The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy (27 page)

‘But he’s a Policeman!’ shouted Betty. ‘It was him who arrested us! This isn’t British justice at its very best, is it now?’

The Magistrate banged his trained fist on the desk again, and was becoming rather red in the face. But then, very suddenly and quite inexplicably, the doors flew open wide! The people in the courtroom were so astonished that some of them raised one or both of their eyebrows. Everyone turned their heads to see a figure standing in the doorway!

‘It’s Whatshisname!’ shouted Daniel. ‘At last! He’s come to rescue us!’

‘No it’s not!’ said Betty. ‘Silly boy. Can you smell creosote or pineapple? Can you? Hmmm? No! It’s the figure of a man, standing silhouetted in the courtroom doorway!’

‘Nice imagery, Betty,’ whispered Daniel. ‘Who is it?’

‘Wait!’ the figure of a man said in a rather stern man’s voice. ‘Enough of this interminable courtroom scene!
I’ll
be a character witness for these two dear harmless inept children. Now, where do I need to stand for maximum dramatic effect?’

Betty and Daniel were transfixed! They stared at the figure of a man. They might now be saved from their ghastly fate!

But who was the figure? And where had he come from? And why was he stark naked?

In which our heroes meet yet another peripheral character but this one has severe dandruff; Amy and Ricky are close to saving the world; or maybe not; there is mention of a four-in-a-bed romp but don’t get too excited; that may be George Michael hiding behind the kangaroo; no, for legal purposes, it’s definitely not.

‘Honestly, Amy!’ moaned Ricky. ‘Do you have to keep landing on top of me?’

‘I couldn’t help it!’ squeaked Amy. ‘I don’t have any control over it, do I? It’s the sprouts and the wardrobe that have the control, apparently. And will you stop doing that to me! You’re fondling my buttocks! Again! I’m your sister!’

‘I’m
not
fondling, I’m just trying to get you off me!’ said Ricky. ‘But, I must admit, you are jolly well firm-bodied and I did feel a strangely erotic sense of eroticism which, I think, must be totally out of character and not wise for a brother-sister relationship, surely.’

Amy struggled to her feet on the school’s lush lawn where they had landed. She was quite red in the face! ‘What silly talk! Just get up off the lush lawn,’ she ordered, with very little ill-feeling and even less understanding of the word
eroticism
.

Ricky struggled to his feet and looked about him. ‘Where are we? I’m hungry.’

‘Hopefully we’re in 1980!’ Amy snapped. ‘Remember? We made sure the Nixie clock was set to the right year this time and then we asked Uncle Quagmire to keep Old Hag away from our wardrobe when we time-travelled.’ She paused uncertainly then lowered her voice. ‘Is that enough backstory?’

Ricky nodded his head twice. He was still quite embarrassed at the strange sense of eroticism which, interestingly, seemed to be stronger than his usual uncontrollable sense of hunger.

Amy looked carefully around her. ‘It looks very much like a school,’ she observed. ‘Sort of big, with big windows and a big roof to keep the small pupils quite dry. How exciting! I haven’t been in one of these for ages!’

‘Hopefully, this is Sampson’s school, the Stanley Gibbons School for the Fairly Gifted,’ Ricky said.

Just then, without warning, a first floor window clattered open and a man’s head and shoulders poked out, causing an outbreak of scattered showers of dandruff onto the shrubbery below. ‘Hey, you two pupils!’ the man called. ‘What were you doing there, lying on the grass? Were you indulging in a congress? Did I miss a concrescence?’

Amy frowned and looked quite confused. She wasn’t used to such language and so many syllables in one sentence. She turned to Ricky, who looked just as quite confused. He was also perplexed at all the talk of a concrescence on the lawn. He looked around for a statue.

‘Please sir,’ Amy called to the head and shoulders of the man. ‘We weren’t doing anything naughty like . . .’ She tried desperately to remember the correct terminology. ‘. . . like canoodling, if that’s what you meant. We’ve only just arrived from 1964, you see. We’re looking for someone called Sampson de Lylow so that we can stop him from becoming evil and then we will have saved the world.’

The man didn’t look too convinced. ‘I’m not too convinced,’ he called. ‘And I probably don’t look as though I am either. Now, shoulders back, stand upright, and get inside before I start to take my duties as headmaster very seriously for a change. And if I find, when examining the photographs I took of you very secretly with my six-point-two-million-pixel digital camera, that you were up to no good then it’s the high jump for you. Or the shot put, as
we’re quite short of participants in that particular discipline in the Inter-School Underperformers’ Olympics.’

