The Secret of Platform 13 (8 page)

But Odge now came to the rescue. She had promised to behave like the girls of St Agnes who said: ‘Play Up and Play the Game’ and she said: ‘Raymond, I’ve brought you a present, a really special one. I brought it all the way from the Island. Look!’

The word ‘present’ cheered Raymond up at once and he watched as she lifted her suitcase on to the bed and opened it.

‘What is it?’ Raymond asked.

But he didn’t shudder this time; he looked quite pleased. And the person who wasn’t pleased with what lay inside, cradled in layers of moss, would have been made of stone. A very small animal covered in soft, snow-white fur, with big paws lightly tipped with black. His eyes, as he woke from sleep, were huge and very dark, his blob of a nose was moist and whiskery and cool, and as he looked up at Raymond and yawned you could see his strawberry pink tongue and smell his clean milky breath.

‘I’ve never seen one of them,’ said Raymond. ‘It’s a funny looking thing. What is it?’

Odge told him. ‘It’s a mistmaker. We have hundreds of them on the Island; they get very tame. I got this one because his mother got muddled and rolled on him. She didn’t mean to, she just got mixed up.’

She lifted the little animal out and laid him on the satin quilt. The mistmaker’s forehead was wrinkled like a bloodhound’s; he had a small, soft moustache and his pink, almost human-looking ears had big lobes like you find on the ears of poets or musicians.

‘Why is it called a mistmaker?’ asked Raymond.

‘I’ll show you,’ said Odge. ‘Can you sing?’

‘Of course I can sing,’ said Raymond. ‘Everyone can sing.’

‘Well, then, do it. Sing something to it. Put your head quite close.’

Raymond cleared his throat. ‘I can’t remember any words,’ he said. ‘I’ll play it something on my radio.’ He turned the knob and the room was filled with the sound of cackling studio laughter.

‘You try , Ben,’ ordered Odge. ‘You sing to it.’

But Ben didn’t sing. He whistled. None of them had heard whistling quite like that; it was like bird-song, but it wasn’t just chirruping – it had a proper tune: a soaring tune that made them think of spring and young trees and life beginning everywhere. And as Ben whistled, the little animal drew closer . . . and closer still . . . he pressed his moist nose against Ben’s hands; the wrinkles on his worried-looking forehead grew smoother . . .

‘Aaah,’ sighed the mistmaker. ‘Aaah . . .’

Then it began. At first there was only a little mist; he was after all very young . . . and then there came more . . . and more . . . Even from this animal only a few weeks old there came enough cool, swirling mist to wreathe Raymond’s bed in whiteness. The room became beautiful and mysterious; the piles of neglected toys disappeared, and the fussy furniture . . . and the Islanders drank in the well-remembered freshness of early morning and of grass still moist with dew.

Raymond’s mouth dropped open. ‘It’s weird. I’ve never seen that. It isn’t natural.’

‘Why isn’t it natural?’ asked Odge crossly . ‘Skunks make stinks and slugs make slime and people make sweat so why shouldn’t a mistmaker make mist?’

Raymond was still staring at the little creature. No one at school had anything like that. He’d be able to show it off to everyone. Paul had a tree frog and Derek had a grass snake but this would beat them all.

‘You’d be able to play with mistmakers all day long if you came to the Island,’ said Gurkie. ‘You will come, won’t you?’

‘Nope,’ said Raymond. ‘I’d miss my telly and my computer games and my Scalextric set. But I’ll keep him.’

He made a grab for the mistmaker but the animal had given off so much mist that he was less pillow-shaped now, and nimbler. Jumping off the bed he landed with a thud on his nose and began to explore the room.

They watched him as he ran his whiskery moustache along Raymond’s toy boxes, rolled over on the rug, rubbed himself against a chest of drawers. Sometimes he disappeared into patches of mist, then reappeared with one ear turned inside out which is what happens to mistmakers who are busy.

The wizard cleared his throat. Now was the time to come out with the truth. Such a snobby boy would surely come to the Island if he knew he would live there as a prince.

‘Perhaps we should tell you, Raymond, that you are really of noble—’

He was interrupted by another and even louder shriek from Raymond.

‘Look! It’s lifted its leg! It’s made a puddle on the carpet. It’s dirty!’

Odge looked at him with loathing. ‘This mist-maker is
six weeks old
! They can be housetrained perfectly well but not when they are infants. You made enough puddles when you were that age and it’s a
clean
puddle. It isn’t the puddle of someone who guzzles shrimps and roast pork and greasy potatoes.’

