The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy (10 page)

‘Erm, what do we have to do?’ whispered Amy.

Daniel and Betty shook their heads at Amy’s stupidity. ‘Tell her, Daniel,’ whispered Betty.

Daniel looked at Betty. ‘Erm . . .’ he said.

‘Go on,’ whispered Betty, ‘tell her.’

‘You tell her,’ whispered Daniel. ‘You’re the one who knows about all these things.’

‘Why am I always the one?’ Betty whispered quite loudly. ‘I’m getting fed up of being the one. I’m going to quit!’

‘No!’ pleaded Amy. ‘Please don’t leave me with Daniel!’

‘Look,’ said Daniel, a little upset that Amy wasn’t exactly ecstatic at the thought of being left alone with him. ‘Let’s stop and think about what to do next.’

As they stood there, stopping and thinking about what to do next, occasionally casting a glance in the direction of Old Hag who
definitely
seemed to be in a trance, Whatshisname padded over to the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock. He nudged it with his nose and whined a little whine. The children looked at him as he then padded over to the wardrobe and nudged the door with his nose, which was proving to be an excellent part of his anatomy for occasional nudging. Indeed, it was probably the only part of his anatomy made for occasional nudging.

The children looked inquisitively at him, so he sat by the wardrobe, waiting, occasionally nodding his head towards the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock, then towards the wardrobe.

‘Ah!’ said Daniel, eventually.

‘Ah!’ said Betty, even more eventually.

‘What?’ said Amy, stupidly.

‘I’ve had an incredibly good idea about what we should do!’ said Daniel. ‘My incredibly good idea is that we should set that switch on that homemade thing that isn’t an alarm clock, then go into the wardrobe and it will send us back in time to help Uncle Quagmire!’

‘Exactly,’ said Betty.

‘Okay,’ said Amy.

‘Woof woof woof?’ said Whatshisname, which meant
ahem, whose idea?

Daniel reached over to the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock and was about to flick its switch when Old Hag suddenly opened her eyes again.

‘Ha!’ she cackled. ‘I overheard you all chatting. Great news, I’m coming with you!’

‘I thought you were in a trance,’ said Daniel.

‘No, Dandy, I
wasn’t
in a trance!’ Old Hag shouted. ‘I was concentrating! Hard!’

‘And anyway,’ said Amy, ‘you said that the bed was Uncle
Quagmire’s time machine, and you were wrong!’

‘I was close! Anyway, I’m old!’ said Old Hag. ‘My memory’s not what it used to be when I was but a slip of a lad . . . or was it a slip of a lass? See what I mean? But, hold on, I’m sure there’s something else I should tell you at this point. Now whatever was it?’

‘Go on, girls,’ Daniel said. ‘Into the wardrobe before Old Hag comes out of her trance!’

‘Hey!’ yelled Old Hag. She struggled to get off the bed as Betty stepped over to the wardrobe. Betty opened the door a little and peeped inside, then pulled the door open wide. ‘It looks just like a normal big wardrobe to me,’ she said. ‘Except that it’s empty and devoid of anything that looks consequential in any way.’

‘Right, get in!’ said Daniel, enjoying being in charge for a change, even though his spectacles hadn’t yet appeared. ‘And you, Amy, drag Whatshisname inside with you. Then I’ll flick this switch and join you.’

‘What about me?’ said Old Hag as she fell off the bed, landing with her head tucked between a shapely pair of Queen Anne legs.

‘Sorry, Old Hag,’ said Daniel in his best apologetic voice. ‘The wardrobe’s full. We have health and safety considerations to consider. And you’d only be in the way of our super adventure.’

‘And it
is
our destiny to rescue Uncle Quagmire,’ added Betty as she stepped into the wardrobe. Amy followed her, pulling Whatshisname in by his ears. Old Hag was struggling to get up as Daniel made sure that the display on the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock was still set to 1964, then he flicked the switch and hurried into the wardrobe. Even without spectacles, he thought, he’d make a pretty good leader. He slammed the door shut, and they all held their breath!

From inside, they could hear Old Hag banging her scrawny fists on the door and calling, ‘I’ve remembered what it was! There’s a chapt . . .’

In which there’s hardly time to draw a breath; it’s over in a flash, and a complete waste of a chapter number; there’s a wardrobe and not much other stuff; these chapter preambles just slow down the narrative pace, and that’s very irritating; the faithful dog Whatshisname clings fondly to a leg and recalls the good times.

