The Kneebone Boy (5 page)

Lucia remembered her hands, particularly a constellation of freckles around one of her right knuckles that right side up looked like a bowler hat and upside down looked like a dog with floppy ears. She remembered that same hand running through her own hair, making her feel sweet
and drowsy. She remembered having kisses blown at her, and blowing them back, but she couldn’t remember the lips that blew them.

It was maddening really.

Max said that the thing he remembered most of all was the way she smelled. He said she smelled of peppermint. When Otto and Lucia told him that of course she did, the whole town smelled of it, he shook his head. “No, it was peppermint that grew from the ground, not the kind that came from the Such Fun Chewing Gum chimneys.”

Still, at four o’clock on Tuesdays and Fridays, the Such Fun factory pumped out their mountain mint flavor, which was close, Max said, to Mum’s smell. On those days Max liked to sit on the roof and smell the air.

That was all the Hardscrabbles had left of her. No photographs—Casper said she hated to be photographed—few memories, and a father whose face grew so sad when her name was mentioned that they stopped mentioning her at all.

“Think about it logically,” Otto said. “If Mum’s alive, she knows where to find us. She knows where we live, since we’ve lived in the same place all our lives. If she’s alive and wanted to see us, she might have come whenever she liked. She hasn’t, so she doesn’t. And if she’s dead, well, then what does it all matter?”

They were silent for a moment. Then Lucia said, “So what do we do now?”

“Nothing,” Otto said. “Things will go on as just they always have.”

Note to reader: If you ever want your life to turn topsyturvy, say, “Things will go on just as they always—” Oops, I almost said it. Anyway, say the last words that Otto just said. I, however, want to keep my life as normal as possible, so I can get on with writing this book.

In which the Hardscrabbles take a train to London, enter a portal to the Perilous-World-at-Large, and make a tattooed man really angry

The following day, when the Hardscrabble children came home from school, they found that their bags were packed and piled near the front door. This was the beginning of things happening that had never happened before.

In the past, they usually had a few weeks between the time Casper started sleeping at night and when he finally sent the children off to stay with Mrs. Carnival. During those weeks, Casper would gently break it to them that he had to go away for a job. He’d show them the place on a map and tell them about the people whom he would be painting, and little by little, the children would ease into the idea of spending time with Mrs. Carnival and her neck cyst.

“What’s this?” Otto said to the bags when he and Lucia
walked through the door. Just then, Casper came down the stairs, dressed in regular clothes—black trousers and a mostly clean white button-down shirt.

“Where are you going
this
time?” Lucia asked sullenly.

“It can’t be helped,” Casper said briskly. “I’m wanted rather suddenly. Prince Andrei’s fox has learned to balance a champagne glass on his snout and the prince wants me to paint that into the portrait I’ve already done, in time for his birthday party. The fox’s birthday party, that is. Now, don’t look at me that way, Lucia. It won’t take more than a few days. You’ll all be perfectly fine, but you’ll have to hurry. There’s a train leaving at four ten. Angela will meet you at the station.”

“Angela? You mean your cousin Angela?” Lucia cried, her eyes widening at Otto. “Angela in London?”

“That’s right,” Casper said. “School is nearly over for the year anyway, so it won’t matter that you lose a few days. And Angela hasn’t seen you three in ages.”

No Mrs. Carnival!
And a few days in London!
Lucia smiled at Otto, and Otto smiled back but not quite as brightly. Leaving Little Tunks always made him nervous.

“Max!
Max?
” Casper called up the stairs. When there was no answer, Casper said, “He must be on the roof. He bolted when I told him. Lucia, go fetch him please. We’ve only twenty minutes to get out of your school clothes and get to the station.”

Lucia ran out the door and round back, where the monstrous oak tree snuggled against the house. Grabbing the lowest branch, she pulled herself up to the first
foothold, then carefully began to climb. She was quite a brave person, except when it came to heights. Consequently, the climb was slow and awkward. The worst part was when she reached the roofline. Even though the roof’s pitch was not steep, she hated making the small leap off the tree and onto the roof, and feeling that terrifying instant of being unsupported in the air. She might call to Max from the tree, but Max never answered you when you did that. He always made you walk on the main roof and then over on the adjoining roof where the chimney sat.

