Flashback - Softcover

Mann, Gordon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595202829 ISBN 13: 9780595202829

Publisher: iUniverse, 2001

Synopsis

Dr. Julius de Havilland, a lecturer in history, and his wife Claire, a nurse, are happily married until his friend, Professor Geoff Haynes, persuades him to take part in a new project he's working on. When the experiment goes disastrously wrong it seems that Julius will never see his wife again. But what happens when he becomes attracted to a young Victorian girl? A story of love and infidelity across two centuries, and one man's struggle to live in a world that he has only previously known from history books

About this title

About the Author:

Gordon Mann is a full-time computer programmer. He is a double graduate with degrees in science and English literature/history. He is keenly interested in Victorian England. This is Gordon?s first book and combines a traditional romantic love story with elements of science. His ambition is to become a full-time author.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Could it really have been something as simple as his name that had started his obsession with the past? Even as a youngster he’d been fascinated with his family history but in researching it, had come to an abrupt halt when trying to find details of his great-great-grandfather. Thinking back he could say, yes it was his name that had been the spark that gave him his whole career.
Being a somewhat sensitive boy his name had proved a great embarrassment at school and provided excellent psychological ammunition for the tormenting bullies. They constantly called after him “Julie, that’s a girl’s name” or even worse. In his younger days he’d arrived home many a time close to tears after the teasing he’d received. He even wished, secretly, he had a middle name he could use instead. When he tentatively suggested to his parents that he might change his name to William, after his uncle, well, great uncle really, their answer was an emphatic no! So, Julius de Havilland he was, and Julius de Havilland he would remain.
His father was also Julius but it never occurred to him as a small boy to ask why they had the same name, that is, until it was time to start at the grammar school and his mother was sewing in his name tags. She had said that she had some old ones that belonged to his father and as they had the same name there was no point in wasting them.
‘Mum, why are Dad and me called the same?’ he had asked.
‘Well, it certainly wasn’t my idea,’ she replied, ‘Apparently it’s a family tradition. Your Grandfather was also called Julius and as far as I know his father was as well.’
‘How far back does it go, then?’
‘I really don’t know. You’d have to ask your father.’
He did ask his father but he received very little more information than from his mother. It seemed that all the eldest sons of the family were named Julius so he resolved there and then to find out more about it one day. At the moment however he had the problem of a new school to worry about which rather tended to push other pursuits into the background.
He’d had few friends at school. The only one who he could call a real friend was a girl by the name of Claire Westfield. She came from the next village and was a bit of a tomboy who went to the woods with him and climbed all over the trees. She dared to climb higher than he did but never once used it as a stick to beat him with. She had freckles and short hair that stuck up all round her head. He once asked her why she didn’t have long hair like most of the other girls.
‘It catches in things,’ she said, before punching him in the chest and running off for him to chase her. They went to the cinema together most Saturday mornings and then would spend the afternoon acting out what they had seen. One afternoon just before they were due to leave school for their next stage of education, they were in the woods playing chase and Jules caught her and pinned her to the ground.
‘I shall kiss you like that man did in the film this morning,’ he said and leaning down, kissed her full on the lips. Although they were both little more than eleven years old, the sensation of her lips on his and, her warm body pressed against his, generated a strange excitement in him, an excitement he’d never felt before. He lifted his head after less than a minute and looked down at her. She looked up at him strangely and he realised that she too had felt this odd feeling. After that there seemed to be a slight reserve between them which lasted the few days until they left school and he didn’t see her again.
He did well at the grammar school. He took to the arts like a fish to water and it was not long before he was picking up prizes. It was obvious that he was going to go on to University and in the last year at school it seemed that he was all set to go to Cambridge and read for a degree in philosophy. That this did not happen was due to an event that was to change his life for ever.
He remembered it so well. He was seventeen years old at the time, at a loose end and bored. Despite it being late spring the weather was already hot and humid and he sat around the house first picking up and then discarding magazines and books unsure of what to do. It was Saturday afternoon and there was the usual ancient black and white film on the television droning away ignored in the background. His father suddenly appeared from the garden where he’d been cutting the grass. He carefully removed his green-stained shoes, placed them neatly outside the open French door and collapsed exhausted into an armchair, prepared to watch whatever was on the TV. Jules had a sudden thought.
‘Dad, where do we come from?’
‘I thought you had sex education at school these days.’ His father’s jokes were never of the highest quality and Jules was not in the mood anyway.
‘No, seriously. I thought I might spend some time researching the family tree and, well, we must have originated from somewhere. It can’t be here because this is a new estate and I know that there aren’t any de Havillands in the local cemetery because I looked ages ago.’

About this edition

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0595202829
• ISBN 13: 9780595202829
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 212