The 1,000 year old Boy

by Ross Welford

  I decided there and then that if ever I was in a crisis I’d want eleven-year-old Roxy Minto in charge.

  Which, considering what was to come, was a wise decision.

  Less than an hour later, we were back in the garage, and I had discovered several things.

  1. Dad’s patience was running low. I knew I’d been skiving the household jobs. I tried sneaking in the back door and up to Libby’s room without him hearing, but he was sorting out paintbrushes downstairs and called me. ‘Where the heck have you been, sunshine?’ He only ever calls me ‘sunshine’ when he’s annoyed. ‘I need some help: we have to get this place sorted.’ I promised I’d help him later and scooted off. Pressed for time, I hadn’t had a great deal of choice over clothes for Alfie.

  2. Roxy’s mum lived in the front room because she couldn’t get upstairs easily. I’d have to ask Roxy what was wrong with her mum another time. (Is that what you say? ‘What’s wrong?’ Or is it something else, like, ‘What is the nature of her disability?’ Who knows? I got the impression that it wouldn’t take much to set her mum off.)

  3. Alfie was a boy. That is, not an adolescent yet. (You can tell these things when someone is naked and being helped in and out of the bath.) I’d guess he was about my age, so I asked him, ‘How old are you, mate?’ but he didn’t answer. In fact he didn’t say a single word all the way through the bath, while I washed his hair and he kept his arm out of the water.

  4. His other arm has two small scars on the biceps, each about five centimetres long, like an equals sign. I didn’t ask him about it.

  5. He has a tattoo. I know! Eleven years old and a tattoo. It’s on his back between his shoulder blades. It’s a square cross, quite blurred, and big – with a pattern on it that was hard to make out. It looked like one that Grandad Linklater had done when he was in the navy years ago – all smudged and faded.

  After he came out of the bath, I helped him to dry himself and get dressed. I’d given him a pair of my underpants. They were too big, but it was better than him wearing Libby’s knickers. Her jeans fitted him OK, except they had sparkly sequins in a line down the hem of each leg. He didn’t say anything. The T-shirt was plain black and what I’d thought was a sweater turned out to be a cardigan in pale blue and white, but he couldn’t put it on yet because of his arm. A pair of Libby’s striped wellies completed a look that was – by anyone’s standards – completely bizarre.

  If Alfie minded, he didn’t show it.

  Back in the garage, Roxy had acquired bandages, and the gauze stuff that goes under them, some cream in a tube, cotton wool and a bowl of water. Like the world’s gentlest nurse, she bathed Alfie’s burnt arm, and smoothed the cream on it, pausing when he sucked his lips with the pain, then wrapped the bandage round, not too tight, securing it with a safety pin.

  She had brought some apples. Alfie ate three, one after the other: core, pips, everything.

  When it was all done, he whispered, ‘Thank you,’ and then – out of nowhere – he started crying. Great heaving sobs that shook his body. All Roxy and I could do was sit next to him.

  Roxy put her arm round him and said, ‘Shhhh,’ like a mother would, and stroked his hair.

  On and on it went, like a summer storm that eases for a few minutes, then comes back again, even more intense. In the end, Roxy was crying too, and I thought for a moment it was all going to set me off as well.

  Eventually, though, the sobbing stopped, and he flopped back, exhausted, on the sofa. His mouth dropped open and his head shook slightly from side to side. And then that stopped and he was quiet.

  His eyes were still closed when I said, ‘Do you want to come inside, Alfie? Meet my dad? We can make up a bed for you.’

  He opened his eyes but didn’t move his head. I had said the wrong thing again.

  ‘If you tell anyone that I am here – anyone – you’ll regret it.’

  Then he closed his eyes. You would almost have thought he was sleeping – except that the tears kept coming, for a long time.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Roxy when we were out of the garage. ‘What’s your mobile number?’

  She gave me this wide-eyed look of disbelief when I told her I didn’t have a phone. Honestly, if I’d said I had a pet crocodile she couldn’t have looked more horrified. I didn’t tell her about our money problems, about how my dad said we didn’t need another monthly bill in the house. Instead I gave her our landline number.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ I said. ‘It’ll be better that way.’

