The Charlie Moon Collection

by Shirley Hughes

  Charlie nods.

  “So are we, me and my sister-in-law. I like the big resorts, but she likes it very quiet, very refined. When we were in Spain last year Mona was the one who complained. Too noisy and too hot, she said, and the food gave her a liver attack. Talk about a moaner! She never stopped! Didn’t like the guests in the hotel—said they weren’t the right type—didn’t like the dancing.” She glances at the empty ballroom. “I love a dance myself. I wonder when they last had one here?”

  Before Charlie can answer Mrs Cadwallader sets off across the huge shiny floor, humming a tune, and holding her cigarette holder out at arm’s length with her other arm about the shoulders of an imaginary partner. Her high-heeled shoes swerve in all directions making a complicated pattern of steps.

  “I think I ought to be . . .” calls out Charlie after her, but she doesn’t seem to hear. She reaches the piano. Sitting down, she balances her cigarette-holder on the end of the key-board, removes her rings, and strikes up a thrilling chord. Then she bursts into song.

  “WALTZ-ing WALTZ-ing, HIGH in the clouds.

  ON-ly YOU and I in the clouds . . .” carols Mrs Cadwallader sweetly.

  Charlie sits down on one of the little gold chairs, defeated. She sings on and on, playing more runs and trills on the piano than anyone could have believed possible. Between verses she beams over at him, for all the world as though he were a proper audience. Charlie begins to feel desperate. At last delivery comes. The lift doors at the other end of the room open, and out steps Miss Mona. Mrs Cadwallader’s song falters in mid-flow, and her hands drop from the key-board.

  “So here you are, Connie,” says Miss Mona quietly. “I hope you realize what time it is? Dinner is in ten minutes.” She looks coldly at Charlie. “Is this the boy who got stuck in the lift? I heard all about it from the manageress herself, when I came in from my walk. She was really annoyed. We’ve been looking all over the hotel for both of you. What on earth have you been doing in here, anyway?”

  “Just having a bit of fun,” says Mrs Cadwallader defiantly, but she shuts up the piano lid all the same. “I was just giving this little lad a song or two.”

  Miss Mona fixes Charlie with a beady eye.

  “I feel I’ve seen you before,” she says. “What is your name?”

  “Charlie Moon,” answers Charlie, pulling down his cap even further over his eyes.

  “Where do you live?”

  “I’m staying with my Auntie who runs the Joke and Carnival Novelty shop along opposite the pier, and I think if you don’t mind she’ll be expecting . . .”

  “I know who you are!” snaps Miss Mona, looking at him more closely under the peak. “You’re the little vandal who was behaving so disgustingly on the prom yesterday. You’re an obvious trouble-maker, that’s clear. I suppose you thought you could come trespassing in this hotel and making more mischief without being recognized? Now, listen to me. You’re to leave here at once and if I hear of your causing any more trouble I’m going straight to the police.”

  “Oh, come on, Mona,” says Mrs Cadwallader. “He wasn’t doing anything.”

  “Straight to the police, do you understand? Now come along, Connie, we must change. We’re terribly late already.”

  Taking Mrs Cadwallader’s arm, Miss Mona sweeps her into the lift. As the doors close, Mrs Cadwallader catches Charlie’s eye over the top of her sister-in-law’s head, and gives him a big wink.

  Left alone at last, Charlie breathes a great sigh of relief. It has been a long, difficult afternoon. He is sick to death of the Hydro Hotel and everyone in it. He never wants to see any of them again. But, as he turns to go, something catches his eye, twinkling on top of the grand piano. Drawing nearer, he sees three rings lying there—very expensive-looking rings with stones nearly as big as boiled sweets. Mrs Cadwallader has left them behind!

  “You still here, then?” says the hotel handyman sternly. Charlie has collided with him as he tears upstairs with the three rings in his pocket. “You’d better not let the manageress catch you. She’s in a black, bad temper, indeed. And, look you, don’t go messing about with that lift again, or I’ll have you for sure. I’ve got enough to do here without young tomfool boyos like yourself tinkering about all over the place.”

  “Those two ladies,” pants Charlie, “they’ve just gone upstairs. I’ve got to catch them!”

  “If it’s the Cadwallader ladies you mean, they’ve gone to their rooms, no doubt, as it’s nearly time for dinner. What do you want them for, anyway?”

