Floods 7 (5 page)

‘She has taken the bait,' said Winchflat as he pored over the dials of his Hearse-Whisperer-Detector,
¹⁶
‘and she is on her way to Tristan da Cunha.'

‘Who would have thought it?' said Valla. ‘I've really got to hand it to you, little brother. You are a genius.'

‘Indeed you are, my boy,' said Nerlin. ‘I wish I had your brains.'

‘I could make you a photocopy of them,' Winchflat offered.

‘You'll do no such thing,' said Mordonna. ‘Your father is perfect the way he is.'

Mordonna really meant it. She had fallen in love with Nerlin as he was and did not want him to change. And she most certainly did not like the idea of having a husband cleverer or even nearly as clever as she was.

‘Just leave your father's brain alone,' she said. ‘I have to go back and sort this Barry Trubshaw out.'

‘Why bother?' said Betty. ‘Why don't we just leave?'

‘Because he is going to help us get Vessel back.'

She went back to the yurt, where she had left Barry Trubshaw in suspended animation when Betty had come over to tell her there was news about the Hearse Whisperer.

‘OK,' Mordonna said to Barry now, clicking her fingers so he could move again, ‘here is the deal. You are going to do one simple little thing for me and I am going to make you into everything you have been pretending to be.'

‘What do you mean?' said Barry Trubshaw.

‘I will make you tall, dark and handsome. I will give you charisma. I will clear all the rubbish out of your head and off your top lip and make you wise, sexy and seventeen years younger. In other words, I will make you into the Cool One – for real,' said Mordonna.

‘Don't be ridiculous, you can't do that,' said Barry.

‘Oh yes I can,' said Mordonna. ‘I am a witch – not a tie-dyed-skirt-and-jangly-bells pretend witch, but a genuine witch with powers you have never dreamed of.'

‘Come on,' said Barry. ‘I wasn't born yesterday. There's no such thing as witches.'

‘I'll prove it,' said Mordonna. ‘What is the one thing you want more than anything in the world?'

Barry Trubshaw opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say a word, Mordonna held up her hand and said, ‘The one thing you want more than anything in the whole world is something you are not even sure exists. The one thing you want more than anything in the whole world is a twelve-and-a-half-franc 1905 Belgian Mauve, a stamp so rare that no one has ever seen one in the flesh and the only proof it ever existed at all is one old faded photograph.'

Barry Trubshaw's mouth was still open but it was speechless. All he could do was give a feeble nod. As he did so it began to snow inside the yurt. Mauve snow drifted down in gentle flakes, appearing out of the darkness above them.

And every flake, all five thousand of them, was a genuine twelve-and-a-half-franc 1905 Belgian Mauve stamp.

‘There you are,' said Mordonna. ‘That is every Belgian Mauve stamp ever printed, the entire stock resurrected from the ashes of the Great Belgian Stamp Printing Works fire of 1905 that destroyed
them all the day before they were due to be released to the post offices of Belgium.'

Barry Trubshaw's mouth, still open, now made a noise. It whimpered.

‘Of course, with five thousand of them, their legendary status and staggering value no longer exists,' said Mordonna. ‘So I will now return four thousand, nine hundred and ninety-eight of them to the dust I collected them from, leaving you with two priceless treasures, one to keep and one to sell for an obscenely high price.'

Barry Trubshaw finally closed his mouth. He fell to his knees and tenderly picked up the two remaining stamps and placed them between the pages of his favourite book – an unpublished epic called
My Incredibly Brilliant and Exciting Life
by B. Trubshaw. Then he took them out again and placed them between the pages of his least favourite book –
My Son is a Twerp
by Mrs Trubshaw
¹⁷
– where they would be much safer.

‘What must I do, oh great and wonderful witch?' he said and he meant every word.

‘Oh, nothing too difficult,' said Mordonna. ‘You just have to go and collect an old birdcage.'

‘Is there an old bird in the old birdcage?'

‘There is, and he must be treated with the greatest care,' said Mordonna. ‘For he is more than he seems, not so much an old bird as my mother's boyfriend under an evil spell.'

‘Oh, right,' said Barry Trubshaw, wondering why someone as powerful as Mordonna could not go and get the cage herself.

‘Will I, er, be in, like, danger?' he asked.

‘No,' said Mordonna. ‘Not really. Hardly at all. Just a bit.'

Barry Trubshaw began to wonder if two twelve-and-a-half-franc 1905 Belgian Mauves were such great things to have after all. If owning them carried a risk of getting dead, maybe he could live without them.