  ‘And remember – not a word to anyone.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s right? I mean …’

  ‘You heard what he said. Let’s do what he asked, at least for the moment. Otherwise it might make him worse. I don’t want to take that risk, do you?’

  I nodded, perhaps a bit reluctantly, but it was a nod nonetheless.

  I’ll spare you the telling-off I got from Dad. Lazy, selfish skiver more or less sums it up. Aunty Alice and Uncle Jasper were out on Jasper’s boat, so it meant the rest of the afternoon was spent helping Dad to paint Libby’s bedroom walls mauve, unloading the final boxes, moving furniture around, wiping surfaces and vacuuming so that when Mum got back at about seven from the call centre the place would be shipshape, with a casserole in the oven and Dad in a good mood again.

  With all the unpacking, I had found a bag of my too-smalls, which hadn’t made its way to the charity shop, and a woollen blanket I’d never seen before that I figured wouldn’t be missed. I stashed them under my bed for later.

  In fact Dad’s mood was good enough that – despite my promise to Roxy – I decided to tell him about Alfie.

  I know. But think about it: Alfie was injured, distressed, homeless; his mum had died and as a result he was probably not even thinking straight. To heck with promises: he needed help from an adult.

  I’d even worked out how I was going to say it, and probably even taken the breath that would form the words, when I heard Mum’s key in the door. It would have to wait for now.

  Except Dad’s good mood didn’t last. Mum hadn’t been back ten minutes and already they were hissing at each other, and I don’t even know what kicked it off. I heard her say, ‘I can do without this, Ben, after ten hours of being sworn at by idiots …’

  All I knew was that I didn’t want to be around and there was no way I would raise the matter of Alfie right now.

  ‘I’m just nipping next door,’ I said, sticking my head into the living room, where Dad was leaning against the mantelpiece, head bowed, a pile of opened mail in front of him.

  Bills: I could tell that much.

  I’m not sure they even heard me.

  Standing on Roxy’s front step, I was about to ring her doorbell when I heard singing from inside: a high, wobbly voice belting out a loud hymn that I recognised from school assembly, only it was sung in a strong West Indian accent.

  ‘Thine be tha gloree, risen conquerin’ son!

  Endless is tha vict’ry thou o’er deat’ has won!’

  Then there was a crash – something smashing – and a ‘NO!’ followed by what sounded like some dialect swearing that I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what to do, and I stood there, hesitating, my finger hovering over the bell, when the door opened suddenly and Roxy was there, looking up at me.

  ‘I saw you coming,’ she said, pointing to a tiny camera above the door.

  ‘Sorry, I just heard … that is, I mean …’

  ‘Oh, Mum? Yeah, she just dropped something. It gets to her. Come on in.’ She about-turned and trotted back through her hallway, calling, ‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’ll clear it up.’

  At the end of the hall, her mum put her head round the doorway. She was supporting herself on crutches, and she looked so different from the first time I’d seen her. She wasn’t tall, but she was heavy for her height, with bulges of fat under her clothes, and huge, dimpled upper arms. Her hair was shorter than Roxy’s – a cropped Afro with a purple streak in it, matching her large, round earrings.
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  Her eyes, though, were exhausted. Somehow she managed to look like every picture I had ever seen of someone who is ‘bravely battling’ a serious illness. She smiled, showing perfect teeth. It was a tired smile and forced, as if the effort of lifting the corners of her mouth drained her.

  It was the same shape as Roxy’s 100-watt grin, but with none of the brilliance.

  ‘Hello, love. You mus’ be Aidan. Roxy’s told me all about you.’

  ‘Has she? I mean … erm, hello, Mrs erm …’

  ‘Call me Precious, darlin’. Sorry, are you wantin’ to get past? It’s these damn crutches …’ She pressed herself against the wall as I went into their kitchen.

  I wondered if she would say anything about her odd behaviour last night. To my relief, she said nothing more.

  Roxy was dumping the remains of a broken plate into the bin. I watched Roxy’s mum as she moved awkwardly round the corner, banging the kitchen door behind her by using her crutch.

  ‘She seems,’ and I hesitated fatally, ‘nice.’

  Pathetic, Aidan.

