The Charlie Moon Collection

by Shirley Hughes

  Auntie Jean has just arrived, Mrs Cadwallader has stopped singing, and together they are in the Hall of Waxworks, surrounded by costumes, hats and wigs. Auntie Jean is crawling on her hands and knees round Mrs Cadwallader, trying to pin her into a long dress with a train. Mrs Cadwallader’s coat and her long string of pearls are draped over the waxwork figure of Christopher Columbus, who is also wearing a brown bowler hat tilted at a rakish angle.

  “There was somebody in the yard just now when I went outside,” Charlie tells them, but neither pays much attention. Auntie Jean’s mouth is too full of pins for her to answer properly. Out of the side of it she says:

  “Mmemmer mime, mear, I mmespeck issa sray hat.”

  “But it wasn’t a cat,” Charlie insists.

  Auntie Jean removes a few pins.

  “If it’s those Morgan boys up to their tricks again . . . ! Oh well, they’ve gone now, I hope. Make us a cup of tea, Charlie, there’s a good boy.”

  “But I’m trying to wash the magic mirrors.”

  “Can you pull it in a bit more at the waist, Jean?” says Mrs Cadwallader. “My word, this is great! I feel just like something out of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’.”

  Auntie Jean’s mouth is full of pins again.

  “Breave imm bleeply, mmear,” she tells her.

  Charlie sighs, plumps down his bucket, and goes off upstairs to the little kitchen where Mr Cornetto does his cooking. There he finds Lordy lurking under the table. Uneasy about all the preparations which are afoot, he has retired from his usual job commanding the pay-box.

  “A rotten watch-dog you are, too,” Charlie tells him sternly, slamming the kettle down on the stove. “We could have twenty burglars in here before you’d notice anything, sulking under there.”

  Lordy’s baggy eyes droop tragically. Charlie relents and gives him the remains of Mr Cornetto’s breakfast to cheer him up. As he makes the tea, he decides that he must tell Mr Cornetto himself about the intruders. But when he arrives downstairs with the tea-tray, he hears angry voices upraised in the entrance hall. Peeping round the plush curtain, he sees all three grown-ups huddled together like cornered sheep, confronting the bristling figure of Miss Mona. Her small form is compacted with fury, and she is poking her neck forward like a goose about to peck somebody.

  “You’re making a perfect exhibition of yourself, Connie! You must be mad even to consider appearing in public dressed like that. Poor dear Caddy would turn in his grave if he could see you—thank heavens he was spared it.”

  “Rubbish, Mona,” retorts Mrs Cadwallader bravely. “I was dressed up when Caddy first met me, except that then it was silver tights. He’d be glad to see me enjoying myself, so there!”

  “You’re far too old for it now—you look quite ridiculous!” Miss Mona tells her cuttingly.

  Mrs Cadwallader looks momentarily dashed, but Mr Cornetto puts in gallantly:

  “Not at all, she’s elegance itself! She’s helping to give my place a new look for the Grand Reopening. Excitement, glitter, razz-me-tazz—you know . . .”

  There is an icy pause. Miss Mona turns her gaze upon him, and he shrinks beneath it.

  “I most certainly do not know,” she says at last. “Neither do I wish to know. As far as I am concerned my sister-in-law is making a silly spectacle of herself dressed up like that. I thoroughly disapprove of her being associated with a . . . a . . .” She looks about as though another stink-bomb were wafting under her nose “. . . venture of this kind. It’s embarrassing. Take that dress off, Connie, and come along back to the hotel.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “I insist, Connie.”

  “But I’m having such a good time . . .”

  “I’m not leaving here without you.”

  “You’d better go, Connie,” says Auntie Jean, giving her a nudge. “I’ve fitted the dress anyway. Let’s have it back, and I’ll go on with the alterations.”

  “Oh, all right,” says Mrs Cadwallader crossly. “But I’m coming back and . . .” She glares at her sister-in-law . . . “nobody’s going to stop me!”

  A strained silence follows in which Mrs Cadwallader goes off to change. Behind his curtain Charlie wonders why grown-ups have to get so worked up about such unimportant things. He decides that it’s not the right moment for tea, so he takes the tray back upstairs and drinks some himself. By the time he comes down again Mrs Cadwallader and Miss Mona have already gone.

