The Accidental Time Traveller (15 page)

Three nights later, on Christmas Eve, me, Mum, Dad, Esme and Ellie were all together in the living room. The Christmas tree lights were flashing on and off and the twins kept trying to reach out to them. Under the tree were a few Christmas presents. Dad had his big Christmas book out and he read to the twins in his Santa Claus voice, just like he’d read to me when I was little.

Then, when Dad finished his story it was my turn. “Remember Randolph, Mum?”

“Uh-huh. The one Dad said was really a girl?”

I nodded. Dad sunk back into the sofa with his arm round Mum. The twins were asleep on the sheepskin rug. Mum sipped her glass of red wine. “And? What about him? Or her?”

“Well, remember when I was grounded, and you sent me out to buy Jaffa Cakes?”

“And you were away for ages. And it started snowing. Yes, I remember.”

“Something tells me,” said Dad, “that the Scottish Borders Young Historian of the Year has got a really good story up his sleeve.”

I coughed, then carried on. “Well, the thing is, this girl almost got knocked down by a car. It screeched. She screamed. I swung round. She stumbled across the road, tripped over the kerb and grabbed me.”

This, I swore, was going to be my last ever lie – and this one was white coloured. Time travel was too weird, and it seemed like there were some things that kids could believe in and adults just couldn’t. So I told them the story of Agatha Black, with changes. “Well, she was lost, you know,” I told them. “And after she nearly got hit by that car it made her go a bit funny, a bit freaked out. So we hung out for a few days, her and me. I thought it would be easier if we pretended she was a boy. Anyway, I helped her a bit with things. And she helped me. It was fun, actually. She knew loads about history, and she taught me to play chess. I would never have won the history competition without her. Anyway, she’s back with her dad now. But she needed some help with the journey home. They don’t have any money. I knew it was important, and she was a really good friend, so I… um… I helped her out.”

When I came to the end of my story, it dawned on them that there was nothing left of my winnings, and I saw their faces fall. Ever since the prize ceremony, Mum had been suggesting I open a bank account. I’d been shrugging it off. Dad had been telling me to keep
my money for the sales, then I could go on a spending spree.

“You gave it
all
away?” Mum shook her head in disbelief. I nodded.

“All of it?” Dad said, and I told them about the twenty-pounds worth of sweets and crisps.

“I can’t believe it,” Mum said, finishing her wine. She looked at me and shook her head. “You know something, Saul?” I shook my head, wondering what was coming next. “You didn’t need to pretend she was a boy.”

Dad put his hand on my shoulder. “Your mum’s right. But you know what, son? I’m proud of you. If we can’t help other folk then we’re not worth much.” And he hugged me, and so did Mum. And I went off to my room that Christmas Eve the happiest boy in Scotland.

But I couldn’t sleep, not right away. I peered out of the window. Most of the snow had disappeared. Just a few white patches were left, lit up in the moonlight, and a shrunken snowman. I pressed my nose against the window and stared out at that tiny snowman for ages, remembering Agatha Black running around the garden laughing, rolling her head, as if it was the best fun ever. And I wondered what she was doing on Christmas Eve, 1812. I hoped, whatever it was, she was laughing, and clapping her hands, and having a right merry time.

In the morning the church bells pealed out Christmas carols. Mum rang a bell through the house and shouted, “Merry Christmas, ho-ho-ho!” and Dad came into my room dressed up in his Santa costume.
The first thing I opened was my stocking at the end of my bed. Inside was a tangerine, an apple, a chocolate golden coin and a torch. I ate the tangerine slowly, imagining it was the most delicious thing in the whole world.

Then I bounded through to the living room, gave Ellie and Esme a kiss for their very first Christmas, then set about opening my presents. I tried to look really surprised at the DVDs, unwrapping them and grinning. I gave Mum and Dad a drawing of our house, which they said was brilliant. Then I tore the paper off socks, books, slippers, selection boxes and a £20 top-up voucher for my phone. Mum was shaking rattles and teddies in front of the twins.

Then Dad disappeared. I heard the front door click open. I heard him wheel something in. My heart thudded. “Merry Christmas, Saul!” he shouted, nudging open the living room door with the front wheel and pushing a green BMX right up to me. “It’s not the top of the range, son,” he said. “Not even brand new to be honest, but I fixed it up. It’s a fine bike, and we hope you like it.”

