The Secret of Platform 13 (16 page)

‘Yes, Mrs Smith,’ said the other harpies gloomily . ‘We understand.’

They sat in a circle round their chief in a disused underpass not far from the Astor. No one went there after dark; it was the sort of place which muggers loved and ordinary people avoided. All of them would have liked to be the one to snatch the Prince but they hadn’t really expected to be chosen – their leader always kept the best jobs for herself.

Miss Brown, Miss Green, Miss Jones and Miss Witherspoon were a little smaller than Mrs Smith, but they had the same rank black wings, the same evil talons, the same stretch tops and bloomers ending in the same frills. They too had handbags full of make-up but Miss Witherspoon kept a whistle and some dog biscuits in hers. She was the sporting one; the one who trained the dogs.

‘You have the sack, Lydia?’ asked Mrs Smith – and Miss Brown nodded.

‘And you have the string, Beryl?’ she went on – and Miss Green held up the ball of twine.

‘Good. We’ll parcel him up in the cloakroom – I don’t fancy any wriggling as we go through the tunnel.’ She turned to Miss Witherspoon: ‘As for the dogs, they’d best stay on the lead till the last moment. I’ll give the signal when you should let them go.’

One of the black yelpers stirred and got to his feet.

‘Sit!’ screeched Miss Witherspoon – and the dog sat.

‘Now
grovel
!’ she yelled – and the great saucer-eyed beast flopped on to his stomach and crawled towards her like a worm.

‘Well, that settles everything, I think,’ said Mrs Smith. ‘Just time for a little sleep.’ She opened her handbag and took out a packet of curlers which she wound into her brassy hair. Then she tucked her head into her wings, as birds do, and in a moment the others heard her snores.

There were only a few more hours before the closing of the gump for nine long years, but it was clear that Mrs Smith didn’t even think of failure. Much as they had wanted to snatch the Prince themselves, the other harpies had to admit that she was the best person for the job.

On the roof of the Astor, Mrs Trottle waited with her husband and her son. Her suitcase, ready packed, was beside her, and a travelling rug. In ten minutes the helicopter would be there to take them to safety. Mr Trottle’s uncle, Sir Ian Trottle, who lived in a big house on the Scottish border, had offered to shelter them from the madmen who were chasing Raymond.

Her darling babykin hadn’t realized that the gang of dope fiends were after him again. When he came round inside the cake he couldn’t remember anything and she hadn’t told him what had happened. And actually she herself wasn’t too clear about what had gone on in the Astor dining room. Bruce had told her that he’d thrown the boy for safety into the cake to save him from the clutches of the kidnappers and she’d rewarded him, but he wasn’t much good any more, limping about and with a bruise on his head the size of a house. And Doreen, who’d been thrown through a window, had cut her wrist so badly that it would be a long time before she could knit. She’d sent them both home and it was two of the Astor’s own guards who were protecting them until the helicopter came.

As for the rest of the babble – something about some boy being lifted up and taken to heaven – Mrs Trottle put that down to the effect of the poisonous gas that had been let off in the room. By the time she’d got back after some idiot kept her talking on the phone, the dining room was in a shambles and what everyone said was double-dutch.

‘I’m hungry!’ said Raymond.

‘We’ll have some sandwiches in the helicopter, dear,’ said Mrs Trottle.

‘I don’t want them in the helicopter, I want them
now
,’ whined Raymond. He began to grope in Mrs Trottle’s hold-all, found a bar of toffee, and put it in his mouth.

Mrs Trottle looked up, but there was no sign yet of the helicopter. It was a beautiful clear night. They’d have an easy flight. And as soon as Raymond was safe at Dunloon, she was going to call the police. Once Ben was out of her way and there was no snooping to be done, she’d get proper protection for her Little One. And Ben
would
be out of the way – she’d left clear instructions at the hospital. Even now he might be on the way to Ramsden Hall. She’d had a scare with Ramsden – some meddling do-gooders had tried to get the place shut down, but the man who ran it had been too clever for them. Whatever it was called, Ramsden was a good old-fashioned reform school. They didn’t actually send children up chimneys because most people now had central heating, but they saw to it that the boys knew their place and that was what Ben needed. And oh, the relief she’d feel at having him out of the house!

