The Portal (10 page)

And there was only one way he could think of to make that happen.

Although it was still early, he got up, dressed and walked down the hill to Mrs Duggan's house.
He found her in the back garden, splitting logs with an axe, while Timber picked up the pieces and stacked them neatly in the shed. She stopped when she saw William.

‘Any news?'

‘Not really,' said William. ‘Uncle Larry says it might be as long as a week before they know anything definite, and Brin says I can't manage the station that long on my own.'

‘Ah.' Mrs Duggan leant thoughtfully on her axe. ‘How they going to sort that out then?'

‘I'm not sure,' said William, ‘but I think I could manage, if you helped.'

‘With the station?'

‘Yes.'

‘Not sure about that.' Mrs Duggan made a face. ‘Looking after people… Not good with people. Never have been.'

‘You wouldn't have to be,' said William. ‘There's only two or three passengers a week and I can deal with them. What we need is someone who can help keep an eye on Daniel, help with the cooking, and maybe do the bricks once in a while. If you could do that, I could do all the people stuff.'

Mrs Duggan chewed thoughtfully at her bottom lip. ‘Your Uncle Larry think of this?' she asked.

‘No,' said William. ‘It's my idea. I thought I'd ask you about it first.'

There was another pause.

‘Might work,' said Mrs Duggan eventually.

‘Could you come up to the house later?' asked William. ‘And talk to Uncle Larry about it?'

Mrs Duggan considered this. ‘Be up about eleven,' she said. ‘All right?'

‘That'd be great,' said William, and he was about to go when he remembered the other thing he had wanted to ask.

‘You knew about the Portal,' he said, ‘but you didn't say anything.'

‘No,' Mrs Duggan admitted.

‘So how did you know? I thought it was supposed to be a big secret.'

‘It was,' said Mrs Duggan, ‘but your dad…' She stopped. Whatever it was she had been going to say, she changed her mind. ‘Long story. Maybe tell you one day.'

Down at the station, William waited until Emma told him that Uncle Larry was awake and then took in a tray with a pot of tea and a plate of chocolate biscuits. Dad had always said if you were going to ask someone to do something for you, you should make sure they were comfortable first.

‘I thought you might like some tea,' he said, placing the tray on the table by the bed.

‘Ah! How kind!' Uncle Larry pulled himself up to a sitting position.

‘I was thinking about what Brin was saying, about my not being able to run the station on my own.' William began pouring out the tea. ‘And I wondered if you'd thought of Mrs Duggan.'

‘I have,' said Uncle Larry, ‘but it wouldn't work. You couldn't ask Mrs Duggan to look after a passenger. She's not good with people.'

‘She wouldn't have to be, would she?' William passed Uncle Larry the mug. ‘I could do all that. What we need is someone to help with the house, keep an eye on Daniel, maybe do the bricks occasionally… and she could do that OK, couldn't she?'

Uncle Larry thought about it.

‘It might work,' he said. ‘I'll have a talk to her.'

‘She's coming up to the farm at eleven,' said William. ‘I'll tell you when she's here, shall I?'

‘That would be… Yes. Thank you.'

‘Right…' William turned to leave. ‘And the bricks came ten minutes ago. You've got forty-three messages.'

Uncle Larry stared thoughtfully at the door for several seconds after William had gone. The boy was more like his father than he had realized, he thought. He had that same knack of coming up with the solution to a tricky problem,
but making it sound as if he was asking your advice.

He smiled to himself and sipped his tea. He wasn't sure why but for some reason he was feeling much more cheerful.

The meeting at eleven o'clock lasted barely an hour. Uncle Larry, Brin, William and Mrs Duggan sat in the sitting room down in the station and Uncle Larry ran over what Mrs Duggan should do and how much she should be paid for doing it. Brin gave her a phone so that she could keep in touch with Emma even when she was out with the sheep, and William showed her how to use the lift down to the station by dialling 1066 on the office phone.

The only problem, as Mrs Duggan pointed out, was what they should do if a passenger arrived while William was at school, and it was William who suggested that he didn't go back to school at all.

