The Icicle Illuminarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  She’s brushed away. ‘What? Who are –?’ Her Ladyship looks in horror at Bert’s grubby, freckly hands from the bush that dare to touch her.

  ‘I’m your interior decorator, Your Ladyship, remember?’ Bert announces with far too much confidence for a child. It won’t be liked. ‘Well, training to be. As well as dress designer. Here, look.’ Berti takes off her necklace made of chandelier crystals and places it over Lady Adora’s neck. ‘Have it. Please. It’s my best.’

  Lady Adora scrabbles the object off. Flings it aside. ‘Urgh! Who are you? I do not need any of your help, thank you very much. Who ordered you here? Was it you, Darius?’

  ‘Er, mmm …’ he can’t quite answer, stepping back. ‘There was some confusion … it happened so fast. Panic, remember. What to do.’

  ‘What? Yes. Me? Really? No, no. Most confused. This is all a mistake. Are these mine?’ She looks at the crystals strewn on the floor then at us, in revulsion, as if she’s only just noticed our strange getup. Which has all come from her house, of course. ‘Remind me, where are you from?’ Utterly icy.

  ‘The Kensington Reptilarium, Your Ladyboat!’ Pin announces proudly.

  ‘That place!’ she roars. The mere sound of it has sliced a nerve. ‘I’m sick of hearing about it. Or anyone associated with it. I need it removed. Now, yes. From my life. Need this episode wrapped up. Darius. Where are you? Darius?’ Lady Adora staggers to her feet, rights herself and accidentally smashes her wine glass on the floor.

  Darius just stands there, his eyes firmly shut and his face to the heavens in an attempt to somehow block out all the madness. Hebe groans with her hands over her ears; she’s mortified. ‘Mummy, stop, stop.’

  We Caddys step back, embarrassed, gobsmacked. The night has suddenly become very old. Stretched. Weary. Like something has snapped in Lady Adora’s head and all the demons have rushed out. We inch back towards the door. Time to go.

  Her eyes light up at the retreating sight of us. ‘Not so fast,’ she hisses. Staggers forward.

  ‘Where’s our mama?’ Pin cries wildly, not guessing this might not be a good time to ask. ‘I want my mama. What have you done with her? Did you eat her?’

  Lady Adora stares at him in bewilderment, spits, ‘Your mother?’ Then pushes past us all, knocking Pin to the ground. He’s shocked but unhurt.

  I pick him up, furious. ‘He’s just a child,’ I shout. Lady Adora stops. Like she’s suddenly woken up from a dream inside the snow globe of a beautiful winter ball and hard, cold reality has come crashing back.

  ‘Addy,’ Darius warns, trying to grab her arm, ‘calm down.’ She spins on him, on Pin.

  ‘Flora Caddy.’ She nods at the memory. ‘You’re her children, yes, of course.’

  ‘Now now,’ Darius warns, low.

  ‘No.’ She dismisses him with a flick of her hand. Looks around the vast room, the wallpaper peeling away, the war-damaged roof, as if she’s seeing everything for the first time. ‘All this talk of your Kensington Reptilarium. Ha. Well, do you know what this is, my little mousies? It’s the Icicle Illuminarium and it’s far more spectacular. Isn’t it, Dari? Our secret world that … illuminates. Oh, it contains many, many secrets. About your mother, about her world. But you’ll never find them out, will you? Oh no.’ She snatches a goblet from Darius’s hand, as if she needs to clutch all her possessions now, have no one else touching them. Drinks deeply. ‘We used to have so many balls here, didn’t we? This very room …’ She starts to cry. ‘It held all my happiness once. The summer ball. Bunty Shearer with his shotgun, Boo Kessel-Jones dressed as a polar bear. The Harvest festival ball. The thanksgiving services in the chapel. Remember, Dari? The chapel! Desecrated! They used the altar as an operating table, those army brutes. The Mayday ball. Flora Caddy in her sky-blue dress with her shouty-red lips. Flora Caddy. Got what she deserved, didn’t she?’ Lady Adora wags a finger in my face. ‘You’ll have to hurry if you want to get to her now, tiger girl. Save her? What?’ She rounds on little Pin, who’s now crying heartily, his lion mask trampled on the floor. ‘Oh, she’s beyond saving, boy.’

  ‘Where is she?’ I cry, the mission crumbling before my eyes.

