by Jan Mark
‘It’s a skewer,’ said Mum. She didn’t explain why it was there. Andrew wondered if she was looking embarrassed and doubted it. A chair scraping on the floor told him that Mrs Skelton was getting up to go. Perhaps she was afraid that Mum would whip out the skewer and run amok. When he heard the door close he went back into the kitchen.
‘Eavesdropper,’ said Mum. ‘What a strange person. She didn’t look at me once. She kept staring over my shoulder. What could she have been looking at?’
‘The ironing board, I expect,’ said Andrew, pointing to the row of footprints along the middle of it.
Mum looked at them admiringly. ‘That’s neat,’ she said. ‘That’s very neat. You know, we could make a fortune flogging that pattern as trendy wallpaper.’
Someone else knocked at the back door and Andrew went to open it. Victor was standing outside with a slice of bread and butter in his hand.
‘I met my mum in the lane. She told me to give you this,’ said Victor. ‘What did you give her a bit of bread and butter for?’
‘We didn’t,’ said Mum. ‘Oh dear, it’s Edward’s. He must have put it in her shopping bag while she was sitting by the playpen.’
‘Why was she here, then?’ asked Victor, stepping into the kitchen so that he could personally return the bread and butter to its owner.
‘She said she was looking for you,’ said Mum.
‘She couldn’t have been,’ said Victor. ‘I was still at home when she went out. I bet she wanted to see what your house is like. She heard me telling my sister what a mess – oh.’ Victor stopped, suddenly. ‘I didn’t say that, exactly.’
‘I’ve never seen your sister,’ said Andrew, helpfully. ‘I don’t believe you’ve got one.’
‘You’ll see her picture in the paper, soon enough,’ said Victor. ‘She’s getting married, next month. I wanted her room when she go, but Mum say I’m not to go mucking that up as well. I say, do that skewer go right into your head?’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Mum. ‘Do you want some coffee?’
‘Yes please,’ said Victor. He knelt down beside the playpen and poked the bread between the bars. Edward’s hand closed on it.
‘Feeding time at the zoo,’ said Victor. ‘Gorillas’ tea party. Why don’t you put him out in the run with the guinea pigs?’
‘He’d eat them,’ said Mum. ‘He’s a carnivorous baby.’
‘That means he eats cars,’ said Andrew.
Mum handed round the coffee and they sat on the table to drink it. Victor removed one of his sweaters. It was a warm day.
‘I’ve brought a pile of Mitch Mulligan to cut up,’ he said.
‘Who is Mitch Mulligan and why are you cutting him up?’ asked Mum.
‘It’s not him we’re cutting up, it’s the Wellingtons,’ said Andrew.
‘All is now made clear,’ said Mum. ‘You’ve got it in for Mitch Mulligan so you’re going to cut up his wellies. What’s he done to deserve it?’
‘Bombers, not boots,’ said Victor. He went out and brought in the project file and a bundle of Action. ‘This is Mitch Mulligan, the Wellington Wizard.’
‘Thanks very much,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll borrow a couple of these, if I may. I want something to read while Edward finishes his breakfast. What a load of baloney,’ they heard her say, as they went upstairs.
‘What do she want to read them for?’ said Victor.
‘She’s got to be reading something,’ said Andrew. ‘Even if it’s only the label on the marmalade.’
Victor immediately set to work with the scissors. Andrew sneaked a look at the Marvellous Mystico before he made any cuts.
In half an hour they had cut out several Wellingtons, but none of them was complete. They all had bits missing where the edge of the picture frame cut them off. Victor stuck them on to a piece of paper and Andrew sketched in the parts that were missing. He tried to follow the advice that Mr Coates had given them but it was all too easy to see where the original picture ended and his drawing began.
‘Tell you what,’ said Victor. ‘We ought to trace them. If we get those books out of the library on Tuesday we can trace the photographs. Have you got any toilet paper? The hard kind.’
‘We’ve got some tracing paper, somewhere,’ said Andrew. ‘I’ll go down and look.’
They went downstairs again. Ginger was asleep across the bend in the stairs and they tripped over him. He ran into the kitchen ahead of them, swearing.
