Adults Only

by Morris Gleitzman

  ‘I know,’ said Jake quietly.

  There was no point arguing. He knew exactly the words Mum wanted to hear.

  ‘When guests come all the way to a sophisticated adults-only holiday hideaway on a remote island,’ recited Jake sadly, ‘they don’t want to find they’ve got to share the place with a kid.’

  ‘Good boy,’ said Mum.

  After Mum had gone, Jake pulled Crusher’s head out of the underpants. This was important and he wanted Crusher to hear it.

  ‘If Mum and Dad are trying to run an adults-only island,’ said Jake, ‘why did they have me?’

  Crusher didn’t reply at first.

  Jake felt panic spiralling up from somewhere under his kidneys.

  Then Crusher saved him.

  ‘They had you,’ said Crusher, ‘because they wanted you. Because they love you.’

  Jake gave a relieved sigh.

  ‘Right,’ he said, starting to feel better already. Sometimes it was good having a best friend with a sewn-up mouth because in your mind you could make him say exactly what you wanted.

  Then Jake saw what Crusher was thinking.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Jake. ‘If Mum and Dad want this to be an adults-only island, they should start treating me like an adult.’

  Crusher didn’t disagree.

  ‘Mum’s always telling me to be a big boy,’ said Jake. ‘Well, I’ll show them what a big boy I can be. I’ll show them I can be such a big boy they’ll wonder how they ever ran this place without me.’

  ‘Go for it,’ said Crusher.

  3

  Jake had never organised an Easter egg hunt for other people before.

  It wasn’t going too well.

  He crouched out of sight behind a large rock and watched the optometrists anxiously.

  ‘I don’t reckon there are any flaming eggs,’ said the loudest of the optometrists, screwing up the Guest Activities Newsletter he’d found under his door that morning. He kicked a small gorse bush with his hiking boots. ‘I reckon someone’s having a lend of us.’

  An egg-shaped object rolled out from under the bush.

  ‘Don’t be such a whinger,’ said another of the optometrists. ‘This is fun. I haven’t been on an Easter egg hunt for years.’ She spotted the egg-shaped object and pointed with her bucket. ‘Look, there’s one. An Easter egg.’

  Jake wished it was, but he could see that it wasn’t. He sighed. Being Guest Activities Organiser was more difficult than he’d thought. He really envied Guest Activities Organisers in other hotels who could do their job without having to stay hidden.

  The third optometrist hitched up his tracksuit pants and knelt down on the grass for a closer look at the egg-shaped object. It was hard and wind-dried. The optometrist picked it up and sniffed it.

  ‘It’s dog poo,’ he said.

  Jake realised there were some advantages to being a hidden Guest Activities Organiser. At least you didn’t have to explain to guests that the poo they were holding wasn’t dog poo. That sometimes other guests out for walks couldn’t be bothered going back to the house when nature called.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said the fourth optometrist, pulling a hanky from his shorts pocket and wiping his pink bald head, ‘is why we’re having an Easter egg hunt in September.’

  Jake took a deep breath. He’d feared this might come up. He should have explained it in the newsletter.

  It’s because I’m usually the only one on the Easter egg hunt, he should have written. I hide the eggs at Easter, but then I have to wait three or four months so I forget where I hid them. So I can hunt for them.

  The four optometrists were all studying the newsletter now.

  ‘Are you sure this is an official hotel activity?’ said the loud optometrist.

  ‘I reckon it’s a practical joke,’ said the optometrist in the tracksuit.

  The optometrist with the bucket peered at the newsletter over the top of her sunglasses. ‘It says here all the eggs are hidden on this top section of the island,’ she said, pointing with her bucket to the grassy patches and clumps of gorse and rocky outcrops all around. ‘Come on.’

  The other optometrists wandered off after her, grumbling and turning things over with their boots.

  Please, begged Jake silently, watching them from behind his rock. Please find some eggs and decide this is the best fun you’ve had for months and then tell all your patients about it when you get back to work so they all book holidays here as soon as their new glasses are ready.

