The Charlie Moon Collection

by Shirley Hughes

  “There was a ninth—I counted,” insists Ariadne. “I know it was there. And it did move, I’m sure of it.”

  But somehow, with all the lights on, it all seems less likely. Even as she speaks, she’s beginning to doubt it.

  “Well, it was a daft idea of Charlie’s in the first place,” says Mr Cornetto, locking up the back door. “You should never have taken Lordy away from here. He’s a good watch-dog—the best in North Wales, and that’s a fact.”

  “Well, Charlie scared them off, didn’t he?—those horrible Morgan boys, I mean,” mutters Ariadne. “It was only when I was left all alone in the dark . . .” Her voice wobbles dangerously.

  “It’s been a long day, love,” says Mrs Cadwallader firmly. “We’re all tired out. Now come along, we’ll walk you back to your Auntie’s and you can get off into bed right away.”

  There’s nobody at home when they get back to the shop.

  “I wonder where Charlie’s got to?” says Ariadne. “We must go and look for him.”

  But somehow her knees suddenly seem to bend under her, and she finds herself slumped in an armchair, hugging the welcoming Lordy for moral support.

  “You’re staying right where you are,” Mrs Cadwallader tells her. “You’ve had enough for this evening, I should think.”

  Charlie is hiding in a doorway at the other end of the prom. He had known from the start that he wasn’t going to be able to catch up with the Morgan boys. That wasn’t the idea, anyway. Dressed in a gorilla suit, it was all he could do to manage a loping stride, which couldn’t possibly match the speed they were putting on to get away from him. They’ve probably never run so fast in their lives, thinks Charlie with satisfaction. They’ll be half way to Penwyn by now, and they won’t be back in a hurry.

  Charlie is so hot inside his mask, with all the running and excitement, that he feels as though he’s going to melt. He struggles with it, but somehow it’s anchored to the rest of the suit at the back of his neck. Eventually his fumbling fingers discover the top of a zip, and he gives it a great tug. But it seems to be caught. He turns his head inside the mask and tries to squint down one nostril to see what’s wrong. No good. He can’t get round that far. He wrestles again with his gorilla head, sweating and miserable. It just won’t come off.

  There’s nothing for it but to try and get some help. He remembers Ariadne. Wearily he makes his way right back along the alley-way to the Crazy Castle. He daren’t walk along the prom for fear of meeting somebody. But when he gets there, to his surprise he finds the back door securely locked against him.

  Charlie sits down on the doorstep, his mood of triumph turning to despair at the prospect of being imprisoned in this suit for much longer. He must find Ariadne. But then he remembers that Auntie Jean herself will still be at the launderette, which is quite near at hand in Market Street. She could hardly be all that cross with him for borrowing the gorilla costume, after his heroic adventures this evening. If only he can get there without meeting anyone. He searches behind Mr Cornetto’s dustbin for his mackintosh and headscarf and puts them on, just in case. Then he sets off again.

  He reaches the end of the alley-way and peers cautiously round the corner into Market Street. It’s a quiet Sunday evening. Nobody is about. He hurries along the street, keeping well in to the shop fronts and trying to hide his jutting gorilla jaw under the turned-up collar of his mackintosh. Suddenly Mrs Phillips from the bakery pops round the corner, with a carrier bag full of cakes for her sister up on the Penwyn Road. She runs straight into Charlie. They both stop short, face to face. Mrs Phillips lets out a piercing scream, like a factory siren, drops her bag, and scuttles away up the street, gobbling with fright. Doughnuts and iced fancies roll about all over the pavement. Ignoring them, Charlie hurries grimly on.

  At last he sees the lights of the launderette, shining out into the street. He peers in through the window. Auntie Jean’s still in there all right, idly turning the pages of a magazine while she waits for her wash. Nearby sit two ladies, deep in conversation, and a bored little boy who is gazing at the circular window of a washing-machine, with its whirling clothes, as raptly as if it were a television screen. Charlie edges towards the door, trying to capture Auntie Jean’s attention, but it’s the little boy who looks up first. They stare at one another silently.

  “Mam,” says the little boy presently.

  “Yes, love.”

  “Look, Mam.”

  “Yes, what is it, then?”

