NO ORDINARY ROOM (5 page)

Jamie read through the message on the screen and it left him wondering about his great Uncle Stanley.  Considering that his late relative had not been in contact with his family for so many years he had obviously given them some thought.  The gist of the message was a series of question and answer boxes, but Jamie’s initial thoughts that it was a fun family quiz were soon dashed when a warning message revealed that failure to answer all the questions would be disastrous.  He had just 48 hours to answer all six questions correctly to stop the computer from deleting all of its files and effectively going into a self destruct mode.  The questions were as follows:

Question 1

 Who was Liverpool’s top scorer in the 1950-51 season.

Question 2

 Christian names of Great Grandfather Tranter.

Question 3

 What regiment did Grandfather Tranter serve in.

Question 4

 What is the name of my favourite goldfish.

Question 5

The year Great Grandmother Tranter was born.

Question 6

 Result of multiplying the number on your room key with answer to Q5.

By the time that Jamie had studied the list for the third time he was thinking that he may as well turn the computer off and forget about it.  Question 1 was about the only one that he felt confident of being able to answer with the help of his dad or one of his books on the history of Liverpool Football Club.  He doubted if old Rufus would know the name of the goldfish and for most of the other questions he might have to rely on his dad’s memory which wasn’t too good for anything other than football.  Uncle Stanley’s instructions made it clear that ALL the questions had to be answered, so he reckoned he was probably sunk, but he wouldn’t give up that easily.

CHAPTER SIX

Jamie was half way through his dinner when he tried approaching his dad with his first question.  ‘Dad, you know that Uncle Stanley was in the Royal Air Force, well was Granddad Jack in it as well?’

Kevin laughed.  ‘No chance, my dad was in the infantry.  He used to say the RAF was full of …..’ Kevin had second thoughts about revealing the full extent of his late Father’s opinion of the boys in blue uniform.

 ‘Er, er,’ Kevin struggled to find something suitable to replace what he had nearly said and settled for. ‘He thought they were a load of toffs.’  Kevin had nearly repeated his dad’s claim that the RAF was full of mummy’s boys, although his dad had always acknowledged the bravery of the boys in blue.

‘So, what was the name of your dad’s regiment?’ asked Jamie eager to get the answer.

‘Hmmm,  I know it was one of the finest in the British Army and I used to know the name.  My old dad told me often enough and he even wanted me to join it once, but I’m not one for taking orders.’ 

Debbie gave him a bemused smile at the thought of Kevin in army uniform and then she was saddened for a moment.  Kevin's dad had died just last year and he had been very close to him.

‘Would Uncle Steve know?’ asked Jamie.

‘I would think so, but don’t worry it will come back to me one day.’

Jamie instinctively looked at the clock on the wall and had a sinking feeling.  Uncle Stanley might have thought that the task was easy enough, but it looked as though it was going to be mission impossible.

Jamie was finishing off his pudding when Debbie asked Kevin if he was going to take Jamie to watch the local football team later.

‘Black Watch,’ Kevin shouted out.  The other three members of the family looked at Kevin as though he had gone loopy.

 ‘Black Watch,’ he repeated.  That’s it.  I told you that I would remember it.  My dad served in the Black Watch which is a famous Scottish Regiment.  I should have remembered that because there were some photographs of him wearing a kilt.’

Jamie’s mood changed at the unexpected breakthrough and his dad’s recollection had made his mum smile.

‘Kevin, it’s a pity you didn’t join the Black Watch because you would have been an asset during any fighting. You could have been a sort of secret weapon in a battle.'

‘How do you figure that, Debs?’ Kevin asked, puzzled by the remark.

‘Well, it’s obvious really.  If you’d been wearing a kilt and showing off your knobbly knees the enemy wouldn’t have been able to fire their guns because they would have been laughing so much.’ 

‘Funny,’ Kevin said.

‘Nice one, Mum,’ chipped in Jamie.

‘Anyway, I’m not staying here to be insulted,’ Kevin joked.  ‘I’m off to the match.  Go and get your coat, Jamie.’

‘I think I’ll give it a miss, Dad.  I want to try and get the old computer working properly and if I do, can I try and get on the Internet?  It’ll mean using the telephone line, but it shouldn’t cost much.’

