Emily's Penny Dreadful (11 page)

Emily shook her head. “Not necessarily.
Older people don’t always die before younger people. That’s good to
know, isn’t it?”

  “
Grant me patience,”
said Uncle Raymond, once again. Emily wanted to ask if those words
were like a magic spell, but she didn’t. Uncle Raymond didn’t give
her a chance.

  “
I promised you an
answer so I’ll keep my promise,” he said. “I was busy on a book the
day the fire took hold.”

  “
A new book?” Emily
asked.

  “
No. It was one I’d
already finished but I was making a few, last-minute changes to
it,” Uncle Raymond said.

  “
We have to make
changes to the stories we write at school,” Emily remembered. “It’s
called editing.”

  “
Precisely,” Uncle
Raymond agreed. “Well, I was

busy editing when I felt a draught. It was a
cold

draught so I turned on the heater.”

  “
Not the fireplace?”
said Emily.

  “
There is no fireplace in my study at home,” said Uncle
Raymond. “Or should I say, was. I turned on the heater. It is – was
– a bar heater. I like –
liked
– the glow of the bars. The room soon warmed up.
I warmed up as well. In fact, I became somewhat somnolent. I dozed
off.”

  “
What happ . .
.?”

“
Shush!” said Uncle
Raymond. “No interruptions, please. Now I’ve started, I feel
compelled to finish. The draught wafted one of the pages I was
editing, off the desk and into the maw of the heater. I didn’t
notice. I’d fallen asleep. Then I smelled smoke. I woke up and
discovered that in the chain of events started by the wafting
paper, my study curtains were ablaze. Luckily, I saw that I could
get to the door in time before the flames spread and blocked my
exit. I got out just in time, grabbing the Penny Dreadful as I
fled. Auntie Dot ran next door to call the fire brigade but
everything happened so quickly that by the time they arrived - and
they did not take long - it was too late to save the house and its
contents. The house burnt down.

I solely am to blame.”

 
For once Emily was
lost for words.

  “
It wasn’t really
your fault,” she said at last.

  “
It wasn’t, and yet
it was,” said Uncle Raymond. “I was careless. And that is the
understatement of the century.”

“
At least now I know why
you’ve been much more grumpy than usual,” said Emily. “You feel
bad.”

“
There’s no arguing with
that assessment,” said Uncle Raymond. He paused, then added: “Am I
usually grumpy?”

  “
Nearly always,”
said Emily. “Except that time when the ice cream cone broke and you
got caramel on your trousers and you laughed.”

  “
Did I really laugh
then? I still don’t remember.”

  “
Auntie Dot said
that you’re forgetful sometimes,” said Emily. “Especially
now.”

  “
Then I shall have
to try to remember to laugh again,” Uncle Raymond. “Once in a
while. This has not been a good year for me, Emily. First our dear
mother – your Gran – died, and then I fell asleep and our house
burnt down.” Uncle Raymond shook his head. “And now I find that my
Muse has abandoned

me.”

  “
What’s a Muse?”
asked Emily. “Something funny?”

  “
No. A Muse is not
the same as amusing. A Muse is a source of inspiration. Without
even a little inspiration all you are left with is a blank computer
screen and a head bereft of ideas,” said Uncle Raymond.

  “
Or a page of
exercise book with only a question mark and a few words on it,”
said Emily.

  “
Precisely. Except I
think you can now start to fill up the rest of that exercise book
with words.”

  “
I’ll try,” said
Emily. “But what about you, Uncle Raymond? Your head is still
empty, isn’t it?”

  “
There’s no help for
that,” said Uncle Raymond.

  “
Maybe I can help
you,” said Emily.

  “
Finish your story
first,” said Uncle Raymond. “If you have any ideas left over, then
perhaps offer them to me. Just don’t expect me to write a
juvenile.”

Chapter 15

?

Miley woke Ned up.

  “
Not again!” said
Ned. “That’s the second night in a row. I’ll be useless for
counting matchsticks in the morning.”

“
You shouldn’t be counting
matchsticks,” said Miley in a whisper loud enough to be heard by
Ned but not loud enough to wake Athol and Charlie. She didn’t want
to frighten them. “None of us should. You should be back home with
you father, reading as many books as you want to read, and I should
be back home with my Mama and Papa and my dearest sister. Now I
wouldn’t even mind if my Uncle was there. Anything would be better
than this.”

  “
We’ve done our
best,” said Ned. “There no way out of here. We’ve been there and
done that already, Miley.”

  “
But I’ve been
thinking,” said Miley. “You know how I came through the door marked
Inward Goods Only.”

  “
You told me,” Ned
agreed.

  “
Well, if things get
delivered to the factory then things must be taken away from it as
well.”

  “
Of course,” said
Ned.

  “
Well, what happens
to the matchboxes we put our counted matches into?” asked
Miley.

  “
We pile them up,”
said Ned.

  “
And then . . .?”
said Miley.

  “
Then they get
packed into the big boxes over by the wall.”

  “
Yes!” said Miley.
“But who packs them? We kids don’t. And when does it happen? And
where do they go after they’re packed?”

  “
You ask too many
questions,” said Ned.

"There are always about the same number of
big boxes by the wall,” Miley continued, “so that means that some
regularly get taken away.”

  “
I guess it must
happen at night,” said Ned. “Someone takes them through the
kitchen.”

“
Why would they go that way
unless the boxes had to be stored in the cellar,” said Miley. “It’s
a lot of work going up and down the stairs and the doorways
are

quite narrow. As far as I could see, there
wasn’t

anything stored in the cellar the night I
arrived.”

