by Joan Aiken
However, to discourage it from being bad-tempered on the journey home, she paused at the wine counter and bought a miniature bottle of Drambuie, which, administered to the parrot on the spot, soon had it in an amiable and contemplative frame of mind. She also bought a quart of cider and, at the next counter, a large cooked chicken.
Richard wondered if the cider was for the bishop or to maintain the parrot’s good humour. He was more and more amazed at the charm and capability of this girl. Imagine being able to keep a shopping list of such length and complexity in one’s head! And she had entirely tamed the parrot. It was clambering happily up and down the pogo stick, which she carried like a spear, muttering, “Help, fire! Help, fire!”
She paused now, and carefully counted the change in her purse, hesitated, and finally stopped in the boating department. “How much is that rope?” she asked, pointing to a coil.
“Elevenpence a fathom, miss.”
“I can only afford five fathoms. Would that be enough to hang myself?”
“Oh, yes, ample,” the young assistant began, and then stopped dead, yardstick in hand, and gasped. “But, madam—”
“Yes,” the girl said seriously and sadly, “there’s such endless trouble between my father and my boyfriend that I’ve decided there’s only one way to end it all.” And she stood with lips folded together, staring straight in front of her like Boadicea, while the shaken young man cut off a length of rope and coiled it, and Richard, equally shaken, wondered with what words he could dissuade this ravishing girl from her dreadful project.
One thing was certain. He must not take his eyes from her. At all costs he must follow her home, in case her father, the bishop, was out conducting Evensong or ringing the tenor bell when she got back. She must not be left on her own for a moment.
He edged after her through the parcel-laden crowds.
Two hours and several nightmarish bus rides later, Richard was still gamely in pursuit. They were in the wilds of Surrey, it had begun to snow—“Those snowshoes will come in handy,” Richard thought parenthetically—and both Raoul’s and Richard’s stomachs were protesting that lunch was long overdue, and there seemed little reason to believe that tea would not be likewise. The conductor, two old ladies, Richard, Raoul, the parrot, and the girl were the only passengers remaining. The bus was toiling up a steep and tree-girt incline.
The old ladies rang the bell, and the bus came to a slithering stop.
When, after they had alighted, the driver tried to start again, there was a frenzied noise of racing engine but no movement.
“He’s done it again,” the conductor said resignedly. “I told him not to stop on this hill when there’s snow, but he always forgets. Would you mind getting out and helping me push, ladies and gents, please? The luggage can stay inside.”
This Julia interpreted to mean the parrot, the pogo stick, and her duffel bag, while Richard left his sextant and spirit-level, now registering an acute variation from the horizontal. They walked to the back of the bus and looked at it without enthusiasm, as it tilted over them like some cornice in the frosty Caucasus. Snowflakes pouring down thick as butterflies silted on Julia’s frivolous hat and made Raoul sneeze.
“When I wave my hand, push,” called the driver.
“Raoul, come here,” said Richard.
“Why do you call him Raoul?” asked Julia, getting ready to push.
The driver waved his hand and they struggled and shoved like coal-heavers.
“After the Vicomte de Bragelonne,” panted Richard. “He was the son of Athos, you remember. He was jilted by Louise de la Vallière.”
“And has Raoul been jilted?” gasped Julia, much interested. The bus was beginning to move.
“Not that I—puff—know of, but the name sounds like the noise”—they were both running now, and the bus was grinding along—“that he makes when I leave him behind.” And indeed Raoul raised his voice in a long, lamentable howl and came loping after them. “He can’t bear being left.” Keep her mind occupied, he thought, that’s the way. “You see, I used to work for a firm of cookery-book publishers, making up cocktail recipes. I had to drink forty to eighty cocktails a day. Quite against my will I was turning into a dipsomaniac.”
Raoul caught them up, and the bus, with a terrific roar of acceleration, spurted away over the crest of the hill and left them.
“I do hope the driver will remember we’re not on board,” said Julia. “But how do the cocktails tie up with Raoul?”