‘Please, sir,’ called Ricky. ‘Two things before you go. One, did you know that your severe dandruff can easily be cured by use of a good shampoo containing selenium sulphide, eating plenty of Vitamin B6, and a strict hair-washing regime where you avoid hairdryers? And two, do you actually know where we could find the boy called Sampson? We are, as my surprisingly firm-bodied sister suggested, The Secret Five on a mission to save the world from his future evilness, you see. We need to stop his utter humiliation.’

But, without warning, the man disappeared, slamming the window behind him. Then, just as suddenly, the window opened again and there were the man’s head and shoulders and further localised showers of dandruff.

‘So sorry,’ he called. ‘How foolish of me. An immediate correction is needed, before I get the letters flooding in. This is 1980, of course, and the digital camera doesn’t get properly invented until about seven years from now. I did, in fact, mean my Penron 35mm single lens reflex camera with its 100mm coated Sigtax lens with macro capability. Now, please carry on.’

‘Excuse me, don’t go, sir at the window,’ Amy called. ‘We are at the right school, aren’t we? The one that Sampson de Lylow was at in 1980?’

‘I can’t be expected to know everyone by name!’ yelled the man at the window. ‘It’s difficult enough trying to remember the name of my wife and my two secret lovers. I know one is called Simon, but the others? Hmmm, I’ll need to think about that. Anyway, why not pop along to the Big Hall. Most of the . . . what do you call them . . . you know, little people . . . children, that’s it, they’ll be in there.’ And, with that, he slammed the window and disappeared yet again, hopefully forever unless the story demands a four-in-a-bed romp.

Amy stamped her foot, critically wounding a rather unfortunate but rare lawn weevil in the process. ‘I really don’t want to be in
this story!’ she said, quite sulkily for a girl of her woefully inadequate shoe size. ‘He was horrid. There are so many rude characters in this adventure. We never ever meet
really
nice people, apart from little old ladies in their tea shops.’

Ricky crowded around her as best he could. ‘Come on, old thing,’ he said. ‘Let me give you a reassuring platonic hug. And did you mention tea shops?’

‘Ricky!’ Amy shrieked. ‘We have no time for, er, plutonic hugging or stupid tea shops! Don’t you have any sense of responsibility for the future of mankind? Come on, we must find Sampson.’

And, with that, she set off quickly and determinedly towards the school entrance.

‘Amy!’ called Ricky. ‘Come back!’

But Amy had disappeared, as predicted, into the school entrance, and Ricky was left pondering his options. Should he wait here for her to come back, maybe nursing the rare weevil back to health while he waited? Or was he brave enough to follow her and help to save the world?

Probably not, actually.

Just then, rather unexpectedly, Ricky looked upwards and scowled a big scowl at nothing in particular. ‘Oh yeah?’ he said. ‘Not brave enough, eh? I’ll show you!’

He set off towards the entrance. He looked quite determined, for a change.

Inside the school, Amy hurried and scurried down a corridor, hoping that she was hurrying and scurrying in the right direction. She stopped. Up until the use of the verb gerund
hoping
she was sure it was the right direction. Now she wasn’t so sure.

But then, right on time, she heard a boy’s voice say something of extreme importance.

‘Can I help you?’

She turned to face the boy’s voice, which came from the direction of a boy who had a lot of brown hair on his head and a really handsome tanned face. Both of Amy’s knees went all
wobbly, fortunately for her stability at the very same time.

‘Hi! I’m George,’ he said, holding out his tanned hand. ‘How are your wobbly knees?’

‘G-g-g-gosh!’ s-s-s-s-stammered Amy as she s-s-s-slipped her hand into his and let him sh-sh-sh-shake it. This might be, at long last, an indication of the emergence of her latent sexuality. ‘Hello George,’ she said, gazing into his big eyes. ‘I’m looking for the right direction for . . . we’re . . . I’m . . . erm . . . looking for Sampson. G-g-g-gosh!’

‘Why?’ George asked incisively, letting go of her hand.

Quite suddenly Ricky appeared at her side. He looked determined, and took the opportunity to glare firmly at George. ‘Ah, my darling sister, whom I will protect until my dying day,’ he said. He put his arm around his trophy sister. ‘Found you at last!’

Amy scowled hard at Ricky, pushed his arm off her shoulders and kicked out at his shins.

