The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy

by John Lawrence

  The children each raised both of their eyebrows and looked quizzically at Old Hag. Given her choice of clothes, who can blame them. Whatshisname, who had sneaked back into the chapter while Old Hag was busy cackling, tried his best to look quizzical but failed quite miserably. Looking quizzical had never been his strong point, his time on the vet’s table during the surprise outing being the closest he had come to raising an eyebrow or two.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Uncle Quagmire, bravely carrying on despite the digressive narrative, ‘they told me that the only way to preventicate this certain criminal mastermind from destroying or dominating the civilised world is to . . .’

  Uncle Quagmire paused melodramatically. The children were deeply impressed by his use of dramatic effect and histrionic verbal dexterity, but in truth it was because he had a lump of ginger cake stuck in his throat. He coughed, and bits of cake splattered out, having a dramatic effect on the face of Whatshisname, who tried frantically to lick them off. Uncle Quagmire retrieved the bits of cake, popped them back into his mouth, and continued almost exactly from where he had left off: ‘is to go back in time and, through fair means or foul, to stop him from being born!’

  The children gasped a huge gasp, as they hadn’t gasped for a while and one had built up inside them. Old Hag, not wanting to be left out of any Secret Five activity, also decided to gasp, but she wasn’t so good at it, having missed out on all the training, and it sounded more like an amateur wheeze than a highly-trained gasp.

  ‘Go back? time? fair? foul? stop? born?’ said Betty, in a daze and unable to say prepositions or conjunctives.

  ‘Yes, Betty,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘You’re right when you say go back time fair foul stop born, for that is my mission in a very small and concise nutshell, if nutshells come that small and concise these days, that is. It’ll be highly dangerous, no doubt, and very highly risky, but now I’m here I’ll do what I have to do to save the world, and more if necessary. You children are very naughty indeed and shouldn’t have followed me here. But as you’re here, the mission for you, should you choose to accept it, is simple but too highly dangerous. And far too highly risky.’

  ‘I knew I should have left the story at the beginning,’ mumbled Amy. ‘I don’t like the sound of anything that’s too highly risky. I wanted to be in an adventure where we discover buried treasure and easily outwit a gang of clumsy escaped convicts.’

  ‘I understand your fears, Ann . . . Angela . . . erm, Amy?’ Uncle Quagmire said. ‘I wouldn’t want to lose you to a hideously prolonged death. After all, you’ve always been like a daughter to me.’

  ‘I am your daughter,’ Amy reminded him.

  Uncle Quagmire stared at her. ‘Oh . . . okay. But, despite that, I still wouldn’t want to lose you.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly, Amy,’ said Daniel in a real man’s voice. ‘We’ll be all right. Maybe. Anyway, Uncle Quagmire, I have some questions.’

  And indeed, Daniel had some questions, because someone who shall remain nameless had slipped a list of important questions into his hand while everyone’s attention was elsewhere. ‘Question Number One,’ he said, consulting the piece of paper, ‘is about stunt nuns – what exactly is a stunt nun?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Uncle Quagmire said. ‘I thought everyone knew.’

  ‘I know, I know, I know!’ yelled Old Hag, waving her arm in the air like a classroom swot. Uncle Quagmire slapped her.

  ‘Right, let me explain,’ he said, firmly yet diligently. ‘In this very city at this very moment some Hollywood people are filming a very spectavagant film, and it’s got lots of nuns in it. One of those nuns must do dangerous things, like running quite quickly down a green grassy hillside, so she’ll need a running stunt nun double. You see?’

  ‘Oh,’ said one of the children1.

  ‘Question Two,’ said Daniel quite relentlessly referring to his list. ‘What has the stunt nun got to do with the man who is threatening to destroy or dominate the world?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Uncle Quagmire, and Daniel felt quite proud of his question, although it wasn’t him that thought of the question, was it now?

  Uncle Quagmire beckoned them to gather round closely, which they already were, so they first tried to ungather a bit so they could gather round again.

