by Ross Welford
Thank God – the taxi driver’s still there, head back, snoring loudly. A few minutes later and I’m on the back seat I put the sandwich bag in my coat pocket alongside … I feel around in my pocket for Alan Shearer. With a lurch in my stomach, I don’t find him.
Think, think. I definitely had him when I was talking to Mr Frasier because I remember him wriggling. And I put my hand in my pocket to protect him as I climbed in through the steel door after collecting soil.
So he must be in the underground bunker.
I sit for a few minutes more in a panicked silence. Finally, I say to the driver: “We have to go back.”
He looks at me in the rear-view mirror.
“You’re jokin’ aren’t you, son?”
“I, er … I’ve forgotten something.”
He pulls the car into the side of the road and stops, with the engine idling. Turning round in his seat, he says, “It’s gonna cost you. It’s another tenner.”
“But I haven’t got any more.”
“What about yer mam? She’ll have it, won’t she?”
“No. She, er …” I’m thinking hard, but nothing comes out. “She hasn’t.”
I know: lame, lame, lame.
He starts driving again. “Sorry, son. I don’t drive for nowt. Whatever it is you’ve forgotten, you’ll have to get another time.”
Alan Shearer’s going to have to wait to be rescued.
Back home, before I fall into my bed, I look it up on the web: two days. That seems to be the majority opinion on how long a hamster can survive without food or water. (Again, not an action endorsed by Dr A. Borgström.)
The Day My Dad Died
I don’t mind if you skip this bit. It’s really sad. But you probably didn’t know my dad personally, so you may be OK with it.
The thing is, most kids these days don’t have to deal with people dying very much, at least not in real life. Don’t get me wrong – I think that’s a good thing, I really do. It’s just that when it happens, we’re not ready for it.
Look, take Grandpa Byron. When he was a kid, pretty much everyone in a family he knew, including a boy he played with, were murdered one night just because they were Muslims, or Hindus, or something. Not that that was normal or anything – there was some kind of war or ‘civil unrest’ going on at the time – but still …
His own grandpa had lived with Grandpa Byron’s family, and died on the veranda one afternoon, and Grandpa Byron discovered him, still holding his teacup. This guy, Grandpa Byron’s grandpa, had been taken by his own dad to see a load of men being hanged outside a prison in the city they lived in. Can you imagine that?
My mum’s mum, who lives in Ireland, was alive during World War 2, when loads of people died, and her mum, my great-grandma, had four brothers and only one of them lived beyond 20 years old. One was killed by the Germans, one died two days after being born, and one was a fisherman who drowned at sea.
I found all this out after Dad died.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that in the olden days, people died all the time, and I guess kids just got used to it.
That’s scary, isn’t it? It keeps me awake sometimes, or it did, at any rate, for a while, until I stopped thinking about it so much.
Dad was really weird in the days before he died. Obviously, I know now why that was, but at the time I didn’t. He went for a long walk, like really long, on his own one day. It must have been a weekend. And he kept hugging me really hard. It wasn’t like Dad never hugged me, it’s just he did it more, much more, and harder. It got to the stage where I asked him to stop, and that really hurt his feelings and we had a bit of a row about it, which I’m still sad about, because now I know what was going on. Now I know that he had learned he was going to die.
Then on the night it happened, he just went to bed as normal. He and Mum were reading in bed. Mum put out her light and went to sleep, and when she woke up the next morning he was still there, propped up on the pillows, bedside light on, but dead.
The first I knew about it was Mum coming into my room. She was really, really calm. That’s how I knew something was seriously up, because Mum only gets that calm, and talks in her deep, calm voice, when there’s something very wrong. If something’s gone a bit wrong, like she’s burnt the dinner, or pranged the car again, she’ll be all, “oh oh oh!” and flapping around, but if it’s something serious, she’ll be all calm, like when I was six and she told me that the baby brother she was growing for me had died inside her tummy.