‘Here it comes!’ said Mr Trottle, and the guards moved aside the cones and turned up the landing lights, ready for the helicopter to land.

The pilot who’d been sent to fetch the Trottles was one of the best. He had flown in the Gulf War; he was steady and experienced and of course he would never have taken even the smallest sip of drink before a flight.

And yet now he was seeing things. He was seeing dogs. Which meant that he was going mad because you did not see dogs in the sky; you didn’t see stars blotted out by threshing tails; you didn’t see grinning jowls and fangs staring in at the cockpit.

The pilot shook his head. He closed his eyes for an instant, but it didn’t help. Another slobbering face with bared teeth and saucer eyes had appeared beside him. There were more of them now . . . three . . . four . . . five.

There couldn’t be five dogs racing through the sky . But there were – and they were coming closer. He dipped suddenly, e xpecting them to be sliced by his propellers, but they weren’t. Of course they weren’t because they didn’t exist.

High above him, Miss Witherspoon, her handbag dangling, encouraged the pack.

‘Go on! See him off!’ she shouted. ‘Faster! Faster!’

Excited by the chase, the dogs moved in. Sparks came from their eyes, spittle dropped from their jaws. The pack leader threw himself at the cockpit window.

The pilot could see the roofs of the Astor below, but every time he tried to lose height the phantom dogs chivvied him harder – and what if those sparks were real? What if they burnt the plane?

‘Tally ho!’ cried Miss Witherspoon, high in the sky . S he blew her whistle and the dogs went mad.

The pilot made one more attempt to land. Then suddenly he’d had enough. The Astor could wait, and so could the people who had hired him. The Trottles, staring at the helicopter’s light as it came down, saw it rise again and vanish over the rooftops.

‘Now what?’ said Mrs Trottle, peevishly .

She was soon to find out.

The people of London had forgotten the old ways. They had heard the baying of the phantom yelpers in the sky , a nd now they could smell the evil stench that came in with the night air, but they spoke of drains, of blocked pipes, and shut their windows.

And the harpies flew on.

‘Yuk!’ said Raymond, chewing his toffee bar. ‘It stinks. I feel sick!’

‘Well, my little noodle-pie, I did tell you not to eat sweets before—’

Then she broke off, and all the Trottles stared upwards.

‘My God!’ Mr Trottle staggered backwards. ‘What are they? Ostriches . . . vultures?’

The gigantic birds were losing height. They could see the talons of the biggest one now, caught in the landing lights.

And they could see other things.

‘B . . . Bloomers,’ babbled Mrs Trottle. ‘F . . . frills.’

‘Shoot, can’t you!’ yelled Mr Trottle at the guard. ‘What are we paying you for?’

The guard lifted his gun. There was a loud report, and Mrs Smith shook out her feathers and smiled. The wings of harpies have been arrow proof and bullet proof since the beginning of time.

‘Ready , g irls!’ she called.

The second guard lifted his gun . . . then dropped it and ran screaming, back into the building. He had seen a handbag and could take no more.

And the harpies descended.

Each of them knew what to do. Miss Brown landed on Mrs Trottle who had fainted clean away, and sat on her chest. Miss Green picked up the remaining guard and threw him on to the fire escape. Miss Jones pinned the gibbering Mr Trottle against a wall.

Only Raymond still stood there, his jaws clamped so hard on his treacle toffee that he couldn’t even scream.

And then he stood there no longer.

By the evening of the ninth day, the rescuers could put off their return no longer, but as they made their way to King’s Cross Station they felt sadder than they had ever felt in their lives. To come back in disgrace like this . . . to know that they had failed!

Odge, trudging along with the mistmaker’s suitcase, was silent and pale and this worried the others. They had expected her to rant and rave and stamp her feet when Ben once more refused to come with them, but she had behaved well and that wasn’t like her. If Odge was sickening for something that would really be the end.

They had waited till the last minute to make sure Ben had completely recovered from the blow to his head. He’d kept telling them he was fine; he’d helped them to clear up the summer house, sweeping and tidying with a will, and that had made the parting worse because they’d remembered the moment when they first saw him in the basement of Trottle Towers. How happy they’d been when they thought he was the Prince! How certain that they could bring him back!

