The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

by Philip Ardagh

  ‘But why should she do that, Lady Constance?’ asked a puzzled Skrimshank.

  ‘The clue is in the name Even Madder Aunt Maud, Captain,’ Eddie reminded him. ‘Now I must talk to you about the other paying passeng–’

  He got no further because there was a terrible smashing of glass and the terrifying figure of an elderly woman, half-covered in seaweed, came crashing through the window of the captain’s cabin, swinging on a thick rope, with a slightly battered-looking stuffed stoat under one arm.

  Before anyone realised quite what was going on, she had landed on the floor, snatched the dazzling Dog’s Bone Diamond from the stunned captain’s hand and dashed out on to the wheel deck.

  The others rushed out after Even Madder Aunt Maud just in time to see her trip and lose her grip on the Dog’s Bone Diamond. It rolled across the wheel deck, like the peppermint from the detective inspector’s ear, and over the edge and out of sight. For a moment, everyone watched in horror, frozen to the spot … then there was a sudden dash to look over the edge to the main deck below to see what had happened.

  There had been no sound of diamond-hitting-wood. Just an eerie silence. Perhaps it had landed on a coil of rope or some burlap sacking? No. There was none directly below; just bare boards. And no sign of the diamond. That end of the deck appeared to be deserted.

  Captain Skrimshank whimpered whilst Mr Briggs was already running down the wooden ladder joining the decks, two rungs at a time. Powder Monkey and Eddie, meanwhile, were helping Even Madder Aunt Maud to her feet. Fortunately, she seemed none the worse for wear for having lived rough, swung Tarzan-like through a window and fallen on the deck … but, at least it had subdued her. It was only later that it occurred to Eddie that Lady Constance was nowhere to be seen.

  *

  Despite a shipwide search, there was no sign of the missing diamond and the captain was beside himself – now there’s a phrase that’s impossible to act out in real life, without the aid of mirrors – with anguish. Considering Even Madder Aunt Maud had been a stowaway and entirely to blame for the gem’s loss, Eddie thought the captain was being incredibly reasonable about the whole thing; simply confining her to her (well, to Eddie’s) quarters and insisting that Eddie not leave her alone for one second.

  The frustrating part was that Skrimshank wouldn’t let Eddie get a word in edgeways concerning his suspicions about Swags … suspicions which now included the one that the Dog’s Bone Diamond was probably in the escaped convict’s hands!

  Eddie concluded that Swags must have somehow got wind of the fact that the priceless diamond was on board the Pompous Pig and had become a paying passenger with a view to stealing it from the safe … until Even Madder Aunt Maud had – almost literally – let it drop into his lap. Eddie was as sure as he could be, without having actually witnessed it, that Swags had been lucky enough to have been on the main deck when the jewel had come falling towards it. It must have seemed like a gift from heaven!

  Fully aware that Even Madder Aunt Maud (and Malcolm, of course) wouldn’t have set foot on the ship – and so wouldn’t have created an opportunity to steal the diamond – if he hadn’t been on board in the first place, and the fact that the shiny-thing-as-bait idea had been his, Eddie felt responsible for the theft of the diamond. He wanted to put things right for Captain Skrimshank, even if it meant disobeying orders and leaving his great-aunt on her own.

  Eddie felt somewhat guilty, but he decided the safest thing to do would be to tie up Even Madder Aunt Maud, to stop her wandering. He didn’t want to tie her wrists and ankles – that would be most painful and undignified and not something any great-nephew should ever have to do to a great-aunt, mad or otherwise – so he waited until she dropped off to sleep (in his bed, as a matter of fact) and then wrapped a coil of rope around her and the bed, like an extra-tight blanket. Tiptoeing to his cabin door, he heard his aunt happily muttering something to do with ‘prunes’ in her sleep, blissfully unaware she was a prisoner.

  Taking one last glance back at her as he gingerly turned the door handle, Eddie thought how cosy she and Malcolm looked, tucked up together like that. He stepped out of the cabin and into the night.

  The Pompous Pig seemed very different bathed in silvery moonlight. Familiar objects seemed to take on different forms. The barrel to Eddie’s left, for example, appeared to be moving.

  ‘Whatcha up to?’ asked the barrel.

