by Ross Welford
We go through, me and Grandpa Byron, and we sit in her tidy front room, and her husband Roddy, who’s now an inspector in the Northumbria Police, brings tea, and a juice-in-a-box for me, like I’m five or something. She and Roddy and Grandpa Byron talk adult small-talk, all the how-have-you-beens and everything, which lasts a few minutes, and I learn that she and Roddy have no children, but several nieces and nephews that they’re very fond of, and they moved here about eight years ago, and Roddy built the conservatory himself, and blah blah blah … but then it starts to get a bit tricky because all this while, I have said nothing and there are some big question marks hanging in the air. Who am I, why did I call her ‘mum’, and so on.
Mum says to Grandpa Byron, “Did you say Al was your grandson? By your daughter, Hy … er …”
“Hypatia. Yes.”
“Didn’t she move to America, or Canada, ages ago?”
“Ah. She, er, she came back.”
Then Roddy chips in, “And he has your surname? Chaudhury?” Perhaps it’s just me, perhaps it’s just because I’m on edge and he’s a policeman, but there’s an almost-silent suspicion in his voice.
“Yes. We wanted to keep the name in the family,” says Grandpa Byron, airily. Too airily, if you ask me, because there’s still something going on in Roddy’s eyes.
And me? I’m sitting there, saying nothing at all. I mean, I can’t, can I? What can I possibly say? It just can’t get any worse.
(By the way, whenever anyone says that to you, remember that it will get worse. It did for me, and it was all my fault.)
I’m on her shiny black sofa, and there’s one thing I can do to show her that we have a connection, that might persuade her that she is my mum, and that’s my syndactylic toes. I wait till Roddy’s left the room for a moment, then without saying anything I quickly take off my shoe and sock and say, “Look!”
(Another tip: if you’re in strange company and want to convince someone beyond doubt that you are mentally deranged in some way, taking off your shoes and socks and saying “Look!” is a good way of doing it, I now know.)
Mum barely glances at my feet, but smiles indulgently and a bit nervously, and her eyes look at Grandpa Byron, sort of pleading for help.
“My toes!” I say. “Syndactylic! Like my mum’s.”
“Oh yes!” says mum enthusiastically, but it’s not her real voice. It’s the voice that people who don’t have children use when they talk to children. A bit too sing-songy. “Did your Grandpa tell you I have that too? You probably know how rare it is! How unusual! You’re very special, Al, aren’t you?”
Special.
Mum’s smiling at me, but it’s not a real smile either. It’s a sympathetic, synthetic smile, which might be all I will ever get from her.
It’s time to go. I can’t stand it any more, and I quickly put my shoe and sock back on and stand up as Roddy comes back in the room.
Mum says, “From your mum, you say?” Then to Grandpa Byron, “I don’t remember you saying Hypatia had syndactyly?”
“Ah … he’s confused, bless him. He means his dad. Anyway, nice to see you again, Sarah, Roddy,” and it’s like we can’t get out of their house fast enough. I know that I’ve been acting oddly, and there’s just this look that is still on Roddy’s face as he and Mum say goodbye, and “please come again!” and all of that. I know I have messed up, but still I try one more tactic.
“Say hi to Aunty Ellie for me!” I say, and Mum gets this shocked look on her face as Grandpa Byron practically pulls me up the driveway.
Back on the scooter, we are a little way up the street, and I crane my neck back to see Roddy turn to Mum. He purses his lips and shakes his head, and it’s at that exact moment that I can see what’s coming, and I know what I have to do.
Remember I told you that Grandpa Byron can remember pretty much every single day of his life? Now I think about it a bit more, it’s easily the most impressive thing he does.
Some of what he remembers are big things, like getting married – which everyone remembers – but some can be tiny, like having a particularly nice lunch, or what he wore that day.
So far, it makes for more than eighteen thousand bits of information that he can call up when he wants to remember, say, where he was on a particular day, or where he was living, or who was with him, or what he ate. None of it’s written down, of course, so there’s no way I can check whether he’s right, but I trust him.
