Amy was rooted to the spot, thanks to some carelessly discarded chewing gum. She peered over Ricky’s shoulder. ‘Let George join us if he asks,’ she whispered to Ricky. ‘Please?’
‘Oh, of course I’ll join,’ George said, flashing his whiter-than-white teeth at them. ‘And I think I can help. If you’re looking for Sampson, I can help find him, I’m your man. Yeah.’ He wiggled his hips and ran his fingers silently through his own hair, as it would have been very forward of him to run them silently through someone else’s hair. ‘Sampson’s probably getting ready and doing some last minute rehearsing for the musical that we’re performing very soon. God knows he needs to.’
Ricky leaned forwards towards George. ‘Er, can I say something?’ he whispered. ‘We can’t mention God. If you don’t mind. Our Secret Five world is predominantly secular and godless, you see.’
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise,’ said George, apologetically wiggling his hips again.
‘A musical?’ said Amy, trying desperately to pick up the narrative pace a little.
‘Yeah,’ said George. ‘The school is performing a special musical version of The Birthday Party.’
‘Nick Cave’s Birthday Party?’ said Ricky, rather too cleverly for someone of his taste in breakfast cereals. ‘Wow! They are definitely the darkest of the post-punk bands, creating bleak and raucous soundscapes that are an ideal backdrop for Nick Cave’s dark and profound lyrics about religious perversity and extreme violence! Wow again! I love their rockabilly licks, their hellacious feedback and their unremitting pace and base rhythm! So, can I come and watch it? I also like Whitney Houston, by the way.’
George looked very strangely at Ricky. ‘Whitney who?’
‘No, Houston,’ said Ricky.
‘Oh. Well, you’re welcome to come along,’ George said, quite patiently. ‘But it’s actually Harold Pinter’s play The Birthday Party, and not Nick Cave’s band. We’ve rewritten it as a musical version, specially for tonight. Yeah.’
Suddenly he spun round on his heels and ended up pointing one of his fingers in their direction and sort of looking at them under his eyebrows in a mysterious way.
‘Yeah, you see,’ he continued, ‘I have considerable talent and wrote a song specially for it, to counteract the abundant mystification and the menacing claustrophobia of Pinter’s neurotic world. It’s called Wake Me Up Before You Go, Goldberg. But I may have to tighten up the lyrics a bit.’ He leaned forward, close to Ricky. ‘By the way, you do have very good skin. Do you moisturise? And has anyone told you that you have really nice eyes?’
Amy stepped in front of Ricky. ‘What about mine?’ she asked, pointing to her eyes one by one and trying to pout but only succeeding with her top lip.
‘Oh behave!’ Ricky said, pushing Amy aside quite roughly. ‘We’re on a secret mission, so stop sulking. George, thanks a lot for the compliment about my skin and eyes, I quite like yours too, as skin and eyes go, and you have made me feel good about myself, and again I feel a strange sense of . . . erm, never mind. But we need to find Sampson, urgently. Apparently, he’s supposed to be humiliatingly ejected from a band very soon, and we have to stop it happening.’
George looked quizzically at them, perhaps still thinking about the utter silliness of disturbing lyrics about extreme violence and religious perversity. Then he told them to follow him, that he would lead them to Sampson as long as he could definitely join The Secret Five, with a copious amount of privileges.
Ricky and Amy hastily agreed that he could join their provisional wing, but with severely restricted copious privileges.
‘Cool! That’ll do me. The play is in the Big Hall,’ George said as he led them along the long grey school corridor. ‘It’s been hard work. We have had to rehearse hard, man. It’s the only way to get it right.’
Ricky agreed. ‘If you’re gonna do it, do it right. Right?’ he said to George, who stopped, turned and looked quite curiously at him for a while before walking on.
As they reached the Big Hall, another boy suddenly came up to George, adding to the confusing clutter of peripheral characters.
‘Yeah, this is Andrew,’ George told them. He introduced Amy and Ricky to Andrew, which was really quite astonishing as he hadn’t yet been told their names, but it might have been a gift that certain people possess.
