Tanglewreck Read Free Page A

into the kitchen. It was not a modern kitchen at all. It was enormous, like a bus depot, and it had astone floor, and a huge iron oven, and a long wooden table with long wooden benches placed on either side. There were hooks from the ceiling for hanging hams and herbs. There were two stone sinks side by side with plate racks nailed on the wall above them. There was no fridge, no washing machine, no dishwasher, no lino, no TV, no nothing at all, except what had been put there four hundred years ago. Oh, and there was Mrs Rokabye’s microwave, sitting on its own at one end of the twenty-foot long oak table, where twenty servants had eaten every day, when the house had been a great house.
    The microwave looked very out of place in the old kitchen, as though a Martian had left it there and gone back to Mars.
    Today, though, Mrs Rokabye was not heating up Ready-Meals for One in the blue microwave. She was bending over the great oven and lifting out a huge tin dish of sausages cooked in egg batter.
    ‘Toad in the Hole!’ she said, placing it on the table in front of the hungry and amazed Silver.
    Quickly, she washed her hands and sat down, as Mrs Rokabye cut two portions with a gleaming knife.
    ‘You never said you could cook,’ said Silver.
    ‘I have been very busy,’ said Mrs Rokabye.
    ‘You’ve been here for four years.’
    ‘Is it really four years? All that dusting I’ve had to do – the place was a shambles, as you know. Well, well, four years, how time flies – tempus fugit, as Abel Darkwater would say.’
    ‘What?’ said Silver, her mouth full of delicious sausage.
    ‘Tempus fugit,’ said Mrs Rokabye. ‘It means “Time flies”.’
    ‘What language is that?’ asked Silver.
    ‘Latin, I think,’ said Mrs Rokabye. ‘You must ask Mr Darkwater yourself. Ask him tomorrow – for that is my wonderful news!’
    While Silver ate seconds and thirds of Toad in the Hole, Mrs Rokabye told her of their trip to London the very next day.
    ‘We will have a picnic on the train. We will stay in Mr Darkwater’s magnificent house – nothing like this – all modern inside, and we will be taken to a musical in the evening. Mr Darkwater loves children and all he asks in return for his kindness is that you talk to him as though he were your own father. If he asks you a question – any question, do you hear me – if he asks you a question you must answer it.’
    ‘What if I don’t know the answer?’ said Silver.
    ‘I am sure you do know the answer,’ said Mrs Rokabye. ‘All questions have an answer.’
    Silver wondered if that was true, but there was no point asking Mrs Rokabye. Privately, Silver thought that the answer to some questions was another question.
    ‘Be ready to answer,’ said Mrs Rokabye, ‘it will be better for everyone that way. Then we shall all have a lovely time.’
    She said it still smiling, though by now the strain was beginning to show, like somebody desperately trying to hold on to the edge of a cliff by her fingertips.
    She turned away to get Silver some chocolate, but really to give her face a chance to relax into its customary scowl.
    As she stood with her back to Silver, relaxing and scowling, she didn’t realise that she was reflected in the polished metal door of the Chocolate Cabinet. Silver could see the real look on her face, and she knew that nothing had changed.
    The Chocolate Cabinet was where Mrs Rokabye kept her supplies of caramels and cake bars. The cupboard was made of steel and fastened with a metal padlock of the ferocious kind. Silver was never allowed in there.
    Carefully, and with something like pain, Mrs Rokabye took out two tubes of Smarties, then put one back, then took it out again. She reminded herself that she was a nice kind lady, at least for the next twenty-four hours, and she guessed that a nice kind lady would not be mean with her sweets.
    ‘London!’ she said brightly, forcing pleasure and happiness into her voice, like the ugly sisters forcing their