Time Travelling with a Hamster

by Ross Welford

  I’m sort of paralysed.

  The joke goes like this.

  “How do you make a cat bark? Soak it in petrol and set fire to it: Woooof!”

  OK, so perhaps it’s not the funniest joke in the world, and it’s a bit cruel. But when I first heard it, I laughed, because it’s so silly. When Hector Houghman told it to me in the playground he made a little pause before saying “Woooof!” which I suppose is ‘comic timing’ which made it funnier, and besides, no one would really set fire to a cat, would they?

  “Right, who’s got the matches?” says Macca.

  In my jeans pocket, my hand closes around my mobile phone, and I get an idea.

  There’s the rasp of a match being struck on the box. “Listen,” says Macca. “You are about to hear, for the first time in nature, a cat go woof.”

  I step out from behind the jutting out rock, and shout, “Stop! Stop!” just like that and start running towards the group. I thought it would be Macca holding the match, but it isn’t: it’s the kid called Chow who chucks it away behind him as soon as I approach. In fact all of them edge back a little and look down at the sand.

  All but one. Macca folds his arms and takes one step forward, nearer the box so that he’s standing right over it. I can see into the box, and sure enough, there’s a cat in there, and it’s alive (I think) and its fur is wet, and I can see the container that the kid they call Chow is holding: it’s lighter fluid.

  They really were going to do this.

  Macca cocks his head back and looks at me through his piggy, bulbous eyes. He isn’t moving anywhere for anyone.

  “Who. The hell. Are you?”

  Now I hadn’t really thought this through, as you will gather. I’m kind of winging it.

  “The cat. It belongs to me, well, to my, er … my gran. Me nan. Me nanna. It’s me nanna’s cat. I came out lookin’ for it.” In the space of a sentence, my voice has shifted to a slightly stronger Geordie accent. I need to get Macca on side and this is one way of doing it.

  I can see Macca is a bit thrown by this. It’s one thing to fire an airgun and set fire to an anonymous cat. It’s different when the supposed owner of the cat’s grandson is standing in front of you. Even morality can be relative.

  Macca’s eyes have narrowed to tiny slits. I’m not sure that Macca’s morality is like other people’s.

  “He was trespassin’ in me garden. Me garden’s full of cat crap. Me little brother Stokoe got it on his bare feet the other day.” He says all of this as if it means that the subsequent torture was justified.

  “Look, I’m sorry. How about …” and I hesitate, because I know this is risky but I can also see that Macca isn’t much moved by my imaginary grandmother’s plight. “How about we swap?”

  I take my phone out of my pocket and held it up.

  The others peer at it curiously. Macca, arms still crossed, glances at it.

  “A pocket calculator? What do I want one of them for?”

  “It’s not just a pocket calculator. It’s got a built in camera too! Look –” I point it at Macca – “Smile,” I say, and – amazingly – he does. Not a proper smile, it doesn’t reach his little eyes, but the corners of his mouth turn up. I show them the picture, and they gasp appreciatively.

  (I should point out, by the way, that my phone is rubbish, with push-buttons and everything, and I can’t make a phone call with it, because:

  There are no mobile phone masts, or networks or anything in 1984

  No one else in 1984 has got a mobile phone, so who would I call?

  For a brief moment, though, I wonder if I’d be able to call through spacetime to Mum or someone. That would be so cool. But there’s no signal, obviously. Anyway, this lot are impressed.)

  I take another picture, this time a selfie of me and the kid, Chow. I show Macca which button to push, and how to make it show the photo. He has it in his hands and is turning it over, impressed.

  “A swap, eh? This thing for a half-dead cat?”

  I nod.

  “What are gonna do wi’ the cat?”

  I shrug. “Dunno. Take it back to me nanna’s?”

  Macca looks at me fiercely. “One word. One word of this gets out and you, my friend, are history.” At that moment, I believe him. He pockets my phone and says to the others, “Ha’way. Leave this loser with his nanna’s cat.”

  Then he walks away, and the others follow.

  And I’m stuck with a cat I don’t know what to do with.

