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  Marmalade Atkins is not a good girl. In fact some people think she is the worst girl in the world. Her mother and father, who are pretty dreadful themselves, think that; and so do Sister Purification and Sister Conception, who run the school at the Convent of the Blessed Limit. And after Marmalade has sewn Sister Conception to the altar cloth and Superglued the head girl to the toilet seat, it is time for drastic action to be taken.

  Mrs Allgood, who is in the Helping Professions, and famous for her Understanding smiles, comes up with the solution: Very Extreme Treatment. This treatment (which is still on the secret list) involves taking Bad Girls and blasting them off into space, where the Bad Thoughts can be washed out of their brains, and they can be changed into Goody-Goodies.

  In spite of Captain Conch and Colonel Perry the astronauts, and the dreadful Reeny of Spacehols Interglobal, Marmalade succeeds in outwitting her enemies, with the help of luck, low cunning, and a nodding bloodhound.

  Cover shows Charlotte Coleman as Marmalade Atkins, Dudley Sutton as Colonel Perry and Dicken Ashworth as Captain Conch in the Thames TV Theatre Box production of Marmalade Atkins in Space.

  Director: Colin Bucksey

  Producer: Sue Birtwistle

  ANDREW DAVIES

  Marmalade Atkins in Space

  Illustrated by John Laing

  A Thames/Magnet Book

  Andrew Davies lives in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, with his wife, two children, two cats, and an alsatian. His books include Marmalade and Rufus (the previous exploits of the worst girl in the world), Conrad's War (winner of the Guardian prize for fiction), and The Legend of King Arthur (which was based on his BBC Television adaptation of the story).

  Magnet paperback edition

  first published in Great Britain 1982

  by Methuen Children's Books Ltd

  11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

  in association with Thames Television International Ltd

  149 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9LL

  Reprinted 1983

  Published simultaneously in hardback by Abelard Schuman Ltd

  Text copyright © 1982 Andrew Davies

  Illustrations copyright © 1982 John Laing

  Printed in Great Britain by

  Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd

  Bungay, Suffolk

  ISBN 042 3 002 201

  This paperback is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Contents

  The File on Marmalade Atkins

  Making plans for Marmalade

  Marmalade at Eton

  Marmalade in Venice

  Marmalade's short stay at St Florinda's

  Marmalade and Captain Crust

  Marmalade mooches about

  Marmalade and the Blessed Limit

  Mrs Allgood has an idea

  Marmalade blasts off

  Marmalade and the Lord of the Universe

  Marmalade and the Potman's Grotto

  Some of you will have heard of Marmalade Atkins before, and some of you won't. If you have heard of Marmalade Atkins before, you will know that she was not a nice girl. In fact, many people thought that she was the worst girl in the world.

  If you only like stories about nice little girls, do not read this book. You will be disgusted.

  And if you like the sort of book in which bad girls learn to be good and happy, and a credit to their mummies and daddies, then this is not the sort of book for you either.

  I am sorry about this, but there it is. Marmalade stays bad.

  The File on Marmalade Atkins

  If, like Marmalade Atkins, you are a very bad girl, you have an interesting time, and you meet some interesting people. Marmalade Atkins had wrecked the lives of a lot of interesting people, and they had got together the File on Marmalade Atkins.

  A file is a sort of list of terrible things that a bad person has done, and a list of the things that people have thought up to try to make the bad person good.

  By the time this story starts, the File on Marmalade Atkins was so big and fat that they had to carry it round in a wheelbarrow. If you want to read this story, it is only right that you should know some of the things they put in the File on Marmalade Atkins.

  A lot of the Bad Things in the File on Marmalade Atkins have to do with a diabolical donkey called Rufus, who is not in this story. He was Marmalade Atkins's chief partner in crime, and here are some of the things they did together:

  1 They tossed a posh snob called Cherith Ponsonby into a thistle patch and let the goat eat her new yellow riding boots.

  2 They destroyed a valuable sofa and tried to pretend it was camels.

  3 They completely demolished the El Poko Night Club and Restaurant.

  4 They completely ruined the Nativity Play in Coventry Precinct, routed the Bulkington Silver Band, and were thoroughly beastly to a bunch of bishops.

  If you really insist on knowing all the details of what Marmalade Atkins and Rufus did together, you will have to read a book called Marmalade and Rufus.

  But what about Rufus? you must be thinking. Especially those of you who know him. What's happened to him? Where’s he gone? Why is he not going to be in this book?

  Well, there are two stories about that. You will have to make up your minds which is the true one.

  The first story is the one that Mr Atkins would tell you. Mr Atkins was Marmalade's father, and he was not a very nice man. He was not very fond of Marmalade and he was not very fond of Marmalade's mother, come to that. He was not very fond of anything, except leaning over fences in yellow and purple tweed suits poking pigs and saying "Ar"; and he did like selling things. He sold things to rich Arabs, and he was very good at it.

