The Icicle Illuminarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  About the Book

  THE MYSTERIOUS LADY ADORA HAS A PLAN FOR THE CADDY KIDS, BUT IT DOESN’T INVOLVE CHOCOLATE AND GAMES …

  Kick, Bert, Scruff and Pin are rejoicing – Dad’s been found! But he’s ill from his wartime experiences, and he’s sent away to recover. Then a hint from the butler sets their hearts racing. Could their mother still be alive too? The four siblings begin a wild goose chase to search for clues. But it all goes terribly, horribly wrong when they’re kidnapped. They’re imprisoned in the Icicle Illuminarium – the coldest, loneliest and most falling-down mansion in England. Luckily, there might be a secret friend or two to be found in this odd place. Can Bucket, their loyal dingo dog, help Uncle Basti to find them – before Lady Adora can set her plans in motion?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Meet the Caddys

  Dedication

  1 A Father Most Changed

  2 A Shock Most Unexpected

  3 No, It Cannot Be

  4 Ingenious Plan Number 452

  5 A Square Full of Fun

  6 Preparation

  7 A Rope of Silver

  8 Why, Kick, Why?

  9 Where the Ghosts Go

  10 Mysterious Potions and Commotions

  11 So Near Yet So Far

  12 The Icicle Illuminarium

  13 The Most Singular House on Earth

  14 A New Mummy

  15 Most Peculiar Sleeping Arrangements

  16 The Song in the Wind of the Night

  17 Pin’s New Friend

  18 The Evilest of Evil Plans Involving the One and Only Basti

  19 The Football Trap

  20 The Striker In Our Midst

  21 Scrubbing and Scouring and Sleuthing

  22 Bearbaiting

  23 The Frozen Banquet

  24 The Broken Night

  25 Our New Recruit

  26 Dollhouses

  27 The Classroom’s Secret

  28 The Arrival

  29 Through the Magic Garden

  30 Follow Me

  31 Our Girl

  32 The Truth of the Matter

  33 Charlie Boo to the Rescue

  Epilogue

  Extract from The Kensington Reptilarium

  Copyright Notice

  Loved the book?

  For Justin, India, Will, Luc and Mimosa – gorgeous godchildren, all!

  ‘Caddys major, intermediate and minor, put down your snakes!’

  Well, we most certainly do. This is Charlie Boo, after all. The bravest, cleverest butler in the entire universe – trained in martial arts in Rangoon and hat-frisbeeing in Haiti, and an endless source of chocolate airplanes that appear, thrillingly, at unexpected moments. Which could be now. In fact, Scruff’s got his tongue out in readiness. Four green tree snakes are unwrapped quick-smart from four necks. Not missing out on this one. Four green tree snakes are plopped on the lion skin in front of us.

  But – oh no! – Pin can’t resist. He leans down, sneaks his snake an extra smacker of a kiss, then decides that, actually, his two sisters and brother should be getting a kiss too because it’s the day after Christmas and no one’s been fighting all day – an absolute miracle when it comes to us. You’ll soon find out.

  ‘Master Phineas,’ Charlie Boo tuts with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Does everything have to be smothered in sticky, icky love in your world?’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Boo. Specially you!’

  Charlie Boo leans back in mock horror as an enormous bear hug comes at him and, yep, almost knocks him over. Then he lifts the little boy high into his arms, says, ‘Well, if I must, I must,’ and surrenders to the ferocious onslaught of cuddles and kisses with a smile of pure bliss on his face.

  ‘I was under the impression – until you lot came along – that butlers were strictly not for befriending, let alone loving. They were meant to be for one thing and one only. Obeying.’ He attempts a stare. He attempts a glare. He raises an eyebrow but it wobbles and collapses.

  The rest of us get a right old giggle going on. Nup, sorry, Charlie Boo, you’re not getting any help from us at this moment. Because we’re still on a giddy Christmas high and it’s proving impossible to climb down from it. We’ve got more presents than we’ve had in our lives and snow for the first time ever, which means sledding with all our brand new neighbourhood friends right in front of our Uncle Basti’s amazing Kensington Reptilarium, in London, our glorious new home. And most incredible of all, we’ve got a father just back from the jungles of Malaysia! Plus, PLUS, a dingo dog! Who we thought had been left behind forever, lost somewhere in the desert of central Australia – or worse, taken in by a cop.

