Frozen in Time

by Ali Sparkes

  Mr Gerard came in and Freddy stood up again, but managed not to say ‘Good afternoon, sir.’ Mr Gerard looked thunderous.

  ‘Well, this is a fine start to the year, I must say,’ he glowered. ‘And fine thanks for allowing you two in without getting in the full paperwork yet! If your uncle wasn’t a good friend of mine, you can be sure you’d both be out on your ear again by now—all of you, in fact. I’ve never seen such a scrum! Two major fights in one lunch hour and both of them involving a Robertson! If this is what living in a hippy commune teaches you, then there’s not much hope for any of us!’

  ‘But it wasn’t their fault!’ protested Rachel, although nobody could really hear her very clearly through the tissues. ‘They were being picked on.’

  ‘Your cousin has just concussed two boys!’

  ‘Yes, b-but, sir,’ said Ben, from his corner. The head teacher spun round and glared at him. ‘Ththink about it. It was Roly O’Neal and the P-Pincer twins … and Lorraine Kingsley … I m-mean, honestly … what do you think happened?’ Ben felt a rush of nerves and excitement. He had never spoken to a teacher like this before, but he was quite convinced now that he was right to.

  Mr Gerard opened his mouth to retort angrily and then closed it. He pondered for a moment. Then, to Ben’s enormous surprise, he said, ‘Well, you have a point, Benedict. Perhaps I will just send a letter home to your uncle this time. But I want you all to know that I don’t tolerate stand up fights at Amhill Secondary. I advise you all to keep a low profile for a while!’

  Ben hauled Freddy out of school as quickly as possible at the end of the day, and found Rachel shoving Polly along equally fast as he reached the gate. They were both looking fearfully around them. They knew the Pincer twins, Roly O’Neal, and Lorraine Kingsley well enough to expect a second round at any time. Although, thought Rachel, it had been absolutely glorious looking at Lorraine’s astonished, casserole spattered face, and hearing the laughter growing among the crowd. Nobody liked Lorraine, after all, and it was much more fun to see her get a face full of someone’s lunch than to watch the new girl being bullied. In the afternoon classes a couple of other girls had grinned at Polly and three boys at the back made ‘salaaming’ gestures to her as she went to her desk, next to Rachel. Lorraine wasn’t in any of their classes, so they were safe until home time.

  ‘Oh, do give over, Ben!’ Freddy protested as his great-nephew propelled him along to the bike sheds at great speed. ‘Emersons don’t run away!’

  ‘No, I’m sure they don’t. They don’t run away. They don’t give up. They don’t have bodyguards, either—and that’s our biggest problem right now.’

  Ben looked back over his shoulder, but saw no sign of their enemies yet. They grabbed their bikes fast, just as a shout could be heard behind them. It was Lorraine Kingsley. There were brown spatters down her white blouse and her hair was wet from where she’d had to wash it in the girls’ toilets. She was moving now, gathering pace, head down, like an angry bull. Rachel’s fingers slipped on the combination lock on their bikes.

  ‘I think you might want to look sharp, Rachel,’ suggested Polly.

  ‘You do? Really?’ Rachel snapped the lock apart and hauled the chain out from between their wheels just as Roly O’Neal joined Lorraine on the path heading down to the bike sheds.

  ‘Time to go, I think,’ said Freddy, grabbing his handlebars. They all leaped onto their saddles, bags on their backs, and pedalled away at top speed, narrowly missing a dinner lady with a tray of bread.

  ‘I’ll getchooo! You wait! I’ll getchoooo!’ bawled Lorraine. Rachel glanced back and saw her punch Roly O’Neal in the stomach. For no apparent reason. Roly was yanking Lorraine’s damp hair in reprisal as she looked back again. Then they were round the bend in the road and cycling as fast as they were able, Polly and Freddy tearing along ahead of them. Rachel’s heart clattered wildly in her chest but she gave a shout of excitement as they made their getaway. Of course, it would feel a lot different when they went back into school tomorrow, but for now—they had won!

  Uncle Jerome still wasn’t back when they got home, but a message was blinking on the answerphone and Ben pressed the button while Rachel and Polly made a big fuss of Bessie, who had been left alone in the hallway again for the day—and had managed to poo exactly where she was supposed to, on the newspaper under the stairs. Ben and Freddy held their noses as they listened to the message. It wasn’t from Uncle Jerome.