  Lady Adora spins around, oblivious. ‘That mid-winter ball when we all had to dress in white. The Hunt ball where Daddy was convinced I’d be married off.’ She laughs bitterly. ‘Married off …’ Looks at us, muttering, then gazes at the ruined sweep of the room. ‘What happened? Where’s the band? Champagne, fireworks?’ Suddenly focuses on Bert, who’s shrinking back. ‘Thinking of taking over, aren’t you, bat girl? Well, you cannot have our Icicle Illuminarium. No, no, you can’t. Greedy, greedy. As for your mother, pah, forever haunting me, isn’t she? Oh, I see your schemes, your grand plans, I read your mind.’ She holds Bert’s chin, hurting and tight. ‘Want to redecorate?’

  ‘No,’ Bert sobs, squirming. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Oh yes, you do. Rip apart. Swallow up. Conceal, change, grab. Like you own the place.’ She spits at Bert, right in her face. ‘Well, you can’t have it. All the furs, the crystals from my chandeliers, you can’t have any of them.’ She rips the fur cape from Bert’s back. ‘This is mine.’ Holds up a chipped dinner plate, then a goblet. ‘All mine.’ Smashes them both in triumph.

  Bert shrinks back. ‘This is not what we’re here for.’

  But Her Ladyship isn’t listening. ‘No one forces me from this house. You’ve come to check it out, haven’t you? To drive me out. Oh, they all do. Everyone wants it.’

  ‘We didn’t ask to be here,’ I butt in but it’s no use.

  ‘Swinging on my chandeliers, sizing up what you’d like. For Flora Caddy with her red lips to swan around in.’ Like an animal, she hisses, ‘Well, she’s not getting it.’

  ‘Where is she?’ I scream.

  ‘Where you’ll be going very soon, girl.’ She’s mad, utterly mad. ‘Squeedly, lock them up. Out of my sight.’ We back out. Need to run. She’s in the way, Silent Mountain’s at the door. ‘How did this happen? How did I allow it? Lapse. All lapse. Oh yes. I cannot see them anymore, can’t bear their sight. If I see them again, I’m getting the hunting rifles out. Bang! Bang! Ladyboat indeed.’ She’s right in Pin’s terrified face now. ‘Urgh. Everything they remind me of. The new world, the brave new world. All that energy. Living to a hundred years, oh yes.’ She looks at Darius in a challenge, hands on hips.

  ‘Madam?’ Mrs Squeedly says, faint.

  ‘Impediments, impediments. We’re running out of time. Darius!’

  ‘Your Ladyship,’ Darius whispers urgently, trying to shut her down.

  ‘Off to London. Tonight. Everything’s taking too long,’ she whines petulantly. ‘I’m getting impatient, Dari. We could do with some action here. You need to visit your friend some time. We need … clarification.’

  ‘Mummy,’ Pin sobs loud; it’s all become too much.

  Lady Adora looks at him in wonder. ‘Your mother?’ She smiles. ‘Let me tell you about mothers abandoning children. No, can’t.’ It’s like she’s having two conversations at once in her head and is being driven mad by it. ‘Oh yes, abandonment. I had to. So long ago. For the house, for the best. No one wanted him. Why can’t we forget? Move on.’ She shakes her head, holds it tight. Pin continues howling, the rest of us are speechless with shock. What is she talking about? ‘Some mothers aren’t very good at being mothers, you know. Because of what they do. External pressures. Oh, tell me about it.’

  I look at her – this woman who calls her daughter ‘Lump’ to her face. One thing my mum was, always, was my champion. ‘I’m your rock, Kick,’ she’d say, ‘never forget it, no one will champion you more than I do. You can always come to me, with anything – and I’ll be there for you.’ I try to shake Lady Adora’s poison out of my head as Bert cries that we have to get home, that there’s no point in us being here because she’s mad, raving, she makes no sense.

  ‘Uh uh uh!’ Lady Adora sings. ‘The tennis court, little mousies. Where you’ll be
locked up good and tight.’

  We make a dash for the lawn via the French doors.

  ‘STOOOOOOOOP!’ she screams.

  She’s holding Pin.

  Pinny! He’s squirming, can’t break loose from her grasp. She’s hurting him, doesn’t seem to notice. ‘If you don’t go up to the tennis court right now, your little lion cub gets shut in the cellar. For a very long time. A very, very long time.’

  A gasp from Hebe. From all of us. Everyone looks at me. What to do? I look at Hebe. Hands in anguish over her ears again, mouthing ‘Mummy, Mummy,’ over and over. It’s no use. Look at Pin’s stricken face. He’s crying, in pain.

