Frozen in Time (11 page)

Sad, that a man who had once been so popular should have only a cleaner, a resentful old work colleague, and someone else from the government attend his funeral. Because the newcomer certainly was government, no question.

Now he walked across, nodding respectfully to the priest who was making a swift exit. ‘For a moment back there,’ he said, ‘I thought I might have got extremely lucky.’ He held out his hand. ‘David Chambers.’

‘Ernest Granville,’ said the man in the grey trench coat, and shook the proffered hand. ‘I suppose you were hoping I might be Henry Emerson.’

Chambers laughed. He looked slightly embarrassed.

‘We have no reason to think the old boy’s even alive. But at least we know he wasn’t a traitor. Tarrant did that much for his old friend. Cold comfort though—telling us fifty-odd years after the event.’

‘It would be nice to let Emerson’s family know that, wouldn’t it?’ said Chambers, taking off his spectacles and regarding Granville closely.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But I don’t think either of us are going to do that just yet, are we? Just in case …’

‘In case they’re hiding the return of an old genius scientist?’

‘Or his son or daughter?’

Granville sighed. ‘Let’s stop playing games, shall we? None of us has a clue. He could be dead or alive, in Russia or in Peru for all we know. And his children too. We’ll probably never know. I suppose you’ve a sleeper in place in Amhill, even so.’

Chambers smiled. He stooped down and threw the dirt on the coffin.

‘Treacherous old goat,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t really deserve to Rest In Peace. Emerson could have taken this country into an astonishing future. But I suppose if he had done anything for the Soviets we would have seen some evidence of it now. He probably refused and paid with his life.’

‘Like I said,’ Granville threw his own handful of dirt and they both turned away from the grave and began to walk, ‘we’ll probably never know.’

Ben knew this wasn’t possible. There was no way he could travel back in time. But he couldn’t suppress a shiver as Freddy led him back down into the vault for the third visit that day. They had hastily finished their food and were now descending the metal rungs once more.

Freddy jumped the last few feet and was away down the corridor and opening the first chamber door before Ben and Rachel and Polly had reached the bottom rung. They followed him into the main sitting room and saw him fiddling with one of the boxes of Izal toilet paper on the metal shelving to the right of the door.

‘Don’t worry,’ quipped Rachel. ‘The curry wasn’t
that
hot!’ But Freddy didn’t pay her any attention. Now he was twisting something on the wall behind the cardboard packets and then he grunted with satisfaction as there was a hollow rattle and the entire shelving unit swung towards him. Ben and Rachel gaped as a bright glow shone out in a fattening column in the wall behind the shelving. It was a hidden room.

‘Good. Light still works,’ said Freddy.

‘Freddy,’ said Polly, doubtfully. ‘Father said we weren’t to go in! We weren’t allowed!’

‘That,’ said Freddy, ‘was before he froze us and disappeared for fifty-three years. I reckon he would have let us in by the time we turned sixty. And I’m sixty-six.’

Polly shrugged and followed him into the brightly lit chamber. Ben and Rachel looked at each other. ‘Should we get Uncle J?’ breathed Rachel. ‘Shall I get him?’ She gulped.

‘If you like,’ said Ben, ‘but I’m going in.’ He stepped into the room behind Freddy and Polly. It was small. About the size of a garden shed, with grey walls and more of the green swirly carpet. There was hardly any dust in it. Set into one of the walls was a small rectangular screen—perhaps fifteen centimetres across and rounded at the edges. It was dark green; showing nothing. Beneath it was a monstrous machine of grey metal. It was the size of a piano, but bulkier and had large buttons and stubby black sliders on it. On the top of the machine, on a black spindle, sat a large reel of what Ben recognized as old oxide tape in a metal wheel—the kind of thing early reel-to-reel tape machines used; much bigger than the little reels in the recording machine which had greeted them in the other room. At the front of the machine the proud letters
AMPEX
stood out. Beneath them more letters read:
Mark IV VTR
.

Ben peered at it, fascinated. He thought he might have seen something like it at the London Science Museum. ‘Is this … is it a … video recorder?’

Freddy looked round, his hands resting with excited reverence on the buttons and faders. ‘Yes! It is! Isn’t that amazing?’

‘It certainly
is
,’ came a voice from the door, and Uncle Jerome drifted in, yet more amazement on his face (a look which threatened to burn into his features for ever after today, thought Ben). ‘How on earth did your father get hold of
this
? These weren’t even commercially available until the autumn of 1956! And they cost an absolute
fortune
!’

‘Oh well, Father had a lot of connections,’ said Freddy, breezily. ‘He was a good friend of Lodge—the man who helped develop this for CBS. This was a prototype. He only got it last month …’ Freddy turned his attention to the many ducts and wires that fed into the back of the huge machine. ‘I think it’s still connected up—I wonder if the camera still works. Probably not.’

‘Do you mean to tell me that your father set up a video surveillance system?’ gulped Uncle Jerome. ‘His own CCTV?’

Freddy blinked. ‘CCTV?’

‘Closed circuit television! His own camera— recording something around here?’

‘Well—yes. That was what it was for,’ said Freddy.

‘It was a spy camera!’ said Polly, widening her eyes theatrically. ‘Like in spy films! He said we had to know who was lurking around outside the house, in case they were spies!’

‘Did he really?’ asked Rachel, who had come in now, behind Uncle Jerome.

‘Well, not exactly,’ admitted Polly. ‘But it was jolly close to that! He thought the meat man spent too long peering down the driveway and started to wonder if he was a Soviet. Father was a bit funny that way.’

Uncle Jerome had now joined Freddy in running his hands over the mammoth video recorder. ‘The very first Ampex!’ he was murmuring. ‘Just astounding!’ He looked at Freddy and, quite oddly for Uncle Jerome, asked: ‘Can I?’

