The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue (8 page)

Ambrose briefly consulted the calfskin Book, ran his finger over one of the pages and then tapped decisively on a spot somewhere in the middle of the fourth century. It was only when he picked up his scythe that Ralf began to panic. Ambrose couldn’t go yet! There was so much he wanted to know. It was too late to say anything though, because Ambrose had walked over to the side of the tent and, with the scythe’s tip, sliced a hole in the fabric of the universe.

An iridescent line glimmered there in the middle of the fabric. Resting the scythe against the desk, Ambrose stepped forward and, eyes closed, felt along the length of the shimmering line with his fingertips. He pulled. Delicately, as if separating a grape from its skin, he inched back the covering to reveal a swirling mass of lightness beyond.

Ambrose opened his eyes and, with a look of satisfaction at the hole he’d created, turned to face them.

‘Do finish the scones, Valen. No one eats them except you.’

And with that, he thrust a domed helmet on the top of his head, picked up the scythe, the cloth bag and strode into – into nothingness. The flaps either side of the hole fell back against each other and the light winked out.

For a long time they just stood there. Eventually, Ralf went over to inspect the wall. He touched it gingerly, expecting it to be hot. But the cloth was just cloth.

‘He was very good wasn’t he?’ Seth said.

‘Say again?’

‘He was good, Ambrose I mean. He really had us going didn’t he? When he convinced us we were all talking a different language. There was a point back there when I actually believed him!’

‘But, the tapestry – ‘

‘CGI,’ said Seth. ‘All you need is a good P.C. If I could just find it…’ and he was up searching the tent for a computer Ralf was sure would not be there.

‘How can you not believe him?’ Ralf shouted. ‘He’s just walked through the wall of the tent into another Time!’

Seth looked from Ralf to Leo as if he was missing a joke. ‘It’s all some kind of trick! I’m not saying I know how he did it, but all those things he said can’t be true. It’s just not logical!’

Valen sniggered. ‘That’s the point isn’t it, Seth? We can’t explain what’s happened to us today can we? The Saxons? The dinosaur? Doh! No one could fake that.’

‘Er – everyone?’ Alfie had been wandering round as they talked and was now at the door of the tent. No one seemed that keen to listen to him though, they were all focused on Seth.

‘Leaks in time?’ said Seth. ‘I happen to know a bit about physics and –’

‘Burrowes said you were a genius –’ said Valen.

‘Yes, well,’ Seth gave a little smile. ‘I do know that you’d need an event equivalent to an exploding star to create enough energy to open a wormhole big enough to theoretically transport you in time and space. And then –’

‘Yo! Guys?’ Alfie’s voice sounded shrill.

‘ – then, even if you managed to create a wormhole, there’d be no way you’d be able to predict where you’d end up with any kind of accuracy. It must all be –’

‘SHUT UP!!’ Alfie was practically screaming, his face drained of all colour. ‘Bluds, you gotta come see this!’

They rushed to the door of the tent, Ralf’s mind churning with new disasters that might have happened while they’d been inside. He gasped as he raised the tent flap then shakily stepped outside. The others followed.

Swann’s Circus was gone. There wasn’t a sweet wrapper or a hoof print or a patch of flattened grass – no sign that it had ever been there. Instead, they were in the middle of a broad stretch of green in the slowly turning shadow of the London Eye. People were strolling down the side of the Thames. Birds were singing. Traffic droned in the distance.

Seth shrugged. ‘I’ve got a problem explaining this, I admit. Unless we’ve all had some kind of joint hallucination…’

‘Do me a favour!’ said Alfie. ‘Oh, wait up, I’ve left my hat.’ He dodged back into the tent behind them but emerged a second later hatless and hopeless. ‘Gone!’

‘It must be there somewhere,’ said Valen, impatiently. ‘Have you looked under the cushions?’

Alfie shook his head. ‘What cushions, though? All gone. All different. Trust.’

Sure enough, the sign outside the tent now read: ‘Local Artists. Work for Sale.’ Inside the tent was light and airy; there was no fire, no table, just rows of paintings and a frosty looking woman who obviously suspected they were not art lovers.

Back outside Seth was turning in circles and scratching his head. Valen was grinning madly. Alfie, meanwhile, seemed to have forgotten all that had happened and was just scowling and kicking the grass at the loss of his hat. Leo, looking more like his old self, asked, ‘What now?’ But Ralf didn’t know how to answer him. He was trying to get his thoughts in order when he registered the smell. That sharp ozone tang was back, earthy and damp, with the promise of rain.