  ‘Hello, my lovelies!’ sang out a woman’s voice. ‘It’s me—Mum. I’m sorry—it’s been days and days since we’ve been able to get a decent signal out here. Honestly, with all the ship to shore technology and satellite phones, you’d think it would be easy! Anyway, are you back at school today? I think it’s today you go back—I do hope it’s gone well and you haven’t had any trouble.’ Ben and Freddy snorted. Freddy had got down on his haunches and was peering into the answering machine, wrinkling his brow and trying, Ben guessed, to see a tape reel or something. ‘Anyway, the season’s gone really well and we’ve only got a few more days and we’ll be flying back to you! Oh, I am so looking forward to seeing my little family again.’

  They looked at each other, edgily. Mum was going to find out that her little family had grown a bit, thought Rachel. How on earth would she take it?

  ‘We’re already booked up for next year, and for a short spell at Christmas,’ went on their mother, ‘although we’ve said we won’t go until after Christmas Day, you’ll be glad to hear. Everyone especially loved the new fire act this time—although Daddy did lose his eyebrows the first time around … he’s had to put them on with a felt tip pen ever since. Anyway, we hope you’re having a great time and not getting into mischief. See you both soon!’ There was a click and the message was finished.

  ‘What—what do you think your mother and father will want to do … about us?’ asked Polly, playing anxiously with Bessie’s ears.

  ‘You don’t think they might call the police, or something, do you?’ asked Freddy.

  Ben and Rachel exchanged glances. They had absolutely no idea what their parents might do. Mum and Dad were not normal parents … but maybe that was a good thing. They would not be returning to a normal family.

  ‘No more messages?’ Rachel asked, to change the subject. No. There was nothing else. ‘I’m getting a bit worried about Uncle J,’ she said. ‘He’s never left us alone for this long before. Where do you reckon he’s got to?’ There was a long silence. ‘I mean … I don’t want to worry anyone, but soon we’re going to be out of food …’ said Rachel. ‘We spent the last of our money today, on school dinners for the week.’

  ‘Oh don’t worry,’ said Polly. ‘We’ve got heaps and heaps of food down in the vault!’

  Ben and Rachel winced. ‘Yeah,’ said Ben, ‘but it’s fifty-three years old!’

  ‘Well, so are we!’ said Polly. ‘And we’re all right!’

  ‘Yes, but all the food hasn’t been in a cryonic chamber with us, has it?’ pointed out Freddy. ‘Although I vote we go and have a rummage through the tins. They’re meant to last for an age, aren’t they?’

  Rachel sighed. Half-a-century-old Spam really did not appeal to her. She went to the kitchen and poked around in the permafrost at the back of the freezer. It gave up five fish fingers and seven individual peas. They were completely out of bread and biscuits and there were only three apples left in the fridge. The tins they had in the larder all seemed to be chilli beans or rhubarb. Even Polly couldn’t make a tasty supper out of that.

  ‘We really do need money,’ she said, as the others came in and Polly filled the kettle. ‘It would be just like Uncle J to get caught up in something and forget to come back for a week!’

  Ben sat down, straight-faced, at the cleanly scrubbed kitchen table, where Bessie immediately gnawed on his shoelaces. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen him so excited as he was down in the vault. He couldn’t bear to stay away from it for long. S-something … I th-think something is wrong.’

 
As soon as the words were out everyone was nodding gravely. They had all felt it but Ben was the first to say it. Where was Uncle Jerome? Rachel shivered. ‘How can we find out?’ she asked. ‘We just don’t know where he went. Or if anyone else at all knows. And if we go to the police or something, and report him missing … well, they’ll be straight over here and with Mum and Dad away … well, we’ll all get taken into care or something. And then what about Freddy and Polly? They’ll want to know about them too …’

  ‘He’ll come back,’ said Ben, wishing he felt half as certain as he sounded. ‘And in the meantime we’ll just have to think of a way of getting hold of some money. Is there anything we can sell?’

  Rachel thought hard. ‘Our bikes?’

  ‘No, we need those. What else? Computer games? Books? CDs?’

