by Janis Mackay
“You too, Frank,” I said, and we shook hands, then laughed. Then he picked up his bag, waved to me, took Elsie’s arm and they walked on across the field. Somehow, because of all the work, I’d always thought of Elsie and Frank as small grown-ups, but now, walking away to their new life, they looked like us. Agnes and me watched them go.
“Good luck,” I shouted.
“Good luck to you too,” Frank and Elsie turned round and waved to us. Me and Agnes waved back, until finally they stopped waving and walked on. Then they were gone, into a Peebles just at the beginning of the First World War.
“Well, Agnes,” I turned to look at her, “are you ready?”
She wiped a tear from her cheek and smiled. “I’m ready, gang leader.” As we walked along the road she patted her rucksack and winked at me, “And we’ve got everything time travellers need, right in here.”
As a parting gesture, like an actor hanging up his costume when the play’s over, I left my patched-up 1914 suit at the back door of Yew Tree House, and hung the cap on the doorknob. I put my trainers on over my filthy feet. Agnes had stuffed her brown dress into the rucksack and was now busy at the tree setting up the elements. She had tucked the wilted white rose Jean had given her behind her hair. “For luck,” she said, winking, though I was pretty sure we couldn’t bring things into the future.
Because I was a bit of an expert now, I made the fire, and Agnes set her wee pan of water on the flames for the steam. I looked about for the gardener but couldn’t see him. Looking dirty but more like our usual selves, we pressed our hands one over the other against the bark of the yew tree. “Double gold, double power,” I said, and both rings glinted in the sun. The glass globe spun. Steam turned the rainbows into swirling, coloured mist. I looked down, hoping like mad that we really were standing on the buried deeds, and that no one would find them, not for a hundred years.
“So, who’s going to sing the antique song then,” Agnes whispered.
“You start”, I said, “and I’ll join in.”
She did and the ring felt hot on my little finger and pretty soon I started to feel dizzy. In the distance I thought I could hear the horse whinny. I imagined it all alone in the stable, and the gardener all alone in the big garden. The house was empty. But the den wasn’t. My head started to spin. The wind moaned. The gardener was going to have the horse. Tricksie, or Trickstar, or whatever it was called. Maybe the army would take the horse? Maybe… The ground under my feet seemed to sway and I tried to sing but my voice sounded like it was far away. The needles of the yew swished in the strong wind. The song turned into a ringing in my ears. Everything went black and I felt like I was falling.
36
And I kept on falling.
Like I was jumping off the river bank into the black pool but the jump was going on for ever and there was ash puffing up into the air and flames flickering and a rod coming loose on a bike brake and fruit spilling all over the street and a scratchy blanket and porridge and potatoes and Frank saluting and Elsie frowning and a horse neighing in the stable and Agnes singing on the street then a scuffle and swimming in the river and Agnes splashing and shouting, “Don’t go to war, Frank!”, and him yelling he was free…
“What happened to your T-shirt?”
“Jeez Louise, did you ever see such a manky face?”
“I think they fainted. Maybe we should chuck a bucket of water over them.”
“Your theory is rubbish, Will. Like, they’ve been gone 23 minutes. A minute you said. Saul! Saul, can you hear me?”
I could, but I couldn’t move. I tried to open my eyes but it felt like they were glued. I wanted to speak but I couldn’t. Part of me was still falling… and Jean was waving, and she had a flower in her hair, and the soldiers were smiling, and the women were waving hankies, they were saying they’d be home for Christmas… but they’d be gassed, and lame, and blind…
“Agnes! What happened to your flip-flops?”
She groaned. Then I heard her mumble, “I think… I lost them in the field.” Then I managed to open my eyes and the first thing I saw was Robbie’s face but it was going round and round, like it was in a washing machine and I felt Agnes shake me. “You ok?”
I hoisted myself up onto my elbows and looked at her. Slowly the world stopped spinning. She was sitting beside me on the grass under the tree, looking dazed. The white rose had gone. “If I have a good scout around,” she was muttering, “then maybe the flip-flops will be under the grass, somewhere…”
And I remembered what else was buried under the grass. “You know that old rusty garden spade?” I mumbled to Robbie and Will. My voice had caught up with me. I was all in one piece.