‘No way, man! Look!’ Alfie yelled suddenly. ‘Is that pure lucky or what?’ He darted ahead, pointing to a splash of colour on steps leading down to the river. He ran down the steps.

Ralf’s neck prickled. He opened his mouth but Leo was there ahead of him.

‘ALFIE, NO!’

As one, the others broke in to a run. Alfie turned, his face flushed with happiness. ‘What?’

They were sprinting now and, almost on top of each other, they clattered down the stairs after Alfie. Ralf reached out. Leo shouted. Valen knocked Seth as she overtook him. ‘Don’t go near it!’ she shrieked desperately,

Alfie was laughing now. ‘It’s only a hat!’

Alfie’s small hand reached for a patch of colour in a square of haze. There was a shimmer in the air, a crackle of electricity. Ralf felt the jolt at the exact same moment he grabbed Alfie’s arm.

The riverbank disappeared. It was as if a sudden cold fog had descended and Ralf lurched through it blindly, flailing and stumbling. Someone banged into his back. He got an elbow in the face. He was shouting and somewhere in the murk he could hear the others shouting too. Abruptly, the ground fell away from under him as if he’d fallen off the edge of a gigantic waterfall. He couldn’t breathe. He must have fallen off the bank and into the river and he thought, madly, that the water didn’t feel as wet as it should. Pulled and pummelled by currents all around him, it was taking him a long time to drown and he wondered with detached curiosity, whether it would hurt much when he did.

In his last seconds of consciousness, Ralf’s mind somersaulted in time with his rapidly spinning body. Strings of unrelated words and images flicked though his brain as though he was turning the pages of fifteen different books at once: Ambrose, the boy from Highgate Ponds, an impossibly large dog, a Roman Centurion, a fishing boat, Gloria…

Everywhere there was a pale, misty glow, a swirling mass of lightness and he thrashed and bucked to surface from it. He couldn’t breathe.

CHAPTER SIX

King’s Hadow

‘Wolf! Get up! You’ve got to see this!’

It was Leo speaking and, judging by the way Ralf was now being rocked roughly from side to side he was giving him a good shake. Ralf opened his eyes. ‘Aaargh!’

He was staring directly into bright summer’s sun. He sat up quickly, blinked until the spots disappeared and then looked around. They were all there, Leo, Seth, Valen and Alfie, huddled in a group, next to a picket fence at the back of an old station.

‘Where are we?’

Seth shook his head but Leo answered. ‘More like
when
, mate,’ he said. ‘Look around you.’

Ralf did as he was told. There was a rush of noise to his left and Ralf’s vision cleared enough for him to see a gleaming black steam train chug in to join another already at the station.

‘King’s Hadow! King’s Hadow Station! All change!’ A uniformed guard in a stiff collar and black peaked cap bellowed down the platform. A multitude of hands reached through the train’s open windows to grab door handles, and passengers stepped down from the train on to the wooden platform.

R
alf and the others stared open mouthed as soldiers with kit bags, smartly dressed women with rolled hair and box hats and suited men in trilbies hurried to leave. Porters rushed to help with their luggage. More people emerged from a tiny brick building marked ‘Waiting Room’ and Ralf found himself wondering what idiot had decided to criss-cross all its windows with tape. The tape was the only fault in an otherwise perfect picture. There were pots of flowers dotted around and everything was neat, and swept clean. A small kiosk selling newspapers stood next to the waiting room. Ralf blanched at the headline on the board, which read:
GERMANS INVADE AND BOMB POLAND. BRITAIN MOBILISES.
The date in the corner was 2nd September 1939. He grabbed at the whitewashed fence to steady himself. ‘Breathe,’ he told himself. ‘Everything will be all right, if you just keep breathing.’ He turned nervously to face the opposite direction and, when he saw what lay there, he was glad he’d had the foresight to hang on to something. There was no doubt about it. They were definitely not in London anymore.

There was the sea. It stretched, vast and impossibly blue until it melted into the sky at a blurred horizon. Down to the right was a sheltered harbour
where small boats were tied in every available spot. In front was a village. Rows of stone cottages with slate or thatched roofs snaked down a narrow lane to the sea.

Ralf’s fingers clutched at the whitewashed fence. This was the village he’d seen in Gloria’s photograph. But it was also so much more.

‘I’ve been here before,’ he whispered.

The others did not share his recognition. They were understandably too busy panicking.

Abruptly, Valen moved. She rushed to the spot where Ralf had been lying just a few seconds before. There was an odd patch of haze at the foot of the fence. The place they must have travelled through!

‘It’s just like Ambrose said,’ Leo breathed. ‘Like the cloud of spray at the bottom of a waterfall!’

