by Ali Sparkes
‘Um … yeah. I can skate. Not brilliantly, but I get by.’ Ben had been given in-line skates last Christmas and had gone everywhere on them for a couple of weeks before he got a bit bored. Now Freddy was handing him something with wheels on.
‘Hurry—get them on. We don’t have much time.’
Ben realized he was holding a very old-fashioned pair of skates—quad skates, with four little hard wheels attached to a kind of metal sole, with leather straps and metal buckles at the ankle and toe ends. He copied Freddy, still bewildered, and strapped them on tight to his shoes. Freddy had thrown his empty bag back on his shoulders and now looked around the corner. ‘All right, you go right and I’ll go left—let me go first and head them off. I’ll catch up with you.’
‘But—’ said Ben, but Freddy was gone. ‘You’re heading straight for them …’ he added, dismally. He peered around the edge of the alleyway and saw Freddy skating like a bullet down along the wide pavement— right into the path of Roly and the Pincer twins. The boys were staring, open mouthed, as their quarry hurtled towards them. Ben saw Roly mouth ‘Oh yeah!’ with malicious delight as Freddy wobbled around a few feet in front of him and waved his arms about to stop falling.
‘Geddim!’ bawled Roly and Ben winced. Freddy was no match for Roly’s skating—the boy was fast and confident. But even as he watched, preparing to see his new friend squelched into the gutter, Ben saw Freddy give a whoop, leap up, arc around on his wheels and started hurtling back along the pavement towards him.
‘Go—go, you idiot!’ he bellowed, but he was grinning and now Ben could see why. Freddy was good—oh yes—Freddy was very good.
Ben turned and skated off fast and immediately noticed how much lighter his feet were in these skates than in rollerboots. It nearly spilled him at first, until he got used to it—but he began to realize why Freddy could outrun Roly and the twins. Glancing back he saw the boy powering along, his arms swinging with perfect momentum, hair streaked back from his temples, grinning like a loon.
‘Go! Go! Go!’ he laughed and Ben went. In seconds, though, Freddy had caught up with him. He seemed to be oblivious to the murderous shouts from their pursuers as he whipped along beside him. ‘Better speed up a bit,’ he advised. ‘You can go like a rocket on these things in 2009! Last time I used them it was flagstones and the gaps don’t half mess up the axles! Good job I brought these along today, hey? Or we’d be mincemeat by now. Come on!’
Ben felt like a drunk daddy-long-legs in comparison to Freddy who was now powering away ahead. He’d never seen anything like it. But he didn’t know how much longer he could outrun the others—they might be slower but they were determined and he was losing pace in spite of his light feet. He looked back over his shoulder and saw Roly mouth ‘You’re dead!’ Being able to read his lips was not a good sign. What was up ahead wasn’t much better when Ben whipped back around.
No! Pouring out of a gateway a few feet away came a sudden torrent of little girls in ballet outfits. Mrs Eagle’s Dance School was off to a festival. Ben wailed aloud and then went ‘Doof!’ in a comedy fashion as he was grabbed and spun to his right, into a driveway that led to the town car park.
‘This way!’ said Freddy and hared along, wheels a blur, in among the cars. Only seconds later the trio in boots turned the corner and split into three wheel-based scouts, looping around the few remaining parked cars and shouting to each other like hunters. Freddy looked at Ben, wobbly on his aching ankles, crouched beside him between a car and a weed filled ditch, and grimaced. ‘Sorry about this, old chum,’ he said. ‘You’ll thank me later.’ Then he shoved Ben into the ditch. Ben squeaked as he fell through the high weeds and seconds later was glaring up at Freddy through the leaves. ‘Stay there—they can’t see you. I’ll come back for you,’ said Freddy.
Ben scrambled back upright under the leaves and peered out, quite hidden, to see what Freddy was going to do next. To his amazement, the boy shot out in full view of the trio.
‘Come on then!’ he yelled. ‘Do you want to beat me up or do you want to show me some real skating? Can you do this?’ And he sped across the tarmac at immense speed before slaloming to the right in a tidal wave of grit and then leaping up and spinning in the air. He hit the ground, his knees bending like springs and swept into a tight circle, feet turned out, spinning faster and faster.
