The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

by Philip Ardagh

  It was then that Mrs Dickens had a brainwave. She usually had one every sixteen years or so, so wasn’t due to have one for another three. Luckily for them, though, she had this one early. ‘The winch!’ she cried.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Follow me!’ Eddie’s mum shouted, and dashed back onto the landing, the fire raging all around her. Mr Dickens followed her into the bedroom. There, in the corner, was a coil of sheets. These were the same sheets as had been tied together and used to lower their bed out of the window, when they were waving farewell to dear Eddie and Mad Uncle Jack and Aunt Maud.

  The reason why the sheets hadn’t burnt to a crisp like almost everything around them was that they were soaking wet. It had been raining hard when Eddie’s parents had seen his carriage disappearing into the distance. By the time Dawkins had winched the master and mistress back into the room and given them fresh brown paper sheets, the soaking wet coil of knotted sheets which had been used to hoist them up and down lay forgotten in the corner.

  The heat of the fire had almost dried the sheets by now, and there was the hiss of the water turning into steam above them … but they were still just too wet to burn.

  Mrs Dickens grabbed the sheets and tied one end to the nearest heavy thing that wasn’t on fire. Unfortunately for Mr Dickens, that was him and he had to struggle to free himself. He retied the sheets to the metal frame which was all that remained of their bed. The frame was very hot, and he burnt his fingers, but there was no time to lose.

  Meanwhile, Mrs Dickens had thrown the other end of the knotted sheets out of the window.

  ‘Go!’ said her husband, urgently, and she clambered down the outside of the house … to safety.

  Now it was Eddie’s father’s turn. He had always been afraid of heights, and even felt a bit dizzy when he stood on tiptoe. Once, when he had stood on a chair to reach a book on a high shelf, he had had to be talked down by a team of passing philosophers, brought in by the fire brigade. One of the few things Mr Dickens was more afraid of than heights, though, was fire – so he was out of that window and climbing down the outside of his house quicker than you could say ‘how now brown cow’, which I’ve always thought was a rather strange thing for anybody to want to say anyway.

  The result was that both Mr and Mrs Dickens escaped from the fire that had been caused as a direct result of Dr Muffin’s Treatment. Unfortunately for Dawkins (sometimes known as Daphne), he wasn’t so lucky. After trying to reach his master and mistress with the eggy snack that he’d made as a result of a genuine misunderstanding, he was forced back by the flames and had to retire to the garden. There he discovered that a burning ember must have floated through the air and landed on his tissue paper, setting it alight and reducing it to a very small pile of ashes. He burst into tears at this unhappy sight.

  Gibbering Jane was equally unlucky. The results of all her years of knitting for eleven hours and thirty-six minutes each and every day were destroyed – except for the top left-hand corner of an egg cosy, which she was to wear on a string around her neck for the rest of her life.

  ‘We’re alive!’ said Mrs Dickens.

  ‘Thanks to your plan, my dearest,’ said Mr Dickens.

  ‘But no thanks to Dr Muffin!’ said Mrs Dickens, beginning to have doubts about the doctor for the very first time since the Treatment had started.

  Eddie’s father was about to agree with Eddie’s mother when he noticed that there was something different about her. At first he thought it must be the black soot that was smeared all over her face, but after he had rubbed it off her with the damp sheet that flapped at the bottom of the ‘rope’, he realised what it was.

  ‘You’re not yellow any more!’ he gasped.

  Mrs Dickens grabbed the sides of Mr Dickens’s head and felt them. ‘And you’re not crinkly round the edges any more!’ she said in amazement.

  They then sniffed the air. It smelled of burning house and furniture.

  ‘And we don’t smell of old hot-water bottles!’ they cried, in unison.

  ‘We’re cured!’ said Mr Dickens and, taking his wife by the hand, they both danced around in a little circle.

  ‘Dr Muffin is such a genius!’ Mrs Dickens pronounced. ‘I’m so sorry I doubted him.’

  At that moment there was a terrible groan and their home came crashing down into a pile of brick and wood that looked nothing more than a giant bonfire.

  ‘This calls for a celebration!’ said Mrs Dickens. ‘Just think, now that we’re cured, there’s no need for Simon to stay at Awful End.’

