The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

by Philip Ardagh

  Mr Loaf led the horse out of the main entrance to The Coaching Inn and hitched him up to the carriage.

  ‘Thank you, my good man,’ cried Mad Uncle Jack, reaching into the pocket of his coat and pulling out a dried eel, which he tossed down to the grateful landlord.

  ‘No, thank you, sir,’ said Mr Loaf and winked at Eddie Dickens, who was leaning out of the carriage window, watching the proceedings.

  Eddie imagined Mr Loaf parcelling up the eel along with the other dried fish his great-uncle had used to pay for the board and lodgings and sending them on to his father.

  ‘Goodbye, Master Edmund!’ beamed the landlord. ‘Good luck!’

  ‘Good riddance!’ added Mrs Loaf, sweetly.

  With a flick of the reins and a loud whinny – from Eddie’s great-uncle, not the horse, which was still far too sleepy to be making conversation at that time of the morning – they were off.

  Mr and Mrs Loaf ran alongside the carriage, shouting and waving at Eddie.

  ‘Drop us a line, Master Edmund,’ called the landlord.

  ‘Drop dead!’ called the landlady.

  ‘Stay again soon,’ cried the landlord.

  ‘Stay away!’ cried the landlady.

  ‘If you’re ever passing this way –’ began the landlord.

  ‘Keep going without stopping,’ finished the landlady.

  And so the comments continued until the carriage picked up speed and the Loafs were left behind them.

  Eddie had to admit that Mrs Loaf really did have an excellent knack of making him feel unwelcome. He never wanted to go to The Coaching Inn again.

  ‘What time is it?’ demanded Mad Aunt Maud. She was looking directly at Eddie when she asked the question, so he decided that she really must be asking him and not the stuffed stoat.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have a watch,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Then borrow mine.’ His great-aunt rummaged in a small patchwork sack she had on the seat next to her. She pulled out a silver pocket watch on a chain and handed it to him. ‘Now, what time is it?’

  He read the hands. ‘It’s three minutes after eight o’clock,’ he said, passing the watch back to her.

  She studied the timepiece in her gnarled hands. ‘I couldn’t accept this,’ she said. ‘It’s solid silver.’ She held the watch up to her right ear and listened. ‘And it has a very expensive tick. No, I most certainly couldn’t accept such a valuable gift from a mere child.’

  ‘But it’s yours,’ Eddie tried to point out.

  ‘No, I cannot accept it,’ insisted Mad Aunt Maud sternly. ‘We’ll hear no more about it. What would your poor, crinkly-edged mother have to say about you trying to give away your treasured watch?’

  Eddie sighed, but decided it was best not to try to argue with his great-aunt. He slipped the watch into his pocket.

  ‘Thief!’ cried Maud. ‘Thief!’ She brandished Malcolm the stuffed stoat by the tail, like a club. It was as stiff as a policeman’s truncheon and made a frightening weapon. ‘Return my property to me at once!’ she demanded.

  Eddie swallowed hard. He dug his hand back into his pocket and passed her back her watch.

  Great-Aunt Maud grinned from ear to ear. ‘What a charming present,’ she said. ‘How thoughtful. How sweet.’

  Putting down Malcolm carefully on the seat next to her, she leaned to her left and opened the window of the carriage, then tossed out the silver fob watch. ‘Useless trinket,’ she mumbled.

  There was a cry, followed by a bit of confusion and then the carriage lurched to a halt. Eddie was propelled out of his seat and – to his horror – landed head first in his great-aunt’s lap.

  Apologising, he got to his feet and caught sight of a bearded stranger through the open window of the carriage.

  The bearded stranger was rubbing his head with one hand and holding Mad Aunt Maud’s watch with the other.

  Mad Uncle Jack jumped down off the now stationary carriage and was striding towards the man.

  ‘Why did you cry out like that?’ demanded Eddie’s great-uncle. ‘You frightened my horse.’

  ‘Because one of your number assailed me with a projectile!’ spluttered the bearded stranger, barely able to contain his rage.

  ‘Who did what with a what?’ demanded Uncle Jack.

