In which the postman wears a pink bonnet; there is a brief exchange regarding aspects of pension planning, which everyone should consider from an early age in these days of economic uncertainty; a terrible thing happens, but not until much later, probably in another chapter.
The Magistrate looked slightly unsettled by the sudden and unannounced chapter break. ‘Stay calm!’ he boomed at the spectators, who looked as though they might panic and stampede at any moment. ‘It is, apparently, merely something called a chapter break. Constable Landscape warned me about them. He fears that the Urchins might use them as a cover to escape. Watch them both very closely indeed, Constable.’
The Constable leaned forward and glared very closely indeed at the children as the Magistrate continued his booming. ‘I think the people should decide about the slapping of the boy!’ he announced, in a rare fit of democracy. He looked around at the Victorian people in the courtroom. All of them looked very eager to take part in the proceedings. ‘Those in favour of a hearty slapping, say aye!’ the Magistrate boomed.
Now, it might be recalled that revenge is a dish best served hot enough to burn the roof of a mouth quite badly when the opportunity next arises. Grudges are shameful, to be avoided, but unfortunately the people in the court responded to the Magistrate’s request in a big way. ‘Aye!’ they all shouted. The postman from chapter one ayed particularly loudly in his relentless but futile search for stardom.
The Magistrate held up his hand to stop the loud ayeing and pointed a fierce glare at Betty, at the same time raising his substantial Victorian eyebrows as if to say what are you waiting for?
Betty shrugged.
‘Sorry again, Daniel,’ she murmured. ‘This has to be the last time, surely, so I’ll try to make it very special.’ Then she slapped him really hard!
‘Ouch!’ he moaned, holding a hand to his rather red cheek which now matched his rather red ear. The people in the court cheered loudly! Hurrah! They threw their caps and bonnets high into the air! Hurrah again!
After a few more minutes, during which the people clamoured and mingled and bartered to try and recover their caps and bonnets, some quite unsuccessfully it seemed, the Magistrate called them to order. The postman, a rather fetching pink bonnet perched on his head, looked particularly pleased with his new headgear.
‘Now,’ said the Magistrate. ‘Where were we? Ah, yes. You were going to tell me things about the future to prove that you are indeed time travellers. Well?’
Daniel rubbed his cheek and looked quite sulky.
‘I don’t know anything about world wars,’ Betty said. ‘That sort of thing isn’t something we are supposed to know, as it would really ruin our adventures. But we did hear that some men flew to the moon.’
The people in the courtroom sniggered and tittered. Betty heard muttering of fanciful talk and talking through her bottom.
Daniel, despite his utter grumpiness, thought that he would try to help his sister. ‘Sire!’ he shouted above the tittering and sniggering. ‘I’ve remembered something from the future! I do know that they lay sleeping policemen across the roads to slow down traffic, because Uncle Quagmire is always complaining about them and drives as fast as he can over them!’
Constable Landscape gasped a huge gasp then fainted in a big heap on the floor, which managed to break his fall. Several concerned people gathered round and started to kick him.
‘Stop this Victorian courtroom fiasco!’ boomed the Magistrate. ‘Constable Landscape, I demand that you awaken and recover from your fainting fit at once, otherwise I will make you a Ward of Court. Awaken! For we will need you for some penetrating dialogue very soon, I fear.’
Daniel looked at Betty for inspiration as Constable Landscape struggled to his feet, vowing never to fall asleep again in case he was carried off somewhere for horizontal traffic-control duties. Daniel sensed that Betty was having trouble thinking of something that might impress the Magistrate. He had to think fast!
‘Podcasts!’ he exclaimed.
The Magistrate frowned. His frown spread quickly around the courtroom and back again like a trapped Mexican wave.
Daniel quite cleverly sensed the wave and realised that he had to think of something else. ‘Blogs?’ he offered hopefully.
Betty kicked his ankle.
‘Blogs?’ the Magistrate repeated, and frowned an even bigger frown. ‘Are these podcasts and blogs undergarments of some kind? Can’t you think of something of greater importance to mankind?’
‘Erm . . . Twitter?’ Daniel said. ‘Or Eminem?’
The Magistrate appeared to be becoming rather more grumpy than normal. ‘Bah! If you cannot think of something really impressive, Urchin Number One, I will have no option but to . . .’ ‘SERPS!’ Daniel interrupted, suddenly remembering a time when Uncle Quagmire talked to him at some considerable length about the urgent need for pension planning from the age of three.
