‘Old Wilberforce is quite inventive when it comes to punishments,’ said Harley.
‘Well, he can’t punish us now. It’s the school holidays. We can do what we like,’ said Jodie.
‘I’m still in his care,’ said Harley.
‘Well, we’re not,’ said Jodie. ‘Come on, Pearl, help me!’
She tugged hard at the cupboard, going red in the face with the effort.
‘You’ll hurt yourself, Jodie!’
‘So give me a hand!’
I scrabbled at the cupboard too. We could barely budge it an inch. We looked at Harley.
‘It’s not worth the effort and the potential aggro.
There’s nothing up there,’ he said, but he came and stood beside us and heaved too.
‘I think there are attic rooms,’ I said. ‘Mrs Wilberforce told me about them. She said she tried to count them all once. She said I should have a go.’
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peer round,’ said Jodie. ‘Come on, use your shoulders. One, two, three, push!’
The cupboard made a great groaning sound as we shoved at it.
‘Ssh, we don’t want Miss Ponsonby to come running,’ said Harley.
‘She’s miles up the other end. She won’t hear a thing. Come on, one more go.’
We hauled at the great cupboard and it suddenly budged and shifted sideways, toppling alarmingly.
‘Watch it! It’ll fall on top of us if you’re not careful,’ said Harley.
‘It’s fine, it’s fine,’ said Jodie. ‘Look, we can just about squeeze through. Lucky job we’re all thin. Let me go first!’
She hunched her shoulders up, stood sideways and wriggled slowly through the gap.
‘It looks horribly dark through there. Are there any spiders?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Ooooh! Tarantulas! Help, help, killer tarantulas as big as beach balls! They’re jumping all over me with their hefty hairy legs!’ Jodie called.
‘She’s such a pain, your sister,’ said Harley, sighing. ‘Are you going next?’
‘All right.’ I paused. ‘Will you come too?’
‘What do you think I’m going to do? Shove the cupboard back and wall you both up for ever?’
‘Stop it! You’re as bad as Jodie!’
‘Never,’ said Harley.
I still hesitated, looking at the gap.
‘She’s joking about the spiders,’ said Harley.
‘I know she is. It’s just the moment she says it I can kind of feel them,’ I said.
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onto me. If you feel anything at all spidery, just give a yell and I’ll yank you straight out.’
I smiled at him and then squeezed through the gap, hanging on tight.
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‘Oh, it has to be a wedding dress,’
said Harley.
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8
It was like squeezing into a different world. It smelled damp and musty, and it was much dustier.
The narrow stairwell was very dark.
‘I don’t like it!’ I said. ‘Jodie, let’s go back!’
‘Don’t be such a wimp. Here, hold my hand. Is Harley coming?’
‘Give us a chance,’ Harley called.
He stuck his arm through the gap, then squeezed his long lanky body through, limb by limb. Then we stumbled up the murky stairs, coughing as we breathed in the dust. There was a long corridor with lots of spiders’ webs dangling down from the ceiling.
‘Look!’ I said, pointing at them.
‘They’re just little baby spiders,’ said Jodie. ‘Isn’t this great? It’s like we’ve found our own secret passage.’
We stood peering along the long corridor. There were buckets and basins all the way up it, half full of dank water.
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‘I think the roof ’s leaking big-time,’ said Harley.
Jodie was dodging around them, trying doors.
Some were locked, without any keys.
‘What’s going on? What’s in here? Why has Mr Wilberforce blocked the way with that cupboard?
Perhaps we’ll find the bodies of all his former wives, like he’s a Bluebeard and he’s murdered them all.
Maybe he even had a go at murdering the present Mrs Wilberforce by shoving her out the tower window but she miraculously survived, though of course tragically maimed.’
‘Don’t, Jodie!’ I said. ‘That’s horrible!’
‘She did fall. Someone told me in the village. It was years and years ago, before she was married,’
said Harley.
