The Secret of Platform 13 Read online

  But there was one thing they didn’t have. They didn’t have a baby.

  As the years passed and no baby came along, Mrs Trottle got angrier and angrier. She glared at people pushing prams, she snorted when babies appeared on television gurgling and advertising disposable nappies. Even puppies and kittens annoyed her.

  Then after nearly ten years of marriage she decided to go and adopt a baby.

  First, though, she went to see the woman who had looked after her when she was small. Nanny Brown was getting on in years. She was a tiny, grumpy person who soaked her false teeth in brandy and never got into bed without looking to see if there was a burglar hiding underneath, but she knew everything there was to know about babies.

  ‘You’d better come with me,’ Mrs Trottle said. ‘And I want that old doll of mine.’

  So Nanny Brown went to fetch the doll which was one of the large, old-fashioned ones with eyes that click open and shut, and lace dresses, and cold, china arms and legs.

  And on a fine day towards the end of June, the chauffeur drove Mrs Trottle to an orphanage in the north of England and beside her in the Rolls Royce sat Nanny Brown looking like a cross old bird and holding the china doll in her lap.

  They reached the orphanage. Mrs Trottle swept in.

  ‘I have come to choose a baby,’ she said. ‘I’m prepared to take either a boy or a girl but it must be healthy , o f course, and not more than three months old and I’d prefer it to have fair hair.’

  Matron looked at her. ‘I’m afraid we don’t have any babies for adoption,’ she said. ‘There’s a waiting list.’

  ‘A waiting list!’ Mrs Trottle’s bosom swelled so much that it looked as if it was going to take off into space. ‘My good woman, do you know who I am? I am Larina Trottle! My husband is the head of Trottle and Blatherspoon, the biggest merchant bank in the City and his salary is five hundred thousand pounds a year.’

  Matron said she was glad to hear it.

  ‘Anyone lucky enough to become a Trottle would be brought up like a prince,’ Mrs Trottle went on. ‘And this doll which I have brought for the baby is a real antique. I have been offered a very large sum of money for it. This doll is priceless!’

  Matron nodded and said she was sure Mrs Trottle was right, but she had no babies for adoption and that was her last word.

  The journey back to London was not a pleasant one. Mrs Trottle ranted and raved; Nanny Brown sat huddled up with the doll in her lap; the chauffeur drove steadily southwards.

  Then just as they were coming into London, the engine began to make a nasty clunking noise.

  ‘Oh no, this is too much!’ raged Mrs Trottle. ‘I will not allow you to break down in these disgusting, squalid streets.’ They were close to King’s Cross Station and it was eleven o’clock at night.

  But the clunking noise grew worse.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to stop at this garage, Madam,’ said the chauffeur.

  They drew up by one of the petrol pumps. The chauffeur got out to look for a mechanic.

  Mrs Trottle, in the back seat, went on ranting and raving.

  Then she grew quiet. On a bench between the garage and a fish and chip shop sat a woman whose frizzy red hair and long nose caught the lamplight. She was wearing the uniform of a nursery nurse and beside her was a baby’s basket . . . a basket most finely woven out of rushes whose deep hood sheltered whoever lay within.

  The chauffeur returned with a mechanic and began to rev the engine. Exhaust fumes from the huge car drifted towards the bench where the red-haired woman sat holding on to the handle of the basket. Her head nodded, but she jerked herself awake.

  The chauffeur revved even harder and another cloud of poisonous gas rolled towards the bench.

  The nurse’s head nodded once more.

  ‘Give me the doll!’ ordered Larina Trottle – and got out of the car.

  For eight days the nurses had waited on the ship as it anchored off the Secret Cove. They had sung to the Prince and rocked him and held him up to see the sea birds and the cliffs of their homeland. They had taken him ashore while they paddled and gathered shells and they had welcomed the people who came though the gump, as they arrived in the mouth of the cave.

  Travelling through the gump takes only a moment. The suction currents and strange breezes that are stored up there during nine long years have their own laws and can form themselves into wind baskets into which people can step and be swooshed up or down in an instant. It is a delightful way to travel but can be muddling for those not used to it and the nurses made themselves useful helping the newcomers on to the ship.

