Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs

  Chapter 11

  Time Travelling

  So, that was how I agreed to become a time traveller. Lizzie told me what I had to do and I agreed. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so soft with girls. I was just too easy going. A push-over. It was different with boys. I stood my ground. If I didn’t want to do something, I said so. But with girls things became a little bit more complicated. I made a mental promise to be tougher with girls from now on. Especially with Lizzie and Beth. Dad had always said that girls were trouble and I was beginning to agree. I knew from experience how tricky some girls could be.

  A girl from my art class had once said that she fancied me. Using her two giggling friends as messengers, we planned to meet on Saturday morning at the bus-stop into town. I waited and waited. It was raining and two buses had already passed. I hung around for an hour. I was just about to give up and walk home when I saw them pass by in a car. They were talking together, pointing and were still giggling. They didn’t stop. Walking home I was embarrassed and angry, embarrassed that I had been made to look a prat, and angry at myself at having been fooled. I also couldn’t believe that anyone could do that. It was cruel. Word got around school and I had to take weeks of mickey-taking. Everytime the three girls saw me they would whisper together and, you guessed it, giggle. Why all that laughing? I didn’t find it funny. Beth and Kyle were brilliant, though. Beth even wanted to march up to them and give them a piece of her mind. But I persuaded her not too. I think Kyle learnt a lesson from me and stayed well away from girls after that. He didn’t want to get burned like I did. Which is another reason why I couldn’t believe he was falling for this Monique.

  Kyle was stupid like that.

  Lizzie suggested the following night, a Saturday, for my first visit to her house in 1946. And, like a fool, I had agreed.

  As soon as Lizzie had faded away into my green bedroom carpet, I thought about what I had agreed to.

  Almost right away I heard the cackle of the three girls from school.

  But there was more to this than just being made to look an idiot. The whole friendship with Elizabeth Raynor, unbelievable from the start, had always seemed unreal. I had gone along expecting to wake up one morning to find everything had been a dream. Just like in the films. But now things were getting a bit more awkward and scary. This special-powers thing was becoming a menace and the dream of the man in the small room had frightened me in lots of ways. I didn’t like what I had felt during the dream, and what it left me feeling afterwards wasn't nice either. It left me cold and clammy and sad. If dreams like these were part of my so-called special-powers, then I didn’t want them.

  I decided to confront Lizzie about this before I went anywhere.

  I mean, could I really skip back six or seven decades? By doing what? Just how am I meant to follow Lizzie into 1946? I had never thought to ask.

  Get a grip, Jay, for goodness sake.

  All these thoughts were banging and clashing about like a shopping trolley on a busy day at the supermarket. I heard Dad go to the loo then clump back to bed. I slid back under my duvet and my bare feet felt the coldness of the bed down there. I liked that. I liked finding the cold spots with my feet. I reached up and turned off my bedside lamp.

  Once more it seemed I had a dreamed enough for one night because I didn't have any more. When I eventually got to sleep, that is.

  Kyle called on Saturday morning but I put him off. I was too tired for football and when I closed the front door I went back to bed.

  Dad woke me up at 12.30. He had promised to go into work for the morning and wanted to see Mum in the afternoon. So he was busy.

  “Jay? Jay? Are you up yet?”

  Dad was standing at my bedroom door in paint-stained, dusty jeans and a green t-shirt. He smelled of oil and wood. I mumbled something in reply and opened my eyes.

  “C’mon, Jay,” insisted Dad, “if you’re not well again tell me. But if you’re OK let’s have you up.”

  He sounded a bit angry. It was unusual for me to be in bed this late on a Saturday morning (or afternoon, for that matter). The interrupted sleep and the dreams were having an effect on me and Dad seemed worried when he saw me tiredly chomping on cereal at the kitchen table.

  “Are you feeling alright, Jay?” he asked placing some clean nighties for Mum into a black sports bag.

  “Yeah,” I said around the side of a mouthful of rice crispies. “Just tired.”

  Dad thought for a minute then took a long hard look at me. “It seems the visit to the doctor didn’t solve anything.” He leant back against the worktop. “Is there anything else I should know about? Are you still having those dreams?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you sure, Jay? Cuz if you’re not we might think about those pills the doctor prescribed.”

