When I’d used up nearly all the pages of Marzipan’s rough pad I went and showed my Star magazine to the Brigadier. I hoped he’d read it from cover to cover but I suppose he didn’t really have the time. But he did spend quite a while flicking through and sometimes he stopped and read a whole page. I was pleased to see that they were nearly always the pages I had written. Sometimes he smiled and once he laughed out loud.
‘Do you think it’s OK?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘I think it’s more than OK, Miss Stebbings. I think it’s a magazine to be proud of. You have a word with my daughter, see if she can get busy with the photocopier.’
‘What, so that I can sell it like a real magazine?’ I said eagerly.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said the Brigadier. ‘How’s the swimming going?’ he added, as I was halfway out of his door.
I pulled a face.
‘It’s not.’
‘But you’re still trying?’
‘Every day. But it doesn’t work. I know what to do with my arms and legs and I blow when I’m supposed to but I still go glug glug glug.’
‘Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it eventually,’ said the Brigadier.
I knew I wouldn’t—but I also knew it was a waste of breath arguing. I ran off to ask Miss Hamer-Cotton to get printing my lovely Star magazine straight away.
I hoped she’d do it there and then but it took her four whole days—and then I couldn’t help being bitterly disappointed. I know it was daft, but I’d expected her to make some proper magazines with coloured covers and real pages. These limp little stapled sheets of messy handwriting looked like something from school. But all the other children started sharing them out, wanting to have a look, and they seemed really interested, so I cheered up.
‘Hey, give those back. They’re not free handouts, you know. They’re for sale. One pound per copy. All right, all right, fifty pence. But you’re getting an absolute bargain.’
I sold every single copy in a morning and went back to Miss Hamer-Cotton for some more.
She sighed.
‘Oh, Stella. It took me ages to do the last lot—especially all that stapling. Can’t you all share the copies I’ve already done?’
‘Well, not really, Miss Hamer-Cotton. They’re for sale, you see, and it wouldn’t be fair on the children who’ve already bought their own copies.’ I hesitated as she looked dazed. ‘You wouldn’t like to buy a copy for yourself, would you?’
I wasn’t sure whether she was going to laugh or get cross.
‘You really are the limit,’ she said. ‘And you shouldn’t have sold the copies, Stella. What have you done with the money?’
I patted my bulging pockets. I sounded just like ‘Jingle Bells’.
‘I’m not sure you ought to keep the money for yourself,’ said Miss Hamer-Cotton.
‘Well, I was planning to pay my staff a sort of wage.’
‘What about your printer?’ said Miss Hamer-Cotton.
‘Oh. Well. How much would you like?’
‘I was only joking, Stella. At least I think I was. But I really think you ought to make a large donation to a children’s charity.’
‘Charity begins at home,’ I mumbled, but I didn’t dare say it out loud.
I ended up putting a few pounds in the charity box, but Miss Hamer-Cotton let me keep the rest.
On Saturday morning we were allowed to walk into the village with Jimbo and Jilly. I went to the newsagent and bought Marzipan a new jotter (it was quite a bit smaller but she said she didn’t mind) and some fruit gums and chocolate drops and chocolate toffees and jelly babies and big wiggly jelly snakes—a huge bag of all the sweets that I love and Mum won’t let me buy because she says they’ll rot my teeth. I’d much sooner have false teeth and eat fruit gums and chocolate drops and chocolate toffees and jelly babies and big wiggly jelly snakes every day. Marzipan bought a big Yorkie bar and Janie and Rosemary bought crisps and a big bottle of lemonade.
Louise and Karen hadn’t bothered to come to the shops with us.
‘Won’t they be jealous when we have an absolute feast,’ I said.
But when we got back to the Emerald dormi we found Louise and Karen having their own private feast. Louise’s dad had sent her a huge box of crystallized fruit. Karen was back in favour and was slobbering at a great pink pear, sugar crystals all round her mouth.
‘See what we’ve got, Baldy,’ she said.
‘I don’t care. I don’t like that stuff anyway,’ I said.
I did really. Uncle Bill had bought some crystallized apricots round last Christmas and they were the most beautiful sweets I’d ever eaten, like little sugar suns. Louise was eating an apricot now and it made my mouth water just watching.