  “I saw it in the tea-leaves the other day—a dark cloud, a little spot of trouble,” remarks Auntie Jean, as she packs up the costumes in the Hall of Waxworks. “Never mind, Mr Cornetto, we mustn’t let that Miss Mona interfere with our preparations. Nasty, stuck-up old thing! I thought Connie looked lovely myself, a real picture.”

  “A picture indeed,” agrees Mr Cornetto. “She hasn’t changed at all since the old Royalty days—not one little bit. But I’m worried about our Reopening. We couldn’t get on without her.”

  “Of course we won’t have to get on without her. As far as Connie is concerned, the show always goes on! Now stop bothering yourself, Mr Cornetto, and try this bowler on for size.”

  Auntie Jean lifts the brown bowler hat off the head of Christopher Columbus and hands it to Mr Cornetto, who puts it doubtfully on to his own. It is not a good fit. Being much too small, it perches on his head uneasily. He hands it over to Charlie, who, trying it on in turn, finds that it comes well down over his ears and nearly covers his eyes, so that he can hardly see out. All the same, he decides he’ll wear it as a change from his peaked cap.

  “Good gracious me! Well I never!” exclaims Auntie Jean. She’s not looking at Charlie, but at the figure of Christopher Columbus, round whose neck she has noticed Mrs Cadwallader’s pearls. Carefully Auntie Jean removes them and holds them up to the light.

  “There’s careless! They’re real ones, too! That Connie doesn’t seem to care tuppence about all this valuable jewellery her husband left her. Only the other day she left her expensive cigarette case behind, and there were those rings that Charlie found. It’s just like her. Once I even caught her using a diamond brooch instead of a safety-pin because she couldn’t be bothered to sew on a button!”

  “My Mum goes mad when I lose things,” says Charlie, “even though she’s just as bad herself. You should see her looking for her glasses, or her purse when the milkman calls for his money.”

  “But real jewellery!” says Auntie Jean, and she clicks her tongue in a shocked way. “Well, I shall just have to take these pearls back to my place and put them away safely until I see her again. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t even notice she’s lost them!”

  “She’s a remarkable lady,” says Mr Cornetto, “a truly remarkable lady.”

  Barmy, more like it, thinks Charlie to himself, but aloud he says nothing. Tipping the bowler on to the back of his head so that he can see better, he picks up his bucket and goes back to the magic mirrors. What with one thing and another, he has quite forgotten about the intruders in the yard.

  7

  The next few days are hard work for everybody, cleaning, sewing, polishing, painting and hanging curtains. The Crazy Castle gradually takes on a new look, and so do the waxworks in their smart costumes, refurbished by Auntie Jean. Ariadne spends hours on a ladder painting up the figures on the outside of the building. She gives the kings beautiful new crowns and moustaches, the queens golden hair and jewels in all colours of the rainbow, and the skeletons grinning green teeth and eyes which glare horribly from their black eye-sockets. Groups of curious passers-by on the prom stop now and then to watch.

  “I’d like to do a prehistoric monster—a Diplodocus or a Tyrannosaurus Rex—but there isn’t room,” she tells Charlie, who is standing at the bottom of the ladder to hand up paint-pots and give advice.

  “Even if there was, people would think there were monsters inside and it wouldn’t be fair,” says Charlie firmly. “Mr Cornetto’s ordered two new pin-tables, though,” he tells her. “They’re arriving today. It�
�s beginning to look great in there.”

  It certainly is. Strings of coloured lights lend romance to the entrance hall, where newly-painted chairs and tables are grouped about invitingly. Even Mr Cornetto seems excited. He has put up posters about the town announcing the Reopening, and he is going to accompany Mrs Cadwallader on the old piano, wearing a loudly checked suit and waistcoat and a large flower in his buttonhole. Mrs Cadwallader herself has somehow managed to escape Miss Mona’s eye to practise with him whenever possible. But each time somebody has to be on guard in case her small but alarming figure is seen stalking up the prom. So far, all is well. Everybody is in good spirits except poor Lordy, who seems to be more and more upset by all the changes to his old home.