Roly immediately powered across towards him and also tried to slide to one side. His rubber wheels juddered against the tarmac and he nearly pitched over, his arms flailing madly. Enraged, he powered up again and jumped high into the air. He landed quite well, and managed a pretty good spin and then began to move meanly towards Freddy, bellowing colourful predictions of what Freddy was about to experience. Freddy laughed and pulled his skates smoothly in and out, in and out, toes and heels, toes and heels, backwards without once looking over his shoulder.
The Pincer twins—not great skaters themselves— stood off, watching the two boys in fascination. As Roly closed the gap, crouching low and ready, Ben guessed, to do his trademark headbutt on Freddy’s chin, Freddy suddenly flipped around and made for the exit of the car park, just as a tow-truck passed by on the road.
‘Hey, Roly!’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘Can you do this?’ And he launched himself over the kerb, landed, still moving, on the road and grabbed the tow-truck’s bumper, crouching low, holding his knees and wheeled feet steady and strong as the truck pulled him swiftly away. ‘See you!’ called back Freddy, and was gone.
In the car park the three boys stared, Roly’s wheels juddering to a halt, his mouth open. ‘Wow!’ said one of the Pincer twins. His brother smacked him in the head.
‘I’ll get him,’ Roly said, finally. ‘You’ll see. Tomorrow.’
Freddy came back five minutes later, his hair wild and his grin wide. Roly and the Pincer twins were long since gone and Ben had climbed out of the ditch to wait for him.
‘Thanks. I think,’ said Ben, handing him back his spare skates. ‘I really think we should get our chips now.’
Jerome Emerson sat very, very still and thought of Shakespeare. The words ‘To be or not to be’ and ‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?’ and ‘Once more unto the breach’ all rebounded around his mind as he tried desperately to remember as many Shakespearean speeches as he could.
It wasn’t that he was into Shakespeare particularly— he was a scientist, not a creative—but he remembered a scene from a spy film where the hero managed to keep himself calm and focused while baffling his enemies by reciting non-stop Shakespeare in his mind.
A spotlight glowed in the dark, surrounding him in a pool of white as if he were indeed a player upon a stage. If so, there was only one man visible in the auditorium. A man who called himself Chambers.
‘I wish you’d stop all this muttering and just relax, Mr Emerson,’ sighed Chambers, from the dark side of the table. ‘We’re not going to torture you, for heaven’s sake. All we want to know, perfectly reasonably, is why you were poking around in government folders, on a restricted access site.’
‘I’ve told you already,’ snapped Uncle Jerome. ‘I’m researching my family tree! What’s wrong with that? Everybody’s doing it nowadays. You can’t turn on the TV or radio without somebody declaring they’re related to Anne Boleyn!’
‘Most people use the internet or parish census books,’ observed Chambers. ‘Not restricted government records.’
‘I know, I know … it was … um … cheeky,’ admitted Uncle Jerome. ‘I have a certain level of access, as you know, and I just—well—tweaked it slightly to go a bit further. My family tree is more difficult than most, obviously, given the disappearance of my grandfather—Henry Emerson. I just wondered, as we’re nearly twice past the thirty year rule, if anything about his whereabouts had been uncovered. Whether there were distant cousins in America or somewhere.’
‘Or Russia, perhaps,’ said Chambers.
‘Possibly, possibly,’ agreed Uncle Jerome. His lips went on moving. Chamber
s, who had lost his hearing for a while as a child, could read them. Romeo, Romeo—wherefore art thou Romeo. He smiled to himself. He knew that spy film too.
He also knew Jerome Emerson was lying.
‘It was good of you—you know—to give up your records,’ said Rachel as she and Polly sat in the garden with Bessie, who was snoozing against Polly’s legs. ‘I just wish Uncle Jerome would get back or we might have to think of something else next.’
‘I didn’t give up all of them,’ said Polly, looking a little guilty. ‘I kept one.’
‘Really? Which one?’
‘I’ll show you. You’ll think I’m a ninny, but I didn’t want this one to go,’ said Polly, getting up and plonking Bessie’s sleepy muzzle over on to Rachel’s legs instead. The puppy snuffled a little, but didn’t complain. Polly jumped over the stream and made her way back to the hatchway, while Rachel waited. She found herself checking Bessie’s furry nose while she waited and was relieved to see no more sign of blood. She hadn’t noticed anything else about Freddy either, since last night. Hopefully it was all going to be fine.
