The Magic of Endings, page 9
But it was not the beach. There was no ice cream parlour like Jojo had heard was there nowadays. (And maybe, in some fleeting memory, could picture – pink-and-white striped parasols, a giant whippy cone with a flake. He could almost taste the ice-cream.) On this beach there was just a line of old beach huts. Lost in the past, Aunt Pen had said. Jojo knew where they were but not when they were.
Across the beach, Ricco chased Trevor, laughing and leaping, still wearing his pyjamas.
‘This won’t do, will it?’ said Aunt Pen. She wrinkled her nose, blinked and in a flash of light, all were dressed for a day at the beach. Jojo looked from Ricco’s shorts and sandals to his own. Not just shorts, swimming shorts.
Aunt Pen looked unsteady on her feet for a moment. ‘Jojo,’ she said and reached out a hand. Jojo had seen this gesture before, from Grandma. He put out his arm to let Aunt Pen steady herself on him.
She was definitely ageing. Before their eyes, the ancient faerie was growing ever older.
Jojo looked from his faerie godmother out across the beach.
They were not alone on the beach. There was a couple strolling toward them, a group sat with their backs to the dunes, a man walking a dog, clouds of smoke escaping from around his head. None of them seemed to notice the door, standing open on the rocks.
‘Ricco,’ Jojo called. ‘Come back.’
‘If ever I heard something silly shouted, it was that,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘Might as well try to call the moon into your pocket as call your brother back from running around on the sand.’
‘But you said—’
‘I know what I said. But we can see him now. He isn’t going anywhere, is he? Let him have some fun. And we can—’
Aunt Pen had stopped. Not because Jojo had interrupted her in return. But because Grandad was now heading out across the sands too. Not toward the sea. Not toward Ricco. But toward two figures picking their way down the beach, pulling a red boat on some sort of trailer.
‘Oh,’ said Aunt Pen, ‘I think this is what we’re here for.’
‘Is that...’ Jojo whispered, for he didn’t seem able to catch his breath. ‘Is that... is that my dad?’
The Girl with Red Hair
Wait,’ called Aunt Pen. Not after Ricco. She wasn’t worried about him, running, whooping, dancing with Trevor around his ankles. She called after Grandad. She called and she chased after him, hobbling along, dragging Jojo with her.
‘Mr Locke,’ she said, catching up, Jojo at her side without an answer to his question. ‘You need to understand some things.’
It had been a long time since Jojo had been on that beach. But the sand beneath his feet – Jojo remembered that sensation somehow, the way it shifted, the way it moved.
‘Listen to me, Mr Locke.’
Grandad didn’t slow. He kept on walking, not running, but walking with purpose toward the two figures who were still making their way down the beach toward the sea, pulling the red boat, which now they were closer, Jojo could see was bigger than he’d first imagined and was held on a two-wheeled trailer contraption. They weren’t the only ones heading for the pair: a girl, whose curled red hair flew out behind her, ran to catch them.
‘Stop right there, Josephus Locke. Stop right there,’ Aunt Pen said, forcefully now. Forcefully enough that Grandad did pause, a stone’s throw from where the man and boy and boat would pass. Grandad didn’t look back but looked down.
He waited a moment for Aunt Pen and Jojo to catch up. ‘I’ve not seen my son for a long time,’ he said. ‘I intend to see him today.’
‘You can see him,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘But please stop and listen to me for a moment.’
Grandad didn’t turn. But he didn’t start walking either. Not yet.
‘We’re in the past here. We’re a long way from home. This is your past. Now think back. Think about this day. Do you remember having a chat with an older version of yourself, thirty years ago? Do you remember a faerie in the shape of an ageing human? Do you remember meeting your grandsons? Did any of that happen?’
Grandad stood statue-still. Jojo thought he understood what Aunt Pen was getting at.
‘None of that happened. So now we’re here you can’t do anything that didn’t happen. You just can’t.’
‘What if we do?’ said Jojo.
‘Well...’ Aunt Pen said. ‘You just can’t. The world would reject us. We’d be spat back into our own time as fast as you can say Merlin’s beard.’