  “There’s something I’ve got to give them. It’s important.”

  “Well, right-ho then. But you’re to come straight down again, mind. They’re on the fourth floor. I can’t recall the big lady’s room number off the top of me head, but the other one’s in Number 404.”

  “Thanks!” shouts Charlie over his shoulder. He’s already sprinting up the next flight of stairs, two at a time. No more lift journeys for him.

  The Hydro seems to have as many rooms, passages and stairs in it as an enchanted palace in a fairy tale, and to be just as confusing. Reaching the fourth floor, Charlie takes off from the main staircase, scurrying like the White Rabbit down long corridors, and counting the room numbers backwards under his breath as he passes. Nobody is about. Most of the guests are already gathered for dinner downstairs. Through open doors he glimpses marble bathrooms, dignified mahogany beds with starched white sheets, and the occasional small, startled reflection of himself in a huge wardrobe mirror. At last he arrives at room Number 404 and knocks timidly.

  Miss Mona’s questing, bird-like face appears almost immediately.

  “Is this intended to be some sort of joke?” she says angrily, before Charlie can get in a word. “You have no business to be up here, as you well know. I won’t tell you again. Kindly leave these premises at once, or I’ll call the manageress.”

  “I . . . the other lady . . .”

  “You mean my sister-in-law? She’s dressing for dinner. What do you want with her?”

  “I found . . . I mean, she left these behind on the piano!”

  Charlie plunges his hand into his pocket and pulls out the three rings. They lie winking and sparkling on his palm. Miss Mona looks at them silently for a moment.

  “I see,” she says, in a slightly altered tone. “That was most careless. I will see that they are returned at once.”

  She takes the rings into her own hand and half closes the door. Then she adds, through the crack:

  “Thank you for returning them promptly. Now please LEAVE HERE AT ONCE!”

  The door is then closed firmly in Charlie’s face, and he is left standing alone in the corridor. Tired as he is, he breaks into a wild, capering dance, throwing his cap about, thumbing his nose, and pulling hideous faces at the closed door. Then, turning away, he starts to try and find his way back to the main staircase. At last he can go home for his tea.

  4

  “Lovely bit of material, that is,” says Auntie Jean, holding up a gentleman’s tailcoat, one of the many items of costume that she keeps in her back sitting-room. “Bit of moth under the arm here, but good as new otherwise.”

  She blows the dust off the shoulders of the coat, and it rises in a great cloud.

  “What’s that purple dress, Auntie, with the black lace on it?” asks Ariadne. She and Charlie are sitting side by side on the sofa, eating sticky buns.

  “Oooooh, that’s a dream, that is. It’s an old-fashioned costume, once worn by the leading lady in a musical play at the Royalty. A real picture she was in it, too.”

  “It’s just like the sort of dress the ladies in my book are wearing. I’d love to sweep about with that train thing behind.”

  “What’s that shaggy brown one over there?” Charlie wants to know.

  “Some sort of animal suit, I think, Charlie. It was for the pantomime one year, if I remember right. Looks as though it needs a bit of a patch in it when I get a moment. Lovely on, though.”

  Auntie Jean is in good
spirits. She loves going through the old costumes and reminding herself of happy times in the theatre. It is the day after Charlie’s adventure in the lift, and it has been a successful one in the shop. A party of trippers strayed in during a shower and all bought false noses to cheer themselves up on the way home.

  “I’ve got some lovely pork chops for tea,” she tells them. “And chocolate ice-cream to follow—a treat, see. Why don’t you slip along and ask Mr Cornetto if he wants to come round and join us? He looks as though he could do with a good meal. I don’t believe he cooks anything proper, there on his own.”

  Charlie and Ariadne stroll up the prom, still chewing the remains of their buns. The sun has come out, warming the damp pavement under their feet, and catching the sails of two little boats, dipping along optimistically in the bay. The tide has gone out, leaving behind it a glittering expanse of rich, salty mud, garlanded with dark seaweed. In the middle distance, the children from St Ethelred’s Holiday Home are straggling along the water-line, with melted ice-lollies dribbling down to their elbows. They stop now again to poke about amongst the driftwood, or push one another into the pools. The student in charge, his trousers rolled up to the knee, moves up and down his flock like a sheep-dog, herding them home to bed. Their voices echo across the bay as in an enormous bathroom.

