Nicking Time (12 page)

We’re sitting in the den passing round a bottle of American cream soda that is nearly done. Our talk today is serious.

“I’ve never known anybody that’s died,” says Bru.

“Yeah, you have,” says Hector. “D’you not remember Skooshie’s cousin’s other gran?”

Skooshie pauses in draining the last dregs of ginger from the bottle to contribute, “Yeah – her,” then up-ends the bottle into his mouth again.

“Well, we never met her,” says Bru. “Skooshie’d never even met her. But we met Mr Murphy – remember that day when he grabbed Lemur and had a go at him? We actually knew him quite well.”

“It is spooky,” agreed Hector. “Where is Lemur anyway?”

We were never there before him. “Must be planning a big entrance,” I say.

“Oh,” says Skooshie. “Should I have left him some cream soda? Ah well, never mind.” He puts the empty bottle down. “Talk of the devil, here he is.”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Just out and about. Then I went to get you, Midge.”

He glances at me. This is to make up for the other day, the Mr Murphy day. And I’ve just announced to everybody that he’s only late to be the centre of attention, which makes me feel a bit pish as a pal.

“You weren’t in – but your sister was. She’s really annoying, isn’t she? She bombarded me with questions.”

“What about?”

“Ghosts, dens… and school uniforms?”

Hector snorts. “Girls. Totally off their heads.”

There’s no space for Lemur on the cushions. He gets down on the ground, lying flat out and closing his eyes.

“Been running?” asks Hector.

“No. Just tired. What’s happening?”

“I’ve got news,” I say.

“About that Mr Murphy,” says Skooshie before I can get started. “Remember that man in Midge’s flats that was shouting and accusing you?”

“Oh, him. What about him?”

“He’s dead!” says Hector.

“When?”

“Last night,” I say loudly. This is my news and I’m not having them hijack it.

“So?”

“Well, we were just saying we don’t know that many people who have died. So it’s news.”

“How did he die?”

“Midge jumped out at him when the lift opened and gave him a heart attack.”

“Shut up, Hector. My mum says he died because he was lonely.”

“People don’t die because they’re lonely,” says Skooshie. With five brothers and sisters, Skooshie does not believe that loneliness exists.

“That’s probably true,” I admit. “My dad says he was just old.”

“So, he was an old man and he died.” Lemur shrugs.

This was my news and we were enjoying it before Lemur blundered in. Even though he’s lying down and not bouncing around like usual, somehow he still does actually manage to make himself the centre of attention. Plus I’m surprised at his reaction. I’d thought Lemur would care. It’s like the conversation we had the other day about Mr Murphy never happened. Like Lemur never visited him, never saw Mr Murphy crying. I’m so annoyed I hunch over and poke the ground, like I’ve discovered something really interesting down there.

And so I miss the start of it. By the time I tune in again there’s a heated debate in full flow.

“Every four years,” Bru’s saying. “Every year is 365 and a quarter days long. The extra quarters add up to a day every four years. So there’s a leap year every four years. Like this year.”

“No, you’re wrong there,” says Hector. “Because a year is a bit
less
that 365 and a quarter days – just a toaty bit less. But over time that adds up. So some years when you’re expecting a leap year, it doesn’t happen.”

“Like when?” Skooshie’s very doubtful. “I’ve been watching out for leap years ever since I was born and they’ve never missed one yet. Every four years, regular as clockwork, like Bru says.”

“So how many have you lived through?” says Hector,
less than impressed by the vastness of Skooshie’s experience.

Skooshie does a bit of discreet counting on his fingers. “This will be my fourth. Wait a minute… I was born in 1964 but
after
the 29th of February – does that one still count?”

There’s a general feeling that it does, that if there had been no leap day in the year of Skooshie’s birth, somebody in his family would have mentioned it to him.

“OK – four, and they haven’t missed one.”

“They don’t skip them that often,” Hector explains. “Just three times every four hundred years.”