Betty turned and pointed quite a big glare at Daniel. ‘Serps? Silly boy!’ she scolded. ‘How is a social disease of the twentieth century going to help us out of this predicament?’
‘Yes,’ added the Magistrate. ‘I agree. What is this serps? Is it highly contagious?’
‘Sire, it’s State Earnings-Related Pension Scheme,’ Daniel replied, quite eagerly for a boy facing the death penalty, or worse. ‘It’s to provide employed people with additional pension, but they can contract out of SERPS if they have a PEP or an occupational pension, apparently. It’s really only for Wrinklies and Crumblies. I’m not too sure about all the small print, though. And it might have all changed since I was three.’
‘Wrinklies and Crumblies?’ asked the Magistrate. ‘This is very confusing. What are those, pray?’
‘Sir, they’re very very old people,’ said Betty, quite enthusiastically joining the SERPS debate. ‘You know . . . queue busters . . . stair-lift pilots . . . shredded-wheat-face . . . old people, a bit like yourself.’
‘What?’ the Magistrate boomed. ‘All the insolence does not help your cause, Urchin Number Two, and makes me boom a lot. And, boy Urchin, is this your way of proving that you are from another time? Perps and seps and twittle indeed! At this rate I will increase the sentence with a jolly good ticking-off before the hanging!’
‘Please, sir,’ pleaded Betty. ‘Ignore him. He’s just not very clever.’
Betty suddenly and quite dramatically remembered Sampson’s autobiography. She turned to Daniel. ‘Daniel,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve had an idea that must rate amongst the top ten best ever Secret Five ideas! Why don’t we show him Sampson’s autobiography?’
‘Good idea!’ said Daniel. He plunged his hand down his trousers.
The people in the courtroom gasped! ‘Clerk of the court,’ boomed the Magistrate. ‘Note that the boy is feeling about within his trousers, will you? Stop that at once! Or I will add Unauthorised Licentious Behaviour without a Licence to the list of charges!’
Daniel stopped that at once.
‘Why have you stopped?’ Betty said.
‘I’ve lost it!’ Daniel moaned. ‘It must have been when we were dragged here! And, to be honest, I don’t want unauthorised lice . . . or whatever he said, added to the list of charges, do I? I just want to go home!’
‘Hush at once, raggedy Urchins! Let us get back to my perfectly reasonable request for a character witness,’ said the Magistrate. ‘If you have not brought one along with you, is there anyone in the courtroom that you have seen before?’
Daniel and Betty looked very carefully around the room. ‘The policeman?’ offered Daniel, adding ‘Ouch’ as Betty kicked his ankle again.
‘Good!’ said the Magistrate. ‘Constable Landscape! Good to see you have been obliging enough to recover from your fainting fit in order to partake in some meaningful dialogue. Can you vouch for the characters of these two cheeky lying thieving Urchins?’
‘Well,’ said the Policeman, leaning forward in eager anticipation of his moment in the spotlight, ‘much as it grieves me to say so, for
they have been a part of my life for over three chapters now, and it would hurt me so to see them whipped enthusiastically and then incarcerated for years or hung by the neck until fairly dead, but there comes a time when you have to protect the Victorian Public and tell the truth about such unruly Urchins. I only wish that those ASBOs were available . . .’
‘But he’s a Policeman!’ shouted Betty. ‘It was him who arrested us! This isn’t British justice at its very best, is it now?’
The Magistrate banged his trained fist on the desk again, and was becoming rather red in the face. But then, very suddenly and quite inexplicably, the doors flew open wide! The people in the courtroom were so astonished that some of them raised one or both of their eyebrows. Everyone turned their heads to see a figure standing in the doorway!
‘It’s Whatshisname!’ shouted Daniel. ‘At last! He’s come to rescue us!’
‘No it’s not!’ said Betty. ‘Silly boy. Can you smell creosote or pineapple? Can you? Hmmm? No! It’s the figure of a man, standing silhouetted in the courtroom doorway!’
‘Nice imagery, Betty,’ whispered Daniel. ‘Who is it?’
‘Wait!’ the figure of a man said in a rather stern man’s voice. ‘Enough of this interminable courtroom scene! I’ll be a character witness for these two dear harmless inept children. Now, where do I need to stand for maximum dramatic effect?’
