The Unlikely Time Traveller (11 page)

I stood frozen to the spot, somewhere between St Giles Cathedral front steps and a pod selling bread. I was aware of all these coins jammed in my pocket, and the crowd of smiling people gazing at me. Some of them were bowing. Robbie was giving me the thumbs up, and nodding like mad.

“So, young lad,” said a large man with a droopy moustache, “I am indeed gladdened the young ones care to gaze back through the corridors of time. Lead us on!”

I sidled up to Robbie, who was still beaming around at the large group. “Just tell them stuff,” he hissed. “I don’t know anything about history.” Which was a lie because he
lived
in history, but clearly he didn’t see it that way.

“Tell them
what?
” I whispered. We started to head down the Royal Mile. Our group obediently followed.

“Anything,” Robbie muttered. “About cars and computers and school. Anything at all. If you dry up, I can crack a few jokes. Come on, Saul.” He elbowed me in the ribs. “This was your idea!”

The coins jingled in my pocket. I reminded myself I was the gang leader, and for my age had already done loads of brave things. “Right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Right!” I swung round, faced the crowd, and launched in.

“Um… hi,” I began. They nodded. Some looked
confused. “‘Hi’ is what folk said a hundred years ago,” I explained. Still they looked at me blankly. “It means ‘hello’. Want to try it?
Hi
.” Amazingly, they repeated. That gave me some confidence. “Then,” I went on, “people in the past might do a high-five as well, for a more friendly hello. Like this.” I smacked Robbie’s hand. The crowd laughed. Next thing they were all high-fiving each other. I started to relax. This might even be fun. “Round about here,” I said, gesturing to the pedestrian precinct, “is where guys used to do stuff like fire-eating and juggling. In the summer, like in the Edinburgh Festival, you would get loads of tourists and these fire-eaters and jugglers would perform. They could make a ton of money, but it was pretty dangerous.”

The crowd nodded. I could tell by their faces they were trying hard to understand. “Saul is speaking the way boys did a hundred years ago,” Robbie piped up, explaining.

“Totally,” I said, thinking I might as well ham it up and enjoy myself. Maybe I would be fine as a tour-guide. I swept down the Royal Mile with this crowd following me. I felt like the Pied Piper. The Royal Mile was prettier than in our time. It had trees growing in the middle of the road and big boxes planted with flowers. And there were really nice benches all over the place. “Of course, there were cars back then,” I said, stopping and pointing to the cobbled street. “And lorries and motorbikes and mopeds and vans, revving and hooting and puffing out exhaust smoke.” I whipped out the photo the Post Office Museum people had given me, and pointed to the Mini. Robbie looked really impressed. “As you can imagine,” I went on, “roads were really noisy.”

Robbie chimed in, “Then you might get a bus as well and a fire engine. Sirens make one serious racket. People
take cars everywhere. Honestly. Some people hardly walk anywhere.”

“
Walked
, he means.” I glared at him, then smiled back at my group. “Anyway, over here,” I pointed to the window of an old building, “used to be a fish and chip shop.”

I heard the man with the droopy moustache explain to a woman how people in the past loved eating fish and chips. I overheard him say his own grandfather used to be very fond of chips. “You could get them with salt and sauce or you could get them with vinegar,” I went on, “and a really long time ago you even got them wrapped up in newspaper. Now – I mean, a hundred years ago – you got your chips on a polystyrene plate.”

I know I was going on too long about chips but, like Robbie, I was hungry. I could practically smell them as I talked. By the way Robbie was nodding and agreeing with everything I said, I guessed he was aching for fish and chips too. “Believe it or not,” I said, “you could even buy something called a deep-fried Mars Bar.” My audience shook their heads. I could tell they had no idea what I was going on about. “Chocolate,” I explained, “deep fried.” Still they looked confused, so I guessed it was time to move the tour along.

I carried on down the street and they followed. “You’re doing brilliant,” Robbie whispered. “Just give it another five minutes then wrap it up. I’m starved.”

By this point we had come to the middle of the Royal Mile and I was sure there used to be a Games Workshop there. I had loads to say about that. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, feeling way more confident, “this very space here that is now,” I quickly read the sign, “a relaxation and foot-care zone, used to be a games shop. Like, you could actually come here and play battles with
little toys. I don’t just mean kids but adults too. They would do these major wars and stuff and it would go on for hours, even days. Then there were all the computer games…” I paused, waiting to see if they knew what a computer was.

“I have heard of them,” a woman said. People in the crowd nodded and murmured, as if they too had vaguely heard of computers.

“Of course,” I went on, “it was a very long time ago. Before the online shut down of…” I tried to remember what the man in the postal museum had said, “2059.”

Older people in the group nodded. “I recall it,” one elderly man said, nodding. “We had come to rely on this way of exchange and almost overnight it ended.”

