Eating Things on Sticks Read online

  I said sarcastically, ‘Oh! Could it be a tiny flash of angel’s wings?’ and added my imitation of Titania: ‘Thooper, Uncle Twithtram! Can we go and thee?’

  He was too busy looking up the hill to pay attention. ‘You know, I do believe it’s water.’

  ‘Can’t be,’ I told him. ‘The stream runs down the other side.’

  He handed me the camera. ‘You look,’ he ordered. ‘Use the zoom.’

  I twiddled until everything came into focus. Sure enough, there was a tiny stream of water trickling down the hill.

  ‘Strange,’ Uncle Tristram said. ‘You’d think you’d need a heap of rain to cause a second stream like that to come down on our side. Unless there is some kind of blockage at the top, of course.’

  I felt a slight twinge of unease.

  ‘Maybe we should just climb up there again today,’ I said. ‘To check things out.’

  ‘Check things out?’

  I didn’t feel like mentioning the dam I’d made. I thought he might tell Morning Glory, and she would tick me off for inharmoniously meddling about with the universe. So I said, ‘You know. Just to look for angels.’

  He gave me a stern look. ‘I know she’s loopy,’ he said. ‘But she is very sweet and very kind.’

  ‘And very pretty.’

  ‘And very pretty. And I am getting very fond of her. So let’s have no more teasing about her angels.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said.

  ONE QUICK BURST

  I meant to sneak off up the hill by myself, but Morning Glory turned out to have plans. ‘Today I thought we could drive over the island together to see my father,’ she told us.

  Uncle Tristram had left off trying to prove he was in harmony with the universe and taken to setting all the pig and piglet knick-knacks in battle order against the owls. ‘I think I’ll just give that a miss,’ he said. ‘But do feel free to take young Harry with you.’

  ‘If you don’t come with us, we’ll have to hitch,’ warned Morning Glory.

  ‘Borrow my car.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ said Morning Glory. ‘I’ve never driven a car as sleek and powerful as yours. Up until now, I’ve only ever puttered about in meals-on-wheels vans and the odd rusty police car.’

  I wondered if I’d heard her right. ‘Did you say police car?’

  She turned a little shifty. ‘Only fetching chips.’

  I still thought it sounded odd, unless she was an undercover officer. But Uncle Tristram wasn’t even listening. He was still busy setting out his owl and pig attack lines.

  I didn’t really fancy dying in a quite unnecessary car crash. I shoved my face in front of his to make him pay attention. ‘If Morning Glory isn’t used to powerful cars, Mum would be furious if you let her take me out with her on her very first time.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, all right!’ Moving a winsome little china owlet into her battle position on the dado rail, he made one last weak stab at sending us off without him. ‘What is your mother’s line on hitchhiking?’

  ‘She is one hundred per cent against it,’ I explained to him. ‘If she found out, she’d kill me. Then she would kill you.’

  ‘That rather robs the safety aspect of forbidding it of some of its punch,’ said Uncle Tristram. ‘But I do take your point. Either we all three go, or Morning Glory hitches alone.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Wearing that?’

  Uncle Tristram turned from his knick-knacks. ‘Isn’t she even dressed yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ Morning Glory said. ‘This is a day dress.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But it is very thin and airy, isn’t it? I thought it was another of your nighties.’

  Uncle Tristram sighed. ‘Whatever she calls it, it’s still an invitation to being pestered by strange men in beards. I suppose that means we’ll all three have to go.’

  ‘Goody!’ said Morning Glory. ‘I’ll go and drag those filthy old pieces of tarpaulin off your nice car.’

  Uncle Tristram looked anxious. ‘There will be seagulls. Shouldn’t we leave them on?’

  Morning Glory’s face fell. ‘It seems a shame,’ she said, ‘to have a beautiful yellow car and drive around looking more like a moving haystack.’

  ‘Better than having to spend the week chiselling off seagull poo,’ said Uncle Tristram. He went to rope the pieces of tarpaulin even more firmly over his Maverati while Morning Glory and I packed up some dandelion fritters and a few pork pies.

  Then we were off. The helicopters were all over again.

