by Ali Sparkes
‘I suppose Uncle Dick’s long gone too,’ sighed Polly. ‘Or an old man now. He was fun.’
‘Well, he was younger than Father,’ said Freddy. ‘I reckon he’d be about eighty-five … maybe.’
Uncle Jerome sat down opposite Freddy, replaced his glasses, and sighed. He nodded. ‘You’re quite right, Freddy. I was just getting carried away. This is so exciting. But we need to think carefully about this. You need time to get used to the twenty-first century, for one thing, before all this gets out. Once the government knows, there could be a leak. Then the tabloids would be chasing you in days.’
‘Tabloids? What are tabloids?’ Polly looked anxious. ‘Are they some kind of—some kind of robot?’
Freddy nudged her. ‘Newspapers, silly. The small ones like the Daily Sketch. Not robots!’
Ben laughed. ‘Far worse than robots!’
‘I suppose you must have heaps of robots,’ sighed Polly. ‘Do they really do everything for you—like metal servants? Do they talk? I saw something about them on Hilary’s television set. They said robots would run the world in the future.’
‘Yes—there are robots, Polly,’ said Uncle Jerome. ‘They make cars and so on, and defuse unexploded bombs, even do certain types of surgery—but almost nobody has a robot servant. Robots just aren’t that clever yet. They certainly don’t run the world.’
‘So—these tabloids? How are they worse?’ said Polly, looking serious. ‘Do—do they print beastly things?’
‘Only if you’re a footballer’s girlfriend or have boobs the size of China,’ giggled Rachel, and both Uncle Jerome and Polly gave her a reproving look. ‘Well—it’s true!’ said Rachel.
‘Tabloids are somewhat worse than they used to be,’ explained Uncle Jerome. ‘They have very tenacious reporters who would be fascinated by your story. They tend to be a little—sensationalist—in their reporting. But you don’t have to worry—no tabloids will come after you, because nobody is going to know about your past.’
‘How, though?’ said Ben. ‘We can’t hide them in the cellar every time someone comes—and what about Mum and Dad? They’ll have to know! They’re back in a couple of weeks! And what about school and stuff? And—well—inoculations! Medical things … I bet they haven’t had an MMR!’
Uncle Jerome nodded and smiled. ‘All in good time, Benedict! All in good time. There are ways and means. I agree, it’s most important to first acclimatize your great-aunt and uncle to the ways of 2009. Gently, of course. Most of your unlovely generation will shock them rigid. We can tell everyone that they are your cousins—come over from … um … South Africa?’
‘But we don’t know anything about South Africa!’ protested Freddy. ‘Come on, JJ! There’s got to be a better cover story than that!’
‘I know! I know!’ Rachel jumped up and down. ‘A commune! A hippy commune! They were brought up in the remote woods somewhere and—you know— taught at home. There are some children who are, you know! I read about it. They don’t know anything about anything—not even EastEnders!’
‘What’s EastEnders?’ asked Freddy.
‘It’s a soap,’ said Ben. ‘It’s a waste of time.’
‘Oh,’ said Polly. ‘Well, you should try Knight’s Castile. It’s jolly nice and keeps your complexion youthfully clear. And it’s got lovely paper wrapping which you can draw on.’
Ben and Rachel looked at each other. ‘Another time,’ said Rachel, and Ben nodded.
‘I say—can we get out of here now?’ said Freddy. ‘I’m dying to see what the twenty-first century looks like! Have you got a television set we can have a bit of a squint at?’
Ben sighed. ‘We have got one—but it’s broken. It blew up this morning.’
‘Well then—a wireless?’
‘A wire—? Oh—a radio? Yes. We’ve got two or three of those,’ said Ben.
Uncle Jerome gave a cry of joy. He had just found the notebooks which Ben had looked at before the door locked, earlier that day. ‘Shall we leave you to it for a bit, Uncle J?’ Ben offered. ‘Get some tea on for Freddy and Polly?’
