Time Travelling with a Hamster

by Ross Welford

  “Is that chai?” I ask. I have sort of moved across to where Grandpa Byron is standing and I pretend to sniff at the cup he’s holding. Really I’m trying to smell him, but it doesn’t work. All I get is the whiff of the sweet milky chai.

  “Why, yes it is – do you want some?” He turns to get another mug and pours from the steaming jug. “That is so jolly splendid you like chai! I am hoping I’ll meet your parents soon – what is your father’s name?”

  I don’t get to reply, because at that moment the answer comes back into the kitchen as a very welcome interruption.

  “Can I show Al the fireworks, Daddy-ji?” Pye’s by the back door with his hand on the handle.

  “Go on, then – take these masks with you and put them on the shelf.”

  Most of the houses on Pye’s street have got a tiny shed in the back garden, just about big enough for a lawnmower to mow the tiny lawn. Pye’s shed, though, takes up half of the outside space. Inside, just like the kitchen, it’s full of stuff, yet tidy. Even the shed windows are clean, and not covered in cobwebs. It smells of fresh wood and old paint.

  On the floor, pushed up against the wooden wall, is a huge silvery metal trunk, like a cupboard lying on its side. Straining, Pye lifts up the lid. “Check this out!”

  Inside the trunk is packed to the brim with fireworks, but unlike any fireworks I have seen up close in my life. There are huge cake-shaped drums with countless blue fuses, multi-coloured canisters the size of a Pringles tube, and rockets that must have been nearly two metres long, dozens and dozens of them. I pick one up and hold it up to the light from the window, gasping at its weight.

  “Wow! Diwali again?”

  “Yep. It’s going to be the biggest firework display ever seen. You’ve got to come!”

  My attention has wandered already, though. Because propped up in the corner of the shed is the reason I am here, and my stomach gives a little lurch as I remember why.

  It’s a beautiful thing is The Lean Mean Green Machine. When Dad – when he was Dad, not Pye – told me about it, I had the idea that it was a tatty, amateur affair, but it’s not. It’s awesome. The pram wheels are a bit rusty on the spokes, but otherwise it looks like one of the pictures in a book that tells you how to make it but that the one you make yourself never looks as good as.

  Olive green, with a white stripe down the side, and there’s even a cushion in the sit-on part.

  “That’s better than I ever imagined,” I say, with true admiration. I sit in it and Pye pulls me along the garden path, and I can steer and brake and everything. We tow the kart out of the back garden gate and into the back lane that runs behind the row of houses. I’m first out of the gate and I turn my head towards the sound of running feet, just in time to see a figure turn the corner at the end and disappear.

  Macca. Has he been watching us? What has he seen? I can’t tell.

  “What’s up?” asks Pye.

  I take a deep breath. “Nothing.” And then I turn and head back towards the house. “Hang on,” I call back. “I just want to say goodbye to your dad.” Pye smiles and shrugs.

  Grandpa Byron’s sitting at the kitchen table with Hypatia next to him holding a deck of cards that’s far too big for her little hands. She turns them face up one by one on the table, and he’s calling the names before he sees them.

  “Ten of diamonds, six of spades, jack of spades, oh hello, son. What can I do for you?”

  I hesitate, not quite sure what to say. Grandpa Byron waits patiently while I find the words.

  “Um, Mr Chaudhury? Byron? You know this firework display you’re doing?”

  “Aye, what about it? It’s not till October, mind you.”

  “Erm … will you have the fireworks on a sort of metal platform thingie?”

  “A pyro rig? Aye, I daresay.”

  “Oh good. Can I just say, erm … they’re kinda dangerous, so will you make sure you check it’s secure and everything?”

  He screws up his eyes and sort of half smiles. “Er, yes, I daresay we’ll be doing that.” I can tell he’s not taking me all that seriously.

  “No, I really mean it. Please, please check all the bolts on the pyro rig. It’s just … I’ve heard of someone who didn’t and it sort of went wrong.”

  “All right, bonny lad, I’ll check them.”

  “You won’t forget? Check them yourself. All of them?”

