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First Published:
Sep 2002, 128 pages
Paperback:
Sep 2003, 144 pages
The cupboard under the stairs of
the Dickens household was occupied by Gibbering Jane. She spent her days in
the darkness, alongside a variety of mops, buckets, and brooms, mumbling about
"hospital corners" and "ruckled chenille." She never came
out and was fed slices of ham and any other food that was thin enough to slip
under the bottom of the door.
The reason why Mr. and Mrs.
Dickens had rustling brown paper sheets and blankets was that this was a part
of the Treatment. Dr. Muffin was always giving very strict instructions about
the Treatment.
The smell of old hot-water
bottles had almost reached "unbearable" on Eddie's
what-I'm-prepared-to-breathe scale, and he held his hanky up to his face.
"You'll have to leave the
room, my boy," said his father.
"You'll have to leave the
house," said his mother. "We can't risk you going all yellow and
crinkly and smelling horrible. It would be a terrible waste of all that money
we spent on turning you into a little gentleman."
"Which is why we're sending
you to stay with Mad Uncle Jack," his father explained.
"I didn't know I had a Mad Uncle Jack," gasped Eddie. He'd never
heard of him. He sounded rather an exciting relative to have.
"I didn't say your
Mad Uncle Jack. He's my Mad Uncle Jack," said his father. "I do wish
you'd listen. That makes him your great-uncle."
"Oh," said Eddie,
disappointed. "You mean Mad Great-uncle Jack." Then he
realized that he hadn't heard of him either and he sounded just as exciting as
the other one. "When will I meet him?"
"He's in the
wardrobe," said his mother, pointing at in the huge wardrobe at the foot
of the bed, case her son had forgotten what a wardrobe looked like.
Eddie Dickens pulled open the
door to the wardrobe, gingerly. (it was a ginger wardrobe.)
Inside, among his mother's
dresses, stood a very, very, very tall and very, very, very thin man with a
nose that made a parrot's beak look not so beaky. "Hullo," he said,
with a u and not with an e. It was very definitely a
"hullo" and not a "hello." Mad Uncle Jack put out his
hand.
Eddie shook it. His little
gentleman lessons hadn't been completely wasted.
Copyright © 2002 Philip Ardagh
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