The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy

by John Lawrence

  But then reality struck, and his trusty instincts clicked in. He recalled that one moment he had been happily slurping at some yummy red liquid under an ornate table somewhere, the next moment he had landed on top of Mind, Body & Spirit in a school library. Indeed, he had landed there after being carried unconscious into a typical Victorian wardrobe, tongue lolling out of his pink mouth, dribbling all over the sprouts, and forcibly time-travelled to 1980 with his two pals.

  The time-travel landing on top of the bookshelves had jolted him awake. Hearing Betty and Daniel talking, he opened his mouth to say woof woof woof.

  ‘ ,’ he said, as nothing at all came out. He’d been struck dumb as well! Poor Whatshisname! Apart from the mental anguish caused by the fluffy pink collar, and the dumbness, and the endless flurry of exclamation marks, he was now suffering badly from quite a significant headache!

  But, despite the headache, he dared to look down. Quite suddenly, and quite pathetically, he discovered that he was also afraid of heights! Or was he afraid of bookshelves? He wasn’t sure. Whatever, he knew that the phobia symptoms would begin soon – excessive sweating, rapid breathing, rapid heartbeat, nausea, dizziness. It was so exciting! He looked forward to them all, especially the rapid breathing, which he hadn’t experienced since well before the surprise outing to the vets.

  He whimpered quietly to himself and started to crawl very slowly along the top, trying not to look down, hoping to find some handy library ladders in the DIY section. Below him Betty and Daniel were still talking, unaware of his dire canine predicament.

  ‘Forget Whatshisname,’ Betty told Daniel. ‘He’ll be lost in time somewhere with his dire canine predicament. Never mind, eh? Now hush! There’s a commotion! It’s coming from the direction of Poetry & Literary Criticism!’

  Sneakily, the two of them sneaked round the bookshelves. They heard a voice that sent shudders through their very ankles and up to their very knees.

  ‘Ha!’ said the voice. ‘Some evil son you are! I can’t leave you to do anything. They’re still alive!’

  ‘That’s Old Hag!’ whispered Betty. ‘I bet she’s up to no good.’

  ‘Are we allowed to bet?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ she snapped back quietly yet effectively. ‘But look! There’s Amy and Ricky, they’re tied up by The Romantics! They might catch something and become profoundly imaginative! How utterly ghastly for them!’

  They saw that Amy and Ricky were indeed tied up and looking rather sorry for themselves. Daniel gasped and felt much better for it. They also saw a boy who looked moderately evil and slightly familiar.

  ‘That must be Sampson!’ whispered Betty. ‘By the look of it, he has turned moderately evil, so Amy and Ricky have indeed failed. Unless we can stop him. Let’s have a meeting. This might be the climax of our adventure, the bit before the resolution!’

  ‘I don’t think we actually have time for a meeting,’ whispered Daniel. ‘It looks as though Old Hag is going to kill Amy and Ricky! Cool!’

  Betty glared a big glare at him. ‘What do you mean, cool? Killing is bad, Daniel! Very bad! And they’re family!’

  ‘Well, I do find myself wondering,’ wondered Daniel, ‘if it isn’t about time there was an unexpected violent death or two in the story. Just to liven it up a bit. Midsomer Murders is full of them, apparently, and look how successful that is.’

  But just as Betty was about to say something quite interesting for a change, Old Hag spotted them!

  ‘Ha!’ she cackled. ‘Well, if it isn’t Dando and the one with the big things. How was 1880? Shame you got yourself back, but now you’re here, you may as well suffer some cackling!’ She pointed a random old hag finger vaguely in their direction. ‘Just look at them! Ha! They’re rubbish. And definitely not evil enough, Sampson. They will certainly spoil your plans for world domination if you don’t stop them.’

  But Old Hag had underestimated the children’s bravery and the daring yet shrewd plan that Betty and Daniel were about to put into action without a moment’s thought for their own safety.

  ‘What plan?’ whispered Daniel to Betty.

  Betty shrugged both her shoulders. ‘No idea,’ she whispered thoughtfully. ‘But look! Sampson has dragged Amy to her feet and has the cake slice at her throat! We’re not used to this sort of violent behaviour. What shall we do? It’s rather spoiling our super adventure. And isn’t there a health and safety issue with that cake slice?’

  ‘Help us!’ shrieked Amy pathetically yet artistically.

