The Icicle Illuminarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  ‘I am the best!’ Pin flashes a V for Victory sign, which gets muddled into three fingers at once. Our Bucky girl has been following Darius’s coat without him realising it, knowing that wherever he goes, we must be close. And she’s probably been starving, trapped in the catacombs, unable to get out.

  We fling open a window and whistle low on the wind, the way we learnt to in the bush, from Dad. Our old hunting signal. Instantly her ears prick up. She gazes up, straight at us. We wave frantically. But Darius! Coming back to the van! Quick, girl, move away! Bert gives a warning whistle, directing her, but she’s onto it. She slips under the car. Waits.

  Darius retrieves another carpet bag, oblivious, and returns to the house.

  When he’s gone our girl slinks in behind him. We rush to the door, it won’t be long. After a few minutes we can hear her whining and pawing on the other side of the wood. ‘Atta girl, sssssshhhh, oh you beautiful thing, you!’ Then we hear something else. The heavy footfalls of Silent Mountain bringing up food. Stopping at one point; as if the steps are too steep for him, too much of an effort; but he’s determined to do it.

  Bucket goes quiet. Growls low. ‘Sssshh, girl,’ I whisper. ‘Don’t attack. Sit.’

  ‘Bone?’ Bert cries out. ‘We need you here. To explain about our dog. Quick.’

  ‘Oh, do I have to?’ He yawns from his lazy perch.

  ‘Yes. Now,’ Bert snaps like Mum used to at Dad. A great crash of a tray tumbling to the floor. Mr Squeedly’s shock, no doubt, at the sight of a dingo by our door.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Bone yells, looking at me, then scrambling over with a salute to Bert. ‘She’s with us. I mean, them. It’s their dog. She’s found them. Followed, sniffed them out or something. Is that right? They just want a cuddle or whatever it is that dog people do. Can she come in?’ He looks at Bert, she nods. We all press our ears to the door. No sound.

  The door slowly opens. Bucket slips in as it’s opened, whimpering and yelping her happiness to see us. ‘Sssh, girl, no barking,’ I laugh. We all roll on the floor with her in one licky, squeezy, waggy-taily bundle of amazement. She made it. Our brave, clever Bucky girl. Silent Mountain looks at Bone, asking, why are you here, what’s going on? Bone just shrugs a cheeky grin of ‘what?’ The man’s eyes raise to the heavens, like the boy is beyond help.

  Our dingo girl gets all the food we’ve got. Wolfs everything down in great gulps then Bone slips out with Mr Squeedly to get something else for her. We don’t know when it was the last time she ate, but we can feel her rib bones too much. She doesn’t care – she’s licking us so crazily like she’ll lick our faces off.

  Right. I get down to business. Time’s running out. Scribble a note on a torn-out ad from an old tennis magazine.

  ‘We need our names,’ Scruff says. ‘I don’t think he’s ever seen our handwriting. What’s a codename he’ll recognise, Company T? So that he knows no one’s forged the note and it’s really us.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Bert grabs the pen. ‘We have one unique call sign here.’ She signs the note:

  Of course. His nickname, collectively, for the crazy desert addition to the family. ‘Brilliant!’

  Pin adds a kiss and a cuddle. ‘Will Basti bring the police?’ he asks.

  ‘No. They’ll only draw attention to the Reptilarium, so he’s stuck.’ I frown. ‘He has no one to turn to, actually. Except Charlie Boo.’

  We look at each other doubtfully. Will our uncle and Charlie Boo be enough? Basti’s a bit hopeless, has been all his life; since the Great War when it all went wrong for him, and that was a long, long time ago. It feels like we’re calling on a ninety-nine-year-old crippled grandmother to climb Mount Everest here. All by herself, without alerting anyone. But it’s our only chance.

  ‘We just need to have faith, troops.’ I tuck the note under Bucket’s collar then ask Pin for our uncle’s sleeping cap still around Banjo’s neck. Solemnly, without any trauma this time, he hands it over. ‘Anything for Basti.’ I let Bucket sniff it then with both hands hold her beautiful wet nose close to mine. Stare into her eyes. Say that she has to go to Basti, find him. Have her sniff the cap again. She has to head back to London, with Darius, in his van. I take her to the window, point to the vehicle, tell her over and over again, ‘Basti.’ Because Darius might be heading to our uncle, or Basti might go back to the cemetery to have another stab at working things out, or Bucket might be clever enough to use her amazing tracking skills to find her way back to him. I have no idea if it will work, but it’s worth a shot. Because Mum said to me once that the only failure in life is in doing nothing. To just keep trying and trying because you never know what one day might, miraculously, work.