A date might be mentioned on the radio, and he’ll close his eyes and say, “Ah, yes! March 12th 1977. That was the day me and your Grandma Julie walked along the beach and there was the most jolly terrific hailstorm, great big hailstones as big as peas,” and sometimes he can do added details like who else was there and what they were wearing, but not always.
Anyway, we are back at Grandpa Byron’s house, stiff from the moped ride, and I need to check something. We have hardly said a word on the way back, mainly because it’s virtually impossible to talk over the whining of the engine and the wind in our faces, and besides, there’s not much to say that doesn’t involve me saying sorry for having messed it all up.
“How are the old Memory Palaces, Grandpa Byron?” I ask with what I hope is a casual voice, but I wasn’t to know the reaction this would provoke. He goes very, very quiet and he scowls and I honestly don’t think I’ve seen Grandpa Byron scowl before.
“Requiring a little maintenance, I’d say.”
“OK. So what were you doing on, ooh … September 2nd, 1980?”
His eyes look up to the left for the longest time. “That was, erm … Like I say, they are requiring a little upkeeping.”
I am disappointed and can’t help showing it. “Oh come on – what about January 24th, 1996?”
Grandpa Byron snaps at me, “Don’t! I am not a performing flipping monkey.”
But I don’t give up. “You wrote the book, though! The Memory Palaces of the Sri—”
“I know what I did, and so do you, apparently. Everything about ‘me’. Except that it seems to be some other ‘me’,” and to emphasise what he’s saying, he makes quote marks in the air with his fingers. His voice is quite loud now. “I have never seen that book in years, I have never seen you for thirty years, and now you are expecting me to be someone else? Think about what you are asking, Al. I’m going to the shops. You stay here. I’m not wanting you to walk the streets. It’s not safe. And afterwards we need to work out what to do with you.”
What he means is it is not safe for him. I get it. A man cannot suddenly have a young boy live with him without people wanting to know why.
The front door slams as he leaves, and that now makes two rows I have had with Grandpa Byron both within about five days, or thirty years, or oh, I don’t know … take your pick. I’ve pretty much given up trying to work it out.
I hear Grandpa Byron’s scooter coughing down the street and I have to act fast.
The thing is this: I have come back to a world that has changed in a billion unknowable ways as a result of what I did. Mum doesn’t know me (other than meeting me once and thinking I’m ‘special’), Grandpa Byron’s just … well, he’s just not the same. I worked this out on the journey back from Blaydon when I remembered what Grandpa Byron (or who I am now beginning to think of as ‘the old Grandpa Byron’) told me:
“Don’t dream of a different life, Al. Love the one you’ve got.”
Does that mean I can’t try to change the one I’ve got? I have decided that it doesn’t. From my backpack in Pye’s bedroom, I take out the scratched and battered black box and the cables. The string of numbers and symbols that I so laboriously typed into Pye’s supercomputer is still on my key-ring memory stick. I’ll need to borrow Grandpa Byron’s laptop. I’ll need to find a zinc garden tub from somewhere.
I am going to use the time machine one last time.
And I mean it. One. Last. Time.
I am sick to death of time travel.
Grandpa Byron’s only been gone two minutes and I’m down the
bottom of the garden in the shed where, in a different world, he kept his fireworks and Pye had his go-kart. If I had more time, I’d feel emotional, breathe in the smell of the shed and remember Pye and all of that.
But I don’t. I’ve just got to find a tin tub and all the way down the garden path I have been telling myself that there won’t be one, because there never is in situations like this, is there? You never find exactly what you’re looking for.
Except I do. At the back of the shed, filled with canisters of weedkiller and old plastic plant pots and bamboo canes, is a zinc tub and it’s huge. I can’t even feel jubilant owing to my nervousness. I’ve brought out all the rest of the stuff: the laptop, the back box, the cables, my memory stick, my hamster (of course), and in just a couple of minutes I’ve got it all rigged up, and the numbers are scrolling up on the screen faster and faster, and I’m beginning to feel a bit sick with anticipation and …
At this point I suppose I should tell you what my plan is.