  ‘Yes, help us!’ endorsed Ricky. ‘There’s a rather nice buffet going to waste!’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ said Daniel, gently sweating. ‘Stay calm, just like we are . . . gosh . . . I feel . . . I feel rather . . .wack . . . yo! Sis! Kotch for a mo! Diss am soooo A-heavy. Too grimy fo’ me, f’sho’! Absofrickinlutely gah! Nim nim nim. Innit!’

  ‘Daniel!’ scolded Betty, kicking his ankle. ‘This is not the time to lapse into street talk!’

  ‘Sis! Don’ be trippin’ like a lava lamp!’ Daniel said. ‘Dis am shew as bones de bes’ time, woo-man, innit?’ And with that he sank to the floor and started humming excerpts from Eminen’s latest choral album.

  Betty knew immediately that she would have to be the one to save the world, but now she had had enough.

  ‘I’ve had enough!’ she shrieked, confirming what we already knew but without the extra irritating had. She advanced on Sampson, waving her arms in the air. ‘ENOUGH! I’ve had EEEEENOUOUOUOUGH!’

  Sampson looked uncertainly at Betty and the flurry of capitals. The cake slice wavered at Amy’s throat. He marvelled at Betty’s bosom, which was approaching very quickly and threatened to surround him. But instead of attacking him, Betty flopped down on the floor alongside Ricky. ‘Go on then, tie me up!’ she yelled. ‘I’ve had enough! In italics! I’m fed up of being the sensible one, the one that has to think and make the decisions, the one with the bosom that everyone keeps staring at . . .’

  ‘Now you mention it . . .’ said Sampson, releasing Amy and staring down at Betty’s bosom.

  ‘See what I mean?’ growled Betty.

  Amy sank to the floor. She and Ricky glanced at each other twice, then again for luck, and knew that, if Betty flipped, the end of The Secret Five was surely upon them. A swift yet slow death would be a sweet relief compared to there being no Secret Five, they thought, although that point was surely debateable.

  ‘Never mind her!’ yelled Old Hag, stamping her feet. ‘Be evil, son! Go on, tie her up as well!’

  ‘No!’ shouted Ricky. ‘Sampson, you’re family! Our half-brother, if my mathematics are correct! You can’t hurt family!’

  ‘Ha!’ yelled Old Hag. ‘Don’t listen to them. You’re my flesh and blood. You extruded yourself from my own uterus . . .’

  ‘Yo! Cool bitch!’ murmured Daniel.

  ‘No she didn’t,’ said Ricky. ‘Sampson’s mummy and daddy are Clarissa and Uncle Quagmire.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Betty.

  ‘Yo!’ murmured Daniel again, staring at his feet.

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Betty yet again.

  But now Old Hag had had enough dilly dallying. ‘Ha! And ha! again. I’ve dillied and dallied for long enough,’ she confirmed, advancing on Sampson. ‘If you won’t kill them I will! And then blame you! You will be evil by proxy! You will be an outcast, cast out and . . . and . . . proxied!’

  ‘But,’ moaned Sampson, ‘they keep saying you’re not my mummy. And they are The Secret Five with a vast experience of such things, so they should know. And they never ever lie.’

  Old Hag pushed Sampson aside and grabbed the cake slice. ‘Ha! You’re rubbish as well,’ she cackled. ‘Just keep an eye on that Betty girl to make sure she doesn’t try any tricks.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Sampson, eagerly going one step further by keeping two eyes on Betty.

  ‘Hey, that’s unfair! I don’t know any tricks!’ moaned Betty.

  ‘Say your prayers, Ricko!’ Old Hag spat
, and thrust the cake slice towards Ricky’s throat. Ricko screamed as he saw the flash of metal and Old Hag’s spit arching towards him.

  ‘Ha!’ cackled Old Hag as she paused in her thrusting, flashing and arching. ‘Sorry about the spitting. And I forgot to ask you if you had a last wish. Or a last cigarette maybe? Hmmm?’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Ricky, cowering politely. ‘No, but thanks for asking.’

  Old Hag thrust the cake slice again towards Ricky’s throat. Betty looked on helplessly, as Daniel hummed a rather silly little tune and Sampson looked inquisitively down Betty’s top.

  This was a crisis indeed! Would there be anyone to save these brave children from a gruesome death? Would there?

  Chapter Thirty Six

  In which Old Hag has a surprise; we learn a thing or two about line dancing and the Birmingham area; more truths are revealed although who knows if they are the truth or not; indeed, who cares; reinforcements arrive; stick with it, we’re near the end now.

