Framed

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  Minnie said she was coming too.

  Mam told Dad that it was daft to go all the way up the mountain with one cup of coffee. It didn’t make economic sense, and anyway it would be cold when he got there. When Dad replied, he was talking so fast no one understood a word. He just went outside and climbed into the Mini Cooper. Minnie said, ‘Can I get in the front since the car is named after me?’

  Dad said, ‘Yes.’

  I said, ‘But it’s oldest in the front. I should be in the front.’

  Dad said, ‘Yes,’ again. His mind wasn’t on it.

  I shoved past Minnie and strapped myself into the front seat. The interior was surprisingly luxurious with lots of faux walnut and the smell of leather. It was also surprisingly small. I felt like an egg in an egg box. I said, ‘Are you sure we should be going up the mountain in this? I mean, how big is this engine?’

  ‘If you don’t like it,’ said Dad, ‘get in the back.’

  I didn’t. But I should have. Every time there was a hole in the road, we bounced out of it like a football. One time we spun around completely. Dad seemed to be pure delighted with this. ‘It’s just like The Italian Job!’ he yelled.

  I said, ‘What’s “The Italian Job”?’, trying to start a conversation that would take my mind off the possibility that we might eventually bounce off the mountain completely.

  ‘You know The Italian Job. A group of criminals does a big robbery in Milan. Or is it Turin? One of those places, anyway. And they get away by stopping all the traffic. They cause this big traffic jam and they get away in Mini Coopers because the Mini can drive down steps and through underpasses and drainpipes and everything. Brilliant.’

  Minnie leaned forward – which was pretty brave of her. ‘How much did they get away with?’ she said.

  ‘Millions. It was bullion. They nicked bullion.’

  ‘Gold bullion?’

  ‘A big pile of it. Tons of it.’

  ‘And they got away with it?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, sort of. You’d have to see it. Michael Caine was in it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Minnie, disappointed, ‘it was a film. I thought you meant it was a proper robbery.’

  You can’t often see the top of the mountain from Manod because the top is usually covered in cloud. And so is the middle. So is the bottom a lot of the time. Sometimes the cloud in Manod is so low, you have to walk through it to get to the upstairs toilet. I know it sounds exciting, driving through cloud, but it’s actually like driving through lots of dirty grey dishcloths. We were driving through grey so long, we began to feel we were turning grey ourselves.

  A little white lamb suddenly jumped out in front of the car. Dad braked and parped the horn, and the lamb ran off. Typically, it ran off straight ahead, down the middle of the road, so we had to stay behind it. As Minnie said in her letter to Gumbi, ‘We drove at lamb speed through the murky air of Planet Dishcloth for what seemed a lifetime, until all at once we were out, above the cloud, on the upper slopes of Manod Mountain.’

  And guess what? It was sunny! It had been raining more or less non-stop in Manod since February, so driving into the sun was like – well, imagine if you opened a cupboard in your kitchen and found a beach. Dad wound down the windows. The daft lamb ran back into the cloud. After all that grey, the green of the grass and the white of the lambs seemed like the brightest colours you’d ever seen. Even the slate didn’t look grey anymore. It was blue-black and silvery, like an old Mercedes with a new wax finish. Out of the back window all you could see was this dirty, thick duvet of cloud stuffed into the valley, with Blaenau Mountain sticking up out of it in the distance.

  The road ahead was just like a dribble of tarmac with grass growing down the middle of it, like a really long Mohican. You could see the old shepherd’s hut off to the left. ‘He’s got to be in there,’ said Dad. ‘There’s nowhere else.’ He wasn’t talking so fast now.

  As we got nearer we could see two men in orange jackets. One of them was on a quad bike. I was just getting excited when Dad stopped the car.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look.’ There was a barbed wire fence going straight across the road and over the hillside. ‘They’ve fenced off the whole top of the mountain.’

  We all got out of the car and looked over the fence. The man on the quad bike drove over. It seemed to take ages for him to get to us, and then he didn’t get off his bike or take off his hard hat. He said, ‘Can I help you?’ in a voice that said he wouldn’t help you if you were hanging off a cliff.

