The Hollywood Mission

by Deborah Abela

  ‘Hey!’ exclaimed Toby to himself. ‘It’s that gadget Max had when Linden was here at Hollingdale.’

  Max pressed a few keys and began speaking into it. Toby heard Linden’s name and some hushed talk about a time and space machine. He remembered the machine from when he stole Max’s diary and read her spy stories out loud to the other kids. He also remembered Max and Linden laughing when he teased them about being spies. They laughed as if they knew something he didn’t.1

  ‘Maybe you are a superspy.’ As soon as Toby said it, he felt ridiculous. Why would anyone choose Max to be a superspy? She wasn’t even chosen for any of the sports teams at school. But maybe, just maybe, it was true.

  ‘At least it’d explain why you’re so weird.’

  Toby strained to hear more but Max closed the device and put it in her bag.

  ‘Too bad, Max. I saw your little gadget.’ If Max was up to something exciting, Toby was going to find out about it. First, though, he needed to get his hands on the communication device she had in her bag to discover more about the Time and Space Machine. As the bell chimed throughout the school and Toby watched Max make her way to class, the beginnings of a cunning plan ignited in his brain.

  After school, Max walked out the gate to find her mother parked in the ‘no standing’ zone, applying lipstick and eyeliner in the rear-view mirror. A build-up of traffic struggled to make its way past the car as her mother remained oblivious of the fact that this was simply another of a million embarrassing things she did. Then she noticed Max and sounded the horn.

  ‘Hurry up, sweetie! We’re late already,’ she cried, waving a red scarf out the window.

  Max walked past a line of kids blowing her kisses and calling each other ‘sweetie’ as they waved hankies and pretended to apply invisible lipstick. She walked even faster to the car, wondering what it would be like to be an orphan.

  Her mother gave her what had become in recent months her regular slobbery kiss before taking off at high speed and just missing the school bus that had to swerve to avoid her. Max sank into her seat as the driver slammed the horn and the kids in the bus made faces at her.

  Her mother prattled on about her day and the romantic weekend she and Aidan were about to go on. Max tried to erase all the disgusting thoughts that wormed into her mind. What is it about adults that they don’t get that this stuff should happen in private?

  She stared out the window. Her mother hadn’t mentioned her dad’s phone call or his invitation to America. She could at least tell her she’d said no, then Max could get on with how miserable her life was. Eventually, as the trees and farms of the country began to appear, her mother stopped talking and the silence began. Max felt her mother’s eyes flick towards her, wanting, she knew, some kind of Hollywood mother–daughter bonding session that would make everything alright.

  ‘Is something bothering you, sweetie?’ Her mother asked like someone who hadn’t been involved in Max’s life over the last twenty-four hours.

  ‘Have you told Dad about you and Aidan?’ Max couldn’t bring herself to say the word ‘marriage’.

  ‘Yes. He knows.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘No.’ Then she remembered. ‘Oh, he did mention something about you going to America but I told him you and I had the wedding to organise.’

  Her mother’s face inflated into a plump smile as Max’s heart fell to her feet. She’d thought the answer would be no but hearing it took away any hope of it not being true.

  ‘I haven’t seen Dad for three years.’ Max held back tears.

  ‘I know,’ her mother said softly. Then she brightened again as if she had the answer to all their problems. ‘But you and I will be so busy. We can go shopping together, pick out material, decide on table settings. It’ll be fun.’

  Unless someone had rewritten the definition of fun to mean ‘a hideous time where one is subjected to the tortures of one’s mother’, fun didn’t have a vague chance of happening. ‘Yeah, fun,’ she repeated dully.

  Max saw her mother’s smile falter. She wanted her mum to be happy and would even get used to Aidan if she didn’t have to spend too much time with him, but Max missed her dad and there was this feeling in her stomach only he could fix.

  They drove on in thick silence.

  At Ben and Eleanor’s farm, Max didn’t wait for her mother to turn off the engine before she grabbed her bag and ran towards Eleanor’s out-stretched arms.

  ‘Now that’s what I call a proper hello!’ Eleanor hugged her niece into the many folds of her clothes.

