The Shadow Thief Read online

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Frazzled Flamingo

  A cross the hall Ernest found himself in an enormous study, so dusty and musty it might have been straight out of Victorian England. Even in the short time he had been there, Ernest had already come to realise that nothing in Hog House was moderately sized. The Mayors seemed to believe that bigger was always better and the study was no exception. Not only was it the size of a marquee, but the walls were so high they tapered into a blur; and when Ernest looked up he could not see where they ended and met the ceiling. Instead, stretching as far as the eye could see were wall-to-wall filing cabinets. The only decorations were the oriental rugs strewn across the floor, and there was one small window, the size of a porthole and it was covered with a grille.

  Funnier still, off to one side stood a cherry picker. For those of you who don’t know, a cherry picker is a kind of crane with a platform, much like the contraptions used for cleaning windows on skyscrapers. The platform of this cherry picker was loaded with bulging files that Ernest assumed were waiting to be housed in the unfeasibly high cabinets. In the very centre of the study stood a heavy oak desk, also piled high with a tower of fat ledgers and bulging manila folders.

  A voice rang out through the gloom. ‘There you are, boy!’

  Mr Mayor snapped shut the leather-bound tome he was skimming through and heaved himself upright from his reclining position on a vast chaise longue. He pumped Ernest’s hand enthusiastically, as if he were being reunited with an old friend. ‘Glad to have you on board.’

  He reached for a handful of boiled sweets from a yellow glass bowl and crammed so many into his mouth that his cheeks bulged. As he munched, he offered the bowl to Ernest who politely declined.

  ‘I’ll be back to collect you at midday,’ Mr Mayor garbled, spraying sticky lolly fragments all over Ernest’s face. ‘Mind you look your spanking best. Your mother would like us to take tea with her this afternoon. Until then, give my secretary a hand. Lord knows, he needs all the help he can get. Cheerio then!’ He thumped Ernest heartily on the back and strode towards the door.

  ‘One moment, sir!’ Ernest spluttered. ‘What is it exactly that you’d like me to do?’

  Mr Mayor began a chuckle that soon grew into a deep reverberating laugh. ‘You’re quite the comedian, aren’t you, son?’ he said, mopping his sweating brow with a silk handkerchief. ‘Now, if there’s anything you need, just ask my secretary.’

  Ernest looked around but there did not appear to be any sign of a secretary. He turned to ask Mr Mayor where his secretary might be hiding, but Mr Mayor had already gone, locking the study door behind him.

  Under lock and key, Ernest had no choice but to begin nosing about the room. What was expected of him? The ubiquitous filing cabinets offered no clue. Unless, of course, he opened one.

  The first cabinet Ernest reached for was locked, as were all the others he tried. The only thing he managed to do was jam his thumb in a faulty latch that snapped over his finger as he tried to prise it open. ‘Ouch!’ he cried out. But there was no time to investigate the damage, for a panicked screech filled the room. This was immediately followed by the mountain of folders stacked like a fortress on the desk toppling left, right and centre. Ernest coughed as clouds of dust filled the air. When at last it settled he could see, seated behind the desk on a swivel chair with a quill in foot, one very startled flamingo. Ernest wasn’t sure what he had expected to find, but it certainly wasn’t a pink bird wearing spectacles and a spotted necktie.

  The soft fluff-like down on the flamingo’s head quivered uncontrollably as he scrutinised Ernest. His bill was black, his legs reedy and his webbed feet stuck out at a curious angle, which is what happens when a flamingo sits down. Adjusting the spectacles on his bill, the flamingo stared agitatedly at the intruder. It seemed a painfully long time before either of them spoke.

  ‘Are…are you,’ Ernest stammered, ‘the secretary?’

  The bird leapt from his chair in sudden indignation. On two legs, he was almost five feet tall and stood eye to eye with Ernest. Up close Ernest could see a bald patch on the flamingo’s crown; he was losing his feathers from stress just as people lose hair. He wondered why the bird erratically blinked its right eye until he realised it was a nervous twitch.

  ‘In case you don’t know,’ the flamingo’s voice sounded thin and shrill, ‘flamingos are renowned for their superior secretarial skills.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ernest said. ‘I didn’t know.’

