Nano Bytes

RobMay Back to the Opera

It was the hottest weekend of the year in London. I was twelve years old and now that school was out, I had a summer of work ahead of me: making a bit of cash by feeding all the cats of Kensington, whose wealthy owners were jetting off to even hotter climes.

Just off Holland Park Road is a row of millionaires’ townhouses, and one of those belonged to a man who me and my friends knew simply as the Professor of Rock, because he divided his time between touring with his band and giving lectures on astrophysics. Don’t ask me about his music, though, or what his lectures were all about. All I know is that his cat would rather eat my shoelaces than the food I put out for him.

I let myself into the spacious black–and–white–tiled hall. ‘Flash,’ I called. ‘Come on, boy!’

‘In here!’ said a voice from the study, which nearly gave me a heart attack.

The Professor was at home. When I entered his office, he was lounging in his leather swivel chair, long legs up on his desk. He wore black drainpipe jeans and a black shirt, that contrasted with his mass of curly white hair. He must have been about, I don’t know, fifty? Sixty? Seventy? Who knows how old old guys are.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hey, Lauren,’ he said. ‘I was waiting for you. I was wondering if you’d help me run a little errand. I need someone to go somewhere I can’t. I don’t want to risk getting recognised.’

I shrugged. ‘Sure. Where do you want me to go?’

‘I want to you go back in time, thirty years, to 1985.’

We went up five flights of stairs to the attic. I’d never been up here before. There were computers and strange machines everywhere, and what looked like giant loudspeakers that were as tall as I was. Guitars hung from the walls or were propped up in stands. Was this a recording studio, a science lab … or both?

A young guy with black hair and eyeliner was sat at a laptop in the corner. ‘That’s Adam, my assistant,’ the Professor said.

‘Hi Adam,’ I said.

‘Yo,’ he replied in an American accent, giving me a casual wave.

The Professor showed me his iPhone. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I just tap in the date I’m sending you to here. So, 14th July 1985 …’

‘Wait a minute!’ I said. ‘Are you telling me you built a time machine …out of an iPhone?’

The Professor laughed. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘The app is just the interface. All of the heavy lifting and number–crunching is done online, in the cloud. Now you stand between these two monitors …’

He indicated two of the giant loudspeakers that were facing each other, a metre apart.

‘What do you know about quantum physics, Lauren?’ he asked me.

‘Quantum what?’

‘Well, quantum theory states that if I play a chord on my Red Special here,’—he picked up an electric guitar from one of the stands—’then that chord will also sound in an infinite number of parallel universes. And if I set up a feedback loop like this …’

He strummed the guitar. The fuzzy chord tickled my eardrums and the air around me started to vibrate. ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘You haven’t told me what my errand is yet!’

‘Oh yeah,’ the Professor said. ‘I almost forgot.’ He tossed me a box of chocolates. ‘I want you to go and deliver this to an old friend of mine. But that’s just your cover story; what I really want you to do is to find me an old demo tape that went missing in 1985. It should be labelled ‘Back to the Opera,’ and I’d really like to get my hands on it. It will make a great bonus track next time we reissue a remastered box set.’

I didn’t understand half of what the Professor was saying. ‘What’s a demo tape?’ I tried to ask, but although my lips were moving, no sound seemed to come out. My whole body was wobbling like jelly on a plate.

‘Don’t be more than a couple of hours,’ the Professor said. ‘I have to keep playing my guitar in order to keep the way back open for you. Turn the gain up, Adam!’

And with that, his fingers blurred on the strings of the guitar. Adam pressed a button on his laptop, and the world of 2015 vanished.

I was still in the attic, but it was dark and empty now. It might have been my imagination, but I could still hear the Professor’s guitar notes hanging in the air all around me, the only link to the world I had left behind. I had to feel around for the door to the landing, and then quietly sneak outside: the house seemed different, and evidently belonged to someone else in 1985.

