The Unlikely Time Traveller (5 page)

I didn’t like the rich boy thing, but maybe compared with him I was. My dad had a car. I had a bike. I had a phone; my mum had a laptop. I had an Xbox. As far as I could see, Ness worked with horses, and in the field, and had none of those things. But maybe in the future rich and poor looked different and you couldn’t tell from the stuff people owned.

We set off along the High Street, past the glass-fronted tall buildings and the silver pods with fruit and veg for sale. I tried not to gape like I had just landed from Mars. It felt like I was in a film set. The bank had gone. The butchers and bakers had gone. Trees grew in the middle of the main road. The Post Office, amazingly, was still there, still looking exactly the same. Ness saw me gazing at it. “You think he may have gone into the Post Office Museum?”

So it wasn’t a normal Post Office any more. I doubted museums would be top of Robbie’s list of Things To Do in the Future, but I nodded. I wanted to have a look.

This museum wasn’t anything like the National Museum in Edinburgh. There were no whale bones, stuffed giraffes or Egyptian mummies. “Welcome to the past,” a man said, saluting me at the door. He had on a red T-shirt with yellow lettering:
Royal Mail
. He looked
a bit like our postman in 2015. He even had a canvas bag full of letters over his shoulder and handed me one. “Handwritten and sent with a stamp costing nine old-time pence.” I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. Read it? “This is a letter,” the man explained. “A communication between two people, and it was handwritten in Peebles in 1973. It is a family letter from son to mother.”

I just stood there gaping at it. Maybe the man thought I couldn’t read.

“I can read it out for you,” he said. “A shame indeed that many young do not understand the writing of the hand.”

“I can read it myself,” I said and saw how Ness flicked back his long hair and looked at me admiringly. I folded open the envelope and pulled out the sheet of paper, hoping there wouldn’t be any difficult words.

“Dear Mother,”
I read to the hushed audience of Ness and the museum staff,
“Just to let you know I am settling in as postie and getting to know the cobbled lanes and narrow streets of Peebles. You were right; it’s a grand job. I will be as fit as a fiddle delivering letters, Mother. Thank goodness there are no rabid dogs. Peebles is altogether a fine town. I carry dog biscuits to make my job easier. I am putting a few pounds of my wages by each week into a Post Office savings account. I am saving up for one of the latest record players. Can you picture your son twisting again like they did last summer in his new suede shoes? I miss my old chums from Melrose, and of course our cosy chats by the fire (and your fruit scones) but I will be home for Christmas.

Your loving son, Craig.”

Not exactly difficult to read. I don’t think Mrs Flynn
would have been putting me to the top of the class for being able to read ‘fruit scones’. But the man in the Royal Mail T-shirt started clapping and shot me wide-eyed admiring looks. Not everyone can read in the future, I figured, or maybe it was the handwriting thing. Anyway, I suddenly felt proud. I might look like a prat here, but at least there was something impressive I could do!

The man rustled in his bag and fished out another letter. “From 2014,” he announced, waving it in the air. “This,” the man went on, “was a letter of complaint sent to a post service delivery office, when we had such things.” I opened out the paper and read,
“Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to inform you that the Playstation 4 I ordered for my son – TWO WEEKS AGO – has not yet ARRIVED!!! He is understandably upset and has had three tantrums in the past week. It was to be one of his main presents for his birthday, which has now passed. I am not asking you to deliver this parcel to the moon. What on earth is the problem??? An extremely dissatisfied customer.”

Ness laughed as though this was really funny. But I didn’t. A shiver ran up my spine. Robbie’s mother had written that letter. I could tell by the address. She was always writing letters to complain about stuff. I remembered all the fuss about that Playstation arriving late only last year. Robbie had gone on and on about it in the den, like he was so hard done by. My fingers were shaking so much I dropped the letter, but the museum staff and Ness were still having a good old laugh.

The man picked up the letter and slipped it back into his bag. “Fine indeed to meet a pleasant handwriting-reading boy,” he said, wiping his tears of laughter away. “We have many such crabby letters of unhappiness. We had many electronic mails also, but after the online
world shut down back in 2059 they all stopped of course.” Maybe he saw my jaw drop. “Do they tell you of history in the community school? It can’t all be green guardianship, music and the healing arts. What about history? It’s important.” Then he beamed at me, like he had just noticed my clothes. “Ah, you have dressed up too. You are a keen one for history, I can tell. Perhaps you would like to take up your citizenship work in our museum? You will learn of stamps and letters. You can read aloud all the old letters.” The women behind the counter nodded and smiled.

It all seemed cheery in the Post Office Museum, until I heard a woman in the corner muttering angrily to herself.

