Island of the Aunts Read online

  Once she had decided this she felt better, but there was a long afternoon to get through still; one of the longest of her life, it seemed to Myrtle. Lambert lived in a large house bristling with burglar alarms and fitted with ankle-deep carpets, a private bar, a swimming pool, and a kitchen full of gadgets which hummed and pulsed and throbbed and which she had no idea how to use.

  What Lambert’s house didn’t have in it was any people. His father was busy getting rich, and his mother was busy spending the money he made, so neither of them spent much time at home. Myrtle had been told to wait till the woman who gave Lambert his supper came, and hand him over.

  Lambert sat down in front of an enormous telly and started zapping channels in a bored way, and Myrtle made her way to the bathroom to freshen up. She had decided to flush the chloroform down the loo; it bothered her having it when she had given up as a kidnapper, so she took the bottle and her bag of hairpins and made her way upstairs.

  “What have you got there?” Lambert’s suspicious voice made her turn round. He had put his telephone in his pocket and was glaring at her, narrowing his eyes. “You’re stealing something. What’s in that bottle?”

  He leant forward to try and snatch the bottle. Aunt Myrtle put it behind her back but Lambert kicked her hard in the shins, twisted her free arm and grabbed the bottle. Then he undid the stopper and put his nose to it.

  “Don’t!” cried Myrtle. “Put it down, Lambert.”

  But it was too late. The loathsome boy lay felled and quite unconscious on the floor.

  Chapter 3

  Minette woke up in a strange bed with a lumpy mattress and brass knobs. She was in a big room; shabby, with a threadbare carpet and faded wallpaper covered in a pattern of parrots and swirling leaves. The curtains breathed slightly in the open windows. A high mewing noise came from outside.

  Then she remembered what had happened and at once she was very frightened indeed.

  She had been eating a sandwich, sitting opposite a strange fierce aunt who was supposed to be taking her to her father; and suddenly the compartment started going round and round and the face of the aunt came closer and then further away…and then nothing more. Blackness.

  She had been drugged and kidnapped, she was sure of that. She could remember the way the dreadful aunt had peered at her as if she was looking into her soul. Minette knew all about fear but now she was more afraid than she had ever been. What dreadful fate lay in wait for her? Would they cut off her ear and send it to her parents—or starve her till she did what they wanted?

  And what did they want? Kidnapping was about getting money out of people and neither her mother nor her father was rich.

  Moving in the bed, she found she was not tied up, but the windows would be barred and the door locked.

  Pushing aside the bedclothes, she walked over to the window. She was wearing her own nightdress; the aunt must have kidnapped her suitcase as well. The window was open and as Minette looked out she gasped with surprise.

  For she was looking at a most incredible view. Down below her was green, sheep-cropped turf studded with daisies and eyebright. A large goose with black legs walked across it, followed by six goslings with their necks stretched out. Beyond the turf the ground sloped to a bay of perfect white sand—and then came the sea.

  Minette looked and looked and looked. The sea in the morning light was like a crystal mirror; she could hear the waves turning over quietly on the beach. There were three black rocks guarding the bay and on them she could make out the dark round heads of seals. White birds circled and mewed and the air smelled of seaweed and shellfish and wind. It smelled of the sea!

  “Oh, it’s beautiful,” she whispered.

  But of course she would not be allowed to go outside. Kidnapped children were kept in dark cupboards and blindfolded. Any minute now someone would come and deal with her. She looked round the room. Old furniture, patchwork rugs, and by the bed—and this was odd—a nightlight. She had begged and begged for one at home but neither her father nor her mother had ever let her have one.

  A small snuffling sound made her turn quickly. It had come from behind a screen covered in cutouts of animals in the corner of the room.

  A fierce dog to guard her? But the noise had not been at all a fierce one.

  Her heart pounding, she tiptoed to the screen and looked round it. On a camp bed lay a boy of about her own age. He had very dark hair and sticking-out ears and he was just waking up.