  There’s a longish pause while he looks hard at me to see if I’m serious. When he sees that I am, he nods slowly and grins. “I won’t forget. I can remember anything I want. For a lad who likes chai and knows about Kali I promise I won’t forget.” I can tell he means it.

  “Thanks. Bye.”

  “Bye, Al.” Hypatia echoes him in her little-girl voice: “Bye Al!”

  I turn to go, but something makes me stop for a second. I check that Pye can’t see me from his position at the end of the garden. I turn back and throw my arms around Grandpa Byron in a big hug. He’s startled, I can tell, and I know it’s a strange thing to do, but as I squeeze him, and at last breathe in his smell of bidis and hair-oil, I feel his arms go around me and he hugs me back.

  I’m embarrassed now, and I let him go, but before I hurry out the back door there’s one more thing I want to do. Fishing my phone out of my pocket, I switch it on, hold it at arm’s length and crouch beside them.

  “Look at my, erm … calculator and smile,” I say to Grandpa Byron and Hypatia. Before I can see if they’re doing it right, I snap a selfie, and hurry out of the back door and up the garden path without looking back.

  As I leave, I hear Grandpa Byron saying to Hypatia, “I haven’t a clue, pet.”

  “Where are we headed?” I ask Pye.

  “Let’s go down the slip road to the beach! You can build up a good head of speed.”

  “I know, we could go on the path down to the small bay? It might be faster.” Pye looks at me doubtfully. Culvercot’s beach is cut into two bays, where a low cliff juts out and divides the beach. The smaller bay has a smooth, tarmacked path leading down to it. Perfect for homemade go-karts, in fact.

  Except in 1984, it isn’t yet tarmacked. We stop at the top and look down at the rough, pebbly surface. “That’s lethal, that is,” says Pye, and turns immediately to walk over the clifftop to the other bay.

  The tide is higher than I’ve ever seen it, and the steel-grey waves are pounding the seawall and splashing over the promenade below.

  What we call the slip road is a long and steep path with grass either side and a wide curve leading from the clifftop down to the beach, where today the sea is high enough to cover the sand. About halfway down the path, on the arc of the bend, it joins up with the grandly named ‘promenade’, which is really just the top of the seawall with two or three benches where old people go to sit.

  So this, I think to myself, is the path that killed my dad. It’s an odd thing to think, I grant you, but that’s what is going through my mind, as well as a nervous calculation about what will happen next. Just then a weak shaft of sunlight pierces the thick cloud, which I take as a good omen, and I start to feel better and better about the whole day.

  I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do it right.

  We stand at the top, Pye and me, and plan out the ride. It’s pretty straightforward: a steep bit at the start, then into the curve, which will take a bit of braking and steering but not much, and then the gradient levels off a bit so that by the time you reach the beach you’re going a bit slower anyway and the sand will stop the wheels anyway.

  “Who’s going to go first?” I ask.

  “Not me. I’ve done it loads of times. It’s got to be you.”

  So I sit on the cushion, one foot pushed against each front wheel to stop the kart from rolling forward, and it so wants to go. It was made for this. The wind is strong, and the waves are loud and the blood is pumping in my ears, so when I take my feet away I get a cold rush of air, which I gasp at as the kart picks up speed on the first steep part.

 
; It’s a smooth ride, and fast! I’m applying the brake well before the curve, and tugging on the right-hand rope to turn the front axle, and my hair is blown by the speed and the salty wind as I go round the curve … “Ha haaaaa!”

  I’m slowing down a bit now, and off to the left of the path I see it: the brick that Dad crashed into. It’s towards the side of the path, not the middle as he had said, but it’s there all right, and definitely dangerous if you hit it at full speed. By the side is a small, rusty supermarket trolley. It all fits. It’s just as Dad said.

  Then I’m slowing down with a judder as the pram wheels hit the soft sand, bringing me to a stop. I leap out and pull The Lean Mean Green Machine out of the way of a grey wave that’s creeping up the beach, and start running back up to the top.

  On the way I stop at the brick and throw it well out of the way, and wrench the trolley out of the sandy soil it’s half buried in, away from the path, and rejoin Pye, who opens his arms and shouts “Yaaaay!” before throwing them around me and squeezing really hard so that I’m gasping and laughing.

