Dubious Deeds

by Philip Ardagh

  The scene Mr Pumblesnook and Eddie had been rehearsing when they’d been so rudely interrupted by EMAM (again) was one of a number set on board The Pompous Pig bound for America, where Eddie came face to face with the escaped convict, Swags (the true version of which is beautifully laid out in my book Terrible Times). Mr Pumblesnook was playing the role of Swags.

  Those of you familiar with Eddie’s earlier adventures may recall that Swags was a very thin man and Mr Pumblesnook a very large one. The reason for such miscasting was simple: as director and producer of the show, Mr Pumblesnook insisted on taking all the best parts for himself. At the initial casting, he had even tried to give himself the title role of Eddie but even he had to eventually admit that Eddie had been born to play the part.

  Most of the other roles were played by Mr Pumblesnook’s band of players, made up of the original core of actors Eddie had first encountered at the rather unoriginally named The Coaching Inn coaching inn plus those escaped orphans from St Horrid’s Home for Grateful Orphans who’d chosen to stay with him after their escape.

  In fact, the escape was the climax at the end of the first act. The real Marjorie, the hollow cow-shaped carnival float in which they’d escaped, was now Even Madder Aunt Maud’s home in the rose garden of Awful End. In the play, it was portrayed by a much smaller two-dimensional painted wooden cow on wheels.

  Like most of the working props, these were constructed by one of the wandering theatricals, Mr Blessing. And, like most of the wandering theatricals, he had rather an annoying nickname: Bless Him. I’m sorry, but there it is.

  For this play, Bless Him was ably assisted by Eddie’s cousin, Fabian. Fabian would have made a fantastic understudy for Eddie because they looked so like each other that, when they weren’t mistaken for each other they were mistaken for virtually identical twins. (Their eyes were somewhat different. More on this later.) When asked, however, Fabian had refused, point blank, to act. The conversation went something like this:

  ‘You are aware that I am writing a play?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Laudanum.’

  ‘Being an account of some of the more exciting moments in my son Edmund’s disproportionately action-packed life –’

  ‘Yes, Uncle.’

  ‘– without the distractions and asides of –’

  ‘Yes, Uncle.’

  ‘Well, Fabian, I was wondering whether you would consider being an understudy?’

  ‘A basement?’

  ‘I think you are confusing an understudy with an undercroft.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Uncle.’

  ‘An understudy is someone who learns another person’s part so, if that person is taken ill, he can take on the role in his place.’

  ‘His part?’

  ‘His character. His acting role in the play.’

  ‘But I could never do that …’

  ‘You would rather have a role all to yourself?’

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that I couldn’t act in front of people.’

  ‘These are not people, Fabian. They are family, and a few close friends. Not people. The stage will be built here at Awful End and the play performed in the grounds.’

  ‘Then perhaps I could help with that, Uncle? With building the stage –?’

  ‘And props! What an excellent idea.’

  And so it was. As director and producer and manager and player of all the best parts other than Eddie’s, Mr Pumblesnook was clearly in charge but he fully understood patronage. As well as his handsome fee, he was being housed and fed at Awful End, along with his acting troupe, and Mr Dickens had written the script himself. So Mr Dickens got listened to. Mr Dickens got respect. And his weird family, who were also his hosts, were reluctantly tolerated.

  The member of the household – for want of a better description – with whom the actor-manager was on worst terms was Malcolm (or was it Sally?). Once, when disguised as a highwayman, Mr Pumblesnook had the misfortune of being hit across the knees with Malcolm – something not dramatised in the play – and he had never forgiven the stuffed stoat. This was, of course, totally unreasonable as Malcolm had no say in the matter and, in the improbable – nay impossible – situation where he might have had an opinion, he would, I’ve no doubt, have felt sorely wronged. It was Even Madder Aunt Maud the man should have been angry with: it being she who’d used Malcolm as a weapon on him.

  Mr Pumblesnook was holding Malcolm’s nose in his grip right now, EMAM still clutching his tail end, or should that be ‘the end of his tail’?

