Time Travelling with a Hamster

by Ross Welford

  I know, it’s hard to get our heads round. We are goldfish, remember!

  I put the letter down and sigh. I’m not sure I’ve understood a single word and the frustrating thing is that I know my dad’s trying to explain it really simply.

  Do you remember learning multiplication in primary school, and instead of saying “what’s five times four?” the teacher would say something like, “there are five dogs, and they each have four legs – how many legs are there altogether?” so you wouldn’t get freaked out by the maths-ness of it all? Well, I can tell that’s what my dad’s doing, but I still don’t get it.

  I rub my eyes and read on.

  Perhaps that’s as much as you need to understand. You’ll get the rest when you turn on the laptop on the desk.

  That, in case you hadn’t guessed, is the time machine.

  It wasn’t always there, Al. I was not getting up in the night and sneaking away to a secret underground laboratory. Most of the work I did was in front of a computer screen, in my room at home, while our family life was going on around us.

  Calculations, coding, more calculations …

  Only when I knew I had the right formula did I open up the bunker and install the required apparatus, when you and Mum were out visiting Aunty Ellie.

  Which means that everything is ready for you to travel back to when I was a boy, and save my life. That might sound odd but it will make sense soon.

  Now it’s down to you, Al. Go to the time machine laptop and switch it on.

  Further instructions will appear.

  See you in 1984!

  Your loving Dad X

  I’ve read the letter three or four times before I notice a sliver of pale light sneaking through a gap in my curtains as the sky outside lightens.

  I yawn, but I can’t sleep, and my head is spinning and I can hear my dad’s voice and if I close my eyes it’s OK, I don’t feel sad. I can even pretend he’s here with me and as I let my mind drift I feel his weight on the bed next to me, and he’s really here, even though he’s really not, and I can smell him, and I smile …

  … It was close to Christmas, and Mum and Dad’s friends Peter and Annika and some others as well had come to our house for their dinner. I had been allowed to stay up and open the bottle of wine for them, and Peter had given me a two-pound coin before I went up to bed, but I hadn’t really fallen asleep, not properly, so when my dad came in to check on me I opened my eyes.

  “Hi,” he said softly, with that little jerky nod of his head that he had, and he smiled his crooked smile.

  I smiled back. “Hi,” I said, sleepily. I loved it when Dad came in and sat on my bed, and I knew exactly how to play it. If I was too wide awake, he’d be a bit cross with me for not getting to sleep, and he would tell me to put my light on and read for a bit until I was sleepy. But if I was quiet enough, and acted drowsy, he’d come and sit on the bed, and sometimes stroke my hair, and sometimes chat with me, especially if he had been drinking wine.

  I moved my legs to one side of the duvet to make room for him to sit down. From downstairs came Annika’s loud shriek of laughter, and I smiled at Dad who smiled back.

  “Tell me a story,” I said.

  Dad had loads of stories. He would add little details and do funny voices, so they were a bit different each time, which meant you could hear them more than once without getting bored. Whenever I asked him, Dad would usually say, “no, it’s too late,” then I would beg, and he would say, “but you’ve heard them all,” and I would say that it didn’t matter (because it really didn’t), and he’d say, “what sort of story then?” and I’d say, “one from when you were young,” and he’d think really hard. Sometimes I would prompt him and that’s what I did.

  There were two stories that were my favourites. The first one was the story of when he and Mum met.

  They were about twenty years old, and apparently he rescued her from drowning in a lake, or the sea, and he went in fully-clothed, or was in his swimming trunks. (That’s what I mean about them being a bit different each time.) Once when he told it, he said she was never drowning anyway, but just called out to him pretending to be in trouble because she fancied him. The only thing that never changed was that Grandpa Byron was with him: they were having some beach party or something with a bunch of other Indians and they had gone to the water’s edge and heard Mum shouting for help and Dad had gone in to rescue her.

  The other story, though, was the one I asked for this time.

