The Icicle Illuminarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  ‘Few would want to,’ I snap, most Kick-like. ‘Where are we? What’s going on?’ I continue the pounding. Lady Adora shrinks back, startled – and what kind of name is that? I sigh in a right grump.

  ‘This is my family seat,’ she says sulkily.

  ‘Your what?’ Scruff looks dubiously at her bottom.

  ‘Oh, you colonials! So uncouth.’ Then she leans her cheek into wallpaper that’s falling away like great strips of sunburn. A single fingertip tenderly traces the faded pattern of a flower. ‘Where are we, young … lady? Why, The Swallows, that’s where. One of England’s great stately homes. It’s been held by the Ellicott family for four hundred and fourteen years. Swallows – such a beautiful name. So appropriate.

  ‘This land was given to the original duke by Henry VIII to guarantee his loyalty to the Tudor succession …’ Lady Adora’s eyes are closing like a cat’s as she rests her cheek on the wallpaper. ‘Mmm, the king, yes. Do you know, in the Duke’s journeys to London, outriders would go ahead to clear peasants from his path so he wouldn’t be defiled by their sticky gaze –’ She peers at us. ‘Yes. Sticky. Exactly.’ Strokes the wall like it’s a person. ‘You really need a roof over your head, don’t you? A mummy, someone to clean you up. Wash out your mouths with soap. How odd you sound. That funny accent. My poor, bereft little mousies … new to all this. Fresh blood …’

  But before we can jump in with a thousand indignations she gallops on. Asks if we like our shoes – that she told ‘Dari’ to find some for us, couldn’t bear the thought of our dear little desert feet so ill-prepared. ‘He has quite a selection, you know. From, er … clients.’ She laughs a secret laugh, then purrs directly to Scruff, ‘We weren’t expecting you at all, young man. Quite the shock. Here, in England. And so … robustly. Spoiling our plans. And there’s Dari, panicking, as he does. Didn’t know what to do. “Bring ’em here!” I laughed. And so he did.’ Her face crumples into a frown. Darius is pale, as if he’s suddenly realised he’s made a terrible mistake.

  ‘And here you are. Glowingly healthy. Tall. Tanned, in that crude Aussie way.’ She laughs a laugh with no joy in it, asks us if we think we’ll live to a hundred. ‘Good strong bones, mousies. No wartime rations for you. Yah.’

  ‘Where’s our mother?’ I cut in. If there’s no purpose in being here I’m pulling my troops out.

  A glittery silence. Adora comes up close, worrying the key around her neck. ‘No one likes other people’s children,’ she whispers. ‘It’s a hard lesson to learn but don’t worry, I’m an exception to the rule. I’ll be prepared to like you. Just.’

  ‘Darius says our lives are now tied up with this house,’ Bert tries a new tack, rubbing her arms with the cold. ‘So, are there any old clothes in here? Curtains, sewing boxes?’

  ‘Oh, is that what he said? Ever the trickster.’ She cups Darius’s chin. He says nothing, shakes his head, goes to explain but she talks over him. ‘Well, he’s right of course. In a sense. I have plans … we have plans.’

  Bert blurts that she can help because she’s a fashion designer and loves interior decorating too; blurts that she could do both.

  Lady Adora snaps that she and she alone will decide what happens around here. ‘For a start, those frightfully vulgar accents bother me. They make you all sound a bit stupid. They … grate. Have you even been educated? Can you write?’ I want to hit her, my fist is clenched. ‘Something must be done.’

  Darius murmurs his mmm, almost bending towards her as he speaks, like a vine angling for the light. Lady Adora sulks all of a sudden; she’s tired and has had enough. Rings a bell. ‘We’re going to tuck you little mousies up snug and tight – before we decide how to proceed. We’re digesting the vast shock.’

  ‘Proceed?’ I ask, tight. ‘What’s The Swallows got to do with us?’

  ‘Why, everything, my dear. Daddy was so naughty, frittering away all the money; one too many leopards in the kitchen, I suspect,’ she trills. Then she comes up close, her voice cold, quite someone else. ‘I will not be the one to lose this. Four hundred and fourteen years and counting. It will not be ending with me.’ Then she puts a hand over her mouth like some mortifying thought has bubbled up and she has to swallow it, quick. Gathers herself.

  ‘Where’s our mother?’ I demand again.

