Page 81 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘Come ON!’ said Esme again.
They turned the corner all together and found themselves at a dead end: the very farthest corner, Mirren thought, of the maze. Like the one they’d come in next to but on the opposite corner of the diamond. It, too, had a small statue in a little grotto.
‘Is this it?’ said Esme, suspiciously.
‘Well, there are no more instructions in the locket,’ said Jamie, looking relieved. ‘So it obviously brought ussomewhere.’
‘If this is one of those things where you have to wait for the sun to hit a certain point...’ started Esme, ‘or, like, an eclipse or something, I’m going to kill you.’
But Jamie knelt down and cleared away some of the muck and ice from the statue. It wasn’t a gryphon this time, but instead, of all things, a stone carving of a pineapple. It was weather-worn and chipped, but unmistakably a pineapple.
‘Why onearthis there a pineapple here?’ said Mirren, startled.
‘Oh, they’re quite common in Scotland,’ said Theo, and Esme shot him a withering glance.
‘It’s true,’ said Jamie, wincing slightly.
‘Why? You can’t grow pineapples here.’
‘No,’ said Esme. ‘But you can grow them in the Caribbean, thicko.’
‘Oh,’ said Mirren. Then, ‘Oh.’
‘Quite,’ said Jamie, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘They are a symbol of national shame. There aren’t many still left.’
Mirren stared at it.
‘You know . . . ’ she said slowly, screwing up her eyes. ‘You know, if I’d lived all my life up here, and someone showed me a pineapple – a golden yellow pineapple, with fronds coming out of the top . . . ’
The others stared at her.
‘A crown of gold?’ said Jamie. ‘Do you think?’
‘It’s the colour of gold and it looks like a crown,’ said Mirren, obstinately.
They all stared at it.
Jamie tried to heave it up, but it wouldn’t budge. There was nothing around it, just a stone plinth on the paving stones beneath their feet. Together the two boys tried to shift it, but nothing doing.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Esme and gave it a good boot with her foot. Nothing happened, except she hurt her foot and swore in a way you presumably only learned how to do at either really posh boarding schools or at sea in the nineteenth century.
‘Bollocks,’ said Jamie, looking around. ‘There’s nothing else here! Nothing!’
Theo started searching the heavy hedges, which helped not at all, except he managed to scratch his face. Esme was still hopping. Jamie started exploring the ground, pushing leaves aside with his feet, the back of his neck going red. It got even darker overhead.
Mirren stepped forward, holding up the torch, and examined the statue closely.
She took her newly warmed hands out of the first set of mittens, keeping on the liner gloves, and knelt down. The pineapple stood about a metre high on its plinth; its stone was green and covered in moss and bird droppings, and worn away on its north and east side, where the winds swept down. The lines of the rind had been etched into it with a chisel; it was fine work, or had been, once upon a time. Each had a dot in the centre or raised stone, just like the fruit, and its leaves, slightly broken now, made a profusion at the top. For an instant Mirren wondered what it must have been like, to live in the depths of the Scottish winter and taste a pineapple for the very first time. It must have been unimaginably exotic and extraordinary. She thought, too, of the awfulness of the trade that went to the Caribbean; that built this beautiful house and its grounds. No wonder its inhabitants had felt themselves cursed, at one time or another, down the years. No wonder.
Experimentally, she pushed one of the pineapple’s buttons. Nothing happened, of course. But as she looked across the surface she saw one that did not look like the others. It almost did;but as she peered at it closely she could see it was not stone but metal, painted to look like stone, but slightly worn on one side, where the metal gleamed through. She looked up. Esme and Theo were arguing about something. Jamie was just looking lost. Bending her head in an act of supplication that did not seem out of place, Mirren scratched away the ice until it was clear, then pressed the button hard.
And the top of the pineapple made a heavy grinding noise, and the leaves began to move.
41
The effect on the group was electrifying. Esme darted over, her sore foot forgotten. Theo managed to swallow down whatever had been threatening to reappear. Jamie looked up, his face full of hope.
They all shuffled forward. The leaves had moved a few centimetres to the right, but no further; the mechanism was obviously old, and stiff. Jamie pushed it further, until it hit a point where the hole was large enough to insert a wrist; a slender one, at any rate.