  “Tell me about how your teeth got crooked,” I said.

  “What, again?”

  “Yes.” I settled back on to my pillow and pulled the duvet up to my chin. I loved this one.

  “Well, I must have been a bit older then you are now, maybe eleven or twelve, and Grandpa Byron had built me a go-kart which back then we called a bogey …”

  I snorted with laughter. “A bogey! Why’d you call it that? It means snot.”

  “I dunno. We just did. I think it just means something on wheels.”

  “And you used pram wheels?”

  “Yeah, in those days you could still find old-fashioned pram wheels, so that’s what we used. Your Grandpa made a wooden base, like a seat, and he brought all the extra bits like bearings and screws and fixings from work.”

  “He stole them?”

  “No, not your Grandpa Byron. I think they just sort of fell into his pocket as he walked around, you know?”

  I laughed. I loved the idea of things falling into someone’s pocket, like if they walked past a shelf these things would just roll off by themselves.

  “Anyway, the only brakes on this thing were a wooden lever that you had to pull up against the back wheel to slow it down, that was all. And I painted it with the only paint I could find, which was left over from painting the garage doors, so it was this weird olive green.”

  “Olive green?” This was a new detail.

  “Yeah. I called it The Lean Mean Green Machine. I wrote its name in white poster paint down the middle board.”

  “You never told me this.”

  “I’m telling you know. And me and your grandpa had already tested out the Green Machine, and it was pretty lean and mean, I can tell you!”

  “Did your friends like it?”

  Dad hesitated. “I think perhaps … I can’t remember them ever … I guess they must have been busy with other things.” There was then a longish gap, so I nudged him on.

  “So, this one day I was out with the Green Machine …”

  “The Lean Mean Green Machine,” I corrected.

  “Yes indeed, The Lean Mean Green Machine, and it was only me, and I was on the long slope that goes down to the promenade above the seawall. You know the one; perfect for bogeys!”

  I nodded. I liked the promenade. That’s what we called it anyway. It was really just a pathway on top of the wall that dropped down to the beach. There was a metal railing to stop you falling off, and twice a year the tide got so high that it came right up against the wall and sometimes the waves would crash below and splash you.

  “So I’m in the bogey, I’m on my own, and heading down the slope, and there’s this thing I’m shouting from the telly at the top of my voice, Fan-dabby-doziiii! And then—”

  “You hit a brick in the middle of the road!”

  “That’s right, a huge brick, or a breeze block, or something, I can’t really remember, and the front wheel comes clean off, and I go wheeee through the air and land right on my face in the road – cruuuunch!”

  “Was there loads of blood?”

  “Blood? I looked like I’d just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and—”

  “What? Who’s he?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Blood all over the place, down my front. One tooth missing, two others knocked out of line, my face all scraped from the road and a wire spike from an abandoned supermarket trolley has gone right up my nose.”

  I remembered this bit and I winced. It really sounded horrible.

  Dad continued: “I�
�m crying my eyes out, not with pain, but because the Green Machine is broken. And some guy who’s driving along the road at the bottom of the slope stops his car, I can remember it was a blue Austin Allegro, and he yanks the spike out of my nose, puts me in his car and takes me home, while I’m dripping blood all over the inside of his car.”

  “Didn’t you go to hospital?”

  “No. Perhaps I should have done. Maybe they’d have sorted my teeth out. But your grandpa, he just said, ‘Oh my Lordy! You’ve been in the wars!’” (Dad did Grandpa Byron’s head wobble for good effect.) “He cleaned me up and put me in front of the telly, and I was back at school the next day.”

  “You were brave,” I said.

  Dad smiled. “Not sure I was brave. It stopped the other kids picking on me for a bit, though.”

  “Did that happen a lot?” I asked, but Dad had stood up. The chatter from downstairs was still going on, and Annika was still laughing her laugh. Dad bent over and kissed my head. I could smell the wine on his breath and I hugged his neck hard. I tried to imagine anyone being mean to my dad, and I couldn’t really so I just hugged him again until he gently pulled away and went downstairs.

