Island of the Aunts

Chapter 16

“If you could go back now — if your parents came to fetch you away, what would you do?” asked Fabio the next day.

Minette felt the familiar crunching in her stomach. Only what was the crunching about? Was it about whether her parents loved her and loved each other, or was it about something else…? Was it about going away from the Island?

“How could we leave him?” she said. “We’d have to stay till his father came back. It’s only a year and a day — less now. We’d have to stay that long, wouldn’t we?”

Fabio nodded. “That’s what I think. But if they find us…”

They had been playing ball with the little kraken in a rockpool, keeping a close watch because Walter was nearby and sometimes the kraken became muddled and thought the merbaby with his round bald head was a beach ball too.

“I’m not ever going back to my grandparents,” Fabio went on. “The ones in London, I mean. Not ever. If I have to leave the Island I’m going back to South America. I don’t know how, but I’m going.”

Minette nodded. He looked very small, sitting on a boulder with his hands round his knees, but she believed him. Both the children had changed since they came to the Island; they were stronger, and sunburnt, their hair thick and glossy with health.

“Isn’t everything beautiful?” said Minette, looking out across the bay. “Of course it was even before he came, but now…”

This was true. It was early summer now; the grass was studded with clover and ox-eye daisies; the rowan which sheltered the house was covered in new green leaves — but it was more than that. It was as though the great kraken’s blessing stayed with them, and would stay, even though he himself was gone.

Everyone felt it — and even fewer people went away! The naak did not go back to Estonia; the mermaids, though they had lost all traces of oil, stayed where they were — and the Sybil went on washing her feet.

After the kraken left the Captain had sent for his daughters.

“I can die happy now,” he said, “because I’ve seen him. So you can measure me up for my coffin.”

But when the aunts had gone away to cry and came back with a tape measure, they found him and the stoorworm taking tea together.

“If my head is upstairs and my tail is downstairs, where is me?” the stoorworm was asking, and it was clear that the old man had changed his mind about dying.

But down on the point, Herbert’s mother really was coming to the end of her life. She had chosen the Island as her Last Resting Place, which was a compliment because selkies are fussy about where they die.

“I’m ready to go, Herbert,” she said. “I’m ready to give myself to the waves.”

And Herbert said: “The time will come, Mother. Don’t hurry it.” But he knew it would not be long now and that when the great kraken returned for his son, Herbert would be free to go away with him.

It was during these peaceful days that they were woken by a sound that was new to the Islanders: a proud and joyful squawking that sent the aunts and children running up the hill.

And there they were! Three chicks the size of bull terriers, their feathers still moist from the egg, their yellow beaks already open as they cheeped and wriggled for food.

“More wheelbarrowing,” was all Aunt Etta said, because with the male boobrie still away the mother would never manage to feed her chicks alone, but the aunts were almost as proud as the bird herself. Boobries have not bred where there are humans for hundreds of years.

Even Lambert had suddenly become almost nice and this was the most extraordinary thing of all. He did his work without grumbling, he ate his food — sometimes he even smiled.

“He too has been touched by the spirit of the great kraken,” said Myrtle, but Fabio disagreed.

“If that creep is being nice there’ll be a reason,” he said.

And he was absolutely right.

The battery of Lambert’s mobile had suddenly given a spurt of life and he had dialled his father’s number. The Hurricane was now steaming towards the Island and it so happened that Stanley Sprott heard his phone ringing down in the cabin and answered it.

Mr Sprott knew better than to ask his son anything sensible, like “What latitude and longitude are you on?” or “Are there any submerged rocks near the entrance to the bay?”—but there was one question he did ask.

“Those women who are holding you prisoner — are they nudists?”

“Eh?” said Lambert, who did not know what nudists were.

“Are they wearing clothes?” Mr Sprott wanted to know.

Lambert thought about this. “Yes,” he said. “They’re wearing clothes.”

“And sheep? Are there a lot of sheep?”

Lambert said he didn’t think so. “Just a few on the hill.” Then his battery began to play up again and he said frantically: “But you’re coming, aren’t you? You’re coming to fetch me?”

“Yes, Lambert, I’m coming,” said Mr Sprott.

It was after he talked to his father that Lambert changed. Soon now the Hurricane would come and his father would blow everyone to hell: the creepy aunts, the horrible children and the foul monsters who weren’t really there. When Lambert smiled now it was because that was what he was thinking about: all the people he hated lying dead in their own blood.

“I feel sick,” said Boo-Boo, leaning over the rail of the steamer.

“I feel sick too,” said the Little One. “I feel sicker than you.”

Aunt Dorothy looked at them with loathing. What she really wanted to do was throw them into the sea and make her own way to the Island. Doing good is all right when you are beating up restaurant owners or thumping people who are trapping rare animals for their skins, but doing good by taking on your sister’s horrible children is just stupid.

