The Week at Mon Repose (6 page)

 

 

When Allie and Jenny reached the bedroom Marilyn shared with her brothers, she greeted their offer for help with undisguised relief.

A layer of clothes and toys hid the floor and the three bunks. Marilyn had cleared a space across the end of one of the bunks and was frowning at the three sets of pyjamas and two towels she had laid across one of the mattresses.

“They aren't really bad little brats, just tiring,” she said. “Got to find a missing towel before we herd them into the bath.”

The missing towel stayed missing. Allie's admiration for Marilyn grew as Marilyn picked up and tidied and stuffed grubby clothes into a large laundry bag. She then stripped the bottom bunk bed and put fresh sheets on it while Jenny and Allie remade the other two beds. They then collected, sorted, and put away matching bits of plastic toys into their storage boxes.

“Do you have to do this every afternoon?” Jenny asked.

“Mostly.”

“So when do you find time to do your homework or catch up on your social life?” Allie demanded.

“Why aren't your little brothers being trained to put away their own toys?” Jenny asked. “I've had to clear away my own stuff since I was old enough to remember.”

“I'd have even less time to myself if I had to nag them into doing it,” Marilyn said.

Allie nudged Jenny. Jenny coloured up and changed the subject. “One of your little brothers might have taken the towel outside. If we can't find it, I'm sure Mrs. Marybone will give us another one.”

The girls headed to the small fenced-in play area. Marilyn's mother sat on the veranda drinking tea with the other women and watching her sons. The missing towel was tied around the neck of the seven-year-old brother, who was taking his turn at jumping off the top of the slide into the sandpit.

“I'm super duper man! Look!”

“I'm not gonna have a bath tonight,” the five-year-old yelled when he spotted his sister. “I'm not dirty, and I haven't finished playing.”

“Oh, yes you are,” Marilyn called as she sprinted across to the gate to catch him before he escaped. He swerved, ducked under her, and kept on running.

“Neither am I,” yelled the seven-year-old as he scrambled over the fence and ran away.

Chasing Billy and his five-year-old brother, Jimpy, seemed part of the bath time routine. Allie spared a thankful thought for the fact that the youngest brother, Georgie, was still a toddler and unable to join in the game.

The brothers were fast and experienced at dodging pursuers. The three girls chased them around the grounds of Mon Repose, across the veranda, down the long passageway, and along the drive. They caught the small boys at last by splitting their forces and trapping both of them in the long passage across the centre of Mon Repose.

When Billy and Jimpy had their clothes dragged off and were thrown in the bath, the water fights started. The three girls were wet through before they got the boys clean. Then the boys were lifted out to be dressed in their pyjamas and dressing gowns.

“That was rather fun,” Allie said as the boys, suddenly quiet and well behaved, trotted off, leaving them to the wreckage of the bathroom.

“Why is it your job to bathe the boys?” Jenny asked.

“I sort of started when Mum was so sick having Georgie, and now they won't let anyone else bathe them.”

“Fancy having to do this every night,” Allie said. The dinner bell clanged, reminding her of how late it was getting. “Do you get saturated every night as well? We're going to have to get changed before we eat.”

“I'll clean up the bathroom, put the laundry on, and meet you back at the dining room,” Marilyn said.

“We'll help,” Allie said.

Allie knew by the way Jenny was already blotting water off the bathroom window that Jenny thought the same way as she did. Marilyn was the most clever, efficient, and hard-working person she had ever met in her life. Even her mother and Jenny's mother weren't as clever and hard-working as their new friend.

After the bathroom was clean and dry, the heavy laundry bag of dirty clothes and the sopping towels were stacked into the washing machines in the laundry. Marilyn sprinkled in soap powder and turned them on.

“Mum will hang them out,” she said. “Better smarten up on changing, or we'll all be late for dinner.”

Mr. Masterton's room was near the laundry, and as they were passing, Jenny paused to open the door. Ahmed was stretched out on the small, folding bed, gazing up at the ceiling.

“The dinner bell's gone. Are you ready for dinner?”

“You look funny,” Allie said.

Ahmed didn't answer. The three girls stepped farther into the room.”Why have you turned green?” Marilyn asked.

The room with its one small window was dark. Allie turned on the ceiling light. Ahmed's skin was definitely green! His eyes were glazed, and he didn't seem to hear or see the girls. Jenny stooped to touch him and gave a gasp as her hand sank into his arm.

“His arm is soft all the way through as if he's melting or something!”

“He's been here too long and is fading away,” Allie groaned. “And it's all our faults!”

“We've got to send him back and fast,” Jenny said.

“Except we don't know how?” Allie pointed out.

“He said he could last three days before fading,” Marilyn said. “We've still got time to find out how to send him back before he fades out completely.”