Ben had already been to the bathroom for a cloth and was mopping up. Mopping up after Raymond was something he had been doing ever since he could remember. Then he gathered up the mist-maker who was trembling all over and trying to cover his ears with his paws. You cannot be as musical as these animals are without suffering terribly from the kind of stuck-pig noises that Raymond made.

‘You keep him downstairs, Ben,’ ordered Raymond. ‘You can feed him and see he doesn’t mess up my room. But remember, he’s
mine
!’

Odge and Gurkie spent the night curled up on the floor of the little summer house. It was a pretty place with a fretwork verandah and wooden steps but no one used it now. Years ago the roof had begun to leak and instead of mending it, the head keeper had put up a notice saying:
private
.
no admittance
. Dark privet bushes and clumps of laurel hid it from passers by. Only the animals came to it now: sparrows to preen in the lop-sided bird bath; squirrels to chatter on the roof.

Near by, a patch of snoring grass showed where the ogre rested. Ben had smuggled the mistmaker into his cupboard of a room.

But Cornelius could not sleep. He longed to conjure up a fire to keep his old bones warm, but he thought it might be noticed and after a while he took his stick and wandered off towards the lake. The Serpentine it was called because it was wiggly and shaped like a serpent, and he remembered it from when he had lived Up Here. Londoners were fond of it; people went boating there and caught tiddlers and brave old gentlemen broke the ice with their toes in winter and swam in it, getting goose pimples but being healthy.

But it wasn’t just old men with goose pimples or lovers canoodling or children sailing their boats that came here. There were . . . others. There had been mermaids in the lake when Cor was a little boy, each tree had had its spirit, banshees had wailed in the bushes. And on Midsummer’s Eve they had gathered together and had a great party.

Midsummer’s Eve was in two days’ time. Did they still come, the boggarts and the brownies, the nymphs and the nixies, the sproggans and the witches and the trolls? And if so was there an idea there? If Raymond saw real magic – saw the exciting things that happened on the Island, would that persuade him to come?

Cor’s ancient forehead wrinkled up in thought. Then he raised his stick in the air and said some poetry – and seconds later Ernie Hobbs, who had been sleeping on a mail bag on platform thirteen of King’s Cross Station, woke up and said: ‘Ouch!’ Looking about him, he saw that Mrs Partridge, who’d been flat out on a luggage trolley, was sitting up and looking puzzled.

‘I’ve got a tingle in my elbow,’ she said. ‘Real fierce it is.’

At the same time, Miriam Hughes-Hughes, the ghost of the apologizing lady , rolled off the bench outside the Left Luggage Office and lay blinking on the ground.

It was Ernie who realized what had happened.

‘We’re being summoned! We’re being sent for!’

‘It’ll be the wizard,’ said Mrs Partridge excitedly . ‘There isn’t no one else can do tricks like that!’

Wasting no more time, they glided down the platform and made their way to the park. They found Cornelius sitting on a tree stump and staring into the water.

‘Did you call us, Your Honour?’ asked Ernie.

‘I did,’ said Cor. He then told them what had happened earlier in Raymond’s room: ‘We went to tell him who he was, but the noise he made was more than anyone could bear. We had to leave.’

The ghosts looked troubled. ‘We should have warned you, maybe,’ said Ernie, ‘but we thought he might be better with you.’

‘Well, he wasn’t.’ Cor rubbed his aching knees. ‘Hans wants to bop the Prince on the head and carry him through the gump in a sack, but I think we must have another go at persuading him to come willingly. So I want you to call up all the . . . unusual people who are left Up Here and ask them to put on a special show for Raymond. Wizards, will o’ the wisps . . . everyone you can find. Ask them to do the best tricks they can and we’ll build a throne for Raymond and hail him as a prince.’

‘A sort of Raymond Trottle Magic Show?’ said Mrs Partridge eagerly .

Ernie, though, was looking worried. ‘There’s always a bit of a do on Midsummer’s Eve, that’s true enough. But . . . well, Your Honour, I don’t want to throw a damper but magic isn’t what it was up here. It’s what you might call the Tinkerbell Factor.’

‘I don’t follow you,’ said the wizard.