Lucia made her leap, stifling a gasp of terror as she did so. She landed on the roof, wobbly and breathless. After pausing to collect herself and find her balance, she cautiously made her way towards her brother.

Max was sitting in a lawn chair that was perched precariously across the opening of the chimney. His nose was in the pocket atlas book and he didn’t look up, not even when Lucia was right beside him.

“It’s no good brooding about it, Max,” Lucia said, trying to keep the shakiness out of her voice. “I don’t like it either, but we haven’t got a choice in the matter. And anyway, it’s Angela, not Mrs. Carnival, and it’s
London.
” She paused, expecting to have to strengthen the argument, or at the worst physically drag Max off the roof, which was far too dangerous for her taste.

“I didn’t come up here because of that,” Max said, his nose still tucked into the book. Lucia watched him for a minute.

“Was it because of Brenda then?” Lucia asked. “Did the kids at school tell her about Mum?”

Max sighed and looked up. He gazed off into the distance, over the stretch of houses, past the Such Fun factory’s chimneys, and to the hills beyond. “I think they must have. She was giving me that look at lunchtime. You know that look?”

Lucia did.

“I’m sorry,” Lucia said.

Max shrugged. “Bound to happen, I guess.”

That really bothered Lucia. She had always made fun of Max’s unfailing optimism about people, but she had also come to count on it.

“Anyway, I’m not up here because of her,” he said, standing and dropping the atlas down the chimney. “We’d better go down. We have to catch the four-ten train.”

“Then why on earth did you run off like that?” Lucia sniped, angry at having had to make the frightening climb to the roof for nothing.

“Oh, I had some last-minute business to take care of,” Max said mysteriously.

No one knew what Max did up on the chimney, and no one cared enough to try to find out. Which just goes to show, you should pay attention to the youngest.

A train ride is nearly always an enjoyable thing. There are views to gaze out upon and sweets to unwrap and people to make fun of. The three Hardscrabble children were
very amused by a man sitting across from them who had fallen asleep and was having a conversation with himself.

“Chum, chum, chum, I fancy apples. Better than a kick in the pants, that’s for sure, har-har-har!” He was going on like this for some time, and the Hardscrabbles had to squash their hands against their mouths to keep their laughter from waking him up and spoiling their fun. A loud sneeze from the woman behind him startled him awake anyway, and then they had to find something else with which to amuse themselves.

For a while they tried to take an interest in a teenage girl whose eyebrows were pierced and whose hair was dyed green and shaved on the sides.

“You ought to take her photo,” Lucia whispered to Otto. (She had urged him to take a camera along to London in case he found curiosities he wanted to capture for his collection.) But by the time he’d gotten the old Nikon camera out of its case, they found that the girl was staring back and seemed equally amused by them, which greatly annoyed the two eldest Hardscrabbles. Lucia puffed out her nostrils and said, “What’s wrong with
us
?” while Otto adjusted his scarf and looked away. Max, however, smiled at her. She smiled back and tossed him half of her chocolate bar.

“Are you mad?” Lucia whispered to him as he started to bring it to his mouth. “Don’t eat that! It’s probably poisoned. Or laced with drugs. Remember Prince Hunai.”

Prince Hunai was one of their father’s clients who had smoked something strange while making a diplomatic visit with the leader of a nomadic tribe, and had refused to
wash his hair ever since. Casper made it look nice in the sketches but he said it smelled like a fish-and-chip shop in mid-August.

Max turned in his seat to face his sister squarely, then stuffed the chocolate in his mouth and smiled at her as he chewed.

“Well, if your lips turn blue and you have a seizure, don’t come running to me,” Lucia said. She watched Max nervously for a few moments, but his lips only turned chocolaty in the corners. In the end Lucia wished that she’d asked for a bite.

