by Anne Fine
She looked repentant. ‘Do you mind? Horribly?’
‘I mind,’ said Uncle Tristram. ‘But not horribly. Much as I have adored you, I could no more live on this benighted island than fly to the moon.’
‘What’s wrong with the island?’ demanded Morning Glory.
‘Don’t even start!’ I hissed at Uncle Tristram. ‘Remember she no longer loves you, it’s pouring with rain, and there is still a heap of time before the ferry gets us out of here.’
He took my point. Pretending he was too busy clearing Aunt Audrey’s clothes off the sofa to get into an argument, he let the matter drop. After a moment, Morning Glory pitched in to help. We heaved the piles of shoes and dresses and corsets tidily into a few massive rubbish bags, and sat down to play cards. Morning Glory kept wriggling. ‘I’m so uncomfortable!’ She reached behind her and tugged out the whalebone corset and the holiday homework I’d stuffed behind the cushion and clean forgotten.
‘What’s this?’
She glanced down at it. Then she looked at me. Tears sprang into her eyes. She gave a little sob. Then, turning to Uncle Tristram, she told him haughtily, ‘At least there’s someone in your family who appreciates the beauty of this island, and is in harmony with the universe.’
In blatant astonishment, Uncle Tristram pointed in my direction and said, ‘Who? Him?’
She cleared her throat and read aloud the first words of my holiday homework.
‘Sunday: The strangest day. I feel as if I have been given a new life. Everything seems brighter here. I stare down at the clumps of grass outside the door. They shine like scattered emeralds among the rocks. I gaze at the sky. It glows like the bluest sapphire. Is it me, or have I moved into a different world?’
She raised her eyes and looked at me with love and admiration. ‘This is your daily diary, isn’t it? And this is how you felt on the first day you came! I’m moved and touched.’
Behind me, I heard Uncle Tristram mutter, ‘Certainly touched.’ I was quite worried they’d get in a spat and we would end up spending the night in the car or the coal shed. So I just did a bit of Titania-style simpering, and kept my mouth shut.
Morning Glory looked at the paper in her hand again and read some more.
‘Monday: This morning I woke fearing the magic might have vanished and I’d be back to my same old dull grey plodding self. But, no! Again today I seemed to walk on air. The mice scurried as I strode with heart aloft between the dark walls of this place. I think they sensed my growing confidence.’
She turned to Tristram. ‘See?’ she said. ‘Unlike yourself, your nephew has a heart.’
‘Pity he doesn’t have a brain,’ said Uncle Tristram.
Morning Glory read on. ‘Tuesday: I’ve seen an angel! Speak to me last week and I would have told you she was nothing more than a pretty young lady. But I see more clearly now. She is a shining angel! I want to shout to those around me, “Look at her! Don’t you see her radiance?” But I know better than to spill my secret. So I said nothing.’
Morning Glory turned to me. ‘You saw her, then! Up on the hill, you saw my angel Dido!’
‘Maybe he didn’t,’ Uncle Tristram said, trying to make mischief. ‘Maybe with all that radiant angel stuff, he’s really talking about you.’
All right, then. So I blushed. But anybody would have blushed. It doesn’t mean a thing. Except that Morning Glory leaned across and whispered, ‘Was it me you meant? You can say! I promise I won’t tell.’
I snatched the holiday homework out of her hand and left the room. The last thing I heard as I ran up the stairs was Uncle Tristram sniggering.
FUNNY, THAT
I can’t work out what woke me in the middle of the night. It might have been the rain, but after two full days and nights of water tippling down, you’d think that I’d have been accustomed to that.
Opening my eyes, I saw, behind rain-stippled panes, the jet-black silhouette of the hill looming outside my window.
Funny, that. Because it hadn’t been there the night before. Or the night before that. Or any night since we’d arrived. I’d lain in bed and seen a lot of things. I’d watched clouds billowing across the sky. I’d seen the dawn one morning. I’d seen a host of seagulls and more than one helicopter. I had seen thousands of raindrops scudding down the windowpanes.
But I had never seen the top of the hill.
