The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy

by John Lawrence

  ‘Ha!’ Old Hag cackled. ‘I was doing all right until you interfering kids came along. With the right training and an effective appraisal system, Sampson here could have been the most reviled person in modern times, after certain British prime ministers, all members of parliament, and disgraced TV game show hosts, and he’d have made me the most famous old hag in history!’ She looked up at Sampson. ‘You were doing rubbish at it, though. The castanet solo was my last chance to turn you!’

  Carefully, Sampson stood up, grimacing from the effects of the raging furnace in the central Birmingham area, now spreading to the suburbs as far as Erdington and Edgbaston. ‘You . . . you evil, nasty, unmotherly person!’ he cried. ‘You lied to me! I never suckled at your breast . . .’

  ‘Oh, please!’ moaned Amy.

  ‘. . . but,’ continued Sampson, still grimacing but now frowning as well, ‘I don’t understand how I was Clarissa and Bartle’s child until The Secret Five came along and now I’m Clarissa and Uncle Quagmire’s child. How could that be?’

  Betty glanced at Daniel, Ricky glanced at Amy, Whatshisname opened one eye, couldn’t see anyone to glance at, so fell asleep again, back into the dream about the fit black poodle and the bondage game with the leash.

  ‘It’s best not to ask,’ Betty said to Sampson. ‘It’s the rather complex nature of the narrative, you see.’

  ‘And the inbuilt plot holes,’ added Ricky brightly. ‘It’s part of our unfailing charm. Apparently.’

  ‘And all this time travel can make it all so very complicated,’ said Daniel.

  ‘Why?’ asked Amy.

  Just then, to everyone’s surprise, they heard the library door being opened rather suddenly! They all turned and looked at the door, fully expecting to be astonished to see George swarm in with a policeman who looked very much like Constable Landscape but in a modern day policeman’s uniform.

  They weren’t disappointed.

  ‘Thank God!1 You’re both safe!’ sighed George after he had finished swarming in with the policeman. George stood with his feet apart, wiggled his hips and ran his very own fingers through his very own hair, yet again. ‘We heard all the contemporary commotion and the story climax dialogue so I called the police, after we had polished off the splendid buffet of course. Yeah!’ He pointed a finger dramatically at the policeman. ‘I have the utmost respect for the police, and always will have, yeah. Constable Simon Country here rushed over in his 1980 Series 3 Austin Allegro panda car to arrest and detain the evil ones, and the flying squad back-up are on their way in their Ford Granada GT . . .’ He stopped with a start. ‘Blimey! Jesus to a child2! Who is the girl with the big knockers? And who on earth is McFly?’

  ‘Erm, thank you, George,’ said Ricky. He pointed at Old Hag. ‘Constable Country, if you please, the evil moaning woman under the fat ugly dog with the pink fluffy collar is the one you want to arrest. She is the evil rogue behind the plot to nurture Sampson to dominate the world.’

  Betty nudged Daniel. ‘Is that who I think it is?’ she whispered, nodding in George’s direction.

  Daniel shrugged. ‘He could be,’ he whispered back. ‘Why, do you fancy him?’

  ‘Best not to,’ Betty replied.

  Just then (which, for clarity’s sake, was a different just then from the previous one) a scruffy plain-clothes man in flared trousers swooped into the library, his tie undone and a cigarette hanging rather dangerously from his lips.

  ‘Ah,’ said the constable in a timely effort to explain the sudden appearance of yet another peripheral character. ‘The Flying Squad. Reinforcements at last.’ He raised his constable’s arm. ‘Over here, sir.’

  The scruffy reinforcement approached and glared at them all. ‘You can all call me The Guvnor,’ he growled. ‘Capital T, capital G, capital N, if you please.’ He glared again, causing Amy to hide behind George.

  The GuvNor pointed at Daniel. ‘You!’ he said. ‘Despite the pathetic attempt to disguise yourself with those naff spectacles, I sense that I must have seen your ugly mug before. You look well bad, you do, so I must have done.’ He walked up to Daniel, removed the cigarette from his very own lips, and pressed his face close to Daniel’s. ‘I’m The GuvNor, and I haven’t had my dinner yet, so unless you want a good kicking, you’d better come quietly, son.’

  Daniel opened his mouth to protest, but only a feeble mewing came out. Betty tutted at Daniel.

  The constable pointed at Old Hag. ‘But Guvnor . . . sorry, I mean GuvNor . . .’