For the rest of the train ride, the children had to make do with their own brains for amusement. Otto slumped back in his seat and pulled his trousers leg up. Extracting a pen from his back pocket, he began to draw a dragon on his knee. Max stared out the window and imagined what it would be like to live in the towns that they passed, where no one had ever heard of the Hardscrabble family.

Lucia opened the book she had brought along. It was a mystery, a type of book that she usually didn’t like on account of the fact that bodies were always being found. That reminded her of two things: one, that her mother’s body had not been found; and two, that her mother’s body might someday be found and she didn’t like the thought of that either. Still she had taken this book out of the library because she liked the author’s photo on the back, and sometimes that’s as good a reason as any.

On page five a body was discovered in a henhouse and it was being pecked apart by the hens. Lucia promptly
closed the book but marked her place with a train timetable that had been left on her seat, just in case she found herself in desperate need of reading material on the trip.

She looked out the window and tried to think of poetic things to say about green fields and grazing cows, but the effort made her feel feverish. So instead she thought of the Sultan of Juwi, as usual. I won’t tell you
all
of her thoughts about the sultan because they are very personal and none of your business, not to be rude. But I can tell you about the bit in which Lucia imagines seeing the sultan standing by the edge of the Thames. His face is swollen from many beatings by Dr. Azziz and his goon squad. Though he has managed to escape from them, he is suffering from acute amnesia. Probably from all the beatings to the head. In despair, he has decided to pitch himself into the inky depths of the river. Just as he lunges forward toward his death, Lucia grabs his arm and yanks him back to safety.

Right at this moment, a few seats in front of her on the train, Lucia has spied a head that interests her. She can only see the tiniest bit of it above the seat, just a bit of the profile with a delicate nose and a sloping cheekbone, but it’s enough for her to imagine that it might be
him
. Let’s leave her to her thoughts now.

The Hardscrabbles arrived at St. Pancras station five minutes early (it turned out the sloping-cheekboned head belonged to a middle-aged woman!), so it was no cause for panic when they found that Angela was not at the station. She was a very rush-about sort of person, always arriving
late and breathless. They stood around for a good ten minutes, watching all the people bustling across the platform. So many gloriously unfamiliar faces! A few people glanced at the Hardscrabbles longer than usual, noting that they were a good-looking trio, but otherwise the children were deliciously anonymous. It was like a vacation from being Hardscrabbles.

After twenty minutes, they all sat down on their bags, and after twenty-five minutes their chins were anxiously digging into their palms.

“Do you think she’s forgotten?” Max asked.

“How could she forget? Dad just talked to her today,” Lucia said.

“Maybe Dr. Jekyll got sick,” Otto said. “And she had to rush him to the veterinarian’s.”

“Maybe they’ll give him a lobotomy while he’s there,” Max said. He hated that dog and the feeling was mutual.

“Anyway, I think I remember the way to her flat. Sort of,” Lucia said. “We might as well just meet her there. What do you say?”

Max thought yes, but Otto said no and persuaded them to wait another ten minutes. But when Angela still didn’t appear he had to give in to their plan.

They examined a tube map hanging on the wall and, mostly through Max’s excellent sense of direction, they managed to make their way to Camden Town. There was the moment of triumph when they found themselves on Fishtail Lane, Angela’s cramped side street. The sooty brick houses were pressed together, shoulder to shoulder, and
Angela’s building was the narrowest of them all. As they entered the building, the Hardscrabbles felt the thrill of a quest successfully completed and the budding sense that their street savvy was equal to any native Londoner’s. They also felt more kindly towards Angela. Back when they had been fumbling through the tube station, their bags pummeling their thighs, they were saying things like “Angela is such a featherbrain!” “She’d forget her own ears if they weren’t fastened to her head.” But now they were saying, “Won’t Angela be amazed that we found her place so easily!” “I can’t wait to see her again, silly old thing!”