  ‘Madam,’ he said firmly, in a voice he’d used to such great effect when playing the Archbishop in Steeple Chase, ‘if you would be so kind as to put that stoat away and go about your normal business, young Eddie and I shall do likewise.’

  ‘But you don’t have stoats to put away!’ she snorted.

  ‘The normal business, ma’am!’ Mr Pumblesnook sighed. ‘We shall likewise go about our normal business!’

  Even Madder Aunt Maud went up on tiptoe and glared straight into the actor-manager’s eyes. ‘There’s nothing normal about you, sir!’ she declared, then turned and stomped off, waving Malcolm before her, like a commander leading his troops into battle, sword raised.

  Mr Pumblesnook watched her go. ‘Your great-aunt certainly knows how to make a grand exit, Eddie,’ he said, almost grudgingly. There had been a time when he’d greatly admired her, but living in prolonged proximity to her had soon cured him of that. ‘Now where were we?’

  ‘You were about to take another stab at me with that dagger,’ Eddie reminded him.

  ‘Not I!’ declared Pumblesnook, his voice rising. ‘That villain Swags!’ and, with that, he was back in character and chasing Eddie between the scattered barrels.

  Episode 2

  Goodbyes, Hellos & Tallyhos!

  In which we say goodbye to a bunch of monks

  and get to know a bunch of relatives better

  Eddie had been sorry to see the monks go when they finally left Awful End. He felt good at having been able to return the favour and put them up when they were monastery-less, and now the place seemed very empty without them. Awful End was a vast house (and, following the success of these books, I’ve heard rumours that the current generation of the Dickens family are considering opening it to the public during the summer months, and then that way you’ll be able to see for yourselves), so it could easily accommodate a few hundred monks. He would miss their company, their conversations, their chanting and singing.

  With them gone, it was back to ‘normal’ – as if that term could be applied to Awful End – but with a few noticeable differences. Now there were also Eddie’s newly discovered Aunt Hester (whom everyone called Hetty), a newly discovered uncle, called Alfie (who had a permanent hacking cough), and Eddie’s newly discovered cousins, Fabian and baby Oliphant, living with them.

  As I touched upon in Episode One, Eddie and Fabian looked very similar indeed. In truth, so similar that when David Roberts came to illustrate this book he could have cheated and simply drawn Eddie twice – which, my American friends, is how we say ‘two times’ on this side of the Atlantic – then pointed at one at random and said, ‘That one there is Fabian!’ (Even professional illustrators employ tricks like that sometimes, you know.)

  Despite their eyes being different colours, that wasn’t the way most people told them apart (because, generally, people couldn’t remember who had the brown ones and who had the greeny-blue ones). It was the fact that Eddie’s looked more saucery that was the trick.

  The reason why Eddie had such saucer-like eyes is a pretty safe bet. Few people, Fabian included, had experienced as many eye-opening events in his life as Eddie had. Everywhere Eddie turned, he seemed to find himself in extraordinary situation after extraordinary situation (rather like those characters in TV murder mysteries who, wherever they go, always seem to stumble upon a dead body, week after week after week). It probably didn’t help living with such an extraordinary family. And, oh yes, whilst I remember, Fabian
wore a gold hoop earring in one ear.

  Baby Oliphant looked pretty much like any other baby boy, which meant that Aunt Hetty thought that he was the most handsome baby ever born, and the others thought of him as being generally quite nice, apart from the dribbling. He seemed to love Fabian and Eddie in equal measure and cooed when they were around. Apart from his mother, though, Oliphant’s favourite person in the whole wide world seemed to be ex-chambermaid (and now ‘maid of all works’) Gibbering Jane, which made her gibber with pleasure on pleasure-gibbering levels one would never have imagined possible. This is why I’ve drawn this graph:

  At every available opportunity, she would proudly wheel little Ollie around the grounds in a home-made pram (even though he was now a pretty fast crawler in his own right). As well as being able to say ‘Mamma’, ‘Dadda’ and ‘narna’ the last of which – I think – meant food, he could also do some impressive gibbering noises of his own, which Jane took as a real compliment.

