Hugo Pepper

by Paul Stewart

  So who was it meant for? he wondered. There was only one way to find out.

  Hugo folded the paper up again, returned it to the little capsule and attached it to the ring on the pigeon’s leg. Then he picked up the plump bird and crossed to the open window. The sun was rising over the rooftops of Firefly Square as Hugo stretched his arms out of the window and released the pigeon, which flapped away with its mysterious message, carrying it to the person for whom it was intended.

  The snow chariot was ready and waiting for him on the roof of Edward Evesham’s workshop, but his departure could wait another day, Hugo told himself. He gazed out across Firefly Gardens at the institute opposite, his curiosity getting the better of him.

  ‘Midnight,’ he whispered.

  reakfast, Hugo, dear,’ Daisy called from downstairs. ‘Grilled sardines, fresh from the harbour this morning!’

  Hugo closed his window, hurriedly dressed in the stripy vest, canvas trousers and over-sized sailor’s jacket – leaving the sou’wester on the chair by his sea-bed – and clattered down the stairs.

  ‘Why, Hugo, dear,’ said Lily, who was drying her long bronze-coloured hair beside the ship’s galley stove in the corner of the cluttered kitchen. ‘I put out your reindeer herder clothes for you. After all, I thought—’

  ‘ I thought I might just stay a little bit longer,’ Hugo interrupted, sitting down at the large barrel that served as a kitchen table. ‘I mean, if that’s all right with you and Daisy.’

  ‘Of course it is!’ exclaimed Daisy, swishing over with a plate of grilled sardines and seaweed toast. ‘As long as we’ve still got a roof over our heads, you’ll be welcome under it, Hugo, dear.’

  The Neptune sisters smiled at Hugo as he helped himself to a sardine and a piece of seaweed toast.

  ‘There’s something I’d like to ask you,’ said Hugo, taking a sip of Camomiles’ Sunny Morning tea. ‘Do either of you know anybody by the name of Alfie?’

  ‘Alfie?’ said Lily, finishing drying her hair and swishing over to join Daisy and Hugo at the table. ‘Alfie … Alfie … The name does seem familiar. There was an Alfred Ampleside who had a small tug-boat. Freddie Fishface, we used to call him …’

  ‘Or that butcher’s boy, Lily, dear,’ said Daisy. ‘Always miserable. Had a face like a storm at sea. His name was Alfie.’

  ‘So it was!’ exclaimed Lily, gazing at her sister through her green spectacles. ‘Alfie Spangle.’

  ‘Does he work at the institute?’ asked Hugo, intrigued.

  ‘Little Alfie Spangle?’ exclaimed Daisy, laughing. ‘Of course not, dear. His father, old Sid Spangle, sold his sausage shop and moved to the Sunny South years ago, and that’s the last we ever saw of Alfie and that funny old bicycle of his.’

  ‘Alfie Spangle working at the institute,’ Lily giggled. ‘Whatever gave you that idea, Hugo, dear?’

  But before Hugo could answer, a copy of The Firefly Quarterly came through the letterbox and landed with a thump on the seagrass welcome-mat. Lily and Daisy stopped laughing and exchanged worried looks.

  After breakfast, Hugo left the Neptune sisters tut-tutting and shaking their heads over The Firefly Quarterly and visited Dalle and Daughter: Rug Restorers.

  Tik-Tik the moth-dog jumped off his cushion and came trotting over to lick his hand. Hugo tickled him behind the ears, then brushed past the hanging carpets and entered the back room.

  Meena was hovering in mid-air in her flying carpet slippers, darning a battered looking carpet that was stretched in the frame on the far wall. As Hugo entered, she turned and smiled. Then, with a click of her heels, she sank to the ground and gave him a fierce hug.

  ‘Hugo! Darling boy!’ she exclaimed in her musical voice. ‘I thought you were leaving first thing this morning.’

  ‘I was,’ said Hugo, ‘but when I woke up … well, I thought I’d stay just a little bit longer.’

  ‘Stay as long as you like, Hugo. It’s so lovely having you here with us.’

  ‘Meena,’ said Hugo, when she’d released him from the hug. ‘Where is the cat fountain?’

  ‘You mean you didn’t see it when you arrived?’ said Meena. She looked surprised, then thoughtful. ‘Though I suppose you did rather crash-land, didn’t you? Thank goodness for the flying carpet.’