  ‘I know,’ said Freddy. ‘Antiques.’ They stared at him. ‘Well, don’t look at me like I’m an idiot! What did JJ say? Our vault is a time capsule! There must be loads of old things in it that the antiques shop in town would buy. What about our records and our Dansette and stuff? I bet those would fetch a jolly good sum. And they’re all in tip-top condition … as if they’d only just been bought.’ He smiled, wryly, at Polly.

  ‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and see what we’ve got.’

  Back down in the vault they switched all the lights and power back on as they pushed the inner door, and went to sit down on the chairs and sofa while Freddy slid a box of records out and a large navy-blue case-type thing from inside a sideboard. Dansette was written on it, in silver lettering. Freddy lifted the lid of the case to reveal an old-fashioned record player, with a big rubber turntable and a chunky arm which swung across it, a stubby needle poking out beneath, ready to run along the grooves of an old vinyl record. Ben and Rachel watched in awed silence as Polly flicked through the large square albums and slid them across the carpet, one by one. Alma Cogan, The Four Aces, Dickie Valentine, Mantovani, Pat Boone, Guy Mitchell, The Crew Cuts, The Stargazers … Polly chuckled and picked up one sleeve. She plucked out a wide black vinyl disc and carefully put it into the record player. She rested the needle into the groove and all at once the room was filled with the foot-tapping rhythm of Bill Haley & the Comets’ ‘Rock Around The Clock’.

  ‘Oh, I love this!’ said Rachel, and got to her feet.

  ‘Do you? Do you know this? Truly?’ beamed Polly, taking her hands.

  ‘Everyone knows this!’ said Rachel. They began to dance, twirling each other around and giggling and singing along. Polly grabbed Freddy and pulled him up too and then got Ben up as well. Soon everyone was singing, dancing, and throwing their arms about. As the record ended they collapsed back onto the carpet, laughing.

  ‘Another one—another!’ cried Polly and whipped off the first record to replace it with another from the Stargazers’ sleeve. ‘Close the doors. They’re coming in the windows!’ Polly sang along with huge enjoyment. ‘Close the doors—they’re coming down the stairs! Close the doors, they’re coming in the windows … those ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-nehs are everywhere!’

  ‘This was in the charts?’ yelled Ben, looking both amused and horrified.

  ‘Don’t go there, Ben—we bought the “Crazy Frog”, remember,’ Rachel reminded him.

  They sorted out a pile of thirty records, all beautifully kept in cardboard or paper sleeves. Most of them, it turned out, were Freddy’s. ‘Father liked some of it—his was the Mantovani and Jimmy Young and Humphrey Lyttelton,’ said Freddy.

  ‘I bought “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White”,’ said Polly, proudly.

  ‘Are you sure we should sell them?’ asked Rachel. It did seem a shame. She would hate to have to sell some of her CDs. Not that she had many and not that they were worth much.

  ‘Yes, certainly we should,’ said Freddy. ‘It’s a matter of survival. Anyway, you can always get them back for us on eBay one day, can’t you?’

  Ben and Rachel gaped. ‘You have been paying attention!’ said Ben.

  Ben and Freddy decided they would walk back into town with the records. The antiques and collectibles shop was right on the edge of the town and not too far—and the records were way too heavy and fragile to carry on their backs while cycling, although Freddy was carrying something in his backpack too—something he said he wanted to show Ben when they got to the park. They would both take a box with fifteen records each. Rachel and Polly would stay at home to feed Bessie and take her out in the garden for an hour. As they left the house Ben could hear Polly teaching Rachel that daft Stargazers song. ‘Those ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-nehs are everywhere!’ he heard them both sing, collapsing into giggles, while Bessie barked excitedly. He felt bad that the record was in his box—but Polly, like Freddy, had insisted.

  It was close to closing by the time they reached Past For A Present, the little shop which might want to buy the records. It was a small, dark emporium of all kinds of objects, from vases and china cups to elderly dinner suits and age-spotted mirrors. The old records, most of which weren’t actually that old, were stacked across a display at the back of the shop. Ben and Freddy went to the counter where a middle-aged man with a bald head was leaning, flicking through the local paper.

  ‘Excuse me, sir—we wondered if you might be interested in buying these seventy-eights,’ said Freddy in his terribly polite voice. He rested his box on the counter and Ben did the same. The man peered inside and began to flip through the records, nodding and squinting, occasionally pulling one out and going, ‘Hmm. Uhuh.’

  After he’d been through Ben’s too he sighed heavily and said, ‘I’ll give you fifteen quid for the lot.’

