Eating Things on Sticks (9 page)

‘The house
is
very gloomy,' Morning Glory admitted. ‘But it is
famous
.'

‘Famous? Why is it famous?' I couldn't help asking.

‘Because it has the only tree on the island.' She turned, astonished. ‘Haven't you even noticed it? That apple tree in the garden? People come miles to see it.'

‘Really?' said Uncle Tristram.

‘Wouldn't you?'

‘Not really, no,' he admitted. ‘Trees are a bit “two a penny” where I live, I'm afraid. I don't think I'd go any distance at all to look at a plain old apple tree.'

Morning Glory shrugged. ‘Well, I must confess that, much as I love the apple tree, up until recently even I was thinking of selling Aunty Audrey's house and moving somewhere else.'

‘Where were you planning to go?'

She turned all wistful. ‘There is a lovely cottage overlooking the fairground. Not very far away from the police station.' Morning Glory sighed. I thought I heard her muttering, ‘Though that dream's over now.' But just at that moment we came round the last bend and there the house stood in front of us. Squat and dark and bleak.

Ghastly, in fact.

We all sat staring at it, swathed in the pall of gloom that seemed to have followed us all the way back across the island. In the end, Uncle Tristram broke the silence by asking, ‘But who would ever
buy
it? It may have the only tree, but who would want to buy a house on any island with no bank, a ferry only once a week, and not a single cinema?'

I had an idea. ‘Someone who likes eating lots of things on sticks?'

Thursday and Friday

Thursday and Friday

PING! PING! PING!

When I woke up, the rain was beating on the windowpanes. The sky was grey. I could hear dripping and see little pools of water all over my uncarpeted bedroom floor.

I hurried downstairs. Morning Glory was on her knees, rooting in the back of a cupboard.

‘Have we got any buckets?' I asked her. ‘My room is springing leaks.'

‘We're clean out of buckets,' she told me. ‘Already this morning we've used up most of the saucepans. We're down to mixing bowls now, and Tristram says if any more leaks start up we'll be reduced to tea cups.'

I ate a pork pie on a stick. (I had begun to practise.) And then I helped by wandering round the house like Tristram, emptying saucepans and buckets.

‘The upstairs of this house is like a colander,' he kept on grumbling. ‘We're going to have to stay home all day simply to keep an eye on it.'

I peered along the landing.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
The floor was cluttered with mugs and jugs and cereal bowsl, all filling fast.

‘I've got an idea.'

I went back downstairs to the cupboard in which I hadn't found anything modern enough to use a battery. What did folk do all day before things with batteries were invented? Chopped logs and knitted? And sure enough, on the top shelf I found a basket overflowing with balls of leftover wool of every colour and shade.

On the shelf below there was a packet of drawing pins.

‘All we need now is a ladder.'

We found a pair of folding steps out in the coal shed. Then Uncle Tristram held them steady for me while I climbed up and down with lengths of coloured wool and drawing pins. It took an hour or so, but finally I'd managed to use the pins to stick one end of each of the lengths of wool into the ceiling plaster right beside every spot where drips kept bulging. The drips ran down the wool instead of dropping off. We gathered all the bottom ends and draped them all over the rim of one big bucket.

‘There you go!' I said. ‘Down to one bucket in the middle of every room. And no more pinging!'

Morning Glory clasped her hands together. ‘My heavens, that is so beautiful! It looks like an upside-down maypole.'

‘Brilliant!' said Uncle Tristram. ‘I think your new system buys us just enough time to get our breakfast.'

We had more pork pies on sticks. It was too wet to go out. I got so bored I started on my holiday homework:
Imagine you are Frankenstein's monster, suddenly endowed with feelings. Write your daily diary
.

‘What does endowed mean?' I asked Uncle Tristram.

‘Given,' said Uncle Tristram. ‘Like Morning Glory got this house from her Aunt Audrey.'

I knew I'd end up having to copy the whole thing out a second time in best, so I didn't bother writing out the title. I just got stuck in.

Easy-peasy, once you let yourself go.

I snuck out for one more pork pie, and licked the stick as I carried on.

Uncle Tristram came into the room. ‘What are you doing?'

‘Nothing,' I said, tucking my work away safely behind the sofa cushion.

‘Well, stop your slacking,' he told me, ‘and come upstairs to take your turn emptying buckets.'

