The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories

by Joan Aiken

  The girl continued to gaze at him in silence, abashed and nervous, grasping her trowel.

  “Wild fritillaries are so rare, so very rare,” Mr. Pentecost mildly explained to her, “that it is wrong, it is most dreadfully wrong to dig them up; besides, of course, being against the law. Did you not know that? And why, do you suppose, are they so rare?” he went on, considerately giving her time to recover her composure. “Why, because of people like yourself, my dear, finding out about where they grow and coming to dig up specimens. I know the temptation—believe me, I know it!—but you really must not, you know.”

  “Oh dear,” murmured the girl, finding her voice at last, it seemed. “I’m—I’m very sorry. I—I didn’t know.”

  “No? You really didn’t know? Where are you from?” he inquired, gently veiling his disbelief. “You are certainly not from anywhere around here, or I should have known you. And your steed,” he added thoughtfully.

  “No, I—I come from—from quite a long way away. I was sent”—she hesitated, looking sheepish and contrite—“sent to—to collect a specimen, as you say. It is the last, you see—we already have one of everything else.”

  Good gracious, thought Mr. Pentecost, in surprise and a certain amount of disapproval. Everything else? Aloud he said,

  “It is for a school project, I conclude? Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, but you really must not remove the flowers from this precious patch. I will tell you what you can do, though—” as her face fell. “If you care to accompany me to Evensong in St. Anthony’s—or, of course, wait outside the church if you prefer,” he added kindly, “you may then come with me to my rectory in Chilton Parsley. I am fortunate enough to have quite a large number of fritillaries growing in my flower border, and I shall be happy to give you a specimen for your collection. How about that, my dear?”

  “Why,” said the girl slowly, “that—that is very kind of Your Reverence. I am indeed greatly obliged to you.” She spoke with considerable formality; although English enough in appearance, she could, judging from her accent, have been a foreigner who had learned the language very correctly from some aristocratic old lady with nineteenth-century intonations. “I have instructions to be back though”—she glanced at the sky, then at the watch on her wrist—“by seven. Will that—?”

  “Plenty of time,” he assured her, smiling. “The evening service is never a long one. . . . Strict about that sort of thing, are they, at your school?”

  She blushed.

  Mr. Pentecost began walking back toward the gate, anxious, without making it too obvious that he was in a hurry, to join his patient parishioners, but also wishful to be certain that the girl accompanied him. She, however, showed no sign of intending to disobey his prohibition and came with him docilely enough. Once outside the copse gate—“You must always close gates, you know,” Mr. Pentecost reminded her amiably but firmly—she remounted and he got into his car. “Just follow behind,” he told her, poking his white-haired head out of the window. She nodded, kicking the shaggy pony into a walk; perhaps it was the late light filtered through the young hawthorns, but the pony, too, Mr. Pentecost thought, showed a decided touch of green in its rough coat. “Only a very short way to the church,” he called, swerving his car erratically across the road as he put his head out again to impart this information.

  The girl nodded and kicked her pony again. For its diminutive size—a Shetland cross, perhaps?—the pony certainly showed a remarkable turn of speed.

  Mr. Pentecost had not expected that the girl would be prepared to attend his service, but she quietly tied her pony to the lych-gate, murmured some exhortation into its ear, and followed him through the churchyard, glancing about her with interest. Then a doubt seemed to overtake her: “Am I dressed suitably to come inside?” she asked in a low, worried tone, pausing at the church door.

  “Perfectly,” he assured her, smiling at the glossy shako. “Our congregation at St. Anthony is quite informal.”

  So she slipped in after him and demurely took her place in a pew at the back.

  After the service—which, as he had promised, lasted no longer than twenty-five minutes—the rector exchanged a few friendly words with the six members of his congregation, stood waving good-bye to them as they set off on their return walk across the fields, and then said to the girl, who had remounted and was waiting by the gate:

  “Now, if you will follow me again, my dear, I will drive slowly and I do not think the journey should take more than about fifteen minutes for that excellent little animal of yours.”

  She nodded, and they proceeded as before, the vicar driving at twenty miles an hour, not much less than his normal speed, while horse and rider followed with apparent ease.

  As he drove, Mr. Pentecost reflected. During Evensong his mind, as always, had been entirely given over to the service, but he had, with some part of it, heard the girl’s voice now and then, particularly in the hymn, Miss Sedom’s favorite, “Glory to Thee My God This Night.” So the girl was, at least, familiar with Christian ritual. Or was a remarkably speedy learner. Or was it conceivable that she could be coached, as it were, continuously by—by whatever agency had sent her? There were so many things wrong with her—and yet, mused the rector, he could swear that there was no harm about her, not an atom.

  When they reached the damp and crumbling laurel-girt rectory, Mr. Pentecost drove around, as was his habit, to the mossy yard at the rear, and parked there.

  “You can tie your pony to the mounting block—” He gestured to the old stable. “Now, I will just leave my cassock inside the back door—so—and fetch a trowel—ah, no, of course there is no need for that, you already have one.” It was a bricklayer’s trowel, but no matter. “Follow me, then.”

