by Robin Jarvis
Yikker stormed across to Marcus’s cabin, just to make certain the boy’s bed was empty. When he saw Marcus standing by the door with Lee and Spencer, the guard’s mouth fell open.
“Stinkboy!” he shrieked in rage. “What you do here?”
Marcus was still mortally afraid for Maggie, but he tried to act as normal as possible.
“How’d you mean?” he asked. “I was fast asleep till the shooting started. I was having a fantastic dream about juicy ripe melons…”
“Lies!” the guard screamed at him, pulling out the pistol. “Is lies, lies, lies!”
The boys raised their hands instantly.
“Calm down, cuz!” Lee suggested. “You don’t want no accidental discharge goin’ on with that gat. We ain’t gonna be no trouble.”
Yikker bared his teeth and waved the gun menacingly in front of Marcus’s eyes. He pressed the barrel to his forehead. It was still hot from firing. The boy cringed as the sadistic guard dragged it across one eyebrow, then down his bruised cheek.
“You make game of Yikker,” he hissed. “Big wrong, stinkboy. Yikker no like be fool. Yikker make you wish for bullet in face.”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marcus answered. “I’ve been in bed.”
The Punchinello’s finger tapped against the trigger. A bead of perspiration ran down the boy’s temple.
“Hurry up!” Jangler called impatiently from outside. “Bring them out!”
Yikker sneered, then spat and moved aside.
“Go!” he barked.
The three boys hurried to the door.
“Makin’ friends is a life skill you do not have,” Lee whispered at Marcus as they ran on to the grass.
The other children were already gathered out there; most were shivering from fear at what they suspected was about to happen. Alasdair was demanding to know what was going on, but Jangler was trying to do a headcount. Christina was wiping the sleep from her eyes and beginning to wonder where Maggie was; she looked around but couldn’t see the large girl anywhere. Charm was waiting anxiously for Marcus to emerge and ran to him the instant he appeared.
“I don’t know!” he told her, before the girl had time to even ask. “She must still be stuck over there.”
“Then she’s done for!” Charm gasped. “They’ll see she’s not ’ere and go lookin’.”
Captain Swazzle had seen Yikker come out and shouted at him in their own language. Yikker responded with a sullen shrug of those high, humped shoulders and stared at the ground, mumbling a reply. Swazzle screeched something back, which really didn’t need translating. Yikker flinched then glowered at Marcus with fresh hatred.
Jangler was frowning. There did appear to be one person missing. He was about to do a recount when Swazzle came swaggering over.
“Yikker make wrong,” the Captain told him. “Boy not gone, boy here.”
“What? Then all this commotion was for nothing? You need to have a word with that fellow, Captain. Now wait a moment. I must ascertain there really are twenty-one prisoners here. Get them lined up in rows. It’s nigh on impossible when they’re higgledy-piggledy like this.”
Swazzle shouted at the children and they assembled in their usual lines. Charm looked worriedly at Marcus. This was it. This was when Maggie’s absence would be discovered. Charm gazed around desperately. Then she let out a high scream of terror.
“Spider fings!” she cried, pointing towards the fence. “Two of ’em! Aaaaarggh!”
Chaos ensued. The children fled from their rows and the Punchinellos fired their guns into the dark, which made the panic even worse. Charm was squealing in every direction except the main block, seeing Doggy-Long-Legs everywhere. Up in the skelter tower Garrugaska let out a battle cry and came bounding down the stairs to join in the shooting of those nose-eating vermin.
Seizing this chance, Marcus raced to the main building and found Maggie still frozen against the wall. There wasn’t time to speak. He knocked the bucket from her tight grasp then grabbed her hand and pulled her back to the front lawn where confusion reigned. Shots fired blindly into the night. The Punchinellos couldn’t see any invading Gangles, but they were overjoyed to use their weapons again so soon.
“Stop this!” Jangler commanded once the initial alarm had worn off. “Stop it, I say!”
The guards ceased fire and glared into the surrounding gloom.
“There’s nothing there!” the old man shouted angrily. “You’re shooting at shadows. You, girl – what did you see?”