“I’m coming to that. My Aunt Adelaide was worried about me, and when she died she left me Raoul with instructions that I was to take him everywhere. She knew that meant I’d have to change my job and get something in the open air. Thanks to her I’m now completely cured.”
“So you could get rid of Raoul now?”
“She said I was never to part with him unless I could find him a home in a bishop’s family.”
Julia darted an acute, blindingly blue glance at him, but he was staring innocently ahead through the snow. “Look, there’s our bus waiting,” he said.
The journey was resumed, but soon Richard saw that Julia was getting ready to descend. She wound the parrot’s chain firmly round the pogo stick and shouldered her duffel bag. He picked up the spirit-level.
“Is this your stop, too?” asked Julia with a certain suspicion.
“I’m taking observations and collecting statistics regarding the height and distribution of pine trees in Surrey,” Richard replied promptly. “The Comet Film Corporation, a small British company, is making a film of Lohengrin and they want Teutonic-looking scenery for the outside shots. Of course, it’s unfortunate that the pines in Surrey are nearly all p. sylvestris, but I daresay they’ll be able to make do.”
“Not very good weather for making a survey, surely?” said Julia. She stopped, sat in the snow under a bush, and strapped on a pair of snowshoes. “Would you care to borrow a pair?”
“Thank you; I would like to very much. Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Richard in a melancholy tone. “If I don’t somehow get some money to pay my rent, Raoul and I will be sleeping in the crypt of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.” He finished lacing his snowshoes, stood up, and shouldered her duffel bag.
“That’s very kind of you,” Julia said uncertainly. They plodded on through the snow together and presently came within sight of a small cottage.
“Isn’t there a cathedral around here?” said Richard casually.
“Not nearer than Guildford. Why do you ask?”
“The spire would have been useful for taking an elevation. Never mind, I can manage without.” But it was now his turn to survey her with suspicion as she unlatched the garden gate.
Meanwhile Hugh had returned from his demonstration. At four o’clock he dropped artlessly round to the Newberys’. “Any tea going, Juley?” he bawled.
No answer. He poked his head through the kitchen door, saw a kettle on the floor and, looking round the corner of the entrance, found Mr Newbery irritably winding a well-handle. It was a peculiarity of the cottage that the well was in the scullery.
“Now, now, now, Dad,” said Hugh, sliding his cigarette farther into the corner of his mouth and advancing on Mr Newbery, who would have bolted had there been another door. “Pump’s not gone wrong since I mended it, surely?”
“Bit slow in starting,” mumbled Mr Newbery, who had long since found it simpler to wind himself up a bucket of water as required than engage in the hellish pump-starting routine.
“I’ll finish winding and then I’ll start her up for you,” said Hugh, chivalrously wrenching the handle away from him. He gave it a tremendous jerk, the aged rope broke, and the bucket dropped back into the well with a splashing clatter.
“Now look what you’ve done,” snarled Mr Newbery, at the end of his tether. “All I want is one cup of tea, and a chance to drink it in peace and quiet. What a hope! Not a drop of water in the house, and rugger-playing oafs in and out all day long.”
“Soccer, not
rugger,” said Hugh, not a bit discomposed. “Y’know, Dad, you keep this pump in a shocking condition. Tank’s empty, too. No wonder she won’t go.” He strode out and returned with a can. Mr Newbery was feverishly looking in all the empty milk-bottles, vases, or jugs which might conceivably hold water and finding none.
“How much does she hold?” Hugh asked, after he had put in some petrol. “Got a torch?”
“Battery’s run out.”
“Always ought to keep a spare in the house.” Casually Hugh lit a match and peered into the petrol tank. There was a small but brisk explosion. A tongue of flame shot out, annihilated Julia’s nylons on a towel-horse, and leapt to a pile of potato-sacks.
“I told you so,” said Mr Newbery rather unfairly. He shrugged his shoulders and retired to the kitchen. Julia and Richard were just coming in. He looked at Richard balefully. “Your other young man,” he said to Julia, “has set fire to the house. The well-rope’s broken, the bucket’s down at the bottom. It’s a pity I forgot to pay the insurance.”