  ‘I don’t remember much about it, to be honest,’ said Hugo, shaking his head. ‘Just falling and then, instead of hitting the ground with a thump, I seemed to land so softly …’

  ‘In a tree not far from the old fountain in the middle of Firefly Square,’ said Meena, smiling. ‘It has a small statue of a one-eared ship’s cat called Treacle on it.’

  ‘So that’s the cat fountain,’ said Hugo thoughtfully.

  But Meena didn’t reply. She was looking with a worried expression at the copy of The Firefly Quarterly which Tik-Tik had just dropped at her feet.

  Hugo didn’t stay long at Meena Dalle’s. She seemed distracted and worried, and kept picking up and putting down The Firefly Quarterly as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to open it and look inside. Instead, he went next door to Camomile and Camomile: Tea Blenders.

  There, he found Diego on the landing at the top of the spiral staircase. He had a set of small scales in front of him and was wearing a waistcoat with dozens of small pockets, each one containing a teaspoon of a different size. On the small fold-up table beside him were several large tins of tea with labels on them such as Quick-Witted Blue Bush, Bold and Brave Broadleaf and Delicious Irony Mint. Diego dipped into these tins with one or other of the teaspoons from his waistcoat and sprinkled their contents into the left- or right-hand pan of the scales – which, Hugo realized on closer inspection, were in fact miniature teapots, each being warmed from beneath by a candle.

  ‘Just a new blend I’m working on, Hugo, my boy,’ smiled Diego when he saw the fascinated expression on Hugo’s face. ‘Thought I’d call it Camomile’s Lionheart tea. What do you think?’

  ‘It sounds wonderful,’ said Hugo, bending down to examine the scales. ‘Diego, do you know anybody called Alfie who works for the institute?’

  ‘Alfie? At the institute?’ Diego took a teaspoon from his waistcoat and tapped it thoughtfully against a tin marked Dandoon Derring-do. ‘No,’ he said at last, ‘I can’t say as I do. The institute pokes into everyone else’s business, but when it comes to its own, it’s as secretive as a blue monkey’s tea party. Now, it was different in your grandfather’s day …’

  Just then, Freda Camomile’s voice came floating up from the basement.

  ‘Diego, dear, that beastly Firefly Quarterly has arrived, but I can’t bear to open it. I feel faint, Diego, and my heart’s all a-flutter!’

  After lunch, Hugo left the Camomiles and popped his head round the door of Evesham’s Workshop.

  ‘Leaving it rather late, my lad,’ said Edward Evesham, putting down the angle-poise lamp he was adjusting and wiping his hands on his apron. ‘The old girl’s packed and waiting – but it’s mid-afternoon. I thought you were making an early start this morning.’

  ‘I was,’ said Hugo, ‘but I changed my mind. Tomorrow morning, perhaps …’

  ‘Excellent stuff! Delighted to have you around,’ said Edward, turning the lamp on and directing its light onto his workbench. Hugo saw a copy of The Firefly Quarterly lying open next to an oil can.

  ‘Nobody seems to like The Firefly Quarterly,’ said Hugo, picking it up and flicking through its pages, ‘and yet everybody seems to read it …’

  Edward shook his head and took the copy from Hugo. He turned to the back page.

  ‘That, Hugo, my lad, is because it’s full of rumours and tittle-tattle and untrue stories, and everybody is afraid that they’ll be in it. That’s the reason they’re always making donations to it – so The Firefly Quarterly won’t say anything nasty about them.’

  ‘Do you make donations?’ asked Hugo.

  Edward didn’t reply. Instead, he just smiled ruefully and pointed to the back page. Hugo read the article there.

&
nbsp; SOUTHSIDE SHOPKEEPERS STRAPPED FOR CASH

  It has come to the Quarterly’s notice that the peculiar little shops on the south side of Firefly Square are more than usually rundown and empty of customers.

  Not surprising, you might think, given their reputation for shoddy workmanship, over-priced harbour junk and sawdust-filled tea.

  But not for much longer! The Quarterly has it on good authority that the money has run out for the shoddy shopkeepers, and change is in the air in Firefly Square!