Amy’s knees began to tremble again. ‘G-g-g-gosh!’ she s-s-s-s-said. She was surprised that all boys weren’t ugly, and that she’d now met two boys who put the boom-boom into her heart. She felt like telling them that. Maybe later. First she’d need a recap on what conception and canoodling were all about, and which one came first. If only Betty was here and not stuck in some Victorian courtroom threatened with hanging, she thought, although some people might wonder how she knew about Betty’s predicament, and those people just need to relax a bit.
As she shook Andrew’s hand, she noticed his big eyes! She wanted to lick them! Slurp slurp! To roll them round in her mouth!
‘Amy! Yeuk!’ said Ricky, wrinkling his nose. ‘Get a grip!’
‘Erm, that was only a silent thought,’ said Amy.
‘Oh, sorry,’ Ricky murmured, looking down at his shoes.
‘We need to find Sampson, Andrew,’ Amy said. ‘He’s about to be ejected from some band and utterly humiliated.’
‘That’ll be our band,’ Andrew said. ‘And we’ll be doing the humiliating, yeah.’
‘ Your band?’ Ricky said, raising both of his eyebrows together.
‘Yeah, I was gonna tell you,’ George said. ‘Andrew and me and Sampson. One day we’ll be famous, yeah. But one of us is holding us back and Andrew thinks it’s Sampson. So we’re gonna sack and humiliate him. We no longer think a castanet player is hip in Bash!, do we Andrew?’
‘Bash?’ Amy enquired.
‘No, Bash!,’ George said. ‘In italics, and with an exclamation mark, not a question mark. We did try a question mark but it didn’t work. It made us look indecisive. But do you like our group’s name? Sampson thought of it. Maybe we can change it when he’s gone. Come on, follow me into the hall. Let me take you to the very place where Sampson will be sacked and humiliated.’
Amy nudged Ricky as George grabbed the doorknob. ‘You have to tell them not to humiliate Sampson!’ she whispered.
Ricky suddenly felt quite important and very serious. ‘Gosh! It’s been a while since I took on any responsibility and didn’t moan about it,’ he said, beaming. ‘I’ll do it!’
Ricky then stood up straight and used his very best voice as he told Andrew and George not to sack Sampson. ‘No!’ he said, very forcefully for a boy with his DNA. ‘You can’t sack Sampson! Please!’
‘But he’s useless!’ Andrew said. ‘Give us one good reason why we shouldn’t sack him.’
‘Because,’ Ricky said, ‘it means that, if you do, he’ll turn evil, and eventually seek world domination through evil means. And, more importantly, I quite like castanet music. I used to play them myself when I was but a small child. I gave it up when I was four years old. It was disturbing the gerbil.’
‘Cool!’ said George. ‘Get on down! We’ll keep him then, shall we Andrew?’
‘What!’ said Ricky. ‘Just like that! You’ll not sack and humiliate him? You’ve changed your mind? It’s that easy to be persuasive?’
‘Yup,’ said Andrew. ‘ That easy.’
‘But we want a challenge!’ said Ricky. ‘Where’s the setbacks and reversals and bits of the adventure where we give up hope and can’t go on, only to pick ourselves up and carry on regardless of adversity?’
‘Mmmm, quite,’ said Andrew. ‘Sorry we’ve ruined the structural elements of your adventure, but Amy is such a babe! She makes the sun shine brighter than Doris Day, she does. We’d do anything for her, wouldn’t we George?’
George looked unsure, although the bit about Doris Day had caught his attention. Amy’s cheeks flushed bright red, resembling the colour of a freshly-squashed grey squirrel’s1 pool of blood in the middle of a rather
busy A-road just outside Skipton.
‘Gosh!’ she said in a meaningless way, yet somehow full of meaning. She turned to Ricky. ‘Ricky, if this means that our adventure is really over, apart from getting home that is, have I got time to learn something about canoodling?’
