The Secret of Platform 13 (6 page)

Raymond continued to scream.

‘Tell Mama; tell your Mummy , my pinkyboo,’ begged Mrs Trottle.

‘I’ve got a pain in my tummy , ’ y e lled Raymond. ‘I’m ill.’

Mrs Trottle pulled back the covers on Raymond’s huge bed with its padded headboard and the built-in switches for his television set, his two computers and his electric trains. She put a finger on Raymond’s stomach and the finger vanished because Raymond was extremely fat.

‘Where does it hurt, my pettikins? Which bit?’

‘Everywhere,’ screeched Raymond. ‘All over!’

Since Raymond had eaten an entire box of chocolates the night before this was not surprising, but Mrs Trottle looked worried.

‘I can’t go to school!’ yelled Raymond, getting to the point. ‘I can’t!’

Raymond’s school was the most expensive in London; the uniform alone cost hundreds of pounds, but he hated it.

‘Of course you can’t, my lambkin,’ said Mrs Trottle, drawing her finger out of Raymond’s middle. ‘I’ll send a message to the headmaster. And then I’ll call a doctor.’

‘No, no – not the doctor! I don’t want the doctor; he makes me worse,’ yelled Raymond – and indeed the doctor was not always as kind to darling Raymond as he might have been.

Mr Trottle now came in looking cross because he had sat on his portable telephone again and asked what was the matter.

‘Our Little One is ill,’ said Mrs Trottle. ‘You must tell Willard to drive to the school after he has dropped you at the bank and let them know.’

‘He doesn’t look ill to me,’ said Mr Trottle – but he never argued with his wife and anyway he was in a hurry to go and lend a million pounds to a property developer who wanted to cover a beautiful Scottish island with holiday homes for the rich.

Raymond’s screams grew less. They became wails, then snivels . . .

‘I feel a bit better now,’ he said. ‘I might manage some breakfast.’ He had heard the car drive away and knew that the danger of school was safely past.

‘Perhaps a glass of orange juice?’ suggested Mrs Trottle.

‘No. Some bacon and some sausages and some fried bread,’ said Raymond.

‘But, darling—’

Raymond puckered up his face, ready to scream again.

‘All right, my little sugar lump. I’ll tell Fulton. And then a quiet day in bed.’

‘No. I don’t want a quiet day. I feel better now. I want to go to lunch at Fortlands. And then shopping. I want a laser gun like Paul has at school, and a knife, and—’

‘But, darling, you’ve already got seven different guns,’ said Mrs Trottle, looking at Raymond’s room which was completely strewn with toys which he had pushed aside or broken or refused to put away.

‘Not like the one Paul’s got – not a sonic-trigger activated laser, and I want one. I
want
it.’

‘Very well, dear,’ said Mrs Trottle. ‘We’ll go to lunch at Fortlands. You do look a little rosier.’

This was true. Raymond looked very rosy indeed. People usually do when they have yelled for half an hour.

‘And shopping?’ asked Raymond. ‘Not just lunch but shopping afterwards?’

‘And shopping,’ agreed Mrs Trottle. ‘So now give your Mumsy a great big sloppy kiss.’

That was how things always ended on days when Raymond didn’t feel well enough to go to school – with Raymond and Mrs Trottle, dressed to kill, going to have lunch in London’s grandest department store.

The name of the store was Fortlands and Marlow. It was in Piccadilly and sold everything you could imagine: marble bath tubs and ivory elephants and sofas that you sank into and disappeared. It h ad a Food Hall with a fountain where butlers in hard hats bought cheeses which cost a week’s wages, and a bridal department where the daughters of duchesses were fitted for their wedding gowns – and none of the dresses had price tickets on them in case people fainted clean away when they saw how much they cost.

And there was a restaurant with pink chairs and pink tablecloths in which Raymond and his mother were having lunch.

‘I’ll have shrimps in mayonnaise,’ said Raymond, ‘and then I’ll have roast pork with crackling and Yorkshire pudding and—’

‘I’m afraid the Yorkshire pudding comes with the roast beef, sir,’ said the waitress. ‘With the pork you get apple sauce and redcurrant jelly . ’

‘I don’t like apple sauce,’ whined Raymond. ‘It’s all squishy and gooey. I want Yorkshire pudding. I
want
it.’

It was at this moment that the rescuers entered the store. They too were having lunch in the restaurant. When Ben had told them how Raymond was going to spend the day, they decided to follow the Prince and study him from a distance so that they could decide how best to make themselves known to him.