  ‘Somebody lost at sea, I expect,’ said Uncle Tristram.

  ‘Then why are they buzzing about all over the island?’

  ‘Are they?’ He poked his head out of the open window and craned upwards. ‘So they are. Maybe they’re after bank robbers.’

  ‘There are no banks on the island,’ Morning Glory said.

  ‘Car thieves, then?’ Uncle Tristram suggested.

  ‘They won’t want this one,’ I assured him. ‘With these tarpaulins draped all over it, it looks like a corporation tip on wheels.’

  ‘Still,’ Morning Glory said wistfully, ‘it would be nice to have a little go at driving it . . .’

  Now he’d been dragged away from all his owls and pigs, it seemed that Uncle Tristram was far less keen to hand over the wheel to someone who had so far only trundled down a few cart tracks in a meals-on-wheels van, and used a rusty old squad car to fetch chips.

  ‘As you so rightly said,’ he started pontificating, ‘this is a very powerful car. I’m not at all sure that it would be safe.’

  ‘Please?’ Morning Glory pleaded. ‘One really quick burst?’

  He winced. ‘No, no. I know that Harry’s mother wouldn’t like it.’

  How two-faced can you get? He had been keen enough to let her loose when it was only my life on the line.

  To spite him, I said, ‘I could always get out,’ and added mischievously, ‘After all, fair is fair! Morning Glory did take us all the way up the hill to look for angels.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ he rather surprised me by agreeing. ‘You get out of the car. That’ll be safer. Indeed, I think your mother would insist on it. We’ll drive back down the road the way we’ve come, just for a while, then turn round and meet you’ – taking revenge, he pointed to a sheep pen about a hundred miles away – ‘over there.’

  I know when I’ve been trumped. Unbuckling my seat belt, I got out of the car and set off walking. The two of them changed places, and with a clash of gears and only one or two short roars of horror from Uncle Tristram, the car spun round and took off fast the other way. From time to time, I glanced back over my shoulder, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  I reached the sheep pen at last and sat in its shadow, sulking. Finally – finally – after I’d had enough time to grow one of the Uncle Joe beards that I’d been fancying so much practically down to my feet, I saw them driving back.

  LUCKY ESCAPE

  ‘We had a lucky escape there,’ said Uncle Tristram.

  I was so cross I just pretended I couldn’t care a fig about anything or anyone Morning Glory had nearly run into or over. But he pressed on. ‘This police officer suddenly leaped out from behind a hedge and flagged us down.’

  Now this did interest me. ‘Did he have a beard?’

  Uncle Tristram stared. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Now that you come to mention it, he was clean-shaven.’ There was a long, long pause while he glanced suspiciously at Morning Glory as if, like me, he was remembering what she had said about one of her old boyfriends having to shave off his beard. Then he pressed on with his story. ‘Anyhow, he peered at me for a very long time – sort of inspected me.’

  I was still feeling sour. ‘Probably wanted to know what sort of person is so obsessed with bird poo he drives round with tarpaulins draped all over his Maverati.’

  Uncle Tristram adopted a lofty look. ‘I don’t think he noticed that. He simply nodded curtly at Morning Glory, peered into the car, and asked me to step out and open the
boot for him.’ He snorted. ‘I actually had to explain to him that you don’t have to step out of a G46 Turbo Maverati Ace-Matic in order to get the boot open.’

  I gave up sulking and climbed back in. ‘So what was he looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Uncle Tristram said. ‘I thought at first he was just pouncing on us because Morning Glory had been driving so fast.’

  ‘I was not,’ Morning Glory insisted. ‘I was just tootling.’

  ‘Tootling in this car,’ Uncle Tristram pointed out, ‘can often amount to what an officer of the law will call “excessive speed”.’ He turned to me. ‘So then, of course, I was all “Oh, Officer this,” and “Oh, Officer that”.’

  ‘Turned into a bit of a crawler, you mean?’

  ‘Put it your own way,’ Uncle Tristram snapped. ‘In any case, as soon as Morning Glory saw the two of us standing together, she was out of the car in a flash.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then, of course, this meddling police officer found himself doing nothing more than staring at her nightie.’

