Monkie Business

by Thomas, Debbie;

‘Allow me!’ Abbie brandished the firelighters.

  ‘Why don’t we just have chocolate instead?!’ Perdita waved the wrappers.

  Everyone stood in silence while guilt and outrage played ping-pong across their faces.

  At last Mr Dabbings clapped his hands. ‘All righty. It seems both teams have been up to their tricks. We’ll have to revise the rules. From now on, everyone can use matches instead of having to light their candles in the fire – and everyone can share the remaining chocolate.’ Before anyone could argue, he turned to Matt. ‘How about you get the fire going now, twenty-first-century style? I’m sure a good breakfast will calm things down.’

  But even Dad’s Dairy Milk and porridge couldn’t clear the air. The teams sat apart on the beach, whispering together and glaring at the enemy, until Coriander stood up.

  ‘This is awful!’ She threw out her arms to the Hartley-Battboilings. ‘We can’t spend the rest of this trip at war. Let’s forget treasure hunting today and have some fun together.’

  Dad jumped up. ‘Good idea. We need to build trust again. And I’ve got just the thing. I was saving it for a rainy day but it’ll be even better in sunshine. It’s what the monks did to get closer to God and each other.’

  ‘Boresticks!’ shouted Henry. ‘I’m SO not praying.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’ Dad grinned. ‘Though now you mention it, the Annals of Donal do say that angels joined in, to reward the monks for their holiness.’

  An hour later Abbie was praying for angels. But she must have failed the holiness test because there wasn’t a heavenly helper in sight and it felt like a metal bar was turning in her shoulders. ‘How could the monks enjoy this?’

  Dad, who’d decided he’d be most useful supervising, stopped on his rounds. ‘They had no choice. No Potted Histories for them, my girl.’

  His ‘just-the-thing’ was making flour from some barley seeds he’d brought along. Everyone was sitting in a circle, crushing the grain between two pebbles they’d collected from the lakeside.

  ‘The monks used stones as well,’ Dad told the sweating grinders. ‘They shaped them into simple hand mills called querns.’ He looked over Abbie’s shoulder. ‘Come on Abbs, give it more welly.’ He slapped her on the back.

  ‘Ow!’ She rubbed her shoulder. ‘What’s the point? I’m using more calories making the flour than I’d get from eating it.’

  Dad chuckled. ‘Think of the poor monks. They had to grow the barley, pick it and pull off the husks before they even thought about grinding.’

  Abbie scowled. Dad’s trust-building exercise was doing just the opposite. Querning, or whatever you called it, had not brought her closer to God or anyone else. Her fingers closed round the pebble in her right hand. It had, however, brought her closer to grinding Dad to a pulp.

  But he’d moved on. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘how about a prize for the quickest querner?’ He strolled round the circle. ‘Not bad, Terrifica … Nice technique, Coriander … Hey!’ He stopped behind Ursula. ‘Mega.’ He held up her bowl, full of pale brown powder.

  She blushed. ‘It’s the arm wrestling. I practise every morning against myself.’

  Dad took a Mars Bar from his pocket. ‘Congratulations, Quern Queen.’

  ‘Wow, thanks.’ Ursula held it reverently by her fingertips. Then she tore off the wrapper, broke the bar in two and gave half to Perdita.

  Creep. Abbie scowled. And that went for Dad too. How could he reward the enemy? Building trust was one thing, sharing supplies quite another.

  Marcus caught her eye. ‘Stuff this,’ he muttered, scooping up his barley pile and flinging it at the lake. ‘I’m going for a swim.’

  Five minutes later, while the adults gathered the grain piles to make porridge for lunch, the children were splashing around in their shorts and T-shirts.

  All except Abbie. She sat at the edge of the lake doodling in her notebook while tiny waves tickled her outstretched legs.

  ‘Come in,’ called Marcus. ‘It’s brilliant.’

  She shook her head. All that querning had worn her out. Yawning, she stood up. A stroll along the lake, a bit of peace and quiet – that would do nicely. She’d had quite enough of team-building for one lifetime.

  ***

  ‘Ask your master what ’e wants on ’is T-shirt.’ Grandma and the Incas were in a souvenir shop in Killyboon. They’d spent the morning buying supplies for the trip to Remote Ken. After trading in one of Chunca’s golden bracelets, they’d bought rucksacks, hiking gear and a few tins of food. Now Grandma had spotted a Design-your-own-T-shirt shop and decided that the Incas might as well die in style. ‘You can ’ave somethin’ written on specially – a sort of epitaph.’