  I give our dingo girl a kiss. She licks me in obedience, her keen, warm eyes brimming with intelligence. ‘Atta girl,’ I hold her tight.

  Later, when Mr Squeedly collects the empty plates, a well-fed Bucket slips out. Within minutes we see her by the van, waiting for the moment when it’s opened to slip inside. Bone sighs that she could never be that impressive. I bet him an entire lesson of football tricks with Dooky that she’ll do it. We shake on it.

  Actually, I’m not sure myself that she’ll make it back to Basti, but I don’t tell anyone that. This is our best bet. Our only bet. It has to work. Scruff whispers that our dog’s never done anything as massive as this. She’ll be fine, just you wait, I soothe.

  Crossing fingers behind my back.

  The next day. A tentative knock on the door. Like no knock we know.

  Extremely un-Bone-like. But he’s not here, so can’t interpret. ‘Hello?’ Scruff yells out. No answer. Slowly the bolt slides back. Breaths held. What now? Who?

  Hebe. Standing awkward before us. As if she’s been caught out; no one must know. She’s looking fearfully behind her. Can’t read her face, which is encased in an enormous blush.

  ‘I–I found something.’

  ‘What?’ ‘Hebe!’ ‘It’s so good to see you!’ ‘Come in.’

  ‘No time. But you might want to see this. Quickly. You mustn’t be seen.’

  Pin tugs me back, remembering Bone’s words of warning about her no doubt. ‘It might be a trap, Kicky.’

  I shake my head. She’s offering us a way out of this room. A way out. ‘We can’t leave any stone unturned, little man. I’m with you. Trust me.’ I nod to Hebe.

  She smiles, shyly; tells Pin he’ll like it, she promises. She leads us a back way down a tiny corridor and narrow service steps, nervous, jumpy. Mr Squeedly is waiting outside, in a car. What? Silent Mountain says nothing. Of course. Very silent and very mountainous. Doesn’t look at us, doesn’t have any expression on his face, just stares dead ahead. Hebe tells us to get inside, fast; to crouch low on the floor next to the seats at the back. ‘Keep your heads down. I’m not meant to have anything to do with you. Mum will kill me if she sees us. You’re a bad influence,’ she grins. I ask Mr Squeedly: what’s happening, where are you taking us?

  No answer. Hebe jumps into the front seat. ‘I got him to help us. He’s my servant, so he does what I say, of course, but … he’s more than that – he gets me. He’s very kind. He’s known me since I was a baby. He doesn’t talk to many people but he talks to me, even though he’s painfully shy. I’m lucky.’ She smiles at him. ‘He’s always been nice to me. Even when Mum isn’t.’ A pause. We all know what she means. ‘But this is hugely dangerous, so do everything I say, all right? Don’t run off. Don’t do anything you shouldn’t. You haven’t got long away from the room. Only an hour or so, but it’ll be enough. If you do exactly what I say.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Scruff asks.

  She smiles. ‘Enver. That abandoned village I told you about.’ We gasp. ‘There’s something there you have to see. It was taken over by the War Office a month before Christmas in 1943. They used it to train the US soldiers preparing for the D-Day landings. The place was evacuated, and the village just vanished off the maps. The villagers were praised for their great sacrifice, and promised that their hou
ses would be returned after the war. But it’s not looking likely, is it, Mr Squeedly?’ He nods. ‘Some of them were really upset, but they were seen as these amazing heroes for supporting the war effort. It’s still out of bounds to everyone.’ She grins, quite someone else. ‘Except us.’

  ‘Will Mr Squeedly get us in trouble?’ Pin asks.

  ‘Mr Squeedly has a key to the gate, Pin. A big wire fence surrounds Enver, but his dear little son is buried in the church graveyard. He knew someone in the War Office who gave him a secret key. He used to live in the village. Most of the help did.’ She pauses, touches the man’s shoulder. ‘The key is so that Mr and Mrs Squeedly can visit their son whenever they like.’ Bert thanks him softly; Silent Mountain nods, his face granite. I want to reach over and touch him in thanks but don’t dare.

