Eating Things on Sticks (13 page)

THE LURE OF THE PORK PIE

I came downstairs to find Uncle Tristram frantically sweeping water out of the kitchen door. It was a losing battle. There was a flood all down the hall and in the living room.

‘You find another broom,' he ordered me. ‘We're getting
swamped
in here.'

‘That isn't going to work.'

He glared at me. ‘Have you a better idea?'

‘Yes,' I said, and I walked down the hall to open the front door. All of the water went rushing that way.

‘This house is now on a slope,' I said. ‘And that end's
down
.'

We watched as the living room and kitchen gradually emptied. Soon there was just a stream of water pouring in at the back door, straight down the hall, and out the front.

We heard soft footfalls and looked up to see Morning Glory wrapped in a luminous rainbow poncho and wearing diamanté slippers. She leaned over the banisters. ‘Heavens!' she said.

‘Look at it! It's almost exactly like having a stream running through your house!'

‘I hate to break this to you,' Uncle Tristram said. ‘But that is exactly what it is.'

‘What?'

‘A stream running through your house.'

She thought for a moment, then her face crumpled. ‘But what am I going to
do
?'

I only had one suggestion and that was feeble. ‘Wait till it stops raining?'

Uncle Tristram was made of sterner stuff. ‘Ignore this stream,' he urged her. ‘Treat it with the contempt it deserves until it goes away.'

‘What? Just step over it?'

‘Or, if you choose, wade through. But don't for a moment let it cramp your style.'

‘You might want to take off those rather pretty diamanté slippers,' I suggested. ‘In case the sparkles rust. And if you want to make that fortune in London, you might be wise to rescue Aunty Audrey's clothes before those bags split and they all get soaked.'

Cheered, Morning Glory reached down to ease the diamanté slippers off her feet. Tossing them to Uncle Tristram, she stepped in the water. Together we rescued all the massive plastic bags and stowed them safely in the boot of Uncle Tristram's car. Then we waded upstream to the kitchen.

‘No pork pies left, I suppose?' I asked, without much hope.

‘Don't worry,' Uncle Tristram tried to console me. ‘I'll buy you a pork pie on a stick as soon as we get to the fair.'

‘We're not still going?'

‘Why on earth not?' He took in our astonished looks. ‘Think of it this way,' he urged. ‘All Morning Glory's happiness is at stake. She can't stand Officer Watkins up again. This time, he'd dump her for good. And I can't for the life of me think what we can do that's useful here, unless one of us turns out to be a secret star at building the sort of dams that can re-route a hill stream.'

Building the sort of dams that can re-route a hill stream . . .

Whoops!

There was a long, long silence.

Yes, yes! I know. I made the wrong decision! I failed the moral test. I should have leaped to my feet and cried, ‘Of course! I know what caused this problem and I can solve it! I will miss coming to the fair, and my big chance to eat things on sticks! I will climb up that steep and soggy hill and unblock my dam. The stream will instantly go back to running down the other side, and you won't have this problem.'

Call it a craven nature. Call it the lure of the pork pie. But I said nothing.

TERMITES AND GAS EXPLOSIONS AND AIRCRAFT FALLING OUT OF THE SKY

Uncle Tristram tugged the tarpaulin off the top of the car and threw it on top of the plastic bags in the boot with a shudder. ‘Disgusting! Completely bespattered with seagull poo. It looks more like camouflage than canvas.' He called to Morning Glory. ‘Hurry up! We have a lot of things to munch through if we're to win this competition.'

She was still staring back over the fence. ‘Is it my imagination,' she asked us suddenly, ‘or is the house on a tilt?'

‘A tilt?'

‘You know.
Leaning
.'

It was my second chance to come clean. And I blew this one, too. ‘It's obviously leaning a
tiny
bit,' I tried to soothe her, ‘or the water wouldn't rush through. It would stay put, like lakes do. But it is, after all, a very old house.'

‘Yes,' Uncle Tristram backed me up. ‘I expect that getting the odd stream taking to coming in one door of your house and rushing out of the other is an entirely normal and quite common result of years of mild subsidence. Nothing to worry about at all. Just hop in the car, and we'll be off to the fair.'

He never should have mentioned ‘subsidence'.

‘Hang on a minute,' Morning Glory said. ‘I'm sure I saw that word in Aunty Audrey's insurance policy. Perhaps there'll be something in there about streams running through your house as well.'

‘Bound to be,' Uncle Tristram tried to assure her. He was getting impatient. ‘Streams, rivers, brooks, burns, geysers, hot springs, mountain torrents – all
bound
to be adequately covered.'

‘I think I'll just check.' Already she was taking off her diamanté slippers. He tried to grab her, but in a moment she was out of the car and picking her way back barefoot through the mud towards the house.

‘We're going to be so
late
,' wailed Uncle Tristram.

‘Look on the bright side. We'll be even hungrier.'

He cheered up. ‘I could
murder
a chipolata on a stick.'

I took the chance of Morning Glory being gone to climb in the front seat. I half expected Uncle Tristram to order me back, but I suppose he thought that since she wasn't his girlfriend any more, he might as well not bother.

‘Where
is
she?' Uncle Tristram kept grumbling, while I just thought about pork pies.

Finally she came back looking a bit dishevelled and clutching the envelope she had gone to fetch. ‘Sorry! The stream's quite deep now. I had to take off all my clothes before I waded through.'

‘You should have called!' insisted Uncle Tristram. ‘I would have come to help you
in a flash
.'

We took off down the track. Morning Glory's face became more and more anxious as she read through the sections of the policy.