But there’d been no changing Ben’s mind; he wouldn’t leave his grandmother. ‘She’s having an operation,’ he’d said. ‘I can’t leave her to face that alone. Maybe I can come down next time, when the gump opens again.’

He’d turned away then, and they knew how much he minded – but Odge hadn’t lost her temper the way she’d done before; she’d just shrugged and said nothing at all.

The ghosts were waiting on platform thirteen. They looked thoroughly shaken though it was hours since the harpies had come through on their way to rescuing Raymond.

‘I tell you, it was like the armies of the dead,’ said Ernie. ‘I wouldn’t be Raymond Trottle for all the rice in China. They’ve had engineers here all afternoon looking for blocked drains.’

And indeed the harpies’ vile stench still lingered. Even the spiders on the stopped clock looked stunned.

Now it was time to say goodbye and that was hard. The ghosts and the rescuers had become very fond of each other in the nine days they had worked together, but when Cor asked them if they wouldn’t come through the gump, they shook their heads.

‘Ghosts is ghosts and Islanders is Islanders,’ said Ernie. ‘And what would happen to the gump if we weren’t here to guard it?’

But the ogre was looking anxiously at the station roof.

‘I think we go now?’ he said. ‘I wish not to be under the smelling ladies when they return.’

No one wanted that. No one, for that matter, wanted to see the Prince brought back in the harpies’ claws like a dead mouse.

They went through into the cloakroom and shook hands. Even the ghost of the train spotter was upset to see them go.

‘Please could you take the mistmaker’s suitcase for me,’ said Odge suddenly. ‘ My arm’s getting tired.’

Gurkie nodded and Odge went forward to the Opening. ‘I’ll go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’m missing my sisters and I want to get there quickly . ’

It says a lot about how weary and sad the rescuers were that they believed her.

When he came into the ward, Ben saw that the curtains were drawn round Nanny’s bed.

‘Has she had the operation?’ he asked the nurse. It was Celeste, the one with the red rose in her hair whom everyone loved.

‘No, dear. She’s not going to have the operation. She’s – very ill, Ben. You can sit with her quietly – she’d like to have you there but she may not say much.’

Ben drew aside the curtain. He could see at once that something had happened to Nanny . Her face was tiny; she looked as though she didn’t really belong here any more. But when he pulled a chair up beside the bed and reached for her hand, the skinny , b rown-flecked fingers closed tightly round his own.

‘Foiled ’em!’ said Nanny in a surprisingly clear voice.

‘About the operation, do you mean?’

‘That’s right. Going up there full of tubes! Told them my time was up!’

Her eyes shut . . . then fluttered open once again.

‘The letter . . . take it . . .’ she whispered. ‘Go on. Now.’

Ben turned his head and saw a white envelope with his name on it lying on her locker.

‘All right, Nanny . ’ She watched him, never taking her eyes away, as he took it and put it carefully in his pocket. And now she could let go.

‘You’re a good boy . . . We shouldn’t have . . .’

Her voice drifted away; her breathing became shallow and uneven; only her hand still held tightly on to Ben’s.

‘Just sleep, Nanny, ’ he said. ‘I’ll stay.’

And he did, as the clock ticked away the hours. That was what he had to do now, sit beside her not thinking of anything else. Not letting his mind follow Odge and the others as they made their way home . . . Not feeling sorry for himself because the people he loved so much had gone away. Just being there while Nanny needed him, that was his job.

The night nurse, coming in twice, found him still as stone beside the bed. The third time she came in, he had fallen asleep in his chair – but he still held his grandmother’s cold hand inside his own.

Gently , she uncurled his fingers and told him what had happened.

It was hard to understand that he was now absolutely alone. People dying, however much you expect it, is not like you think it will be.

The Sister had taken him to the rest room; she’d given him tea and biscuits. Now, to his surprise, she said: ‘I’ve been in touch with the people who are going to fetch you and they’re on their way. Soon you’ll be in your new home.’

Ben lifted his head. ‘What?’ he said stupidly .

‘Mrs Trottle has made the arrangements for you, Ben. She’s found a really nice place for you, she says. A school where you’ll learn all sorts of things. She didn’t think you’d want to go on living with the other servants now your grandmother is dead.’

Ben was incredibly tired; it was difficult to take anything in. ‘I don’t know anything about this,’ he said.