‘GRANDAD!!!’ He turned. I thought he was going to stop, but he was only changing direction, veering off towards the left.
Then he stopped. Looked round. He shouted back at me, ‘Come on! We’re going to miss it!’ He carried on walking, quicker than ever, further and further out.
I caught up with him. While I was trying to get my breath he said, ‘Good lad. I knew you’d come. I was hoping you would. This thing is really heavy. Do you want to pull it for a bit?’
‘Grandad, the tide is coming in.’
‘Well, I know that. How could my ship come in, if the tide wasn’t?’
‘We’ll be drowned, Grandad. We’ve got to go back.’
‘I’ve sailed the Seven Seas with criminals and kings and never drowned once. The jetty is just there.’ He walked on. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I remembered something.’
What did he remember? Me? My name?
‘For ages, when it was high tide, I used to go out to meet my ship. It was never there. Then today I remembered. The ship doesn’t come in at Dumfries. There’s not even a jetty at Dumfries. It comes in here. Look. There’s the jetty.’
The old jetty was a few hundred yards ahead of us. Little waves were already splashing white around it. But maybe if we got to it we could clamber up or at least hold on or something. I tugged at the trunk. It wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be. I tried to hurry, to beat the tide. If I just did what he wanted – but faster – we might still be all right.
Then we hit the creek. A gurgling brown current snaked between us and any kind of safety.
‘No help for it,’ said Grandad, striding straight into the water. ‘Don’t want to miss the boat.’
‘No, Grandad, please, you’ll get cold.’ If he gets cold, he could get really sick because he’s old. He trudged through the stream. I dragged the box after me. The water hurried past my legs. Even though it was only a few inches deep, I could feel the force of it tugging at me. How hard would it be pushing us when it was up to our waists? I sludged out of the water up on to the mud.
But the sea chest didn’t.
It tipped backwards and stuck its end up like a shopping trolley in a canal.
‘Careful there!’ shouted Grandad. ‘You’ve run aground!’
‘Careful?! We’re going to drown.’
‘Haul her down, boys, she’ll come out. We’ll get her afloat again.’
‘We have to leave it.’
‘We can’t beach her. All my rememberings are stowed in her.’
‘It’s not rememberings, it’s memories. How can you have memories in there? You don’t even know who I am.’
‘You’re Preston Mellows, my grandson. Middle name: Arthur. Birthday: 26 May. You’ve just started at Dumfries Academy. You’ve got very good manners and the makings of a decent cook. You fancy yourself as a bit of an electrician but you’re not really. Anything else?’
I stared at him. I wanted to hug him. I would’ve jumped up and down but I was worried that I’d sink in the mud. I’d started to think he’d never recognize me again. The way he said it, it sounded like he was just remembering it. Like all his memories were coming back.
Then Grandad said, ‘It was you. You used to come with me when the tide was high and tell me that I’d just missed my boat.’
‘And then we’d go for chips and eat them in the park.’
‘You knew. You knew there was no ship really. You were just being nice.’
Watching his face as some of his memories came back was like watching someone walk towards you out of the mist. First they’re just a shape, and then there’s colours and a face and expressions and everything.
‘You learned that trick from me.’
‘What trick?’
‘When you were little I did the same thing to you. When your mum went, I didn’t know what to do with a little one. I used to take you for walks around the city and tell you we’d been to all kinds of places, been on all kinds of adventures. I even drew you a map.’
I pulled the map out of my pocket. ‘It’s here!’ I said. ‘Look. I kept it.’ I held up the Map of the World that was really just a map of Dumfries.
‘Aye, that’s it.’
‘So I’ve never really been to any of those places? The Amazon? The Taj Mahal?’
‘No. Furthest you’ve ever been is Stramoddie.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’ve still got all those things ahead of you. You can tick them off the list. Got it all to look forward to.’
‘Not if we don’t get moving, I haven’t. We’d better get going.’
As I said that a massive wave crashed against the jetty. White foam exploded into the air. We were never going to make it there.
