Arabel and Mortimer

by Joan Aiken

  Luckily, at this moment the guard blew a shrill blast on his whistle, for the two men were beginning to look even more impatient, so Mrs. Jones hastily bundled Arabel into the railway carriage and dumped her suitcase on the seat beside her.

  "Now you'll be ever such a good girl, won't you dearie, and Mortimer, too, if he can, and take care among all those megadilloes and jumbos and do what Aunt Effie says—and we'll be down to fetch you on Friday fortnight—"

  Here the guard interrupted Mrs. Jones again by slamming the carriage door, so Mrs. Jones blew kisses through the window as the train pulled away. One of the bowler-hatted men—the short fat one—got up and put Arabel's case in the rack, where she couldn't reach it to get out her picture book. He would have done the same with the canvas bag she was carrying, but she clutched that tightly on her lap, so he sat down again.

  The two men then took their hats off, laid them on the seat, settled themselves comfortably, and went on with their conversation, taking no notice whatever of Arabel, who was very small and fair-haired, and who sat very quietly in her corner.

  After a minute or two she opened the canvas bag, out of which clambered a very large untidy black bird—almost as big as Arabel herself—who first put himself to rights with his beak, then stood tip-claw on Arabel's lap and stared out of the window at the suburbs of London rushing past.

  He had never been in a train before and was so astonished at what he saw that he exclaimed, "Nevermore!" in a loud, hoarse, rasping voice which had the effect of spinning round the heads of the two men as if they had been jerked by wires. They both stared very hard at Arabel and her pet.

  "What kind of a bird is that?" asked one of them, the large pale one.

  "He's a raven," said Arabel, "and his name's Mortimer."

  "Oh!" said the pale man, losing interest. "Quite a common bird."

  "Mortimer's not a bit common," said Arabel, offended.

  "Well, I hope he behaves himself on this train," said the pale man, and then the two men went back to their conversation.

  Mortimer, meanwhile, looked up and saw Arabel's suitcase in the rack above his head. As soon as he saw it he wanted to get up there, too. But Arabel could not reach the rack, and Mortimer was not prepared to fly up. He disliked flying and very rarely did so if he could find somebody to lift him. He now said, "Kaark" in a loud, frustrated tone.

  "Excuse me," said Arabel very politely to the two men, "could you please put my raven up in the rack?"

  This time both men looked decidedly irritated at being interrupted.

  "Certainly not," said the large pale one.

  "Rack ain't the place for birds," said the short fat one. "No knowing what he might not get up to there."

  "By rights he ought to be in the guard's van," said the first. "Any more bother from you and we'll call the guard to take him away."

  They both stared hard and angrily at Arabel and Mortimer, and then began talking to each other again.

  "We'd better hire a truck in Ditchingham—Fred will be there with the supplies; he can do it—have the truck waiting at Bradpole crossroads—you carry the tranquilizers, I'll have the nets—twenty ampoules ought to be enough, and a hundred yards of netting—"

  "Don't forget the foam rubber—"

  "Nevermore," grumbled Mortimer to himself, very annoyed at not getting what he wanted the instant he wanted it.

  "Look at the sheep and the dear little lambs in that field, Mortimer," said Arabel, for the train had now left London and was running through green country. But Mortimer was not the least interested in dear little lambs. While Arabel was watching them, he very quietly and neatly hacked one of the men's bowler hats into three pieces with his huge beak and then swallowed the bits in three gulps. Neither of the men noticed what he had done. They were deep in plans.

  "You take care of the ostriches—mind, they kick—and I'll look after the zebras."

  "They kick, too."

  "Just have to be quick with the tranquilizer, that's all."

  Mortimer, coming to the conclusion that nobody was going to help him, hoisted himself up into the rack with one strong shove-off and two flaps. The men were so absorbed in their plans that they did not notice this either.

  "Here's a map of the area—the truck had better park here, by the ostrich enclosure—"

  Mortimer, up above them, suddenly did his celebrated imitation of the sound of a milk truck rattling along a cobbled street. "Clinketty-clang, clang, clink, clanketty clank."

  Both men glanced about them in a puzzled manner.