Freddy grinned and shrugged. ‘Go ahead. I don’t really know how it works. Father never let me have a go. I just watched a couple of times.’

Uncle Jerome beamed at him and then turned back to the machine. After a brief pause his fingers moved to the grey metal reel of oxide tape and picked up one end of the wide brown ribbon which ran off it. He swiftly threaded it up and down through all sorts of metal rollers and pulley wheels which bobbed smoothly in their settings, as if they were a few weeks rather than half a century old. Uncle Jerome fed the end of the tape into another—empty—grey metal reel and moved the spool around a couple of times until the tape caught and began to pull against the reel next to it. Now the tape tightened and with a single balletic bob of all the rollers and pulleys, the reels turned together. Uncle Jerome pressed a button on the machine—everything clunked and bobbed again and both tape reels wound faster and faster.

‘Got to rewind the tape first,’ he said. ‘It must have rolled on and then come off the spool when time ran out. Must have flicked around a few times and then the power probably cut out automatically.’

The huge plate of reddish grey tape grew smaller and smaller on one side and larger and larger on the other, and Uncle Jerome stopped it just as one side shrank to the size of a saucer. Then he looked up at the screen above and reached over to it to turn a button. A discreet click was followed by a pinprick of light in the centre of the green screen.

They waited in silence. After a few seconds Rachel said, ‘Is that it?’

Polly gave her a pitying look. ‘It’s got to warm up, silly!’ she said.

‘TVs in the 1950s took several minutes to warm up,’ explained Uncle Jerome, not taking his eyes from the little screen. ‘The cathode ray tube would heat slowly and gradually radiate across the screen. You had to be patient. Something you children of today are not used to at all.’

At last something was happening on the screen. The dot had become a column and the column was widening out into a speckly white and grey rectangle. A couple of minutes later the whole screen was lit. Uncle Jerome took a breath and then pressed a button on the Ampex. There was a heavy clunk and a gentle hum and the tape spools began to move again, in the reverse direction. Up on the screen a grainy image began to gather.

‘Yes!’ said Freddy. ‘It still works! That’s the gate!’

Ben squinted at the screen, not sure what he was seeing at first but gradually beginning to recognize the view. It was the road outside Darkwood House. Darkwood Lane with the hedgerows on either side, June blossom, bright in black and white, blowing in a gentle breeze. Exactly the same view that you would get if you climbed the chestnut tree by the gate— except that the road was rough shingle, rutted and unmade up, whereas today it was smooth grey tarmac. Everyone stared, rapt, at the view. It was the least dramatic thing they were ever likely to watch on TV and yet quite thrilling.

‘Could this be the same day?’ asked Rachel. ‘The same day you went to sleep?’

‘It looks like yesterday,’ agreed Polly. ‘It was bright and sunny and a bit breezy and there
was
blossom out in the lane.’

‘Did your father run this camera continuously?’ asked Uncle Jerome.

‘I think so,’ said Freddy. ‘Well, during the day at any rate. It was all a bit new. I don’t know if he’d totally got the hang of it. He would come in to change the reels every couple of hours, so I don’t suppose he could have run it all through the night. It was more of an experiment than anything else.’

‘Look! Look!’ cried Polly. ‘The meat man! This must be about half past eleven—he always used to come before lunch.’

On the small screen an old-fashioned van rolled into view and a young man wearing a peaked cap and an apron got out. He disappeared around the back of the small vehicle and then reappeared, carrying a large covered basket.

‘He used to bring our chops and lamb and pigs’ hearts every week,’ said Polly.

‘Pigs’ hearts? Oh, yuck!’ said Rachel.

Polly frowned. ‘What’s wrong with that? Everyone knows pigs’ hearts make your brain grow. Mrs M poaches them with onions. Oh, look—there he goes.’

The meat man had walked towards the screen and then on into the driveway, out of view. For several minutes they stared at the van and then the back of the meat man’s head went past and they saw him return his basket to the rear of the van, walk around, get back in and go.

‘It’ll be you next, Freddy,’ said Polly. ‘You came back from youth club right after the meat man came, I remember.’

She was not wrong. Uncle Jerome sped up the reels and two minutes later Freddy suddenly shot across their view on a large, old-fashioned black bicycle with a basket on the front. Uncle Jerome wound it back— Freddy zooming backwards this time—and then played it at normal speed. Ben felt a shiver run through him. The tape showed a time so obviously fifty-three years old, with the unmade-up road and the 1950s delivery van. But Freddy, jumping off the saddle and wheeling the big black bike in past the gate, looked exactly the same as he did now, standing right here next to them. He was wearing the same clothes. In his basket on the front of the bike was a striped paper bag and a comic of some kind. Ben squinted and made out
Eagle
on the top of it, in bold, angular letters.

‘Blast it! I never did get to read that!’ muttered Freddy. ‘I suppose it’s long gone now. Never got to eat those bull’s eyes either. Rotten luck!’

‘Oh no—don’t tell me you ate bull’s eyes too!’ grimaced Rachel.

‘They’re sweets, you goose!’ laughed Polly.

After Freddy had gone in, nothing else happened. After a while Uncle Jerome wound the tape forward at high speed. ‘What time was it when your father put you into stasis?’ he asked, eyes still on the screen and hands poised above the buttons.

‘Just after lunch,’ said Polly. ‘We had chops. I cooked them! Mrs M was off that week.’

‘So … about now then.’ Uncle Jerome was watching a dial of numbers. ‘This is the time code,’ he said. ‘We’ve been watching for about ninety minutes-worth now and if your meat man and Freddy here came in just before lunch, I believe you would have eaten by now.’