‘Aha, you feelthy British Pussy Cat,’ said Mum as he went by. ‘Defiance is useless. Ve haff vays of making you purr.’
‘I don’t think you’d better read any more of those comics,’ said Andrew. ‘Where’s the tracing paper?’
‘How should I know?’ said Mum, speaking English again. ‘I can’t even find the bread knife. There used to be some in the map case, left over from that time you did some tracings for school.’
The map case was a box file containing all the maps that the Mitchells owned. As they had lived in so many places there were plenty of them. The newest were the maps of East Anglia which Dad had bought when they were looking for somewhere to live. They were still muddy from being dropped in the road.
‘I can’t remember which map I was tracing,’ said Andrew, shaking them all to see if anything would fall out. Victor took the map of North East Norfolk and spread it out on the floor.
‘I can’t read all this little writing,’ he complained. ‘Where are we?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Andrew. ‘I’ve never looked before. We’re quite near the coast, aren’t we?’
‘About halfway between Polthorpe Broad and the sea. I can see the sea, I can’t find the broad. Up here, up here a bit,’ muttered Victor, poking with his finger. ‘What do that say?’
Andrew leaned over to have a look.
‘Trimingham,’ he said.
‘Wrong Ingham, too far up,’ said Victor. ‘Here’s Polthorpe. That say Polthorpe, don’t it?’
‘I remember now,’ said Andrew. ‘I used this map to get across the fields the first day we were here. Our house is on it. Look, here we are. That little dot.’
‘Where’s my house?’ said Victor, still fumbling with the lettering. ‘I wonder if I need glasses, I can’t read a thing. No, I don’t. I just can’t read.’
‘You could read those tombstones all right,’ said Andrew. He thought Victor needed encouraging, especially in view of what his mother had said. Getting him to do the project was a good start.
‘If books were as big as tombstones I’d manage OK,’ said Victor. ‘What are these little red dots?’
‘Our footpath,’ said Andrew. ‘And here’s yours. Look, they meet up at the corner of the churchyard. I didn’t know that. Haven’t you ever seen a map before?’
‘Only in an atlas,’ said Victor. ‘That didn’t look like this. You could get the whole of Norfolk under one hand. Hey, look. There’s our school. That’s even the right shape. You can see where the canteen stick out at the back.’
He sat back on his heels and surveyed the map from a distance. ‘You could have a lot of fun with one of these. That’s Norwich, down in the corner. I can read that. What’s that spotty-looking place just outside it, all done in dots?’
‘Norwich Airport. Those dotted lines must be the runways. I wonder if Coltishall’s on here. Can you see another place like it?’
‘What about this one?’
‘That says Rackheath,’ said Andrew. ‘Is Coltishall near Rackheath?’
‘No, miles away. What about this?’
‘It can’t be there. It’s not on the coast. That’s Bacton Gas Terminal.’
‘Royal Gas Force,’ said Victor. ‘Is this it?’ He pointed to another maze of dotted lines and spelled out ‘C-o-l-t. There you are. That’s it. Here’s the end of the runway and the road going across. This must be where I watch them land. Look at all these little roads going round the edge. Isn’t that Firegate Four?’
They examined the area carefully and picked out all the p
laces they had been to.
‘Aren’t there any more airfields? I thought there would be dozens,’ said Andrew.
‘There are,’ said Victor. ‘Get a bigger map.’
‘That won’t be any good. The bigger the map the smaller the details,’ said Andrew. ‘It has to be as big as Heathrow or it doesn’t show up.’ He found the map of North Norfolk, that fitted exactly against the first one. It was patterned all over with the ghostly bones of dead airfields.
‘I’d like to visit them all, one day,’ said Victor. ‘I’ve been to some already. Marham’s a good one. That’s not on this map. That’s where they have the Victors. You can sit all day and watch them come in. Nothing but Victors, great big things, just like mackerel. Named after me, they are.’
‘Get out,’ said Andrew. ‘What are they really?’
‘I told you,’ said Victor. ‘They’re tankers. You know those probes on the Lightnings? They link those up with the fuel lines on the Victors.’
‘In the air?’