  I swallowed the mouthful of soft, soggy rice I had placed in my mouth. Just for a moment, I thought about telling Dad the truth. But I thought about Lizzie’s missing brother and how I could help. Even though it might all turn out to be some sort of set-up I couldn’t let Lizzie down. Telling Dad would ruin the only chance Lizzie had of seeing her brother again. I thought about Mum and the dreaded D Word. If someone told me I could see my Mum again after she’d ‘passed-on’ then I would try everything in my power. I understood how Lizzie felt. She loved her brother and wanted him back and if I was an important piece of her jigsaw then I would help.

  If I could.

  So I shook my head and said that I was just worried about Mum, which was partly true.

  Then Dad asked if I wanted to go with him to the hospital but I said no, it was OK. I wanted to have a kick around with Kyle.

  That was a lie.

  Still, Dad seemed reassured and patted me on the back before he left for the hospital.

  “Everything’ll be fine, son. You’ll see.”

  I hope so.

  I was in bed and in my piranhas when Lizzie arrived. I really didn’t know what to expect so I’d decided to go to bed as normal just in case Lizzie was just another bad dream.

  But she wasn’t.

  I didn’t see her arrive and suddenly she was there, stood at the foot of my bed. I jumped out of my skin.

  “Lizzie!” I said, my heart in my mouth, “you’ve made it.”

  Lizzie put her wobbly, grey hand to her mouth and giggled. “Sorry about that.”

  I sat up in bed. Lizzie seemed nervous and agitated. She didn’t sit down on my computer chair as normal but stayed on her feet with her hands held together in front of her. There was an embarrassed silence. We both knew why but it was like an object we couldn’t get past. Talking about this ‘crossing-over’ had suddenly become a hurdle. Lizzie looked at her feet as they shifted greyly and I looked stubbornly at my football duvet.

  It was Lizzie who had the courage to speak first.

  “Well, are you ready?” she asked slowly. She wasn’t sure that I was and I had started to feel guilty for agreeing to do something I really didn’t want to do. It was the girl thing again. I just couldn't say know, even when I know I should have. I decided that I needed some answers before I went anywhere and, first and foremost, I wanted to be honest. And that’s why I said what I did.

  “Lizzie. I’m scared.”

  Lizzie seemed to come to life after this.

  “Oh, Jay,” she said, moving to the side of my bed, “please don’t be scared. There’s nothing to be scared about. We need you, Jay. We need you more than ever.”

  Again Lizzie seemed to want to reach out and touch me. But she didn’t. She just rested her arms on my football duvet.

  “Please don’t say you won’t help,” she said. “You promised.”

  “I know I did. But I need to know how I’m meant to help and…”

  “And what?”

  “Well, just how I’m I meant to cross-over into your world. And how do I know what to expect. I mean…does it hurt?”

  Lizzie giggled again. Girls and giggling. I was sick of it. I was getting defensive.


  “What? What’s so funny?”

  Lizzie saw that she was upsetting me and that she was putting my trust at risk. She stopped laughing.

  “No. There’s no pain. All you do is follow me and…hold my hand.”

  I flushed red. I don’t know why. I just did.

  “But what about when I get there? Where am I going? What will I have to do? And these special powers. What are they and how am I supposed to use them?”

  Lizzie took the white hanki from her cardigan pocket and ran it across the bottom of her nose, replaced it and took hold of the Jesus Christ on the cross around her neck. “I’m sorry. I haven’t explained properly have I? You’ve been dreaming a lot and, those voices you‘ve been hearing, they were mine and my family. Well, not voices exactly. They were our thoughts. You haven’t been hearing our voices. You’ve been hearing our thoughts. I knew you could hear us because I knew you were visiting us.”

  I stopped her. “I’ve never gone through time and visited anybody. How did you work that one out?”

  Lizzie looked confused. “Work what out?”

  I forgot. She didn’t understand 21st century talk. “Sorry. I mean what do you mean ‘visited you’? I’ve never visited you. How?”

  “In your dreams. My Dad saw you.”

  “Saw me? Where?”

  “In your dream you were sat on the floor by the dining table in our front room. Dad saw you.”

  I suddenly made the link between what Lizzie was trying to describe and the dream I kept having. The one with the old man I had told Dad and Dr Meen about. It made sense and explained why the room looked ‘old’. I had visited 1946 in my dream. Amazing!

  “Your Dad saw me?” I said to Lizzie. “But he never looked at me once. I never saw his face. How did he know?”

  Lizzie shrugged.