  Max breathed in Eleanor’s familiar smell, which was a mixture of baked dinners, grassy paddocks and old-fashioned soap. She clung to her aunt and wished she could stay there forever, away from news of weddings, arguments and the fact that she wasn’t going to see her dad.

  ‘That’s enough for her. Now it’s my turn.’

  Ben grabbed Max and swooped her into the air. She giggled as he swung her around his bulky frame before plonking her back on the ground. After Max regained her balance, she saw a tall man walking towards her from the shed.

  ‘Now here’s someone who’s been looking forward to seeing you,’ Ben whispered.

  It was Francis, Ben’s brother who came to live with them after Max and Linden brought him back from London.2

  ‘It’s good to see you again,’ he muttered as he tried to figure out where to put his hands. Ben and Francis were total opposites. Ben was loud and big and always sat in a room like he was in charge of it. Francis was quiet and shy and never said more than he had to, but the way he smiled at Max made her feel he’d swung her into the air as well.

  Then she noticed something on the verandah.

  Ralph!

  Ralph was Ben and Eleanor’s dog. He was a hairy, smelly horse of an animal that never knew how to say hello without almost killing you, and after the last few days, Max wasn’t sure she could cope with a Ralph hello.

  But amazingly, he trotted down the stairs and calmly sat beside her. That was it. No pushing, no knocking her to the ground, no rolling her in the dirt. And he didn’t stink either. In fact he smelt like a bathroom after a long shower with lots of shampoo.

  ‘I knew you could do it!’ Linden bolted from inside the house, ran down the stairs and leapt into an all out rumble with Ralph so that it was hard to see where Linden ended and the hairy rear end of Ralph began.

  ‘You want us to leave you alone?’ Max moved away from the churning ball of dust.

  Linden turned his dirt-stained face towards her. ‘I’ve been training him.’

  ‘Well, when you’ve finished trying to prove Cro-Magnon man still exists, you might want to say hello.’ Max’s hands were firmly on her hips.

  Linden stood up and tried to push his hair out of his eyes. He had this wild mop that always stuck out from his head like sails on an old ship. The hair sprung back, sending a small plume of dust swarming around his head. ‘Max!’

  Then, in slow motion, Max saw Linden’s body lunge towards her, angling in for a wide, all-embracing, farm-filled hug.

  She had to stop him before he got any closer.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  Ben, Francis and Eleanor hid squirming smiles.

  Linden stopped in mid-hug attempt, as if he’d run out of power. ‘Sorry. My brain must have gone into hibernation for a second there.’

  ‘Do you think it might wake up and join us sometime soon?’ Max smirked.

  ‘Anything’s possible,’ Linden said with a smile that took over his face.

  Max’s mother finished another make-up routine in the car before opening her door and stepping out as if she were royalty. Ralph must have missed the ‘royal’ bit because his ears sprang up and he took a running jump at Max’s mother, pushing her into a pile of leaves and grass that exploded into the air. He licked her face with a grime-covered, salivary tongue.

  ‘Ralph!’ Everyone flew to Max’s mother’s rescue. Linden and Max grabbed Ralph as Ben, Eleanor
and Francis pushed away the leaves and helped Max’s mother to her feet.

  She stood up and tried to steady her high heels on the uneven ground. She looked like a cross between the bride of Frankenstein and a Barbie doll after a windstorm. Next to Linden and Ralph, with their wild dust-filled hair and fur, the three of them looked like some freaky family photo.

  Linden held onto Ralph’s collar and wondered where his training had gone wrong. The rest of them waited for the explosion, but all Max’s mother said was, ‘What an energetic dog.’

  She brushed herself down as Eleanor and Ben looked at each other. So did Ralph and Linden. Max’s eyes drew half closed in suspicion, wondering where her real mother was.

  Linden resumed breathing now he knew his life wasn’t over. ‘Sorry about that, Mrs Remy.’

  ‘Ms Beckinsdale, actually.’ She picked some leaves from her hair. ‘It’s fine.’

  Max’s eyes widened. Since when had her mother started using her maiden name? It looked as if anything to do with Max’s father was finished from now on.