  The rectory garden, beyond the overgrown laurel hedge, was a wonderful wilderness of old-fashioned flowers and shrubs that had grown, proliferated, and battled for mastery during the last hundred years. Smaller and more delicate plants had, on the whole, fared badly; but Mr. Pentecost adored his fritillaries and had cherished them as carefully as he was able: frail and beautiful, both speckled and white, they drooped their magic bells among a drift of pale blue anemones and a fringe of darker blue grape hyacinths.

  “Aren’t they extraordinary?” he said, fondly looking down at them. “It is so easy to believe in a benevolent Creator when one considers these and the anemones—which, I believe, are the lilies of the field referred to in St. Matthew. Now, this little clump, still in bud, would, I think, transfer without too much harm, my dear—er—what did you say your name was?”

  She hesitated. Then: “My name is Anjla,” she answered with a slight, uneasy tremor of her voice. And she knelt to dig up the clump of plants he had indicated. The rector fetched her a grimy plastic bag from the toolshed, but she shook her head.

  “Thank you, but I can’t take it. Only the flowers. This is—this is truly very kind of you.”

  A faint warning hum sounded in the air—like that of a clock before it strikes.

  The vicar glanced across the wide meadow that lay alongside his garden. A large oak, leafless still, covered with reddish buds, grew in the middle of the grassy space. Mr. Pentecost eyed it thoughtfully. Beyond it, pale and clear, shone the evening star.

  Mr. Pentecost said, “My dear—where do you really come from?”

  The girl stood, tucking the plants into her basket. She followed the direction of his glance, but said defensively, “You would not know the name of the place.”

  It was, however, remarkably hard to evade Mr. Pentecost when he became as serious as he was now.

  “Forgive my curiosity,” he said, “but I do think it is important that I should know—precisely why are you collecting specimens?”

  She was silent for a moment; for too long. Mr. Pentecost went on, “You see—I am an absentminded, vague old man, but even I could not help no
ticing that your pony has claws on its hooves. Moropus! A prehistoric horse not seen in these parts for a million years! And, well, there were various other things—”

  She blushed furiously.

  “That was the trouble!” she burst out. “For such a small errand—just one flower—they wouldn’t allocate enough research staff. I knew there were details they had skimped on—”

  “But why,” he persisted mildly, “why are you collecting?”

  Anjla looked at him sorrowfully. Then she said, “Well—as you seem to have spotted us, and it is so very late, in any case, I suppose it won’t matter now if I tell you—”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  “This planet”—she glanced round at the stable yard—“is due to blow up—oh, very, very soon. Our scientists have calculated it to within the next three chronims—”

  “Chronims?”

  “Under one hundred of your hours, I think. Naturally, therefore, we were checking the contents of our own Terrestrial Museum—”

  “Ah, I see.” He stood thinking for a few minutes, then inquired with the liveliest interest, “And you really do have one of everything? Even—for instance—a rector of the Church of England?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Her tone was full of regret. “I wish I could take you with me. You have been so kind. But we have a vicar, a dean, a bishop, a canon—we have them all. Even an archbishop.”

  “My dear child! You mistake my meaning. I would not, not for one moment, consider leaving. My question was prompted by—by a simple wish to know.”

  The low hum was audible again. Anjla glanced at the sky.

  “I’m afraid that now I really have to go.”

  “Of course you must, my dear. Of course.”

  They crossed the yard and found the shaggy Moropus demolishing, with apparent relish, the last of a bunch of carrots that had been laid on the mounting block for Mr. Pentecost’s supper.

  Anjla checked and stared, aghast. “Sphim! What have you done?”

  She burst into a torrent of expostulations, couched in a language wholly unlike any earthly tongue; it appeared to have no consonants at all, to consist of pure sound like the breathy note of an ocarina.

  The Moropus guiltily hung its head and shuffled its long-clawed feet.

  Mr. Pentecost stood looking at the pair in sympathy and perplexity.

  The warning hum sounded in the air again.

  “Do I understand that your—um—companion has invalidated his chance of departure by the consumption of those carrots?”

  “I don’t know what can have come over him—we were briefed so carefully—told to touch nothing, to take in nothing except—over and over again they told us—”

  “Perhaps it was a touch of Method,” suggested Mr. Pentecost. “He was really getting into the skin of his part.” And he added something about Dis and Persephone that the girl received with the blankness of noncomprehension. She had placed her hands on either side of the pony’s hairy cheekbones; she bent forward until her forehead touched the other’s. Thus she stood for a couple of moments in silence. Then she straightened and walked across the yard in the direction of the meadow. Her eyes swam with tears. Following her, interested and touched, Mr. Pentecost murmured,

  “I will, of course, be glad to take care of your friend. During what little time remains.”

  “I am sure that you will. Thank you. I—I am glad to have met you.”

  “You could not—I suppose—show me what you both really look like?” he asked with a touch of wistfulness.

