The Charlie Moon Collection

by Shirley Hughes

  Charlie was the one underneath. He couldn’t even struggle. He just lay there trying not to be squashed to death by Dodger and promising himself never to be the back legs of anything ever again. Especially not a horse. More especially not if Dodger was the front legs. He wasn’t a reliable person to go about with at the best of times, what with holding his breath between one lamp-post and another on the way to school or suddenly deciding to sidle about like a crab. You never knew when he was going to have a stop-and-go phase. Being inside the same skin with him was a mistake from the beginning, thought Charlie bitterly. Next time, at the very least, it was front legs or nothing.

  At last Linda, the children’s librarian, wrestling with zips and fastenings, managed to rescue them and get them on to their feet. There were books all over the place. They’d been accidentally knocked off a nearby display stand. Luckily all this had happened in the small room across the passage from the main library, the one where Linda sometimes read stories aloud to them. The door was firmly shut, so the people who were choosing their books didn’t rush across to demand who was making all the noise. Even so, Linda looked anxiously towards the door.

  “Come on, you three, we’d better get this lot tidied up right away,” she said. “Charlie, Dodger, you start piling up all those books—very carefully, mind—and I’ll rearrange them as they were. Ariadne, you’d better get the costumes back into their boxes. I hope nothing’s been damaged. The horse suit is only borrowed and I’ve promised to return it in good condition.”

  Linda had borrowed the costumes for the Book Bonanza which was going to be at the end of this half-term week. She had hired the big hall which was next door to the library, and there were going to be lots of stands with all kinds of books on them—ghost books and fairy-tale books and books about snakes and racing cars and magic and Egyptian mummies and monsters from outer space. There were going to be badges and stickers and some real writers and artists too. Linda was organizing it all. She had a lot of good ideas, like having some people in fancy dress walking up and down outside the hall with notices telling everyone about the Book Bonanza and getting them to come inside. This was where Charlie, Dodger and Ariadne came in. Today was supposed to be a sort of rehearsal.

  “Thank goodness my notice is O.K.,” said Ariadne, leaning it tenderly up against a wall. “It took me hours to do. Typical of you to go falling over it, Charlie Moon.” She always thought that things which happened to Charlie quite accidentally were “typical”. It was her favourite word. The other was “pathetic”. Worse still, she’d just discovered another one: “nauseating”. “You’re absolutely nauseating,” she would tell Charlie, whenever she could steer the conversation round to it. He wasn’t quite sure yet what it meant, but he knew it wasn’t a compliment.

  They got the books back on to the shelves. Linda looked worried. Her hair was all on end. It was short and curly all over like a red setter that’s been out in the rain, only it smelt much nicer.

  “There’s only a few days to go and so much to do,” she said.

  “Is Duggie Bubbles really coming?” asked Charlie and Dodger for about the twentieth time.

  Everyone knew about Duggie Bubbles because they’d all seen him doing magic tricks on television. He was going to be the star attraction of the Bonanza. Charlie was planning to be a television conjuror too, so he was anxious to pick up some hints. You were supposed to have a top hat, which Charlie hadn’t, but he was working on that. He’d also spent his Christmas book-token on a book by Duggie Bubbles himself called Magic for Boys and Girls. But the chapter about cutting a hole in a large white handkerchief hadn’t been a success because he’d kept getting the hole the wrong size. Mum had been very cross when she’d found out what had happened to all her good linen handkerchiefs.

  “Yes, he’s really coming,” said Linda, “and so is that lady illustrator. They’re going to use the platform. Everything’s got to be absolutely ready by then. Oh, dear!”

  They all liked Linda. She could read aloud ever so well. Listening to her was as good as a play. Dodger sometimes hung about at the back pretending he was doing something else, but really his ears were flapping. They all wanted to help with the Bonanza. But now it was nearly time for the library to close, so it was too late to do any more today.

  They were just finishing tidying up when there was a great roaring noise outside. A powerful engine spluttered a couple of times and then shut off.