  Ben tried to lighten the situation with a little humour. ‘They spend lots of money in those Paris fashion shows to look like that.’

  Silence. Max’s mother had no sense of humour, especially when it came to how she looked. There was an awkward pause until finally she laughed. ‘Oh Ben, you always were so funny.’

  Okay, Max thought, where’s my mother gone? She was here before but now she’s been replaced by this wild-haired, merry-making loony.

  ‘How about a cuppa?’ Ben asked, full of confidence after his joke.

  At least she won’t accept, thought Max. She’ll want to rush back to the city to wash off the country as fast as she can.

  ‘That’d be lovely,’ her mother said, pulling more leaves from her hair.

  What! Max’s mother never accepted an offer to come inside the house. Why now? And what was she going to say to people she’d hardly ever said hello to? Max’s horror was interrupted by her mother’s mobile phone.

  ‘Yes?’ Pause. ‘Is he?’ Pause. ‘Well, we’ll see about that.’ She closed her phone abruptly. ‘A young network personality has decided to throw a tantrum at a major publicity event. I’m going to have to pass on the cuppa.’

  Saved! Max hurriedly escorted her mother to the car and quickly kissed her goodbye, before running back to Eleanor and Ben and diving into their arms as if they were human pools of chocolate. When Max turned to give her mother a final wave goodbye, she noticed her creased brow. A strange guilty feeling crept over her as her mother offered a small smile and drove away.

  ‘Cuppa’s still on if anyone wants one,’ Ben said as a glazed look buttered his eyes. ‘There’s cinnamon cake as well.’ Ben and Linden sped into the house, followed by a smiling Eleanor and Francis.

  Max stood in the yard for a moment longer. Coming back to the farm made her feel like she was coming home. She felt the breeze wrap around her as she stared at it all. The shed, the paddocks, the … ‘Aaaaahhhh!’

  Max swished her hands in front of her face in an attempt to drive away the sudden whoosh of squealing and screeching.

  Then it stopped.

  Max looked at her feet. Three small chicks were pecking the ground. Then she saw something else. Geraldine, the chicken who used Max as target practice every time she came to visit, only this time she’d had babies.

  ‘Training your kids to be just like you?’

  Geraldine clucked away, swiping the ground with her foot.

  ‘Remember, you’re the chicken and I’m the human, which means I’m smarter than you.’ Max flicked her head and turned away in a ‘I-showed-you’ kind of way until her foot squelched into something soft and slippery. The three chicks had created a freshly laid pile of chicken poo before wobbling away to join their mum. The smell rose up and hit Max’s nose with a firm whack.

  ‘You’ll keep,’ she warned. ‘All of you.’ She found a patch of grass to wipe off their stinky handiwork before going into the house.

  When Ben talked about cinnamon cake and tea, he forgot to mention the dinner that came with it. Normally, Max couldn’t understand how they could eat meals that seemed big enough to power a small energy plant, but she hadn’t eaten anything since the nori roll at lunchtime, so when the smells of a baked dinner wafted out of the kitchen, Max’s appetite bit into her stomach like an overexcited chihuahua.

  Mealtimes at Mindawarra were usually accompanied by the clanging and clattering of plates and cutlery, mingled with a sense of urgency that came with placing Ben and Linden in front of food. When they were up to their second helpings, Max had had enough of being patient. She needed to ask the one important question. ‘How’s the Time and Space Machine?’

  Ben had a mouth full of baked lamb, pumpkin and gravy. Max watched him chew it slowly and swallow before he finally said, ‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘Want to try her out?’

  Max knocked her tea cup across the table where it somersaulted into the mashed potato. ‘Yeah! Sorry.’

  Ben wiped his napkin across his mouth. ‘Right, then. Follow me.’

  Ben led the way down the long, musty hall to the loungeroom. He threw back a tattered rug to reveal a trapdoor, then he lifted the door and made his way down a set of spiralling metal stairs.

  Max had no idea this room held anything more interesting than layers of dust. ‘What’s down there?’

  ‘The lab,’ Ben’s voice came echoing back.

  ‘Ben’s shed was a good lab for a while but we needed something more …’ Francis tried to find the right word as he followed Ben. ‘… sophisticated.’

