Monster Mission

‘He had a very famous grandmother,’ said Myrtle, dropping her voice. ‘At least, we think she was his grandmother. She was called the Selkie of Rossay and there are stories told about her all over the islands.’

‘Tell us,’ begged Minette again. She could never get enough stories.

So Aunt Myrtle pushed her hair out of her eyes and began.

‘The Selkie of Rossay was a female seal who lived about a hundred years ago. One night she came out of the sea and shed her sealskin and danced with nothing on by the light of the moon and a fisherman came and fell passionately in love with her.’ Myrtle paused and gave a wistful sigh. ‘You know how it is,’ she said, ‘when people are dancing by the light of the moon.’

The children nodded politely though they didn’t really.

‘So he hid her sealskin and brought her some clothes and married her and she stayed with him and had seven children and they were perfectly happy. Though when they sat down, even on dry days and in completely dry clothes, the children left a damp patch. Not… you know … anything to do with nappies. Nothing nasty—it was an absolutely fresh

damp patch—but it showed they had seal blood.’

Herbert was listening most intently. He moved closer, he cleared his throat.

‘Then one day when she was rummaging in a trunk, the selkie found her old sealskin and she put it on and the sea called to her—it called to her so strongly there was nothing she could do—and she dived back into the sea and after a while she married a seal and had seven seal children. But for the rest of her life she was in a terrible muddle, calling her sea children by the names of her land children and her land children by the names of her sea children and never really knowing where she belonged. At least, that is the story.’

Myrtle stopped and Herbert gave an enormous sigh and rolled over on to his side. He might have forgotten how to speak like a human, but he had understood every word and the story Myrtle told was his own.

The Selkie of Rossay had been his grandmother. She had gone crazy in the end from not knowing whether it was better to be a woman or a seal, and Herbert’s mother, the youngest of her seal children, had stayed with her till she died, seeing that she didn’t starve even when her teeth fell out and her eyes filmed over.

Herbert’s mother was still alive; she came ashore sometimes and nudged her son and tried to get him to make up his mind about what he wanted to be because she knew it didn’t matter whether one was a man or a seal so long as one stuck to it.

But Herbert took after his grandmother. He couldn’t decide. When Myrtle played the cello to him it seemed that being human was the best that he could hope for. But when he watched Art and saw what he would have to do if he was a man—wear trousers with braces or zips, and shoelaces and all that kind of thing—he would dive back into the water and turn over and over in the waves and think: This is my world; it is here that I belong.

When the children got back to the house, they found Art with a large piece of sticking plaster on his forehead. He had tried to give Lambert some lunch and Lambert had torn the plate out of his hand and hurled it across the room. Then he’d lain down on the floor and drummed his heels and screamed for his father and his mobile telephone.

‘I’d have thumped him,’ said Art now, ‘but I daren’t. I don’t know my own strength. I might have pulped him into a jelly.’

Fabio didn’t say anything but he was beginning to wonder about Art’s great strength. Meanwhile Lambert was still in the room above the boathouse.

‘But he can’t stay there,’ said Coral. ‘The boy is a fiend. We’ve got to get rid of him.’

But though they discussed it for the rest of the day, none of the aunts could see how this could be done short of killing the child—which they would very much have liked to do, but which was not the kind of thing that happened on the Island.

Chapter Five

When the children came down to breakfast the next day they saw at once that the aunts were worried. Etta’s moustache stood out dark against her pale face and her nose had sharpened to something you could have used to cut cheese.

‘I really don’t want to operate,’ they heard her say, ‘but it’s serious. She’s completely egg-bound.’

‘Who’s egg-bound?’ asked Fabio.

Aunt Etta ignored him.

‘I’ve tried massage; I’ve tried Vaseline; I’ve tried a steam kettle,’ she said to her sisters.

‘What about castor oil?’ suggested Coral.

‘It’s worth a try, I suppose.’

‘Can we help?’ asked Minette.

‘No.’ Etta looked up briefly. ‘Well, perhaps you can carry the buckets. We’re going up the hill. And kindly fold your napkins properly when you leave the table. You left them in a disgusting heap yesterday.’

It was quite a procession which wound its way up the hill. Etta carried an enormous bottle of castor oil, Fabio lugged a footstool and a primus stove, Minette had two buckets and a bundle of rags.