by Ross Welford
Grandpa Byron, on the other hand, just looks at me and winks. “Reckon you know the way?”
We walk up the alleyway from the seafront towards Chesterton Road, and past the jungle of scrubland where the foxes lived and we look at the house from across the road. All the time I’m thinking about how I’m going to get into the cellar to retrieve Alan Shearer without Grandpa Byron knowing. You know I said I’d Formulated a Plan? Well, to be honest it had some gaps in it.
“Still looks the same,” I say.
Grandpa Byron sniffs a bit disapprovingly. “Could do with a lick of paint.”
We cross the road for a closer look. “Doesn’t it seem a bit nosy?” I say.
Grandpa Byron gives a little laugh. “This is a public street and it’s just a house. We’re allowed to be looking!”
Just then, a lady comes out of the front door, and I tug at Grandpa Byron’s sleeve. “Come on,” I say urgently.
“Well, that really would look suspicious, wouldn’t it? As if we’re going to break in. Just say hello.” And true to his word, he calls a hearty, “Good morning, madam!” to the lady.
She looks at Grandpa Byron in his robes, and me in my jeans, and says, “Good morning,” a bit warily, if you ask me.
“My grandson used to live in this house. He wanted to see it again!”
She relaxes and smiles. “Oh yes! I remember you – my, haven’t you grown! How are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” and I smile a polite smile.
She’s sort of old-middle-aged, this lady, older than Mum but not as old as Grandpa Byron, and she’s got short, greyish hair and glasses like a teacher. She looks back at the house and pulls a face.
“We haven’t done much to it since we bought it,” she says. “It’s still exactly the same. But all that’s going to change.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes, we’re putting in a conservatory at the back and that old garage is coming down to make way for an office for my husband.”
I feel as if the air has suddenly been forced from my chest.
“The … the garage?” I croak.
“Yes. Oh it’s such a mess. I expect you know all about the underground shelter.”
“Oh, er … yes. I think so.” I’m trying to sound unconcerned and casual, but I think I’m coming across as some sort of half-wit. Grandpa Byron’s looking at me like I’ve lost the plot.
“Well, we had a look down there a few weeks ago. I think your dad, rest his soul, was using it as an office. There were a couple of old computers down there and stuff, but still the old bunk beds, and a toilet. Quite remarkable.”
“But … but the entrance to it is still blocked up,” I say, then I have to add, lamely, “I suppose?”
The lady looks at me intently, and I compose my face into the blankest of innocent expressions. It seems to work.
“Yes. Well, we’ll have to clear it out again when we get started.”
Now I really want to know when this is, but I’ve already spoken too much so I’m keeping my mouth shut, and thank God for Grandpa Byron who says – out of polite interest, “When are you commencing the work?”
“Tomorrow or Tuesday. That’s when the men are scheduled to start. But you know what they’re like, these builders. Never one hundred per cent reliable, eh?” She and Grandpa Byron both chuckle at their shared familiarity with ‘feckless builders’.
“Anyway,” she says, brightly. “Got to go. Meeting my husband, nice to see you!” And she gets into the Skoda that’s in the driveway and drives off with a little wave.
As I take my hand out of my pocket to wave, a woollen glove falls to the ground, and it gives me an idea.
Try as I might, I just can’t find the appetite for fish and chips because I have to get back to the bunker, without Grandpa Byron, and rescue Alan Shearer, and Grandpa Byron has noticed a change in my behaviour, I can just tell.
Still, time to put the plan into action. I pull my remaining glove from my pocket and pretend to look for the other one.
“I’ve lost my other glove,” I say. Then: “I think I know where. I think I dropped it outside our old house.”
“Don’t worry,” says Grandpa Byron. “We’ll go past on the way back and pick it up.”
But by then I’m halfway to the door.
“Don’t worry. It’s not far. I’ll go and get it,” and I’m out of the door while Grandpa Byron’s saying, “But Al – your fish and chips!”