  Roxy gave her little yap of laughter. ‘Ha! Nice? Good try, Aidan. You’re such a bad liar!’

  ‘No, I just meant …’

  Roxy smiled, a bit sadly I thought. ‘It’s OK. She’s hard work. But she is nice. Underneath it all.’

  ‘What, erm … I mean, what is … how … the nature … erm …’ Roxy let me squirm for a bit just – I think – for her own amusement. Finally she said:

  ‘Diabetes, mainly. Plus chronic fatigue syndrome, and probably something else that hasn’t been diagnosed yet. The drugs she takes for one react badly with the insulin and cause her to gain weight which affects the diabetes and in turn causes mood swings, so she takes another medicine, and that affects the CFS.’ She rattled this off as if she had practised it, and then she paused before answering the question that I was forming in my mouth. ‘No. There is no cure. Well, not one that’s certain or that we could afford. And she’s furious.’

  ‘Because there’s no cure?’

  ‘Because there’s no cure, because she got it, because she can’t move about, because some days she can’t get out of bed, because she has to rely on me, because my dad left, because she can’t get upstairs, because she has to use a wheelchair, just … everything, really.’

  Roxy had delivered this little speech leaning against the kitchen counter with her arms folded in front of her. Despite her size, she suddenly looked about forty years old, just for a couple of seconds, and her perma-smile had disappeared. I got to see exactly what she’d look like as an adult, and that was strange.

  ‘She’s got quite a singing voice,’ I said, and Roxy smiled.

  ‘Yeah. If she’s in a good mood, she sings.’

  ‘And the accent?’ I asked.

  The smile became wider. ‘She learnt all of the hymns from my gran, who was from Trinidad. That was the first time she’s sung in ages, and then she dropped the plate, so …’ She shrugged.

  ‘Have you been to see him?’ I asked, jerking my head in the direction of the garage. Roxy shook her head.

  ‘I had to help Mum. I’ve got some food ready.’ She indicated a Tupperware box on the counter.

  ‘Let’s go, then.’

  ‘No, Aidan. I have to show you something first. I said I had proof, remember?’ She sat at the kitchen table and opened her laptop. What I saw in the next twenty minutes was to change all our lives.

  ’What, like you have an allergy to genies? You rub a lamp, out pops a genie and you get a rash?’

  ‘Sounds like it, doesn’t it?’ said Roxy. ‘But the word is GENEALOGY. It’s tracing your ancestors, basically. Like when they do it on TV for celebrities.’

  I shrugged. I took her word for it. I was still thinking of a genie allergy.

  ‘It’s what Mum does, now she can’t go out to work. She creates people’s family trees. Look.’

  She opened a web page called ‘Ancestral Connections’ and there was a picture of Precious Minto at a desk, looking friendly, and the usual tabs labelled About Us, Pricing, Contact and so on.

  ‘Now look at this,’ Roxy said, clicking and typing as she spoke.

  The web page she was indicating was headlined ‘England: Register of Births and Deaths’. There was another called ‘British Land Registry’ and a ‘Northumberland Directory’, and, as Roxy opened the pages, and zoomed in, and clicked on links, and scrolled through charts and blogs, it was as if, temporarily, she was in a little world of her own.

  She hadn’t said a word for about three minutes, and I was left feeling a bit awkward, like reading over someone’s shoulder except the book was in a foreign language. Then she stopped, flicked her eyes to the kitchen door and said, ‘By the way, my mum doesn’t know I’ve copied all her programs and memberships. She’s not even properly authorised to see some of the sites, so if she asks … you know.’

  I nodded.

  Eventually she said, ‘Hang on, hang on … here it is.’

  The website was called ‘Photographic History’ and there was a grainy black-and-white photo of a lady and a boy standing in front of a stone cottage. Her long dress reached the ground, and there was an apron over it. The boy wore long trousers and a collarless shirt.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Roxy. ‘That’s the house that burnt down. Look at the caption.’

  Sure enough, the caption read Oak House, Near Whitley, Northumberland, around 1870.

  I nodded. ‘So?’

  ‘So? So look at the people in the picture.’