  I’m standing there, and without any warning I start sobbing for the poor cat, still alive, curled up in the box, then I hear a noise behind me and I swing round just in time to see a shape dart behind an upturned fishing boat that’s been dragged up on to the shingle.

  I should, of course, be more cautious, but I reckon that if someone is trying to avoid being seen by me, then they’re probably not a threat.

  “Hello?” I call, softly. “Who’s there?”

  No reply. I walk over to the boat, and look around the side. Crouched down, facing away from me, is a boy in a blue satin-y bomber jacket. This was the kid they were calling Chow. He doesn’t turn round. Instead he says, “I didn’t mean to. Honest. They made me do it. Macca and them.”

  I’m looking down at him and I realise that this kid is the owner of the girl’s voice I had heard.

  Slowly, he emerges from his crouched position and stands up to face me. His eyes are red and wet, and he’s still half-cowering away from me, like he expects me to hit him or something.

  “Are you the one they were calling Chow?” I ask. He nods: a short bob of the head.

  That’s when I know.

  There were plenty of other clues I could have picked up on: the darker skin colour, the high voice, but it was the short nod of his head that was so familiar to me. At this point, it would have been really dramatic if I had fainted on the sand, or something. You know – rushed up to him and given him a big hug and said, “Daddy! My Daddy!” like the girl at the end of The Railway Children, but that would have been completely weird – apart from the fact that it is simply not how I felt. I read once in the newspaper about a lady who was in a boating accident with her husband, and at the moment she realised that he was dead, she was trying not to drown, and she became super-calm and started planning his funeral. I suppose I felt a bit like that, but at the same time the next words I speak are pretty much whispered.

  “Are you … Pye Chaudhury?” I ask.

  “How do you know that?”

  That isn’t a question I am about to answer quickly, at least until I can think of a plausible lie, and there isn’t any thinking room in my head right now. It seems like the available space is taken up with the new knowledge that this skinny brown kid in the satin bomber jacket is my own father. The man who kissed me goodnight, who told me stories about when he was growing up (although none of them ever included a half-dead cat) and I’m just standing there like a half-wit looking him up and down for I’ve no idea how long until he says it again.

  “How do you know my name?”

  With a real effort of will I force myself out of my daze. Instead of answering his question, I create a diversion by saying, “Hang on. Is that them coming back?” I look up the bank at a family walking along the top. It’s pretty weak, but it works. Pye ducks down and looks up cautiously.

  “No. Not them. So, how …”

  “Come on, what are we going to do with this poor cat?” We look at it for a bit. I can see it breathing, because its tortoise-shell fur is moving up and down, but I can also hear that it is gasping a bit, and there is blood gathering in the bottom of the box.

  I have not given away my mobile phone to a psychopath just to watch a cat die in front of me.

  “Mr Frasier,” says Pye. “He’s a vet.” With that, he bends down and picks up the box. “Come on, then.”

  I had not known that Mr Frasier used to be a vet. In my time he’s old and retired.

  As Pye trudges through the dry sand ahead of me, carrying t
he heavy box, I’m free to stare at him. He makes little noises as he breathes out through his nose, tiny little grunts of air with each exertion. It’s not something I remember my dad doing, yet the sound is oddly familiar. Step, pphhth, step, pphhth, and I’m following, watching and listening, and then I know why it’s familiar: it’s because I do it myself. Hearing him sounding so much like me, even when he’s just breathing, starts to freak me out a bit, so I say, “Give me the box,” and I catch up with him and take it off him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Al.”

  “Al? Al what?”

  I have thought about this.

  “Singh.”

  “Oh. OK. Hi.”

  Singh is a pretty neutral surname. You can’t tell anything about a person from the name Singh, not really. It was given as a surname to people ages ago by a Hindu guru who wanted all his followers to treat each other equally and not be snobby because of their names, so people of all types can be called Singh. Choudhury, though – that’s a bit posh in India. Not always, but sometimes. I just wanted something ordinary.

  “Where are your parents from?” he says. I’ve thought about that too.

