Chapter 18
What We Take for Granted
Back in my time it was the same old routine.
1) Tired. No, absolutely knackered.
2) Dad calls up stairs to get me up. Bangs and crashes out the door to work.
3) I mope around, get ready for school and try and have some breakfast.
4) Another boring day and Kyle and Bethany ignore me.
5) Donkers throws paper at me in Tech.
6) Back home and I’m Billy-no-mates watching tea-time TV.
Dad had gone to see Mum at the hospital. She was still very ill and fed-up with life, especially when the doctors told her that she might have to have more treatment. Poor Mum. I’ll have to go with Dad to see her soon. She asks after me but doesn’t want me to see her really poorly.
I miss my Mum.
I miss my Mum like Albert misses Ernie.
Dad looked really tired too and this morning I noticed five empty cans of lager on the kitchen surface. I know because I had to clear them off to pour my rice crispies into a bowl. I sat at the kitchen table. I was tired and I kept thinking about Albert’s story. Shovelling spoonfuls of soggy crispies into my mouth without thinking I remembered HMS Indefatigable and the D Word. No matter what you did to try and forget about it or pretend it wasn’t there it always came back. Like a scraggy cat or a frisby. The D Word sat and watched. Returning quietly. So quietly you just didn’t know where it would land.
That’s what the D Word felt like. It seemed you couldn’t predict its movements and I didn’t like that. I liked to know what we were having for tea or what time I was expected to go to bed. I liked order. Routine. Although I always say I don’t. Mum is good with routines. She always tells me what time I was expected to go to bed, what time I should be up, what we’d be having for our tea. Dad wasn’t like that though. I know he has a lot on his mind but we usually have what’s in the freezer. Nothing’s planned. Even at bedtime he usually falls asleep on the sofa. So I leave him, feet up on the footstool with the reflection from the TV dancing on his stretched figure like night time lights in a swimming pool.
As I picked the last of the cereal from the bowl I pictured Mum in my head. How she used to be. She would be sat beside me now at the kitchen table with her flowery silk dressing gown on. She would have rings under her eyes from sleep but she would still look pretty. In fact I would smell the sleep on her. You know, a mixture of stale breath and body muddled up with last night’s shampoo and shower. It sounds strange but I miss that smell. Dad doesn’t smell quite the same in the morning. I won’t tell you what he smells like but Dad usually says this about himself.
‘Blimey! I smell like death this morning!’
Oops. It’s out!
I’ve thought the D Word.
Then I thought of my smelly Dad. How stupid I was being with the D Word. I laughed to myself but it was a nervous laugh.
At least I went to school with a smile.
Later and I was lying on the sofa watching TV when the front doorbell went.
It was Dr Meen again. I could see him in his long coat and hat staring hard at the door. Waiting for someone to answer. I didn’t. I knew now that this was beyond weird so I hid underneath our front window and peered out over the window ledge at the doctor as he pressed the bell again. I watched when he stepped back and looked up at the front of the house. I ducked down as his eyes scanned the front room window. When I decided it was safe to look again he was still there. He pressed the doorbell once more. Long and hard.
“Go away,” I whispered to myself. “Just go away!”
At last he did and I heard his shoes pass by the window. I gave it a full three minutes before I decided to look but, as I was just about to get up and make sure that the coast was clear, the doorbell went again.
It was Kyle.
Thank God for Kyle.
“Hiya Kyle,” I said as I answered the door. I got him inside quick and closed the door sharpish.
“Hiya mate,” he said in reply, like he used to do.
I was a bit surprised, what with Dr Meen and Kyle arriving on his heels. In fact having a visit by Kyle was probably stranger than having another visit by Dr Meen.
I didn’t know what to say really. We shuffled our trainers on the hallway carpet then I asked him into kitchen.
“Is you Dad in?” he asked warily. Dad usually teased Kyle and Kyle didn’t like this very much. A lot of adults are like that. Some teachers too. They think they are being funny and say things that make us embarrassed and flustered. Anyway, I shook my head. As soon as I did Kyle started rummaging in our fridge looking for coke. Pretty soon we were sat at the kitchen table, at the very same spot I sat this morning. But it was Kyle sat opposite me. Not Mum. We talked about school for a bit. About Donkers and about how Ms Smith fancies one of the PE teachers. Then Kyle mentioned my new status as a geek. I asked him what he meant and he explained it was because I was getting into history. Everybody was talking about it.