Polly was back quickly, a green and white and black record sleeve under her arm.
‘Promise me you won’t tease!’ she said.
‘Of course—why would I?’
‘Freddy’s always teasing me about it. It’s just that—well, you know, it’s a sort of a crush. I’m not the only one!’ she added, hurriedly. ‘Other girls like him too.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Rachel smiled. ‘I get crushes too. What about Orlando Bloom, eh? You know—the one I showed you in the Daily Mail … in Lord of the Rings?’
‘What, with all that long hair? Golly, I couldn’t like him. He looked like a girl!’
Rachel sighed. ‘Live and learn,’ she said.
‘Max is much better looking—really a bit of a dreamboat!’ said Polly, flipping over the record cover. Rachel gurgled. She slapped her hand over her mouth. But she still couldn’t stop a peal of laughter splurging out between her fingers.
‘Oh really, that’s too bad of you!’ Polly sat down crossly and Bessie shot up with a small yelp. ‘You said you wouldn’t!’
‘B-but …’ Rachel struggled to control herself. ‘It’s Max Bygraves!’ And it was—admittedly much, much younger than the elderly crooner Rachel had seen on TV once or twice, here in black and white, raising his thumb and smiling cheekily from the record cover. The record was called ‘A Good Idea, Son’. Even though it was fifty-three years ago the object of Polly’s crush still looked like a cheery geography teacher. Polly was very put out.
‘If you’re going to be like that I jolly well shan’t tell you anything, ever again!’
‘Oh, Polly! Look—I’m sorry.’ Rachel finally got control. ‘It’s just that, in my world, all my life, Max Bygraves has been … well … a golden oldie, I think they call them. He’s really old now. He’s still great, of course, and I know my nan thinks he’s fab … but … Well.’ She picked up the cover and tried to see what Polly saw. ‘Of course, back in 1956 he was quite a—a dish, wasn’t he?’
‘Do you think so?’ Polly picked at the grass, pink in the face.
‘Well—yes—now that I come to look at it. And I bet he had a great singing voice too.’
‘Oh yes! I loved “Meet Me On The Corner”. I was going to listen in to him this week, on Stars of Variety on the Light Programme. He’s got a super voice.’
‘Well, there you are then,’ said Rachel, nodding at the album cover. ‘Sorry, I was being stupid. I can really see it now. Bring it up into the house with you. You can put it up on our wall in our room if you like. It’s getting cold now anyway. The boys will be back soon, with fish and chips I hope.’
‘Has fish and chips … changed … at all?’ asked Polly as they went back inside and tucked Bessie into her bed in the hallway.
Rachel smiled. ‘No. I think you’ll find it’s exactly the same as the fish and chips you had last week. Except they don’t wrap it in newspaper any more— Dad told me they used to do that. Just white paper now.’
‘That’s an awful waste of paper,’ said Polly. ‘I couldn’t believe how much paper they wasted at school today. There were perfectly good bits of lovely white paper, only used on one side, just screwed up in the bin! We could have drawn pictures on them. I was going to get them out of the bin but I thought you would probably say I was goshing too much again.’
‘No, you’re right. It is a waste,’ agreed Rachel. ‘It’s just that paper’s easy to get these days. Nobody thinks anything of throwing it away. We’re a throwaway society, my dad says.’
Back in the kitchen they put the kettle on and made tea and Polly insisted they should put plates in the oven on the lowest heat, to be warmed and ready for the fish and chips. While she was laying out the table mats and cutlery and glasses the telephone rang. Rachel ran into the hallway and scooped up the receiver, hoping very much that it was Uncle Jerome, at last calling to tell them he was on his way back—maybe with information about Henry Emerson.
‘Hello?’
‘Oh, hello,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘May I speak to Jerome Emerson, please?’
‘Sorry, he’s not here right now,’ said Rachel, pulling a face and shaking her head at Polly, who was looking hopefully around the kitchen door.
‘Oh dear—do you expect him back later?’
‘Um … who is this, please?’ asked Rachel.
‘I’m just one of his work colleagues—needed to check something with him,’ said the woman. ‘When is he due back? Later this evening?’