Ricky rubbed his shin, scowled back at Amy with a bigger and more robust scowl, then stood bravely in front of her, his arms folded, facing George. ‘Ahem! Let me politely explain who we are, as we must seem awfully mysterious to you. We are the forward spearhead contingent of The Secret Five and can’t stop to talk –
or to flirt
– or to give away the secret purpose of our secret mission apart from the fact that we’re travelling through time to try and save the world from the grip of an evil mega-monster and that we have two friends and their dog with a pink fluffy collar all stuck back in 1880 and who are probably lost forever but hey that’s life. And, before you ask, boy stranger, you’re far too good looking to join our intensely secret club. I’m so sorry. Is all that quite clear? Now, where’s Sampson de Lylow? And a handy tea shop.’

Amy was rooted to the spot, thanks to some carelessly discarded chewing gum. She peered over Ricky’s shoulder. ‘Let George join us if he asks,’ she whispered to Ricky. ‘Please?’

‘Oh, of course I’ll join,’ George said, flashing his whiter-than-white teeth at them. ‘And I think I can help. If you’re looking for
Sampson, I can help find him, I’m your man. Yeah.’ He wiggled his hips and ran his fingers silently through his own hair, as it would have been very forward of him to run them silently through someone else’s hair. ‘Sampson’s probably getting ready and doing some last minute rehearsing for the musical that we’re performing very soon. God knows he needs to.’

Ricky leaned forwards towards George. ‘Er, can I say something?’ he whispered. ‘We can’t mention God. If you don’t mind. Our Secret Five world is predominantly secular and godless, you see.’

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise,’ said George, apologetically wiggling his hips again.

‘A musical?’ said Amy, trying desperately to pick up the narrative pace a little.

‘Yeah,’ said George. ‘The school is performing a special musical version of
The Birthday Party.
’

‘Nick Cave’s Birthday Party?’ said Ricky, rather too cleverly for someone of his taste in breakfast cereals. ‘Wow! They are definitely the darkest of the post-punk bands, creating bleak and raucous soundscapes that are an ideal backdrop for Nick Cave’s dark and profound lyrics about religious perversity and extreme violence! Wow again! I love their rockabilly licks, their hellacious feedback and their unremitting pace and base rhythm! So, can I come and watch it? I also like Whitney Houston, by the way.’

George looked very strangely at Ricky. ‘Whitney who?’

‘No, Hou
ston
,’ said Ricky.

‘Oh. Well, you’re welcome to come along,’ George said, quite patiently. ‘But it’s actually Harold Pinter’s play
The Birthday Party
, and not Nick Cave’s band. We’ve rewritten it as a musical version, specially for tonight. Yeah.’

Suddenly he spun round on his heels and ended up pointing one of his fingers in their direction and sort of looking at them under his eyebrows in a mysterious way.

‘Yeah, you see,’ he continued, ‘I have considerable talent and wrote a song specially for it, to counteract the abundant
mystification and the menacing claustrophobia of Pinter’s neurotic world. It’s called
Wake Me Up Before You Go, Goldberg
. But I may have to tighten up the lyrics a bit.’ He leaned forward, close to Ricky. ‘By the way, you do have
very
good skin. Do you moisturise? And has anyone told you that you have really nice eyes?’

Amy stepped in front of Ricky. ‘What about mine?’ she asked, pointing to her eyes one by one and trying to pout but only succeeding with her top lip.

‘Oh behave!’ Ricky said, pushing Amy aside quite roughly. ‘We’re on a secret mission, so stop sulking. George, thanks a lot for the compliment about my skin and eyes, I quite like yours too, as skin and eyes go, and you have made me feel good about myself, and again I feel a strange sense of . . . erm, never mind. But we need to find Sampson, urgently. Apparently, he’s supposed to be humiliatingly ejected from a band very soon, and we have to stop it happening.’

George looked quizzically at them, perhaps still thinking about the utter silliness of disturbing lyrics about extreme violence and religious perversity. Then he told them to follow him, that he would lead them to Sampson as long as he could definitely join The Secret Five, with a copious amount of privileges.

Ricky and Amy hastily agreed that he could join their provisional wing, but with severely restricted copious privileges.

‘Cool! That’ll do me. The play is in the Big Hall,’ George said as he led them along the long grey school corridor. ‘It’s been hard work. We have had to rehearse hard, man. It’s the only way to get it right.’