Frozen in Time

by Ali Sparkes

  ‘No—they’re not ghosts,’ said Rachel, standing up. ‘They’re—’

  ‘I know who they are. Who else would they be?’ gasped Uncle Jerome, resting his head against the fridge and stretching his eyes as if he just could not fit what he saw into them. ‘It’s Frederick and Pauline.’

  Ben got his uncle to put his head down between his knees until the faintness passed, while Rachel made another mug of sweet tea.

  ‘Are they still there?’ Uncle Jerome’s voice was weak and muffled by his corduroy trousers. ‘Have they faded from view yet?’

  ‘They’re still here—and they’re not fading at all,’ said Ben. ‘They’re not ghosts. How do you know their names?’

  ‘Have they made contact?’ asked Uncle Jerome. ‘Ask them to knock three times if they can see us.’

  ‘They’re not ghosts!’ insisted Ben. ‘Honestly, Uncle J—I’m surprised at you! You’re a scientist!’

  ‘How does he know your names?’ asked Rachel but Freddy and Polly just shrugged, distracted from their own grief and shock by the arrival of the man who was insisting they weren’t real.

  ‘Uncle, please!’ said Rachel, sounding as much as she could like her mother (Uncle Jerome’s younger sister, who never did take any nonsense from him). ‘This is Freddy and Polly—we found them in an underground vault in the woods.’

  ‘They’re not ghosts,’ repeated Ben. ‘That would be ridiculous. They’ve just been held in cryonic suspension for fifty-three years.’

  Uncle Jerome shot his head back up from between his knees. ‘What did you say?’ he gasped.

  ‘I said, they’ve been in a sort of cryonic suspension … down in the vault in the garden … since 1956. We just dug them out.’

  Uncle Jerome looked across at the brother and sister, who were regarding him nervously across their half-drunk tea, and suddenly he gave a wild chuckle and a tear rolled down one cheek. ‘I knew it … I knew he couldn’t have done it. I knew it!’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ Ben shook his uncle’s shoulder.

  ‘Everyone said he did—but I never believed them! Never! And I was right!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Ben.

  ‘Ben—be a good boy and bring the wooden chest in from the sitting room,’ said Uncle Jerome, who was now getting to his feet, still chuckling, his moist eyes fixed upon Freddy and Polly. ‘Hurry up!’

  When Ben returned with the small chest, Uncle Jerome was sitting at the table, shaking his head in amazement, looking from Freddy to Polly and then back again. Rachel was trying to get him to drink his sweet tea. ‘You look exactly—exactly—as I remember you,’ he was murmuring.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Polly. ‘But I don’t remember you. Ought I to?’

  ‘Not like this, certainly,’ laughed Uncle Jerome. ‘You need to knock fifty-three years off. I was only six when it all happened.’

  ‘When what happened?’ asked Freddy. ‘I want to know what happened. What happened to Father? Where is he?’

  Ben dropped the chest at his uncle’s feet and Uncle Jerome quickly undid it to reveal books and old faded papers. He pulled out a grey foolscap folder and put it on the table. Inside were yellowed newspaper pages. ‘Prepare yourself,’ he said, quite gently for Uncle Jerome, and opened up what turned out to be the front page of the local daily paper. Across it, in thick black headlines, they read:

  SCIENTIST BELIEVED TO HAVE MURDERED

  CHILDREN AND FLED

  Polly cried out and put her hand to her throat while Freddy inhaled sharply and pulled the elderly paper closer to him, staring down at it in horror. Ben and Rachel peered over his shoulder and read the story. Of course, they had heard about it, long ago … everyone had.

  Renowned scientist Henry Emerson is being hunted by police after the sudden and suspicious disappearance of his son Frederick, 13, and daughter Pauline, 12, from their Hampshire home. Professor Emerson, who was commended by the Government for his invaluable research during the war, has not been seen for two weeks. His children were reported missing after failing to arrive back at their boarding schools for the second half of term.

  Headmaster Jonathan Harlow, of Plumstead Boarding School for Boys in Wiltshire, first attempted to contact Prof. Emerson by telegram, letter, and telephone but was eventually obliged to call in the Hampshire Constabulary. Detectives have reported signs of a scuffle and bloodstains on the floor of the Emerson family residence at Amhill.

