The Kensington Reptilarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  We all look. I bite my lip. No, not this, not now. He has to be all right.

  Gently Dinda drops down to her neighbour. ‘Seb, it’s Din. Speak to us, come on.’

  He looks horribly bruised, there are cuts and scratches on his arms and face; his left ankle looks wonky and wrong.

  ‘We shouldn’t shift him –’ I bite a nail ‘– he might have damaged his back.’

  Dinda gulps a sob.

  ‘Wake up, Uncle Basti, come on!’ Scruff cries impatiently.

  Nothing. It can’t come to this. We’ve just found him, he’s just saved our sister, we’ve finally got the uncle we’d dreamt of.

  ‘He’s a good man,’ Dinda says softly, through tears, ‘a good, good man. Everyone in this square knows that. All the old people. They remember him. Tell their kids, their grandkids of the war hero who got lost. How as a little boy he used to climb that tree every day of his life. Once. Long ago . . .’ A pause. ‘Then one day –’

  Wait! He’s stirring, ever so slightly, his mouth.

  ‘Dinda, look.’

  Pin leaps forward; we go to haul him away but he wraps his arms around Basti’s neck. ‘He’s mine,’ he says, cross. ‘He’s my friend.’ The little boy leans down and smacks a kiss on Basti’s cheek.

  Nothing. So still. So quiet.

  Pin kisses him again and gently lifts off his hat.

  Basti stirs. Opens one eye. ‘Captain!’ he reprimands, as his hat almost makes it to Pin’s head. ‘There’s life in the old boy yet.’

  We all cheer. Enormous relief, whooshing right through us.

  ‘I’m the captain and I’m invins-iple!’ Pin declares as the hat finds its place on its new head.

  ‘Indestructible, more like it.’ Basti winces, slowly, painfully, retrieving what is his and returning it to its rightful place. Everyone laughs. ‘First of all, my princess. How is she? Intact?’

  Bert laughs. ‘Gosh, yes. Absolutely yes. Not quite a ghost yet.’

  ‘As much as you’d like to be, perhaps?’

  ‘Not quite, Basti. I won’t be trying that trick again.’

  ‘Excellent!’

  Slowly Dinda helps Basti into a sit, checking him over, rubbing his ankle, which is swelling, bruised. Bert steps forward and crushes him in a hug then, what the heck, we all do.

  ‘Ouch!’ he says, and we spring back. ‘No, keep on doing it,’ Basti sighs in defeat, ‘but gently. It’s been quite some time since that tree was scaled. A little weight may have been gained in the interim.’

  One by one we drop back, leaving him holding just Pin. Holding him as if that little boy is the most precious thing in the world right now, as if he’s never going to let him go.

  ‘Come on, Dinda, we need to hear more about that little boy who climbed the tree every day of his life,’ Scruff jumps in cheekily. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Wha-at?’ Basti looks alarmed.

  Dinda grimaces. ‘I was just telling them about you and the tree. To my nursery. Every day. As a kid. The champion tree-climber of the universe. Not only this one but every single tree in Holland Park. Remember?’

  Basti’s shaking his head in warning but it’s not enough. We’re urging, ‘Come on, come on, tell us!’

  ‘Well, one day the Grand Master Tree-Climber of London decided to do a very grown-up thing. Which shocked everyone in this square. He signed up. To fight. For king and country. Even though he was far, far too young. But he wanted to be a big, brave soldier, the biggest, bravest war hero they’d ever seen. That’s what he said to me. It was why he would be going away for a very, very long time. I just didn’t know how long, did I?’ She looks straight at him; his head is bowed. ‘They should know, Seb,’ she says gently. ‘They need to. But big, brave Basti Caddy was just a boy. He lied about his age.’

  ‘Why?’ Scruff asks.

  ‘Because he loved his country so much, and felt like it was the most honourable, most exciting thing he could ever do. He didn’t want to miss out.’

  ‘I wouldn’t either!’ Scruff says, eyes shining.

  Dinda smiles sadly. ‘He somehow slipped through the net. As so many did. And he told his next-door neighbour – who was his very best friend in the world – all about it in utter secrecy. How he was going to come back the biggest, bravest hero in the world, with this enormous row of medals across his chest. That he’d be a general by the end of it – she just had to wait. You see, she was his – how do I say it – girl next door . . .’