  A fierce figure appeared in the doorway, covered from head to foot in shiny black plastic, with a helmet under its arm and its face covered like a bandit’s with a white silk scarf. But inside it was only Norman, Charlie’s young uncle. He quite often dropped in to collect Charlie from the library. This was because he hoped to linger about, chatting to Linda.

  Charlie, Dodger and Ariadne ran out at once to admire Norman’s big motorbike. Dodger stroked its shiny tank lovingly. Bending his knees and gripping imaginary handle-bars, he pretended to zoom off, leaning over sideways as he cornered at 80 m.p.h.

  “I hope he’s brought the spare crash helmet so I can have a ride,” said Charlie.

  This afternoon they were all in luck. Linda had invited everyone to have tea with her uncle, Mr Owen Bowen. Unlike Charlie’s Uncle Norman, who was young, Linda’s uncle was very old. He was often at home and liked to be visited.

  Norman was in a good mood.

  “O.K., Charlie, get this helmet on. I’ll give you a lift round there,” he said. With Charlie snug and secure on the pillion, he kicked the starter and revved the engine very loudly two or three times.

  “See you there, folks,” shouted Charlie above the din, with a careless wave.

  The admiring group on the pavement watched as they roared away up the quiet road and disappeared round the bend. Even Ariadne was impressed.

  2 A Ghost is Heard

  Linda’s Uncle Owen Bowen lived quite nearby on the top floor of a big old house. He was lucky with his view because his room overlooked the most beautiful river in the world: the steely, oily, muddy, tidal, glittering River Thames. The other houses along this River Walk were mostly very grand. Some elegantly furnished rooms could be glimpsed through the freshly painted windows. But the house where Uncle Owen Bowen lived stuck out like a rotting tooth in a row of gleaming white ones. Bits of the front seemed to be falling off into the basement area. The windows of the downstairs rooms, which were all empty, had bedraggled lace curtains drawn tightly across them.

  Charlie and Norman arrived first, of course, and had to wait on the pavement until Linda, Ariadne and Dodger came strolling along the River Walk to join them. The row of doorbells next to Uncle Owen Bowen’s front door bore the fading names of lodgers who had all gone away. It was no good ringing any of them because they were all disconnected, like Uncle Owen himself. He never seemed to hear anything that went on down in the street. They had to shout up to the windows for a long time before his face appeared over the balcony. Then he dropped the front door key down to them.

  The most difficult thing about getting through the hall was the smell. Or smells. Was it torn cats, dead rats, mouldy kippers or simply very old socks? Or all four? It was hard to tell. Every time they came there the smells seemed to be different. Today there was an ancient heater at the bottom of the stairs which smoked and stank gently, adding to the already over-laden air. As usual, all the children held their noses on the way upstairs.

  “I’b nod breadigg add all,” Charlie told Dodger, scarlet in the face as they reached the first landing.

  “Neidder ab I,” answered Dodger between clenched teeth.

  “Dawseatigg!” muttered Ariadne.

  Uncle Owen Bowen was hovering outside his room at the top of the house, waiting to welcome them. What a relief it was to be there. Inside, with the door shut, there was no smell at all except for a pleasant whiff of oil paint and turpentine. It was a lovely room. From the balcony outside you could see right up to the great iron bridge with its fairy-tale towers, and the moored barges, and the river sli
pping past. Near the window Uncle Owen Bowen had his easel and his paints and brushes, neatly arranged upright in big jars. Charlie had never seen so many interesting objects collected in one room. There was the stuffed pike in a glass case, the brass letter-scales, the fourteen old clocks (none of them going), the banjo, the tailor’s dummy and the model ship. There were also stacks and stacks of pictures, framed and unframed, not only hung all over the walls but leaning up against them too. Uncle Owen had painted quite a few of these himself. Hanging over the massive sideboard was a birdcage, inside which lived, not a parrot or a budgie, but Uncle Owen’s best false teeth and his gold-rimmed glasses. His sight was bad, so he kept them there for safety in case he lost them.

  “I’ve got in some rock cakes for your tea,” said Uncle Owen Bowen. “The home help bought them for me.”

  They ate standing up or wandering about the room because all the tables were too full already to put plates on them. This suited everyone very well, especially Dodger. There was nothing he hated more than a set meal. Uncle Owen Bowen had given them up years ago.

