Frozen in Time (22 page)

In the car park the three boys stared, Roly’s wheels juddering to a halt, his mouth open. ‘Wow!’ said one of the Pincer twins. His brother smacked him in the head.

‘I’ll get him,’ Roly said, finally. ‘You’ll see. Tomorrow.’

Freddy came back five minutes later, his hair wild and his grin wide. Roly and the Pincer twins were long since gone and Ben had climbed out of the ditch to wait for him.

‘Thanks. I think,’ said Ben, handing him back his spare skates. ‘I really think we should get our chips now.’

Jerome Emerson sat very, very still and thought of Shakespeare. The words ‘To be or not to be’ and ‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?’ and ‘Once more unto the breach’ all rebounded around his mind as he tried desperately to remember as many Shakespearean speeches as he could.

It wasn’t that he was into Shakespeare particularly— he was a scientist, not a creative—but he remembered a scene from a spy film where the hero managed to keep himself calm and focused while baffling his enemies by reciting non-stop Shakespeare in his mind.

A spotlight glowed in the dark, surrounding him in a pool of white as if he were indeed a player upon a stage. If so, there was only one man visible in the auditorium. A man who called himself Chambers.

‘I wish you’d stop all this muttering and just relax, Mr Emerson,’ sighed Chambers, from the dark side of the table. ‘We’re not going to torture you, for heaven’s sake. All we want to know, perfectly reasonably, is why you were poking around in government folders, on a restricted access site.’

‘I’ve told you already,’ snapped Uncle Jerome. ‘I’m researching my family tree! What’s wrong with that? Everybody’s doing it nowadays. You can’t turn on the TV or radio without somebody declaring they’re related to Anne Boleyn!’

‘Most people use the internet or parish census books,’ observed Chambers. ‘Not restricted government records.’

‘I know, I know … it was … um … cheeky,’ admitted Uncle Jerome. ‘I have a certain level of access, as you know, and I just—well—tweaked it slightly to go a bit further. My family tree is more difficult than most, obviously, given the disappearance of my grandfather—Henry Emerson. I just
wondered,
as we’re nearly twice past the thirty year rule, if anything about his whereabouts had been uncovered. Whether there were distant cousins in America or somewhere.’

‘Or Russia, perhaps,’ said Chambers.

‘Possibly, possibly,’ agreed Uncle Jerome. His lips went on moving. Chambers, who had lost his hearing for a while as a child, could read them.
Romeo, Romeo—wherefore art thou Romeo
. He smiled to himself. He knew that spy film too.

He also knew Jerome Emerson was lying.

‘It was good of you—you know—to give up your records,’ said Rachel as she and Polly sat in the garden with Bessie, who was snoozing against Polly’s legs. ‘I just wish Uncle Jerome would get back or we might have to think of something else next.’

‘I didn’t give up all of them,’ said Polly, looking a little guilty. ‘I kept one.’

‘Really? Which one?’

‘I’ll show you. You’ll think I’m a ninny, but I didn’t want this one to go,’ said Polly, getting up and plonking Bessie’s sleepy muzzle over on to Rachel’s legs instead. The puppy snuffled a little, but didn’t complain. Polly jumped over the stream and made her way back to the hatchway, while Rachel waited. She found herself checking Bessie’s furry nose while she waited and was relieved to see no more sign of blood. She hadn’t noticed anything else about Freddy either, since last night. Hopefully it was all going to be fine.

Polly was back quickly, a green and white and black record sleeve under her arm.

‘Promise me you won’t tease!’ she said.

‘Of course—why would I?’

‘Freddy’s always teasing me about it. It’s just that—well, you know, it’s a sort of a crush. I’m not the only one!’ she added, hurriedly. ‘Other girls like him too.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Rachel smiled. ‘I get crushes too. What about Orlando Bloom, eh? You know—the one I showed you in the
Daily Mail …
in
Lord of the Rings
?’

‘What, with all that long hair? Golly, I couldn’t like
him.
He looked like a girl!’

Rachel sighed. ‘Live and learn,’ she said.

‘Max is much better looking—really a bit of a dreamboat!’ said Polly, flipping over the record cover. Rachel gurgled. She slapped her hand over her mouth. But she still couldn’t stop a peal of laughter splurging out between her fingers.

‘Oh really, that’s too bad of you!’ Polly sat down crossly and Bessie shot up with a small yelp. ‘You said you wouldn’t!’

‘B-but …’ Rachel struggled to control herself. ‘It’s Max Bygraves!’ And it was—admittedly much, much younger than the elderly crooner Rachel had seen on TV once or twice, here in black and white, raising his thumb and smiling cheekily from the record cover. The record was called ‘A Good Idea, Son’. Even though it was fifty-three years ago the object of Polly’s crush still looked like a cheery geography teacher. Polly was very put out.

‘If you’re going to be like that I jolly well shan’t tell you anything, ever again!’

‘Oh, Polly! Look—I’m sorry.’ Rachel finally got control. ‘It’s just that, in my world, all my life, Max Bygraves has been … well … a golden oldie, I think they call them. He’s really old now. He’s still great, of course, and I know my nan thinks he’s fab … but … Well.’ She picked up the cover and tried to see what Polly saw. ‘Of course, back in 1956 he
was
quite a—a
dish
, wasn’t he?’

‘Do you think so?’ Polly picked at the grass, pink in the face.