  Mum’s looking at me carefully as I stare glumly at my cereal, not eating it. She’s holding her tea mug in both hands. It’s just her and me. Steve is off on some residential course called New Directions in I.T. For Municipal Libraries, according to the flyer on the fridge, and Carly leaves early anyway, largely – I suspect – to avoid having breakfast with me and Mum.

  I don’t feel well, it has to be said, but it’s entirely down to having been up virtually all night. I don’t think I fell asleep till about five.

  “Are you well enough for school, Al?” she asks.

  This one has to be played carefully. I need to work out how to get back to the time machine, which means I don’t want to go to school. But if I’m too eager to stay off, she’ll think I’m faking. If I sound too ill, like with a croaky voice or something, she’ll think I’m faking. In short, almost anything I do will make her think I’m faking, but …

  I have one advantage. A year ago, I wasn’t faking and she packed me off to school anyway and I threw up in assembly and she had to come and collect me. That’s like having one in the bank, and I have saved it up to spend wisely. I opt instead for The Shrug.

  Now what The Shrug says is this: “I’m very poorly. In fact, so poorly, I can’t even be bothered to have an opinion on whether or not I’m too poorly for school, especially since last time I was too poorly for school you sent me anyway and I was sick down Katie Pelling’s back.”

  It’s a risky tactic, but it’s working.

  “I think you look awful, love. I’ll get the thermometer.”

  Best of all, I don’t even have to spend the one I have in the bank, because I’m not asking to stay off school. I have a feeling that I may need that one soon.

  Mum puts the thermometer in my mouth. “Keep that there, I’ll be back in a tick,” she says, and she leaves the kitchen. Her mug of tea is on the table in front of me and the minute her back is turned I dip the thermometer into it. I can see the red line climbing and I figure I’d better not overdo it or she’ll call an ambulance. By the time mum’s back, the thermometer’s in my mouth again. She looks at it and shakes her head.

  “Poor love,” she says. “I knew you looked ill.”

  For the next twenty minutes, mum fusses me back into bed, making sure I have a glass of water, a bucket to be sick in, a sandwich if I get hungry, books to read.

  “I can’t take the day off,” she says, “but I’ll try and leave early. You get some rest, and call me if you feel any worse. You’ll be OK?”

  I nod and smile wanly and wait for her to leave. But she stops at the door and wrinkles her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  I can smell it too. Fox poo. Faint, but distinct, and somewhere on the clothes that are still heaped by my bed.

  I sniff, then say. “Sorry. That was me. Bad tummy.”

  Mum sniffs again, then puts her head on one side and gives me her most sincere ‘poor love’ look before leaving the room.

  The second the front door slams shut, I’m out of bed and on my laptop, searching the web for ‘Einstein’, ‘Theory of Relativity’ and ‘Time Travel’.

  Two hours later and I’m asleep, head resting on one arm, the other hand still clutching the mouse. And I’m no closer to understanding it, although:

  I had seen a cool cartoon on YouTube in which a talking cat, travelling at the speed of light, had his spaceship struck by two simultaneous lightning bolts.

  I read a long article by that bloke who does the planets on TV entitled – promisingly – ‘Relativity for a smart twelve-year-old’. Smarter than me, obviously, and, without meaning to boast, I know I’m pretty smart. At maths, anyway.

  I had learnt that quantum physics means that one thing can exist in two places at the same time, but I still didn’t know why. Or how.

  I discovered Albert Einstein didn’t learn to talk till he was four, and then he said out loud at the supper table: “This soup is too hot!”

  I had scraped off the fox poo that was on my jeans, put them through a quick wash and tumble-dry, and replaced them in my drawer.