‘Of course,’ said Victor. ‘If they can refuel in the air they don’t have to land so often. How did you think they did it? Come down by a garage and ask for five gallons?’
‘I hadn’t heard of Victors till you told me,’ said Andrew. ‘I never even saw a Lightning until we moved here. If we hadn’t moved when we did I might never have seen one at all. There won’t be any left soon.’
‘Yes, there will,’ said Victor, sweeping all the maps aside. ‘Other countries have Lightnings as well. There’ll still be some around, somewhere.’
Andrew wondered why he kept reminding Victor that the Lightnings were going when Victor didn’t want to know. He tried to think of a way to apologize.
‘Shall we go to Coltishall today?’ he said.
‘I can’t,’ said Victor. ‘My mum want me at home this afternoon to dig the garden.’
‘What about tomorrow, then?’
‘They don’t fly on Saturdays,’ said Victor. ‘Tell you what, we could go on Monday.’
‘I can hear something outside now,’ said Andrew. ‘Quite low.’
‘Chipmunk,’ said Victor. ‘Horrible little things. They’re only training planes and they go round and round in circles, for hours. I get properly fed up with them.’
Andrew went to the window and looked up. A small, red and white aircraft with RAF roundels was drooling in circles over the house. He described it to Victor who was still crawling about among the maps.
‘Chipmunk. I told you,’ said Victor, without looking up. ‘I don’t want to see that. Bad as a vulture, going round all day. I wouldn’t want to see one of them over me if I was dying in the desert.’
Mum came in with Edward under one arm.
‘If I put him in the playpen will you keep an eye on him?’ she said. ‘I want to go round to the Post Office.’
‘I’ll go round for you,’ said Andrew. Edward was peering about, looking for trouble. If he was left with Andrew he would scream and go stiff and purple.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Victor. Andrew knew what was coming next. ‘Can we take Edward in the pram? Can I push him? I’ll be ever so careful.’
‘You’ll go and push him up a telegraph pole, or something,’ said Andrew.
‘I’ll push you up a telegraph pole,’ said Victor.
‘You’d better fetch the guinea pigs in before you go,’ said Mum. ‘It looks to me as if it might rain again.’
‘Can’t they stay out in the rain?’ said Victor. ‘Wouldn’t they go into their hutch?’
‘They haven’t got the sense,’ said Mum. ‘I’m surprised they remember to breathe.’
She put Edward in the pram and fastened him down with a webbing harness. Victor helped Andrew to fetch in the hutch.
‘Hello, Kong; hello, Fits,’ said Victor, greeting the guinea pigs through the chicken wire. They were sitting in a friendly heap with Ginger at the end of the pen and whistled angrily when Andrew tried to stuff them into the hutch. Ginger was also put out and ran behind them, making abusive noises.
‘I do like Kong,’ said Victor as they stowed the hutch under the sink. ‘I wish he was mine. Could I sort of be his godfather and borrow him, sometimes?’
‘How do you mean, borrow him?’ said Andrew. ‘Where would you keep him?’
‘Not borrow him, exactly,’ said Victor. ‘Just the idea of him. Then I could tell people I’d got shares in a guinea pig.’
‘Can you really not have one at home?’ said Mum. ‘You don’t have to bring them indoors, most people don’t. You could keep it in the shed.’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ said Victor. ‘My sister was at school with a girl who caught something off her rabbits and we had to get rid of our budgie.’
‘How do you like this, then?’ said Mum. ‘If you get one you can keep it here. Your mother won’t mind that, will she? We’ll charge you board and lodging to make it all official and he can live here with ours.’
‘Oh,’ said Victor, with a grin that showed every last tooth and beyond. ‘Oh yes. I know where I can get one. I’ll go and ask Mum now. Just a minute.’
‘Hang on, what about the post office? I’m not going without you,’ said Andrew, but Victor had gone.
He came back, a few minutes later, out of breath.
‘She say that’s all right if I don’t kiss it,’ he said, looking round the back door. ‘I’ll get that tomorrow, if that’s OK?’
They set out for the post office. Victor pushed the pram and talked about his imminent guinea pig.
‘I like the way they whistle. The first time I came to your house I thought they were birds in the garden. Can you teach them to whistle tunes? We could get them all to learn the Dambusters’ March.’