  Then on the ninth day something different came through the tunnel . . . and that something was – a smell.

  The nurses were right by the entrance in the cliff when it came to them and as they sniffed it up, their eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Oh Lily!’ said poor Violet, and her nose quivered.

  ‘Oh Rose!’ said poor Lily and clutched her sister.

  It was the smell of their childhood: the smell of fish and chips. Every Saturday night their parents had sent them out for five packets and they’d carried them back, warm as puppies, through the lamplit streets.

  ‘Do you remember the batter, all sizzled and gold?’ asked Lily .

  ‘And the soft whiteness when you got through to the fish?’ said Violet.

  ‘The way the chips went soggy when you doused them with vinegar?’ said Rose.

  And as they stood there, they thought they would die if they didn’t just once more taste the glory that was fish and chips.

  ‘We can’t go,’ said Lily , w ho was the careful one. ‘You know we can’t.’

  ‘Why can’t we?’ asked Rose. ‘We’d be up there in a minute. It’s a good two hours still before the Closing.’

  ‘What about the Prince? There’s no way we can leave him,’ said Lily .

  ‘No, of course we can’t,’ said Violet. ‘We’ll take him. He’ll love going in a swoosherette, won’t you my poppet?’

  And indeed the Prince crowed and smiled and looked as though he would like nothing better.

  Well, to cut a long story short, the three sisters made their way to the mouth of the cave, climbed into a wind basket – and in no time at all found themselves in King’s Cross Station.

  Smells are odd things. They follow you about when you’re not thinking about them, but when you put your nose to where they ought to be, they aren’t there. The nurses wandered round the shabby streets and to be honest they were wishing they hadn’t come. The pavements were dirty, passing cars splattered them with mud and the Odeon Cinema where they’d seen such lovely films had been turned into a bowling alley.

  Then suddenly there it was again – the smell – stronger than ever, and now, beside an All Night garage, they saw a shop blazing with light and in the window a sign saying FRYING NOW.

  The nurses hurried forward. Then they stopped.

  ‘We can’t take the Prince into a common fish and chip shop,’ said Lily. ‘It wouldn’t be proper.’

  The others agreed. Some of the people queuing inside looked distinctly rough.

  ‘Look, you wait over there on the bench with the baby,’ said Rose. She was half an hour older than the others and often took the lead. ‘Violet and I’ll go in and get three packets. We’re only a couple of streets away from the station – there’s plenty of time.’

  So Lily went to sit on the bench and Rose and Violet went in to join the queue. Of course when they reached the counter, the cod had run out – something always runs out when it’s your turn. But the man went to fetch some more and there was nothing to worry about: they had three quarters of an hour before the Closing of the Gump and they were only ten minutes walk from the station.

  Lily , w a iting on the bench, saw the big Rolls Royce draw up at the garage . . . saw the chauffeur get out and a woman with wobbly piled-up hair open the window and let out a stream of complaints.

  Then the chauffeur came back and started to rev up
. . .

  Oh dear, I do feel funny , thought Lily and held on tight to the handle of the basket. Her head fell forward and she jerked herself awake. Another cloud of fumes rolled towards her . . . and once more she blacked out.

  But only for a moment. Almost at once she came round and all was well. The big car had gone, the basket was beside her, and now her sisters came out with three packets wrapped in newspaper. The smell was marvellous and a greasy ooze had come up on the face of the Prime Minister, just the way she remembered it.

  Thoroughly pleased with themselves, the nurses hurried through the dark streets, reached Platform Thirteen and entered the cloakroom.

  Only when they were safe in the tunnel did they unpack the steaming fish and chips.

  ‘Let’s just give him one chip to suck?’ suggested Violet.

  But Lily , w ho was the fussy one, said no, the Prince only had healthy food and never anything salty or fried.

  ‘He’s sleeping so sound,’ she said fondly .