Either the hill was getting higher, or this side of the house was sinking fast. And on a tilt.
I can’t believe I just went back to sleep.
Sunday
Saturday
THE LURE OF THE PORK PIE
I came downstairs to find Uncle Tristram frantically sweeping water out of the kitchen door. It was a losing battle. There was a flood all down the hall and in the living room.
‘You find another broom,’ he ordered me. ‘We’re getting swamped in here.’
‘That isn’t going to work.’
He glared at me. ‘Have you a better idea?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and I walked down the hall to open the front door. All of the water went rushing that way.
‘This house is now on a slope,’ I said. ‘And that end’s down.’
We watched as the living room and kitchen gradually emptied. Soon there was just a stream of water pouring in at the back door, straight down the hall, and out the front.
We heard soft footfalls and looked up to see Morning Glory wrapped in a luminous rainbow poncho and wearing diamanté slippers. She leaned over the banisters. ‘Heavens!’ she said.
‘Look at it! It’s almost exactly like having a stream running through your house!’
‘I hate to break this to you,’ Uncle Tristram said. ‘But that is exactly what it is.’
‘What?’
‘A stream running through your house.’
She thought for a moment, then her face crumpled. ‘But what am I going to do?’
I only had one suggestion and that was feeble. ‘Wait till it stops raining?’
Uncle Tristram was made of sterner stuff. ‘Ignore this stream,’ he urged her. ‘Treat it with the contempt it deserves until it goes away.’
‘What? Just step over it?’
‘Or, if you choose, wade through. But don’t for a moment let it cramp your style.’
‘You might want to take off those rather pretty diamanté slippers,’ I suggested. ‘In case the sparkles rust. And if you want to make that fortune in London, you might be wise to rescue Aunty Audrey’s clothes before those bags split and they all get soaked.’
Cheered, Morning Glory reached down to ease the diamanté slippers off her feet. Tossing them to Uncle Tristram, she stepped in the water. Together we rescued all the massive plastic bags and stowed them safely in the boot of Uncle Tristram’s car. Then we waded upstream to the kitchen.
‘No pork pies left, I suppose?’ I asked, without much hope.
‘Don’t worry,’ Uncle Tristram tried to console me. ‘I’ll buy you a pork pie on a stick as soon as we get to the fair.’
‘We’re not still going?’
‘Why on earth not?’ He took in our astonished looks. ‘Think of it this way,’ he urged. ‘All Morning Glory’s happiness is at stake. She can’t stand Officer Watkins up again. This time, he’d dump her for good. And I can’t for the life of me think what we can do that’s useful here, unless one of us turns out to be a secret star at building the sort of dams that can re-route a hill stream.’
Building the sort of dams that can re-route a hill stream . . .
Whoops!
There was a long, long silence.
Yes, yes! I know. I made the wrong decision! I failed the moral test. I should have leaped to my feet and cried, ‘Of course! I know what caused this problem and I can solve it! I will miss coming to the fair, and my big chance to eat things on sticks! I will climb up that steep and soggy hill and unblock my dam. The stream will instantly go back to running down the other side, and you won’t have this problem.’
Call it a c
raven nature. Call it the lure of the pork pie. But I said nothing.
TERMITES AND GAS EXPLOSIONS AND AIRCRAFT FALLING OUT OF THE SKY
Uncle Tristram tugged the tarpaulin off the top of the car and threw it on top of the plastic bags in the boot with a shudder. ‘Disgusting! Completely bespattered with seagull poo. It looks more like camouflage than canvas.’ He called to Morning Glory. ‘Hurry up! We have a lot of things to munch through if we’re to win this competition.’
She was still staring back over the fence. ‘Is it my imagination,’ she asked us suddenly, ‘or is the house on a tilt?’
‘A tilt?’
‘You know. Leaning.’
It was my second chance to come clean. And I blew this one, too. ‘It’s obviously leaning a tiny bit,’ I tried to soothe her, ‘or the water wouldn’t rush through. It would stay put, like lakes do. But it is, after all, a very old house.’
