My Sister Jodie (12 page)

‘You're the number one mucker,' said Harley.

‘Charmingly put! I wonder if they'll do a play this year? I want to be in it. Is there a proper stage here, Harley?'

‘Of sorts. So, Dame Jodie, this is presumably the start of your acclaimed acting career?' said Harley.

‘Do not mock! My moment of fame will come, you'll see,' said Jodie. ‘I'm going to be a mega star.'

‘Do you want to act too, Pearl?' Harley asked.

‘I like dressing up and pretending, but not in front of people!' I said.

‘So what do you want to do?'

‘I think I want to write,' I said shyly.

‘She's written heaps and heaps. You should get her to show you. Some of her stories are brilliant,' said Jodie.

‘No, they're not, they're rubbish,' I said, blushing. ‘And my stories aren't anywhere
near
as good as yours. Tell Harley some of your stories, the really creepy, bloody ones.'

‘He thinks we're weird enough already,' said Jodie.

‘I
like
weird! I positively celebrate it,' said Harley. ‘I
have
to take that standpoint as you don't get much weirder than me. I'm going to earn a fortune exploiting my own weirdness. I shall do my best to keep on growing and be a living freak in a circus – Harley the Hundred-Metre Man. They'll have to construct an enormously tall tent to exhibit me,
with staircases and balconies so that people can climb up and gawp at me eyeball to eyeball.'

‘Yeah, you're weird all right,' said Jodie. She rattled ten or twelve walking sticks in a wonky umbrella stand. ‘Hey, are these
canes
? Does Mr Wilberforce whack you on the bum when you've been bad?' She took two of the canes and hobbled backwards and forwards with them. Then she pressed down hard on them, balancing, and swung between them. There was a hatstand too, with bowlers and trilbys and caps, even a battered grey top hat. Harley put it on and then draped a long black cape over his shoulders.

‘Hey, it fits, more or less,' he said, swaggering about, doffing his hat to us.

‘Are they costumes for some old-fashioned play?' said Jodie.

I picked up a moth-eaten fur stole with two creepy little animal heads at one end. They had staring glass eyes and glinting teeth.

‘Yuck, they're real furry creatures,' I said, dropping it on the floor. ‘I don't think they're dressing-up costumes, they're real Victorian ones. I drew some like this for my Victorian project at school.'

‘
This
isn't Victorian,' said Jodie, hauling a heavy mink coat round her shoulders. She tossed her hair and struck a film-star pose.

‘And what about this?' said Harley, slipping his long arms into a soft white fur jacket.

It looked ridiculous on him, his wrists and splayed hands sticking out miles below the cuffs.

Jodie laughed. ‘You look like a half-skinned rabbit.' She stroked him mockingly. ‘Good
bunnykins. Hey, I think that jacket
is
rabbit. Oh dear, it's so sad. Yet it's so soft too. Let
me
try it on, Harley.'

‘It's like all the people who ever lived here left their coats behind,' I said.

‘Perhaps that's why they're here. Maybe these all belonged to Mrs Wilberforce's family, her parents and grandparents,' said Harley, wriggling out of the jacket and letting Jodie try it on.

It looked lovely on her. She kept it on while we went on to the next room. Jodie was an expert at getting in now. We couldn't find any more clothes, apart from a splendid crimson smoking jacket with a matching tasselled fez and a half-finished long white dress still pinned on a dressmaker's dummy.

‘Oh, it has to be a wedding dress,' said Harley. ‘This is too Miss Havisham for words!'

I'd seen the film of
Great Expectations
on television and remembered Miss Haversham was the old lady who'd been jilted on her wedding day, so I could nod intelligently.

Jodie pinched the waist and held out the long skirts. ‘Yes, it's definitely a wedding dress, a total white meringue,' she said. ‘Sooo, was it going to be Mrs Wilberforce's dress? And then some guy jilted her, so she threw herself from the tower in deep despair.'

‘Sherlock Jodie,' said Harley. ‘Though I doubt it's as elemementary as that.'

‘Poor Mrs Wilberforce,' I said.

‘You can ask her all about it when you take her book back,' said Jodie.

‘I can't do that! She might not like me talking
about it. How awful if something like that really
did
happen,' I said.

