The Icicle Illuminarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  ‘You never do that!’ Scruff retorts. Hmmm. His gag has been tied looser than mine; I think everyone’s has. Interesting. Deliberate? One hundred per cent. ‘You’ll find a way out of this, Kick,’ he adds.

  I smile at my brother’s crazy blind faith. Deluded. And I don’t share it. Stare out when I can at endless roads because they can’t, because I’m the one closest to the paint’s scratch. We drive for hours. All through the day. There’s purpose to all this. To what he’s doing to us. But what?

  I whisper a running commentary as the land empties and flattens out. London’s chimneys and identical houses that give way to fields, hills, cows now, sheep, fences made of stone. Dinky churches. Bridges. Forests. Dark green, dense, so different to home. Villages tumbling upon villages, too soon, and in Australia of course we can drive for eight hours straight and never see another building let alone a cow. A roo. A soul. Now I see military things abandoned in fields, a lot. The van bullets along roads of narrow, high-hedged green then gradually it all gets emptier, wilder, stonier. Colder. Brrrrr. We must be heading north. The land rises. ‘We’re going up, troops, brace yourselves!’ Great hillsides plunge down to the road. Mountains rush at us with streaks of high snow like frozen tears. Wherever we’re going feels spectacularly lonely. Removed.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ says Scruff.

  I shake my head, shrug. It’s the least of our worries.

  ‘Freezing,’ Bert adds.

  Shake my head. Again, nothing I can do.

  ‘Duddle?’ Pin asks.

  That I can do. Waggle a foot onto his leg and he giggles and it’s the loveliest sound, the giggle we’re all addicted to.

  ‘Again, Kicky!’

  I most humbly oblige. Scruff joins in, then Bert sings ‘Botany Bay’, all muffly, till we’re getting him laughing and squealing through his gag, which loosens miraculously and he whoops his delight at the sudden freedom. ‘Woohooo!’

  Darius slams the brakes on the car. Gets out. Bursts open the back door. ‘What is going on back here? Mmm?’

  ‘Fun!’ Pin laughs.

  ‘You got a problem with that?’ Scruff says defensively, all muffly in his gag. ‘And where are you taking us?’

  He raises an eyebrow. Gotcha, says his stare. ‘Mmm, you’ll find out soon enough,’ he says through a cold smile, then tightens Pin’s gag around his mouth again. ‘Patience is a virtue,’ he adds as he slams the door shut. Then ‘Children should be seen but not heard’ comes from outside. For good measure. We giggle despite ourselves.

  Drive on and on. No villages or towns anymore. A deep frost shrouding everything; trees, fences, an occasional farm building. Everything feels brittle and still and waiting – for what? Suddenly the car slows. I crane. We’re outside an enormously grand, sandstone gatehouse. A sign that’s seen better days is attached to rusty iron gates.

  Golly. And yep, we’re heading in. We drive cautiously up a hill of trees arching over us, laden with snow and frost. Everything feels like it’s pressing too close, swallowing us up. The light drops. Then suddenly the road flattens into the relief of a wide brightness and a white, waiting sky.

  The van stops.

  We ask Darius where we are as soon as he opens the door. ‘So glad you asked. You’ve travelled a very long distance today. Into another world. Mmm. Let’s just say,’ he smiles, ‘that you have gone from the Kensington Reptilarium to something even more … splendid …’

  Four faces stare at him with great expectancy.

  ‘It’s the Icicle Illuminarium. Well, that’s my little name for it. Mine and … a friend’s.’ He smiles a secret smile. ‘A most extraordinary place. Mmm. And if you stick with it, it might just answer some of your questions, perhaps, in your quest to find your mother. Mmm. So don’t go running away on me.’

  ‘Is Mum there?’ ‘What’s a luminar-um?’ A rabble of voices are all jumbly through the gags.

  ‘Why did you drug us?’ I ask loudly.

  ‘Ah yes. A technicality. To get you here quietly. Under orders, if you like.’

  ‘Whose?’ I snap.

  He ignores me. ‘I had to make sure you wouldn’t escape while you had the chance, mmm.’ He smiles. ‘But you won’t dare run from me now, will you? You’re too far from anything out here. You’d never find your way back.’ We’ll see about that. ‘And if you do escape, you’ll never find the path to your mother, will you?’ Yep, he’s got us. Well and truly caught. ‘Always remember that.’