  ‘What do you think? said Edward Evesham, shaking his head.

  ugo wrapped the blanket round his shoulders and climbed the tall tree in the corner of the gardens of Firefly Square.

  He found a branch about halfway up, and settled down to wait. Peering through the leaves, he had a perfect view of the small fountain in the centre of the gardens.

  It wasn’t surprising that he’d overlooked it before, he thought. Not only was the little park neglected and overgrown, but the fountain’s stone base – carved into a scallop shell resting on a mossy plinth – was half covered in ivy.

  Water had once filled the shell, but now, apart from a couple of old fish bones and a pebble or two, it was dry and empty. At the centre of the fountain was a carved stone pillar from which two rusty iron seagulls protruded. Their beaks, which must once have acted as decorative water spouts, had long since dried up. On top of the pillar sat a small sculpture of a thin, one-eared cat, clasping a curled scroll in its front paws. From his look-out point in the branches of the tree, Hugo could just make out the words Treacle – The Ship’s Cat inscribed on the scroll.

  It was half-past eleven by the old ship’s clock in the window of Neptune’s Nautical Antiques when Hugo had tip-toed out and quietly closed the door behind him. The Neptune sisters had been quiet and subdued all evening, and had gone up early to bed. They’d clearly been upset by The Firefly Quarterly and Hugo didn’t want to bother them with stories of pigeons carrying messages – which he shouldn’t have been reading in the first place.

  Then again, he was glad that he had. And as he sat perfectly still in the branches of the very tree he’d crashed into only a few nights earlier, he couldn’t help wondering who he might see in the gardens beneath him at midnight.

  He didn’t have much longer to wait.

  Down below, treading nimbly in soft mouse-skin boots, came an elderly woman in a shabby coat and a patched and ragged skirt. Her large-brimmed hat of velveteen was held in place with several hat pins and was decorated with a long silver fish bone. In one hand she clutched a cat-head umbrella, and over one arm was slung an enormous leather handbag, as big as a suitcase. Her large, deep-sunken eyes were ringed in dark blue and on her upper lip, several long silvery whiskers quivered as she peered around her.

  Then – apparently satisfied that the gardens were deserted – the woman stretched her scraggy neck forward, opened her mouth and gave a thin, piercing miaooww!

  As if in answer, from the dark clumps of the bushes and shadows beneath the trees, a dozen miaowing calls sounded. One by one, thin scruffy yellow cats slunk out on to the overgrown path and circled the fountain. As they approached the old woman they dropped the crumpled pieces of paper they were carrying in their jaws at her feet, like proud house-cats dropping sparrows on a sitting-room rug.

  With a greedy glint in her eyes and her whiskers quivering, the old woman gathered up the pieces of paper and sorted through them. Then, as Hugo watched, she unbuttoned the bulky coat she wore to reveal a lining bulging with pockets, each one full of neatly sorted scraps of paper. There were bills, accounts, shop receipts and business correspondence, love letters, get-well cards and thank-you notes – all flattened out and filed. Besides the bulging paper-filled pockets, there was something else that caught Hugo’s eye.

  It was a row of metallic capsules – just like the one he’d discovered on the plump pigeon in his bedroom – hanging from small fish-hooks stitched into the lining of the coat. For a few moments, the woman slipped each piece of paper into various pockets, crooning softly to herself while the cats waited patiently, staring at her with unblinking yellow eyes. When she had finished, she buttoned up her coat, set down the enormous handbag and opened it wide.

  Inside was a row of pigeon-holes, each one containing a plump cooing pigeon. The old lady ignored them, and instead pulled a greasy grey sack from the depths of the bag before snapping it shut again.

  ‘Here you are, my darlings,’ she crooned to the waiting cats, dipping into the sack and pulling out a handful of pungent fish-heads. ‘Mummy hasn’t forgotten you. See? Mummy loves her beautiful clever catty-kins …’

  Each cat leaped up to take a fish-head in mid-air as the old woman swept her arm in a wide arc and let the handful go. Then, gripping their pungent suppers delicately in their jaws, they slunk back, silently, into the shadows.

  Just then, a tall angular man with a mean pinched-looking face and small shifty eyes stepped out of the bushes and approached the fountain. He had a thin moustache and wire spectacles, and was wearing a long expensive-looking black overcoat and a tall black silk hat. He carried a gold-tipped ebony cane and had on soft kid gloves of duck-egg blue.