  ‘You mean Jonathan,’ said her husband, when, in fact, they both meant Eddie. You will recall that neither of them was terribly good at remembering their son’s name.

  ‘We’ll send word to your Mad Uncle Jack to bring him back home!’ smiled Mrs Dickens.

  Little did she and Mr Dickens know that their dear beloved son had never even reached Awful End but was languishing in St Horrid’s Home for Grateful Orphans.

  Now, you don’t really know what ‘languishing’ means and I don’t really know what ‘languishing’ means, but it’s what people do in prison cells or orphanages in books … and this is a book, and poor old Eddie is in an orphanage, so ‘languish’ he must. That, I’m afraid, is the way of the world.

  There was a book in Eddie’s cell – sorry, room – in the orphanage. Written on the front in big gold letters were three words ‘THE’, ‘GOOD’ and ‘BOOK’, which, if you put them together, says: ‘BOOK GOOD THE’. If you put them together in the correct order, they say ‘THE GOOD BOOK’, which is what I should have done in the first place.

  As it was, this was the book that was going to help Eddie escape, but not until a later episode … and not until we find out how he ended up in St Horrid’s in the first place.

  Episode 8

  Get On With It!

  In which a chocolate could be a mouse dropping

  Things started to go from bad to worse for Eddie after the actor-manager, Mr Pumblesnook, joined him and Mad Aunt Maud in their carriage – not forgetting Malcolm the stuffed stoat.

  Who could forget Malcolm? Not Eddie, that’s for sure, because the stoat’s snout was stuck in his ear.

  ‘Why are we all squashed together like this?’ he demanded, still angry with Mr Pumblesnook for having pretended to be a villain and pointed the revolver at him. ‘Couldn’t one of us sit on the other seat?’

  This seemed a fair enough question, because all three of them (plus stoat) were sitting next to each other along one seat, while the seat opposite was v-a-c-a-n-t, which spells ‘empty’.

  ‘I am in charge of seating arrangements and I say this is how we shall sit!’ roared Mad Aunt Maud.

  ‘Did you not, in fact, spend a summer at the Young Ladies’ School for Seating?’ asked Mr Pumblesnook, who in Eddie’s opinion was simply trying to keep in her good books.

  ‘You are correct as always, Mr Pumblesnook,’ Mad Aunt Maud simpered, and blushed like a young school girl which – with her age and wrinkles – gave her the appearance of an under-ripe prune. ‘I did not, in fact, spend a summer at the Young Ladies’ School for Seating … My knowledge of seating arrangements is instinctive. I was born with the skill!’

  ‘But this is ridiculous!’ said Eddie, who now had the misfortune of his great-aunt’s elbow in his ribs, as well as the stoat in the ear.

  ‘Quiet, boy!’ screamed Mad Aunt Maud. ‘When I was a girl, children were seen but not heard!’

  ‘When I was in my early youth …’ began the actor-manager, who, you will recall, used many words when few would do. ‘… When I was in my early youth, children were neither seen nor heard.’

  ‘Just smelled?’ suggested Mad Aunt Maud.

  It was obvious to Eddie that Mr Pumblesnook hadn’t been about to say ‘just smelled’, but he was too polite to say so.

  ‘They were neither seen nor heard, just smelled!’ Mad Aunt Maud screamed. ‘Rubbed down with an onion so they just smelled!’

  The mention of an o
nion reminded Eddie of his own dear mother, who had recently taken to popping whole, peeled onions in her mouth to improve the shape of her head. You guessed it. This was another part of Dr Muffin’s Treatment. He sighed.

  ‘Don’t be sad, child,’ said the actor-manager. ‘Let us take advantage of the many miles and hours we share to see whether you have within you the potential to be a thespian!’

  Eddie looked at him blankly.

  ‘We’ve got time on our hands, so let’s see if you can act,’ Mad Aunt Maud translated. This was the first sensible thing she had done in the brief time he had known her. Eddie was stunned. So was Mad Aunt Maud. She seemed as surprised at saying something sensible as Eddie was.

  ‘Me, act?’ said Eddie, a tingling of excitement starting in his feet. Or perhaps it had more to do with wearing itchy socks.

