What happened next, in this particular story, was that their housekeeper sneaked out of the back door. She ran over to the trampoline, holding a finger across her lips. Then she took the finger away and kissed Edward, Sophie and Hotspur, but very quietly. (She usually gave them great smacking, musical kisses like cymbals being flicked together). Then she vaulted lightly over the garden wall with the grace of a trained ballet dancer, and slid into her car – a red ‘Snifitzu’ – which was parked in front of the garage.
Gently and silently, she put it into reverse; gently and silently she took off the handbrake and coasted down the sloping drive. When she hit the main road (after looking carefully both ways), she took off like a rocket.
Three minutes later Bonniface called out, asking where the tomato sauce was.
Four minutes later he got up and began to search the house for tomato sauce, calling Daffodil’s name as he did so. His voice echoed in empty rooms.
Five minutes later a howl of fury and anguish rang out in the Sapwood kitchen.
CHAPTER 10 A Startling Idea for a Devoted Father
“How could she do this to me?” Bonniface complained bitterly. He mopped up the last of his egg with the last of his toast – toast he had been forced to make himself.
“It’s nearly Christmas,” said Sophie, for the children had come in from the trampoline to comfort their father. “You could put off going to the Antarctic until after Christmas.”
“You don’t understand,” cried Bonniface. “I’ve just had a dream. I heard a mysterious voice. ‘Help!’ it cried. Now, a lot of people would be confused by a voice calling ‘Help!’ but not me. I knew – knew for sure – that it was an Antarctic voice. And it was calling me! ME! And it wanted me now! And not only that, I had the strangest feeling that I knew where it was calling from. I suddenly remembered an inlet – the Inlet of Ghosts, they called it – which people talked about without quite knowing whether it was really there, and I woke up with a sudden new theory about where I might find The Riddle, so…”
“You’ll have to take us with you,” interrupted Edward. “I’d rather go to another planet, but going to the Antarctic might be a sort of science fiction practice.” Hotspur gave the cry of an excited goose.
“Antarctic explorers never take their kids exploring with them,” shouted Bonniface. “Scott didn’t! Shackleton didn’t! Amundsen? No way!”
“It might have been more fun for them if they had,” said Edward.
Bonniface crunched his toast thoughtfully. Slowly, his expression changed till suddenly he thumped the kitchen table with his clenched fist. He thumped it so hard that the bottle of tomato sauce leaped high in the air.
“You’re right!” he cried. “Why should I copy Scott and Shackleton? Why shouldn’t I be the first explorer to take my children with me? I want to look after you kids. I long to try out my new Riddle theory. And I absolutely need to answer that cry of ‘Help!’ I’ll do all three things at once. It’s settled. We’ll all go south!”
“Hooray!” shouted Edward and Sophie, while Hotspur chortled like a happy magpie. “We’ll pack at once.”
“You will need thermal underwear,” their father shouted after them.
“You gave us some last Christmas,” Sophie called back. “And the Christmas before that.”
Bonniface smiled proudly, thinking what a good father he had been.
“What I really wanted was a reflecting telescope,” Edward muttered. Still, it was no use worrying about past disappointments.
“And do you have polypropylene jerkins?” Bonniface shouted again.
“You gave us jerkins and jackets for our birthdays,” Edward’s voice came back faintly. “We have complete sets of explorer clothes! And mukluks! Even Hotspur has mukluks – though he really wanted trainer skates.”
Hotspur! Bonniface suddenly frowned. The older children might be useful. They could cook, do up their own jerkins and jackets and mukluks. But Hotspur!
“Perhaps we should send Hotspur to Granny’s,” he suggested. But this suggestion made Hotspur squawk like an angry seagull.
“Dad!” cried Sophie. “We can’t leave Hotspur behind. I know he’s little, but every little helps.”
Oh well, thought Bonniface, there wouldn’t be too much work in looking after anyone as small as Hotspur. He ran to his fax machine, planning to contact Scott Base on Ross Island, on the very edge of the great, frozen continent. He wanted to let them know he was coming and to order a particularly good skiddoo – a sort of Antarctic motor-sledge.
“It must be a state-of-the-art skiddoo!” he muttered to himself. “Nothing but the best will do. And when they hear that I’m bringing the kids, they’ll make sure that I get the very best. After all, it’s nearly Christmas. They’ll want the children to be safe as well as happy at Christmas. There might, after all, be great advantages in taking the kids with me.”
CHAPTER 11 Unexpected Air Travel
The Sapwood children always travelled by plane when they visited their grandmother. They were used to airline seatbelts, and looked forward to free aeroplane lollies. But the inside of the Hercules aircraft (which was waiting to take explorers and scientists to Antarctica) took them by surprise. For travelling by Hercules turned out to be rather like flying in a second-hand-clothes-and-general-junk shop. There were seats, of course (you didn’t have to stand all the way to the Antarctic), but they weren’t like ordinary aeroplane seats. They were made of a curious orange webbing and they ran around the edge of the Hercules cabin. You strapped yourself in and sat there, staring inwards towards the middle of the plane. And down the middle of that cabin ran tall racks on which people hung coats and slung luggage. A man in an orange-coloured overall and headphones moved around, handing out plastic bags. Sophie thought perhaps they were being given large bags full of sweets, or something to be sick into, but it turned out he was handing ear-muffs to everyone.
Of course, the Hercules was full of people all going to Antarctica and, while they waited for the journey to start, Bonniface pointed them out to his children… helicopter pilots, geologists, penguin experts, drill-operators, and so on.
“It’s almost as good as going to another planet,” Edward whispered to Sophie, who nodded in a rather distracted way. As she had climbed on to the plane, suddenly the pendant, hidden under layers of warm clothes, had shifted against her skin as if it were startled. She had the odd idea that, even through layers of jerseys and jackets, it had recognised someone, and that somewhere in the Hercules, someone smiling and cheerful had also recognised – not the invisible pendant, perhaps, but certainly the whole Sapwood family, and had stopped smiling. Sophie peered around anxiously, but there wasn’t a single person looking disturbed, dismayed, or disgusted by the sight of a famous explorer taking three children on a dangerous expedition.
The Sapwood family settled down on the webbing seats and strapped themselves in. A merry crowd of Antarctic helicopter pilots were settling themselves opposite, and singing a fine old Antarctic helicopter-pilot’s song.
“Oh, let us meanderOut over Lake VandaWhere we’ll take a ganderAt prospects