  Selling things to rich Arabs had practically made him into a millionaire. What did he sell to them? Anything he could think of: cars, pictures of sunsets, hamsters by the lorryload, and also, I am afraid, things that did not actually belong to him, such as Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. He did his level best to sell Marmalade Atkins to the Arabs as well, but they were not enthusiastic.

  After the bad business with the bishops, and the dreadful doings in the big city that followed, Mr Atkins decided that Rufus the donkey was not a good influence on his daughter, and that he would have to go. So he invited a bunch of rich sheikhs around, and to Marmalade's horror he auctioned Rufus to the highest bidder.

  "The camel, we know, is the ship of the desert," he said, "but Rufus here will be the Rolls Royce of the Shifting Sands!"

  The sheikhs were very impressed indeed, and decided to club together and pay Mr Atkins a large sum in gold. Rufus was packed into a strong wooden crate all ready to be flown off to the desert, and Mr Atkins staggered off to the bank with his pile of gold. That was the end of the story as far as he was concerned.

  But late that night Marmalade Atkins was awakened by a sort of thumping sound, and then a sort of creaking sound, and then a sort of splintering sound. Almost, Marmalade thought, like the sounds you would hear if a small but powerful donkey was kicking his way out of a stout wooden crate.

  And then there were some more sounds: some quiet clip-clopping, and a couple of moos, and then a lot of sharp tapping sounds, as if someone was nailing a stout wooden crate together again.

  Then there was a gruff throaty sound halfway between a giant snoring and a gate creaking, and Marmalade opened her window to see her donkey standing in the middle of the yard.

  "Rufus," she said. "You’ve escaped!"

  "
Course I 'ave, Marmalade Atkins. Don't fancy no desert, not me. And I done a deal with that young cow Elsie."

  "What sort of deal?" said Marmalade.

  "Well, she fancied seeing a bit of the world," said Rufus. "Cows don't see much of the world. Dull life, cows 'ave. This way, see, she gets a trip in the sheikh's executive jet plane, gets a look at a bit of desert like. Sheikhs get narked they got a cow not a donkey, and they'll send 'er back 'ome. Laugh'll be on your dad then, eh?" And Rufus let out a hoarse metallic guffaw.

  "But what are you going to do?" said Marmalade.

  "Ah well," said Rufus. "Have to make meself scarce for a bit. Going on a trip, like."

  "Where?"

  "Not sayin'."

  "Take me with you!"

  "Not this trip, Marmalade Atkins," said Rufus. "I need you to stay here, keep things going like. Put yourself about a bit on your own. If you need any help, there's always the nodding bloodhound."

  "Always the what?”

  "Cheerio, Marmalade Atkins!"

  And Rufus trotted out of the yard away into the darkness and out of this book.

  Making plans for Marmalade

  After Mr Atkins had got rid of Rufus the donkey by selling him to the sheikhs, he was extremely pleased with himself. He was often to be seen wandering round the grounds singing snatches of old Arabian folksongs in a very loud and tuneless voice, which irritated his wife so much that she ordered four new fur coats from Harrods to spite him.

  Mr Atkins did not seem to notice this at all, however. He was spending more and more time leaning over the wall in his tweed hat and leggings, poking his pig Rover, and saying things like, "Ar. This be the loife," and "Nice bit of bacon, that," over and over again. This got on Rover's nerves more than somewhat. He hated being poked, and what was more, he thought that talking about bacon was very tactless.

  Marmalade Atkins sympathised with Rover's point of view, and one day she unlatched Rover's gate.

  When Mr Atkins came home that evening after a hard day with the Arabs, he leaned over the gate and gave Rover an especially hard poke in the bottom, saying: "Ar, me old beauty. Lovely bit of cracklin' there!" Rover the Free Range Pig, who had had a bit of a hard day himself, poked back, and found to his delight that the gate swung open.

  "Whoa there, me old darlin'!" said Mr Atkins in a very nervous way, but Rover was in a mood for poking, not whoaing, and he chased Mr Atkins all the way to the house and up the stairs, where Mr Atkins locked himself in the bathroom.

  Mr Atkins had a very boring evening in the bathroom, because Mrs Atkins thought it was his own fault and pretended not to hear his cries for help. Eventually Marmalade Atkins persuaded her father to escape through the bathroom window, which he did with some difficulty, tearing all the buttons off his expensive tweed suit, and then falling into a pile of manure which he had been meaning to put on the rose garden.

  Rover the Free Range Pig trotted downstairs and strolled round to watch with Marmalade as Mr Atkins slowly emerged from the manure heap, shaking tufty brown lumps from his pockets, eyebrows and ears.

  "This be the loife, eh, mate?" said Marmalade Atkins to Rover the Free Range Pig, which made Mr Atkins wonder if his daughter might have had something to do with the incident.

  He made his smelly way back to the bathroom, had a bath, then a shower, then another bath, and then splashed himself all over with Marmalade's mother's very best perfume, which had cost fifty pounds a bottle. Mr Atkins used three bottles of it, which made him feel a lot better. Then he put on his purple silk smoking jacket. He had decided to go to the smoking room, smoke a cigar, and have a serious think about Marmalade Atkins and what to do about her.