“Saul! We were seriously worried. Like, more than twenty minutes you’ve been gone. I was going to get the police, or your mum,” Robbie was saying. “Will ate all the crisps by the way. We waited in the den, but you didn’t turn up. So we ran down to the tree. The glass globe was still swinging and the fire was still alight. It freaked me out. I mean, where were you?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, “but right now, do you think you could go and get that spade?” I would have run to the den and got it myself, except my knees were shaking and my feet had pins and needles.
“Oh yeah,” Agnes yelled, “the deeds! And the key!”
“The what?” Now it was Will and Robbie yelling their heads off. “Did you find them? Can you save the den?”
Shakily I got to my feet. I had to lean against the yew tree to steady myself. Robbie was right: the glass globe was still swinging and the bonfire was still glowing. I helped Agnes up. “Maybe we did,” I muttered. Maybe we didn’t, I thought. “Get the spade and we’ll find out.”
“You look like you just ran a marathon or something,” Will said. “Saul, are you ok? I mean, do you want a coke, or sweets, or a macaroni pie or something?”
“Look, Will, if you could just get that spade…”
“I mean, I’m pretty sure this kind of time travel is dangerous,” Robbie said. “Like, amazingly risky. I know you’ve got this formula and all that, but… me and Will were seriously worried. It felt like hours.”
“I appreciate you were worried,” I said. “But are you gonna get that spade? Because then we’ll dig for treasure.”
“Sure,” they both said and raced each other up the garden to the den.
“I hope they’re here,” I said, gazing at the mossy patch under the tree.
Agnes dropped to her knees and started patting the ground. “Looks pretty much like it did a hundred years ago,” she said. “Undisturbed. So if John Hogg buried them here, I reckon they’re still here.”
When Will and Robbie came running back up the garden, Robbie with the old spade in his hands, and Will with what looked like a huge bag of popcorn, I asked Agnes what her dad would do with the land. “Oh, nothing,” she said, breezily, “he likes living in the caravan. Says the simple life is a happy life. And he says he likes wild places, like this.” She looked around at the ruined house and the overgrown garden. It felt weird to see it back to its old ruined mess. “Don’t worry, Saul,” she said, smiling up at me. “He’ll leave it just the way it is.”
Agnes pointed to the mossy patch under the yew tree. Robbie and Will stood by. As gang leader, I was the one to do the digging. I wedged the heel of my foot – safe in my trainers – against the edge of the spade. I had this sudden fear that there was going to be nothing there. I glanced at Agnes. By the way she chewed her lip and pulled at her hair I guessed she had the same fear. “Even if it turns out there’s nothing there,” she said, “it was still worth it.”
She was right about that. I thought about Frank and Elsie and the German spy and I pushed the spade down through the mossy earth. Deeds or no deeds, the time travel had been worth it. The ground was soft and it cut in easily, though I didn’t hear it hit against any treasure chest. “It’s probably really deep,” Will said, upbeat. “I mean, if it’s been there for over a hundred years, it would have sunk
.” I didn’t know if Will’s theory was right but I dug deeper. I felt strong – probably after carting all that coal.
“Keep going, Saul,” Agnes said. She wasn’t twisting her hair round her finger now. She was peering down into the hole I was making. I pushed the spade deeper, and deeper, and then it hit something.
I yelled.
“That’s it!” Agnes cried.
“Could be a stone,” I panted.
“It doesn’t look like a stone.” Agnes flashed her torch down the hole. I pulled back the spade and peered in. Agnes fell to her knees, training her torch on some light-coloured thing. “I think… it looks like… a tin,” she called up, her voice shaking. She peered closer. “A biscuit tin! Saul – do you want to bring it up?”
I leant on the spade, my heart racing. “You bring it up, if you want,” I said.
