The Kensington Reptilarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  ‘There’ll be new outfits awaiting you in London, Albertina. Velvets, laces, collars and cuffs, all the fashions from Harrods. Paris, if you must!’ He winks. Does this little hop and step sideways with arms outstretched. ‘Brrrrmm.’

  Right. Quite a dance he’s got going there.

  ‘Brrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmmm.’

  Bert looks at him with her fists on her hips and her chin jutting out. Assessing. Horatio’s plane does a little circle in the dirt and the brrmming gets louder. ‘London, Paris, Harrods, Claridges, Selfridges! Fabric shops, to make your own fabulousness!’ he chants then leaps onto the balcony and jumps off, clearing all five stairs at once.

  That’s it.

  Bert jumps up and runs as fast as she can to the house with her hands wide, squealing: ‘Goggles! Flying goggles! Bucket, quick. Daddy might be waiting for us at the other end!’

  Bucket runs wildly after the Caddy in the family who’s wanted to be a fashion designer in a world capital – any, take your pick – ever since she could walk. Yep, that’d be right: Horatio’s managed to pick the one and only thing guaranteed to work with that girl. How did he know?

  He looks straight at me. ‘We’ll be flying over the exact spot Miss Earhart is rumoured to have disappeared from. Can even stop on a nearby island if you’d like.’

  I gasp. Number One hero: Amelia Earhart. I can just see it now . . . finding her, sunburnt and stricken but alive. The world acclaim. A new mum in my life and a pilot’s apprentice to boot, all from sitting tall and squealy on those red leather seats with binoculars glued over the rumoured spot . . .

  Bucket’s now barking crazily with excitement. The policeman throws wide his hands like he’s given up. He looks straight at me. ‘Best dog in the desert, right? Leave her with me. She’ll be waiting for you.’

  ‘Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!’ Bert screams in joy. London, Paris, crowns and couture, here she comes.

  And what can the rest of us do?

  Nothing, I’m afraid, but fall into line.

  Because it all seems to have been decided upon.

  So. There we have it. London, Uncle Basti, the Kensington Reptilarium and goodness knows what else – here we come. The four of us, the whole fierce crazy lot.

  Whether you like it or not.

  What’s in our eyes, usually?

  By day: a world very flat, with a shimmery haze of heat resting on the horizon. Above it, an endless, hurting blue. Ripples of sand dunes the colour of rust, tracks of roos and rock wallabies and snakes. Spinifex tumbling, muddy waterholes, ghost gums like shinbones. By night: an enormous canopy of stars above us, like the most wondrous of circus tents. We’ve never seen two houses stuck together. Never seen buildings taller than the ground floor. Never seen a city in our lives.

  And now this.

  Grey, grey, relentless grey, and a bit of black. A gaggle of chimneys being furiously used. Cold like shock. Traffic that barely moves. The taste of it. Pale faces, so many, close, bunkered down into scarves, hats, coats. Rows of tall houses that look the same, then the piles of rubble, the sombre gaps. Bomb hits. Again and again, and more frequently as we get further into the city, closer to tube stations, to areas where the crowds are thickest. What’s underneath these tangles of rubble? What did these people go through? We were so removed, from everything, in our desert place at the bottom of the world.

  And then we stop.

  Er, this is the Kensington Reptilarium? That most legendary place? Excuse me?

  Because what’s looming in front of us is the saddest-looking building we’ve ever seen in our lives. We were expecting turrets, ballrooms, stables and maids; servants lining up to greet us with trays of hot chocolate. Oh yes, we’d taken bets. But now this. A towering, six-storey house that gives nothing away except a curmudgeonly wish to be left utterly alone. Paint peels from the walls like giant sunburn, dead vines spill from neglected windowboxes, long smears of dirt run down the façade like the grubbiest of tear-streaked faces, rogue sproutings of grass emerge triumphant from cracked marble steps and a high mound of leaves laps at the door. The entire building has one thing written all over it: ‘GO AWAY I DON’T LIKE YOU.’

  ‘We’re he-ere!’ Horatio exclaims, like this dingy old dump is made up entirely of chocolate and marzipan.

  ‘Don’t tell me. Our new home.’ Scruff’s not impressed either.

  ‘Indeed, young sir. The most magical building in the whole of England.’