  Bucket most conveniently gives a sharp, joyful bark at this point, needing to be appreciated too. Pin obliges and gets a big slobbery licky kiss in return, which seems to cover his entire face, in fact, almost swallows it up.

  Oh, and did I mention that horrid old World War II is over and it’s never, ever coming back? So right now there’s a lot to be silly with glee about.

  Charlie Boo, however, has gone all serious on us. His face doesn’t reflect any of our zippiness. Quite the opposite. Saggy and droopy, suddenly weary of life. ‘I have something extremely important to tell you, my little friends.’

  The change in his voice snaps us to attention.

  ‘Master Phineas. Miss Thomasina. Master Ralph. Miss Albertina the Younger.’ Pin, me, Scruff and Bert are each gravely stared at in turn. We hush. ‘It’s something even more pressing than the development of that most, er … singular Twelfth Night extravaganza you’ve got going on.’

  Oh. Is that what he really thinks of the show we’re developing for the last festive night of the Christmas season, the twelfth night of Christmas? But it’s going to be fabulous! It’s somewhere in early January and it’s our enormous spectacle of a circus involving whip cracking and double backflips and singing and costumes from the fashion house of one ‘Albertina of Kensington’ as well as four dancing snakes weaving their heads back and forth, simultaneously, when a dead mouse is waved in front of them.

  ‘Do you realise,’ Charlie Boo says softly, ‘that while you’ve been busily devising your grand and extravagant amusement, you’ve been neglecting here, to some extent, someone most … neglectfully. I don’t think you do, do you? Someone who’s been lost for months in a farflung outpost of terror. Who escaped evil captors then spent weeks with flesh-eating savages, swinging on vines and consuming grasshoppers and shooting poisoned darts or, or, something like that, all for –’ he shakes his head, with that twinkle back in his eye ‘– you lot. Goodness knows why.’

  We all look to the corner of the room. To our father. Awake, but with these weirdly blank staring eyes. Golly galoshes! We rush over. Yes, something is desperately wrong here and look at us, too busy and zippy and shouty to notice. This is no time for green tree snakes! What were we thinking?

  ‘Cor blimey,’ I whisper. And there it is. The first bit of swearing and it’s breaking a two-day drought – a possible record in the Caddy books.

  Charlie Boo whispers to me that we don’t have long. What are you talking about, I ask, not liking the way he’s sounding here. We’re told the recovery process will be lengthy and gruelling and it won’t be with us here, at the Reptilarium. That our dad’s too ill. Terribly weakened. Malaria, perhaps.

  We gasp. All peer closer at our beloved, cheeky Daddy. His frail body is completely swallowed by his zebra-skin armchair. His bullet-ridden bush hat – that’s seen just about every country on earth – is most horribly askew and he never wears it like that, he’s too proud of it. Bert straightens it with a careful tenderness and kisses him gently on the cheek. He gives her absolutely n
othing back, there’s just a slow closing of his eyes. His legendary red-checked handkerchief is too jolly around his neck. It doesn’t match the rest of him.

  ‘Your father’s fading,’ Charlie Boo continues, ‘and he needs to be put to bed immediately and loved most fiercely – yet gently, Master Scruff, gentleeeeeee,’ he adds as Scruff tiptoes back from the fearsome bear hug he was about to administer. ‘Your father is your responsibility now, my bouncy Caddy kangaroos. While you have him.’

  ‘Stop talking like that, Mr Boo!’ I cry. ‘Say what you mean.’ Because grown-ups never do that enough and I get so sick of it.

  ‘He needs proper help, Kick. Urgently.’

  I stare at the pale ghost of the legendary desert adventurer before us. The master spy, croc wrestler, brumby wrangler, champion woodcutter and crack shot. Who now just looks … broken. His silk dressing gown has slipped open and his hip bones jut out too sharp, like the prow of Pin’s abandoned toy ship from the desert sand at home. His rib bones are like the corrugated iron of our roof. His cheeks could hold a cricket ball in the well of each one of them and his eyes – one green, one blue, the fabulous Caddy trademark – are barely alive with life. I press my hand to my mouth in horror. Whisper, ‘Daddy.’ All he can muster is a weak smile back.