Betty and Daniel were transfixed! They stared at the figure of a man. They might now be saved from their ghastly fate!
But who was the figure? And where had he come from? And why was he stark naked?
PART FOUR
Chapter Twenty Eight
In which our heroes meet yet another peripheral character but this one has severe dandruff; Amy and Ricky are close to saving the world; or maybe not; there is mention of a four-in-a-bed romp but don’t get too excited; that may be George Michael hiding behind the kangaroo; no, for legal purposes, it’s definitely not.
‘Honestly, Amy!’ moaned Ricky. ‘Do you have to keep landing on top of me?’
‘I couldn’t help it!’ squeaked Amy. ‘I don’t have any control over it, do I? It’s the sprouts and the wardrobe that have the control, apparently. And will you stop doing that to me! You’re fondling my buttocks! Again! I’m your sister!’
‘I’m not fondling, I’m just trying to get you off me!’ said Ricky. ‘But, I must admit, you are jolly well firm-bodied and I did feel a strangely erotic sense of eroticism which, I think, must be totally out of character and not wise for a brother-sister relationship, surely.’
Amy struggled to her feet on the school’s lush lawn where they had landed. She was quite red in the face! ‘What silly talk! Just get up off the lush lawn,’ she ordered, with very little ill-feeling and even less understanding of the word eroticism.
Ricky struggled to his feet and looked about him. ‘Where are we? I’m hungry.’
‘Hopefully we’re in 1980!’ Amy snapped. ‘Remember? We made sure the Nixie clock was set to the right year this time and then we asked Uncle Quagmire to keep Old Hag away from our wardrobe when we time-travelled.’ She paused uncertainly then lowered her voice. ‘Is that enough backstory?’
Ricky nodded his head twice. He was still quite embarrassed at the strange sense of eroticism which, interestingly, seemed to be stronger than his usual uncontrollable sense of hunger.
Amy looked carefully around her. ‘It looks very much like a school,’ she observed. ‘Sort of big, with big windows and a big roof to keep the small pupils quite dry. How exciting! I haven’t been in one of these for ages!’
‘Hopefully, this is Sampson’s school, the Stanley Gibbons School for the Fairly Gifted,’ Ricky said.
Just then, without warning, a first floor window clattered open and a man’s head and shoulders poked out, causing an outbreak of scattered showers of dandruff onto the shrubbery below. ‘Hey, you two pupils!’ the man called. ‘What were you doing there, lying on the grass? Were you indulging in a congress? Did I miss a concrescence?’
Amy frowned and looked quite confused. She wasn’t used to such language and so many syllables in one sentence. She turned to Ricky, who looked just as quite confused. He was also perplexed at all the talk of a concrescence on the lawn. He looked around for a statue.
‘Please sir,’ Amy called to the head and shoulders of the man. ‘We weren’t doing anything naughty like . . .’ She tried desperately to remember the correct terminology. ‘. . . like canoodling, if that’s what you meant. We’ve only just arrived from 1964, you see. We’re looking for someone called Sampson de Lylow so that we can stop him from becoming evil and then we will have saved the world.’
The man didn’t look too convinced. ‘I’m not too convinced,’ he called. ‘And I probably don’t look as though I am either. Now, shoulders back, stand upright, and get inside before I start to take my duties as headmaster very seriously for a change. And if I find, when examining the photographs I took of you very secretly with my six-point-two-million-pixel digital camera, that you were up to no good then it’s the high jump for you. Or the shot put, as we’re quite short of participants in that particular discipline in the Inter-School Underperformers’ Olympics.’
‘Please, sir,’ called Ricky. ‘Two things before you go. One, did you know that your severe dandruff can easily be cured by use of a good shampoo containing selenium sulphide, eating plenty of Vitamin B6, and a strict hair-washing regime where you avoid hairdryers? And two, do you actually know where we could find the boy called Sampson? We are, as my surprisingly firm-bodied sister suggested, The Secret Five on a mission to save the world from his future evilness, you see. We need to stop his utter humiliation.’
But, without warning, the man disappeared, slamming the window behind him. Then, just as suddenly, the window opened again and there were the man’s head and shoulders and further localised showers of dandruff.
