The Icicle Illuminarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  ‘Now, Brompton Cemetery. Fact Man?’ I turn to Scruff. ‘Navigator extraordinaire?’

  ‘Why thank you, ma’am. And actually, I looked up a map in the library last night. There’s Holland Park tube station, most conveniently, right at the bottom of this hill. And I must say, London’s train system is a ripper, troops.’

  ‘Yippeeeeeeee, Scruffy the best!’ Pin laughs.

  But we have no money. For tickets. Er, forgot about that.

  The ticket seller looks at us dubiously. OKAY, yes, we’re a sight. A barefoot sight, in deepest winter no less. We smile hopefully. Hold out our hands. He’s not convinced. How to charm him into help? He looks hugely sleepy, like he can’t wait for his shift to end and get home to a lie down and a nice hot soup.

  ‘We’re almost-orphans. From Australia,’ Pin announces hopefully.

  ‘I gathered.’

  ‘We need to get to our mama,’ Pin says.

  ‘At Brompton Cemetery,’ I jump in. The ticket seller looks suspicious, sorry and alarmed all at once. ‘But we can’t pay.’ Pin’s eyes fill with tears. The man raises an eyebrow. ‘We do have a dingo,’ I say. He backs away. ‘Yep. An authentically wild dog straight out of the central Australian desert. How about … um … a ticket for a trick?’

  ‘That’s four tricks I’d be after.’

  ‘Just four?’ I grin. ‘You’re on.’ Click fingers. Bucket jumps up on two paws and dances. She’s handed over to Scruff with a flourish. He snaps his fingers and Bucket leaps up and grabs Dad’s hat from his head. Bert whistles, indicates. Bucket jumps high and places the hat back on Scruff’s head and is rewarded with a double backflip from the champion gymnast who manages to keep her feather boa intact.

  ‘One more trick, or the little fella comes home with me for lunch.’ The ticket seller winks at Pin.

  ‘Oh yes, please!’

  ‘Pinny,’ I say stern, ‘the circus audience is waiting,’ and with a gleeful laugh he opens out his arms like an aeroplane and zooms around the ticket hall with a dingo dancing on her back legs right behind him, then making little leaps, just like a kangaroo. We’ve spent years in the desert perfecting this.

  ‘Well, I never!’ The ticket seller waves us through with a bow.

  ‘Hang on, how exactly do we get to Brompton Cemetery?’ Bert asks.

  ‘Take the Central line heading East. Change at Notting Hill gate to the Circle line. Change at High Street Ken to the District line. Get off at West Brompton. Got that?’

  We laugh and nod, sort of, then set off, four kids from a tall blue sky who’ve never been underground in our lives, let alone on a train, and with a dingo to boot.

  ‘Hold your breath!’ Bert instructs, as the lift cranks us down, down, into the bowels of the London earth, to its blast of stinky warm air.

  ‘It’s a dingo,’ Scruff’s exclaiming to anyone and everyone who’s looking at her. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ Bucket is smiling and prancing at her most adorable best. ‘She’s the first real-live dingo London’s ever seen outside a zoo. You’re very lucky. Would you like a pat? We’re from the bush, the Australian bush. Any chocolate?’ He’s babbling on at ladies and gentlemen left and right and centre like he’s been living in a very confined space for far too long – actually, he has – but all the people are mostly too busy or too polite or too shocked to talk back. Well, we are a sight. And I don’t think we’re going about this right.

  ‘Scruff,’ I nudge, ‘I don’t think London people are used to all your chitchat.’

  Because we have to concentrate here, we need all hands on deck with so many train changes on this journey, so many screeching brakes and platform gaps and stairs and tunnels and endless readings of the maps in the carriages, debating ‘next stop’, ‘no, next’ and then suddenly, finally, we’re at West Brompton, thank goodness.

  Pin leads the charge off the train. ‘Mama’s getting close, Kicky,’ he whispers wondrously, coming back to take my hand. ‘I can just feel it.’

  My heart swells. I squeeze his little fist. Something huge, I just know it, is around the corner for all of us. We’ll get to Mum, we’ll get to the bottom of this. And then go home. As a family. All six of us at last. We’ve actually never had that.

  ‘I’m so over you being mum.’ Bert pricks my bubble as soon as we’re away from the platform.

  ‘So am I, sis, so am I. I can’t wait to hand the reins back.’