  ‘Shut it, Constable!’ said The GuvNor. ‘I can always tell the criminal element, soon as I walk into a room. And this blagger is it.’ He breathed on Daniel’s spectacle lenses. ‘What’s your name, son?’

  ‘Dur . . . dur . . .’ stammered Daniel.

  ‘Well, Durdur,’ said The GuvNor, backing away from Daniel. ‘Get your trousers on, son. You’re well and truly nicked!’

  Daniel looked down to check that he still had his trousers on. He mewed again, then removed his spectacles. He twitched, then pointed a spectacle arm at The GuvNor. ‘Yo, get right, dude! Love dis pig’s hexa screensava! Yo me homeboy! Like, whoa, man! Cool! Innit?’

  ‘Oh no!’ Betty said. ‘Not again! Look what he’s done to Daniel now!’

  ‘He’ll have to stay like that,’ urged Ricky. ‘I’m fed up of us having to slap him out of it.’

  ‘Erm, GuvNor,’ Constable Country said, pointing again to Old Hag. ‘Over here. This one’s the criminal element.’

  The GuvNor looked at Daniel, then at Old Hag, then back at Daniel. ‘You sure?’ he said to Constable Country. ‘But what about Durdur here?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said the constable, quite assertively for a man with his taste in truncheons. ‘She’s under this rather large dribbling dog with the fluffy pink collar.’

  Looking quite unconvinced, The GuvNor glared and pointed his finger at Daniel. ‘I’ll deal with you later, Durdur.’ He then stepped over to where Old Hag lay squashed under Whatshisname. He bent over and peered down at them.

  ‘Hello hello hello!’ he said. ‘She is a big doggy, isn’t she? Better phone through for an industrial winch.’

  Whatshisname suddenly and unexpectedly opened his eyes! He was keen to protest at being called a she and to avoid being winched anywhere. He noticed that everyone was looking at him. He lifted his head, which felt quite heavy compared to its normal unladen weight, and it was pounding very hard indeed. ‘Woof woof woof?’ he said weakly, slightly relieved that his dumbness had only lasted for a few sticks.

  Betty bent down to stroke him. ‘Silly doggy!’ she said. Gently, yet roughly, she took hold of his collar. Ricky and Amy grabbed an ear each and, pulling with all their pathetic might, dragged Whatshisname off Old Hag, leaving a long trail of translucent dribble.

  Old Hag struggled to her feet, showing an unseemly amount of scrawny leg and bulging various veins in the process. ‘Ha!’ she cackled as Constable Country handcuffed her. ‘I’m old, you know. But I will be back!’

  ‘I think not,’ said The GuvNor. ‘You’re well and truly nicked. Anything you say will be ignored and treated with the utmost disdain. You are not obliged to say anything other than ouch stop it as I bludgeon you with a pick-axe handle. Constable, fetch it from the back of the Seventies motor, if you please.’

  ‘But GuvNor!’ whispered the constable. ‘The witnesses!’

  ‘What? Oh, all right. Maybe later,’ sighed The GuvNor. He pointed a trained Flying Squad finger at Old Hag. ‘Lady, you’re going to be locked up for a very long time. Unless, that is, you can overpower the constable, and engineer a daring escape when his Allegro3 breaks down as he drives you to the nearest police station.’

  Sampson stepped forward to block their path as the constable led Old Hag away. ‘Stop! I feel the need to give some sort of lengthy monologue at this point to you, my non-mother,’ he said, glaring at Old Hag. ‘About your cruelty and your lying and the way you used me to fulfil your own evil ambition. About how you betrayed me for . . .’

>   ‘Hey! Sampson, do you want to rejoin Bash!?’ George suddenly interrupted, throwing a spare arm around both of Sampson’s spare shoulders. ‘You could perfect your castanet solo on our latest song. One day we’ll be famous, you, me, and perhaps Andrew.’

  Sampson looked very pleased with himself, almost forgetting all about his silly old aching testicles. ‘Gosh!’ he said. ‘But to be honest, I was hoping to be invited to join The Secret Five.’

  ‘He can do that as well,’ Ricky said. ‘Can’t he Betty? Now that Old Hag is no longer a member.’

  ‘Hey!’ cackled Old Hag. ‘Why am I no longer a member?’

  ‘Because,’ said Betty, who knew all about these things, ‘if you have a criminal conviction you aren’t allowed in. That’s the constitution, you see. Can’t change it, sorry.’

