Gramps was unlike every old person you have ever met. He was up to date on everything. This included all of Charlie’s favourite television shows such as the Simpsons, Mutant X, Smallville and any Star Trek episode from any of the various incarnations of the programme. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of each show and could discuss the minutiae of, more or less, every episode with Charlie. Charlie did not know if his grandfather’s knowledge had been acquired to delight and amuse him or if Gramps genuinely liked the shows. Either way, it didn’t matter; it just made Gramps cool in Charlie’s eyes and meant that he loved to be here.
The other great thing about Gramps was his vast knowledge of anything even remotely scientific. Gramps could answer any question concerning those subjects in which Charlie was interested. In fact, Charlie could not remember his grandfather unable to answer any question. And Charlie could ask some pretty serious questions. In short, Gramps was the grandfather every boy like Charlie would want if they could design their own from scratch.
Charlie and his mother bundled in through the front door and Gramps shut it before turning to them and making a grand sweeping gesture with his arm toward the kitchen at the back of the house.
“Tea! Hot toast and marmalade! For the weary travellers!” his voice sounded like a volley of cannon fire. “Eat and make merry!”
Gramps’ kitchen was vast with a huge ancient oak table planted squarely in the middle. Surrounding the table were eight equally old oak chairs, each upholstered in red leather, and it could quite easily take
four more. They sat down and Gramps quickly produced a huge plate of buttered toast and two steaming mugs of tea. Then he turned to Charlie.
“Television or radio?” he enquired, gesturing to each appliance in turn as he did so.
“Television,” Charlie replied and Gramps promptly switched on the grey portable on the work surface beside the table.
“Commercial television, the British Broadcasting Corporation or something beamed from a satellite in geo-stationary orbit above the earth?” What he meant was ITV, BBC or Sky TV.
“Sky please, Gramps,” Charlie didn’t have Sky at home, which was another reason that he loved being at Gramps’ house.
“I’ll make it so!” said Gramps producing the remote control with a flourish and affecting a melodramatic Shakespearian voice.
Charlie enjoyed the impersonation of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, as Gramps knew he would.
Charlie’s mother finished a piece of toast and gulped down her mug of tea.
“I’ve got to go Dad,” she said and stood and embraced her father lovingly.
“I told them that I would be in by eleven, which only gives me an hour and a half to get back across town.”
She walked over to Charlie and gave him a big mum type hug as well.
“Be good for Gramps and take care of yourself Charlie. I will come over on Saturday morning and we can go out for the day.”
“Okay Mum,” beamed Charlie. He really did love his mother, she worked hard to make him happy and he recognised that and he repaid the effort by being the son she wanted, the son that any mother would be delighted to have.
“Take care driving Jeanie,” said Gramps, with an uncharacteristically soft voice. “And try to avoid the A40; apparently there are some major road works that are snarling up all traffic out of town.”
He reached out and gave her another hug and then walked her to the door. She called back from the other end of the hall to Charlie in the kitchen, “Byeeeee Charlie!”
“Bye Mum!” he shouted back and then he heard the door close and Gramps returning along the hallway to the kitchen, his brown brogue shoes tapping a rhythmic beat on the dark hardwood floor.
“Now then young Charlie Watts, what is your pleasure?” asked Gramps as he re-entered the kitchen. “You have the full run of the house this morning and I suspect that you will want to attend to some experiment or other in your room. I will prepare us a lunch at thirteen hundred hours precisely and I thought that you might enjoy an excursion to the cinema this afternoon. There is a new film with the Austrian politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger entitled Terminator Four. Would that appeal to you?”
Charlie smiled broadly.
“That would be great Gramps. What time does the film start?”
“At fourteen thirty hours. We will leave at precisely fourteen hundred hours. I have already booked the tickets on the internet using my bank credit card. All very modern and clever if you ask me.”
Anyone listening to Gramps would be convinced that he was losing his marbles but Charlie knew better. He knew that Gramps could complete the cryptic crossword in the Times in less than ten minutes, could recall any date without hesitation and remembered any event without having to ponder it for ages like most old people. Gramps just seemed to live in a time warp as far as his way of speaking was concerned. Everyone who knew him realised all of this and universally ignored it.
“I have to go out for one hour Charlie, into the town to visit with my good friend Dr. Cirencester, so I will leave you to fend for yourself for this amount of time. Please try to avoid burning my house to the ground, do not permit entry to strangers and, under no circumstances, perform any type of unnecessary surgery on Hercules. Do you understand these simple rules?”
Charlie nodded gravely. Gramps was referring to several specific events. As a young boy he had managed to start a fire in his room with a small chemistry set that Gramps had given him, invited a huge fat dirty man, in a dirty vest, who had been selling tarmac, into the house and, finally, had tried to put a wooden splint onto Hercules, Gramps’ cat. Charlie thought the animal had broken a foreleg jumping from a wall in the garden. Gramps insisted that Hercules had been mentally scarred for life by the experience of Charlie binding its right foreleg
with a wooden ruler and Sellotape and then securing it against the other foreleg, with more Sellotape, to ensure it remained straight. Gramps had found Hercules trying, unsuccessfully, to stand up, mewling in terror at the bonds in which it found itself. Charlie was seven at the time. He knew better now but Hercules, now an old shabby Jellicle cat, had not forgotten the incident, or the pain of having the Sellotape removed from his fur. He always ran for a dark and concealed corner, showing a surprising turn of speed, whenever Charlie turned up. There he would normally stay, quivering, until Charlie departed or went to bed.