  ‘It was that roof episode that finally did it. You could have lost little Pinny. Killed him. Just like that.’

  I shove her, she pinches me. ‘You be careful with us, all right?’ she cries.

  I stop abrupt. Right. So. It’s going to be a long road ahead for the two of us.

  The boys are oblivious. Scruff’s run ahead with Pin. He turns back and whistles his most piercing desert whistle, one long, one short. It’s the signal to regather, fast.

  ‘Hurry up, slow coaches. Look, look! Ahead!’

  A poky-up city of the dead.

  That’s what this is. We’re all shivery and silent as we gaze at it. We’ve never seen anything like it. Row upon obedient row. Headless statues, armless ones, winged angels staring at the ground. What are they so ashamed about? Crosses and marble needles into the sky and feeble grass trying its darndest to poke up and get a grip in this place. But the snow and the cold won’t let it. It’s all so different to home, where hard little plots are scraped into a furiously unwilling earth, roped by rusted railings and then pillowed by a stern iron cross. It’s always just one or two people in the middle of a great nothing. Like a warning. But here it’s thousands of dead people, crammed too close. I shiver again, a great big brrrr of a thing. Gosh, all these ghosts. And we’re stepping into it.

  Is Mum among them? Is this some trick of that sneaky adult-talk that always means something else and we’re the mugs here and we’ll just have to slink back? I gulp. Shut my eyes. Snap them open. Nope, we have to press on.

  We walk through an arched entranceway of cold-looking stone. Knock at a tiny door in it.

  A man opens the door, suspiciously. He’s looks all stooped by a life of too many low ceilings and walls too close and there’s a wet look about him, like his palms would be permanently damp. In any other circumstances Scruff and I would be off with our giggles by now, but not this time. Too much at stake.

  The man can’t quite look us in the eyes, his head is angled to the side. Splodges of – what? – stain his skinny black suit. I don’t want to think too much about that. I know Scruff is. I reach for his hand and it gratefully slips into mine and squeezes tight. The man’s hair is grey and hangs limp to his shoulders. It might’ve been dashing once but now just looks dirty and his skin is yellow-grey as if it’s never seen the light. I want to drag him out into a desert blast of it but it looks like he’d turn into dust if I did. Plus there’s an old smell about him. Sharp. Unnatural. Preserving potions, perhaps. Mixed with cobwebs and dust.

  ‘Hello. We’re looking for Mr Davenport,’ I start. ‘Can you help?’

  ‘Mmm, really?’ He looks at us sideways.

  ‘We need to see him on an extremely urgent matter.’

  A pause. ‘I am he.’ Reluctantly. As if children are quite the most unpleasantest things in the entire world. He stares down at our bare feet. Flinches. No invitation to step inside, of course, no warmth.

  ‘And who be you?’

  ‘We’re from Australia. We’re staying with Sebastian Caddy.’ A tic in his right eye jumps. ‘We’re his nieces and nephews.’ The air between us is suddenly crackly with silence and shock.

  ‘Mmm, he’s made contact?’ Disbelief in his face. ‘But I thought he never wanted anything to do with you. None of your branch was family to him. That’s what he told his lawyer. Mmm.’ That murmur is a habit that’s starting to drive me bananas. It’s like every time he does it he’s thinking, considering, and his eyes slide away; he can never look at us quite straight. ‘Oh yes, I know these things. He’d lost touch with his brother years ago. Mmm. Are you imposto
rs, by any chance?’ He glances down again at our bare feet like he’s never seen anything like them before. ‘His estate is extremely valuable. And he’s quite vulnerable. One must always be careful. Especially now, at Christmas. Awful time. Mmm.’ He starts shutting the door on us.

  ‘Look into our eyes,’ I calmly instruct.

  Mr Davenport peers close, head to the side. One green, one blue, just like our uncle. He steps back, pale. It’s the look of someone … what? Threatened, perhaps? Shocked out of his skin, I know that. ‘Well, well.’

  ‘We’re a family now!’ Pin jumps in gleefully.

  ‘Plus we’re starving,’ Scruff throws in. ‘Any chocolate in the house? Just a man hunch you’ve got some, Mr Davenpit.’

  ‘Davenport,’ he hisses. ‘And certainly not for the likes of you, boy. Mmm.’

