by Ann Michaels
Chapter 3.
Esmeralda down the Hole
As I ventured down the staircase, from my room in the attic, attired in my green, velvet suit, the next morning, I was greeted by a most becoming and novel aroma. As I nudged the old onion through the door of the kitchen, I saw Uncle Crispy togged out in a frilly, pink apron, skittering about with a tray of dainty cakes.
‘Good morn Uncle! What nourishing handiwork is this? I asked, pointing to the fruits’ of his cooking labour.
‘Oh! My dear boy! I have been stoking the home fires, so that your chums may have a morsel to eat, when they come to tea today’.
‘Thank you, Uncle Crispy! That is thoughtful and most kind!’ I replied. I really was quite overcome. Few fellows could possess a greater, great uncle.
It was not long after Uncle Crispy and I had finished luncheon, that, the doorbell chimed and as Mrs Pollard had returned last night, from a holiday with her sister, in Blackpool, it was she, who waddled down the stairs, and made her way to the front door.
As I am sure you are wondering, who, this Mrs Pollard is. I will tell you. As two, relatively helpless, male creatures, rattling about in a rather large abode, my uncle and I, require a person to keep us in some order. Therefore, Mrs Pollard has been entrusted with this role. With a snug little nest on the ground floor, overlooking the back garden, Mrs Pollard is well set up. And, as she believes herself to be the Queen, and head honcho here, she is just about as happy, as a pig after rain.
Alice and Owen entered the door, as Mrs Pollard swung it open, and I greeted them most happily upon the stair, as I descended. Alice was unashamedly rubbernecking about her, whilst Owen, was taking a gander about, with a look of great caution.
‘Howdy-do!’ I called. Uncle Crispy, who was skipping down behind me, like a great, American whooping crane, also called out his hellos. I could see Alice grinning, wickedly with glee, and Owen, swallowing hard, almost like he was alarmed or rattled in some way.
Then, Uncle Crispy led us upstairs again, but this time, to his library on the third floor. He pushed the heavy, mahogany door open, and we entered a large room, with a towering ceiling, lined with timber bookcases, carrying oodles of books, standing straight like soldiers on parade. One wall, however, was completely given over to the heads’ of stuffed animals. It was a horrible sight to behold. There was a screaming baboon; a wolf with its fangs barred; a fox looking resigned to its horrible fate, and even a hammer-headed bat. A badger looked down upon us, with a malignant smirk, and, a very old, moth-eaten lion’s head, added to the assembly of terror.
‘Crikey! Is this for real!’ shrieked Alice. ‘Just so you know: I’ve just decided that I’m a vegetarian. I really don’t approve of this ghoulish layout. At all’.
‘Lay off Alice. You’re a visitor here!’ whispered Owen in a strangulated voice.
‘No. No. No, my dear boy! This young possum here is quite right,’ exclaimed Uncle Crispy, looking down at wee Alice.
‘I inherited this horrid exhibition from an uncle. But, I just haven’t had the heart to throw the poor, injured creatures away. In fact, they have become very dear friends, after all these years’. He pointed to the lion, ‘I consult Cecil here, in regard to many a conundrum’. He then waved his hand at the bat, whose mouth was drawn back in a revolting, rictus of horror, ‘And Beatrice, is a great comfort. I wouldn’t part with her, for all the world.’
‘You’re all right Pops!’ giggled Alice. But I have to admit that, I was rather overcome with jealousy, when Alice then threaded her arm through Uncle Crispy’s. However, as he is somewhat tall, and she dashed short, it appeared like, she was trying to post a letter.
Just then, Mrs Pollard brought in the tea and dainty cakes, and so, we sat upon the elephantine, leather arm chairs and stuffed our faces, as Uncle Crispy told us a tale about his expedition to Australia, in the 1970’s.
‘It was damn hot; January as I recall, and there I was in cane toad country,’ began Uncle Crispy in an odd sepulchral voice.
‘Ha, ha’ chortled Alice, ‘banana bender land!’
‘I had been invited to a very thought-provoking event, that night: a Queensland barbeque and I had gorged rather liberally on the victuals, and the liquid refreshments. Anyway, I retired to my house in the small hours of the morning, to catch a bit of shut eye. And so, it was a damned shock, when I awoke sometime later, to find myself still in the old crib, and the house gone.’
‘What? How?’ asked Owen, forgetting to flush like a partially blanched lobster this time.
‘Well, it seems that there had been a very vigorous cyclone during the night, which had spirited the house away. But don’t despair, it was found floating happily in a nearby lake next day. I, however, had merely been lifted up in my bed and deposited inside the chicken house next door. When I awoke, with the morning sunshine on my dial, I also found a freshly laid egg, under my right arm. Breakfast in fact! Most opportune.’
Alice fell on the floor laughing, cake spilling from her mouth. Owen smiled, his rare and winning smile, and all was well.
After Owen and I had peeled Alice off the floor, we shuffled downstairs to the secret room. As we tripped along, Alice ran a running commentary about all the things that caught her eye, as though she had never clapped her peepers on a bronze horse in a suit of armour, or a human skeleton in a 19th century kimono, before! Though, I must admit that, the painting sent by my father, of the phoenix bursting into flames, is not for the faint hearted.
As I opened the bookcase, which led to the secret room, Alice fell quiet for the first time. I switched on the light, and one by one, we descended the staircase, and felt the air temperature grow cooler, and the dampness rise up, and enter our nostrils.
‘Ok’, announced Alice taking charge, ’if this is going to be our clubhouse, then we have to get organised. Righty-oh?’
Outclassed, Owen and I merely nodded like a couple of performing monkeys, and began to follow directions.
Firstly, we had to muster all our muscle powers and manoeuvre the desk about. However, Alice couldn’t decide exactly where the desk should go, so, she had us sliding it about like a dodgem car at the carnival.
Finally, Alice was happy with the positioning of the desk, and we turned our attention to the bookshelf. But it was extremely heavy. Then it was time to roll up the dusty, old Persian carpet. By this time, though, Owen was looking mutinous.
‘I reckon it’s about time that you did something, instead of just giving out the orders’, he said, glaring at Alice, with eyes as mad as a lacerated snake.
Alice said nothing; she pursed her lips; her nose rose in the air and she walked toward the carpet with great dignity, and began to roll the asthma inducing carpet, with great care.
‘Fair suck of the sav!’ squawked Alice. ‘Get an eye-full of this!’
Owen and I hurdled over to when Alice was kneeled on the brick floor, staring at the lid of a trap-door. ‘What do you reckon is under this?’ asked Alice quizzingly.
‘Maybe it’s a door to another world, like Narnia’, Owen bubbled excitedly.
‘Or, there might be some treasure down there that will make us filthy rich’, said Alice thoughtfully; ‘although Rhonda and Bruce might try to claim our share’, she added doubtfully.
Just then, Esmeralda, my batty, yet divine cat, marched down the stairs, with a deceased mouse in her mouth.
‘No!’ moaned Alice, ‘not another dead animal!’
‘A thousand apologies Alice’, I babbled, ‘but Esmeralda becomes somewhat spiritless on Sundays, because, Edgar visits his love, at the Globe Fields Burial Ground.’
‘Who’s Edgar?
‘He’s the ghost who lives in the laundry room. Esmeralda here, delights at teasing him on most days, but, as I said, on Sunday she is deprived of this sport, and so, she must look for her amusements elsewhere’
‘This is a crazy house. I like it!’ pronounced Alice, as she lifted the wooden trap-door and revealed an opening in th
e floor, from which dank smells arose, from a bottomless looking darkness. But before any of us could say a word, Esmeralda plunged into the void and disappeared.