  The bird ignored the apology. ‘And if you would be so kind as to refrain from clattering about and making ouching sounds. Noise makes me very jittery and when I am jittery I cannot think clearly, and when I cannot think clearly I fall behind, and when I fall behind I run the risk of jeopardising my reputation for having the most superior secretarial skills in all the animal kingdom!’

  It was clear that reasoning was not going to be possible. Ernest tried a different tactic.

  ‘Perhaps you can tell me what I’m supposed to be doing here?’ he asked.

  The flamingo fluffed his feathers importantly. ‘Even with my superior secretarial skills, I cannot be expected to know why you are here. Have you come via a recommendation? Do you have a resumé? Are you even legitimate!’

  Comforted by the fact that he had finally encountered a creature more highly strung than himself, Ernest found he had the confidence to expand the conversation.

  ‘What exactly are you organising?’ he asked.

  ‘That,’ the flamingo shot back, ‘is irrelevant!’

  Plopping down on his knees, he became totally immersed in gathering the toppled folders. By now Ernest was well and truly perplexed, but he knew that engaging this unsociable bird in conversation was his only hope of gathering information.

  ‘I’m Ernest, by the way. What’s your name?’

  ‘I’m an employee of the Mayors. I don’t need a name.’

  ‘But you must have one.’

  ‘If I have, it’s long been forgotten.’ The flamingo looked suddenly crestfallen. The corners of his bill twitched and the down on his head quaked even more wildly.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ Ernest offered in an attempt to distract the secretary from what was obviously a sensitive topic.

  Touched by this display of kindness (something he had never before experienced in Hog House) the flamingo allowed Ernest to gather the scattered sheets and slot them back into their folders.

  ‘Thank you, thank you. Can’t afford to stop. Can’t afford to chat. Mustn’t fall any further behind!’ Leaving Ernest to clear up the mess on the floor, he settled himself in the cherry picker, which began to rise until it disappeared from view.

  With the flamingo out of sight, presumably filing, Ernest seized the opportunity to examine the folders in front of him. These appeared to contain information about various residents of Drabville. Inside the first folder were profiles as well as photographs of the Bottlebrush family: six-year-old Emma Bottlebrush with her neat braids, Mother and Father Bottlebrush in identical frog-patterned sweaters, and Grandma Bottlebrush with a budget haircut that had left her looking like a troll. There was a comprehensive collection of birth and marriage certificates, applications made, permits issued, order forms and receipts all bound together by a large rubber band. Thumbing through the pages, Ernest found there was a leaf for every year of Emma Bottlebrush’s life, which gave her six in total. The troll grandmother had eighty-three!

  Ernest’s perusal was interrupted by the return of the cherry picker which came trundling down. The flamingo leapt out and resumed his work at the desk.

  ‘What are all these files?’ Ernest asked, trying to sound casual as he handed the flamingo a stack of papers gathered from the floor. But the flamingo was spinning furiously on his chair, too busy to hear him. As he spun, his webbed feet flew, sorting documents, clipping pages and inserting finished folders into a shaft at the bottom of the desk. No sooner did he rise to load a bundle of folders onto the cherry picker than a new stack dropped from a chute onto the desk. Each time this happened, a great haze of dust was emitted and the flamingo coughed into a checked handkerchief.

  ‘How did you come to be Mr Mayor’s secretary?’ Ernest queried, guessing it was not by choice. He had never seen such a stressed bird in his life.

  The flamingo glared at him from behind gritty spectacles. ‘I am very busy. These files won’t file themselves. It will be my head, not yours, on the chopping block.’

  Sensing there was more to the story, Ernest persisted. ‘I’ve never seen a flamingo working in an office before. What time do you get to go home?’

  At the word ‘home’, the flamingo’s wings fell motionless on the desk and he stared wistfully through the barred window at the fragment of blue sky. Suddenly his face crumpled, his whole body shook and he began to sob hysterically.

  ‘I will never see home again!’ he gasped. ‘Never feel the rush of water on my feathers. Never taste the salty tang of algae soup.’