  ‘Nice morning,’ said Dad. ‘We’ve brought Lester his paper.’

  ‘And his coffee,’ I said, holding it up.

  ‘Pass them over. I’ll see he gets them.’

  ‘Oh, but. . . the coffee will go cold.’

  ‘I’ll see he gets it.’

  ‘This fence . . .’ said Minnie.

  ‘It’s a temporary structure. We apologize for the inconvenience. It will be removed once we’ve secured the site.’

  ‘What site’s that then?’ said Dad.

  ‘Our site,’ said the man in orange. Then he put the FT on his seat and the cappuccino into a handy drinks holder just under the handlebars, and was gone.

  Minnie said, ‘Well, there’s a criminal headquarters if ever I saw one.’

  She was pointing at two shapes next to the old hut. You couldn’t see them at all at first because they were the same colour as the grass and the stones. But if you kept looking, you could make out two domes, one on each side of the hut. They were like big tents, but not flappy or flimsy at all. They were made of something hard, like two big shells.

  We watched the man in the hard hat tootle up to one of the domes on his quad bike and then go inside. I said, ‘The Technodrome!’ because that’s what it looked like. In case you don’t know, the Technodrome is the headquarters of the Turtles’ arch enemy, Arko Saki, known as the Shredder. It’s a big, round, heavily armed metal ball with rooms inside. It’s like a building that rolls. Only this one probably didn’t roll. Dad and Minnie didn’t know what the Technodrome was, so they didn’t say anything about it. Dad was just looking back down the valley and then up at the sky.

  After a while Minnie started fretting about going to school.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dad. ‘Seems funny though, to be somewhere nice and sunny and then drive off into the rain on purpose.’ He still didn’t move. ‘Do you know, there are places in the world where the weather’s like this all the time? Sunny and bright.’

  I said, ‘Like Gumbi. It hardly ever rains there.’

  ‘Or like here,’ said Minnie. ‘It looks like it’s always sunny up here. Look how dry the grass is.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Dad. ‘That’s cheered me up no end.’

  Which surprised me a bit, him saying that, because why did he need cheering up?

  So we drove back down through Planet Dishcloth, saying nothing, just quietly turning grey. Then suddenly, up ahead of us, two great lights appeared in the mist. Something big was driving towards us up the cinder road. Dad flashed his headlights and beeped the horn. The lights stopped moving and so did we.

  ‘Wonder who that is,’ said Dad. ‘I hope he’s going to back up.’

  Nothing happened.

  Then Dad said, ‘Dylan, go and tell them it’s easier for them to back downhill than it is for me to back uphill. Go on.’

  I stepped out of the car. It really was like a different planet out there. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, but I could hear the engine of the vehicle churning over and even feel the warmth of the engine in the wet air, like the hot-air blower in the customer toilet. I walked four or five paces before I saw it: the front end of a van, jutting out of the mist like a massive present sticking out of tissue paper. I couldn’t see the whole van, but I could tell it was the same kind as we had seen the other day. It had ‘F a V’ written on the door.

  I shouted, ‘Hello?’

  I could hear a window being wound down, and out of the mist a voice shouted, ‘Hell
o?’

  I couldn’t see a face.

  ‘Dad says it’s easier for you to back downhill than it is for us to back uphill.’

  ‘Tell Dad he’s wrong.’

  I thought about this for a minute. Then I said, ‘Are you sure? He’s not usually wrong.’

  ‘Maybe he’s losing his touch, eh?’

  And that was it. I could hear the window going up again.

  Dad was cross. He kept muttering, ‘Can’t see a blind thing,’ as he bumped up on to the grass. The engine of the van coughed and the big yellow eyes lurched forward. It passed us in the mist. Once it had gone by, Dad went to put the Mini in gear again. but then he stopped. Another pair of big yellow eyes was going by: a second van was rumbling past, kicking up big sods of earth and even stones.

  ‘Hell’s milk teeth,’ said Minnie.

  Then another one went by. Followed by a fourth, then a fifth, a sixth, a seventh . . .