“So how do you know when they’re going to skip one?” asks Bru.

“It’s the years ending in zero zero, when the century changes. You don’t count three of them. So 1700, no leap year. 1800, no leap year. 1900, no leap year. 2000 leap year.”

“So the 29th of February, 1900 didn’t exist?” I say, because I’ve forgotten to still be annoyed. “Weird.”

“No one was expecting it to,” says Lemur, who’s now propped up on one elbow and looking a bit livelier. “But there was a time when some days people were waiting for were actually lost.”

“Lost?”

“Where?”

“How?”

“Well, a long time ago, they used to think like Bru – that you needed a leap year every four years. The extra days started adding up and making a difference. They realised that meant the link between the year and the seasons was getting broken. The date was slipping
behind the season. By the eighteenth century, when the calendar said the 25th of March, the weather said the 6th of April.”

“So if they’d kept going like that, we’d have ended up with Christmas in the summer?”

“Eventually,” says Lemur.

“Like in Australia,” says Hector, knowingly. His cousins live in Australia so he’s something of an authority on the place.

“Would we have got kangaroos as well?”

Hector opens his mouth to respond to Skooshie’s question but Lemur’s not for any more interruptions. “So they decided,” he continues loudly, “to change the calendar and miss out some days so the dates and the seasons matched again.”

“How did that work?”

“In 1752 on the 2nd of September everyone went to sleep. And when they woke up, it was the 14th of September.”

“So those days – the 3rd to the 13th – they just didn’t exist?”

“No – they were lost.”

“That’s so weird… Can you imagine what that would feel like?”

“Some people thought the days had been stolen from them,” says Lemur. “There were riots in the street!”

“People protesting that they wanted their eleven days back?”

“Yes – weren’t they stupid?”

“Were they school days?” asks Bru. “
I
wouldn’t be asking for those back!”

“They were just days,” says Lemur. “What use were they? The people went to sleep, they woke up and it was later than they thought it would be. So what?”

“Well, what if something important fell on those days? My birthday’s on the 10th of September – I’d’ve missed it.”

“Yeah, it’s not just the days that were lost. It’s everything that might have happened on them.”

“The same things just happened a few days later,” says Lemur.

“Not in the same way. Take Hector’s birthday. It just wouldn’t feel the same celebrating it on the 14th.”

“It
is
like having time nicked from you.”

“Time’s just time,” says Lemur. “It didn’t belong to them. How could it be stolen?”

He’s getting red in the face. I can sense that no one’s going to back down on this one. It could go on forever.

Then Bru comes to the rescue. “They were time thieves, you know,” he says, his voice mysterious. “They didn’t nick the days to fix the calendar. They nicked them to cover up what really happened then – things so strange that they couldn’t allow anybody to remember them. It’s been a secret for all this time. We’re the only ones to have worked it out. And we owe it to the world to remember the things that actually happened, the things they tried to hide. You first, Midge.”

I could see where he was going with this and I’m ready.

“You might have asked yourself whether the Loch Ness Monster is actually real…”

“Too right she’s real!” hoots Skooshie, and he’s backed up by a general hullaballoo of agreement.

“Well, you might have asked yourself what Nessie looks like…”

“Like this!” Skooshie, Bru and Hector do a three-man impersonation (or should that be im-monster-ation?) of Nessie, arching up out of the water. The sound effects are impressive: a cross between a tyrannosaurus rex in a bad mood and a zombie pig.

“Cool… Well, have you ever wondered how she got into Loch Ness?”

“That I have asked myself,” Skooshie admits.

“Then let me tell you. It all happened on the 3rd of September, the first day to be nicked by the time thieves. At this time, Nessie lived in the River Clyde.”

“The Clyde? Here in Glasgow? Isn’t Loch Ness miles away?”

“Yeah, Midge, it definitely is.”

“Maybe she got out and ran cross-country for part of it—”

“Will you just SHUT UP and LISTEN?”

“We’re listening!” This in an aggrieved tone, like I’m being unreasonable.