  If this had been a TV cartoon, Eddie would have jumped out of his skin, leaving it on the deck like a discarded pile of crumpled clothes.

  ‘Who –?’ he blurted. Then, quickly regaining his senses, he added an urgent ‘sssh!’ He had recognised that this was no barrel, it was the boy Powder Monkey.

  ‘I’m sure I’s heard the cap’n tells you to stay with that dotty old lady of yours,’ whispered the galley hand, with a wicked grin.

  ‘Do I know you?’ asked Eddie. ‘Have we met before … somewhere on dry land, I mean? You do look very familiar.’

  ‘’Course we ’ave,’ said Powder Monkey. ‘The last time you saw me, I was hittin’ some strange bloke with a cucumber.’

  It all made sense in an instant. ‘You’re an orphan from St Horrid’s Home for Grateful Orphans!’ said Eddie, a little louder than he should have, what with all the excitement.

  ‘That’s right,’ whispered the boy, ‘an’ you’re the one what helped us all escape an’ that. What’s you up to this time?’

  Eddie quickly told his new ally about Swags, and his belief that he must have the gem. ‘With you to help me, that should make things a whole lot easier,’ Eddie concluded.

  ‘How’s that?’ asked Powder Monkey.

  ‘If you could knock on his door and get him out of his cabin – making some excuse about Mr Briggs wanting to see him and then leading him on some wild goose chase around the ship – that should give me time to search it for the missing diamond.’

  ‘But I don’t have no goose,’ said Powder Monkey.

  ‘No what I meant was –’

  ‘An’ if I did, it’d be a tame goose, not a wild one –’

  ‘No, I simply meant –’

  ‘And what if Mr Swags didn’t wanta chase it anyways?’

  Eddie grabbed Powder Monkey by the shoulders. ‘Forget the goose!’ he hissed. ‘I wish I’d never mentioned the goose … Could you tell Swags some lie about Mr Briggs needing to see him below decks, then get him well and truly lost down there?’

  ‘Sure I can,’ said Powder Monkey, giving Eddie a strange look. ‘I don’t need no goose for that.’

  ‘I asked you to forget the goose,’ Eddie reminded him.

  ‘What goose?’ grinned Powder Monkey.

  ‘Good,’ said Eddie, grinning back. At last, they were getting somewhere. ‘Excellent.’

  Keeping to the shadows, they made their way towards the door of Swags’s cabin. Hearing footsteps on the wooden decking, they hid behind a huge coil of rope and stood as still as they humanly could.

  Eddie listened. The steps were ‘clackerty’ and close together, which suggested short strides in women’s shoes and, apart from Even Madder Aunt Maud, the only woman on board was Lady Constance Bustle. But what was she doing up and about at this hour? Especially when she’d said goodnight to Eddie, several hours earlier, just before she’d said that she was ‘retiring to bed’.

  Perhaps she’d got up for a glass of water, or something, and looked into his cabin to find EMAM trussed up like a chicken, and that he – Eddie – was nowhere to be seen. He sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case.

  The person responsible for the footsteps walked past them in the dark and, sure enough, it was indeed Lady Constance. She had a grim, determined expression on her face. She headed purposefully towards the prow – the pointy bit at the front – of the ship. Eddie and Powder Monkey followed. There was someone waiting for her. When Eddie saw who it was, his heart sank (in much the same way that Gibbering Jane’s had when she’d come out from under the stairs, back home, to find out what had made that n
asty ‘CRUNCH’ in the hallway).

  Lady Constance’s secret late-night rendezvous was with none other than Swags himself.

  Episode 11

  Going Overboard

  In which various characters pick themselves up, dust themselves down and start all over again

  Fortunately for Mad Uncle Jack, he was none the worse for falling from Eddie’s father’s scaffolding rig because he landed on top of Dawkins – Awful End’s gentleman’s gentleman – thus cushioning the impact.

  Fortunately for Dawkins, who had happened to be crossing the floor of the hallway at exactly the right/wrong moment, a free-falling MUJ wasn’t too heavy a person to be hit with. Being so thin, he was more arms and legs and beak-like nose than anything else. Still, it’s not very pleasant having anyone land on top of one unexpectedly, and poor old Dawkins ended up in bed for six weeks, as a result. (It would have been seven but Mr Dickens was getting desperate to have someone tie his ties for him.)