‘But I don’t remember an old man standing here, watching us. Or a boy chasing a dog,’ said Grandad quietly. ‘None of us were there. This didn’t happen.’
‘But it did,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘It had to have. You can change time. Small things, like who was standing on a beach on a certain day. It’s happening right now as we walk and talk and breathe, it’s happening. And it already happened. But if you change big things – like talking to a past version of yourself. Well . . that’s a big old time-travelling monster of a headache kind-of-complicated. The world would not be happy.’
Neither Grandad nor Jojo replied for a moment. What was there to say to that? But then Grandad, still quiet, still not looking back, said: ‘So, I don’t remember us being here and—’
‘No. You don’t. And we are going to keep it that way. We are just some ordinary people on the beach. OK?’
‘Ordinary people on the beach,’ said Grandad. ‘So I can’t—’
‘No,’ said Aunt Pen.
‘And I can’t—’
‘I am sorry,’ said the faerie godmother.
‘But what if I—’
‘Then we’d be gone. Back to the present day. Back to where we belong.’
‘Where we belong,’ said Grandad, setting out again, but not along the beach as he had been, not toward the figures, the man, the boy and the red-haired girl, whose voices now drifted across the flat sand.
‘Will we catch anything?’ said the voice of a boy. A voice which sounded a lot like Ricco’s.
‘You’ll never find it, you know,’ said the red-haired girl, as if she was having an entirely different conversation.
Grandad walked toward the sea, keeping his distance but keeping pace with the man, who Jojo could see was Grandad. It was him. Not ‘looked a bit like him’. It was him, just smoother, less grey, but the same golden brown skin. The same broad shoulders and straight back. A slimmer Grandad. A younger Grandad.
The wind caught his words and washed away his reply to the boy who walked on the other side, out of sight of Jojo. Younger Grandad and the boy Dad did not seem to notice them following along at all, but the girl had turned to look from where she trailed behind, one hand resting on the very back of the boat. She glanced at them, frowned then turned away, her eyes back on Jojo’s dad.
They caught the boy’s reply. ‘And how will we know where to fish?’
Jojo wondered if his grandad – the man who walked just ahead of him, the old man who he didn’t really know, who wandered along lonely rivers – missed all this. None of them came to the beach any more. Not since...
Did Grandad miss the sea and the sand and pulling a boat down the beach? Could the old man in front of him still pull a boat down a beach? It looked heavy. That boat. That boat. Jojo had seen that boat before – back in the barn, dusty and faded, but the same boat.
‘We’ll know,’ said the younger Grandad. Their paths were closing in; they were closer now. Soon they’d pass Ricco where he was fighting Trevor for a thick whitish plank of wood. ‘The sea’s in our blood, you know. We’re sailors, us Lockes. Always have been. Right the way back to Josiah Locke. He was a pirate, you know. We’ve been seafarers since he sailed out of St Kitts three hundred years ago.’
Those words hit Jojo in the gut. He’d heard them before. Almost word for word. He’d heard his grandad say them on this same beach. With this same boat.
He was sitting in the boat that time though. He was sitting as his father pulled it down the beach. He remembered when he learned to sail.
When he learned to sail?
The younger Grandad sounded proud. Proud of who he was. Of where they’d come from.
‘Will I be a sailor?’ said the boy on the other side of the younger Grandad.
‘I’m gonna be a sailor,’ said Jojo in his memory.
‘You can be whatever you want to be,’ said the younger Grandad.
‘You can be whatever you want to be,’ said his dad in that memory that wound itself round this one.
Then the girl with red hair spoke, bringing him crashing back to the present, or the past, or wherever it was they were. ‘You wouldn’t find it if I gave you a thousand years,’ she said. ‘No one can find it. Don’t you want to play?’
Jojo stopped in his tracks. Tears were welling up from that empty place that was filling again, filling with memory.
‘Come on,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘No time for that.’
Jojo gulped and walked on. No time for that. He needed time, though. Time to think. Why were all these memories coming to him now? What did they have to do with the appearance of Aunt Pen? And who... who was this girl with red hair? He’d seen those eyes, that hair before too.
Jojo pushed down the thoughts. They would have to wait.