  ‘It is a day dress,’ Morning Glory insisted.

  ‘You call it what you like,’ said Uncle Tristram. ‘All I can say is that it worked. He clean forgot about her irresponsible and reckless driving. He went beet-red, took a quick peek in the boot to see if we were hiding some missing child it seems that everyone’s looking for, then waved us on.’

  I wondered if it was the moment to ask Morning Glory if this was the very same officer who used to lend her his rusty squad car to fetch chips. But she was standing with a bright pink face, scuffing a few bits of dried seagull poo into a heap on the road with her luminous satin slippers.

  I turned back to Uncle Tristram and asked instead, ‘So are we going to her father’s or not?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Uncle Tristram. Just to show off how safe a driver he could be himself, he took an age to do a simple three-point turn – making great play of craning his head in all directions and checking his mirrors ten times in a row.

  Then we were on the road again.

  BIT GLOOMY

  ‘So what’s he like, your dad?’ I asked Morning Glory when we had gone a few miles down the road and she’d recovered from her embarrassment.

  ‘Bit gloomy,’ said Morning Glory. ‘You mustn’t let him get you down.’

  ‘Has he a beard?’

  She looked at me as if I had asked something like, ‘Does he have feet?’ So, yes. Another beard. I settled comfortably in the back seat and let my mind drift. Mum had as good as ordered me not to think about the kitchen, but still I wondered what colour she had chosen for the new cabinets and whether we would get another microwave or keep the old one, even though you have to press the buttons dozens of times before it obeys you.

  When I woke up, the car was bouncing down a stony track towards some sand dunes. On the right was a cottage so ancient it was half sunk in the ground. Outside stood some fearsome codger of at least a hundred. He had the best beard yet – it looked like a forkful of straw after a three-day tempest.

  The codger shook his fist at us as we rolled past.

  Morning Glory waved back. ‘Hi, Dad!’ She turned to Uncle Tristram. ‘You have to stop here. This is it.’

  ‘Here?’ Uncle Tristram asked, horrified. (I think that what he meant was ‘Him?’ but it wasn’t polite to come out with that.)

  Morning Glory scrambled out of the car and ran across to throw her arms round her father. ‘Daddy! It’s been such ages. I’ve missed you so much.’

  A snort shot out of the beard. ‘Self-pity never boiled a haddock.’

  I looked at Uncle Tristram as if to ask, ‘What’s that to do with anything?’ and he shrugged back. Then, ‘Look at the man,’ he whispered. ‘His face is miserable enough to make a funeral procession turn up a side street. You’ll have to rescue the poor girl. Hurry up. Get out of the car and be cheerful.’

  ‘Why me? Where are you going?’

  He hummed and ha-ed, and in the end the only thing he could come up with was, ‘I’m going to find somewhere to park, away from the seagulls.’

  ‘We’re at the sea,’ I pointed out. ‘Over there are the sand dunes. That is the beach. There will be seagulls everywhere.’

  ‘Just get out,’ Uncle Tristram said, ‘and earn your keep. Say happy things till I get back.’

  I scrambled out and went to stand beside poor Morning Glory. ‘Oh, what a lovely beach!’ I said. I clasped my hands together in delight, just like Titania does when someone asks her to recite one of her ghastly poems or sing one of her ghastly songs. ‘Look at the way the sun is glittering on those waves!’

  Her father said despondently, ‘Aye. But don’t forget that midsummer is less than a spit away from the start of next winter.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘But it’s nice today!’

  ‘For each summer morning, we’ve a bitter winter night to come.’

  ‘Cheer up, Dad,’ Morning Glory urged. ‘At least I’ve made it over here.’

  He gave a listless shrug. ‘One visit more, one visit less.’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Morning Glory wailed. ‘You mustn’t start to think about how many times we’ll ever get to see each other again. You’ll live for ages yet!’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t mean myself,’ said Morning Glory’s father, adding morosely, ‘Don’t you forget, my precious, the bonniest flower is often the first to wilt.’

  I gasped. But Uncle Tristram had given me a job and I thought I should at least be making a stab at doing it when he came back. So I said cheerfully, ‘Morning Glory is pretty, isn’t she?’