  There were twenty-one. Plus the two that were already up there. That’s twenty-three big vans on the top of Manod Mountain. When we were sure the last one had gone, we headed back down to town. But me and Minnie spent the whole time looking out of the back window at the mist. It was full of tail lights.

  When we got back to the shop, the forecourt was jammed with cars. We could hardly get in at the shop door, it was that full. Everyone in Manod had seen the vans go up the High Street and then turn left up the mountain. Everyone knew that something was going on, and everyone thought we must know what it was.

  Mrs Porty was at the counter saying, ‘I hear it’s a telephone mast, which is a terrible thing because everyone knows they spread radiation and though there are no people up there, there are badgers.’

  Mam was holding Max. She looked tired and cross. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mrs Porty,’ she was saying.

  ‘Well, I heard,’ said Mr Morgan, ‘that it was going to be a bunker for the government in case there was a big attack. They’re going to helicopter them all up on to the recreation ground and they’ll have police cars waiting by to take them up the mountain. The vans were taking food up there, tinned food like, and dry goods. And they’ll be comfy in there for a year and up.’

  ‘Like Baxter Stockman,’ said Tom. Everyone looked at him. ‘He was the one who made Mouser Robots that could eat through metal. People thought he just had a few of them. Then April O’Neil found an underground cave and it was completely full of them, hundreds of them, just lying there waiting.’ Everyone still looked at him. He said, ‘In the Turtles.’

  ‘Oh,’ said everyone. ‘Right.’

  Then Big Evans said, ‘Well, I heard it was good news.’

  It went quiet for a bit.

  ‘I heard that all these vans and what-have-you, they’ve gone up there to reopen the quarry. There’s going to be work in Manod. That’s what I heard. What do you think?’

  ‘That would be very nice,’ said Mam.

  Mr Choi said, ‘We had some young people in, the other night, come down from Blaenau they had, looking for a musical rave. Could that be it? Could it be unruly youths?’

  You could see that Mam had had enough of this. She was going to chuck everyone out, which would have been a great selling opportunity missed. So it was good that Dad came in and shouted out, ‘We’ve just been up there, so you could ask us.’

  Everyone started talking at once.

  Dad put his hands up in the air and said, ‘Before we start, who would like a coffee? And what kind?’

  Everything went quiet for a minute. Then Tom’s mother asked for a skinny latte decaf. Everyone stared at her. They didn’t know that Tom had been reading Coffee Cavalcade to her down the phone.

  Mr Morgan coughed and asked for one too.

  ‘Skinny latte decaf?’

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘Coming up.’

  Mam took the orders. Dad made the coffees. I passed them round. And that was great teamwork. I looked across at Mam to see if she was cheering up. Dad had given her a big frothy mochaccino with a flake in it. The steam was swirling all around him like a genie.

  ‘Toxic waste,’ said Mrs Porty, ‘that’s what I heard.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say so,’ said Dad. ‘They’ve got a barbed-wire fence round the old quarry. They’re very big on security. I can’t see that would be a worry with toxic waste. Who’d want to steal toxic waste?’

  There was more talking and the door went ‘pong ping’. Everyone looked round. It was Mr Davis, the butcher. Everyone was too surprised to speak. He has not been in our shop for eleven years; I don’t know why. In fact he didn’t actually come in now, he just stuck his head round the door and snarled, ‘I know what’s going on up there, don’t think I don’t.’

  Tom’s mam said, ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us then, Mr Davis?’

  He said, ‘And I know you’re all in on it. Don’t think I don’t. You all wee in the same welly, I know that.’

  Then he was gone.

  Everyone looked at Dad. He shrugged. ‘Never weed in a welly in my life.’ Everyone laughed.

  And then the phone rang and everyone went quiet again. Dad answered it. Everyone leaned forward, trying to hear. You could tell it was a man. And Dad was being very polite to him, saying things like, ‘No trouble, honestly. No, really. Of course.’ We could tell it was him. When Dad put the phone down, everyone started asking questions at once. Dad shushed them. ‘He said thank you for the papers and coffee. That he’s quite happy to come and collect them himself, so there’s no need to take them up in future.’

