Dubious Deeds Page 22

  Another time, he hid from Annabelle the baby croc in a large wicker basket in the laundry room. Unfortunately, his bad back seized up and it was two days before he was discovered by Bless Him, who’d been looking for some old shirts and longjohns to turn into sails for the stage representation of The Pompous Pig.

  Like a goat, Annabelle seemed to eat anything and everything. Fabian took great delight in tossing her a whole lettuce or a cabbage and watching her snap it up. Once, he kicked a cabbage to her like a ball. The cabbage veered off in completely the wrong direction, but his shoe came flying off his foot and landed in the pond next to her, with a satisfying splash. Annabelle had eaten it before Gibbering Jane, who was sitting at the water’s edge, could stop her.

  ‘Ooops!’ said Fabian, who thereafter hobbled around with just one shoe until he ‘borrowed’ a spare pair of Eddie’s just before bed.

  He and Eddie got on surprisingly well, in fact, and it was obvious that Eddie was delighted to have someone his own age – and normal – in his life! Eddie wasn’t used to a child taking his stuff without asking but that was a small price to pay for having an ally in a household full of odd adults. And he was really enjoying this acting lark too. All in all, life was good.

  Then Uncle Alfie’s health took on a turn for the worse. As well as his appalling cough, his whole chest now felt tight and it was painful to lie down. He had to sleep in a sitting position with plenty of pillows packed around him.

  ‘I think we need the doctor,’ said Aunt Hetty at breakfast.

  ‘Muffin or Humple?’ asked Mr Dickens.

  ‘A doctor,’ repeated a puzzled Hetty, thinking she was being offered something to eat.

  ‘They are both doctors, Aunt Hetty,’ Eddie explained. ‘Dr Humple is the family doctor and Dr Muffin a specialist.’

  ‘He cured us when we became crinkly around the edges and smelled of old hot-water bottles,’ said Mrs Dickens.

  ‘What do old hot-water bottles smell like?’ asked Hetty, thinking of her own hot-water bottle, an earthenware cylinder with a cork stopper in it.

  ‘Like we did when we were ill,’ said Mr Dickens.

  ‘Then perhaps Dr Humple would be the better choice. Your Dr Muffin sounds very specialised,’ Aunt Hetty reasoned.

  ‘If I might interject, madam?’ said Dawkins, who usually left the Dickenses and Grouts to serve themselves from the side table (on which he’d place various dishes under silver domes, in order to keep the food warm).

  ‘What is it, Daphne?’ asked Eddie’s father.

  ‘It’s just that Mrs Grout –’ he was referring to Hetty, of course ‘– might make a more informed decision if she was aware of the fact that Dr Humple is no more.’

  ‘No more, what?’ demanded Even Madder Aunt Maud, surfacing from her hiding place under the breakfast table. She’d been tying the men’s shoe laces together whilst eavesdropping on the conversation. ‘No more than a man with a funny hat and a stethoscope? No more than ninety-eight per cent water?’

  ‘Dead, madam,’ said Dawkins. ‘He is alive no more.’

  ‘He seemed perfectly alive the last time I saw him!’ Even Madder Aunt Maud snorted.

  ‘That’s because he was indeed alive on that occasion, madam,’ said Dawkins. ‘He has died since.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ said Mr Dickens.

  ‘How did he die? Do you know, Daphne?’

  ‘Peacefully in his sleep, apparently, sir,’ said Dawkins. ‘He was seventy-two.’

  ‘Er, has he a replacement, do you know?’ asked Hetty, feeling it slightly indelicate to be discussing someone taking over the doctor’s practice, but she needed someone to see her poor Alfie as soon as possible.

  ‘I believe a Dr Moot has stepped in to care for his patients, and intends to take over his medical practice, madam,’ said Dawkins, pleased to be the fount of all knowledge.

  ‘Moot?’ said Mad Aunt Maud, pulling herself upright with the aid of the tablecloth, causing it to slip across the table top and various items – such as knives and forks – to clatter to the floor. ‘Not Moo-Cow Moot?’

  ‘Madam?’ asked Dawkins, with a what-on-Earth-are-you-on-about expression on his face.

  ‘Old Mooty, huh?’ Mad Uncle Jack joined in. ‘It must be the same fella. There can’t be that many Dr Moots knocking about the place.’

  ‘I believe that his first name is Samuel, sir,’ said Dawkins.

