by Ali Sparkes
‘OK,’ nodded Rachel. ‘Good idea. How long do you think it’ll take to get there, though? I think it’s about five miles away, isn’t it?’ She looked at her handlebars doubtfully.
‘Five miles? Pish! That’s nothing!’ said Freddy. ‘We go twenty miles or more in a day, don’t we, Poll?’
‘Yes—but not without a good picnic,’ said Polly. ‘We can’t go off without our lunch.’ And with that she rested her bike on its little kick-down stand and went back inside, Bess at her heels, to the kitchen.
‘Come on, Rachel,’ she called back. ‘We can’t let the boys starve, can we?’
Ben snorted with laughter and Rachel narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t think you’ll be getting this kind of treatment for long!’ she muttered at him, while Freddy looked mystified. ‘It’s only while she gets used to things. You can both do the next picnic—and don’t think you’re getting out of it.’ She stomped off after Polly with a toss of her blonde ponytail.
Freddy pulled a face at Ben. ‘What’s up with her?’
Ben shrugged. ‘Um … things are a bit different these days with girls. You can’t go round expecting them to sort out all your food for you and iron your clothes and stuff.’
‘Why not? I fix her bike for her and get spiders out of the bath and all that. Fair trade, I say! And girls are good at cooking and laundry and sewing and all that. They all want a nicely run home, don’t they?’
‘Nope.’ Ben shook his head. ‘Not any more.’
‘Oh lord,’ said Freddy. ‘Things really have gone badly, haven’t they? I say—can I have a crack at your bicycle?’
The sun shone down brightly as the four pedalled vigorously along the lane. Two of them carried backpacks. One had a red-checked cloth tucked across the top of the basket hanging from her handlebars and one had a puppy sitting up in his.
‘Hurrah!’ shouted Polly. ‘How I love the hols! Just weeks and weeks without any school! We’re going to have such fun and such adventures!’
‘Stop hurrah-ing and keep pedalling,’ shouted back Freddy. ‘I nearly went into the back of you then. I say—sit down, Bessie! You’re too little to run along with us. You might get squashed!’
‘Oh, won’t it be lovely when she is big enough to run along with us?’ sang Polly. ‘She could be our guard dog too, just in case we ever bump into any bad sorts. You’d protect us, wouldn’t you, Bessie?’
Wuff, said Bessie, and Freddy and Polly laughed.
Ben and Rachel would have laughed too, but they were having difficulty breathing.
‘C-could—could you just—slow—down—a bit?’ gasped Ben, feeling as though someone had dumped a small truck on his chest. He’d never seen any other kid race up Poppycock Hill with such speed and still be able to speak. As soon as they’d started out from Darkwell House, Freddy and Polly were away and shooting past old Percy, as he ambled on up the hill after his usual rest on their gate, so fast that his peaked cap blew off. He was still dusting it off and looking shocked when Ben and Rachel strained past, clicking desperately through their many gears.
‘Oh, Ben, don’t be such a girl!’ shouted back Freddy. ‘You’ve only just been going for five minutes and you’re already coming over all queer!’
‘Really—must—remind you,’ puffed Ben, ‘not— to say that …’
‘Well, honestly, with all your clever tyres and unshockable suspension, you’d think you and Rachel would be miles ahead of us!’ Freddy glanced back, scornfully.
Ben gritted his teeth. ‘Just wait—till we go off road!’ he gasped out. ‘Then we’ll show you!’
At last they reached the top of the hill and could speed down the other side, catching their breath. Even here Freddy and Polly outstripped them, their narrow road tyres slick across the tarmac.
‘Jolly good roads!’ shouted back Polly. ‘Not nearly as many ruts and holes as there were yesterday. I say— can we get ices at this farm shop? Oh, do say we can! There’s nothing quite as lovely as an ice after a bicycle ride on a sunny day!’
‘Yeah—I think so,’ shouted Rachel, finally getting enough breath back to speak. ‘And I think they sell Magnums.’
Freddy’s brakes screeched and Bessie’s ears, which had been flattened, inside out, to the side of her furry brown head, flopped back forwards. ‘You mean they sell guns alongside ices in 2009?’
‘No, you doofus,’ laughed Ben. ‘It’s a kind of ice cream lolly thing—loads of chocolate on it. Revolting, I think, but Rachel loves ’em.’
