Island of the Aunts

by Eva Ibbotson

  Chapter 14

  The next island on which Stanley Sprott landed did not have any naked people on it. It did not have any people on it at all. What it had on it was sheep.

  They came to it through driving sheets of rain. It was the wettest rain they had ever come across and it looked as though it must stop soon because the sky would have emptied itself, but it didn’t. And on the low-lying, sodden island were hundreds—no, thousands—of soaking sheep.

  “There’s nowhere to land,” said the skipper.

  But when they’d circled the island twice they found a narrow inlet and, chugging up it, they saw a shingle bay where the dinghy could be beached.

  No one had wanted to land among the pink nudists and no one wanted to land among the wet sheep.

  “The boy won’t be there,” said Des. “No one could last on this dump.”

  But Mr Sprott had a bee in his bonnet about a honeycomb of underground caves and tunnels full of mad aunts who were holding Lambert.

  “They might have brought the sheep to put people off,” he said, “or they might come up and shoot them for meat”—and he ordered the Hurricane to put down her anchor.

  Leaving Casimir to guard the boat they rowed to the island and went ashore.

  It was not a pleasant place. Sheep are not often cheerful once they are grown up and these sheep were the wettest, gloomiest sheep you could imagine. They stood pressed together, the water running down their noses, giving off a smell of wet wool and lanolin. Some of them had foot rot and though sheep-pats are not as squelchy as cow-pats, they are not agreeable to walk on in the rain.

  “We must go round and round the island in smaller and smaller circles; that way we won’t miss any openings. It’s like looking for a ball in a field,” said Stanley Sprott.

  So they trudged round and round, the water dripping down their necks, slipping and sliding on the wet grass and on the wet other things, while the sheep huddled together, too miserable even to lift their heads, and occasionally made a gloomy bleating noise which did not sound much like Baa but more like the crying of doomed spirits in hell. If the mad aunts had brought them to put people off they hadn’t done so badly.

  “There won’t be any caves,” said Des. “The soil’s wrong for caves.”

  But Stanley Sprott only told him to keep his mouth shut.

  Then, almost in the middle of the island, they did find an opening which led underground.

  “Down you go,” said Mr Sprott, very excited. “Make sure they know you’re armed. We’ll keep you covered.”

  So Des went down into the hole and came back almost at once looking very sick.

  “Well? What’s down there?”

  “More sheep,” said Des, rubbing his behind. “Rams. Two of them and as mad as hatters.” He turned round so that Mr Sprott could see the jagged holes in his trousers. “Lucky they didn’t get through to the flesh. It can give you rabies, being butted by rams.”

  While Stanley Sprott had been pursuing his son among nudists and sheep, the police had been following in a fishing boat. Now, though, they ran into bad weather; fog came rolling in from the west and the skipper of the fishing boat found that his radar was jammed. He insisted on turning into the next port to get it fixed, and this meant that the Hurricane steamed on without being tailed.

  There was only one island left that fitted Lambert’s description. It was a long way away but it had to be the right one; it had to!

  “Full steam ahead!” barked Mr Sprott to the skipper, who only raised an eyebrow. He’d had the Hurricane doing twelve knots ever since they’d seen the last sheep and he wasn’t going any faster till the weather cleared.

  Meanwhile in London, Minette’s parents and Fabio’s grandparents had called a meeting to complain about the police and the feeble way they were handling their case. The superintendent had told the Danbys and the Mountjoys that there was a possible lead on the children’s whereabouts and having some hope again brought out all their disagreeableness.

  The meeting took place in the Mountjoys’ cold house with the brass gong in the hall and the portraits of dead Mountjoys on the wall. The Mountjoys didn’t like the look of Mrs Danby, who was as usual chain-smoking and wearing a blouse which showed more than they thought was right. They liked Professor Danby a bit better because he was stern and gloomy like themselves. But the main point of the meeting wasn’t to make friends, it was to complain.