  Charlie Boo lifts our papa’s terrible frailness too easily into his arms. ‘Come on, young man, let’s get you to bed.’

  Pin – dear little Pin – suddenly cottons on to the gravity of the situation. Attempts to drag Dad out of Charlie Boo’s arms, trying, as always, to be the circuit-breaker with us crazy lot.

  ‘Hey, ow! A mighty Pin cuddle right now will crush these brittle old bones,’ Dad scolds his youngest child. A bit too far, mate, in my book.

  Pin feels it. His mouth is suddenly like an upside-down Sydney Harbour Bridge. There might even be a cry.

  Scruff’s onto it. He grabs my cricket ball from the floor and throws it in the air, snatching it in a spectacularly neat catch. Diversionary tactics. Splendid. ‘Come on, Mr Bradman,’ he coaxes Dad, ‘give us that googly you’ve always got tucked away in you.’

  Googly. It’s the magic word that giggles us right up – and the signal for a session of Caddy madness to begin. But both boys don’t fully get it. Dad’s really, really sick here, worse than Spanish flu, worse than plague.

  Dad shakes his head and tells his Scruffter that there’s no ball games allowed inside this place. ‘Not that it stopped us at home.’ We all laugh, thinking of the poor battered bread tin in the kitchen that was always our stumps. It hadn’t seen a loaf for years. No mum, no fuss. ‘Home,’ Dad whispers, his eyes lighting up for a tick.

  It’ll be a long time before we can get him back from London at this rate, to our crazy playground of a homestead smack-bang in the centre of Australia. The tin slippery dip from roof to dirt, the chook house Pin’d hold his school in, the windmill we’d all jump from into the water tank (best diving board in the west), and Scruff’s eggs happily frying on the bonnet of Matilda because it’s so darned boiling in those parts. It’d be forty-eight degrees right now and I tell you, I need the big blaring sun strong on my back again, so much, after this endless London cold that’s so darned sneaky it’s like it’s curled up inside us and gone straight to sleep.

  Pin salutes and cries that Daddy is our hero, trying to get his father’s eyes to re-ignite.

  ‘Captain, I salute you.’ Charlie Boo nods in appreciation.

  ‘Oh yes, I am the captain and I am invinciple,’ Pin announces to one and all, end of story, in the most grown-up of four-year-old voices.

  ‘Indestructible, more like it,’ murmurs Charlie Boo.

  Dad glances at the dawning realisation in Scruff, getting the hang of this new situation here. ‘Just hang in there, ol’ Scruffter me boy,’ he whispers, ruffling his eldest son’s hair but barely touching it before his hand drops. ‘We’ll get our beer together yet. Just you wait.’ But the worry in Charlie Boo’s face is telling us that there’s a lot they haven’t explained about the injuries Dad got in his horrid old jungly prisoner-of-war camp. Can someone be a bit honest around here? And excuse me, but who’ll be looking after us while Dad’s so sick?

  I sigh. Because hang on, yep, I know the answer to that one. Yours truly. Taking care of the whole pesky lot of them at the grand young age of thirteen. Great. Chief mum and dad and governess all at once; along with fun-hunter, mystery-solver, putterer-to-bedder, nose-wiper and Pin-tracker all rolled into one.

  No one will bother to ask me what I want. And it’s not what I need right now. Too much hard work. Not mummy material at all, nup, not girl material for that matter. Who’d want to be one of them? I’m far too tough and bush-blunt for that, far too boy and desert rough. Plus my little sister Bert will be recording in her notebook, with malicious delight, every time I swear. So she can tell anyone who’ll listen how badly done by she is having to put up with the likes of me. But hang on, what about me having to put up with her?

  Dad trails his finger along my cheek and chuckles as he’s always done, as if to say, ‘It’s okay, Kicky, it’s all right.’ But it’s so not. Because everything is suddenly just not fair and not working out and too much. Don’t go disappearing on us, Daddy, just as we’ve found you; it’s so tough at the frontline with this crazy lot.