The farm shop car park had only three cars in it. They were enough to bring Freddy and Polly screeching to a halt again; Freddy only just grabbed Bess before she was catapulted out. The brother and sister looked at the cars—a new Mini, a Ford Mondeo, and a VW Golf—in awed silence.
‘Blimey O’Reilly!’ murmured Freddy, eventually. He got off his bike, rested it on its stand and ran his fingers lightly over the shiny green bonnet of the Mini. ‘I didn’t think they could get a motorcar to be this neat and small. Where do they fit the engine?’
‘This one’s got a window in the roof!’ cried Polly, who had also rested her bike and gone to peer at the Golf. ‘Gosh—and a television set in it too! How on earth can they do that? Surely you don’t watch television and drive!’
‘No—it’s a SatNav,’ explained Ben.
‘A SatNav? What’s that?’ Freddy went to look in the Golf’s window.
‘Satellite navigation … it sends information into the car—on to the screen. From a kind of giant camera in space which can track you wherever you go.’
Freddy looked appalled. ‘Sounds ghastly! Like something out of Flash Gordon.’
Polly nodded: ‘Yes—like you’re being spied on by the Galactic Bureau of Investigation. How dreadful!’
‘Well, no—it’s really just to help you to get to places without fumbling about with a map book,’ said Rachel, resting her bike against a telegraph pole and unwinding her lock and cable.
‘That’s what they want you to think,’ said Freddy, darkly.
‘OK—moving on,’ said Ben. ‘Ice cream—remember?’
‘Ooh yes—ices!’ Polly clapped her hands.
‘Bring your bike over to mine, Polly—we need to lock them,’ said Rachel. ‘Freddy can lock his to Ben’s.’
‘Lock them. Why?’ asked Polly.
‘Well, they might get stolen …’ Polly looked astounded. ‘By bad sorts,’ added Rachel. Polly’s eyes shot wide open.
‘Bad sorts? Do you have them around here?’
Rachel smiled at her. ‘It’s 2009. Bad sorts are around everywhere.’
Polly was still looking fearfully about her when they went into the farm shop. It was a modest place with tools and animal feed at one end, and more general hardware and some snacks and sweets at the other. They found a metal bowl, a bag of puppy food, and a small, squashable dog bed which Ben could fit into his backpack (he’d got an empty one with him for just this purpose) and then went to the big freezer chest with ice cream and lollies in it. Next to it was a glass fronted fridge filled with cans and bottled water.
‘So much choice,’ Polly was muttering, peering into the freezer chest. ‘What to have! Gosh, look at the twinkly wrappings, Freddy. Oh, look—this one looks like a helter skelter.’
‘Better steer them away from the really colourful ones,’ Ben muttered to Rachel, who was carrying Bessie. ‘They’re full of E-numbers and they’ll probably go bonkers after they eat them. They’re not used to it.’
‘Go for a Cornetto,’ advised Rachel. ‘You’ll love those. Mint or strawberry or vanilla. The helter skelter ones aren’t that good.’
Ben got a couple of cans of Coke for them all to share and some water for Bessie, and Freddy looked on, dazzled by the array of 7 Up and Sprite and Dr Pepper and Tango. A rainbow of cans glistened through the glass in a way that Ben had never really noticed before. At the till a sulky girl in a stained green apron slouched on one elbow. Ben and Freddy gathered up the Cornettos and Cokes and went across to her.
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‘No—look, I say, let me get these,’ said Freddy, digging his hand into his shorts pocket and extracting some clunky old coins. Ben stared at them in fascination. They were shillings, he was sure of it, and a sixpence, and several huge old pennies. ‘How much, miss?’ asked Freddy, politely, while the girl chewed noisily and looked at him with immense boredom. She got up and rang the Cornettos and Cokes through the till and said ‘£5.75,’ with a flash of tooth-imprinted gum across her tongue.
Freddy looked astounded. ‘Um … how much? I mean … is that … five shillings?’
She stared at him as if he was an idiot.
‘Stop messing her about.’ Ben gave him a nudge with his elbow and handed the girl a fiver and a pound coin. He and Rachel had built up quite a bit of pocket money that summer, having nowhere to go and nothing to do. Freddy and Polly tried not to look amazed at the money. Of course, thought Rachel, they didn’t know anything about decimal coins. And five pounds or more would seem like a huge amount to them.