Rachel paused. ‘Yes—yes, I expect so. Shall I leave him a message? What’s your name?’
‘Not to worry—I’ll call back,’ said the woman, and then hung up. Rachel blinked. That was odd— Uncle Jerome hardly ever got calls from work colleagues. Maybe this was someone he’d been talking to while trying to find out something about Freddy and Polly’s father. Rachel didn’t know why goosebumps suddenly swept across her arms and shoulders. She put down the receiver, and then picked it up again to dial 1471. The number was withheld.
‘Who was it?’ called Polly, from the kitchen.
‘Someone for Uncle J.’ Rachel jumped violently as the door crashed open and then heaved a sigh of grateful relief as Ben and Freddy charged in, clutching a hot parcel leaking wonderful fish and chip fumes, and looking rather scruffy. Ben had leaves in his hair.
Over their warm fish and chips (they’d kept their tea well wrapped up as they hared back from the chippy at the top end of the town) Ben and Freddy told their story of Roly and the Pincer twins and how Freddy had outskated them all.
‘I wish I’d been there!’ said Rachel. ‘Especially when you pushed Ben in the ditch! That was dodgy, though, hitching a lift on that truck! You could have been splattered all over the road.’
‘I have to admit it did go a lot faster than the old meat vans we used to hitch up to,’ said Freddy, digging into his cod and batter. ‘It was a bit of a fright when it went to fourth gear! But I managed to get off at the next set of lights and make myself scarce. It’s super skating on your pavements, though! Much, much faster! Our axles used to snap in half after a while, going over those flagstones all the time.’
‘You wait till we get you down a skate park!’ said Ben. ‘You’ll freak out!’
Polly sighed: ‘There’ll only be more trouble tomorrow, though. Oh, I do wish we didn’t get into such scrapes. We’re supposed to be keeping our heads down, aren’t we? And when, oh when, will JJ come back with news of Father?’
Freddy paused, and thoughtfully waved a ketchup tipped chip on his fork. ‘Hmmm—I really do think it’s a bit qu—a bit odd—not hearing from your uncle for so long. Do you think we ought to try to find out where he’s got to? I mean, I know he’s a bit absent minded, but I’m certain he didn’t mean to leave us on our own for quite this long.’
Ben had been thinking the very same thing. ‘I know—but where would we start? How can we find out where he went without making people sus
picious? There’s nobody to ask, is there?’
‘What about Percy?’ said Rachel. ‘He knows about us—and he was going to look into his old files, he said, didn’t he? Maybe Uncle J has been in touch with him. He lives in Amhill. It shouldn’t be too hard to find out where and go to see him.’
‘We could look in the phone book,’ said Ben.
Rachel shook her head. ‘We haven’t got one. Uncle J burnt them all in an experiment … something to do with the ink they use. We’ll have to find out another way … or borrow one or something.’
‘Top idea, old girl,’ said Freddy. ‘I vote we do that tomorrow—straight after school. That’s if JJ hasn’t come back by the morning, and he might have done.’
Everyone felt a bit better, now that they had some sort of plan. For two of them, though, the feeling didn’t last. As they cleared up the remains of the fish and chips Rachel decided it was time Freddy arrived in the twenty-first century, and demanded that he wash up. Polly offered to do it, of course, but Rachel stood her ground.
‘No! You mustn’t encourage him, Polly. This isn’t 1956 any more and boys do housework now—at least they should. I don’t mind drying up, but you’re going to wash, Freddy.’
Freddy sighed and then grinned. ‘All right. I’ll do my bit. And the next time there’s a big hairy spider in the bath and Polly’s screaming blue murder, you can get it out.’
‘Done,’ said Rachel, choosing not to think too hard about that particular deal. ‘Go on, Polly—go and sit down with Ben in the other room. Go through the magazines and stuff again.’
Freddy washed up clumsily and haphazardly but eventually the drainer was stacked with dripping plates and cups and Rachel would have felt very smug about the whole thing if she hadn’t then witnessed something quite awful.
As Freddy dried his hands on the dishcloth he winced slightly. He looked down at his hands, frowning, and then gulped two or three times. When he lifted his head his face was pale and set. He saw that Rachel had seen it too.