  “How was that?” he says. He is hopping from one foot to the other with excitement.

  “Pretty awesome, but man, it’s steep at the start. Don’t forget to brake!”

  “I won’t.” Pye stops. He’s looking over my shoulder. “Is that who I think it is?”

  Coming towards us from the other side of the promenade is Macca. He’s holding what looks like a bunch of sticks in his arms. He waves an arm above his head and shouts something, but it’s indistinct under the noise of the wind and the waves.

  “Oh terrific. What does he want?”

  He stops on the prom and waves for us to come down and join him. I point to him then to us. “No!” I shout. “You come here,” but he shakes his head, holds up the sticks, and waves us towards him again.

  Pye says, “You go and see what he wants. I’ll ride down in a minute. I just want to shorten the string a bit.” He kneels down and starts untying the steering rope from the front axle. I figure it’s safe to let him ride the kart. After all, I’ve got rid of the brick and the shopping trolley now.

  When I get near to Macca, I see that he is placing the sticks of three huge firework rockets into a hollow tube that’s he’s shoved in the ground, and he’s got the same mean grin on his face as he had the very first time I saw him.

  “All right, boyfriend? You’ll never guess what I’ve got.” He gurgles a manic-sounding laugh and bares his yellow teeth.

  I don’t know what to say. They are so obviously the rockets from Pye’s shed, and Macca just doesn’t care. He’s stolen them and what can I do about it anyway? Report him? Fight him? He knows I’m powerless and it enrages me.

  “Those are ours! Well, Pye’s,” I hear myself shouting over the wind.

  “What? These? Nah, man, they’re mine, left over from last Bonfire Night.” He’s lying, obviously, but so brazenly that he just carries on without a pause. “Look, I’ve taped them together wi’ Sellotape.” So he has, and the blue touchpapers of each rocket have been twisted together too. “And it gets better.”

  Out of the pocket of his thin zip-up anorak he brings a jam-jar filled with liquid. Opening it up carelessly, he spills half the contents on his sleeve as he pulls from the jar a long string that has been soaking and chucks the jar on the ground.

  “It’s lighter fluid,” he explains. “And this is the extra long fuse.” He twists the string round the blue touchpapers and trails it across the ground. It’s only about a metre long so I don’t really see the point, but what happens next changes everything.

  Honestly: everything.

  “Now for the masterstroke,” says Macca, proudly. “Get yersel’ a look at this, man.”

  He turns the rockets around so that for the first time I can see the other side, and taped on to them is an empty toilet roll, with one end flattened down and stuck, so it’s a tube with a closed end.

  “It’s going to be the first …” and he says something that I don’t catch because just then a big wave crashes into the seawall and sends a fine spray over the two of us. “Here, steady!” he shouts at the sea. “Don’t get me rockets wet!”

  “The first what?”

  “This is ace. It’s the first rat in space.”

  Out of the other anorak pocket he takes Alan Shearer. “I found him in our bunker.” He’s holding him far too tightly, and Alan Shearer bites him. “Ow! You little bleeder, you deserve what’s comin’ to you!”

  “That’s not a rat, that’s my hamster!”

  “Your hamster? How come? How the hell can it be yours? Don’t be such a moron – it’s a rat with a deformed tail. Vermin, running around my bunker, and this is what we do to vermin, ’specially ones that bite, OW!” Alan Shearer bites him again as Macca shoves him headfirst into the toilet tube.

  “No!” I shout, “You can’t!” I try to reach out for the rocket contraption but Macca shoves me away, then he turns to grab me, one hand gripping my jacket and the other grabbing a handful of my hair. He puts his face close to mine and I can taste his spit as he hisses.

  “Who says I cannit, eh? I bleedin’ well can and I bleedin’ well will!” He practically picks me up and marches two or three steps up the grass bank before throwing me hard on the ground so that all of the air in my lungs is forced out. Just as I’m managing to draw in some oxygen, Macca delivers a brutal, vicious stamp with his boot on my stomach and I think I actually black out, just for a second or two, with pain and breathlessness. When I regain my senses, I can see Pye fiddling with the string on the kart but he hasn’t seen our confrontation. He’s just getting into the kart, preparing to set off.