  “If you ask me, the police are too busy finding homes for dirty tramps and mollycoddling the unemployed to do their job properly,” said old Mr Mountjoy.

  He had decided not to send for Hubert-Henry’s family after all. His wife had been having nightmares about Indians with poisoned arrows ambushing her in her bed, and her heart was not strong.

  Professor Danby agreed. “Even when they find the kidnappers I expect they’ll just send them to prison. In the old days they’d have been hung, and rightly so.”

  The Mountjoys nodded their heads. “It is absolutely shocking the way this case has been dealt with. Outrageous.”

  They decided to complain to their Member of Parliament, and Professor Danby said he would insist on a full inquiry.

  Mr Mountjoy approved of that. “And I shall write to the Minister for Law and Order. God knows what the country is coming to when three children can vanish off the face of the earth without anything being done about it!”

  Mrs Danby stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one. “I’m thinking we might sue the police,” she said thoughtfully. “Get some, money out of them. We might as well have something for the anxiety we’ve been through.”

  Professor Danby was about to disagree with her. He always disagreed with his wife—but this time he didn’t.

  “It’s an idea,” he admitted.

  “We could give the kids a good time with the money we get,” said Mrs Danby. She’d buy Minette lots of new dresses and if there was any money over she could do with some new clothes herself. There was a lovely pink georgette with a black underskirt she’d seen at Adrienne’s Boutique…and the sitting room carpet was getting really shabby.

  Professor Danby too was thinking of how he could help Minette with some extra money to spend; her bedroom when she stayed with him could do with a proper writing desk so she could do her homework, and if there was any money to spare he needed the new three-hundred-volume Grammar Scholastica. He’d had his eyes on it for months but the cost was absurd.

  Even the old Mountjoys thought that suing the police was a good idea. Hubert-Henry’s fees at Greymarsh Towers were ridiculously high; any help would be welcome.

  They were working out how best to do this when the parlourmaid came in with the tea things on a silver tray. She was the only one who had been fond of Fabio and now she asked whether there had been any news of him.

  “No, there hasn’t,” snapped Mrs Mountjoy and told her to bring some more hot water. What were servants coming to, sticking their noses into family business?

  While the Danbys and the Mountjoys met to complain in London, something sad and serious happened in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The mother of Boo-Boo and the Little One tripped on a cracked paving stone and broke her hip.

  Breaking a hip is a bad business. An ambulance came and rushed her off to hospital where they put a pin into the joint and told her she had to stay in for a week and be careful for a long time after that.

  This left her husband, the tax inspector, with a problem. Being a tax inspector is very hard work. You have to go to an office every day and fill in lots and lots of forms and send rude letters to people who are trying not to pay their tax, and do a great many sums. Betty’s husband, whose name was Ronald, was a very good tax inspector and he did not feel he could look after Boo-Boo and the Little One as well as doing his job.

  But now something amazing happened. He was just wondering what on earth to do with his children when a tall, fierce-looking lady came striding up the path, carrying a suitcase and the kind of saucepan that people use to stir-fry thing
s in. The tax inspector had never used one because his wife Betty did not cook foreign foods, but he knew it was a wok and once he had realized this, he knew who the lady was. It was Betty’s sister Dorothy, who had been imprisoned in Hong Kong for hitting a restaurant owner on the head because he was serving pangolin steaks in his restaurant. She must have kept the wok as a memento and as she came closer he saw that he was right because there was a dent in the side which might well have been made by the restaurant owner’s head.

  “Where’s Betty?” said Dorothy, putting down her case. She did not like her sister Betty, who shaved her legs and had three kinds of toilet freshener in her loo, but families are families and on her way home to the Island she had decided to call on her and see how she was.

  She soon realized her mistake. Visiting Betty in hospital was one thing, but being asked to look after Boo-Boo and the Little One was quite another.

  “I can’t stand children, you know that,” said Dorothy. She could have said, “I can’t stand your children,” but she didn’t because of Betty being “family”.

