Time Travelling with a Hamster Read online

  “We found this in your dad’s things after he died. He must have written it ages ago.”

  I’m staring at the envelope in her hands. Grandpa Byron’s expression hasn’t changed.

  “What is it?” I say eventually.

  “I don’t know. It’s personal, addressed to you. But I think you should regard it as highly private –” and here she pauses – “not to be shared with anyone else.”

  I take the envelope carefully and read the spidery writing on the front. My dad’s handwriting, and my full name: Albert Einstein Hawking Chaudhury. Below my name is written: IMPORTANT: Do NOT open this envelope until SIXTEEN hours after receiving it. To be delivered on his twelfth birthday.

  I look across to Grandpa Byron. “Did you know about this?” I ask.

  He shakes his head, and there’s something in the quick side-to-side movement and the tightness of his mouth that is odd. I even think he’s turned a bit pale, and he’s staring at the envelope.

  Steve, meanwhile, is just sitting there with this big daft smile that looks slightly forced and I get straight away that he’s jealous. He wants so much for me to like him that he’s angry that my dad has come back between us, and this makes me like Steve just a little bit less.

  “Well, I can’t open it till later anyway,” I say, pointing at the instructions on the envelope. Now obviously I’m boiling inside to see what it says, but there’s something about seeing my dad’s handwriting that’s like getting an instruction directly from him, and I want to be respectful. That, and Grandpa Byron’s stony face, has kind of freaked me out.

  “Ha’way, son, you gonna be late,” he says, picking up his helmet from the breakfast bar. And that is the last thing he says to me until he drops me at the school gate, saying, “You coming round after school?”

  I nod, and he scoots off on his bike, not even waving.

  All of which makes it a very unusual morning.

  Twelve Things I Know About Grandpa Byron

  His full name is Byron Rahmat Chaudhury-Roy and his birthday is on New Year’s Day, although he never celebrates it. “Why celebrate getting one year closer to death?” he once asked me. “It’s just passing time, it’s not important.” He still gets me birthday presents, though, so he can’t be that serious. He’s around sixty or so, but he looks much younger, apart from his nearly white hair.

  He has got the most awesome memory; I mean, like, unbelievable. From the age of ten until he came to England, he studied under some Indian guru who taught him all these meditation tricks, and it means he can remember anything. He’s never forgotten anyone’s name that he’s ever met.

  He was born in a part of India called Punjab, and his mum and dad sent him to Britain in the 1960s because there was a lot of fighting there. Some people call it ‘the swinging sixties’, but Grandpa Byron said he didn’t see much swinging in Wallsend.

  He lived with an auntie and uncle, but they died yonks ago and I never met them.

  He married Grandma Julie in 1972. I know that because he told me that a song called ‘Without You’ by Nilsson was number one and I looked it up on the internet. Grandma Julie died before I was born.

  Grandma Julie’s parents didn’t come to their wedding. Grandpa Byron says they were too busy, but that seems odd to me. Perhaps they were racists and didn’t like her marrying Grandpa Byron. Everyone was a racist in 1972, apparently.

  He didn’t always dress in yellow robes. Actually, he still doesn’t always. But when Dad died he went away for a while, for months Mum said, and when he came back he had grown a beard and started wearing the long robes. (The beard didn’t last long. He said it itched.)

  He wrote a book while he was working in a factory in North Shields. He would write it in the evenings on a typewriter, which is like an old-fashioned computer but with no memory, just a keyboard and printer in one, which is pretty cool. No one would publish it in England, so it was published in India.

  His right arm got wrecked in a fireworks calamity, of all things. He was setting some off for a big display and part of the metal rig that they were resting on had a loose bolt or something, and the whole thing came down and crushed his arm. He can’t use it much and it looks a bit weird, kind of twisted to one side. He got some money from the insurance company, and he stopped working at the factory.

  He put some of his money into the first Tandoori restaurant in the area: the Spice Of The Sands, on the Culvercot seafront. (It’s still there, but it’s run by some Bangladeshis now, and serving much nicer food, said Grandpa Byron once, but he was laughing.)

