Monster Mission

‘These are stranded jellyfish,’ said Etta. ‘Put them back into the water. You’d better wear these.’

She handed Minette a pair of rubber gloves and stood over her while she carried the wobbling blobs back into the sea.

Fabio was taken to a big tank in the paddock and told to pick up an eel with a skin disease.

‘Hold him behind the head while I scrub,’ Coral ordered him. ‘He’s got scabies.’

When they were in bed at night, the children tried to think how to run away. Fabio now slept in a box room next to Minette and with the door open they could talk.

‘We can’t stay here and turn into slaves,’ said Fabio.

‘No. Except the aunts are slaves too. They work harder than us.’

This was true, but Fabio said it made no difference. ‘We’ll have to steal a boat.’

But their beds were warm; they had nightlights; the sea sighed softly beneath their open windows—and, before Minette could see even the smallest tiger on the ceiling, they were both asleep.

And while they slept the aunts discussed them.

‘Well, so far so good,’ said Etta. ‘They haven’t squealed or squirmed or wriggled. Yet. Or said “Ugh!” I can’t bear people who say “Ugh!”’

‘And they seem to be keeping to the rules,’ said Coral.

The rules had been set out on the first day.

‘You’re not to go near the de-oiling shed in the cove,’ Etta had said. ‘Nor up to the top of the hill.’

‘Nor to the loch between the hills.’

The children had grumbled about this.

‘It’s exactly like that fairy story about Bluebeard’s Castle,’ said Minette. ‘You know … if you open the seventh door you’ll have your head chopped off.’

But they had obeyed—even Fabio who had been so difficult to control in his grandparents’ house. Nothing, though, could stop Fabio asking questions.

‘What’s that honking one hears sometimes? It sounds like a foghorn.’

‘If it sounds like a foghorn I expect it is a foghorn,’ said Etta, and that was the end of that.

But what of Lambert?

Lambert went on screaming and kicking and wailing for his mobile telephone and Art (who did not know his own strength) just put down his tray and ran for it whenever he brought him his food. They had locked him in a room above the boathouse; it had been the Captain’s study and the doors and windows were strong.

At mealtimes they tried to decide what to do with him. Coral thought they might set him adrift in a dinghy with enough food for a few days, and Fabio thought he should be dipped in boiling oil. But they never got very far because whenever they talked about Lambert, Aunt Myrtle always began to cry because she blamed herself for having kidnapped such an awful boy and brought him to the Island.

Then, on the fourth day, as they came down to breakfast, Fabio and Minette found all the aunts looking at them with a pleased expression. Their teachers at school had looked like that when they had passed an exam.

‘Your work has been satisfactory,’ said Etta.

‘And your conduct,’ said Coral, flicking her beads out of the sugar bowl.

‘So we have decided that you may work in the de-oiling shed today.’

The children thought this was an odd kind of reward for being good; de-oiling seabirds is about the messiest job there is. But they kept quiet and presently they were following Aunt Etta along the cliff path and down to the cove on the far side of the bay.

The de-oiling shed was a wooden building set back into the cliff. At high tide the water came almost to the walls but now they could reach it by scrambling over low rocks covered in seaweed, and pools full of anemones and shrimps and tiny scuttling crabs. The children would have liked to linger and explore but Aunt Etta thrust them forward and knocked loudly on the door.

‘Are you decent?’ she called.

The children looked at each other. How could sea birds not be decent?

There was a scuttling noise, followed by a plopping sound—and then the door was opened from the inside.

The children had expected rough wooden walls; shelves, perhaps; a slatted floor. But the shed was more like the inside of a Turkish bath.

There were tiles on the walls; water gushed from a tap into a large, blue-painted sink decorated with seashells and into two tubs set under the high windows. Hairbrushes lay on a low table, and hand mirrors, and there were more mirrors on the wall.

But it was what was inside the sink or lying on the wet floor which held them speechless. You can read about such things as often as you like but seeing them is very different.

There were four mermaids in the shed. They wore knitted tops which Myrtle had made but their tails of course were free—no one would have worn one of Myrtle’s knitted tops on their tails—and when she saw that the children, though pale, were not going to make a fuss, Aunt Etta introduced them.

‘This is Ursula,’ she said, leading them up to a very old lady who sat in the sink nearest the door. Her hair was full of broken pieces of shell and sticks; the egg case of a dogfish hung over one ear and she had only one tooth—a long one which came down over her lower lip.