‘Problem?' I asked her.

She shook her head. ‘I don't know. I can't work it out at all.' She ran her finger down the page. ‘I mean, it seems the house is fully covered for earthquake or fire, or even terrorist outrage.'

‘If you want fire, go for young Harry here,' urged Uncle Tristram. ‘He is our family expert.'

Morning Glory ignored him. ‘And you can have flood, or major or minor subsidence. You can have vandalism. It seems you can even have termites!' Her finger was still moving down the page. ‘According to this, you can have gas explosions. And aircraft falling out of the sky (military or commercial).' She laid the policy down in her lap. ‘But there is nothing – nothing at all – about streams running through your house.'

‘Well, never mind,' said Uncle Tristram.

‘We should go back,' insisted Morning Glory. ‘If I'm not even
insured
, I really ought to try to barricade the door.'

‘If you can barely even wade through the stream,' said Uncle Tristram, ‘you won't be able to shut the door on it.' He went all cunning. ‘Why don't we just press on? Then Officer Watkins won't get cross with you all over again for standing him up at a grand island social occasion, and you can ask his advice.'

‘There's no point in getting his advice,' said Morning Glory, ‘if I'm so far away from home that I can't take it.'

‘Why can't he drive you back?'

‘He doesn't have the squad car.' Morning Glory pouted. ‘Not on a Saturday. There's only one police car on the island, and Delia gets it on Saturday even if she's not fetching the chips.'

‘Why don't I lend him this one?'

‘Would you?' She turned to Uncle Tristram, radiant. ‘You wouldn't mind?'

‘Why should I?' Uncle Tristram asked. ‘I shall be busy eating things on sticks.'

GAME PLAN

On the drive over the island, Uncle Tristram and I discussed our game plans.

‘I'm going to set down a heavy meat base,' Uncle Tristram said. ‘You know. Start with the steak on a stick, then the hot dog and then the meatball. Move through the pork pie and the salami until I reach the fishcake. Perhaps at that point I'll refresh the palate with the pickle on a stick. And then I plan to move in for what you might term the heavier desserts: the toffee apple on a stick, the frozen banana with sprinkles – finishing up with the ice lolly, the cheese puff and the candy floss.'

‘That's mad,' I told him. ‘You'll feel totally stuffed before you're even halfway through.'

‘Oh, yes?' he huffed. ‘So how are you planning to go about it?'

‘I'm going to have my pork pie first,' I explained. ‘Because that's breakfast, and you should never start the day without a good breakfast. And after that I'm moving on to the cheese puff because that's mostly puff. Then candy floss. That collapses into nothing. Pickles are vegetables, so they don't count. They barely line your stomach. I'll have the ice lolly on a stick next, I think, because that's nothing more than coloured water. So by the time I get round to any of the heavy stuff, I'll still be practically
starving
.'

Morning Glory leaned forward. ‘Would you two mind?' she said. ‘You're making me feel rather
sick
.'

We sat there quietly for a while. Then Uncle Tristram had a thought. ‘Oh, by the way, I meant to ask you, Morning Glory. Who were those people your boyfriend was searching for when he went round the house?'

‘Kidnappers.'

‘
Kidnappers?
'

‘Of that missing boy.' Morning Glory leaned forward again. ‘It seems he was away from home with some other member of his family, and both of them vanished. His parents have had a couple of anguished phone calls about him being kept in a cell and needing ransom money. Both of the calls were cut off before the police could trace the number. But he did manage to tell his mother just enough for them to work out he might be on this island.' She gave a little shiver. ‘It's quite exciting, really – for round here, anyway.'

I felt a stirring of unease, just as I had when I first saw the stream running down the wrong side of the hill. ‘So what does this missing boy look like?'

‘The same as everyone you see on the telly,' Morning Glory said. ‘Fuzzy grey blob.'

‘And this relation of his? Fuzzy grey blob as well?'

‘That's right!'

I tried a different tack. ‘But why did the police think that he might be hidden in
your
house?'

‘They didn't,' Morning Glory said. ‘They have been looking everywhere. For days. It's just that Tom left searching my house till last because he was in such a sulk about my missing the dance, and didn't want to see me.'

‘So this boy – he's still missing?'

‘They're both still missing. But the police suspect the other fellow is dead.'

I glanced at Uncle Tristram. ‘Dead? Why?'

‘Because nobody's heard a word from him. And his mobile phone went off for good nearly a week ago.'

My feelings of unease were strengthening by the minute.

‘Does that explain the helicopters?' Uncle Tristram asked.

‘Yes,' Morning Glory said. ‘They're looking for a yellow-topped car.'

There was a silence, though I could swear that I could hear Uncle Tristram's brain whirring away at full speed. After a moment I glanced his way again, to find that, this time, he was looking my way.

I can't explain what happened next. I mean, at any other time I know that one or the other of us would have come out with the words, ‘You don't for a single moment suppose . . . ?'

But we had both of us had a horrible week. It had been raining for days. We had been eating weeds. Poor Uncle Tristram had lost Morning Glory back to her boyfriend. I'd been so bored I'd even started on my holiday homework. Even the Battle of the Owls and Pigs had been a bit of a let-down.

Now here we were, less than ten minutes away from our only chance of having one good laugh (and a pork pie) before we left the island. We couldn't get home sooner anyway. The ferry didn't leave till six. We'd still be home tomorrow.

Still – Mum and Dad! I knew they must be mad with worry.

I sighed. ‘Uncle Tristram, I really think you're going to have to stop at the next phone.'