The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy (5 page)

‘What’s the matter with her now?’ he whispered to the others.

‘I think she’s mad,’ said Betty, a little too loudly.

‘Ha! I am not mad,’ the old hag said, approaching the children, a haggish finger pointing at them in a seriously haglike way. ‘I’m just IMPRESSED.’

Betty nudged Daniel. ‘I wish she’d stop talking in capitals. It’s so INFURIATING,’ she said.

‘Well, you just did it,’ said Daniel.

‘Did I?’ Betty frowned.

‘Yes, you said INFURIATING,’ Daniel said.

‘Oh, SORRY,’ said Betty.

‘You just did it again,’ Daniel said. ‘Get a grip, Betty!’

Betty furrowed and wrinkled her brow and looked really embarrassed. She thought it best to change the subject. ‘Then why are you . . .’ she asked the old hag, pausing to ensure that her voice was in lowercase, ‘impressed?’

‘Why? Because you’re
The
Secret Five,’ she replied. ‘I heard all about you from your dear Uncle Quagmire. What am yow . . . erm, what are you doing here? Are you having another great adventure? Bostin! But where’s your kangaroo? Eh?’

‘Gosh! How did you . . .’ Amy said, stopping mid-sentence and pointing a medium-sized frown at the old hag. ‘Kangaroo?’

‘You kids must think I’m yampy
⁵
!’ the old hag said.

The children nodded. ‘Woof woof woof,’ agreed Whatshisname.

‘Don’t you think I don’t know about the kangaroo,’ the old hag said. ‘I know
all
about you lot and your adventures.’

Whatshisname sighed. He liked this old lady, as she smelled of gammon and freshly-sawn timber. It went well with his pineapple and creosote fragrance. But did she have to encourage all this adventuring?

‘You know all about us? But we’re The
Secret
Five!’ said Ricky. ‘We’re supposed to be a
secret
! That’s the whole idea.’

‘Ha!’ said the old hag.

‘Maybe we should change our name?’ suggested Daniel.

The others looked peculiarly at him. The old hag stood there (or, to be precise, just to the right of there) wondering if she had
time to dash off to the toilet while this bit of dialogue took place.

‘Change our name? What to?’ enquired Ricky.

‘Well . . .’ said Daniel, quite intelligently, ‘I think we’d need an antonym.’

Amy perked up. ‘We had an Anthony in our class at school. Will he do?’

‘Hmmm . . . an antonym, eh? What about unsecret. Or unconcealed?’ suggested Ricky, ignoring his sister’s confused look.

‘The Unconcealed Five?’ said Betty. ‘It hasn’t got that certain ring to it, has it?’

‘Overt?’ suggested Daniel.

‘The Overt Five,’ said Betty, thoughtfully. ‘No. It sounds far too French. That’d never do.’

‘What about palpable?’ suggested Ricky.

They pondered very hard upon
palpable
, then they all agreed that
The Palpable Five
sounded quite stylish, especially in italics.

‘But we’ll only use it,’ said Betty, ‘if we find out that The Secret Five is no longer a secret.’

‘Shouldn’t we have a meeting to decide that?’ asked Amy.

‘Another meeting?’ Daniel groaned. ‘This is like déjà vu.’

Ricky pondered. He was sure he’d heard that phrase before.

‘Good idea, Amy,’ said Betty. ‘A meeting. But first we’re going to need the password from you all.’

‘Ha!’ the old hag yelled. ‘It’s
testicle!
’

Amy jumped up and down. ‘Told you so! Told you so!’

Betty glared at Amy, so Amy glared at Ricky who, in turn, glared at Daniel who, having no-one left to glare at, glared down at Whatshisname, who was still behaving as though he was at the Wimbledon final. But then Whatshisname sensed the glare, considered his canine options and turned to glare at the old hag, who had sat down on the stairs while they were glaring and now looked quite relieved that the attention was back on her. She stood up and resumed her old hag expression while pulling a West
Bromwich Albion Football Club bobble hat onto her bobbly grey head.

‘Your Uncle Quagmire told me all about you and your funny tricks,’ the old hag said, ‘so you can stop all that glaring now. You look like morkins
⁶
, you do.’

Betty was a bit put out at being told when and where to glare in this age of human rights for the common people but, nevertheless, she did slowly stop glaring, at her own steady pace, then bravely edged towards the old hag. ‘Old hag-like person, where is our Uncle Quagmire?’ she demanded in fluent English.

‘Woof woof woof!’ added Whatshisname in his supporting role.