  And another noticeable difference at Awful End? Why, the arrival of Mr Pumblesnook’s wandering theatricals, of course. Mad Uncle Jack hadn’t initially liked the idea of the actors and actresses – female actors weren’t called plain actors back then – staying in the house itself. In those days, in the great scheme of things, actors (and actresses) were seen to be below woodlice and earwigs in the hierarchy of living things … which might explain why he suggested that they each be issued with a large piece of tree bark to sleep under in the gardens. Mr Dickens had managed to persuade him that Awful End was so big and had so many empty rooms that he would hardly know they were there. When he pointed out that the monks had caused them very little inconvenience, and MUJ had replied, ‘What monks?’ he knew that he’d won. Mr Pumblesnook’s troupe arrived and all was well.

  Eddie was very pleased to see again so many of the orphans he’d helped to escape, and to see how much better fed and happier they looked nowadays. And they were pleased to see him. Eddie Dickens would always be held in special regard by the former occupants of St Horrid’s Home for Grateful Orphans.

  Surprisingly, it was EMAM who seemed to miss the monks most of all, and this was expressed by the fact that she often mentioned how little she missed them. Or thought about them. Hardly ever.

  ‘I won’t miss the one with a face like a gargoyle,’ said Even Madder Aunt Maud one sunny afternoon.

  ‘Abbot Po was a very nice man,’ said Eddie in his defence.

  ‘Never said he wasn’t, but he was ugly enough to stop all the clocks, and Ethel wouldn’t lay,’ snapped his great-aunt.

  ‘Ethel?’ asked Fabian.

  It took Eddie a moment to remember about whom EMAM was talking. ‘She means her favourite chicken … only it’s no wonder she didn’t lay any eggs while Abbot Po was here. She was dead and buried years ago.’ (In fact, Ethel the chicken was buried long before a single Bertian monk set foot in Awful End.)

  ‘That doesn’t make my statement any less true!” snorted Even Madder Aunt Maud, bringing an axe crashing down over her head. Not on Eddie or Fabian, I hasten to add. I suppose I should have explained that they were in the woodshed, shouldn’t I?

  Though called a shed, it was more of a lean-to with the outer wall missing: a covered area where the logs for the fires were cut and stacked.

  It used to be the ex-soldiers’ job to cut the wood, but they were getting a bit past it now and had had rather too many accidents and near misses over more recent years. Dawkins had a bad back, so wood-chopping couldn’t be included in his endless list of duties. The younger monks had loved chopping wood but now, of course, they’d gone.

  Even Madder Aunt Maud had announced that it would now be one of her responsibilities. No sooner had the words passed her lips than an involuntary shudder had passed through Eddie’s entire body. The thought of his great-aunt wielding a large axe seemed about as safe and sensible as appointing a piranha fish to be a lifeguard or asking a cat-burglar to clean your gutters. That’s why Eddie and Fabian were out in the woodshed-that-wasn’t-really-a-shed with her, at a safe distance. They wanted to make sure that she didn’t do herself a serious injury.

  Both boys were impressed how strong their great-aunt was. She wasn’t a very tall lady but she was fit and healthy (which was probably why she would go on to live to the ripe old age that she did).

  It was as Even Madder Aunt Maud was just about to narrowly miss chopping off the toes of her right foot by the narrowest of narrow margins for the third time that a bugle sounded.

  Those of you with an army background might think of the sounding of a bugle as a call to get up in the morning, or to go to the cookhouse, or to fight, or to remember the dead – a bugle has a surprising number of uses in army life doesn’t it? – and, if you’re a lover of boogie (as in music), the sound of the bugle may remind you of the Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B, a song made famous by the singing group The Andrews Sisters, not to be confused with the Andrews sisters (small ‘s’) who lived in Lamberley Hall (not too far from Awful End) and owned one of the finest collections of reject china in the British Empire at the time, which included three-handled two-handled mugs (if you see what I mean), some of the finest sets of chipped or incomplete dinner and tea services, and soup bowls so warped that they couldn’t hold soup.

  The sisters, Kitty and Amelia Andrews, had inherited the Hall from their father, the Honourable Douglas ‘Duff’ Andrews, (who was ‘new money’, having made his fortune from coconuts), and neither had ever married.

