by Mark Evans
‘Right, I’ve got a few theories I want to try out.’ He made a Napoleonic patient kneel in front of him, then picked up a cricket bat. ‘Let’s see if I can’t beat the madness out of you.’ He proceeded to play a series of violent cricket shots using the patient’s head as a ball. To give the doctor credit, his technique was excellent – head still, good foot movement, nice high elbow – but the results were awful: severe external damage to a head that was already damaged within.
‘Any good?’ asked the doctor, of the now unconscious patient. ‘Hard to tell. Right, next theory: can I burn the madness out of you?’ He wielded a can of fire-juice3 and advanced on a group of three nutters, who had been tied together and surrounded with kindling.
At these sights, I had to agree with Aunt Lily, for this was surely the nastiest man of medicine I had ever seen, a doctor who, when he spoke the Hippocratic oath, must have rewritten it to start with the words ‘First do lots of harm.’ I wondered who was the madder: the madman or the medical maniac who treated the madman.
It was clearly the latter.
He was a right old psycho, though the patients were all still tap-tap-curly-wurly cuckoo.4 Nevertheless, they did not deserve such a Hardthrashery fate and we moved to intervene as he finished sprinkling the inmates with the flammable liquid.
‘Right, it’s time for a loony inferno! Anyone got a light?’
‘No,’ said Aunt Lily, stepping forward. ‘But I have got a sword.’
To prove her point she now drew it and placed the tip against the doctor’s throat, but this did not frighten him in the least.
‘Ooh, is it one of those new light sabres?5 Spark it up and we’ll have flambéed crackers-brains all round!’
‘I don’t think so. Step away from the kindling, Doctor.’ He did so, emitting a small, disappointed whine, like a kitten that has just discovered it will grow up to be a cat and not a much nobler dog. ‘Children, free the maddoes.’
Pippa, Harry and I did just that and the crackpots wandered away, muttering Napoleonically. ‘Austerlitz, c’était bon. Waterloo, c’était merde.’
‘Now, what are we to do with you, Dr Hardthrasher?’ Aunt Lily asked.
‘You could let me go. I haven’t tested half of my theories yet. This new electricity thing seems ideal for treating madness. And I’d like to stick a straw too far up a patient’s nose and see if I can suck the insanity out of their brain.’
‘That’s not going to happen, Doctor. What shall we do, children?’
We discussed the matter briefly and decided that justice would be best served by leaving him at the mercy of his patients. On announcing this to them, they became less dribbly and much more focused, rushing to gather tools and materials, then quickly constructing a rudimentary guillotine and outfitting the doctor in a rather convincing Louis XVI costume they had run up.
Then, like the mad people they were, they ignored the razor-sharp blade on the guillotine and instead simply pushed the whole thing over on top of Dr Hardthrasher, who managed to shout, ‘You weak-minded, mock-Napoleonic, pseudo-imperial—’ before being crushed and emitting one final ‘splat’.
Oops.
We had hoped that they might show mercy, but they had not, and now I felt responsible in some large way for the deaths of both Hardthrasher brothers, a feeling of guilt that weighed heavily upon me.
Actually, I didn’t feel that bad – they had been a right pair of gits – and we merrily readied ourselves to set off in pursuit once more, with Pippa and Harry removing their clocky, admirally disguises, and Aunt Lily asking, ‘Where is the wedding to take place, Pip?’
‘In a local church, I suppose.’
‘Yes, but which one?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
Now I noticed that my companions were all staring at me. An icicle of fear suddenly grew in my brain, instantly starting to melt and send chill drips of panic down my spine.
‘I sort of assumed you knew, Aunt Lily. You seem to know everything else.’
‘That’s the one thing I didn’t know. For some reason I thought Benevolent had told you.’
‘Well, not that I remember . . .’
‘Well, that’s it, then, game over,’ said Aunt Lily. She stalked off and sat in the grass nearby, head in hands, and with a cold, horrible certainty, I knew now we could not prevent Mr Benevolent marrying my mother and that all was lost.
1 Greek muse of dance. Other muses included Thalia, muse of comedy, Sentimentalia, muse of greetings-card writers, Morethanmyjobsworthia, muse of security guards and petty bureaucrats, and Graham, muse of sensible names.