  He won a trophy from the factory when he was in a talent show with the other workers. Everyone else was singing or telling jokes, and one guy could imitate the voices of all their bosses brilliantly, but Grandpa Byron just did memory tricks and he won! Someone shuffled a pack of cards and read them all out, and Grandpa Byron remembered them all in order. He told me that was ‘Level One’ stuff, in other words not even remotely difficult.

  He doesn’t own any photographs. He says the best pictures are in his head and that taking photographs is just lazy.

  So school is OK.

  Miss Henry, who’s usually quite nice to me anyway, is especially smiley and tells everyone it’s my birthday. Freddie Stayward – who last week started a chant of “loser, loser” when I dropped an easy catch (until Mr Springham yelled at everyone to stop it at once) – even gives me his sponge pudding at lunch. Obviously I check it for spit/hairs/bogies, but once it has received the Chaudhury All-Clear, I eat it.

  (I knew exactly no one on my first day at St Eddie’s, by the way. We had moved in with Steve and Carly during the summer holidays. Mum did that grown-up thing of making it all seem like a big adventure, and kept telling me how much fun we’d have, but I wasn’t sure, and I’m still not, to be honest. I suspect – don’t know, mind, but I suspect – that finances came into it. Dad left us not very financially secure, Mum once told me. It’s about the only time I can think of her saying anything negative about him.)

  Anyway, after lunch I’m sitting by the coats in the little alcove where you can’t really be seen if you pull your feet up. I discovered this spot on my second day at St Eddie’s back in September when I didn’t know anyone and there’s no way I was going to sit on the ‘buddy bench’. Besides, I quite like it there among the coats and the musty smell of muddy wellies and gym shoes.

  I’ve taken a book from the school library about hamsters, and I open it. That’s when I hear Jolyon’s voice. I draw my feet up, but too late.

  “Reading, eh?” Jolyon drawls, pointing at the book. His whole tone is caring, concerned and so warm that it sends a shiver down my back. My hands give an involuntary little tremble, which I hate because it looks like I’m scared. It makes the book in my hand shake.

  Jolyon Dancey talks in this sort of fake, mixed-up posh-and-Geordie accent He gets a new mountain bike every Christmas and his dad (who he hardly ever sees) does a late-night weekend jazz show on Radio Metro, which is about as micro as micro-celebrity can get, but which I’ve heard Jolyon boasting about more than once.

  What’s worse is that Carly sort of hangs out with him, even though she’s in the year above, and she’s standing there with him now, chewing gum. It’s not like she’s his girlfriend or anything, but she’s definitely in his circle, or would like to be. She has hitched up her skirt so high that you can’t really see it under her school blouse, which is not tucked in. It’s like she’s standing there in just her shirt and tights.

  He’s a complete pain, and almost a class bully, except that nothing that Jolyon Dancey does could ever get him into trouble for bullying, because he’s being nice. Not nice nice, but nasty nice.

  “Reading!” he repeats, pointlessly, and he crouches down so that his face is level with mine, getting really close, grinning insincerely like one of those crocodiles on nature documentaries.

  “What we got here, matey? A book? Aw, I love hamsters, don’t you, Carly?” Carly nods again. “Can I see it?”
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br />   He puts out his hand, and I find myself handing over the book. Jolyon takes it and stands up, and starts to read the cover.

  “Hamster Fancying for Beginners, by Dr A. Borgström.” He gives a little snort. “You fancy hamsters, do you, Albert? Really fancy them?” He smirks at Carly.

  “It just means, you know, looking after them …”

  “Right, I believe you. Can I borrow this? Can I?”

  A wave of nausea starts in the bottom of my stomach as he starts to put the book in his blazer pocket, even though it’s just a library book. Then Carly says, “Leave it out, Jol. Not today.”

  Jolyon pauses, confused.

  At that moment, Mr Springham’s voice booms from down the corridor: “Walk on the left!” His heavy footsteps are getting closer.