Uncle Jerome was flipping through the notebook pages madly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and going ‘Aha! Aha … aha …’ He glanced up quickly at Ben and Freddy. ‘Yes … yes, of course. Get some decent food into them. They’ve not eaten for half a century. You can leave me here for a while.’ Ben grinned. He knew that ‘a while’, in Uncle Jerome’s case, might very well be days. Literally days. When he got that excited he was liable to forget to eat or sleep. They must remember to pop down with food for him.
‘You boys go on ahead,’ said Polly, as they went through the bunk bed room, ‘and take Bess out into the garden for a few minutes. Rachel and I will pack some clothes to bring.’
‘Righto,’ said Freddy and scooped the puppy out of Rachel’s arms. She pulled a face. She didn’t want to stay behind and pack.
Polly pulled two battered leather suitcases out from under one of the lower bunks and then went to the shelving on the far wall. There were drawers in the lower parts of the storage racks, filled with neatly folded shorts and blouses and dresses and jumpers, which Polly deftly gathered and pressed into the open cases. Rachel tried to help, but Polly shook her head at once. ‘No! You can’t put a jumper on top of a blouse! The heavier items are packed first … then the lighter items, such as blouses and petticoats, go on top. Or else they’ll get creased!’ She carefully placed the jumper under the lighter items of clothing. ‘You do Freddy’s. He won’t mind creases so much.’
‘Polly—we’re only going up the garden!’ said Rachel but Polly lifted her chin.
‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. I could do with some tissue paper, really, to roll up my frocks in … Didn’t your mother ever teach you to pack properly?’
Rachel had a vision of her mother, blonde and pretty, wildly flinging sparkly magic act outfits into a large trunk from across the other side of the room. Her method of packing was more like playing volley ball. The idea of her rolling anything up in tissue paper actually made Rachel laugh out loud. Polly looked a little offended, so Rachel coughed and answered: ‘Um … well, we don’t go away that much. Who taught you, then? Uncle J’s mother?’
‘Oh no, I learned all I need to know from Girl,’ said Polly, snapping shut the top of the little brown suitcase. ‘From the Mother Tells You How pages. They’re frightfully good. Only last week I made my own laundry bag from an old pyjama jacket. It hangs up in the wardrobe and is really rather good. At least Father thought so.’ At the mention of her father Polly fell silent and Rachel feared she might start crying again, but the girl just took a sharp breath, lifted her chin and stood up with her case. She gave Rachel a shrewd look. ‘It’s quite all right, you know. You needn’t worry that I’m going to start blubbing again. I’m really not that kind of girl. It’s just been a rather shocking day. I think I’ve got it out of my system now.’
Back in the house Ben and Freddy were looking for a working radio, Bess following them on unsteady legs, which hadn’t had its batteries nicked to power their hand-held computer games. Rachel and Polly went to the kitchen to sort out tea. While Rachel rifled through the freezer for ready meals, Polly attempted to lay the table.
‘Where are the place mats?’
‘Place mats? Um … you could try the second drawer down,’ suggested Rachel, hauling out some packets of Indian convenience meals.
Polly went to the second drawer down, opened it, reeled back a little in shock at the tangled mess she found there, and then gamely began to search through it for place mats. At length she retrieved some raffia weave things which someone had given their mother for Christmas some years ago. They were still in their box. It would simply never occur to Ben and Rachel’s mother to put place mats out on a table. Having cleared the rectangle of scrubbed pine of mugs and odds and ends of junk, Polly swiftly wiped it down with a wet cloth and laid out four mats. She guessed at the cutlery drawer—correctly—and began the next sta
ge of sorting out knives and forks that didn’t have smears on them.
‘Sorry, Polly,’ said Rachel, glancing across at the girl’s dismayed expression. ‘The dishwasher ran out of salt and it always makes stuff go all smeary when that happens. It’s quite safe though.’
‘You have a dish washer?’ Polly raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘And she ran out of salt and just didn’t bother to go and get any more? Mrs M would have sacked her on the spot.’
‘Umm … not a dishwasher person.’ Rachel bit her lip and tried not to giggle. Polly really was very funny—and she had no idea of it. ‘A machine.’
‘Like a tabloid?’
‘No—no that’s a newspaper, remember?’
