by Ross Welford
I’m watching this unfold from a position of relative safety when Graham takes out his mobile and starts talking to the police.
“Fifteen minutes? That’s a long time to respond to an emergency … Well, no. No one is in imminent danger, no … I suppose it gives me chance to get dressed …”
I have an idea, but I’m not sure if I can pull it off. I can see Bella looking through the upstairs window, but she doesn’t see me. And nor does Graham, when I sneak round the back of the car, and when he shuffles in his slippers down the driveway to look out for any approaching police cars, that’s when I sneak behind him, and through the open front door.
I grew up in this house, so I know exactly where to go. Immediately to the right of the front door as you go in is a toilet, and that’s where I’m hiding when Graham comes back in.
I’m gambling that no one would naturally put their car keys in a dressing-gown pocket.
To my relief, I hear the chink of his keys on the table by the front door, and then his footsteps going up the carpeted stairs.
“Quarter hour, they say, love,” he calls to Bella. “I’ve locked the little cow in the car. Can’t be more’n about fifteen.”
And then I’m out, picking up the keys as silently as I can and opening the front door slowly, slowly. I know the trick of closing this door quietly, and lift it a bit by the letterbox and it shuts silently.
I can see Carly staring, astonished, as I come out the front door, and I’m about to click the remote key to let her out when I stop. It’s going to go blip when I open it.
I turn and insert the house key into the front door’s lock, and lock the door, leaving the keys dangling. Only then do I press the button on the car key. The corner lights on the car flash, and sure enough there’s a little blip sound, which echoes in the street’s silence.
Immediately, Carly’s out, and I’m next to her, running down the driveway. I half turn, keeping my face partly obscured, and see a furious Graham pounding on his bedroom window, followed a few seconds later by the sound of the front door rattling.
His next move will be to go out the back door, and through the garage. But by now we’ve reached the taxi, and I hold my hand out to Carly in a ‘slow down, act cool’ gesture, which she does, and we get in.
It’s not until we’re out on to the coastal road that she holds up her hand and we exchange a silent high-five.
It’s two thirty a.m. by the time everything’s up in my room. Carly and I have hardly said a word and I can tell by the look on her face that she has several words she wants to say.
Trouble is, I am so tired I can barely sit upright. That isn’t going to stop her trying.
“Al,” she starts. “I am not stupid.”
She’s standing by my bedroom desk, looking angry. What can I say? I kind of shrug in an ‘I didn’t say you were’ sort of way.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about? Breaking and entering, trespassing, theft …”
“It wasn’t theft. It belonged to Dad.”
“According to you. Locking that bloke in his house – that’s probably illegal too, I mean what are you into here, Al? And don’t tell me you’re trying to get in touch with your dad, ’cause like I say, I’m not stupid.” She gives me the death-stare, and then adds the clincher. “I could always tell your mum everything.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t dare tell her how you tricked me into robbing a house? Took advantage of my spirituality …”
(So far as I can tell, Carly’s ‘spirituality’ involves listening to a lot of emo – sorry, goth – music, and watching the ‘Twilight’ movies, but to be fair my world is turning a lot weirder than any film.)
“…to, to … cynically dupe me, swindle me out of twenty pounds, and then run off and leave me when I get locked in a car by a crazed man?”
“Leave you? I came back to get you. I rescued you!”
She says it again. “According to you. You’re the one that’s going to have to explain all this stolen gear in your room. And I’m sure Asif at A-Z Taxis would love to help establish the truth as well.”
We stare each other out for a good twenty seconds. There is no question about it, though: she has me.
“Can I tell you in the morning? I’m so tired.”
“No. You tell me right now.”
I sigh. “You’d better sit down, then.”
I’ve slept in and Grandpa Byron’s waiting to take me to school when I come downstairs. Mum and Steve have already left for work, and Carly’s nowhere to be seen.