  Because Dr Humple didn’t want to move Dawkins too far from the scene of the accident, for fear of doing him more harm than good, and because it was agreed that Gibbering Jane should be the one to look after him, Dawkins’s bed was brought downstairs.

  The head end was stuck through the doorway to the cupboard under the stairs so that Jane could feed him, mop his brow, etc., whilst still being able to remain in familiar surroundings. The rest of the bed stuck out into the hallway. Sometimes Eddie’s father would shout down with words of encouragement, flat on his back, from high above.

  Mad Uncle Jack and Eddie’s mother, Mrs Dickens, meanwhile, were on a steam vessel heading in the direction of America. Yup, you read that right. That’s what that picture over there, at the beginning of this episode, is all about!

  Unable to bear any more time apart from his beloved Maud than absolutely necessary, MUJ had decided to set off in hot pursuit of the Pompous Pig. He had chartered the ‘steamglider’ Belch II because of its speed.

  Without going into too much boring detail, which would require a few diagrams and pages and pages of explanation (when there are less than twenty-four left to finish the entire story), suffice it to stay that what powered the engine of a steam vessel was, as you might possibly have guessed without a degree in mechanical engineering, steam and what created the steam was water heated to boiling point by burning coal.

  The problem arose if you had to go any great distance. You needed an ENORMOUS amount of coal. You didn’t need a big ship simply to carry the passengers, you needed it big to house the fuel to make it go anywhere in the first place!

  Whilst people were up on deck sipping lovely drinkies and saying, ‘’Ain’t it a beautiful morning?’ gangs of men were down in the bowels of the ship stoking the boilers; not with unwanted tally sticks but with shovel after shovel of coal.

  Fortunately, this was sort of solved when a new kind of steam engine, called a double-expansion engine, was invented. It made much more use out of the same amount of steam so (as the mathematically minded amongst you will have gathered) this meant more distance, or speed, for less coal.

  The Belch II was designed and built by Tobias Belch, who later became Sir Tobias and is best remembered today for having invented one of the first watches to be worn on the wrist, rather than kept on a chain or in a pocket, though, unfortunately, it too was steam-powered and could cause nasty burns. His ‘steamglider’ had an even newer and more remarkable engine which he called the ‘quadruple-expansion engine’ or ‘Sweet Nancy’ (when he was whispering to it, to try to encourage it to go faster). This, he claimed, needed so little coal that the Belch II could be smaller and faster, and the ‘steamglider’ had quadruple propellers too which, apparently, was also a good thing. The fact that Sir Tobias – then plain Mr Belch – was a person way ahead of his time was borne out by the fact that he wore shorts instead of trousers and, not only that, they had a bright flowery pattern on them.

  He was sporting a pair of such shorts as he steered the Belch II with one hand and consulted a navigational chart with the other. ‘Of course, the Pompous Pig is dependent on the winds and we may miss her altogether but, with luck on our side, we could catch up with her any day now,’ he told Mad Uncle Jack, who was leaning against a railing, dressed in a sailor suit similar to one he’d worn as a boy. Mrs Dickens was, in the meantime, stoking the small boiler. Both had lost count of the number of days they’d been at sea. Mrs Dickens found that she was a natural-born stoker and was enjoying every minute of it. On more than one occasion, Tobias Belch had told her to stop stoking because it’d be a waste of fuel. The quadruple-expansion engine – Nancy – was doing very nicely without it, thank you very much.

  Thanks to the brilliance of his engineering and the skill of his sailing (or whatever it is you call handling a sea-going vessel without sails), Tobias Belch finally caught up with the Pompous Pig, despite its many days’ head start. This also had something to do with the fact that the ship was at anchor. In other words it was ‘parked’ and not going anywhere.

  Using a big whistle to attract attention, and some flag waving (called semaphore) to explain their intention, Belch II was soon alongside the Pompous Pig and Mad Uncle Jack and Mrs Dickens were soon scaling up the side of the clipper on the rope ladder, Eddie’s mother relieved that she no longer needed crutches.

  ‘Where’s my darling Maud?’ cried MUJ.

  ‘Where’s little Edmund?’ asked his mother.

