Chapter 8: Battle Plans

21st December 1966, age 11 & three-quarters

Christmas looked like it was going to be a pretty miserable time. The story the orphanage staff told us was that Harry had been in a fight. Someone had stolen Harry’s watch, the prop from Thunderball that Sean Connery had given him. Harry had confronted the presumed thief, and that older kid had thrown the first punch which led to the police being called.

The coppers, unsurprisingly, had far better things to do with their time. But the council’s policy was zero tolerance for fighting or violence in its homes, so both boys were carted away. Ordinary kids would have been told off and swiftly handed over to their parents. But as children in care, Harry and his sparring partner were locked up until their social workers came to get them. Then it got even worse, as both boys had been labelled troublemakers and sent off to a secure home up in Leeds, forty miles north.

That was more than two weeks ago.

There was nothing to be done at the orphanage, so we extracted Caity’s friend Ester as planned and headed to our hotel. When we got to the familiar suite, the girls went off to their room, gossiping happily. Meanwhile, I was simply fuming at the injustice of the situation. Grandpa sank wearily into a chair and held his head in his hands. “This wasn’t supposed to happen”, he said. Then he looked up at me. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. That damned watch has caused a serious diversion in the timeline.” He looked at Dan. “We’ve got to fix this. We’ve got to get him back to the orphanage if we’re going to save his life.”

That last bit jumped out at me. Something was going on that I didn’t know about.

While Dan got on the telephone with the hotel manager to ask about local solicitors, I tried piecing together fragments of information. Eventually, in a brilliant example of two plus two equalling five, I asked Grandpa: “Is saving Harry why you didn’t stop mum and dad from dying?”

“Is that why you’ve been angry at me for months?!”

“Yes! It’s true, isn’t it?! You decided to let my parents die because of something that happens to Harry in the future! Tell me!”

Grandpa calmed his voice to reply, “No. You’re not ready to hear this. And keep your voice down. Harry’s your friend, and he needs our help. That’s all you need to know right now.”

“But you said that you had one thing left that you came back in time to do. That’s got to be about Harry, and it’s got to be bad!

“Finn, no one should know too much about their future. It’s dangerous and unhealthy. I won’t tell you about Harry’s future because I don’t want it to change your relationship with him right now. That’s very, very important. Understand?”

“What about mum and dad?!”

“That was the hardest decision I ever had to make, but it was the right one. Someday, when you’re ready, I’ll tell you about it. But not now.”

For the rest of that day and much of the next, Grandpa and Dan laid plans to break Harry out of his jail. I could only observe, quietly seething.

First, they located the very best solicitor in the region, with plenty to choose from in the big cities of Leeds and Manchester that were within reach.

Then on the morning of the 22nd, Grandpa and the solicitor visited Harry’s mum in prison to convince her to sign-off on a lawsuit against Social Services. The lawsuit would allege unlawful detention of Harry in the secure home (which was essentially a combined prison and school), and ask for substantial damages. They would also apply for an emergency injunction to have Harry released back to the orphanage until the case came to court, which might take months.

The solicitor thought there were reasonable grounds for the case, though it was far from cut and dried. The key was to leverage the potential damages against Harry’s freedom.

By the afternoon I was impatient for results. With Christmas almost upon us, the wheels of justice were moving at seasonal snail’s pace. Social Services had been swiftly served with the suit, but if their senior people were already off on holiday, there might not be a response until the new year.

There was nothing more we could do, so Grandpa decided we should return to London. That didn’t sit well with me, and I have to admit that I didn’t handle my anger very well, misdirecting it towards the others and being sulky. My mood got even darker when Grandpa insisted we visit mum and dad’s graves before leaving.

When we got back to London on the 23rd, Dan grabbed me by the scruff of the neck before I could disappear indoors. He marched me into the garage where we wouldn’t be overheard and gave me a severe telling off. I’d seen him angry before but never at me, so it was a bit of a shock.

After his initial tirade about my treating people badly, he calmed down and told me: “Eleven-year-old boys who sulk in their bedrooms are powerless to challenge injustice. If you want to make things better for others, being a brat isn’t the way to do it.”

