The House at World's End Read Online Free Page A

many of these beastly animals—’ Valentina did not even know about Pip.
    ‘Not enough,’ Carrie said, licking her fingers. ‘If only we lived in the country, we’d have dozens and dozens.’
    ‘Oh! I can’t stand any more! Oh, it’s hard on me!’
    ‘They do not sweat and whine about their condition.’
Tom quoted the poem softly, as the kitchen door swung angrily behind her. ‘I
think I could turn and live with animals…’

6
    They had all had the same idea. They fought as much as any family, and screamed and punched and sometimes bit, and told Charlie, ‘Kill her! Attack!’ while he smiled and thumped his tail and rolled his mild eyes, but when there was a good idea about, they all grabbed it together.
    After school, they met in the playground among the gorgonzola statues, and went out by bus to the depressing grey suburb where Uncle Rudolf had his plumbing factory. It was no use trying to talk to him at home, with Valentina flouncing about in clothes made of dead animals and talking about herself.
    The factory was an old-fashioned building of dirty yellow brick, with spiked iron railings all round, like a prison. Over the great studded door, Uncle Rudolf had put a royal emblem of a huge crown and crossed water pipes, with a Latin motto: ‘Princeps Plumbarium.’ The Prince of Plumbers.
    Tom and Carrie and Em and Michael had been there before when Uncle Rudolf had given them a tour of the workshops where pipes were elbowed into strange angles, and baths beaten into shape with hollow clangs. He had hoped to interest one of them into coming into the plumbing business some day. That was before he had to have them living in his house. Now he would not have had them as a gift.
    ‘What’s this?’ he asked irritably, as the four of them, having waited for his secretary to go and get her tea, charged into his office and stood on the carpet before his desk.
    ‘It’s a delegation,’ said Tom.
    ‘Well, I haven’t time.’ Uncle Rudolf had actually been reading a magazine when they came in, but he began to push papers and bits of broken pipe and strings of washers about, to look busy.
    ‘But this may be the happiest day of your life,’ Carrie said.
    ‘The happiest day of my life will be when I can get some peace to do my work.’
    ‘Ah,’ said Tom, shifting his bony weight from one long leg to the other, like a horse. ‘That’s just it.’
    ‘We’ve had an idea,’ Carrie said.
    Em said nothing. She had learned from the cats to wait and be cautious.
    ‘A brilliant idea, Uncle Rhubarb.’ Michael stepped forward and put his chewed fingertips on the desk and his head on one side. He could look horrible when he was dirty, with his clothes sagging at the waist and falling off his shoulders and his hair like scarecrow straw, but he was still young enough to be able to turn on the charm like one of Uncle Rudolf’s taps. The innocent, babyish charm that the others had exchanged for growing years.
    ‘Don’t call me that,’ Uncle Rudolf said, but at least he listened to the idea. He listened, but he did not like it.
    ‘But you’ve got the house!’ they cried. ‘You said you couldn’t sell it, and it’s going to waste with nobody in it.’
    ‘It’s going to pieces.’
    ‘We could fix it up. We could live there.’
    ‘What on?’ Uncle Rudolf laughed without mirth.
    ‘I’m seventeen,’ Tom said. ‘Well - sixteen then. In my seventeenth year. I can leave school. I can get a job. I’m not a child.’
    ‘You talk like one.’ Uncle Rudolf pushed his lips in and out like a windy baby. ‘It’s impossible. You’d starve to death. I’d have the authorities on me for child neglect’ He seemed to care more about that than the starving.
    ‘If that’s what’s worrying you …’ Em had kept quiet, watching all the faces, the eager begging young ones and the cold, scoffing older one, set years ago in the shape of disapproval. ‘Why not give us the money it costs you to keep us now?’
    Uncle