by Kim Newman
There was a sad story about that.
If it came to a punch-up between rival schools, neither would win. Clever Dick’s Brain-Boxes – Cadet Branch of the Splendid Six – would scoop the tobies and go home for cocoa. Amy worried a battle was fought and lost while she was freezing her proboscis off in the stratosphere. Even the weeds, wets and dims of Humble College – fully, St Cuthbert’s School for the Sons of the Humble and Pious – could hardly participate less than a person bobbing about like a rudderless Zeppelin.
‘Five hundred and ninety-one green bottles hanging on the wall, five hundred and ninety-one green bottles hanging on the wall, and if one green bottle should accidentally fall – Whistle whistle whistle kerr-ASH! – there’ll be five hundred and ninety green bottles—’
Miss Gossage’s high sing-song buzzed in the back of Amy’s mind.
‘Mawther Hein to Kentish Gloreah, Mawther Hein to Kentish Gloreah, come in, come in, ovah…’
The ungainly, lopsided teacher was herself an Unusual. A Drearcliff Old Girl (Class of ’11), Clemency Gossage returned to the fold after a Disappointment. Assiduous collectors of staffroom gossip had not discovered whether the Disappointment was in love or another field of human endeavour. The betting was on a punctured romance though. The Sausage was the sort of google-eyed, pre-emptively apologetic goose who’d let some rolled-stockings vamp waltz off with any swain not nailed down and golly-gosh-what-a-rum-do about it rather than use her Talent to get her chap back or put her rival out of the picture.
Chemicals in Miss Gossage’s brain made her a living telegram service. She could transmit brief messages directly into the minds of pupils she had a fix on, and receive curt responses. A Talent as close to mental telepathy as floating was to flying. The party piece had Applications in the field, even if – or especially when – the field was thirty feet above a fogbound city.
‘Mawther Hein to Kentish Gloreah, what is your – ahh – position? Ovah.’
Amy concentrated. The Sausage could pick up short sentences, formed in the mind but not spoken aloud. It helped to mouth the words.
‘My position is over… over Fitzroy Square or thereabouts.’
She tried to think an ‘over’. A full stop formed in her mind – Frecks’ beauty mark.
‘EC3 and E1 parcels collected… ovah.’
Good news. They’d been sure about the EC3 site, but iffy on the E1.
‘Parcels collected… and posted. Pillah box ain roowt to WC1. Postmein sent to SW2. No developmeints on W1. Ovah.’
Pillar Box was Larry Laurence. Another dud handle.
WC1 was ‘Helen’s Hole’, the Troy Club. The easy one.
Before the Off, Amy saw Haldane’s reasoning in not collecting the WC1 parcel until after the team had tackled some real puzzlers. It was like having a match in hand. Now, with the fog, she had a notion ‘the easy one’ wouldn’t be as easy as all that. The Great Game wasn’t famous for gentle warm-up rounds. It was, in fact, known for fiendish trickiness from the Off to the Finish.
Amy’s antennae tingled. Well, her eyebrows itched – which was still equivalent to a moth becoming alert to danger, food or a change in the weather. A more specific intuition would have been preferable, but – as Dr Swan said – ‘we must find Applications for the Talents we have.’
Miss Gossage buzzed again – a zizzle of irritation, unlike any sound issued from a human throat… Not strictly a sound at all, since it was all in the Sausage’s mind and Amy’s. It was like an ice-cream headache.
‘Oh, noodles,’ said Amy, aloud.
She had lost count of those precariously-placed green bottles and couldn’t be bothered starting all over again. No matter how many of the blessed things were hanging on the wall – and why anyone would want to hang bottles on a wall was beyond her! – they’d just have to jolly well stay put and not accidentally fall. All that broken glass was bound to get underfoot and be a nuisance.
Fitzroy Square or thereabouts. North of Oxford Street.
Not as insalubrious as Soho, according to Light Fingers, but not exactly respectable either. Denizens called this Fitzrovia. Anywhere with denizens rather than residents was decidedly suspect. Light Fingers’ larcenous parents, who once moved (very fast) through the demi-monde, fleeced many a mark in the clubs of Fitzrovia… watering holes famous for cocktails, gambling and other vices.
The Troy Club was the only seedy salon in town to waive cover charges for Drearcliff Grange girls. If Mother found out places like ‘Helen’s Hole’ were on the itinerary of a school trip, she wouldn’t approve.