  They had little to do with the outside world and spent so much of the time just speaking to each other that they’d fallen into the habit of knowing exactly what the other was going to say, so rarely needed to speak complete sentences. A typical Andrews sisters’ (with a small ‘s’) conversation might go along the lines of:

  ‘Do you know where –?’

  ‘Under the –’

  ‘How on earth –?’

  ‘I hid them from –’

  ‘Wise move!’ which, once translated, would read:

  KITTY: Do you know where I put the scissors?

  AMELIA: Under the sofa.

  KITTY: How on earth did they get there?

  AMELIA: I hid them from Cleptomania Claire.

  KITTY: Wise move!

  JULIE: The hills are alive with the sound of –

  I’m so sorry. I’ve no idea how Julie Andrews ended up in the mix. That’s certainly one Andrews too many … and do please remind me: how did I get on to the Andrews sisters (with a small ‘s’) in the first place?

  Let me work backwards: Andrews sisters (with a small ‘s’) > Andrews Sisters (with a big ‘S’) > The Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B > bugles > Even Madder Aunt Maud, Fabian and Eddie in the woodshed, hearing a bugle sounding. Aha! Here we are:

  Though the sound of a bugle may mean different things to different people, a bugle sounding here at Awful End meant one thing: the local fox hunt.

  Mad Uncle Jack had banned fox hunting on his land, though it had little to do with the fox. A man who paid for everything with dried (dead) fish probably wasn’t overly concerned with the foxes’ wellbeing. The reason why Mad Uncle Jack (or Mad Mr Jack Dickens or Mad Major Jack Dickens, as he was known locally) had banned it was because he was in dispute with the Master of the Hounds (who was the chap in charge of the local hunt).

  This chap was another retired major but, unlike MUJ, who’d reverted to plain ‘Mr’ now that his fighting days were over, Stinky Hoarebacker still used his military title. Of course, he wasn’t christened ‘Stinky’. His first name was actually Cheshire, which is also the name of a type of cheese and, if you share your name with a type of cheese and you go to an English public school – which, dear American readers, is what we English call our private schools for some unknown reason – there is a 98.6% chance that you’re going to end up being called ‘Stinky’ for the rest of your natural born days.

  He and Mad Uncle Jack had fallen out over a bet. A few years prior to the events I’m now relating – somet
ime between those outlined in Terrible Times and Dubious Deeds, I think – Mad Uncle Jack and Stinky Hoarebacker had been discussing hats. Mad Uncle Jack had insisted that the deerstalker was the finest hat of its generation. Stinky had insisted that it was the mullion.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ MUJ had demanded, tightening the strap under his saddle. I’m sure such straps have special names and, being the horsey type, my editor might even point it out to me and suggest we add it here. In other words, if you read this paragraph without the technical name for such a piece of tackle added, then it’s probably because she’s not doing her job properly. ‘The mullion is a cap, not a hat!’

  ‘It is most certainly not,’ Stinky had insisted.

  At this moment, Mad Uncle Jack snorted. ‘The finest of hats is the deerstalker, the mullion is a cap and not a hat, and there’s an end to it,’ he whinnied.

  ‘It most certainly is a hat, sir!’ replied Stinky.

  ‘It most certainly is not, sir!’ MUJ retorted, which isn’t as painful as it sounds.

  ‘’Tis, sir!’

  ‘Not, sir!’

  ‘’Tis! ’Tis! ’Tis!’

  ‘’Tisn’t! ’Tisn’t! ’Tisn’t!’

  ‘A wager?’ which is a bet, suggested Stinky.

  ‘A wager!’ which is still a bet, agreed Mad Uncle Jack. ‘What will it be?’

  ‘A shilling!’ which is an amount of money, suggested Stinky.

  ‘Done, sir!’ said MUJ. ‘I’ll wager you one shilling, sir, that the mullion is not, was not, and never shall be a hat. It’s a cap.’

  The two retired majors shook hands. Mad Uncle Jack then instructed that the local hunt not be permitted in the grounds of Awful End, and the two men had not spoken to each other since … yet the bugle had sounded and here came the hunt. And Even Madder Aunt Maud was ready for them!