“Her mother had been the very last of the dinosaurs – and before you ask, it was a type of dinosaur that hasn’t been discovered yet. (Hey, Dinosaur Discoverer – that’d be such a cool job! I might put that on my list.) Anyway, she’d managed to hide an egg at the bottom of the Clyde. It stayed hidden for hundreds and thousands of years. Then one day there was a thaw after a freezing cold winter and the egg hatched…

“Nobody suspected the baby dinosaur was in the river. She ate fish and things like oranges that fell off the boats (she was especially keen on oranges), and she grew bigger and bigger. And at the same time the Clyde got busier and busier.

“So, there was Nessie, minding her business, just chasing a big juicy fish. In her excitement she bobbed up a bit too close to a boat. There was a shout – she’d been seen! They were after her! Some wanted to capture her, so they could sell her to a circus. Others wanted to kill her and make her into Nessie burgers.”

“Aw, no!” says Skooshie, looking really anxious, even though he’s got a fairly clear idea of how this one’s going to end.

“She swam like she’d never swum before, desperate to escape. But in her panic she went inland instead of out to sea. The river got narrower and shallower, too shallow for Nessie – her front legs hit the riverbed. She couldn’t swim any further! And she was too big and heavy to outrun them. But she didn’t give up, not for a minute – because Scottish dinosaurs don’t. There was one more thing she could try. Pushing up off her strong back legs, she reached for the sky. To the astonishment of everybody watching, the webbing on her front legs meant they worked as wings! There was nothing the chasers could do – just try and steady their boats against the blasts of wind from Nessie’s flapping as she soared up into the sky and away.”

“Yeah! Go, Nessie!”

“She flew until she found a nice big, deep loch to settle in. And that’s where she’s been since 1752. And
sometimes she likes to play games by popping her head above the water and shouting, ‘
Yoo hoo
!’ to people with cameras on the banks.”

“Good one, Midge…”

“My turn! On the 4th of September the people were awoken by a weird storm. The sky was raining Irn-Bru and throwing down hailstones made out of marshmallows…”

We talk on as the day disappears into the dark. There are so many fantastic impossible things to describe that really we could’ve easily filled a whole month of nicked days.

“Do you fancy,” asks Lemur the next afternoon, “taking part in a ritual?” He’s leaning back against the big tree in the den. He’s the only one of us who looks like a normal human being at the moment. We’ve retired to the den because the heat outside is too much and the rest of us are red-faced and probably about to keel over with heatstroke. It might have been a better idea to schedule the Rolling Down the Hill competition for a cooler part of the day.

“Not now,” pants Hector, with his eyes still closed.

“Do we have to move?” groans Bru.

“What’s a ritual?” says Skooshie, raising his head from the floor to show polite interest – then letting it crash back down because it’s too heavy.

Lemur leans forward, his pale face lit with excitement.

“It’s a kind of ceremony, a special kind of ceremony.”

“Like a wedding?” Skooshie is propped on one elbow now and looking anxious.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s a leap-year surprise for you. She’s a lovely girl, Skooshie. You’re going to like being married!”

The look of horror on Skooshie’s face is priceless.
A few moments of loud amusement – all at Skooshie’s expense – is enough to revive us all.

“Not a wedding, Skoosh,” says Lemur, giving him a reassuring thump. Skooshie looks very relieved. “Something important. Maybe the most important thing you have ever done in your life.”

We are now all ears.

“Remember the story I told you about how the Lorredan brothers died? And how Christy Lorredan couldn’t ever leave this place? Well, I’ve been thinking about how we could help him.”

“Brilliant!” says Skooshie, a bit too enthusiastically.

“What would we do?” asks Bru.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter what we do,” says Lemur. “It’s the fact that we make it up together. It’s got to be all of us to make it work. What do you think?”

So we pool what we know about rituals and pick out the bits that sound most fun. Skooshie’s well up for it. He liked the words “make it up” and, now we’re all pitching in with ideas, seems to feel pretty sure this
is
a game and not a detour into the dark and spooky netherworld.