‘It felt like going over freakin’ Niagra Falls!’ said Alfie. ‘And we didn’t even have a poxy barrel!’

‘That’s it!’ Valen yelled. ‘The Fall! We have to get back! Quick!’ She grabbed Seth’s arm and yanked him towards the opening.

Ralf took a faltering step, squinting at the hazy patch. It was like staring through a shower curtain or a steamed up window. Alfie, spurred on by Valen’s shout, rushed to join them. Only Leo remained still and watched as the misty patch flooded with colour from the outside in, disappearing like smoke being sucked into a bottle. Valen stretched for the spot with desperate fingers but they jarred against the all too solid plank of the fence. She winced and snatched her hand away.

‘It’s too late,’ said Leo, flatly. ‘I don’t think we can get back that way.’

The others stood there, still and white faced. They were stunned, frozen by the enormity of what had befallen them.

Then there was a sharp cry and Valen, her face livid with fury, grabbed Alfie by the collar and slammed him into the fence. It swayed dangerously and one of the planks split with a crack.

‘The one thing we were warned about!’ Valen shouted. ‘The one thing he told you not to do! And how long did it take you to go and put your stupid hand through a Time Fall? Two minutes? Three?’ She gave him a vigorous shake.

‘Watch the threads, cuz,’ Alfie whined, but then his eyes bulged. ‘Hey my jacket! My clothes!’

Valen dropped Alfie abruptly and he fell in a heap. ‘Look at us!’ she gasped.

Ralf’s shock at everything he saw had distracted him from a niggling feeling of discomfort but now he saw what had been bothering him. His jeans and t-shirt had been replaced with cord shorts and a loose shirt, his Nessie
slippers by a pair of battered boots with soles at least an inch thick. A small moan escaped his lips but the others were far too distracted by their own appearances to worry about any sounds he might be making. The boys were all dressed quite similarly, though the colour and style of their clothes seemed to reflect how they’d been dressed before. (Leo was in a bright red knitted jumper, his braidless hair now an Afro halo. Seth wore round, wire-framed spectacles and a small bow tie.) Alfie was examining his shiny black boots and whimpering like a lost dog until he realised he was holding the hat that had pulled them through the Time Door. It was a tartan tam o’ shanter with a crimson bobble and he unfolded it and put it on his head. This seemed to cheer him up a bit.

Of all of them Valen was the worst off. She wore a printed summer dress, matching lemon coloured cardigan and patent leather shoes. She reached up to tug at her hair in frustration only to find it was no longer short and spiky, but arranged in two neat plaits on either side of her very red face.

She glared at them all, fists clenched. ‘If any of you say one word!’

‘What are these?’ Leo asked tugging at the string of a buff coloured box he wore over his shoulder.

‘Gas masks,’ said Seth shortly. ‘It’s these I’m more worried about, though,’ he stepped forward to tug at a brown parcel tag pinned to Valen’s cardigan.

Name: Valentine Cadwallader, School: East Sheen County, Age: 12, Height: 4’ 7”.

Address: 14, Marchpain Rd., Richmond, London.

‘My name’s changed,’ frowned Valen. ‘One letter different. Valen
tine
.’

‘Mine too,’ said Seth, reading his own label. ‘I’m Gold
berg
now…’

‘But why the labels?’ ask
ed Leo. ‘You don’t think we’re –we're –?’

‘Evacuees?’ said Seth, nodding towards four labelled cardboard suitcases that stood by the fence. ‘That’s exactly what I think.’

‘Where’s mine then?’ Ralf asked.

‘Never mind that,’ said Leo shortly. ‘Look!’ He nodded towards the tracks where the second train was now pulling away. As the sea breeze cleared the smoke and Ralf saw what lay on the other side of the tracks, he felt like shouting for joy. It took only a second of staring at the green and white Big Top, the fluttering bunting and the huge sign for ‘Swann’s’ before they were moving.

‘Ambrose!’ Alfie’s shrill cry voiced all their thoughts.

‘I don’t believe it!’ said Seth.

‘We’ll add it to the list!’ laughed Valen.

‘It’ll be fine,’ called Leo excitedly as they ran. ‘We’ll just find Ambrose and ask him to send us straight back.’

Stumbling in their eagerness to get there, they dashed down the platform and out of the station. Once outside, it was clear where they needed to go. A steady stream of people, many hanging on to excitable young children, were heading into a large field from which laughter, music and the scent of horses was drifting on the breeze. Ralf’s heart thumped as they dodged round a queue of uniformed servicemen and through the gate where a ragged man in a spotted neckerchief was playing the ukulele. The intricate tune echoed Ralf’s nervous excitement. What would Ambrose say when he saw them? There was only one way to find out. He jogged on.