“Yes, right then,” I said, needing to steer the topic on to something I kind of understood. “Mobile phones,” I practically shouted. I was on the point of producing mine, but decided against it. “Everybody had phones in the past,” I said. “People were glued to them. Texting. Taking selfies. Listening to music. You could play games and even watch a film on your phone.”

“He’s right,” Robbie piped up, nodding. “And it was easy to charge phones back in the past,” he said, wistfully.

I changed the subject again and quickly pointed towards the trees in the middle of the street. “Back then there were no trees. I mean, not on the Royal Mile. But loads of tourists came here in the summer. They came on planes. Or buses. And there were tons of people milling about, buying tartan hats. Lots of people went on ghost tours, and some people stood on the street strumming guitars and… busking with fiddles.” Like Agnes’s dad. I racked my brains, trying to think what else there was a hundred years ago. “And people wore
hoodies and T-shirts,” I said, pointing to my outfit. In the background Robbie was gesturing for me to wind it up. He was putting his hand to his mouth like he was eating and he was making huge chewing movements. I tried to think how to bring it all to an end. “So, yes, the past was a busy place. Cars and phones and shops and free Fringe shows and malls and chips, so, um, that’s it and thanks for coming on the tour.”

Robbie stepped in, acting like he was my boss. “Thanks a million, Saul. I loved it.” He beamed round to the crowd. He was putting on his American accent. “I’m sure you all just loved it too, ladies and gentlemen. We are Robbie and Saul History Tour-Guiding Company, and you’ve been great. Be safe now.”

People in the future, so I worked out, were polite. I doubt they got their money’s worth. My tour only lasted about fifteen minutes, but they smiled and nodded and started bowing. Robbie high-fived me, and the polite crowd high-fived each other, the way I had taught them. While they were still smacking each other’s hands, we ran off. We didn’t stop running until we were back at the marketplace behind the cathedral.

“You were totally awesome,” Robbie said, breathless and slapping me on the back. “I couldn’t believe when you went on about deep-fried Mars Bars. That really cracked me up.” He steered me over to the pod with the meat.

“Ten bits of that,” he said to the man at the meat pod, pointing to the dried meat strips. The man raised his eyebrows but unhooked the meat and counted out ten strips. That left his hook empty.

“Three sillers,” he said, and I fished three coins out of my pocket. It worked. He took the money, nodded at us and we got the meat.

I thought of the time-capsule tin, and how the dangling hook that had held the meat strips would surely get the lid off. The man noticed me staring at it. “And more?” he asked.

“Um…” I pointed to the hook. “Is that muckle hook for sale?” I spoke slowly, trying to sound like Ness.

The man scratched his head, stared at us, then shrugged, brought it down and handed it to me. “One sillar,” he said. I fumbled in my pocket, gave him one coin, then off I went with something that looked like Captain Hook’s hand.

“That’s some muckle weapon,” Robbie muttered, giggling.

It was too lethal to slip into my back pocket so I held it carefully, rolling my sleeve down over it. I couldn’t stop laughing. Now I really did look like Captain Hook. Then we sat on the steps of the cathedral, listening to strange music as we munched away on the super-tasty dried meat.

“I could stay here forever,” Robbie mumbled, his mouth stuffed with meat.

“And live in a tree house with wolves prowling about?”

Robbie just shrugged, as if he wasn’t afraid of wolves any more, like that whimpering boy last night wasn’t him. He tore into another meat strip, saying how it reminded him of chorizo. When he polished that off he said he couldn’t wait for his new clothes. “And I want a proper I-band,” he said, staring longingly at mine. He patted his head. “No offence, Saul, but I’m not too keen on wearing a ripped-up bit of your old T-shirt. Let’s find an I-band shop.” He looked around, as if one might miraculously appear. Then, feeling, I guess, all confident and well fed, he called out to a man nearby who was gazing up at the cathedral. “Excuse me, where’s the nearest I-band shop?”

The man looked us over suspiciously. “The hospital is on the outskirts of the city,” he said. I steered Robbie away from the cathedral steps and the Royal Mile. “I get the feeling, Robbie, there are some things in 2115 you can’t buy in shops. And anyway, we really need to head back. Ness is probably worried about us.”

“What do you reckon she wants to give us to take back?” I shrugged. I had been thinking about that too, but had no idea. “Reckon she’s going to give us I-bands, Saul?”

“Na, something historic probably.” I took Robbie by the arm and steered him towards the station, thinking it would be a clever move to stop our Edinburgh excursion while we were ahead.

“Shame,” Robbie said, looking wildly about as we hurried through Waverley Station, “that there’s nowhere to charge my phone.”

“Dream on Robbie.” I hauled him straight into a waiting train bound for the Borders.

