The Icicle Illuminarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  We scramble up the Reptilarium’s delicious ladders that whizz sideways when a destination is reached, then fly past the cages, candlelit on each level, up past golden, glass and brass receptacles filled with water dragons and salamanders and slow worms and skinks. The great glass dome, the lid of the building, has snow falling onto it, big blowsy drops dancing in London’s orangey evening light, and I smile at the beautiful sight.

  We burst into the room of tall silver curtains that plunge like foam on a beach. As our father’s tucked into the four-poster bed with its silvery drapes, Charlie Boo murmurs, ‘This poor man has just survived the giant leeches of the most ferocious jungle on earth. He’s survived amnesia. Starvation. Deathly thirst. And now, God help him, he has to survive you crazy lot. Is it possible?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Dad smiles weakly, falling back on his silk pillow.

  Bert suddenly lunges at her father, most un-nurse-like, crying for him not to leave her.

  ‘Would you stop cuddling him in that stickily ferocious way, Miss Albertina. You’re worse than a boa constrictor. And if you don’t unhand yourself right now I’ll jolly well fetch one, just to demonstrate. It may well gobble you up.’

  ‘Oh please,’ I respond. ‘I’ll pay you.’

  I’m hit. By my sister. Who’s punched back. Harder. Who then hits and hits and – ow! – yep, she’s in it for the long haul, we’re off. Charlie Boo tries to break it up. It doesn’t work. ‘Madam? Miss. MADAM –’ Charlie Boo takes out a trench whistle and blows on it; we snap into stillness. Amid a great cacophony of Reptilarium noise from a thousand creatures protesting with shrieks and hisses and thuds and squeaks. ‘Madam Albertina – newly crowned fashion empress of the post-war era – come in, Albertina. Couturiers, in case you haven’t realised, are not in the habit of attacking their number one, most beautiful Christmas mannequin. Do you copy?’

  Bert pokes out her tongue at me. I narrow my eyes like a cat. The battle ain’t over yet.

  ‘Ah, my little tiger cubs, you haven’t changed a bit, have you?’ Dad shakes his head. He tells Pin to tie Basti’s sleeping cap around Banjo’s neck immediately, so as not to lose it, then tickles Bert because he needs her smiling again, needs her cranky face wiped off. I know why. Because when we’re happy, he’s happy, he’s always saying that. But he can’t tickle for long, he has no energy for it, he’s so … sapped.

  ‘Now listen here, I’ve got something important to tell you.’ A big sigh as if he can hardly bear it. We huddle close. A pause. He tells us he’s going on another mission. Nooooo! Impossible. Too soon, he’s not ready.

  ‘Dismantle your battle face, Kicky. It’s called the Sanatorium Mission. The task: to get fixed. Pronto. In a proper place that will set me right. First thing tomorrow, in fact. So this is all of me you’ll get, I’m afraid, for now.’

  Cue all manner of wailing and exclaiming: ‘No!’ ‘Too short.’ ‘What will happen to my beer!’ That one from Scruff, of course.

  ‘You’ll stay here with Uncle Basti. Until I get strong enough. And don’t you worry about that beer, Master Scruff. I’ll be telling Basti to keep it on tap. Just you and me. It’ll only be a few weeks.’ He winces, placing his precious hat on Scruff’s head. ‘Look after this for me, mate. And don’t you grow any hairs on your chest while I’m gone.’

  ‘Oooooooh, Scruffty Scruff, you’re my hero.’ Bert flutters her eyelashes.

  Pin hooks his hand gravely around his father’s neck and draws him in and covers his face with tiny pecks. Our youngest Caddy is pure, fat love, always has been. Dad snuggles into his dear little neck and breathes him in deep, like he’s trying to singe the memory into his brain.

  ‘I bet you’ll get a chocolate ration there every day,’ Scruff says. ‘Can you save it for me? I mean, us?’

  Dad explains in exactly Basti’s posh voice that he’ll be far away from us, taking the waters in Bath, no less. He ties his scarf around the neck of Banjo, Pin’s teddy. ‘Something to remember me by, me old Banj. You will look after them for me, won’t you?’ he asks the teddy most earnestly. It waggles in an enthusiastic yes. Pin is enchanted. ‘Daddy, book?’ he says hopefully. Because it’s bedtime. Pin starts reciting The Jungle Book in exactly Dad’s bedtime-story voice then says, ‘Hang on, I do Kicky now,’ and proceeds with lots of swear words thrown in and skippings-to-the-next-chapter.

