‘Indeed not, no,’ said Eddie, beginning to wonder whether life in a monastery wouldn’t be such a bad option after all.
‘Are the boy’s parents at home?’ asked Abbot Po. David Thackery had mentioned his mother and father being friends of Eddie’s parents.
‘Mr Dickens is currently indisposed, a chimney having been pushed upon him,’ said Eddie’s great-aunt, unable to suppress a chuckle. ‘I’m a great believer in seeing the funny side of things.’
‘Not so funny for my father, I suppose,’ said Eddie.
‘You’re behaving very oddly, boy,’ said EMAM, fixing a stare on Eddie.
‘The child has lost his memory,’ the abbot said. ‘If we might be allowed in to see his parents – his mother, at least – I can explain everything.’
‘No memory, you say?’
‘Not of his family, no, madam.’
‘Ridiculous!’
‘Helping him regain it could be a slow process,’ said Abbot Po. ‘The mind is a delicate tool and –’ He was interrupted by a loud ‘THUMP!’
The loud ‘THUMP!’ was generated by Even Madder Aunt Maud leaning back inside the doorway, lifting Malcolm the stuffed stoat from an occasional table just out of view, and hitting Eddie over the head with him.
Slightly dazed, Eddie blinked, then looked from Malcolm to Even Madder Aunt Maud and back to Malcolm. Suddenly, the world made sense again.
‘Malcolm!’ he said in delight, throwing his arms around the rigid animal. ‘Now I remember everything!’
‘Cured!’ said his great-aunt triumphantly. ‘Now there’s no time to stand around talking, I need to get on!’
She slammed the front door, leaving Abbot Po, Brother Guck and Eddie out on the driveway.
‘That’s Even Madder Aunt Maud,’ said Eddie.
‘Delighted to meet her,’ said Abbot Po.
‘My great-aunt,’ said Eddie.
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ said Po.
The front door flew back open. ‘And might I just add that you’re the ugliest man I’ve ever seen,’ said Maud, before slamming it shut again.
None of them had to guess who she was talking to, or even to whom she was talking.
*
There was much back-slapping and a few tears when Eddie was welcomed back into the bosom of his family. Gibbering Jane had been so upset when Even Madder Aunt Maud had given Baby Ned to Brother Guck that she’d gone back to the cupboard under the stairs and refused to come out. Now that Eddie was back, she emerged. Eddie was quick to assure her that little Ned was safe and well – and bawling his eyes out – back at Lamberley Monastery. She gibbered with delight at the news.
Mad Uncle Jack shook Eddie’s hand solemnly. ‘I take it that you told the enemy nothing?’ he asked.
‘I was in an accident,’ Eddie explained for the umpteenth time. ‘I lost my memory.’
‘So that’s what you told the blackguards, huh? And they believed you? Excellent, my boy! I knew that a Dickens would never talk under interrogation. We’re part of what makes this country great: chin up … stiff upper lip … eyes front, and all that!’
In Eddie’s absence, his mother (Mrs Dickens, of course) had ‘knitted’ him a suit using the unravelled material from the sofa. ‘It was my way of telling myself that you’d be back,’ she said, kissing her son on the forehead. Her breath smelled of mothballs. She’d been sucking on a handful now and then, to calm the nerves.
Eddie changed out of his monk’s habit and into the suit. Looking at himself in the wardrobe mirror, he quickly changed back again.
Mr Dickens was delighted to see Eddie, but could still only manage a horizontal position. He’d solved this by asking his wife – Mrs Dickens to you and me – to lash him to the tea trolley he remembered from his youth. Mrs Dickens hadn’t been able to find any rope at such short notice (or of such a short length) so had used some bunting last hung out for one of the Queen’s jubilees.
It was in this extraordinary state that his father first greeted Eddie on his return. It’d be interesting to know what Eddie would have made of this if he’d met his father in this condition before his memory came back to him. As it was, this was just another typical Dickens family scene.
‘Fandango Jones – you remember him, I take it?’ asked Mr Dickens. Eddie nodded. ‘He had a theory that the chimney was deliberately pushed from the roof; a theory which the detective inspector –’
‘The same detective inspector?’ asked Eddie.