‘There's only three more days before the holidays,' he pointed out. ‘How about someone rings in and says I'm still sick?'

‘Sounds like the simplest solution,' Uncle Larry agreed. ‘Let's do that then. Any other problems?'

‘Amy won't mind, will she?' William looked at Mrs Duggan. ‘Moving up here, I mean?'

‘Can't see why,' said Mrs Duggan. ‘Spends most of her time here anyway.'

‘And Timber?' William looked across at the dog who had been following the conversation with rapt attention. ‘He'll be happy sleeping in the kitchen or something, will he?'

‘He's a dog,' said Mrs Duggan briefly. ‘He'll do as he's told.'

Both Uncle Larry and Brin left that afternoon. Uncle Larry left first, after giving careful instructions on what William should do if Federation Security got in touch with news about his parents.

‘You send me an emergency brick,' he said. ‘Emma'll tell you how. And if a problem comes up you can't solve, tell Brin. He's closest and he can be straight over.' With a wave of his hand and a promise to be back in a week to see how things were going, he disappeared through the Portal.

Brin left an hour later after a ferocious burst of cleaning that left the station smelling rather heavily of bleach. ‘You've got a passenger at four thirty,' he reminded William as he made his way to the Portal. ‘You're sure you don't want me to stay and help?'

William said he thought he'd be OK.

‘In that case I shall leave you to it…' Brin polished an invisible smudge of dirt from the wall,
before stepping on to the Portal surface. ‘Don't forget now. A message every day to tell me how it's going!'

Ten minutes after he'd gone, Mrs Duggan appeared outside the back door with six suitcases she had brought up on the tractor. Only one of them belonged to her. The other five were for Amy, and William helped carry them inside and up to Daniel's room. Mrs Duggan made up the beds and started unpacking, and then there was just time to get tea ready before Daniel and Amy got back from school.

At a quarter past four William went back down to the station to greet his next passenger.

Prince Helmut of Tarkis was a tall, good-looking young man, who was clearly a bit disappointed to find William in charge of the Portal.

‘I don't mean to be rude,' he said, ‘but I was really hoping to see your father.'

‘I'm afraid he's away at the moment,' said William.

‘Away? Do you know when he's going to be back?'

‘Not really,' said William. ‘Did you need him for anything urgent?'

‘Well, it wasn't that important.' Prince Helmut spread himself out on a sofa in the station sitting
room. ‘I just wanted to tell him how well everything had worked out and… and say thank you.'

‘Oh,' said William. ‘Thank you for what?'

Prince Helmut's family, it turned out, had ruled the tiny world of Tarkis for more than three hundred years, but recently there had been demands for the King to abdicate.

‘The people kept saying they wanted a parliament,' the Prince explained, ‘and it looked like the end of the line for us royals. But then one day, on the way back from a holiday on Cygnus, your father tells my father that when the same thing happened here, your people chose to have a parliament and a monarchy. He told Dad exactly how they did it, Dad came home and tried it – and it worked! We're more popular now than we've ever been!'

‘Oh, good,' said William.

‘It is very good!' the Prince agreed. ‘My father's having the time of his life, going around giving state banquets and military parades and so on, but…' His face clouded for a moment. ‘I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do. While I'm waiting to be king. I was hoping your father might know.'

‘We have a prince who's waiting to be king,' said William, ‘but I'm not sure what he does.'

Prince Helmut looked up. ‘Is there any way you could find out?'

William asked Emma to set up a connection with the Internet and then tapped Prince Charles into Google. There were quite a lot of sites about Prince Charles and Prince Helmut sat glued to the screen in the drawing room, furiously downloading notes on to a recording device that hung round his neck. ‘The Prince's Trust…' William heard him muttering, as he brought in tea and sandwiches. ‘…I want all the stuff on that. And the Duke of Edinburgh's Award. And I want lots of pictures of this garden at Highgrove…'

He was still at it nearly five hours later, when William brought him a last pot of tea and warned him it would soon be time to leave.