  I sleep for ages, dreaming that I’m in a spaceship, being chased by a police spaceship; dreaming about Einstein, about Jolyon Dancey, about everything and nothing all jumbled up; and then, eventually, I sleep a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Ten Things I Know About My Mum

  My mum can cook five things brilliantly. Spag bol; sausage and mash and onion gravy; macaroni cheese (except when she puts weird cheese in it); fish pie (except when she puts weird fish in it – you know I’m talking about you, anchovies); and for special occasions, lasagne. Everything else is a bit experimental. Curries and stuff she used to leave to Dad, but Steve’s not keen on spicy food, so now I just have curries at Grandpa Byron’s.

  She has never been on a diet. She’s not fat or anything, she just says that she stops eating when she’s full. Steve says this is unusual. Even Carly’s on a diet. (Not to be mean, but I don’t think it’s a very effective one.)

  She can read really fast. I once timed her (secretly, so she wasn’t trying too hard) when she was reading a book, and she turned the page about once a minute, which is twice as fast as normal people read. It’s handy, I suppose, because she works in a library.

  Sometimes, though, she reads really slowly, mainly when she’s reading poetry. Then she’ll stare at a page for ages and ages, and her lips will move, which is funny to watch because it looks like she can’t read very well.

  Her favourite poet is T S Eliot. I have never read anything by him, but I did see Cats with the school when it came to the Theatre Royal in Newcastle, and I think he wrote that.

  Mum’s parents moved to Ireland to look after her granny years ago and never moved back. We don’t see them much. Mum speaks to them on the phone and whenever I speak to them they have to ask me how old I am now. Mum goes over about once a year. Aunty Ellie visits them more.

  Mum can’t swim. She never learned, which is crazy. If Mum and Dad ever took me to the pool when I was little, Dad would come in and Mum would sit in the cafe with the big window drinking coffee and reading (really fast). She says that ever since she nearly drowned that time that Dad rescued her, she’s been too scared to get into the water.

  Mum sometimes gets this dreamy look when she looks at me and calls me “Wonder Boy”, which is nice (but a bit embarrassing). She and Dad tried for ages for a baby until I came along. The doctors had told her she was unlikely to have children at all so they were really happy when I turned up. (Yay, me!)

  Her favourite actor is some guy called Richard Gere who is seriously old, white hair, glasses, everything. She says he’s ‘lush’ and that she has always liked older men and that’s when I ran from the room with my hands over my ears because that’s just embarrassing. (Mum was a bit older than Dad, but Steve is older than her and not like Richard
Gere. Not even a tiny bit.)

  I saved the best one till last. My mum’s got webbed feet! We both do actually. OK, that’s a complete exaggeration. She has a thing called ‘syndactyly’ which means that both her little toes are joined with skin to the ones next to them. It’s hereditary. Her mum has it, that’s why I do too (although I don’t really show anyone because it looks a bit alien, and besides, when do you go around showing people your toes?). It’s pretty rare, but not dangerous or anything.

  When I get up, Grandpa Byron’s sitting at the kitchen table in his yellowy-orange robes and fiddling with his mobile phone.

  “Bloody kids. Not respecting property, not respecting anything. Bloody great scratch down one side, and eeh, y’beggar, the faring stinking of fox sh—” He sees me come in the room. “Fox’s … doings. My goodness gracious, stinking to high heaven, to be sure.”

  When Grandpa Byron gets agitated, his speech patterns in English go a bit strange, and sometimes he uses phrases that are hopelessly outdated, or very regional.

  “You’ve called the police, haven’t you, Byron?” says Mum.

  “Most certainly. They saw the flipping rascal last night and chased him, but he got away.”

  “Your Grandpa’s moped was taken last night by joyriders,” explains Mum.

  “Oh no.” I say, and then a bit more forcefully, “Oh no!” I hope I’m not over-acting. Grandpa Byron, though, is miles away.

  “The thing I’m not really understanding,” he says, “is why return the bike to my house? Up the side-alley, back where it belongs. Don’t joyriders normally just, well, leave it somewhere?”