“Do you think he will last until midnight when we can have our séance?” Jenny asked doubtfully.

“His third day isn't up until tomorrow night,” Marilyn said. “He's just got to last.”

“We'll tell Mrs. Marybone he's got a headache and he won't be along for dinner,” Allie said. She ushered them out the door, turned off the light, and shut the door. “If we're late for dinner, someone might ask awkward questions.”

This was enough to galvanize them all into movement. Marilyn sprinted off down to her bedroom, and the other two girls ran for their own room to change out of their wet clothes.

Mrs. Marybone was all sympathy for Ahmed's headache and was firmly discouraged from taking him along a cup of tea and some aspirins.

“He said that he doesn't want anything to eat. The light hurts his eyes, and he has a headache,” Marilyn said glibly.

“Probably a migraine, poor lad,” Mrs. Marybone agreed. “He'll probably be better after a good night's sleep.”

Dinner was roast beef with parboiled potatoes and carrots and cauliflower covered in lumpy white sauce. The girls excused themselves from the dessert of roly-poly pudding covered with what looked like the same lumpy white sauce as the cauliflower and went along to look at Ahmed again.

His skin was a more glowing green. His body was even flatter along the small bed. There seemed a lot less of him than before dinner. He definitely was fading fast. He seemed unaware of the three girls inspecting him with such horror.

“He doesn't look to me as if he will last until tomorrow night,” Jenny said, her worried expression returning.

“Just shut up,” Marilyn shouted. “He said three days, so he just has to last three days.”

“So let's get back to our bedroom,” Allie suggested, not taking any offence at Marilyn's rudeness. “We can set the Ouija board up and at least start trying to find some help.”

Allie led the other two out of the room in gloomy silence. They shouldn't have let Mr. Masterton talk them into helping call Ahmed up in the first place. What was happening wasn't exciting anymore; it was just plain nasty. Ahmed's dreadful end was going to be their fault.

The trouble they were going to be in when their parents discovered they had to have four hundred dollars for horses that had vanished had suddenly become trivial and unimportant.

 

 

Allie sneaked a look at their little travelling clock. They had been sitting at the Ouija board for hours. The background mutter of conversation and the clatter of crockery from supper had died down. There were goodnights called and doors slammed as the guests at Mon Repose settled down for the night.

At one stage, Marilyn's mother had put her head around the door. “The boys were saying you weren't in bed yet?”

“I'm staying with the girls for the night,” Marilyn explained.

“You should have told me,” her mother said and went away.

“This just isn't going to work,” Jenny grumbled, spotting the direction of Allie's glance. “We have tried every combination of every question for hours, and not even a twitch from the glass.”

“Maybe something will happen at midnight,” Marilyn insisted. “We've just got to keep on going.”

Allie sneaked another look at the clock. It was fifteen minutes to midnight. “Maybe the questions aren't getting through,” she suggested.

“You can say that again,” Marilyn said with a sigh.

“All those variations of the question, ‘please help Ahmed get better', mightn't be aimed at the right person,” Allie continued. “We've got to get through to someone who really cares about what's happening to Ahmed.”

“He's a genie,” Marilyn said thoughtfully. “Do you reckon they have a union or committee for genie safety, like our road safety crowd?”

“We need a short sentence that we can do over and over again,” Jenny said. She reached for the notepaper and her pencil. “Got any ideas?”

There were plenty of ideas, and the pages of the notebook filled rapidly. Marilyn pointed out that it would take them until dawn to even spell the page of explanation about the danger of Ahmed fading into nothingness, letter by letter on the Ouija board. At last they settled on one sentence.

Allie sneaked a look at the clock. It was exactly midnight. They gathered around the Ouija board again and placed their fingertips on the glass.

“All together now, and I will spell the letters out as we go around,” Jenny said.

They spelled out their message once and waited. The glass remained inert under their fingertips.

“Again,” Jenny said.

Allie looked despairingly at Jenny. Marilyn was biting her lip and glaring at the glass.

“Again,” Jenny repeated.

The glass spelled out the message again. Again the girls waited. Nothing happened.

“Again,” Jenny insisted. Her eyes were starting to brim with tears.

Allie watched the glass as it glided from letter to letter. “Genies, help us save Ahmed.”

They waited. The glass remained on the “D.” Jenny sighed.

“We'll try it again.”

“If it hasn't worked the first three times, we can sit here until morning for all the good it will do,” Marilyn snapped.

“If we have to, we will,” Jenny said.

“Well, stop playing games,” Marilyn said rudely. “The first letter G is on the other side of the board.”

Jenny grabbed for the pencil with her free hand. “It's moving! Spell out the letters as the glass touches them.”