We had survived futuristic Edinburgh and nothing terrible had happened. I plonked myself down in a soft seat and stretched out. “Maybe,” I said to Robbie as we clicked ourselves in and the train sped off, “when I leave school, I might go to drama college.”

“Good idea, Saul.” Robbie patted me on the back. “Cause you were brilliant.”

We made it back to Peebles without any major trouble. “First,” I said, “let’s run back to the tree house and open the tin.”

Robbie’s eyes lit up. “Then we can have a rest.”

“Then we can work in the field, actually. Helping to produce the food.” I waved the hook in the air.

“Ok,” he said, dodging backwards, “chill!”

We hurried through Hay Lodge Park, feeling buoyed up after our Edinburgh trip. I put the hook in my back pocket and climbed the oak tree carefully.

“Can you remember if we put any chocolate in the time capsule?” Robbie yelled, clambering behind me.

We slid into the tree house. Funny how a place can feel so quickly like home. “Na, we only put in things that wouldn’t rot.”

I snatched back the blankets. Robbie grabbed the tin, shook it and whatever was in there clunked about. I suddenly remembered how, only a few days back, I had added the picture of the Northern Lights.

“Amazing to think this is one hundred years old, eh?” Robbie said, brushing dirt off the sides.

I brought out the hook and sunk to my knees. “Right Robbie, you hold the tin tight and I’ll lever it open.”

He held it down and I jammed the edge of the hook
under the lid. It didn’t take long. “It’s budging!” I yelled, and next thing I fell back as the lid sprang open.

So it was Robbie who got a first view in. I was on my back trying not to stab myself. “Wow, my hair is still here, and there’s a photo of all of us, a pencil, and a pound coin, a tiny jar of honey, and a wee bottle of perfume. Hey, there’s a photo of the den, and a CD, a picture of fireworks, and a letter…”

“Not fireworks, and not perfume,” I said, now peering into the tin. Carefully I lifted out the bottle and showed him its little label.
Petrol from 2015.

“Cool!”

I brought out the picture of the Northern Lights and showed him that too. “The Aurora Borealis, Robbie.” I nudged him and grinned. “I meant to show you this a hundred years ago but you ran off. Sleeping out with the gang will be a walk in the park after what we’re doing now, eh?”

Robbie shrugged, like he still wasn’t convinced, and changed the subject. “What’s that?”

It was the letter from me and Agnes, written to the unknown people of the future. I fished for the time-capsule pencil, which, amazingly, was still sharp. I remembered how Agnes had sharpened it before she put it in. “You can add a wee bit,” I said, handing it to him. I unfolded the paper. It was crinkly and yellow but you could still read the words:

…
What we really love doing is hanging out in our den and having adventures and even though we are going to high school now (Monday to Friday) we’re still young, and can do stuff that adults don’t, like climb trees, go biking and make fires and talk. Sure adults talk, but not like we do. We talk about what we’re going to do when we grow up, and what the world 
is going to be like, so this is a letter to you in the future so you know what it was like in the past. We’ve got this brilliant den (an old shed – we call it Pisa – after the leaning tower of Pisa in Italy – cause it leans over a bit) and wilderness garden. It’s our secret, our wild place to play and hang out. We’ve got bikes and skateboards and loads of folk near Peebles go mountain biking and we listen to music on our I-pods (except some people play fiddle on the street!!) and loads of people watch TV and go on social media and play on their phones. It is a shame but some people don’t have fun. Some people don’t get enough to eat, and then there’s wars and bombs and people begging on the street. Agnes’s dad (the one who plays fiddle on the street) says it’s because some people are greedy and lazy. Robert Burns is our national poet and Christmas is our biggest day, then comes your birthday. The weather is ok, nice sometimes and cold sometimes. But when you’re having fun you don’t notice it too much. The best thing is having friends
…

This was Agnes’s handwriting. I had chipped in with stuff and she had written it down. I handed the letter to Robbie. “The paper is pretty fragile,” I said.

There was a small space at the bottom of the letter. I could see Robbie chewing his lip the way he does when he’s thinking hard. Then I couldn’t believe what he wrote:

We’re gonna sleep out in our wild garden and watch the Northern Lights. And it’s gonna be ace.

From Robbie the Brave!

I felt like hugging him when I read that. “Brilliant Robbie,” I said, folding the letter up and putting it back into the tin. I looked at him in the dim light of the tree house. “What I’m thinking is, we give this to Ness. So she’ll have something to talk about when she has to make her big speech. It’ll be like a present from our gang.
Are you ok with that?”

For a while Robbie didn’t say anything, then he unstrapped his fancy watch and dropped it into the tin. “She might like that too,” he said and laughed. “Ideal present to get from a couple of time travellers, eh?”