Amy wasn’t sure this was where she should be hovering either.
This was not getting them home in time for tea and buns.
There were three more ‘parcels’ to be ‘collected’ and ‘posted’.
There was but one thing for it.
She extended thin, jointed mentacle spines. Spreading her cloak like wings, she fanned a hole in the fog. She saw wet rooftops before the hole filled in.
Taking a deep, clear, stinging breath, Amy began to sink.
The ground was calling her. Loud and clear. Over and out.
Her nose stung. The goggles kept fog out of her eyes, but she couldn’t see worth a toffee.
‘Noodles,’ she said again, for extra emphasis. ‘Soggy noodles!’
II: Nine Hours Earlier: On the Road
‘THE OFF IS at sunset,’ insisted Headers Haldane. ‘It’s in the rules.’
Girls groaned. Amy, like everyone else, was fed up with rules.
Sunset was hours away. And the Off was in London.
Rattletrap, the school motor charabanc, was barely past Andover.
Joxer, the Drearcliff Grange Man of All Work, mumble-grumbled as he bent over the steering wheel. By his lights, Rattletrap – spanking new, and a proud purchase for the school this term – was an instrument of Satan. With many a lurch and backfire, the vehicle veered across the road, searching for ruts to get stuck in. Joxer scorned irresponsible mechanisation. Horse and cart had served the school since Founding Day and he saw no need to abandon tried and tested conveyance. ‘What be next,’ he muttered, ‘a nairy-plane? T’ain’t a natural thing, and no good’ll come of ’ee!’
After two hours’ bouncing on a hardwood pew, Amy was beginning to agree with him. That ancient cart at least had upholstered seats – though faithful Dauntless might not have got this far without conking out by the roadside, no matter what secret formula Joxer added to the nag’s oats. Rattletrap was built for excursions to the seaside on sunny Bank Holidays. A canvas roof could be wound up to keep off the worst of the rain, but open sides left passengers at the mercy of wind, smuts, petrol fumes and small boys throwing stones.
‘Stuff the rules,’ said Frecks, risking a Major Infraction for impudence to the Head Girl. ‘Stuff ’em with walnuts. You know who we’re playing. Draycott’s Girls don’t give a fourpenny whoops for the laws of Great Britain, let alone the rules of the Great Game. The Brain-Box Brats think cheating’s clever, not wrong. Even the Humblebumblers will have opened the envelope by now. Unless you crack on, those sooners’ll collect the tobies double-quick. We’ll end up holding the wooden spoon. Again. That’ll sit ill with the assembled throng on our return.’
Last year’s result fostered a fierce sense of injustice. Amy hadn’t been selected for the team then, but shared the wounded pride. A pall of humiliation settled on the whole school.
Before the Off, a Draycott’s girl with a Talent for pocket-picking sidled up to Miss Gossage and switched envelopes. Thus, Drearcliff Grange were packed off on fools’ errands. Lucretia Lamarcroft, the Amazonian Captain, was duped into ‘trying out the famous echo’ in the Quiet Room of the Diogenes Club. Apparently, under the bylaws of that institution, you could be shot for coughing – but she gave out a war-whoop that’d have startled a herd of stampeding buffalo. Aconita Gould, the Scots Wolf Girl, followed a false trail to Battersea Dogs’ Home and was subjected to a flea bath. Janice Marsh, the aquatic American, was lured to a
slab in Billingsgate Fish Market and barely escaped gutting. Moria Kratides, the undersized Sixth, led a party into the sewers of Hampstead on a hunt for the fabled Black Sow whose brood of flesh-eating swine terrorised Under-London. That was a put-up job too. The Kratides Expedition got beastly lost in unsanitary tunnels.
With their main rivals sabotaged, Draycott’s romped to victory with four out of five tobies. Apparently, their ‘unorthodox tactics’ did not violate the rules Haldane set so much store by. Dr Swan made several speeches in assembly to steel the school’s resolve. For over a year, the message from Headmistress had been unambiguous. Drearcliff must win the next Great Game.
Which was not to say they were limited to ‘orthodox tactics’.
‘Initiative is encouraged,’ Dr Swan told them.
They should interpret that how they wished, Amy presumed.
Haldane gripped the oilskin document packet. Its provenance was beyond reproach. Even Headers saw sense in taking custody of the envelope early in the day. The Sausage handed it over before the team trooped aboard Rattletrap. The black wax seal was imprinted with the skull sigil of the Undertaking. The sombrely dressed fellowship, known for their discreet presence at sites of mysterious occurrences, had overseen the Great Game since its beginnings in the reign of James the First and Sixth.