Outside, though, nothing had changed. The white terraces of Kensington still looked the same. Were the road signs different? I dunno‑I never paid them much attention in 2015. The cars were the same mix of BMW’s and Mercs, although the designs were squarer and less sleek. A guy in faded blue jeans and a white Live Aid T shirt was strolling past, listening to music on oversized headphones with orange ear pads. The wire led to a big chunky box that was clipped to his belt. That settled it: this was the past alright! They probably didn’t even have computers here, let alone the internet!

I pulled out my phone and dialed home, just to see what would happen. No signal. Boring! I guess I could duck into a newsagents and check the date on the papers, or something, but then I remembered I was on the clock. I had to get back before the Professor’s fingers tired out, otherwise I’d get stuck here and wind up becoming my own mother or something crazy like that. I looked at the box of chocs I held: there was an address on the tag: Garden Lodge, Logan Place.

I knew where that was! Logan Place is a small residential street off Earl’s Court Road. I was there in ten minutes. Garden Lodge was a massive Georgian mansion surrounded by a tall brick wall. I must have walked past it many times in the past‑I mean in the future–but something looked different about it this time. I didn’t have to knock, because as I approached a dark–haired man with a thick moustache came out of the gate.

‘Are you …’ I said, looking at the tag again, ‘the Wizard?’

The man laughed. ‘No, I’m the Wizard’s hairdresser.’ He sized me up and down as if assessing my threat level, and then nodded to the gate. ‘He’s inside. Close the gate behind you.’

The gardens were beautifully manicured. Inside, the house was stylishly furnished with gilded sofas, exotic rugs and expensive paintings. I followed the sound of a man singing, and wound up in a large room with a crystal chandelier. It might once had been a dining room, but it now housed the biggest piano I had ever seen.

The man at the piano was also dark–haired and moustached. He looked tough, like he should be in a biker gang or something. Yet, he was wearing a yellow vest and white shorts and was pushing the piano pedals with bare feet. The melody was light, and his voice was a rich, and operatic. There were cats sitting all around listening to him play.

‘Oooh, la de da … music can’t save me … think I’m going ga ga. If you don’t come back to me, la de da … then I’ll go … I’ll go … la la la …’

He spotted me and stopped playing.

‘Well, hello there,’ he said. ‘What do you think the next line should be?’

I suddenly felt the weight of fate crushing down on me, and my lips moved silently for a few seconds before I managed to squeak: ‘I’ll go back to the opera?’

He flashed me a toothy grin. ‘I like it. I like you. Where did you suddenly appear from?’

The future! I wanted to say. ‘Your hairdresser let me in,’ I actually said.

‘Oh did he now?’ the Wizard said. ‘Well, I will deal with him later. What have you brought me? Chocolates but no flowers? Really, darling!’

Did he just call me darling? I handed over the chocs. ‘The Professor sent them.’

‘I don’t know any professors,’ he said, flipping the lid. ‘Well, how sweet: one for every month of the year.’ He popped one in his mouth. ‘Would you like August?’

‘No thanks,’ I said, wanting to avoid some horrible time paradox that interfering with the gift might bring about. ‘What you doing?’ I said, looking for a reason to stick around.

‘Oh, just lazing on a Sunday afternoon,’ he said. He pressed a button on a chunky machine and took out a clear plastic rectangle with a reel of tape inside. The demo tape!

He labelled the tape with a marker pen and tossed it on a nearby chaise longue. ‘Well, it’s hard work composing a number one hit. You know what we need? Cigarettes and champagne! Do you want some?’

‘I’m twelve!’ I told him.

‘Oh. Well, maybe just a cigarette then. They’re low tar!’

The phone rang, and the Wizard moved across the room and caught the receiver just as one of his cats knocked it off. It was big chunky phone with a cord! ‘Bob!’ he said to whoever had called. ‘No, no, no, my dear–it was my pleasure. Who can resist Wembley? Too loud? Well, it was nothing to do with me! Who complained? Bono! Well, tell that jumped–up little diva …’

While this went on, I edged over to the chaise longue to try and get my hands on the precious demo tape. But the moment I was in arm’s reach, a massive tortoiseshell cat jumped up and sat on the tape.

The Wizard wound up his call and came over to find me sat next to the cat, stroking it while trying to slip my hand under its massive butt. ‘Meet Delilah,’ he said. ‘Delilah, meet …’

‘Lauren,’ I said.