  Ernest was mortified. He hadn’t intended his comments to unleash such an outburst. He placed a comforting hand on the flamingo’s back and patted him hesitantly. He would have hugged him had he not considered it inappropriate given the short time they had known each other.

  ‘I wouldn’t recognise my own children if I saw them,’ the flamingo wailed tragically. ‘I don’t even remember my own name!’ His spectacles had steamed up and tears rolled down his bill.

  ‘Calm down,’ Ernest said, kneeling beside him. ‘Who brought you here?’

  ‘I was captured,’ the flamingo whispered. ‘Plucked right from my nest in front of my wife, children and all my neighbours. I’m sure they’ve given up waiting for me to come back by now.’

  ‘I’m sure they haven’t,’ Ernest said. ‘Listen,
I’m a prisoner here too, but I’m going to find a way out. My friend Millipop Klompet and I have no intention of staying in this nightmare.’

  The bird appeared a little heartened at this news. He blew his nose, wiped his spectacles on his feathers and blinked hopefully at Ernest.

  ‘Really? How?’

  ‘We’re still working on that,’ Ernest replied, ‘but there’s a lot of people on our side.’

  The flamingo sighed. ‘Life wasn’t always like this,’ he reminisced. ‘You know we flamingos were once revered as the living embodiment of the sun god. But then things changed. We have no rights now. My great-grandfather, God bless his soul, was once used as a croquet mallet by a reckless girl! I live in constant fear of ending up on the Mayors’ dining table. Like the ancient Romans, they consider pickled flamingo tongue quite a delicacy. That’s why I have to be a super secretary and make myself indispensable.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ernest promised him. ‘I won’t let anyone pickle you.’

  The flamingo gave a joyous wail at this and threw his wings around Ernest’s neck.

  ‘When Milli and I escape, we’re taking you with us,’ Ernest went on. He wasn’t sure he should be sharing such confidences with a virtual stranger, but he felt the woeful flamingo could be trusted.

  ‘If I can be of any assistance to you or your friend, Milliplop Klobberit, don’t hesitate to ask,’ the bird said.

  A rattle at the door brought the conversation to an abrupt end. Mr Mayor poked his beefy face into the room. The flamingo had just enough time to scuttle into the cherry picker and zoom upwards at top speed before Mr Mayor could notice anything amiss.

  ‘Ready for afternoon tea?’ he asked. ‘I trust you’ve had a productive morning.’

  As Ernest followed Mr Mayor out of the study, he glanced up, hoping to catch a last glimpse of his new friend and perhaps offer him a reassuring smile. But the flamingo was well out of sight and all he could see was a solitary pink feather drifting slowly to the floor.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Prickly Tea Party

  Before he was deemed presentable enough to attend afternoon tea, Ernest was forced to undergo a radical transformation inspired by Mr Mayor’s idea of what was fashionable. He found himself outfitted in a yellow waistcoat, tweed breeches and a tie patterned with tiny ladybugs. Instead of flopping over his eyes, his curls had been disciplined away from his face with hair wax so they formed a kind of shiny helmet. Milli could not repress a giggle when she saw him, even though her own puffy-sleeved dress and lacy bonnet were equally comical.

  The setting for the ritual of afternoon tea was an elegant courtyard decorated with spouting fountains in the shape of lions and nymphs frolicking together, as well as classical statues on stone pedestals. They reached it by going through a dense maze of neatly trimmed hedges. So winding and tortuous was this maze that the children had to scurry after the Mayors in order not to be left behind. They were forced to walk so briskly that at first it escaped their notice that the hedges were not composed of trimmed bushes planted close together to form a boundary, as one might normally expect of hedges. They were, in fact, made up of hedgehogs piled on top of one another like circus acrobats. The hedgehogs, from what they could gather, were forced to remain stationary for the duration of afternoon tea. Red-uniformed soldiers with muskets at the ready, stood poised to shoot any that accidentally slipped out of position. The idea was both preposterous and repugnant. Milli and Ernest squirmed to see hundreds of pleading eyes following their every movement.

  ‘The hedgehogs look terribly uncomfortable,’ Milli ventured. ‘Why do they need to keep still like that?’