  “I’m afraid that would be quite impossible. Your eyes simply aren’t adapted, you see—”

  He nodded, accepting this. Just the same, for a single instant he did receive an impression of hugeness, brightness, speed. Then the girl vaulted the fence and, carefully carrying her basket, crossed the meadow to the large oak tree in the center.

  “Good-bye,” called Mr. Pentecost. The Moropus lifted up its head and let out a soft groaning sound.

  Beside the oak tree, Anjla turned and raised her hand with a grave, formal gesture. Then she stepped among the low-growing branches of the tree, which immediately folded like an umbrella, and, with a swift flash of no-colored brilliance, shot upward, disintegrating into light.

  Mr. Pentecost remained for a few moments, leaning with his forearms on the wooden fence, gazing pensively at the star Hesperus, which, now that the tree was gone, could be seen gleaming in radiance above the horizon.

  The rector murmured:

  “Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away

  Change and decay in all around I see;

  O Thou, Who changest not, abide with me.”

  Then, pulling a juicy tussock of grass from beside one of the fence posts, he carried it back to the disconsolate Moropus.

  “Here, my poor friend; if we are to wait for Armageddon together, we may as well do so in comfort. Just excuse me a moment while I fetch a deck chair and a steamer rug from the house. And do, pray, finish those carrots. I will be with you again directly.”

  He stepped inside the back door. The Moropus, with a carrot top and a hank of juicy grass dangling from its hairy lips, gazed after him sadly but trustfully.

  The Man Who Had Seen the Rope Trick

  Miss Drake,” said Mrs. Minser. “When ye’ve finished with the salt and pepper, will ye please put them together?”

  “Sorry, I’m sorry,” mumbled Miss Drake. “I can’t see very well as you know, I can’t see very well.” Her tremulous hands worked out like tendrils across the table and succeeded in knocking the mustard onto its side. An ochre blob defiled the snowy stiffness of the tablecloth. Mrs. Minser let a slight hiss escape her.

  “That’s the third tablecloth ye’ve dirtied in a week, Miss Drake. Do ye know I had to get up at four o’clock this morning to do all the washing? I shann’t be able to keep ye if ye go on like this, ye know.”

  Without waiting for the whispered apologies she turned towards the dining-room door, pushing the trolley with the meat plates before her. Her straw-grey hair was swept to a knot on the top of her head, her grey eyes were as opaque as bottle tops, her mouth was screwed tight shut against the culpabilities of other people.

  “Stoopid business, getting’ up at four in the mornin’,” muttered old Mr. Hill, but he muttered it quietly to himself. “Who cares about a blob of mustard on the tablecloth, anyway? Who cares about a tablecloth, or a separate table, if the food’s good? If she’s got to get up at four, why don’t she make us some decent porridge instead of the slime she gives us?”

  He bowed his head prayerfully over his bread plate as Mrs. Minser returned, weaving her way with the neatness of long practice between the white-covered tables, each with its silent, elderly, ruminating diner.

  The food was not good. “Rice shape or banana, Mr. Hill?” Mrs. Minser asked, pausing beside him.

  “Banana, thank’ee.” He repressed a shudder as he looked at the colourless, glutinous pudding. The bananas were unripe, and bad for his indigestion, but at least they were palatable.

  “Mr. Wakefield! Ye’ve spotted yer shirt with gravy! That means more washing, and I’ve got a new guest coming tomorrow. I cann’t think how you old people can be so inconsiderate.”

  “I’ll wash it, I’ll wash it myself, Mrs. Minser.” The old man put an anxious, protective hand over the spot.

  “Ye’ll do no such thing!”

  “Who is the new guest, then, Mrs. Minser?” Mr. Hill asked, more to distract her attention from his neighbour’s misfortune than because he wanted to know.

  “A Mr. Ollendod. Retired from India. I only hope,” said Mrs. Minser forebodingly, “that he won’t have a great deal of luggage, else where we shall put it all I cann’t imagine.”

  “India,” murmured Mr. Hill to himself. “From
India, eh? He’ll certainly find it different here.” And he looked round the dining room of the Balmoral Guest House. The name Balmoral, and Mrs. Minser’s lowland accent, constituted the only Scottish elements in the guest house, which was otherwise pure Westcliff. The sea, half a mile away, invisible from the house, was implicit in the bracingness of the air and the presence of so many elderly residents pottering out twice a day to listen to the municipal orchestra. Nobody actually swam in the sea, or even looked at it much, but there it was anyway, a guarantee of ozone and fresh fish on the tables of the residential hotels.

  Mr. Ollendod arrived punctually next day, and he did have a lot of luggage.

  Mrs. Minser’s expression became more and more ominous as trunks and cases—some of them very foreign-looking and made of straw—boxes and rolls and bundles were unloaded.

  “Where does he think all that is going?” she said incautiously loudly to her husband, who was helping to carry in the cases.

  Mr. Ollendod was an elderly, very brown, shriveled little man, but he evidently had all his faculties intact, for he looked up from paying the cab driver to say, “In my room, I trust, naturally. It is a double room, is it not? Did I not stipulate for a double room?”