by Ross Welford
Two minutes? Tops. Anyway, I have already opened up the tiny toilet window, which I reckon I can just squeeze through. Trouble is, I’ll squeeze Alan Shearer as well.
Moving quickly, I take off the loo roll that’s hanging on the wall, and tear off a long strip of paper. I twist it into a rope, tie it on to the cardboard tube, then pop my hamster inside, shutting both ends with a ball of paper. Poor Alan Shearer! But it’s only going to be for a few seconds. Holding on to one end of the paper rope and standing on the toilet seat, I lower the toilet roll out of the window and on to the ground outside.
I’m next. I have to go through feet first, which means standing on the sink and getting my legs through the small window, and I’m just about to push off and out when there’s a knock on the toilet door.
“Al? Are you OK in there?” It’s the police lady.
“Ah … yeah. Nearly finished,” I say from my position halfway in and halfway out of the window.
“It’s your hamster. I think he’s got out of his box.”
“Oh no. Could you go in and look on the floor? He usually goes behind the fridge. Perhaps you could pull that out? I’m nearly finished.” I can tell my odd position is making my voice sound strained, so I add, “Bit of tummy trouble!”
I hear her footsteps move away and I drop out of the window, pick up Alan Shearer and release him from his cardboard tube. Holding him in my hands, I run down to the garden shed and open it up. Now, the shed can be seen from the kitchen, but I just have to trust to luck that she doesn’t look out of the window and that she is presently trying to move the fridge to find Alan Shearer, who is instead happily in the garden tub along with the rest of the time machine stuff.
Carrying a garden tub is tricky anyway, as I discovered that time when I was with Carly. There are handles on the side, but it’s just the size that makes it unwieldy. It’s virtually impossible to run with it, as I’m now trying to do, down the back alley that runs down to the seafront.
But I’m going in the other direction. I’m going back to Chesterton Road, back to the ‘jungle’, the patch of wasteland in front of my old house, number 40. Back to where this all began.
It just feels right.
Dear Pye,
With luck you will be reading this on the morning of August 3rd, 1984.
Sorry I didn’t turn up at the beach like we agreed.
It’s a little difficult for me to know exactly how much I can put into this letter, but if this all works then things will become clearer, I promise.
Meeting you has changed my life, changed my world, but don’t be scared by this. It’s a good thing. Mostly.
There is just one thing I want you to do, Pye. Or, rather, NOT do.
PLEASE, Pye, do not go out on The Lean Mean Green Machine today.
That’s all. I can’t really tell you why, but you must believe me.
(And – for good measure – next time you go down to the promenade, there’s a brick on the path which you should move.)
While I’m here, though, a couple of things occur to me.
Macca is bad news. (I think you have already worked that one out.)
If you become a dad, call your first son Albert Einstein Hawking. After me.
Never ever mess with time travel. Ask your dad about it. He knows a better way.
Got that? If you don’t do anything else, just trust me on the go-kart thing. Don’t use it today.
Trust me like you have never trusted anyone before in your life.
To show you how important this is to me, I am trusting you with something of mine.
Please look after Alan Shearer. He’s the best hamster ever.
And I REALLY hope I see you again some time in the future.
Your true friend, Al
I’ve made it to Chesterton Road, hauling the tin tub and everything else, and I’m dripping with sweat. It’s not that far, maybe a mile, and I’ve gone down back lanes when I can and generally tried to be unobtrusive.
That is, as unobtrusive as a boy running and carrying a huge garden tub can be.
From a few streets away I hear a quick blast from a police siren. I guess they’re patrolling the streets looking for me by now, but it’s hardly a full-scale emergency. Yet.
It’s a warm evening, and the air is a bit salty from the sea. The trees that line the street cast long shadows and I can hear birdsong and a lawnmower. Not that I’m noticing it much. I don’t think you would, either, if you were going to do what I am going to do.