Once they were inside the field it became too crowded to run. They hurried forward in a group, eyes everywhere, searching for Ambrose’s red tent. They weren’t the only ones staring, though. Everywhere they went eyes seemed to follow them. Most people just looked curious. But some faces were shocked, some hostile. One mother actually pulled her small son close and watched them fearfully as they passed.

‘Is it the clothes?’ Alfie asked, confused.

‘We look like everyone else,’ said Seth. ‘Even our hair…’

Ralf reached up to touch his own head and felt only soft bristles at the nape of his neck instead of the tangled mess he’d been expecting.

Leo stopped walking. ‘It’s not the hair,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s me.’

‘What?’

‘Look around you. The faces,’ said Leo. There was a strange look on his face, a half smile failing to hide the defiance in his eyes. Still walking, the others glanced about, not really sure what they were supposed to be seeing. ‘Now look at me,’ said Leo. Ralf did and when he saw Leo’s expression, he suddenly understood. Leo’s was the only black face in the field.

‘What you looking at?’ Alfie growled at a boy twice his size whose eyes were glued to Leo’s face. Valen and Seth took a step closer to Leo and added their glares to Alfie’s.

‘Leave it, all of you,’ said Leo, taking a deep breath. ‘It’s not their fault. It’s the time. Anyway, I’m not going to be staying long enough to have to worry about it. Let’s find Ambrose.’

Leaving the boy still staring, they hurried on toward the far edge of the field where they thought the tent would be. It took longer than they expected because the circus, it seemed, had been bigger in 1939. The Big Top was a lighter green and boasted a small, red and white porch. There were vintage vans and trailers parked to one side and a number of smaller tents dotted about in a rough circle around the edge of the field. The Shetland ponies were still there and the acrobat, but there was much more too.

There was a booth selling cherry red, buttery smelling toffee apples. The man working it had slicked back hair and an arrow straight parting. ‘Only tuppence and cheap at twice the price!’ His black eyes twinkled at Ralf merrily. ‘No? Saving your wad for the Big Top itself, are you? What about you sir?’ he turned to a couple who were walking arm in arm, trying not to stare at Leo. ‘Mouth-watering toffee apple for your sweetheart?’

Ralf tore his eyes away from the apple stand and immediately wished he hadn’t because at the edge of the field was someone he was sure he recognised and it wasn’t Ambrose. A grubby little man, thin as a pin, emerged from behind one of the vans with a smart army officer whose arm was in a sling. Ralf’s neck prickled and he stopped walking, transfixed. As he watched, the two men parted and the officer strode off but it was the thin man Ralf was interested in and he racked his brain trying to remember where he’d seen him before.

Valen jogged back to him. ‘What?’ she asked.

Ralf shook himself. What was he doing, wasting time like this? ‘Sorry. Thought I saw something. Look, there are some smaller tents right at the back of the Big Top. Ambrose might be there.’

‘Let’s take a look,’ said Valen.

They went on but Ralf couldn’t resist a look back at the thin man who was now lounging against one of the vans, alternately chewing a match and spitting. Who
was
he? And why did seeing him make Ralf feel much more nervous than before?

He turned to say as much to the Valen but she’d moved further on and was standing, with the others, mesmerised by three clowns in thick make-up and ridiculous wigs, comedy juggling with vegetables and plates.

‘What do you think?’ Seth asked as Ralf joined them.

‘They’re great, aren’t they?’ said Leo. He grinned hugely as the clowns threw cabbages to each other and then added somersaults and plate swapping leapfrog into the routine.

‘They’re brilliant,’ said Ralf testily, ‘but we’re here to find Ambrose and get home. That is unless you all want to stay and do some research for your next school history project!’ The others turned with dazed looks on their faces, for a second they had felt as if they belonged there.

Ralf threw up his hands. ‘Will you lot snap out of it and come on?’

The words were hardly out of his mouth when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. Leo’s eyes widened. Seth and Alfie’s confused expressions turned to ones of panic. Valen planted her feet further apart, finding her centre of gravity despite the dress.

Before Ralf could do anything other than gasp, he was spun round and pulled forward by the scruff of his neck.

‘Well, well, if it ‘ent young Osborne!’ The thin man fixed Ralf with slitted black eyes and smiled to reveal a missing front tooth.

He lost that in a fight with Clem Atkins, Ralf thought. But before he could wonder how he could possibly know this, his mouth was running away with him.

‘What do you want, Gadd?’

‘That’s Mister Munton to you,’ the thin man wagged his finger.

‘Mister Munton,’ echoed a weasely new voice.