I looked in the opposite direction, towards the shore. Waves were scything low across the beach, breaking over the rocks and shattering around the salmon poles. We couldn’t go that way.
I looked back the way we came. The creek had burst its banks now. The sea chest was half hidden in swirls of water.
We couldn’t go that way either.
We were stranded. On a mud bank. A mud bank about the size of a caravan. But getting smaller every minute as the water got higher.
All I’d done was try to look after him. But somehow I’d made everything worse. Before I came, one person was going to drown. Now, thanks to me, two people were going to drown and one of them was me. Just like when Sputnik set out to look after me and ended up putting the planet in danger.
I wasn’t thinking about the planet now. I was just thinking about Grandad.
Grandad, though, was just thinking about his sea chest. He was tugging at it and pulling at it, slipping about, trying to get a grip on it.
‘Grandad, stop! There’s no point!’
‘It floats,’ he said. ‘If we can just dislodge it, we could hang on to it. Maybe we could stand on it. Then when my ship comes by, they’ll spy us and pick us up. Give us a tot of rum.’
I didn’t bother saying that there wasn’t going to be a ship or that I was too young to drink rum. I just said, ‘Good idea,’ got down in the water and pulled while he pushed. The chest tottered over and splatted into the mud. We clambered up on top. As we did, his harmonica dropped out of my pocket.
‘That’s mine,’ he said, picking it up. ‘What are you doing with that?’
‘Someone stole it. Then they gave it back. I was going to give it to you.’
He put it in his mouth and played a tune. I’d listened so often to Sputnik making it sound like a chicken being strangled that I’d forgotten that it played music. The notes drifted over the water and mixed with the sound of the waves and the splashes and gulls. ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, the tune was called. He used to play it all the time. I’d forgotten. Oh, that’s funny, I thought. I forget things too. I sang along while he played and the sea drummed on the sea chest. And I thought, Well, what else can we do?
Grandad was the first to see it. He nudged me with his elbow and nodded towards the shore but didn’t stop playing. A plume of white foam was speeding towards us across the bay, a V of ripples spreading out behind it as though the sea was a big brown anorak that was unzipping. Its engines whined and gurgled. The faster Grandad played, the faster it seemed to move. The engines stopped.
There, bobbing up and down on the waves, on what looked suspiciously like a mobility scooter, was Sputnik.
‘So that’s what a harmonica’s supposed to sound like,’ he said. ‘I told you it should be on the list!’
‘Sputnik!’
‘Who knew these things had hydrofoils?’ he yelled.
‘Mobility scooters don’t have hydrofoils.’
‘Oh yes, they do. It’s all in the manual, which was safely stowed under the driving seat. Unopened of course. Why does no one ever read the manual?’
He looked at Grandad and said, ‘Grandad, it’s an honour to meet you. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you last time we met. But I know better now. I’ve got a message for you, from an old friend.’ He sat
up in the seat and he saluted. And – maybe it was the light, maybe I had salty water in my eyes – but just for a second, as his arm went up to his forehead, he looked just like a scruffy little dog, but a scruffy little dog in a space helmet.
‘Laika!’ shouted Grandad.
‘She said you’d remember,’ said Sputnik.
‘Oh, I remember,’ said Grandad.
‘Climb aboard while I hold her steady. We’ll soon have you back on dry land.’
‘I’m not going anywhere without my sea chest.’
‘Of course,’ said Sputnik. ‘I’m agog to find out what’s inside that. Prez, jump off the chest.’
I stepped off. The water was up to my middle now. I helped Grandad get up behind Sputnik, and he pulled and I pushed and together we managed to heave the chest up on to the scooter. As we got it into place, it slipped and the lid flew open.
‘Shut it! Quick!’ shouted Grandad. ‘All my rememberings will blow away.’