  ‘The stunt nun, Clarissa Claghorn, is staying near here in the Hotel Bristol,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘which is the sister hotel to the Hotel Salzburg in Bristol. Coincidentally, there is also a Hotel Bristol in Bristol, but that’s neither here nor there – unless you are staying there, of course, in which case you’d have to know whether it’s here or there otherwise you’d never find your way back to it, and your luggage would be lost forever, together with the fluffy bathrobe and the rather fetching shower cap you intended to steal. Anyway, children, I do wish you’d stop digressatering, for it is here in Salzburg at the Hotel Bristol that she first meets and . . . and, erm, becomes very friendly with an American tourist named Bartle de Lylow.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Amy meaningfully.

  ‘And,’ continued Uncle Quagmire, ‘in that weekend they first meet and, erm, um, become overly friendly. Their overly friendship results in the sudden conception of Sampson de Lylow, the man that heads a shadowy group who call themselves The Shadowy Group, and he is the very man who is threatening the very securitiness of mankind with his shadowy threats of destroying the world as we know it by starting a new master race and re-populating the world with perfect subjects, and who, amongst other things, will exterminate all smirking patronising television chefs and those authors who insist on writing very long sentences that go on and on for ever and ever and then seem to stop in mid. This man, dear children, is so utterly evil that he fully deserves to be made to sit on the naughty step for quite a long time. Anyway, I cannot tell you any more about his shadowy threat as it would give substance to the narrative and ruin your little adventure. Suffice it to say that my secret mission is to stop that conception so that Sampson de Lylow will never be born!’

  Amy raised one of her hands into the air around her head. ‘Can I ask something?’ she said, obviously very keen to ask a penetrating and incisive question.

  ‘Hang on, is it on my list of official penetrating and incisive questions?’ asked Daniel, waving the piece of paper at her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Amy. ‘I’ll try it. It’s this – what does conception mean?’

  ‘Erm . . .’ said Daniel, checking his list. ‘No, it’s not on the list! So I’m not sure if that’s allowed.’

  But Betty was suddenly very eager to share her thorough knowledge of all things gynaecological with her cousin Amy. ‘Conception, Amy,’ she said quite loudly and steadfastly, ‘is where the man’s spermatozoa, after ejaculation, enters the woman’s cervix, some of which then enter the fallopian tube, where the nuclei of an individual sperm will enthusiastically fuse with the ovum’s nucleus to form something called the zygote.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Amy, keen to be identified as a major character but still very much in the dark, both about the mechanics of conception and the reason why they had to stop this Bartle man and Clarissa woman getting together to stop a baby happening.

  Uncle Quagmire looked strangely at Betty for a while, then for a while longer, before speaking. ‘Er,’ he erred, thoroughly wrinkling his very own brow. ‘O-kay. Very, erm, edifying. Now, can I say that, although I think that you’re all very nauchievous for following me here, and the secret mission will be highly very dangerous and highly very risky, I suppose I could use you all as disposable pawns in my secret mission to stop this, er, enthusiastic sperm fusing business.’

  Disposable pawns! Gosh! The children suddenly felt quite important! And, even though some of them, would you believe, weren’t at all sure what it all meant, they felt quite excited at the thought of stopping a conception.

  Just then, without any consideration whatsoever for the mechanics of plot progression, two things happened. One, Whatshisname barked an excited ‘woof woof woof’ but e
veryone ignored him except for one lady passer-by who poked him quite sharply with her pointy umbrella as she passed. And two, Daniel decided that this was an opportune time to raise the burning issue of his character wearing spectacles.

  ‘I’d like to wear spectacles!’ he said, to prove the point.

  ‘What?’ Betty spluttered, ignoring the fact that it’s hard, if not impossible, to splutter one short word.

  The others looked strangely at Daniel, who hadn’t ever openly voiced a desire to wear spectacles.

  ‘I said,’ he said, ‘I’d like to be a character that wears spectacles. Wire framed ones. Varifocals, preferably. That’d be good. Ones with an anti-reflective coating.’

  ‘But,’ butted Amy, ‘you’ve got this far in the story without wearing glasses! Do you actually need them to see with?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Daniel said. He put down his drink and squinted at the others to see if that made any difference to his vision. It didn’t.

  ‘It’s only attention seeking if you ask me,’ mumbled Amy.

  ‘It’s not!’ said Daniel, glad of the attention. ‘It’s just that I’d like the opportunity to suck the curly end of the side bit that rests around the ear when I’m thinking hard about some difficult aspect of the adventure. I can also point the curly bit at someone when I’m making a valid point.’