  “There’s a gorilla.”

  “Oh, yes—lovely. Got your comic there, have you?”

  “No, a gorilla, Mam. A real one. Out there in the street.” He shakes her arm. “There, Mam.”

  Both ladies glance over to the door. But Charlie, of course, has shrunk back into the shadows.

  “Ooh, a real gorilla. Just like the one on Animal Magic, isn’t it?” says Mam fondly.

  “No, this one’s wearing a mac and a scarf thing over its head. But it’s not there any more.”

  “Well, there’s unusual. Mackintosh and scarf, is it? Well, I never did.”

  “I thought it was coming in here.”

  “I expect it’s got some clothes for the wash, then,” says Mam. Then lowering her voice to her friend: “He’s that imaginative. Always full of fancies—the artistic type, you know.”

  Charlie, meanwhile, is becoming quite frantic. Auntie Jean won’t look up. But the little boy is hanging over the back of his chair, waiting with interest for his reappearance. Now a young couple walk slowly towards him up the street, their arms draped about one another. Charlie, hunching deep into his collar, presses himself against the shop door. But they pass by, far too absorbed in each other to notice him. At any moment somebody else will, though, thinks Charlie desperately.

  At last Auntie Jean’s drying-machine stops. She takes the clothes out, spending what seems like an endless and unnecessary time to fold each item carefully. Then she puts them back into the old pram and says good-night. The little boy watches her leave the shop with round eyes.

  She is setting off briskly up the street when Charlie looms out of the darkness. She gasps and lets go of the pram handle, so that it nearly tips up over the curb.

  “It’s me, Auntie Jean,” says Charlie plaintively. “I can’t get out of this suit.”

  “Charlie! You did give me a turn! What, may I ask, are you doing out at this time of night dressed up like that? And where’s Ariadne?”

  “I don’t know . . . I mean, I’ll tell you all about it when we get home. But please help me out of this suit. I’m so sick of being inside it.”

  Clicking her tongue with exasperation, Auntie Jean fiddles with the back of Charlie’s disguise.

  “Drat the thing! It’s no use. The zip’s all caught up, and I haven’t got my proper glasses. I’ll have to take a pair of scissors to it when we get home.”

  “Come on then,” says Charlie urgently, pulling her sleeve.

  “But you can’t walk home like that!” cries Auntie Jean. “What would we do if we met someone? What would the neighbours say? You’re enough to give anyone heart failure with a face like that on you, indeed to goodness!”

  Charlie decides to keep very quiet about Mrs Phillips from the bakery. Things are going to be difficult enough to explain as it is.

  “I’ve got to get home somehow, Auntie Jean,” he says.

  Then Auntie Jean has one of her brainwaves.

  “I know, you can get in the pram and hide under the washing. I can put the hood up so no one can see you.”

  “But . . .”

  “Don’t worry. The washing’s bone dry.”

  “Oh all right . . .”

  Charlie feels too tired to argue. Instead he climbs meekly into the big old pram and curls up with his knees jammed up against his chin, while Auntie Jean covers him with washing, careful to see that none of it gets dirty. It’s surprisingly comfortable in there. So it isn’t only children who have the really daft ideas, thinks Charlie to himself, as Auntie Jean
trundles him home.

  Inside the launderette the little boy removes his nose from the glass door and climbs back on to his seat. He starts to shake his mother’s arm again.

  “Mam.”

  “Just a minute, dear. Don’t interrupt when Mam’s talking.”

  “But Mam . . .”

  “What is it, then?”

  “That gorilla.”

  “Oh, your gorilla. Not still here is it?”

  “Oh no. It’s gone. It went off in a pram with a lady pushing it.”

  “Oh yes, dear, so it did. Well never mind, it’s past your bedtime.”

  As they pack up to go, Mam says to her friend:

  “You know, sometimes I think they watch too much telly. But what can you do?”