  “
So what does all
that mean?” asked Ned, yawning hugely.

  “
It means there must
be ANOTHER way out,” said Miley.

  “
Where?” said Ned.
“We looked last night and didn’t see anywhere.”

  “
We didn’t look
behind the wall of big boxes,” said Miley.

  “
But surely there
isn’t any room behind those boxes,” Ned said.

  “
We have to check to
be sure,” said Miley. “Will you come with me?”

  “
I suppose so,” said
Ned, reluctantly. “But what if Bacon’s on the prowl? She might
suspect that we’re up to something.”

  “
Listen,” said
Miley.

 
They both listened
and heard the sound of what might have been water gurgling in the
pipes. “She’s fast asleep and snoring,” said Miley.

  “
She was last night
as well, to start with,” Ned pointed out.

  “
We’ve got some
time,” said Miley.

 
Ned dragged himself
out of bed. “This better be

worth it,” he grumbled.

  “
It’s worth anything
if we can escape,” said Miley.

Chapter 16

They managed to get right up to the wall of
boxes without disturbing Bacon’s slumber.

  “
Look,” said Miley,
almost breathless with excitement.

  “
You were right!”
said Ned. “There IS a gap behind them. A little
corridor.”

  “
Let’s go down it,”
said Miley.

 
But Ned wasn’t keen.
“If Bacon wakes up, we’ll be Pork Pie’s breakfast,” he
said.

  “
We have to look,”
insisted Miley.

 
Boldly and bravely,
she led the way. There was actually a surprising amount of room
between the boxes and the real wall.  There had to be, of
course, if that was the way the boxes left the factory.

  “
It’s so dark,” said
Ned.

  “
Feel for a door,”
said Miley.

 
They put their palms
against the rough bricks of the

real wall as they inched forward.

  “
Ouch!” said
Ned.

  “
What is it?” asked
Miley.

  “
A nail, or
something,” said Ned.

  “
Maybe it’s part of
a door,” said Miley.

 
She moved her hands
up and down and over the wall. The feel of bricks gave way to
something smoother and colder. Wood perhaps, held together with
bands of metal. Then: “I think I’ve found a handle,” said
Miley.

 
She tried turning it
but nothing happened.

  “
Locked,” said Ned.
“We’re still trapped.”

“
I hear something,” said
Miley.

  “
Is it Bacon?” said
Ned, frightened. “Has she woken up?”

  “
Maybe she has,”
said Miley. “But that wasn’t the noise I meant.”

 
She put her ear to
the door.

  “
Voices,” she said.
“Outside.”

Chapter 17

“
Quick, run!” said Ned.
“Back to the dormitories.”

  “
Then we’ll run into
Bacon for sure,” said Miley,

very calmly and sensibly. “Let’s carry on
the way we

were going before we found the door. The
handle is on our left hand side so, if we go on a little way ahead,
when the door opens we’ll be hidden behind it.”

 
Miley paused, her
ear still pressed to the door.

  “
They’re coming
closer, whoever they are. Hurry, Ned!”

 
Ned scuttled
forward, Miley close on his heels.

 
Just in time they
faded into the darkness between boxes and wall. Just in time,
because they heard a scraping sound like a key turning and the door
in the wall opened, letting in light from a lamp held aloft by
whoever was outside.

  “
Now we just have to
wait for our chance to escape,” said Miley.

Chapter 18

At first Miley and Ned couldn’t see what was
happening on the far side of the door. They just had to guess that
the person holding the lamp had come into the factory, followed by
goodness knows how many other people. Probably not many, Miley
decided.  

Boxes began to be taken away. After a while
Miley

and Ned could see, through
a gap in the pile, that there were only two men in total. One was
busy packing the small matchboxes into the larger boxes and putting
those boxes into the gaps from where the filled big boxes had been
taken. The other man was doing the taking away.

 
Then Bacon
appeared.

  “
I overslept,” she
said grumpily. “My sleep was disturbed the night before. We thought
that a child or children were on the loose. Not that they could
have escaped.”

  “
We haven’t seen
anyone tonight,” said one of the men.

  “
Good,” said Bacon
“Well, be sure to secure the door when you leave. I’ll make you a
cup of tea in the meanwhile.”

  “
We could murder a
cup of tea,” said the man.

 
Bacon went to the
kitchen. The men continued their work.

  “
They don’t care
that children are imprisoned in the factory,” Miley said. “That
makes me so angry. Listen, Ned. As soon as the man taking the boxes
has gone

outside and the man filling the boxes has
gone to fill

some more – when both those things happen at
the same time – then we’ll make a run for it. We can easily skirt
round the door now there’s some more space, and get outside.
Okay?”

 
Ned nodded. He
realized that Miley could not see him nodding so he whispered a
reply: “Yes.”

Chapter 19

They had to wait another ten or fifteen
minutes before both men were far enough away. It seemed the longest
number of minutes either of them had ever had to wait.

  “
Now!” said Miley.
“Let’s do it!”

 
They dashed down the
passageway as far as the open door. Miley paused briefly to be sure
that the man packing the boxes had his back to them before she
grabbed Ned’s hand and fled from the hateful match
factory.

 
The man heard them.
He turned round and cried out, but he was too late.

 
Miley and Ned raced
past the second man who was tottering under a pile of big boxes
beneath a sign that read: Outward Goods Only. As she dashed past
him,

Miley nudged him with her elbow and he

staggered, dropping the boxes and spilling
their contents over the cobbled laneway. He, too, yelled at Miley
and Ned to halt, but of course they ignored him and continued to
run as fast as they could.