‘Nearly finished!' said the Prince. ‘There're some great ideas here! Can't imagine why I didn't think of them myself. I am very grateful to you!' He smiled happily at William. ‘And I shall tell your father so next time I see him. Where is he, by the way?'

William admitted that he didn't know, and found himself telling Prince Helmut the story of his parents' disappearance.

‘Extraordinary!' said the Prince when he'd finished. ‘Has anyone thought of asking a Guardian?'

‘I… I don't think so,' said William, who had no idea what a Guardian was.

‘The Guardians have Touchstones,' said Prince Helmut. ‘With a Touchstone you can find out anything that ever happened, anywhere.'

‘Can you?' William wondered why Uncle Larry hadn't suggested this himself.

‘Of course, everyone has lots of questions so there's a waiting list of ten or fifteen years,' said Prince Helmut, ‘but one of the benefits of being in a royal family is that you get automatic access to a Guardian once a month.' He looked across at William. ‘I could ask what's happened to your parents when I get home, if you were interested.'

‘Oh, I am,' said William. ‘Very interested. Thank you.'

When Prince Helmut had left, William came back upstairs and found Mrs Duggan clearing up in the kitchen.

‘Children both asleep,' she said. ‘Put out clean clothes for Daniel, and Timber's done the chickens.' The dog lay curled up in his basket by the cooker. His eyes opened briefly to look at William, then closed again. ‘How did it go with His Majesty?'

‘Not too bad,' said William.

Mrs Duggan wiped her hands on a towel and glanced round the kitchen to check there was nothing out of place. ‘Thought I'd do the bricks tonight. Let you get a proper sleep.'

‘OK,' said William. ‘And I'll do getting up Daniel and Amy in the morning.'

‘Right.' Mrs Duggan took a deep breath and looked out the window at the night sky for a moment. ‘You reckon we can do this, do you?'

‘I know we can,' said William. ‘We can do it easy. You'll see.'

And, as he spoke, he tried very hard to sound as if he believed it.

In one way, at least, it turned out to be easier than William had expected. Managing the Portal, he found, rather to his surprise, was really no problem at all. Doing the bricks and looking after the occasional passenger was comparatively simple now that Mrs Duggan was helping out.

The bit that wasn't quite so easy, was Daniel.

William was never sure how it started or why it went so badly wrong, but now that they were living in the same house, Daniel and Mrs Duggan didn't seem to get on at all. In fact, in a matter of days, things had got to the point where they could barely talk to each other without one of them losing their temper.

It puzzled William. Admittedly, it wasn't easy
living with someone who tended to leave parts of dead animals lying around, but that was just how Daniel was. Mrs Duggan, however, did not see it that way. When she found a half-eaten rabbit carcass on the breadboard, she would demand that Daniel throw it away. Daniel would say that he needed it for an experiment, Mrs Duggan would tell him not to argue, Daniel would argue… and in no time there'd be a full-blown row going on with all the sound effects of slamming doors and some very loud shouting.

William wondered if part of the problem was Daniel having to share a room with someone whose clothes took up all of the wardrobe and a good deal of the floor, and whose beauty-care products had taken over the desk. But Daniel said he didn't mind any of that. It was Mrs Duggan that was the problem and within a matter of days, the two of them could scarcely be in the same room together without one of them saying or doing something that made the other one explode.

William didn't know what to do. There had never been rows when his parents were here. He had seen arguments like this in his friends' houses, but never at home. Disagreements at home were sorted out before they ever got to be rows, though – now that he thought about it – he wasn't quite sure how this had happened.

After one particularly violent argument over a dead pigeon in the fridge, William tried asking Daniel not to argue with Mrs Duggan. ‘She's helping look after us,' he said. ‘Please, be nice to her!'

‘Why should I?' said Daniel. ‘She's always picking on me!'

William pointed out that he was the one who left dead pigeons in the fridge. ‘If Mrs Duggan asks you to do something,' he said, ‘you just have to do it.'

‘No, I don't,' argued Daniel. ‘She's not my mother.'

‘But she's looking after us till Mum gets back,' said William. ‘And we need her.'