Frankie Fish and the Sonic Suitcase

by Peter Helliar

  It didn’t take them long to find Nurse Mavis Hopley. As doctors and nurses whirled around, she was carefully and quickly looking over young Alfie Fish, who was passed out on the stretcher. The scene was chaotic, but Nurse Hopley was the definition of grace under pressure. When everyone was ready, she helped wheel the injured racing-car driver and her future husband (um … hopefully) into the emergency ward.

  ‘She’s like an angel caught in a daydream,’ Grandad murmured.

  Frankie looked around for an industrial-strength vomit bag.

  Before Grandad had the chance to offer up more poetic reflections on his future wife (… um, hopefully), he was interrupted by … guess who?

  If you said King Jerk, the jerkiest jerk in all of Jerksville, Clancy Fairplay, then you would be right.

  ‘Is Nurse Hopley in the vicinity? Mavis Hopley?’ he bellowed smarmily. In one hand he held his winner’s cup. His cologne wafted up the corridor, a curious combination of gasoline and sleaze. Grandad and Frankie were too late.

  ‘Clancy Fairplay, the stupid, arrogant fool,’ Grandad muttered. Frankie clutched at his sleeve, holding him back.

  Nurse Hopley turned around to see who was hollering after her.

  ‘May I help you, Mr Fairplay?’ asked Nurse Hopley, a little flustered.

  ‘Miss Mavis,’ Clancy began pompously. ‘As I’m sure you know, I won the Big Race today fair and square, no matter what anybody may say. As a result, and in line with our agreement, I was hoping you would do me the honour …’

  Frankie watched anxiously. He knew he should just let this play out and hope Nanna made the right decision to kick this jerk to the curb, but after everything that had happened today, he was worried about leaving anything to fate. But what could he do?

  Meanwhile, Clancy Fairplay continued to remind everyone (especially Mavis Hopley) that he’d won the Big Race today.

  ‘And as such, it’s only right that you honour your commitment and accompany me on a date, Miss Mavis, right this instant!’

  Clancy evidently thought this was a romantic and not-at-all-rude statement.

  Nurse Hopley looked a little perturbed.

  ‘Well, that is very nice of you to think of me so quickly after winning the Big Race, but I have a patient who needs urgent care at the moment.’

  ‘You mean old Stinky Fathead Fish?’ said Clancy, rolling his eyes. ‘He’ll be OK, just a little banged up is all. You did promise …’ He was clearly getting annoyed that Mavis Hopley was not throwing herself at his feet.

  Inspired, Frankie darted into the room, leaving Grandad to follow.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Fairplay,’ he blurted.

  ‘Can I get a selfie? Er … I mean, an autograph?’ Clancy spun around, bright red. So much smoke came out of his ears that a nearby Nurse Gretchen thought his brain might have actually exploded.

  ‘I don’t do AUTOGRAPHS!’ he hissed in Frankie’s face.

  ‘Oh come on, I’m just a kid,’ said Frankie, making his eyes wide and hopeful.

  This seemed to infuriate Clancy. ‘I hate kids!!’ he yelled loudly, like he was screaming in the middle of a cyclone. It echoed around the corridors of the hospital.

  Nurse Hopley took a step back, disgusted. ‘You don’t like children? What kind of monster doesn’t like children?’

  Clancy Fairplay immediately realised what he had done, and his face almost morphed like Frankie’s. Clancy went from Angry-Jerk face to Whoops-I-Shouldn’t-Have-Done-That face.

  It was time for the finishing touch. Frankie reached out and tugged at Clancy’s sleeve. ‘Please, mister. Can I …?’

  ‘Get away from me!’ screamed Clancy, swinging at Frankie with his winner’s cup. As Frankie ducked, Nurse Mavis’s eyes widened with horror.

  ‘How dare you treat that innocent lad like that, you pompous rat?’ she yelled, like she too was now in a cyclone. ‘Get out of this hospital this instant!’

  ‘But you promised me a date,’ Clancy protested weakly.

  ‘I wouldn’t date you even if it turned out you could poop gold,’ Nurse Mavis snapped.‘Now SCRAM.’

  With that, Clancy slunk away like the loser he really was.

  Nurse Hopley laid a hand on Frankie’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I yelled at him so loudly but I don’t know – I just feel very protective of you for some reason,’ she said, apologetically. ‘Are you OK, young man?’