  The optometrists didn’t seem to be having much fun so far. The one with the bucket was looking more and more disappointed and the other three were scowling and muttering to each other.

  If only I could remember exactly where I hid the eggs, thought Jake. Perhaps I could give them a clue without them seeing me.

  He fumbled in his rucksack, wishing he’d brought binoculars and magnifying glasses he could leave lying around for the optometrists to use.

  ‘Crusher,’ whispered Jake, pulling him out of the rucksack. ‘You were here when I hid the eggs. Can you remember where I put any of them?’

  Jake waited. He knew Crusher didn’t actually speak at moments like this, but the battered old bear had the incredible knack of putting the right thought into your skull at the right time.

  The sun was glinting off one of Crusher’s button eyes. It was like he was winking. And Jake saw that one of Crusher’s arms, resting on the edge of the rucksack, was pointing down the hill.

  Yes.

  Suddenly it all came back.

  Jake remembered where he’d hidden one of the eggs. In the bent tree halfway down the hill.

  ‘Thanks mate,’ he whispered, giving Crusher a hug. ‘You’re the best.’

  Now, how could he point the optometrists in the right direction?

  Jake peered round the rock to see where they were, and froze.

  They were heading straight for him.

  He squeezed down behind the rock, making himself and Crusher as small as he could.

  Please, he begged. Please don’t see us.

  ‘That old wooden box next to the big rock,’ said the optometrist with the bucket. ‘I bet there’s one in there.’

  Jake felt relief flood through him like molten chocolate.

  Of course.

  The old weather instruments box right next to where he was hiding. It was where he’d put the biggest of all the eggs. And, he realised now, it was where Crusher had been pointing.

  He heard the optometrists throw back the lid.

  There was a long silence.

  Jake peeped out from behind the rock.

  The optometrists were staring at what was in the box.

  Jake stared too.

  It was definitely an Easter egg, but it had changed quite a bit since Jake had last seen it. The colour, for a start. It was green now, with black and orange things sprouting out of it. And it was furrier than Crusher. And the smell was pretty strong.

  The optometrists were staggering back, hands over their mouths and noses.

  ‘Urghhh,’ said the loud optometrist, gagging loudly.

  Jake realised he should probably have explained something else in the newsletter.

  I made the eggs myself to save on cost, but I didn’t have enough chocolate so I made some of them out of cheese.

  The optometrist with the bucket was bending over. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ she mumbled through her hand.

  I tried using margarine, Jake wished he’d written, but it wouldn’t hold its shape.

  ‘This is a fiasco,’ yelled the pink-faced optometrist, who was getting redder by the second. ‘I’m complaining to the management. In writing.’

  Jake huddled behind his rock and wished he was in bed and that this was all just a bad dream.

  But it wasn’t.

  He waited miserably while the optometrists stumbled down the hill. Then he put Crusher back into the rucksack and headed down the other side of the hill. He tried not to think what M
um and Dad were going to say.

  Below him, the main beach stretched out, golden in the midday sun. He wished he was down there, safe and not in big trouble, like the person he could see standing in the middle of the salt haze.

  Jake shaded his eyes and looked more closely.

  His insides gave a jolt.

  It was a girl in a pink dress.

  He stared even harder.

  It couldn’t be a girl. The only people on the island were him and Mum and Dad and the optometrists. Even if Mr Goff had made an extra food delivery in the boat and was stretching his legs on the beach, he wasn’t a girl.

  This person was definitely a girl.

  ‘Hang on tight,’ Jake said to Crusher in the rucksack, and started running down towards the beach, dry grass and gorse whipping at his legs.

  His thoughts were racing too. Perhaps she was a new guest. Just arrived with parents who didn’t know the island was adults-only.

  Then he remembered his glimpse of pink on the cliff path. The same pink as her dress. That was yesterday. So she couldn’t have just arrived.

