The Eddie Dickens Trilogy

by Philip Ardagh

  Technically, of course, she was inaccurate. ‘Burglars’ do their burgling at night. In the daytime, such a person should have been called a ‘housebreaker’. Then again, she was being even more inaccurate than that, wasn’t she? (That was what we call a rhetorical question. I don’t expect you to answer me. You’re probably too far away for me to hear, anyway.) Mad Uncle Jack was neither burglar nor housebreaker. He was her husband! It was at times like these that Eddie wondered if he wouldn’t be better off living in a nice quiet orphanage somewhere.

  Mad Uncle Jack emerged from under the desk red-faced and enraged, his hat crumpled like a concertina (which may not be a very original simile, but is a jolly good one, along with ‘as black as a bruised banana’).

  ‘WHAT IS GOING ON?’ he demanded, pulling the prongs – or ‘tines’ if you want to be ever so accurate – of the toasting fork from his bottom.

  To Eddie’s utter amazement, Even Madder Aunt Maud actually looked apologetic. He’d expected her to be unrepentant, blaming her husband for being under the desk in the first place, or ‘masquerading as a burglar’ or something. But no. She looked positively sheepish at having pronged – or tined – poor Mad Uncle Jack.

  ‘My sweet!’ she cried, in anguish, tossing Malcolm aside and throwing her arms around her injured man.

  Fortunately for Eddie, he managed to catch the stuffed stoat as he came flying through the air like some thick French breadstick used as a throwing club. Eddie knew from experience that being hit by a flying Malcolm was enough to knock a fleeing convict to the ground.

  Jack and Maud’s hug had somehow taken on the appearance of a grapple. Losing her footing in her elephant’s-foot umbrella-stand boots, Even Madder Aunt Maud was trying to use her husband to steady herself at the same time he was using her to steady himself as he tried to turn to inspect the damage done to his behind. The result? A terrible crash and an entanglement of Great-uncle and Great-aunt on the bearskin rug in front of the spluttering study fire. I’d love to say that the fire was ‘roaring’ but Mad Uncle Jack spent most of the time living in a treehouse in the garden so the fire was rarely lit. When it was, families of hibernating mice or hedgehogs had to be carefully moved some place else first, and the wood was often damp and spitting.

  (If you know about real fires, you’ll know about spitting logs. If you don’t, you’ll just have to take my word for it: a damp or sappy log can spit like an angry camel but, unlike camels, they don’t – according to folklore – know the 100th name of Allah, so don’t have that all-knowing smug expression that camels do, which you’d have too if you knew such an important and sacred name. In fact, most logs’ expressions – big or small – are quite wooden.)

  And don’t think I have forgotten about the poor old bear who ended up as a bearskin rug on the floor. Back in Eddie’s day, animal-skin rugs were everywhere: lions, tigers, bears of all shapes and sizes. It was unusual to stand on a rug that hadn’t once been running around quite happily in the sunshine. I don’t know this particular bear’s history but I’m sorry to say that he probably ended more with a bang than with all his family around his bed (in the bear cave) as he ended his days saying, ‘I’ve had a good life …’

  Which brings us back to Mad Uncle Jack lying on top of his ruggy (as opposed to rugged) remains.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Eddie, helping his great-aunt to her feet.

  ‘What have I done? What have I done?’ she groaned.

  They both looked down at Mad Uncle Jack who lay there like a helpless upturned beetle.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ said Eddie, trying to sound reassuring. He took MUJ by the arm and tried to help him to his feet.

  ‘Leave me,’ he whispered hoarsely into the boy’s ear. ‘You must get word to Fort Guana.’

  ‘Fort Guana?’ asked a puzzled Eddie.

  ‘Tell them that we will hold the ridge until re-enforcements arrive …’ He paused and took a gulp of air. ‘The Bumbaloonies shall not break through our ranks!’ He turned his face away and came eye-to-glass-eye with the head of the bearskin rug.

  ‘I see that Corporal Muggins didn’t make it,’ he sighed, stroking the head. ‘A fine soldier. Made an excellent omelette.’ He turned back to Eddie, tears in his eyes. ‘It’s all down to you now, my boy … Take my horse …’ and, with that, he fainted.