“I don’t know,” I squirmed. “I just like history, that’s all.”
Kyle giggled cheekily and slurped some coke. I didn’t like that response. I thought that, in his own little way, Kyle was making fun of me too. Then conversation turned to his girlfriend Monique and Kyle looked all serious and flustered in the same way he does when Dad makes fun of him.
“Yeah, she’s really nice,” he said, tapping his coke can with his fingers. “She’s a brilliant footballer and her step-Dad promised to take us to see England play a friendly against Romania in a few months.”
“Sound.”
“Yeah.”
And then we ran out of things to say so Kyle drained his can of coke then said he’d better be getting home.
“We’ll have to go for a kick around sometime,” he said on his way out the door.
“Yeah. Sure.”
But we didn’t make any promises and when he’d gone I sat out in the back garden for a while and watched the birds perched on the aerials of the houses opposite. I tried to see if they were watching me. When I waved my arms at them they didn’t budge so I assumed they weren’t.
I went back into the kitchen and saw the red coke can Kyle had left on the kitchen table.
I picked it up and dropped it in the bin. Then I sat nervously in the front room, looking out for Dr Meen.
Not long after this I heard a crash and a thump from upstairs.
Oh no! What now?
I sat bolt upright on the sofa and I found that I was shaking and my heart was slamming around the inside of me like it was trying to get out. I fumbled for the TV remote control and turned it down. But not off. I cleverly thought any burglars would notice if the volume on the TV suddenly disappeared.
When I didn’t hear anything else I started to explain the noise away. After this I somehow summoned some courage to tip-toe quietly to the bottom of our stairs. An evening sun had warmed the porch area through the glass of the front door. Leaning against the wall was Dad’s black umbrella. He hardly ever used it but I thought it would be handy for self-defence so I picked it up. I felt its weight. Held it worriedly out in front of me.
I decided that I didn’t really want to confront a burglar so I’d let them know that I was coming. That way they’d have a good chance of escape and nobody would get hurt. Least of all me.
“Kyle!” I tried but I had a frog in my throat and it came out as a timid gurgle. So I cleared my throat and tried again.
“Kyle!” Much better this time. “Kyle! Is that you messing about?”
No answer.
I was seriousIy doubting I’d heard anything now. No! I’d definitely heard something. Maybe a game or a DVD had fallen off one of my crowded shelves. Maybe Dad had come back and I hadn’t noticed.
Or was it Dr Meen back for another check-up?
“Dad! Is that you? Dad!”
Nope. Nothing.
That was it then. Up I go. I gripped the brolly tightly and put my left foot on the first step.
Anoth
er crash. This time something fell heavily and I found myself back in the front room hiding behind the door. I heard nothing else then felt ashamed that I had run away so easily.
I decided to climb the stairs regardless.
I would be brave.
So I did. Slowly. Quietly. Putting one cushioned, stealthy foot in front of another. When I reached the last stair I could see into my room so I flattened myself against the wall and peered in.
And there was the grey, shimmering shape of Lizzie.
She was sat at my computer table using the keyboard to pretend to type. She had knocked some of my stuff onto the floor and odds and ends were scattered about her on the faded green carpet.
I relaxed and lowered my Dad’s brolly. I headed into my room.
“Lizzie, what are you…”
Lizzie had obviously been completely unaware that I was anywhere near as she screamed at the top of her little voice. She jumped so high she sent the stool she was sat on crashing into the computer table. Other bits and bobs fell around her onto the carpet. She screamed so loud that I jumped and my heart started protesting again. I held out my hand to calm her.
“Whoah, whoah. It’s OK. It’s me.”
Then I realised Lizzie had a pair of small headphones in her ears and she had been listening to some music I had left on earlier. She scrambled them off and threw them onto my bed.
“Careful with them,” I said, “they’re expensive.”
But Lizzie was speechless with fright. I could have been anybody and she was probably more angry with herself than me.
“Jay,” she gasped, “b…blimey. I thought…I thought you was…was someone else. Don’t do that again.”
“It’s not my fault. What are you doing here anyway?”
“I was bored so I thought…I thought I’d come early.” She was still in shock. Panting like a sprinter. She pointed to the pair of little black headphones she had tossed onto my football duvet. “What are those and what’s that noise coming out of them?”
“Music.”
Her breathing was coming slower now. “Music?” she repeated, staring horrified at the little black dots. “That’s music?”