  A glittery silence. Basti doesn’t look up.

  ‘Who loved him very much.’ A tear rolls down her cheek. ‘Who never stopped loving him, actually.’

  Basti shuts his eyes tight.

  ‘Who thought he loved her.’

  Everyone is very, very quiet. I put my arms across my uncle’s shoulders and hold him, and hold him. Can feel his trembling. I squeeze firmer.

  ‘Oh, you should have seen this one as a kid.’ Dinda smiles, composing herself. ‘He was a shining boy. With the biggest heart. The one destined for greatness, the whole neighbourhood knew it. The best cricket player, horse rider, the square’s conkers champion, Dux, Head Boy of his prep school, the best at . . . everything. The golden child who chose me – me – to entrust with his secret, beyond anyone else.’ A pause. ‘I never breathed a word at the time. I wish I had now. Because he came back quite . . . changed.’

  Basti doesn’t move. Neither does Dinda. What to say? Nothing and everything.

  ‘Look, Kicky!’ Pin exclaims, pointing at the window that caused all the trouble in the first place. ‘Christmas!’

  ‘That’s what I was aiming for,’ Bert says quietly. ‘For all of us.’

  Everyone’s now staring up at the magnificently wrapped presents in the window, sitting there so enticingly. Dinda laughs. ‘And would you believe it, I’ve just been waiting for you lot to appear to hand them out. Why don’t you come in now? I for one need a stiff drink after all this. Anyone else?’

  ‘Me!’ Scruff declares.

  ‘No.’ Basti winces, standing painfully.

  Dinda reaches across to help him.

  ‘Stop.’ He bats her away angrily, still in great pain. ‘Leave me alone.’ As if he can’t bear it. What she’s just said, the invitation to her house, everyone listening out here to the perplexing history of his life. Everything changing so fast and Basti not in control of any of it. ‘I have to get the children home. It’s late,’ he barks and limps off painfully into the foggy dark, scooping up a stunned Perdita on the way without a backwards glance.

  Just like that.

  As if he can’t deal with what’s just been said, can’t respond, can’t face it. The truth, the past. And it’s been years and years of not being able to face it. What’s he afraid of letting in? Why is he so stuck?

  We can do nothing but follow. I look back despairingly at Dinda, at her crestfallen, broken face. It’s not meant to be like this.

  ‘Goodnight,’ I say softly.

  She raises a hand in lonely farewell, a picture of sadness as she stares after the man next door; the man, we know now, she has loved her entire life, and has never stopped loving.

  Who does not look back.

  Home. Perdita extremely pleased to be back in her cage.

  Her face saying it all – she’s practically begging us to padlock the door and leave her in peace. For good.

  Little Pin won’t unwrap himself now from Basti’s neck. It’s as if his hands have been stuck together with industrial-strength glue. None of his siblings are putting him to sleep tonight – there’s someone else in the mix now. The Hero Rescuer of the Universe.

  ‘Come on, sleepy head,’ Basti says softly, his old self now that we’re safely inside the comfort of his home, with the front door firmly shut on everything else.

  The four of us tuck Pin into his bed. His uncle tenderly smoothes his curls, and keeps smoothing, until Pin’s finally asleep. Basti finally, delicately, slips his hand from Pin’s grip – our brother hasn’t let him go since he’s
been back in his house.

  ‘Now, who’d like a banana?’ Basti whispers.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘There may well be several waiting downstairs in the kitchen, as we speak. Just for you lot.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Possibly yes. A contact in Africa sent them in gratitude for rescuing the hippopotamus worms. They’re more valuable than gold at this moment – and it just so happens that we have only three of them.’

  ‘Race you!’ Scruff cries.

  Cue four people thundering down the ladders as fast as they can.

  Guess who wins?

  Basti.

  Of course.

  He won’t have a bar of having one himself, despite us offering several times over. ‘Not interested. Off you go.’ Which we most certainly do. ‘There are oranges, too.’