  Frankie pretended to wipe away some tears, just for good measure. ‘I am now,’ he said, ‘but what a bully. I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to date him.’

  ‘I could never date a man who hated children,’ declared Mavis. ‘Now, is there anything I can do for you?’ she added with the tenderness of a saint.

  Frankie shook his head, but then remembered there was one thing. ‘Will Grand– will Alfie Fish be OK, do you think?’ he asked.

  Nurse Hopley sighed, and said, ‘He’s going to lose his hand, but I think he’ll live. He’s a fighter, that man.’

  ‘And very handsome too, don’t you think?’ added Grandad, hopefully.

  Nurse Mavis laughed despite herself. ‘Well yes, yes he is,’ she agreed, her cheeks a little pink. ‘Now off home with the both of you.’

  And that’s exactly what Frankie and Grandad tried to do …

  … But I did say tried, didn’t I?

  Frankie ushered Grandad down the hospital corridor and found an empty ward. Closing the door behind them, Frankie moved purposefully to the empty bed and opened the Sonic Suitcase on top of it.

  ‘Now that we know Young Alfie is OK,’ he said urgently, ‘we need to get home before the protective force field collapses altogether. Let’s move!’

  Grandad moved Frankie out of the way and started typing into the Sonic Suitcase. ‘Exactly how many time-travel shows have you seen, kiddo?’

  There wasn’t time to go through exactly how many movies or episodes or books or games! ‘Just trust me. If we don’t get home quick-sticks, it could be disastrous.’

  ‘Define disastrous,’ Grandad asked, still typing.

  ‘Well, we might disappear off the face of the earth forever, or we could get lost in time and space for all eternity,’ said Frankie.

  He scratched an itch on his cheek, which had started morphing again, and felt stubble.

  ‘Yep, that’s the textbook definition of disastrous, all right,’ Grandad said, gulping. Then he glanced up at Frankie, shock written across his face.

  ‘What now? I have a beard, don’t I,’ said Frankie, searching the room for a mirror.

  ‘That’s not the worst of it,’ replied Grandad, his face pale. ‘We’re out of battery.’

  His wrinkly hands trembling, Grandad turned the Sonic Suitcase around so that Frankie could see it for his own eyes (which were currently those of a brown-eyed girl with lashes to die for).

  Frankie saw the battery reading as clear as the D- on his last Biology project.

  Three. Lousy. Per cent.

  ‘What per cent do we need to get back to 2017 again?’ Frankie asked Grandad, his throat dry.

  ‘Seventeen,’ Grandad replied. His face was unreadable.

  ‘So we find a generator or something,’ said Frankie, his face suddenly snapping back to his own. ‘Charge it up again and get out of here.’

  ‘It’s 1952, Frankie,’ Grandad groaned. ‘We can’t just plug the Sonic Suitcase into a power point – the voltage is all wrong and it could destroy the suitcase altogether. We need a strong, pure electric charge!’

  ‘What are you saying, Grandad?’ Frankie pleaded.

  Grandad buried his face in his hands. ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do, kiddo. It’s over. The only way we could generate enough electricity would be to somehow harness a bolt of lightning – which is basically impossible.’

  Frankie leaned heavily against the wall. ‘So after all that – we’ve saved the family in 2017, but now we’re stuck in 1952?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Grandad whispered. ‘Unless we can find a natural source of elec
tricity, Frankie, it may just be … the end.’

  If Frankie Fish’s life were a movie, this is the moment where you’d hear a sudden strum of guitar.

  Frankie lifted his head, his eyes wide. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I said … um … I don’t remember. What did I say?’ Grandad replied, which kind of ruined the moment a little.

  ‘You said “unless we can find a natural source of electricity”,’ his grandson reminded him.

  A second strum of the guitar.

  ‘If you say so,’ Grandad muttered.

  Frankie reached into his pocket and pulled out the piece of yellow paper he had put in there, all those years in the future. He unfolded it and gave it to Grandad triumphantly.

  ‘What’s this?’ Grandad said.

  ‘You tell me,’ Frankie said.

  Grandad stared at Frankie, his face blank. ‘Um, wasn’t it where I took Nanna on our first date?’