‘The very same,’ nodded his father, with a wince. ‘The fat one with the checked suit. Only now he’s very thin, but still has the same suit. Well, he agrees with Jones. He says that this was no accident, not that I was necessarily the target.’
‘How dreadful!’ said Eddie.
‘Nothing a piece of sacking wouldn’t fix,’ said Even Madder Aunt Maud, passing by with what appeared to be a stuffed moose’s head (mounted on a wooden shield) under her arm.
‘I beg your pardon?’ asked Eddie.
‘I assume you were referring to the abbot’s ugliness. I was saying it’s nothing a piece of sacking wouldn’t fix! He could cut out a pair of holes for his eyes.’
‘He was referring to someone deliberately pushing that chimney on to me,’ said Eddie’s father, somewhat indignantly. ‘And where are you going with that moose head?’
‘What moose head?’ asked his aunt.
‘That moose head,’ Mr Dickens managed to point. ‘Under your arm.’
EMAM looked down and flinched in surprise as though noticing the moose head for the first time. ‘I read somewhere that they make nourishing soup,’ she said, somewhat unconvincingly. I’d hazard a guess that she had no idea why she was carrying it either.
‘I think she’s thinking of carrots,’ muttered Laudanum Dickens as she strode out of earshot.
Eddie found that he couldn’t sleep that first night back at Awful End. It was a strange feeling getting all his memories back, even though they were rightfully his. It wasn’t so much the having-regained-his-identity part that was so odd but the looking-back-at-his-time-in-the-monastery now that he knew who he was. It was difficult to remember what it was like not knowing. And if you find my trying to explain that confusing, think how hard it was for Eddie to make sense of it in his head.
After staring at the ceiling for what seemed like an eternity, Eddie got up and went for a wander around the house, to try to stop his brain working overtime. It was a moonlit night and Awful End had more than its fair share of curtainless windows, especially since, some years previously, Mad Uncle Jack had used so many of the curtains to fuel an enormous beacon to warn of the coming of the Armada. (Of course, he’d been confused. He’d read in his newspaper a report marking the anniversary of the coming of the Spanish fleet some three hundred years earlier but had mistaken it for current news.) Still, the local fire brigade – also known as three men and a horse-drawn fire cart – had great fun trying to douse the flames, and the only victims were the local ducks who were homeless because the fire fighters had drawn all the water for their hoses from their pond. The Thackery family (with the notable exception of Master David, of course) had rallied around, travelling up especially, and giving the ducks temporary accommodation whilst their original watery home was restored to its former glory.
Eddie decided to go up on to the roof. He liked doing that some summer evenings. It was usually a haven of peace and quiet in an otherwise frenetic household. Away from the big windows, the enclosed upper stairways were in darkness. Eddie held up his bedside candle before him.
Out on the roof, he placed the candle on the parapet. The air was so still that the flame barely flickered. Eddie looked up at the star-filled night sky, dark blue in the moonlight. Then something caught his eye.
There, over in Awful Wood, was a glimmering light. Someone had lit a campfire on the estate. Eddie was too far away to make out anything more. Had he been closer, he would have seen the strange tent that Gibbering Jane had passed that day of her afternoon perambul
ations with Baby Ned. Of course, she’d failed to mention it to anyone or, if she had, they’d probably failed to understand her through all that gibbering.
Eddie wasn’t too alarmed by the sight. It was clearly a self-contained campfire and not a danger to property. He guessed that it must be one of his great-uncle’s ex-soldiers practising night manoeuvres, or some such thing. He yawned. He’d investigate in the morning.
Episode 11
Falling Into Place
In which Eddie Dickens makes a startling discovery and a late breakfast
To English ears and eyes – well, to mine, at least – the word doppelganger doesn’t sound like it means anything, and looks made-up. But, no! Apparently, it’s from the German meaning ‘double-goer’. Double-goer? Well, a doppelganger is your double. If you come face-to-face with yourself in the high street, then that person is your doppelganger, or you’re theirs … or both. Unless, of course, you’re looking at your own reflection in a shop window, or anywhere else for that matter.