‘Truly?’ I said. ‘How awful! I wonder how she fell?
You don’t think someone really pushed her, do you?’
‘Maybe we’ll try to find out. We’ll solve the Mystery of Melchester,’ said Jodie.
She wandered along the corridor. One of the doors was off its hinges, but we didn’t spot any dead wives when we peeped in, not a single coffin. It was just old school junk: broken computers, wobbly desks, and stacks of cheap plastic chairs, big ones, medium-sized ones and little ones.
‘Oh, it’s too big. Oh, it’s too soft. Oh, oh, oh, it’s just right!’ said Jodie in a funny Goldilocks voice, trying out all three sizes.
She tried another room while Harley and I stacked the chairs back neatly. She just took a running push at the door and it creaked open.
‘Jodie! Don’t! You mustn’t break the lock!’
‘It was broken already. Come and look!’ she called.
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We found her kneeling amongst big cardboard boxes and battered trunks, pulling out limp paper-chains and tinsel and winding them round her neck like garlands. One of the trunks had old costumes from school plays.
‘Now you have to admit, this is seriously cool,’
said Jodie. She snatched up a white veil and a long blue dress. ‘Oh, wow, I’ve always wanted to be Mary,’ she said, still rummaging. ‘No, no, look, even better, white feathers! Blow Mary, I’ll be the Angel Gabriel, then I can wear wings.’ She pinned them on her back and flapped around the room.
I fingered the fruit-gum jewels on the three cardboard crowns wistfully. I wanted to play at being a queen but I’d feel too silly in front of Harley. Then I found a lovely smooth black velvety coat and I slipped it on, stroking the sleeves.
‘I like your coat, Pearl! What else is there? What’s that brown furry one? Are these the Three Wise Kings’ robes?’ Jodie put on the brown fur and tried to tie the long thin belt round her waist.
‘Weird belt! It’s more like a tail,’ she muttered.
‘It is a tail!’ said Harley. ‘You’re Ratty! And you’re Mole, Pearl.’ He delved into the trunk and found a large coarse black fur coat with a white streak down the front. He tried it on, grinning. ‘Who am I, Pearl?’
‘Badger!’ I said.
There was a bright green spotted mac at the bottom of the trunk, a perfect Toad outfit.
‘You’d make a great Toad, Jodie,’ said Harley.
‘Leap around going Parp-parp.’
‘Parp-parp! Poop-poop!’ said Jodie, flinging the Toad mac over her head and doing little froggy 113
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leaps around the room. She tripped in her high heels and ended up sprawling on the floor, laughing.
‘How old are we? Mucking around like little kids!’ she said breathlessly.
‘You’re the number one mucker,’ said Harley.
‘Charmingly put! I wonder if they’ll do a play this year? I want to be in it. Is there a proper
stage here, Harley?’
‘Of sorts. So, Dame Jodie, this is presumably the start of your acclaimed acting career?’ said Harley.
‘Do not mock! My moment of fame will come, you’ll see,’ said Jodie. ‘I’m going to be a mega star.’
‘Do you want to act too, Pearl?’ Harley asked.
‘I like dressing up and pretending, but not in front of people!’ I said.
‘So what do you want to do?’
‘I think I want to write,’ I said shyly.
‘She’s written heaps and heaps. You should get her to show you. Some of her stories are brilliant,’
said Jodie.
‘No, they’re not, they’re rubbish,’ I said, blushing.
‘And my stories aren’t anywhere near as good as yours. Tell Harley some of your stories, the really creepy, bloody ones.’
‘He thinks we’re weird enough already,’ said Jodie.
‘I like weird! I positively celebrate it,’ said Harley.
‘I have to take that standpoint as you don’t get much weirder than me. I’m going to earn a fortune exploiting my own weirdness. I shall do my best to keep on growing and be a living freak in a circus –
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with staircases and balconies so that people can climb up and gawp at me eyeball to eyeball.’