She looked up at me, her eyes shining. “Yes, I do want to.” Then she lay right down on the ground and stretched her arms down the hole. Robbie and Will were jumping up and down like frogs and I was gripping the spade so tight my knuckles went white. I watched Agnes bring up a rusty, cream-coloured tin box covered in earth. I watched her place the box carefully on the grass and brush some of the soil off it. I watched her dig her nails under the lid and try to pull it open. Her face was turning red with the effort. “It won’t… budge,” she cried.
“It’s got a keyhole!” I cried out. “There, under the handle. Where’s the key from the secret passage?”
Agnes leapt up and, looking less dazed and more determined, scrambled up into the yew, disappearing up into its thick dark branches. Above us, the branches shook. A minute later she was back down again with John Hogg’s key, her eyes shining.
“It’s rusted, Saul, but it was still there,” she said.
Rubbing it down, she worked it into the keyhole, and turned it. It clicked.
Then Will knelt down to help. So did Robbie. I let the spade fall and sunk to my knees beside them. “One,” we all yelled, feeling the lid give slightly, “two…” It moved a tiny bit more. “Three!”
37
The box lid sprang open and there they were – old documents wrapped in red ribbons and stating, so Agnes read in a trembling voice:
The mansion house known as Yew Tree House by Eshiels Bank, Peebles, in the county of Peebleshire, in the country of Scotland, and the land of one acre surrounding it, is the sole property of Mr John Hogg and in the event of his death the said property will pass to the next male heir – by Scots Law.
Signed by witnesses
Dr Gray and Messrs Strachan
Peebles, Michaelmas, 1874
“We’ve done it,” Agnes murmured, gazing round at our very own wild and fabulous garden. “We’ve actually done it.” The deeds shook in her hand. “My dad is the next male heir. We’ve saved the den!”
Agnes was right about her dad. He said it gave him unspeakable delight to send these money-grabbing property developers packing. He said it was enough that his only daughter had lost her mother, she didn’t need to lose her childhood too. And children, he said, need places to play. Wild and wonderful places! Me, Will and Robbie put our pocket money together and bought Agnes’s dad a huge box of chocolates and he said we were the best pals Agnes could wish for.
The story got out that we had found the buried title deeds and there was even a bit about it in the local paper.
CHILDREN AT PLAY DISCOVER
LOST DEEDS TO LAND
Thankfully we didn’t have swarms of photographers nosing around the den. The bulldozers turned round and trundled off. The luxury homes developers looked for some other piece of land to build on, and things went back to normal. We climbed trees, played hide and seek, swung on the rope swing, made fires and munched on toasted marshmallows.
During one game of cards we were chatting about doing a bit of artwork in the den. “Funny, isn’t it?” Robbie said, gazing about, “that this den is in way better nick than the ruined house.”
“I’ve been wondering that too,” Agnes said, flicking down an ace of spades and trumping us. “So – I did a bit of research.”
I felt my heart sink. “And?” She had told me she was going to the museum. She had asked me if I wanted to go with her. She had told me she was going to read all the names on the war memorial. But I had said I didn’t feel like going. “Reluctant, Saul?” she had said, winking at me. But it wasn’t that. I just wanted to keep them all young. Sometimes when I woke in the middle of the night they were there, Frank and Elsie. Frank would be laughing, maybe nicking a piece of cake, and Elsie would be playing snap, and I didn’t want to change that.
Agnes scooped up the cards and told us what she had found out. “Jack Lamb, a retired gardener and hermit, lived in this hut alone until 1964. He was eighty-five years old when the authorities found him and decided to move him into a home where he died three days later.” We all looked about our den as if the ghost of Jack Lamb might suddenly appear. I noticed things about our den I hadn’t seen before; like places where wood had been added, and holes patched up. “It said in the obituary I read,” Agnes went on, “that Mr Lamb took good care of the few things he had. He lived by trapping rabbits, catching pheasants and growing fruit and vegetables.”
“Thanks very much, Mr Jack,” Robbie said, nodding appreciatively to our surroundings.
“And – I found out other stuff,” Agnes said, shuffling the cards.
