Eating Things on Sticks (8 page)

I wondered if it was the moment to ask Morning Glory if this was the very same officer who used to lend her his rusty squad car to fetch chips. But she was standing with a bright pink face, scuffing a few bits of dried seagull poo into a heap on the road with her luminous satin slippers.

I turned back to Uncle Tristram and asked instead, ‘So are we going to her father's or not?'

‘Yes, yes,' said Uncle Tristram. Just to show off how safe a driver he could be himself, he took an age to do a simple three-point turn – making great play of craning his head in all directions and checking his mirrors ten times in a row.

Then we were on the road again.

BIT GLOOMY

‘So what's he like, your dad?' I asked Morning Glory when we had gone a few miles down the road and she'd recovered from her embarrassment.

‘Bit gloomy,' said Morning Glory. ‘You mustn't let him get you down.'

‘Has he a beard?'

She looked at me as if I had asked something like, ‘Does he have
feet?
' So, yes. Another beard. I settled comfortably in the back seat and let my mind drift. Mum had as good as
ordered
me not to think about the kitchen, but still I wondered what colour she had chosen for the new cabinets and whether we would get another microwave or keep the old one, even though you have to press the buttons dozens of times before it obeys you.

When I woke up, the car was bouncing down a stony track towards some sand dunes. On the right was a cottage so ancient it was half sunk in the ground. Outside stood some fearsome codger of at least a hundred. He had the best beard yet – it looked like a forkful of straw after a three-day tempest.

The codger shook his fist at us as we rolled past.

Morning Glory waved back. ‘Hi, Dad!' She turned to Uncle Tristram. ‘You have to stop here. This is it.'

‘Here?' Uncle Tristram asked, horrified. (I think that what he meant was ‘
Him?
' but it wasn't polite to come out with that.)

Morning Glory scrambled out of the car and ran across to throw her arms round her father. ‘Daddy! It's been such ages. I've missed you so much.'

A snort shot out of the beard. ‘Self-pity never boiled a haddock.'

I looked at Uncle Tristram as if to ask, ‘What's that to do with anything?' and he shrugged back. Then, ‘Look at the man,' he whispered. ‘His face is miserable enough to make a funeral procession turn up a side street. You'll have to rescue the poor girl. Hurry up. Get out of the car and be cheerful.'

‘Why
me
? Where are you going?'

He hummed and ha-ed, and in the end the only thing he could come up with was, ‘I'm going to find somewhere to park, away from the seagulls.'

‘We're at the
sea
,' I pointed out. ‘Over there are the
sand
dunes. That is the beach. There will be seagulls everywhere.'

‘Just get out,' Uncle Tristram said, ‘and earn your keep. Say happy things till I get back.'

I scrambled out and went to stand beside poor Morning Glory. ‘Oh, what a lovely beach!' I said. I clasped my hands together in delight, just like Titania does when someone asks her to recite one of her ghastly poems or sing one of her ghastly songs. ‘Look at the way the sun is glittering on those waves!'

Her father said despondently, ‘Aye. But don't forget that midsummer is less than a spit away from the start of next winter.'

I took a deep breath. ‘But it's nice today!'

‘For each summer morning, we've a bitter winter night to come.'

‘Cheer up, Dad,' Morning Glory urged. ‘At least I've made it over here.'

He gave a listless shrug. ‘One visit more, one visit less.'

‘Oh, come on,' Morning Glory wailed. ‘You mustn't start to think about how many times we'll ever get to see each other again. You'll live for ages yet!'

‘Maybe I didn't mean myself,' said Morning Glory's father, adding morosely, ‘Don't you forget, my precious, the bonniest flower is often the first to wilt.'

I gasped. But Uncle Tristram had given me a job and I thought I should at least be making a stab at doing it when he came back. So I said cheerfully, ‘Morning Glory
is
pretty, isn't she?'

‘Fair hair can hide dark roots,' he warned. ‘Her sins will have to go down in the book of No Rubbing Out, along with everyone else's.'

Morning Glory looked horrified, burst into tears, and I gave up.

FARTING DONKEYS

It was Uncle Tristram who rescued us. Striding up manfully, he seized Morning Glory by the arm and led her away. Hastily I scuttled after them. ‘What's up?' I heard him asking her. ‘Don't tell me your dad's upsetting you already?'

Still weeping, she nodded.

‘He's told her that she's going to die soon and she'll go to Hell,' I sneaked to Uncle Tristram.

Uncle Tristram stared. ‘I was away two minutes!' He strode back to Morning Glory's father and put on a beaming smile. ‘Well, absolutely lovely to have met you, Mr . . . ?'

‘McFee,' growled Mr McFee.

‘Of course! McFee. But really we only popped in to invite you to join us at the island fair on Saturday.'

‘Look for me that day in my bed,' said Mr McFee. ‘I'll probably have my face turned to the wall.'

‘Don't want to see the farting donkeys?' Uncle Tristram asked.

‘I don't.'

‘Or have your head licked by the Arabian camel?'

‘No, I do not.'

‘You could enter the Eating Things on Sticks competition.'

‘No, thank you.'

‘Oh, well,' said Uncle Tristram cheerfully. ‘Sadly, we have plans for the rest of today. But should you change your mind on Saturday, you'll find us at the fair, eating our things on sticks.'