The steamer was hardly going up and down but now first Boo-Boo and then the Little One were sick and as soon as they’d finished they started worrying about whether they had messed up their clothes.

“Etta is going to kill me when she sees them,” thought Dorothy.

But though she would very much have liked to throw them both overboard she realized it could not be done so she took them down into the cabin and dabbed at the Little One’s velvet coat collar and Boo-Boo’s silly blazer, and told them to lie down till they landed.

But landing was only the beginning. After that they had to take a ferry to a smaller island and then they had to wait till the one fisherman who could be trusted not to gape or gawp or give away the secrets of the Island could take them across at night. There was no one else the aunts ever used — and just how sick these idiotic children would be in an open boat at night was anybody’s guess.

The Hurricane came in quietly at noon. She anchored to the south of the Island, hidden from the house by a copse of windblown trees, and Mr Sprott took Des and one of the gunmen with him in the dinghy for a reconnaissance.

But even if she had come into the bay by the house no one would have seen her. Fabio and Minette had taken the kraken to the north shore with a picnic and the aunts were visiting the Sybil, which they did once a week to see that she was eating properly. Even the Captain was not looking through his telescope but dozing quietly in his bed.

Mr Sprott had at first meant to come in with his cannon firing but then he had thought better of it. After all, Lambert had to be got out safely first.

As the dinghy rounded the spur of rocks, with its row of slumbering seals, he saw a boy standing alone on the edge of the sea.

“It’s Lambert!” said Des.

And it was!

Whatever plans Mr Sprott might have made were set aside as his son waded towards him and threw himself weeping into his arms.

“Take me away, quick. Take me to the Hurricane. Oh hurry, please, Dad.”

Mr Sprott pulled himself out of Lambert’s clinging arms and looked at his son. He looked well. In fact he looked better than he had ever seen him look; but that was neither here nor there. The boy was obviously terrified.

“It’s an awful place. They feed you poisoned food and then you see things,” sobbed Lambert.

“What sort of things, Lambert?”

“Creepy crawly things…things that slither, and freaks with tails — only they’re not really there.”

There was a sudden yell from Des. The bodyguard knew that it was as much as his life was worth to yell when they were trying to get into a place unseen but now he stood up in the dinghy and pointed with staring eyes at a rock sticking out of the water.

“My God,” he shouted. “Look, guv’nor! It’s a bloomin’ mermaid!”

“No, it isn’t,” cried Lambert. “She isn’t really there. It’s because of what you’ve eaten. None of them are there, the other one isn’t there and the old one isn’t there and the long white worm isn’t there. They’re all because of what Art put in the—”

“Be quiet, Lambert,” said his father. Then to Des, “Catch her,”

Des didn’t need to be told twice. He slipped off his holster and dived into the sea.

The girl was Queenie, and she thought the whole thing very funny. She waited till the clumsy man was almost up to her — then she gave her silvery laugh and vanished underneath the waves.

“She isn’t there, she isn’t there,” Lambert went on yelling. “It’s what you’ve eaten — it’s Art’s seaweed flour.”

“Don’t be silly, Lambert,” said his father. “I haven’t eaten any seaweed flour and I saw her quite clearly. Unless it was a trick. It must have been a trick, but if so it was a good one.”

Des was still thrashing about in the icy water. Now suddenly he dived down, grabbed at something — and missed. But when he swam back to the boat he had two things clutched in his hand. A silver fish scale and a golden hair.

Mr Sprott examined them. Then he turned to his son.

“Now then, Lambert,” he said. “Just tell us what else you’ve seen on the Island.”

“I haven’t seen it — it isn’t—”

“All right, boy. Tell us what you haven’t seen, then. Tell us carefully.”

By the time Lambert had finished babbling about old mermaids with no teeth and long white worms that sucked peppermints and outsize birds the size of elephants — all of which weren’t there—Mr Sprott’s face wore a look of eager cunning. Of course it was probably all rubbish, but if it wasn’t, the money one could make! And those trees with the branches stripped off — the ones that Lambert called stoor-worm trees — they were there all right.

“Go on, what else?” he prompted, digging his son roughly in the ribs.

But Lambert had said all he could. The sight of that island in the bay that hadn’t been there at night and then really hadn’t been there in the morning had frightened him so much that he couldn’t say another word, nor about the small island that had broken off from the big one and was around somewhere.

“Please, Daddy, take me home,” he whined. “Look, there they are; they’re coming for me!”

Stanley Sprott looked up. The three dreaded women whose pictures were on the wall of every police station in London were coming towards them.

Aunt Myrtle was in the lead, which was unusual for her. She was carrying a brown paper parcel and she was very nervous — but in a way Lambert was hers, just as Fabio was Aunt Coral’s, and Minette belonged to Etta, and she felt she had to hand him back herself.

“Good morning,” she said, bracing herself. “I see you have come to fetch Lambert — he will be pleased to go home. I’m afraid he never quite fitted in.”