“Ah, yes,” the jolly man said, suddenly frowning. “Ms Abula has had a difficult morning. A bad sort stormed through earlier, vexed and crying that he wanted to be sent home. He crashed into the stand of historic postcards, careless, and sent them toppling to the ground.” The man lowered his voice. “The arrangement of our historic postcards is something Ms Abula is most proud of. You see, it is spoilt now. All spoilt. We sent the boy from the museum. Told him never to return.” The man sighed. “He did seem a troubled citizen indeed.”

I swallowed. “Did he have short hair?”

The man nodded sadly. “Most short. Where does strength go when hair is cut off? There was a fashion in the eighties for short hair but it didn’t last. I do think this citizen is not well.”

He hadn’t seen my hair because I still had my hood up.

“Where did he go?” I asked.

They shook their heads, unsure. A woman behind the counter asked, “Would you like to hold in your hand a real postal stamp? We also have a collection of old one
pound coins.”

“No thanks.” I had held enough pound coins. I turned to Ness. “That troubled citizen was Robbie!”

“You can have an historic photo to take with you,” Ms Abula said, shoving one in my hand. “When people sent old letters they at times included pictures. Have it. A gift from the museum.”

I thanked her, slipped that into my pocket then spun round and headed for the door. “My friend, that boy earlier, is not very well,” I explained to the man. “Sorry about him messing up the postcards.” I was doing a lot of apologising in the future.

We burst out of the old-fashioned Post Office doors and onto the High Street.

“Let’s try the cinema,” I said.

“Cinema?” Ness said. “What’s—”

“This way!” I charged across the road, swerving to miss an oncoming horse.

Like I said, Ness was a fast runner. We were over the road-that-wasn’t-exactly-a-road in a flash and headed for the Eastgate Arts Centre. Except when we got there it didn’t exist any more.

In place of the arts centre and the cinema stood a tall tinted-window building, maybe a block of flats. And at my feet, like it was mocking me, lay a crushed Irn-Bru can. “He’s not here,” I cried. I felt like kicking that can into tomorrow, as my dad would say. I felt like stamping on it and crushing it to pulp. I scooped it up, crushed it in my fist and stuffed the stupid thing in my pocket, which nudged the photo out.

The photo fell to the ground and I found myself staring at a picture of Peebles High School with a Mini parked out on the street and a boy in a school uniform leaning against the red car, sticking up his thumb and grinning. Maybe he was in sixth year and had just passed his driving test. I looked closer to see if I could recognise him. I didn’t, but I recognised the building, and the uniform. And I had seen plenty of cars like that before. How weird. That boy would be dead. The car would be on the scrap heap. I suddenly felt sorry for how time changes things, and how things that were such a big deal in the past are forgotten in the future. It was all too unreal.

And maybe I looked like I was ready to burst into tears – or get knocked over by a horse – because next thing Ness picked up the photo and gave it back to me, smiling kindly, then steered me over the road and down
another lane.

“Does your friend enjoy the pool?” he said.

“You bet,” I muttered, images of the Commonwealth Pool belly-flop disaster flashing into my mind.

“So, he may be in the Aqua Park,” Ness said. I could hear excitement in his voice. “Tis muckle excellent there.”

I wanted to ask Ness about the shut down of the online world, and where were all the cars, and was the high school that I saw in the photo still there, but I kept quiet because I was trying to fit in.

Next thing, we burst out of the lane and landed up near the river. At last I got my bearings. So many other buildings and streets had changed, but the River Tweed, lapping and flowing by, was still there. The hills beyond the river were still there too, the same big sloping shapes. This was Peebles. This was my town one hundred years in the future. I started to feel more at home. Then I turned round.

“What’s…” I gasped at the sight ahead of me, “that?” This definitely had never been part of the Peebles I knew. It looked like a huge watery outdoor funfair by the banks of the river. “It’s…” I remembered Ness’s words: “…muckle amazing!”

The Aqua Park was like a summer wonderland, with huge twisting slides and water wheels and different-shaped swimming pools on split levels, and diving boards, massive sprinkling fountains, water wheels, long chains of buckets that emptied into each other, and then the buckets soaked random people walking up twisty steps. People screamed in joy, and laughed. Water cascaded from one pool to another in waterfalls and seemed to change colour as it fell, making each pool a different colour. One big arc of water looked like a rainbow you
could swim up, over and then shoot down the other side, though I couldn’t see anything underneath it holding it up. I stood gaping, taking it all in. There were curved grassy hills in between the pools and hundreds of people having a great time.