  ‘There’s a lab under your house?’ Max scowled.

  ‘Yes. Wonderful, isn’t it?’ Eleanor made her way down the stairs.

  ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’

  ‘They did. Just now,’ Linden answered as he too disappeared below.

  Max took a deep breath. As much as she’d grown to love these people, they had an annoying habit of staying calm in the face of incredible news.

  When she stepped down into the lab she immediately forgot her bad mood. It still had the usual messiness of Ben’s old lab but underneath the books and newspapers, goggles, boxes, tubes and his miniature replica of Big Ben was a shiny, new lab. Above the polished white floor were chrome benches with beeping, humming lab equipment, but the most exciting bit was a large round platform in the centre of the lab. Sitting under a soft pool of light was a glass cabinet that contained the new Time and Space Machine.

  ‘Sorry about the mess.’ Ben picked up a lab coat and hung it on an already overcrowded hook. ‘But I think better this way.’

  ‘That’s what he tells us, anyway,’ said Francis, putting the cap on a tube of glue.

  Ben walked over to the platform and stood by the machine. ‘Come and look.’

  They all made their way past walls and tables covered with maps, diagrams and sketches of plans, strange devices and indecipherable ideas.

  Ben spoke as if he was a tour guide in an ancient museum. ‘After years of tireless research carried out by Eleanor, Francis and me, we created the Matter Transporter which, with the addition of the Time and Space Retractor Meter and the Aurora Stone that Francis discovered in Scotland, was developed into the device you now see before you: The Transporter Mark II, a machine that holds the dream of scientists throughout the centuries: the secret to time travel.’

  Eleanor and Linden burst into spontaneous applause as Francis blushed and again tried to find somewhere to put his hands. Ben beamed as if he’d just won the Nobel Prize.

  ‘After making a few adjustments to the Time and Space Retractor Meter, we believe we’ve created the most efficient machine yet, and the good news for you, Max, is that we’ve fixed the glitch with the landings. From now on, you should land exactly as you left.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’ Linden rolled his eyes and sighed.

  ‘What are you worried about? You always have the good landings,’ Max complained.

  ‘Yeah, but now when we
’re on missions, I won’t have a partner who smells like the back end of a sheep.’ Linden nodded as if he was simply stating the facts.

  ‘Is that so. Well I —’

  ‘But that’s not all,’ Ben interrupted with more to reveal. ‘Francis?’

  Francis nodded and spoke with a smaller, less award-winning voice than Ben’s. ‘When Eleanor and I analysed the chemical structure of the Aurora Stone, we knew its high density energy supply would enable the Time and Space Machine to move at the speed of light, thus allowing time travel. But we had to conduct thorough testing to ensure the machine’s safety before we could begin our first trials.’

  ‘When will you start the trials?’ Max was eager to be one of the world’s first time travellers.

  ‘Last week,’ Ben said coolly.

  ‘Last week?’ Max’s mind flooded with the questions that cascaded into her brain. ‘But how’d you? … Where did you? … What kind of …?’

  ‘You’re really going to have to finish some of those questions if you want an answer,’ Linden advised before turning to Ben. ‘How’d it go?’

  Ben looked at Francis and Eleanor. ‘I’d say it was a success.’

  ‘Alright!’ Linden’s mind was already flicking through history, trying to choose which parts he wanted to see first.

  Max stared open-mouthed. She remembered when she met Ben and Eleanor and thought they were a pair of chicken farmers, and how when she went to London to find Francis, she thought he was a grumpy old man with bad taste in cardigans. These same relatives, who looked like regular people, were not only superspies but now time travellers as well.

  ‘Who went?’ Linden asked as Max still hadn’t managed to close her mouth.

  ‘Eleanor and I. Francis stayed here in the lab and monitored the test.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  ‘Norway in the Middle Ages.’ Eleanor smiled. ‘I have a soft spot for Norway.’

  ‘What was it like being able to travel through time?’ Max had unravelled her brain, regained control over her mouth and finally managed a question.

  Eleanor thought about this carefully. ‘It’s like history gets on with doing what it’s doing and we get to see it up close as it’s happening.’