  ‘All right,’ I whisper. ‘All right. We’ll go upstairs. Just give our brother back.’

  Lady Adora pushes him roughly to us and I hold him and hold him, breathe him in deep, our precious boy, like I’ll never give him up. Then we’re marched off in defeat.

  Bone was right: Lady Adora’s getting more irrational by the moment; she’s a tinderbox of un-predictability and who knows what she’ll do next. Bert’s right too: we need to get out of this. Fast. We’re in too deep. And Darius is heading off to London tonight. With our only hope now – Dad’s scarf in his pocket, for Bucket. And he’s under instructions to seek out his friend, to get some clarification. We can only presume that means finding Basti … and working out a way of executing their plans.

  Nooooooooooo.

  Frantically I count the days on my fingers, since Boxing Day, since we left the Reptilarium, since we came here. We were heading into a weekend, yes. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, is it Saturday? Yes! So, Sunday is tomorrow. Thank goodness! The one day of the week that Charlie Boo has off so Basti barricades himself in the Reptilarium and doesn’t answer the door, to absolutely anyone, and Darius might not know this. So he’d have to wait until Monday at the earliest to visit him, and not too early because our uncle likes sleeping in, he only knows one ten o’clock in a day and it’s not the early one. So, we have a day – one single day – to sort everything out.

  Our last sight:

  Hebe, staring after us, in silence. Her face broken with knowing. Aghast.

  ‘Booooooo-ooooooooone?’

  We call out, as soon as we’re back in the room and the door’s safely shut. Where is that blasted boy? Because the mission has just failed spectacularly and we need to regroup here, try something else. Fast. With his help.

  A hugely empty, hugely silent space.

  He’s not anywhere. Typical. And impossible. We’ve searched every inch of this room and just cannot work out how he constantly escapes and slips back. I stamp my foot in one big strop of exasperation. Need him, immediately. To get away from here. Have to have his knowledge of this building to escape. We’ll go through cellars and tunnels and wall gaps if we must.

  ‘The Bone Boy is ba-ack!’

  A chirpy cry, suddenly, from the far end of the room. And there he is, walking merrily along a roof beam, dipping and skipping with the ever-faithful Dooky tucked under his arm and that enormous sunbeam of a smile on his face, not a care in the world. ‘You rang, Company T?’

  He leaps down, balancing the ball on his foot then bouncing it high on his heel, shin, calf, toes. I snatch Dooky up. ‘No need for grumpiness,’ he tuts. But there’s no time for games here, mate. I tell him we need to break out because Lady Adora’s absolutely mad, as he knows, and it’s not safe for us anymore. Grabbing the ball back, he spins it on his finger and declares that he refuses to be left here on his lonesome.

  ‘Come with us!’ Bert cries. ‘We’ll take you to London. Find your family. Get you home.’

  ‘Have no family. Am home.’ He winks at her. Bert’s whole body fills up with a smile. That’s her staying with him, then.

  ‘We’re getting out of here now,’ I snap. ‘With your help. Even if curiosity for anything beyond this house isn’t your specialty, mate.’

  Uncharacteristic silence from the Bone Boy.

  ‘You don’t want to come with us, do you?’ Pin’s bottom lip trembles. ‘You don’t like us enough.’

  ‘On the contrary, P. But oh, I have my grand plans, right here in this Illuminarium. For annexation.’ He takes the little boy’s hand. ‘Can you keep a secret? An absolutely spiffing one? The bottom level will be turned into a zoo. All the leopards and lions will come back, and you can help me import the kangaroos. The middle level will be a hotel. Only for extra special guests, mind.’ He winks at us. ‘The top will be a skating rink. And a football pitch. No grown-ups allowed. The Squeedlys will be at the centre of the vast operation, running the show with brutal efficiency and purple uniforms and dinky little hats. I’ve got it all worked out.’

  I roll my eyes in exasperation. This is Bone’s world, his entire existence – it’s all he’s ever known, it seems.

  ‘Besides, I need to be here, to drive Lady Adora mad. It’s my sole purpose in life,’ he declares with the cheekiest of grins. Urgh, I wish he’d just be serious for once.

  ‘Plus I’m waiting.’

  ‘For what?’ Scruff says.

  ‘For life to turn,’ he smiles mysteriously.

  ‘Okay.’ I’ve had enough of his games. ‘We get it. You don’t need us. But we need you. So please just help us to get home from here.’ I’m pleading like I’ve never pleaded in my life.