  “I like this picture,” said Ariadne, pausing in front of the easel. “Are you working on it now, Mr Bowen?”

  “Yes, yes. River with pleasure boat. Greens and blues. Light’s a bit unreliable today, though.”

  “It’s lovely. I like the way the clouds are flying up out of the top of the canvas.”

  “It’s coming along, coming along. Must get the paints away before Mr Dix comes. Said he might drop in later, and he’ll be ever so cross if he sees them.”

  “Why should he be cross?” asked Ariadne, indignant.

  “Mess—paint on the carpet—smells. He complains about the smells. Oh dear, yes.”

  “But oil paints smell lovely,” said Linda.

  “Doesn’t like them.” Uncle Owen Bowen’s pale eyes started nervously. His chin disappeared into his neck rather like a goose, which gave him a permanently startled look anyway. The very mention of Mr Dix made him nervous. Mr Dix was the owner of the house. He had bought it with Uncle Owen Bowen in it. There had been some other lodgers too, but they hadn’t liked the way Mr Dix had kept popping in to check up on their habits. So one by one they had all packed up and moved out until only Uncle Owen was left. He had lived their all his life and didn’t know where to go.

  “Mr Dix says that Beauty’s making the hall smell,” said Uncle Owen. Beauty was his old cat. “But I have to let her go up and down so she can get out through her cat door.”

  “That old stove down there’s smoking badly,” said Norman. “Looks a bit dodgy to me.”

  “No, no. Mr Dix gave that to me himself. Good of him. Second-hand of course but he said it had cost him a lot. Beauty feels the cold terribly, you know.”

  Charlie knew Mr Dix. He didn’t seem like a specially good person. He lived on a barge which was moored nearby, and he was always shouting at Charlie and Dodger whenever they played near that part of the river. Mr Dix had bought Uncle Owen Bowen’s house so he could move in himself and do the old place up as a posh hotel. But he couldn’t get people to pay a lot of money to stay there if Uncle Owen was messing about on the top floor, painting pictures. Mr Dix kept suggesting to Uncle Owen that he should go into a Home, but he wouldn’t. He had an old friend who was in one he said, where the head nurse was a regular sergeant-major. Nobody there was allowed to use a small box of water-colours, let alone oil paints. Charlie wondered why so many things that seemed worth doing counted as making a mess, like practising conjuring, or Norman taking his motorbike to pieces in the front room.

  Ariadne asked Uncle Owen if they could see some more of his paintings. She was keen on art. Uncle Owen let them turn some of the canvases that were stacked against the wall face forwards so they could look at them. They were nearly all of the river: on misty days and grey days, or in sparkling sunshine, with boats going up and down, and the water all jumping points of light. They admired them all, one by one.

  “Did you do this one too, Mr Bowen?” asked Norman with interest. He was looking at a small chalk drawing hanging on the wall opposite the window. It was of a young lady with dark red hair.

  “No, no. That’s very old. It’s of my grandmother, Lily Bowen. Linda’s great grandmother. The Stunner, she was called. She was an artist’s model. Drawn and painted by all the famous artists of her time. Stunner was their nick-name for a good-looking young lady in those days, and she was the most stunning stunner of them all.”

  Linda happened to be standing next to the drawing. Turned towards the light she looked just like the lady in the picture, except that her hair was short and curly and Lily Bowen’s was long.

  “Lovely,” said Norman. Charlie hadn’t known until now that Norman was keen on art. He’d never mentioned it.

  “I don’t think I ever had a great grandmother,” said Dodger. “I’ve got a gran, but we’ve moved such a lot that I don’t see her very often.”

  “Lily used to live by the river,” Uncle Owen told them. “She was a mudlark’s daughter.”

  “What’s a mudlark?” they all wanted to know.

  “Poor people who used to go down to the river at low tide and search for things in the mud that they might be able to sell. Rubbish and things that people had thrown away. Coins sometimes, if they were lucky. A famous artist saw Lily when she was helping her mother with the mudlarking and cleaned her up so he could paint her.”