So I’m jogging down Chesterton Road with the tub and everything, past Mr Frasier’s monkey-puzzle tree, across the alleyway that leads down to the seafront, and then I’m at the ‘jungle’, among the scrubby bushes, and dried-up litter and bits of twig.
I don’t know why, but I choose exactly the spot where Carly did her mirror-and-candle thing. Like I say, it just feels right. It’s as if I’m carrying out some ritual.
The battery on the laptop is charged, and I carefully place the leads and the hand grips over the edge of the tin tub so they are touching the bottom. The black box (which I never did find a proper name for) is connected to the laptop, and the memory stick is jammed into the side when I turn it all on and it begins its start-up.
You know, I think at a point like this it is usual to say that my heart was ‘beating like a hammer’ or something like that, but mine isn’t. My mouth is a bit dry, I suppose, but that could have been from the running, and I’m sweating because it’s a warm night, but my heart? Nah.
I think it’s because I simply have nothing left to lose, and nothing more to give.
From my jeans pocket I take the letter to Pye and place it with both hands, sort of ceremoniously, in the tub as well. I pick up Alan Shearer and hold him close to my face. His whiskers twitch and I give him a little kiss on his furry back.
“Good luck, matey.” Into the tub he goes. He seems happy enough.
The numbers have stopped their scrolling and the blurry sheen has appeared, by now much less than halfway up the side of the tub, but still well clear of Alan Shearer’s head. There are just the coordinates to enter. Cautiously, I open up the folder marked ‘map’. I’ve only opened up this folder once before and it looks scary: right now it’s showing a stark bird’s-eye view of the streets around Culvercot in green and black, like Pye’s old computers in the school. (I think it’s been adapted from Google Maps or something, and laid over with a kind of grid.) Using the touchpad, I pinpoint the exact spot where Grandpa Byron’s shed is. When I click, up pop the coordinates for me to enter. That is where – all being well – Pye will discover a tin tub, and a letter, and a hamster.
Then the date and time.
And then the password. I hum The Blaydon Races to help me remember.
WMAG GGGGWV E7G5 EGL2 CWG
I have told myself on the jog here that the most likely thing is that nothing will happen. It’s because of the doppelganger thing. I’m not travelling anywhere; I’m staying put, right here, so I can’t meet my own double. But I am hoping that my letter changes the past. I’m hoping that Pye will live, and go on to meet Mum, and have me … and then what? Will I have somehow slipped under the barrier of spacetime, broken its rules, and come face to face with the ‘me’ that up till now has been living an unremarkable life with Mum and Dad? I’m hoping not …
But I can’t be certain.
So with all this going on in my head, finally – with … with what? A trembling finger? Nope. My heart in my throat? Nope again – I just press ‘enter’.
Just like that.
Like I say, I have nothing left to lose.
I turn away from the tin tub. I don’t even want to see whether it works this time, or what happens. I turn away and crouch down with my head on my knees. And before I cover my eyes, I see that walking towards me is the skinny policeman, his radio crackling. Behind him, getting out of the squad car, is the policewoman.
“All right, son. Don’t move. Just stay there, son. Just stay there.”
He’s talking in a calm voice, and he is holding his hands out, palms up. He is really close now, and as I contemplate the failure of my mission, and at such a late stage, I’ve just got nothing left. My shoulders slump and my head droops and I’m suddenly more exhausted than I ever thought possible and I just kind of fall forward.
There was this game that I used to play with Grandpa Byron. Well, I say ‘used to’ but it was probably only once or twice. He called it ‘Kim’s Game’, although who Kim was I’ve no idea. Perhaps a friend of his. Anyway, what he’d do was put a few random objects on a tray, like a spoon, a teabag, a pepperpot, a pen, a ring … anything that was lying around. I’d then have a minute to look at them, and after that I had to look away while he removed two or three, and I had to tell him which objects were missing.
Obviously, Grandpa Byron was brilliant at it. He could do it even if you didn’t remove any objects, but just swapped the positions of a couple.