  ‘Indeed, boy, that is precisely what I indicated. Let us endeavour to establish whether you have the gift!’ said Mr Pumblesnook. ‘As you saw from my performance when hit by this dear lady’s watch’ – he nodded in the direction of Mad Aunt Maud, his forehead hitting her on the chin because all three were sitting so close together – ‘it is vital to remain in character whatever the distraction.’

  ‘Stay in character?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘To be the person whose character you are portraying,’ explained Mr Pumblesnook.

  Eddie still wasn’t sure what he meant until Maud explained: ‘Once you’re pretending to be a character, don’t let anyone put you off.’

  For the second time in as many minutes, Eddie was stunned. If Mad Aunt Maud kept on being this helpful, they’d have to rename her Only-Mad-Some-of-the-Time Aunt Maud. What had got into her?

  ‘Acting is so much more than pretending to be a character,’ stressed the actor-manager, ‘but, in essence, once you become that character you must not, as this fair queen just intimated, let anyone “put you off”.’

  Eddie did his best not to laugh at the idea of anyone calling his great-aunt ‘fair queen’.

  At that moment, there was a cry of ‘Woooah, there!’ from Mad Uncle Jack, and the carriage came to a halt. There was a scrambling sound as he clambered from the driving seat, and then his beakiest of beaky noses appeared through the open carriage window.

  ‘A call of nature,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ said Mad Aunt Maud. ‘What was it? An owl?’

  ‘No, my dear, what I mean is –’

  ‘Did either of you hear an owl?’ asked Mad Aunt Maud turning to Eddie first, an action which led to her hitting him in the face with Malcolm’s nose, then, turning to Mr Pumblesnook, hitting him with the stuffed stoat’s tail.

  ‘No,’ said Eddie, nursing a nosebleed.

  ‘Neither a terwit nor a terwoo, madam,’ said Mr Pumblesnook, looking for the piece of tooth that had been chipped off into his lap.

  ‘A badger call, then?’ asked Mad Aunt Maud. Both Mr Pumblesnook and Eddie tensed just in case she turned to them again, bringing her stoat with her. Who knew what new injuries she might cause?

  ‘No, my dear! By call of nature, I mean that I have to go to the … I must …’ Mad Uncle Jack’s face reddened, though it was so thin you wouldn’t have thought that there’d have been room for it.

  ‘Not an owl? Not a badger? Surely you don’t mean that boring little bird that has a call that’s supposed to sound like “a little bit of bread and no cheese”? Surely you didn’t stop the carriage for such a commonplace call as that?’ his wife protested.

  Mad Uncle Jack was about to do some more explaining, when he could wait no longer and dashed off into the undergrowth. He appeared a few minutes later with a look of relief on his face.

  ‘Did he find the eagle?’ asked Mad Aunt Maud, as her husband climbed back up the side of the coach.

  ‘Eagle?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Children should be neither seen nor heard, just smelled!’ she cried in indignation, as though she had just thought of it.

  Eddie relaxed a little. There was something strangely reassuring about his great-aunt going back to being completely bananas.

  ‘Eagle aside, young fellow-me-lad,’ said Mr Pumblesnook, ‘let us commence our experiment.’

  There was a flick of the reins, a clomp of hooves and the carriage was in motion once more. It was agreed that Eddie was a fine little gentleman. Don’t forget that Eddie’s parents had spent good money on turning him into a little gentleman.(They’d tried to spend bad money on him, but it’d been sent back.) And, being such a fine little gentleman, might it not be a good idea to start his acting by playing the part of a child so different from himself.

  ‘You don’t mean a Foreigner?’ said Eddie, shocked, when Mr Pumblesnook suggested this. This was in the days when all Foreigners were treated with a great deal of distrust, whether they were a prince or a pauper or anything else that did or didn’t begin with the letter ‘p’.

  ‘Indeed not, sir!’ said the actor-manager, clearly shocked. ‘I would hardly ask you – an untrained actor and merely a child, also – to assume the role of a Foreigner in the presence of a lady in such a confined space!’

  ‘I met a Foreigner once,’ said Mad Aunt Maud, a faraway look in her eye. ‘I couldn’t see him nor hear him, but I could smell him … someone had rubbed him down with –’

  ‘An onion?’ Eddie suggested.