  Jolyon hands the book back to me and moves away, giving me another grin and a wink. A wink. Honestly. And he probably thinks I’m a loser.

  That’s the thing with St Eddie’s: I don’t really have any friends. To be honest, it’s not St Eddie’s, it’s my life generally. It’s not that I don’t like people, or even that people dislike me. But even when people are being nice to me, they still just seem to sort of look through me. It’s a good thing I like my own company otherwise it could all make me quite sad.

  I’ll give you an example: hugs. I don’t think I have ever hugged or been hugged by a friend. It’s no big deal, really – I mean, I get hugs all the time at home from Mum and Grandpa Byron (and sometimes from Steve which is less good, but still) – but there are boys at school who are forever doing this back-slapping hug thing and it looks kind of fun.

  Anyway, like I say, school is OK.

  Grandpa Byron is meditating when I let myself into his house with my own key. The curtains in his sitting room are drawn, and a stick of incense is smouldering, a smell of sweet leather permeating the house.

  He sits on the sofa, cross-legged, hands resting on his knees and his back dead straight. He raises a forefinger to acknowledge my presence, which I am relieved about, because sometimes he doesn’t do that and it’s like he can’t hear me or anything. I once stayed until he opened his eyes and it was ages. I had finished my homework, run down the battery on my MP3 player and read most of his Daily Telegraph and all he said was, “Oh, hi – how long have you been here?”

  This time I don’t have to wait long. He slowly opens his eyes and unfurls his long brown legs from underneath him.

  “You are just in time for chai. Why not put on the telly? Maybe today you will be faster than those clots.” There’s a crinkling around his eyes when he says this because he doesn’t think the contestants on TV quiz shows are really stupid, just not as smart as he is. Not many people are.

  We sit in front of the TV drinking the super-sweet Indian tea and eating badam barfi, which is an Indian fudge that Grandpa Byron has made because it’s my birthday.

  There is always a TV quiz on at around this time of day. Usually we’ll watch one of the main channels, but if it’s a show Grandpa Byron doesn’t like, he’ll find an old show on Challenge or one of the other channels instead.

  For him to like it, it has to involve questions that require you to know stuff, what he calls ‘General Knowledge’. Stuff like capital cities, or obscure foreign presidents, or dates of wars, or chemical compounds, or great works of art, or … well, you get the idea.

  Today’s programme is a new one on BBC2 called MindGames in which six contestants try to kick one another out of the contest by forming alliances with each other and betting points on how certain they are of the answer. The thing about it – and the thing that Grandpa Byron likes – is that the questions are really hard, to me at any rate.

  The presenter is a bloke who usually reads the news, except here he’s dressed in a black polo neck and jeans, which look a bit weird on him. He’s talking really fast.

  “All right, Darren, you’ve teamed up with Celia, let’s see how you get on – together can you eliminate Adnan from the competition and get yourselves closer to the big prize? Three questions on popular music coming up, you have thirty seconds starting from … now. What was the last UK number one hit for The Beatles before they—”

  “‘Ballad Of John And Yoko’, number one for three weeks in 1969,” says Grandpa Byron before the guy on telly has even finished.

  “Which record album, released in 1982, became the biggest-selling album of all t—”

  “Thriller,” barks Grandpa Byron, “by Michael Jackson!”

  “And finally, which artist paired up with Alicia Keys to record hit single ‘Empire State of Mind’ in 2010?”

  I know this one. “Eminem!” I shout. Grandpa Byron shakes his head and smiles. “Jay-Z. And it was 2009 not 2010.”

  Of course, he gets them all right.

  He always gets them all right – or nearly always, anyway.

  “How do you do it?” I ask for what must be the hundredth time. “How do you know so much?”

  And he gives the answer he always gives. “Don’t confuse knowledge with memory, Al. I have got a good memory because I have trained it, but that is not the same as knowledge, and neither memory nor knowledge is the equal of wisdom.”

  He gives me a grin and takes a large swig of chai.