2 He means either a water boatman, skim-daddy or windsurf louse.
3 Nineteenth-century term for petrol.
4 Other phrases for madness at the time included bonk-bonk-twisty-wisty-chaffinch and knock-knock-bendy-wendy-parrot.
5 With criminals often using ‘Got a light?’ to lure victims close for a mugging, a sword with a cigar lighter on the end was invented so you could offer a light from a safe distance. And with a sword in your hand.
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
In which memory and weather take a hand
All was frowns, sad shakes of the head and incipient tears, not least in myself. Had we come so far only to fail at the last?
But then my mind tingled with the tiny, tickly fingers of a memory trying to get my attention. ‘Wait a minute! Back at school Mr Benevolent gave me an invitation to the wedding!’
This re-energized Aunt Lily, who leaped eagerly to her feet. ‘Where is it?’
‘He ripped it up.’
‘Ah.’ De-energized, she once more sank down into the grass.
‘But before doing so, he showed it to me, albeit very briefly. Perhaps if I could remember what it said . . .’ I furrowed my brow in memory-thought. Nothing. I tried harder, pursing my lips and crinkling my eyes. Still nothing. I looked skywards, closed one eye and wiggled the tips of my ears. And still no – but wait! Now a mind-image floated before me, the invitation mentally coalescing until it was whole and readable before the eyes of my memory.
‘Well?’
‘It is at the church of RSVP!’ I said triumphantly. ‘No, hang on, that’s not right. I know! The church of St Reluctant!’
‘Of course! The patron saint of unwanted weddings.’ Aunt Lily quickly unfolded a map. ‘This is an ecclesiastical map of Great Britain. Every church is marked.’ She traced her finger across the paper and stopped. ‘There! It is but a few miles from here.’ Now, looking alternately at the map and the countryside around us, she rotated a half-circle round, then stopped and pointed. ‘And what remarkable luck – you can see the steeple from here. That way!’
But we had barely taken a step in the direction she had indicated when a strange occurrence occurred, as occurrences are wont to do. Ahead of us lay a shrubbery that bordered the adjoining property, and as we stepped forward, so did one of the bushes therein.
‘Aarggh!’ yelped Harry. ‘A walking rhododendron!’
‘Nonsense,’ I corrected him. ‘It is not a rhododendron. It is an azalea.’
‘No, it is neither,’ said Aunt Lily. ‘It is a person disguised as such.’
I looked closer within the foliage where I could discern human features: an eye here, a leg there, possibly a chin, two arms and a mouth – and luckily not in that order or it would have been a freakazoidal sight indeed.
It was Pippa who first joined the limbs and features into a correct and, indeed, recognizable order. ‘Poppy? Dear sister Poppy, is that you?’
Now the ambulant shrub spoke, and with Poppy’s voice. ‘Pippa? Beloved sister Pippa? And dear brother Pip?’
I was a bit miffed that I was merely dear Pip while Pippa was beloved, but I set aside the sibling league table of affection and simply rushed to embrace her in a hug, as did Pippa.
‘Oh, joy!’ said Poppy. ‘I have been living wild in the countryside these past weeks, disguised as a rhododendron.’
&nbs
p; ‘Told you,’ interjected Harry, smugly, so I flicked him with one of Poppy’s twigs. ‘Ow.’
‘You said that you would never leave our home, and you have not!’
‘Indeed not. All this time I hoped you would return and now you have and we three siblings are reunited! Poppy, Pippa and Pip!’
‘Pippa, Poppy and Pip,’ Pippa echoed.
‘Pip, Pippa and Poppy,’ I, too, chimed.
‘And Parry Piscuit!’ Harry tried to join in, failing miserably. We stared at him. ‘Sorry, just feeling a bit left out.’
‘Poppy, this is my new best friend, Harry Biscuit,’ I introduced, hoping to make him feel more left in.
‘How do you do, the second Miss Bin?’ Harry said, blushing much less than when he had met Pippa – perhaps he was getting used to girls.
‘And, Poppy, this is—’
‘Aunt Lily, yes, I know,’ said Poppy, astounding me, for if neither Pippa nor I had ever heard of Aunt Lily until recently, how had Poppy? ‘Mama used to sing us songs about brave Aunt Lily fighting foreigners.’