“It's garbage,” Marilyn groaned as the glass slid along the letters ROHCNA.”

“Shut up and concentrate,” Jenny ordered. “They might be in reverse like the first message.”

“Anchor,” Allie said. “
AN AS CLOTHES.
”

“Mastersons Bob use,” interpreted Marilyn as the glass pulled their fingers across the board to each letter.

“Use Bob Masterton's clothes as an anchor,” Allie said. “We've got it!”

“He's not a ship,” Marilyn protested as they stood up and headed for the door.

“To anchor him here,” Allie whispered. “Keep your voice down. We don't want to wake anyone.”

They crept along the passage and down the three steps that led to the lower part of the house. It was very dark. The floorboards creaked, but no one appeared to challenge them sneaking along the passage in the middle of the night.

They reached the last room along the passage before the laundry. Allie opened it quietly.

“In you come,” she whispered. “I'll turn the light on.”

She shut the door and clicked the light on. Ahmed's body was flat under the bed covers. Even his head had become a flat oval, with the flattened face and his staring eyes still gazing upwards. The skin was an even brighter glowing green. To heighten the effect of a cardboard cut-out figure was the fact he wasn't breathing!

“He's carked it on us!” Marilyn gasped.

“He's still here, isn't he?” Allie snapped as she opened the wardrobe door.

Inside hung a bright purple sports jacket, dark brown pants, and a white silk shirt. A pair of cream, leather, slip-on shoes sat neatly on the bottom of the wardrobe. She got them out and turned to the bed.

Marilyn was checking out drawers. “Two singlets, two pair of orange striped underpants, three pair of socks, and three check handkerchiefs,” she reported.

Jenny pulled back the bedclothes and unbuttoned the checked shirt.

“You're going to undress him,” Allie protested.

“And put him in Mr. Masterton's clothes,” Jenny whispered sharply. “I think the clothes should be touching his body to work.”

The three of them held the flat cardboard body carefully. Ahmed was now as light as the cardboard he looked like, and they were terrified they might bend or break him as they buttoned on the loose fitting clothes. Beneath his jeans and check shirt he wore the white cotton sarong he had arrived in.

At last he was covered in the brown pants, socks, leather slip-on shoes, and the thick purple sports jacket. They lowered his body carefully back on the bed, and pulled up the bed covers.

“Cover his hands and head with the spare handkerchiefs,” Jenny suggested.

“How long before it works, do you think?” Marilyn whispered as they waited around the bed.

“Maybe he will be okay by the morning,” Allie whispered.

Jenny nudged her and pointed to the handkerchief over the face. It was moving up and down gently. Ahmed was breathing!

Allie leaned forward and moved the handkerchief from his face. Ahmed's dark eyes swivelled around to look at her out of the bright green cardboard face.

“Smart, clever, beautiful ladies,” said Ahmed from the unmoving cardboard lips. “Put the handkerchief back on my face and get some beauty sleep, which none of you need. Tomorrow we have a horse to steal and a race to win.”

“Will you be all right?” Allie whispered.

“I will be all right, oh compassionate ones,” Ahmed promised.

Jenny covered his face with the handkerchief again and switched off the light. Marilyn and Allie followed her back up the long passage, around the corner, up the five steps, and along the passage to their bedroom.

“He's going to be all right,” Marilyn babbled as soon as they were safely inside the door.

“We must have got to him in time,” Allie said. She hugged Jenny. “Reckon you must be the smartest cousin in the world.”

“I feel like I've been reprieved from a death sentence,” Jenny said. “Isn't it wonderful?”

“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!” Allie and Marilyn chanted together as they hugged Jenny and whirled her around.

Suddenly, the door opened. Mrs. Marybone's head, crowned with high round rollers, appeared around the door.

“If you girls don't settle down and go to sleep this instant, Marilyn will go straight back to her own bedroom. What do you think you're doing making a racket at this hour of the night?”

“Nothing, Mrs. Marybone,” Jenny whispered, as she sat on her bed undoing her shoelaces.

“I'm asleep already,” Marilyn said, diving down to the end of Allie's bed and kicking off her shoes.

“Sorry we disturbed you, Mrs. Marybone,” Allie said, as she threw the spare pillow down to Marilyn, untied her shoes and shot under the bedclothes. “Would you mind switching off our light?”

“Hum,” said Mrs. Marybone.

The light was clicked off the door shut, and then they heard her footsteps padding off. Allie moved over in the bed to make room for Marilyn to stretch out. She yawned, feeling peaceful, relaxed and happy. Even if Ahmed didn't win the race, it wasn't going to be a world-shattering disappointment. What was important was that they had saved Ahmed from fading into nothingness.