  ‘Ah! Sounds reasonable to me,’ offered Uncle Quagmire. ‘If not a little late. Go ahead then, Daniel. Wear spectacles from here on. Now, where were we?’

  Daniel sucked on the curly end of his spectacle arm and put on a ponderous look.

  Whatshisname sighed. He was always on the lookout for an iconic moment in the history of The Secret Five, and that definitely wasn’t it.

  ‘I think you were talking about stopping a concession,’ said Amy, glancing at Daniel’s spectacles and wondering whether to request some for herself.

  ‘So, what is the plan, Uncle Quagmire?’ asked Daniel, proudly slipping on his spectacles and pushing them up the bridge of his nose. They felt really good.

  ‘Well,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘today is the day when Clarissa and Bartle meet and . . . and . . .’

  ‘Can I ask why do you keep doing that?’ asked Amy. ‘All that dot dot dot stuff?’

  Uncle Quagmire smiled a knowing smile. ‘Oh how much you have to learn, strange child. It’s lit-speak for me being uncertain, not wanting to say the words, or a literary pause.’

  ‘Oh, gosh!’ Amy said. ‘How very interesting!’

  ‘As I was saying . . .’ Uncle Quagmire continued in a rather grown-up manner, ‘according to Sampson de Lylow’s autobiography My Plan Is To Dominate The World – which, incidentally, is ghost-written by himself – very soon is the time when his parents Clarissa and Bartle meet while they are touring a big castle not far from here. Then they have dinner, and later on the, erm, conception takes place, so the strategic and daring plan is to stop them from getting together in the first place.’

  The children seemed utterly confused by it all, but Daniel managed to suggest something which sounded quite sensible. ‘Why don’t we just kidnap this Bartle fellow?’

  Betty was keen to join in all the suggesting. ‘Or kidnap Clarissa?’

  ‘I don’t think kidnapping is a good idea, children,’ Uncle Quagmire said. ‘I think the besterest way is to keep them apart.’

  ‘Or kidnap both of them and keep them in the same room!’ said Amy, rather stupidly.

  ‘Woof woof woof,’ said Whatshisname wearily.

  ‘What about me?’ piped up Old Hag.

  ‘What about you?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘Can’t I suggest someone to kidnap?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, if you must,’ said Daniel bravely. ‘As you’re an honorary member of The Secret Five.’

  ‘Right,’ she said in her best old hag voice. ‘How about us kidnapping you, Quaggy? Ay? Ay?’

  ‘What? Kidnap me?’ exclaimed Uncle Quagmire, his jolly nose twitching quite uncontrollably. ‘I’ve already been kidnapped once in this adventure! Twice would be downright clumsy. Anyway, why me?’

  ‘Ha! Because they won’t be expecting it,’ Old Hag said. ‘Always surprise your enemy, that’s what they all said in the war. Do the unexpected. I’m old, you know.’

  ‘Look,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘No kidnapping, okay? Not Clarissa, not Bartle. And especially not me! It would make the plot structure far too complifficult for everyone.’

  ‘What about the dog, then?’ cackled Old Hag. ‘Ha! She looks as if a bit of kidnapping might do her some good. Bostin’ idea, don’t you think? Ay?’

  Everyone ignored her, except Whatshisname who whimpered and nuzzled up against Betty’s leg for comfort.

  ‘Right, enough of all this loose talk!’ said Uncle Quagmire, quite firmly for a man with tremendously thin knees. ‘Gather round again for my undeniably good propoggestion. I propoggest that now we go to the castle which, apparently, is not far from here, where some of us befriend Clarissa and some of us befriend Bartle, and we keep them apart at this critical time.’

  ‘Good plan!’ said Daniel.

  ‘Really good plan!’ said Betty, striving for originality.

  ‘Really really good plan,’ agreed Amy, inventively.

  ‘Woooof,’ said Whatshisname, who was now sitting with his ears pricked, which must have been painful but nothing compared to having his testicles whipped away without a by-your-leave.

  ‘Good!’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘Let’s finish off our ginger cake, pay the bill, and go and explore!’

