The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy

by John Lawrence

  ‘Ha!’ she cackled. ‘I overheard you all chatting. Great news, I’m coming with you!’

  ‘I thought you were in a trance,’ said Daniel.

  ‘No, Dandy, I wasn’t in a trance!’ Old Hag shouted. ‘I was concentrating! Hard!’

  ‘And anyway,’ said Amy, ‘you said that the bed was Uncle Quagmire’s time machine, and you were wrong!’

  ‘I was close! Anyway, I’m old!’ said Old Hag. ‘My memory’s not what it used to be when I was but a slip of a lad . . . or was it a slip of a lass? See what I mean? But, hold on, I’m sure there’s something else I should tell you at this point. Now whatever was it?’

  ‘Go on, girls,’ Daniel said. ‘Into the wardrobe before Old Hag comes out of her trance!’

  ‘Hey!’ yelled Old Hag. She struggled to get off the bed as Betty stepped over to the wardrobe. Betty opened the door a little and peeped inside, then pulled the door open wide. ‘It looks just like a normal big wardrobe to me,’ she said. ‘Except that it’s empty and devoid of anything that looks consequential in any way.’

  ‘Right, get in!’ said Daniel, enjoying being in charge for a change, even though his spectacles hadn’t yet appeared. ‘And you, Amy, drag Whatshisname inside with you. Then I’ll flick this switch and join you.’

  ‘What about me?’ said Old Hag as she fell off the bed, landing with her head tucked between a shapely pair of Queen Anne legs.

  ‘Sorry, Old Hag,’ said Daniel in his best apologetic voice. ‘The wardrobe’s full. We have health and safety considerations to consider. And you’d only be in the way of our super adventure.’

  ‘And it is our destiny to rescue Uncle Quagmire,’ added Betty as she stepped into the wardrobe. Amy followed her, pulling Whatshisname in by his ears. Old Hag was struggling to get up as Daniel made sure that the display on the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock was still set to 1964, then he flicked the switch and hurried into the wardrobe. Even without spectacles, he thought, he’d make a pretty good leader. He slammed the door shut, and they all held their breath!

  From inside, they could hear Old Hag banging her scrawny fists on the door and calling, ‘I’ve remembered what it was! There’s a chapt . . .’

  Chapter Ten

  In which there’s hardly time to draw a breath; it’s over in a flash, and a complete waste of a chapter number; there’s a wardrobe and not much other stuff; these chapter preambles just slow down the narrative pace, and that’s very irritating; the faithful dog Whatshisname clings fondly to a leg and recalls the good times.

  In the wardrobe the children were still holding their breath, thankfully unaware of any sneaky literary divisions, but fully aware of a gentle rocking of the wardrobe from side to side. Amy, unsurprisingly, was very scared and clung to Daniel tightly. Whatshisname was also quite frightened, and wrapped his front paws around Amy’s leg, giving him an opportunity to fondly recall old times. The gentle rocking of the wardrobe was accompanied by a piercing high pitched noise, which sounded very much like a scream, very much like a woman screaming, very much like an old woman screaming, very much like . . .

  The door burst open and there stood Old Hag, screaming, ‘Take me! Take me!’

  Daniel was rather aghast at first, as he thought that Old Hag was ready to take full advantage of the Sixties’ reputation for its free love and the moral vacuum that existed before Dyson came along, but soon realised that they hadn’t gone back in time at all. Old Hag must have stopped the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock!

  ‘Take me! You need me!’ shouted Old Hag. ‘I’m going to go with you. Let me in!’

  ‘You stopped it!’ said Amy, frantically trying to shake Whatshisname off her leg. ‘That’s not fair! You’re ruining our adventure! Anyway, there’s only room for three persons in here.’

  ‘But I’ve got a two-for-one voucher!’ Old Hag cried, foraging about in her cardigan pocket.

  ‘Oh, let’s take her,’ said Betty. ‘After all, she is a member, and we no longer have Ricky. She can be a poor substitute. Come on in, Old Hag. Hurry!’

  ‘Ha! You won’t regret this,’ said Old Hag as she clambered in. But it was too late, as they already had.

  Daniel went over to reset the homemade thing that wasn’t an alarm clock. He flicked the switch and hurried back into the wardrobe. He slammed the door, and they waited and waited. Whatshisname still clung to Amy’s leg, sighing and with the merest hint of a smile. Amy clung to Daniel, who also sighed and had the merest hint of a startled frown.