  ‘What a silly question, child. Because that is their function, that’s why,’ Mrs Mayor replied breezily. ‘Just as chairs are for sitting on.’ She laughed uproariously at their concern.

  ‘But it’s so unkind!’ Ernest exploded.

  ‘Unkind?’ The Mayors looked at each other in mock horror. ‘Fun is number one we always say!’

  ‘Doesn’t goodness count for anything around here?’ Milli said crossly.

  ‘Good-ness.’ Mr Mayor sounded out the word as if it were an alien term in his vocabulary.

  ‘Is goodness fashionable?’ Mrs Mayor asked eagerly.

  ‘Is it valuable?’ Mr Mayor asked hopefully.

  ‘It’s not a thing!’ Milli exclaimed in frustration. ‘It’s…it’s…a way to behave.’

  Mr and Mrs Mayor were baffled. Try as they might, they could not get their heads around the idea of something that was not a commodity being important. Finally, they threw up their hands in exasperation.

  ‘Goodness,’ the Mayors snorted, ‘what’s it good for?’

  Milli and Ernest gave up.

  A wrought-iron table covered with a frilly cloth and fine china had been set up in the courtyard. Milli and Ernest had to admit that it all looked rather dainty, until Mrs Basilisk, the prune-faced housekeeper, arrived and Mrs Mayor began to bark orders.

  ‘Tell Cook to prepare one serve of Boffin Buns, some Daisy Cakes, a platter of Turtle Paste Sandwiches, a Jelly Giraffe and a nice bowl of Dunking Treacle. What would my treasures like to drink?’

  Judging by what they had seen so far, who could tell what exotic beverages would be on the Hog House menu? The children decided to play it safe.

  ‘Could we just have some juice, please?’ Milli requested.

  ‘Juice?’ Mrs Mayor guffawed. ‘What kind of juice? Hickleberry, Huckleberry, Cloudburst, Wildwood or Wet Moss?’

  ‘Perhaps just some tea,’ Ernest said, trying not to look as confounded as he felt.

  ‘Then Hairy Dewberry Tea for four,’ was her decision.

  Mrs Basilisk, all in black save for the cameo at her throat, gave the children a withering look as she plonked down the tea trays on her return. A look which seemed to say: you may have beguiled the impressionable Mayors but don’t think you stand a chance with me. Mrs Basilisk was as thin as a beanpole with a jaundiced complexion. In fact, the children had never seen anyone more urgently in need of some vitamin D. Her bow-legged stance made her appear part grasshopper and her lips were pursed so tightly it was difficult to differentiate between them and a cat’s bottom.

  During the tea party, Mrs Mayor struggled to divide her time equally between chatting and munching, and at times had difficulty juggling the two. When a soggy bit of Boffin Bun flew from her mouth and lodged itself in Mr Mayor’s whiskers, he retrieved it as if it were a gift from the gods and popped it with exaggerated relish into his mouth. He called Mrs Mayor his ‘Raunchy Nugget’ and they exchanged sizzling looks and complicit smiles. Our naive protagonists looked dubiously over their teacups at this exchange. Had you or I been present, we would have known exactly what the Mayors were thinking and would probably have had to stop eating immediately.

  The children had long finished their tea by the time Mr and Mrs Mayor finally dabbed their greasy lips with linen napkins embroidered with their initials. At last, thought Milli, the tedious tea party was over. But it was far from over. Mrs Mayor called for some peppermint leaves to chew on before launching into a deep discussion with her husband on a topic the children had trouble following. Finding themselves completely excluded from these adult affairs and with nothing to look at but stock-still hedgehogs, they began to grow restless. Ernest shifted in his seat. Milli tugged at her collar and studied the table, from the floral teapots to the trail of crumbs leading to Mrs Mayor’s plate and finally down at Ernest’s half-eaten Boffin Bun. She watched Ernest use the tip of his forefinger to surreptitiously crumble the Boffin Bun onto the lace tablecloth. He slowly spelled out a single word: Walk. Luckily, Mr and Mrs Mayor were so engrossed in their conversation that neither of them noticed this secret communication.