  Bacpac didn’t understand the word. So, loudly and slowly, she’d given some examples: ‘I ♥ Ibiza’ or ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Gran’.

  ***

  Above the huts, on top of the moor, a boulder wriggled into position. An unusual boulder, covered in mint-green moss and holding a pair of binoculars.

  ‘Ze children are splashink in lake,’ the boulder murmured, adding almost wistfully, ‘havink funs.’

  ‘Funs?’ barked Inner Mummy. ‘Vot is point of zat? Vy zey vaste zeir time on pleasure, ven zey could be seekink treasure?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. I never vaste time.’ From the way he sighed, you’d almost think Klench regretted it. ‘But look.’ The binoculars shifted to the left. ‘Not everyvun is svimminks. Zere is Miss Meddle.’ That was his pet name for the girl who, twice now, had foiled his wicked schemes: the first time last summer in the Platts’ Museum of Hair, and the second before Christmas in the Amazon jungle. ‘She is strollink off round lake.’

  Klench lowered the binoculars. ‘Not much excitements. I guess zat means zey have found nothink.’ That was good news. The bad news was that neither had he. But at least, wandering over the moor, he’d come to the ridge and spotted the camp by the lake.

  Mummy had been delighted with the discovery. ‘Spyink, Hube, now zat’s ze ticket. If zey find a clue, just nick it.’

  But no joy yet. Packing away the binoculars, he lumbered back over the moor to his tent in the woods and a measly lunch of four long-life doughnuts.

  14

  The Hiding Place

  Abbie strolled along the beach to the right of the lake. The shrieks and splashes of the swimmers faded beneath the buzz of flies and hush of tiny waves against the shore. Sunlight danced tiptoe on the trembling water.

  She walked faster. Her back straightened; her lungs filled with soft, warm air. ‘It’s OK,’ she told a bramble bush, ‘it really is.’ So what if she’d lost her best friend? The sun would still rise. Leaves would still fall. And a Pringle would still nearly fit on her tongue. It wasn’t the end of the world, just the tiny part she’d shared with Perdita. ‘And good riddance to that,’ she said, swinging her arms. ‘I’d had enough anyway.’

  For a moment the bramble believed her.

  Beyond the spot she’d reached with Dad yesterday, the lake curved round to the right. A new sound joined the murmuring afternoon: a low roar like distant traffic. Shielding her eyes with her hand, Abbie gazed up at the mountain on the right. About halfway up a waterfall burst from the rock, spilling down in thick white lines like paint.

  Sweat tickled her forehead. The back of her neck burned. Her head was beginning to throb. I should go back. But she’d come this far. Might as well get a proper view.

  A little further on she reached the bottom. The waterfall bounced into a pool to the right of the beach. In front of the fizzing wall the water lay dark and deep. It flowed out into lacy streams, strewn with large stones, that rattled across the beach and fed the lake.

  Abbie knelt by the pool. Bending over, she scooped water into her mouth. Then she lay on her back beside the water, perched her notebook on her stomach and tucked her hands behind her head. Bliss.

  The roar of the waterfall was strangely soothing: a duvet of sound round her ears. Spray pecked her face. She looked up. High clouds drifted l
ike cigarette smoke. A seagull wheeled in the echoing blue.

  And suddenly she was wheeling too, looking down on the island – on herself and the others, plotting and scheming over treasure that didn’t exist. ‘How sad are we?’ she asked a fly as it landed on her stomach.

  The fly rubbed its front legs as if to say, ‘Where shall I start?’

  She sat up and opened her notebook.

  I hereby vow, she wrote, to stop this wild goblet chase and spend the rest of the trip treating every living thing with love and respect.

  The fly flew onto the page. She squashed it.

  She gazed into the pool, gleaming and calm before the waterfall’s fury. Her shoulders sank with sudden exhaustion. All the bickering and trickery of the last few days; all the nights interrupted by lumpy beds and Terrifo-snores; all the fresh air and mushy food … a huge yawn tumbled out. But I can’t sleep here. What if it’s dark when I wake up?