  “Dad just knows. He’s got special powers too. He talks to the people who have crossed-over. I think you were still invisible. A ghost from the future. But he knew you were there. He could sense you. He can do things like that.”

  “So your Dad’s psychic then?”

  “I know what that means,” replied Lizzie. “Yes. He is. Sometimes people come to the door and ask Dad to contact relatives that have passed-on.”

  I was really interested now. I loved that sort of stuff.

  “And does he?” I asked her. “Does he contact the dead?”

  “He does what he can.” Then Lizzie looked at me sternly. “But they’re not dead, Jay. Just ‘passed over.”

  “Passed-over where?”

  “To the next life, silly.”

  “But where’s that?” I still wasn’t getting the answers I wanted.

  Lizzie just shrugged. “Who knows.”

  I thought about the D word and ghosts and things like that. “But I’m somebody from the future. I haven’t passed-over yet. In fact, in your time, I don’t even exist. So how come he got in touch with me and somehow got into my dreams? Or how did I get into his? Oh, I don’t understand.”

  “I just know that Dad knew there was someone in this house who could help. Someone that had powers like us. And whether they come from the past, present or future doesn’t really matter.”

  That made sense although I was still trying to digest all this information. She seemed to be saying that I was a psychic too. I was sure she was wrong. That she'd got the wrong person. But if I was psychic, if I did have 'special powers,' then how would I help?

  So I asked Lizzie.

  “That’s easy,” she said, “you already know where Ernie is.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. You’ve seen him in your dream.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes.”

  I knew I had. I'd seen him in the small room with the window and the laughing people outside.

  Lizzie rested her chin on arms already folded together on my bed. She looked up at me and there was silence while I thought things through.

  After a bit she spoke. “So? Are you still coming?”

  I expected this and I knew I would have to give it a go. To be honest I was sure that nothing would happen. I would hold Lizzie’s hand or whatever and I would find that I couldn’t go back in time and that would be that. I would stay firmly stuck in the future and that would be the end of the it all.

  Time travel? Pretty unlikely.

  I looked at Lizzie, shimmering grey by my bed.

  “I’ll give it a go.”

  A smile spread across Lizzie’s face and I smiled weakly back. Lizzie got up from beside my bed and moved to the end of the room, where the stairs used to be. Or, in Lizzie’s case, still were. I got out from under my duvet and stood shyly in my piranhas. Lizzie put a hand to her mouth and giggled. I looked down at myself. I looked ridiculous.

  “Hadn’t you better get dressed?”

  So I got dressed while Lizzie turned her back. Pants, socks, jeans, T-shirt and trainers. I was horrified that Lizzie might turn around thinking I’d finished and catch me half-dressed. But she didn’t and I had to tell her twice to turn around when I’d finished. She was still smirking and a bit embarrassed. But then she was younger than me. At one point I heard Dad go to the loo as he did at 2 AM most nights. Lizzie reminded me that, while she was there, it was impossible for Dad to hear us. She wanted to prove this by shouting ‘help’ at the top of her voice. But I said no. I didn’t want to risk it.

  When I felt I was ready I stood beside my bed. I was more than nervous. Lizzie was stood quietly at the other end of the room with her feet together and her hands held in front of her. For a short while we looked at each other. Then Lizzie smiled and held out her right hand for me to take. Once again this was the signal for me to blush as red as a Roman candle. I was still convinced that nothing would happen.

  But what if it did? I still didn’t know what to expect. I felt I needed to know so I stayed where I was. Lizzie’s smile vanished and her welcoming hand dropped. She looked confused. I felt guilty again.

  “What will happen?” I asked her politely. “Where will we go?”

  “You’ll feel nothing. All you’ll do is walk down these set of stairs.” She nodded at the floor. “Right to the bottom. You’ll find yourself in my kitchen next door to the front room. You know the front room don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Just don’t let go until we’re at the bottom.”

  This was it then. I walked forward and my eyes met Lizzie’s. Her eyes were a pair of quivering black circles. They had no colour, just grey and black. And she didn’t blink. Despite her age I trusted her. I wanted to help.

  Still looking at me she took my left hand in her right. She felt soft and warm. I was surprised. I thought ghosts were meant to be cold.

  Lizzie smiled. “C’mon then.”