  ‘Fair hair can hide dark roots,’ he warned. ‘Her sins will have to go down in the book of No Rubbing Out, along with everyone else’s.’

  Morning Glory looked horrified, burst into tears, and I gave up.

  FARTING DONKEYS

  It was Uncle Tristram who rescued us. Striding up manfully, he seized Morning Glory by the arm and led her away. Hastily I scuttled after them. ‘What’s up?’ I heard him asking her. ‘Don’t tell me your dad’s upsetting you already?’

  Still weeping, she nodded.

  ‘He’s told her that she’s going to die soon and she’ll go to Hell,’ I sneaked to Uncle Tristram.

  Uncle Tristram stared. ‘I was away two minutes!’ He strode back to Morning Glory’s father and put on a beaming smile. ‘Well, absolutely lovely to have met you, Mr . . . ?’

  ‘McFee,’ growled Mr McFee.

  ‘Of course! McFee. But really we only popped in to invite you to join us at the island fair on Saturday.’

  ‘Look for me that day in my bed,’ said Mr McFee. ‘I’ll probably have my face turned to the wall.’

  ‘Don’t want to see the farting donkeys?’ Uncle Tristram asked.

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Or have your head licked by the Arabian camel?’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  ‘You could enter the Eating Things on Sticks competition.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Uncle Tristram cheerfully. ‘Sadly, we have plans for the rest of today. But should you change your mind on Saturday, you’ll find us at the fair, eating our things on sticks.’

  He ushered us down the track to where he’d parked the car inside some bushes.

  ‘Will there be farting donkeys?’ I asked eagerly.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Uncle Tristram said.

  ‘What about a head-licking camel?’

  ‘Oh, do grow up!’ said Uncle Tristram. ‘Can’t you see I was just trying to ease the three of us out of the old man’s doleful gravitational field without being rude?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, disappointed. ‘But there will be eating things on sticks?’

  ‘Yes,’ Morning Glory assured me. ‘There will be eating things on sticks.’

  We all piled back into the car.

  ‘Well,’ Uncle Tristram said. ‘That visit went well, didn’t it?’

  I leaned forward to ask Morning Glory, ‘
If your dad’s as gloomy as all that, how come he even agreed to let you have the name you do?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, “Morning Glory”! It’s such a cheerful, optimistic name.’

  She cocked her head to one side. ‘I suppose it is,’ she said, as if she’d never given it a thought before. ‘But, there again, everyone says he used to be a very cheerful, optimistic man.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ Morning Glory insisted. ‘I’m told by everyone that he was “a veritable sunbeam”.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘It’s a sad story,’ Morning Glory said. ‘He was a really good runner. Championship standard, Mum says, and everyone agrees he had a chance at running in the Olympics. But he was so busy training, he ran right past the notice board down at the ferry terminal every day for a month and never slowed up long enough to read the signs plastered all over it. And Mum had just had me, so she had not been out much and hadn’t heard about the changes in the timetable. So it was only when he went down to the terminal to get to the mainland to compete in his heats that he found out that his ferry had been cancelled.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’ Uncle Tristram shook his head with the wisdom of bitter experience. ‘Glerhus dill sotblug.’

  ‘That’s right!’ said Morning Glory. ‘And ever since that day when my father missed his one and only chance of winning something wonderful, he has been miserable. That’s why my mother ran away to the other side of the island. She says she’ll never think of coming back until he smiles again.’

  ‘That is a tragic tale,’ said Uncle Tristram. We sat in respectful silence for a few seconds, and then he added, ‘I really think we ought to cheer ourselves up a bit. What shall we do?’

  ‘Is there a cinema on the island?’ I asked.

  Both of them looked at me as if I’d asked, ‘Is there a Disneyland?’ We settled for a walk along the beach. Uncle Tristram and Morning Glory strolled on ahead. He put his arm round her, and kept on leaning closer to dry her tears about her gloomy father, or kiss her or something. I was so far behind I couldn’t really see. At one point I felt cross enough to shout at them, ‘This is so boring it could be one of Aunt Susan’s ghastly nature walks.’