  Mrs M. Minstead, the family housekeeper, told police she was asked to take holiday over Whitsun and leave the family to look after itself. She reported that Prof. Emerson sometimes performed some of his experiments upon his children, despite the concerns she expressed. A thorough search of the family house and gardens has revealed no trace of the children, but many of the scientist’s books and notes appear to have been taken from his attic laboratory, along with his passport. The children’s belongings were left behind, according to Mrs Minstead.

  ‘We can’t be sure,’ said Detective Inspector Percival Shaw, ‘but it does look very suspicious. Professor Emerson kept very much to himself and was known to be short-tempered with his children. We do fear the worst.’

  Ben and Rachel stared at each other, amazed, across the table. Why didn’t they think of this sooner? The mystery of the missing Emersons had been talked about for years around Amhill, but to be honest, everyone had got used to the story by the time Ben and Rachel had moved into Darkwood House. It only tended to come up at Hallowe’en.

  Freddy raised his eyes to Uncle Jerome. ‘Does— did—everyone believe that? That my father killed us?’

  Uncle Jerome shook his head and shrugged sadly. ‘It was a big shock, of course. Nobody wanted to believe it—but the evidence, such as it was in those days, stacked up against your father. I was too young to be told much, but I remember everyone in the town talking about it.’

  ‘How do you come to have this?’ asked Freddy. ‘How do you come to be living here—in our house?’

  ‘Well, you see, Frederick—you’re my uncle. And Pauline is my aunt,’ explained Uncle Jerome, with a smile. ‘My mother Ivy was married to your big brother, William—who died of TB when you were little and I was only a baby. Do you remember? So that made her your sister-in-law—your father’s daughter-in-law. When your mother died after having Pauline, my mother would sometimes come and help out at Darkwood House, and bring me along too—remember? My sister, Annabel, was born about ten years later after mother remarried—you never met her. Annabel is Ben and Rachel’s mum. Do you see?’

  Freddy was screwing up his face. ‘You mean … you’re JJ? That snotty little infant who tried to eat my chemistry set?’

  Uncle Jerome laughed. ‘Yes! Yes—it’s me. I always loved your chemistry set. I loved your father’s lab too, although he only rarely let me see it. He was amazing. I couldn’t believe he was a murderer. I really couldn’t. He—he inspired me! I inherited his house and his laboratory … even some of his notes. I’m a scientist, too, but, oh my word, nothing like as great as he! He actually did it! He actually did! He perfected cryonic suspension. And here you are! The living proof! Tell me—what can you remember? What can you remember about—’

  ‘Yesterday?’ said Polly and Uncle Jerome shut up, stricken, as they were all reminded that for this girl it really was yesterday that she last saw her father.

  ‘Yesterday was sunny,’ said Polly, in a small, high voice. ‘We were going to have Battenberg cake at teatime, as a treat. Because Father said he’d really done it. It was perfect. He said when they dropped the atom bomb we’d all be safe. We could all just sleep for years until the radioactivity was gone—and wake up good as new. He wanted to do a one hour check and then we were going to have Battenberg …’

  ‘So it’s a bomb shelter?’ gasped Ben. ‘Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?’

  ‘Father said there could be a strike at any time,’ said Freddy. ‘He said we had to be prepared. He had the shelter built last year … I mean … in fi
fty-five. But we weren’t to tell anyone about it. He said neighbours would all come running when the sirens went off, and we didn’t have enough space or supplies for them all—especially if the sleeping chambers didn’t work. But they did. They did …’ He looked down at his feet and then suddenly up at them all again. ‘Did they drop the bomb? Did it happen?’

  ‘Well … no,’ said Rachel. ‘We wouldn’t all be here if it had, would we?’

  Polly stood up and began to walk around the kitchen in agitation. ‘Who cares about the bomb? What happened to Father? Where is he? Is he … is he still alive? Did they put him in prison? What?’

  Uncle Jerome sighed. ‘I’m so very sorry, Pauline. We just don’t know. He was never found. Some people thought he had fled abroad after killing you both—perhaps in an experiment which went wrong— others said he was a spy for the Soviets and had defected—’

  ‘Never!’ shouted Freddy, also standing up again. ‘My father did everything for his country! Everything! He was a hero! And he never did experiments on us, whatever Mrs Minstead said—that’s just tosh!’

  ‘Well … er … he did put you in suspension a few times … didn’t he?’ ventured Rachel.