“Right,” says Hector. “So far we’ve got:

    1. Masks

    2. Chants

    3. Dancing

    4. Drums

    5. Food.”

“Masks,” says Bru thoughtfully. “Like Hallowe’en masks?”

“What about making our own?” I say. I dip my fingers in the dust of the den floor and smear it on my cheeks to
leave dirty streaks. “That looks good,” says Hector.

“The very ground they died on,” murmurs Bru. Skooshie, fortunately, doesn’t hear this.

“Any suggestions for chants?”

Lemur picks up a stick and looks around. He finds an empty Jaffa Cake box. He starts to hit the stick against the box, settling into a rhythm:
SMACK
,
tap-tap-tap, SMACK, tap-tap-tap, SMACK, tap-tap-tap
. And he starts to chant, so softly at first that we can’t make out what he’s saying. The hitting, the chanting get louder, then it’s clear: “
TIME to go now! TIME to go now! TIME to go now!
”

We all join in for a bit of a practice, dancing in a circle round the den, until Lemur gets bored and throws down the stick and box. “We’ll need better drums obviously,” he says.

“Skooshie and I know where we can get drums,” says Hector.

“Great. Dancing – I think that’ll fall into place once we’ve got the drums.”

“OK. And for the food, everybody just bring something?” says Bru.

“Sounds good,” I say. “When are we doing this?”

“Tomorrow,” says Lemur. He makes his voice scary. “Tomorrow… at midnight.”

“Midnight?” We all stare at him like he’s gone mad.

“It’ll be scarier if it’s dark,” he says.

“Yeah, but one small drawback,” says Hector. “We’ll all be in bed, asleep.”

“No way I’ll be allowed out at night,” says Bru.

“Your mum and dad would let you do that, Lemur?” I ask.

He laughs. “Of course not. I meant let’s sneak out.”

I don’t know what Lemur’s house is like, but you’d think he’d’ve paid a bit of attention when he was in my house or Bru’s.

“What do you suggest, that I climb out my bedroom window and dreepy down the wall?” I say. “The only way out of my house is down the hall, right past my mum and dad’s bedroom door. If Bru was lying in his own bed at home, with the blankets over his head, my mum could still hear him picking his nose.” (Bru looks suitably impressed.) “You think she’s not going to hear me unlocking our house door, then opening all the landing doors, then creeping down the stairs?”

“If you can’t, you can’t,” says Lemur with a shrug. “After dinner then?”

“Oh, and Midge,” he adds, as we wander down May Terrace on our way home. “Not a word to Kit about this. It’s got to be a secret. You don’t want to make her curious.”

“I wasn’t going to tell her,” I say. “Why did you think I would tell her?”

“Just don’t,” he says. “Not this time.”

Then he’s gone, before I have time to react to the total injustice of being branded the unreliable one.

We’d decided it would be a good idea to get everything in place early so we meet up at the den first thing in the morning.

I’ve brought a bottle of water.

“Is that all?” asks Bru, looking disappointed. He’s been waving a packet of giant marshmallows in my face. I suspect his mum might not yet know that these are missing.

“It’s for the masks,” I say.

“What??”

I unscrew the top and pour a trickle onto the ground. I scratch up some dust with a stick and mix it to a smooth mud. I stick my finger in this and draw a big dirty line down Bru’s nose. “For the masks,” I say. He grins. He looks like a crazy, ginger, pint-sized warrior.

“Magic!” he says.

Hector and Skooshie appear with a huge empty tin under each arm. Skooshie is also wearing one on his head. The tins say:

YELLOW CLING PEACHES

Slices in Heavy Syrup

and bring a sticky, sweet smell into the den. There’s a sticky, sweet smell about Skooshie for the rest of the day too.

“We got them out the bin behind the Chinese restaurant,” Hector explains. “They’ve always got loads of them.”