(I don’t think she totally buys the time travel stuff, now that I’ve made my big confession. No surprises there. She is intrigued, though, and that’s enough to buy her silence for now. But I’m going to have to produce some evidence pretty soon, or I’m toast. And she’s not at all happy about the twenty pounds she’s spent.)
Grandpa Byron looks at me, shakes his head and says, “Oh my flippin’ Lordy! What has happened to you?”
I suppose I can’t look that great. I have slept for about three hours, and badly at that. I’m shivering and pale, and I still haven’t got my school uniform on. Instead my dressing gown hangs loosely around me.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost! How do you feel? How’s your kyte?”
He means my stomach. It’s one of his old Geordie words, I think.
“Pretty rough, actually.” There’s an opportunity to miss school here, I can tell, so I make my voice croaky, just to be on the safe side, although in truth I feel really sick. Grandpa Byron pulls down my eyelids, and then my bottom lip. He smells my breath, and declares that I am “most certainly out of balance”. His remedy is what he calls a “hot posset”.
Soon the kitchen is filled with the smell of spices: cardamom and cinnamon are the only two I recognise, and he goes out again to fetch some others at the Bangladeshi shop. The resulting concoction – the ‘hot posset’ – is warm, milky and sweet, and when I sip it, I already feel a little better.
“There, you see! Balance is everything!” He pauses, and I see his eyes flick over to me. “I was telling this to your father just the other day.” Grandpa Byron has a sort of faraway look in his eyes when he says this, but then I see him glance at me again to check if I’m listening.
“To Dad? What do you mean?”
“I mean just what I say. Even though your father has passed on from this life, that does not mean that he is forgotten.”
“Of course not!”
“Well, then. Imagine using the power of your mind to transcend time, Al. Thanks to your namesake, Mr Einstein, the whole world knows that time is relative: it can be different depending on what you are doing.”
So he knows, then. Or knows something, at any rate. Stuff like this doesn’t come out of the blue.
I say nothing, which I figure is probably the safest thing to do while my mind is racing. I think of Dad’s letter when he quoted Einstein’s idea of putting your hand on a hot stove and it seeming like ages, and I sip more of the spicy medicine-milk.
“The scholars of the Sri Kalpana knew this many, many years ago, Al.”
Ah. The old Sri Kalpana. Grandpa Byron’s prized book that I haven’t quite got round to finishing. It’s on the kitchen table in front of me under a pile of other stuff, poking out. Still I say nothing.
“The mysteries of the universe are multitudinous, Al. And the answers lie within us, not without. Your father and now you, I think,” and here he pauses, narrowing his eyes a little, “you both seek to transcend these wonders in the physical realm, from which only misery can arise.”
I love the way Grandpa Byron talks, but sometimes it gets a little, well, dense. I’m walking through a dark forest of words, and looking for a clearing of sense. He sees that I’m getting confused.
“I know what you have been doing, Al. I am not stupid.”
Apparently everyone around me at the moment has this idea that I think they are stupid.
“I n
ever said you were.” I’m getting a bit defensive, and Grandpa Byron can tell.
“Don’t try being smart with me, bonny lad. I am trying to help you. My book, which I see you have not read, aimed to assist you in this regard.”
I put on a pained expression. “I’m sorry. I have tried, it’s just …”
“Difficult to understand? You betcha. But not so difficult to understand as why you would risk everything on this ludicrous adventure of your father’s.”
I stare at Grandpa Byron, unsure of what to say. I can tell where this is heading, obviously, and I don’t like it. I can feel myself being cornered, hemmed in by his calmness and the pretty inescapable fact that he’s right: it is a ludicrous adventure, or at least very dangerous. I hate it when adults do this, and the only thing I can do is to get all self-righteous to try to steer the argument. I stare at him angrily.
“You read my letter, didn’t you? The one from Dad to me?”
Instead of answering me directly, he comes to the kitchen table and sits down opposite me.