‘As long as you don’t become an addict in the attic,’ Kevin said as he passed Jamie on the way out.

Jamie wasn’t sure if he would be able to connect to the Internet even if he managed to solve the test questions, because he hadn’t noticed a telephone socket in the computer room.

After his dad had left for the football match Jamie headed for the back garden to feed the fish and then he would think about doing his homework.  He sprinkled the flakes of the fish food on to the pond and watched the hungry fish come to the surface, wondering which one of them had been Uncle Stanley’s favourite.

‘I hope you’re not over overfeeding those fish.’

Jamie felt foolish that just for a split second he thought the voice belonged to Uncle Stanley until he saw the long nose off Rufus who was peering over the top of the hedge.

‘Stone the crows, Mr Cranleigh you made me jump.  I thought you were……’ Jamie said, but stopped himself from saying, Uncle Stanley.   It had crossed Jamie’s mind that old Rufus might actually be Uncle Stanley.  After all no one had any idea what Uncle Stanley looked like?   He might have owned both houses and rigged the whole thing up with the help of his solicitor just because he was lonely.  Jamie had seen Mr Cranleigh wearing shorts while he was gardening and he remembered him having very knobbly knees, so perhaps knobbly knees ran in the Tranter family.  Jamie hadn’t noticed if his own knees were knobbly, but he intended to have a really close look at them the next time he was in the bath.  

 ‘Mr Cranleigh, did my Great Uncle Stanley have names for his fish and did he have a favourite?’

‘He did and what odd names they were.  None of them were what you would call ordinary names, like Goldie or Speckley.  I know that one of was called Faraday.  I can’t remember what he called his favourite fish, but I know it was another strange name.’

Jamie felt like groaning.  What was it about older people like Rufus and his dad that caused their memory chips to fail?  Well that was the end of that then and there was no point in bothering with the other questions now.  He may as well have gone to the football match with his dad.

‘Bye, Mr Cranleigh,’ Jamie said as he trudged off towards the house.

‘Hang on.  That name has just come to me.  It was Impedance.  I told you it was a strange name.’

‘Thanks, Mister Cranleigh.’ Jamie shouted, unable to hide his excitement.

Mr Cranleigh looked puzzled as he watched Jamie hurry away; obviously elated by the information he had just given him. 

Jamie headed for his dad’s collection of football books and soon found the answer to question one.  He now felt that that he was in with a real chance of being able to answer all the questions.  He hadn’t been very hopeful of finding out the name of goldfish, but there was a good chance that someone in the family would know the details about his great grandparents.  He had three more questions to answer, well only two really, because he could easily do the maths calculations in question six once he knew the answer to question five about his great grandmother’s birth year.  There was no point in asking his dad for the answers, but he had just had an idea that might help, but he would have to lie to his mum.  Well, it wasn’t really a lie, a little fib perhaps and maybe not even that if he actually did what he said that he would do.

‘You should have gone to football, Jamie,’ Debbie said as Jamie entered the kitchen and then asked him if there was anything wrong because she could tell that he was restless or bothered about something.

‘I’m fine, Mum.  It’s just that I’ve got an idea for a surprise for dad, but I need to telephone Uncle Steve.’

Debbie gave Jamie a quizzical look.  ‘What sort of surprise.  Is it something to do with football?’

‘It’s nothing to do with football, I’m going to try and do some research about dad’s family tree and I need some information to get started.’

‘Your dad would like that.  Isn’t that what they call geology?’       

Jamie looked towards the ceiling.  His mum was forever getting the meaning of words wrong.  One of her classics had been when she had referred to decapitated coffee instead of decaffeinated.

‘It called genealogy, Mum,’ Jamie explained.

Debbie smiled.  ‘Well I was close, wasn’t I?’

‘So, can I phone Uncle Steve now?’

 ‘Of course you can, but don’t forget to tell him that it’s a surprise, because I think your dad plans to give him a call over the weekend.’

Uncle Steve was Jamie’s favourite uncle just ahead of his mum’s brother, Billy and they were both good fun and so different to his henpecked Uncle Alistair.  Uncle Steve was a lot like his dad except that he had a wider range of interests and he supported Everton, so he wasn’t perfect.