The first teams to compete were the Homunculi, apprentices and acolytes (not all strictly human) of the occultist John Dee; the Sea Eyasses, buccaneer cabin boys and rigging rats; the Weird Sisters, the sly fey lads who played the witches in the original production of Macbeth; and the Daughters of Annwn, urchin vixens who filed their teeth and worshipped Old Blood Goddesses. Rhyming riddles set by Francis Bacon led to the hiding places of the pickled heads of five Spanish sea captains. Whoever claimed the biggest bag of bonces won the day.
The outcome of the first Game was hotly disputed. The longed-lived survivors – an Admiral of privateers and a High Priestess of Agroná – married each other, but never put the quarrel to bed. Seventy years on – despite the pleas of children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – they determined to settle the matter with a clash of cold steel. Tragically, the duellists ran each other through and expired in each other’s arms. Heirs and adherents divided into factions to keep the fight going. Somewhere, the Disagreement of Eyas and Annwn raged still. Over the centuries, the death toll has been equivalent to a medium-sized war.
The Armada noggins served as prizes for a century or so before they flaked to bits. Reluctantly, the Undertaking replaced the heads with toby jugs.
Those who did well in the Great Game frequently went on to figure in the Shadow Chronicle of Britain – the record of wars, feats and crimes too disturbing for ordinary history books. Those who did poorly in the Great Game seldom figured in the Chronicle of Anything.
Amy closed her eyes and imagined the seal crumbling.
‘Lay off that hocus-pokery,’ said Headers, voice rising an octave. ‘Whichever of you Unusuals is casting the fluence, cut it out. I’m on to your wicky tricks. One thing you’ll find about me is that precious little can be got past my nose.’
Everyone repressed smirks.
Haldane’s most prominent feature was her hooter.
‘But, Headers—’ began Frecks.
‘You’re on notice, Walmergrave,’ Haldane told her. ‘Any more talk of cheating and it’s a Major Infraction.’
Frecks threw up her hands in despair.
Amy drew in her mentacles.
The rest of the team slumped and slouched.
Rancour and resentment stewed.
Prima Haldane had risen through assiduous creepery. As Chief Whip, she marked down more Infractors than any five prefects put together. As Head Girl, she was a stickler for School Rules. If it were up to her, she’d make up more of the beasts so more girls could be marked down for infractions of them. Her honker was perpetually poked into places it wasn’t welcome.
When Headers was a Third, her good-hearted cellmates Byrne and di Fontane got it into their noodles that her problem was a sad, shy inability to make friends. On her birthday, they surprised her with a midnight feast. Haldane refused to budge from her cot and reported the whole corridor to the whips. Infracted for After Lights Out Activity, her would-be benefactors ended up scrubbing the Heel – a traditional Drearcliff Grange punishment – and cursing her name.
Unpopular with her peers, Haldane secured her current position – which entailed being Team Captain in the Great Game, among other honours and responsibilities – by toadying to beaks and tattling on potential rivals. Susan Byrne, jolliest girl in school, easily lived down the After Lights Out Black Notch Haldane put in her Time-Table Book and seemed a natural for elevation to the post of Head Girl. However, her tenure as Fifth Form Ariel Captain was tainted by scandal – a persistent fug of perfumed cigarettes in her cell, a sixpenny-a-trick whist ring, letters arriving from boys she claimed never to have met which (upon examination by Keys, the school censor) referred to licentious escapades off grounds. So Haldane was left as the only viable candidate.
Whisper had it that the Selection Committee debated breaking the tradition that Head Girl should be an Ariel. Likely candidates among the athletes of Goneril or the terrors of Tamora were considered. The Suggestion Box was stuffed with recommendations for Rose of Viola, whose particular qualifications for office were being startlingly fair of face and completely without voice. When Headers began assembling dossiers on Sixths of other houses, the Committee gave in and advised Dr Swan to pin gold braid on the pest and be done with it. After all, it was only for a year, and what harm could she really do? It wasn’t as if she were another Antoinette Rayne or Ariadne Rinaldo. She was no Unusual.
Talents were tolerated – encouraged, even – but unspoken convention reserved the position of Head Girl for what Light Fingers contemptuously referred to as ‘an Ordinary’.