‘Yeah, you’re weird all right,’ said Jodie. She rattled ten or twelve walking sticks in a wonky umbrella stand. ‘Hey, are these canes? Does Mr Wilberforce whack you on the bum when you’ve been bad?’ She took two of the canes and hobbled backwards and forwards with them. Then she pressed down hard on them, balancing, and swung between them. There was a hatstand too, with bowlers and trilbys and caps, even a battered grey top hat. Harley put it on and then draped a long black cape over his shoulders.
‘Hey, it fits, more or less,’ he said, swaggering about, doffing his hat to us.
‘Are they costumes for some old-fashioned play?’
said Jodie.
I picked up a moth-eaten fur stole with two creepy little animal heads at one end. They had staring glass eyes and glinting teeth.
‘Yuck, they’re real furry creatures,’ I said, dropping it on the floor. ‘I don’t think they’re dressing-up costumes, they’re real Victorian ones. I drew some like this for my Victorian project at school.’
‘ This isn’t Victorian,’ said Jodie, hauling a heavy mink coat round her shoulders. She tossed her hair and struck a film-star pose.
‘And what about this?’ said Harley, slipping his long arms into a soft white fur jacket.
It looked ridiculous on him, his wrists and splayed hands sticking out miles below the cuffs.
Jodie laughed. ‘You look like a half-skinned rabbit.’ She stroked him mockingly.
‘Good
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bunnykins. Hey, I think that jacket is rabbit. Oh dear, it’s so sad. Yet it’s so soft too. Let me try it on, Harley.’
‘It’s like all the people who ever lived here left their coats behind,’ I said.
‘Perhaps that’s why they’re here. Maybe these all belonged to Mrs Wilberforce’s family, her parents and grandparents,’ said Harley, wriggling out of the jacket and letting Jodie try it on.
It looked lovely on her. She kept it on while we went on to the next room. Jodie was an expert at getting in now. We couldn’t find any more clothes, apart from a splendid crimson smoking jacket with a matching tasselled fez and a half-finished long white dress still pinned on a dressmaker’s dummy.
‘Oh, it has to be a wedding dress,’ said Harley.
‘This is too Miss Haversham for words!’
I’d seen the film of Great Expectations on television and remembered Miss Haversham was the old lady who’d been jilted on her wedding day, so I could nod intelligently.
Jodie pinched the waist and held out the long skirts. ‘Yes, it’s definitely a wedding dress, a total white meringue,’ she said. ‘Sooo, was it going to be Mrs Wilberforce’s dress? And then some guy jilted her, so she threw herself from the tower in deep despair.’
‘Sherlock Jodie,’ said Harley. ‘Though I doubt it’s as elemementary as that.’
‘Poor Mrs Wilberforce,’ I said.
‘You can ask her all about it when you take her book back,’ said Jodie.
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about it. How awful if something like that really did happen,’ I said.
‘It’s not real, we’re just making it up,’ said Jodie.
She took the white rabbit fur coat off and draped it tenderly round the dummy’s shoulders over the long white dress. ‘There now,’ she said softly.
She went on to explore the next room. ‘Pearl!
Pearl, come and look at this!’ she called.
I went running. I stared around the room, my mouth open. It was like a nursery, with a beautiful Victorian scrap screen, four panels of plump-cheeked pouting children, overblown roses, little bluebirds with beady eyes, and flying fairies with spotted butterfly wings. There were old wooden chairs painted with hearts and flowers, a wobbly washstand, an old clothes horse, a misshapen fire-guard and a big leather trunk.
Jodie tried to prise it open but she was a nail biter and couldn’t get a proper grip.
‘Go on, Pearl, you do it,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s locked, it’s just stiff.’
I bent over and tugged hard, using my hands like hooks. The lid gave a little and I started levering it up.
I peeped inside.