We wonder if it’s possible to attach some kind of strap to the tins, so we can carry them as we dance around. Skooshie has the idea that we could make holes in the bottom and the sides with a tin-opener, then thread string through the holes. But as we don’t have a
tin-opener
or any string, we decide to keep it simple. We find five sticks of more or less the same size. We turn the tins upside down and hit them to test the sound. It’s
good. We also tear off the cling peaches labelling round each tin, to make them look more spooky ritual and less Chinese restaurant bin.

Finally it’s ready. Mudpool prepared (might need topping up with a bit more water later if the day’s hot – I leave the bottle beside it). Food piled under one of the drums for safety, and the drum dragged under the shade of the tree for maximum coolness. We’ve got the marshmallows (brought by Bru), a packet of Hula Hoops (from Skooshie), a poke of big, red raspberries (Lemur), a Curly Wurly (Hector) and a tin of Creamola foam, lemon flavour (that’s from me – I’ve even remembered to bring a spoon to prise open the tin and measure out the crystals fairly and to the correct strength).

All the organising has taken ages.

“What’s the time?” Skooshie asks Hector hopefully.

Hector glances at his watch. “Half past nine.”

“So we’ve been here twenty minutes?” I say.

“Could we not just do it now?” asks Bru.

“No!” says Lemur. “It’s
got
to be later. It won’t work otherwise. We agreed it would be evening.”

“OK, OK, keep your knickers on,” says Skooshie.

“Well, we’re going to have to find
something
to do for the rest of the day,” I say.

That’s easier said than done. The day passes slowly, slowly, slowly…

We can’t settle to anything. We take turns making half-hearted suggestions and turning them down. We
loll on the grass and try to play Skooshie’s Game but all the things we think of are rubbish. They get so rubbish that thinking up rubbish questions becomes the point of the game. “What’d you choose: to be an octopus or a Mars Bar?” “Have two noses or four ears?” “Be able to fight like a kitten or sing like a kangaroo?”

Which was quite funny.

For a while.

“What are they doing?” says Lemur, standing up and peering down at a load of kids massing between the flats. Kit’s in the middle of them.

“Usual wee kid stuff,” says Hector.

“Let’s go and see,” says Lemur. And he’s up and off before we can object.

The place is teeming with kids. Really. I don’t know where they’ve all come from. It’s like nobody is inside or on holiday – they’re all out here.

We approach, interrupting a debate about teams.

“Are you playing rounders?” Lemur asks.

Kit waves the bat she’s holding in his direction.

“No, we use this for skipping.”

The posse of wee girls surrounding her giggles. The boys in the group marvel at her bravery and lack of respect.

“Let us play.”

“Well, I don’t know…”

“C’mon. Let us.”

“Aw, let them, Kit!” say some of the boys.

And then they’re all at it. “Let them, Kit, let them! They’re big – it’ll be fun.”

Lemur steps forward, the kids moving out of his way.
He says something to Kit that we don’t hear. She looks at him, her eyes narrowed.

“OK,” she says. “But you’ll need to do as you’re told. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“What did you say to her?” I ask Lemur as Kit starts organising people into teams.

“That she wasn’t very good at rounders. That she wasn’t letting us play because she was scared we’d show her up.”

He gives an evil grin. And not for the first time, we realise how clever he is.

“Hey, listen!” Kit shouts to get everybody’s attention. “Teams: girls against boys!”

Which is met with a roar of approval.

“That was… fun,” says Skooshie, much subdued, when we leave the place of battle an hour later.

“Yeah,” we agree.

“But never again?”

“Oh, no, never again!”

“Those wee girls were vicious!”

“I was nearly concussed by that one throwing the bat over her shoulder when she started running.”

“And look at this bruise on my side – well, it’ll be a bruise tomorrow. She wasn’t even aiming for base – she threw it
right at me
.”

“And such bad winners,” says Bru in a shocked tone. “I didn’t know wee girls knew words like that…”