The Secret Five and the Stunt Nun Legacy (11 page)

‘Good idea!’ said Betty, enthusiastically. ‘It’s a shame Ricky isn’t here to enjoy it, isn’t it?’

‘Woof woof WOOF!!!!’ barked Whatshisname for no reason whatsoever except, perhaps, as a subconscious motivation derived from anthropological customs, or because Uncle Quagmire had trodden ‘accidentally’ on his paw.

Happily, they all walked or, in the case of Whatshisname,
limped, to an Austrian outdoor café in a four-sided outdoor square, where they all sat down and ordered lemon and lime cordial and ginger cake, which were freely available in Salzburg in 1964, were they not?

‘So, tell us all about this secret mission,’ said Daniel. ‘And the reason why you were kidnapped.’

‘I know it all!’ interrupted Old Hag, who had trailed behind them and was now making herself quite comfortable at their table. ‘Ask me! Ask me!’

‘Okay,’ said Betty, with a hint of a firm but tranquil shrug. ‘Tell us if you must.’

‘Well,’ said Old Hag, ‘your Uncle Quagmire is on a secret mission and he was forced to make use of his time machine to come here and save the world by stopping a stunt nun from getting preggers . . .’ Quite suddenly she stopped talking and looked around her. ‘Where are we, Quaggy? Is this Loughborough? Where am the nuns?’

‘No, it’s not Loughborough, silly Old Hag. We’re in Salzburg, near Austria,’ said Uncle Quagmire knowingly and almost reassuringly.

‘Are you sure it’s not the one near Brisbane, Uncle Quagmire?’ asked Daniel.

‘Stunt nun?’ enquired Betty.

‘Preggers?’ asked Amy. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Woof woof woof,’ moaned Whatshisname, licking his paw.

‘I thought you said you was going to Loughborough,’ said Old Hag. ‘I’m sure that you said . . .’

‘Anyway,’ interrupted Uncle Quagmire, ‘as I was saying, children, I was kidnapped and made to . . .’

‘Go back to nineteen sixty four!’ said Old Hag.

‘Look!’ said Uncle Quagmire to Old Hag, quite irritably for a man of his shoe size. ‘It’s
my
story and there are people out there waiting to know all about this, okay? Don’t you have to do something, go somewhere? Go off to the toilet or something like that?’

‘Oh blimey, ta very much, I knew there was something I had to do,’ mumbled Old Hag, as she scrambled off her chair and scurried away, bravely followed by Whatshisname who had been desperate to go since chapter six.

‘Right,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘now she’s gone, gather round the table and I’ll explain.’

‘Yes, let’s!’ said Amy, gathering round a little too quickly and making herself dizzy.

‘Well children, thanks for gathering round so obediently. Now, my very secret mission is to stop a stunt nun from getting pregnant . . .’ started Uncle Quagmire.

‘What’s a stunt nun?’ asked Amy, rather unnecessarily.

‘You don’t know? Hmmm. I’ll come to that later,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘Now, you know that I used to work for the government, secretly, undercover . . .’

‘Gosh! A bit like our Secret Five!’ said Amy.

‘Yes, if you like . . .’ he went on, ‘except for the kangaroo, of course. Well, as you probably know, I retired on a rather generocious final-salary retired-undercover-spy graduated occupational pension – the value of which, by the way, can go up or down – after the unfortunate incident with the royal-corgi-cam in the Queen’s private bathroom. But then they learnt about my latest invention . . .’

‘Your time machine!’ said Betty.

‘Quite,’ said Uncle Quagmire, quite quietly. ‘So they asked me to do one more job for them, and I refused.’

‘Ha! He refused!’ cackled Old Hag, adjusting the gusset of her tracksuit bottoms as she reappeared and hoisted herself onto a chair.

‘Shush!’ shushed Daniel. ‘Let him finish. It might become mildly interesting.’

‘In the end,’ Uncle Quagmire continued, ‘I went into hiding at Greentiles but they found me and kidnapped me so that they could send me here to . . .’

At that point Old Hag started waving her arms around and yelled, ‘Chapter break! Chapter break!’

‘What?’ exclaimed Uncle Quagmire, glaring a very effective glare at Old Hag.

‘Oh, it’s all right,’ said Betty. ‘She’s got inside information about chapter breaks. There’s obviously one due.’

‘Oh,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘In that case, I’ll pause on a mini cliffhanger, shall I?’

The children thought that was a good idea, and said so. ‘That’s a good idea,’ they all said, quite unsurprisingly.