Eddie met his doppelganger when he’d made his way across the lawns and into Awful Wood, the following morning. He saw the tent before he saw the remains of the fire, now long since turned to ashes, that had caught his attention the previous night. The tent was expertly constructed from branches and leaves collected from the wood.
‘Is there anyone in there?’ he asked, not knowing who to expect. Life at Awful End was full of surprises and, for all Eddie knew, Even Madder Aunt Maud had hired a dwarf to pretend to be a garden ornament by day and live in the wood at night. He wouldn’t put it past her.
What he didn’t expect was the person who came blinking into the morning sunlight to look how he looked. Eddie blinked. Twice. And then again, for good measure.
He and the boy-emerging-from-the-tent looked remarkably like each other. Like two peas in a pod.
The boy-who-had-now-emerged-from-his-tent looked equally startled.
‘Good morning,’ said Eddie, politely. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’
‘No,’ said the boy. ‘I don’t think we have.’
They even sounded similar. The boy was a fraction taller than Eddie and his hair was a lighter shade of brown.
‘You’re Fabian, aren’t you?’ said Eddie. ‘Hester’s boy.’
Fabian, for that was, indeed, who he was, was flabbergasted (and what a brilliant word that is).
‘How … how on earth did you know that?’ asked Fabian. He furtively looked from left to right, as though he was expecting that this was some kind of trap, and that a swarm of peelers might appear from behind the trees and start beating him with their truncheons.
Of course, the reason that Eddie knew that Fabian was Fabian was because he guessed that there couldn’t be that many gypsies of about his age and appearance loose in the countryside; and there was no doubting that Fabian was a gypsy, what with the clothes he was wearing and the skills with which he’d made the tent from branches in the wood.
‘I keep my ears open,’ Eddie grinned. ‘And Chief Fudd is out looking for you.’
‘Has he been to the house?’ asked Fabian, nodding in the direction of Awful End.
Eddie shrugged. ‘I’ve been away,’ he said, ‘but no one here’s mentioned him to me.’
Fabian took a knife out of his pocket and began to whittle a small piece of wood which he took from the other. Eddie was tinged with jealousy. His parents only let him whittle with a carrot, which is another way of saying ‘not at all’, carrots being one of the blunter vegetables. Whittling was out for Eddie. They were worried he might cut himself. Eddie was pretty sure – which is similar to fairly confident – that Fabian had primarily produced the knife not to whittle but to let Eddie know that he was armed. It was obvious from his manner that he was jumpy about something. He looked decidedly uneasy.
‘You went off the day that the chimney landed on that man,’ said Fabian.
‘That’s right,’ said Eddie. ‘The man is my father. I went to fetch the doctor.’
‘Is he all right? Your father, I mean,’ asked the gypsy boy.
‘He’s always having accidents,’ said Eddie. ‘The doctor says that he’ll make a full recovery.’
‘That’s good,’ said Fabian. ‘What happened to you? You didn’t come back.’
‘Until now,’ said Eddie. ‘I was waylaid.’
There was a period of silence between them. Fabian whittled and Eddie stuck his hands in his pockets.
‘Is this a bad place?’ asked Fabian, when he next spoke.
‘Bad?’ said Eddie, in genuine surprise. ‘Mad, maybe, but I wouldn’t say bad.’
‘What about the beatings?’ asked Fabian.
‘Beatings?’ asked Eddie. The only beating he could think of was being beaten over the head with Malcolm, and that had done him the power of good.
‘The day you went and didn’t come back. The tall beaky man was talking about beating people …’
‘Oh,’ said Eddie. ‘You mean beating the bounds! He was only going to hit a well-padded ex-soldier with a stuffed stoat.’ The minute the words came out, he realised how odd they’d sound to a stranger. But just how much of a stranger could someone who looked so like Eddie be?
‘And what about Oli – about the baby?’ asked Fabian. ‘What happened to the baby? They let someone take him away!’
‘You seem to know an awful lot about what’s been going on here,’ said Eddie. ‘Who exactly are you?’
There was the loud flap of a wood pigeon’s wings as it took flight, and Fabian threw himself to the ground as though dodging a bullet.