  Jake was on the beach path now, feet skidding on sandy soil as he pounded his way downwards. He could see her more clearly now. Puffy short sleeves on her dress. Short dark hair. Bare feet. About his age.

  She was looking straight at him.

  Perhaps, thought Jake, heart hammering with effort and excitement, Mr Goff’s taken on a trainee deck hand. Which would mean there’d be another kid around on the island sometimes.

  At last.

  Jake went through the dip at the end of the path in three big happy leaps, and when he came out from behind the dune onto the flat sand she’d gone.

  Vanished.

  He stared up and down the beach, dumbfounded.

  She wasn’t there.

  Jake went over to where she’d been standing. The spot was a fair way from the waterline, even further from the dunes and a long way from the cliffs at either end of the beach. He’d been behind the dune for about three seconds. There was no way she could have covered any of those distances in that time.

  Jake stood on the sand, panting and confused.

  I don’t get it, he thought. I just don’t get it.

  On the whole stretch of tide-smoothed sand there was just one line of footprints.

  His.

  ‘Un—be—liev—able,’ said Dad. ‘Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.’

  Jake sat on his bed with his head in his hands.

  This was worse than he’d feared.

  When Dad forgot his whole vocabulary except for one word, you knew he was really upset.

  ‘I just wanted to help,’ said Jake quietly.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ said Dad, brandishing a Guest Activities Newsletter. ‘Do you honestly think dragging our guests all over the island and showing them rotting cheese is helping? Do you? Do you?’

  Jake shook his head.

  ‘Frank,’ said Mum. ‘Let me do this. You go up, love. The optometrists’ll be finishing their main course soon.’

  Dad didn’t move. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said.

  Jake glanced at Crusher, who was looking even more glum than the time a guest’s poodle rubbed its bottom on his head.

  ‘Listen, Jake,’ said Mum.

  Jake’s heart sank further. She was using the voice she used the time Mr Goff delivered a new dishwasher and dropped it.

  Gentle cycle, pot-scouring strength.

  ‘We know you wanted to help, Jake,’ said Mum.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ said Dad.

  ‘There’s something we haven’t told you,’ Mum went on. ‘Something we’ve been trying to protect you from. But as you’re so keen to be involved, we think it’s time you heard it.’

  Please, thought Jake anxiously. Please don’t be sick, either of you. Or getting a divorce. Or a poodle.

  ‘Our business is in trouble, Jake,’ said Mum. ‘We’re not getting enough guests. We haven’t been for about two years. We think it’s all the flash new children-not-welcome colonial cottages opening up on the mainland. Which is why, love, we can’t have you upsetting the guests we do have.’

  Jake digested this.

  He looked down at Crusher, who was lying on the floor staring at a shoe. Crusher couldn’t meet Mum’s eye either.

  ‘We’ve been borrowing extra money from the bank,’ Mum went on. ‘Last week they said no more.’

  Jake looked up at her and Dad.

  He waited a moment till his voice came back.

  ‘Why don’t we sell?’ said Jake. ‘Why don’t we sell this place and leave the island and buy a motel on the mainland with aluminium window frames?’

  For a few seconds there was silence in the room except for the happy pictures roaring through Jake’s head.

  Him and Crusher going to school on the mainland and making heaps of new friends.

  Him and Crusher showing their new friends how to play ping pong and how to arm-wrestle lobsters and how to sink enemy submarines just using dynamite and clothes pegs.

  Then Dad got the rest of his vocabulary back.

  ‘We can’t sell,’ he said. ‘Nobody wants to buy a business that’s losing money.’ He sat down on the bed next to Jake, but didn’t look at him. ‘Even if we could find a buyer, what we’d get wouldn’t be anywhere near what we owe the bank.’

  Jake stared at Crusher.

  Between them they’d come up with an answer.

  ‘We could pay the bank off,’ said Jake. ‘A bit each week. With the profits from the motel.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be a motel,’ said Dad. ‘We wouldn’t have the money for a motel.’