“One of the hardest things in life, Al, is to accept the things that cause us pain, absorb them, and continue. And no, I did not read your letter. But I imagine it was to do with your father’s experiments in, for want of a better expression, time travel?”
“And what if it was?”
“Then you are at liberty to follow your heart. But that is not always the wisest option.”
“And what if I had the chance to stop Dad from dying, eh? Wouldn’t you want that?” I’m getting a bit upset now, and I have raised my voice, but Grandpa Byron remains unperturbed, which infuriates me further. He just wobbles his head, and says:
“Death, Al, is not the end. As it says in the Sri Kalpana, ‘Live life so completely that when death comes to you like a thief in the night, there will be nothing left for him to steal’.”
“And so I should just do nothing? I have this ability, and I should just do nothing? Can you hear yourself? You sit there, spouting this so-called wisdom like you’re, you’re … Yoda or something, and all the while Dad is still dead and you don’t want to do anything about it.” My cheeks are hot, and my throat is wobbling but I’m not crying. (That’ll come later.)
Still Grandpa Byron just blinks slowly and reaches across the table to pick up his precious book.
“But you cannot undo what has been done, Al. It may appear that you can, but you cannot. It may appear that you can change your world by going back in time and altering it, but you are merely creating another world and living in that instead. Escaping is not changing.”
“Well, I want to escape then.”
“Don’t do it, Al. It cannot make you happier.”
“How not? How not?” I can hardly speak, I’m so angry. “Don’t you even want to see Dad again?”
“But I can, Al, by—”
“By what? By meditating, is that it? You can dream about him? You can think about him? God Almighty, I can do that. Anyone can do that! But actually meet him? Wouldn’t you like to do that? Well, I have. Got that? I have. And I’m going to do it again.”
“Don’t do it, Al. Please, for God’s sake. Just. Stop. You’re playing with things that … that …”
“That what? I don’t understand? Like you understand everything, O holy wise Indian mystic? Give me a break. You and your Sri Kalpana, it’s just mumbo-jumbo for people who can’t handle reality. Take it. Take it away and go away yourself.”
Grandpa Byron says nothing more. In fact that’s the last thing I say to him. With an expression of deep hurt on his face, he picks up the old book and silently leaves the house.
I hear his moped coughing and spluttering down the street, but – in case you were wondering – this is not when I start crying. My mind is racing with what I have to do.
Things I Will Do With A Time Machine
I’m beginning to think the possibilities are endless. Just think of the misery that could be stopped, the accidents prevented, if I had the courage to travel back in time and do what was required.
I entertain myself with these scenarios.
I could kill Hitler. I can’t believe no one’s thought of this (come to think of it they probably have). I could go back to Austria, April 20th, 1889, to the Pommer Guesthouse in a village called Braunau am Inn and kill the baby Adolf Hitler, who was born there that day. (I know: anyone would think I’d been researching this or something.) Wouldn’t that be awesome, although I’m not sure how I would feel about killing a baby, even one that I knew was Adolf Hitler and would grow up to murder millions of people. How could I do it? I’d suddenly materialise in the dining room, say, then go up to the receptionist and ask, “Wo ist das Hitler Baby?” then – assuming I understand the answer and I haven’t been pounced on by the terrified locals – what am I supposed to do? Run into the room, shouting, “Die, you murderous dictator-to-be,” and stab the baby with a steak knife I found downstairs? No. I couldn’t do it. And what would the baby’s mum say? I’d never get away, I’d be captured and hanged, leaving a time machine zinc tub in the middle of a 19th century Austrian dining room.
Stop the First World War. OK, this one is a bit easier. Everyone says the First World War was started by a lone gunman, Gavrilo Princip, who shot the Austrian Duke, Franz Ferdinand and then everyone else piled in, basically. So I go back to where it happened, outside Schiller’s Delicatessen in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914. I stand next to Princip in the shop doorway and wait for him to draw his gun, and then nudge his arm so he misses. But what if he hit someone else? Or turned the gun on me?