‘Well, there’s this fairy . . . she’s in a book called
Peter Pan
. Tinkerbell, she’s called. When people say they don’t believe in her she goes all woozy and feeble. It’s like that up here with the wizards and the witches and all. People haven’t believed in them so long they’ve lost heart a bit.’

‘We can only do our best,’ said Cornelius. ‘Now, tell me, what’s the situation about . . . you know . . .’ He spoke quietly , not knowing who might be listening in the depths of the lake. ‘
Him
. The monster? Is he still there?’

‘Old Nuckel? They say so,’ said Ernie. ‘But no one’s seen him for donkey’s years. Have you thought of calling him up?’

‘I was wondering,’ said Cor. ‘I happen to have my book of spells with me. It would make a splendid ending to the show.’

The ghosts looked respectful. Raising monsters from the deep is very difficult magic indeed.

‘Well, if that doesn’t fetch the little perisher, nothing will,’ said Mrs Partridge – and blushed, because nasty or not, Raymond Trottle was, after all, a prince.

It was incredible how helpful everyone was. Witches who worked in school kitchens trying to make two pounds of mince go round a hundred children said they would come, and so did wizards who taught Chemistry and stayed behind to make interesting explosions after the children had gone home. An animal trainer who trained birds for films and television, and was really an enchanter, promised to bring his flock of white doves so that the evening could begin with a fly-past.

Melisande, the water-nymph-who-was-not-a-mermaid, swam through the outlet pipe at For-tlands and spoke to her uncle who was a merrow and worked the sewers, dredging up stuff which people had flushed down the loo by mistake or lost in the plughole of the bath, and he too said he would come and do a trick for Raymond.

‘Really , people are so
kind
,’ said Gurkie as she ran about jollying along the tree spirits who had agreed to do a special dance for Raymond on the night.

And she was right. After all, it wasn’t as though they didn’t know what Raymond was like – that kind of thing gets around – but everyone wanted the King and Queen to be happy . The Island mattered to them; it was their homeland even if they themselves hadn’t been there, and there seemed to be no end to the trouble they were prepared to take.

The ghosts, during these two days, were everywhere; helping, persuading, taking messages. Even Miriam Hughes-Hughes stopped apologizing and found a Ladies’ Group of Banshees – those pale, ghastly women who wail and screech when something awful is going to happen, and they agreed to come and sing sad songs for the Prince. A troll called Henry Prendergast who lived in the basement of the Bank of England said he thought he could manage some shape-shifting, and Hans tried to forget the hurt that Raymond had done him by calling him creepy , a nd practised weight-lifting till his muscles threatened to crack. As for Odge Gribble, she went off by herself in the Underground to visit an aunt of her mother’s. The aunt was an Old Woman of Gloominess and absolutely marvellous at turning people bald, and she promised to bring some friends along from her sewing circle and amuse Raymond by making donkey’s tails come out of people’s foreheads and that kind of thing.

But it was Cor who worked himself hardest. Hour after hour, he sat by the lake with his black book practising his monster-raising spell. He didn’t eat, he scarcely slept, but he wouldn’t stop. There was something special about the Monster of the Serpentine, only , he couldn’t remember what it was. There was a lot he couldn’t remember these days, but he wasn’t going to give up. There was nothing Cor wouldn’t have done to bring back the Prince – un-bopped and un-sacked – to the parents who wanted him so much.

The only thing that still worried the rescuers was how to make Raymond Trottle come to the park. Of course it would be easy to call him by magic as Cor had called the ghosts, but they had promised faithfully not to use any magic directly on the Prince.

It was Ben who thought of what to do. ‘There’s a boy at Raymond’s school called Paul who’s the son of a duke. Raymond would do anything to keep up with him. If we pretend that Paul’s giving a secret party by the lake, I’m sure Raymond will come.’ Then his face became troubled. ‘Of course, it’s cheating, I suppose. It’s a lie.’

But Cor was firm about this. ‘Bringing Raymond back to the island is like a military campaign. Like a war. In a war, a soldier might have to tell a lie but he’d still be serving his country . ’

Ben’s plan worked. Melisande knew a siren who worked in Fortlands showing off the dresses, and she ‘borrowed’ a posh invitation card and Ben pretended that Paul had bribed him to deliver it.

And just before twelve o’clock on Midsummer’s Eve, Raymond Trottle, in his jazziest clothes, arrived at the edge of the lake – and found a great throne which the trolls had built for him, and a host of people who raised their arms and hailed him as a prince.