  “We’d better take him round to Auntie Jean’s, Mr Cornetto,” says Charlie on the day of the Reopening. “He can stay the night in the kitchen. Einstein always goes out then. I’ll give him a bowl of dog-meat.”

  That evening the portcullis of the Crazy Castle is drawn up and the lights shine out. Charlie, dressed in a red soldier’s jacket covered in medals, has taken Lordy’s place in charge of the pay-box. A small crowd starts to collect. They drift inside to play with the slot-machines and gaze at the waxworks and magic mirrors. Then out steps Mr Cornetto, and sits down at the piano. He strikes up a few loud tinny chords, and launches immediately into the sort of tune that makes you want to keep time with your feet. Now Mrs Cadwallader appears, beaming and splendid in her long old-fashioned dress, and starts to sing. Her voice carries out over the darkening prom. A much larger crowd gathers. There is a certain amount of giggling curiosity. But gradually one or two people start to join in the choruses. Mrs Cadwallader carries them along, coaxing and encouraging. She has clearly never enjoyed herself so much for years.

  “There was I,

  Waiting at the church,

  Waiting at the church,

  He’s left me in the lurch . . .”

  Business is brisk in the tea-bar. Ariadne flies about in a starched cap and apron, serving snacks. A queue forms for the fortune-telling booth.

  “It’s a giggle, anyway,” says a girl to her friend. “Better than hanging about.”

  “I had my fortune told. It’s much cheaper than over at Penwyn, and she told me I was going to marry a rich rock and roll singer and live in America.”

  “Those old slot-machines are a real laugh. There’s one with a kind of peep-show with old-fashioned bathing beauties.”

  “She’s going to sing again. Keep us a seat over there, will you, Sandra?”

  A small party of ladies and gentlemen from the Hydro Hotel pass by and drop in to see what’s going on.

  “Isn’t that one of the guests from our hotel? My dear, I didn’t know she was an entertainer.”

  “I thought I recognized her. What’s that she’s singing? I think I remember it . . .”

  “Quite takes one back, doesn’t it? Just like the seaside when I was a gel.”

  “Get us some cheese and onion crisps, Brian.”

  “Ask her if she knows ‘Yellow Submarine’.”

  “Makes a change from television anyway . . .”

  “A week’s takings in one evening!” cries Auntie Jean triumphantly at breakfast the following Sunday morning. “Mr Cornetto and I counted it up late last night. It’s getting better all the time. Wait till I tell Connie, she will be pleased.”

  “If the Old Moaner finds out she won’t like it, will she?” says Charlie. He hasn’t forgotten the angry words he heard between the two ladies when he was hiding behind the curtain.

  “No, I’m afraid she won’t, Charlie. She’ll try to put a stop to it if she can.”

  “Typical!” snorts Ariadne. “Just when Mr Cornetto is on the verge of gold beyond the dreams of avarice.”

  “What’s that mean?” Charlie asks through a mouthful of cornflakes.

  “Rich, of course. I read it somewhere.”

  “P’raps we’ll all be rich. Mrs Cadwallader’s really good at making people join in with the singing, isn’t she? You’d think they’d be sort of shy, but she won’t let them be.”

  “I wish I could play the piano like Mr Cornetto,” says Ariadne. “Bouncing your hands up and down over the keys like that looks so easy, but it isn’t really. I’ve tried.”

  At this moment Lordy, who has been sitting under the table, bounds out to greet his master, as Mr Cornetto himself bursts in through the back door. He looks very unlike his usual self, with hair on end and shirt tails hanging out at the back.

  “Why, Mr Cornetto, whatever is it, indeed?” asks Auntie Jean anxiously.

  “Burglars! Wreckers! My place . . . it’s been broken into in the night!” Mr Cornetto tells them wildly.

  Leaving their breakfast at once, they all hurry round to the Crazy Castle. Lordy rushes inside ahead of them pretending to be a bloodhound, nosing the ground and growling deep down in his throat. The entrance hall is a mess. Tables and chairs have been turned over, a curtain has been half pulled down and is hanging lopsided, paper cups and plates are scattered everywhere, as though someone has been playing a pointless game with them, and nearly all the remaining food has been trodden underfoot on the floor. One of the slot-machines has been damaged and the carved wooden bear is lying on his side in a pool of lemonade.