It’s to go back One Last Time to 1984, to a few days before I last arrived, so that I won’t/can’t meet myself. I will then break into Pye’s shed and disable The Lean Mean Green Machine (I can’t destroy it, that would be heartbreaking, I’ll just take the wheels off or something), and then, to be doubly sure, I’ll go down to the slipway and move the stone and the supermarket trolley. That will prevent Pye’s first accident, and it should also prevent him from going out on the go-kart for a couple of days until he’s fixed it – just in case there is some weird ‘fate intervenes’ thing going on which means he’s going to steer his go-kart into the sea regardless. I tell you – I’ve thought of all of the possibilities.
That is, except for one thing that I suddenly notice.
The time machine seems to be losing power. The numbers have stopped scrolling, and the blurry film that once formed a big bubble-like dome over the zinc tub now looks a bit like a wobbly liquid surface coming halfway up the sides of the tub. There is, quite simply, no way I could possibly fit in there, let alone get back.
Should have thought of that. I tap the ESC button on the laptop, the program stops and I start to think this through.
After a moment, it comes to me. I won’t physically travel back in time, and I won’t personally move the brick and the shopping trolley. Instead, I’ll send my dad a letter telling him to do these things. And I’ll send it with Alan Shearer, so he doesn’t ignore it.
OK. A letter. This can work.
But then, as I keep thinking, a second problem arises, and this one’s even bigger.
A white cursor is blinking on the screen demanding that I input the string of letters that were written on the black box. The same black box that has been in and out of every dimension as well as my backpack, wearing off the pen marks. The writing on it is illegible. The string of letters now looks like this:
WM..GGGG...7..5E8... and then a big smudge containing a G.
WM … what came next? S? D? There were some numbers too. A three. A two?
I can’t remember the password.
Which means I can’t send a letter back to 1984.
I’ve left all the time machine stuff in the shed and I’m coming back up the path to the back of the house with Alan Shearer cupped in my hands, feeling totally defeated, when I hear Grandpa Byron’s moped buzzing up the front driveway. And something wonderful happens in my memory:
The sound of the moped makes me remember being on it earlier in the day, and how my bum hurt after fifteen miles …
And I was aching worst when we passed the road sign saying BLAYDON when we came into the town …
And remembering ‘Blaydon’ makes me think of the song, ‘The Blaydon Races’…
And whenever I think of the song now, I think of that rhyme to remember the Kings and Queens of England that Grandpa Byron taught me.
That’s the one that goes:
‘Willie, Willie, Harry, Steve,
Harry, Dick, John, Harry Three …
One, two, three Eds, Richard Two
Harrys four, five, six then who?’
It was the four G’s in the remaining smudged letters that made it click. “Geordie, Geordie, Geordie, Geordie, William and Victoria” was always my favourite line, and I knew now I had the password, starting halfway through on the chorus bit of the tune:
‘William and Mary, Anna Gloria
Geordie, Geordie, Geordie, Geordie, William and Victoria
Edward Seven’s next and then George the fifth in 1910
Edward Eight, then George, Liz Second.
Charlie Wills and George it’s reckoned!’
In other words: WMAG GGGGWV E7G5 E8GL2CWG
Imagine: I used to think of them as Grandpa Byron’s ‘memory tricks’, like they were something trivial.
Back in Pye’s room, I take a long look round. I’m not sure I’m aware of making it a ‘last look’, but that is how it’s going to turn out.
I look at all Pye’s bits and pieces – the science books, the model of the solar system dangling from the ceiling, his clothes in the wardrobe, his clothes (jeans, T-shirt, bomber jacket) that I’m wearing. On his desk there are more books and a slim box labelled ‘Junior Letter Writing Kit’ with envelopes and paper decorated with pictures of spaceships and planets.
Sitting at the desk, I remove from its frame the picture of me, Dad and Mum. I fold it in half, put it in an envelope and address it to Mum. Well, not my real mum, but the one in Blaydon, the one married to Roddy.
It’s a leaving present. It’s like I want her to have something of me.