  He unties us all. We climb creakily out of the van, stretching and rubbing each other’s backs, getting the circulation back. Then Darius strides off.

  So, Mum could be ahead, close. Which stops us from doing anything but follow this mysterious man in his black suit. We climb the crest of a hill and gasp. Ahead of us is a house. No, a castle. And it’s enormous. The length of a runway, a city block. Wow. And it’s fabulously glamorous. We blink tears in the wind’s snap.

  Darius announces that it’s our new home. For the time being.

  Really? This might not be so bad after all. I look back at Scruff; he does a cautious V for Victory. Luxury, tennis courts, servants waiting on us hand and foot – here we come. ‘But Basti needs to know where we are,’ I say cautiously.

  Darius nods vaguely. ‘Indeed, mmm.’

  We crunch along a gravel driveway but as we get closer another picture entirely emerges. Bert frowns that it looks sick. I murmur in agreement, with a sinking heart.

  Because the house’s front feels like the open mouth of the newly dead. Vines spill from the window sills like a corpse’s frail lace collar. Grass laps at the window gaps and door blanks. Lichen and mould is triumphant on the walls and the bare bones of the roof. Huge blocks of stone lie on the wide front steps as if the chunks have been tossed down by giants who’ve plundered the grand house long ago. And a lot of it – most of it – is covered in this enormous white frost. It’s gorgeously beautiful. Bizarre. Tragic.

  I can feel Bert’s heart lift at the spectacle of ruined beauty before her that she just about wants to lick; she’s jaunted herself right up as she walks straight at it. Mummy’s here now, everything will be all right. Can see her already planning the new winter collection to match the redecoration of this place, a collection in tasteful shades of frozen blue and white that uses the iciness of satin, the feathers of a snowy owl and the fur of polar bears to maximum effect.

  The garden’s also crying out for rescue. An enormous oak tree has been split by lightning and heaved from the ground and all that’s left is the wave of its roots. Enthusiastic branches poke from the roof of a smashed greenhouse like giraffes from a too-small truck.

  Oval windows on their side stare from a central triangle of the roof: eyes permanently awake but drained of life. There’s an avalanche of beams and bricks on one side of the building where an added-on wing has given up.

  Why are we here?

  ‘No one could possibly live in this place,’ I say to Darius. ‘Why are we here?’

  ‘Mmm, delighted you asked.’ As if he’s a tour guide. ‘You see, as Basti Caddy’s newly found family, your future is intimately tied to this place.’ The way he says ‘intimately’ makes me shiver. ‘Patience. It’s a surprise.’

  There’s only one surprise we want here, mate. I ask when we can see our mum. He ignores me. Hate being ignored. Want to kick him; resist. Want to turn around and run off; resist. Stomp closer to the blank shock of the house’s stare, following them all, the promise of a mum luring me on. Leaves and hessian bags are banked up by the building’s entrance like a litter of puppies at their mother’s warmth. I think of Bucket. Wonder where she is. Want her with us.

  ‘Darius, where’s our –’ Stop. Think better of it. He doesn’t need to know. We need to keep her safe, don’t want him hunting her down in the catacombs or wherever she is. Did he drug her too? Shoo her away? If he’s completely forgetten about her I don’t want him now tracking her down back at the cemetery, and doing goodness knows what. I don’t trust him one bit, but we need
to go along with him for now if it’s going to lead us to Mum.

  Darius pushes open the front door, which is already ajar, as if in readiness. No knock. We step into a long entrance hall of dirty black and white checks. A whirly shell of an oval staircase climbs to a blank sky. We crunch over glass from a dome high above us that has few of its panes left. The walls hold in the rain and the damp; we can smell it clamouring to get out.

  There’s a clattering from a far wing. Scruff turns abrupt. Who? What? ‘A bird,’ I mouth. Can’t have him spooked. Need our wits here.

  His face is unsure, about everything. He’s wondering how long we’ll survive in this place. It’s a building to catch pneumonia in, or worse, death. Mum is in here? Really? Yet she might be. Onward. Must.

  Darius leads us through rooms of extravagant tallness. Corridors and halls. We push through a revolving mirrored door into a ballroom as empty and lost as a shut stadium. Floor-to-ceiling windows gaze out to a lawn of limbless statues. They’re covered in curtains of ivy that snuff out the light.