  Slowly we moved towards my bedroom wall and I found myself suddenly staring down a set of steep stairs. Stairs? Where did they come from? I stopped Lizzie from going any further as I took them in. The stairs were covered in faded red carpet and the walls on either side had wooden hand-rails and were covered in white patterned wallpaper. Stranger still was that one leg of my computer table was resting on nothing. Just thin air. I looked nervously from the stairs to Lizzie then back again.

  Lizzie tugged at my hand and softly murmured, “C’mon then.” She must have known how scared I was. It was no use. I couldn't hide it.

  I hesitated but then took a first step. Then a second step. Then a third. Nope. Lizzie was right. I felt nothing. I gripped Lizzie’s small hand tighter and continued my slow journey down. As I did so there were other changes I recognised. First of all there was the smell. My bedroom had smelt reasonably clean (although it didn’t always smell like that) but now there was a musty and damp smell that made me turn up my nose. A smell like old books or things brought down from the attic. The temperature also dropped and the sounds suddenly changed. But at this point I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.

  The biggest change though was in me.

  As I approached a
curve in the bottom of the flight of stairs I noticed that the hand and arm that was holding on tightly to Lizzie had become tracing paper grey. At the same time Lizzie herself had turned completely into colour and I noticed her as if for the first time. The beret on her head and her cardigan were both the same colour red. Her skirt was grey but her long socks white and her strapped shoes a kind of scuffed purple. Her pigtails were a light brown and her complexion much like my own. I was fascinated by her and by myself. I must have looked frightened as Lizzie told me not to worry, told me that fear was normal when crossing-over.

  We reached the foot of the stairs and I stopped and stared through an opening into what seemed to be a kitchen. Before I took the final step down I looked back up into my room. But it had gone. All that stood at the top of the stairs now was an old white wooden door.

  And the door was shut.

  Lizzie still looked at me and held my hand. “Don’t let go,” she whispered and led me into the kitchen.

  The kitchen wasn’t that big. It was about as big as ours is now and it was light and creamy. But it was very different to ours in lots of ways. For instance there was a big fireplace on one wall that was obviously ready for use because there was paper and wood placed in it ready for lighting. There was a big, square white sink under a small window. To my right what seemed to be a big, blue cooker. There was some faded patterned rugs on the floor which covered a plastic surface. In the middle of the kitchen a table and four chairs. The table had a white tablecloth placed neatly over it with blue stripped crockery placed on top of that, things for making tea: a milk jug; a teapot with some sort of jumper on it; a sugar bowl as well as other bits and bobs. And hanging from the ceiling? What was that? A wooden rack was suspended up near the black electric cable with its bare light bulb. Another quick glance around the room and there was a cupboard door and a white cabinet that had a kind of worktop pulled down. There was a loaf of bread on it. And the air smelled of a mix of stale bread and fried bacon. Back in my time our kitchen usually smelt clean and fresh.

  Although I might have been thinking of when Mum was home.

  There didn’t seem to be anybody about so I stood near the table and looked around. No doubt about it, the room was definitely a kitchen but it looked and smelled old. It was like nothing I’d ever seen or smelt before. Everything seemed so basic and clunky. My eye was drawn to a light switch, so sleek in our time, but here big, round and black. And there were cracks in the ceiling.

  I’m was still assuming that we were in the past. It felt and looked like it, so I continued to believe it.

  The suddenly I realised that I still held Lizzie’s hand so I looked at her. She was now coloured-in as if by a magic crayon.

  “Can I let go now?” I asked as politely as possible.

  “Yes,” Lizzie nodded, and giggled.

  “What now?” I couldn’t believe she was laughing at me. She could see what I was going through.

  “It’s just…”

  “Just what?”

  “Just that… when you talk… nothin’ comes out ‘til a second or two later. It looks funny.” And she giggled again.

  “Right. I’m letting go. Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “One, two, and…”

  I thought I would explode away or disappear into dust or something, so letting go of Lizzie was harder than I thought. It took quite a bit of courage. But I did eventually, gradually, and not quite on three. Then I looked around again.

  At the kitchen.

  In 1946.

  I tried to keep calm and cool, as if this sort of thing happened every day.

  “So,” I nodded slowly, still looking around, “this is your pad, huh?”

  Lizzie glanced at me like I had suddenly sprouted an extra head. “I beg your pardon?”

  I quickly corrected myself. “I mean, this is where you live, is it?”

  Lizzie frowned at me. “Funny. You sounded American.”

  “Sorry.” I did. I don’t know why.