  I slam my hand hurriedly over his mouth. ‘I’ve been a good mum, I promise!’

  ‘Well, hopefully she won’t have to be the mum for too much longer,’ Charlie Boo chuckles as he rubs ointment into Dad’s foot.

  Eh? We all look at Charlie Boo. In sudden silence. Shock. What did he say? He just implied – did he? Did we hear right?

  ‘But Mum’s dead,’ I whisper.

  Goosebumps scooting up my back.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Bert shakes her head with her hands scrunched at her temples.

  ‘Mum’s not dead?’ Scruff asks.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ Charlie answers cheerily, grabbing some spare blankets and quite oblivious to the shockwaves his casual remarks have caused.

  Thumping heart. Dry lips. Bert grabbing my fingers, almost breaking them. Pin holding his hands to his chest in wide-eyed hope. A mummy? But he’s never had one. Since he was a baby she’s been gone. He could be getting a mummy back now, as well as a dad? What’s going on? Grown-ups. Why are they always so mysterious?

  Charlie Boo talks on, measuring out a bandage for Dad’s foot. ‘Darius Davenport should be able to help out in that department, shouldn’t he, Mr Caddy? That’ll be your next big mission, no doubt.’

  We all turn to Dad.

  He’s deathly pale. He looks at us. At Charlie Boo.

  ‘Out,’ he thunders. Suddenly changed. Completely. Scarily. ‘Remove yourself, Mr Boo. From my children, from my room, from my life. Find a job to do. The lot of you. Stop talking nonsense. Just GET OUT.’

  We look from one man to the other, not knowing what’s going on. Mum’s dead. Isn’t she? There’s a memorial, in our garden at home, under the desert rose. She’s gone for good. I clutch my head, trying to think. But hang on, what were we actually told? What did we always believe? It was four years ago, so long, just after Pin was born.

  ‘What … Dad … where’s Mu–?’ I begin.

  ‘OUT!’ he roars. Like he can’t bear to talk about it. Can’t bear to deal with any of us all of a sudden.

  We shrink back. Gosh. A father completely changed. Snapped. Just like his brother, Basti, sometimes is. Like he’s … damaged. For good. Shell-shocked. We know that word now. Like us kids are too loud in his head and it hurts, really hurts, deep inside him. Something is very wrong.

  ‘Confused by malaria, no doubt, along with everything else,’ Charlie Boo hurries us out fast, ‘and then look at me, no idea what I’m rambling on about. Sorry,’ he tuts. ‘All the excitement, yes. Forget everything, you heard nothing in there. Too much going on. Bed, now, the lot of you. Off, off.’

  ‘But Bucket?’ Scruff asks. ‘She’s still in there.’

  ‘Oh, she can stay,’ Charlie Boo murmurs. ‘She’s more relaxing than the lot of you put together. She’s a good nurse.’

  We look back as he shuts the door. At Dad’s eyes, closed already. At one hand over his forehead like he has an enormous headache going right through his eyebrow. At the other hand holding his beloved Bucket, our darling girl, the Cleverest Dingo In The West.

  I look at Charlie Boo. He’s completely rattled, muttering ‘sorry, sorry’ to himself, to us. What did he say about a mother? Why is he so flustered? What did we want him to say? Did we deliberately mishear whatever it was?

  Because we know now that sometimes people who we think are gone can return. War does that sometimes, it jumbles families up. Then suddenly someone comes back. From a camp, another country, a memory loss, another life. It’s happened once with Dad. Lost but not. Could it possibly happen again? I never know what grown-ups mean. It’s like they speak this weird double language, it
’s all layers and pretending and covering up. Was all that really about Mum? Why is Dad so upset?

  Maybe she did similar work-things to him, secret, government stuff. Spying. Who knows. They were so alike, two peas in a pod. Maybe her job was as top secret as his. Does Basti know anything more? The War Office, the government?

  I know one thing. We’ll get to the bottom of this. Have to.

  I hold my fist to my mouth with the amazingly deliciously fabulous thrill of it. Could we possibly be a family, a real, proper, together-family in our desert homestead all over again? A dad. AND a mum. Plus a Bucket and, oh all right, everyone else. There’s the familiar tingling. Of the call to arms, of action and adventure and the needing to know. I will work this out.

  We will.

  I look at the rest of them. They’ve all got their skills. We can do this.

