The Icicle Illuminarium

by N. J. Gemmell

  This is one very big estate, and a very isolated one. Worse luck. Far, far away from help; from shouting or screaming or army flares (sorry, Scruff). No village in sight, no public roads. On the cusp of the sea cliff is a lonely old chapel, a skeleton of stone with its flesh, light. Fat use that is to us now.

  The last of the sunlight peeks through the clouds like a rip in a curtain. I push open a windowpane as far as it’ll go and wily winter rushes in and curls around us, right under our clothes. I slam the window shut. Rub a violently shivering Pin. Can’t let this defeat us. We need to prepare – cosy ourselves right up here – make this tennis court a bedroom not a space. I gaze at the messy jumble of hospital beds behind us. Scruff’ll be in with me tonight. And Pin. And quite possibly Bert.

  We arrange the beds in a row, crammed close. Pile on the blankets for a cold, cold night because we’re used to evenings so sticky and stinky that not even a sheet can be endured under the mozzie net. We lie on our backs, in a row. Oh, it won’t last. It’s soon dark and Bert scrambles for a switch on a forlorn table lamp abandoned nearby on the floor. It works, thank goodness, weakly, but it’s enough. ‘For Scruff,’ she says quickly. He doesn’t respond but we know it’s for every single one of us. A vast canopy of stars is high above the glass roof. We can actually see them here – in London we can’t. We must be hugely away from any other light.

  The wind picks up. Glass rattles in the panes but they hold firm and protesting on their latches. One window whooshes open – we all jump. Giggle, shiver. The house is alive with sound from too many secret places. No wonder Lady Adora feels haunted. There are wind sighs and creaks, rattles and scurries and Pin huddles close, then Scruff, then even, even, your ghost-hunter ladyship. Well, hello there. Bert mumbles that Scruff needs her close.

  ‘No I don’t.’ He scrunches his face in revulsion at imminent girl germs but we let it ride; we’re all together in one piece here, that’s the point.

  Silence. Thinking of what’s ahead. Of how on earth we got into this.

  ‘It isn’t your fault, Kick,’ Bert says suddenly. Astoundingly.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Scruff adds quick.

  I look at them. Roll my lips in tight. Smile a glittery thanks because the guilt is almost sinking me here. Because I do blame myself, oh I do. How could I be so stupid? Too insistent and bossy and cranky for my own good. If I hadn’t stormed us all out of the Reptilarium the three of them would be snug as bugs right now, feeding Perdita the cobra and playing sleds in the square.

  And I’d be the only one having to deal with this.

  I roll over and cuddle Pin’s warm little body, breathe it in deep. He thuds against me with his whole weight. I shut my eyes … the bliss of it. He’s clutching his Banjo teddy like he’ll never give him up and I bury my nose in the softness at the back of his neck, the little dip of a curve; ‘the double cream,’ Mum calls it. Then Dad took it up. Was always trying to snuffle it out, with all of us, to kiss. An arm winds around my back and tickles my stomach. Scruff.

  ‘Come on, little mousie,’ he chuckles, ‘there’ll be cheese in them thar parts.’ In exactly Lady Adora’s voice. ‘Albertina, now that’s a name I can approve of.’ Bert pretends to vomit and before I know it, the little monkeys have got me laughing.

  ‘But what about that big mountain man?’ Pin asks. ‘He’ll rescue us.’

  ‘Mr Silent Mountain?’ I ask.

  We crack up. ‘Silent Mountain!’ Yes. ‘Silent Mountain!’ Forthwith he shall be known as that. Scruff stares at me intently, cocking his head and crossing his eyes and that’s it, we’re all gone as we attempt our most mountainous, most silent, most cross-eyed silent mountain man impressions, trying to beat everyone else.

  Ah, we’ll be right. We’ve got each other here and it’s enough. Dad never wanted us split up. No matter what, I’ll never be alone. Even with Bert. So at least I have this, that we’re together, just how Dad wanted it. I think back to Lady Adora, two floors below us with her tiara and tea-sets, and no matter who’s with her in this house she seems so utterly, utterly by herself. Stranded.

  And howling inside with it.

  The bolt is screeched open. We scramble to the door.

  A tray is handed to us by – excuse me for a giggle here – Silent Mountain, and before we can grab him and crack him into life, into talk, he’s gone, just like that, as if he can’t possibly commune with the likes of us. There’s just a quick catching of his eyes, which gives us nothing, and then it’s shut off. The door is bolted. Of course. Mustn’t forget that one, eh?