  ‘Ha!’ said Old Hag, ruthlessly glaring her very best glare at the children. ‘Torture me, hang me, beat me, but renounce my associate membership of The Secret Five? Never! You’ve made a big mistake! I won’t forget it! Anyway, think about it, I’ll be incarcerated in 1980, which will probably mean I won’t be around in 2010, which will mean that this adventure will never take place! Ha! Let that be a lesson to you, interfering children!’

  The children looked at each other and frowned as the two policemen dragged Old Hag unceremoniously, yet daintily, out of the library.

  ‘What did she mean?’ asked Amy.

  ‘It’s probably best not to think about it too much,’ said Betty. ‘But Sampson, you can still be a Secret Five member and be in Bash!, just as long as you don’t turn evil.’

  Sampson smiled a big smile for someone with a heat wave in the Birmingham area and his dubious talent in castanet playing. ‘Despite my premature smile,’ he said, ‘I’m worried that Mummy – sorry, Old Hag – will come back to intimidate me and make me cry a bit.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got that covered,’ said Betty reassuringly. ‘The Secret Five Witness Protection Programme will make sure you’re safe.’

  Sampson looked relieved. George, without asking, took his arm. ‘Let’s go outside,’ he said to Sampson as he led him out of the library. The children watched them walk off into the sunset, which had appeared without warning but was well overdue in the narrative.

  ‘Did you see how happy and unevil Sampson was?’ Betty said. ‘Doesn’t that make you happy too? All I know is that we saved the world! I’m so glad that our work here is done.’

  Daniel was also glad, and so was Ricky and Amy. In fact, everyone was glad, even Whatshisname, who was glad twice but no-one noticed because the first glad stopped after the second one started.

  ‘Isn’t this the point where we all tell each other we don’t want another scary adventure like that one, give a happy sigh and finish the story here and now?’ suggested Ricky. ‘Then someone says Good Luck Secret Five, and may you have lots more adventures!’

  They murmured agreement, except Daniel who murmured something that sounded like ‘Iss all sooo like a’gravy, man. Innit?’

  Then Betty spoke. ‘Actually, first, we do need to get back home, sprouts and portals permitting, and preferably without having to carry Whatshisname on our backs. You see, we need to have an on-site meeting to review our performances.’

  ‘What?’ squeaked Ricky.

  ‘She’s right. Don’t you remember?’ Amy said. ‘We all agreed at a meeting that we should have performance reviews after each adventure. Betty said we are to be results-oriented, and have to stretch the boundaries of Best Practice and discuss New Ways of Working. Or did you miss that meeting, Ricky?’

  Ricky looked very miserable indeed.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Betty. ‘We’ll need to know if Uncle Quagmire made it home safely, as surely that will measure the success of the adventure.’

  ‘Yo, woo-man,’ said Daniel. ‘Tha’s hellza key! Boomshakalaka! Innit?’

  ‘Can’t we leave Daniel behind?’ suggested Amy hopefully.

  They all laughed, except Daniel of course. And Betty and Ricky. And Whatshisname.

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  In which Betty becomes bossy again; Daniel yells at the author, who gets a bit upset and tries not to show it too much but it really hurt; you have an opportunity to get a refund on this book as long as you haven’t dog-eared or bitten or annotated the pages; I mean, why on earth should you want to annotate the pages anyway; and finally, what was I thinking.

  The children were so excited at being home again and could hardly contain themselves as they walked up to the front door of Guantanamo Cottage. Whatshisname had quite recovered from his ordeal with the wine, thanks mainly to a couple of bouts of hearty vomiting over the Fiction A-D section, predominantly over Jeffrey Archer. Now, he was back to his old self, making sure that he had the chance for a last trot and patter as he followed his chums up the path. All he had to do now was to try and get rid of the stupid pink fluffy collar. But he was safe at last!

  And yet, looking back, their final time travel trip from 1980 had almost gone very badly wrong when Whatshisname had been sick all over the Brussels sprouts which, as everyone knows, could have affected the dithiolthiones and consequently the quantum object’s timeline resistance which in turn might have dramatically reduced the effect of the spatial vortex . . .

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ moaned Daniel, whose bout of street-talk had mercifully ended as they had climbed into the school’s handy portal wardrobe with their vomit-glazed sprouts. He glared upwards, ripped his spectacles off and pointed them into the sky. ‘How much more of this can we take? GO AWAY! LEAVE US ALONE!!’