  Betty began to cry. Her leg was in plaster and hitched up to something and she had a bruise on her face where she had fallen, so when she cried she looked very pathetic indeed.

  “Please, Dotty—oh, please. Poor Ronald works so hard, and he can’t give up his job.”

  Dorothy didn’t like being called Dotty and she didn’t like Ronald and she really loathed Betty’s house where everything was covered in little crocheted hats or frilly embroidered cloths or sprayed with some gooey scent which climbed into your nostrils and stayed there. Betty’s chairs had chair covers and the chair covers had more covers to keep the covers clean, as though sitting down was a dangerous act, and the whole thing drove Dorothy round the bend. Also she was homesick for the Island and for Myrtle and Coral and in particular for Etta who was next to her in age and her closest friend.

  But there was Betty looking absolutely miserable—and after all it wasn’t her fault that she was an idiot and had two ridiculous children. Life isn’t fair and never has been.

  “I’ll stay for a week,” Dorothy said. “Till you’re over the worst. But that’s all.”

  But after a few days Dorothy cracked. Boo-Boo (who was a boy) and the Little One (who was a girl) were the daftest children she had ever seen. They cried if their pyjama cases got mixed up, so that Boo-Boo’s sleeping suit ended up in the skirts of the fairy doll and the Little One’s nightdress was zipped into the stomach of a fluffy poodle. They cried if she handed them the wrong bath towel so that Boo-Boo had to dry himself on Big Ears and Noddy whereas the Little One was rubbed down in roller-skating Yogi Bears. They threw a tantrum if she brought the cereal packet to the table without its frilly cereal packet container, and they complained because she hadn’t combed out the tassels on the lampshades.

  “Right, this is it,” said Dorothy on the fifth day. “I’m going home.”

  But when she told Betty, who was still in hospital, her sister cried once more.

  “What am I going to do?” she sobbed. “None of my neighbours seem to want to look after my children.”

  Dorothy opened her mouth to tell her why and closed it again. After all, Betty was ill and she was her sister and she wouldn’t be able to shave her legs for weeks because of the plaster. On the other hand nothing now could stop Dorothy from going back to the Island.

  “I suppose I could take the children with me. Just till you’re better.”

  As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t, but it was too late. Betty looked at her gratefully. Usually she would have done anything to keep her darlings from that rough place where the animals wandered in and out of the house and nothing was done nicely, but now it was her only hope.

  “Thank you, Dorothy,” she said. “Perhaps the sea air will do them good.”

  So the following week Dorothy took the train to catch the steamer to catch the second steamer to catch the ferry which would in the end get her to her home. She did not have a chance to let her sisters know whom she was bringing, which was as well. Even if they had been very badly oiled, Boo-Boo and the Little One would not have been welcome on the Island.

  Chapter 15

  Minette sat on her bed beside the open window, trying to brush her hair. Aunt Etta insisted on a hundred strokes each night, but now she put her brush down and sighed.

  “I’m never going to have children. Never. It’s awful.”

  “Oh come on,” said Fabio, wandering in from the bathroom. “It isn’t as bad as that.”

  But it had been very bad.

  They had woken early and at once known what had happened. Even before they went to the window they had felt the emptiness and the silence.

  Downstairs the three aunts sat stiffly at the breakfast table. Coral looked thinner and Myrtle’s blouse was on back to front.

  “Go to him,” said Aunt Etta as soon as the children had finished. “You’re excused all your other duties.”

  Outside it really hit them. Yet the kraken had only been here just over a week. How could the bay seem so empty, so wrong? And how could such a great beast slip away so silently?

  It was all very well for Aunt Etta to say, “Go to him,” but where was he? Not by the shore, not in his favourite rockpool. The mermaids were guarding the entrance to the bay but the children knew he would not have tried to follow his father. He might be small but he knew what it was to keep a promise.