Hugh came rushing out. “It’s hopeless,” he gasped. “Get out while you can!” He himself set the example.
Richard wandered to the scullery door. “Have you a telephone?” he said.
“The Exchange always takes twenty minutes to answer,” Julia murmured regretfully, indicating the instrument.
Richard linked the parrot’s chain round the flex and took off the receiver. Then he emptied out the contents of the duffel bag and gave the bird a tot of cider. It perched obediently on the receiver and began shouting, “Help, fire! Help, fire!”
“Someone will hear that sooner or later,” said Richard. “Now”—he was tying one end of the coil of rope to the mouth of the duffel bag—“if you, Your Grace, will inflate that paddling pool”—He handed Mr Newbery the pump off Julia’s bicycle—“and you”—he passed Julia his snowshoes—“could wrap these in a wet tea-cloth and beat out the smouldering bits of the fire.”
He swung his improvised bucket down the well, brought it up full, and tossed the contents over the blazing sacks. Before drawing a second bucketful he reached down into the well with the pogo stick, hooked up the rightful bucket, and emptied it into the paddling pool which Mr Newbery had now inflated. “This will do as a reservoir, since two people can’t draw water at the same time.” He passed Mr Newbery the bucket and drew out six more duffel bags full.
“Ingenious,” said Mr Newbery admiringly. He emptied half his bucketful on the fire, reflected a moment, poured the rest into the kettle, and put it on the range in the kitchen. Then he went back to his task. The fire was almost out by now, and after a few more bucketfuls he decided that he could make tea and leave the rest to Julia and the new young man.
“Help, fire!” shouted the parrot for the hundred and fiftieth time. It glared beadily at Raoul by the range and launched itself at him like a dive-bomber. The telephone fell off the windowsill and dangled quacking at the end of its flex.
“It’s all right, thank you, the fire’s out,” Mr Newbery said politely into the receiver before replacing it.
Raoul had taken refuge with his master, so the parrot, cheated of its prey, turned on Hugh, who had just reappeared with a stirrup-pump. “Now you’ll be all right,” he was shouting. The parrot pecked him.
“Oh, go and take a running jump at yourself, you and your efficiency methods,” Mr Newbery snapped.
Julia and Richard emerged, black, damp, and triumphant. “Rather busy just now, Hugh,” Julia said absently. “I’m going to clean out the pantry.”
“If I get psittacosis I shall sue you,” Hugh said angrily. Even he could see he was not wanted.
Mr Newbery picked up, How to Build Your Own Cathedral. “Here, dear boy,” he said. “With the compliments of the season.” And, as Hugh left, slamming the door, he added, “Let’s hope that’s the last we shall see of him for a hundred man-hours.”
The door shot open again and two brawny and beaming firemen dashed in. “All right, Mr Newbery,” shouted one of them. “We’ll soon have her out. Where’s the trouble?” They quested about like bloodhounds.
“Oh, not more efficiency experts,” sighed Mr Newbery ungratefully.
“Sorry not to get here sooner,” the larger fireman apologised when they were really convinced there was nothing to be done and were drinking cups of tea. “Miss Mumpsey at the Exchange is that deaf it’s a wonder she puts through any calls at all. Matter of fact we were down there having a bit of a warm-up—the Fire Station’s so cold—and that’s how we came to hear of your little blaze.”
“It was most kind of you, most kind,” said Mr Newbery with distinguished courtesy. “A little token of seasonal good will”—he fished about in the clutter on the kitchen table and extracted the sunlamp—“to warm up the Fire Station, and perhaps you would call in with this present for Miss Mumpsey on your way back? I am told these appliances improve one’s hearing marvellously. A happy Christmas to you!”
Beaming, the firemen withdrew. “As for this young man who has helped us with such a genius for improvisation”—Mr Newbery turned cordially to Richard—“we must reward him, Julia, to the best of our ability.”
He delved again on the kitchen table. “Would you, my dear fellow, prefer a sextant, a spirit-level, a pogo stick, or a paddling pool? The parrot, I perceive, has left us already.”