  ‘Well, we helped him sometimes, that’s all. And that’s not the same as—I don’t know—sticking needles in us or making us eat radioactive pudding or something,’ said Freddy. ‘And that’s exactly what it sounds like in that shabby newspaper. What else do they say about him?’

  Uncle Jerome pulled out some more cuttings, all following the story of the missing children and their father with headlines like: ‘MISSING SCIENTIST & CHILDREN—MYSTERY DEEPENS’ and ‘COULD HE HAVE KILLED HIS OWN? VANISHED SCIENTIST EVIDENCE POINTS TO MURDER’. The bloodstains, they read, had been identified as the children’s blood group.

  ‘But our father was the same blood group as us. He did tests on all our blood!’ said Freddy. ‘What if it was his blood? It must have been his.’

  ‘Yes—I think that was said at the time,’ said Uncle Jerome. ‘None of the family wanted to believe he was a killer—but the press really got their teeth into it. The investigation went on for months and months before they just had to give up. They didn’t find any bodies and no trace of any of you … which puzzles me now. How is it that they didn’t find the entrance to the shelter? I know Rachel and Ben dug you out today, but that was after fifty-odd years—you’d expect it to get covered over, in the middle of a wild wood, over the years—but surely it wasn’t at the time? And they must have searched the wood.’

  ‘Well, Father set up a system in case he needed to cover it up in a hurry,’ said Freddy, looking proud. ‘We even practised it with him, like a drill, a couple of times, in case of emergency. We had a pulley system in the trees. There were ropes which held some leaves and earth in a bag—and a log suspended upright near the hatch. When you wound the handle, this great load of mud and sticks and leaves would fall into the hole that the hatch was set into—then the log would drop down across it. Then it looked just like the rest of the wood floor, with a jolly heavy log on top. You could do it in a minute if you needed to and all the ropes and pulley stuff was hidden in the trees. Father made it work from the outside or from the inside, so we could cover our tracks if we all had to go in. I expect the police did search the woods, but if you didn’t know what you were looking for, well … you’d never have found it. Not until the log mouldered away, at any rate. And it worked, didn’t it? It took fifty-three years.’

  ‘Astonishing!’ marvelled Uncle Jerome. ‘So we can see how it was done … but why?’

  Everyone thought about this but nobody could come up with any answer. Why had Freddy and Polly been buried and abandoned?

  ‘Didn’t your housekeeper, or anyone else, know about the shelter and what your father was doing?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Oh no—definitely not!’ said Freddy. ‘She was a decent sort, I suppose, but a frightful gossip. Father wouldn’t have trusted her with our secrets. Like I said, we didn’t want a great crowd of neighbours rampaging up to us when the sirens went off … and … they never did …’ He shook his head in amazement. ‘Everyone was so scared, with the Soviets working with the Arabs …’

  ‘Why?’ asked Rachel.

  Ben snorted. Rachel was never that great at history. ‘Don’t you remember? 1956! The Suez crisis! Everyone thought they were going to get nuked over that one.’

  ‘Suez crisis?’ echoed Freddy.

  ‘Yeah—you know … when the Egyptians grabbed the Suez canal and the Russians sided with them and everyone thought …’ Ben tailed off and glanced at Uncle Jerome.

  ‘That was in the November,’ he said. ‘Freddy and Pauline disappeared in the spring of that year … May or June, I think it was.’

  ‘I don’t care about some rotten old canal!’ burst out Polly. ‘What about Father? What about him? If it was his blood on the floor—what—what happened to him? Someone must have attacked him! What—what if—?’ She put her hands over her eyes and shook her head. ‘No! No—this can’t be real. It can’t be!’ Suddenly she ran out of the kitchen and back down the hallway, shouting: ‘Father! Father! Daddy—oh, Daddy! Make it stop! Make them all stop and come back! Come back!’ She flung open the front door, fought her way past the wisteria and out into the garden and ran.

  Freddy raced out after her and the rest of them followed. Rachel felt her heart contract with sorrow for Polly as she heard the girl stumbling and slipping back down through the wet garden shouting ‘Daddy! Daddy! Come back!’ over and over again. Eventually they found her, crouched, hugging her knees, in the damp little cave space which had been beaten into the rhododendron bushes on the bank by years of den making. Tears streamed down her face.