  Snatching Malcolm from the occasional table where Eddie had placed him, Even Madder Aunt Maud let out a truly dreadful cry of despair and fled the study – this time through the doorway rather than the window.

  Eddie looked at the unconscious form of Mad Uncle Jack. He didn’t think that he’d be finding out much more about his trip to America that day!

  Episode 3

  A Cure for Ills?

  In which Doctor Humple pays yet another visit to Awful End and Eddie goes in search of shiny things

  As it turned out, Doctor Humple was more concerned about Mad Aunt Maud’s state of health than Mad Uncle Jack’s. After a good night’s rest and a few of Dr Humple’s large blue pills, Eddie’s great-uncle seemed to be back to his same old self, apart from a sore bottom, backache and a slight limp. The doctor had tucked him up in his tree house (which was made entirely from creosoted dried fish) and, by the next morning, he’d been down the ladder and building snow sculptures like he did most winter mornings, weather permitting.

  Even Madder Aunt Maud, in her hollow cow in the rose garden, meanwhile, was far from her normal self. She clutched Malcolm to her, rocking backwards and forwards, muttering, ‘What have I done? What have I done?’ and no amount of coaxing could get her to relax and unwind.

  Once Eddie’s mother had taken to regularly eating raw onions and, after the habit had passed, Even Madder Aunt Maud had threaded the remaining vegetables singly – like conkers – and hung them at different heights from Marjorie’s ‘ceiling’. There was nothing she liked more than passing the dark evenings by hitting the suspended onions with Malcolm’s nose, singing as she went; as though each onion somehow represented a particular musical note.

  Eddie tried hitting them and singing now – there was no way that he could prise Malcolm from her grasp, so he’d used a wooden spoon. No reaction. Even Madder Aunt Maud simply continued to snivel. Even Dr Humple’s mixture of big blue, small pink and medium-sized yellow pills had no effect. Even Madder Aunt Maud was awash with guilt at stabbing and then knocking out her beloved Jack.

  They brought Mad Uncle Jack to see her, to show her that he was, in his own words, ‘as right as rain’(apart from the sore bottom, backache and slight limp, in the other leg now) but this made no difference. She was still terribly upset. MUJ soon grew tired of trying to ‘make her snap out of it’ – his words again – so he stomped off back through the snow to his treehouse, in a huff.

  Dr Humple put his arm on Eddie’s shoulder. ‘I really am at a loss as to how to help your poor great-aunt, at present,’ he said. ‘Fortunately for us, Time is the great healer.’

  Although Eddie was hearing the words come from the doctor’s mouth, rather than seeing them on the printed page as you are, he knew that Dr Humple had just said ‘Time’ with a capital ‘T’, in the same way that people sometimes say ‘Nature’ with a capital ‘N’, when they mean Nature in an all-important way …

  … From past experience, Eddie knew that Mad Aunt Maud’s mood could certainly change in the time it took to blink an eye or scratch an eyebrow, but a mood change didn’t necessarily make things better. Suddenly, an idea popped into his head.

  ‘Shiny things!’ he said.

  The doctor stopped what he was doing – which was coiling up his stethoscope and putting it in his top hat (that’s where doctors used to keep their stethoscopes. Honestly, dear reader, I promise) – and stared at Eddie. ‘What do you mean by shiny things, my boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, you remember when you came in the summer and gave Mother the neck brace and crutches and Father the back-strengthening corset?’

  ‘How could I forget?’ said Dr Humple. ‘They�
��re both still using them … and that was the day poor Gorey died, beneath the spreading rhubarb leaves.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Eddie continued. ‘The whole thing came about because Even Madder Aunt Maud –’ He paused and looked down at his great-aunt, whom they’d managed to tuck up in bed, but seemed oblivious to (unaware of) what was going on around her. ‘The whole dreadful accident happened because Mad Aunt Maud liked the look of a shiny artillery shell.’

  ‘The idea is to make the poor lady feel less guilty about herself, young Edmund, not MORE!’ the doctor reminded him.

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ said Eddie hurriedly. ‘I was simply about to suggest that we try to distract her with some new shiny object she might like.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Dr Humple, his hat back on his head, the stethoscope safely tucked inside (his hat, not his head). ‘That is, indeed, clever thinking!’