“It’s very kind of Your Grace,” Richard began, but Julia cut in.
“What about the programme, Father—if you go giving everything away?”
“It has already taken root in my mind,” Mr Newbery said happily. He wound up the musical box, and it began to play “The First Nowell” in the breathless tinkle common to such instruments. He handed it to Richard and picked up the sermon pads. “I’m going to retire and rough it out now. It will be called Spur of the Moment. Two people, a heap of miscellaneous objects, a crisis—yes, yes. Get rid of your young friend, Julia, and you can type for me. I fear the buses will have stopped running, but it is only five miles to the station and the snow is not more than eight inches deep.”
“I’m afraid I suffer from snow-blindness,” said Richard decisively. “In that respect I take after my grandfather, who walked round and round Trafalgar Square and eventually died of exposure. There’s not a hope that I should survive the walk.”
“In that case you must of course stay the night,” said Mr Newbery, capitulating with grace and the respect due to a fellow-improviser. “You won’t object to sleeping in the paddling pool? Perhaps you might help me with my TV programme?”
“TV,” said Richard. The last piece of the jigsaw fell into place.
“I will join you both for dinner at eight,” said Mr Newbery benevolently. He waved his sermon pads at them and withdrew. Raoul snored peacefully by the glowing grate.
“He’s so comfortable here, it’s a pity this isn’t a bishop’s family,” said Julia thoughtfully. “Oh, by the way, hadn’t you better ring Comet Films and tell them you’re snowbound?”
“Ahem,” said Richard. “As to that . . .” He grinned. Julia, standing with a pineapple under each arm, grinned back.
“Perhaps we’d both better begin at the very beginning,” she suggested.
The Paper Queen
The town of Rohun, or Rune, was a dying town, and its inhabitants liked it that way. They liked the gravel shoal in the river below the twelve-arched bridge that stopped paper barges coming up to the wharfside any more. They liked the gentle air of ruin in the church square, the dead quiet that listened to its own breathing of a Sunday, the fact that there wasn’t a fishmonger’s nearer than St. Malpus, to which the bus ran only in the summer.
Old as it was, and full of legends, the town was able to dispense with most of them. A legend is how granny made the tea with linseed oil the day her spectacles fell into the separator, and no one in their senses bothers to keep alive a lot of dead old tradition when tradition is building itself up all the time, like the gravel shoal in the River Rune.
Porteous Snawl meant t
o change all this. When he first came to the town he saw that it had possibilities as a summer resort, and in less than no time he had grown a black beard, so as to look like a retired sea captain, and started up a sweet-and-mineral shop, hiring out motorboats to visitors in the summer and transforming his bit of cobbled yard into a tea garden.
By his second year he was on the water board, housing committee, and library suggestion panel, and in three years he was mayor. The River Rune had been cleared so that paper barges could once more proceed up river to the Merlinhay Mills, water was laid on in some of the council houses, and some of their windows were mended, too, and there was talk of buying new books for the library.
And were the natives pleased? They were a peaceful crew, the people of Rune; in actual fact they hardly noticed the ant-like activity of Mr Snawl, though they did see that his daughter Helen was more than commonly pretty. In their own way they too were busy: fishing for salmon in the Rune River before dawn of a July morning, singing the Messiah in the leafy, smoky autumn twilight, scratching the backs of each others’ lean pigs in the springtime.
Only one thing was of importance to them, and this was the band-playing. On Christmas Eve the town’s four silver bands wandered about the streets from daybreak till well after dark, playing carols. Let Mayor Snawl revive, if he would, the decayed Regatta, the crowning of the Paper Queen, the Gorsedd of local poets on a hilltop recently rechristened Arthur’s Throne, and the townspeople had no objection, as long as no one interfered with the bands.
Christmas Eve is a grand time to come out of prison if you have a loving, family warming your stockings and making your mince pies. Young Mark Pentecost had no family because his mother had died when he was born and his father was drowned in the flood of thirty-seven when Fore Street was eighteen feet deep and the church swam on the water like a Noah’s Ark.