I shot a glance at my watch. “But you know what,” I blurted out. “I was supposed to be home five minutes ago to pack for France.”
“France!” Will and Robbie cheered.
“Demain,” said Agnes, jumping to her feet and grinning, “nous allons à Paris!”
“We’ll climb the Eiffel Tower,” Will yelled as we all wriggled through the hole in the wall and set off over the field.
“And go on all the rides at Disneyland,” Robbie cheered.
“And don’t forget the art galleries,” Agnes chirped.
In all our cheering and laughing, not one of us mentioned the trip to the war graves in northern France. The teacher, Mrs Johnston, had said it was fitting at this time to spend half a day there and no one dared complain. She said how we would visit the Gardens of Remembrance and cast our minds back one hundred years. Agnes and I had shot each other a look across the classroom. We had more memories than Mrs Johnston could ever imagine.
38
We did the Eiffel Tower which was really high and from the top you had this terrific view of the whole of Paris, and we went on a boat down the river Seine. I didn’t need to get worried about frog’s legs because in France we ate pretty much the same food as in Scotland, just with more bread and cheese. Agnes made us all practise our French until we were fluent in, “Bonjour – nous sommes Eccossais.” Very loudly. And we did go to the Louvre art gallery, even though we had to queue for a whole hour to get in. When we eventually got in Agnes led us straight to the Mona Lisa, and Robbie said it was tiny and she said small can be powerful and beautiful, and the woman in the painting smiled at us, like she knew secrets about us all. Robbie and Will went off to spend five euros on a hot chocolate and, with the Mona Lisa’s eyes still following me, Agnes led me off to see another famous painting – of sunflowers in a vase.
“I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you,” she whispered while crowds peered over our heads to get a glimpse of the famous sunflowers.
“Tell me what?” I whispered though I had a pretty good idea. She fumbled about in her little bag and drew out a sheet of paper. “I got this from the war records in the museum in Peebles,” she whispered. “You ready?”
I nodded, but kept on staring at the bright golden painted sunflowers while she read out very quietly:
Private Frank Noble was killed in action at the battle of the Somme in Northern France, 1st July 1916. Said to be nineteen, it was later discovered Private Noble was in fact just sixteen years of age. As well as making the great sacrifice while serving his country, Noble will be remembered fo
r the part he played in uncovering the German spy, Herr Loden. Noble was survived by his twin sister, Elspeth Noble of Walkershaugh, Peebles.
Agnes folded up the sheet of paper and put it back in her bag. The sunflowers looked like they wanted to burst out of the vase. They were like trumpets playing a victory song.
“They were twins,” Agnes whispered. “Can you believe it, Saul? Frank and Elsie were twins! Elsie survived. I read how she lived with Jean Burns until 1930 when she flitted to Edinburgh. I read how Elspeth Noble fought for women’s rights to education and decent pay. Good old Elsie. I always knew she was a fighter. Both of them were. And they were only fourteen, back then. When we knew them.”
Back then seemed like a very long time ago. Like another lifetime. We both stared up at the painting and didn’t say anything for a while.
Then Agnes nudged me, held up a ten euro note and whispered, “Hot chocolate?”
“We’ll toast them,” I said, as we walked through the crowded gallery in search of a café. “We’ll drink to the memory of Frank and Elsie.”
“And Jean,” Agnes said.
“And all the soldiers,” I whispered. And as we hurried through the gallery I remembered how Frank had marched right-left, right-left, and how he was itching to join those soldiers, get on a train, wear a uniform and serve his country.
“You know what?” I said to Agnes as we sat down at a café table, “I think I’ll have a cup of tea instead. Coz you know,” I winked at her, “there’s nothing like a guid cup o’ tea fir pitting the world tae rights.” And when our tea arrived, me and Agnes rose to our feet. “Wet yer whistle on a guid cup o tea, Agnes,” I said, and clinking our teacups together we toasted them: “To Frank! A brave soldier of the First World War! And to Elsie, who also fought for freedom!”