  Macca’s back at the rockets now, and bending over the fluid-soaked string, trying to coax a flame from a cigarette lighter but the wind is too strong. What happens next is something I can remember in every detail. I wish I couldn’t, but I can.

  The thought of what Macca is about to do to Alan Shearer forces me, gasping, to my feet at the same moment that the lighter flares up, and almost instantaneously a much bigger flame whooshes up from the pool where the jar had spilt. No more than a second later, and the sleeve of Macca’s jacket is alight. To begin with, he glares at his burning sleeve angrily, and then he’s laughing. Not a funny laugh though; more a sort of crazed cackle.

  With a desperate effort, I lunge forward at the rockets and push them out of the way, and at that moment I see a green shape in my peripheral vision heading fast towards us. The Lean Mean Green Machine is heading straight down the path, and misses the curve, instead hurtling on to the promenade, Pye’s face frozen in silent, open-mouthed fear.

  Pye is careering directly towards Macca, who is still cackling and waving his flaming arm around. One side of his hair is alight now, and he can’t see Pye heading towards him. In fury at his cruelty, I push Macca hard, away from me, and he staggers towards the seawall edge. Holding the rockets and the toilet roll, I roll out of the way and Pye and the go-kart smash into the back of Macca’s legs.

  At the moment of impact, I’m facing the ground, and I don’t actually see them enter the water, but I hear the splash as they hit the sea. There’s no scream, no big noise, just a fairly small splash, and then a big booming crash as another wave hits the seawall.

  I’ve run to the edge of the seawall now, just as the biggest wave slams into the concrete with another slap and smashes the go-kart in two. Carried up on the wave is Macca, his face contorted with terror, and then he’s down again, over the back of the wave. I’m looking for Pye, but I can see nothing but boiling white surf, and then I hear a cry. Not “help!” as you might expect, but just “Aaaaa!” and it’s Macca again, much further out now and waving with one hand. It has only been about ten seconds since they hit the water and already the combination of the waves and the current have carried him far from the shore.

  I’m still trying – desperately – to see Pye, but there’s nothing. In fact, I haven’t seen him since the blur of the go-kart entering the water. Fo
r a moment I wonder if he’s been washed up on the beach further along, and I run towards the tiny strip of sand that’s being pounded by the waves.

  “Pye! Pye!”

  I’m soaked with the sea spray, hair sticking to my forehead, and I’m screaming.

  “Dad! Dad!”

  Nothing.

  “Daddy!”

  The waves continue to bash, and the wind dies down a little and it’s ages before I think about the lifeboat even though I know it’s useless. All I can do is just stare at the spot where the kart, and Macca, and Pye entered the water. Two or three people have gathered on the clifftop and they’re looking and pointing at the same place.

  At one point I think I see Pye’s head, but I can’t be sure, and then another minute goes past and I’m sure I see Macca’s arm waving, but he’s way, way out by now. And then I’m just staring, staring at the pounding grey-black sea.

  I slump to the ground and pick up Alan Shearer, and I might have stayed there forever but a couple of the people on the top of the cliff have started scrambling down towards me, so I start walking back the way Macca had come, back along the promenade, and my walk gets faster and when I’ve rounded the corner I start to run. I run and I run and I daren’t stop, because if I do I think I’ll start to sob, and if I start crying I really don’t think I’ll ever stop so I’d better keep running. Looking back I see the flashing blue light of a police car so I keep running till I’m staring down the long stretch of beach north of Culvercot that goes on for about two miles, and I want to run along that too but my chest is hurting and my legs are aching so I just sink down on to the sand beneath an overhang of cliff where I can’t be seen.

  Then I hear the maroon flares go off, summoning the Culvercot lifeboat men: two loud bangs in the air.

  That’s when I start to cry. I don’t know how long for. Between sobs, my gaze is drawn out to the wild sea again and again, and I blink through the tears, hoping (I think) that Pye will suddenly be washed ashore on one of the waves. But really, I know he won’t.