  ‘Will we get to see some coffins?’ Bert, of course, being very Bert. In fact, she’s almost beside herself with excitement at such an exotically fabulous place. She spent several years, from age six to eight, with a cupboard obsession. Loved getting inside them, making them her hidey-holes, goodness knows what she did in them; begged to sleep in her mother’s cupboard most of all, loved any space that was dark and enclosed.

  ‘Coffins?’ It’s the first smile of the day that we get. ‘Why yes, little girl, excellent, mmm. The Tower of London has nothing on the attractions here. Did you know that that esteemed place used to hold a menagerie of exotic beasts?’ We shake our heads, wide-eyed. ‘Well, it’s got nothing on the catacombs of Brompton. Oh yes. I can’t offer you African beasts but I can offer you something else. Mmm.’ He chuckles. It makes me hold Scruff’s hand tighter. ‘Come come, this way. Let me think …’

  What about? I’m about to catapult a thousand questions into his head but he puts a long finger stained a mysterious yellow to his lips and whispers, ‘Ssssh, don’t want to wake anyone, do we? Mmm.’ Hang on. He’s Basti’s best friend, isn’t he, so he must be all right. Surely? And we don’t want to be rude. So follow we must. Yes? What would Basti do in this circumstance? Get cross at our reluctance, no doubt.

  Mr Davenport grabs a clanking bunch of keys from a hook on the door. Crisply locks up the gatehouse – three locks, checked, tight – then leads us past rows of tombstones. Our bare feet are red and raw as we crunch through snow as resistant as frozen grapes.

  ‘Singular, aren’t you?’ he murmurs, staring down at our feet once again and shaking his head. ‘You’re sure you’re not here for the money? Mmm?’ We’re struck dumb. Extremely un-Caddy-like. We don’t know what he’s talking about.

  We follow his curved back down steep open steps to an enormous double door. Two serpents face each other on the black iron grilles, mouths open and hissing their fury. Forever. Yep, they’re cranky at each other, endlessly. It’s me and Bert. She traces the delicate detail in their scales, in raptures over everything in this place. ‘No wonder Basti likes you, Mr Davenport,’ she murmurs.

  ‘Oh yes, he christened those two snakes Wallis and Eddie. Such a wag. We’re old school friends, you know. Mmmm.’ A pause. ‘The best.’ Another pause. ‘And now you’re here.’ He savagely unlocks a rusty old padlock holding together a rope of iron as thick as my arm. ‘So that’s that. Yes. Here.’

  We step inside. Fear blows its warning onto the back of our necks. A rash of goosebumps races across our skin, all of us, I just know it. Well, except maybe Bert. But it feels like we’re entering the bowels of the earth here, that we’re walking through the gates of some terrifying underworld – and we may never, ever get out. As we creep along the stone floor, a bank of cold hits us like the breath of a thousand ghosts – wily vents from somewhere are keeping the corridors well aired.

  Bucket has to be dragged into the subterranean gloom. Her paws are resisting at every step, she’s whining. What are you telling us, girl?

  Bert claps her hands silently in glee. Scruff looks terrified. Pin holds my hand in an iron grip. Because the air’s alive with death and we’ve never been in a place like it. All that is vibrant and living and light-filled has been sucked out of it as we walk further and further on. And I now completely regret not telling anyone where we were going. Stupid, stupid Kick. Not even a note was left. A sign. What was I thinking? Or not thinking, more like it. So. No one knows where we are. We are here, and we are completely lost to the world. Completely, utterly vanished. And never meant to talk to strangers, of course.

  What if we never come back? It will kill Basti. He’ll blame himself. Then Dad. What have I done? How can we get out … was it a right we just took, a left?

  ‘Amazing,’ Bert is whispering, oblivious, as we walk further and further into the earth along narrow brick tunnels. We can smell the soil’s dank secrets pressing close. Coffins are stacked on shelves.

  ‘My dear friends are swaddled in the silks and velvets of their Sunday best, then sealed in lead to hold the frights of the world at bay, oh yes,’ Darius explains helpfully, running a loving hand over a particularly mangy-looking casket that’s so rotted it looks like cardboard. ‘This is Mr Rattly in here, a most splendid chap. Mmm. Good evening, my friend.’

  ‘H-how do you know all that?’ Scruff asks, but his question’s unanswered.