  ‘That’s him!’ said MUJ, folding his paper and tossing it onto the table.

  ‘The very same!’ said EMAM. ‘Samuel Moo-Cow Moot!’

  ‘Will that be all?’ Dawkins asked the assembled company. He had been summoned to the breakfast room by the bell, and was eager to get back to his sheets of tissue paper, which he was busy sorting in the pantry.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Daphne, just bring those extra sausages we asked for,’ said Mr Dickens. Dawkins bowed and backed out of the room.

  By now, Even Madder Aunt Maud had found an empty chair at the table. She sat between Fabian and Eddie. ‘Which one are you?’ she asked Eddie.

  ‘I’m Eddie, Mad Aunt Maud,’ he said.

  ‘I do wish you’d stop it!’ she said.

  Eddie had no idea what she was talking about.

  ‘Is Dr Moot a good doctor?’ Hetty interjected.

  ‘Strange fellow,’ said Mad Uncle Jack. ‘He shot me once.’

  ‘He shot you?’ gasped Eddie.

  ‘Yes. When I say once, he actually shot me twice, but on the one single occasion.’

  ‘But why, Uncle?’ asked Hetty.

  ‘He deserved it!’ said Even Madder Aunt Maud. She had somehow managed to get Malcolm’s snout stuck in a pot of marmalade shaped like an orange.

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed MUJ. ‘I mean to say, I’d have shot old Moo-Cow if he hadn’t shot me first!’

  ‘Was it a duel?’ said Eddie, in growing wonder.

  ‘It most certainly was, young Edmund!’

  ‘What were you fighting about?’ asked Fabian.

  ‘It was before I was married to your lovely great-aunt,’ said Mad Uncle Jack looking across the table to his beloved Maud. The expression on his face was so soppy that it would have put a big-eyed puppy dog to shame. ‘Moo-Cow was as in love with her as I was and thought that I had insulted her good name.’

  Eddie found it hard to imagine anyone being in love with his great-aunt – except for Mad Uncle Jack, of course – and her ever having had a good name which anyone could insult.

  ‘He accused my love pumpkin of having called me ridiculous –’ began Even Madder Aunt Maud.

  ‘Which, of course, you are!’ said Mad Uncle Jack.

  ‘Precisely!’ agreed Maud. Having successfully freed Malcolm’s snout from the pot, she was busy licking the marmalade from his matted fur.

  ‘So why did you fight the duel, Mad Uncle Jack?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘Because Moot had challenged me to one. It would not have been gentlemanly to decline!’

  ‘I thought duels were illegal?’ said Eddie’s mother, who’d been silent until now because her mouth had been filled with buttons. (She later admitted that she’d cut them from Eddie’s father’s clothes, when his trousers fell down.) She would have preferred button mushrooms but, in her opinion, these were the next best thing.

  ‘The law was different back then … or less rigorously followed, anyhow,’ said MUJ.

  ‘Where were you shot?’ asked Mr Dickens, who’d never heard this particular family anecdote before, nor noticed any scars.

  ‘Near The Eel.’

  ‘The eel?’ said Mr Dickens, imagining a place near the spleen.

  ‘The coaching inn near Little Gattling,’ said Mad Uncle Jack. He might have said more, but Dawkins burst into the room and burst into tears.

  ‘I’m not sure how much more of this I can take, madam!’ he sobbed, facing Even Madder Aunt Maud. One of the sausages he was carrying, piled high on a serving dish, fell to the floor with a dull thud.

  ‘What are you on about?’ s
he demanded.

  The gentleman’s gentleman turned to reveal that Annabelle the baby crocodile had attached herself to his bottom with her teeth.

  Episode 5

  Surprising News

  In which Mad Uncle Jack receives an offer he can’t refuse

  Back in Eddie’s era, there were numerous postal deliveries in a day. At my home, there’s one delivery and it’s sometime in the morning. That sometime is usually when I’m in the bath, or changing a nappy or in the middle of an important phone call or jotting down a brilliant idea … and the postman invariably knocks because someone has invariably sent me something too large to fit through my letterbox: a rolled-up poster, a big book, or a fan letter wrapped around a bar of gold bullion (hint hint). He never seems to come when I’m eagerly waiting for mail or not in the middle of something else.