They followed the younger Grandad and the boy who was Jojo and Ricco’s dad down to the sea. They stood and watched as man and son unloaded the boat from the trailer. They watched as the pair slid the boat across the wet sand and into the wash. They watched in silence out of the corners of their eyes, pretending instead to be looking out to sea.
All the while, memory came flooding into Jojo’s mind like the crashing waves.
He’d done this more than once. He’d done this many times, been out to sea, in a boat with his father and Grandad. He just knew it. He could see it. He could see them laughing and smiling. He could see his dad, a dark silhouette against the moon.
He remembered sitting in that same boat, his father’s arms around him, with the stars above.
He remembered.
Back on that beach in the past, the girl stood and watched too, her hands in the pockets of her floral dress, her feet making shapes in the wet sand.
Ricco and Trevor joined them.
‘Woohoo. This is brilliant,’ said Ricco, breaking their silent stare. ‘And it’s all in the bathroom? What we looking at?’
‘That boy,’ said Jojo. ‘It’s... he’s... our dad.’
The boy in question had his back to the watchers. He had not been much help to Grandad, the younger version, as the boat was rolled and dragged. And now he too watched as Grandad fitted a mast and sails to the red vessel.
‘What?’ gasped Ricco. ‘Our what?’
The little girl turned at the noise and frowned at the group of Jojo, Ricco, Grandad, Aunt Pen and Trevor. But the younger Grandad and boy Dad were engrossed in the boat.
‘Shhhh! They can’t see us.’
‘You mean like we’re invisible?’
‘They mustn’t see us,’ Aunt Pen hissed, still leaning on Jojo’s arm. ‘If they do, we’ll be ejected out of the world and back to ours. It won’t be much of a fun trip, I assure you.’
Ricco huffed then said, ‘So is this like...’ he looked around them. ‘...the past? Like we time travelled? Like in a film or something?’
Jojo nodded. Aunt Pen said, ‘Well, it’s a complicated matter. Listen...’
But before she could explain, a shrill voice broke the air, an angry voice, a voice that seemed bigger than the tiny girl who made it.
‘What about our game?!’ she shouted above the waves.
They were in the boat now, younger Grandad and the boy Dad. ‘I’m going fishing, Mabel. Keep your game!’
‘Who’s the girl, Grandad?’ said Ricco.
But Grandad didn’t answer.
‘Grandad? Grandad? Are you OK?’
Grandad looked away for a moment from his former self and his son. When he looked back at Ricco, his cheeks were damp and water filled his eyes.
‘I’ve not seen him in... so long. But this feels like it was yesterday. I remember it all. I remember his big hands, like yours, Jojo. I remember how excited he was about everything, just like you, Ricco. I remember... I remember how it felt to hold him. I can still smell his hair,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever remember again.’
Jojo knew exactly what he meant.
He remembered too. Big hands. How it felt to hold him. The smell of his hair. He remembered it all.
Jojo stepped towards his grandad, leaving Aunt Pen to totter on the shore, and pulled him into a hug. ‘Grandad,’ he said. Ricco joined them. So did Trevor, sitting himself on Grandad’s feet. Over the breeze and waves they heard the unmistakable sound of the little dog farting.
Lockes at Sea
They hugged a while and when they turned back to the sea and to Dad and the younger Grandad, the red boat was fifty metres out amongst the waves.
‘He showed me the world, your dad. When I was with him, it was like seeing through a pair of new eyes.’ Grandad sniffed. ‘I’m glad I’m here with you two. Remembering.’
There were just two figures in the boat. The girl with the flaming hair had gone – not on the beach at all. Gone.
‘Well,’ said Grandad, taking a long sniff of the sea air. ‘As we’re here, on a beautiful day like today, we should see what can be done about you city boys getting a taste of the sea.’
On all their trips down to Dor, Grandad had never spoken like this. They’d not come near the beach. No sand. No sea.
And now... a taste of the sea. Jojo didn’t like to tell him that he already had. In his mind. He remembered it all. He remembered the sea and the waves and the feeling of the deep beneath the boat. Grandad must not remember this part, as Jojo had not remembered it till now.
