point spending money on some palatial tent that you’ll only use once, if that,” said their mother. “I’ll believe all you laid-back city types are going camping when I actually see it.”
“Well, you won’t see it, Mum,” said Adiel reasonably. “You’re not coming, are you.”
Their mother stopped in the doorway with a pile of dirty plates and there was a moment’s silence. Then she turned and regarded them all with narrowed eyes.
“Well now. Maybe you’d better not count on that. I happen to be the only one in this entire family who has actually had some camping experience. Oh yes!” she added as they all gawked at her, “I was quite the little happy camper when I was in the Girl Guides.”
“Mum! You weren’t a Girl Guide! You couldn’t have been!” they all – even Omri – yelled.
She drew herself up. “And why not? As a matter of fact I was a platoon leader. I had more badges than anyone else.”
“How many?”
“Eleven and a half. So there.” She turned, walked out, head in air.
“What was the half-badge for?” their dad called after her.
“Making a fire without matches,” she called back. “Only it went out.”
They were all silent for a moment. Then Gillon went back to the Yellow Pages. “Five-man tents, five-man tents,” he muttered.
“I wish I were a cartoonist,” said their father. “I would love to draw your mother smothered with badges, lighting a fire without matches.” He winked at Omri. It was one of his slow winks, a wink that said, You and I know what this is all about. But Omri didn’t. All he knew was that he couldn’t wait to get his dad alone and find out.
“Of course we’re not really going camping, Dad?”
Omri had managed to get his dad to himself by following him out to his studio across the lane. His father was putting the finishing touches to a large painting of a rooster. He was very into roosters since they moved to the country, but they got weirder and weirder. This latest one looked more like an armful of coloured rags that’d been flung into the air. But Omri liked it somehow. It was like the essence of rooster – all flurry and maleness – rather than the boring, noisy old bird itself.
“Well,” said his dad, tilting his head to one side and standing back with his palette. “I hadn’t planned that we should. I didn’t think the boys would go for it the way they did. Never mind your mother! Really, she is full of surprises…” He stepped up to the easel and put a streak of red near the top of the canvas, like a cock’s comb while the cock is in flight. “… so I’ve changed my plan. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll arrange that Gillon and you and I will go on a preliminary trip, a sort of dummy run, to Dartmoor to pick out a suitable site and so on, while Adiel’s away at school, and then we’ll do it on a weekend when Gillon won’t want to come.”
“Why won’t he?”
“We’ll fix it so he won’t.”
“How?”
“Watch the forecasts. Pick a very wet weekend when there’s something good on the box.”
“And then?”
“And then, my hearty, outdoor lad, you and I will go off together, ignoring the weather, and no one will miss us for two days, and we’ll ‘go back’ and see what the situation is.”
“Ah!” So that was it. A way of getting away from home, just the two of them. “But have you thought about what we’ll use to go back in?”
“Yes. I’ve thought.”
“Well, what? We can hardly carry some wardrobe or chest or something big enough in the back of the car!”
His father put down the palette carefully on his paint-stained table with all its jam jars full of old brushes and its rows of squashed paint tubes. “It came to me today in the square, when I was shopping. I got a load of vegetables and I couldn’t carry them all in one go so the greengrocer said he’d take the other box out for me to the car. He asked me the registration, and I told him, and it burst on me like a blinding light.”
“What, Dad?”
“Go and look at it. The numberplate.”
Omri, frowning, left the studio and crossed the yard to the open bays, in one of which was parked the family car – a third-hand Ford Cortina Estate that his father had recently bought when their old one packed up. His eyes went to the numberplate and he stopped in his tracks.
The next instant he had turned and raced back, bursting into the studio with his face alight.
“Wow, Dad! Wow and treble-wow! You’re brilliant!”
“No, Om. It’s the magic. It couldn’t be coincidence. It means we’re meant to go.”
They went out into the yard together and stood looking marvellingly at the old car.
The registration number was C18 LB.
“C eighteen. That’s for eighteenth century, of course,” said Omri’s dad softly. “It’s a double indicator. I never thought I could believe anything like this. But I know it’s true. That’s our cupboard, Omri. Our time-machine.”
Omri went to bed that night feeling so excited he couldn’t sleep. Another adventure, and with his Indian! The adventure with Jessica Charlotte, his ‘wicked’ great-great-aunt who had actually made the key, had been complicated and thrilling in its way, but it was more like a detective story than a risky adventure, and it had all happened here in his bedroom, under the thatch. A lot of it, most of it, had happened in his head while reading the Account. Now a real, true adventure was in the offing. And his dad would be part of it!
It might be a bit of a problem, though, leaving Gillon behind.
He was really getting worked up about the camping trip. He kept calling through the thin dividing wall between their two bedrooms, keeping Omri awake more than ever.
“I’m going into town tomorrow after school to get a camping mag. They’ll have proper ads in them for gear, and articles to read and stuff.”
“Mm.”
“It’s not true that Mum’s the only one who’s camped. Remember Adiel went to the Brecon Beacons with his class?” Omri pretended to be asleep and didn’t answer. “Omri? Remember?”
“Yeah.”
“He said it