It really isn’t far to our old house from the fish and chip shop – maybe half a mile, maybe less, but I sprint all the way, and I’m wheezing and lightheaded by the time I get there. So long as I can get there without being detected, and get down into the bunker, and grab Alan Shearer, I’ll be back in a few minutes – no sweat.
Fine. Yeah, fine. I take a deep breath, look up and down the street and cross the road and up the driveway of my old house, and as I slip though the broken garage door, I catch a glimpse of a silver Skoda coming round the corner and up the road.
No chance of moving slowly and silently now. Like I’m demented, I fling off the planks covering the steps. I’m turning the wheel that opens the steel bunker door as I hear the Skoda’s engine coming up the driveway, and the driver’s door opening.
I’m closing the steel door behind me when I hear the garage door scrape up and a muffled man’s voice mutter, “Bloody Nora!” Then, “Bella! Have you seen this? Have you been in here?”
Inside the bunker, I switch on the light. There’s no sign of Alan Shearer but I haven’t got time to look properly because the man’s footsteps are coming down the little stairway towards the bunker door.
“Oh my word, Graham!” says the lady I was talking to before. “Someone’s been here!”
I know what’s coming next, so I grab my side of the metal wheel that opens the steel door, and hold it as tight as I can when the man tries to turn it.
“It’s stuck,” he says, but gives another tug to try it. My arms are aching. “I need something to lever it open.”
His footsteps are retreating again, but I know I’ll be no match in strength when he comes back with something to force the door, and I can hear him poking around in the garage.
I’m trapped. I scan my eyes around the bunker, desperately looking for a hiding place. Under the bed? Too obvious. Behind the door? Not enough room.
There is one escape route, though.
Releasing the handle, I dash down the steps to the laptop and turn it on.
“Come on, come on!” I’m muttering at the screen as it goes through its start-up stuff. There’s a broom in the corner of the bunker, and I grab it and shove it through the spokes of the wheel-handle. It’ll buy me an extra few moments.
I can hear the guy coming back across the garage floor now. “This’ll shift it,” he says to his wife.
I’m in the tub and typing in the password now – The Lean Mean Green Machine – and waiting again for the program to load. When it does, I type in the letters copied from the top of the black box: WMAGGGGGWVE7G5E8GL2CWG
Then the time and coordinates like before, and I wait.
And nothing happens. I can hear Graham at the door, and he’s trying to get in and the time machine’s not working, and I’m hitting the ‘enter’ button again and again, but all that happens is … nothing.
I’m going to be caught.
Then something unexpected happens and I am overcome with calm. Although I can hear Graham rattling the door and scuffling outside, there is not a single bit of me, not an atom, that is panicking.
My breathing steadies, and I hear my dad’s voice as if he’s right next to me. I even turn my head slightly in a reflex, to where I hear it, but of course it’s all my imagination. The only noise is the creaking of the wooden broomstick as it resists Graham’s assault.
It’s suddenly clear to me exactly what I have done wrong. The words Dad wrote come back to me:
The laws of spacetime seem to be beautifully arranged to prevent such chaos.
I
cannot go back to the same place and time that I was before: it has already been occupied – is already occupied – by me.
With my fingers hitting the keys noisily, I re-type the coordinates, altering the time to an hour later in the day and two things happen simultaneously.
I hear a crunch as the broomstick bends and snaps but the remaining pieces are still holding the door shut, just.
I see Alan Shearer scampering across the floor of the bunker.
Without thinking, I leap out of the tub, kicking the swivel chair aside, to scoop him up. I shove him in my pocket, grab the laptop and the hand grips, and get back into the zinc tub.
“Did you hear that, Bella? I reckon there’s someone down there!”
The pieces of broomstick finally give up and fall to the floor. The wheel is turning when I press ‘enter’ and the room goes blurry.