  ‘A member of your party assaulted me with a missile!’ the bearded stranger explained. When it was obvious that Uncle Jack still had no idea what he was talking about, he tried again. ‘One of your lot threw this pocket watch at me,’ he said.

  ‘How very interesting!’ said Mad Uncle Jack. Before the bearded stranger knew what was happening, Eddie’s great-uncle had snatched the watch from his grasp and was studying it closely.

  ‘This watch does indeed belong to my beloved wife Maud,’ he mused. ‘I gave it to her on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday. Here, read the inscription.’

  He thrust the watch under the bearded stranger’s chin. When the bearded stranger managed to disentangle the silver watch chain from his beard, he read the inscription:

  To Maud

  Happy 2nd Birthday

  Jack

  The bearded stranger frowned. ‘Didn’t you just say that you gave this to your wife for her twenty-first birthday?’ he asked.

  ‘What of it?’ demanded Mad Uncle Jack, digging his hands into the pocket of his coat and clasping a dried fish in each.

  ‘Simply that the engraving refers to her second birthday, not her twenty-first.’

  Uncle Jack snorted at the bearded stranger as if he was an idiot. ‘It was cheaper to have “2nd” engraved rather than “21st”,’ he explained. ‘You had to pay by the letter.’

  ‘But the “1” of “21st” is a number, not a letter,’ the bearded stranger pointed out.

  ‘Then I was overcharged!’ muttered Mad Uncle Jack. ‘Thank you for bringing it to my attention, sir. After we have deposited my great-nephew at Awful End, I will visit the shop where I originally bought this watch for my dear Maud – some fifty-five years ago – and demand my refund of a ha’penny!’

  ‘Yes … That’s all very well, but that still doesn’t explain the reason why I became the target of a watch-thrower!’ the bearded stranger protested.

  Mad Uncle Jack stuck his head in through the open window of the carriage – his beak-like nose narrowly avoiding poking Eddie’s eye out.

  ‘Maud, dearest?’ he inquired.

  ‘Yes, peach blossom?’ she replied.

  ‘Did you throw your watch at this gentleman?’

  ‘Gentleman? Gentleman?’ she fumed. ‘He’s nothing more than a beard on legs!’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I wasn’t aiming at him,’ said Maud. ‘He simply got in the way.’

  ‘That’s solved then,’ said Mad Uncle Jack, satisfied that the truth had been reached. ‘My wife was not throwing things at you, sir. She was simply throwing things, and your head was in the way.’ With that, Mad Uncle Jack went to climb back up into the driver’s seat on top of the carriage.

  The bearded stranger put his arm on Uncle Jack’s shoulder. ‘Not so fast,’ he said. ‘This is a public highway and I have every right to be walking down it unmolested,’ he said.

  Mad Uncle Jack pulled free of his grasp and clambered up the side of the carriage. ‘Your head was in the way, sir,’ he said. He liked the phrase, so repeated it: ‘Your head was in the way.’

  ‘Then be very careful that this boy’s head does not get in the way of one of my bullets,’ said the bearded stranger.

  He opened his coat and pulled out a revolver. He pointed it through the open carriage window, and aimed it straight between Eddie’s eyes.

  Episode 5

  Big Guns

  In which we learn that the bearded stranger isn’t either

  Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a revolver pointed at you, but even if you haven’t, you probably know what one looks like.

  First and foremost it’s a gun. You pull the trigger and, if someone’s remembered to put
the bullets in it, one whizzes out of the end of the barrel and buries itself as deep as possible in the target.

  If the target is just that – a target – then it makes an impressive ‘bang’ followed by a ‘twang’ and everyone hurries forward to see how close the bullet hole is to the bull’s-eye.

  If the target is a person, there’s normally a cry of ‘AAARGHHH!!!’ as well as the bang, followed by a thud as the person falls to the ground with what looks like spaghetti sauce splattered all over his shirt … which isn’t very nice, especially if your job is to wash the shirt afterwards. In case you haven’t guessed it yet, guns aren’t the safest of inventions.

  The important thing about a revolver is how the weapon got its name. It has a revolving chamber. This means that once a bullet has been fired, the chamber revolves and the next bullet is lined up with the barrel and ready to go. This is jolly useful if you plan to rob a bank or something and want to fire lots of bullets into the ceiling to make people lie on the floor and be ever so helpful. It’s amazing how happy even the most unfriendly bank manager is to open his safe when he has ceiling plaster in his hair.