I'M GOING TO NEED SOME MONEY

We got ahead with the emptying, then took a bit of time off to get lunch and practise with things on sticks. First we had comfrey fritters. (Don't even ask.) Then we had florets of broccoli. (They were hard to stab.) Then we had artichoke pancakes. (They were all floppy and you almost had to slide in underneath to get them eaten.)

I could see Uncle Tristram working himself up to ask Morning Glory a question. Finally, out it popped. ‘Have you
always
eaten like this?'

‘What, off a stick?' Distracted, she let her pancake slither down inside her velvet bodice. ‘Don't you think, if I had, I'd be a little better at it?'

‘I didn't mean that,' Uncle Tristram said. ‘What I meant was, have you always eaten this sort of stuff?'

‘What sort of stuff?'

He spread his hands. ‘You know. All these weird gleanings from' – he tried to suppress a shudder – ‘the
countryside
. These comfrey fritters, for example. And those turnip croquettes that we had yesterday.'

‘The parsley muffins,' I added bitterly. ‘And that nettle pudding.'

Morning Glory turned huffy. ‘Oh, I know! Down in London you eat good stuff like pizzas and hamburgers and sushi and samosas and sweet-and-sour chicken and—'

‘Stop!' I interrupted her. (I was practically
drooling
.)

‘Well, you have
restaurants
,' said Morning Glory. ‘And money. You can
afford
to eat like that.'

‘Not
much
money,' Uncle Tristram argued.

‘You have a whole lot more than me,' said Morning Glory.

I felt a little guilty. After all, we had been with her since Saturday night. She hadn't had a single one of our pork pies, and we'd had lots of her stuff.

‘I am owed pocket money,' I pitched in. ‘
If
I'm still getting it after burning down the kitchen. I could phone Mum and ask, and if I am, maybe we could lash out on steak and chips and I could pay you back later.'

She didn't argue, so I went in the living room and phoned home.

Mum picked up instantly. I could tell she was in a state. ‘Harry! Thank God! Are you all
right
, my precious?'

‘I'm fine,' I told her.

She didn't believe me, you could tell. ‘Really?'

‘Well,' I admitted, ‘I can't say it's much fun. I'm really cold, and I am sick of emptying buckets.'

I heard her whispering, ‘Poor lamb! They've got him in some sort of cell! He's even emptying
buckets
.'

I looked round Aunty Audrey's living room. ‘It isn't quite a
cell
,' I said. ‘But it is damp and bleak.'

‘Oh, my poor darling!'

I thought it might be time to strike. ‘I've had to ring you, I'm afraid, because I need some money.' Realizing instantly how bad it sounded, only bothering to get in touch in order to beg for my allowance, I made a little joke of it. ‘That's if you want me out of here alive!'

Mum made a choking noise and said, ‘You just put one of them on the line!' I wasn't going to drag in Uncle Tristram or Morning Glory to do my wheedling for me. ‘I can't do that,' I told her, horrified.

‘Well, how much are we talking about?'

I thought about it. ‘The whole lot, I think.'

‘The whole lot? What does that mean?'

I couldn't
believe
she had forgotten yet again how much I get each week. ‘It's—'

I heard a creaking noise behind. Distracted, I turned to see the precious only apple tree on the island outside the window gradually keel over sideways and crash to the ground, taking the phone wire with it.

GONE DOWN SOME POTHOLE

Poor Morning Glory was
distraught
. ‘The tree! The tree!'

We all went out to look. Uncle Tristram thought to snatch up Morning Glory's umbrella with the dancing frogs to save her velvet bodice and cowboy skirt from getting wet. But he and I just stood there getting drenched.

‘How did it
happen
?' she wailed, mystified.

‘It is strange, I admit,' said Uncle Tristram. ‘Because it isn't even windy.'

‘The ground feels odd,' I said.

It did, too. Where I was standing, there was a sort of sodden wet roiling and boiling, as if the earth beneath my feet was churning into mush. ‘The hill looks different,' Morning Glory said. We all looked up. I felt a stab of guilt. I had forgotten to sneak up to unblock my dam, and now the stream was tumbling down our side of the hill as firmly and as strongly as if that were its natural route.

For all his earlier wavings of the camera at the glories of the view, Uncle Tristram didn't seem to have noticed that the stream had switched sides.

‘If there were ever any sun to glint in,' he observed, ‘that water might look quite pretty till it suddenly disappears like that, halfway down.' He shrugged. ‘Gone down some pothole, I expect.'