‘Oh yes.’ Polly turned back to the knives and forks, found a tea towel, and began to polish them furiously, while Rachel turned her attention to violently stabbing the plastic seals of the frozen ready meals with a kitchen knife. After a few seconds she became aware of Polly at her shoulder, watching. ‘Is that … food?’
‘Yes,’ said Rachel. ‘Chicken tikka massala and rice. You’ll like it. It’s great. We have it all the time.’
Polly looked doubtful. ‘It’s a TV dinner, isn’t it?’ she said, unexpectedly.
‘Um—yes. I suppose so.’
‘They have them in America, all the time.’
‘Well, they have them in England all the time now, as well.’ Rachel stacked the plastic punnets inside the microwave, calculated the time, entered it on the greasy control pad and then set the microwave going. It hummed tunefully and shone a little light out through the spatters on the glass door.
‘This really is a dirty kitchen,’ said Polly. Rachel couldn’t disagree. Housework wasn’t a big concern at Darkwood House, although they did clear up from time to time. Usually about once a week, when Uncle J couldn’t get past a pile of rubbish and got cross. Most of the time he didn’t really notice. Rachel did make a point of not preparing food on mucky surfaces—she had learnt that much from health and safety lessons at school—but as most food preparation only involved heating stuff up in plastic tubs, it really wasn’t much of an issue. Now she saw the kitchen through Polly’s eyes and she was embarrassed. The kitchen in the underground chamber was much better than this, and nobody had cleaned that for fifty-three years.
‘Come on,’ said Polly, briskly. ‘We’ve got twelve minutes before the microwaving is finished. Let’s set to!’ To Rachel’s amazement, Polly was rolling up her sleeves and then emptying out the washing-up bowl (a swamp-like mess with orange scum floating around the edges) and stacking dirty crockery up on the side and running the hot tap. ‘I’ll wash—you dry,’ she instructed, handing Rachel the tea towel. She briskly scrubbed the plastic bowl clean under the tap before filling it with hot soapy water. ‘Washing-up water should be just hot enough to sting,’ she said. ‘Any cooler and it won’t do the job. Now. Dirty cutlery— fill this jug, like so, and put it all in, handles up, to soak, while we get on with the rest. Always wash the least dirty things first—that way you make your hot water last longer. Do you have a long-handled washing-up mop?’
‘A long-handled what?’ gasped Rachel. ‘Look— you don’t have to worry about all this. We’ll just sling it in the dishwasher.’
‘Has it got any more salt?’ asked Polly, crisply.
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Then it won’t do. Come on. Start drying. And putting away. We’ve only got nine minutes now. We want everything on the table for when the boys come in, don’t we?’
‘Do we?’ Rachel asked, faintly, but Polly gave her a look which silenced any further protest. She got wiping.
When Ben and Freddy and Bess came in ten minutes later, with a radio but no batteries, Ben was astounded to see four hot meals laid out in bowls on place mats, forks to one side, dessert spoons along the top, clean tumblers of water and a small vase of hand-picked honeysuckle gracing the centre. Polly looked pleased and Rachel, as she put Ben’s dish on his place mat, looked as if she’d been abducted by an alien.
The food made Freddy and Polly cry. It was only a mildly spiced dish, but it had them reaching for their cotton handkerchiefs (neatly folded in their shorts pockets) almost immediately.
‘What do you think?’ grinned Ben. ‘Twenty-first century food all right then?’
‘Oh! It’s marvellous!’ spluttered Freddy, and loaded his fork again immediately. ‘I’ve never tasted anything like it!’
‘And there’s so much meat,’ said Polly. ‘This must cost half your housekeeping!’
‘Not really,’ said Ben, giving a morsel to Bess, who was under the table, to stop her nibbling on his socks. ‘Everyone eats chicken. Loads of it.’
Polly and Freddy exchanged awed glances. ‘We only get it on Sundays, a few times a year,’ said Freddy.
‘Elbows off,’ said Polly, and Ben and Rachel did as they were told—and sat up straight as well.
Polly sighed. ‘Father loves roast chicken. If only we knew what had happened to Father,’ she said, scooping up the last of her food. ‘If only there was some way to be there, on that last day, and see what really happened. I can’t bear to think we won’t find out. It would be just too awful.’