  Freddy gave her a hug. ‘Come on, old girl,’ he said. ‘It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right … I mean, at least we’ve still got family, eh? Even if one of them is the oldest nephew in living history …’

  Uncle Jerome followed Ben and Rachel into the tight, leafy cave, hanging awkwardly from a slippery green branch. ‘Yes, quite right too, Freddy. You and Polly will be fine with us. You’ll stay here with us and we’ll look after you. And I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to find out what happened to your father. And imagine! You’re fifty-three years in the future— all kinds of things for you to see and experience! Ben and Rachel will be your guides and keep you safe. What an amazing thing! What a challenge!’

  ‘Yes—that’s right. It’s a challenge,’ said Freddy, briskly, as Polly wiped her eyes, sniffed and nodded. He nodded too and added, robustly: ‘Eat my shorts!’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind sharing,’ said Rachel as she showed Polly into her bedroom, which was at the front of Darkwood House, overlooking the driveway and the five-bar gate that led out onto the lane. ‘There are other rooms but they’re a bit dusty and old. There’s a spare bed that comes out from under mine—it’s really nice,’ she explained, pulling out the red mattress on a low frame on little wheels. ‘I’ve used it for sleep-overs and it’s comfy.’

  Polly gazed all around her. She said nothing. Rachel’s heart suddenly thudded with realization. ‘Oh … was this your room, before?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Polly.

  ‘I’m sorry. It must be really weird seeing all my stuff in it.’ Rachel glanced around at her books and stuffed toys and clothes and teen dolls, all mixed up with magazines and CDs for her mini sound system, her digital camera, the fibre optic lamp in the corner and the yellow bead blinds that hung over the high sash window, matching the lemon paint on her walls and the duvet cover on her high pine cabin bed. She saw it with different eyes now. ‘What was it like in nineteen—I mean—yesterday?’

  ‘It was green,’ said Polly, softly, her eyes travelling the walls. ‘Wavy green leaves on the wallpaper and cream paint on the ceiling.’ She glanced up to the white ceiling which had yellow and orange stars randomly painted on it, at the yellow glass bead lamp-shade over the light, and then across to the window. ‘With a dressing table there�
��by the sash—a glass topped one. I had a silver-backed brush and comb set on it and a mirror on a stand. And a pot of Yardley’s face cream. There was an oak tallboy near the door. My bed was where yours is—but a proper iron-framed bed with a lace counterpane on the eiderdown. I had my dolls on a shelf. Miss Rosebud used to sit on my bed. She’s my favourite doll. Of course, I’m a bit old for dolls now, really, and Freddy laughs at me—but I do love her.’

  ‘Oh—I love dolls too!’ said Rachel, cheerfully, although it wasn’t strictly true. She quite liked dolls, but certainly didn’t love them—she’d pretty much grown out of them a year or more ago. She seized one now, though, to show to Polly. It was Ritzy—a Chatz Doll—one of a collection of funky teenage figures with oversized eyes, glossy pouting lips, and dreadlocked hair. This one wore hotpants and a crop top and leather-look boots. The designers had given her a navel with its own piercing and she came with a choice of bellybutton rings and studs.

  Polly took the doll in her hands, eyes wide. ‘She doesn’t look like a little girl at all. She’s got a … a bosom! Oh! And someone’s stuck a pin in her tummy! How horrid!’

  ‘No—that’s …’ Rachel tailed off. Polly didn’t even have pierced ears, she could see. This was going to take a while to explain. She changed the subject. ‘I’m sure we’ve got lots in common!’ she chirruped. ‘What’s your school like … er … was it like? I bet you had a horrible maths teacher. Every school has a horrible maths teacher!’

  ‘We went to boarding school,’ said Polly. ‘So Father could concentrate on his work. We didn’t mind. Grange Court was all right. The girls were mostly quite decent although you had to fag for the older ones and that was jolly hard work when I first went.’

  ‘Fag?’ Rachel queried.

  ‘You know—do all their chores for them! Because I was in the first year, of course. It’s to teach you your place! And how to shine shoes and sew and all that. Just because we’re at boarding, it doesn’t mean we all have butlers, you know. We don’t have anyone at home except Mrs M and she only comes in three times a week. But you’re right—mathematics is ghastly! I detest it. Mr Bullford is awful whenever I get my times tables wrong and I’m wrong a lot. Freddy’s good at maths, of course—and sport and all that boy stuff— but I’m a total clot when it comes to that kind of thing. I’m good at English though, and Domestic Science. I can make hotpot and neck of lamb and all sorts.’