Charm was a picture of startled innocence. “I coulda swore I saw them ’orrors!” she exclaimed. “Them guns got my nerves so strung out I’m seein’ fings. I’ll have awful nightmares tonight, I will.”
Jangler grumbled under his breath, but he believed her. He supposed she really was stupid enough. The children were pushed into their rows once more. This time the tally was the right one. The old man dismissed them back to their beds then spoke sternly to Captain Swazzle, threatening to take the guns away if another disruptive incident like this occurred.
“Hey,” Lee said to Charm as she made her way back to her cabin.
The girl looked at him questioningly. “You speakin’ to me now then?” she asked.
“What you just pulled – that were the smartest thing I seen in a while.”
“I dunno what you’re on about,” she told him with a toss of her head. “Everyone knows I’m fick.”
With a crafty smile on her face, she pushed the door open and left him grinning outside.
Maggie didn’t have time to thank Marcus. She returned to her cabin and got into bed quickly. She had experienced the narrowest escape and she pulled the duvet over her head to stifle the sobbing that was about to engulf her.
Two beds away Christina was sitting up, staring at her. “Where were you?” the little girl asked. “First you weren’t there, and then you was.”
“I was on the lav,” Maggie answered thickly. “Go to sleep.”
Christina continued to stare at her, unable to decide if she was laughing or crying under that quilt.
In Marcus’s cabin, he was bouncing around in celebration. “Yes!” he roared. “Yes! Yes!”
“Shut up!” Lee told him. “You want them guards to ask why you’s so happy?”
Marcus stretched out his arms and basked in the praise and adoration of an imagined, cheering multitude.
“We won this one!” he said, running up to Spencer and giving him a victory thump. “Damn – it feels good to be a winner again. I hope Gnasher got away – he deserved to. He played a blinder.”
Spencer rubbed his arm. “That Yikker’s got it in for you now though,” he warned. “Like really got it in for you. Worse than ever.”
“Ha,” Marcus chuckled, unconcerned. “We ran rings round them tonight. Just wait till the tunnel is finished. I’d love to see the look on that monster’s face when he knows I’ve gone for good.”
“You’re gonna die,” Lee told him for the umpteenth time.
Marcus wasn’t listening. He felt on top of the world. Tonight, for the first time, they had succeeded in something, gained a small triumph over the insidious, unstoppable evil of Dancing Jax. Perhaps it was an omen of better things ahead. That night he slept with a spark of hope in his heart.
Spencer removed his spectacles and placed them on the bedside cabinet. He stared up into the blurred gloom. It wasn’t as dark as the thoughts fermenting in his mind. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Each new, futile day brought some new danger, some new hideous threat. He longed for it to stop, but there was only one way that could happen. Maybe it would have been kinder not to have given Jody any water at all. They had only prolonged her torment. Spencer wished he had the courage to bring an end to his own. His ability to cope with the mounting despair was almost at breaking point.
At the back of the main block, Jody had worn herself out trying to guess what the shooting had meant. Cramped in that airless cupboard, she drifted in an
d out of sleep.
Many hours later, she heard an old, crackly dance tune play through the camp. She had no idea it was called ‘Three O’Clock in the Morning’ by Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra. To her, that scratchy piece of music sounded even more sinister than the gunfire because it was so bizarre and incongruous. Jody feared she was hallucinating, especially when unnatural sounds of strange beasts took over once the tune ended. Her head dropped on to her chest and the night passed.
IT WAS A glorious evening. Estelle Winyard was so enjoying the drive in Simon Beauvoir’s darling Morris 8 Tourer with the roof down, she didn’t particularly want to attend the party any more.
“Do let’s keep driving round and around,” she pleaded limply. “The countryside in the spring really is the cat’s meow. It’s such heaven to be out of stuffy old London. I don’t want to go to that beastly party. I shan’t know a soul. This is so much more pleasant. Let’s cry off and make our excuses tomorrow. You can say I contracted polio, rickets or diphtheria or anything drastic or squalid. I shan’t mind, not a jot. We can drive on and on till the petrol runs out and hole up in a barn the entire night.”
Simon gave his signature whinnying laugh that was so familiar in Society.