“Peebles is famed in Scotland for this Aqua Park,” Ness said, laughing. “It is not possible you don’t know.”

I shrugged, like maybe I did but forgot. “Yeah,” I said, already heading towards it, “Robbie’s probably here.”

Ness caught up with me. “I come here when not at school or helping with the horses or working in the fields. It’s muckle grand. I love so to splash and play. What glee! But perhaps you, rich traveller with nuts in your pocket, have an Aqua Park to you alone. Perhaps you don’t labour in fields or with horses.”

“Look, Ness,” I blurted out, “I’m not a rich boy. I don’t have my own pool. And I’m not lazy.”

Ness shrugged.

This fantastic Aqua Park stood more or less where the old Peebles swimming pool used to be. But what a change! Right in that moment I didn’t want to go back to the past. Ness was right, Peebles Aqua Park was muckle grand. Maybe Peebles had got warmer in the last hundred years – warm enough to have outdoor pools. I thought I had landed on a hot day, but maybe the weather was different now? There were palm trees growing nearby and some of the birds I’d seen were different from the usual birds I recognised.

If I knew Robbie – and I did know Robbie – he wouldn’t be able to walk past this Aqua Park any more than I could. In fact, he was probably there right now, splashing about, jumping off diving boards and yelling at folk to get out of the way.

“Can we take a look?” I asked Ness. Course, I didn’t have trunks, towel, anything like that. I had a torch, a dead phone, litter, a few old peanuts, a photo and a packet of toffees – fat lot of good they had been – taking up space in the pocket of my hoodie. Maybe we could hire trunks.

“The horses will manage without my help for a while,” he said. “Aye, I do love splashing around and playing in the pools.” This huge grin spread over his face. “Friend Saul, I race you to the sprinkle fountain.” Ness took off like a sprinter at the starting gun. I tore after him and soon we were neck and neck, sprinting across the grass towards a huge multi-coloured wooden sign that said:
Welcome to the Aqua Park.

“You do win, Saul,” Ness shouted, even though I was sure it was a draw. Panting hard, all I could do was gape ahead of me. People of all ages were lazing about on the sculpted lawns. Beyond the grassy chill-out zone the real fun was going on. People were sliding down twisting water slides, arms out, yelling. Others were swinging on ropes then plunging into pools. There were spouts and sprinklers everywhere. Not that many people, as far as I could see, were actually swimming. People were floating over slides and waterfalls on what looked like soft clouds. There were rafts bobbing about and enormous bubbles in different colours. I spotted a few muscley-looking guys strutting about on the lower diving boards and girls giving them the eye. The Aqua Park was huge. Up past a large pool I saw really high diving boards. And there was an enormous swinging boat that splashed through the water. Awesome! I forgot about looking for Robbie.

A lot of people wore what looked like thin wetsuits and most people had on weird hats. A hat was just what I needed. I’d put my hood down in the sunshine and my short hair was drawing way too much attention in this long-haired future.

“We both won,” I said, still so gobsmacked I’m sure my mouth was hanging open. Just then a girl in the pool
recognised Ness and waved and bowed. “My best friend,” he told me as he bowed back in her direction. “It is muckle good to have a best friend, is it not?”

The girl clambered out of the pool, shook water off herself and ran over to where we were standing. “Ness!” the girl cried, taking Ness by the hand. “Come and cool down in the fountain. The other girls from school have come also. Let’s swing in the boat.”

I stared round at Ness. I swallowed hard, looked away then looked back at him. He was chatting away with this girl, laughing,
giggling
even. Then he glanced back to me. “Are you well?” he asked, looking concerned. I could feel my cheeks burn up. I nodded, and felt a fool.

“Ah, a stranger?” the girl said, like she suddenly noticed me. “And you have met Ness. Is she not the best?”

I nodded again, and coughed. I shot a glance at Ness’s face. I suppose it could be a girl’s face. It was hard to tell. And his broad shoulders and strong hands.
Her
broad shoulders. How did I get it so wrong?

“Saul,” Ness said, beaming at me, “is a traveller in search of another traveller who is lost. And this bright star is my best friend, Scosha.”

Scosha bowed to me and I bowed back. I was at a loss for words. All this time I really thought Ness was a boy. “Where do you come from, traveller?” Scosha asked me. My mouth fell open. I couldn’t think of a lie.

“Actually…” Just then people started yelling.

Scosha and Ness looked concerned, like they weren’t used to people yelling that way. The racket was coming from a large distant pool. I got this sinking feeling inside me.

Ness spun round and stared at me. “Robbie?” he said. I mean, she said.