In the wardrobe the children were still holding their breath, thankfully unaware of any sneaky literary divisions, but fully aware of a gentle rocking of the wardrobe from side to side. Amy, unsurprisingly, was very scared and clung to Daniel tightly. Whatshisname was also quite frightened, and wrapped his front paws around Amy’s leg, giving him an opportunity to fondly recall old times. The gentle rocking of the wardrobe was accompanied by a piercing high pitched noise, which sounded very much like a scream, very much like a woman screaming, very much like an old woman screaming, very much like . . .

The door burst open and there stood Old Hag, screaming, ‘Take me! Take me!’

Daniel was rather aghast at first, as he thought that Old Hag was ready to take full advantage of the Sixties’ reputation for its free love and the moral vacuum that existed before Dyson came along, but soon realised that they hadn’t gone back in time at all. Old Hag must have stopped the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock!

‘Take me! You need me!’ shouted Old Hag. ‘I’m going to go with you. Let me in!’

‘You stopped it!’ said Amy, frantically trying to shake Whatshisname off her leg. ‘That’s not fair! You’re ruining our
adventure! Anyway, there’s only room for three persons in here.’

‘But I’ve got a two-for-one voucher!’ Old Hag cried, foraging about in her cardigan pocket.

‘Oh, let’s take her,’ said Betty. ‘After all, she is a member, and we no longer have Ricky. She can be a poor substitute. Come on in, Old Hag. Hurry!’

‘Ha! You won’t regret this,’ said Old Hag as she clambered in. But it was too late, as they already had.

Daniel went over to reset the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock. He flicked the switch and hurried back into the wardrobe. He slammed the door, and they waited and waited. Whatshisname still clung to Amy’s leg, sighing and with the merest hint of a smile. Amy clung to Daniel, who also sighed and had the merest hint of a startled frown.

One moment the wardrobe was there, and the next moment – it was still there. And, indeed, the next moment and the moment after that. But apart from all this being still there, absolutely nothing was happening inside the wardrobe – no whirring noises, no spinning through a tunnel-type spinning thing, no computer-graphically-enhanced whirling through time and space with a background of eeee-ooooh-eeeeee-wa-wa-wa-ooooo-eeeeee music.

‘This is absolutely horrid. Nothing’s happening,’ said Amy. ‘I expected at least to be whirling through time and space. Do you think the bottom is going to drop out of the wardrobe? Do you?’

In which we meet Uncle Quagmire and immediately regret it; a coach load of peripheral characters make an appearance; stunt nuns are gently introduced into the storyline for some obscure reason; Daniel completely destroys a humdinger of a cliffhanger chapter ending.

Uncle Quagmire was a strange fellow at the best of times and, with a literary flourish, at the worst of times. He was quite an odd-looking fellow for his height, and had a bit of a jolly face. That bit was his nose, which had a jolly shape to it with two matching nostrils. Apart from that, his face was quite sullen looking, but he couldn’t see it from where he usually stood so it didn’t really matter to him. He was clean-shaven under the little beard on his chin and the little moustache above his top lip, and he had mightily small ears for the size of his head. Altogether he looked like a slightly eccentric scientist, but the children knew that he had a heart of gold, which he kept in a jar in a cupboard under the stairs.

Uncle Quagmire’s worries about the first testing of his time machine had proved to be unfounded. His recent failed inventions, to be honest, had given him cause for concern. The inflatable travel dartboard idea had attracted the attention of the authorities after a spot of bother on a BA flight to Dubai, and several experiments with his rocket-powered mousetrap had repeatedly caused damage to the village church’s ancient stained glass window, which now incorporated several spread-eagled-mouse-shaped holes in the sacred depiction of the Last Supper, one of them missing Judas Iscariot’s pint of shandy by a whisker.

But his prototype time machine had worked spectacularly! Just twenty-one minutes ago he had landed safely, with a bit of a
bump, on a swath of small flowers which looked quite out of place in a large flower bed in the middle of 1964 Salzburg.

‘My goodness!’ he had muttered to himself, looking around in slight wonderment. ‘It worked! My time machine actually worked! Assuming this is 1964, of course. How splendacious!’

People had stared at him as though he’d just dropped out of the sky! He’d stood up and had marvelled at his own ingenuity. But he knew that all the spontaneous marvelling must be curbed, for he had an important mission, and that mission was top-secret, so he couldn’t tell a soul about it. Except, that is, a coach party of swarthy men and their even swarthier wives that he’d met as he was brushing the crushed flowers off his clothes. They had stopped to ask the way to somewhere or other. During his explanation on how to get to somewhere or other he inadvertently told them all about his secret mission.