  One moment the wardrobe was there, and the next moment – it was still there. And, indeed, the next moment and the moment after that. But apart from all this being still there, absolutely nothing was happening inside the wardrobe – no whirring noises, no spinning through a tunnel-type spinning thing, no computer-graphically-enhanced whirling through time and space with a background of eeee-ooooh-eeeeee-wa-wa-wa-ooooo-eeeeee music.

  ‘This is absolutely horrid. Nothing’s happening,’ said Amy. ‘I expected at least to be whirling through time and space. Do you think the bottom is going to drop out of the wardrobe? Do you?’

  PART TWO

  Chapter Eleven

  In which we meet Uncle Quagmire and immediately regret it; a coach load of peripheral characters make an appearance; stunt nuns are gently introduced into the storyline for some obscure reason; Daniel completely destroys a humdinger of a cliffhanger chapter ending.

  Uncle Quagmire was a strange fellow at the best of times and, with a literary flourish, at the worst of times. He was quite an odd-looking fellow for his height, and had a bit of a jolly face. That bit was his nose, which had a jolly shape to it with two matching nostrils. Apart from that, his face was quite sullen looking, but he couldn’t see it from where he usually stood so it didn’t really matter to him. He was clean-shaven under the little beard on his chin and the little moustache above his top lip, and he had mightily small ears for the size of his head. Altogether he looked like a slightly eccentric scientist, but the children knew that he had a heart of gold, which he kept in a jar in a cupboard under the stairs.

  Uncle Quagmire’s worries about the first testing of his time machine had proved to be unfounded. His recent failed inventions, to be honest, had given him cause for concern. The inflatable travel dartboard idea had attracted the attention of the authorities after a spot of bother on a BA flight to Dubai, and several experiments with his rocket-powered mousetrap had repeatedly caused damage to the village church’s ancient stained glass window, which now incorporated several spread-eagled-mouse-shaped holes in the sacred depiction of the Last Supper, one of them missing Judas Iscariot’s pint of shandy by a whisker.

  But his prototype time machine had worked spectacularly! Just twenty-one minutes ago he had landed safely, with a bit of a bump, on a swath of small flowers which looked quite out of place in a large flower bed in the middle of 1964 Salzburg.

  ‘My goodness!’ he had muttered to himself, looking around in slight wonderment. ‘It worked! My time machine actually worked! Assuming this is 1964, of course. How splendacious!’

  People had stared at him as though he’d just dropped out of the sky! He’d stood up and had marvelled at his own ingenuity. But he knew that all the spontaneous marvelling must be curbed, for he had an important mission, and that mission was top-secret, so he couldn’t tell a soul about it. Except, that is, a coach party of swarthy men and their even swarthier wives that he’d met as he was brushing the crushed flowers off his clothes. They had stopped to ask the way to somewhere or other. During his explanation on how to get to somewhere or other he inadvertently told them all about his secret mission.

  ‘Bother!’ he said, after a few minutes of studious attention by the group of swarthy yet attentive people. ‘I’m not supposed to tell anyone all this secret stuff.’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ one swarthy man at the back shouted. ‘You have to bear in mind, good fellow, that we are all Italians from a nearby place called Italy, and we don’t spe
ak or understand any English whatsoever, as sure as day follows night. Not a single word. We didn’t comprehend a bloomin’ word, and that’s no lie, so you have no worries on that count, chum.’

  ‘He’s dead right,’ his swarthy Italian wife added. ‘Every man-jack of us didn’t understand any of that stuff you just said, but we’re tickled pink that you’ve told us the way to somewhere or other, and explained all about your secret mission, pal.’

  ‘Phew!’ said Uncle Quagmire, wiping his own brow with one of his free hands. ‘I was almost compromisated then. I really appreciate your swarthy honesty.’

  ‘It’s been a sheer pleasure,’ yet another swarthy man said, before leading his swarthy coach party off stage-left. Uncle Quagmire walked away, knowing exactly what his mission instructions were, and exactly where he was supposed to go next.

  But just as he was walking away and wondering where he was supposed to go next, he heard a series of whooshing and thudding noises that sounded like three children, a dog and an old hag landing on a Salzburg flower bed!