The girl snatched the money from Ben and glared at Freddy and as she turned her head Polly clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream, while her eyes stretched wide with horror.
The shop girl stopped chewing and let her mouth hang open for a few seconds while Polly squeaked and struggled to get herself under control.
‘Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!’ she breathed. ‘You—oh gosh—you’ve got—you’ve got something awful stuck in your eyebrow! Oh, Rachel—hurry— look for a first aid kit!’
The girl at the till was narrowing her eyes at Polly now, and slapping the change down on the counter. In her right eyebrow was a sharp silver stud—the kind that pokes through on either side. Ben and Rachel saw them on people’s faces all the time in town. Rachel thought they were pretty nasty—especially the lip or tongue ones—but was certainly not shocked by them. Who was, in 2009?
‘Iodine! Or Germolene—that’s what we’ll need. And some sticking plaster,’ went on Polly, grimacing at the offending eyebrow with great concern and sympathy.
The girl curled her lip dangerously as she thumped a carrier bag of their goods on the counter. ‘Are you taking the—’
‘Polly’s just a bit … um … odd,’ said Ben, hurriedly picking up his change and propelling Polly away, while Rachel snatched up the bag and yanked a gaping Freddy along by one arm. Ben made a twirling gesture with his finger at his temple and grinned at the glowering shop girl. ‘She doesn’t mean any harm.’ He shoved Polly out through the door and Rachel dragged Freddy swiftly outside too.
‘What? What? I just wanted to help that poor girl!’ squawked Polly. ‘She was horribly injured—didn’t you see? It was awful!’
Ben and Rachel looked at each other. There was going to be so much explaining to do.
After the ice cream and Coke (the cans also caused great amazement—apparently Coke only came in bottles in 1956) they decided to go back up Poppycock Hill and then go off road, along a winding track to the top, where a small clump of trees offered some shade and a good view of the Amhill valley spread out below them. It was just as well to do another bike ride. Freddy and Polly, even without any E-numbers in their ice cream, had experienced a bit of a sugar rush and were both buzzing with amazement and excitement.
‘They want a spike through their skin? They actually want that?’ Freddy kept repeating as he put Bessie back into her basket below his handlebars. ‘And through their tongues? Are they lunatics?’
‘Girls really get tattooed?’ Polly was shaking her head and there was mint ice cream on her nose—her pupils were wide and glassy. ‘Really? Girls?’
‘Twenty-first century overload,’ Ben said to Rachel. ‘Ice cream, cars, Coke in cans, and piercings— they’re freaked. Let’s get them cycling again.’
Once again, fuelled by more sugar than they normally consumed in a week, the brother and sister stormed ahead up the road, but Ben and Rachel finally got to be smug when they reached the off-road path. While Freddy and Polly had to get off and push their bikes almost immediately, Ben and Rachel were able to show off and ride easily up the stony track for some way on their chunky all terrain tyres. It was lunchtime when they reached the little clump of trees and all four, plus Bessie, gratefully sank into the tall cool grass beneath the branches. Ben had to explain that, yes, you really did buy water in bottles these days, as he poured it into the bowl for Bessie to drink. She lapped it up eagerly and then scoffed a whole sachet of puppy food while they got out their own lunch.
Polly laid out the checked cloth (Rachel had absolutely no idea where she had found such a thing— their mum was more likely to bring bin bags to a picnic than a cloth!) and set out foil-wrapped sandwiches of corned beef and pickle. Little wax-wrapped round cheeses came out with them (‘I put those in,’ said Rachel) and a plastic tub, full of diced cucumber and tomato from the fridge (‘I didn’t put those in,’ added Rachel). The Tesco delivery had come earlier that week and the salad stuff hadn’t yet gone off. Amazingly, Polly had also managed to find a couple of flasks, which she had washed thoroughly and filled with hot tea—and four tin mugs, which were also strangely clean and shiny.
‘There’s ginger cake and apples to follow—but only after the sandwiches,’ said Polly, patting the cake package primly. Ben grinned. It was like having a miniature mother with them. Polly, wearing beige shorts and a blue, high-necked blouse, and her wavy dark hair held neatly back with matching blue clips, was so funny. Freddy clearly didn’t think anything of it. He just grabbed a couple of sandwiches and started to munch. ‘Ahem!’ said Polly.
‘Fanks, shis,’ he mumbled, his mouth stuffed. He gulped. ‘I’m absolutely famished!’