Everyone says that the First World War led to the Second World War, so that would mean no Second World War, without me having to kill Hitler. But then Dad used to say that the biggest advances in computer technology came about when we devised ways of firing rockets at Germany (or maybe it was Germany firing rockets at us, I can’t remember) and decoding their secret messages. Anyhow, without the Second World War, maybe there’d be no computers, and without computers, Dad wouldn’t have built his time machine. So that’s all a bit tricky.
OK here’s one. I could go back to last week and buy a ticket for the lottery, knowing what the winning numbers are. I could then convert it all to cash and bring it back to now, and be super-rich. You know, that one’s quite good. The only difficulty is that I’m not old enough to buy a lottery ticket, and I run up against the doppelganger thing. But it’s worth bearing in mind.
Meanwhile, though, I have a task – and to do it, I need to fix up the time machine in my bedroom.
I have never had a row with Grandpa Byron before. Never.
I can’t stop thinking about his anguished expression when he was begging me not to continue my travels.
I decide I have to call him and apologise, and I look round for my phone.
The phone I left in 1984.
A chill feeling comes over me. I get it when I think something might have gone very wrong. It’s like my neck has gone really cold. What if Macca has lost it? Or given it to someone? After all, if someone arrived now with a gadget from thirty years in the future I’d be pretty tempted to show it off, however much I had promised not to.
In my room, I pull the zinc tub out from under my bed and grab the laptop. I’m more nervous than when I first did it.
I think it’s because I’m trying to rig up the time machine myself. The first times, it was all set up for me. I just put in the numbers, and pressed ‘enter’. But now that I’m doing it myself, I’m suddenly conscious again of all the things that might go wrong.
I hear the front door go. It’s too early for Mum or Steve, so I call down, “Carly?”
“No, it’s me,” calls back my mum. “Come down, Al, I need to talk to you.”
Hm. Don’t like the sound of that.
I am now Most Definitely Rumbled. And I’m in Deep Trouble.
I’ll cut it short for you, because I’ve already done the row with Grandpa Byron, which I’m still feeling bad about when the next confrontation starts.
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br /> For all my efforts to remain undetected last night, Graham at Chesterton Road recognised me, and called Mum at work today.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, a friend of Steve’s is an out-of-work lecturer who drives cabs for A-Z Taxis in Ashington and Asif has been telling everyone in the cab office about these teenagers and their midnight trips to Culvercot, and Steve’s friend tells Steve, and Steve calls Mum, and boom!
So I get all this in about the first five minutes with Mum, but then I have to wait for Steve to get back, and Carly, and there’s the Big House Meeting.
Now in all of this, there’s one thing that I’m trying to do, and that is protect my Dad’s secret long enough for me to do what he wanted me to do.
So if you ask me, it’s a pretty bold strategy to tell them I’m building a time machine.
I was counting on it sounding so crazy, so outlandish, that it would be dismissed as the ravings of a nerdy twelve-year-old, in the grip of an obsession to prove himself at school, or something like that anyway.
There was absolutely no guarantee that it would work; quite the opposite in fact.
“So. Let me get this straight,” says Steve. He’s sitting across the table from me and Carly, and Mum is standing behind him, squeezing her own hands. I feel a bit sorry for her. I think she thinks I’ve gone a bit deranged. “You have twice been to Culvercot in the middle of the night …”
“Once,” corrects Carly. “I only went once. He went twice.”
In fact, it’s three times, but I’m not going to own up to driving Grandpa Byron’s moped if I don’t have to.
“Yes! Yes! Yes! I have been twice to Culvercot!”
It’s tricky playing mental. I have to be careful not to overdo it. Mum’s eyebrows wrinkle in the way they do when she’s upset or worried and I turn it down a bit.
“And you stole, what, a laptop and a garden tub?”