  There was one way to stay awake. Laying her notebook on the beach, she slipped off her sandals and stood up. ‘One, two, three –’

  She crashed into freezing darkness. Her arms thrashed up through the shocking blur till she surfaced, spluttering and laughing. ‘Wahoo!’ She pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘Wahaa!’ Holding her breath, she went under again, trying to touch the bottom. But her feet pedalled endless silky water. Her chest nearly bursting, she came up again.

  Perdita will love this, she thought, flipping onto her back.

  Perdita. Her ex-best friend. In the thrill of discovery she’d forgotten. She pictured Perdita coming here with Ursula to learn some stupid wrestling move like the Spraylock or the Gushcrush.

  ‘Never!’ she yelled into the din. ‘This is my secret.’ She swam towards the waterfall. Taking a huge breath, she dived. Water slammed down on her, solid as concrete. And then she was through, gasping and snatching great gulps of air.

  She’d come up into a kind of chamber hidden behind the waterfall. Two metres in front of her the pool met a wall of jutting, blocky rocks. They must form the bottom of the mountain. On the right the chamber was bordered by thick undergrowth. To the left the water lapped against boulders and mossy rock.

  Abbie swam over and hauled herself up onto a boulder. Dangling her feet in the water, she gazed at the waterfall from behind. It drilled down in a shouting, shimmering curtain.

  ‘Wow!’ She was surprised to hear herself. But tucked inside the clamour was a kind of silence: the sort you get in a classroom that’s so noisy you can say ‘Bottom burp,’ in a perfectly normal voice, knowing that your neighbour will hear but the teacher won’t.

  She shivered in the gloom. Standing up, she wrung out her T-shirt and squeezed her dripping hair. She ought to get back. But the thought of diving into those wriggling depths again made her teeth chatter. She looked to her right. She could get out by walking over the boulders to the edge of the chamber. There was a small gap there, between the waterfall and the mountainside.

  Abbie stepped carefully over the slippery boulders towards the edge of the waterfall. Sunlight streamed through the gap onto the rocks projecting from the back wall of the chamber.

  Between two of the rocks lay a vertical crack. A shaft of sunlight filtered through, lighting up some sort of cave behind.

  Her stomach flipped over. You couldn’t design a better hiding place.

  Crazy. No one organised scenery except God and Steven Spielberg.

  She gasped. Of course! It was the other way round. Because it was so secret, this was the perfect place for hiding something.

  Her heart hammering, Abbie crept towards the back wall and squeezed through the crack. For a maddening moment it was pitch dark. She breathed out slowly, letting her eyes adjust to the weak light that trickled through.

  She was in a dome-shaped cave. The walls of reddish mud and rock had crumbled in places, leaving an earthy rubble round the edge. The floor, too, was smooth, packed mud. Water plopped on her head. The air smelt like wet socks. By the Hartley system of measurement, the space was about four Abbies long and two wide. The highest point must be a Dad and a half.

  That was all. No goblet dripping with rubies and diamonds.

  ‘Poop!’ she yelled.

  ‘Oop … oop … oo,’ echoed the walls.

  ‘It must be here!’

  ‘Ere … ere … ere,’ the cave agreed.

  She looked round again and tried to think monk. The ground. Perhaps they’d buried it. But where? Kneeling down she began to dig, clawing and scraping with her fingers. Mud squeezed under her nails. Her fingers ached.

  She sank back on her heels. She’d made a hole the size of a tennis ball. The treasure could be anywhere. She needed help: tools to dig, lights to see. And company. Because a cold dread was leaking into her stomach – a feeling that she wasn’t alone. She wheeled round.

  Nothing but rock, dripping and mud.

  She dug her fingernails into her palms. Get a grip. It was just the gloom and cold: the shock of the water and thrill of this find. But no matter what she told herself, the shivering wouldn’t stop. She longed to be back at the huts.

  Jumping up, she squeezed out of the cave. She turned and paused to memorise the position of the crack between the rocks. Then she picked her way across the boulders to the edge of the waterfall. Icy spray nipped her skin as she slipped through the gap and back out into the dazzling afternoon.

  She ran back along the beach, jumping from stone to stone across the network of streams. At the spot where she’d lain by the pool she picked up her notebook. Crack between 3rd and 4th rocks, she scribbled, cave in mountainside. She drew a quick sketch of the back wall of the chamber. Then she slipped on her sandals and legged it back to the huts.