“You do speak the most abject phonus balonus at times!” he scoffed.
He took his eye off the empty country road and looked across at her. She was trailing a swan-white arm out of the car. Her pretty head was swathed in a scarf of ivory chiffon that protected the curls and waves of her glossy brown hair from the streaming wind. Framed by that pale cloud, her face looked more angelic than it deserved.
“You’re bally well coming to this shindig,” he scolded. “And that’s an end to it. We’ve incurred the wrath of your pater, scooting away for this weekend, so let’s make it count… and the look that hotel manager gave us earlier!”
“Felixstowe is an unsophisticated dead end,” she said. “I saw a woman sitting in the lobby wearing a cloche hat and another with hair like Mary Pickford! Imagine – in this day and age! I can’t see why the Most Evil Man in England would live within a spit of it. Not the right sort of hellhole at all.”
“I told you, it’s his family seat.”
“It’s certainly that! I never saw such a back end.”
“You’d be surprised who visits him here! All the fraidies who daren’t be seen with him in town: archbishops, members of parliament, lords, duchesses, artists, that crashing Simpson woman – she’s here quite a bit so you can bet Kingy Boy comes with her. He goes woofing after her heels everywhere.”
“Simon, you’re the Society oracle. You scribble up all the silly tattlings in Pater’s tawdry newspaper: who was at whose dreary dinner, who attended the first night of the opera, who is coming up to town and the rest of that high-hat rot. So tell me, honest injun, is AF really as dangerous as they say? I’ve only ever seen him once at a distance – at one of the Mitfords’ ghastly balls.”
“Dear Estelle, you’re one of the biggest snobs I know, so don’t pretend otherwise. Let those other drippy, dippy debs flirt with fascists or socialism to shock their maiden aunts, but it clangs so hollow when you try, my pretty pirate. You don’t give tuppence for the common masses and the unemployed. You simply couldn’t live without your daily doses of fizz, frocks and Mayfair salacity.”
“You’re a beast,” she said, pouting. “And you didn’t answer the question.”
“Yes, I am a beast,” he agreed. “But you’re about to meet a far greater and more savage one – we’re here.”
The peacock-blue automobile turned right on to a long track that sloped gently upward and was flanked by trees and an avenue of flaming torches.
Estelle leaned forward, eager to catch her first glimpse of the house she had heard so much about. In the past few years, Fellows End had become notorious. If only half the rumours were true, it would be worth roughing it here in the provinces, for a day or two. As they trundled up the track, a leviathan of a Rolls Royce came roaring towards them. Simon swerved aside to let it thunder past.
“Did you eyeball who that was in there?” he declared. “Only the Nazi fellow, Ribbentrop.”
“That German who flits about town, boring everyone about how wonderful Mr Hitler is? Pater says he’s a pushy parvenu and, as soon as his novelty value wears off, the grand invitations will dry up. Fancy him being here!”
“I told you AF knows everyone. I wonder why he’s not stopping for the bunfight? Don’t Nazis waggle their legs, or do they have to keep them rigid for those goose-steps?”
The nineteen-year-old girl at his side wasn’t listening. She was staring ahead, open-mouthed. The family home of Austerly Fellows had come into view.
“Oh – it’s perfectly monstrous!” she exclaimed with repulsed fascination.
“Yes, rather a trifle Poe-ish, but not everywhere can boast Savoy modernity. I think it has a certain… unique charm.”
“It must be a hoot at Hallowe’en.”
He drove up to the large, ugly building and Estelle shivered when they passed into its shadow. There were many gleaming cars parked on the gravel in front. Simon found a space and tucked his humble Tourer beside a Bentley. Leaping out, he whistled at the dazzling array of motors on show. It was going to be a very prestigious gathering.
Estelle remained in her seat. She stared up at the forbidding building. Efforts had been made to jolly it up with paper lanterns strung around the porch and around the sides, but they made the rest of the gloomy, misshapen house appear sullen and brooding in contrast.
“I don’t like it,” she announced. “I want to go back.”