  Fortunately, revolvers are also jolly useful for sheriffs and marshals and people like that. They track down bank robbers and lock them away for a very long time for shooting innocent ceilings who never did anyone any harm in the first place.

  Anyway, in Eddie Dickens’s day, revolvers were one of the newest of new inventions. Before the revolver came along, most guns were flintlock pistols. They didn’t even have proper bullets. You filled the barrel with gunpowder, added small metal pellets called ‘shot’ and hoped for the best.

  One of the problems with a flintlock was that you had to reload it every time you’d fired it. This took about the length of time it took for the person you were firing at to come over to you and hit you over the head with the branch of a tree or whatever else he – or she – could lay his – or her – hands on. An even bigger problem was that a flintlock wasn’t very reliable.

  If people aren’t very reliable, that isn’t always the end of the world. They say that they’ll meet you outside the cinema at three o’clock, then turn up at half past and the film’s already started. It’s annoying, but you’ll live to see another day. If flintlocks are unreliable, you might not get to the ‘living-to-see-another-day’ part.

  Sometimes, you might pull the trigger of a flintlock and, instead of the gunpowder firing the shot out of the barrel at the enemy, it would decide to blow up instead: BANG. Just like that.

  If you were lucky, it would mean that friends would only have to buy you one glove for Christmas instead of a pair. If you were unlucky, it would mean that you’d never have to bother to buy a hat again … because you wouldn’t have a head to put it on.

  So that’s why people who liked weapons thought revolvers were such a good idea – the person you were pointing the thing at was usually the one who got hurt if the trigger got pulled … which is why Eddie Dickens was feeling very, very nervous.

  ‘I think you owe me an apology, sir,’ said the bearded stranger. ‘A simple “sorry” will be enough. Is it too much to ask for?’

  ‘S-S-S-Sorry,’ said Eddie, and he wasn’t just being polite. He truly was sorry – sorry that he’d ever laid eyes on Mad Uncle Jack and Mad Aunt Maud and her stuffed stoat, Malcolm; sorry that he’d ever had to leave home and go on this dreadful journey to Awful End. Who on Earth would call their house Awful End anyway? His great-uncle and great-aunt, that’s who. And why didn’t that surprise Eddie?

  ‘V-V-Very sorry,’ Eddie added.

  ‘It’s not you who should be apologising, boy,’ said the bearded stranger. ‘It is this gentleman, here, who has insulted me.’

  Eddie was tempted to ask the man why, if he – Eddie – had done nothing wrong, he was the one having the revolver pointed at him … but he thought it best to keep his mouth shut.

  ‘Put that thing away, you big bush,’ snarled Mad Aunt Maud, clambering out of the coach with surprising speed.

  She snatched the stranger’s beard and, to everyone’s complete and utter amazement, it came away in her hand. Only Malcolm the stoat’s expression remained unchanged, which, if you think about it, is hardly surprising.

  The bearded stranger, who wasn’t really bearded at all, made a grab to keep his disguise over his face. As he did so, the revolver was no longer pointing at Eddie, but skywards.

  Mad Aunt Maud, who obviously wasn’t so mad when it came to dealing with would-be highwaymen, grabbed the stuffed stoat by the tail and swung its head against the man’s legs.

  There was a nasty scrunching noise as the stuffed animal’s nose came into contact with the man’s knees, followed by a loud wail which Eddie was to remember right up until his sixteenth birthday.(How he came to forget the wail on that particular birthday has to do with a lady hypnotist called the Great Gretcha, and is another story.) The non-bearded bearded stranger pitched forward, dropping both his revolver and false facial hair to the ground.

  As the gun hit the solid roadway, the trigger was knocked back and a small flag on a pole shot out of the end of barrel and stayed there. The flag unfurled and on it was one word.

  If you thought that the word was BANG then you’d be wrong. That word was PUMBLESNOOKS so you can guess how little the letters had to be for all of them to fit on a flag small enough to fit in the barrel of a gun. But they were big enough for Eddie to read them from where he was standing.