  “Who are you?” he asked, staring at her with big round eyes.

  “I’m Minette. And I think I’ve been kidnapped by an aunt.”

  The boy sat up. “Me too.” He blinked. “Yes, I’m sure. I was supposed to be going back to my grandparents. She gave me a hamburger.”

  “Mine gave me a cheese and tomato sandwich.”

  The boy got out of bed and stretched. He too was wearing his own pyjamas. “We’ll have to try and escape,” he said. “We’ll have to.”

  “Yes. Only I think we’re on an island. Come and look.”

  She didn’t know why, but she had had the feeling at once that the sea wasn’t just in front of them but all around.

  “Wow!” Fabio too was struck by the view. “What a place.”

  Minette had gone over to the door. “Look, it isn’t locked!”

  “I’m going out,” said the boy. “They don’t seem to have taken our clothes away. They’re crummy kidnappers.”

  “Unless it’s all a trap.” She thought of the films she had seen—holes suddenly opening in the ground with man-eating piranhas or sharks. “Do you think they’ve kidnapped us to feed us to something?”

  He shrugged. “You’d think they’d choose fatter children than us. Come on, get dressed. I’m going out.”

  There was no one in the corridor; there was no one on the stairs.

  Then, from behind a door across the hallway, they heard a scream, followed by a thump, and then a second scream. Someone in there was being tortured—and it sounded like a child.

  Minette leant back against the wall, white-faced and trembling.

  “Come on—quick!” Fabio clutched her arm.

  The children ran out across the turf, over the dunes, along the perfect crescent of sand. The tide was out; it was a shell beach; there were Venus shells and cowries and green stones polished like emeralds. No one stopped them; there was no one to be seen. It would have been like Paradise except for that ghastly scream.

  “Look,” said Fabio.

  A group of seals had swum towards the shore and were looking at them, swimming in a semicircle, snorting and blowing…With their round heads they looked like a group of Russian dolls.

  The children were silent, looking at the seals, and the seals stared back at them. Then suddenly they turned and swam back into the deep water.

  All except one, a bull seal with white markings on the throat, who came close to the shore, and closer, till he was in the shallows with his flippers resting in the sand.

  “It’s as if he’s trying to tell us something.”

  “He’s got incredible eyes,” said Minette dreamily. “He doesn’t look like a seal at all. He looks as though inside he’s a person.”

  “Well, seals are persons. Everything that’s alive is a person really.”

  But that wasn’t what she’d meant.

  They took off their shoes and walked on the firm wet sand between the tidemarks towards a cliff covered with nesting kittiwakes and puffins and terns. The tide was still going out, leaving behind its treasures: pieces of driftwood as smooth as velvet, crimson crab shells, bleached cuttlefish bones, whiter than snow. There was no sign of any ship. They might have been alone in the universe.

  “What’s that noise?” asked Fabio, stopping suddenly.

  A deep and mournful sound, a kind of honking, had come from somewhere inland.

  “It must be a foghorn,” said Minette.

  But there wasn’t any fog, nor any lighthouse to give warning if there had been.

  The
y listened for a few moments but the sound did not come again, and they ran on along the shore. It was a marvellous island; it seemed to have everything. To their left was a green hill; two hills, actually, with a dip between, the slopes covered with bracken and gorse. The far shore would be wilder, exposed to the wind.

  “If we climbed up there we could see exactly where we are. There might be other islands or a causeway. If we’re going to escape we’re going to have to know,” said Minette.

  They had to get away—that terrible scream still rang in their ears—but Minette couldn’t help thinking of where she would be if she hadn’t been kidnapped. In her father’s dark sitting room trying to get interested in a book till he came back from the university.

  Fabio seemed to be having the same sort of thoughts. “I can’t help wondering if my grandparents will pay the ransom for me. They’re horribly mean and they don’t like me.”