Ricky looked quite confused and worried! He was worried firstly that Betty and Daniel were wasting their time in 1880 (although he would have given his right arm to be invited to their forthcoming celebration banquet, which of course he didn’t know about and even if he did, and had been invited, losing his right arm would have made the efficient handling of the best silverware quite a challenge) and, secondly, that their part of the adventure was not really worth the paper it was printed on (and yet, if it were recycled paper or paper from a sustainable source, then it would be much less of a waste). He was also worried that Amy was becoming a bit of a tart and it was his duty, as a caring brother, to stop her from sliding deep into degradation so early in life.
‘No time for that, Amy,’ he said. ‘The performance starts soon. I can hear the audience drifting into the next chapter.’
‘I can’t hear anything,’ George complained.
‘Nor me,’ said Andrew.
‘Can’t you?’ said Amy. ‘We can.’
Chapter Twenty Nine
In which we get all Pinteresque, as if Blytonesque wasn’t challenging enough; we definitely regret ever picking this book up; good job it was discounted; oh, it wasn’t; anyway, moving swiftly on, Sampson plays his castanet solo and then something else happens but more slowly this time.
‘Oh yes,’ said George, as he heard the drifting audience. ‘I can hear them now.’
‘You get used to these things after a while,’ Amy said. ‘Now, let’s talk about how to canoodle . . .’
‘Amy!’ scolded Ricky. ‘We must cease all this sexual awakening!’
‘Look, we’ve got to go and get ready,’ said George, very eager to change the subject. ‘Are you two gonna go in and watch the performance? That’d be really cool, man. Yeah!’
As Ricky and Amy had never actually seen a play before, they jumped at the chance. ‘Very good,’ said Andrew. ‘Mind you, I don’t know how the performance will go. We’ve got a stand-in playing the part of Lulu. How she’ll cope with playing the tin drum while singing Boom Bang-a-Bang I don’t know. And she’s a bit old, and has been refusing to take off her West Brom FC bobble hat on stage.’
Ricky and Amy were aghast, bordering on agog! They were also utterly speechless!
‘I’m utterly speechless!’ said Ricky.
‘And so am I!’ agreed Amy. ‘Really really speechless! Do you think it’s her? Do you Ricky? Hmm? Do you?’
Ricky was about to ask Andrew what the old lady looked like, but the boys had already disappeared. He turned to Amy.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘when Uncle Quagmire told us he’d take care of Old Hag, do you think he actually did it?’
Amy looked quite puzzled, as usual. ‘I don’t know,’ she whined.
‘You don’t know?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You look quite puzzled.’
‘I do?’
‘Yes, quite puzzled.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s irrefutable.’
‘Irrefutable?’
‘Yes, irrefutable.’
‘Oh.’
‘You were not a success, Amy.’
‘Was I not?’ (Vacant look)
‘No, Amy.’ (Engaged look)
‘I had mislaid my glasses.’
‘Don’t lie. You don’t wear glasses.’ (very long meaningful pause) ‘You’re sweating.’
‘I’m sweating?’
‘Yes, you’re sweating.’
‘I was the belle of that ball.’
‘You were.’
‘Erm, hold on, what are we doing, Ricky?’
‘I’ve no idea, Amy,’ Ricky said, giving a great big shrug that seemed to go on for a long time. He pointed upwards. ‘You-Know-Who gets carried away sometimes. He’s into all that Pinteresque stuff, it seems.’
‘You-Know-Who?’ Amy asked. She looked up at the ceiling, frowned, then shook her head. ‘Sometimes I can’t keep up with it all,’ she muttered. ‘Weren’t we talking about the sudden threat of a plot reversal, with the chance of Old Hag beating us to it?’
Ricky looked aghast, but with much less agogness this time. ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘But what can we do?’
‘What if we have a meeting?’ Amy suggested. ‘We haven’t had one of those for ages.’
Ricky shook his head. ‘Neither of us is equipped to call and facilitate meetings!’ he moaned. ‘It’s inadequate succession planning, if you ask me.’
Amy didn’t ask him.
‘I said . . .’ Ricky said.
‘I know what you said,’ said Amy. ‘You said . . . erm . . . you said inaccurate session planning, if you ask me. I just chose not to ask you. And I don’t see why we shouldn’t have a meeting to get us out of this hole you’ve got us into. Boys! I tell you what, I’ll make the decision this time. We’ll go inside the Big Hall and join the audience, so we can see what happens and maybe experience the spectacular outcome of our wonderful adventure. Then we can go home and sleep. Can we take George home with us? Can we? Pleeeeease?’