  Oh, I can just picture inside. Big sagging ceilings like cows’ bellies, thick cobwebs for curtains, dust-covered, rotting bedclothes, bathroom tiles hosting unknown slime and a damp kind of cold that curls up in your bones like mould and can never be scraped out.

  Scruff’s gripping the car seat, Pin’s trying to climb into his lap, Bert’s picking the last of the paint off her nails as if she hasn’t seen the house, and on top of it all it’s starting to rain. Great. How very London. Welcome to our new world.

  Horatio’s having none of it. He flings the car door wide. ‘Chop chop, chaps!’

  ‘Aren’t you coming with us?’

  He glances at the house.

  ‘Er, do you want me to? You don’t need me now, surely. Do you?’ He’s suddenly blustery and agitated, checking his watch, glancing down the street. ‘I really have so much . . . to do . . . we’re running very late, you know. Very, very late.’

  ‘But who’s going to introduce us?’

  ‘Why, your good selves. Possibly? Think of it as a little test, my dears, your first step towards London independence. The spirit of the Blitz, heading forth into unknown climes! Yes? No? It’s wonderfully exciting and adventurous. Isn’t it?’ He looks at us helplessly. ‘You’re from the bush, aren’t you? Self-sufficient, big, brave, tough, all that?’

  ‘Do you really work for Basti?’ I snap, dreams dissolving before our eyes.

  ‘I – why – I – of course.’ He looks again at his watch. ‘It’s just . . . er . . . I have a luncheon appointment at Claridges, right this instant, and if I’m not there immediately I may lose the hand of the woman who’s to be the future Mrs Smythe-Hippet. I’m thirty-nine, girl. Don’t you know what this means? Yes, I am pathetic, but have mercy upon my soul and GET OUT of the car. Please. The lot of you. Right now.’

  I glare suspiciously. At the house, at Horatio. He was hopeless all the way over, toddling off to the closest club or bar wherever he could find one, telling us to ‘play in the dirt, or whatever it is children do,’ alerting me that we’d possibly flown over Amelia Earhart’s island the day before and it had slipped his mind to let me know, worse luck, old girl.

  Scruff looks at my face then back at our chaperone. He stares at Horatio with his enormous doe eyes that fool everyone but his family – everyone melts at the sight of them but us.

  ‘Dad won’t like this,’ he says. Dead quiet.

  ‘What? You’re warriors who wrestle snakes for breakfast and crush scorpions in your fist! I have been forewarned, you know. They make you tough out there – don’t they?’ Horatio pinches Scruff on his cheek, Pin shoots off Scruff’s lap and the chauffeur revs as if he can’t wait to get away from this wretched place.

  The rain hardens. Horatio’s now trying to haul Bert out but she’s got an iron grip on Scruff. ‘Don’t you understand what it’s like to be hopelessly in love? With a woman who insists on promptness at every moment and didn’t want you gallivanting off to Australia in the first place? Do any of you understand this? Can you imagine what it’s like to be desperate to see your beloved, no matter what?’ He is suddenly very still. ‘Can you?’ he pleads, quite hopeless. ‘Have you ever been in love?’

  Bert looks at him as if it’s just clicked. Nods, solemnly. Steps swiftly, obediently, into the pouring rain. ‘I have, Horatio. Kick has no idea. She doesn’t love anything because she’s as mean and tough as old nails. Especially with her family. Of course we can do this by ourselves. Off you go, quick. My sister’s just a big old bossy boots who doesn’t care about us in any way – but I do. I�
�ve got a heart, unlike some.’

  Right. I just want to kick her right there and then. Want to drive off in the car and leave her here all by herself. This is punishment, of course, for me telling her endlessly on the way over that no, we can’t make a diversion to find some purple Thai silk and no, we can’t let Scruff fire the guns for target practice. ‘You’re not my father! You’re not my mother! So stop telling us what to do,’ was the constant refrain, rat-tat-tatting into me.

  Bert pokes out her tongue at me now, in triumph, then turns to our dubious new home. Which we will soon be entering all by ourselves, thanks to her impetuousness and stubbornness and unending desire to do the opposite of whatever I want. ‘There’s family inside, isn’t there, Horatio?’ she continues solemnly. ‘Maybe Daddy’s here. Some of us actually care about that.’ She glares daggers at me. ‘Come on, troops. Christmas is close. We’ve got work to do.’