  Jake looked at Crusher.

  Crusher didn’t have any more answers either. Except ones that involved bursting into banks and taking large numbers of hostages.

  ‘Twelve years ago,’ said Mum, ‘when Dad and I first came here, we had to buy a fifty year lease on this place. That’s like paying fifty years rent in advance. We borrowed a huge amount of money. It was fine while this place was making good profits. But now the bank wants it all back.’

  ‘If we can’t get more guests,’ said Dad, turning to look hard at Jake, ‘and don’t stop upsetting the ones we’ve got, we’re history.’

  After Jake finished the sandwich Mum brought him, he tried to think.

  It was no good. At times like this you could only think clearly on the beach.

  He grabbed Crusher and crept out of his room and up the cellar steps to the side garden.

  Crusher was giving him a warning look.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Jake whispered. ‘I know we’re meant to stay in our room. But our beach is almost part of our room, eh? Mum and Dad send us there as much as our room.’

  Crusher didn’t argue.

  Jake looked around the side garden. Nobody was watching. He squeezed through the hedge into the ti-tree grove, ducked expertly between the trunks and branches, and slithered down through the tangled undergrowth to the side beach.

  It was tiny compared to the main beach, but Jake didn’t care. It was big enough for him and Crusher.

  Jake checked that his beach toys were in their nylon string bags hanging from a tree above the tide line. Then he propped Crusher up on his favourite rock, and sat down next to him.

  He could see that Crusher was pretty tense, so he took a deep breath and started whistling some of Crusher’s favourite tunes. TV theme songs mostly, with a couple of the ad jingles that Crusher particularly liked.

  It usually helped. Crusher had let him know years ago that when he was tense he really liked being whistled to. Either that or being massaged by crabs.

  Jake felt Crusher slowly relax. He took another lungful of crisp sea air and felt himself relax too. He was thinking more clearly already. He could see Crusher was too, which was pretty impressive for a bloke with a head full of fluff.

  They both gazed out to sea.

  ‘That girl,’ said Jake. ‘I definitely saw her. But she wasn’t there. You know what that means, don�
��t you?’

  He was pretty sure Crusher did.

  ‘It means loneliness is making me go mental,’ said Jake. He glanced at Crusher to see if Crusher understood. ‘Loneliness for another kid,’ he added hastily, ‘not another bear.’

  He saw that Crusher did understand.

  ‘So what we need,’ continued Jake, ‘is a way to get some kids here so I don’t go more mental. And some more guests so crippling debts don’t destroy our family.’

  They both thought hard and when they finally had the idea it was so simple they laughed for ages with relief.

  4

  Jake’s first thought was to do it over the school radio.

  As he headed back to his room he checked that Mum and Dad were out of the way.

  All clear. Dad was in the kitchen stuffing fish for dinner and Mum was upstairs still trying to persuade the optometrists not to leave early.

  Jake went down the steps to his room, sat at his desk, switched on the radio and checked that the microphone was working and that he had the right transmitting frequency.

  Then he remembered it was the holidays.

  I’m getting as bad as Mum, he thought, switching the radio off. No point calling the class in the holidays. They’d all be outside rounding up cattle or sheltering from duststorms or driving four hundred kilometres to the video shop.

  No problem. E-mail would do just as well.

  Jake switched on his computer, clicked Mail, found the mailing list with all his classmates’ e-mail addresses, and started writing.

  Tired of hanging round with the same old herd? Fed up with grit in your Gameboy? Sick of getting to the video store and finding you’ve left your card at home? You need a holiday, and our place is the place for you. Restful exciting island holiday resort. Historic modern amenities. Great beach and rocks. Completely safe unless you’re an idiot. Dad’s a top cook and Mum lets you watch Satellite TV really late on weekends. First visit free. No need to book. Just turn up.

  That should do the trick, thought Jake happily.

  He added the e-map that Mum and Dad sent to all their guests, and clicked Send. Then he put the whole thing into Delete Message and clicked again.