  “Did she marry him?” asked Ariadne promptly.

  “No, no. He married someone else. A richer lady. And Lily married George Bowen who kept a pub. But she wasn’t happy. Not happy at all, I’m afraid.”

  “Poor lady,” said Ariadne.

  “After she died,” said Uncle Owen quietly, “her ghost was supposed to haunt the river at low tide, down where she used to do her mudlarking. The place where the famous artist first found her.”

  They all fell silent, looking at the little drawing. Outside the spring dusk was starting to fall and the colours of the opposite bank of the river, so bright an hour ago, were ebbing away to grey like the tide. Overhead there was a faint scuffling noise, like footsteps walking in tissue paper. They began on one side of the ceiling and worked their way slowly over to the other, paused, then started again, then stopped.

  “Who’s that up in the attic, Uncle Owen?” asked Linda.

  3 Smells and More Smells

  There was nobody else in the house at all, as far as Uncle Owen knew. But he had heard that noise at dusk before.

  “The place is full of smells and now it’s got strange noises as well. I can’t make it out,” he said. They listened again. Now the noise had stopped the silence seemed ghostly too. Charlie had a nasty chilly feeling in the back of his neck.

  “Perhaps it’s Beauty catching mice,” suggested Ariadne nervously.

  But Charlie knew it couldn’t be Beauty because he’d seen her sitting on the railings down below in River Walk. He couldn’t help thinking about that sad, dead Lily and wondering if, rather than haunting the river mud, she’d taken to following Uncle Owen Bowen about instead. Just then there was a louder, creaking step on the landing and a knock on the door that made them all jump.

  “Afternoon, all,” said Mr Dix, stepping in without being asked. He was not a welcome sight. But it was a relief, at least, that he wasn’t a ghost.

  Mr Dix wore heavy dark glasses. When you looked into his eyes all you saw were two tiny reflections of yourself. He also wore a peaked cap which he never removed, indoors or out. It made him look rather like a sea-captain, an idea which he encouraged because he liked standing about on the deck of the safely-moored barge where he lived, pretending he was at sea and bossing an imaginary crew. Very little of his face was visible except for his jutting jaw.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Dix,” said Uncle Owen, hovering about in front of his easel and paints in the hope that they wouldn’t be noticed. But it was too late. Mr Dix was already bearing down on them.

  “Sorry to see you’ve got those paints all over the place
again,” he said to Uncle Owen, ignoring the others. “I could smell them half way up the stairs, you know. I’m a reasonable man, I hope. Don’t like to interfere with tenants. Never did. But this is my property and we can’t have oil paint smelling the place out and getting all over the carpet, can we?”

  “Not on the carpet,” murmured Uncle Bowen, shuffling his feet. “Most careful, I do assure you. A cup of tea, Mr Dix?”

  “Haven’t time, I’m afraid. Madly busy. Just dropped in to remind you about that drawing.”

  “Drawing?”

  “You know. The little chalk drawing of the girl over there.”

  “Yes, yes. My grandmother. We were just looking at it when . . . I was telling these young people here . . . I mean . . . Mr Dix is an art dealer, you know,” Uncle Owen explained to his guests.

  Mr Dix nodded briefly.

  “I’ve managed to get a few pounds for your river paintings from time to time, haven’t I, Mr Bowen? I just wondered if you’d decided to sell that little drawing. It’s a bad time, of course, but I might be able to find a buyer for it.”

  “Er, no, I don’t think so, Mr Dix, thank you very much. I’m rather fond of it, you see.”

  “Oh, Uncle, you can’t sell The Stunner!” cried Linda. “I couldn’t bear you to part with it!”

  “Pity. I might be able to get quite a good price, you never know,” said Mr Dix. “And, considering your rent arrears, Mr Bowen . . .”

  “I think it may be quite valuable,” said Uncle Owen Bowen, “by such a famous artist . . .”

  “Pity it’s not signed,” said Mr Dix, “that brings the value down a lot, of course. But I tell you what. Let me have it valued for you. I know an expert—a customer of mine—who’ll do that for me as a favour. No charge. And there’s no need for you to sell if you don’t like the price.”