She sat on my bed in the same place that Dad usually sat when he told me stories.
“Al,” she said, “wake up. I have something important to tell you.”
I was awake straight away.
“Your dad has been taken very ill in the night. The doctors will be here any minute. I need you to be very grown up, and get dressed quickly.”
I’m sorry. Do you mind if I don’t write the rest of this? It’s making me really sad.
You kind of get the idea, though, yeah?
The days and weeks afterwards were all a bit of a blur, to be honest, and it was all so crazy sad that I’ve forgotten quite a lot of it on purpose – I mean, properly forgotten it.
There was an inquest, which is a legal inquiry that they always do when someone dies unexpectedly, I think it’s to make sure that they haven’t been murdered or anything. Dad died of a subarachnoid haemorrhage, which is very rare, and sometimes happens if there’s a history of it in the family (which there isn’t in ours) and sometimes just happens. That’s what happened to Dad. They discovered afterwards that it had been caused by a piece of metal lodged in his brain, that had moved about and then – bam – the lights went out.
His accident, I know now. The one I have to stop.
Then there was the email that Mum sent to Aunty Ellie. I wasn’t looking for it, or anything, it’s just my laptop had been going a bit mental owing to some virus it got when I tried to download a game for free from a torrent site, so I borrowed Mum’s to look up something for my homework, and there it was, and I just sort of read it.
Hi E
Thanks for being so good on the phone last night. You’re a star, sis.
Things are just mad here, but like I said, people have been so kind. Byron came round this morning – God, he looked awful, he seems to be about twenty years older.
Don’t know when the funeral will be yet for certain, prob a week on Thursday. Dr Bannerjee confirmed that it was SAH and so far as he was concerned there were no suspicious circs (obvs) and that the inquest should be straightforward, and they release the body to Harrison’s who are doing the funeral.
Got a call from Pye’s sister, Hypatia – remember her? All big hair and fake nails. She’s flying back from Canada. Not a peep from her for years, and now she’s all concerned. I wish she'd called him more.
Listen to me, E – I’m planning a funeral and I’m only thirty-eight. I’ve been OK the last few days, I just can’t shake off the guilt that something was troubling P and he couldn’t tell me, and the stress of it brought on the aneurysm. I can’t put my finger on it, but he wasn’t himself. He and Al had some row, which neither of them would talk to me about, and P and I were tetchy for days and I feel so guilty about that.
Oddest of all, though, he went to see Jack Robson, the solicitor, last week to talk about OUR WILL. We made a will when we had Al and haven’t touched it since. JR said he made no alterations, just wanted to check that everything was in order because we’d lost our copy of it (true!) and could he post us a new copy, and that was it.
How weird is that, E? JR reckons it was definitely just a coincidence, and that he’s not going to bring it up, least of all at the inquest because that would just confuse and delay matters, but I mean … WHAT? Anyone would think that he knew he was going to die, but that’s not true, he was healthy and everything.
Maybe I’m just being over-analytical. The solicitor’s probably right, but it’s still weird, isn’t it?
Al’s bearin
g up, but God he’s going to find it hard in the next few months and years. That’s what I find more upsetting than anything.
Thanks for your offer to take him for a few days. I think he’d like that, get away from here for a little while. But not too long: I need him here, he’s the man here now.
Steve from work has been great too. Did I tell you he lost his wife three years ago? Cancer. Life’s cruel sometimes, wouldn’t you say?
Sarah x
Ten Things I Know About Steve
He’s old, like in his fifties. He has white hairs on his chest and a potbelly. I don’t know what Mum sees in him really.
He and Mum met at Mum’s work. She’s a librarian and so’s he, but in a different branch, or head office, or whatever they have in libraries.
The first time I met Steve, I knew he’d end up as my stepdad. Mum had mentioned him a few times, then one weekend he took me and Mum to Chessington World Of Adventures. That’s what Mum said, anyway: “Steve’s taking us to Chessington World Of Adventures,” but what she really meant was, “Me and Steve are taking you to Chessington World Of Adventures because I really want you to like him.” That’s when I knew.