Ricky tutted gently and pushed open the door. The two of them went through into the Big Hall. They were really surprised, as there were lots and lots of people!
‘Gosh!’ said Amy. ‘I didn’t realise that there were so many other people in the world! Did you?’
Ricky said that he did, but he’d heard that most other people weren’t really that interesting. Not compared to them, anyway.
They found two empty seats on the end of the front row, and sat down and waited. When all the members of the audience had taken their seats and the volume of sweetie wrapper rustling was acceptably high, the curtains opened and the performance began. From the start, the play was a daring spectacle for the school to perform. It opened with a cornflakes advert and a lengthy confessional dialogue that had a rampaging vitality and a bouncing-ball talkalonga screen so that everyone could join in. The audience was soon experiencing a spiritual liberation through the powerful conflicting emotions and the liberal distribution of bags of Jelly Tots from the stage. Then the three members of Bash! came onto the stage to a tumultuous silence. Andrew and George clutched their guitars and waved to the audience in true rock star fashion before launching into their song. Amy noticed that Andrew had no strings on his guitar, but he enthusiastically plucked at thin air and made guitar sounds with his mouth.
Then, with breathtaking timidity, Sampson started his castanet solo. Both Amy and Ricky couldn’t help but stare. He was quite an odd-looking boy for his height, and had mightily small ears for the size of his head. He certainly didn’t look like a criminal mastermind who, as a career move, would want to dominate the world. Indeed, at times, he was having problems dominating his castanets, which kept flying out of his hands and clattering to the floor. He could easily have been mistaken for a blind castanet juggler.
Suddenly, given a subtle entrance cue from the prompter (‘Are you deaf? It’s your entrance, you old biddy!’) the character Lulu entered from stage left, carrying a pack of cheese sandwiches. Amy and Ricky wanted desperately to gasp! It was indeed Old Hag, direct from her performance in 1964 Salzburg! She was dressed in a schoolgirl’s outfit and her West Brom FC bobble hat.
‘It is Old Hag!’ whispered Amy.
‘I can see that!’ whispered Ricky. ‘How on earth . . . ? Yeuk! That short skirt, it’s disgusting! I feel sick! And what are all those blue squiggly lines on her legs.’
‘I believe people catch them from being old,’ whispered Amy. ‘I think they’re called various veins. But I don’t understand how she and her various veins beat us here. It’s not fair to our adventure!’
Ricky shushed her. ‘Shush! Let’s listen to the play. I’ve never seen a play before. Are they acting? It all seems s
o real.’
Several members of the audience, who didn’t like all the shushing and whispering, shushed Ricky and whispered to each other how disgusting it was to go to a play and have people shushing and whispering all the time. Amy was also a bit put out by Ricky’s shushing, and sank into her seat. She decided to keep a wary eye, or two, on Old Hag, using techniques that the highly informative Secret Five Intensive Surveillance Training Module had taught her, such as not falling asleep. This was, she knew, a highly important stakeout. Carefully she watched as the play continued.
Meg: I really want to play at something!
Goldberg: Something?
No-one speaks for fifteen seconds, just to embarrass the audience.
Lulu: What sort of something?
Another long pause, as though the actors have forgotten their lines.
Meg: Any something.
Lulu: Ha! I know! (Pause) Let’s play sacking the castanet player!
The members of the audience gasped in unison! They whispered amongst themselves and then shushed each other. Ricky looked at Amy in horror, then Amy looked at Ricky in horror. On stage, Bash! looked as though they would have liked a quick gasp as well. Old Hag, a.k.a. Lulu, appeared to be enjoying it, although the girl playing Meg looked very confused.
Meg: Er . . . um . . . sack . . . the castanet player?
Lulu: (waving arm about) Ha! Yes! He’s worthless! Tell us, George and Andrew, is he any good? Tell us!
George: Well, actually . . . no.
Andrew: Er . . . I agree. He’s pretty worthless.
The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy Page 22