  There’s this thing with Grandpa Byron: when he’s done watching a TV programme, he turns the television off. At my house we normally just leave the room, or flick around to see what else is on – either way, the telly stays on. But not Grandpa Byron. It’s like when he’s reading the paper: he folds it up carefully when he’s finished an article.

  So when MindGames finishes, off goes the telly and we sit in silence for a bit. Grandpa Byron’s got this half-smile. Perhaps he’s pleased that he got all the questions right, or that for the first time I got one or two of them within the thirty seconds.

  “One of these fine days you will be memorising better than me,” he says. He’s looking at me through half-closed eyes. “You see, with the power of your mind you can do almost anything, Al. That, plus, of course, The Memory Palaces of the Sri Kalpana.”

  This is the book that Grandpa Byron wrote ages ago that’s now so rare that he owns the only copy, which I have never seen. He has mentioned it to me before, but only in passing, whereas now he’s looking right into my eyes and smiling.

  He kind of bounces to his feet effortlessly (without that oof sound that most old people make when they get up from a sofa). He takes a book down from the shelf and hands it to me. It’s a thinnish paperback with a plain yellow cover, the same colour as his robes. The only writing on the cover is the title, The Memory Palaces of the Sri Kalpana and underneath it says ‘by Byron R. Chaudhury-Roy’.

  “I was going to wait before giving you this,” he says, “but, well … now seems like the right time. Now you are twelve.”

  “Really? I mean, thanks a lot …”

  He holds up his index finger to quieten me. His eyes go a bit blank until he blinks hard. “We’ll study it together. Meanwhile, feel free to take it with you.”

  I grin and shrug. “Cool!”

  There is something going on here, though, and I can’t put my finger on it. It was the way Grandpa Byron said “now you are twelve” that made me think that giving me this book was somehow connected with him going all weird when he saw that letter from my dad. I don’t have to wonder long.

  “That letter from your father …” he begins, without looking at me. He is being altogether too casual, like he’s practised this. I just nod, and wait while he sits down opposite me and looks at me intently.

  “Your father and I, we had some disagreements. Over the work he was doing.”

  “Over his work?”

  “Not his job. But some research he was undertaking in his spare time. He told me about it and … well, I didn’t really approve.”

  “What was it?” (Remember, at this stage I have no idea about my dad and time travel.)

  Instead of answering directly, Grandpa Byron reaches over and takes the book from my
hands.

  “Life, Al, is such a wonderful gift that we should open our minds to every possible moment and cherish the memory of those moments. Because people change. Places change. Everything changes, but our memories do not. Accept life the way it is, Al. That’s the way to be happy.”

  I think I narrow my eyes sceptically, because Grandpa Byron takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and continues. “In my head, Al, in my mind, are some most wonderful places. Some are like palaces, huge and ornate; others are much more humble. And all of them, room after room, are crammed to brimming with memories. Some of these imaginary rooms are like offices, with drawers and filing cabinets – that’s where I keep all the facts, like football scores, and dates, and horse-racing winners, and presidents. But the most precious rooms, in the the grandest palace of all, they contain the memories I love the most: the day your father was being born, for example, the day me and your grandmother married, or just five years ago when you and I had that picnic in the rain in Druridge Bay and you were losing your Crocs. There’s a memory for every day of my life, back to when I was about your age. I can revisit these rooms whenever I like, take out the memories, re-live them, spit-and-polish them up, then put them back for another time. I am going there any time I like.”

  “Is that what you do when you meditate?”

  “Aye. Usually, anyhow. Keeping my Memory Palaces clean and tidy. They can get a bit cluttered, you know, just like real rooms. Memories can go astray, or get a bit faded, and I am liking to keep everything ship-shape and Bristol fashion!”

  “And what’s that got to do with Dad’s letter?”

  Grandpa Byron opens his eyes and looks at me as if he’d forgotten about it. Eventually he says, “I’m not sure. It might not have anything to do with it. But read my book anyway. Well, if you want to, that is.”