Last year, she could not have imagined anyone worse than Sidonie Gryce, the witch who was Head Girl when Amy first came to Drearcliff. But Gryce could be bribed or otherwise got around.
‘One thing you’ll find about me,’ insisted Haldane, ‘is that I cannot be bribed or got around.’
‘That’s two things,’ said Light Fingers quietly.
‘I cannot be tempted, gulled or—’
‘Led by the nose,’ suggested Frecks.
Giggles were not stifled.
Before Headers could share another thing they would find about her – that she was not to be sneezed at? – Miss Gossage rapped a bench. At the same time, without meaning to, she buzzed in Amy’s head.
‘Leviteah is fine in its place, gels,’ said the Sausage, ‘but this is no light matter. Remembah, we are a team. We represeint School Spirit. We must prevail. Our honour is at stake.’
‘Who, me?’ said Honor Devlin humorously.
‘Yes, you, missy my gel,’ said Miss Gossage seriously. ‘Yes, all of you. Not oneses and twoses, but youses and usses. Fortitude, gels!’
‘Fortitude, attitude and pulchritude!’ said Frecks.
Devlin – known as Stretch because of her rubbery bones – saluted, slapping elongated fingers against the brim of her boater.
‘Boldness…’ the Sausage said.
‘Always boldness,’ the whole team chimed, though more than one thought it was waggish to pronounce it ‘always baldness’.
‘Dr Swan has made space in the trophy cabinet,’ said the Sausage. ‘Space enough for five jugs. Those who disappoint Dr Swan do not prospah.’
Miss Gossage was talking about herself, not just the team.
However wary they might be of Draycott’s felons in skirts, everyone in the charabanc was more afraid of Myrna Swan. Headmistress had subtle ways of wreaking revenges.
Miss Gossage set an example with Character, but lacked Guile. Were Miss Borrodale – the Science teacher – in her place, Drearcliff Grange might be better placed for a quick victory. Fossil Borrodale had recipes for irresistible toadstools treats. Come the Off, Quell’s myrmidons migh
t be wracked with mystery tummy upsets.
The Silly Sausage was above such tactics. Worse luck.
Yesterday afternoon, Dr Swan invited the team – sans Miss Gossage – to her study for a word of advice and encouragement.
Surprisingly, Headmistress had the girls hold hands as in a ring-a-rosy. Then, she said, ‘Do not trust anyone not in this circle. Show no mercy, for none will be shown to you. Do not play the Game, win the Game. You all have Abilities, whether Unusual or not. Use them. Look askance at easy opportunity. Become mistresses of mistrust.’
That sank in, though Amy felt strange about it.
Dr Swan didn’t hold any hands – was she telling them to mistrust her?
Haldane nodded as if taking it in, but was holding Nancy Dyall’s hand so the straight talk might be corkscrewed in her mind. Dyall’s Talent was radiating discombobulating waves.
Headers turned the sealed packet over and over in her lap.
Did she realise she was picking at the Undertakers’ seal as if it were a scab?
Frecks’ wooden spoon talk was getting to the Team Captain. A poor showing would reflect badly on her. Even Haldane wouldn’t prize a commendation as the most rule-abiding loser in the Game. Lamarcroft, last year’s Team Captain, lived out her final term at Drearcliff Grange as a Fallen Heroine. After a poor showing in exams, she enlisted as ‘Private Jane Noone’ (Noone for No One) in General Flitcroft’s no-questions-asked Regiment of the Damned. They were currently fighting in the Nejd-Hashemite War. No one was sure on which side.
Piling into Rattletrap after a hearty breakfast, the Moth Club had bagsied the back bench. Amy, Frecks, Light Fingers and Kali could turn round and peer through the isinglass window in the canvas, once-overing dishy motorists.
Early in the excursion, Amy and Frecks played Light Fingers and Kali at pub cricket. When they passed an inn or hostelry on the left, they scored runs equal to the number of legs on the sign. The Cow and Chandler in Mere scored a Six, the Goose and Trumpet in Zeals a Two, and so on. Light Fingers and Kali batted the right side of the road. When Rattletrap passed the Duke of York’s Regiment in Ratfyn, the right-handers claimed a match-sweeping Twenty Thousand. Argument arose as to how many of the Duke’s well-remembered ten thousand men were actually depicted on the sign. Amy declared before things got too heated. It was a Little Game. Not one that mattered.