  “The waxworks!” screams Auntie Jean at once, rushing over to the archway. “Oh, thank heavens they’re safe!”

  “I locked that door last night before I went to bed, so whoever it was never went in there,” Mr Cornetto tells her. “They must have climbed in through the little window by the back door. They’ve been in the Hall of Mirrors, though.”

  They have indeed. Sticky handprints, splodges of butter and melted ice-cream cling to all the carefully polished surfaces. On one big central mirror, written in what looks like tomato sauce, are the words “Thank U Verry Much!”

  Looking at it, and remembering all his hard work, Charlie suddenly feels very weary. Then he remembers too about the time when he was polishing those very mirrors and heard somebody in the back yard. Now, too late, he tells them all about it.

  “If it’s those Morgan boys . . .” says Auntie Jean, but even she is too depressed to get into one of her rages.

  “Typical!” mutters Ariadne.

  “There’s no proof that it’s them,” says Mr Cornetto. “It could have been anybody.”

  “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you that day, Mr Cornetto. There seemed to be such a lot going on at the time.”

  “It can’t be helped, boy. Don’t you think any more about it. One thing, though. None of the money’s gone. I put that where no one’d find it in a hurry. In fact, the more I think of it, nothing of any value’s been stolen. They don’t seem to have been those sort of burglars.”

  “Vandals!” exclaims Auntie Jean. “You’ll have to report it at the police station, Mr Cornetto.”

  “Yes, indeed, I suppose I will.”

  They all follow him back to the entrance hall, where he stands among the wreckage looking smaller than usual. All the happy triumph of the morning has drained away. Nobody knows where to begin. Only Lordy rushes about, busily growling and sniffing. Ariadne opens the piano and picks out a few plaintive notes.

  “Whoever it was never got round to spoiling the piano, anyway,” she says. “I am glad.”

  “Well, thank heavens it’s Sunday and we’re closed until tomorrow,” says Auntie Jean briskly. “Gives us a bit of time to help you get cleared up, Mr Cornetto. I’ll have to put off Chapel till this evening, but I’ve no doubt the Lord will make allowances. You put on the kettle and make us a cup of tea, Ariadne dear, and we’ll get started.”

  Mrs Cadwallader joins them just as cleaning-up operations are getting under way. She is in great spirits, and is not at all put out by the scene that greets her.

  “I’ve seen worse,” she says. “We had terrible trouble with burglars once when I was on tour. Took all the costumes and all, I hadn’t a rag left to wear.” She hangs up her smart coat and s
tarts to roll up her sleeves.

  “I’ve given Mona the slip this morning,” she tells them gleefully. “She booked us on a coach trip to see an old country mansion, but I pretended I wasn’t feeling up to it. She won’t be back until late tonight. I’m afraid she’s very suspicious, though. There are rumours at the hotel about what I’m up to here, and she pretends not to hear. I’ll be in trouble before long, I’m afraid, but who cares? Give us that scrubbing-brush, Jean. I’ll get on with the floor while you re-hang that curtain.”

  A great Sunday afternoon quiet settles on Penwyn Bay. Cleaning up the Crazy Castle has turned out be an easier job than it seemed at the beginning, and Mrs Cadwallader has rounded off the morning’s work by sending Charlie out for a dinner of fish and chips for everybody, double portions all round.

  Both children have now been let off for a swim, and are sitting on the beach on their damp towels, Ariadne deep in her book as usual. Charlie is trying to knock a tin can over by throwing small stones at it.

  “Having burglars isn’t nearly as exciting as I thought it’d be,” he says. “Just a lot of mess and hard work. They didn’t leave any proper clues we could follow up, like real detectives.”

  “They wrote ‘thank you very much’,” says Ariadne, without looking up.

  “That’s no good. I meant footprints, blood, bits of hair, proper clues like that.”

  “Well, there were plenty of sticky smears.”

  “We should have taken fingerprints,” says Charlie, throwing another stone and missing.

  Keeping her place carefully with a bit of seaweed, Ariadne picks up a small pebble, and, aiming it at Charlie’s tin, hits it first time.