‘How will you do that? You can’t whistle yourself,’ said Andrew.
‘Yes, I can,’ said Victor, making a sound like an air raid siren. ‘I tried to teach our budgie to whistle. He pulled all his tail feathers out.’
‘Why, because of your whistling?’ said Andrew.
Victor ignored him. ‘Look who’s coming down the road,’ he said.
Riding towards them, very upright on a wiry black bicycle, was the lady from the library.
Andrew said, ‘Good morning,’ but she pedalled past them very carefully as if they were an obstruction in the road with red lights round it. Victor scowled as she glided by and then went into his gorilla routine, behind her back, hopping about, gibbering and scratching. The lady librarian saw him out of the corner of her eye. She slowly stepped off her bicycle and stood quite still, for a full minute, staring at him.
Victor hastily resumed human shape and began chatting to Edward, as though the exhibition had been for his benefit. The librarian got back on to her bicycle and rode away.
They could see what she was thinking, even from behind.
‘I don’t think we’d better go back to that library,’ said Victor.
12. God Save the Queen
Victor appeared next morning, just after breakfast.
Dad was washing up and Mum was reading the paper when he looked round the door, carrying a string bag with a lettuce in it.
‘We’re here,’ said Victor.
‘Come in,’ said Dad. ‘Who’s where?’
‘Me and my guinea pig,’ said Victor. He put the string bag on the table and folded back the edges of the lettuce. It had been hollowed out and where the heart should have been sat a small, brown guinea pig, nibbling at the lettuce.
‘I thought that’d feel more at home in there,’ said Victor.
Ginger jumped on to the table to see what was afoot. He put out a tender paw and patted the guinea pig in the hope that it would bounce.
‘Let’s put it in with the others and see how they get on,’ said Andrew.
‘How do you know they won’t fight?’ said Dad. ‘What sex is yours, Victor? Come to that, what are ours?’
‘Male,’ said Mum. ‘Guinea boars.’
‘Mine’s a sow,’ said Victor. ‘I should have thought of
that before. Perhaps we shall get guinea piglets.’
‘I should say that was an absolute dead certainty,’ said Dad.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Mum. ‘Ours are very old gents indeed and Victor’s looks far too young to be courting.’
‘We shall soon find out,’ said Dad. ‘Guinea pigs being what they are.’
They took the hutch outside and connected it to the pen. Victor put in the lettuce with the guinea pig still inside it. King Kong and Fittipaldi wandered out of the hutch. King Kong scratched himself. Fittipaldi went to sleep. Inside the lettuce Victor’s guinea pig went on with her breakfast.
‘I think you ought to change Fittipaldi’s name,’ said Victor. ‘Who was that fellow who went to sleep for a hundred years and woke up dead?’
‘Rip van Winkle,’ said Mum. ‘And it was only twenty years. He was still alive when he woke up.’
‘There you are,’ said Victor. ‘That’s what you ought to call him.’
‘What a nerve,’ said Andrew. ‘How would you like it if somebody changed your name when you were too old to look like Victor Skelton?’
‘What are you going to call yours?’ asked Dad.
‘I hadn’t thought,’ said Victor. ‘I could call her Lightning but that probably won’t suit – especially if she’s anything like Fittipaldi. Phantom might be better. They can go ever so slowly.’
‘How about MRCA?’ said Dad.
‘What’s that?’ said Mum. ‘Member of the Rodent Collectors’ Association?’
‘Multi-Role Combat Aircraft,’ said Victor. ‘No, I don’t think so. That’s not a very nice name for a lady guinea pig.’
‘Queen Kong?’ said Andrew.
‘Oh, that’s good,’ said Victor, ‘that’s what I’ll call her. Did you hear that, Queenie?’ he said, into the lettuce.
Andrew was pleased that Victor had chosen his name. He had been afraid that his parents would think of something clever.
Victor would have been happy to stay and look at Queen Kong all morning but his mother wanted him to go shopping in Polthorpe.
‘We’ll both go,’ said Andrew. ‘Can I borrow your bike?’ he added, quickly, in case Edward was invited to join the party.