I managed not to sulk about being called sulky.

“You can spend a lonely two weeks shut up in your bedroom being angry at the world, or you can spend that time drawing up a battle plan. Are you going to be a brat or the extraordinary, kind, smart boy that I know?”

I wasn’t extraordinary, or even smart. But I did see some logic in what he said.

That afternoon, Dan set about teaching me to play chess. He used that as a way to get us talking about strategy, meticulous planning, pre-positioning resources, and all sorts of real life applications.

Then on Christmas Eve, Dan helped me work out some broad targets. The first was easy, prompted by my rage at how Harry was being treated. Dan helped me focus and refine it into nine words: ‘to exert legal and political pressure to challenge injustices’.

The second target was ‘to tackle the root causes of large scale deaths, like wars, genocides, famines and treatable illnesses’. I’d already made a start on that by getting Grandpa to send scientists out to Haiti to study HIV. The other parts were harder.

Finally, the superhero one that Grandpa had sort of suggested: ‘to prevent or limit crimes and terrorist attacks, by tipping off the authorities where possible, or by taking direct action’.

Just writing down those three sentences somehow made me feel a little better, vague and open-ended though they were. Writing them down was easy. Figuring out how to achieve them would be harder.

Christmas Day was lonely. We did the usual routine of presents and church and lunch and so on, but I felt awful that Harry was stuck in Leeds. I didn’t feel like being with other people, so there was no way I was going to join in the silly party games we usually played.

On Boxing Day, Dan and I got back to work on my battle plans. He would have made a brilliant teacher, as he had a knack for guiding me to solutions whilst still allowing me to discover them for myself. I relied heavily on him for much of the detailed stuff, and we both got a lot of help from the writers of the future history books.

On the afternoon of the 29th December, Grandpa called me to his study and handed me the telephone.

“Hello?”, I asked tentatively.

“Hi Finn”, I heard a familiar voice say.

“Harry! Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m back at the orphanage. Thanks for getting me out of that place. It was ... well, it was rough.”

I turned to Grandpa and asked, “Can we go get him?”

He smiled. “Tomorrow.”

“Harry, we’re going to come and get you tomorrow. I was so worried about you.”

We chatted a little more before I put the phone down. “Thanks”, I said to Grandpa.

“That’s okay. Are you and me talking again now?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay. Will you tell me what you and Dan have been plotting?”

I couldn’t help but smile a little.

“We’ve been planning for the future”, I told him. “I’ll tell you all about it soon, I promise. And you’d better get your chequebook ready!”

He grumbled about me costing him and arm and a leg as I was leaving, but I think he was actually quite pleased.

The next day found us back at the Sheffield house of horrors. We managed to get permission for Harry to stay with us for two nights, until New Year’s Day. He seemed really down the whole time. We gave him a pile of Christmas presents, and he gave me a comic book that I think he’d had for a while. The gesture was more important to me than the actual present, as I doubted he’d been allowed the time or money to go shopping.

Getting Harry to cheer up was a frustrating, losing battle. In the end, it was Grandpa that got through to him when they went off for a walk. I don’t know what was said, but Harry was more willing to smile, more willing to play with the presents we’d given him, and more willing to hug than he was previously.

Harry and I resolved to stay up till midnight on New year’s Eve, which we just about managed. After Caity had reluctantly gone to bed, Grandpa told Harry and me about an idea he had. Apparently, there was a film that would be shot in his studio in June and July, which needed lots of boys as background extras. If we wanted to have a go at being in a movie, he said he would speak to the director for us. He warned us that they would probably be small non-speaking parts, but Harry and I were both still excited. The film was to be a musical version of a book by Charles Dickens: Oliver!

The night before school resumed in January 1967, I presented Grandpa with my grand plan.

“I want to stop a war”, I told him.

“You’re kidding me! Well, I’m glad you picked something easy!”

“Actually, I want to stop one and prevent another. We’ve got fifteen years to get ready. There’s a lot to do.”

“Only fifteen years? How ever will we manage?! Go on then. Tell me what you need.”