  ‘It’s too blurry, Roxy. You can’t see anything apart from, well …’

  ‘They’re wearing sunglasses?’

  That was unusual, I have to admit. I couldn’t recall ever seeing pictures of Victorian people wearing sunglasses.

  ‘Were sunglasses a Victorian thing?’

  ‘Exactly! No, they weren’t!’

  ‘They didn’t exist?’

  ‘Well, they weren’t popular until the 1920s. They did exist. I’ve looked it up. People wore them for eye injuries and stuff.’

  I looked again at the photo. ‘Sorry, Roxy. What are you getting at?’

  ‘Can’t you see?’ Her voice was rising with exasperation. ‘It’s them!’

  She expanded the web page as large as it would go, but it didn’t really help: the details were still too indistinct. I didn’t want to upset Roxy so I said, ‘Hmm. I suppose they do look a bit alike.’

  ‘A bit? Exactly, more like.’ She hit some more keys and brought up a site called ‘UK Census Online’. ‘See, the census is a record of everyone who lived in Britain in 1861.’ Some of the pages were in normal print; others were scans of old documents with entries in old-fashioned, curly handwriting.

  ‘Wow!’ I said, impressed. ‘Everyone?’

  ‘Yes, everyone! And if we go … here,’ she clicked on the tracker pad, ‘you’ll see that living at Oak House, Northumberland in 1861 was …’

  Monk, Hilda – widow – age 33 –

  occupation, seamstress – spouse, unknown

  Monk, Alfred – child, male – age 11

  Roxy’s enthusiasm was written all over her face, as her fingers skipped across the keys. I felt guilty for not being more excited.

  ‘And here,’ she was saying, ‘is the census for 1911: fifty years later.’ I peered at the screen.

  Monk, Hilda S. – widow – age 34 –

  occupation, dressmaker – spouse, deceased

  Monk, Alfred – child (M) – age 11

  ‘It’s almost the same,’ I remarked. ‘But who are these people? I mean, Alfred, Alfie – it’s a pretty common name, especially back then.’

  ‘It gets better. Look at the Office for National Statistics site. It has the most recent census: only seven years ago.’

  Monk, Hilda S. – widow – age 33 –

  occupation, costumier – spouse, unknown

  Monk, Alfred – child (M) – age 11

  ‘What about further back? When was the first census?’ I aske
d.

  Her fingers were a blur now, and she didn’t answer me for ages.

  ‘Roxy?’

  ‘The first census … hang on … the first census was in 1801, and there’s no mention of Oak House, but look here.’

  She had brought up another website. ‘This one is searchable by name as well, and the good thing is their name is not all that common.’ She typed in ‘Monk’ and a list of entries scrolled down on the screen, but, before I could scan it, Roxy was typing again. ‘They’re not there. But look what happens if I spell the name slightly differently.’

  She typed in ‘Munk’, and half a page of results appeared. Roxy pointed at one.

  Munk, Mrs H S widow, Hexham, N’th’berland

  Munk, Mstr. A (11), Hexham, N’th’berland

  ‘Don’t you see? Monk with an “o”, Munk with a “u”, Hilda, Alfred? It’s the same people!’

  It was hard not to be caught up in Roxy’s enthusiasm, so I played along.

  ‘So this proves, you reckon, that until last night they’d been living there – at any rate on and off – since the 1860s, so that makes her, at least, a witch?’ It was hard to keep the doubt out of my voice.

  Roxy’s eyes shone with wonder and she grinned. ‘Don’t you think that’s unbelievable?’

  That was definitely the word. I didn’t believe any of it.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, getting up. ‘There’s a way we can test your theory. We can just ask him.’

  As we made our way down her back garden, I was still curious about this genealogy thing.

  ‘So … people pay money to find out who their ancestors were?’

  ‘Yep. That’s about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Don’t you want to know who yours are?’

  I thought about it for several seconds. ‘Not really. What difference does it make?’

  ‘Would you be surprised to find out you were a descendant of Charlemagne?’

  We had just done the Holy Roman Empire in school. Charlemagne’s an emperor who ruled Europe in the ninth century. ‘I guess so. How would you know?’

  ‘Because just about everyone is! Every white European, at any rate, apart from recent immigrants.’