I could hear the small, tiny, tinny drum and bass sounds coming from them and I shrugged.
“Yeah, well, it is pretty crap though.”
Then I smiled. I had a great idea. I looked at the clock on the wall and realised that Dad wouldn’t be back for a while.
“Lizzie,” I said.
“What?” She was pouting and stubborn now. Her pride had taken a blow.
I smiled wider. A mischievous smile. All thoughts of Dr Meen were now forgotten. “Wanna take a look at my house?”
Lizzie shrugged playfully. She was being difficult.
“Have you ever seen a television?”
Suddenly she was interested and excited. “I know what one of those is. Have you got one?”
“Yep,” I replied proudly. “Right downstairs.”
“What are we waiting for then?” And, quite naturally and without even thinking, I took Lizzie’s hand and led the way.
It was fascinating watching Lizzie’s grey features take in the new things around her. I had to remember that I probably looked as interested and as puzzled at the unusual things around when I visited 1946. If my bedroom wasn’t treasure enough then the odd objects she saw placed around the house were stranger still. At first she wrinkled her nose and commented at the smell, as I might have done in her house, I suppose. I could smell nothing out-of-the-ordinary but I still worried that she might be referring to my ‘boy’ smell as Beth would put it.
Moving downstairs and Lizzie constantly ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ and gasped at the colours. I must admit things in my time certainly looked cleaner, newer, more modern. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? At one point she picked up a copy of the Yellow Pages, running her small, colourless hands over its cover. She looked for a while at some family photographs in frames on the wall and seemed hypnotised by a shot of the family on a beach in Cornwall.
“So much colour,” she said, and I pointed out Mum to her, looking young and brown and happy. Smiling across five years.
In the front room I showed her how to turn on the TV and again she jumped in surprise. The volume wasn’t unusually loud but the ‘effects’ option was on and I can imagine how it must have sounded to someone only used to a radio. As the picture on the screen slowly unfolded Lizzie knelt down and put her hands on the screen and moved her face closer until it was only inches away. The images moved across her expression like light rain. She was completely absorbed. The way she reacted to the television reminded me of a toddler. When she finally stood up she looked at me with a huge smile on her grey face.
“You are so lucky.”
I shrugged. I didn’t think so.
Lizzie ran her hands over the radiators, examined a DVD and CD, turned the DVD player on, then off, then on again. Then she sat on the sofa then peered timidly at our open curtains. It was getting dark outside now and we could see some streetlights. Lizzie didn’t go near the curtains. I think she was a little scared of what she’d see on the other side.
In the kitchen she bounced from surface to surface with the same expression of wonder. She opened drawers (they open slowly) and ran her hands over the toaster, cooker and peered at the food we had in the fridge. We needed to go shopping but Lizzie still thought our fridge had too much in it. I gave Lizzie some chocolate digestives which she loved and I made her a cup of tea. She made a fuss of the kettle and couldn’t get her head around the idea of a teabag, although she didn’t drink it all as she didn’t like the taste.
She had another chocolate digestive though. And another. But then felt a bit sick so she left some.
I gave her some lemonade, which she seemed to be comfortable with and liked. Then she peered out of the back door into our garden. Light was fading fast and the sky over the rooftops was a light grey. We could still make out shapes and I had to explain what television aerials were for. She seemed to recognise a lot of what she saw outside. She said it hadn’t changed that much. The odd garage or outside building she said was there in 1946. That made me think. All that time and very little change.
Lizzie was scared of being seen so we stayed just inside the back door. We talked about how Lizzie’s Father was going to use me to find Ernie. Lizzie told me how Pauline was also sort of psychic, following the tradition of the family’s ‘special power’ status. She had been able to contact the dead at an early age. Lizzie told me what she had been told. She had been told that when Pauline had been two or three she had an imaginary friend called Susan who went everywhere with the family. Susan was so real to the small Pauline that Mum and Dad had to lay a place for her at the dinner table, cook her food, say goodnight, even include her in conversation. Susan eventually faded into memory but was replaced by others and by six Pauline was openly contacting people who had ‘passed on’. By eight she was holding séances for friends and family. It also seems that Pauline had the ability to climb into her astral self and ‘fly’ to faraway places. I quizzed Lizzie on this ‘astral’ thing and she explained that it was when you float out of your body. She used the example of people dying and the sensation of floating and looking down at themselves. The person who was ‘near-death’ would witness the frantic efforts to revive them below. To remember the experience the patients would have to have been saved. Many had and many had talked of this ‘near-death’ experience. The difference with Pauline was that she could do this when she wanted. The plan was that I join a séance in 1946 and Pauline will ‘look through me’ to find out where Ernie was. If he was alive that is. Lizzie told me that they all believed he was.