Pippa and I looked at each other, bemused. I did not remember this and clearly neither did she. ‘But—’
‘You two never used to listen properly to poor Mama. But I did, which is why I am her favourite child.’
Oh, well, this was fine news! Apparently Poppy was Mama’s favourite child. After the recent ‘beloved’ and ‘dear’ sibling incident, it turned out I was now way down the filial affection league as well. But I clamped down on my jealous feelings, for rescuing Mama was the priority, not laying the highest claim to her affection. Though secretly I thought that if we did rescue her and I could somehow claim all the credit for it, I might yet make myself top child.
‘Anyway, it’s really great to meet you at last, Aunt Lily. Your adventures sound amazing! I wish my life was that exciting.’
Aunt Lily surveyed her leafy niece, then pronounced, ‘That is a fine rhododendron disguise. Your skills at blendy-in-ness do you credit.1 Skills you might perhaps one day use in the Secret Service.’
‘Ooh, that sounds fun. I’d like that,’ Poppy said.
‘We’ll see. But, first, let us rescue your mother!’
As if to underscore the seriousness of our mission, a peal of thunder now tolled across the sky, like the angry flatulence of a weather-god; perhaps today Zeus had eaten of the baked beans of Fate.
Aunt Lily pointed at the dark clouds that had gathered above us like a flock of rain-bearing black sheep. ‘If it rains, it will aid us, for it will turn the rough country roads to mud and slow Benevolent’s carriage.’
‘Then let it rain!’ I imprecated the skies, and they answered with a pit-pat of pluvial drops.
‘Harrumble!’ shouted Harry. ‘Pip Bin can control the weather! Can you make it snow next, please? I love snow.’
‘No, Harry. For it was not divine power, it was merely the chance confluence of my words with the enhanced statistical likelihood of precipitation in the presence of heavy black clouds,’ I explained.
‘That’s near enough for me, Pip Bin, O rain-master.’
I shook my head in fond despair at my enthusiastic but brain-limited friend, and we re-commenced our maternal pursuit.
We had been going barely a minute when Harry asked, ‘Are we there yet?’
‘No, Harry,’ we replied in unison.
‘Oh.’ He sighed in return. ‘Then could someone else please carry the anvil for a while? It’s really hurting my arms. I think it may have stretched them a bit as well.’
He had been carrying Pippa’s anvil for a long time, and indeed his hands did now seem to swing ape-like around his knees.
‘Can’t we just leave it?’ Aunt Lily and I asked simultaneously.
‘No,’ insisted Pippa. ‘It has proved both useful and lucky so far. Pip, why don’t you carry it?’
‘But . . .’
‘Oh, Pip, yes, you must carry Papa’s anvilly Pippa-gift!’ Now Poppy was on Pippa’s side there was no choice: if two sisters jointly asked a brother to do something he was legally bound to obey.2
‘Fine, I shall carry it.’
‘Thanks!’ Harry handed the anvil over and, with an elastic sproing, his arms sprang back to their normal length – though initially they twanged back a bit further so that for a brief moment his arms were ridiculously short and he looked like a small, plump dinosaur.
I immediately wished I had broken the law and said no: the anvil felt heavier than an elephant fed on lead-filled suet pudding. I plodded slowly forward, my feet squelching on the wet ground, for it was raining hard now, great splattery drops smacking into us, soaking and slowing, and the wind was picking up also, driving the liquid weather into us at speed.
As I write these words, towards the end of the glorious nineteenth century, we have tamed the climate with liberal burnings of coal, gas and liberals. But back then the weather was far more severe and eccentric. Everyone remembers the Thames used to freeze over in winter, but we forget that in summer the river Severn used regularly to boil. The people of Shrewsbury would stand on bridges and hurl tea, milk and sugar into the steamy, rushing waters, then hurry downstream to enjoy a cuppa straight from the river.
And the winds! Few people now know that Norfolk used to be right next to Somerset before a hurri-twister-phoon blew it all the way to East Anglia, explaining why Norfolk and Somerset accents sound so similar – it is not just actors being lazy.3
Then there were the rains, such as the great storm which, thank God, flooded the valley between England and France, aquatically separating them for ever. And it seemed as if we were in the teeth of another such downpour, one so rain-filled that it was what we used to call an air-bath.