‘Well—yes—now that I come to look at it. And I bet he had a great singing voice too.’

‘Oh yes! I loved “Meet Me On The Corner”. I was going to listen in to him this week, on
Stars of Variety
on the Light Programme. He’s got a super voice.’

‘Well, there you are then,’ said Rachel, nodding at the album cover. ‘Sorry, I was being stupid. I can really see it now. Bring it up into the house with you. You can put it up on our wall in our room if you like. It’s getting cold now anyway. The boys will be back soon, with fish and chips I hope.’

‘Has fish and chips … changed … at all?’ asked Polly as they went back inside and tucked Bessie into her bed in the hallway.

Rachel smiled. ‘No. I think you’ll find it’s exactly the same as the fish and chips you had last week. Except they don’t wrap it in newspaper any more— Dad told me they used to do that. Just white paper now.’

‘That’s an awful waste of paper,’ said Polly. ‘I couldn’t believe how much paper they wasted at school today. There were perfectly good bits of lovely white paper, only used on one side, just screwed up in the bin! We could have drawn pictures on them. I was going to get them out of the bin but I thought you would probably say I was goshing too much again.’

‘No, you’re right. It is a waste,’ agreed Rachel. ‘It’s just that paper’s easy to get these days. Nobody thinks anything of throwing it away. We’re a throwaway society, my dad says.’

Back in the kitchen they put the kettle on and made tea and Polly insisted they should put plates in the oven on the lowest heat, to be warmed and ready for the fish and chips. While she was laying out the table mats and cutlery and glasses the telephone rang. Rachel ran into the hallway and scooped up the receiver, hoping very much that it was Uncle Jerome, at last calling to tell them he was on his way back—maybe with information about Henry Emerson.

‘Hello?’

‘Oh, hello,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘May I speak to Jerome Emerson, please?’

‘Sorry, he’s not here right now,’ said Rachel, pulling a face and shaking her head at Polly, who was looking hopefully around the kitchen door.

‘Oh dear—do you expect him back later?’

‘Um … who is this, please?’ asked Rachel.

‘I’m just one of his work colleagues—needed to check something with him,’ said the woman. ‘When is he due back? Later this evening?’

Rachel paused. ‘Yes—yes, I expect so. Shall I leave him a message? What’s your name?’

‘Not to worry—I’ll call back,’ said the woman, and then hung up. Rachel blinked. That was odd— Uncle Jerome hardly ever got calls from work colleagues. Maybe this was someone he’d been talking to while trying to find out something about Freddy and Polly’s father. Rachel didn’t know why goosebumps suddenly swept across her arms and shoulders. She put down the receiver, and then picked it up again to dial 1471. The number was withheld.

‘Who was it?’ called Polly, from the kitchen.

‘Someone for Uncle J.’ Rachel jumped violently as the door crashed open and then heaved a sigh of grateful relief as Ben and Freddy charged in, clutching a hot parcel leaking wonderful fish and chip fumes, and looking rather scruffy. Ben had leaves in his hair.

Over their warm fish and chips (they’d kept their tea well wrapped up as they hared back from the chippy at the top end of the town) Ben and Freddy told their story of Roly and the Pincer twins and how Freddy had outskated them all.

‘I
wish
I’d been there!’ said Rachel. ‘Especially when you pushed Ben in the ditch! That was dodgy, though, hitching a lift on that truck! You could have been splattered all over the road.’

‘I have to admit it did go a lot faster than the old meat vans we used to hitch up to,’ said Freddy, digging into his cod and batter. ‘It was a bit of a fright when it went to fourth gear! But I managed to get off at the next set of lights and make myself scarce. It’s super skating on your pavements, though! Much, much faster! Our axles used to snap in half after a while, going over those flagstones all the time.’

‘You wait till we get you down a skate park!’ said Ben. ‘You’ll freak out!’

Polly sighed: ‘There’ll only be more trouble tomorrow, though. Oh, I do wish we didn’t get into such scrapes. We’re supposed to be keeping our heads down, aren’t we? And when, oh when, will JJ come back with news of Father?’

Freddy paused, and thoughtfully waved a ketchup tipped chip on his fork. ‘Hmmm—I really do think it’s a bit qu—a bit odd—not hearing from your uncle for so long. Do you think we ought to try to find out where he’s got to? I mean, I know he’s a bit absent minded, but I’m certain he didn’t mean to leave us on our own for quite this long.’

Ben had been thinking the very same thing. ‘I know—but where would we start? How can we find out where he went without making people suspicious? There’s nobody to ask, is there?’

‘What about Percy?’ said Rachel. ‘He knows about us—and he was going to look into his old files, he said, didn’t he? Maybe Uncle J has been in touch with him. He lives in Amhill. It shouldn’t be too hard to find out where and go to see him.’

‘We could look in the phone book,’ said Ben.

Rachel shook her head. ‘We haven’t got one. Uncle J burnt them all in an experiment … something to do with the ink they use. We’ll have to find out another way … or borrow one or something.’

‘Top idea, old girl,’ said Freddy. ‘I vote we do that tomorrow—straight after school. That’s if JJ hasn’t come back by the morning, and he might have done.’

Everyone felt a bit better, now that they had some sort of plan. For two of them, though, the feeling didn’t last. As they cleared up the remains of the fish and chips Rachel decided it was time Freddy arrived in the twenty-first century, and demanded that he wash up. Polly offered to do it, of course, but Rachel stood her ground.