  I sigh. She’s delusional about Dad and now’s not the place to enlighten her. Horatio’s just biting his lip: he’s no use. I want a bit of certainty, for once; want to know this is a situation we can trust. Want to stay in the warmth of this car, to end up anywhere but this wreck of a place, but Bert’s said the magic words no matter how impossible they are – Dad might be in there – and suddenly the rest of them are right beside her on the pavement, looking hopefully at their determined new boss who’s just supplanted the eldest Caddy of the group.

  ‘Datty.’ Pin looks to the house, trustingly.

  I shut my eyes. It’s beyond horrible.

  Horatio murmurs, ‘Bless you, my children, our future is assured,’ and departs quick smart as if he can’t wait to get away from the place. ‘Knock nice and loud,’ he flusters then slams his car door and winds down the window. ‘Basti will be home, he’s always home, he never goes anywhere.’

  Bert goes to ask something – as if she’s only just realised what she’s got us all in for – but ‘The knocker, the knocker!’ Horatio urges over the top of her as his car pulls away gratefully. ‘Muscles, Master Scruff!’ he mimes, pounding on the door. ‘It’s what won the war, eh? And proper clothes, young lady.’ He stares at me as if it’s only just dawned on him that I may not have the right look for a grand London establishment. ‘For God’s sake, a dress.’

  I bristle, thanks mate; want to kick him now too.

  ‘The attic. Something red. It’s your colour, young lady, believe it or not.’ He laughs as if he’s just told an enormous joke. ‘Yes. Quite terrifying.’

  ‘What? Me, or the house?’ I yell, throwing my coolie hat at the departing car.

  The sky’s the colour of a battleship and the cold . . . I groan. It’s brutal, and we’re woefully unprepared for it. We’re used to heat that fries eggs on a car bonnet and guess what? We’re dressed in a crazy collection of army shorts and string vests and sarongs and military jackets that were found anywhere and everywhere along the way. By yours truly. Every morning, before I’d attempt to wake Horatio up, because he always overslept. To get him to England, quick smart, to a country that may just understand what Christmas is all about before Christmas has been and gone and we miss it entirely this year. And of course we’d forgotten to pack anything remotely useful in the mad rush to those delicious-sounding red seats. All I managed was Dad’s old knife with the string around the handle plus my slingshot and Dad’s copy of The Jungle Book.

  Horatio only realised the dire clothing situation somewhere above Ceylon and shouted a thrillingly banned word (promptly recorded by Scruff in his spy notebook) and now it’s suddenly midwinter and there’s not a single overcoat among us; Scruff doesn’t even have shoes. And we’re terrifyingly alone. Horatio’s left us with no forwarding address, no contact details of any kind. So. Great. Dumped, in the middle of a London street. In front of a wreck that doesn’t look like anyone’s lived in it for a hundred years. We usually love being alone, love a place all to ourselves; as long as we know a parent and love and jolliness and warmth is still somehow attached to it. But this?

  The blackest, widest, dustiest front door you’ve ever seen looms before us. It’s covered in cobwebs. Leaves are banked up to our knees. Bert’s blinking away tears because she’s suddenly cottoned on: no, of course, Daddy couldn’t possibly be in this. It’s a trick. She’s extremely good at pretending she’s so very grown-up; the last thing she wants is for people to think she’s as soft as a pocket, but she’s reached her limit right now, I just know. I put my hand on her shoulder.

  She shrugs it away. ‘I hate you. I don’t need you. I never do. You’re not my mother. Leave me alone.’

  I bite my lip.

  ‘The knocker,’ Scruff urges in exactly Horatio’s voice, poking me in the back. ‘Come on, Kick. Quick.’

  Thanks, mate. It’s coming from all quarters here. The door doesn’t look welcoming in any way and why was Horatio so afraid of it? I look up the street: the car’s well and truly gone. No help anywhere. Has to be done. ‘Damn, damn, double DAMN.’

  ‘Dan! Dan!’ Pin claps wildly with excitement at yet another thrillingly forbidden word. From his big sister no less, the one who’s always scooping out yummy ants from his mouth and saying ‘no’ in a cranky voice.

  ‘Damn,’ Scruff corrects drily from a distance. ‘And courtesy of Miss Bossy Boots, of all people.’ He cackles with glee.

  ‘Naughty Kicky.’ Pin wags his finger. ‘No, no no.’ Oh, he’s loving that. Scruff’s now throwing his finger in there, wagging it wildly – Bert joins in too. ‘Damn, damn,’ Pin taunts.