That’s when I saw what Grandad had in his sea chest. I’m not sure what I expected. Maybe clothes or ornaments or gadgets that he’d collected on his travels. But that’s not what was in there. The reason that the chest was so surprisingly light was that it was full to the top with yellow Post-it notes, all covered in lists. Lists in my handwriting. All the reminders I’d written for him over the years were there in that chest. I could see words like ‘Tuesday’ and ‘Dentist’ and some of the last Post-it notes I wrote, that had things like ‘Prez is your grandson’ and ‘You live in Dumfries’ written on them, from when he was getting really mixed up.
Rememberings.
‘All my days are in there,’ said Grandad, ‘all my days with Prez. When I was losing my mind and he was trying to keep it for me. Like a good sailor bailing out a leaky boat.’
Sputnik stared. I thought he was going to be angry. I’d sort of made him think it might be full of treasure. Not old Post-it notes.
‘I wanted to remember that he’d tried,’ said Grandad. ‘Even if I didn’t remember what actually happened.’
‘That,’ said Sputnik, ‘is the most amazing thing ever.’ He took out the notebook and went to write something. Then he paused. ‘What do you call it?’ he said.
‘Post-it notes.’
‘Not the notes. The thing. The thing that made you do them?’
‘A pen?’
‘No. The knot. The knot that ties you two together even right out here on the Merse where there is Danger of Drowning from Fast Incoming Currents.’
‘Oh. That.’ I tried to think of all the things that made me try and help Grandad. Being scared of losing him. Wanting him not to change. Wanting to make sure he was all right. Wanting to make him laugh. Wanting to laugh with him. Wanting that feeling I got when we laughed together. The feeling of home. Wanting that feeling back. Wanting home.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a word for that kind of knot. Maybe just being human.’
‘I’ll think it over,’ said Sputnik. ‘Let you know next time I see you.’
He started up the engine and nudged the scooter round, spraying water in my face.
‘Hey. Wait for me!’ I yelled.
‘No room, sorry,’ said Sputnik.
‘But aren’t you supposed to be looking after me?’
‘Och, there was a right chuffing mix-up there. Turns out it was your grandad I was supposed to be looking after all the time.’
‘But . . .’
‘You’ll be fine. It’s only up to your chest. Don’t try to swim it. Just keep walking. Stay calm. Careful where you put your feet. If you feel the floor giving way, swim. Good luck.’ He revved the engine, spraying water all over me again. Then he turned it down until it was idling. ‘Nearly forgot. Laika asked me to give you this.’
He reached into his backpack.
‘Have to make sure that my seat belt’s fastened first. This present is all that was keeping me on the ground in this gravity.’
He tightened his seat belt, then out of his backpack he pulled the old rubber ball with the toothmarks that he had shown me that first night.
‘That’s lovely,’ said Grandad. ‘I used to play fetch with her.’
‘I know. She remembers,’ said Sputnik.
I said, ‘Is that the ball you used to play with her?’
‘This? A rubber ball? No!’ laughed Sputnik. ‘This is my planet. After shrinking.’
I could see now that it wasn’t a rubber ball at all. It was floating just above the palm of his hand, spinning like a little bonsai planet. The things that I’d thought were toothmarks were actually tiny mountain ranges. The red swirled about like a pocket sea.
‘I’m up to my neck in cold water,’ I shivered. ‘If there was any chance of a lift . . .’
He ignored me. ‘Prez will tell you,’ Sputnik said to Grandad, ‘I don’t normally play fetch, but if you were to throw this, I’d make an exception. It’d be an honour to play fetch with Grandad Mellows.’
He handed the little ball to Grandad. As Grandad took hold of it he gave a yelp of pain and pulled his hand away as if it had burned him. The ball hit the water with a massive splash and a wave that rocked me back out to sea, yards away.
‘Should’ve mentioned,’ said Sputnik, ‘although it’s shrunk, it still weighs the same as it did when millions of us lived on it. Gravity is different inside my backpack.’
The waves surged around us.
‘Has it sunk to the bottom?’ yelled Grandad. ‘I wouldn’t want to lose your home planet.’