Polly beamed as they all got stuck in to the food, Ben and Rachel taking care to say thank you. She bit into her own sandwich and sighed happily. ‘I don’t know why it is,’ she said, after a gulp, ‘but food eaten outdoors always tastes heaps better!’
‘Unless there’s a wasp in it,’ observed Ben. He’d nearly eaten one once. It had hidden in a Jammy Dodger.
‘Oh—just feel that sun!’ went on Polly, ignoring him. ‘We shall all be brown as berries! We’ll look just like little Indians!’
‘Um … two things,’ spluttered Ben. ‘First—now really, pay attention—you can’t say we look like little Indians.’
‘Whyever not?’
‘It’s—well—disrespectful to Indians. Especially little ones.’
Freddy and Polly looked at each other, mystified.
‘And we can’t get brown as berries because we’ll end up with a deadly skin disease,’ added Rachel. ‘We should have put cream on before we left, really. When Mum’s home we can’t get outside the house any time after March without being coated in goo. The sun’s much hotter than it used to be in 1956. More dangerous.’
‘Seems just the same to me,’ said Freddy.
‘Tell them about the ozone layer, Ben,’ sighed Rachel. She was only just beginning to realize what an enormous task lay before them. How on earth were they ever going to explain everything that Freddy and Polly needed to know? There was more than fifty years’ worth of stuff to catch up on. Ben was explaining the ozone layer and his great-aunt and uncle were looking very sceptical. Polly, though, pulled her bare legs back into the shade.
‘You’ve got a lot to learn,’ said Ben, echoing Rachel’s thoughts.
‘Fair enough,’ nodded Freddy. ‘But we’ll catch up soon. You see if we don’t!’
‘It’ll have to be soon—we haven’t got much time, you know.’
‘Before what?’ Freddy screwed up his foil and threw it expertly at Polly’s head.
‘Before you go to school. We go back next week. And if you’re going to get signed on to all the registers and everything, you’ll have to be coming with us.’
‘Well, it’s not as if we’ve never been to school before!’ said Freddy. ‘I mean—how different can it be? You still get masters, I dare say? You don’t get taught by robots or anything?’
‘Teacher
s, not masters,’ corrected Ben. ‘And to be honest, some of them are about as human as robots …’
‘All right then. Teachers. And desks and blackboards and chalk …?’
‘Tables, whiteboards and markers … oh, and interactive screens, smartboards, Powerpoint, internet access, computers … and so on.’
Freddy and Polly, now on their ginger cake, glanced at each other and back at Ben.
‘You’ll have to have some lessons in all this stuff,’ he said, looking at Rachel, who nodded. ‘I mean, even if we do pretend you’ve been off living in a hippy commune all your lives, you have to know about some of this stuff. You just have to.’
‘The internet’s amazing. You can learn about anything on it,’ said Rachel. ‘And get almost anything from it. We might even be able to find you a Miss Rosebud, Polly—on eBay, maybe. Uncle J might let us use one of his computers.’
‘What’s eBay?’ asked Polly, cuddling Bess close to her.
‘Oh, it’s a thing on the net where people buy and sell stuff.’
Polly looked blank. ‘On the net?’
‘Yeah—a website. Sorry, you won’t know anything about websites, of course.’
‘Well, my father’s study was a dreadful web site,’ said Polly, stroking Bessie’s ears. ‘I used to have to tidy it up, because Mrs M wasn’t allowed in there. The duster would get covered in webs because he wouldn’t let me in for weeks sometimes, when he was really in the thick of some research. I can’t abide cobwebs in corners. It’s really poor. When I’m a housewife I’ll never let cobwebs build up in my home.’
‘No—no—quite right too,’ muttered Rachel. She didn’t have the first idea how to explain the internet to Polly. She thought she’d leave that to Ben.
Ben lay back in the grass and watched the clouds passing overhead. His brain hurt just trying to think about all the stuff Freddy and Polly needed to understand. He flopped his forearm over his eyes and tried not to panic. He pictured all the kids in his year— sneery Jim Lewis and obnoxious Roly O’Neal. The Pincer twins with their habit of doing wrist burns to anyone they’d just met and beefy Lorraine Kingsley, who smoked like a chimney in the girls’ toilets and had once head-butted a teacher. He thought of all these glorious examples of 2009 youth waiting to meet Freddy and Polly, and shuddered.