  ‘I come with the two of them now and then,’ Hebe says. ‘When Mum’s been mean to me and I need to get out of the house. I love being in the fresh air, away from everything.’ She shivers. ‘The Squeedlys understand that. They don’t dare get close to you because my mother has expressly forbidden it, but I think it’s more than that – they had a huge loss, and don’t want to extend themselves to anyone who might disappear from their lives in an instant.’

  ‘Why would we be disappearing?’ Scruff asks.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugs. ‘But Mum told me you might.’

  All the more reason to get out of this situation sooner rather than later, I think. Scruff’s on my wavelength; he whispers to me that we could escape while we’re in the village, find a way out, it’s a good chance. Hebe says she can hear us, and tells us not to even think of it because we’ll really want to see what she’s about to show us.

  ‘But can we trust you?’ I look at Pin, who’s trembling and not trusting anything at this point.

  ‘You can’t,’ she laughs, ‘but you’ll just have to.’

  The car stops by a tall gate in a wire fence:

  Bert asks what shells are. Bombs, Hebe replies. Pin trembles even more violently. I smile bravely because at this moment we have no choice but to trust everything here – there’s nothing else.

  We drive past the abandoned church, all alone in the middle of a mishmash of tank tracks. The gravestones lean violently back in unison as if in shock at the endless blasts they’ve been subjected to – but it’s probably the wind that’s done it. It’s howling straight off the ocean right now, straight through us. And no hands have been here of course, for years, to set the gravestones straight. The battered ruins of houses stand forlorn in the main street. Sandbags are piled high in some windows, barbed wire wraps others. Grass grows up through the road and laps at the doors. A rusty bicycle leans against a lamp post.

  ‘Enver Court’ is a manor house at the edge of the main street, with sheets of corrugated iron across its windows. Bert gasps at the possibilities in it – the house would have been beautiful once.

  We get out of the car. Mr Squeedly stays in the driver’s seat, stares ahead, lost in his thoughts. We walk the ghost village beside Hebe, who strides confidently through it like she’s done this many times before, alone; in her very own playground. It’s eerily empty, unearthly quiet. Even the birds have fled, as well as the ghosts; everything blasted out. We wipe dust from the windows of the village shop that has bullet holes pockmarking its walls. Step inside. Rusty tins of food are still on the shelves. A till has a few lonely pennies in it.

  ‘Any lollies?’ Scruff asks.

  ‘Sorry. Gobbled them up long ago.’ Hebe rubs her tummy. ‘They were good.’

  ‘Torture!’ Then Scruff’s eyes light up at a concrete bunker box with slits on its sides lying across the road. ‘About turn, P!’ Behind it is a rusty tank, the ground rising up and swallowing its wheels like the earth is a mud ocean in this place. The boys disappear into their bliss. A nearby sign reads:

  But the boys ignore it, as does Hebe. She runs across to them. So do Bert and I. ‘Should we be scared?’ I ask nervously. Nope, she responds with a shake of her head – she trusts the Squeedlys completely.

  Scruff yells across his approval: it’s the best playground ever! We girls stand back and watch the boys being boys. I ask Hebe if she’s excited about getting The Swallows one day and she tells me that she might end up with this playground, too, if she’s lucky. She shivers that she wouldn’t be wanting her family’s big, ghosty house under any circumstances.

  ‘That mouldy old thing? Urgh. It’s only brought my family misery. Oh no, I want a cosy little flat in London with a gaslight heater and a wireless in the kitchen and a ginger cat on the window sill. In Soho. With a cake shop right by Covent Garden tube station. I want to spend all day baking. I’ve got it planned. I use the shop here as practice.’

  ‘Hebe Ellicott, you are something else,’ I murmur. Because you could have knocked us down with a feather.

  ‘And anyway, I’m just a girl, so I’ll never inherit. It’ll go to some musty old cousin or something. Mum’s fighting it but she has no hope. She’s deluded. It’s how it works here and has since the year dot.’

  ‘That’s appalling!’ Bert says. ‘Just because we’re girls we’ve got just as much right as anyone.’

  ‘Try telling the system that. We only get a girl queen when they’ve exhausted everyone else who could possibly do it.’