  Bert spins. ‘What I could do with this!’ she exclaims, pointing. ‘Candles. Polished chandeliers. Our silver curtains. Imagine, Kicky! The party we could have in it.’ Because we’re good at that, instant parties, but not here, now. It’s too hard, too tragic.

  Hundreds of sacks of potatoes bobble the floor of one room. Mouldy grain is heaped – dune high – in another. Empty petrol drums are carefully stacked in a third. So. I see. This enormous house is nothing more than a succession of silos now. Storage rooms. It feels like a dirty secret. Like we’ve just seen someone very grand, undressed. And stinky and crazy with it.

  A parlour of birds. They rise up with great startled flappings in a room open to the sky. Their droppings are thick on a parqueted floor and our feet slip through the muck like wet paint. On and on we go. To who? What? Darius is walking with brisk purpose, on a mission. There are strange clankings and wind sighs from far corners. Scruff is bunching close. I run my finger down his arm: I’m here, mate, I’m with you.

  Signs in foreign languages, rows of iron bedsteads, broken metal tables, upturned helmets. Mysterious, rust-coloured stains that look like old blood seeping from under high doors, Was this a hospital once? Grime bruises clot walls. Ceilings gently bulge like swollen bellies. Tapestries fall into nothingness at their ragged ends. Frescoes have ‘COLLECTION POINT’ or ‘MESS’ painted roughly in red across them. In one wood-panelled games room there’s a billiard table with its legs sawn off, now just a turf of rectangular green. In another, mahogany table legs in a grate. What’s left of firewood. A welcome gift from someone who didn’t own this, or didn’t care for any of it.

  The Cottesloe Library announces a plaque. ‘A library!’ Bert exclaims. Darius sighs in impatience, as if he really can’t be bothered with our wonder, there’s something else that needs to be done here.

  ‘Kicky, your favourite thing!’ Pin says, pushing open the doors before Darius can stop him. I shut my eyes. Oh, there is hope.

  But no, chaos. Sinking hearts as we think back to Basti’s beautifully cherished library – where we could be now – brimming with its books to the ceiling and leather armchairs. But this. The few volumes that are left have been thrown across the floor and they’re only in foreign languages, mainly Latin or Greek, and the only order is in the shelves of one bay where twenty gas masks are obediently lined up with tin hats propped on each. Too ordered, neat. As if waiting for one last battle. Ours?

  A dusty gramophone sits forlorn in a corner with a smear of records around it. Music, sound – they’re the enemy of any library I know. We tread across a strange white flaking on the slippery floor and bend to pick pieces of it up – what on earth is it? Low flying planes, Darius tuts, and tells us that every time the R.A.F. passed over during the war the ceiling would flake like snow. Eventually the pilots were redirected but it was too late, there was hardly any paintwork left. Bert asks if this building was a hospital once.

  ‘Mmm, indeed. For wounded soldiers. From the allied countries. But eventually even they were defeated by the vast challenges of a stately home. The damp, the rot, the decay. Ghosts, mmm.’ He smiles wryly. Scruff presses closer.

  Pin tugs his coat, asks who lives here. ‘You?’

  ‘Goodness, no. Just you wait. It’ll be worth it.’

  We finally reach the far corner of the house. Right at the back. White and gold double doors.

  Behind them, a high-pitched wailing.

  We gasp. Someone’s here! Could it be … Mum? Has she taken up singing?

  Darius turns and smiles. Flings the doors wide with a flourish. ‘Your Ladyship. They have arrived.’

  Our eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark after the frosty white of the rest of the house. We step forward. What is this place? The wailing is opera music that plumes through this secret wing, which is crammed with a series of rooms off a long corridor. Rooms that seem to be clutching fiercely to whatever is of value in this place – it looks like all the lost treasures have been rammed into them. In secretive haste. It’s a great jumble of portraits and statues, gilt-edged chairs, harpsichords, stuffed deer heads and stacks of rolled-up rugs. All waiting for release. Which feels like it will never come.

  A woman. Ahead.

  Her back to us, at a window. A gloved hand resting on a cocked hip. The other hand languishing high on the frame. We can’t make her out except that her hair is snowy white in a cloud about her head. She’s silhouetted, dark. Framed by the glary white of outside. We squint. She looks slim, glamorous, from the curve of her back. It just looks posh. Like Mum.

  Breaths held, all of us. Transfixed.

  ‘They’re here,’ Darius says, louder.