  She bats me away. ‘I’m tired, I said. Your questions, tans, energy. Off you go. Squeedly? Squeedly!’ She’s calling out to goodness knows who but I’m not letting this pass; the dragon is well and truly uncurling here, roaring up.

  ‘Is our mother here?’ I demand. ‘Otherwise we’re off.’ She just rolls her eyes like I’m mad. That’s it. No point being here. ‘Let’s go, troops,’ I bark and as one we turn and run out the room, up the corridor, out the double doors that Darius had flung open with such a flourish.

  ‘Flora Caddy?’ The scream behind us. We stop, stunned. She’s said our mother’s name. ‘The Honourable Flora Caddy?’ She’s making it sound like an insult. We turn. Come back, in defeat, she’s got us. ‘We were in the same class at school.’ She knows her. ‘She used to win all the prizes, of course. Hockey captain, Head Girl, all of that. Came out, what, 1928? Belle of the debutante ball, with her rosebud lips that every man was so desperate to kiss. Oh, they all loved her, didn’t they? Flocked, flocked. All … hovery. Sticky. And that vulgar hoot of a laugh. Who could forget it. Blood not quite blue enough, you knew that, didn’t you? I bet you’ve got the Flora bray, too. Always at the centre of her little web of … giggly … what? Giggles. Well, she never invited me to her little soirees in Eaton Square.’ Lady Adora’s face screws up in revulsion. ‘Dari, they’re asking me about Flora Caddy. Can you believe it?’

  He nods, murmuring his murmur, bending a little more.

  ‘Then she just disappeared on us. Off to Or-stray-ya or wherever it was. Married her cowboy, rode her kangaroos, had a thousand children.’ She looks us up and down. ‘As she would. And couldn’t she yell, oh my. Voice like a foghorn. But when distressed –’ Lady Adora laughs ‘– then she’d whisper her little whine … “Addy, Addy, stop, you’re being beastly.”’

  ‘Stop stop stop!’ I slam my eyes shut, hands pressing on my ears. Because Lady Adora is doing exactly Mum’s voice here. That used to drive me bananas. It’s like this woman has snapped something in my brain; the memory of how frustrated I’d get with my mother, how terribly I’d attack her; the dragon inside me would just roar out at her, so horribly, when I just wanted to hurt her, stop her, get her quiet. Lady Adora has made me remember exactly how Mum sounded on that last night I saw her – ‘Kicky, Kicky, stop …’ – as she tried to get me to clam up with the shouting and the swearing about life being so unfair because I always had to look after everyone and fetch the baby and feed the chooks and she was always going on about the horror of my overalls and how I had to pretty myself up, be a proper girl, a young lady, like I was never good enough and she was always so critical and then, and then, I just snapped, I don’t know what happened but I roared back that Mum didn’t love me like the others, she was always so mean to me, singling me out, making it harder than the rest and I hated her for it, I said I hated her, I actually said it. ‘Go away, I want any mother but you. I want someone else.’

  The last words.

  Hovering in the shocked quiet.

  Then she was gone. So she did go away, oh yes, exactly as I’d asked. And I have to live with it. Which is why I’m determined to find her now.

  Where is she? I plead now, broken, cracked. Because I need to make it up to Mum, say I didn’t mean it, tell her how I love her so much it hurts. The guilt is like a great weight pressing down on my chest. Did I make her walk out?

  ‘Aha!’ Lady Adora pokes like a magpie into my distress. ‘So you care about something as much as I do. Oh, I can see it. We’ll make a fine pair, you and me. You know why?’ Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘Because we care too much. Oh yes, I recognise it in you. Because I was that once.’ I shrink back. Want out, away. She leans closer, so close I can se
e the cracks in the makeup, the swervy lips, the eyes rimmed with too-wobbly black. Never be this.

  ‘Your precious mother is where you’ll be going very soon, my little mousie tomboy. Patience, patience …’

  Heart thudding. She mentioned Mum. She knows where she is. We have to stick with this. I look around wildly. So. Can’t run away. Can’t go to the police. Because it’ll all unravel too soon and Basti’s Reptilarium will be found and he’ll be kicked out and be sent to a home for damaged war veterans and his entire world will be lost. Again, my fault.

  Her Ladyship calls out for Squeedly once more, clanging the bell with furious violence now. A woman in a housekeeper’s uniform appears, running, pulling up abrupt. As pale and dusty and beige as her boss is vivid and loose; and puffed. She looks like she’s sucked on a lemon for days, months, years. Nope, she won’t be of use to us. It’s in her face.