And the reason I’m telling you this now is that Kim’s Game comes to mind when, after a minute or so of crouching, and not looking up, I lift my head and the policeman is not there.
Has he driven off? The police car isn’t there either. I didn’t hear it drive away. I look around for signs that anything has changed.
The first thing I notice is that the garden tub has gone, along with its contents. All that’s left are a smouldering black box, and the laptop with its screen black and burnt out. The cables have been severed (melted?) at the point they entered the tub, and that is the sorry end of my dad’s time machine.
So something has happened. I’m just not sure whether to be pleased or not. If anything, it just makes me more nervous than I was before. But, like a bad player of Kim’s Game (me), I hadn’t really paid much attention to my surroundings in the first place, so it’s hard for me to tell what – if anything – has changed.
Slowly, I walk over the road to number 40, our old house. There is a car in the driveway, which I don’t recognise. It’s not Graham and Bella’s Skoda. The front door is dark blue, like it was when I lived there before, but … so what? What colour had it been when Graham and Bella lived there? I can’t remember.
Now my heart is beating fast. Or hard. Or loud. Or all three, I can’t tell, because I know for sure that in the next few moments I will have the answer to whether my experiment has worked. I push the doorbell.
Who will answer?
Graham? Bella? Somebody else?
And the door opens, but before I can see who it is, she turns away and stalks briskly back down the hallway.
“For heaven’s sake, Al, how many times? Take your key!”
I know the voice and my heart feels like it’s racing, and my throat is still dry so I can just about croak:
“Mum? Mum!!”
She stops. She turns.
It’s Mum. In our old house. Not Steve’s house.
“Well, what are you stand— Al? What on earth are you wearing? Oof! Hey!”
I have rushed into the house and thrown my arms around her with such force that we almost overbalance, but we don’t. Instead I just stand there squeezing her and kind of making sure that it’s really her, and all the while she’s saying, “Are you OK, Al? Is something wrong?” because I’m sort of half sobbing, half laughing.
In hindsight, that must have been pretty weird for her.
So we’re like that in the hallway and by now Mum is hugging me back because (she tells me later) for a mum, a hug from your son is always welcome, and while I’m hugging her, I’m checking over every inch of her – her head, her hair, her hands – and I’m just grinning because eveything’s how it should be. Then she kisses the top of my head. “All right, Wonder Boy. Let me go.”
From the front room is the sound of the television, and another familiar voice.
“Lithuania! Oliver Cromwell! Sodium Chloride!” and then a chuckle. “Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!”
And then Grandpa Byron’s in the hallway too and everything looks right there, as well. I hug him too, and he smells right, and his right arm is twisted and even that seems right.
Everything is right.
Mum says, “Supper in ten minutes, boys.”
“What’s for supper?” I ask, a little warily – because probably for the first time in my life I want it to be one of mum’s experiments.
“Chicken korma,” says Mum, and I get the beginnings of an uneasy feeling. “Only, there was no chicken in the freezer so I’ve done it with pig’s kidneys. It’ll be a bit of an experiment. And, eeh, Al – where did you get those clothes? You been down the Sue Ryder?”
Behind her back, Grandpa Byron wobbles his head in amusement.
Everything is right. Everything. Apart from the one thing that I need to know.
It’s the one thing that I cannot bring myself to ask.
I try telling myself that just staying like this forever would be good enough for me, and if I don’t ask then I won’t get the answer that I’m dreading. But it isn’t.
I have to ask.
“Where’s Dad?”
Mum looks at me like I’m crazy and I can hardly breathe. “Your dad?” she says, frowning. “Where do you think?”
I try to think, but I can’t.
“He … he’s alive?”
Mum screws up her face in puzzlement.
“Alive? Of course he isn’t alive.” She looks hurt and puzzled, but then her mouth starts to turn up at the corners and I just don’t know what to think. “Did I not tell you? He was shot dead in cold blood by a gang of trained weasels.” She pauses. “He’s in the bunker, daft lad, where he always is. Go and tell him supper’s nearly ready. Honestly, Al …” and she walks off into the kitchen shaking her head and smiling.