  The lady doesn’t turn. As if she can’t. Isn’t able to bear it.

  Pin can’t help it. He runs straight at her, his little arms outstretched …

  Pin stops, in shock. As the woman turns.

  Why on earth did we think it was our mum? Because we’re desperate, of course. Hallucinating. Exhausted and hungry and starting to see her in everything. I rub my eyes. They’re cranky and scratchy and tired, not working properly anymore. Nothing is.

  Because the woman before us is wrong. Cracked into oldness. Scariness. She’s wearing a ballgown of emerald green and matching tulle that’s in a wispy cloud around her shoulders. But it’s cold in here. And daytime. And there’s no ball. Excuse me, madam, but you’re dressed like a movie star and you’re far too old for it. You’ve seen better days, as has everything in this place. You’re like a mangy old bit of mink that we don’t want to wear.

  I back out fast, pulling several Caddy hands with me. Now’s the time to escape.

  But Darius is right behind us once again, ready to stop any running for it. As if he senses it.

  The woman cranes, steps forward, stares at me hesitant. A tiara’s tilted on her head and there are some bits of it missing and she flurries it straight like we’ve caught her out. A black velvet necklace hangs around her neck; a key on the end of it that she keeps fingering. She wobbles closer on spindly silver heels. Why do ladies do that to themselves? They need sensible boots to navigate this world, don’t they get that?

  Bert’s wasting no time re-dressing her in her head, I can tell; holding up her hands like Dinda does and framing an imaginary shot. But Pin is stepping back, unsure, and he’s never unsure about anyone. It’s a sign. Not a good one.

  Because everything to do with this new person is blaring, ‘Beware, Back Out!’ Her hair is piled high in a crazy bird’s nest. The bright red lips crooked and too big. The face frozen in a mask of jolliness – party time! – except it’s not.

  She surveys us in wonder, but no, doesn’t dare. She’s like a bird, fluttery, nervy, trapped in a room with us. Then her face slips and something much realler and older and tireder comes out.

  ‘So …’ The word hovers in the air. ‘Here you are.’ She does not come forward. There’s no eagerness. In fact, there’s a staleness in her face, deep, worn, dro
opy lines, about a lifetime of disappointments and chances never coming off. Note to self: Never, ever, become this. Never be so defeated by life. Chipped red nailpolish hovers at her cheeks. Then she snaps to attention, as if remembering what she’s actually meant to be doing here. ‘Come come, my sweeties,’ she purrs suddenly, motherly soft. ‘Closer. Let me see what we’ve got. I’ve always wanted more little mousies. And my, you’re quite the menagerie, aren’t you.’

  What’s the real her? She’s turned from bird to cat.

  Darius pokes us forward. The wooden blocks of the loose parquetry lift with the suck of our soles then settle back, resigned, with a plop. Everything, it feels, is falling apart here – this entire world has given up. Her especially, but in a loose cannon kind of way. The room’s ringed with dim paintings climbing to the ceiling. Only the whites of the eyes glare out. So many eyes, watching, waiting, as if wondering what on earth’s next. In fact it feels like this entire place is holding its breath. For what?

  The lady hovers a touch, not quite. ‘My, how … robust you are. You boys look like you could crack me with a squeeze!’ A too-high laugh. ‘Three big bonny lads … who would have thought.’

  ‘I’m a girl,’ I say blunt.

  She shakes her head in bewilderment. Her fingers trace our noses, shoulders, but an inch from our skin as if she can’t bear to actually connect. ‘Little mousies,’ she murmurs, ‘lost. Lost.’

  Pin – who’s been known to cuddle a lamp post if he can – shrinks into my skin as if he wants to be enfolded in it and disappear. Nup. The Pin-detector is on high alert here and it’s telling us to get out, fast – anywhere but this place. But Mum … we have to find out. Imagine getting this far and then abandoning her. Nope, just can’t. With my arm strong around Pin I ask the woman what her name is.

  ‘Ugh ugh ugh!’ she remonstrates. ‘Little mice should be seen but not heard.’ Would grown-ups in this country stop saying that. ‘You have much to learn in life.’ Then she smiles coquettishly. ‘But you know, I’ll allow it. Just this once.’ She draws her tulle protectively around her shoulders. ‘My name is Adora Ellicott. Lady Adora. And you’re most fortunate to have been invited. Few people are.’