Eddie put his hand out, which Fabian sheepishly took, pulling himself back to his feet. He stuffed the knife and whittled wood back into a pocket.
‘Are you a relation?’ Eddie asked.
‘A relation?’
‘Are you and I related in some way?’ asked Eddie. ‘You must have noticed how similar we look.’
‘I – er –’ Fabian stuttered to a halt. ‘The baby?’
‘The baby’s fine. He hasn’t been stuck in any poor-house or orphanage. He’s staying with some monks for the time being.’ Just at that moment, Fabian’s tummy rumbled and Eddie seized the opportunity to turn the situation to his advantage. ‘Do you want to come up to the house for something to eat? We’ve had our breakfast, but there’s always plenty left over.’
Fabian seemed hesitant. ‘I – er – I’m not sure I want the others to see me,’ he said at last.
‘I’m not sure you wanted me to see you,’ said Eddie. ‘It’s probably too late now.’
‘So they’re not bad people?’ asked the gypsy boy.
Eddie put his hands on his hips. ‘How many times am I going to have to say this: they’re not bad, just eccentric. That’s all. Come on.’
Eddie sneaked Fabian into the kitchen, sat him at the table, and then went into the larder to find him some leftovers. No one had invented the fridge yet, though someone of Eddie’s slight acquaintance (a Tobias Belch) had been experimenting with a ‘steam-powered ice box’ in his laboratories in Bristol. So far, with little success and a few big explosions.
Eddie returned with some bacon, kedgeree (a kind of cold fish curry designed specifically to be eaten in the morning) and something called ‘devilled kidneys’, which are not kidneys with little horns and fork tails but those cooked with hot seasoning.
‘I would offer you bread, but my mother’s is an acquired taste,’ said Eddie. He didn’t bother to tell Fabian about her special recipe which included those troublesome watch springs.
Fabian ate hungrily. ‘We are related,’ he said, after he’d eaten his last mouthful.
‘I thought so,’ said Eddie. ‘How?’
Fabian wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘Have you heard of a man named Doctor Malcontent Dickens?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Eddie. ‘He was my great-grandfather. That “tall beaky man”, as you called him, is his only remaining son, Jack. He’s my great-uncle.’
‘If he’s Jack, then you’l
l know that Malcontent had two other sons –’
‘My grandfather, Percy Dickens, and my Great-Uncle George –’
‘The one who burnt down the Houses of Parliament,’ Fabian nodded. Eddie could sense that he was getting excited.
‘But what I don’t understand is where you fit in?’ said Eddie. ‘Out of Grandpa, Mad Uncle Jack and George, only my grandfather had a child … That’s my father, Laudanum. And he, of course, had me.’
Fabian pulled a piece of paper from inside his shirt and unfolded it on the table, smoothing it flat with a fist. ‘That’s not strictly true,’ he said. ‘Look at this.’
Eddie found himself looking at an incomplete branch of the Dickens family tree. Sure enough, his father, Laudanum, was down there as being married to Florinda, but there was no mention of their having a son, Edmund. What really caught Eddie’s eye, though, was what appeared under George’s name.
‘My Great-Uncle George had a daughter?’ he said in amazement. ‘No one ever mentioned that before. In fact, I’m sure that Mad Uncle Jack told me that his brother George never married –’ It’s true, you know. That’s exactly what MUJ told Eddie. If you don’t believe me, you’ll find it on page 49 of the UK edition of Terrible Times. ‘– let alone had a daughter.’
‘She’s my mother,’ said Fabian, producing a stubby pencil from a pocket, and adding the next generation to the family tree.
Here’s what it looked like after Fabian had finished with it:
‘Ned – I mean the baby – is your brother, Oliphant?’ gasped Eddie.
‘Yes,’ said Fabian.
‘So it was you who brought him here and put him in amongst the bulrushes!’
‘It was my mother’s idea,’ said Fabian. ‘She wants Oliphant to have the life that she never had …’
‘But what about you?’ asked Eddie, pulling out a chair from under the kitchen table and sitting next to his cousin. ‘What about the life you never had?’
Dubious Deeds Page 17