‘It's not real, we're just making it up,' said Jodie. She took the white rabbit fur coat off and draped it tenderly round the dummy's shoulders over the long white dress. ‘There now,' she said softly.

She went on to explore the next room. ‘Pearl! Pearl, come and look at this!' she called.

I went running. I stared around the room, my mouth open. It was like a nursery, with a beautiful Victorian scrap screen, four panels of plump-cheeked pouting children, overblown roses, little bluebirds with beady eyes, and flying fairies with spotted butterfly wings. There were old wooden chairs painted with hearts and flowers, a wobbly washstand, an old clothes horse, a misshapen fire-guard and a big leather trunk.

Jodie tried to prise it open but she was a nail biter and couldn't get a proper grip.

‘Go on, Pearl, you do it,' she said. ‘I don't think it's locked, it's just stiff.'

I bent over and tugged hard, using my hands like hooks. The lid gave a little and I started levering it up.

I peeped inside.

‘Oh!' I said, sitting back on my heels. My arm trembled as I eased the lid right up. ‘Oh!' I said again. ‘Oh, oh, oh!'

‘You sound like a session singer, Pearl,' said Harley, standing in the doorway. ‘What's in the trunk? Diamonds? Gold bars? Rubies big as gravel?'

‘Better better better,' I said. ‘It's
toys
.'

The trunk seemed full of old stuffed animals
carefully swaddled in scraps of white silk, laid end to end.

‘I thought you said you were too old for toys now?' Jodie teased. ‘Go on, get them all out so we can see what's there.'

I didn't like to disturb them. They looked as if they were in little silk shrouds in a communal coffin.

‘Maybe we should just leave them exactly as they are,' I said.

‘Nonsense,' said Jodie, leaning over, prodding this one and that one. She found a brown furry arm and pulled. ‘It's a
monkey
!' she said. ‘Look, a chimp in blue trousers with a red bow tie. Isn't he cute!' She pulled him out and then shrieked when his big beige rubbery foot slithered down her front and fell to the floor. ‘Oh,
gross
! He's gone rotten, he's all warped and manky.'

She dropped him so that he fell beside his severed foot. He went on gamely grinning with his orange mouth.

‘Poor manky monkey,' said Harley.

I went and picked him up, feeling sorry for him. His foot was horribly wrinkled and spongy. I didn't like touching it, but I tried poking it back into the monkey's hollow leg. It fell straight off again, flopping into my lap.

‘Perhaps we could glue it on?' I said, smoothing his fur and pulling up his trousers, trying to comfort him.

Jodie was poking further into the trunk. ‘God, there's a whole
family
of rotting monkeys incarcerated in here, look!' She held up a girl monkey in a blue dress and pinafore. She had little earrings piercing her crumbling ears.

‘Hey, I like her little starry studs,' said Jodie, trying to pick them out.

‘Don't take them away from her!' I said.

‘Look, she's only got half her ears left. She doesn't
need
earrings.'

‘Yes she does!' I tried to think of a way of getting Jodie to back off. ‘Maybe the earrings made her ears get all infected and that's why bits have dropped off. If you take the earrings, then your ears will go like that too,' I said, taking the girl monkey and rocking her in my arms.

‘You two are so seriously mental,' said Harley. ‘So, we've got Hop-along and Nibble-ear. Anyone else?'

Jodie found a baby monkey in a long white dress. She had a bonnet pulled very low over her eyes, which was just as well, because half her face had peeled away. Then we found her big brother in a red waistcoat and black cord trousers. He was in better condition, but he'd lost one thumb.

‘So, we have Little Faceless and Greedy Suck-a-thumb,' said Harley, settling them in my lap. ‘There you are, Nurse Pearl, a set of little simian patients for you to put to rights. And when you're done doctoring them, you can do a dormie round. Zeph's teddy has suffered a serious amputation.'

‘Do they all have teddies?' said Jodie, fiddling with a doll. She had a pretty face and long fair hair but her arms and legs dangled dejectedly, her internal elastics rotted away.

‘Dan has his Man,' said Harley.

‘What, Action Man?' I said.

‘No, it's one of those creepy biology kits where you see inside this transparent man to all his heart
and lungs and liver. He has no willy though. I wittily suggested calling him Willy-Nilly but Dan insists his name is simply Man.'