The first time he stayed over at our house, I couldn’t sleep in case I would hear them, you know, doing it. But I don’t think they did. Mum’s a bit old-fashioned like that. (Not long afterwards, I went to stay with Aunty Ellie for the weekend and I’m fairly sure he stayed with Mum then because when I got back there were two cereal bowls in the dishwasher.)
He thinks Carly is the funniest person in the world. ‘Sassy’ he calls her, but I think she’s just rude to him. And Mum.
He got a bit drunk last New Year’s Eve and gave me a big hug and twenty pounds. He called me ‘a little smasher’.
Steve’s house is smaller than the one Mum and I used to live in with Dad, but Mum said we had to move for ‘financial reasons’ and that even my offer of getting a Saturday job wasn’t enough. So that’s why I had to move schools as well. My friends from primary all went to Sir Henry Percy Academy. That said, I didn’t have many friends at primary, either.
Steve loves football. I don’t, as I think I’ve mentioned.
Steve is A Good Man. I’ve put this one in because it’s what Mum says all the time. That’s only nine things, but it doesn’t really matter, oh, I’ve got one.
He burps really loudly. I thought it was funny at first. It’s not, it’s pretty gross really.
So that’s Steve. I kind of wish I liked him more. Perhaps it’s just because I miss Dad.
Steve has waited till Mum is out of the room, then he lets rip.
Burrrrp!
“What about that one, then Al?” he asks.
I try to smile, but I’m miles away. I’ve got The Memory Palaces of the Sri Kalpana open on my lap, but I’m barely even reading it.
“What’s up, Al? You’ve been on another planet for days now.”
“You’re close, Steve: not another planet, but another dimension of spacetime, actually. 1984 to be exact, thanks to a revolutionary algorithm perfected by my late father which mathematically compresses disparate cosmic dimensions to permit physical shifts between them, as postulated in Albert Einstein’s Special Theory Of Relativity. And my hamster, that you named Alan Shearer after some footballer, is currently starving to death in the dimension that we call the 1980s.”
OK, I don’t say that. What I really say is, “Yeah, sorry. I’m just … really tired, that’s all.”
“School holidays soon, son. And then it’s … Anglesey!”
“Yay!”
I try to sound enthusiastic, I really do. There are kids in my class, the Jennings twins, for example, who have never really been on holiday. Their mum is disabled, and their dad works for the company that cleans the school and they’re just really poor, and besides, their mum can’t leave the house much. I tell myself that they would love a week in a caravan in Wales, and I tell myself not to be such a spoilt brat, and I tell myself it’ll be nice for Mum, but still …
It’s me, and Steve, and Mum, in a caravan for half term. Carly’s not coming. She’s been invited to Jolyon Dancey’s parents’ cottage in Norfolk. It’s not just her, there’s others, because apparently it’s huge. Jolyon’s dad will be making an appearance, she says, making him sound like a celebrity.
As for the caravan, we went on a similar thing last year, in Minehead. I hated it. Carly came that time, but she hardly spoke to me. The caravan site had a Kids’ Club, and by the second day the other kids had all made friends with each other, but I hadn’t. Whenever a game required you to form pairs with someone else, I was the one left out that the play leader had to partner with. I stopped going in the end.
Holidays with Mum and Dad weren’t like this. I was still on my own, but it didn’t feel lonely, probably because Dad and I would hang out together, or play some sort of game that didn’t involve a ball.
That’s the thing with Steve. If ever he sees me sitting on my own, reading, or just daydreaming, he’s like, “come on, on your feet, let’s have a game of footie!” and then we’re outside and I’m either trying to take penalties at him, or – worse – he puts me in goal and fires shots at me really hard, which I have to try and stop. I’m not very good. He keeps shouting things like, “Use your hands! You’re the only one in your team who’s allowed to, so stop trying to kick it away!” and when I get mud all over me, he’s delighted. Unlike Mum, it has to be said.