  ‘Ouch!’ cried Amy. ‘That hurt!’

  ‘Not as much as it hurt me. You landed on me!’ said Daniel. That made them all laugh, except Whatshisname, who was incapable of laughing due to the structure of the canine neural circuits, and who always experienced a great deal of trouble responding to the punch lines of jokes unless accompanied by a proffered Good Boy biscuit.

  ‘Look! There’s Uncle Quagmire!’ exclaimed Betty, pointing her finger accurately at Uncle Quagmire.

  ‘And so it is!’ said Amy, quite excitedly. ‘And still as badly-dressed as ever!’

  Whatshisname scampered happily over to Uncle Quagmire and joyfully bit his left ankle rather firmly. Their relationship had certainly seen better times, many sticks ago. Understandably, those better times were before the unfortunate bouncing-dog experiment involving the home-made trebuchet, the over-zealous trampoline and the ill-fated queue of people at the bus stop.

  The children ran over to Uncle Quagmire, leaving Old Hag floundering on the flower bed.

  ‘Oy! Wait for me!’ she yelled. ‘I’m old, you know!’

  ‘Uncle Quagmire!’ cried Amy in quite a girly way. ‘We didn’t know what had happened to you! Old Hag told us you were on a secret mission.’

  ‘Yes, I certainly am,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘but as it’s so secret I’d probably have to kill you with my bare hands if I told you about it.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Amy. ‘Tell us all about it, please do!’

  ‘Later,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘Where’s the other one . . . erm, the boy, you know the one, always hungry – quite ugly – ah yes, Ricky, that’s his name.’

  ‘He left us,’ said Daniel, fairly responsibly and just as seriously. ‘He said he was being treated badly and stormed off. Old Hag here has taken his place.’

  ‘Oh bother, not her!’ Uncle Quagmire said. ‘She’s old, you know.’

  They all turned and watched as Old Hag raised herself out of the flower bed. ‘Ha!’ she cried as she eventually scuttled over to them. ‘So, this is 1964, is it?’

  ‘1964?’ gasped Betty. ‘Gosh and wow! But where are we? Is this Stoke-on-Trent?’

  ‘No, silly girl,’ said Uncle Quagmire, having a private chuckle at Betty’s expense. ‘This is like Stoke-on-Trent but it’s more like Salzburg.’

  ‘The one near Brisbane?’ asked Daniel. ‘Golly, how exciting!’

  Uncle Quagmire had yet another private chuckle, with the reassuring thought that two private chuckles in the space of a few seconds was really going some.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘This Salzburg is near Austria, which is closely joined by land to several other neighbouring countries.’

  ‘Gosh!’ said Daniel, ever eager to expand his woefully inadequate knowledge about European geography and, surreptitiously, the history of lace making in the East Midlands.

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Uncle Quagmire, keen to maintain the narrative pace. ‘All this fantasterful time-travelling has made me quite thirsty. How about finding a shop that dispenses drinks and we’ll chat all about it over a scrumlicious cup of whatever they sell in these times.’

  ‘Good idea!’ said Betty, enthusiastically. ‘It’s a shame Ricky isn’t here to enjoy it, isn’t it?’

  ‘Woof woof WOOF!!!!’ barked Whatshisname for no reason whatsoever except, perhaps, as a subconscious motivation derived from anthropological customs, or because Uncle Quagmire had trodden ‘accidentally’ on his paw.

  Happily, they all walked or, in the case of Whatshisname, limped, to an Austrian outdoor café in a four-sided outdoor square, where they all sat down and ordered lemon and lime cordial and ginger cake, which were freely available in Salzburg in 1964, were they not?

  ‘So, tell us all about this secret mission,’ said Daniel. ‘And the reason why you were kidnapped.’

  ‘I know it all!’ interrupted Old Hag, who had trailed behind them and was now making herself quite comfortable at their table. ‘Ask me! Ask me!’

  ‘Okay,’ said Betty, with a hint of a firm but tranquil shrug. ‘Tell us if you must.’

  ‘Well,’ said Old Hag, ‘your Uncle Quagmire is on a secret mission and he was forced to make use of his time machine to come here and save the world by stopping a stunt nun from getting preggers . . .’ Quite suddenly she stopped talking and looked around her. ‘Where are we, Quaggy? Is this Loughborough? Where am the nuns?’