  She bent over the cot, peered under the hood . . . unwound the embroidered blanket, the lacy shawl . . .

  Then she began to scream.

  Instead of the warm, living, breathing baby – there lay a cold and lifeless doll.

  And the wall of the gentlemen’s cloakroom was moving . . . moving . . . it was almost back in position.

  Weeping, clawing, howling, the nurses tried to hold it back.

  Too late. The gump was closed and no power on earth could open it again before the time was up. But in Nanny Brown’s little flat, Mrs Trottle stood looking down at the stolen baby with triumph in her eyes.

  ‘Do you know what I’m going to do?’ she said.

  Nanny Brown shook her head.

  ‘I’m going to go right away from here with the baby. To Switzerland. For a whole year. And when I come back I’m going to pretend that I had him over there. That it’s my very own baby – not adopted but mine. No one will guess; it’s such a little baby. My husband won’t guess either if I stay away – he’s so busy with the bank he won’t notice.’

  Nanny Brown looked at her, thunderstruck. ‘You’ll never get away with it, Miss Larina. Never.’

  ‘Oh yes, I will! I’m going to bring him back as my own little darling babykins, aren’t I, my poppet? I’m going to call him Raymond. Raymond Trottle, that sounds good, doesn’t it? He’s going to grow up like a little prince and no one will be sorry for me or sneer at me because they’ll think he’s properly mine. I’ll sack all the servants and get some new ones so they can’t tell tales and when I come back it’ll be with my teeny weeny Raymond in my arms.’

  ‘You can’t do it,’ said Nanny Brown obstinately . ‘It’s wicked.’

  ‘Oh yes, I can. And you’re going to give up your flat and come with me because I’m not going to change his nappies. And if you don’t, I’ll go to the police and tell them it was you that stole the baby.’

  ‘You wouldn’t!’ gasped Nanny Brown.

  But she knew perfectly well that Mrs Trottle would. When she was a little girl Larina Trottle had tipped five live goldfish on to the carpet and watched them flap themselves to death because her mother had told her to clean out their bowl, and she was capable of anything.

  But it wasn’t just fear that made Nanny Brown go with Mrs Trottle to Switzerland. It was the baby with his milky breath and the big eyes which he now opened to look about him and the funny little whistling noise he made. She wasn’t a particularly nice woman, but she loved babies and she knew that Larina Trottle was as fit to look after a young baby as a baboon. Actually , a lot less fit because baboons, as it happens, make excellent mothers. So Mrs Trottle went away to Switzerland – and over the Island a kind of darkness fell. The Queen all but died of grief, the King went about his work like a man twice his age. The people mourned, the mermaids wept on their rocks and the schoolchildren made a gigantic calendar showing the number of days which had to pass before the gump opened once more and the Prince could be brought back.

  But of all this the boy called Raymond Huntingdon Trottle knew nothing at all.

  Three

  Odge Gribble was a hag.

  She was a very young one, and a disappointment to her parents. The Gribbles lived in the north of the Island and came from a long line of frightful and monstrous women who flapped and shrieked about, giving nightmares to people who had been wicked or making newts come out of the mouths of anyone who told a lie. Odge’s oldest sister had a fingernail so long that you could dig the garden with it, the next girl had black hairs like piano wires coming out of her ears, the third had stripey feet and so on – down to the sixth who had blue teeth and a wart the size of a saucer on her chin.

  Then came Odge.

  There was great excitement before she was born because Mrs Gribble had herself been a seventh daughter, and now the new baby would be the seventh also, and the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter is supposed to be very special indeed.

  But when the baby came, everyone fell silent and a cousin of Mrs Gribble’s said: ‘Oh dear!’

  The baby’s fingernails were short; not one whisker grew out of her ears; her feet were absolutely ordinary .

  ‘She looks just like a small pink splodge,’ the cousin went on.

  So Mrs Gribble decided not to call her new daughter Nocticula or Va lpurgina and settled for Odge (which rhymed with splodge) and hoped that she would improve as she grew older.