‘Ha!’ cackled the old hag. ‘Your Uncle Quagmire was hiding here, but now he’s gone.’ She paused all this irritating cackling to look around her furtively, in a pathetic effort to raise the level of suspense. ‘But not before he told me why he was here and all about his secret mission.’

The children gasped.

‘Mission?’ asked Ricky.

‘Secret mission?’ asked Amy.

‘His secret mission?’ asked Daniel.

‘All about his secret mission?’ asked Betty.

‘Woof woof woof woof woof woof?’ asked Whatshisname.

‘Oh, you’re all intrigued now, aren’t you?’ the old hag said. ‘Well, I’m going to tell you, but only if I can join The Secret Five.’

They all gasped again, but this time they gasped separately and in alphabetical order.

‘What? You? Join The Secret Five?’ exclaimed Ricky.

‘Impossible! We’d then be The Secret Six!’ said Betty.

‘You must admit, a bit of alliteration would be good for marketing,’ said Daniel.

‘But . . .’ began Betty, ‘but . . .’

‘Yeah,’ said Daniel, ‘that sort of thing.’

‘But . . . The Secret Six?’ moaned Betty.

‘Actually, wouldn’t it be The Palpable Six?’ chipped in Amy, showing an uncommon amount of intelligence.

‘Ha! If you let me join,’ said the old hag, ‘I’ll tell you all about your Uncle Quagmire and his secret mission.’

The children hummed and hawed, with the emphasis on humming rather than hawing, then Betty went one further and aharred. ‘Aha!’ she aharred. ‘What if we make her an honorary member? Without the privileges.’

‘Erm . . . privileges? What sort of privileges?’ asked Ricky. ‘I didn’t know anything about privileges.’

‘I will go for that,’ said the old hag. ‘Ha! I certainly am not much interested in privileges. You can keep your evening with Jennifer Lopez.’

‘Jennifer Lopez?’ squeaked Ricky. ‘An evening? A whole evening? With Jaylo?’

‘Yes. You must have missed that particular meeting about privileges, Ricky,’ said Betty. ‘Now . . .’

‘But . . .’ said Ricky, looking rather dejected. ‘Jaylo!’

‘Right,’ Betty said swiftly, afraid that Ricky might start his personal investigation into the corrupt and somewhat haphazard distribution of Secret Five privileges. ‘Come on, you old hag. Tell us more.’

‘Ha! Your Uncle Quagmire had a room here. Go down that corridor,’ she said, pointing her haggish finger down a corridor that was conveniently situated between two walls, a ceiling and a floor, ‘and it’s third on the left, just past the Ovaltine machine.’

‘Why aren’t you coming then?’ enquired Amy. ‘Are you scared? Hmmm? Are you a
scaredy-cat
?’

‘Ha! No, I’m just going off,’ the old hag said, ‘to a place where fictional characters am rarely allowed to go. Ooooooh, blimey, got to go!’ And she hurried off in some other direction,
clutching her nightgown tightly around her two matching old haggish knees.

‘She’s weird,’ said Daniel, watching her scuttle away. ‘And fancy trying to include a character with such a stupid dialect in our super adventure! Whatever happened to the Queen’s English? Adventure standards are definitely slipping. What’s needed is a consumer watchdog.’

‘Woof woof woof!’ volunteered Whatshisname brightly.

‘What, such as Adventure Watch?’ suggested Betty.

‘Yes,’ agreed Daniel. ‘That sort of thing. Now, let’s all explore down the corridor while she’s away.’

Silently, they crept in an orderly creep down the corridor, Betty leading the way, until they reached Uncle Quagmire’s door, where they stopped all the orderly creeping. Whatshisname sniffed at the door. Then, for some reason, he began to frantically scrabble and scratch at it. The others watched him for a while until he had scrabbled and scratched a large hole in what, to be honest, was shamefully inept workmanship in terms of door-making.

Betty knelt down carefully and peeked through the hole. ‘Gosh! There’s something in there!’ she breathed.

‘What?’ Amy asked, in between her own breaths. ‘Do tell us, do.’

In which they learn all about Uncle Quagmire’s strange disappearance; we learn that we should never have bought this book, never; we hear about Whatshisname’s time system, and meet a posh man with a posh voice who just clutters up the narrative, to be honest; Ricky looks a bit glum.

‘It’s a floor!’ Betty exclaimed.

The others, all things considered, didn’t think that such a lacklustre discovery was worth the effort of a gasp, so they just shrugged a private shrug, except Whatshisname who, despite a lifelong yearning to shrug, had never quite mastered the art of shrugging despite secret practice sessions behind the sofa.

Betty stood up and glared at them. This was really testing her leadership skills. ‘Judging by all the private shrugging, is anyone remotely interested in the discovery of a floor?’ she asked. ‘Hmmm? Anyone?’