  10

  During the next few days Mr Cornetto is busier than ever before. There are queues every night to get into the Crazy Castle, and even Auntie Jean’s shop is doing a brisker trade. Besides local people and guests from the Hydro, parties start to come over from Penwyn, mostly made up of young people, all giggling with high spirits. Mysterious rumours are circulating that the old Crazy Castle really is haunted. It is whispered that strange things happen there after dark, that the waxwork figures hide more than meet the eye, and that lurking beast-like creatures pounce out at you if you’re ever accidentally locked in there at night. Even Mr Cornetto himself is the focus of some curious stares and sidelong glances to see if, in spite of his jolly piano-playing and innocent moustache, he has Dracula fangs instead of teeth. The till, however, gets fuller and fuller as the money rattles in.

  “Those Morgan boys won’t come back, anyway,” says Charlie for about the tenth time, as he and Ariadne hang over the rail at their favourite place at the end of the pier one morning. “I gave them a real scare. I told you I would, didn’t I?”

  Ariadne has been rather quiet since the evening of their adventure, and has found it difficult to go inside Mr Cornetto’s Hall of Waxworks even in daylight, let alone in the dark.

  “There was someone in there that night,” she tells Charlie, also not for the first time. “Or else one of those waxworks moved by itself.”

  “Gerroff!” jeers Charlie, but he relents and adds, “Well, perhaps one did. But how could it? They’re just plastic and wire and false hair when you get close up.”

  “How could you know what happened when you went off and left me all alone in there?” retorts Ariadne. “Typical of you, Charlie Moon,” she can’t resist adding.

  “Well, I couldn’t very well have stayed behind, could I? A fat lot of good that would have done.”

  Ariadne looks down at the waves, the colour of a fishmonger’s green marble slab, patterned with white foam, endlessly heaving, lifting, and returning to slap the ironwork below their feet.

  “Oh, well. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to,” she says after a while. “I’m going back next week, anyway.”

  “So’m I.”

  “It’ll be school again the week after.”

  “Yeah, worse luck. But better than being at home when Mum’s in a bad mood, I suppose.”

  “I’m going to be a waitress at the Hydro on Saturday, though. Carnival Lunch—remember? I’ve got to wear this pathetic frilly apron. Why don’t you come too, Charlie? The cook’s all right. He’s a friend of Mr Cornetto’s. He’ll let you stay in the kitchen. There’ll be lots of food left over, I bet.”

  “Suppose the Old Moaner or the manageress finds me in there?”

  “They’ll be far too busy at the Lunch. There’s going to be a Grand Surprise Bomb.”

  “An explosion, do you mean?” asks Charlie with interest.

  “Not a real one. It’s a kind of indoor firework made of coloured crinkle-paper. When you light it, it showers everyone with hundreds of thrilling surprises—paper hats, mottoes and novelties, or so it says on the label.”

  “Oh. I thought you meant real gunpowder.”

  “No, silly. It comes from Auntie Jean’s shop, and it’s going to be the centre-piece in the very middle of the room. It’s been in her cupboard for heaven knows how long, and she’s pleased as anything to have sold it at last.

  There’s going to be an orchestra, too.”

  “Sounds horrible,” says Charlie.

  “But you’ll come?”

  “Oh, all right, then, I’ll come. Hey, it must be nearly lunch-time. We’d better be getting back to Auntie Jean’s. I wish I had my skateboard here—it’d be great on this pier.”

  They walk back towards the prom, past the iron bandstand with the curly roof which is no longer used, and the rows of empty deck-chairs, flapping expectantly. Only a few holiday-makers are braving the wind, securely wrapped in anoraks and scarves, cheering themselves up with vacuum flasks of tea. Further up the pier are some shelters, glassed in on three sides, with seats back-to-back, separated by a high wooden partition. The side nearest to them is empty.

  Charlie takes a run at it, and a flying leap on to the back of the seat, balancing along it as though it were a tight-rope. From this view-point his eyes are on a level with the top of the partition. He can just see over to the other side. There, below him, sits Miss Mona herself! She is so close that he could lean over and pat the top of her neatly waved head.

  Charlie is so astonished that he stops still, swaying slightly and gripping his perch with the soles of his baseball boots. Miss Mona isn’t admiring the view. She has her back to him, hunched up and intent on something in her lap. She is putting something into what looks like a large envelope. Then she starts to lick it down. But suddenly as though she senses that she is being watched, she glances up. Her eyes meet Charlie’s. In a moment, pushing whatever was in her hands into her handbag, she lunges round the shelter, thrusting her beak at Charlie like a vulture falling upon its prey.