  Unfortunately, some churlish souls might say, there was someone to save these brave children from a gruesome death. Ricky’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut as he heard a whine, a huge thud and a loud old haggish scream. It was as if she had been flattened by some rather large and rather heavy something or other falling from the top of the bookshelves.

  ‘Get me out of here!’ Old Hag said in a squashed old haggish voice. ‘I’m old and vulnerable! Where’s care in the community when you need it?’

  Ricky dared to open his eyes and saw that the truly faithful but truly hungover dog Whatshisname had fallen off the top of the bookshelf on top of Old Hag! The cake slice had flipped out of her hand as she had been flattened, and it now lay at Daniel’s feet.

  Daniel paused in his humming as the deadly weapon missed his toes by millimetres.

  Betty leapt to her feet. ‘Daniel! Pick it up!’

  But Daniel just stared at the cake slice in a pathetic way.

  ‘Get this smelly animal off me!’ moaned Old Hag, who was showing an unseemly amount of various veins and big flannel knickers as her skinny arms and legs flailed from beneath the considerable weight of Whatshisname.

  ‘Yo! Issa a cool blade!’ said Daniel, leaning forwards and inspecting the cake slice. ‘Hevvvveeee, Dude! Da blade iss lush, innit!’

  Betty gasped a medium-sized gasp as Sampson went to grab the weapon! Without any thought for the safety of her own knee, she raised that very same knee into his groin, which we shall call, for decency’s sake and in the true innocent spirit of The Secret Five, his Birmingham area. (She had learned the technique accidentally during a Secret Five special training session on defensive line dancing, and had been fascinated by the result, although it had taken Ricky a very long time to be able to speak and even longer to sit cross-legged.)

  ‘Aaaaaah!’ Sampson groaned loudly as he crumpled to the floor, clutching his Birmingham area, where his bollocks (oops!) now felt as though they had been seared with a blowtorch. ‘Aaaaah! Oooooh!’ he moaned again for effect.

  ‘Shhhhh!’ Daniel shushed. Carefully, he reached out and picked up the cake slice. ‘Nang nang! Cool!’ he said, examining it closely.

  ‘Daniel!’ said Betty. ‘Now give it to me. But first, it is my sisterly duty to slap you extremely hard.’

  Dutifully, she slapped him extremely hard, as she didn’t like to let him down, and wrenched the cake slice off him. Daniel looked stunned. ‘What’s happening?’ he said, staring wide-eyed at the chaos around him. ‘And why is Whatshisname on top of Old Hag?’

  ‘Daniel!’ said Betty. ‘Get up and help me untie Ricky and Amy. And we need to stop Sampson’s evilness while Old Hag is disabled.’

  ‘Hmmm, complicated, isn’t it?’ noted Daniel. ‘I can’t recall such a knotty adventure before, can you? Oh, can I clean my spectacles before I untie you two? They’re filthy, what with all the time travelling.’

  ‘Oh for goodness’ sake, untie us!’ yelled Ricky.

  On top of Old Hag, Whatshisname managed to open an eye. He still felt extremely poorly but was keen to know what all the noise was. It wasn’t helping his banging head. What was happening? Oh, yes, of course, he’d fallen off the top of the bookshelf after he’d crept to the edge and looked down. It had made him feel quite giddy! It had been a good job Old Hag was there to cushion his fall. As he’d toppled over the edge, he had seen his canine life flash before his canine eyes – all those lost opportunities, those bones that he’d buried in forgotten places, all those puppies he’d never had the chance to father, those surprise visits to the vet’s, the fluffy pink collar – hmmm, maybe there were some distinct advantages to dying after all.

  For now, he just couldn’t be bothered to move off Old Hag. He’d put his head down for a few sticks and have a snooze. No more slurping unidentified red liquids . . . no more . . . zzzzzz.

  ‘Get this dozy mutt off me!’ screamed Old Hag. ‘And can someone stop her dribbling?’

  ‘Ur,’ groaned Sampson, still clutching his Birmingham area.

  ‘Do you think Sampson will be all right?’ Amy asked. ‘And why is he holding his . . . his . . .’

  ‘We’re calling it his Birmingham area,’ Betty whispered to her. ‘And it was me that hurt him.’

  ‘Oh, gosh!’ said Amy, unable to grasp the concept of hurting someone.

  Betty and Daniel untied the ropes – the rather flimsy pathetic ropes that a child of three could probably have snapped with one finger – that had bound Ricky and Amy. ‘I wasn’t actually afraid,’ Ricky said bravely as he stood up. ‘It was all under my control.’