  “Don’t be sorry,” said Lizzie in an even better American accent, heading towards a sliding door, “it’s neat.”

  That made me smile.

  With a rumble the sliding door moved along and I moved forward peering into the new room as I went.

  It was then that I realised that there was nothing new to see. I had seen everything in that room before. It was the room with the net curtains, the brown sofa and the cream cabinets and plates, the paintings of the hunt, the portrait, the black stand and the ashtray on top.

  It was the room from my dream.

  This made me stop and catch my breath. I’ve had déjà vu before. You know, when you do something or see something and you get the feeling you’ve done it or seen it before. In fact, I’ve probably experienced it more than most. Some people I swear I’ve met before. Like the old man opposite Mum in the hospital. Why did he stare at me like that?

  What was I thinking? My head was swimming and I felt dizzy. Learning that you were psychic, going back in time and having déjà vu all in a few hours was a lot to handle. Lizzie saw the look on my face. Suddenly I didn’t want to be in 1946 anymore. And another thing. Would I ever get my colour back?

  I decided I needed a glass of water and a sit down.

  “I need to sit down.”

  Lizzie led me to the brown sofa with arm protectors like my gran used to have. She sat me down.

  “And some water,” I added, “I must have some water.”

  I realised that I sounded like a sailor, adrift at sea for a hundred days. Give or take. In other words I sounded like a bit of a wimp.

  Lizzie went to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. I heard the stiff turning of one of the big silver taps and a heavy run of water into the kitchen sink. In the near-quiet I realised there were voices drifting in through an open window. The front room window. The window where the nets still moved and whispered together. I also heard the shouts of children nearby and the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves in the distance.

  Then Lizzie returned with some water in a teacup of white china. I took it from her and raised it to my lips with grey hands. Stopped. I looked up at Lizzie. “It won’t poison me will it? I mean, it is drinking water?”

  Lizzie giggled again. “Silly. Of course it is.” This was said in a teacherly way. So much so that I knew what she was going to be when she was older.

  The water tasted a little different, but it was cold and it was water.

  “Ta,” I thanked Lizzie as I passed back the cup.

  “You should be grateful,” she said, “it’s my Mum’s best china.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  Lizzie then went over to the window. She moved one of the nets to one side and peered briefly out. I caught a glimpse of terraced houses opposite. Grey, old-style windows, nets and curtains. 1946. It was still hard to believe. Then Lizzie let the nets fall back and they fell back to whispering, blocking my view.

  “Are you feeling better?”

  I nodded. “What now?”

  “I think,” Lizzie said, her chest puffing with pride, “I think you should meet my father.”

  “Your Dad?” I was suddenly startled again. “Now? How? Why?”

  “Don’t be a scaredy-cat,” Lizzie sniggered, “he won’t hurt you.”

  Then a door in another room closed with a clunk and I knew that I had no choice.

  I don’t know why but I started to shake. If I still held the cup and saucer I would have rattled the cup off and onto the front room carpet. I followed the sound of muffled footsteps with my eyes. They were moving slowly beyond the front room wall, more or less the same way we had entered. So, any second now and the sliding door through to the kitchen would be heaved aside and I would be faced with Lizzie’s Dad.

  What do I say to him? How would I explain how I got here? He might phone the police. I could be taken away and…

  I couldn’t think about the consequences. It was too much. Why had I been persuaded to come
here? And by a little girl?

  These thoughts tumbled around and about my head like socks in a washing machine. It was too late now but why hadn’t I thought about this earlier.

  But then the slow clump of footfalls moved off into the kitchen and I was given a few moments to think. Lizzie moved beside me. She folded her arms across her chest, frowned then tutted loudly.

  “I don’t believe it. He’s gone to make a cup of tea.”

  Before I could explain that I didn’t mind not meeting her Dad, Lizzie had marched to the white sliding door and thrown it across and it clunked loudly against its stop. I heard a muffled voice from the kitchen and Lizzie said something in reply. Something I couldn’t quite catch.

  I was sat nervously fidgeting, still shaking, when Lizzie came back into the room. She was smiling. “He‘s coming in.”

  I stood up and looked at the space left by the sliding door. Now I was really scared. I don’t know what I expected. I knew what Lizzie’s Dad looked like from the back but I had never looked into his eyes. And he’d never looked into mine.

  I certainly didn’t expect the man that suddenly walked in from the kitchen.