‘How come he's got one of those things? He's only a baby,' said Jodie.

‘I think he's got these weirdo parents who want him to be an infant phenomenon,' said Harley. ‘He's also got a Peter Rabbit cuddly toy but he never plays with it. I read him the
Peter Rabbit
story, and then I took him out to the vegetable garden and we played Peter Rabbit eating all the lettuces but Dan was rather half-hearted about it and poor old Peter got a bit muddy burrowing in the cabbage patch. His paws have never been the same since.'

‘You call
us
weird!' said Jodie. ‘Do you think the kids would like to play with the monkeys? Or do they have to stay chained to that Miss Ponsonby all day?'

‘Pretty much,' said Harley. ‘I think they'd love to come up here, but I'm not sure we could trust them to keep quiet about it. If anyone finds out, we're in
big
trouble.'

‘OK, this is our secret,' said Jodie. ‘So what else is along here? We might as well take it all in while we can.'

We found a room with an open door full of old bedroom furniture – dressing tables and spotted mirrors and a large wardrobe.

‘Hey, let's go to Narnia!' said Harley, opening the wardrobe door a crack.

‘Idiot,' said Jodie, but she got right in the wardrobe.

I got in too. Harley squeezed in beside us, bending his head right down, and pulled the door
shut. It was so dark inside that we couldn't see a thing. We stood squashed up together, giggling a little hysterically. I wanted to hold Jodie's hand but worried that I might grab Harley by mistake.

‘So where's Narnia, then?' said Harley. ‘Let us in, Wicked Queen. I want to ride on your sleigh and nibble your Turkish delight.' He banged his fists on the back of the wardrobe.

‘There's no Narnia,' said Jodie. ‘No way out the back of the wardrobe. And no way out the front either. You've shut the door and the handle's on the outside. We can't get out! We're entombed here for ever! We can shout and yell and hammer with our fists, but we're way at the end of the forbidden corridor and no one will ever hear us. We're stuck in this wardrobe like three corpses in a coffin—'

‘Shut
up
, Jodie!' I said, panicking, pushing on the wardrobe door.

It gave easily and I tumbled out into the room again, landing on my knees. Jodie jumped out after me, laughing her head off. Harley unfurled himself after her, laughing too.

‘That was
horrible
!' I said. ‘Don't make stuff up like that, Jodie, you make it too real.'

‘It was just a silly joke, babes,' said Jodie. ‘We were only in a
wardrobe
.'

‘Yes, but you made it seem like it was a real coffin.'

‘I quite fancy the real coffin idea,' said Harley. ‘It would be cool to have your own comfy coffin to curl up in, only emerging by the light of the full moon, teeth bared, ready for a little snack.'

‘If you keep on growing, they'll have to make you a special long long long coffin, like those long black
boats you get in Venice,' said Jodie.

‘Gondolas? Yes, even better. I could float down some murky Venetian canal, ferried by a mournful-looking black-robed gondolier.'

‘Have you even been to Venice, Harley?' I asked shyly.

‘Yes, I went with my ma, when she was temporarily between men, just before she met my current stepfather.'

‘I suppose you've been to lots of places abroad?' Jodie asked.

‘Some. Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Florence, America lots of time – just the usual,' said Harley.

‘That's maybe
your
usual, matie. We haven't been anywhere, have we, Pearl? We went to Spain once but Mum got all fussed about the noise from the nightclub and Dad didn't like the food. Honestly, they're a joke, our parents.'

‘Not as jokey as mine,' said Harley. ‘I'll swap you.'

‘Sure!' said Jodie.

‘You don't know what they're like.'

‘I'll take a chance. It'll give Mum a break. She's desperate to get rid of me.'

‘She is
not
!' I said.

‘Oh go on. You know perfectly well you're Mum's favourite, Pearl,' said Jodie.

‘Well, you're
Dad
's favourite. And you're
my
favourite too,' I said.

‘Really, Pearly? Even though I scare you rotten?' said Jodie, suddenly clasping her hands round my neck, pretending to throttle me.

I started tickling her in retaliation and she shrieked.

‘Ssh! Shut up, Jodie. I will get in
so
much trouble
if we're caught,' said Harley.