  ‘Troops,’ I announce, as soon as Charlie Boo’s departed, ‘we’ve got a mystery to solve. While Dad’s away at his fixing-up place. Imagine if we get Mum back and she opens the door to him the day he comes home!’ Bert gasps with the sheer glorious loveliness of it – she’s the romantic. ‘We need to get on to it fast.’

  ‘Aye aye, captain!’ ‘Yes!’ ‘Let’s go!’ Three hands shoot into a crisp salute. Excellent. The Caddy kids are well and truly back. Now we just need a plan and we’ll be off.

  Tomorrow! As soon as Dad’s left. He is going to get the biggest welcome-home present of his life!

  ‘The Lumen Room,’ I command, ‘quick.’

  Because my room – the library – is just too risky. We can’t have anyone eavesdropping and Bert’s room is right next door. We can’t worry Dad. He mustn’t know we’re doing this. His bizarre explosion of fury tells us this – it’s not in any way good for his health. He needs rest. Serenity. Calm. He’s not going to get that around us. We run to our favourite place, the room of a thousand glow worms, the most beautiful space in the house.

  Thick, velvety darkness. Stopping us into a hush. ‘We’ve got to wake them up,’ Scruff whispers. ‘Can I?’

  ‘We can’t alert anyone, mate,’ Bert warns.

  ‘Me! Me!’ Pin jumps in.

  Scruff shoos him off with a weary ‘okay’. And so with his teddy held high Pin runs gleefully around the room, as fast as his pudgy little legs will carry him, close to the walls but not touching. Bert can’t resist, she joins in too, silently giggling, and then Scruff comes on board and what the heck, so do I. So there you have it, four Caddys running around a room in absolute silence but giggling until our mouths hurt, faster and faster, creating a huge wind, chasing each other’s tails, and then Pin suddenly stops abrupt and bang! We all jam into him. Collapse in a heap. ‘Ow,’ we whisper, cradling elbows and knees and then, ‘Look!’ Pin softly exclaims and points.

  At the roof. A single glow of light, in a corner. Then another glow worm, and another, until their light is oozing like an upside-down lake flooding right across the room, one wall then another, and another, until we’re surrounded by a buttery golden loveliness.

  I whisper my thanks. Berti tells us she’s going to find a cloth the exact colour one day and make the most beautiful dress that’s ever existed from it. I say it’d be impossible, the colour’s too magical, it couldn’t exist. Pin insists that Mummy will find it, she’s the best, she can do it.

  Mum. Yes. Our beautiful mother. Why we’re here. Who Pin lost as a baby and only knows from the rest of us. What have we told him? Not much – too hard – and then over the years it’s faded into just a few pinpoints of fact. She was far too glamorous for the desert life, I always thought that. She had red hair. Freckles that always sprung out in summer. She loved reading like me, the only thing we had in common, I used to think. I can do her hoot of a laugh. Her voice soft, ‘Kicky, oh Kick.’ But what do I really know about her?

  She had a secret life, she told me that once. ‘Before kids’ she’d been in a very different world, but I never properly asked. Wasn’t interested. There’d be hints. It was in England. It was full of silver shoes with sparkly buckles that look madly uncomfortable, Paris holidays, balls. Champagne, which she’d never had since because Alice Springs didn’t have it. ‘What have I done with my life?’ I remember her crying when Bert lost all the diamonds from her debutante tiara in the red dirt. She had matching red-leather travelling trunks stacked high by her bed, a man’s watch and a face that crumpled into a frown as the desert dust blew in from the south; I remember that so clearly, towards the end, the face that seemed permanently creased by worry. What does everyone else remember? I wonder. We need any clue here, even the tiniest, that could wing us off in the right direction. ‘Troops, we need a debrief.’

  Bert pulls out her notepad in readiness from the pocket of a French maid’s apron she’s wearing over a black velvet evening dress held up in great folds by a succession of brooches that go up to her waist. All thanks to the treasure trove of the Reptilarium’s attic, which holds centuries of wonder and is a bottomless source of delight. And wouldn’t Mum just adore the spectacle of my sister right now. She’d clasp her hands, cry in raptures, ‘Pet! You’ve done it! What a champ.’ She never got me. Berti was the daughter she’d been waiting for.

  I ask them if there’s anything we’re missing here about Mum. Blank looks. Scruff volunteers that she was really pretty.

  ‘Nothing like Kick,’ Bert adds.