I looked at my sweets. I looked at the chocolate and the crisps. I looked and looked at the crystallized fruit.
‘You know what we should do,’ I said. ‘Have a midnight feast.’
Karen looked at Louise. Louise was no fool.
‘I think a midnight feast is a rather babyish idea, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘We won’t bother, will we, Karen?’
‘No, that’s right, we won’t bother,’ said Karen. ‘Who wants to go to a silly old midnight feast, eh?’
‘Marzipan and Janie and Rosemary and I do, don’t we?’ I said.
‘Wow, that would be great, Stella. Yummy yummy,’ said Janie.
‘Dora can come too, can’t she?’ said Rosemary. She hesitated. ‘What is a midnight feast?’
‘We get up at midnight and have a feast, of course,’ I said.
‘Are you just playing, Stella?’ Marzipan asked, looking worried.
‘No, I mean it. We’re having a midnight feast. Tonight!’
‘We’ll get into awful trouble if we get found out,’ said Marzipan.
‘We’re not going to get found out.’
‘What if we all get the giggles and Miss Hamer-Cotton hears?’
‘She won’t. Oh don’t spoil it, Marzie. It’s going to be such fun.’
It didn’t feel like fun when my alarm clock went off at midnight. I’d only just got to sleep for a start. The girls in boarding school books who have midnight feasts always hide their alarm clocks under their pillows. Well I tried but it was so uncomfortable I couldn’t stand it. I have this great big Popeye alarm clock which digs in horribly. It’s got such a loud ring that I didn’t dare put it up on my chest of drawers as usual in case it woke Miss Hamer-Cotton too. I tried setting it and cramming it inside a drawer but the ring was so muffled beneath all my jumpers and jeans that I was scared I’d sleep right through it.
So in the end I had to turf poor old Squeakycheese out of my bed and curl up with the alarm clock clasped to my chest. It was very cold and very hard. So as I said, I didn’t get to sleep for ages and then Popeye’s muscley arms ticked round to twelve o’clock and he rang the bell for all he was worth. It vibrated right through me and I lay twitching with shock. I felt so terrible I thought I might be ill. My eyes were all hot and burny, my head ached and I felt sick. I wanted to turn over and go back to sleep more than anything else in the whole world. But I was determined to have a midnight feast even if it killed me.
I sat up and scratched my tufts.
‘Wakey wakey,’ I whispered into the dark dormi. ‘It’s midnight. Time for our feast.’
Someone muttered. Someone mumbled. But no one moved.
‘Come on,’ I said, and I stuck my legs out of bed. ‘Midnight. Listen to the clock. Dong, dong, dong, dong, dong—’
‘Stella!’
‘Dong, etc.,’ I said. ‘Next up after me gets first pick at my sweets, OK?’
‘Me!’ Rosemary shouted, jumping out of bed.
‘Sh! Keep your voices down, please,’ Marzipan hissed, getting up too.
Rosemary chose a handful of chocolate drops. She gave a pretend nibble to Dora and a real nibble to Janie. Karen sat up in bed, peering through the gloom. She watched us for a couple of minutes without saying anything and then she lea
nt over towards Louise’s bed.
‘Are you awake?’ she whispered hopefully.
‘Mmm. We might as well join in too,’ said Louise. ‘We’ll never get any sleep with this row going on.’
She was too mean to donate any of her crystallized fruit to the feast, but she did get out the tin containing her iced cake. There wasn’t much of it left now but I suppose it was better than nothing. I’d slipped a large slab of the teatime cake up my T-shirt so I got that out too, and all my sweets and Marzipan’s chocolate and the crisps and lemonade. It was really quite a respectable feast.
‘And look what else I’ve got,’ I said, and I produced a very sticky pot of strawberry jam.
I’d taken that at teatime too and it had made a right mess of my T-shirt.
‘Stella, you are dreadful!’ said Marzipan.
‘I’ll put it back again tomorrow. I just thought a bit of jam might make this dry old cake a bit tastier, that’s all.’