  ‘Shall I go up to the house and see if I can find something really shiny?’ Eddie suggested.

  ‘An excellent idea!’ said the doctor. ‘In the meantime I shall check her pulse.’

  Eddie slipped out of Marjorie’s bottom – she was the carnival float cow they were in, remember – and crunched his way through the snow towards the back of Awful End.

  He was surprised to see Gibbering Jane taking down some washing from the line near the kitchen door. As a failed chambermaid, Jane usually spent her time under the stairs, sitting in the dark, knitting her life away. When Eddie’s previous home had burnt down, all she’d managed to save of her years of knitting was the charred corner of an egg cosy which she, thereafter, wore on a piece of string around her neck. She’d moved to Awful End with Eddie’s parents and gentleman’s gentleman Dawkins … directly under the stairs there, so it was unusual to see her doing anything as ordinary as bring in the washing. Not that it was straightforward. The temperature had dropped considerably overnight, and the clothes were as stiff as boards. Put a shirt above a pair of trousers, and it would look as though a very flat person was inside them.

  Gibbering Jane gibbered as she tried to bend the clothes to fit inside the wicker washing basket. She was fighting a losing battle. When she saw Eddie, she dropped the basket – a rigid sock sticking in the snow like a knitted boomerang – and ran (you guessed it) still gibbering into the house. By the time Eddie had entered the warm glow of the kitchen, he could hear the door under the stairs slamming shut.

  Eddie’s mum, Mrs Dickens, was sitting at the kitchen table, cutting the crusts off a pile of triangular sandwiches with a pair of carpet scissors.

  ‘Hello, Jonathan.’ She beamed when she saw her son. (Don’t ask.)

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ said Eddie.

  ‘I’m making these for your father’s breakfast,’ she said.

  If you’re trying to work out what time of day it was, don’t let the whole breakfast business put you off. We’re in the DICKENS household, remember. Breakfast could be served at any time during a twenty-four-hour period (if at all) depending upon who was doing the serving.

  ‘How is Father?’ asked Eddie, who hadn’t climbed up the scaffolding in the hall for the past few days.

  ‘Having great difficulty drawing the serpent in the Garden of Eden,’ said Mrs Dickens. ‘Apparently, it keeps coming out looking like a liver sausage.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Eddie, who secretly thought that his father’s paintings of both Adam and Eve looked rather like liver sausages, too.

  ‘Would you like something to eat?’ asked his mother. ‘There are plenty of crusts.’ She trimmed another sandwich, adding the crusts to an already impressive pile.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Eddie. ‘I’m actually looking for something shiny … something which might distract poor Even Madder Aunt Maud from feeling so guilty about stabbing and knocking out Mad Uncle Jack.’

  ‘Poor Jack,’ said Mrs Dickens, placing the carpet scissors on the table and dabbing her eyes with the corner of a lacy hanky she kept up her sleeve. ‘We shall all miss him so.’

  ‘Miss him? But he’s alive and well, Mother!’ Eddie protested. ‘He was with us inside Marjorie just now, trying to comfort Even Madder Aunt Maud.’

  ‘Then whose funeral did I attend the other day?’ asked Mrs Dickens, a confused look passing across her handsome features.

  Funeral? There hadn’t been any funerals lately. The last time Eddie could remember seeing a coffin was when he’d ended up in one, in the book called Dreadful Acts (not that he’d realised that he was in a book called Dreadful Acts, or called anything else, for that matter). Then he remembered the hen.

  Dawkins kept hens for their eggs, one of which (hen not egg) Mad Aunt Mad was particularly fond of. Sadly she had died of old age a few days previously. Maud had insisted that Ethel, the chicken, be buried, and all members of the (human) family had been required to attend the brief service.

  ‘You’re not thinking of the chicken’s funeral are you, Mother?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘Why, of course! How silly of me,’ said Mrs Dickens, trimming the final sandwich and arranging the pile neatly on the plate. ‘An easy mistake. They’re both so plump and feathery.’

  Eddie could see how Mad Uncle Jack’s whiskeriness might be compared to feathers, but plump? He was about as thin as a person could be and still be classified as a person. Any thinner and he might be a stick man … but Eddie knew better than to say anything. He decided to resume his quest for something shiny.