  Charlie and Ariadne arrive at Carlo’s Crazy Castle to find Lordy in charge of the pay-box, his fore-paws on the till. He greets them with loud barks, which bring Mr Cornetto hurrying to the entrance. He winds up the portcullis to let them in.

  “Well, there’s kind of you, I’m sure!” he exclaims, when they deliver Auntie Jean’s invitation. “I’m just closing up here. I’d a few people round earlier, but it’s pretty quiet on the whole. Want to see round for free, while you’re here, do you?”

  He leads the way into an entrance hall, strangely decorated in a style half way between a medieval castle and a tea-bar. There are suits of armour, a life-sized bear carved out of wood, some plastic-topped tables and chairs, and rows of old-fashioned slot-machines ranged about the walls. There is also a gilt mirror or two, some shields and helmets, and a piano with pictures of storks and flowers painted upon it. At one end of the room is an archway, covered with a heavy velvet curtain, marked “HALL OF WAXWORKS”. Another archway at the other end has a curtain of beads with a notice saying “GYPSY QUEEN ROSITA. FORTUNE-TELLER AND CLAIRVOYANT”. But over this is pasted another notice with the words “Temporarily Closed”.

  Mr Cornetto ushers them proudly into the Hall of Waxworks. Two rows of shabby lurching figures are arranged along low platforms, behind looped silk cords. Ariadne, who is fond of History, knows who most of them are without having to read the labels—Napoleon, Queen Elizabeth the First, Sir Francis Drake, Nelson, Christopher Columbus. There are other, more sinister characters, too—Dick Turpin, the highwayman, with a cocked hat and levelled pistols, and, at the far end of the room, a tableau of Mary Queen of Scots with a masked Executioner, who looks as though he is getting ready to chop off her head.

  “That one’s great,” says Charlie. “He’s really scary!”

  “I like her dress—all those pearls,” agrees Ariadne.

  The waxworks return their gaze with glassy eyes.

  “And now, the Hall of Mirrors,” says Mr Cornetto, throwing open another door. They pass through it into a maze of their own reflections. In one mirror Charlie is as round and fat as Humpty Dumpty. In the next he is as tall and thin as if he had been pulled out like chewing-gum, and his eyes seem to meet in the middle of his head. Standing together, a little further on, he and Ariadne appear as two giants, their feet miles away, their bodies ballooning out round the middle, and their giggling faces flattened out Jike saucers.

  “Bet you look like that when you’re grown up,” says Charlie. “You could get a job on the telly as one of those monsters from outer space.”

  But Ariadne doesn’t bother to answer back. She has already moved on to see, reflected over and over again, an endless vista of herself, in which every small movement turns her into a forest of arms or an army of legs.

  “Like being a centipede,” she murmurs. “But where do I—or rather, where does it—end?”

  But Mr Cornetto is already leading the way through the mirror maze into another smaller room with more slot-machines in it and a huge weighing-machine which says “I SPEAK YOUR WEIGHT”, past a small door marked “Private”, which leads upstairs to the little flat where he and Lordy have their living arrangements, then back to the entrance hall.

  “Now, I’ve just got to lock up and give Lordy his supper,” says Mr Cornetto, when they have admired everything. “I won’t be long. You two go ahead and tell your Auntie I’ll be along about a quarter to seven, if that suits. Lordy can stay here and look after things while I’m out.”

  The evening sunlight on the airy prom seems very reassuring after the dusty fantasies of Carlo’s Crazy Castle.

  “Those slot-machines are a bit pathetic,” says Ariadne on the way back, “sort of old-fashioned. I’ve seen much better ones in the Amusement Arcade over at Penwyn. They have lots of flashing lights and things, and you can win a whole pile of money on them—well, sometimes you can. I liked the Hall of Mirrors, though.”

  “And the waxworks,” Charlie adds, “specially that one with Queen Elizabeth having her head chopped off.”

  “Mary Queen of Scots, Charlie. Don’t you know any History?”

