The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

They found Aunt Emily in the kitchen with Mrs Grove, who always came in early from the village.

Madlyn liked Mrs Grove straight away; she was sensible and friendly, and when Rollo said he didn’t like porridge, that was the end of that. She didn’t try to persuade him or fuss and when Madlyn explained that he had toast fingers and Marmite for breakfast every day of his life, she said that was perfectly normal.

‘Ned used to eat peanut butter day in and day out when he was small, and he’s strong enough now.’

‘Who’s Ned?’ asked Madlyn.

‘My son. He’s around somewhere; he comes to give me a hand when he isn’t at school.’

‘How old is he?’ Madlyn wanted to know.

‘He’s eleven.’

After breakfast they said goodbye to Katya, who left for the station in a taxi, and then they set off to explore the castle, which they found very interesting, though rather cold and damp.

Madlyn particularly liked the museum. It wasn’t much like the museums in London but it was very ... personal. In the London museums you never saw rocking horses with missing legs or stuffed ducks that had choked on a stickleback or dog collars which had belonged to Jack Russell terriers who were able to climb trees. There was a set of brushes for cleaning out Northumbrian Small Pipes and a round, brownish thing covered in some kind of skin, which was labelled ‘The Clawstone Hoggart’. It was on a table all by itself and was obviously important, but they had no idea what it was.

Rollo of course liked the dungeon. He could see at once that all the old machines that had been used for doing the washing could easily have been instruments of torture – and in a corner behind the mangle he found two fat cockroaches whose chestnut wing cases shone most beautifully in the dusk.

But when they had explored all the rooms that they could get into they came back to Mrs Grove in the kitchen.

‘I can’t find the television set,’ said Madlyn.

‘There isn’t one, dear. Sir George doesn’t want one in the place. Nor no computer either.’

Madlyn tried to take this in. She had never been in a house without a television.

‘It’s my favourite programme tomorrow afternoon,’ she said. ‘And Rollo always has his animal programmes.’

‘You can come and watch in my house,’ said Mrs Grove. ‘The village is only five minutes down the road. Ned’ll show you.’

Madlyn thanked her and made her way to Aunt Emily’s room. She could hear someone hoovering on an upstairs landing but when she got closer the hoovering stopped and when she went to investigate there was nobody there.

The idea had been that Aunt Emily would look after Madlyn and her brother with Mrs Grove helping out when necessary, but it soon became clear that it was going to be the other way round.

As far as Madlyn could see, it was Aunt Emily who needed help, and she needed it badly.

She needed help with her hair, which looked like a grey worm that had landed by mistake on her head and passed on to a better world; she needed help with her clothes, which she had lost track of in various drawers – and she certainly needed help with the things she was knitting for the gift shop.

Aunt Emily was very fond of knitting, but unfortunately you can be fond of something and not be very good at it, and Madlyn was not surprised that the gloves and scarves she had made were not selling well.

After all, most people have five fingers; there is really nothing to be done about that.

‘What about crochet, Aunt Emily?’ suggested Madlyn. ‘We could make table-mats and doilies; they’re easy – they just go round and round.’

Aunt Emily thought this was a good idea, and she showed Madlyn the patchwork tea cosy she was working on.

‘Do you think people would notice if I used snippets from George’s pyjamas? I mean, pyjamas aren’t really ... underwear ... are they?’ said Emily. ‘It’s not as though they were striped. Or flannel. Striped flannel would never do, I see that.’

In the next few days Madlyn was busier than she could remember, and she was glad of it because she missed her parents more than she could have imagined. She mended the leaking lavender bags, she turned the pot-pourri to stop it mouldering, she helped Mrs Grove to make fudge to sell the visitors in fancy bags. When Sir George found out how neat her handwriting was he asked her to help with the labels in the museum. She was even allowed to make a new label for the Clawstone Hoggart.

‘What exactly is a Hoggart, Uncle George,’ the children had asked at lunch when they first came.

‘A Hoggart?’ Uncle George had looked vague.

‘Yes. The Clawstone Hoggart in the museum. We’ve never seen one before.’

‘No... well ...’ Sir George took a sip of water. ‘We think it might be...’ He turned to his sister. ‘You tell them.’

‘We found it in an old chest,’ said Emily. ‘It just said “Hoggart” – and of course it was foun“d here so it is a “Clawstone Hoggart”. But we’re not sure exactly . . . Cousin Howard is looking into it.’