  They found him in the end, half hidden under an overhanging rock. He was almost submerged but his head came up out of the water and he was staring at the open sea. When he saw them, he made the most pitiful sound they had ever heard, a heartbroken moan which ended in a whimper. Like a puppy told to “stay”, when his master leaves the room, the baby kraken waited…and looked as though he would wait to the end of time for his father to return.

  “Come on,” said Fabio leaning down from the rock. “It’s time for breakfast. We’ll go and see what Art has got for you.”

  But the kraken only looked at him and then two tears welled out of his golden eyes and rolled into the sea.

  He wouldn’t eat and he wouldn’t play.

  “No ball,” he said when they fetched the beach ball and “No hide an’ see.” He wouldn’t follow them in the boat, though when they moved away he moaned and shivered even more. In the end they got into the water with him and swam round him rubbing his back and telling him again and again that his father would be back, that they loved him, that he was the last of a great and mighty line of krakens and must try to be brave.

  Everyone helped. The mermaids came and sang to him but he only closed his eyes and juddered with sighs. The stoorworm swam out and spoke into his ear.

  “To go is to come,” said the worm in his solemn voice.

  What he meant was that the earth was round so that the great kraken was on his way back as soon as he set off. But thoughts about the earth being round were too difficult for the kraken’s son, whose tears went on flowing and making the seaweed and the little fish look larger and brighter wherever they fell.

  “Do you think if Myrtle played the cello to him it would help?” asked Minette, but it didn’t. Although Myrtle had just said goodbye to Herbert, who had gone off with the great kraken, she came at once, but you never know where you are with music. It can make you happy but it can also make you very, very sad.

  The children did not dare to leave him alone; whenever they moved away he moaned even more pitifully. Art brought their lunch to the shore and they tried to share it with him but he only turned his head away.

  “No soss,” he said when they offered him a sausage roll, and “No cheeps,” when they handed him the chipped potatoes that had been his favourites.

  By the end of the day the children were getting frantic.

  “What if he just fades away and dies?” said Minette, close to tears.

  “He won’t,” said Fabio.

  But his eyes were even blacker than usual. People did turn their faces to the wall
and die; he had seen it in Brazil.

  When he had been on his way for a few hours, the great kraken began his Healing Hum once more. Everything was as it had been when he was on the way to the Island. The sky was blue, the air was soft; above him flew his escort of birds, below him the dolphins and seals circled him.

  He drew level with a fishing boat a hundred miles away. The crew had pulled in three tons of tuna and were casting their nets once more to add to the pile of bloodied thrashing creatures on the deck when the captain straightened himself and rubbed his forehead.

  “Enough,” he said suddenly. “We’ve caught enough.”

  His crew stared at him. He was the greediest fisherman in that part of the world; he’d been fined again and again for exceeding the quota.

  “You heard me,” he said and the nets were pulled in and the boat turned and headed for home.

  But though the kraken went on putting the sea to rights, as he had done before, his heart was heavy. There was an awful emptiness on his left side where his son had swum beside him, and at night his back felt strange without the small bump that had slept on it.

  “You’re to promise to stay and be good,” he had said to his son, and the child had understood, but it was best not to remember the look in his eyes.

  After they had travelled for a day and a night, Herbert came to the front of the kraken’s head and said goodbye. It was hard for him to leave the kraken and return to the Island but his mother was getting very weak and he felt it was his duty.

  It was even lonelier after Herbert left. Other seals swam with the kraken but they were ordinary seals, not selkies; they did not know his thoughts as Herbert had done.

  On a great rock, after another day of swimming, the kraken saw something he had been looking out for. A huge black bird with a yellow beak and yellow feet, huddled up and muddled-looking. He paused and looked directly at the unfortunate bird and, as the kraken’s eyes pierced his sadness, the boobrie came to himself again. He remembered that he had a wife who had been expecting eggs and that he had gone to look for food and got lost, and forgotten who he was and where he was going.