Island of the Aunts (16 page)

“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!

Chapter 17

Meanwhile, in London, Minette’s parents had found a better way of making money than suing the police.

Mrs Danby thought of it first and Professor Danby didn’t hear about it till he saw a newspaper which the tea lady had brought into the University Common Room.

On the front page was a picture of Minette as a baby in her mother’s arms.
Heartbreak Mother Mourns Lost Daughter
said the headline, and underneath the picture were some terribly sad things that Minette’s mother had said, like there was no second of the day when she did not feel the pain of being without her daughter like a wound in her side.
She was a little angel
Mrs Danby had told the reporter, and she went on to say that a candle burnt night and day by Minette’s bed and would go on burning till she was safely returned.

As soon as he saw the newspaper, Professor Danby rang his wife.

“How much did they pay you for that?” he wanted to know.

“Twenty thousand,” said Minette’s mother, “and no more than I deserve with what I’ve been through.”

“I don’t know how you can bring yourself to talk to a filthy rag like the
Daily Screech,”
said the Professor and slammed down the phone.

But all day he was furious. Twenty thousand pounds! It wasn’t as though he wasn’t suffering just as much over his lost daughter. He didn’t light candles by her bed because of the fire risk but the housekeeper, who was fond of Minette, had bought a bunch of flowers and put them in her room. Of course the
Daily Screech
was out of the question—he wouldn’t be seen dead with his photograph in a rag like that—but if the
Morning Gazette
was interested he might say a few words about his sorrow and his loss. There was a photograph somewhere that the housekeeper had taken outside the university in which he was standing beside his daughter wearing his gown and hood. It had come out rather well and made it clear the kind of background that she came from.

Fabio’s grandparents were too snobby to talk to any kind of newspaper, but they appeared on a late night television panel to bleat about the lack of discipline in modern life and the feebleness of the police who still hadn’t returned their grandson.

And even as Minette’s parents were getting rich and Fabio’s grandparents were complaining, a helicopter was getting ready to take off from the Metropolitan Police pad outside London. It was a small machine manned only by one policeman and a policewoman—and their orders were clear.

“Remember, if you get a chance to land, it’s the two children we want. The aunts can wait. And don’t pick a fight with Sprott. We’re after the boy and the girl right now, and nothing else.”

As soon as they opened the door of the mermaid shed, Fabio and Minette realized that something serious had happened.

Loreen lay on the tiled floor, chewing mouthfuls of gum and weeping. In her sink in the corner, Oona looked stricken and pale. Old Ursula was shaking her head and muttering.

“It’s my fault,” Loreen wailed. “I’ve been a rotten mother and I deserve all I get.”

“What is it?” the children asked. “What’s happened?”

Loreen hiccuped and tried to speak but what with her gum and her sorrow no one could make out what she was saying and it was Old Ursula who said: “Queenie’s eloped. She’s swum off with that muscleman who came yesterday and tried to catch her.”

“What muscleman?”

“He came in the dinghy with Lambert’s father and Queenie went up to sing to him. We didn’t think she fancied him but she’s gone.”

A low croak came from Oona as she tried to speak. “She…
didn’t…
fancy him. She…said his biceps were silly.”

But the other mermaids took no notice of Oona, who was trying to make out that Queenie hadn’t gone of her own free will. Twins always stuck together and what had happened with Lord Brasenott made Oona think that all men were evil, which was silly.

“I spoiled her,” wailed Loreen. “She always had the best shells and the prettiest pearls for her hair.”

“Now don’t carry on so,” said Ursula. “It isn’t your fault Queenie turned out so flighty.”

“She didn’t—” began Oona—but Loreen only put another piece of gum in her mouth and went on wailing. “I’ve been a rotten mother, and it’s all my fault,” she said again, and she picked Walter out of the washing-up bowl and slapped his tail though he hadn’t done anything except grizzle and whine in his usual way.

“We must tell the aunts,” said Fabio.

“Oh dear, must we?” cried Loreen.

But Old Ursula said yes, it was best to own up. “Get some wheelbarrows and we’ll go up to the house,” she said.

So the children came back with three barrows and Art, because flopping about overland made the mermaids’ tails sore, and no one took any notice of Oona who went on croaking that her sister had not
liked
the muscleman.

The aunts were very much upset. Not because Queenie was flighty, which they’d known all along, but because it meant that Mr Sprott now knew that there were mermaids on the Island—and maybe other things too.

“I wonder if he knew before he came to lunch,” said Coral. “Do you think that was why he wanted to buy the Island?”

“Perhaps he’ll come back with photographers?” faltered Myrtle.

Fabio and Minette looked at each other. They had lived in the world outside long enough to know that Mr Sprott might come back with something much more serious than that.

A day passed, and half a night, and then they heard the sound they had been dreading: the noise of a boat coming into the bay. So Sprott was back already!

In an instant the aunts were out of bed. Etta ran for the Captain’s blunderbuss, Coral fetched Art’s catapult, Myrtle grabbed the long-handled brush she used to scrub her back.