  Amy glanced at the sky and frowned an extremely large award-winning frown. ‘He’s doing it again! Who is he talking to?’

  ‘Daniel!’ scolded Betty. ‘Calm down, put your nice spectacles back on, you’re confusing Amy. We’re home. We’ve saved the world!’

  ‘No thanks to him!’ moaned Daniel, pointing upwards. ‘And why were we made to take this fat ugly dog? He was a burden. We’d have saved the world much quicker if he hadn’t been there. I think we should change The Secret Five constitution to bar dogs. And cats. And hamsters, I’ve never liked hamsters.’

  ‘Woof woof woof?’ said Whatshisname mournfully.

  ‘I’ll add it to the agenda for the next meeting,’ said Betty. ‘Now, let’s get inside.’

  ‘Well well well,’ Aunt Trinny said as the five of them trooped or trotted through the front door. ‘Where have you all been? I was planning on being worried sick about you all very soon. Uncle Quagmire arrived back just a few minutes ago, and is upstairs putting his socks back on. I did miss him so. Not so much you children, though. Now, I’ll just pop and make sure that there’s enough lukewarm water for baths and some moderately clean clothes for you all. You’ll probably want to have an extraordinary meeting while I’m gone, won’t you now?’

  They nodded their rather tired heads and gathered round the typical kitchen table for the meeting, Whatshisname flopping down at Betty’s feet.

  ‘Right,’ said Betty slightly seriously and rather importantly. ‘I declare the extraordinary meeting of the founder members of The Secret . . . Palpable . . . Three Hundred and Fifteen open. Let’s have the password from you all and we can begin the meeting.’

  ‘Can’t we skip the password bit?’ Amy pleaded. ‘I can never remember it and we do know each other.’

  Betty gave Amy one of her biggest frowns, which she’d been saving up for several chapters. ‘That’s not the point,’ she scolded. ‘We’ve been through all this. Passwords are important.’

  ‘Is it testicle?’ Ricky offered.

  Betty stamped her foot. Whatshisname yelped. ‘Honestly!’ she said. ‘We go on a fantastic adventure and all the rules are forgotten.’

  ‘I agree that we should forget passwords,’ said Daniel. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘And I’m hungry,’ said Ricky.

  Just then, without any warning whatsoever, the door opened and in walked Uncle Quagmire.

  ‘My, my, my,’ he said, rat
her selfishly. ‘You all look as though you’re having an official meeting. Very splendivenient. Can I join in?’

  They all said no, but Uncle Quagmire sat down and spoke. ‘What heroes you all are! You certainly restored the faith in my lack of faith in you, to be sure. I’d like to thank you for saving the world from the evil mastermind that was Sampson. I missed the actual saving bit, as I was somewhat detained in Victorian times . . .’

  ‘With Alice?’ Betty said.

  Uncle Quagmire wiggled and waggled his ears and looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘At least, not just with Alice. I was, well, talking to both Mrs Wells as well.’

  ‘That was nice of you,’ said Amy.

  ‘So, Uncle Quagmire,’ said Daniel, ‘if I may ask a question about you being Sampson’s father?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Amy. ‘That can’t be so!’

  ‘Indeed, it can’t be so,’ said Uncle Quagmire rather hurriedly. He looked down mournfully. ‘But, children, maybe I’m not the man you all thought I was.’

  ‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’ said Betty. Everyone nodded their heads in agreement.

  ‘Ahem,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘It’s all best forgotten, eh? Look, I think I’ll leave you to it after all. All this incisive questigating is too much for me. Anyway, I have another super invention to invent in my shed. I’ve been working on a combined toaster and wrist watch, you see. I just have to overcome a few hitches and it’s there.’ He stood up. ‘So, I will see you anon, Secret Five. And don’t forget to have a bath. You all smell quite disgusting. Especially that dog.’

  ‘Woof woof woof!’ agreed Whatshisname.

  ‘Now, let’s get down to the agenda,’ said Betty, after Uncle Quagmire had left the room. ‘About the adventure. I think it went rather well. A few issues, though. Amy, I thought, needed more blue-sky thinking outside the box, and we’ll be arranging more training sessions with some blue sky, several boxes and a bit more thinking for her. Secondly, I sensed that Ricky’s moodiness was a constant threat to our teamwork . . .’