  The man with the pretend beard had been threatening them with a pretend revolver! Now that the beard was gone and he was rolling around in the mud clutching his knees, Eddie recognised the insulted stranger instantly. He was no stranger at all. He was none other than Mr Pumblesnook, the actor-manager of the band of strolling theatricals.

  It soon became apparent to Eddie that his great-uncle and aunt also recognised Mr Pumblesnook, but instead of being outraged, their behaviour amazed Eddie for the zillionth time since he’d left home with them.

  ‘Oh, Mr Pumblesnook, you really are the most remarkable of men,’ cackled Mad Aunt Maud, hoisting the mud-covered man to his feet with such force that he almost slammed into the side of the coach.

  Uncle Jack, meanwhile, was bending down and retrieving the fake revolver from the road. ‘You most certainly had me fooled, sir,’ he confessed. ‘I was already wondering how we should divide Eddie’s belongings between us if you had shot him.’ He handed the actor-manager his false beard, which now had a few twigs and a piece of an owl’s eggshell in it. ‘Where are you headed, Mr Pumblesnook? Might we offer you a lift?’

  Eddie was furious. He was fuming with rage. Was he the only one who was outraged at some practical joker having pointed a gun at him? It didn’t matter that the gun had turned out to be nothing more than a stage prop, the fear Eddie had felt had been real enough.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ he demanded. ‘Why is Mr Pumblesnook going about in disguise frightening … frightening poor, innocent children like me?’

  ‘A disguise, my boy?’ said Mr Pumblesnook, one eyebrow raised in a most dramatic manner (as far as eyebrows can be dramatic, that is). ‘Criminals wear disguises, my child. Spies wear disguises. This is not a disguise, Master Edmund. This is a costume. This is me in character.’

  ‘But you’re not on the stage now,’ Eddie protested, quickly adding a ‘sir’.

  Now, actors love to quote the lines of a playwright called Shakespeare, not just when they’re in the middle of a Shakespeare play on stage, but whenever they get the chance. One of Shakespeare’s lines that actors most like to quote is: ‘All the world’s a stage.’ You may not think that it’s the most brilliant line in the world – and that you could have come up with it – but Shakespeare came up with it first, and that’s the main thing.

  Who remembers the name of the second human being to set foot on the moon? Who remembers who came second in last Wednesday’s geography test? Who remembers there was even a test? No, Shakespeare was the first one to write these words down and, b
ecause they’re about acting, these are words actors particularly like to quote.

  Think back to Eddie’s words just then, and you can imagine how delighted Mr Pumblesnook must have been that he’d just heard them.

  For those of you too lazy to look back a page, let me remind you that Eddie said: ‘But you’re not on the stage now … sir.’

  No wonder Mr Pumblesnook’s eyes lit up. Eddie’s comment gave him the perfect opportunity to reply: ‘But, in the words of the immortal bard, “All the world’s a stage,” my dear boy!’

  And Eddie was impressed. He had no idea who or what ‘the immortal bard’ was – he had no way of knowing that it was strolling-theatrical-speak for Shakespeare – but he was impressed by a pertinent quote when he heard one.

  ‘It is important for a great actor to get in character,’ Mr Pumblesnook explained. ‘It is important to develop a role long before it reaches an audience. Why, when I was preparing for the part of the salmon in We Little Fishes, I spent a whole month in the bath and ate nothing but lugworm and ants’ eggs.’

  He climbed up into the coach and sat next to Mad Aunt Maud, who was back in her original seat. Malcolm was back on her lap, none the worse for wear. ‘I remember that time you were preparing to play the part of the kidnapper in Bound Hand and Foot,’ she said, the admiration sounding in her voice. ‘The way you managed to trick the genuine French ambassador down into your cellar and kept him hostage there was a stroke of genius! Such a shame you were arrested before the show could be performed.’

  ‘Theatre’s loss,’ the actor-manager agreed, shaking his head sadly.

  Eddie sat down and closed the door to the coach. He had a terrible sinking feeling. Mr Pumblesnook was obviously a close friend of his great-aunt and uncle … and that strongly suggested he was as mad as they were.