  We’re all laughing now, can’t help it, and suddenly I’m punching my arms in the air and declaring, ‘It’s going to be okay, you crazy crazies. We’ll make this work! Anything you want, fire away, come on.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Pin wails, seizing the opening.

  I groan. Of course. Food. The other thing that’s not gone to plan. We’re starving, the lot of us. Yet I can’t quite bring myself to approach that terrifying door; it’s a feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Meanwhile Scruff is now balancing a dead spider on his finger and lecturing it in exactly Horatio’s voice: ‘Now don’t you go expecting anything like a Christmas here, young chap. There’ll be no pudding, oh no, not so much as a ginger snap. Got it? You’re from the bush, remember. Tough. Eh, what?’

  ‘I want Christmas,’ Pin wails.

  My fists are clenched. One thing at a time, troops. And Christmas, of course, is just a few sodding days away. Feeling positively ill now.

  The light’s feeble like it hasn’t had enough vegetables. A rubbly hole is all that’s left of the house next door and a naked doll with dead eyes stares from a puddle and it’s as close to a present that Bert’s going to get in this place, I can feel it in my bones, and she hates dolls. A dead rat’s in the gutter with its horribly sharp teeth bared – urgh – and the garden square across the street has tall, black trees with enormous witches’ hands clawing at the sky and that’ll keep Pin awake, every night, clutched to my neck, I just know it.

  ‘Hey, look at the garden fence,’ I exclaim cheerily, trying to distract them from a missing dad, home, dog, Christmas; trying to distract them from entering a terrifying new life just yet. ‘The railings have disappeared. It’s just the posts. I wonder what happened.’

  ‘I stole them for my master’s cages to put the delicious new little kiddies in,’ Scruff says in his Horatio voice that I want to throttle now. ‘Mmmm, all that lovely new flesh.’ He smacks his lips.

  Bert just looks at him witheringly – this is a girl, after all, who wants to dig up dead people out of curiosity.

  ‘The war took them. In case you’re wondering. Which you obviously are.’

  We nearly jump out of our skins. Turn. To a woman who has appeared behind us. Silently, as if by magic. With black hair and red lips and the palest skin and an umbrella that looks like it’s made out of zebra hide and a fur coat so fabulously ivory-black I can smell Bert’s envy; she wants to crawl right inside it and curl up. In fact, yep, there she is, stroking
its softness with adoration, she can’t help it.

  I yank her back.

  ‘The war took away our very smart fence and I did love it so,’ the woman says, enfolding Bert firmly into her coat as if she’s trying to steal her in broad daylight. ‘It melted down the railings and turned them into tanks, just like that.’ She whoops with laughter as if Bert’s just found her secret giggle-spot. ‘They haven’t quite come back yet but they will, oh they will. Some day.’ Then she looks intently at all of us, up and down. ‘I say, are you lost? Is there a fancy dress party I haven’t been invited to? I do hope not.’

  I glance back at the Reptilarium, speechless. Don’t know if we’re lost, can’t explain; what’s happened to my brain? This is ridiculous. Apparently there’s an uncle but we don’t want to go inside. Haven’t tried, should, yes, of course, but something’s stopping us, not sure what. A feeling, just that, a sense of unwelcomeness . . .

  Bert’s now hugging one of the lady’s legs and pouring every ounce of love into her in an intensely passionate and dark Bert-way.

  The woman hovers her hand over Bert’s thin little back as if she’s not quite sure what to do, to dare, next. ‘Are you looking for someone? Can I be of assistance perhaps?’

  The voice is suddenly low and motherly and it’s been so long since anything like that, for any of us. Mum’s voice is what I remember the most, her voice saying my name, and her fingertips soft on my earlobe and her hoot of a laugh. Bert hugs tighter, it’s got her too. There’s a soft gulp of a cry-about-to-start; it’ll be floods in a moment.

  ‘We need Uncle Basti,’ Scruff pipes up.

  ‘Basti?’ The woman steps back in horror. Looks at us afresh. ‘You’re attached to him?’

  Glances at his house then back at us, as if we’re infected.

  ‘Right. Well, I better leave you then. Off you go, toodle pip.’ And she indicates the big black door. Bert’s briskly ejected from leg and coat. ‘Good luck,’ she murmurs. ‘You’ll need it, must dash.’ She disappears fast into the house on the other side of the Reptilarium without a backward glance.