  They all sat, quietly finishing off their ginger cake and trying desperately to think of some useful dialogue which would give value to the plot, which they couldn’t, so they didn’t. Then, after a long and heated discussion and an equally long and heated silence with the Austrian waitress about the forthcoming Euro currency and the lamentable failings of the Common Agricultural Policy, they strolled off purposefully in several directions.

  ‘Where are you going?’ called Uncle Quagmire from his direction.

  ‘This way,’ yelled Daniel from his direction.

  ‘I’m this way,’ yelled Amy from yet another direction. ‘And so is Betty.’

  ‘Ha!’ yelled Old Hag from her direction.

  ‘Woof woof woof,’ said Whatshisname in a muffled bark. He was sitting quite gloomily where they had left him with the bill in his mouth and the waitress standing over him with her hand outstretched, waiting to be paid.

  ‘Come this way, everyone,’ called Amy. ‘Here there’s a sign that says To The Castle.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Betty. ‘Amy’s not often wrong about such things.’

  They all started to walk in Amy’s chosen direction. The sun shone all the while but it was now very, very cloudy so they couldn’t see it shining at all. They continued on their way, chatting and laughing, but not usually at the same time. They walked and walked until the castle came looming into view. To be fair, it had always been in view, as the café in the outdoor square was right alongside the castle, so it had actually been very secretly and quietly looming all the time.

  They all stopped all the walking and walking to look up at the quietly looming castle. ‘Gosh! This is a real castle!’ said Daniel excitedly, yet with a hint of desolation. ‘It’s nothing like his pathetic pretend castle back in chapter seven, is it? How that one got into the story I’ll never know. This one’s got those corbels and bastions and bulwarks and segmental ramps and hard sticky-up things at the top! Gosh again!’

  They all followed Daniel up to the castle walls, but found that they could walk no further without actually going inside.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Daniel suggested. ‘But here’s a secret suggestion. What about leaving Old Hag out here to keep watch.’

  ‘Good idea!’ said Betty.

  ‘What?’ Old Hag cackled. ‘Stay outside and miss all the inside fun? Ha! You must be joking. I want to witness your missionary zeal!’

  ‘Actually,’ said Uncle Quagmire, quite sternly. ‘It
is a jolly good idea. Old Hag, stay here with the faithful dog Whatshisname and keep watch.’

  ‘Why me?’ said Old Hag.

  ‘Woof?’ said Whatshisname.

  ‘What for?’ Old Hag asked.

  ‘Woof woof?’ said Whatshisname.

  ‘I’m not staying here with this blasted mongrel!’ said Old Hag.

  ‘Woof woof woof!!!’ said Whatshisname.

  ‘She stinks of creosote and pineapple,’ said Old Hag.

  ‘Woof woof woof woof woof WOOF!’ said Whatshisname.

  ‘Yes, yow do!’ said Old Hag to Whatshisname. ‘Dow yow argue! Look, the shock ’as med moy goo back ter me dialect now!’

  ‘Woof woof?’ said Whatshisname. ‘Woof woof woof woooooof?’

  ‘It dow not!’ Old Hag snapped at Whatshisname. ‘It ay loike that, yow mungrel! Be noice ter moy!’

  ‘No, Old Hag!’ pleaded Betty. ‘ Anything but the dialect! Please! Look, what if you stay here alone and Whatshisname comes with us?’

  Whatshisname looked relieved at the latest and most sensible suggestion, and wagged his tail quite quickly from side to side and back again.

  ‘So warramoy s’posed ter do ear?’ asked Old Hag.

  ‘For a start, do as Betty says and please please drop the dialect,’ said Daniel. ‘And in answer to your question, you can keep watch.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Old Hag.

  ‘For . . .’ began Daniel, ‘well, for things that might ruin our adventure, that’s what for.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Old Hag.

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ said Daniel, looking to the others for support.

  ‘If you’re in our secret club,’ said Betty quite helpfully, ‘then you should do whatever needs to be done in the name of adventure, and watching for something that might ruin our adventure is an essential part of every adventure. It’s our calling, see?’

  The children murmured several quiet yet meaningful murmurs in agreement. Old Hag looked even more bewildered than usual, worried that her privilegeless membership of the club was at risk. She slumped down on a handy wall, ideal for slumping on.