I whooped, jumped up, hugged Mum and Dad and took the handlebars of my very own BMX. It wasn’t the one I’d imagined in my magazine. It wasn’t like Robbie’s. But I didn’t care. It looked great. And it was mine.

“Majestic!” I yelled.

Visiting the graveyard was Agnes’s idea. She’d kept going on about it, about how she’d discovered on a map the exact location of this old graveyard, outside Peebles, and how she was pretty sure Agatha Black would be buried there. I didn’t like thinking about Agatha Black being dead. It didn’t feel right. So I kept putting Agnes off, suggesting other things to do instead, like teaching me and Robbie and Will to catch fish with our hands. Agnes called it guddling and we got pretty good at it.

It was 1st March, 2013, and the days were getting longer. It was still cold but you could smell spring in the air. I’d even seen a few daffodils. Agnes had taken on Agatha’s thing of decorating the den. She had a few flowers dotted about the place because me, Will and Robbie said she could, but she wasn’t to overdo it. Sometimes she did overdo it but we didn’t really mind. We had all decorated the walls with the few drawings that Agatha had left behind, even although they were kind of strange: pylons, light bulbs, popcorn and street lights. The drawing of me had gone. Now when I go into Mrs Singh’s shop I imagine me on the wall, next to the tins of soup!

Mostly our gang played all our games like we’d always done, and forgot that Agnes was a girl, or, well, we knew she was a girl but it was no big deal. She joined in with everything. The best was when she showed us how to climb the tree.

Her dad still played his fiddle on Peebles High Street and Agnes said people really liked hearing music on the street. It cheered them up.

Anyway, this Saturday, 1st March, it was just me and Agnes, and we were playing chess in the den. She was wearing a pair of jeans she’d found in a charity shop and she was looking pretty cool. “If I win,” she said, whipping my queen off the board, “I get to choose what we do next.”

“Ok,” I said, thinking it would be fishing or tree climbing or rabbit catching. Agnes liked stuff like that.

“Check mate,” she said, snatching my poor king away. “Graveyard!” she announced, scooping all the chess pieces into the biscuit tin.

I was going to protest when she butted in. “You said ok. Come on, Gang Chief. You can’t go back on your word. Don’t you want to know what happened?”

I shrugged. That was just the problem. If it was something bad, I didn’t want to know. What if Agatha Black had gone back to 1812, caught the measles and died? Or what if she got hung because they said she was a witch? Or what if Dick sold her to the body snatchers? Or what if she never did get back? When I thought about all the “what ifs?” I got a sore head.

Agnes pulled at my sleeve. “Come on, Saul. It’ll be an adventure.” Then she ran out of the den, grabbed
her bike (Robbie had given her his old one after he got a newer model) and squirmed through the gap in the hedge.

I followed her, steering my BMX out and over the wasteland. We started pedalling as soon as we reached a road, racing each other out to the edge of Peebles. The old graveyard was in the country near Neidpath Castle, not the one I walk through to get to school. Agnes said her grandmother often went to this country one, with flowers.

We wound up a narrow lane, going further up and up into the hills. My bike was great. I didn’t care that it wasn’t the most expensive kind. Since meeting Agatha Black I’d learnt a lot of things. Loving my second-hand bike was one of them.

I slowed down as a stone wall came into view behind a clump of fir trees. What else, I wondered – my heart pounding hard and not only because of the cycling – was I going to learn? “I think we should leave our bikes here,” I said, propping mine against the stone wall.

Agnes did the same, her face all pink and shiny. She smiled at me, nervously I thought, the way she chewed her bottom lip. “You ready for this, Saul?”

I nodded, but the truth was I wasn’t. I wanted to remember Agatha alive, the way she was just before Christmas. I wanted to remember her laughing and making fire and telling her stories and being so sad for Bob Cratchet. It didn’t seem right that we were going to try and find her grave.

The old graveyard, next to Neidpath Castle, is one of the creepiest places in Peebles. We walked around
the outside, looking for a gate. Near us,
mountain-bikers
whizzed by on rough tracks, throwing up mud and panting hard. This hill was famous for bike trails. The bikers zooming past weren’t thinking about the ancient skeletons close by.

Agnes and I didn’t say a word but padded on over the mossy ground. We found a rusty high gate, but it was locked. An old sign on the gate said

OPEN SUNDAYS 2-3PM

Agnes hoisted herself up and clambered over. I followed her, wobbling on a rusty bar and struggling to get my leg over the top. Then I had to jump about ten feet down. I landed in springy moss and rolled over. Sitting in the thick grass I swallowed hard. We were in the ancient graveyard.