  But when he opened the cigar cupboard, there were no cigars! Empty box after empty box, which had once held priceless Havana cigars.

  "Darling! Sweetypie!" he called in a voice of savage fury.

  "Yes, my poppet?" hissed Mrs Atkins from the kitchen.

  "Have you been smoking my cigars at all?''

  "Not at all. Not one little bit! In point of fact I loathe and detest them!" said Mrs Atkins. "And you," she added in a voice only slightly less loud.

  "Just asking, sweetypie," said Mr Atkins.

  "Marmalade!"

  "Yes, cock?" said Marmalade, coming into the smoking room.

  "Do you know anything about my cigars?"

  "Father," said Marmalade. "I cannot tell a lie. I gave them to the goat and he ate them."

  Mr Atkins slowly took off his smoking jacket, tore it into two pieces, threw the pieces on the floor and stamped on them.

  After doing this, he was able to control himself enough to ask, in a voice trembling with rage, "Marmalade, why did you let the goat eat my Havana cigars?"

  "Well," said Marmalade, "I couldn't get him to smoke them."

  Mr Atkins stared at her for a few seconds and then began to jump up and down, making curious strangled sounds in his throat, and Marmalade decided that it would probably be a good idea to go for a walk.

  When Mr Atkins had recovered a little he went into the kitchen, where Mrs Atkins sat eating a couple of boxes of liqueur chocolates. She looked hot and irritable and rather fat. This was because she was wearing all her fur coats at once in an effort to annoy her husband. But to her disappointment he still didn't notice. He only thought about one thing at a time, and he was thinking about Marmalade.

  "Think we ought to do something about that girl," he said. "She's getting up my nose."

  "What a curious pastime for a young girl," said Mrs Atkins. "And doomed to failure. Your nose is very big my dear, but hardly that big!" Mrs Atkins laughed loudly and recklessly at her witty sally. I am sorry to say that she had eaten so many liqueur chocolates that she was not quite sober.

  "I wonder if I could sell her to the Arabs," said Mr Atkins.

  "Atkins," said his wife. "You are a fine salesman, but you could not sell a girl like Marmalade to a rag-and-bone merchant. Besides, I understand it's against the law to sell little girls."

  "Pettifogging rules and regulations," said Mr Atkins. "No wonder this country's going down the plughole. Well, what's to be done with her?"

  "A new school," said Mrs Atkins. "A Top Security School, a long way away. Somewhere oldfashioned, where they still cane them, and roast them over open fires. I really do feel that's what our daughter needs, Atkins."

  "Good thinking, sweetypie," said Mr Atkins, brightening. "And if I slip them a few quid extra, maybe they'll keep her for the holidays, too."

  Marmalade at Eton

  Mr Atkins asked the rich Arabs if they knew of any good schools. They all said the same thing.

  "Eton, old boy," they said. "Went there meself. Fine place. Very strict, very smart: stiff collars, striped trousers, bum-freezers. Just the job, old boy."

  Mr Atkins liked the sound of Eton, especially the bum-freezers. He didn't know what they were but he was sure they would do Marmalade a world of good.

  So one fine afternoon he dressed up in a black coat, striped trousers and top hat, and set off with Marmalade in the Rolls Royce. On the way he kept sneaking glances at his daughter, who was wearing muddy jeans and a teeshirt with a picture of a donkey on it. Somehow, he thought, this would not go down well at Eton College, so he made a detour and stopped off at Moss Bros, a posh shop in London where they can make you look smart no matter what size and shape you happen to be.

  "Black coat, striped trousers, stiff collar for the girl here," he said. The men in Moss Bros giggled a lot at first, but when Mr Atkins pulled out a handful of ten-pound notes they soon bustled about, and there was Marmalade looking like a small and evil-tempered waiter.

  "And a top hat," said Mr Atkins as an afterthought.

  The top hat came down over Marmalade's ears and hid most of her face, which was not a bad thing on the whole, or so Mr Atkins thought.

  The headmaster of Eton was rather alarmed when Mr Atkins and Marmalade came marching into his study. But he had seen a lot of strange things in his time, and was well kn
own for his good manners, so he simply asked Mr Atkins what he wanted.

  "Hear you run a fine school here, old boy," said Mr Atkins. "Bum-freezers, caning, all that, Mrs Atkins and I have decided to let you have a go at Marmalade.''

  "You are too kind," said the headmaster, "but I have all the marmalade I need at present."

  "Listen, cock," said Marmalade. "I'm Marmalade, and no funny cracks if you don't mind."

  "Ah," said the headmaster. "What an unusual and charming name. But I am sorry to say that we have no vacancies at present. In fact, Mr Atkins, we have a twenty year waiting list."

  "We can't wait that long!" said Mr Atkins. "Look, I don't mind paying a bit over the odds. And there's a few fivers in it for you personally, know what I mean?"