  ‘Fifteen pounds! I say!’ Freddy’s eyes sparkled and Ben realized that, in his excitement, Freddy had forgotten about fifty-three years of inflation.

  ‘You’ve got to be k-kidding!’ said Ben. ‘There’s thirty records there—mint condition! Like they were bought last week! You trying to tell me they’re worth fifty p each? D-do me a favour!’

  Freddy looked shocked. ‘I say, steady on,’ he muttered, but the man was grinning at Ben and pointing a nicotine stained finger at him.

  ‘I like your style, son!’ he said with a wheezy laugh. ‘All right—thirty!’

  Freddy stared at Ben, excited all over again. Ben just sighed. ‘Come on, we’re wasting our time here.’ He gathered up his box.

  ‘Hold on, hold on—not so fast!’ said the man. ‘What do you think they’re worth?’

  ‘Well,’ said Ben, ‘considering you sell records of this age and in much worse condition for no less than a tenner, I would say they’re worth about three hundred pounds—but I know you’ve got to make your money.So I’d settle for a hundred.’

  ‘Get out of here! Sixty! That’s my final offer.’

  ‘Ninety!’

  ‘Eighty—and I’m doin’ you a favour!’

  ‘Done,’ said Ben.

  Outside the shop Freddy stared in awe at the fan of ten pound notes in Ben’s hand. ‘That was whizzer! I can’t believe you got him to pay up eighty pounds! That was most awfully impressive. Really … cool. I think.’

  Ben grinned. ‘He got a good deal. If we sold them ourselves we’d get a load more than that. But we needed the money fast, so we took a bit less. Anyway, let’s get some fish and chips and get back. The girls can do the proper shopping tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t let Rachel hear you say that,’ warned Freddy. ‘She’s already called me a sexist three times today. I only asked her to press a shirt for me— honestly! You’d think I’d asked her to iron my entire wardrobe!’

  ‘You did ask her to iron your entire wardrobe, actually,’ pointed out Ben as they wandered towards the hot vinegary scent of the local chippy.

  ‘Ah yes—well—won’t be making that mistake again. Thank goodness Polly was decent enough to do it. Now, if a girl’s all right about it and much better at it, that’s not sexist, is it?’

  ‘Yes it is,’ sighed Ben.

  ‘Well, it jolly well wasn’t this time last week!’ reto
rted Freddy. ‘And I think 1956 was much better for it!’

  ‘Hello, you two—how’s your project going?’

  Ben jumped and looked round. They were close to the library and right behind them was the librarian who had helped them with the old cuttings on the microfiche last week. She was standing, paused, on the steps to the old building, with some paperbacks in one arm. She smiled at them both, warmly—particularly at Freddy.

  ‘Hello again, miss,’ said Freddy. ‘Yes, we’re doing fine with it, thank you for asking.’

  ‘You know, it’s a funny subject to choose—the old Emerson murder mystery,’ she said, brightly. ‘What made you think of it? Nobody’s talked about that for years.’

  ‘Nobody knows it was a murder for sure,’ said Freddy, heatedly. Ben elbowed him but he paid no attention.

  ‘Well, no, I suppose not,’ she said, smiling at him again. Too much, thought Ben. He felt uneasy. ‘Quite an unusual topic for Amhill Secondary, though, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sorry—we have to go—we said we’d get back,’ said Ben, before Freddy could say anything else. And he yanked the boy away and along the street.

  ‘What are you doing? That was downright ill mannered!’ protested Freddy. ‘She was being friendly and helpful!’

  ‘Yes. Wasn’t she?’ muttered Ben.

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘I don’t know … I just … well, like you said, we need to be careful!’

  ‘Well, we needn’t be rude. Father says “manners maketh man”.’

  Ben gulped and grabbed Freddy’s arm. ‘Oh no!’ Freddy glanced up quickly and saw what Ben saw: Roly O’Neal, weaving his way along the pavement in his rollerblades. A few feet behind him were the Pincer twins. A second later Roly had seen them too. This time it was Freddy yanking Ben along. He dragged him into an alleyway between two shops. ‘Can you skate?’ he said.

  ‘You what?’ gasped Ben.

  ‘Can you skate?’ Freddy was pulling his backpack off and now opening it. ‘Quickly! It’s important.’