I didn’t have a knife so I dug into the pot with my finger and spread the jam as best I could over the crumbly cake. Then I divided it into six and shared out all the other food too. We didn’t have a tablecloth for anything but the floor seemed perfectly clean.
‘So come on then, let’s eat!’
We sat down around the feast and felt for the food.
‘Yuck, it’s all sticky,’ said Karen.
‘I’m not hungry,’ said Louise. ‘This food is disgusting.’
I didn’t really feel hungry either but I took a big bite of cake just to show her. It felt a bit funny at first—but after a few bites my tummy woke up.
‘How weird, I’m really starving,’ I said, chomping cake for all I was worth. ‘I like this cake with jam. It’s like real jam sponge now. I wonder if I ate it with a bit of Yorkie it would taste like chocolate sponge?’ I experimented. ‘It’s lovely! You try, you lot. It’s as good as Black Forest gateau, really.’
They all tried, even Louise, and everyone agreed it was incredible. I took a handful of Janie’s salt and vinegar crisps and added them to my current mouthful.
‘And now it tastes like Black Forest gateau and chips! Utterly delicious.’
Only Rosemary believed me this time.
‘She’ll be sick, Stella,’ said Marzipan reproachfully.
‘No I won’t. It’s lovely, delicious, just like Stella says,’ Rosemary insisted, feeding the same mixture to Dora. ‘Dora likes it too. Look at her gobbling it up.’
The crisps and chocolate made me desperately thirsty. Janie and Rosemary had been sipping at their lemonade all day and it had already gone flat. I tried a couple of mouthfuls but it didn’t help.
‘I’m just nipping along to the bathroom,’ I said, getting up. ‘I’m so thirsty.’
‘You shouldn’t drink the water out of the taps, it’s bad for you,’ said Marzipan.
‘I like things that are bad for me,’ I said. ‘You are an old fusspot, Marzie-Parzie.’ I bent and tickled her. ‘Fuss, fuss, fuss,’ I said, my fingers scrabbling.
Marzipan shrieked.
‘Stop it! Stella, please stop it, I can’t stand being tickled, stop it!’ Marzipan giggled hysterically.
I tickled harder. Marzipan was sitting cross-legged. She suddenly toppled over right into the food, landing with her nose in the jammy cake crumbs. We all shrieked with laughter.
I could still hear them laughing when I was in the bathroom. And I could hear something else too. That wailing noise. It went on and on and it sounded so sad.
It was no use. I simply had to find out what it was.
I crept along the corridor, trying to kid myself I wasn’t scared. I could hardly see a thing. I edged along the wall, feeling my way, and then gasped. Something soft and feathery flickered across my face. I swotted at it violently and found myself holding bits of leaves. I’d been attacked by one of Miss Hamer-Cotton’s potted plants, that was all. I rather suspected I’d done it a serious damage but there wasn’t time to be bothered about it now.
I could still hear the faint wailing. It lured me onwards. I longed to go back for the others but I badly wanted to show off to Karen that I’d gone by myself.
I got to the end of the corridor and turned right. The wailing was louder now, although it stopped every now and then as if it was pausing for breath. I was pretty breathless myself and I felt horribly sick. I still had the taste of Black Forest gateau and chips in my mouth and it didn’t help at all.
I saw a light shining from under one of the doors near the end. I stood still, listening, waiting for the next wail. When it came I was certain it was coming from that room. I crept nearer until I was standing right outside. I listened so hard my ears ached. There was someone murmuring inside and some little snuffly sounds. Then a wail and more murmurs. I couldn’t quite make out whose voice it was. I sidled right up to the door, pressing my ear against the cold wood. I pressed too hard. The door burst open and I hurtled into the room.
There was a startled yowling and scrabbling from the bed. Orange Overall was sitting there with her hair in pink plastic curlers and her eyes all peepy with fatigue. Well, actually she was Nylon Nightie tonight, hyacinth blue, with pretty pink ribbons to match her curlers. She wasn’t doing the yowling and scrabbling herself. She was holding something in her arms, wrapped in an old towel. The something was very small and soft and snuffling. It wailed pathetically, sounding panic-stricken.