Agnes was already peering at a gravestone. “Wilemina Baxter,” she read, “died 1871, aged 17.”

I got up and looked around. There were loads of gravestones. Some were stone angels with broken wings. Some were simple crosses. Others were slabs in the ground, mossed over. I staggered backwards, realising I was standing on one.

“Poor Wilemina,” Agnes said, “I wonder what she died of?” She moved on. “This one – Helen – died aged two! Probably consumption.”

I cast my eyes around the old cemetery, and shivered. It would take forever to examine every stone. A blackbird landed on a gravestone in front of me. It sang and flew off. I watched it go, swooping up and down
and disappearing into the dark green branches of a tree. “There’s a yew tree,” I said. “Look! Over there!” The branches of the tree hung over mossy graves. “Maybe she’s under there,” I said, pulling Agnes away from wee Helen. I felt a prickle up the back of my neck. “But I don’t know if I want to know.”

“We’ve come this far,” Agnes said, “we might as well know. Come on, and you’re probably right. It would be like Agatha to ask to be buried under a yew tree.”

We walked over. The sun threw gravestone shadows on the grass. The bird had stopped singing and it felt so quiet in there, you could almost hear the dead whisper.

I thought of Agatha screaming, running over the road and grabbing my ankles. I remembered a snowflake falling and landing on her long black eyelashes, and how she smiled so her pale blue eyes sparkled. I remembered the way she said “Majestic!” And how she taught me to play chess, and how she let me cut her hair and how she said she wanted to be called Randolph, and how she said she was good and true. And how she slept all by herself in the den and how she laughed when I suggested eating oranges. And how she said she would never forget me. Ever.

“It’s all mossed over,” Agnes said, tugging my arm. I blinked. I looked down. We had reached the yew tree and right under it stood an old gravestone. A bunch of faded meadow flowers lay on the ground next to it. Was this
the
gravestone? I shuddered. The yew branches made a shushing sound in the wind.

I sunk to my knees and pulled the moss away. It fell off in my hands showing the writing carved into the
stone underneath. “That’s it!” Agnes cried. “Oh! It is! It’s hers!”

She fell to her knees beside me. In a trembling voice she read out the inscription:

AGATHA FORSYTH, NÉE BLACK

BORN 21ST JUNE, 1802
DIED 31ST DECEMBER, 1879

DEARLY BELOVED WIFE OF
HECTOR FORSYTH, SCHOOLMASTER
MUCH-LOVED MOTHER OF
AGNES & SAUL

Agnes gasped. I watched her fumble in a bag she’d brought. Then she scooped up a handful of soft earth and planted a primrose beside the grave. In the tree above us the blackbird started singing again. With a lump in my throat I read out the very last words, carved in stone at the bottom:

ALIVE IN OUR HEARTS FOREVER

The character of Agatha Black is inspired by a real girl: Marjory Fleming. Marjory was born on the 15th January, 1803 in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. At the tender age of six she went off to Edinburgh town where she had lessons from her beloved and very patient cousin, Isabella Keith. To help with her writing, Isabella suggested that the young “all thunderstorms and sunshine” Marjory keep a journal. Between 1810 and 1811, aged seven and eight, Marjory filled three slim notebooks with her own individual observations and poems, covering subjects as varied as literature, love, history and religion.

Marjory Fleming’s aunt had a pet monkey called Pug who lived with them in the house in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh. He was clearly a popular attraction and Marjory wrote of him, “the monkey gets as many visitors as I or my cousins.”

After returning to Kirkcaldy, Marjory wrote in a letter to Isabella, on 1st September 1811, “we are surrounded by the measles on every side.” On 19th December 1811 Marjory died, shortly before her ninth birthday.

Half a century later, Mark Twain, on reading her letters, journals and poems, referred to her as a “wonder child.”

Marjory Fleming is buried in Abbotshall Churchyard in Kirkcaldy. The original and very modest gravestone, simply inscribed “M F 1811”, can still be seen. Next to the gravestone is a statue of a young girl writing, erected in 1930, dedicated to her as the “Youngest Immortal”.

Marjory Fleming’s original diaries are kept in the National Library of Scotland. I am indebted to a beautiful published volume,
Marjory’s Book: The complete journals, letters and poems of a young girl,
edited by Barbara Mclean (Mercat Press).

Janis Mackay

Edinburgh, December 2012