  ‘Take them, Squeedly. Off, off, away. It’s been sorted, no doubt.’ She turns her back on us and walks to the window where we first found her, hands high in the air in a fluttery dismissal. Then she spins back to me and lifts up my chin with a finger and tells me we’ll be going on a grand adventure and we’re going to have so much fun with it, just be patient. She winks right at me. I back away. What does she mean? Pin grabs my hand like he’s protecting me. I put my arms around all of my family. No one is splitting us up here. What’s going on?

  ‘Is there any food?’ Scruff sees his chance. ‘What’s for tea?’

  ‘He’s asking for tea! My dear mousie boy, why not use your legendary bush skills to survive? All those things your perfect mother with her perfect talents taught you. Oh, you’ll get something to eat in good time. But off now, off, off, to your room.’

  I glance back as we leave.

  Lady Adora is twittering and muttering, stroking the wall and murmuring, ‘Soon, my precious, soon.’ Quite mad with it.

  And I’m not sure if she’s talking to Darius – or the house.

  Mrs Squeedly’s back is stern ahead of us. Extremely stern. Nope, she definitely won’t be of any help. It’s in her walk.

  We climb stairs bowed like saddles from centuries of use. Behind us walks a man who seems to have appeared from nowhere. He’s magnificently silent. Monstrously tall. A granite mountain of unknowability. Or should I say obstruction – because there’s no way we could duck behind that bulk and get out. In fact, his express purpose looks like it’s to stop us from going anywhere in this place. Pin keeps turning and staring up at him in wonder. There’s a twinkle in his eyes. This is not good. It means: this obstruction is a challenge and Pin will surmount it, oh yes, there’ll be Caddy cuddles yet.

  How long will we be here? And what’s at the top of these endless stairs?

  An enormously long room, that’s what. As wide as a church. Scruff winks, mouths, ‘Playground,’ chuffed; and throws in a sneaky V for Victory sign. Because this room has got a waiting wooden floor as large as a paddock, a gallery of spectator benches high on both sides and a peaked, glass roof running its lofty length. There are oval windows like eyes at one end and a woefully sagging net across the middle. A tennis court? But hang on, it’s not the usual size. It’s longer and narrower. We turn to the silent mountain man. What is this? He doesn’t respond. Stares straight ahead. Right. We look at Mrs Squeedly, our next best bet.

  She sighs like surely we know. Er, no. Tells us it’s called a real tennis court, built for Henry VIII. That he was extremely fond of the game. That it demands a high roof and light, which is why it’s here, close to the sky, ‘Off you go.’ We promptly run into the middle of the enormous space, can’t help ourselves, and jump over the net, back and forth, back and forth, Pin on the back of me like a jockey with his racehorse. ‘Yippeeeee!’ ‘We need racquets!’ ‘Balls!’ The room quickly echoes with our shrieks bouncing off the high walls and ringing up to the sky. Yep, the Caddys can certainly make a go of this.

  Mrs Squeedly yells across the room that there’s a changing shed in the far corner and we might find something useful in it but she has no idea, she hasn’t looked in it for donkeys.

  ‘Donkey, Kicky! Be a donkey,’ Pin cries. Which I most certainly do.

  Abandoned hospital beds are crammed up one end of the room and piled high with a jumble of pillows and blankets. ‘For us?’ Mrs Squeedly nods, all the while staying close to the door with Silent Mountain Man just behind her. She then glances around, as if trying to find something. We do too – can’t see anything. Scruff asks her what she’s looking for. ‘The resident … ghost.’ Mrs Squeedly hesitates.

  Scruff turns pale. ‘Y-you’re joking. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I am. Ghosts do not exist, young man. Do not, full stop. But Lady Adora is convinced of its presence. Is driven quite mad from it, actually.’ She smiles the oddest smile, can’t quite squash it down. ‘Her Ladyship thinks there’s a little child in this house who mocks her night and day. She can’t be freed from the torment.’ She looks around at the roof beams, as if talking to someone else. What’s going on here? ‘Maybe you can all help. Distract her. She needs distraction.’

  ‘Please, take Bert, she’s terribly distracting,’ I plead. ‘She’ll make any ghost disappear quick-smart.’

  I am kicked.