‘So sorry,’ he called. ‘How foolish of me. An immediate correction is needed, before I get the letters flooding in. This is 1980, of course, and the digital camera doesn’t get properly invented until about seven years from now. I did, in fact, mean my Penron 35mm single lens reflex camera with its 100mm coated Sigtax lens with macro capability. Now, please carry on.’
‘Excuse me, don’t go, sir at the window,’ Amy called. ‘We are at the right school, aren’t we? The one that Sampson de Lylow was at in 1980?’
‘I can’t be expected to know everyone by name!’ yelled the man at the window. ‘It’s difficult enough trying to remember the name of my wife and my two secret lovers. I know one is called Simon, but the others? Hmmm, I’ll need to think about that. Anyway, why not pop along to the Big Hall. Most of the . . . what do you call them . . . you know, little people . . . children, that’s it, they’ll be in there.’ And, with that, he slammed the window and disappeared yet again, hopefully forever unless the story demands a four-in-a-bed romp.
Amy stamped her foot, critically wounding a rather unfortunate but rare lawn weevil in the process. ‘I really don’t want to be in this story!’ she said, quite sulkily for a girl of her woefully inadequate shoe size. ‘He was horrid. There are so many rude characters in this adventure. We never ever meet really nice people, apart from little old ladies in their tea shops.’
Ricky crowded around her as best he could. ‘Come on, old thing,’ he said. ‘Let me give you a reassuring platonic hug. And did you mention tea shops?’
‘Ricky!’ Amy shrieked. ‘We have no time for, er, plutonic hugging or stupid tea shops! Don’t you have any sense of responsibility for the future of mankind? Come on, we must find Sampson.’
And, with that, she set off quickly and determinedly towards the school entrance.
‘Amy!’ called Ricky. ‘Come back!’
But Amy had disappeared, as predicted, into the school entrance, and Ricky was left pondering his options. Should he wait here for her to come back, maybe nursing the rare weevil back to health while he waited? Or was he brave enough to follow her and help t
o save the world?
Probably not, actually.
Just then, rather unexpectedly, Ricky looked upwards and scowled a big scowl at nothing in particular. ‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘Not brave enough, eh? I’ll show you!’
He set off towards the entrance. He looked quite determined, for a change.
Inside the school, Amy hurried and scurried down a corridor, hoping that she was hurrying and scurrying in the right direction. She stopped. Up until the use of the verb gerund hoping she was sure it was the right direction. Now she wasn’t so sure.
But then, right on time, she heard a boy’s voice say something of extreme importance.
‘Can I help you?’
She turned to face the boy’s voice, which came from the direction of a boy who had a lot of brown hair on his head and a really handsome tanned face. Both of Amy’s knees went all wobbly, fortunately for her stability at the very same time.
‘Hi! I’m George,’ he said, holding out his tanned hand. ‘How are your wobbly knees?’
‘G-g-g-gosh!’ s-s-s-s-stammered Amy as she s-s-s-slipped her hand into his and let him sh-sh-sh-shake it. This might be, at long last, an indication of the emergence of her latent sexuality. ‘Hello George,’ she said, gazing into his big eyes. ‘I’m looking for the right direction for . . . we’re . . . I’m . . . erm . . . looking for Sampson. G-g-g-gosh!’
‘Why?’ George asked incisively, letting go of her hand.
Quite suddenly Ricky appeared at her side. He looked determined, and took the opportunity to glare firmly at George. ‘Ah, my darling sister, whom I will protect until my dying day,’ he said. He put his arm around his trophy sister. ‘Found you at last!’
Amy scowled hard at Ricky, pushed his arm off her shoulders and kicked out at his shins.
Ricky rubbed his shin, scowled back at Amy with a bigger and more robust scowl, then stood bravely in front of her, his arms folded, facing George. ‘Ahem! Let me politely explain who we are, as we must seem awfully mysterious to you. We are the forward spearhead contingent of The Secret Five and can’t stop to talk – or to flirt – or to give away the secret purpose of our secret mission apart from the fact that we’re travelling through time to try and save the world from the grip of an evil mega-monster and that we have two friends and their dog with a pink fluffy collar all stuck back in 1880 and who are probably lost forever but hey that’s life. And, before you ask, boy stranger, you’re far too good looking to join our intensely secret club. I’m so sorry. Is all that quite clear? Now, where’s Sampson de Lylow? And a handy tea shop.’
The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy Page 21