  ***

  Bundy Pilks shook his head. ‘No way, maties. Look at that water. Way too choppy. Can’t take Bwidget out in that.’ He was standing on the jetty at Ballinabeeny pointing at the sea.

  ‘But we’ve got to get there asap,’ said Grandma, who’d been driven to the port with the Incas by the landlord from Killyboon.

  ‘It is matter of life and death,’ added Bacpac, proud of the phrase he remembered from his BBC lessons. ‘Or death and life,’ he said, looking suddenly confused.

  ‘Sowwy chaps. No can do. Give me a wing at dawn tomorrow. If it’s calm, I’ll take you first thing.’

  Grandma punched his number irritably into her phone. Then she ushered the old gents back to the car and told the landlord they’d have to come back tomorrow.

  Bacpac translated. The Emp scowled at Grandma.

  ‘Don’t blame me,’ she snapped. ‘And anyway, you’ve waited four centuries – what’s another day?’

  ***

  Sitting on his reinforced air-bed, Klench pulled off his hiking boots and socks.

  ‘Schnooff!’ Mummy wrinkled her inner nose. ‘Don’t you dare make such a stench! You dishonour name of Klench.’

  ‘I cannot help it. Zere is novhere to vosh in zese voods.’ He unzipped the tent door, rolled up the flap and stuck his feet outside.

  ‘Zat von’t do, you great gnu. If you vont zem clean and bright, you should vosh in lake tonight.’

  He nodded slowly, loath to admit that, as usual, her idea was excellent. Besides bathing, he’d be able to search the beach for treasure while the school party was asleep.

  In the meantime, to relieve the stink, he took a bottle out of his rucksack and poured Dettol over his feet.

  15

  Sit Down and Shut Up!

  Abbie tore along the beach. Blood roared in her ears, as if an aeroplane was taking off inside her head. Her right hand sweated round the precious notebook.

  As the huts came into view she stopped to catch her breath. A giggle burst out of her. Wait till everyone hears what I’ve found.

  Because everyone would hear. Her chest swelled with noble pride as she vowed to bring unity once and for all. Goodbye sneaking, so long competing. It was time to lay down all rivalry, forget silly squabbles and band together to find the treasure. />
  Wiping sweat from her forehead, she approached the huts. Perdita, Ursula and Henry were crouching by the lake, too busy making mud sculptures to notice her.

  ‘How’s my Edie?’ Henry was shaping a low ridge of mud into a crocodile.

  ‘Great,’ said Perdita. ‘But her tail’s a bit thin. Hey, Urse, your Winnie’s brilliant. How did you make the mud look so hairy?’

  Anger burned up Abbie’s throat. How dare they? Edie, Winnie – all the zoo animals – they were her special friends. ‘That’s nothing like Winnie,’ she snapped. ‘The arms are way too short.’

  Perdita looked up from her python. ‘Oh, hi. Where were you?’

  ‘Nowhere.’ Abbie whipped her notebook behind her back.

  ‘What’s in there?’ Ursula frowned.

  ‘Nothing.’ Abbie brought the notebook back and dangled it casually by her side. ‘I’m starving. Hope Dad saved me some lunch. Bye.’

  And before they could ask why her face was so red or her hair so damp, Abbie was strolling towards the huts with a hand in her pocket, a whistle on her lips and the notebook up her T-shirt. Welcome back, sneaking, she thought furiously. Hi again, competing.

  She went into Dad’s hut, her heart hopping like a frog in a frying pan. The air was hot and stale. Mr Dabbings sat cross-legged on the ground. He was knitting what Abbie guessed was supposed to be a scarf but looked more like a Curly Wurly.

  ‘There you are, Abbs.’ Dad was lying on his sleeping bag. ‘I was just beginning to–’

  ‘Quick. Get the others. You won’t believe … wait till I … get them!’

  Dad looked as if he was about to say, ‘Now hang on young lady, that’s no way to talk to your father, if you want other people you can jolly well fetch them yourself, I’m not your servant you know, a little respect wouldn’t go amiss and by the way please stop standing on my sleeping bag.’ But the urgency in her voice, and the madness in her eye, made him jump up instead. Thirty seconds later all the Hartley-Battboilings were gathered in the hut.

  ‘Emergency meeting,’ Abbie said in a trembly voice. ‘You’ll never guess what I–’