‘Do you like cats, Lauren?’ the Wizard asked.

‘I love them!’ I said, honestly.

‘Oh, so do I,’ he said. ‘I think I love them more than people some days. So long as I have cats and music in my old age, I think I’ll be happy. Of course, a big house like this helps, but happiness is all that’s really important.’ He went over to a rack of vinyl. ‘What music do you like?’

‘Um …’ I said, trying to think of a band or artist we both might have heard of. ‘I quite like Madonna.’

The Wizard gave a haughty sniff. ‘Well, she has some spunk, I dare say, but if she thinks she’s the queen of pop then she really has another thing coming.’ He went and placed a plastic disc on a turntable and dropped the needle. ‘I love rock, I love pop, but I really love opera, and this woman is opera royalty. Montserrat Caballé‑I would absolutely kill to meet and work with her one day.’

A hiss, a crackle, and then an epic noise filled every inch of the large room.

And while we listened, I managed to squeeze my hand under Delilah’s rump, and pull out the demo tape. It was slightly damp.

The Wizard came over to sit with me. He immediately sprang up again, though. ‘Delilah!’ he screamed. ‘You make me mad when you pee all over my Chippendale suite!’

I spent the best hour of my life listening to records and playing with the eight or nine cats that wandered in and out of the room. I even tried my first smoke (yuk) and took a sip of the Wizard’s drink (yum). My parents would have killed me, but I never felt in any kind of danger. The Wizard was as harmless as a pussycat himself, and when I realised that I had to get going, he looked almost sad.

‘Come back anytime,’ he said. ‘We must listen to the whole of The Magic Flute!’

I promised that I would, though what he would make of me turning up on his doorstep in 2015 was anyone’s guess.

I ran back to the Professor’s house, entered by the back door and bounded up the stairs to the attic. Someone shouted after me, but I didn’t stop. I could hear the guitar notes hanging in the air, still, and they started playing faster and faster as if sensing my presence. The world shimmered again, and suddenly I was back in 2015.

The Professor put down his guitar in relief and flexed his fingers. He flipped down the lid on his laptop; Adam, his assistant, was nowhere to be seen.

I pulled the demo tape out of my pocket. ‘Mission accomplished!’ I said. ‘I hope it still plays though–the cat peed on it.’

The professor smiled and shook his head. ‘It was the cat pee that destroyed it first time around. You didn’t get to it in time.’

I suddenly got all excited. ‘Well, send me back! I can try again. I know what to do this time! I can get to the tape before Delilah—’

‘No need, no need,’ the Professor said. ‘The tape wasn’t the main reason I sent you back, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘The chocolates,’ he said. ‘I will send you back to Garden Lodge again, but next time it will be to 1986 with another box, and then maybe for another couple of years after that … You see, the chocs were heavily dosed with very powerful antiretrovirals–the latest drugs that stop viruses replicating inside the body. I’ve invested most of my money over the last twenty years in medicinal research and development.’

I suddenly remembered what was different about Garden Lodge. When I had used to walk past it, there had been graffiti and often flowers left against the wall … like tributes. ‘Was the Wizard ill?’ I asked.

The Professor shrugged. ‘No, never. You see, with the right treatment, a person with HIV can live a normal, long and healthy life …’

The doorbell rang downstairs, followed by the sound of eager footsteps coming up. The person bouncing up the stairs was humming to himself as he came. I turned round and came face to face with a man in a tracksuit. He was bald, but had a bushy grey moustache and a big grin.

‘Hey, Fred,’ the Professor said.

‘Afternoon, Bri,’ the man said. ‘I’ve just come up with the most perfect middle eight for Back to the Opera, so I just had to run right over and—’

He noticed me gawping at him. ‘Well, hello,’ he said. ‘You look kind of familiar from somewhere. Like someone I used to know back in the good old days.’

‘Oh,’ I croaked. ‘Um, well must be just a coincidence, I guess.’

‘Coincidence?’ the Wizard said. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’

He winked at me. ‘It’s a kind of magic, darling!’