  “Course I do. But we haven’t done that bit. At our school it’s all projects—Roman walls and roads and that. Not many battles. We did some good stuff once about the Barbarian Hordes sweeping across Europe, but then we had a new teacher and went back to roads again. Do you think Mr Cornetto gets many customers?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it. As bad as Auntie Jean’s—absolutely typically pathetic, in fact,” says Ariadne, greatly cheered, as always, by being able to use both her favourite words at once.

  The shop door is already closed, with the blind pulled down, so they go round the back, to be met by the delicious smell of frying pork chops and onions. Auntie Jean is in her little kitchen, darting about in a cloud of smoke and steam, with Einstein weaving excitedly round her legs. Hungry as hunters, Charlie and Ariadne start to lay the table in the sitting-room, putting on a clean checked table-cloth. There is a loud, insistent knocking at the shop door.

  “That’ll be Mr Cornetto, I expect,” calls out Auntie Jean. “He’s early. Just let him in, will you, Charlie, dear?”

  But the shadow Charlie sees on the blind at the end of the passage is far too big to be Mr Cornetto’s. When he unlocks the door and opens it there, as large as life, is Mrs Cadwallader, beaming and looking very grand in pink and pearls. She sweeps right past him into the shop.

  “I’m so glad I got your address right, dear,” she says. “I felt I just had to thank you personally for returning both my rings to me yesterday. It really was silly of me to leave them lying about like that. Mona was furious, of course. I’m always doing it, you see. The things I’ve lost! You wouldn’t believe it! Valuable, too. The trouble is, I can never remember what I’ve put on in the morning when I take it off at night. And then, of course, when I find I’ve lost something, it’s too late to look for it. Little Scatterbrain, my poor late husband used to call me. But you saved me this time, and no mistake. I wanted to give you this, as a little token of my appreciation.”

  She presses a pound into Charlie’s hand, and airily waves away his thanks.

  “So this is your Auntie’s shop,” she continues, looking about her at the masks and false noses. “I like a joke myself—always have done. Poor Mona’s got no sense of humour, I’m afraid, and that’s a fact. Only the other day . . . Good heavens above!” Her flow of chatter stops abruptly, as though she has seen a ghost. Over the top of Charlie’s head she has caught sight of Auntie Jean, standing in the doorway in her big flowered apron.

  “I don’t believe it!” gasps Mrs Cadwallader, clutching her pearls.

  “It can’t be .
. . !” cries Auntie Jean.

  “Well, I never did!”

  “Connie!”

  “Jean Jones!”

  “Indeed to goodness me, where on earth did you spring from after all these years?”

  Charlie, open-mouthed, just manages to step neatly out of the way as the two ladies come together in the middle of the shop in a hearty embrace.

  “Come right inside, Connie, dear,” says Auntie Jean, ushering Mrs Cadwallader through into the back room and sitting her down in the best armchair. “You children, lay another place at the table. We’ve another guest for tea!”

  As the two ladies fall to chattering and laughing and exclaiming both at once, like a pair of noisy parakeets, Charlie and Ariadne, goggling with astonishment, try to piece together the explanation for this surprising reunion. Bit by bit, they find out that Mrs Cadwallader, in her days on the stage, once played a summer season at the Royalty Theatre. Auntie Jean was working there then as a dresser, and the two became firm friends. But after Mrs Cadwallader married her rich husband they somehow drifted apart, and haven’t laid eyes on one another again until this very moment.

  “Well, fancy your being the lady that saved this young scamp nephew of mine from being stuck in the lift yesterday,” says Auntie Jean. “What a small world it is, indeed! And you one of those posh folk staying up at the Hydro!”

  “I’m staying there with my sister-in-law, Mona. But they’re an unfriendly lot up there. Nobody talks to anybody. Things aren’t a bit like they used to be. Even the old Royalty’s closed, I see.”

  “Yes, sad isn’t it? The dear old Royalty. The times we had there, Connie! All that rush and excitement before the curtain went up, and you such a picture in those white tights and all those sparkling sequins!”

  “Oh, it’s such years ago now. But seeing you here makes it seem like yesterday,” says Mrs Cadwallader happily. “Do you remember, Jean, that roll of drums from the orchestra pit, then smash went the cymbals, and up I went into the air, as light as a feather!”

  “And I was always that frightened in case you fell off! There you were on that pyramid of strong men, all standing on top of one another’s shoulders, with you at the very top! I never knew how you had the nerve, Connie, really I don’t!”