‘Only I want Ben to come,’ Odge said.

Everyone wanted Ben to come, but he said he couldn’t. ‘I don’t have school today because they need the building for a council election and I promised my grandmother I’d come to the hospital at dinner time.’

But he said he would go with them as far as Fortlands and point Raymond out because the Tr ot-tles had gone off in the Rolls and no one had seen him yet. Hans, though, decided to stay behind. He didn’t like crowded places and he lay down under an oak tree and went to sleep which made a great muddle for the dogs who didn’t understand why they couldn’t walk through a perfectly empty patch of grass.

Gurkie absolutely loved Fortlands. The vegetable display was quite beautiful – the passion fruit and the pineapples and the cauliflowers so artistically arranged – and she had time to say nice things to a tray of broccoli which looked a little lonely . I n a different sort of shop, the rescuers might have stood out, but Fortlands was full of old-fashioned people coming up from the country and they fitted in quite well. The only thing people did stare at a bit was the beetroot in Gurkie’s hat so she decided to leave it in the fountain to soak quietly while she went up to the restaurant. It was as she was bending over the water to look for a place where the beloved vegetable would not be noticed, that she saw, beneath the water weed, a small, sad face.

Bending down to see more clearly , s he found that she had not been mistaken.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ said a slight, silvery voice. ‘Melis-ande. I heard you were coming.’ And then: ‘I’m not a mermaid, you know, I’m a water nymph. I’ve got feet.’

‘Yes, I know, dear; I can see you’ve got feet. But you don’t look well. What are those marks on your arms?’

‘It’s the coins. People chuck coins into the fountain all day long, heaven knows why . I ’ m all over bruises – and the water isn’t changed nearly often enough.’

And her lovely, t iny face really did look very melancholy .

‘Why don’t you come down with us, dear?’ whispered Gurkintrude. ‘The gump’s open. We could take you wrapped in wet towels, it wouldn’t be difficult.’

‘I was going to,’ said the nymph sadly . ‘ But not now. You’ve seen him.’

‘The Prince, do you mean? We haven’t yet.’

‘Well, you will in a minute; he’s just gone up in the lift. There was a lot of us going, but who wants to be ruled by
that
?’

She then agreed to hide the beetroot under a water lily leaf and Gurkie hurried to catch up with the others. The nymph’s words had upset her, but feys always think the best of people and she was determined to look on the bright side. Even if Mrs Trottle had spoilt Raymond a little, there would be time to put that right when he came to the Island. When children behave badly it is nearly always the fault of those who bring them up.

‘There he is,’ whispered Ben. ‘Over there, by the window.’

There was a long pause.

‘You’re sure?’ asked Cor. ‘There can be no mistake?’

‘I’m sure,’ said Ben.

He then slipped away and the rescuers were left to study the boy they had come so far to find.

‘He looks . . . healthy , ’ s a id Gurkintrude, trying to make the best of things.

‘And well-washed,’ agreed the wizard. ‘I imagine there would be no mould behind his ears?’

Odge didn’t say anything. She still carried the suitcase, holding it out flat like a tray, and had been in a very nasty temper since she discovered that Ben was not the Prince.

What surprised them most was how like his supposed mother Raymond Trottle looked. They both had the same fat faces, the same podgy noses, the same round, pale eyes. They knew, of course, that dogs often grew to be like their owners so perhaps it was understandable that Raymond, who had lived with the Trottles since he was three months old, should look like the woman who had stolen him, but it was odd all the same.

The visitors had looked forward very much to having lunch in a posh restaurant, but the hour that followed was one of the saddest of their lives. They found a table behind a potted palm from which they could watch the Trottles without being noticed, and what they saw got worse and worse and worse. Raymond’s shrimps had arrived and he was pushing them away with a scowl.

‘I don’t want them,’ said Raymond. ‘They’re the wrong ones. I want the bigger ones.’

As far as Gurkie was concerned there was no such thing as a wrong shrimp or a right shrimp. All shrimps were her friends and she would have died rather than eat one, but she felt dreadfully sorry for the waitress.

‘The bigger ones are prawns, sir; and I’m afraid we don’t have any today.’

‘Don’t have any
prawns
,’ said Mrs Trottle in a loud voice. ‘Don’t have any prawns in the most expensive restaurant in London!’

The waitress had been on her feet all day, her little girl was ill at home, but she kept her temper.