  And up to a point, Odge did get a little more hag-like. She had unequal eyes: the left one was green and the right one was brown, and she had one blue tooth – but it was a molar and right at the back; the kind you only see when you’re at the dentist. There was also a bump on one of her feet which just could have been the beginning of an extra toe, though not a very big one.

  Nothing is worse than knowing you have failed your parents, but Odge did not whinge or whine. She was a strong-willed little girl with a chin like a prize fighter’s and long black hair which she drew like a curtain when she didn’t want to speak to anyone and she was very independent. What she liked best was to wander along the sea shore making friends with the mistmakers and picking up the treasures that she found there.

  It was on one of these lonely walks that she came across the Nurse’s Cave.

  It was a big, dark cave with water dripping from the walls, and the noise that came from it made Odge’s blood run cold. Dreadful moans, frightful wails, shuddering sobs . . . She stopped to listen, and after a while she heard that the wails had words to them, and that there seemed to be not one wailing voice but three.

  ‘Ooh,’ she heard. ‘Oooh, ooh . . . I shall never forgive myself; never!’

  ‘Never, never!’ wailed the second voice.

  ‘I deserve to die,’ moaned a third.

  Odge crossed the sandy bay and entered the cave. Three women were sitting there, dressed in the uniform of nursery nurses. Their hair was plastered with ashes, their faces were smeared with mud – and as they wailed and rocked, they speared pieces of completely burnt toast from a smouldering fire and put them into their mouths.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Odge.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said the first woman. Odge could see that she had red hair beneath the ashes and a long, freckled nose.

  ‘What’s the MATTER?’ repeated the second one, who looked so like the first that Odge realized that she had to be her sister.

  ‘How is it that you don’t know about our sorrow and our guilt?’ said the third – and she too was so alike that Odge knew they must be triplets.

  Then Odge remembered who they were. The tragedy had happened before she was born but even now the Island was still in mourning.

  ‘Are you the nurses who took the Prince Up There and allowed him to be stolen?’

  ‘We are,’ said one of the women. She turned furiously to her sister. ‘The toast is not burnt enough, Lily. Go and burn it some more.’

  Then Odge heard how they had lived in the cave ever since that dreadful day so as to punish the
mselves. How they ate only food that was burnt or mouldy or so stale that it hurt their teeth and never anything they were fond of, like bananas. How they never cleaned their teeth or washed, so that fleas could jump into their clothes and bite them, and always chose the sharpest stones to sleep on so that they woke up sore and bruised.

  ‘What happened to the Prince after he was stolen?’ asked Odge. She was much more interested in the stolen baby than in how bruised the nurses were or how disgusting their food was.

  ‘He was snatched by an evil woman named Mrs Trottle and taken to her house.’

  ‘How do you know that,’ asked Odge, ‘if the door in the gump was closed?’ (Hags do not start school till they are eight years old, so she still had a lot to learn.)

  ‘There are those who can pass through the gump even when it is shut and they told us.’

  ‘Ghosts, do you mean?’

  Violet nodded. ‘My foot feels comfortable,’ she grumbled. ‘I must go and dip it in the icy water and turn my toes blue.’

  ‘What did she do with him? With the baby?’

  ‘She pretended he was her own son. He lives with her now. She has called him Raymond Trottle.’

  ‘Raymond Trottle,’ repeated Odge. It seemed an unlikely name for a prince. ‘And he’s still living there and going to school and everything? He doesn’t know who he is?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Rose, poking a stick into her ear so as to try and draw blood. ‘But in two years from now the gump will open and the rescuers will go and bring him back and then we will stop wailing and eating burnt toast and our feet will grow warm and the sun will shine on our faces.’

  ‘And the Queen will smile again,’ said Lily .

  ‘Yes, that will be best of all, when the Queen smiles properly once more.’

  Odge was very thoughtful as she made her way back along the shore, taking care not to step on the toes of the mistmakers who lay basking on the sand. The Prince was only four months older than she was. How did he feel, being Raymond Trottle and living in the middle of London? What would he think when he found out that he wasn’t who he thought he was?