Monster Mission

But after a few days Dorothy cracked. Boo-Boo (who was a boy) and the Little One (who was a girl) were the daftest children she had ever seen. They cried if their pyjama cases got mixed up, so that Boo-Boo’s sleeping suit ended up in the skirts of the fairy doll and the Little One’s nightdress was zipped into the stomach of a fluffy poodle. They cried if she handed them the wrong bath towel so that Boo-Boo had to dry himself on Big Ears and Noddy whereas the Little One was rubbed down in roller-skating Yogi Bears. They threw a tantrum if she brought the cereal packet to the table without its frilly cereal packet container, and they complained because she hadn’t combed out the tassels on the lampshades.

‘Right, this is it,’ said Dorothy on the fifth day. ‘I’m going home.’

But when she told Betty, who was still in hospital, her sister cried once more.

‘What am I going to do?’ she sobbed. ‘None of my neighbours seem to want to look after my children.’

Dorothy opened her mouth to tell her why and closed it again. After all, Betty was ill and she was her sister and she wouldn’t be able to shave her legs for weeks because of the plaster. On the other hand nothing now could stop Dorothy from going back to the Island.

‘I suppose I could take the children with me. Just till you’re better.’

As soon as she said it, she wished she hadn’t, but it was too late. Betty looked at her gratefully. Usually she would have done anything to keep her darlings from that rough place where the animals wandered in and out of the house and nothing was done nicely, but now it was her only hope.

‘Thank you, Dorothy,’ she said. ‘Perhaps the sea air will do them good.’

So the following week Dorothy took the train to catch the steamer to catch the second steamer to catch the ferry which would in the end get her to her home. She did not have a chance to let her sisters know whom she was bringing, which was as well. Even if they had been very badly oiled, Boo-Boo and the Little One would not have been welcome on the Island.

Chapter Fifteen

Minette sat on her bed beside the open window, trying to brush her hair. Aunt Etta insisted on a hundred strokes each night, but now she put her brush down and sighed.

‘I’m never going to have children. Never. It’s awful.’

‘Oh come on,’ said Fabio, wandering in from the bathroom. ‘It isn’t as bad as that.’

But it had been very bad.

They had woken early and at once known what had happened. Even before they went to the window they had felt the emptiness and the silence.

Downstairs the three aunts sat stiffly at the breakfast table. Coral looked thinner and Myrtle’s blouse was on back to front.

‘Go to him,’ said Aunt Etta as soon as the children had finished. ‘You’re excused all your other duties.’

Outside it really hit them. Yet the kraken had only been here just over a week. How could the bay seem so empty, so wrong? And how could such a great beast slip away so silently?

It was all very well for Aunt Etta to say, ‘Go to him,’ but where was he? Not by the shore, not in his favourite rockpool. The mermaids were guarding the entrance to the bay but the children knew he would not have tried to follow his father. He might be small but he knew what it was to keep a promise.

They found him in the end, half hidden under an overhanging rock. He was almost submerged but his head came up out of the water and he was staring at the open sea. When he saw them, he made the most pitiful sound they had ever heard, a heartbroken moan which ended in a whimper. Like a puppy told to ‘stay’, when his master leaves the room, the baby kraken waited … and looked as though he would wait to the end of time for his father to return.

‘Come on,’ said Fabio leaning down from the rock. ‘It’s time for breakfast. We’ll go and see what Art has got for you.’

But the kraken only looked at him and then two tears welled out of his golden eyes and rolled into the sea.

He wouldn’t eat and he wouldn’t play.

‘No ball,’ he said when they fetched the beach ball and ‘No hide an’ see.’ He wouldn’t follow them in the boat, though when they moved away he moaned and shivered even more. In the end they got into the water with him and swam round him rubbing his back and telling him again and again that his father would be back, that they loved him, that he was the last of a great and mighty line of krakens and must try to be brave.

Everyone helped. The mermaids came and sang to him but he only closed his eyes and juddered with sighs. The stoorworm swam out and spoke into his ear.

‘To go is to come,’ said the worm in his solemn voice.

What he meant was that the earth was round so that the great kraken was on his way back as soon as he set off. But thoughts about the earth being round were too difficult for the kraken’s son, whose tears went on flowing and making the seaweed and the little fish look larger and brighter wherever they fell.