‘Bother!’ he said, after a few minutes of studious attention by the group of swarthy yet attentive people. ‘I’m not supposed to tell anyone all this secret stuff.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ one swarthy man at the back shouted. ‘You have to bear in mind, good fellow, that we are all Italians from a nearby place called Italy, and we don’t speak or understand any English whatsoever, as sure as day follows night. Not a single word. We didn’t comprehend a bloomin’ word, and that’s no lie, so you have no worries on that count, chum.’

‘He’s dead right,’ his swarthy Italian wife added. ‘Every man-jack of us didn’t understand any of that stuff you just said, but we’re tickled pink that you’ve told us the way to somewhere or other, and explained all about your secret mission, pal.’

‘Phew!’ said Uncle Quagmire, wiping his own brow with one of his free hands. ‘I was almost compromisated then. I really appreciate your swarthy honesty.’

‘It’s been a sheer pleasure,’ yet another swarthy man said, before leading his swarthy coach party off stage-left. Uncle Quagmire walked away, knowing exactly what his mission
instructions were, and exactly where he was supposed to go next.

But just as he was walking away and wondering where he was supposed to go next, he heard a series of whooshing and thudding noises that sounded like three children, a dog and an old hag landing on a Salzburg flower bed!

‘Ouch!’ cried Amy. ‘That hurt!’

‘Not as much as it hurt me. You landed on me!’ said Daniel. That made them all laugh, except Whatshisname, who was incapable of laughing due to the structure of the canine neural circuits, and who always experienced a great deal of trouble responding to the punch lines of jokes unless accompanied by a proffered Good Boy biscuit.

‘Look! There’s Uncle Quagmire!’ exclaimed Betty, pointing her finger accurately at Uncle Quagmire.

‘And so it is!’ said Amy, quite excitedly. ‘And still as badly-dressed as ever!’

Whatshisname scampered happily over to Uncle Quagmire and joyfully bit his left ankle rather firmly. Their relationship had certainly seen better times, many sticks ago. Understandably, those better times were before the unfortunate bouncing-dog experiment involving the home-made trebuchet, the over-zealous trampoline and the ill-fated queue of people at the bus stop.

The children ran over to Uncle Quagmire, leaving Old Hag floundering on the flower bed.

‘Oy! Wait for me!’ she yelled. ‘I’m old, you know!’

‘Uncle Quagmire!’ cried Amy in quite a girly way. ‘We didn’t know what had happened to you! Old Hag told us you were on a secret mission.’

‘Yes, I certainly am,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘but as it’s so secret I’d probably have to kill you with my bare hands if I told you about it.’

‘That’s okay,’ said Amy. ‘Tell us all about it, please do!’

‘Later,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘Where’s the other one . . . erm, the boy, you know the one, always hungry – quite ugly – ah yes, Ricky, that’s his name.’

‘He left us,’ said Daniel, fairly responsibly and just as seriously. ‘He said he was being treated badly and stormed off. Old Hag here has taken his place.’

‘Oh bother, not her!’ Uncle Quagmire said. ‘She’s old, you know.’

They all turned and watched as Old Hag raised herself out of the flower bed. ‘Ha!’ she cried as she eventually scuttled over to them. ‘So, this is 1964, is it?’

‘1964?’ gasped Betty. ‘Gosh and wow! But where are we? Is this Stoke-on-Trent?’

‘No, silly girl,’ said Uncle Quagmire, having a private chuckle at Betty’s expense. ‘This is like Stoke-on-Trent but it’s more like Salzburg.’

‘The one near Brisbane?’ asked Daniel. ‘Golly, how exciting!’

Uncle Quagmire had yet another private chuckle, with the reassuring thought that two private chuckles in the space of a few seconds was really going some.

‘No,’ he said. ‘This Salzburg is near Austria, which is closely joined by land to several other neighbouring countries.’

‘Gosh!’ said Daniel, ever eager to expand his woefully inadequate knowledge about European geography and, surreptitiously, the history of lace making in the East Midlands.

‘I tell you what,’ said Uncle Quagmire, keen to maintain the narrative pace. ‘All this fantasterful time-travelling has made me quite thirsty. How about finding a shop that dispenses drinks and we’ll chat all about it over a scrumlicious cup of whatever they sell in these times.’