‘Oh!’ I said, sitting back on my heels. My arm trembled as I eased the lid right up. ‘Oh!’ I said again. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’
‘You sound like a session singer, Pearl,’ said Harley, standing in the doorway. ‘What’s in the trunk? Diamonds? Gold bars? Rubies big as gravel?’
‘Better better better,’ I said. ‘It’s toys.’
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carefully swaddled in scraps of white silk, laid end to end.
‘I though you said you were too old for toys now?’
Jodie teased. ‘Go on, get them all out so we can see what’s there.’
I didn’t like to disturb them. They looked as if they were in little silk shrouds in a communal coffin.
‘Maybe we should just leave them exactly as they are,’ I said.
‘Nonsense,’ said Jodie, leaning over, prodding this one and that one. She found a brown furry arm and pulled. ‘It’s a monkey!’ she said. ‘Look, a chimp in blue trousers with a red bow tie. Isn’t he cute!’ She pulled him out and then shrieked when his big beige rubbery foot slithered down her front and fell to the floor. ‘Oh, gross! He’s gone rotten, he’s all warped and manky.’
She dropped him so that he fell beside his severed foot. He went on gamely grinning with his orange mouth.
‘Poor manky monkey,’ said Harley.
I went and picked him up, feeling sorry for him.
His foot was horribly wrinkled and spongy. I didn’t like touching it, but I tried poking it back into the monkey’s hollow leg. It fell straight off again, flopping into my lap.
‘Perhaps we could glue it on?’ I said, smoothing his fur and pulling up his trousers, trying to comfort him.
Jodie was poking further into the trunk. ‘God, there’s a whole family of rotting monkeys incarcer-ated in here, look!’ She held up a girl monkey in a blue dress and pinafore. She had little earrings piercing her crumbling ears.
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‘Hey, I like her little starry studs,’ said Jodie, trying to pick them out.
‘Don’t take them away from her
!’ I said.
‘Look, she’s only got half her ears left. She doesn’t need earrings.’
‘Yes she does!’ I tried to think of a way of getting Jodie to back off. ‘Maybe the earrings made her ears get all infected and that’s why bits have dropped off. If you take the earrings, then your ears will go like that too,’ I said, taking the girl monkey and rocking her in my arms.
‘You two are so seriously mental,’ said Harley.
‘So, we’ve got Hop-along and Nibble-ear. Anyone else?’
Jodie found a baby monkey in a long white dress.
She had a bonnet pulled very low over her eyes, which was just as well, because half her face had peeled away. Then we found her big brother in a red waistcoat and black cord trousers. He was in better condition, but he’d lost one thumb.
‘So, we have Little Faceless and Greedy Suck-a-thumb,’ said Harley, settling them in my lap. ‘There you are, Nurse Pearl, a set of little simian patients for you to put to rights. And when you’re done doctoring them, you can do a dormie round. Zeph’s teddy has suffered a serious amputation.’
‘Do they all have teddies?’ said Jodie, fiddling with a doll. She had a pretty face and long fair hair but her arms and legs dangled dejectedly, her internal elastics rotted away.
‘Dan has his Man,’ said Harley.
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and lungs and liver. He has no willy though. I wittily suggested calling him Willy-Nilly but Dan insists his name is simply Man.’
‘How come he’s got one of those things? He’s only a baby,’ said Jodie.
‘I think he’s got these weirdo parents who want him to be an infant phenomenon,’ said Harley. ‘He’s also got a Peter Rabbit cuddly toy but he never plays with it. I read him the Peter Rabbit story, and then I took him out to the vegetable garden and we played Peter Rabbit eating all the lettuces but Dan was rather half-hearted about it and poor old Peter got a bit muddy burrowing in the cabbage patch.
His paws have never been the same since.’
‘You call us weird!’ said Jodie. ‘Do you think the kids would like to play with the monkeys? Or do they have to stay chained to that Miss Ponsonby all day?’
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