Simon tweaked the white bow tie at his throat. “You, my dear, daffy girl,” he said, “are capriciousness incarnate. Sitting-room thrill-seekers, such as you, are all the same. You think you crave the frisson of excitement to ginger up your humdrummery, but you’re too bound by convention to actually dare do anything about it. A rouged Mrs Grundy I name you. Stay out here if you wish, by all means, but I’m not leaving this place till I’ve sampled AF’s booze. My throat feels like the contents of King Tut’s bandages. I’m positively squeaking for a cocktail or four. Besides, I’ve got my column to think of. I’m agog to find out who’s here tonight.”
“You’re an absolute stinker!” she told him.
He bowed in polite acquiescence and she couldn’t help admiring how handsome he was in full evening dress and Brylcreemed hair.
“Well, open the door for me, you cad.”
Simon strode around the motor and obeyed. Estelle poured herself out of the passenger seat. Her silver satin gown clung and shimmered about her slender frame and she took several moments to carefully unwind the chiffon from her head and drape it about her bare shoulders. Then they exchanged teasing glances. They both knew the glamour quotient of this party had suddenly rocketed.
“Just don’t get ossified on Manhattans!” she cautioned, tapping him with her beaded purse.
The young man crooked his arm and she slid her own into it.
“Let’s go meet the great and the bad,” he said. “There’s no social set more impossible to break into than this. What we have here is the absolute pinnacle of the climber’s ladder. Princesses and prime ministers have been snubbed and turned away from awful Austerly’s haut monde bashes. He doesn’t give a fig whom he insults.”
“Ladders don’t have pinnacles, you ass,” she corrected. “And how did you wangle an invite? You never told me.”
He only tapped the side of his nose in reply and, as they were now standing in front of the open door, she couldn’t press the matter.
A thick-set, scowling Arab in a fez salaamed and gestured silently for them to enter. Estelle raised her pencilled brows. Mr Fellows was well known for his love of the exotic and this entrance hall did not disappoint. The skins and heads of animals she had only seen in zoos were hung on the panelled walls and a python was draped down the banister. Her delight when it reared its head, proving itself to be alive, manifested in a nursery type
gasp from her lips.
The air was thick with incense, streaming from a large brass burner standing in the centre. A huge Moroccan lantern, studded with hundreds of pieces of coloured glass and now fitted with electric light, hung from the ceiling, zinging the place with brilliant jewel colours. Two small Indian boys, carrying silver trays sparkling with cocktails and flutes of champagne, stepped forward from one corner. They looked so alike they could have been twins. Estelle stared at them intently and stifled a giggle as she took a glass.
Simon led her further into the hall, towards the agreeable sounds of lively chatter and jazz.
“So far it’s the bee’s knees,” she whispered to him. “Is it true he’s the head of cults and king of the witches? I do hope so – it would be too Gothically sublime of him. I’d hate for all this to be mere faddery. They say his eyes are the most intense things you’ll ever see. Just one stare from them and he was able to deflower the three Rashton sisters and then moved on to their mother – all in the same night. How deliciously degenerate. Of course no one would ever dream of speaking to them again. They were ruined and had to move to Italy. Only Mussolini would take them in!”
They had come to an internal door, where an amply proportioned Chinese woman in a tight black silk dress, decorated with scarlet dragons, welcomed them with a dead-eyed smile. Estelle thought she twisted the door knob as if she was wringing the neck of a chicken and moved past her hastily when she waved them in.
This large, book-lined space was ablaze with light. Two enormous crystal chandeliers shone like captured suns above and were reflected in countless mirrors all around. Cigars and cigarettes in holders formed their own hazy atmosphere above the invited guests and Estelle took several minutes to absorb the sight of these people. Simon was doing the same, with a professional eye.
It was a select gathering. There were only about fifty people there, but the quality of them made up for the low numbers. Estelle recognised several lords and a countess, as well as a handful of Right Honourables and an industrial tycoon. Over by the ostentatious buffet, a leading man from the London stage was helping himself to oysters, while next to him a red-faced foreign ambassador thought it amusing to try and outstare the salmon. The opulent attire of the women made her own elegant gown feel positively dowdy by comparison. Diamonds or emeralds glittered at every throat, dangled from ear lobes like overripe fruit and weighed down wrists and fingers.