  We stare at what’s before us. Four feeble half glasses of milk in a miserly row. One loaf of hard bread with lots of seeds in it. Scruff’s looking doubtful, but hunger will get the better of him, we all know it. A chunk of old cheese. Is that mould? Those green spots? Urgh! Silent Mountain, you’re not delivering in this department.

  It’ll have to do. I slice off the icky bits with Dad’s old hunting knife on its chain around my neck. Hand everyone a piece. Four equal portions or we’ll never hear the end of it.

  The food perks us right up. It’s too early for sleep. What to do? Work out an escape plan from this room for a start. I instruct everyone to fan out on a Desert Rose reconnaissance mission: for what we can find, and what we can use in this space. We go over every inch of this tennis court and its spectator benches and change rooms and bathrooms, trying to find a way out. A clue to Mum. Lady Adora. Darius. Anything that can help us.

  Within twenty minutes we’re all back with warped wooden racquets and grubby white tennis balls, old nurse’s and tennis uniforms, cricket jumpers, a box of war medals, one crutch, a pile of tennis magazines and three towels of varying rattiness. Great.

  ‘No sign of Mum?’ I ask.

  Heads shaking. We look around in despair. Was she actually even in this house?

  ‘But I’m still –’

  ‘– starving. I know, Scruff,’ I snap. We’re all hungry here, mate. Plus the temperature’s dropping as night rolls in. I tell them to jump into bed before we all freeze to death, snuggle up. Not for fun, for survival, but I don’t tell them that you can actually freeze to death. Bert holds up old bits of curtain and sheets, scraps of old tennis dresses and uniforms and declares that she can do something with them, she’d just need a needle. She’s on my wavelength – we need to prepare here, bunker down, get warm.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be getting anything in the way of sewing stuff from Lady Love-ora or whatever she is,’ I say. ‘She doesn’t strike me as the practical type.’

  Bert giggles. We settle, propped in a line against the hospital-issue pillows. Listen to the wind whistling. Bert flips off the light switch. A scrabbling, in a corner. Scruff whimpers. ‘Someone’s here,’ he whispers. ‘Can you feel it, troops? Right in the back of your neck.’

  We look around. Another rustle.

  Yes, yes, we can feel … something. But no one says anything, no one wants to set everyone off. The ghost? A person watching? Someone else stuck in this place? It’s like a spider, a daddy long legs, is picking its way slowly up our backs. Shallow, quick breathing. Pummelling hearts. Hands clutched. Is it one of those poor, abandoned people Mrs Squeedly spoke about? Brrrrrrr. Scruff shivers. It’s contagious, it spreads to all of us. ‘Hello?’ Bert declares, too loud.

  Just the wind, sighing in far corners, answers back.

  I wish there were books here. To stop the thinking, to crowd the worry out. It’s going to be a long night. Scruff declares again that he’s starving and it wouldn’t be Scruff if he didn’t say that.

  ‘Silent Mountain will help,’ Pin says confidently, ‘some time,’ and that’s it, we’re off, giggling all over again.

  Then one by one they fall asleep around me. Fast. I envy their lovely oblivion. So tired, so tired, too much in my head. Because what on earth does Lady Adora mean when she says she has ‘plans’ for us? Can’t shut down my brain, can’t turn the worry off. Bucket’s out there alone somewhere, maybe still in the cata
combs, and Basti’s going mad with our vanishing and Charlie Boo’s rallying all his grandkids to look for us in entirely the wrong place. I gaze up at the strange heavens, the stars we can’t make out. It’s so different here. A softer sky, and where’s our mighty Southern Cross? Dad was always taking his bush bearings from it – but we have nothing to guide us here.

  The waiting house creaks and groans. There’s some weird kind of expectancy in it; the aching, sad breath of an abandoned building in the dark. Somewhere a startled bird flaps away. I shiver. The ghosts are active tonight. Pin wakes. Goes to cry just as he used to as a baby, wanting milk. I sssssh him quiet and he crawls instinctively into the cave of my arms, cuddling his Banjo. Finally, finally, my own sleep comes as I squeeze him tight. Like I’m never letting his deliciousness go.

  But our mother did. Walked away from us. Just walked off. Why?

  ‘You’re the worst mum ever,’ I said to her more than once. Wanted to hurt, see her flinch. She used to make me so furious. That she wouldn’t let me go bush in the high heat of summer, or drive Matilda, or swim in the water tank, or cut my hair short. It was always no, no, no, endlessly no. And then she was gone.

  Muddled dreams of somewhere far away, a strange lullaby; its soothing voice telling us to rest, sssssh, go to sleep. Like a sound inside a shell inside the deepest ocean. ‘Mum?’ I snap awake. ‘Is it you?’