  "Funny," said the short fat man, "could have sworn I heard a milk truck."

  "Don't be daft," said the large pale one. "How could you hear a milk cart in a train? Now—we have to think how to get rid of the watchman—"

  Mortimer now silently worked his way along the rack until he was over the men's heads. He wanted to have a look at their luggage. From one of the two flat black cases there stuck out a small thread of white down. Mortimer took a quiet pull at this. Out came a straggly piece of ostrich feather. Mortimer studied the bit of plume for a long time, sniffed at it, listened to it, and finally poked it under his wing. Presently, forgetting about it, he hung upside down from the rack, swaying to and fro with the motion of the train, and breathing deeply with pleasure.

  "Please take care, Mortimer," said Arabel softly.

  Mortimer gave her a very carefree look. Then, showing off, he let go with one claw. However, at that moment the train went over a set of switches—kerblunk—and Mortimer's hold became detached. He fell, heavily.

  By great good luck, Arabel, who was anxiously watching, saw Mortimer let go, and so she was able, holding wide the two handles of the canvas bag, to catch him—he went into the bag headfirst.

  The ostrich plume drifted to the floor.

  The two men, busy with their plans, noticed nothing of this.

  The fat one was saying, "The giraffes are the most important. Reckon we should pack them in first? They take up most room."

  "Nah, can't. Giraffes have to be unloaded first. They're wanted by a costumer in Woking."

  "Why the blazes should somebody want giraffes in Woking?"

  "How should I know? Not our business, anyway."

  Mortimer poked his head out of the canvas bag. He was very annoyed at his mortifying fall, and ready to make trouble if possible. His eyes lit on the second bowler hat.

  Fortunately, at this moment the train began to slow down.

  "Nearly at Foxwell now, little girl," said the fat man. He took down Arabel's case and put it by her on the seat.

  "You being met here?" he said.

  "Yes," said Arabel. "My uncle Urk is meeting me. He is—" But the two men weren't paying any attention to her. The large one was looking for his hat. "Funny, I put it just here. Where the devil could it have got to?"

  "Oh dear," said Arabel politely, when no hat could be found. "I'm afraid my raven may have eaten it. He does eat things sometimes."

  "Rubbish," said the hatless man.

  "Don't be silly," said the fat man.

  Now the train came to a stop, and Arabel, through the window, saw her uncle Urk on the platform. She waved to him and he came and opened the door.

  "There you are, then," he said. "Enjoy your trip? This all your luggage?"

  Uncle Urk was brown and wrinkled, with a lot of bristly gray hair. There were bits of straw clinging to his clothes.

  "Yes, thank you, Uncle Urk."

  "That's right." He took Arabel's case, and she carried the bag with Mortimer in it. "Good-bye," she called to the two men, but they were still busy hunting for the lost hat.

  "Look at this!" the pale one said angrily to the thin one, finding the bit of ostrich plume on the floor. "You careless fool!" He quickly picked up the feather and stuck it in his pocket.

  Uncle Urk dropped Arabel's case in the back of his pickup truck and settled her and Mortimer in the front seat.

  "Well? You excited at the thought of staying in a zoo?" he inquired.


  "Yes, thank you," said Arabel. "Mortimer is, too, aren't you, Mortimer?"

  "Kaaark," said Mortimer.

  2

  "Do you keep every kind of animal in your zoo, Uncle Urk?" Arabel asked.

  "It ain't my zoo really, Arabel, you know. I'm just the head warden, and your aunt Effie runs the cafeteria," said Uncle Urk. "The zoo belongs to Lord Donisthorpe."

  "Does he have lions and tigers?"

  "No, he hasn't got any of those. He likes grass-eating animals mostly—wildebeests and zebras and giraffes. And birds and snakes. And he's got porcupines and a hippopotamus and a baby elephant. I expect you'll enjoy giving the baby elephant doughnuts."

  "I thought they liked buns best?" said Arabel.

  "Lord Donisthorpe has invented a doughnut-making machine," said her uncle. "It uses whole wheat flour and sunflower oil and honey, so the doughnuts it makes are very good for the animals. And so they blooming well oughter be at thirty pence apiece," he muttered to himself. "Cor! Did you ever? Six bob for a perishing doughnut!"