I squinted into the sun. Someone was bouncing on the
very high diving board. It was a long way off, and seriously high up, but I recognised that body shape. Below, I could see an adult with a red wetsuit on, a first-aider maybe, run to the edge of the pool, craning back his neck and shouting for the person way up there to stop. I groaned.

A slow panic crept through me. It seemed like I had caught up with Robbie at last. His twenty-first-century litter trail, plus a few upset people, had led me to the Aqua Park. But he wasn’t safe. He was about as unsafe as a person can be. He was a hundred years into the future, without a gold bracelet to get him back again, and he was jumping on a tiny plank four stories high.

“Is he a good diver?” Ness asked, hopefully.

I remembered how Robbie had nearly crippled himself at the Commonwealth Pool. I shook my head.

“Let us help him,” Ness said. Next second, me, Ness and Scosha were running through the Aqua Park, past the first round blue pool with the muscle men on low boards, and past little kids splashing about in a fantastic series of paddling pools, past ropes and swings, rainbow fountains, slides and fun, to the serious pool with the very high diving board. Yep, that nutcase screeching, whistling and bouncing up and down was Robbie. As I ran under sprinkling fountains I got soaked. My hood flopped down and people were gasping at me. Me and Ness were the only ones with outdoor clothes on, never mind that mine were pre-historic.

“You must stop him,” Ness said. “He is on the Olympian board. You need special training to use it.”

By now the three of us had reached the poolside. Breathless I tipped my head back and gazed up. And up. The diving board was as high as the church steeple. From where I stood I saw the board from underneath, tilting
up and down like a crazy seesaw. Time travelling wasn’t dangerous compared with this. Maybe Robbie had gone mad? Maybe the whole time-travel experience had tipped him over the edge? Or, judging by all the litter, maybe he was on a massive sugar rush? Or maybe he was having a great time, thinking he was on a trampoline and getting a bird’s eye view of Peebles? A few people had gathered and were gazing up, looking worried.

My heart raced when I saw the ladder. It looked like a ladder to the moon and I was going to have to climb it.

“Quick,” Ness said, pointing up, “go to him.”

“DON’T JUMP!”
Scosha was shouting up to the sky, but I doubt Robbie heard her. He was a long way up. A very long way up.

Some adults tried to persuade me not to climb the ladder, especially with all my clothes on. “More accidents are caused,” they said, “with two on a board. If he falls and misses the water we will catch him with our net,” they said, “but it would be indeed difficult to catch two.”

Ness persuaded them to let me try. I heard her say the words “traveller” and “strange customs”. I overheard the words “best friend”. Much importance, I guessed, was made of friends in the future. Eventually they let me climb. I pulled off my hoodie. I was boiling. I rolled up my trousers. I started going up. Way above me the board creaked. Heavy footsteps landed then sprung off, and I remembered how Robbie had always wanted a trampoline and his mum never bought him one because, knowing him, she had said, he would fall off and break his leg. I kept climbing. This was higher than the climbing bars at school. This was higher than the highest tree in the garden of the den. My stomach lurched. I couldn’t be sick, not here. I kept going. There was a breath-holding
hush from below. I looked down and this horrible woozy rush made me cry out. The pool below was wobbling. Peebles was swaying. My whole body started to shake.

Then I heard Ness yelling from below: “Touch the I-band!” I had forgotten about that thing round my head. I stopped, held tight with one hand and quickly touched the band. Instantly I felt stronger. I felt brave. I kept going. I was only halfway up. Don’t think about anything, I told myself, just the next step, then the next.

Suddenly I was thinking about me and Robbie at a trampoline party. We’d only been about eight. I can’t remember whose party it was, but Robbie had gone crazy and bounced like a wild thing for ages. He didn’t even stop for birthday cake and ice-cream, which wasn’t like him. He wouldn’t let anyone else onto the trampoline – except me – and he didn’t want to join in with any of the other games. “Come on, Saul,” he had shouted, “let’s do doublers.” So I had scrambled up onto the huge trampoline. It had a net around it. Next thing me and Robbie were bouncing together. It was great fun. We had to try and land exactly at the same time. Robbie went on and on about that party for months.

I blinked and the past disappeared. Only a few more rungs to go. And suddenly I felt sorry for Robbie. He was my friend and he needed help. He did mad things, but that didn’t mean he should plummet down four stories. I didn’t want to give him a fright. If I suddenly appeared next to him he would probably fall off. The board creaked. I could hear Robbie whooping. He was jumping so high it was like he was trying to jump back to the past. I craned my neck and looked up. I knew what I had to do. Just like when we were eight, I had to do doublers and jump with him.

I took a deep breath and reached up to the last rung.