich, the fall of monarchies and the endurance of our own. I told him of movies and music, the hippy movement and the labour struggles of the eighties. He was awed by the advancements in technology, though I was pretty sure when I told him about the moon landings he thought I was making things up again.
“And what about us?” he asked. “Would we still have to sneak around in secret?”
“Things are better, but there’s still a long way to go. It’s not illegal anymore and some countries are even talking about legalising marriage. You might still get some stares, but mostly nobody cares and it’s not so strange to see couples living together openly.”
“Unmarried?” he asked, as though the thought of it was the most shocking thing he’d heard so far.
“Yes, unmarried. Women too. Single parents or unwed couples are all quite common.”
“Well, I don’t know about Cambridge, but I can’t see that taking off in Wales,” he said, in utter disbelief.
I laughed and tucked my arm around him, “You’ll see.”
“But I won’t, will I?” he said, suddenly turning to face me. “Whether you stay or go I’ll still be here in this time. I’ll be long dead before any of that happens.”
“Don’t think like that. I’m here now.”
“But for how long?”
I didn’t know how to reassure him because I didn’t have any of the answers I knew he wanted. I pulled him in close to me and lay my head against his as I considered what to say next, but before anything came to mind, we’d both fallen asleep.