  Minette tried to think if her parents liked her enough to pay a lot of money to get her back but when she thought about her parents her stomach always started to lurch about so she said, “There’s a little path there to the top of the hill.”

  They began to run towards the gap in the dunes, forgetting the lives they had left behind, forgetting even that awful tortured scream. The wind was in their backs; it was like flying. No one could imagine anything dangerous or dark.

  And then it happened! From behind the hummock of sand that had hidden them, there arose suddenly the cruel figures of two enormous women.

  It was the evil aunts!

  The sinister kidnappers glared at the children, and the children, terrified, stared back. Here was the tall bony aunt with her fierce eyes who had drugged Minette’s sandwich, and here was the plump mad person with her scarves flying in the wind who had given sleeping powders to a defenceless boy.

  The children reached for each other’s hands. Minette was shaking so much she could hardly stand. What punishment would they be given for escaping from their room?

  It was the tall bony aunt, Etta, who spoke. “You’re late for breakfast,” she said in her fierce and booming voice.

  The children continued to stare.

  “Breakfast,” the other one went on. “You’ve heard of that? We have it at seven and the cook gets ratty if he’s kept waiting. Go and wash your hands first—the bathroom’s at the top of the stairs.”

  The children ran off, completely puzzled by this way of kidnapping people, and Etta and Coral followed. They were talking about Myrtle, who hadn’t stopped crying since she came back.

  “She’s got to stop blaming herself,” said Coral. “Mistakes can happen to anyone.”

  “Yes. Mind you, Lambert is quite a mistake!”

  Breakfast was laid in the dining room, a big room with shabby leather chairs, which faced the patch of green turf and the bay. All the windows in the L-shaped farmhouse had at least a glimpse of the sea. Even the bathroom, with its huge claw-footed bath and ancient geyser, looked out on the ledge of rock where the seals hauled out of the water to rest.

  “Porridge or cereal?” asked Aunt Etta, as the children came in.

  Minette blinked at her. “Cereal,” she managed to say.

  “Porridge,” said Fabio.

  “Please,” said Etta briskly, picking up the ladle. “Porridge, please.”

  Fabio was the first to shake himself awake. “This is a very odd kidnap,” he said crossly. “And I won’t eat anything drugged.”

  Aunt Etta leant forward, scooped a spoonful of porridge from his plate and gulped it down.

  “Satisfied?” she said.

  Fabio waited to see if she yawned or became dopey. Then he began to eat. The porridge was delicious.

  They were both on second helpings when the screams began again. This time they were even worse than before and were followed by sobs and wails and a low shuddering moan. Then the door opened and a woman they had never seen before ran into the room. She had long, reddish-grey hair down her back; a bloody scratch ran along one cheek and she seemed to be quite beside herself.

  The children shrank back in their chairs, their fear returning. The woman looked every inch a torturer.

  “Really, Myrtle,” said Aunt Etta, “I’ve told the children they mustn’t be late for breakfast and now look at you.”

  But no one could be cross with Myrtle for long, not even her bossy sister. The scratch on Myrtle’s cheek had begun to bleed again, there were tooth marks on her wrist, and though she took a helping of porridge she was quite unable to swallow it.

  And when she was introduced to Minette and Fabio, her tears began to flow again.

  “Yours are so nice,” she sobbed. “They look so intelligent and friendly.”

  “That’s as maybe,” said Etta. “We haven’t tried them out yet.” She frowned as more bangs and thumps came from across the corridor. “He can’t stay in the broom cupboard, Myrtle. What would happen if he goes for the Hoover? We’d never get the place cleaned up again.”

  “It’s just for now,” said Myrtle. “I gave him my bedroom when he first came round but I was afraid for the ducklings.”

  Myrtle often had motherless ducklings keeping warm in her bed and her underclothes drawer.

  “I suppose we shall have to unkidnap him,” said Coral. “But how? No one’s going to pay a ransom for Lambert Sprott.”

  “We could offer to give his father some money if he’ll take Lambert away,” suggested Myrtle, blowing her nose.