  Mr Spartacus Briggs and a small cluster of sailors were waiting for them on deck. He stepped forward. ‘I have grave news,’ he said, not sure where to begin.

  Lady Constance Bustle made her way to the front of the welcoming party, fluttered her eyelashes at Mr Briggs and whispered, ‘Let me do it, Spartacus.’ She then turned to the Dickenses. ‘These are truly terrible times,’ she said. ‘I am sad to report that a number of people – passengers and crew – were washed overboard in the early hours of the morning two days ago …’

  ‘My love-cheese?’ gasped Mad Uncle Jack.

  ‘Your lady wife is fine, sir,’ Mr Briggs reassured him, placing a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. ‘She is currently resting with her stuffed stoat in Master Edmund’s cabin, tied firmly to her bed.’

  ‘Unbounded joy,’ Mad Uncle Jack pronounced.

  ‘And Edmund?’ asked Mrs Dickens. ‘My Edmund?’

  ‘He was not so lucky, Mrs D,’ said Lady Constance, who was used to imparting bad news to relatives because she did it so often. ‘I’m afraid he was washed overboard …’

  ‘Deep sorrow,’ interjected Mad Uncle Jack.

  Mrs Dickens simply wailed.

  ‘Along with our very own Captain Skrimshank, a galley hand and another paying passenger …’ added Mr Briggs, eager to emphasise that the shipping company as well as the Dickenses were suffering a loss. It somehow seemed less careless that way. ‘We’ve been circling around looking for them for days,’ he went on. ‘I’m afraid there’s no sign of them.’

  Mrs Dickens sobbed some more. Well, mothers can be like that, can’t they?

  ‘The wave came out of nowhere,’ said Lady Bustle. ‘It was a calm sea on a moonlit night. I witnessed the whole thing with my own eyes. I was out on deck taking a midnight stroll when I saw the galley hand –’

  ‘His name was Powder Monkey and he was on night watch,’ Mr Briggs interrupted. ‘He was a good lad … Would have made a fine sailor one day.’

  ‘I saw the galley hand in conversation with young Master Dickens, the captain and the one other paying passenger called Mr Smith,’ Lady Constance explained. She crouched down next to Mrs Dickens who had crumpled to the deck, and put a comforting arm around her. ‘A jewel had gone missing and one of them had found it. They were excited and happy and I could see it in the captain’s hand.’ Her tone changed. ‘A moment later, a huge wave came out of nowhere, washing them overboard … It was so fast and so unexpected that they didn’t have a chance to let out so much as a cry. I dashed across the soaking deck to raise the alarm but slipped and knocked
myself unconscious.’ She touched a small bruise on her forehead. ‘I could do nothing until I came to my senses many hours later.’

  There was silence. Even those who’d heard tell of the events before were still horrified by them. That two boys and two men should be lost in that fleeting moment, not forgetting one of the most valuable and famous jewels in the world …

  ‘LIAR!’ said a loud voice behind them.

  Members of the not-so-welcoming welcome committee that had clustered around Mad Uncle Jack and Mrs Dickens parted to reveal – yes, you guessed it (or, at least, you cheated and looked at the picture) – a bedraggled Eddie Dickens climbing aboard the ship.

  ‘You’re alive!’ his mother squealed with delight and, with one of the few signs of affection he was ever to receive from her, she threw her arms around him and squeezed him tight. ‘You smell of turtles!’ she added.

  Eddie’s mother never ceased to amaze him. How did she know what turtles smelt like? But she was right. He’d ridden on the back of a turtle through the waves to get back to the ship. He’d had to help with the steering, of course, because he had a specific destination and couldn’t talk Turtlese (or whatever turtles speak; I’ve never even heard one make a noise) but it was very friendly and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the whole experience.

  ‘Lady Constance is a liar and, if her plan had worked, would be a murderer, too!’ shouted Eddie. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Briggs. The captain and the others are alive and well and ready for rescue!’

  ‘The boy is clearly deranged!’ said Lady Constance. ‘Loopy! Ga-ga! The whole dreadful experience has turned his mind!’

  ‘I think I might be able to prove it,’ said Eddie, walking towards her across the deck, leaving a trail of seawater behind him. Despite her being much taller than him, and him not carrying any type of weapon, she backed away. She knew what he was going to say next.