Eva Ibbotson - Island of the Aunts

“Won’t you try a brandy snap?” asked Aunt Coral. “They were freshly made this morning,”

Mr Sprott took one and decided it was time to come to the point.

“Now, ladies,” he said, smiling his oily smile. “I have a suggestion to make to you.” He leant forward, folding his hands on the tablecloth. “I am getting on in years and I need somewhere to end my days — so I want you to sell me this island.”

There was a gasp from Myrtle, and Aunt Etta stared at him in amazement.

“Sell the Island?” said Coral.

“Sell the Island?” said Myrtle.

“Sell it!” thundered Aunt Etta.

“I take it it belongs to you, does it not? And Captain Harper?”

The sisters looked at each other. They had never thought of owning the Island. It was just there and they looked after it. But now they remembered that their father had in fact bought it from an old couple who could no longer do the work.

“I suppose it does,” said Etta now. “But there’s absolutely no question of selling it.”

“No question at all,” said Coral.

“Oh no, we couldn’t do that,” said Myrtle bravely.

Mr Sprott leant back in his chair and smiled. They did not seem to realize that they were completely in his power.

“I’m prepared to offer ten thousand pounds,” he said. “And that’s generous for a miserable little island…I mean for a simple unspoilt island with only one house on it.”

He’d get the money back in a month, charging two hundred pounds for helicopter rides to the Island of Freaks. The pretty mermaid was worth a fortune on her own; he’d put her in an aquarium and people would have to pay extra to hear her sing and comb her hair. As for that creepy worm, he could just see the visitors clutching each other and screaming. He’d have to keep him in a cage with electric wire. It would be a cross between a zoo, a funfair and Disneyland.

“Very well, ladies. Twelve thousand pounds and that’s my last word absolutely!”

But Etta had had enough of this unpleasant game. “I’m afraid we wouldn’t sell the island for a hundred million pounds,” she said. “We regard it as a Sacred Trust. Now if you would care to take Lambert back with you, I will tell Art that he can clear the table.”

“Oh no you won’t!”

Mr Sprott’s voice had changed. He had become the dangerous bully that he was before. “I think you have forgotten something, dear ladies. You have kidnapped three children. Abducted them by force. My son and two others. The penalty for kidnapping is life imprisonment — and it might even be hanging. They’re thinking of bringing back the death penalty, I’ve heard. So I really think you’d better sell me the Island — or would you rather I turned you over to the police?”

There was a sudden scuffle at the door.

“You can’t! You can’t turn them over to the police because they didn’t kidnap us.” Minette had run all the way from the North Shore. Her hair was tousled, her clothes were in a mess but what was strange was that she wasn’t at all frightened. “I asked if I could come. I asked Aunt Etta if there was a third place and she brought me here.”

Fabio, who had followed her into the room, caught on at once. “And I wasn’t kidnapped either! Aunt Coral saved me from a vile school where they tie you to pillars and try to set fire to your clothes. If anybody says I was kidnapped, I’ll thump them!”

“And Lambert wasn’t really kidnapped either.” Minette, who never lied, seemed to have gone crazy. “He tried to steal Aunt Myrtle’s chloroform and the fumes knocked him out and Aunt Myrtle brought him along because there was no one at home to look after him.”

Both children stood and glared at him like angry tigers.

What they were saying was rubbish, Mr Sprott knew that. The police would get the truth out of them in no time — but he had changed his mind. It had seemed worth a try to do everything the easy way — buy the island and then do what he wanted with it when they’d all gone. But there were other ways of getting what he wanted.

“Very well, it looks as though I was mistaken. Come along, Lambert, I’ll take you home.”

He took the brown paper parcel with Lambert’s pyjamas, shook hands politely, and left with his son.

Oh yes, there were other ways of getting his hands on those weird beasts, thought Stanley Sprott. Before he’d finished they would wish they had sold him the island, because what was going to happen now would not be pleasant at all!

Meanwhile, in London, Minette’s parents had found a better way of making money than suing the police.

Mrs Danby thought of it first and Professor Danby didn’t hear about it till he saw a newspaper which the tea lady had brought into the University Common Room.

On the front page was a picture of Minette as a baby in her mother’s arms. Heartbreak Mother Mourns Lost Daughter said the headline, and underneath the picture were some terribly sad things that Minette’s mother had said, like there was no second of the day when she did not feel the pain of being without her daughter like a wound in her side. She was a little angel Mrs Danby had told the reporter, and she went on to say that a candle burnt night and day by Minette’s bed and would go on burning till she was safely returned.

As soon as he saw the newspaper, Professor Danby rang his wife.

“How much did they pay you for that?” he wanted to know.

“Twenty thousand,” said Minette’s mother, “and no more than I deserve with what I’ve been through.”

“I don’t know how you can bring yourself to talk to a filthy rag like the Daily Screech,” said the Professor and slammed down the phone.

But all day he was furious. Twenty thousand pounds! It wasn’t as though he wasn’t suffering just as much over his lost daughter. He didn’t light candles by her bed because of the fire risk but the housekeeper, who was fond of Minette, had bought a bunch of flowers and put them in her room. Of course the Daily Screech was out of the question — he wouldn’t be seen dead with his photograph in a rag like that — but if the Morning Gazette was interested he might say a few words about his sorrow and his loss. There was a photograph somewhere that the housekeeper had taken outside the university in which he was standing beside his daughter wearing his gown and hood. It had come out rather well and made it clear the kind of background that she came from.

Fabio’s grandparents were too snobby to talk to any kind of newspaper, but they appeared on a late night television panel to bleat about the lack of discipline in modern life and the feebleness of the police who still hadn’t returned their grandson.

And even as Minette’s parents were getting rich and Fabio’s grandparents were complaining, a helicopter was getting ready to take off from the Metropolitan Police pad outside London. It was a small machine manned only by one policeman and a policewoman — and their orders were clear.

“Remember, if you get a chance to land, it’s the two children we want. The aunts can wait. And don’t pick a fight with Sprott. We’re after the boy and the girl right now, and nothing else.”

As soon as they opened the door of the mermaid shed, Fabio and Minette realized that something serious had happened.

Loreen lay on the tiled floor, chewing mouthfuls of gum and weeping. In her sink in the corner, Oona looked stricken and pale. Old Ursula was shaking her head and muttering.

“It’s my fault,” Loreen wailed. “I’ve been a rotten mother and I deserve all I get.”

“What is it?” the children asked. “What’s happened?”