In case you were wondering, I don’t know much about the ‘theory’ of time travel, or the rules, or what you can and can’t do.
I don’t think anyone does, really.
I’ve heard of the ‘Grandfather Paradox’, which says that if you go back in time and murder your own grandfather (nice) then you cease to exist, supposedly, because if he’s dead he will not have fathered your dad, and he in turn will not have fathered you. And I know about Dad’s Law of Doppelgangers, because he told me about it. But I don’t know much else apart from watching bits of Star Trek and Dr Who and in those it seems like anything goes, which is handy for the writers, I suppose, but doesn’t help me at all.
And besides – who invented these ‘rules’? So far as I can tell, it’s all theory – no one has tested anything, although it seems as though Dad’s Law Of Doppelgangers is holding up pretty well to real-life experimentation.
So I don’t know what to expect. I just know I’m relieved as anything when the haziness in my eyes clears, and I’m still in the bunker, but there’s no man trying to get in.
I get out of the tub and sit in the desk chair for a minute, letting Alan Shearer run over my hands. He seems pleased to see me, at least. I pop him in a drawer under the bunk bed while I work out what to do next.
What has happened with that man, Graham? He will have entered the bunker, and he will have seen that the light was on, and the swivel chair turning around, but nobody there at all. How spooky will that have been?
Of course, the sensible thing to do, now that I’ve got Alan Shearer, would be to head straight back to what I have begun to think of as ‘real time’, and Grandpa Byron, waiting in the cafe. After all, if I don’t come back straight away, he’ll start to get worried and come looking for me.
Trouble is, of course, I can’t: Graham is waiting there. It’s like I’m trapped in a sort of time-cupboard in the garage: as soon as I come out, Graham will see me.
My first thought is to set the return time to the present to just a minute before I reached my old house, coming from the fish and chip shop.
But that is a direct violation of Dad’s Law of Doppelgangers. If it was possible, I would bump into myself heading into the garage, and as I have just discovered, the time machine won’t permit that.
The other option is to set the return time to a little later, say twenty minutes, and hope that, by then, Graham and Bella have stopped stalking the garage looking for an intruder. Except that wouldn’t work either. The pesky doppelganger thing means that I – or a version of me – am already there.
I admit it: I’m stumped. Sometimes, though, when you have to think of an answer but none will come, you just need a little time.
Meanwhile, I can’t resist taking another look at 1984.
I come out of the cellar and into the daylight again.
It’s still Radio One playing, and the same presenter, and I can hear him say, “It’s eleven twenty-three here on Radio One, and this is Cyndi Lauper with Time After Time …”
In the garage everything is the same, but there’s no sign of little Stokoe or his mum.
Outside, I feel even more nervous than the last time I was here, as if someone might recognise me. Daft, I know, but that’s how it feels.
And here comes not-all-that-old Mr Frasier, walking in the other direction this time, away from his home. I decide to try something.
“Excuse me,” I say. “What year is it please?”
He glances down at me, but he barely even stops. “Get awa’ wi’ ye,” he says without removing the pipe from between his teeth. “Y’cheeky wee sod,” and he strides on past.
Strange, I’m thinking. But then, I’m dressed differently from the last time, I think I phrased the question differently last time too, Sunday-best polite, and so he reacted differently.
I carry on down the alleyway thinking about the last time. Did it exist? It did for me but did it for Mr Frasier? Was he rude to me because I had already asked him the same question an hour ago? Or am I in a completely different 1984?
And if that lot wasn’t enough to make my head spin, as I carry on walking down the alleyway, what happens next puts it in actual danger of just going, like, BOOOM!
I meet my dad.
OK, so how I meet my dad is really unpleasant, but I thought I’d better say exactly how it was.
You know there are loads of things that everyone thinks are true that aren’t? Such as, ‘you can see the Great Wall of China from space’. No you can’t, not even from the International Space Station, which is only 173 miles up in space.