  *

  Eddie finally found just what he was looking for in one of the upstairs rooms that nobody used any more. It had once contained furniture covered in white sheets, to stop it getting dusty. That had been done back in the days when Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud had an army of servants. Now they were all gone and – before Eddie and his parents had moved in with Dawkins and Gibbering Jane – all they’d been left with was the very small army of retired army misfits (of whom ‘Best of Breed’ Private Gorey had been one). Over the years, MUJ and EMAM – oooh, that’s the first time I’ve used EMAM, and I like it! – had used the furniture under the white sheets as firewood, and used the white sheets as sheets, or to play ‘ghosts’.

  (By the way, I should explain that there was a fashion for calling people by their initials … and not necessarily their own. Don’t ask me why, but the Victorian prime minister William Gladstone, for example, was often referred to as GOM, meaning ‘Grand Old Man’; so my MUJs and EMAMs fit quite neatly into the period, thank you.)

  When Eddie entered the room, it was bare; bare floor, bare walls, bare ceiling … well, not quite a bare ceiling for, although there were no carpets or rugs on the floor and no paintings or fixtures on the walls, from the middle of the ceiling hung a huge chandelier, glinting in the weak winter sunlight that had managed to make it through the slats of the closed shutters across the windows.

  Most of the chandelier was covered in years of dust, and was loosely wrapped in what looked like a giant hairnet, but it still managed to wink in places at Eddie, as if to share the secret that brilliant cut-glass crystal lay beneath. From the bottom of the chandelier, nestling in the net, hung a glass bauble the size of an orange. Eddie felt sure that if he could reach this bauble, unhook it and polish it, it would be just the kind of shiny object to fascinate his great-aunt. The problem was the first part: reaching it. He looked around for something to stand on. Zilch. Zero. Then he remembered the library steps his mother kept in the bathroom for diving practice and he hurried off to find them.

  By the time that Eddie was striding back down towards Marjorie, through the snow, the crystal-cut bauble in his gloved hand was sparkling and glinting like the world’s biggest diamond. Eddie wasn’t wearing the gloves to keep out the cold, but to keep from smudging the bauble. He didn’t want a few fingerprints to spoil what he hoped would be the effect this shiny thing would have on Even Madder Aunt Maud.

  Episode 4

  A Brief Family History

  In which Eddie learns more about his family and the reasons for going to America

 
; Eddie’s mind wasn’t entirely on curing Mad Aunt Maud as he stamped the snow off his shoes and clambered inside Marjorie. He was still thinking about the trip to America, whatever that was about. If only his mother or Mad Uncle Jack had had a chance to explain things to him before Mad Uncle Jack and Even Madder Aunt Maud had joined the list of casualties.

  Dr Humple was giving the boy’s great-aunt another large blue pill, with a sip of water from a glass when Eddie entered.

  ‘What are in those pills, Doctor?’ Eddie asked.

  ‘The large blue ones?’

  Eddie nodded.

  ‘Mainly blue dye. It’s very expensive, which is why my bills are so high … What’s that amazing jewel you have there?’ Dr Humple was eyeing the crystal-cut bauble the size of an orange, nestling in Eddie’s gloved hands.

  ‘A shiny thing!’ said Eddie, passing it to the doctor.

  Dr Humple held it up in front of Even Madder Aunt Maud, just out of her reach. She sat bolt upright in bed and tried to snatch it. The doctor jerked his hand away. ‘I think it’s working, Eddie!’ said the doctor, obviously impressed.

  ‘Ah, my precious!’ said Even Madder Aunt Maud, which would have been a quote from a character called Golom in a book called The Hobbit, except that The Hobbit hadn’t been written yet, which made Even Madder Aunt Maud way, way, way ahead of her time.

  Even Madder Aunt Maud made another swipe for the bauble and Dr Humple almost dropped it. He fumblingly saved it from falling to the floor and tossed it over to Eddie who caught it with ease. His great-aunt was out of the bed now, clutching Malcolm by the tail, but she only had eyes for one item: the shiny thing.

  She launched herself at Eddie who stood by the opening in Marjorie’s bottom, and threw the crystal-cut bauble out into the garden, aiming for the deepest snowdrift so as not to damage it.