The others shook their heads except for Whatshisname who was a dog in all senses of the word and didn’t see the point in shaking his head unless he was wet.

They had a rather hurried conference (skipping the Powerpoint presentations and the end-of-conference motivational speeches) about whether the presence of a floor was reason enough to explore further. In the end, they took a vote, which resulted in seven to two in favour of entering the room. (Whatshisname lodged a protest vote and there was a lamentable miscount issue.)

Ricky pushed the door open very slowly, trying his best not to be overly ginger, and peeked inside.

‘Betty’s right,’ he confirmed. ‘There
is
a floor. And, what is even more interesting, there’s a bed standing on it! And what is
even more than even more interesting, is that those are Uncle Quagmire’s pyjamas on the bed. I can tell, they have those peculiar stains on them, and they are special cordless ones for easier mobility around the house at night.’

They all crowded into the room, looking high and low for any clues that Uncle Quagmire might have left. Then Betty suggested that they looked
between
high and low, and they soon found, on the bedside table, a scrappy piece of paper.

Amy picked it up and stared at it.

‘Read it to us, Amy,’ Ricky urged. ‘Please do.’

Amy frowned a little informal frown.

‘What does it say?’ asked Betty.

‘It says
No milk today
,’ Amy said.

Most of the others were extremely intrigued.

‘I’m only quite intrigued,’ said Ricky, awkwardly.

Just then, on cue, the old hag came bursting through the door.

‘Ha! That’s much better,’ she cackled when she’d finished bursting. ‘Takes a bit of pressure off me bladder in case we’re not allowed to go for a bit. Now, what do you lot want to know? Eh?’

‘Well, very strange old hag,’ said Ricky, ‘we want to know where our Uncle Quagmire has gone to, but I don’t think you’ll know.’

The old hag slowly sidled up to Ricky’s side. ‘Oh, you don’t think I will know, eh, Lard Head?’ she said. ‘Well, Mister Cleverclogs, you shut your cake ’ole
¹
, as I’ll have you know that I know everything there is to know about your Uncle Quagmire, don’t you know.’

‘Never mind all that! Tell us where he has gone,’ demanded Betty in a rather stern voice.

The old hag looked furtively to her left, then furtively to her
right, before furtively speaking. ‘He’s been kidnapped!’ she cackled happily.

‘He’s been kidnapped?’ exclaimed the children. They stood there, waiting, looking shocked and casting sidelong glances upwards and headlong glances downwards.

‘What you all waiting for?’ the old hag asked, with a confused look on most of her face. ‘You all gorra fairce loyk a bulldog chewin’ a wasp
²
.’

‘What? Oh, well, we were rather expecting a chapter break right then,’ said Ricky. ‘It was an ideal place for one, you see, in the world of popular fiction. A sort of cliffhanger moment.’

The old hag nodded her head in agreement and then joined in with their sidelong glances and waiting. After sidelong glancing and waiting for a minute or so more, they all shrugged a communal shrug and then continued.

‘Kidnapped?’ the children exclaimed again, but sounding less certain this time.

‘You heard, kidnapped!’ the old hag said. ‘Taken in a big red truck that rumbled and roared away.’

‘The big red truck!’ exclaimed Daniel.

‘Woof woof woof!’ said Whatshisname.

‘The one that . . .’ began Ricky.

‘Yes, Ricky, we know,’ interrupted Betty. ‘But why? And why was Uncle Quagmire here anyway? And what happened to the sprouts and, erm . . .’

‘Comidons?’ suggested Amy.

The old hag looked quite embarrassed, even by modern old hag standards. ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘I think there might be some sprouts left over. There, you see, on the bedside cabinet.’

Whatshisname padded over to the cabinet and scooped up several sprouts into his mouth.

‘Then what happened to . . .’ said Daniel. He stopped speaking as Betty nudged him in his ribs with her elbow, which was conveniently situated in the middle of her arm. Whatshisname trotted over to Daniel and dropped the sprouts at his feet. Daniel quietly frowned and picked them up.

‘What Daniel was about to ask,’ Betty said, ‘is why was our Uncle Quagmire staying here anyway? And what is his very secret mission?’

‘Ha!’ said the old hag. ‘I’ll tell you all I know. I’ll tell you the whole story, but you must take up positions that convey a sense, like, that you’re enthralled and transfixed by my telling of the story, see?’

‘Good idea,’ said Daniel, rather overenthusiastically. ‘I like the idea of being enthralled and transfixed. Tell you what, I’ll lie on my side on the bed, with my head supported by my left hand.’