‘Hmm, we don’t have a boat of our own but—’ said Grandad.
‘Ah,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘That’s not actually true.’ She set to searching her necklaces and chains.
‘You’ve got a boat?’ shouted Ricco. ‘Brilliant! Let’s do it!’
‘How could you—?’ began Grandad but before he could finish:
‘Aha! Here it is.’ Aunt Pen held up a pendant that looked like a fat fish, it even glimmered as one, the sunlight glinting off its green, blue and purple scales. ‘Now. There’s a knack to opening this. If I just...’ She ran a finger along the fish’s shimmering side. ‘...it should...’ And with that, the mouth of the fish sprang open and out flew a yellow pellet, like a medicine tablet. It flew. Aunt Pen didn’t reach for it; she knew better than that.
But Ricco did. He flung out a hand, grasping at the spinning yellow tube, for now it was a tube, as big as one of Mum’s lipsticks. Ricco did not catch it, but knocked it on, out of reach.
Next Jojo made a grab for it, as it grew and twisted. It was the size of a school dictionary, bright yellow and seemingly made from little planks of wood. Like his brother, Jojo did not get a hand on it, just a fingertip. For a moment it seemed to balance there, on the end of Jojo’s finger. He made to flick it backwards, but instead flicked it on.
Which was probably a good thing, all told, as now it grew and grew. It was a box. It was a cushion. It was bigger and bigger. And whatever reflexes Grandad the Navy boxer had once had, they returned to him then; he stuck out his hand and grabbed hold of a rope which flailed free of the bulging, billowing yellow thing. Or maybe it had hold of him.
Grandad’s feet left the sand and he joined the huge yellow shape, now as big as an armchair, as it sailed through the air towards the waiting waves.
Jojo would later say it was hard to tell where Grandad stopped and the yellow thing began. They were a whirling mass of yellow wood and flailing ropes, swathes of white canvas and the occasional sighting of Grandad’s shock of silver hair and brown skin.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, it came to a halt. There in front of them, bobbing on the sea just a few paces away was a yellow sailing boat, larger than the red one that had just set out. A sailing boat as clean and ship-shape as any boat you could imagine.
‘The Skath Melyn,’ said Aunt Pen. ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Family boat, she is. Built by one of my sisters, Polperra the young, Polperra the explorer.’
‘Grandad?’ called Jojo and Ricco, only half listening to Aunt Pen, but still struck by the idea that this faerie had a family.
‘Oh yes. Good point,’ she said. ‘Where is your grandfather? Should have probably warned you as to what would happen. Mr Locke?’
From the boat came a groan and before they could stop him, Trevor was out amongst the waves, yapping and splashing at the yellow boat – the Skath Melyn – and at the groggy-looking Grandad who pulled himself up and looked over the side at them.
He gurgled as he held his dizzy head in his hands. ‘Just ordinary people on the beach, you said.’
*
After they’d laughed, after they’d splashed through the knee-high water and pushed the boat out deeper, after they’d leaped in to join the recovering Grandad and well-settled Aunt Pen, who’d explained that certain magical objects were designed to keep themselves hidden from unsuspecting eyes, like this miraculous boat and, even incredibly, the doorway on the cliffsides. ‘But that took a might more magic than I had thought it would.’ After all that, the Lockes went out to sea.
If you’ve not been in a little vessel, amongst the endless waves, on top of the vast, vast sea, it’s hard to explain how it feels. You feel small, for a start. You know you are powerless against the great muscles of the ocean current. You feel free as well. For in every direction there is possibility. There are the open waves and the horizon and beyond that, well, who knows what – and that is precisely the point.
‘It’s a bit small, isn’t it?’ Jojo said, clinging onto the very narrow, very low bench that lined the sides of the boat.
‘Well, it’s not built for the likes of you, is it, you great hulking giant,’ said Aunt Pen.
‘A bit rocky,’ Ricco muttered. He was beginning to turn a shade of green.
‘You’ll feel all righ’ soon enough,’ said Grandad. ‘You heard the man – me, I mean – us Lockes are sailors through and through. Got salt in our blood!’