‘You are wondering if two twelve-and-a-half-franc 1905 Belgian Mauves are such great things
to have after all, aren't you?' said Mordonna. ‘Wondering if they are worth the risk of getting dead for?'

‘Umm …'

‘I'll tell you what,' said Mordonna. ‘I'll do some of the other magic I promised you. I will make you a bit taller and cure your baldness and remove all those nasty blackheads from your back. When you bring the cage back here with the bird happy and safe inside, I'll do the dark and handsome bit and make you seventeen years younger. OK?'

Without waiting for his answer, Mordonna performed the spells. It was all a charade, really, because she could have simply taken her sunglasses off, stared deep into Barry Trubshaw's eyes and made him do whatever she wanted without all the stamp and image-changing stuff. But sometimes using magic was more fun and she realised that someone as pathetic as B. Trubshaw did not deserve the unbelievable joy of staring into her eyes.

‘Stand up,' she commanded.

Barry Trubshaw stood up and bashed his head on the central beam across the middle of the yurt.

‘See, I told you I'd make you taller,' said Mordonna. ‘Now I am going to put a map inside your head of where you have to go. I will turn one of your chickens into a horse and one of your pumpkins into a packet of cheese and pickle sandwiches and a bottle of cordial, and you can set out on your quest.'

Barry Trubshaw rubbed the sore bit on top of his head and found that he was no longer bald. Where he had previously reflected moonlight, he now had a thick head of hair – a thick head of hair matted with blood from where he'd hit himself.

‘Stamps beyond price, taller
and
hairy,' said Mordonna. ‘Come on, off you go. And by the way, failure is not an option, as they say in the movies.'

‘What would, er, happen if I failed?' Barry asked.

‘Stamped
on
, much, much shorter, every single hair on your body removed with fire and when it
does grow back it will be bright ginger and you will only be able to speak an obscure language that only three very, very old people on a remote farm in Belgium can understand,' Mordonna said with a smile. ‘But don't worry, you'll be fine. If there is anyone guarding the birdcage, just wait until they are asleep, get the cage and slip away without waking them. Just whisper my name to the old bird and he will understand.'

Barry Trubshaw climbed onto the horse, then climbed down and back on again so his head was facing the same direction as the horse's head. Then he got down and went to the toilet three times because the whole thing had made him very nervous, before climbing back up again and setting off along the valley towards the track back to the outside world.

‘And remember,' Mordonna called after him, ‘I will be watching you every step of the way, so no running home to Mummy and hiding in that secret place you made in the garden shed where you keep those magazines.'

‘You entrusted that self-important fat little bald man with the task of rescuing my beloved Vessel?' cried the Queen.

‘Yes, Mother, and I have no doubt he will bring him back here without any trouble at all,' said Mordonna. ‘Barry will merely act as a robot that I can channel my powers through. Besides, the Hearse Whisperer is on her way to Tristan da Cunha and any guards she will have posted to look after Vessel's cage will be very lowly third-rate idiots who would never suspect a fifth-rate idiot like Barry Trubshaw. They'll just think he's some loony hippy roaming round the country on an old horse, which he is.'

Mordonna was absolutely right.
¹⁸
Barry Trubshaw rode through the forest until he came
to the deserted house where the Hearse Whisperer had trapped Vessel in the enchanted cage, and sure enough there were two third-rate idiots sitting outside on the verandah.

‘I am so bored that if summink don't happen really soon,' said the first idiot, ‘I fink I will die of boredom.'

‘Yeah, well,' said the other idiot, ‘I reckon I am so bored that I prob'ly already have died of boredom.'

‘Hang on,' said idiot one, ‘someone's coming.'

‘Do me a favour, you say that every single day,' said idiot two. ‘And you always say it at exactly seventeen minutes past four.'

‘No, no, I mean it, someone really is coming.'

‘You say that every day too.'

‘I know, but no, I mean, I can hear a horse,' said idiot one.

‘You aren't never said that before,' said idiot two.

‘That's 'cos I din't never heard a horse before. Look, see, horse and man on horse.'

‘It's a hippy,' said idiot two. ‘Where's me gun?'

‘I fink the guns rustid away wiv boredom.'

‘Oh yeah.'

‘Hi, man,' said Barry Trubshaw, climbing down from his horse. ‘Can I use your toilet?'

‘Hippy wants the toilet,' whispered idiot one to idiot two. ‘That's all right, innit?'

‘Yeah, course it is,' said idiot two, ‘but we got to check him first.'

He opened a folder and took out a set of photos.