“What happens if we find out where he is?” I asked, now concerned about the whole idea of a séance. I’d heard some bad things.
“Dad will try and find him and bring him back.”
“It’s that easy?” I was doubtful.
Lizzie just looked sad and shrugged.
> It was about this time that I went to look at the passageway and the front door. I don’t know why. I just felt a little nervous about Dad coming back early. I put it down to my own ‘special powers’ or just plain luck but I was just in time to hear Dad’s van revving into its parking space outside, its white shape gloopy seen through the frosted glass of the door.
I ran back into the kitchen.
“Lizzie!” I whispered urgently. “Lizzie!” I realised that she was still out the back so I ran to fetch her in. She was just outside the back door.
“Lizzie, quick! My Dad’s back!”
“Oh no!”
“Yes. C’mon. You’re going back to 1946!”
Her ghostly grey figure followed me in through the back door and into the kitchen. The hallway carpet was as far as we got. I saw a dark blob through the glass, moving quickly down the garden path to the front door. I looked at Lizzie and she looked worriedly up at me.
Quick! Think!
“Right,” I said, reaching behind Lizzie and opening the door of the cupboard under the stairs. “Get in there!”
From out of the dark space underneath the stairs came the mixed up smell of old clothes, cleaner and damp. Lizzie looked frightened and didn’t want to go in so I had to literally push her inside and squeeze the door shut behind her. I took a deep breath and stepped forward to greet Dad who had just turned the key to open the front door.
“Hiya son,” he said when he saw me stood there in the passageway. He stopped to pick up letters from the small table just inside the door. When I didn’t answer he put down his empty lunch box and unopened letters and stared worriedly at me.
“Are you OK?”
“Yep. Sure”
He didn’t seem convinced. “No dreams or voices?”
“Nope. It’s all cool.” Then I thought I’d better act normal and ask about Mum. “How’s Mum?”
Dad just looked sad then. Butterflies came alive inside me.
“She’s OK,” he sighed, “she’s just taking it day by day.”
Now I was worried and Lizzie’s hideaway was pushed to one side for a moment.
“She is getting better, isn’t she?” I asked. “I mean, the treatments working, yeah?”
Dad just shrugged. “Like I said, she’s taking every day as it comes. We’ll see tomorrow.” Then he smiled weakly and moved past me into the kitchen. I didn’t move. I stayed with my back pressed firmly against the cupboard door. Dad was fussing about in the kitchen.
“Who’s here?” he suddenly asked wiping his lunchbox round with the damp dishcloth. The thumping of my heart chased all the butterflies away.
“What?”
“I said ‘who’s here?” He nodded towards one of the kitchen surfaces. “Someone’s drinking lemonade. It’s not you. You don’t like lemonade.”
I had to think quickly. “Oh…ah…yeah, Kyle called,” I lied. “He’s just gone.”
“You’re still friends then?” Dad asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “Why’s that?”
A clump in the cupboard. Dad heard it too. He cocked his head to one side. What was she doing in there? I needed to get Dad out of the way so I could get Lizzie upstairs and back to her own time. Dad stopped what he was doing and turned to me.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That noise. I heard a bang.”
“Oh that,” I said. There was an idea forming. “I…it’s probably next door’s dog again.”
That did the trick as Dad instantly grabbed the bait. “What’s the bloody mutt doing now?” He waited a short while for an answer and, when I couldn’t give him one, he made up his own mind.
“He’s got under the fence again, hasn’t he?” Then Dad thought a bit more. “Has he been at me lettuce?” Then Dad sprung at the back door. “If he’s peed on me bloody lettuce again I’ll…”
As Dad’s voice trailed on up the garden I grabbed the handle on the cupboard door and pulled. Coats, damp and dark again.
“Lizzie!” I whispered with a real sense of urgency. “Lizzie, get out! Quick!”
Nothing. Just the smells of dust and damp.
And, almost gone, the burning smell again.
“Lizzie!”
Still nothing. I moved the coats to one side and peered into the gloom. Paint pots. An old hoover. A box where all the cleaning stuff was kept.
Of one thing I was sure. Lizzie Raynor had gone.