‘Yes,’ Uncle Tristram backed me up. ‘I expect that getting the odd stream taking to coming in one door of your house and rushing out of the other is an entirely normal and quite common result of years of mild subsidence. Nothing to worry about at all. Just hop in the car, and we’ll be off to the fair.’
He never should have mentioned ‘subsidence’.
‘Hang on a minute,’ Morning Glory said. ‘I’m sure I saw that word in Aunty Audrey’s insurance policy. Perhaps there’ll be something in there about streams running through your house as well.’
‘Bound to be,’ Uncle Tristram tried to assure her. He was getting impatient. ‘Streams, rivers, brooks, burns, geysers, hot springs, mountain torrents – all bound to be adequately covered.’
‘I think I’ll just check.’ Already she was taking off her diamanté slippers. He tried to grab her, but in a moment she was out of the car and picking her way back barefoot through the mud towards the house.
‘We’re going to be so late,’ wailed Uncle Tristram.
‘Look on the bright side. We’ll be even hungrier.’
He cheered up. ‘I could murder a chipolata on a stick.’
I took the chance of Morning Glory being gone to climb in the front seat. I half expected Uncle Tristram to order me back, but I suppose he thought that since she wasn’t his girlfriend any more, he might as well not bother.
‘Where is she?’ Uncle Tristram kept grumbling, while I just thought about pork pies.
Finally she came back looking a bit dishevelled and clutching the envelope she had gone to fetch. ‘Sorry! The stream’s quite deep now. I had to take off all my clothes before I waded through.’
‘You should have called!’ insisted Uncle Tristram. ‘I would have come to help you in a flash.’
We took off down the track. Morning Glory’s face became more and more anxious as she read through the sections of the policy.
‘Problem?’ I asked her.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I can’t work it out at all.’ She ran her finger down the page. ‘I mean, it seems the house is fully covered for earthquake or fire, or even terrorist outrage.’
‘If you want fire, go for young Harry here,’ urged Uncle Tristram. ‘He is our family expert.’
Morning Glory ignored him. ‘And you can have flood, or major or minor subsidence. You can have vandalism. It seems you can even have termites!’ Her finger was still moving down the page. ‘According to this, you can have gas explosions. And aircraft falling out of the sky (military or commercial).’ She laid the policy down in her lap. ‘But there is nothing – nothing at all – about streams running through your house.’
‘Well, never mind,’ said Uncle Tristram.
‘We should go back,’ insisted Morning Glory. ‘If I’m not even insured, I really ought to try to barricade the door.’
‘If you can barely even wade through the stream,’ said Uncle Tristram, ‘you won’t be able to shut the door on it.’ He went all cunning. ‘Why don’t we just press on? Then Officer Watkins won’t get cross with you all over again for standing him up at a grand island social occasion, and you can ask his advice.’
‘There’s no point in getting his advice,’ said Morning Glory, ‘if I’m so far away from home that I can’t take it.’
‘Why can’t he drive you back?’
‘He doesn’t have the squad car.’ Morning Glory pouted. ‘Not on a Saturday. There’s only one police car on the island, and Delia gets it on Saturday even if she’s not fetching the chips.’
‘Why don’t I lend him this one?’
‘Would you?’ She turned to Uncle Tristram, radiant. ‘You wouldn’t mind?’
‘Why should I?’ Uncle Tristram asked. ‘I shall be busy eating things on sticks.’
GAME PLAN
On the drive over the island, Uncle Tristram and I discussed our game plans.
‘I’m going to set down a heavy meat base,’ Uncle Tristram said. ‘You know. Start with the steak on a stick, then the hot dog and then the meatball. Move through the pork pie and the salami until I reach the fishcake. Perhaps at that point I’ll refresh the palate with the pickle on a stick. And then I plan to move in for what you might term the heavier desserts: the toffee apple on a stick, the frozen banana with sprinkles – finishing up with the ice lolly, the cheese puff and the candy floss.’
‘That’s mad,’ I told him. ‘You’ll feel totally stuffed before you’re even halfway through.’
‘Oh, yes?’ he huffed. ‘So how are you planning to go about it?’