  And from that point onward the evening degenerates into the most ridiculous silliness – banana-peel hats on heads and orange quarters in mouths and competitions over who’s got the most outrageous face – Scruff wins every time, closely followed by Basti. Bert keeps on making orange party hats for every head. Finally, finally, our uncle calls it a night.

  But wait, not yet; we mightn’t get this chance again for some time, it’s a sudden new lightness and we shouldn’t waste it. I can feel my notorious bluntness bubbling up. It’s meant to stay put but I can’t help it . . .

  ‘Why didn’t you ever see Dinda any more, Basti, after you got back from the war? If she was such a good friend.’

  His face changes in an instant. Whoops.

  ‘Yeah,’ now Scruff’s onto it too, ‘how come?’

  ‘Please tell us,’ Bert adds, ever the romantic.

  Our uncle sighs. And in that long, weary exhalation I get the feeling that this is one of the hardest questions he’s ever had to face. And now, perhaps, is the time he has to stop running from it.

  ‘Because I was broken, if you must know.’

  He slips a banana peel from his head.

  ‘Just . . . stopped. If that is the word. By everything. And I was too . . . ashamed . . . for anyone to see me like that. Especially the girl next door. Who –’ He stops, can’t go on. I put a hand over his. ‘I’d changed, yes. Dinda was right. I was the golden child once, destined to conquer the world. Everyone thought that. My dear, dear parents, my wild older brother who’d already left for Australia, off on all his mad adventures –’ he smiles sadly at us ‘– the teachers at my school, the neighbours, Lord and Lady Holland who were like mentors to me.’ He pauses, struggling to go on. ‘I came back from the Western Front like a maimed dog. Confused, broken, lost. I couldn’t face any of them. An utterly different man, and utterly ashamed of it.’

  ‘Boy,’ I correct.

  He looks up at me and frowns. ‘Yes, boy. You’re rather handy to have around, aren’t you, Kick? I’ve come to realise that.’

  ‘But Dinda was waiting for you, Basti, for years and years,’ Bert jumps in.

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know. I just assumed Din would find someone else. Someone better, someone whole. Just assumed that she wouldn’t want the broken dog who’d changed so much; that it wouldn’t be fair on such a beautiful, strong, vivid girl. You see, I couldn’t bear for her to look at me anymore. Couldn’t bear for anyone to look at me. Even now. Couldn’t bear to go out and be stared at, to have them all whispering about what I used to be and how everything had changed so ridiculously. The legendary Sebastian Caddy. And then this.’ He looks up and shrugs with an utter ruin of a face. ‘I couldn’t bear to have children – any children – around me. Even now. I’m no role model. I didn’t want you to know about me. You didn’t need to. I begged my brother not to tell you.’

  ‘Why?’ We cry. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m ashamed. Of me. Of everything I’ve become.’

  ‘But you’re amazing!’ Scruff says.

  Our uncle chuckles sadly in disbelief as he lifts the banana peel off his nephew’s head. ‘It was the Somme, Master Scruff. That’s what did it.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Well, if you must know, there’d been a call for the last Christmas post the day before, and I’d missed the mailbag. As you do. But you see –’ he pauses, his eyes light up ‘– I’d found a candle. A beautiful French candle. It smelt of lavender. Imagine that, in the middle of a war zone. A villager must have dropped it in their hurry to escape the oncoming battle and I found it on the ground – too late – but I knew that if I sent it to a certain address in Campden Hill Square, even without a note, the young lady of the house would know exactly who it was from. You know who I’m talking about. The girl who’s been loving that candle tradition ever since she was a tot. I had to do it. And when I saw that French candle in the dirt I felt like a kid again. It would be our secret signal – and Dinda and I had always had our secret signals. Like that knocking Pin heard on the door, that very first night you were in the house. It was her. I recognised it, from our childhood. She was checking up on you, I think, wanting to find out what was going on.’

  I nod, smile. Little Pin was right – he did hear something.

  ‘Now, where was I? The war, yes. I slipped away with my precious candle to the closest village, to find a post office. But on the way I passed these huge pits. They were being dug by some Tommies, which means our own men. The pits were so odd. Large and deep. I couldn’t work out what they were for because they were digging them behind us as we marched forward. I hadn’t been in the war for very long; had done my one foolhardy act of bravery, saving my mates, and that was about it. Then it suddenly dawned on me –’

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘Those pits being dug were for my own body. In anticipation. For the dead bodies of me and all my friends around me. What did the generals know that we didn’t?’