  No, the voice is stranger than that, higher. I’m chilled to the bone but too tired to jump up and fetch another blanket. Just can’t make my limbs move here, everything’s too blinkin’ hard in the dead of night. I glance outside to a world snap frozen. Frosted tree branches are like bleached coral against the sky. I slip into a cocoon of five scratchy army blankets and ram close to my hot water bottle of a little man. Somehow, restlessly, fall back into sleep.

  Wake again. Bolt upright. Almost jump out of my skin.

  Above us, a boy. A boy?

  Lying like a panther on his belly along a thick crossbeam. Exactly above us, staring down.

  Is he alive? Real? Am I dreaming this?

  I flick on the lamp. Yes, a real-live staring boy. But he’s so pale. Unearthly. Lit by moonlight, glowing in a ghostly way, like he’s never known outside. A thin, quizzical face is tilted sideways as he stares at us in wonder. A pointy chin. Huge eyes with big black circles around them. It’s the early hours of the morning yet he’s completely awake. There’s a shock of sticky-up hair as luminously pale as his skin. He suddenly widens his eyes and pokes out his tongue in a very Scruff-like way. I splutter a laugh; nup, definitely not a ghost. Then he cups his face in his fists and sings a song like an ocean call, like I heard in the depths of last night; it’s the voice of a choirboy. It’s the saddest lullaby I’ve ever heard – and the most beautiful.

  ‘Lost, lost, forever they were lost.

  No one ever ca-ame.

  Gone, gone, forever they were gone,

  And Swallows’ glory, back-the-same.

  Crying, crying, forever they were crying,

  Hungry and alo-one,

  Quick, quick, we have to save them now,

  Before they turn to Bo-one.

  Oh-ooooh!

  Before they turn to Bo-one.

  Oh-oh!

  Before they turn to Bo-one.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I whisper.

  Pin wakes in my arms. Gazes up. Smiles. Reaches out. ‘Friend, Kicky, friend! Hello.’

  I hold my brother back. Ghost boy winks and does a V for Victory sign, straight at him, as if he’s known us our entire lives – or he’s been watching us the whole time, here, in this place.

  Pin and I gasp.

  ‘Bone.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The name’s Bone, chaps. Bone Boy. That’s the call sign if you need me. And you are now officially part of Company T, if you choose to accept your mission. T for tennis court, that is.’

  What? Wait. The others need to experience this. They’re shaken awake. Scruff scrabbles me off then exclaims ‘What?’ at seeing the shock of another child above him. Bert’s just got a speechless, oh-my-goodness-he’s-cute thing going on in her face.

  Where did he come from? Is he a prisoner with us?

  Bone Boy swings like a chimpanzee from his beam, skinny limbs dangling. Stare to stare. Then this new face cracks open into the most enormous grin of chuff. As if we’re some just-discovered, long-lost brothers and sisters and he can’t quite believe it. That we’re here, with him, in this place.

  He wears: calico shirt, tweed waistcoat, khaki military singlet poking out, green silk scarf jolly around his neck, a jumble of dogtags, army shorts far too big and tied with a piece of rope and an airman’s cap perky on his head. His long bare feet are curling like a monkey’s as if they’re made expressly for the purpose of climbing and swinging all over this place. In fact, he’s hugely comfortable with this room. As if he owns it, as if he’s become a part of this building, is absorbed into its very bones. And over a very long time. I draw back. Not so sure about this all of a sudden.

  ‘Bone Boy. My call sign,’ he repeats to the rest of the Caddys now awake. ‘If ever we’re under attack. Remember that, Company T. But you can also call me Commander Bone, if you like. Of the Icicle Illuminarium. That’s what Mr Davenport and Lady Adora call it all giggly among themselves, and I do too now, because it’s rather good. Don’t you think?’ We nod, uncharacteristically speechless at this barrage of talk. ‘Jolly good, chaps! We’re going to have a spiffing time! Eh? And in the greatest building that ever existed, no less. You’ll never want to leave it, oh no. Now, this room is HQ. Repeat, HQ. Headquarters. If only the Squeedlys knew.’ He claps his hands in delight. ‘T Company, you are about to have the adventure of your lives.’ A flash of the most beautiful smile once again, a smile that makes me think he’s been very loved because all the sun of the world is in it and it just makes you want to smile right back. Which Bert does, of course, wider than I’ve ever seen in my life. I roll my eyes at her. Oh please.

  Bone Boy laughs and swings wide, back and forth, then jumps off his beam with a double somersault that lands him neatly on his feet, right in front of us.

  ‘You’ve got to teach me that flip,’ Bert whispers in awe at the new trick the gymnastics champion can’t actually master yet.