‘So,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘they secretly told me that a certain criminal mastermind is being very nasty indeed and is about to threatenise the civilised world with . . .’ He paused, to rack up the tension and to maximise the dramatic effect, ‘
worldwide mass destruction!
’

‘Worldwide mass destruction?’ exclaimed Daniel. ‘Golly, that’s quite serious, isn’t it? Now, anyone fancy another glass of lemon and lime cordial?’

‘Er, yes,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘But you’ve now completely destroyed the
worldwide mass destruction
cliffhanger chapter ending!’

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Daniel meekly.

They all sat looking at each other, quietly sipping their cordials, which tasted quite nice.

In which we learn of a highly dangerous mission; a shadowy group is mentioned, very briefly; Betty explains about fallopian tubes, which is quite interesting, everything else considered; Old Hag slumps onto a handy wall; the reader ponders upon the wisdom of impulse book purchases.

‘I am
really
sorry,’ said Daniel, even more meekly than his previous meekly. ‘I think I ruined the end-of-chapter cliffhanger.’

‘Ha! You should be sorry, Dando!’ cackled Old Hag. ‘Don’t know you’re born, you kids don’t. Come to think of it, you haven’t been born yet, have you?’

The children each raised both of their eyebrows and looked quizzically at Old Hag. Given her choice of clothes, who can blame them. Whatshisname, who had sneaked back into the chapter while Old Hag was busy cackling, tried his best to look quizzical but failed quite miserably. Looking quizzical had never been his strong point, his time on the vet’s table during the surprise outing being the closest he had come to raising an eyebrow or two.

‘Anyway,’ said Uncle Quagmire, bravely carrying on despite the digressive narrative, ‘they told me that the only way to preventicate this certain criminal mastermind from destroying or dominating the civilised world is to . . .’

Uncle Quagmire paused melodramatically. The children were deeply impressed by his use of dramatic effect and histrionic verbal dexterity, but in truth it was because he had a lump of ginger cake stuck in his throat. He coughed, and bits of cake splattered out, having a dramatic effect on the face of Whatshisname, who tried frantically to lick them off. Uncle Quagmire retrieved the bits of cake, popped them back into his
mouth, and continued almost exactly from where he had left off: ‘is to go back in time and, through fair means or foul, to stop him from being born!’

The children gasped a huge gasp, as they hadn’t gasped for a while and one had built up inside them. Old Hag, not wanting to be left out of any Secret Five activity, also decided to gasp, but she wasn’t so good at it, having missed out on all the training, and it sounded more like an amateur wheeze than a highly-trained gasp.

‘Go back? time? fair? foul? stop? born?’ said Betty, in a daze and unable to say prepositions or conjunctives.

‘Yes, Betty,’ said Uncle Quagmire. ‘You’re right when you say go back time fair foul stop born, for that is my mission in a very small and concise nutshell, if nutshells come that small and concise these days, that is. It’ll be highly dangerous, no doubt, and very highly risky, but now I’m here I’ll do what I have to do to save the world, and more if necessary. You children are very naughty indeed and shouldn’t have followed me here. But as you’re here, the mission for you, should you choose to accept it, is simple but too highly dangerous. And far too highly risky.’

‘I knew I should have left the story at the beginning,’ mumbled Amy. ‘I don’t like the sound of anything that’s too highly risky. I wanted to be in an adventure where we discover buried treasure and easily outwit a gang of clumsy escaped convicts.’

‘I understand your fears, Ann . . . Angela . . . erm, Amy?’ Uncle Quagmire said. ‘I wouldn’t want to lose you to a hideously prolonged death. After all, you’ve always been like a daughter to me.’

‘I am your daughter,’ Amy reminded him.

Uncle Quagmire stared at her. ‘Oh . . . okay. But, despite that, I still wouldn’t want to lose you.’

‘Don’t be so silly, Amy,’ said Daniel in a real man’s voice. ‘We’ll be all right. Maybe. Anyway, Uncle Quagmire, I have some questions.’

And indeed, Daniel had some questions, because someone
who shall remain nameless had slipped a list of important questions into his hand while everyone’s attention was elsewhere. ‘Question Number One,’ he said, consulting the piece of paper, ‘is about stunt nuns – what exactly is a stunt nun?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Uncle Quagmire said. ‘I thought everyone knew.’

‘I know, I know, I know!’ yelled Old Hag, waving her arm in the air like a classroom swot. Uncle Quagmire slapped her.