  ‘Well, well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes, Alfie, love,’ said the old lady, with a wheezy, cackling laugh. ‘You gets grander every time we meet. Just like them folks in Montmorency Square, and no mistake!’

  ‘They don’t seem so grand when you know all their dirty little secrets, now do they, Cressida?’ smiled the tall thin man, adjusting his silk tie and tipping his hat to the cat lady.

  ‘Indeed, they don’t, Alfie, love,’ Cressida Claw cackled. ‘Indeed they don’t. Not half as grand as Alfie Spangle – or should I say, Elliot de Mille, Esquire.’

  The director of the institute joined in with the cat woman’s laughter. In the tree above, Hugo sat very still indeed, while from surrounding bushes there came the sound of fish-heads being crunched.

  ‘Always a pleasure to see you, Cressida, old friend. You’ve stuck by me through thick and thin, right from the very beginning.’ Elliot de Mille, the director of the institute, shivered with distaste as he remembered his life as young Alfie Spangle the butcher’s boy. ‘Which is why I had to tell you the news in person!’

  ‘The news, Alfie, love?’ said Cressida, her dark-rimmed eyes growing wide and her whiskers quivering. ‘What news?’

  ‘What would you say to a great big pigeon loft, and a cattery, and a place to call your very own, Cressida, old friend?’ Elliot de Mille smirked delightedly.

  ‘Now, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Alfie, love,’ said Cressida Claw, frowning and crossing her arms. ‘I’m not moving into that institute of yours; not with all those nasty stumpy big-footed little horrors. Worse than dogs, if you ask me – and you know how I feel about dogs, Alfie, love …’

  Elliot de Mille gave a shrill, cackling laugh. ‘No, not the institute, Cressida. I know you won’t go near it. But how about a step up from the back alleys of Harbour Heights? How about Firefly Square?’

  ‘But where, Alfie, love?’ said Cressida suspiciously.

  ‘The south side!’ announced Elliot de Mille with a wave of his ebony cane.

  ‘What, a little shop?’ said Cressida, her whiskers twitching uncontrollably. ‘Which one, Alfie, love? Which one?’

  Elliot de Mille puffed out his thin chest proudly. ‘All of them!’ he said.

  s soon as the coast seemed clear, Hugo jumped from the branch of the tree, wrapped in his blanket of cloud sheep wool. As it reached the ground, the blanket hovered and unfurled like a flower opening its petals, and Hugo stepped off it lightly. Pausing only to wrap the blanket around his shoulders, he hurried back through the gardens to the south side of the square.

  Quietly, he slipped through the door of Neptune’s Nautical Antiques, and crept through the cluttered shop and into the kitchen. There, yawning sleepily, he made himself a cup of Camomiles’ ‘Clear Your Head’ tea and sat down with it at th
e barrel that served as a table. He needed to think.

  Clearly Elliot de Mille, or Alfie Spangle or whatever his name was, seemed intent on forcing Hugo’s parents’ friends out of Firefly Square so that his accomplice – the creepy cat woman – could move in.

  Hugo shuddered and took a sip of tea.

  She and those cats of hers obviously supplied him with all the information for the nasty stories he printed in that quarterly of his. What a mean trick!

  Hugo yawned.

  A nasty, mean, deceitful low-down trick! Hugo suddenly felt very homesick for the little cabin in the ice forests of the Frozen North where life was a lot simpler. He put his head in his hands and slumped over the barrel.

  I must warn the Neptunes about this Alfie Spangle person … Yawn … First thing … Yawn … in the … morning …

  Hugo was back in the little cabin in front of the glowing stove. Harvi and Sarvi were laughing and singing and telling stories about reindeer and polar bears and snow giants. He was laughing and singing too, and then he began trying to tell them about Firefly Square and the one-eared cat fountain, and Elliot de Mille. Or Alfie Spangle. He opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out …

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Hugo snapped awake and sat up. The Clear Your Head tea was sitting in front of him, stone cold.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Daisy and Lily Neptune came swishing down the stairs, all a-flutter.

  ‘We’re closed, you know,’ trilled Daisy.

  ‘We haven’t even had our morning swim,’ added Lily, peering through the clutter at the shop window.