  ‘Yes, right,’ said Betty, with unprecedented but totally wasted irony.

  ‘I’m glad you agree. At least I didn’t wave my arms about shouting enough enough!’ said Ricky.

  ‘Well,’ chipped in Amy, ‘ I would have saved the day if you could all have waited a minute!’

  ‘Huh!’ said Daniel. ‘ I was biding my time to strike. Another minute and you’d have all been free!’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Ricky. ‘You were in a street-talk coma.’

  ‘To be honest,’ Betty said, rather sensibly, ‘Whatshisname rescued us all, and he’s my dog and I trained him in the art of self defiance, so there!’

  Just then, unexpectedly, Sampson spoke up. ‘Er, I say, Mummy,’ he said to Old Hag. ‘I am in considerable pain . . . oooh . . . from that girl’s knee thrust into my testicles.’

  ‘Isn’t that our secret password?’ Amy whispered to Betty. ‘How does he know it?’

  ‘But, oooh,’ Sampson continued, ‘I’d really like you to tell me the truth before I decide whether to be evil or not. It’s a difficult choice and an uninformed decision . . . oooh . . . aaah . . . wouldn’t be right. I don’t want to dominate the world under false pretences.’

  ‘Will you get this mutt off me if I tell?’ said Old Hag, her face pressed to the floor and her various veins bulging to bursting point.

  The children gathered around and agreed that they would rescue her, although they had not really thought it through, in particular how they might move Whatshisname.

  ‘Ha!’ squeaked Old Hag. ‘You want the truth? The truth is that I’m really your mummy!’

  ‘No you’re not!’ said the children, not quite together, so it sounded more like ‘No you’re no not you’re no not you’re you’re not not.’

  ‘Ha!’ cackled Old Hag. ‘You’re all too clever for your own good! All right, I’ll make this easy for you. Sampson. I’m not your mummy!’

  ‘Oh! What?’ groaned Sampson.

  ‘But I loved you as your real mummy would, after I snatched you from the cradle at Clarissa’s posh house for my own evil ends,’ continued Old Hag. ‘I had a compulsive disorder, a compulsion to change nappies, you see. It was the smell of ammonia. Lovely. It was out of my control.’

  ‘Told you!’ smirked Ricky.

  Amy looked quite confused. ‘I am very confused,’ she said, going one qualifier further, which was not good for her literary future. ‘You
said that our very own Uncle Quagmire is Sampson’s father. How . . . what . . . where . . . why . . .’

  ‘Ha! She’s off again with her adverbs!’ muttered Old Hag from her privileged position under a big fat snoring dribbling dog. ‘And, despite her youthful exuberance, she’s not going to understand all this, is she? What a waste of a character . . . will someone stop this dog dribbling on me!’

  ‘But we’re The Secret Five!’ Amy whined. ‘How can such things happen? Our mother Aunt Trinny is our father Uncle Quagmire’s wife and surely it’s just not physically possible!’

  ‘Excuse me, Thick Annie,’ interrupted Old Hag. ‘I’m really getting tired of being under this fat dribbly dog. And the collar! Yeuk! It’s blinding me. But now can I finish my evil speech?’

  ‘Shall we let her?’ Betty asked the others.

  ‘Ooooh,’ moaned Sampson.

  ‘Let’s hear what she has to say,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Thank you. Ahem. I did nothing wrong,’ Old Hag said in a little voice that she’d recently stolen from a little person. ‘I was young, misguided . . .’

  ‘Enough!’ said Ricky in rather a manful way for a boy with his taste in socks. ‘I think we all know that you stole Sampson for your own highly evil ends, and that goes against all the teachings and beliefs of The Secret Five, at least those I can remember from the meetings I managed to attend.’ He pointed a manly finger at Old Hag. ‘We, The Secret Five, declare you as officially evil, Old Hag!’

  ‘Well said,’ whispered Betty, somewhat afraid that her senior position was being undermined. ‘But isn’t that my role, to declare people evil?’

  Ricky looked mildly embarrassed but was very keen to continue his maiden speech. ‘And you, haggish Old Hag, tried all ways to turn Sampson into an equally evil monster and it hasn’t worked! Because of our intervention, our careful strategic planning, our relentless time travel, Uncle Quagmire’s libido and, of course, our daring individual bravery, especially me, Sampson is now the offspring not of Bartle but of the kindly, if a trifle unfaithful, Uncle Quagmire, and is therefore basically good!’