  ‘When are we going to see you in a dress for more than a few hours … a proper lady?’ Dad smiles soft. ‘It’s about time, Miss Thomasina Flora Caddy. Did we really call you that? Beautiful name, not that you’d know it. You’re growing up, Kicky, and there’s a right looker under all that frown and crazy hair, all those cut-off shorts and slingshots. But where, I wonder, where?’ He gazes right into me, eyes narrowed. ‘Nope, can’t find it yet.’

  I shake my head angrily. Brusque away. No time for jokes. Because yes, okay, I’m back to wearing dungarees after that silly mistake of the posh Christmas dress – whipped up by one Albertina of Kensington as a very Berti form of torture and, oh boy, didn’t she love the triumph of that. But now my slingshot’s right where it should be – tucked into my belt – and Dad’s hunting knife is on a chain around my neck and I feel proper again, okay? Ready for the world. Right. Not all scratchy and constrained and pink and hot. This is my uniform and I’m sticking to it.

  A blunt fringe was cut last night, just for Dad, in celebration of his return. Okay, it’s a bit wonky, but there’s a clear line of sight now, which means I won’t have to push it away in the desert heat when we’re eyeing off a roo for a clean shot or hurtling Matilda, our trusty ute, straight into the bush in a plume of dust.

  Bert lifts up a lock of hair behind me. ‘It’s only fit for one of those Germans in their work camps, isn’t it, Daddy?’ She giggles conspiratorially. They all laugh.

  I storm off. Have had enough of them, the whole blinking lot. They have no idea how hard it is being the boss of this crazy, bouncy, yappy, mean-as-a-midday-sun mob. Bucket jumps around me in sympathy. I drop to her. She always understands. The only one. She licks me on the lips and smiles at me with her beautiful honey eyes.

  ‘Kickasina Tsarina!’ Dad calls after me, in exactly the voice that used to stop me from gunning Matilda into the desert in a right strop.

  I don’t turn to him. Can’t. He mustn’t see my eyes smarting, no one must, I’m too big and tough for this.

  ‘You’re beautiful just the way you are. Always have been.’ His voice drops. ‘I’m only teasing, you know, because you’re so darn teasible …’

  I face him – deep breath – but the tears are all blinky and hot in me now. Dad suddenly winks. Smiles his beautiful smile that would have got Mum right in the heart when they met, I just know it. Cracking me with kindness, as he always does.

  ‘Ladders, Caddy monkeys, ladders,’ Charlie Boo commands. ‘We’re off to Bert’s room, which has the most comfortable bed in the house. And can fit the lot of you. Miraculously. But, Scruff, be warned, the sheets are silk. Pale pink, no less.’

  ‘Aaaaaah.’

  ‘And if y
ou want a fatherly cuddle in them – well, you’ll just have to cope.’

  ‘Urgh, double urgh.’ Scruff doubles over like he’s going to be sick.

  Charlie Boo presses the button that lowers a chair on chains from the Reptilarium’s dome. He places our father gingerly next to him and Bucket leaps onto his lap. Dad smiles and holds his chin to the top of her head; he’s got his girl. Then, as if on cue, our legendary Uncle Basti emerges from the kitchen in purple pyjamas with red trim and a bright orange sleeping cap. Perdita, his beloved pet cobra, is wrapped around his neck and he holds a silver tray of grasshopper delicacies flat and high in one hand.

  ‘My brother, my captain.’ Our uncle salutes, crisp, with the other hand.

  ‘My brother, my captain,’ Dad replies, softer.

  ‘I’ll be up later to read to you. Dickens? Lawson?’

  ‘Lawson. “The Drover’s Wife.” Read me home, old sport.’

  The brothers smile at each other then our uncle goes to cuddle us; thinks better of it. He’s not good with touching. But he takes off his sleeping cap and hands it across to Pin and tells him it’s for that teddy he can never let go of, that it might be cold tonight, and we know that’s as close to affection as we’ll get from him. Then our uncle melts away into another room of the house, as he always does; impossible to pin down and contrary and reclusive and completely in a world of his own. Charlie Boo pushes the lever and rises majestically to the second floor like a god with his Jesus looking down at the rabbly flock that’s left.