  His truck at that moment passed between the gates in a high wire-mesh fence. Arabel noticed a sign that said CAUTION, ZEBRA CROSSING.

  Ahead of them lay a ruined-looking castle, inside a moat, and a lot of wooden and stone buildings and haystacks. But Uncle Urk pulled up in front of a small white house with a neat garden around it. "Here's your aunt Effie and Chris Cross," he said.

  Chris was a boy who used to live next door to Arabel's family in Rumbury Town, London. But he had come down to work in Lord Donisthorpe's zoo as a holiday job last summer, and liked it so much that he stayed on.

  Aunt Effie was thin-faced and fuzzy-haired; her eyes were pale blue but sharp. Nearly all her remarks about people began with the words "You can't blame them—" which really meant that she did blame them, very much. "You can't blame the kids who drop their ice-cream wrappers; they've never learned no better, nasty little things. You can't blame murderers, it's their nature; what I say is, they ought to make them into pet food. You can't blame your uncle Urk for being such a muddler; he was born that way."

  Now Aunt Effie's pale blue eyes snapped as she looked at Mortimer clambering out of his canvas bag, and she said, "Well, I s'pose you can't blame Martha for sending that monster down with Arabel. I wouldn't leave him alone in the house myself, wouldn't keep him a day, but so long as he stays in my house he stops inside the meat safe, that's the place for him!"

  She fetched a galvanized zinc cupboard with a perforated door into the front hall and said to Arabel, "Put the bird in there!"

  "Oh, please not, Aunt Effie," said Arabel, horrified. "Mortimer would hate that, he really would! He's used to being out. I'll keep an eye on him, I promise."

  "Well, the very first thing he pokes or breaks with that great beak of his," said Aunt Effie, "into the meat safe he goes!"

  Mortimer looked very subdued. He sat beside Arabel at tea, keeping quite quiet, but Arabel managed to cheer him up by slipping pieces of Aunt Effie's lardy-cake to him. It was very delicious—chewy and crunchy, with pieces of buttery toffeelike sugar in among the dough, and a lot of currants.

  After tea, Aunt Effie had to go back to manage the cafeteria. Chris said, "I'm going to feed the giraffes, so I'll show Arabel over the zoo a bit, shall I?"

  "Mind she's not a nuisance," said Aunt Effie.

  Uncle Urk, who was also going to feed animals, said he would probably meet them near the camel house.

  Lord Donisthorpe's zoo was in the large park which lay all round his castle. Lord Donisthorpe lived in the castle, which was in bad repair. The animals mostly lived in the open air, roaming about eating the grass. They had wooden huts and stone houses for cold weather or to sleep in. Builders were putting up more of these. They were also at work building an enormously high stone wall to replace the wire-mesh fence round the park.

  "Is that to stop the animals escaping?" asked Arabel.

  "No, they don't want to escape. They like it here," said Chris. "It's to stop thieves getting in. There have been a lot of robberies from zoos lately. When this one was smaller, Lord Donisthorpe just used to leave Noah the boa loose at night, and he took care of any thieves that got in. But now the zoo's getting so big there's too much ground to cover—Noah can't be everywhere at once."

  Just at that moment Mortimer's eye was attracted by a beautiful stretch of wet cement which the builders had just laid. It was going to be the floor of the new porcupine palace. Quick as lightning Mortimer flopped off Arabel's shoulder and walked across the cement, leaving a trail of deeply indented bird prints.

  "Gerroff there, you black buzzard!" shouted a workman, and he threw a trowel at Mortimer, who, startled, flew up into the nearest dark hole he could find. This happened to be the mouth of the cement mixer, which was turning round and round.

  "Oh, please, quick, stop the mixer!" cried Arabel. "Please get him out!"

  A confused sight of feet and tail feathers could be seen sticking out of the mixer. The man who was running it stopped the engine that turned the hopper and tipped it so that it pointed downward. Out came a great slop of half-mixed cement, and Mortimer, so coated over that nothing could be seen of him but his feet and black feathery trousers.