Freddy suddenly put down his fork with a clatter and stared at Polly. She raised her eyebrows at him and said: ‘What?’
‘You said …’ He gulped and blinked. ‘You said … if only there was some way to see what happened … well … what if there was? Polly! What if there was?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, putting her own fork down and gulping some water from the glass tumblers she had polished clean a few minutes earlier.
‘Polly! Have you forgotten the Ampex?’
She froze and then put her hand to her mouth. ‘The Ampex!’ she whispered. ‘Do you think it could … did he? I mean, could it be …?’
‘What are you two on about?’ demanded Ben and Freddy turned to him and grabbed his arm, his dark blue eyes gleaming with excitement.
‘Ben, old chum,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take you back in time!’
The man in the grey trench coat was surprised to see someone else come to the graveside. As the priest muttered something in Latin, anxious to be off to his lunch on this cold winter’s day, there was a crunch of frosted grass and another man arrived, wearing dark glasses and an unreadable expression. The only other mourner was a woman who had been Richard Tarrant’s cleaner in the last few weeks of his life. She gathered her blue nylon coat around her, shivered, and then stepped forward to throw a handful of dirt onto the coffin before smiling at the priest and walking away.
Sad, that a man who had once been so popular should have only a cleaner, a resentful old work colleague, and someone else from the government attend his funeral. Because the newcomer certainly was government, no question.
Now he walked across, nodding respectfully to the priest who was making a swift exit. ‘For a moment back there,’ he said, ‘I thought I might have got extremely lucky.’ He held out his hand. ‘David Chambers.’
‘Ernest Granville,’ said the man in the grey trench coat, and shook the proffered hand. ‘I suppose you were hoping I might be Henry Emerson.’
Chambers laughed. He looked slightly embarrassed.
‘We have no reason to think the old boy’s even alive. But at least we know he wasn’t a traitor. Tarrant did that much for his old friend. Cold comfort though—telling us fifty-odd years after the event.’
‘It would be nice to let Emerson’s family know that, wouldn’t it?’ said Chambers, taking off his spectacles and regarding Granville closely.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But I don’t think either of us are going to do that just yet, are we? Just in case …’
‘In case they’re hiding the return of an old genius scientist?’
‘Or his son or daughter?’
Granville sighed. ‘Let’s stop playing games, shall we? None of us has a clue. He could be dead or alive, in Russia or in Peru for all we know. And his childre
n too. We’ll probably never know. I suppose you’ve a sleeper in place in Amhill, even so.’
Chambers smiled. He stooped down and threw the dirt on the coffin.
‘Treacherous old goat,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t really deserve to Rest In Peace. Emerson could have taken this country into an astonishing future. But I suppose if he had done anything for the Soviets we would have seen some evidence of it now. He probably refused and paid with his life.’
‘Like I said,’ Granville threw his own handful of dirt and they both turned away from the grave and began to walk, ‘we’ll probably never know.’
Ben knew this wasn’t possible. There was no way he could travel back in time. But he couldn’t suppress a shiver as Freddy led him back down into the vault for the third visit that day. They had hastily finished their food and were now descending the metal rungs once more.
Freddy jumped the last few feet and was away down the corridor and opening the first chamber door before Ben and Rachel and Polly had reached the bottom rung. They followed him into the main sitting room and saw him fiddling with one of the boxes of Izal toilet paper on the metal shelving to the right of the door.
‘Don’t worry,’ quipped Rachel. ‘The curry wasn’t that hot!’ But Freddy didn’t pay her any attention. Now he was twisting something on the wall behind the cardboard packets and then he grunted with satisfaction as there was a hollow rattle and the entire shelving unit swung towards him. Ben and Rachel gaped as a bright glow shone out in a fattening column in the wall behind the shelving. It was a hidden room.
‘Good. Light still works,’ said Freddy.
‘Freddy,’ said Polly, doubtfully. ‘Father said we weren’t to go in! We weren’t allowed!’
‘That,’ said Freddy, ‘was before he froze us and disappeared for fifty-three years. I reckon he would have let us in by the time we turned sixty. And I’m sixty-six.’