  ‘Roger. But plenty of time, old girl. Yes? What?’

  We Caddys are all looking at each other, then back at the boy who’s tumbling out his talk as if he hasn’t spoken to new people for years here and it’s been all bottled up and is bursting out. Oh yes indeed, Pinny, a brand new friend. I hold out a hand strong to shake. It’s grasped, nope, let’s say pumped. Ow. Any lingering doubts that he could actually be a ghost are well and truly squashed at this point.

  ‘Proper introductions. Pronto. Eh? Now you are the legendary Kick Caddy, I presume?’ Hang on, how does he know my name? ‘Jolly good to meet you, K.’ He stares straight where the knife is hidden around my neck. ‘Well, terrified actually, but delighted. And I come in peace, my friend. All right? No Jerrys here. Ha! Just so you know.’ It’s like he’s never been taught how to put a stop on talk; like he can’t wait to jump into everything and there’s so little time and we have to begin, right now, in the early hours, in the pitch dark. And he’s making me feel like he’s been waiting his whole life to meet me. I can’t help laughing. Is he all bluff?

  He bows low, scraping the floor with an imaginary feathered hat. ‘What an honour. Yes? And this is your merry band of troublemakers, I’m guessing. I mean, troubadours? I mean, crack troops, Special Ops. Escape and Evasion Unit, possibly?’ He winks. ‘Just thought I’d throw that in. Learnt a lot from the troops stationed here. All good fun, eh.’

  ‘Scruff. Man of the family.’ My brother steps forward and booms his voice an octave deeper than usual. We girls giggle. ‘I do slingshots. Bows and arrows. Whips and ropes.’ I think he should be saying grenades and tanks here, perhaps.

  ‘And chocolate, too,’ Bert mutters under her breath, which sets me off again as
Scruff continues on, oblivious.

  ‘I’m working on the driving but it’ll come any time soon. And is there any chocolate here, mate?’ We splutter a laugh. ‘Ack ack guns? Ration packs? What do you call it again, grub? I need to get the lie of the land. Need some action.’

  ‘Ah, the mighty Scruff. S, from now on. Copy? Who’ll be the saviour of the entire allied world along with this ailing house, no doubt. Jolly good to meet you, old chap. I have great faith in you.’ Bone’s voice drops conspiratorially. ‘And yes, there’s an abandoned wibble wobble – a tank – in the stables. An army jeep by the greenhouse and Yankee chocolate in Silent Mountain’s cookie jar, at the back of the larder. Well, it might be a bit old, it’s from the American flyboys who were sent here to be patched up. By golly, the swear words I learnt from them.’ Scruff is gobsmacked. ‘Oh yes,’ Bone nods, ‘nothing escapes C.O. Bone in this house. Commanding Officer, that is. Unless you …?’

  We shake our heads; nope, we’ll leave the C.O. to him for now.

  ‘Silent Mountain,’ Bert says. ‘You call him that too?’

  ‘Captain B, I do now. Remember, nothing escapes me here.’ We Caddys look at each other again; who is he? He points up and down at my sister’s beautifully mad clothes. ‘I say, rather dazzling, aren’t you? Scary, too. Just like your sister. Quite the old lags, you two, I think – that means fighters, Company T, who are jolly well experienced. Just the type for Special Ops, eh?’

  Bert’s blushing madly, smiling, ‘Really?’ Quite someone else. The rest of us are rolling our eyes. She’s beyond too much.

  ‘B, you can tell me everything. All your plans, gripes, because I am the secret master of this house as well as C.O., and I am everywhere –’ he grins that gorgeous smile again ‘– and nowhere. It’s my big secret in this place.’

  ‘What about Lady Adora?’ Pin asks.

  ‘No idea I exist!’ He laughs. ‘Spiffing, eh? I haunt her nights and days, whisper in her air vents, cry in her cupboards, knock on doors then disappear through walls and window gaps – until she’s driven quite mad with it.’ Bone rubs his hands, cackling, then leaps back on the beam, dips his toes along it and finishes in a handstand and neat straddle with his chin propped right above Bert’s face. That would take a lot of practice. ‘I have the run of this house, and the Honourable Adora Ellicott has no idea. It’s how I know all your secrets. Oh yes, Commander Bone is lord and master of all the obscure corridors here. The gaps between walls. The disused lifts, the cellars. And he also has very big ears. He’s been trained in espionage, from the very best. The men who were posted here. Our nation’s finest. Somewhat wounded, but still our finest.’ He stares at Pin. ‘So don’t you ever surrender to them, old boy. Don’t go handing me in. Not a word about your Commander Bone to the lady of the house, all right?’