Rain lashed at us, like an angry sadist in an underwater lash factory. As I trudged on, my vision shrank to a few blurry feet, then several unfocused inches and ultimately a water-dimmed nothing.
‘Is everyone all right?’ I asked, into the rainy turmoil, and during the brief seconds my mouth was open so much rain entered that I felt briefly as if I was drowning. It caused me a momentary panic; but much worse was the panic I felt when I realized that there had been no response from my companions. I risked drowning again by yelling, ‘Pippa? Poppy? Aunt Lily? Harry?’
Nothing.
I yelled again, but still nothing.
There was no sign of them. We had clearly become separated, and I was now alone – though what choice did I have other than to proceed?
Actually, I could easily have stopped, sought shelter, maybe given up entirely, abandoned my family and used the anvil to eke out a living as an itinerant blacksmith.
I chose not this last, however, instead trudging onwards, onwards and, where there was higher ground, upwards. The anvil was so heavy I was tempted to leave it, but dreaded Pippa and Poppy’s wrath if I did so. I tried briefly to use it as a heavy iron hat to protect me against the rain, but that really didn’t work so I simply carried it and got wet.
And I was wet indeed, so, so wet. The rain soaked me not just to the skin but to the bones and organs beneath, my gall-bladder getting so wet it got cross and became a galled-bladder, and I was just beginning to think that I could not possibly get any wetter when I realized that it was in fact not raining any more and that I had walked into a lake.
Fortunately it was not a deep lake, the water reaching only to my chest, and what was more, it offered sustenance to my now hungry self, for it teemed with fish, eels and, that most delicious of aquatic creatures, the underwater squirrel, an animal so tasty that in the past fifty years it has been eaten to extinction.4 Alas for them, but hurrah for me, they were friendly little rodents, who quickly came to investigate my presence and, exploiting them mercilessly, I caught and ate three.
Yum.
My strength replenished, I waded onwards until I reached the far shore. I was now in an area of marshy grassland, flat, muddy and forlorn, but ahead of me I saw something that brought great cheer to my heart: a church spire. Was it St Reluctant’s? Could
I yet save my mother? Had Providence and an unanticipated shortcut across a lake brought me to the right place?
The spire was but a hundred yards off and I made haste towards it, albeit anvil-handicapped haste. A stone wall separated the churchyard from the marshes, but it was dilapidated and tumbly-downy, and I quickly scrambled up and over. And there amid the gravestones, wedding-rocks and baptism-boulders5 was a sign indicating the name of the church: St Reluctant’s.
I had made it!
And, better yet, there was no sign of a carriage or of any other human presence. I appeared to have beaten Mr Benevolent.
Victory might yet be mine!
I decided to check vocally the absence of presence before advancing to the church itself, and cried out, ‘Hello! Is there anyone here?’
There was a short pause, and then came a reply: ‘No!’
That was reassuring.
Although . . .
Hang on a minute . . .
Though the word ‘no’ indicated no one else was there, the mere fact of its utterance contradicted its own meaning. But before I could process the implications, a dread figure loomed up from between two gravestones, scarred and muddied, grim-faced and terrifying, and seized me in its terrible arms.
Oh, blimey.
1 The word ‘camouflage’ wasn’t invented until 1922 by the Russian Professor Hidin Maskirovska.
2 When Edward VI inherited the throne after Henry VIII’s death in 1547, his two older sisters (the future queens Mary and Elizabeth I) were so cross at being literally overruled that they passed the Frater Faciendum Act just to annoy him.
3 Yes, it is.
4 There were many more underwater versions of common land mammals before the twentieth century. Sadly for their continued existence, they were all absolutely delicious.
5 There was a proliferation of churchyard ornaments during the ever-commemorating nineteenth century. As well as those mentioned in the text, there were midnight-mass monoliths, harvest-festival pebbles and regular scatterings of Sunday-morning-service gravel. Eventually in 1903 Archbishop of Canterbury Erasmus Joyfree banned memorials for anything other than graves, hoping to teach people a miserable ecclesiastical lesson.