Mr Sprott stared at her. The cheek of the woman was unbelievable!

“I’ve washed and ironed his underclothes and his pyjamas. I wasn’t able to take many of his clothes in the cello case but you’ll find everything is there.”

Myrtle now felt she had done all she could and stepped back, leaving her sisters to take charge, which they did by asking Mr Sprott if he would care to stay to lunch.

As she spoke, Etta was looking warily over the bay. She had told everyone to stay out of sight as soon as the dinghy had rounded the point but one could never be sure, she thought, not realizing that it was already too late.

“No, don’t,” begged Lambert. “Don’t eat anything in there — you’ll think you’ll see creepy-crawlies.”

“Be quiet, Lambert,” said his father — and told the aunts he would be delighted.

It was a strange lunch. The aunts had been well brought up and though they thought that Mr Sprott was just as nasty as one would expect from someone who was Lambert’s father, they were most polite, passing him the salt and pepper and filling up his plate.

“Won’t you try a brandy snap?” asked Aunt Coral. “They were freshly made this morning,”

Mr Sprott took one and decided it was time to come to the point.

“Now, ladies,” he said, smiling his oily smile. “I have a suggestion to make to you.” He leant forward, folding his hands on the tablecloth. “I am getting on in years and I need somewhere to end my days — so I want you to sell me this island.”

There was a gasp from Myrtle, and Aunt Etta stared at him in amazement.

“Sell the Island?” said Coral.

“Sell the Island?” said Myrtle.

“Sell it!” thundered Aunt Etta.

“I take it it belongs to you, does it not? And Captain Harper?”

The sisters looked at each other. They had never thought of owning the Island. It was just there and they looked after it. But now they remembered that their father had in fact bought it from an old couple who could no longer do the work.

“I suppose it does,” said Etta now. “But there’s absolutely no question of selling it.”

“No question at all,” said Coral.

“Oh no, we couldn’t do that,” said Myrtle bravely.

Mr Sprott leant back in his chair and smiled. They did not seem to realize that they were completely in his power.

“I’m prepared to offer ten thousand pounds,” he said. “And that’s generous for a miserable little island…I mean for a simple unspoilt island with only one house on it.”

He’d get the money back in a month, charging two hundred pounds for helicopter rides to the Island of Freaks. The pretty mermaid was worth a fortune on her own; he’d put her in an aquarium and people would have to pay extra to hear her sing and comb her hair. As for that creepy worm, he could just see the visitors clutching each other and screaming. He’d have to keep him in a cage with electric wire. It would be a cross between a zoo, a funfair and Disneyland.

“Very well, ladies. Twelve thousand pounds and that’s my last word absolutely!”

But Etta had had enough of this unpleasant game. “I’m afraid we wouldn’t sell the island for a hundred million pounds,” she said. “We regard it as a Sacred Trust. Now if you would care to take Lambert back with you, I will tell Art that he can clear the table.”

“Oh no you won’t!”

Mr Sprott’s voice had changed. He had become the dangerous bully that he was before. “I think you have forgotten something, dear ladies. You have kidnapped three children. Abducted them by force. My son and two others. The penalty for kidnapping is life imprisonment — and it might even be hanging. They’re thinking of bringing back the death penalty, I’ve heard. So I really think you’d better sell me the Island — or would you rather I turned you over to the police?”

There was a sudden scuffle at the door.

“You can’t! You can’t turn them over to the police because they didn’t kidnap us.” Minette had run all the way from the North Shore. Her hair was tousled, her clothes were in a mess but what was strange was that she wasn’t at all frightened. “I asked if I could come. I asked Aunt Etta if there was a third place and she brought me here.”

Fabio, who had followed her into the room, caught on at once. “And I wasn’t kidnapped either! Aunt Coral saved me from a vile school where they tie you to pillars and try to set fire to your clothes. If anybody says I was kidnapped, I’ll thump them!”

“And Lambert wasn’t really kidnapped either.” Minette, who never lied, seemed to have gone crazy. “He tried to steal Aunt Myrtle’s chloroform and the fumes knocked him out and Aunt Myrtle brought him along because there was no one at home to look after him.”

Both children stood and glared at him like angry tigers.

What they were saying was rubbish, Mr Sprott knew that. The police would get the truth out of them in no time — but he had changed his mind. It had seemed worth a try to do everything the easy way — buy the island and then do what he wanted with it when they’d all gone. But there were other ways of getting what he wanted.

“Very well, it looks as though I was mistaken. Come along, Lambert, I’ll take you home.”

He took the brown paper parcel with Lambert’s pyjamas, shook hands politely, and left with his son.

Oh yes, there were other ways of getting his hands on those weird beasts, thought Stanley Sprott. Before he’d finished they would wish they had sold him the island, because what was going to happen now would not be pleasant at all!