  At Awful End, at the time that the events I’m recounting in this third and final Further Adventure occurred, there was definitely an early morning post, a late morning post, a midday post, and an early afternoon post. There may also possibly have been a late afternoon post, but I’m not prepared to swear to it on a stack of Bibles. (I might fall off.) On this particular morning, when Eddie’s Aunt Hetty was trying to find a doctor for his poor Uncle Alfie, the morning post brought an innocent enough sounding letter which was, eventually, to throw the house into utter turmoil (not to be confused with Upper Turnall which was a small hamlet not a stone’s throw from Awful End, if one was extremely good at throwing stones*).

  The letter, when it arrived, lay on the oval table in the centre of the hall, directly beneath the truly dreadful ceiling painted by Eddie’s father, Mr Dickens, which – though supposedly depicting a biblical scene – left the vast majority of onlookers with a queasy liver-sausagey feeling (though it wasn’t quite as dreadful as Mrs Pumblesnook).

  Fortunately, said letter had been picked up by Hetty who, suddenly remembering that it was in her pocket, produced it at the breakfast table and handed it to Mad Uncle Jack. I say ‘fortunately’ because, had EMAM picked it up, she might have absent-mindedly fed it to Annabelle, or posted it through a crack in the plasterwork in the wall by a piece of furniture referred to as the hall stand.

  Mad Uncle Jack took the letter and tore open the envelope. In his younger days, there had been no such thing as envelopes, people simply used to fold over their letters when finishing them, write a name and address on the blank side and seal them shut with sealing wax. Some men wore signet rings which they pressed into the wax when it was hot to leave an impression of their family crest, or monogram, so that the person receiving the letter would know who it was from before they’d even opened it.

  A cygnet – same pronunciation, different spelling – is the name for a baby swan but, I’m delighted to report that, as mad as the pair of them were, neither Mad Uncle Jack nor Even Madder Aunt Maud ever tried to use a swan (baby or adult) to leave an impression on sealing wax, either accidentally or on purpose (or accidentally on purpose); though they did once try to make an impression on the local bishop with a Christmas goose, but that’s quite a different matter.

  This letter, however, came in an envelope and hadn’t required sealing wax to keep it shut. Mad Uncle Jack scanned the page with his eyes. ‘Ridiculous!’ he said.

  ‘How so, Uncle?’ asked Mr Dickens.

  ‘The buffoon who composed this confounded letter has written the entire thing upside down.’

  Immediately to his right, Even Madder Aunt Maud emerged from under the table. She’d grown tired of sitting between the two boys and had resumed her position on the floor.

  She snatched the letter from Mad Uncle Jack’s hand, turned it the right way up and handed it back to him.

  Eddie was stunned. To him it was like a dog suddenly speaking the Queen’s English, or a weeping willow tree stepping out of its bark and running, naked and giggling, into a lake for a swim. Even Madder Aunt Maud doing something sensible? That made no sense at all.

  ‘You are a triumph!’ said MUJ, kissing his wife on the back of her head with his thinnest of thin lips. In truth, they were his only lips – his only lips being thinnest of thin. (I don’t wish to imply that he had a fat pair nestling alongside the dried swordfish he was inclined to carry around in his inside jacket pocket.) The thinnest comparison is with other people-with-thin-lips’ lips, not with any other lips MUJ might himself have had.

  ‘Sloppy characterisation,’ muttered Eddie’s father, to no one in particular.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear?’ asked Eddie’s mother.

  ‘One of us suddenly acting out of character, simply to move events along. This –’ He stopped. Everyone was looking at him blankly. ‘Never mind,’ he sighed.

  ‘Ha!’ said MUJ, and it was such a Ha! that he had everyone’s attention, including Annabelle’s, who was now back on her silver chain behind EMAM, Dawkins’s posterior having been successfully extricated from her pincer-like grip.

  ‘What is it, Uncle?’ asked Fabian’s mother. ‘Not bad news, I hope?’

  ‘My portrait,’ said Mad Uncle Jack. ‘The War Office wish to commission an oil painting of me, in full military regalia, to hang in Whitehall!’

  ‘–’ said Mr Dickens (which meant ‘I’m at a loss for words’).

  ‘–’ said Eddie (which meant, ‘I don’t know what to say’).