‘If you’d just try them, sir,’ she begged Raymond.

But he wouldn’t. The dish was taken away and Raymond decided to start with soup. ‘Only not with any bits in it,’ he shouted after the waitress. ‘I don’t eat bits.’

Poor Gurkie’s kind round face was growing paler and paler. The Islanders had ordered salad and nut cutlets, but she was so sensitive that she could hear the lamb chops screaming on the neighbouring tables and the poor stiff legs of dead pheasants sticking up from people’s plates made her want to cry .

Raymond’s soup came and it did have bits in it – a few leaves of fresh parsley.

‘I thought I asked for
clear
soup,’ said Mrs Trottle. ‘Really , I fi nd it quite extraordinary that you cannot bring us what we want.’

The rescuers had been up all night; they were not only sad, they were tired, and because of this they forgot themselves a little. When their nut cutlets came they were too hard for the wizard’s teeth and he should have mashed them up with his fork – of course he should. Instead, he mumbled something and in a second the cutlets had turned to liquid. Fortunately no one saw, and the liquidizing spell is nothing to write home about – it was used by wizards in the olden days to turn their enemies’ bones to jelly – but it was embarrassing when they were trying so hard to be ordinary . And then the sweet peas in Gurkintrude’s hat started to put out tendrils without even being told so as to shield her from the sight of the Prince fishing with his fingers in the soup.

The Trottles’ roast pork came next – and the kind waitress had managed to persuade the chef to put a helping of Yo rkshire pudding on Raymond’s plate though anyone who knows anything about food knows that Yorkshire pudding belongs to beef and not to pork.

Raymond stared at the plate out of his round pale eyes. ‘I don’t want roast potatoes,’ he said. ‘I want chips. Roast potatoes are boring.’

‘Now Raymond, dear,’ began his mother.

‘I want
chips
. This is supposed to be my treat and it isn’t a treat if I can’t have chips.’

Odge had behaved quite well so far. She had glared, she had ground her teeth, but she had gone on eating her lunch. Now though, she began to have
thoughts
and the thoughts were about her sisters – and in particular about her oldest sister, Frede-gonda, who was better than anyone on the Island at ill-wishing pigs.

Ill-wishing things is not all that difficult. Witch doctors do it when they send bad thoughts to people and make them sick; sometimes you can do it when you will someone not to score a goal at football and they don’t. Odge had never wanted to ill-wish pigs because she liked animals, but she had sometimes wanted to ill-wish people, and now, more than anything in the world, she wanted to ill-wish Raymond Trottle.

But she didn’t. For one thing she wasn’t sure if she could and anyway she had promised to behave like the girls of St Agnes whose uniform she wore.

‘I want a Knickerbocker Glory next,’ said Raymond. ‘The kind with pink ice-cream and green icecream and jelly and peaches and raspberry juice and nuts.’

The waitress went away and returned with Mrs Trottle’s caramel pudding and the Knickerbocker Glory in a tall glass. It was an absolutely marvellous one – just to look at it made Odge’s mouth water.

Raymond picked up his spoon – and put it down again.

‘It hasn’t got an umbrella on top,’ he wailed. ‘I always have a plastic umbrella on top. I won’t eat it unless I have a – Ugh! Eek! Yow! What’s happened? I didn’t touch it, I didn’t, I
didn’t
!’

He was telling the truth for once, but nobody believed him. For the Knickerbocker Glory had done a somersault and landed face down on the table, so that the three kinds of ice-cream, the jelly , the tinned peaches and the raspberry juice were running down Raymond’s trousers, into his socks, across his flashy shoes . . .

Odge had not ill-wished Raymond Trottle. She had been very good and held herself in, but not completely . S he had ill-wished the Knickerbocker Glory .

‘I want some brandy for my teeth,’ said Nanny Brown.

She lay in the second bed from the end in Ward Three of the West Park Hospital, in a flannel nightdress with a drawstring round the neck because she didn’t believe in showing bits of herself to the doctors. She had been old when Mrs Trottle persuaded her to come to Switzerland with the stolen baby and now she was very old indeed; shrivelled and tired and ready to go because she’d said her prayers every day of her life and if God wasn’t waiting to take her up to heaven she’d want to know the reason why . But she was cross about her teeth.

‘Now, Mrs Brown,’ said the nurse briskly, ‘you know we can’t let you soak your teeth in that nasty stuff. Just pop them in that nice glass of disinfectant.’