‘To the bottom, through the bottom, down into the crust of the Earth. Maybe it’ll make a hole right through your planet. How annoying is that? I came here to save your planet, and now it looks like I’ve made a big hole in it. There’s probably going to be a tidal wave now. Sorry for any inconvenience.’
There was a terrible sucking sound and water rushed past me. As if the water in the bay was pouring into the hole that the bonsai planet had made like it was some kind of turbo-charged plughole. I saw the mobility scooter whirl around and shoot forward.
I don’t really remember too much of what happened next, except that one minute I was deep in dark water, the next I was lying flat on my back on the dunes.
When I came to, I trudged up the dunes. The massive waves had flung seaweed over all the caravans. Mr Leithen was standing outside one of them accusing the owners of trying to kidnap him.
‘But we didn’t know you were in there! How did you get in there? You must have been trespassing.’
‘Don’t throw legal words at me,’ he said. ‘I’m a High Court judge. Retired.’
Further up, tangled in seaweed and sideways in the grass, I found Grandad and Sputnik, laughing and chatting.
‘I waited. To say goodbye,’ said Sputnik. ‘Goodbye.’
He took off his leather collar and handed it to me. ‘That’s not mine,’ he said. Then he undid his safety belt. The moment he did that, he started to float. A little breeze caught him and he started to drift away like a cloud.
I ran after him, shouting, ‘Is this it? Is the planet about to shrink? What do I do now?’
‘No,’ said Sputnik. ‘I found the tenth thing for the list. It was that knot.’
‘What knot?’
‘Home. You got home all wrong. You’re a temporary kid looking for a permanent home. You were looking in the wrong place all the time. I told you, architecture is boring. Home isn’t a building. People leave buildings. Buildings fall down. Even Stramoddie will change. Ray will move out and go travelling and it will be a different place. Planets shrink. Suns explode. Planets come and planets go. Home isn’t a place on a map. Home isn’t the place you come from. It’s the place you’re heading to. All the times you ever felt at home – they’re just marks on the map, helping you to find your way there.’
‘You can’t just leave me. I’ll be on my own.’
‘I told you. I’m a comet. I go round and come back again with my glove on the other hand.’
‘But that’ll
take forever. Millions of years.’
‘Time isn’t a straight line. Also dog years are different from human years. Everyone knows that.’
‘Sputnik, please—’
‘It’s like this. You go off on an adventure. Then you come home. Right? Well that’s what the universe is doing now. Ever since the Big Bang, it’s been heading off into the unknown on its adventure. But the day will come when it will all go back to the beginning. Everything will come home. Everything that was broken will be fixed. Everything that was forgotten will be remembered. It’ll be like the biggest reverse dynamite explosion ever. And then we’ll all be back together and we’ll be home again.’
‘But until then—’
‘Here. Catch. Souvenir.’
He threw me his notebook. It fluttered down like a red bird.
– Don’t you need it? To save the Earth?
‘No, no. It’s all in here now.’ He pointed to his head. ‘And in here.’ He pointed to his heart. ‘Pay particular careful attention to number ten.’
There was no point shouting any more. He was already too high to hear. And he kept getting higher and higher. I followed him, looking up at him, not looking where I was going. By the time he was a tiny black dot, I was way out in the bay again. On my own.
I turned back to the shore. Two big shapes were coming towards me. It was Jessie and the dad. They were riding on the ponies. The hoofs made little bright splashes as they came. Their bridles jingled.
‘We were up the Coo Palace tower,’ said the dad, ‘when we heard a lot of barking and shouting. We thought it might be Sputnik.’
He helped me up into the saddle in front of him. First time I’d ever been on a horse. When we got down, Jessie saw what I was holding in my hand. The dog collar with the old brass tag she’d fastened on Sputnik.
‘Where is he? What happened?’
Where could I start to answer that question?
Luckily I didn’t have to just then. Jessie and the dad were fairly surprised to see Grandad sitting on the wreck of a mobility scooter up in the dunes. They helped us find his sea chest too.
Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth Page 18