It’s at this point that I actually wonder if I can stand any more uncertainty and anxiety, and I feel like I’m going to throw up as I leave the back door and go down the steps to the bunker. The old metal submarine-type door is gone, replaced by a normal door and there’s a smell that is both strange and familiar. I step through the doorway and try to take it all in at once, but it’s very hard.
And there he is, with his back to me.
He hears my footsteps, he turns, and it’s definitely him. And for some reason, I don’t rush forward and hug him, I just stand there and he says, “Hello, matey,” without really looking at me.
I want to rush forward and hug him, but I can’t. I can’t move. Instead, I look around me. One wall of the bunker is lined from top to bottom with small wire-fronted cages, there must be forty of them, with water dispensers clipped on to the front and in each are one or two hamsters: brown ones, grey ones, big ones, small ones … One or two cages have rosettes tied on with wire, and there are framed certificates above the desk, and a bookshelf, and I immediately spot a copy of Hamster Fancying For Beginners by Dr A. Borgström, and I’m just staring at all this in delighted wonder when Dad comes up to me with his hands cupped.
“Look here,” he says, and he opens his hands to show me a tiny, brown baby hamster, “this is Alan Shearer. Here, take him.”
I can’t say anything, and even if I could it would only be something stupid like, “Wha? Eh? Huh? How?”
“He’s the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the hamster that I found in my shed when I was twelve,” he says, counting off the ‘greats’ on his fingers.He takes the baby hamster back and puts it in one of the cages.
And still I haven’t said anything. Dad turns to me and looks at me, a little quizzically.
“Are you OK?”
I nod. Then he checks out my clothes.
“Nice jacket, Al. I used to have …” Then he stops. And he’s just staring at me, and blinking, and I stare back, and it’s as if thirty years melt away in the space between us, there among the hamsters.
Eventually, after the longest time, he says:
“Al Singh.”
I nod.
And that’s when we hug. The longest, hardest, most intensest hug of all time.
“You trusted me,” I say into his chest.
I feel him give his little head-nod and say, “Like I’ve never trusted anyone before.”
After a few minutes, or an hour, or thirty years, he looks at me closely and smiles. “You and I have got a lot of catching up to do.”
And that’s great. Because my dad is hugging me. And I’m not going anywhere.
And that is pretty much it.
Did I change the world? Well, I changed mine. And Dad’s, and Mum’s, and Grandpa Byron’s.
I’ve told them all everything, but only Dad really understands. He dug out my letter from a drawer of his old stuff, and we all looked at the selfies on my mobile, and even then, there were still loads of unanswered questions.
For example, the night it all happened, I had left the house (this house) for about an hour without saying where I was going. That was the ‘me’ that had been living with Mum and Dad up until then (not me), and then the other ‘me’ (me) sent the letter with Alan Shearer, and that world changed … I say ‘and then’, like it was a linear progression of time, one incident after the other, but as I now know (or think I do) that’s not how it works. It’s all very confusing.
For a while I was worried that the other ‘me’, my doppelganger, was going to return from his walk and stroll back into the house, which would have been totally awkward, but it seems like that’s not going to happen after all.
I often wonder where that me is – or the Grandpa Byron with the bad memory – or the Mum, married to Roddy, with no children. Do they exist in some other parallel dimension? Or did they cease to exist when I delivered that letter and Alan Shearer to a twelve-year-old Pye and this world became reality instead?
I hope it’s the last one, but I guess I’ll never know now. And maybe that’s for the best.
Anyway, I’m pretty confident that the whole thing will be our family’s secret.
Aunty Hypatia still lives in Canada but seems to be much more part of our lives than before. I mean, before I had only met her the once, and Grandpa Byron hardly ever mentioned her. Now she’s on Skype all the time.