  “My mum and dad were born here. My grandparents have gone back to live in Punjab.”

  “Speak any Punjabi?” It was funny listening to Pye. He pronounces ‘Punjabi’ in a really Indian accent, like ‘p’njabby’.

  “Nope. Well, ‘sat siri akal’ is ‘hello’. That’s about it.”

  “So how did you know my name?”

  “Hang on. I want to know why you nearly killed this cat.”

  I’m scared of what the answer may be, but I have to ask it for my own peace of mind. I do not want to think that my own dad would do that sort of thing willingly, so I’m hoping he’s going to give a good answer.

  Pye chews his bottom lip in a gesture that I know well from Dad, and mumbles, “I didn’t. Macca shot it.”

  “Are you sick in the head or something? You were about to set it on fire. You had lighter fluid! What d’you want to go and do that for?”

  “Like I said, they made me.”

  “Oh yeah, who made you?”

  “My friends.”

  “Your friends?” We are now at the top of the slipway down to the beach, and about to cross the seafront road. “What sort of person hangs out with people who torture animals?” This comes out much harsher than I intended, and Pye glares at me. I know I’ve touched a nerve, but I also know I’ve gone too far. His chin is trembling and he looks back at the beach.

  “You know what? This is none of your business. It’s got nowt to do with you. You can just … just, piss off!” And with that he puts the box down, turns and starts running back down the slipway to the beach.

  “Wait! Hang On! Wait!”

  But he’s still running, and I’m running after him. Only when he reaches the soft sand does he slow down and turn around to look back at me, by which time I’m quite near to him and I shout again, but he turns to run. I’m desperate now, cursing my big mouth, but all I can do is to try a spurt of speed through the dragging, soft sand until I’m close enough to launch myself at him in what is definitely the only successful rugby tackle I have ever made: arms round his thighs and down we both go with a thud. I’m on top of him now, and he’s struggling and wriggling at the same time as cringing away from me and shouting, “Get off me. Gerroff! I’ll get Macca on yuh,” and he’s shouting so much that he can’t even hear me saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry!”

  I just keep repeating this, and his arms are pinned to the sand by my hands, and my head comes over, level to his. I look hard into his brown eyes and say again, “I’m sorry.”

  He can tell I’m not going to hit him. He stops wriggling, I climb off his chest and we sit side by side on the sand for a while, panting. Eventually Pye says, “Macca’s not so bad. He used to pick on me loads, but he doesn’t now, and I prefer it like that, OK?” I can see Pye’s eyes are starting to moisten, and I figure that there’s more going on here than I can see. “I like him. And the others, all right?” I’m not convinced, but I’m thrown off-guard when he says, with a harder edge to his voice, “Now tell me how you know my name.”

  I take a deep breath. This is going to have to work. “We’ve just moved here. My mum told me to look out for an Indian kid called Pye Chaudhury. She must know your mum or something. There’s not that many of us, so I just guessed.”

  Even as I say it, it sounds brilliantly plausible, especially since I know that Pye’s mum – my Grandma Julie – died years ago. It’s like a double-bluff and I’m so pleased with the lie, that I extend it a bit. “Mums always know each other, don’t they?” I laugh, but the laugh hangs in the air, a bit hollow, and immediately I feel rotten for having 1) used the death of Pye’s mum to create a better lie, and 2) made Pye think about his dead mum.

  He lets it go though, and says, “Where do you live, then?”

  I choose somewhere far enough away to be safe. “Monkseaton village. The new estate.” No sooner are the words out of my mouth than I realise what I have said.

  “New estate? I didn’t know there was one.”

  “Oh, it’s er … quite well hidden. And very small. You’d hardly know it was there. Where do you live?”

  “Sandview Avenue,” he gives that little nod. “As you come into town.”

  We both get up and dust some of the sand off our pants. When I lift up my hand to pat some of the sand off Pye’s back he flinches, then he smiles and lets me do it. With his back to me, I notice his shoulders trembling and shaking like he’s crying.