  "We'd best pour a bucket of water over him before it sets," said Chris, and did so. "Lucky your aunt Effie wasn't around when that happened," he added, as Mortimer, croaking and gasping, reappeared from under the cement. "That'd be quite enough to get him shut up in the meat safe."

  "Mortimer, you must be careful here," said Arabel anxiously.

  Mortimer might have been put out by his mishap with the cement mixer—things like that often made him very bad-tempered—but luckily his attention was distracted just then by the sight of a herd of zebras, all black and white stripes.

  "Nevermore!" he said, utterly amazed, staring with all his might as the zebras strolled across the road.

  Then they passed a group of ostriches, who looked very vague and absentminded, as ostriches do, and were preening themselves in a patch of sand. When he was close by them, Mortimer did his celebrated imitation of an ambulance rushing past with bell clanging and siren wailing.

  All the ostriches immediately stuck their heads in the sand.

  "You better tell Mortimer not to make that noise in your aunt Effie's house," said Chris. "Your aunt Effie doesn't like noise."

  Now they passed a cage which had an enormous sleepy-looking, greedy-looking snake inside it. "That's Noah the boa," said Chris. "He's very fond of doughnuts. Want to give him one?"

  Arabel did not much care for the look of Noah the boa, but she did want to see how the doughnut machine worked. There was one near Noah's cage. It had a glass panel in front and a slot for putting in a tenpenny piece.

  "The public has to put in three coins to get a doughnut," said Chris, "but luckily there's a lever behind that only zoo staff know about, so we can get ours for one. You have to put in one tenpenny piece to get it started; after that you keep pulling the lever."

  He dropped a coin in the slot. Instantly an uncooked doughnut rolled down a chute into a pan of boiling oil behind the glass panel and began to fry. After a minute or two, a wire hook fished it out of the oil and held it up to dry.

  "Now, if you were a member of the public, you'd have to put in another coin to get it sugared," said Chris. "But as we're zoo staff we can pull the lever." He did so, and a puffer blew a cloud of honey crystals all over the doughnut so that it became fuzzed with white.

  "Now what happens?" said Arabel.

  "Now, if you were a member of the public you'd have to put in a third coin to get it out," said Chris. He pulled the lever again. The hook let go of the doughnut, which rolled down another chute and was delivered into a crinkled paper cupcake case.

  Mortimer, who had been watching all this with extreme interest, took a step forward along Arabel's arm. But Noah the boa had also been watching—at the first clank of the coin in the machine all his sleepiness had left him—and as Arabel took the d
oughnut from the paper cup, he opened his mouth so wide that his jaws were in a straight line up and down. Arabel rather timidly tossed in the doughnut, and Noah's jaws shut with a snap.

  "His jaws are hinged so that he can swallow an animal as big as a pig if he wants to," said Chris. "But he prefers doughnuts; they are his favorite food."

  "How do you know?" said Arabel. "He doesn't look pleased."

  "Things he doesn't like he spits out," said Chris.

  "Kaaark," said Mortimer in a gloomy, aggrieved tone.

  "All right, Mortimer," said Arabel. "Ma gave me some money, so I'll do a doughnut for you now if Chris doesn't mind pulling the levers."

  She dropped in her coin, and another raw doughnut slid into the boiling oil.

  Mortimer's eyes shone at the sight, and he began to jump up and down on Arabel's shoulder.

  When the doughnut was cooked and sugared, Chris pulled the lever to release it into the paper cup.

  "Suppose a person only had two tenpenny pieces?" said Arabel.

  "Then they better not start, or they'd have to go off and leave the doughnut waiting there for the next customer," said Chris. "But that doesn't often happen. Who'd be such a mug as to leave twenty pence's worth of doughnut for someone else to pick up for only ten?"

  Just as Mortimer's doughnut came out, something unfortunate happened. A small head on a very long spotted neck came gently over Arabel's shoulder and nibbled up the doughnut so fast and neatly and quietly that for a moment Mortimer could not believe that it had gone. Then he let out a fearful wail of dismay.

  "Nevermore!"

  "Oh dear," said Chris. "That's Derek. These giraffes are just mad about doughnuts. If they see anybody near the machine, they come crowding round."