All right, here’s another one that I looked up on the internet. “Hats stop you getting cold because you lose half of your body heat through your head.” Mum is always telling me this, so I checked, and in children it’s actually only about ten per cent.
But you can be pretty sure that this one – that I have just made up – is true: ‘Kids who mistreat animals are Bad News.’ This is about to be proved to me.
It’s 1984, July 30th, a bright day, but there’s a chilly breeze coming off the sea (Mum calls it a ‘fret’, which I think is a Geordie word) and a slight haze in the air. I’ve come out of the garage, I zip up my hoodie and head down the alleyway towards the seafront. The alley cuts through another row of houses and comes out on the seafront road, and I cross the road towards the beach.
Straight ahead of me on the sand, as I come down the slipway to the beach, is a group of kids a bit older than me, mostly, though there’s one little kid of about six in an anorak with the hood pulled up.
I have turned the corner and seen them, and I would turn back, except the biggest one has seen me, and there is something about him that tells me that if I turned and backed away he would follow.
It’s like a sign of weakness. So I decide that the only thing I can do is shove my hands in my pockets, hold my head up and walk past them, being very, very careful not to catch anyone’s eye, especially the big kid’s, who in any case has turned his attention back to the group having evidently decided that I am not worth his attention, which is fine by me, thank you very much.
By now I’m about twenty metres from the group, and I can see there’s five of them, and they’re kind of circled around the big kid whose back is to me. He’s picked up a shoebox from the ground and taken the lid off. They gather round to look in and there’s a collection of noises that they all make.
“Eugh, Macca, man! Where’d you get it?”
“It was trespassin’. An’ trespassers will be persecuted. With me air rifle!”
“Awww! That’s nasty!”
“Uuuuuurh!”
Then, most chilling of all, from the kid with a high-pitched voice, like a girl’s, “Aw, Macca, man – it’s still alive!”
“Not for long, hur hur! Gan on, Chow – gan on an’ do it,” says the big kid, and the others laugh. It’s not a good laugh, there’s a meanness to it and it’s a bit forced. It’s hard to describe, but it puts me further on edge.
I’m about five meters away now, and I am so not looking in their direction and all of this is happening to the side of me.
Again the big kid says, �
��Do it, Chow – do it now, or are you too chicken?” and again the others cackle, and the kid called Chow, who has his back to me, takes something out of his pocket, like a flattish, square tin, and as I pass them the big kid says, “Ha’ad on,” and the others glance in my direction. He’s holding up the action until I pass, and at that point, I run towards them, deliver a flying kick in the groin to Big Kid. The others all scatter and I am a hero.
Nope, not really. What I really do is dart past as quickly as I can, and my not-looking-at-them bit has become so extreme that I practically have my head turned to one side because the thing that anyone in my position would dread at the moment is hearing the words, “Oi – what you lookin’ at?”
I’ve already seen enough of the big kid to know that I really don’t want anything to do with him. His hair’s cut bristle-short, and despite the chill breeze, he’s wearing only a red-and-white striped football shirt stretched over his stomach, which is almost fat, but not quite. It’s his neck that scares me, though: thick and short and pink and aggressive.
I’m at a safe distance, and there’s a sort of bend where the beach path goes around a cliff and I’ll soon be out of their sight, when I hear the chant start:
“Do it! Do it! Do it!”
I try to imagine what it is that they’re going to do, and to what, but I can’t, or perhaps my imagination just won’t go far enough in that direction.
“Ha’d on, ha’d on,” says the big kid, who must be the one they are calling Macca. “Have you ever seen a cat bark?”
And that’s when my stomach kind of drops because: A) I know the answer to this question. It’s a joke that went around our class. And: B) I’m going to have to stop them. I know that. I just don’t know how.
“No, I’m telling you, I can make a cat go woof. Give me that.” There’s a pause and I can hear some splashing on the ground. The others are like, “Oh, man! C’mon, Macca, don’t be mental.”