“Gramps I am now fourteen. Any medical procedure that I perform on Hercules will be entirely justified and will not involve Sellotape.”
“Capital my lad!” boomed Gramps letting out a huge laugh and then he turned on his heels and was gone. The front door slammed shut and Charlie heard the old Ford Prefect being coaxed into life and then reversed out the garage. Then there was the crunch of the gravel as Gramps left the drive.
FIVE
Now everyone knows that the probability that a buttered piece of bread, when accidentally dropped, will land buttered side down is ninety-nine point nine per cent-recurring, or so it seems. This same rate of probability cannot however, be applied to the chance of a thin biscuit, being dropped accidentally, landing on it’s side and then rolling under a large Welsh dresser where, upon being retrieved, it leads to the discovery of a hidden door leading to a completely unknown place.
This happened to Charlie just after Gramps left to visit his friend Dr. Cirencester, who had a surgery just off Putney high street. He was walking from the kitchen balancing a glass of milk and two rich tea biscuits on a plate. He was intending to go into Gramps’ hobbies room where he was going to carry out some chemistry experiments. However, in a curious twist of fate, he tripped against the edge of a green and red Chinese rug that Gramps had laid in the middle of the highly polished wooden floor in the hallway and, whilst trying to keep his balance, a rich tea biscuit slipped from the plate. It landed on its side and rolled across the floor, right under a large mahogany
dresser that Gramps kept pushed against one wall of the hall. Charlie put down the plate and glass of milk and dropped to his knees to retrieve the biscuit but when he peered under the dresser it was too dark to see it. A torch would be required. Charlie fetched the large rubber cased torch that Gramps habitually kept by the back door and returned and shone it under the heavy dresser. There, right at the back, was the offending biscuit but there was also something else that took Charlie by surprise, the clearly defined outline of the bottom of a door.
Charlie stood up and took a few steps back. There was absolutely no indication of a door when the dresser was viewed from an ordinary
perspective. Clearly the large piece of furniture had been placed in its current position in order to obscure the door. Why would Gramps want to hide whatever lay beyond it? Charlie had assumed that he knew everything about Gramps’ house but obviously he had been wrong. Curiosity now burned in him and he resolved to ask Gramps as soon as he returned. That was the plan.
Now Charlie is not the kind of youth who is normally given over to going where he shouldn’t. He is, however, blessed (or burdened, depending on your point of view) with an enquiring mind that immediately seeks answers to conundrums and this, in his view, was a conundrum of the highest order. He retrieved the biscuit and had intended to carry on with his planned chemistry activity and wait for Gramps to return. That was his resolve. His resolve persisted for a good ten or maybe even eleven seconds before he decided to just test to see if he could move the dresser-just enough to peer behind it at the door it concealed.
He stood at the left side; bracing himself to move the heavy looking piece of furniture and then began to gently prise one side of it from the wall. He was very careful because the dresser was loaded with plates and china ornaments which he knew he should remove. Thinking, however, that he would not be able to move the piece of furniture anyway, removing all the plates seemed like it would be a totally wasted effort. All he was doing was testing to see if, theoretically, he could move it, if he wanted to. He pulled gently at the dresser exerting a small amount of upward lift at the same time, expecting to find that it was like trying to move a medium sized family car. But, to his shock and delight, the dresser “clicked” and swung smoothly and effortlessly away from the wall on some sort of hinge device revealing a white painted door with a black metal handle and a potentially frustrating keyhole.
‘Aha!’ thought Charlie, just as he suspected; a concealed door. This was enough for his curiosity, or so he thought. After resolving to replace the dresser and to patiently await the return of Gramps he immediately decided to just test the handle of the door, which would certainly be locked. If Gramps had gone to so much trouble to hide the door in the first place he would almost certainly keep it locked. Wouldn’t he?
Charlie reached for the door handle and gripped it firmly. It felt cold and hard, as metal inevitably does. He hesitated a second and then, throwing caution to the wind, pushed down. The handle opened the door
with ease and it swung noiselessly toward him. The open door revealed a set of stairs that descended into a pool of liquid-like darkness. A cellar! Charlie was both intrigued and perplexed. He had never known that there was a cellar in Gramps’ house; it had never even occurred to him to ask if there was or to try and find one. Now, however, he realised that it would be ridiculous for a house of this age and size not to have a cellar. But why was it both hidden and so easily accessible? The way the dresser was hinged suggested that access was required on a regular basis.