  “Hey – I said I was sorry,” I say as I move round to face him and that’s when I see that he’s not crying but laughing. Just a quiet laugh, with that little exhalation through his nose, but laughing nonetheless.

  “What’s funny?” I say, starting to laugh myself.

  “Dunno,” he says, still snuffle-chuckling. “You. Me. Us? Wrestling on the sand?” I start to laugh myself. I think for both of us it’s relief: in Pye’s case that I’m not going to beat him up, and in mine because I’ve not screwed up my plan by letting Pye get away. For a moment we just stand there, looking at each other and laughing.

  “Come on,” I say. “Let’s sort that cat out.”

  We’re heading up the alleyway back to Chesterton Road and Mr Frasier’s house, and Pye is being really strange, and almost hiding behind me and the box as we approach the street.

  “What’s up with you?” I ask.

  “Nothing. It’s just … um … that’s Macca’s house, and I don’t want to see him.” He’s nodding in the direction of number 40. My old house.

  “That’s his house?”

  Pye nods. I remember what Mum said once about the people they bought the house from. Rough. Mad.

  “Is his name MacFaddyen?”

  Again Pye nods. “Have you heard of them?”

  “A bit.”

  Great, I think, remembering Macca’s rant about the cat he’d shot. Alan Shearer’s in a drawer in the bunker under a psychopath’s house.

  Mr Frasier’s house is the same as all of the others, except on the wall next to his front door is a rectangle of polished brass and engraved on it it says, “Duncan P. Frasier MRCVS.”

  He answers the door himself, and looks at me standing there.

  “Ah, hullo laddie. Ah see ye’ve brought yer twin brother with ye! Do you want to know the date again?”

  Pye looks at me, baffled. By way of answering, I open the lid of the box, and taking one look at the cat, Mr Frasier ushers us through the empty waiting room (which is his front room, converted), and into the surgery (which is his back room, converted). So far he has hardly said a word. The surgery is clean-smelling, painted in light blue and white, and there are glass-fronted cupboards all around filled with books and packets of medicines and vets’ equipment.

  He asks us to stand to one side, then he gently lifts the cat out of the box and on to a marble-topped bench in
the middle of the room. He stoops closer and sniffs the cat.

  “Lighter fluid?” he asks, looking over at us with an eyebrow cocked. We both shrug. He runs his hands gently over the cat’s sticky, wet fur, parting the fur to reveal the wounds, and the poor cat barely flinches.

  “We found it on the beach. Some big kids were running away,” I say.

  Mr Frasier shakes his head wearily as he fills a syringe and injects something into the cat. He smiles at us.

  “Well done, lads. I’ll tell you the truth: there’s no guarantee that this cat’s going to survive. But I’ll do ma best. I have to remove these airgun pellets, and clean the wounds, and stitch her up, give her antibiotics. Do ye’s want to watch?”

  “Awesome!” That’s me.

  “Not really.” That’s Pye. I think he’s feeling too guilty about his involvement to take any pleasure from seeing a real-life life-saving operation.

  So we sit in the waiting room.

  Pye has gone a bit quiet, so I ask him the Universal Kids-Making-Polite-Conversation Question: “What school do you go to?”

  He smiles. “Culvercot Secondary Modern. You’ll probably be going to Monkseaton High, if that’s where you live. Unless you’re at the Royal Grammar?”

  I say, “Monkseaton High, I think?” It sounds OK.

  “You’ve got more computers than us. We can use the computers in the technical lab, though – they’re ace. They’re new this term – there’s six of them!”

  “Really? Six computers in the whole school?”

  “Well, seven if you include the one in Mrs Spetrow’s office. Pretty neat, eh? There’s a Commodore, two Sinclair Spectrums, which are great because you get these games that are just ace, and Mr Melling lets me into the tech lab at lunchtime, and I’ve been practising how to link them all up with a motherboard to make a supercomputer.” He’s chatting away quite happily and I’m drifting off, wondering how I’m going to get back to my own world when Pye says, “Oh my God.”

  There’s a glass cabinet opposite us and he is gawping at our reflection like an idiot.