‘What are you playing at, you naughty girl,’ Nylon Nightie hissed. ‘You frightened us out of our wits.’ She peeped into the towel. ‘Sh, pet, calm down now. It’s just a great silly girl. Nothing to be frightened of. There, just as I’d got you sorted out and sleepy. I don’t know.’ She patted the towel soothingly and then looked at me properly.
‘Oh my goodness, whatever have you done to yourself?’ She abandoned the towel and sprang out of bed. ‘Where does it hurt? Have you told Miss Hamer-Cotton? We’d better call the doctor quick.’
I stared at her, baffled.
‘A doctor? Why? What’s the matter?’ I stammered.
Nylon Nightie gestured dramatically at my front.
‘Look at the blood!’
I looked. It was not a pretty sight. My nightie was streaked with scarlet. I stared at it, wondering how I could be bleeding to death without it hurting—and then I wet my finger and licked the red.
‘It’s strawberry jam.’
‘Jam? How—?’
‘What’s wrapped in that towel?’ I said very quickly indeed.
I darted round Nylon Nightie and got to the bed. The towel was wriggling furiously and giving intermittent wails. I found a corner and pulled. A little red furry animal was exposed, its big brown eyes glinting, black snout quivering.
‘Oh how lovely,’ I whispered. ‘Isn’t it sweet. Is it … is it a kitten or a puppy?’
‘He’s a fox cub,’ said Nylon Nightie, and she sat on the bed and picked him up. He nuzzled into her nylon folds, his thick tail neatly wrapped round his tiny body. He wailed again, but Nylon Nightie stroked him and whispered to him soothingly until he was quiet.
‘Where did you get him?’ I said.
I decided I wanted a fox cub for a pet more than anything else in the whole world.
‘I found him out near the dustbins. I think the mother fox must have led all her cubs there. We’ve had foxes foraging around in the bins for a while. Right little nuisances they are. Did you hear that, you cheeky little chap?’ She shook her head at him fondly. ‘Anyway, this little fellow got left behind. He’d cut his paw on a tin can and couldn’t run properly. He was crying his eyes out and I couldn’t resist him. I knew he didn’t have much chance if I left him where he was. So I took him indoors and I’ve had him here with me now a couple of weeks or more. His paw’s nearly better now so I can let him go soon—and it won’t be before time. You haven’t half led me a dance, haven’t you, my boy?’ She sighed.‘Did you hear him having a little whimper, is that why you’re here?’
‘I’ve heard him several times. I couldn’t
think what it could be. What’s the matter with him? Is his paw hurting to make him wail like that?’
‘No, I think he’s fine. He just wants to be up and about. Foxes stay up all night in the wild, don’t they? This little fellow just wants to play and when I put my head down on the pillow he starts making a right fuss until I give in to him.’
‘I’ll play with him,’ I said eagerly. ‘Can I stroke him?’
‘Gently then. And mind his teeth. He can’t half nip even at this age.’
I touched his soft fur. He quivered as I gently smoothed it. I could feel his blood beating under his skin.
‘He’s so beautiful,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t mind me stroking him, does he? Imagine, I’m stroking a real live fox! Wait till I tell the others.’
‘Oh no! You’re not to tell anyone,’ said Nylon Nightie sharply. ‘It’s a secret, Stella, do you hear me? If Miss Hamer-Cotton gets to know about little Foxy here she’ll go spare. You know what she’s like about that silly Stinky-tinky cat of hers.’
I giggled.
‘If Stinkypoo caught one whiff of this little chap he wouldn’t half throw a tantrum. Miss Hamer-Cotton would get rid of Foxy before you could blink. So I’ve got to keep him secret until he’s old enough to be set free.’
‘Couldn’t I even tell my best friend Marzipan?’
‘No, I know what you kids are like. Your friend will tell someone else and soon the whole lot of you will know and then there’ll be nudges and giggles and Foxy jokes and it’ll be all round Evergreen. I’ve got my job to think of, haven’t I?’
‘I suppose so. But we wouldn’t tell, honestly.’
‘I know you wouldn’t mean to. But I still want you to keep quiet, all right? You won’t even tell your pals in your dormi?’