  ‘See,’ said Mrs Porty, ‘something to hide. This is exactly what happened in Llechwedd with the wind farm.’

  ‘But . . .’ said Dad. Everyone went quiet again. ‘. . . if it’s no trouble, and if Dylan wants to come up tomorrow, he’s got something up there the boy might be interested in.’

  Every single person looked at me.

  Ms Stannard looked really puzzled. She said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever known you be interested in anything, Dylan.’

  ‘What is it you’re interested in, Dylan?’ asked Mrs Porty.

  I shrugged. ‘I talked to him about hens,’ I said.

  ‘Hens?’

  ‘Hens.’

  9 April

  Cars today:

  All of them. Every single car in Manod and the outlying farms.

  Weather – sunny intervals. Well, one sunny interval. Apart from that, rain

  Note: EGGS ARE SO VERSATILE

  I remember this day because it was so random. No one normally takes any notice of me at all, but this day everyone in Manod was looking at me. When I left for school, Big Evans was on the forecourt talking to Dad about his noisy gearbox.

  ‘Course I may not need a gearbox if it’s right about the quarry,’ he said. And he winked at me! ‘You going to find out for us then, young Dylan? You going to see what’s going on up there?’

  ‘Can’t,’ I said. ‘School.’

  Dad said, ‘School can wait a bit, can’t it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘School’s important. But it might be a bit rude not to go up, seeing as he did ask and seeing as he is a guest in this town?’

  I just said, ‘Got to go,’ and went.

  Mr Morgan passed me in the High Street in his Land Rover. He slowed right down and leaned out of the window. ‘Been up yet, young Dylan?’ he asked.

  I said, ‘No. Got school.’

  ‘Fair enough. No pressure,’ he said. I thought at first he must be talking about his tyres, but when we passed Mr Chipz, Mr Choi was opening up for the day and he asked me if I’d been up yet too.

  ‘Can’t. It’s school.’

  ‘Whenever you’re ready. No pressure.’

  When we got to the school gates, more or less everyone was asking me. It was like everyone in Manod had gone completely random. It was a relief to get inside the school.

  Or it would have been a relief if Ms Stannard hadn’t said, ‘Oh. You’re early, Dylan Hughes.’

 
‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Earlier than expected. I thought you were going up the mountain.’

  ‘Couldn’t,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well . . . school.’ I really think she should have known that, to be quite honest.

  ‘Oh.’ She looked at me for a long time, like she was trying to puzzle something out. Then she said, ‘Did you finish your letter to our friends in Gumbi?’

  Which obviously I hadn’t because of all the excitement about the new customer.

  ‘Right then. As you seem to be finding it hard to think of things to write about, I suggest you go to the top of the mountain, see what’s going on up there, and write about that.’

  ‘What? Just go, miss? Up the mountain? By myself?’

  ‘I’m sure your father will be only too happy to help you with your homework. I’ll text him.’

  Dad got me from school and we went up the mountain. When we came through the cloud and into the sunshine, Dad stopped the car for a minute, got up and walked around in the bright blue air for a while. He tried to get me to join him, but I stayed in the car.

  Then we drove right up to the wire and Dad flashed the men with his headlights. The men on the quad bikes came trundling over. I thought they were going to chase us away again, but Dad said, ‘We’ve got—’

  And the one in the hard hat said, ‘I know what you’ve got.’ He unhooked the wire for us and we drove through. We passed a long, low shed with about six men standing around inside, and some more men sort of jogging towards it.

  ‘That was the canteen when this was a mine,’ said Dad. He stopped the car. And I saw why the men were jogging. They were chasing a football. One of them trapped it, turned and then booted it back. The wind caught it and it came spinning towards us. I dived out of the car just in time to chest it down. I looked up. All the men had their hands in the air, shouting, ‘Over here! Over here!’ I thought, if I do a good job here, they might ask me to join in. I was just lining up the shot when something happened. All the men put their hands down and walked off towards the shed. I looked behind me. Lester was walking towards us. He said good morning. Dad said, ‘Morning. How was the FT?’