  ‘You know, K, I wasn’t meant to come near you when you arrived but I couldn’t resist. Why? Because I needed friends. Company. Needed to know what it’s like. I’ve led a very sheltered life, you know.’

  ‘But we have to leave now.’ I come right up close.

  ‘I don’t want you to.’ He looks me straight in the eyes, absolutely serious, no games anymore. ‘I … can’t.’ He’s so confident … but not.

  ‘Why?’ We all yell.

  ‘Because you’re friends. At last.’

  Gosh. The boy with the smile that could enchant an entire room suddenly seems very small, and lost, and alone. And I can tell that he’s being honest here. His true self. And that it’s really hard for him. He doesn’t want us gone; doesn’t want to be alone; without friends, all over again. I smile in understanding.

  ‘If we really are your mates, you’d help us to get out of here,’ Scruff hrumphs. ‘You didn’t see what that mad lady did down there. Pin almost ended up in a cellar. For good.’ Our little brother yelps and scrunches into me. Bone shrugs it off.

  ‘All right,’ I announce, ‘I’m going ahead myself from now on. Company T, you stay put. I’m going alone. I’ve caused enough problems already.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on, you can’t.’ Bert stands square in front of me. ‘We Caddy kids do not split up. Dad wouldn’t want it. It’s four of us together – or nothing. I don’t want it some new way – and neither do the rest of us, Kick.’ I look at her in astonishment: this is the sister who never lets an opportunity pass to tell us how wrong I am. ‘And besides, we need Basti on board here. Somehow. And Dad. You can’t do this by yourself.’ I look at her perplexed. ‘Don’t leave us,’ she cries as if I’m the dolt brain who’s just not getting it. ‘We don’t want you to.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ I smile at her in a new, firmer truce. She needs me, and I need her. I get it. But before we can continue on with our mission, we have to decide our next step. I tell them we can’t possibly bring Dad into it, he’s too weak, and Basti’s fighting days are over, especially with all that happened just before Christmas and the hunt for his Reptilarium. Bert snaps that Basti’s all we’ve got.

  I sigh. He is. So. We’re stuck for now. Here, in this room, once again. With a Bone who isn’t budging and doesn’t seem to care about some old guy in London. Time to turn in, for all of us. It’s been a long, exhausting day – and night. We need our rest – for whatever’s ahead.

  The next day we work on our ghostly friend all over again – but he doesn’t soften. I strop away, gazing endlessly out the window, biting nails myself now, joining in with Scruff. Can’t stop pacing, fretting, worrying; about Darius in London and whether he’l
l actually visit Basti or not, about Basti’s fragile mental state as he wonders where we are, about the scarf finding its way to Bucket. Will Darius come back here before he even gets to Basti? He’s obsessed with Lady Adora, it’s obvious, can’t keep away from her, so he might. I bang the walls, the glass, the door – how to get out! Feel so useless.

  The day lengthens, the frost is turning to an endless, soft drizzle and it feels like the house is melting; the land is fuzzy, the sea lost. Hebe doesn’t come near us. Has she been banned? Are we too raw, grubby, loud? Too colonial? I bet she’s locked in a room just like us. Poor thing, despite what Bone says. Poor us.

  ‘Hebe?’ Scruff yells at regular intervals. ‘Heebs, we need a match. Where are your striker skills when I need them?’ But just an echoing house answers back.

  Finally, finally, the sound of a car. I race to the window. The familiar van! Of course! Darius mustn’t have known about Uncle Basti’s strict Sunday seclusions, his absolute refusal to open the door to anyone. That’s why he’s back, so swiftly, for his Lady Love-ora – he can’t stay away from her. I bet Darius is just about to report that his friend Basti, most oddly, seemed to be out on this Sunday, but not to worry, he’ll be returning to the Reptilarium soon to take care of things.

  Which is why we have to work on our plan, fast. I gather Company T close. Except for the C.O., who hangs back, doing his pretend-snoring thing on his perch.

  ‘Watch,’ I exclaim, my heart swelling as my arms enfold them.

  ‘What are you looking at over there?’ Bone enquires.

  ‘Darius’s van. The back of it.’

  Breaths held. The car halts. Darius gets out. Goes to the back of the van – Bert gasps in suspense – he takes out a bag. Carries it to the front of the house. Then a dog – a dog! – slips out the back of the car.

  ‘Bucket!’ we all yell.

  ‘Sssssssshhhh,’ I giggle. ‘I knew she’d find the scent, Pinny, and it’s all thanks to Dad’s scarf.’ I give him the biggest hug of thanks.