  Mrs Squeedly rolls her eyes. Tells us the estate has a chequered past and she should know: she was born on it and so was her husband. That in the seventeenth century a reckless son of the fourth duke almost gambled the property away; and in the eighteenth, a female skeleton was found locked in a cupboard. Bert has a squealy shiver. ‘I said, ghosts do not exist.’ Mrs Squeedly glares. ‘But family traumas most certainly do. One duke tried to burn the house down so a hated son wouldn’t inherit. There are priceless portraits downstairs colandered by darts.’ And dripping with pigeon droppings, I want to add but don’t. ‘Lances, swords, armour – all used within the family, no doubt.’

  ‘Wow,’ Scruff says. ‘Armour …’

  ‘It’s what’s known as a calendar house. Three hundred and sixty-five rooms. One for each day of the year. Most beyond repair.’

  ‘It’d take an awful lot of money.’ I spin around.

  ‘Quite, young lady.’ She smiles at me, sadly, as if bingo, I know something here that I shouldn’t. Well, I don’t, thank you very much. Please enlighten me.

  ‘When’s dinner?’ Scruff asks, only ever focused on one thing.

  ‘You eat when you eat, young man.’

  Bert wants to know why everything’s so rundown. She’s told crisply that Lady Adora’s father, the fifteenth duke, passed away a decade ago. A hunting accident, apparently. And just beforehand he’d lost all the family money through gambling, dubious investments, lions and leopards wandering the lawns and then, God forbid, the house. Leaping onto the kitchen table, clawing at tapestries, wearing diamond collars no less. We’re informed in no uncertain terms that Mrs Squeedly was once head of a household of one hundred staff and now she is – ‘we are’ – all that’s left. She quickly glances at the man behind her. Tells us that one day, perhaps, the house will be returned to its former glory. That there’ll be staff again. Their former positions. Scruff’s not interested, he just wants to know what all the war stuff is.

  Mrs Squeedly sighs. ‘The War Office took over in 1940. Gave us a fortnight’s notice. Items of value were stored in the northwest wing. The army requisitioned the building for a hospital then abandoned it. Too big a job. Her Ladyship is driven quite mad with worry over it.’ Mrs Squeedly goes towards the door, the unknown man still behind her.

  ‘Wait,’ I cry, ‘who is he?’ To Silent Mountain Man. ‘Are you locking us in?’ I jam my foot in the door. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘It’s me you’ll be dealing with,’ Mrs Squeedly snaps. ‘He does not partake of idle chitchat. Does not do children. So do not provoke him – for you will not enjoy the consequences.’ The warning is dire. We look at him. He is indeed silent. Mountainous. Kind of terrifying. Pin makes a dash for it, as if to test him. In a flash a huge arm sh
oots out and grabs his squirmy body and my brother is deposited, sternly, right back next to me. The man’s face is unmoved through the entire episode.

  ‘Who is he?’ Bert whispers in awe.

  ‘He was employed as a cobweb sweeper at The Swallows, aged nine. Eventually became Chief Winder of the Clocks. Dreamed of Head Butler. And now –’ Mrs Squeedly pauses ‘– he upholds all the traditions of the house that I cannot. Except for marrying the housemaid. Strictly disallowed by the lady of the house. Lady Adora’s grandmother, that is.’ She smiles at the man. ‘Quite the scandal in its day.’

  ‘Cor, she must have been a looker.’ Scruff sounds just like his cheeky dad.

  ‘That would be me.’

  ‘Oh. But … you …’

  Scruff is trying to stuff his giggles back down. Yep, failing. With a huff the door slams shut and it’s only then that we burst into a right proper, up-to-the-ceiling hoot. ‘Would you stop insulting the staff?’ I chastise Scruff in exactly Lady Adora’s voice. ‘Nothing but maggots and gruel for you, little mousie!’

  We’re finally alone in this room. Try opening the door: firmly bolted. The ceiling’s too high and there’s a horribly tall, slippery roof of slate tiles outside. Nope, we’re not getting out of this place anytime soon. We’ll have to make the most of it. Look around. The day is leaking its light. Night will soon crowd greedily in. And the ghosts. It doesn’t feel like Mum could possibly be in this building – but Adora and Darius know of her. Know of her fate, where she is, it seems; and I need to wheedle that out of them. But how? The four of us gaze from a window to a wild, bleak moor that stretches ahead to water freezing and black. We can hear the great restless boom of it. Its swell is meekened by the snow, its surface just a gentle rise and fall like a giant’s slumbering breath.