Jamie armed himself with a pen and paper and made the call to Liverpool.  He had to take a barrage of insults about Liverpool FC and how his accent was turning countrified before they got down to the serious business of names and dates.

Uncle Steve gave Jamie the positive answer that he was expecting by telling him immediately that his great granddad’s names were John Edward George, the same formal names as Granddad Jack’s.  He knew the date of his grandmother’s birthday, because it was the same has his daughter’s, but he didn’t know the year.  He told Jamie to wait while he checked a photograph of the headstone showing the various dates of those in the family grave. 

‘That’s brilliant Uncle Steve,’ Jamie said when his Uncle had returned to the telephone and told him the exact date.  Before Jamie hung up the telephone he reminded Uncle Steve not to say anything to his dad.  Jamie had been tempted to ask his Uncle if he had knobbly knees.

Jamie told his mum that Uncle Steve had been really helpful and then he collected his calculator before heading back to the computer room, confident that he had all the answers.

While the computer was booting up he took the room key from his pocket and read the number on it to calculate the number required to answer the last question.  He checked the answer three times before he was ready to submit it.  When all six answers had been input he hit the enter button, but was startled when “huh huh’ blasted from the computer’s loudspeakers.  It was like the sound in a television quiz programme when a contestant gives the wrong answer.  A large ‘X’ appeared on the screen with a list of his answers and the message. 

ONE OF THESE ANSWERS IS INCORRECT.

YOU HAVE ONE MORE ATTEMPT
.

Jamie groaned and his shoulders slumped in dejection, but he wasn’t going to give up now that he was so close, so he studied the answers in front of him.  There wasn’t much chance that the football answer was wrong because he had got the answer from a book.  The message had said that only one question was wrong, so that meant that his grandmother’s date had to be correct otherwise the calculation would have been wrong as well.  His dad had been so confident about Granddad Jack’s regiment being the Black Watch, so Jamie’s detective work meant that it was either great granddad’s names that was wrong or the name of Uncle Stanley’s favourite fish.  The problem was he couldn’t ring Uncle Steve back and question him about the name and he couldn’t quiz Mr Cranleigh either. 

* * *

The family had just finished watching the film when the telephone rang, although Jamie’s thoughts had been elsewhere and he hadn’t heard it. 

‘I hope this is not your new girlfriend, Jamie,’ Kevin joked as he made his way to the telephone.

‘All right, our kid,’ Kevin said into the telephone. ‘I was going to ring you tomorrow.  I thought you’d be down the pub.’ Kevin looked towards Debbie and whispered, ‘Our Steve.’

‘Jamie! Yes, he’s here.  You want to ask him about computers!  Hang on I’ll put him on, but I think he’s off computers at the moment.  Listen, I’m just going to the chippy and hope they don’t close on a Sunday, but I’ll give you a bell tomorrow.  Cheers.’

Kevin covered the mouthpiece and then told Jamie that his Uncle Steve wanted to speak to him about a computer problem.

‘Hi, Uncle Steve,’ Jamie said, his voice sounding weary.  He would normally have relished the chance of being able to help his Uncle, or anyone else with a computer problem, but his dad was right about him being off them at the moment.

Kevin had left the room to get his coat and car keys so he didn’t hear or see the change in Jamie’s mood.

‘That’s brilliant, Uncle Steve.  Thanks for letting me know.  Bye, Uncle Steve.’ Jamie put the telephone down and was on his way to the computer room when his mum spoke to him.  ‘That was quick.  I thought Uncle Steve wanted your help?’

‘It was about the call I made to him today.  You know it was about the family tree.’

‘Oh, that geology stuff,’ Debbie said and had forgotten the proper name again.

‘Mum, have we got our own tree?’ asked Leanne.

Jamie shook his head and muttered something about dopey females and was about to run upstairs, eager to get on his computer, when his mum called him back and insisted that he helped his sister with her homework. 

CHAPTER SEVEN

 Jamie glanced at the clock on the bedside table.  It was just after midnight and the rest of the family would be sound asleep by now, or at least he hoped they were.  When they had finished supper the previous evening his pleas to be allowed back in the computer room had been turned down.  Jamie hadn’t been able to sleep and decided to negotiate the creaking floor boards on the landing and climb the stairs to the attic and the computer room.