  “How dare you spy on me, you wretched boy? What do you mean by it? This is the third time I’ve caught you hanging about and making mischief. And what, may I ask, are you doing here?” she asks bitterly, catching sight of Ariadne.

  Charlie jumps off the back of the seat and stands there awkwardly, too taken aback to answer. But Ariadne stands her ground.

  “I’m sorry if we disturbed you, but we neither of us knew you were there as a matter of fact. We were just going back for lunch.”

  “Then what were you doing looking over that partition, then, tell me that?” demands Miss Mona, turning back to Charlie. Miserably, he takes off his cap, puts it on back to front, removes it and puts it on again the right way round, well over the eyes. He is struck dumb.

  But Ariadne answers for him in a clear voice:

  “He never expected to see you there, and he certainly wasn’t spying on you. So, if you’ll excuse us, we must be getting back. We’re not supposed to keep Auntie waiting for meals.”

  And, dragging Charlie by the arm, she marches off up the pier, leaving Miss Mona glaring angrily after them. They daren’t look back until they have reached the prom. Miss Mona is still standing there, quite motionless, but by now they are too far away to see her expression. Once out of sight they both break into a run.

  “Fancy you being able to get me out of that so easily,” says Charlie, jogging along. “I’d never’ve had the nerve. That Old Moaner just scares me stiff.”

  “She doesn’t scare me. It’s only really scary things that scare me. She’s just . . . well, typical. And I think she’s the one that’s acting a bit suspiciously if you ask me, not us.”

  “How do you mean? She only looked as if she was putting something into an envelope. Perhaps she was sending off seaside postcards to her friends, like we ought to be doing.”

  “Well, then, why should she get so cross about somebody seeing her?”

  “Born cross, I suppose,” says Charlie, “like so many of ’em are.”

  Auntie Jean and Mrs Cadwallader are reading the tea-leaves after lunch. Mrs Cadwallader’s cup seems to be extra full of dramatic events.

  “There’s something really violent here,”
says Auntie Jean excitedly. “Looks like an explosion.”

  “Perhaps it’s that Grand Surprise Bomb of yours,” Ariadne suggests. She is lying on the sitting-room floor, using Einstein as a book-rest as usual. Charlie is drawing a monster with Ariadne’s felt pens.

  “Mona’s temper, more like,” says Mrs Cadwallader. “She’s really on the warpath these days. She knows about our little sing-songs down at Carlo’s place, of course. Everyone’s talking about them up at the Hydro. It’s driving her wild. She says I’m to stop it, and now she keeps going on at me about leaving here altogether. Just when I’ve started to enjoy myself for once.”

  “I can’t see any sign of a journey here, Connie. But here’s somebody running. It looks as though one person is chasing another.”

  “Really?” says Mrs Cadwallader with interest. “Go on, Jean.”

  “Some kind of a big upheaval in your life. I can’t quite make it out. And here’s some rings and a necklace, too, very plain.”

  “That’ll be my pearls.”

  “Well, I hope you’ve put them away safely, now, Connie,” says Auntie Jean sternly, putting down the teacup. “Let these tea-leaves be a warning to you. Fancy leaving them in the Hall of Waxworks like that! And with all these burglars about. It was a wonder you didn’t lose them for good, indeed.”

  “I do try, Jean,” says Mrs Cadwallader, carelessly lighting a cigarette. “I know I’m hopelessly absent-minded. But it was Caddy’s family jewellery, you know—it’s not as though he’d bought it for me himself. I’d take more care of it if he had, more sentimental value. But it just doesn’t seem to mean much to me, somehow. The pearls belonged to his mother, of course. Those two rings that Charlie found were hers, too.”

  “Three,” says Charlie, without looking up from his drawing.

  “What, dear?”

  “There were three rings. I remember.”

  “Well, I only seem to have got the two now. I suppose I must have left the other one somewhere since. Oh dear, don’t tell Mona whatever you do! She’ll be furious with me. I’ll never hear the end of it. She’s being difficult enough as it is. That reminds me—what’s the time? I must fly. She’s expecting me.”