What was the secret that Gramps had gone to so much trouble to hide? There was nothing sinister or even secretive about Gramps. With Gramps, what you saw was what you got. Nevertheless, he had not wanted the door to this cellar to be visible to the casual observer and that meant Charlie too. Of course, Gramps would certainly have some good reason and Charlie realised, at this point, that he should close the door, realign the dresser and either tackle Gramps on the subject later that day or wait for Gramps to tell him about it in his own time. Obviously Gramps realised that Charlie would have to know sooner or later, after all, the entire house would belong to Charlie one day.
Now that Charlie knew what he should do he immediately decided to enter the cellar just to get a feel for what it might contain. He felt inside the door for a light switch and in an instant the pool of darkness was drained and warm welcoming yellow light had refilled it. Charlie noted a wooden staircase that lead steeply down to a floor of terracotta coloured tiles. The angle of Charlie’s line of sight prevented him seeing anything else so he would have to go down the stairs, at least halfway, so that he could see into the cellar. This he started to do with a mixture of both excitement and uncertainty.
Charlie reached a point from which he could see around the room and he was immediately consumed by a crushing disappointment. The cellar was completely bare. There was not a stick of furniture, no mysterious chests made of dark ageing oak, no mad scientist equipment and absolutely nothing in the way of ill-gotten gains. In fact, nothing that Charlie might have reasonably expected to find in the concealed cellar of a two-hundred-year-old house. Charlie quickly descended the remaining few stairs in to the cellar and looked around. Bare brick walls, bare tiled floor, whitewashed ceiling with a single bare bulb hanging from it and that was it…except! His eyes were immediately drawn to something he
had not been able to see from his previous vantage point, another door set into a back wall. Ha! All was not lost. The cellar may yet offer up some dark secret.
By this time Charlie had completely forgotten about Gramps and was caught up in the thrill of adventure and discovery. He went straight to the door and tried the handle. The door opened but Charlie was again disappointed to see that it opened into a much smaller room, no more than a cupboard really, which was completely empty. There were the same stark bare brick walls and the same tiled floor. Charlie stepped inside to get a better look and immediately began to feel strange; it was as though he had stepped onto a revolving platform, like a roundabout in a children’s play park. It made him feel light headed and his ears suddenly filled with a sound that was like the rushing of fast flowing river water. He felt as if he was losing his balance and he threw out his hands to brace himself against the walls but the bricks seemed to start crumbling, or rather dissolving, before his eyes. He whirled around to leave the room but the door was no longer there, instead he faced another dissolving brick wall and then the whole room seemed to start spinning as well. A wave of nausea crashed over Charlie and he could tell that he was about to throw up. He was also afraid and completely disoriented; he was no longer sure which way he faced, where the door was or how to get out of the room. The sickness reached his throat and then began to burn the back of his mouth. He looked towards the floor and opened his mouth so that he could begin the inevitable retching and throw up but, to his horror, saw the floor also begin to dissolve and disappear from under his feet. He seemed to be standing on nothing but black air. Then the sound of rushing water was replaced by a booming crash-almost like thunder and, finally, there was a flash of white ultra bright light and, at that point, Charlie was transported over nine hundred years into the pas
PART TWO
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1140
SIX
Charlie was standing in bright sunlight. The feeling of dizzying sickness had left him as suddenly as it had overwhelmed him and he felt normal again. A beautiful clear blue sky was above him, flecked with just a few wisps of cotton white nimbus cloud. A green blanket of lush gently rippling grass stretched out before him. He was beside a huge oak tree that had a thick canopy of leaves and was dripping with new acorns. A gentle breeze played amongst the leaves of the oak and a black raven suddenly took flight from the tree and wheeled in the air letting out a rasping call. A large brown hare suddenly appeared from nowhere. It bolted across the grass, not more than ten feet from where Charlie stood, and disappeared down a hole in the ground. Charli
e was bewildered. He whirled around and could not see the door through which he had come. Instead he saw countryside as far as the horizon in all directions. His mind raced as he tried to understand what had happened to him since he had stepped through Gramps’ cellar into. into. here, wherever “here” was.
He had only taken one step to arrive here and so, he reasoned, one step backwards would take him back to where he started-probably. It didn’t. Charlie took off his glasses and cleaned them on his tee shirt and resettled them on his nose. To say he was puzzled would be an understatement of galactic proportions; one second he was in the small cupboard-like room, in a hidden cellar, in his grandfather’s house, the next he was standing in a field, on a hot summer day, in the middle of the countryside. Charlie realised after walking around in small but ever increasing circles for a few minutes that he was not going to be able to return to the cellar. He decided to venture further afield and began to walk toward the horizon in front of him which was formed by the crest of a gently sloping hill.
He was careful to take note of his starting point beside the oak so that he could return to it.
As Charlie walked he tried to reason why he was here. Why was he in Gramp’s house one minute and the next; well, who knows where. Perhaps, he reasoned, he may have slipped and knocked himself unconscious whilst coming down the stairs to the cellar and this whole thing was some kind of dream. Could he perhaps have wandered here in some state of trance, like sleepwalking? Charlie tried to think of another explanation but he could not. He thought that the dream explanation was the most likely answer and decided that he should try to wake himself-how do you do that?
Charlie Watts and the Rip in Time Page 4