  “Don’t be silly, Myrtle,” said Etta. “For one thing we haven’t got any money—and for another he’d tell everyone about the Island and photographers would come, and journalists.” She shuddered. Keeping the position of the Island secret was the most important thing of all.

  “We could turn him round and round till he was completely giddy and leave him in a telephone kiosk somewhere on the mainland,” said Coral. But she did not sound very convinced by her idea.

  Myrtle began to sob again. “I should have left him on the floor,” she gulped. “I should never have brought him. But it seemed so cruel just to leave him there unconscious.”

  “Hush. What’s done is done.”

  But Myrtle couldn’t be consoled. “And my cello case smells of the awful child,” she wailed. “He puts terrible stuff on his hair.”

  “Perhaps he’ll settle down when we’ve got some breakfast into him.”

  Judging by the screams and thumps coming from across the corridor though, this did not seem likely.

  But Fabio was getting impatient. “What about us? Are you going to unkidnap us?”

  The aunts stared at him. “Are you mad?” said Etta. “After all the trouble we took. In any case, you haven’t been kidnapped exactly. You’ve been chosen.”

  Minette and Fabio stared. “How?” asked Minette.

  “What do you mean?” enquired Fabio.

  Aunt Coral put down her coffee cup. “It’s time we explained. But first you’d better come and meet Daddy. He gets upset when things are kept from him.”

  Captain Harper was a hundred and three years old and spent most of the day in bed looking at the Island through his telescope.

  He was very deaf and very grumpy and what he saw through the window didn’t please him. When he was young there had been far more geese coming from Greenland—hundreds and thousands of geese—and their feet had been yellower and their bottoms more feathery than the geese who came nowadays. The sheep had been fleecier when he was a boy and the flowers in the grass had been brighter and the seals on the rocks ten times larger and fatter.

  “Huge, they were,” Captain Harper would say, throwing out his arms. “Great big cow seals with big bosoms and eyes like cartwheels, and look at them now!”

  No one liked to say that it was probably because he couldn’t see or hear too well that things had changed, and when he told the same stories for the hundredth time, his daughters just smiled and tiptoed out of the room because they were fond of him and knew that being old is difficult.

  “Here are the
children, Father,” yelled Coral. “The ones that have come to stay with us.”

  The old man put down his telescope and stared at them.

  “They’re too small,” he said. “They won’t be a mite of use. You need ones with muscles. When I was their age I had muscles like footballs.”

  He put out a skinny arm and flexed his biceps, and they could see a bump like a very small pea come up on his arm. “We were all strong in those days. There was a boy in my class who could lift the teacher’s desk with one hand. Freddie Boyle he was called. He was the one who put the grass snake down the teacher’s trouser leg.”

  The aunts let him tell the story about the grass snake and the teacher’s trouser leg because it was a short one, but when he began on the one about Freddie Boyle’s brother, who’d run over his own false teeth in a milk float, they shepherded the children out quietly.

  “He won’t notice,” they said.

  When they went downstairs again they found Art, the cook, wiping porridge off his trouser leg. He had tried to give Lambert some breakfast and had it thrown in his face.

  “Nasty little perisher you’ve got in there,” he said. “Best drown him, I’d say. Shouldn’t think his parents would want him back.”

  Before he escaped and was washed up on the Island, Art had worked in the prison kitchens, which was why he made such good porridge. Because he’d killed a man once, Art didn’t like the sight of blood and it was always the aunts who had to chop the heads off the fish before they went into the frying pan or get the chickens ready for the pot. Another thing Art didn’t like to do was anything energetic.

  “I don’t know my own strength,” he would say, when there was anything messy or difficult to be done. “I might forget myself and do someone an injury.”

  This didn’t seem likely—Art was a skinny person who hardly came up to Aunt Etta’s shoulder—but he’d quickly locked the door on Lambert and, leaving him to scream for his mobile telephone, retreated to his kitchen.