  ‘It’d never happen in my world,’ I say. ‘Dad wouldn’t allow it and neither would I. Or Mum.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Hebe says, looking at her watch. Then she tells us we have to get a move on, because we’re running out of time. We need to get to the classroom, fast. What is she so insistent about checking out in there?

  But Hebe won’t tell us. Just grins in a way that entirely changes her face: like she’s triumphed with something in her life, at last. I step in line beside her, close, as she heads towards the school.

  Bone, I am liking this girl more and more. Sorry, mate.

  ‘The school? No way,’ Scruff yells. ‘I’m allergic to it.’

  ‘Me too!’ Pin starts coughing violently.

  ‘Not convinced,’ Hebe says, grabbing Pin’s hand and marching him kicking and screaming straight into the one-room school building. I follow, heart singing. A school means books!

  On our way we pass by an abandoned set of child’s crayons. Several slates on the floor. A broken abacus. Hebe stands at the end of the room, at the old school marm’s desk with its seat attached. Hands clutching the back of it like a war general about to impart details for the final battle. By instinct, we all sit. She raises an eyebrow. A new Hebe entirely.

  Ready? Oh yes.

  She opens the lid of the teacher’s desk with great officiousness. Lifts something out. Holds it to her chest. Steps in front of us, her face flushed with the deliciousness of her secret.

  It’s an old, worn leather satchel. She hands it across. To me.

  ‘I found this a while ago. It’s been here for ages. But I only twigged the other night, during our ball. You might want to have a look inside.’

  My heart lurches.

  I know it, of course. All us Caddys do. And now the tears prick. My mouth is dry as I turn it over, run my fingers across it, breathe in the leather deep.

  Mum’s. Mum’s.

  Here.

  It lived on the wooden hook behind her bedroom door, along with her straw hat with its netting for flies that I haven’t been able to put on since, because it smells of her hair, still; Bert neither. Mum used to take this battered old satchel with her on trips to Alice Springs, the Big Smoke; on sketching expeditions into the desert; on cattle musters and bush picnics. Aunt Alice smirked at Flora’s strange ways – the bag was so unladylike and practical and blunt – but Mum loved it for exactly that. ‘It fits my life in it, Kicky,’ she told me once. ‘A notebook, a purse, a lipstick, a book. All that’s needed. Oh, and love. Of course.’

  ‘Mum,’ Scruff whispers.

  I croak, ‘Yes.’ We haven’t seen the satchel for years. Since she left. With trembling hands I lift open the fla
p, the others gather close. Nothing inside but a dried-up lipstick, her lipstick, a fiery red; and a book. The Mill on the Floss.

  ‘What’s a floss?’ Bert asks.

  ‘A river, I think,’ Hebe says.

  I flip open the volume. To the familiar bookplate in all her books, a woodcut of an oak and a swirly sky and a wooden house with a little round window. The name: Flora Caddy. Bold in her lovely, distinctive copperplate. As it always was, in all her books, which she treasured. And taught us to. ‘HINC EST’ is in a scroll on the bottom of the house. Her family motto: ‘Curiosity is All.’

  And now I weep.

  As we crowd around the teacher’s desk and flip through the thin, fragile pages we come across a curl of the finest, softest reddy-gold baby hair, then another, and another, and another; all carefully wrapped in a sliver of tissue paper with our names on each in that bold copperplate. Ralph. Albertina. Phineas. Thomasina. But I can barely read as the tears come fast now, blurring the careful ink.

  We stare at each other. Prickles up our backs.

  ‘She knew she was going somewhere that night we last saw her,’ Bert whispers. ‘She must have packed this bag on purpose. It was her security blanket. I remember her telling me once that when she had it with her – and her lipstick on – everything was right with the world. She could face anything.’

  ‘She’d never abandon it.’ Scruff punches the air with his fist.

  ‘Not with us in it!’ Pin exclaims.

  I know, I know. Shutting my eyes on all of it. Because for years I’ve felt I was somehow responsible for her leaving and I’ve never told anyone this. That my horribly, tantrumy, attacking words – ‘Go away, I want any mother but you, I want someone else’– had forced her to abandon us, in despair, to just run off. That it was all my fault. But no. Not according to this. Someone else took her here, to this place. And then away from it. By force. She had to leave this satchel behind. Or she didn’t get a chance to take it.