  So many dead people, so close, tucked into the walls’ pockmarks. Coffins with elaborate hinges but whitish mould on them. Coffins with great rust streaks down them, or it’s something else, I hope Scruff’s not looking too close. Coffins green with rot. Old bits of cloth burst through the edges of some, others have burst open and we catch glimpses inside of swathes of brown-stained fabric, encasing … what? What? ‘Don’t think about it,’ I tell myself, ‘eyes straight ahead, don’t look.’ I can almost feel Scruff’s wildly thumping heart bursting through his chest. Lean back, waggle fingers and my hand is gratefully grasped.

  ‘Did you tell anyone of your visit, my friends?’ Darius enquires without looking back. ‘Mmm?’

  Before I can jump in with, ‘Yes, Basti’s waiting for us, must be off!’ Pin says obediently, ‘No, it’s Kick’s big secret.’

  ‘Splendid. I do love secrets.’ And he glides ahead, a hand lingering at one passing coffin then another, tucking a piece of wayward cloth inside with a tut.

  I shut my eyes. So, now he knows that we’re here all by ourselves. That no one else knows. It’s the worst information of the lot. We need to get back into the light. Get home. Find another way to track down Mum. This isn’t worth it. Bucket’s right by my heels, ever faithful, watching out for all of us. Scruff’s pulse is leaping like a flea. I squeeze his hand.

  ‘Are these really all your friends?’ Bert asks.

  ‘Mmm.’ Mr Davenport smiles the chilliest of smiles. ‘I lead quite a singular life.’

  We’re losing our sense of direction here as we twist and turn through the narrow corridors. Remember it, girl, remember. A sharp left here, then a right, then another, or was that left? Hang on, can’t think straight. Breathing heavy, fast.

  ‘Would you like to live down here?’ Darius enquires mildly.

  It stops Scruff, Bert and me in our tracks. Too stricken, can’t answer.

  In a gloomy corner is a mess of bones. The skulls a rich amber, the teeth loose. ‘The servants,’ Darius whispers fondly. ‘Still here to look after their masters. Faithful to the last. As am I. Mmm.’

  That’s it, Scruff’s off. But Darius hooks a hand around his arm, fast, and yanks him back tight.

  ‘Oooow!’

  ‘Now now, little boy, we can’t have you separated from your family, can we? You might get lost. There are pits to fall into here, oh yes. Coffins to come crashing down.’ His voice drops. ‘Little squeaky friends in dark places to bite you and haunt you and terrorise your sleep. Mmmm.’ I step back – gasp – a cobweb brushes across my face and I scrabble its stickiness off.

  ‘Now, who would like to see a dead body?’ Darius turns to Bert. ‘A rare treat.’

  ‘Oh yes, please!’

  ‘I thought as much.’

  Darius pu
shes at a heavy iron door engraved with a lady’s face and the hair of a hundred writhing snakes. The lady looks shocked. Like she’s been snap frozen in this place and can never escape. Inside: a circular room. Musty corners. Low light. Four marble slabs in the centre.

  ‘Scared now, Kicky,’ Pin whispers.

  ‘I know,’ and he’s scooped into my arms. Bert’s having none of it. She lies on a slab with her hands folded across her chest. ‘How do I look, Mr Davenport?’

  ‘Get off,’ I snap.

  She pops up, does a handstand against a coffin propped on the wall and falls neatly into it. Too neatly for my liking. I back away. Near the door. Ready to dash. Try to signal the others that we need some escape action here.

  ‘I need to get outside,’ Scruff stumbles, ‘I’ve got crosstro-phobia, I think.’

  ‘I’ll take him,’ I blurt, ‘but just one last thing before we go – do you know where our mother is, Mr Davenport?’

  His back freezes at a cupboard he’s been scrabbling at. ‘Your mother?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. We’ll be going now. It’s Scruff, his condition. Places like this do it to him. And we thought you could help us but actually, you know, I think we made a mistake.’

  ‘We’ll do anything to find her and we thought we’d start with you,’ Bert jumps in. ‘We’re trying to track her down.’

  Darius spins. Looks at us quizzically, head on one side. Then he smiles that smile of glittery coldness. As if he’s got the measure of us now. ‘Flora Caddy. Mmmm. A fascinating person. Indeed. You’re extremely lucky to have a mother like that. Oh yes.’

  My heart beats fast. Flora Caddy. He said her name. He knows our mum’s name. And most wondrous of all: he talked in present tense. Like she’s alive. This is all worth it. She’s close. He’s a link. I drop Pin and rush forward. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘She looks just like you, mmm, of course.’ Darius traces a long, cold finger down my cheek.