Next, I write on a sheet of paper, “Please read this and remember me. Thank you, love from Al.” I put it inside my copy of The Memory Palaces Of The Sri Kalpana and leave it on the bed.
Finally, and my hand is shaking slightly when I pick up the pen, I start a letter to Pye. I don’t know if you’ve ever written an important letter? Texts and emails don’t seem quite the same, somehow, but this has to be spot-on right, and when I start to write the words they just come straight out, no hesitation, no crossings-out, as if everything I know and everything I need are contained in the pen and all I’m doing is holding it and kind of squeezing it on to the paper. I fill one sheet, then another, and my wrist is aching, and just as I’m near the bottom of the last sheet in the box, I realise that I have finished saying what I need to say. I don’t need to re-read it. I know it’s exactly right. I fold the sheets and cram them into an envelope, writing on the front, ‘FOR PYE CHAUDHURY. READ IMMEDIATELY’.
I stand up, flexing my wrist, and shove the envelope in my jeans pocket.
The doorbell goes, I hear the front door open and voices downstairs. Out of the bedroom window I can see a police car is parked outside.
Grandpa Byron’s voice comes up the stairs: “Pye. I mean, Al. Come downstairs, please.”
In the hallway are two police officers, a skinny man and a fat woman and I immediately get what has happened.
Roddy. Roddy seemed suspicious. It was the way he shook his head at Mum as we left. It’s like he was saying, “Something’s not quite right here,” and he followed his policeman’s instincts, made a couple of calls, and here they are, two police officers, being polite and everything, because there is no reason for them not to be as they are just following up enquiries.
“This is Al, is it?” says the man police officer. “How are you doin’, son?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I say, and give a wary smile.
“I’ve just come to ask you and your granddad a few questions, son. It’s nowt to worry yourself about, but we’ve got to follow certain procedures. You go off into your kitchen with my colleague here,” and he nods his head towards the woman officer, “and I’ll be in your front room with your granddad. Then we’ll swap around, OK?”
I shrug and follow the policewoman’s swaying bottom into the kitchen. I suppose they want to question us separately to check out our stories, and seeing as we don’t even have a story (other than the true one which no one would belie
ve), then I could see Big Trouble ahead. Arrests. Investigations. Accusations. Care Homes. Court Orders. DNA tests. Press reports …
The plan I had devised, with the letter to Pye and everything else, could happily have been enacted in a day or two, once I had built up the courage and thought through the details.
No time for that now. Now I am under kitchen arrest by the unsmiling, fat policewoman, and I must act immediately.
It’s early evening, round about the time that Alan Shearer first wakes up, and I can hear him scrabbling in his cardboard box. I go over to him, pick him up and take him over to the police officer. Who just melts. Her eyes go soft, and a soppy smile makes dimples in her cheeks.
“Awwwwwwwwwweee!” she says (really – it goes on for ages and ends in a squeak). “He’s adorable! What’s his name?” I tell her and she giggles. I let Alan Shearer run over her hands and she loves it. So far so good.
Now for the next bit. “I’m just going to put him back in his box,” I say, making sure she has heard, and I take him from her. With my back to her, I head to the shallow box with Alan Shearer in my right hand. With my left, I pull open the pocket of my bomber jacket and as I bend over the box, I make the actions of putting the hamster into it, but instead slip him into my pocket.
“There you go, matey!” I say, and I even move my head and pretend to follow his movements.
As casually as I can, I say, “I’m just going to the toilet,” and I sort of stroll out of the kitchen, dead natural, down the hallway and into the downstairs loo.
I have only got, I figure, about two minutes, probably less. Here is what is going to happen in the kitchen. Fat police lady is in love with Alan Shearer. She cannot resist going over to his box and checking him out. He won’t be there. She’ll look in his bedding, under the little box that’s in there for him to play with, and she’ll assume he has got out using the plastic ruler as a ladder that I deliberately left leaning up against the inside edge of the box, and seeing as she was left in charge, she’ll start looking for him, desperate to find him before I get back from the toilet.