  ‘No, it’s not Loughborough, silly Old Hag. We’re in Salzburg, near Austria,’ said Uncle Quagmire knowingly and almost reassuringly.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not the one near Brisbane, Uncle Quagmire?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Stunt nun?’ enquired Betty.

  ‘Preggers?’ asked Amy. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Woof woof woof,’ moaned Whatshisname, licking his paw.

  ‘I thought you said you was going to Loughborough,’ said Old Hag. ‘I’m sure that you said . . .’

  ‘Anyway,’ interrupted Uncle Quagmire, ‘as I was saying, children, I was kidnapped and made to . . .’

  ‘Go back to nineteen sixty four!’ said Old Hag.

  ‘Look!’ said Uncle Quagmire to Old Hag, quite irritably for a man of his shoe size. ‘It’s my story and there are people out there waiting to know all about this, okay? Don’t you have to do something, go somewhere? Go off to the toilet or something like that?’

  ‘Oh blimey, ta very much, I knew there was something I had to do,’ mumbled Old Hag, as she scrambled off her chair and scurried away, bravely followed by Whatshisname who had been desperate to go since chapter six.

  ‘Right,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘now she’s gone, gather round the table and I’ll explain.’

  ‘Yes, let’s!’ said Amy, gathering round a little too quickly and making herself dizzy.

  ‘Well children, thanks for gathering round so obediently. Now, my very secret mission is to stop a stunt nun from getting pregnant . . .’ started Uncle Quagmire.

  ‘What’s a stunt nun?’ asked Amy, rather unnecessarily.

  ‘You don’t know? Hmmm. I’ll come to that later,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘Now, you know that I used to work for the government, secretly, undercover . . .’

  ‘Gosh! A bit like our Secret Five!’ said Amy.

  ‘Yes, if you like . . .’ he went on, ‘except for the kangaroo, of course. Well, as you probably know, I retired on a rather generocious final-salary retired-undercover-spy graduated occupational pension – the value of which, by the way, can go up or down – after the unfortunate incident with the royal-corgi-cam in the Queen’s private bathroom. But then they learnt about my latest invention . . .’

  ‘Your time machine!’ said Betty.

  ‘Quite,’ said Uncle Quagmire, quite quietly. ‘So they asked me to do one more job for them, and I refused.’

  ‘Ha! He refused!’ cackled Old Hag, adjusting the gusset of her tracksuit bottoms as she reappeared and hoisted herself onto a chair.

  ‘Shush!’ shushed Daniel. ‘Le
t him finish. It might become mildly interesting.’

  ‘In the end,’ Uncle Quagmire continued, ‘I went into hiding at Greentiles but they found me and kidnapped me so that they could send me here to . . .’

  At that point Old Hag started waving her arms around and yelled, ‘Chapter break! Chapter break!’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Uncle Quagmire, glaring a very effective glare at Old Hag.

  ‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said Betty. ‘She’s got inside information about chapter breaks. There’s obviously one due.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘In that case, I’ll pause on a mini cliffhanger, shall I?’

  The children thought that was a good idea, and said so. ‘That’s a good idea,’ they all said, quite unsurprisingly.

  ‘So,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘they secretly told me that a certain criminal mastermind is being very nasty indeed and is about to threatenise the civilised world with . . .’ He paused, to rack up the tension and to maximise the dramatic effect, ‘worldwide mass destruction!’

  ‘Worldwide mass destruction?’ exclaimed Daniel. ‘Golly, that’s quite serious, isn’t it? Now, anyone fancy another glass of lemon and lime cordial?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘But you’ve now completely destroyed the worldwide mass destruction cliffhanger chapter ending!’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Daniel meekly.

  They all sat looking at each other, quietly sipping their cordials, which tasted quite nice.

  Chapter Twelve

  In which we learn of a highly dangerous mission; a shadowy group is mentioned, very briefly; Betty explains about fallopian tubes, which is quite interesting, everything else considered; Old Hag slumps onto a handy wall; the reader ponders upon the wisdom of impulse book purchases.

  ‘I am really sorry,’ said Daniel, even more meekly than his previous meekly. ‘I think I ruined the end-of-chapter cliffhanger.’

  ‘Ha! You should be sorry, Dando!’ cackled Old Hag. ‘Don’t know you’re born, you kids don’t. Come to think of it, you haven’t been born yet, have you?’