Anyway, Dad didn’t do stuff like that. If he saw me reading, he’d most likely ask me what it was and it would usually be something he had read himself, years ago, or if it wasn’t, he’d ask me about the plot and be interested and try to guess the ending.
Today is Sunday, and Grandpa Byron’s taking me out. He always asks me where I want to go.
Today, there is only one place, and I have Formulated A Plan.
So – Grandpa Byron’s book. Tough-going, that’s for sure, but pretty cool all the same
I’m going to tell you a bit about this Memory Palaces thing, but not too much because I don’t want to distract you, but I do want you to understand it because it’s kind of relevant later on. (This is much, much cooler than the Kings and Queens rhyme, by the way.)
Basically, you have to imagine places – rooms are best – that you’re very familiar with and then make all sorts of crazy images in your head that link together the things in the room with the things you want to remember.
For example if you want to remember three random items – say a chimpanzee, a tractor and some chewing gum, then first imagine you’re standing on your doorstep and walking into your house.
The first mental image you make is of your front door. You’re about to go in, when a chimpanzee’s arm shoots out of the letterbox and grabs you by the throat. It’s a huge, hairy, smelly arm and you’re wrestling with it. (That’s the point, by the way: you’ve got to make it a vivid mental image. Something boring doesn’t stick in your head.)
Now, assuming you’ve overcome the imaginary chimp attack, you’re through your front door, and what do you come across next? In my house, it’s the doormat. Except in my imagination, now the doormat is transformed into a mini-field. The coconut matting has been ploughed into lines by a tiny tractor that’s driving up and down the mat, and I have to be careful not to step on it. So that’s mental image number two.
Next it’s the coat rack. We have a load of hooks for coats by the door – but now the hooks have been replaced by huge lumps of used chewing gum. Instead of hanging your coat up, you stick it to the wall with a claggy piece of gum.
I know – it’s stupid, but it’s also funny and it makes you remember stuff. Now obviously, doing it with three items is pointless. Anyone can remember a list of three things. But what about ten, or twenty, or a hundred?
In The Memory Palaces of the Sri Kalpana, Grandpa Byron talks about Indian mystics who – in their heads – had room after room after room, and these rooms would have doors off them, leading to other rooms, and garde
ns and ante-chambers, and forests, so that they could store and memorise anything they wanted, all with these crazy imaginary pictures.
I’ve started trying to do it. I can easily do ten things, maybe twenty.
And here’s the thing about Grandpa Byron. All that stuff, all that knowledge that he uses to answer quiz questions? That’s him just playing. The real stuff in his main Memory Palace is his life memories – the recollection of daily events back to when he was a kid. Memorising things like The Guinness Book of World Records he just does for fun.
Culvercot on a quiet spring Sunday is nothing spectacular. The sea’s way too cold for swimming or even paddling (though you can in August and September, if you’re brave or under five) and there’s not much to do since Arnold Palmer Crazy Golf closed down, but there’s a cafe, and a fish and chip shop, the Spice Of The Sands Tandoori, of course, and not too many people, although enough to give it a bit of a buzz.
Grandpa Byron and I are on the small clifftop overlooking the main bay. A breeze from the sea is blowing his saffron robes about and there’s a strong, cool sun. On the sand are dog-walkers and dogs and a couple of brave families with deckchairs and thick pullovers. Grandpa Byron takes a deep breath of the wind, closes his eyes and smiles. Time to start my plan.
I try to say, dead casually, “Shall we, y’know, go and have a look at the old house?”
Of course, Grandpa Byron knows that I would want to do that, and isn’t fazed at all. You see, if I had been with Mum, she’d have said, “Oh Al, what do you want to do that for? That’s our old house. You don’t want to be reminding yourself of that. You’ve got to look forward …” and so on. She’d worry that I was “wallowing in the past” and getting all sad for Dad.