‘Right, let me explain,’ he said, firmly yet diligently. ‘In this very city at this very moment some Hollywood people are filming a very spectavagant film, and it’s got lots of nuns in it. One of those nuns must do dangerous things, like running quite quickly down a green grassy hillside, so she’ll need a running stunt nun double. You see?’

‘Oh,’ said one of the children
¹
.

‘Question Two,’ said Daniel quite relentlessly referring to his list. ‘What has the stunt nun got to do with the man who is threatening to destroy or dominate the world?’

‘Good question,’ said Uncle Quagmire, and Daniel felt quite proud of his question, although it wasn’t him that thought of the question, was it now?

Uncle Quagmire beckoned them to gather round closely, which they already were, so they first tried to ungather a bit so they could gather round again.

‘The stunt nun, Clarissa Claghorn, is staying near here in the Hotel Bristol,’ said Uncle Quagmire, ‘which is the sister hotel to the Hotel Salzburg in Bristol. Coincidentally, there is also a Hotel Bristol in Bristol, but that’s neither here nor there – unless you are staying there, of course, in which case you’d have to know whether it’s here or there otherwise you’d never find your way back to it,
and your luggage would be lost forever, together with the fluffy bathrobe and the rather fetching shower cap you intended to steal. Anyway, children, I do wish you’d stop digressatering, for it is here in Salzburg at the Hotel Bristol that she first meets and . . . and, erm, becomes very friendly with an American tourist named Bartle de Lylow.’

‘Oh,’ said Amy meaningfully.

‘And,’ continued Uncle Quagmire, ‘in that weekend they first meet and, erm, um, become overly friendly. Their overly friendship results in the sudden conception of Sampson de Lylow, the man that heads a shadowy group who call themselves
The Shadowy Group
, and he is the very man who is threatening the very securitiness of mankind with his shadowy threats of destroying the world as we know it by starting a new master race and re-populating the world with perfect subjects, and who, amongst other things, will exterminate all smirking patronising television chefs and those authors who insist on writing very long sentences that go on and on for ever and ever and then seem to stop in mid. This man, dear children, is so utterly evil that he fully deserves to be made to sit on the naughty step for quite a long time. Anyway, I cannot tell you any more about his shadowy threat as it would give substance to the narrative and ruin your little adventure. Suffice it to say that my secret mission is to stop that conception so that Sampson de Lylow will never be born!’

Amy raised one of her hands into the air around her head. ‘Can I ask something?’ she said, obviously very keen to ask a penetrating and incisive question.

‘Hang on, is it on my list of official penetrating and incisive questions?’ asked Daniel, waving the piece of paper at her.

‘I don’t know,’ said Amy. ‘I’ll try it. It’s this – what does conception mean?’

‘Erm . . .’ said Daniel, checking his list. ‘No, it’s not on the list! So I’m not sure if that’s allowed.’

But Betty was suddenly very eager to share her thorough
knowledge of all things gynaecological with her cousin Amy. ‘Conception, Amy,’ she said quite loudly and steadfastly, ‘is where the man’s spermatozoa, after ejaculation, enters the woman’s cervix, some of which then enter the fallopian tube, where the nuclei of an individual sperm will enthusiastically fuse with the ovum’s nucleus to form something called the zygote.’

‘Oh,’ said Amy, keen to be identified as a major character but still very much in the dark, both about the mechanics of conception and the reason why they had to stop this Bartle man and Clarissa woman getting together to stop a baby happening.

Uncle Quagmire looked strangely at Betty for a while, then for a while longer, before speaking. ‘Er,’ he erred, thoroughly wrinkling his very own brow. ‘O-kay. Very, erm, edifying. Now, can I say that, although I think that you’re all very nauchievous for following me here, and the secret mission will be highly very dangerous and highly very risky, I suppose I could use you all as disposable pawns in my secret mission to stop this, er, enthusiastic sperm fusing business.’

Disposable pawns! Gosh! The children suddenly felt quite important! And, even though some of them, would you believe, weren’t at all sure what it all meant, they felt quite excited at the thought of stopping a conception.

Just then, without any consideration whatsoever for the mechanics of plot progression, two things happened. One, Whatshisname barked an excited ‘woof woof woof’ but everyone ignored him except for one lady passer-by who poked him quite sharply with her pointy umbrella as she passed. And two, Daniel decided that this was an opportune time to raise the burning issue of his character wearing spectacles.

‘I’d like to wear spectacles!’ he said, to prove the point.

‘What?’ Betty spluttered, ignoring the fact that it’s hard, if not impossible, to splutter one short word.