  We’re silent, horrified.

  ‘I just ran. And ran. And ran.’

  I squeeze Basti’s hand.

  ‘I still can’t explain why.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I heard shelling in the distance. Boom, boom. I just ran deep into the night, like a little boy in over his neck, not knowing what he’s doing really, just utterly spooked. It was horribly dark. Cloudy. No stars, no moon. Finally I found a barn. Couldn’t see clearly. Crept inside, feeling my way in the black. I was so tired, we hadn’t slept for days and days, the trenches were full of mud and lice and rats and overflowing toilets. I nestled into a corner of the lovely clean straw and just wanted to sleep and sleep and never wake up. I found a spot next to a great knobbly wall and couldn’t make it out but I didn’t care, I was so exhausted. Then when I woke I could see exactly what it was that I’d camped up hard against . . .’

  I hold him tight, dread what’s coming.

  ‘The bodies of men. British men. My men. Stacked to the ceiling, to the very top. And all their boots were facing me. That’s what I’d been sleeping against the entire night. My own men. And I was next.’

  Without a word the three of us cuddle our uncle hard, squeeze him, the tightest we’ve ever cuddled anyone in our lives.

  ‘Yes, I was just a boy. I realised at that exact moment. And that this great wall before me was what this glorious and glamorous war was really, actually all about. Be careful what you wish for, eh?’

  I press my wet cheek to his.

  ‘The next day, well, I posted that candle to Campden Hill Square. And that was the last Dinda ever heard from me. Then I walked back to the battlefield.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. I had to. For those mates who’d lain beside me all night. For me. But I was punished, of course. Desertion. Despite me heading back to the Front an example had to be made. As it does. And the punishment for that wretched term “desertion”, even when it wasn’t, was being strapped to the wheels of the gun carriage. For hours and hours. In the middle of the battlefield. I was barely fifteen.’ He squeezes my hand. ‘It . . . it broke me.’

  He’s so quiet we can barely hear him now.

 
; ‘I never recovered. I couldn’t have my darling Dinda see me like that. She had to live on gloriously, find a beau, live her life. Not be chained . . . to me. It was just easier after that to . . . never go out. On the rare occasions I did I just scuttled away if I saw her. Avoided her, wouldn’t talk to her, couldn’t. I was so ashamed. Then gradually I just stopped stepping into the world. Charlie Boo was here for everything, he’d been here since I was a child and he was a huge help. I didn’t answer calls, didn’t respond to letters from anyone. Dinda. My brother in Australia. Old neighbours, friends. I can’t explain it, it was just easier that way. And eventually, after many years, one by one they all gave up. And now –’ he takes a deep breath ‘– here I am. And always will be. And here you are.’

  Basti looks at us, bewildered.

  ‘Most . . . fulsomely. Yes.’

  He smiles. There is a huge, crushed lifetime in that smile. And in the great balloon of sadness that follows I just know it’ll be too cruel to ever force our uncle into visiting his neighbour for a drink, as much as I’d like to; into collecting presents and lighting candles; into Christmas, into anything. Charlie Boo’s right. He’s broken, oh yes. And on this frazzled evening something is stirring in the Reptilarium, something like forgiving love. And with that, finally, comes understanding.

  We shuffle off to bed. It’s time, for all of us; we’re exhausted.

  ‘One more thing,’ Bert says, at her door. ‘Did you write Dad’s letter?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘His last letter, that the policeman gave to us. Telling us to come to the Reptilarium. On the yellow paper. It was in his handwriting.’

  Basti looks like he has absolutely no idea what his niece is talking about. ‘Well, I do have yellow paper in my notepad, yes, but I’m not sure what you’re alluding to here, Albertina.’

  It’s obvious he doesn’t, it’s in his face.

  ‘The letter we got,’ I say. ‘It told us we had to come to you immediately, because you’re our uncle. That you’d look after us. It said Dad had vanished, somewhere up north.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. I received a letter from the War Office, as your father’s closest living relative . . .’