‘I’m going to have my pork pie first,’ I explained. ‘Because that’s breakfast, and you should never start the day without a good breakfast. And after that I’m moving on to the cheese puff because that’s mostly puff. Then candy floss. That collapses into nothing. Pickles are vegetables, so they don’t count. They barely line your stomach. I’ll have the ice lolly on a stick next, I think, because that’s nothing more than coloured water. So by the time I get round to any of the heavy stuff, I’ll still be practically starving.’
Morning Glory leaned forward. ‘Would you two mind?’ she said. ‘You’re making me feel rather sick.’
We sat there quietly for a while. Then Uncle Tristram had a thought. ‘Oh, by the way, I meant to ask you, Morning Glory. Who were those people your boyfriend was searching for when he went round the house?’
‘Kidnappers.’
‘Kidnappers?’
‘Of that missing boy.’ Morning Glory leaned forward again. ‘It seems he was away from home with some other member of his family, and both of them vanished. His parents have had a couple of anguished phone calls about him being kept in a cell and needing ransom money. Both of the calls were cut off before the police could trace the number. But he did manage to tell his mother just enough for them to work out he might be on this island.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘It’s quite exciting, really – for round here, anyway.’
I felt a stirring of unease, just as I had when I first saw the stream running down the wrong side of the hill. ‘So what does this missing boy look like?’
‘The same as everyone you see on the telly,’ Morning Glory said. ‘Fuzzy grey blob.’
‘And this relation of his? Fuzzy grey blob as well?’
‘That’s right!’
I tried a different tack. ‘But why did the police think that he might be hidden in your house?’
‘They didn’t,’ Morning Glory said. ‘They have been looking everywhere. For days. It’s just that Tom left searching my house till last because he was in such a sulk about my missing the dance, and didn’t want to see me.’
‘So this boy – he’s still missing?’
‘They’re both still missing. But the police suspect the other fellow is dead.’
I glanced at Uncle Tristram. ‘Dead? Why?’
‘Because nobody’s heard a word from him. And his mobile phone went off for good nearly a week ago.’
My feelings of unease were strengthening by the minute.
‘Does that explain the helicopters?’ Uncle Tristram asked.
&nbs
p; ‘Yes,’ Morning Glory said. ‘They’re looking for a yellow-topped car.’
There was a silence, though I could swear that I could hear Uncle Tristram’s brain whirring away at full speed. After a moment I glanced his way again, to find that, this time, he was looking my way.
I can’t explain what happened next. I mean, at any other time I know that one or the other of us would have come out with the words, ‘You don’t for a single moment suppose . . . ?’
But we had both of us had a horrible week. It had been raining for days. We had been eating weeds. Poor Uncle Tristram had lost Morning Glory back to her boyfriend. I’d been so bored I’d even started on my holiday homework. Even the Battle of the Owls and Pigs had been a bit of a let-down.
Now here we were, less than ten minutes away from our only chance of having one good laugh (and a pork pie) before we left the island. We couldn’t get home sooner anyway. The ferry didn’t leave till six. We’d still be home tomorrow.
Still – Mum and Dad! I knew they must be mad with worry.
I sighed. ‘Uncle Tristram, I really think you’re going to have to stop at the next phone.’
He tried to hide his groan. ‘Yes, I suppose I must.’
But as we drove along, we both had time to think. And perhaps it was the simple magic attraction of eating things on sticks, but by the time we came across a phone by the side of the road, we’d clearly hatched the very same idea.
‘Now keep it brief!’ he warned. ‘No more than a few seconds at most. If anyone attempts to ensnare you in conversation, pretend you can’t hear a thing. Simply repeat that we’re both safe and well and will be home tomorrow. And then hang up.’ So Morning Glory wouldn’t get suspicious, he added vaguely, ‘After all, we don’t want to be late at the fair.’ He scoured the sky anxiously for helicopters. ‘And while you’re doing that, I might just pull that old tarpaulin back over the top of the car.’
‘Top plan,’ I said. And so that Morning Glory would think nothing of it, I added, ‘The seagull poo is really bad on this side of the island.’