  ‘–’ said Mrs Dickens (which meant she’d just bitten her tongue). Distressed by Alfie’s turn for the worse in the coughing department, she had now filled her mouth with cleaning crystals from the sideboard.‡

  Mad Uncle Jack’s news was quite extraordinary: extraordinarily extraordinary, in fact. Mad Major Jack Dickens’s final military campaign had been an utter disaster. He would probably have ended up shooting some of his own men by mistake – or doing himself a personal injury – if his quick-witted batman (not a caped crusading superhero, gentleman) hadn’t removed all ammunition from but a soldier from the lower ranks whose job it was to act as a kind of gentleman’s not-so-gentlemanly MUJ’s vicinity, and stuffed his rifle full of blotting paper.

  Mad Uncle Jack’s appalling record as a soldier was no great secret, hence the stunned silence. Why on Earth – or any other planet, come to that – would the War Office want someone to paint a portrait of Mad Uncle Jack and hang it at their headquarters in Whitehall?

  ‘Marvellous!’ cried Even Madder Aunt Maud. ‘They probably need it to cover a damp patch.’

  ‘It is, indeed, a great honour!’ said MUJ.

  ‘Congratulations, Uncle,’ said Mr Dickens.

  ‘I wonder who they’ll commission to paint it?’ said Eddie.

  ‘They mention the chap’s name here,’ said Mad Uncle Jack, referring back to the letter. ‘Someone called A. C. Pryden. I can never abide a fellow who uses initials instead of a name –’

  ‘He’s very famous, Uncle,’ said Mr Dickens, who still fancied himself as a bit of an artist. ‘I believe he painted General Gordon.’

  ‘What colour?’ snorted Even Madder Aunt Maud. ‘Purple, I hope?’ Eddie’s great-aunt had recently developed an abiding passion for purple having seen a chromolithograph plate of a Roman emperor sporting a purple toga.

  ‘I think he also painted Lord Bulberry,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Lazy n’er do well!’ said EMAM waving Malcolm dangerously above her head.

  ‘Lord Bulberry?’ asked Hetty.

  ‘This painter man … too lazy to use his full name!’

  Today – I don’t mean Tuesday (the day I’m writing this particular paragraph) but nowadays – Lord Bulberry is best-remembered (by those few who remember him at all) for having written Surviving Three Years Down A Hole and having invented a pocket knife with a particularly powerful spring. Back at the time of these events, though, he was known as the ‘Hero of Guldoon’, Guldoon being a place under siege. He defended Guldoon in some far-off war against some far-off enemy until the British cavalry both physically and metaphorically arrived. It was the big news event of the year in Britain, and there were
even celebrations in the street. To be painted by the same artist who captured Lord Bulberry on canvas was, indeed, an honour (if totally undeserved in MUJ’s case).§

  With Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud spending much of their time, and every night, in their treehouse made from creosoted dried fish and hollow wooden cow carnival float respectively, Eddie’s mother had assumed the role as (almost) lady of the house, and was suddenly concerned where Pryden the painter would sleep if he came to stay at Awful End whilst painting his subject. It wasn’t that there was a shortage of rooms – Mr Pumblesnook’s wandering theatricals didn’t take up that much room when you consider the house could accommodate a whole host of homeless monks remember – it’s just that she was one of nature’s worriers. And when she worried she was in the habit of stuffing even more things into her mouth. Anything. Which was why she now had a mouth full of dried pine cones she’d removed from a small dish on the mantelpiece, when Dawkins entered the breakfast room once more. (What happened to the buttons and cleaning crystals in the meantime, I’ve no idea.)

  Dawkins addressed himself to Eddie’s Aunt Hetty. ‘I have the pony and trap ready, ma’am, and will be riding into town to ask Dr Moot to attend Mr Grout at his earliest convenience,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Dawkins,’ said Hetty. ‘Please do stress the urgency of my husband’s health. I fear for him most dreadfully.’

  Dawkins bowed and left.

  ‘Who the devil was that?’ asked Mad Uncle Jack.

  ‘Dawkins,’ said Mrs Dickens.

  ‘Daphne,’ said Mr Dickens.

  Eddie sighed and looked at the pattern running around the rim of his empty breakfast plate.

  * Not that you should throw stones, whether you live in a glass house or not.†

  † My editor has pointed out that there are already a great many footnotes in this adventure, which is nice because I thought she’d dozed off. I pointed out that in the UK editions of all the previous Eddie Dickens books, the only one to contain a footnote was Awful End, and that was only one, single note … which means that I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.