  ‘Good boy,’ nodded Mad Aunt Maud. She tickled him under the chin and slipped a chocolate drop into his mouth. At least, Eddie hoped it was a chocolate drop. It certainly looked like one, but, knowing his great-aunt as he had come to, it could have been a mouse dropping.

  Chewing the ‘thing’ somewhat nervously, Eddie leant forward to get a clearer view of the actor-manager past Mad Aunt Maud. ‘If not a Foreigner,’ he said, ‘what part would you like me to play?’

  ‘That of an orphan boy,’ said Mr Pumblesnook.

  Those of you with long enough memories, or at least half a brain cell, will see that this really marks the beginning of Eddie’s latest troubles.

  Episode 9

  A Serious Misunderstanding

  In which we meet the Empress of All China … Well, sort of

  ‘What is the most important thing to remember when playing a character?’ boomed Mr Pumblesnook, carefully wrapping a piece of one of his teeth in a handkerchief as he spoke.

  The piece had broken off when Mad Aunt Maud had hit him in the face with the swing of her stoat’s tail, half a mile or so back.

  Eddie, meanwhile, was using his handkerchief for a very different reason – to try to stem the flow of blood pouring from his nose where his great-aunt had hit him with Malcolm’s other end (during the selfsame swing). Eddie was beginning to suspect that Mad Aunt Maud could inflict more damage with that single stuffed animal than the average army could with wheelbarrows full of weapons.

  ‘The most important thing to remember when playing a character?’ said Eddie, thinking hard. ‘To stay in that character, no matter what?’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ cackled Mad Aunt Maud, then slouched backwards in the seat of the carriage. She began rummaging in her handbag.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Mister Pumblesnook. ‘Exactly, my boy. Exactly. There was one time when I was playing the character of a large hazelnut for a production of Nuts All Around. The costume was made from genuine hazelnuts, by my own good lady wife.’

  ‘Lazy wife?’ asked Aunt Maud, perking up. ‘You should poke her with a stick or thrash her to within an inch of her life.’ An inch is about two and a half centimetres, but this happened in the old days and, anyway, to thrash someone ‘to within two and a half centimetres of their life’ doesn’t sound so good.

  ‘My lady wife,’ Mr Pumblesnook explained. ‘Now, where was I? Oh, yes. I was playing the character of a large hazelnut when a family of squirrels – which must have been nesting in the roof of the barn we were using as a theatre that night – fell from the hayloft onto our makeshift stage …’

  Eddie wished that the actor-manager would get to the point, but h
e knew that there was no point in trying to rush a man who used seven hundred and twenty-three words when eleven would do.(And don’t go back and count them. That was just a figure of speech … and if you don’t know what a figure of speech is, I wouldn’t worry too much. I didn’t know what a four-wheel drive vehicle was until I was knocked down by one when I was twenty-three years old, and it never did me any harm. Well, it did, in fact, harm me when it ran me over, but you know what I mean.)

  ‘Thinking that I was a giant hazelnut, the squirrels proceeded to attack me, and nibbled at my outer shell,’ Mr Pumblesnook continued. ‘In such a situation a mere mortal would have slid out of the costume and fled the arena, but not I. I am an actor! I am a thespian! I was playing the character of a hazelnut in front of an audience, so a hazelnut I had to remain. It would take more than a marauding gang of tree rats –’

  ‘Pirates?’ interrupted Aunt Maud. ‘You were attacked by pirates?’

  ‘Not pir-rates, madam,’ said Mr Pumblesnook with extreme patience. ‘Tree rats … squirrels.’

  Still dabbing his nose with his bloodstained hanky, Eddie was trying to work out why his great-aunt had suddenly started mishearing things. Why had she suddenly gone a bit deaf? She hadn’t had much problem with her hearing for the first leg of their journey, so why now?

  ‘So, the play continued,’ Mr Pumblesnook went on. ‘I remained in costume and in character, and behaved as a hazelnut would have behaved when under attack from squirrels … In character … The key to success as an actor, my boy!’

  Eddie was about to ask how the average nut behaved when being eaten by squirrels – in a silent, crunchy sort of way, he supposed – when he was distracted by Mad Aunt Maud’s actions.