  ‘Yes … and now, where was it?’ asked Frankie, pointing his finger at the print that read The Amazing Freido.

  Grandad smiled. ‘Was it Timezone?’

  Guitar crashes out of tune a little.

  ‘What? No! How do you even know about Timezone?’ said Frankie, both confused and impressed. ‘No, you took Nanna to see this magician, the Amazing Freido.’

  ‘Don’t remember,’ said Grandad with a shrug. ‘Was he any good?’

  ‘No idea, but I do know the big trick he finished on,’ said Frankie meaningfully.

  ‘He made all the boogers in the world disappear?’ asked Grandad.

  Frankie rolled his eyes. ‘Oh my God, NO. His big finish was The Water Tank of Death – and guess what was IN the Water Tank of Death?’

  ‘… Dead people?’ asked Grandad.

  ‘EELS!’ Frankie yelled, forgetting they were in a hospital. ‘Electric eels!’

  ‘What’s your point, kid?’ Grandad barked. ‘Are you just going to name animals? I can do that too. Lions, anteaters, wombats, sharks … um, have I said lions already?’

  Frankie thought he might burst. ‘Grandad, if we can get to the day of the Amazing Freido’s Magic Show, we could use the charge off the electric eels to get the Sonic Suitcase back up to seventeen per cent!’ he said in a rush.

  Grandad went very still. Then he brightened. ‘That’s crazy. Brilliant, but crazy.’

  Frankie’s knees were feeling very wobbly. ‘I know it’s crazy, but it’s the only plan we’ve got! Tell me – is three lousy per cent enough to get us one week into the future, to the night of your first date?’

  Grandad thought hard, his eyes sharper now. ‘It should be. If we’re very careful …’

  ‘So, all we need to do,’ Frankie thought aloud, pacing back and forth like a detective solving a mystery, ‘is plug an electric eel into our time computer. Grandad, by any chance, does your time computer have a port for an electric eel?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ replied Grandad, ‘but if we could just get some copper wire to transfer the electric charge from the eel to the Sonic Suitcase –’

  ‘Easier said than done, old man, this isn’t a TV show,’ said Frankie, shaking his head. Then he exclaimed, ‘Oh my God, that’s it!’

  ‘What’s it?’ asked Grandad, looking a bit muddled again.

  ‘We need to find a TV,’ said Frankie, with the biggest grin we’ve seen since chapter one.

  The Sonic Suitcase had officially gone down to two per cent and Grandad and Frankie were now officially in a rush. The kind of rush your dad gets in when he’s running late to the big game and he can’t find his lucky jocks, but multiplied by a thousand.

  Now, televisions were still pretty new in 1952, but Frankie was confident of finding one. For one thing, they were much harder to hide than 2017 models. They were larger and boxier, with amplifiers, lamps, photo-electric cells, arc lights, transmitters, lenses, and lots and lots of WIRES.

  The plan was to take some copper wiring from the back of a 1952 TV set and somehow use it to get an electric charge from the Amazing Freido’s eels to charge the time computer and get the two of them home. It was crazy, it was brilliant – and there was every chance it wouldn’t work.

  But first things first: the TV. Frankie managed to locate one in a special ward on the top floor of St Mary’s, and took some copper wiring out of the back of it, following Grandad’s instructions. He thought it was going to be much tougher to do than it actually was, but the patients watching had just taken their medication and were snoring louder than an elephant with a megaphone.

  Clutching the copper wiring, Frankie sprinted back into their hospital room. Grandad was frantically tapping away at the Sonic Suitcase, setting up their co-ordinates for the short jump.

  ‘I have no idea if this is going to work,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Then we should go to plan B,’ said Frankie.

  Grandad looked hopeful. ‘We have a plan B?’

  ‘Yep, it’s exactly the same as plan A. Plan C, D and E are the same too, for that matter.’

  Grandad mumbled something else, but this time it was under his breath and involved some very creative swearing, so Frankie didn’t bother asking him to repeat it.

  For all his grumbling though, Grandad knew just as well as Frankie that they were running out of options and time. Frankie’s face had begun changing again, more frequently than a lion tamer changes his/her undies, and that was enough for Grandad to move into full throttle mode – which, when you are eighty-five, is tougher than you’d think.