He ushered us down the track to where he'd parked the car inside some bushes.

‘
Will
there be farting donkeys?' I asked eagerly.

‘I doubt it,' Uncle Tristram said.

‘What about a head-licking camel?'

‘Oh, do grow up!' said Uncle Tristram. ‘Can't you see I was just trying to ease the three of us out of the old man's doleful gravitational field without being rude?'

‘Oh,' I said, disappointed. ‘But there will be eating things on sticks?'

‘Yes,' Morning Glory assured me. ‘There will be eating things on sticks.'

We all piled back into the car.

‘Well,' Uncle Tristram said. ‘That visit went well, didn't it?'

I leaned forward to ask Morning Glory, ‘If your dad's as gloomy as all that, how come he even agreed to let you have the name you do?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, “Morning Glory”! It's such a cheerful, optimistic name.'

She cocked her head to one side. ‘I suppose it is,' she said, as if she'd never given it a thought before. ‘But, there again, everyone says he used to be a very cheerful, optimistic man.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes,' Morning Glory insisted. ‘I'm told by everyone that he was “a veritable sunbeam”.'

‘
Him?
'

‘Yes.'

‘So what went wrong?'

‘It's a sad story,' Morning Glory said. ‘He was a really good runner. Championship standard, Mum says, and everyone agrees he had a chance at running in the Olympics. But he was so busy training, he ran right past the notice board down at the ferry terminal every day for a month and never slowed up long enough to read the signs plastered all over it. And Mum had just had me, so she had not been out much and hadn't heard about the changes in the timetable. So it was only when he went down to the terminal to get to the mainland to compete in his heats that he found out that his ferry had been cancelled.'

‘Well, there you go.' Uncle Tristram shook his head with the wisdom of bitter experience. ‘Glerhus dill sotblug.'

‘That's right!' said Morning Glory. ‘And ever since that day when my father missed his one and only chance of winning something wonderful, he has been miserable. That's why my mother ran away to the other side of the island. She says she'll never think of coming back until he smiles again.'

‘That is a
tragic
tale,' said Uncle Tristram. We sat in respectful silence for a few seconds, and then he added, ‘I really think we ought to cheer ourselves up a bit. What shall we do?'

‘Is there a cinema on the island?' I asked.

Both of them looked at me as if I'd asked, ‘Is there a Disneyland?' We settled for a walk along the beach. Uncle Tristram and Morning Glory strolled on ahead. He put his arm round her, and kept on leaning closer to dry her tears about her gloomy father, or kiss her or something. I was so far behind I couldn't really see. At one point I felt cross enough to shout at them, ‘This is so boring it could be one of Aunt Susan's ghastly
nature
walks.'

The wind was gale force, though. My words were blown away.

TELL ME! GO ON! TELL ME! TELL ME!

On the ride home, I asked them curiously, ‘How did you two meet?'

Both of them looked embarrassed.

‘Go on,' I pushed. ‘Tell me.'

‘It's just too silly,' Uncle Tristram said. ‘I'd feel an idiot telling you the story.'

‘So would I,' Morning Glory said.

I thought she'd crack first, so I started on her. ‘Go on. Go on. Tell me. Go on. Please! Tell me! Tell me!'

‘For God's sake,' Uncle Tristram said. ‘Just tell the boy before I push him out of the car.'

So Morning Glory told me the story of how she'd begged a ride to London after an argument with someone on the island.

‘Your dad?'

‘No.'

‘Who, then?'

‘Not telling,' she answered petulantly.

‘Just give me one small clue. Did he have a beard?'

She plain ignored me. I didn't push my luck.

‘OK,' I said. ‘You went to London in a bit of a snit.'

‘I was not in a snit,' she said. ‘I was bereft!'

‘That's how I found her,' Uncle Tristram said. ‘The poor girl was sitting on her suitcase, weeping. I offered her a place to stay.'

‘Only so long as I got rid of that spider.'

‘What spider?' I asked Morning Glory.

She grinned. ‘The one that was keeping him out of his bathroom.'

‘The thing was
massive!
' Uncle Tristram said. He spread his arms to show me. ‘It had been squatting there for days!'

‘It was a money spider,' Morning Glory said. ‘Tiny. I stayed a week.'

‘Was it a week?' said Uncle Tristram. ‘It seemed to pass in a
flash
.' He leaned back to say to me airily over his shoulder, ‘Then that morose bearded maggot we just made the mistake of visiting sent her a note.'

‘What did it say?'

‘I can't remember,' Uncle Tristram said. ‘Perhaps a few tribal curses. Something about the stern path of duty. The road to London is the shortcut to Hell. That kind of thing.'

‘He told me to come back for Aunty Audrey's funeral,' Morning Glory said. ‘While I had gone, she'd died of a heart attack and left me the house.'

‘This one we're staying in?'

‘That's right.'

Scales tumbled from my eyes. ‘So all that lumpy brown furniture and stuff is your Aunt Audrey's, not yours? All of those knitted pigs and china owls?'

‘Some of the pigs are crocheted,' said Morning Glory. ‘And one or two of the owls are made from a rather fine terracotta.'

‘I'm going to make them have their Grand Battle soon,' said Uncle Tristram. ‘My money's on the pigs.'