  ‘Thanks,’ I snap. She’ll keep for now.

  ‘She was a crack shot,’ Scruff adds. ‘Remember the snake? When I was little and I was in the chook house and there was this King Brown and I yelled “Mama!” She was cleaning Dad’s pistol in the shed. The snake slithered in front of the door. I was stuck. And with a single shot she blew its head off. Bang! Just like that. It was mi-racca-lus.’ He mimes holding the pistol. ‘She was the best shot in the desert.’

  Pin’s eyes are wide. Bert sighs that she had the most beautiful clothes. We always knew that, I snap. ‘No, Kick. They were from somewhere else. That’s the key. She must have travelled a lot, before us, because they were really exotic. The materials. You wouldn’t get them even from Sydney, I bet. It was more like Istanbul, Delhi, Cairo, cities like that. She never talked about those places but I reckon she’d been there. And remember she had all that lovely red luggage in her bedroom, stacked up and locked. What was in it? I was always trying to get it open but couldn’t. It’s still there. Maybe we should be opening it.’

  Bert’s right. We need to get home. To solve this. Crack open those chests. First up, get out of the Reptilarium. Which is extremely locked. And without anyone knowing. So, this is Plan Number 452 in my endless array of plans to set things right. I take Bert’s notepad and write it bold.

  ‘So what have we got here? Maybe she was an adventurer, a spy, just like Dad.’

  Blank looks. Maybe she was just a mum. A frazzled one at that. There’s not much to go on here and our father never talks about her going – we never ask – don’t want him hurt so his broken face comes back. But what have we gleaned from Dad over the years?

  She was the love of his life. She made him laugh. She was his best mate. They were a team. She always threatened to leave the homestead because it was becoming too much: kids, mess, dust, runaway chooks, sleeplessness, rabbits, spiders, feral camels, the huge swamp of it, but then she had Pin, our medieval kissing post who giggled us all up. She’d never, ever leave him if she could help it. Surely? No one could.

  Dad once told us once that our mum needed to go away to instruct God how to look after us, because we were such hard work. But what exactly did he mean by it? Did she go to a convent? We always assumed it was heaven but maybe not …

  Bert says she used to always call her Pet. And she’d had long, black hair with beautiful pins holding it up. ‘Ivory, red coral, jet …’

  ‘Topaz, jade,’ I add. We catch each other’s eyes. No one’s told us how to do our hair for years, no one cares. She did. We’ve had no one to teach us how to be ladies, thank goodness, apart from some traumatic interventio
ns from shrivelled old aunts or governesses who’d sucked on too many prunes and always seemed to leave quick smart. They’d just give up. Goodness knows why. Bert seems to have cottoned onto the lady thing, in some instinctive kind of way, but I’m still completely hopeless at it. Who’d want to be one of them anyway? All obedient and sighing and squealing and quiet, shoes that hurt, fiddly stockings, lace hats in the dust. Mum loved her ivory umbrellas and silk pyjamas, yes, yet she could tame not only a brumby but a bull whip. Where did she get it all from?

  Scruff volunteers that she was a crack shot. Well, with beef stew. And chocolate cake. But yes, poor Scruff’s now getting mighty sick of my feeble attempts in comparison to her. Endless fried eggs, and bread and dripping, and roasted roo tails with witchety grub desserts (baked in coals with sugar sprinkled on top, thank you very much).

  ‘The car came and took her away,’ Bert says suddenly. ‘I’d forgotten that.’

  ‘What?’ She’s never told us this before.

  ‘In the dead of night. I thought it was because she couldn’t cope.’

  ‘With what?’

  A pause. ‘Us. Our naughtiness.’ Oh. ‘She was in her nightgown. Some man was holding her arm tight. I don’t know who. I couldn’t sleep. I was looking out my window, at the car. She glanced back, mouthed at me, “Pet.” Really upset. She went away to die, didn’t she, Kick? That’s what I thought. Because she never came back. And she’d found Pin’s birth really hard. I just thought she went to a hospital. Or maybe, maybe, I imagined it? What happened, Kicky? Please tell us.’ Bert scrunches up the hair on her head like it hurts. ‘It was so long ago. You out of anyone should remember.’

  But I don’t. And it’s driving me crazy here. I can’t bear to tell them all I’m failing with this. That we’ve reached a brick wall before we’ve begun.

  Pin punches the air, exclaims. ‘Darius!’ We look at him – his suggestion is genius.