  As the old man finalised the co-ordinates, Frankie kept watch at the door, his feet tapping nervously. The last thing they needed was for another person to get caught up in their hectic time-warping adventure. He stared through the little window out into the hospital corridor, thoughts stirring in his mind like the soup in Nanna Fish’s enormous pot. Then it was Frankie’s turn to have serious doubts about plans A, B, C, D and E.

  ‘Grandad,’ he said worriedly. ‘What happens if we get to the Amazing Freido and for some reason, you haven’t asked Nanna out, or maybe you did but she said no, or perhaps she changed her mind about Clancy Fairplay?’ Frankie’s heart was racing. ‘Way too much has changed, so how can we know for sure that everything will turn out OK?’

  Grandad stopped typing for a moment, and sighed. ‘It’s a fair point, kiddo. If I’ve learned anything from you today, it’s that we can’t trust time, and we can’t trust that we haven’t messed it all up.’

  Frankie waited, unsure whether Grandad had finished making his point, which, if he had finished, seemed a little pointless.

  Luckily, Grandad went on. ‘I guess the only thing we can trust is the love between your grandad and your nanna.’

  This time Frankie didn’t reach for a vomit vessel. Deep down, he knew it was the only hope they had left.

  Grandad held a hand out to Frankie. ‘So come on … Let’s go see a magic show.’

  With that, and without any certainty that two per cent battery was enough to get them anywhere, it was time to go. Frankie came over and held tight to the suitcase’s handle.

  Grandad murmured, ‘Happy travels.’

  And like that, they disappeared from St Mary’s Hospital.

  Rain, rotting fish and old newspapers. They were the first impressions Frankie had when they arrived in a dark cobblestoned alleyway.

  Frankie didn’t feel quite as jet lagged as last time, maybe because of the short distance. Then he realised he was alone. ‘Grandad?’ he called into the cold night air.

  There was a sudden thumping from inside a nearby dumpster, and then someone swore loudly. A moment later, Grandad stood up, a banana peel draped over his bald spot. ‘Blasted computer,’ he grunted, throwing it off. ‘Happy travels my bare bum!’

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Frankie, trying manfully to suppress a giggle.

  Grandad looked around, then pointed triumphantly at a sign: STAGE DOOR.

  ‘That’s the George Theatre, where your nanna and I saw Freido perform,’ beamed Grandad. ‘Not
too bad for an old fart, am I?’

  ‘You did land in a garbage dump,’ Frankie snickered.

  Luckily his grandad didn’t seem to hear. ‘Help me out of this bin, lad,’ he said, ‘and let’s see if he’s there.’

  The Amazing Freido was a sixty-three-year-old magician who – despite having supposedly sent people into outer space in an elaborately decorated Space Coffin – had never actually left Scotland. Even so, Freido was a showman, and a decent magician. The George Theatre was half-full for tonight’s performance (or half-empty, depending on how you view life).

  At that moment, Freido was conducting his final safety-check on the Water Tank of Death. Heaven forbid if the Water Tank of Death wasn’t safe, right? But his inspection was rudely interrupted by a knocking on the stage door.

  ‘Clarissa!’ he screamed. ‘Answer that blasted door and get rid of whoever’s there!’

  There was no answer from Clarissa.

  The Amazing Freido let out an exaggerated huff that was straight out of drama school as he descended from the stepladder and stomped over to the stage door.

  A peculiar sight was awaiting him on the other side: a young boy wearing bizarre clothes and an old man with a face like a sucked lemon. The old man went to speak, but the boy jumped in first.

  ‘Good evening, sir. My grandad here really needs to use the bathroom so that HE CAN DO AN URGENT POOP.’

  Grandad’s cheeks immediately turned a deep, shiny red. The boy, of course, was Frankie, and inside he was cheering, YES! PAYBACK!!

  ‘I’m afraid NOBODY is allowed backstage with the Amazing Freido,’ replied the Amazing Freido in his magnificently deep voice, which was perfectly complemented by a twirl of his cape.

  ‘Please, please, PLEASE?’ Frankie said, barely containing his grin. ‘He’s really busting, aren’t you, Grandad?’

  There was no grin detectable on Grandad’s face whatsoever. ‘I guess so,’ he muttered.

  ‘Why can’t you use the toilets in the foyer like everyone else?’ bellowed Freido.