by Joan Aiken
Mrs. Minser’s idea of a double room was one into which a double bed could be squeezed. She eyed Mr. Ollendod measuringly, her lips pursed together. Was he going to be the sort who gave trouble? If so, she’d soon find a reason for giving him his notice. Summer was coming, when prices and the demand for rooms went up; one could afford to be choosy. Still, ten guineas a week was ten guineas; it would do no harm to wait and see.
The Minser children, Martin and Jenny, came home from school and halted, fascinated, amonst Mr. Ollendod’s possessions.
“Look, a screen, all covered with pictures!”
“He’s got spears!”
“A tigerskin!”
“An elephant’s foot!”
“What’s this, a shield?”
“No, it’s a fan, made of peacock’s feathers.” Mr. Ollendod smiled at them benevolently. Jenny thought that his face looked like the skin on top of cocoa, wrinkling when you stir it.
“Is he an Indian, Mother?” she asked when they were in the kitchen.
“No, of course he’s not. He’s just brown because he’s lived in a hot climate,” Mrs. Minser said sharply. “Run and do yer homework and stay out from under my feet.”
The residents also were discussing Mr. Ollendod.
“Do you think he can be—foreign?” whispered Mrs. Pursey. “He is such an odd-looking man. His eyes are so bright—just like diamonds. What do you think, Miss Drake?”
“How should I know?” snapped Miss Drake. “You seem to forget I haven’t been able to see across the room for the last five years.”
The children soon found their way to Mr. Ollendod’s room. They were strictly forbidden to speak to or mix with the guests in any way, but there was an irresistible attraction about the little bright-eyed man and his belongings.
“Tell us about India,” Jenny said, stroking the snarling tiger’s head with its great yellow glass eyes.
“India? The hills are blue and wooded, they look as innocent as Essex but they’re full of tigers and snakes and swinging, chattering monkeys. In the villages you can smell dust and dung smoke and incense; there are no brown or grey clothes, but flashing pinks and blood reds, turquoises and saffrons; the cows have horns three yards wide.”
“Shall you ever go back there?” Martin asked, wondering how anybody could bear to exchange such a place for the worn grey, black, and fawn carpeting, the veneer wardrobe and plate glass, the limp yellow sateen coverlid of a Balmoral bedroom.
“No,” said Mr. Ollendod, sighing. “I fell ill. And no one wants me there now. Still,” he added more cheerfully, “I have brought back plenty of reminders with me, enough to keep India alive in my mind. Look at this—and this—and this.”
Everything was wonderful—the curved leather slippers, the richly patterned silk of Mr. Ollendod’s dressing gown and scarves, the screen with its exotic pictures (“I’m not letting that stay there long,” said Mrs. Minser), the huge pink shells with a sheen of pearl, the gnarled and grinning images, the hard, scented sweets covered with coloured sugar.
“You are not to go up there. And if he offers you anything to eat, you are to throw it straight away,” Mrs. Minser said, but she might as well have spoken to the wind. The instant the children had done their homework they were up in Mr. Ollendod’s room, demanding stories of snakes and werewolves, of crocodiles who lived for a hundred years, of mysterious ceremonies in temples, ghosts who walked with their feet swiveled backwards on their ankles, and women with the evil eye who could turn milk sour and rot the unripe fruit on a neighbour’s vine.
“You’ve really seen it? You’ve seen them? You’ve seen a snake charmer and a snake standing on its tail? And a lizard break in half and each half run away separately? And an eagle fly away with a live sheep?”
“All those things,” he said. “I’ll play you a snake charmer’s tune if you like.”
He fished a little bamboo flageolet out of a cedarwood box and began to play a tune that consisted of no more than a few trickling, monotonous notes, repeated over and over agin. Tuffy, the aged, moth-eaten black cat who followed the children everywhere when they were at home and dozed in Mr. Ollendod’s armchair when they were at school, woke up, and pricked up his ears; downstairs, Jip, the bad-tempered Airedale, growled gently in his throat; and Mrs. Minser, sprinkling water on her starched ironing, paused and angrily rubbed her ear as if a mosquito had tickled it.
“And I’ve seen another thing: a rope that stands on its tail when the man says a secret word to it, stands straight up on end! And a boy climbs up it, right up! Higher and higher, till he finally disappears out of sight.”
“Where does he go to?” the children asked, huge-eyed.
“A country where the grass grows soft and patterned like a carpet, where the deer wear gold necklets and come to your hand for pieces of bread, where the plums are red and sweet and as big as oranges, and the girls have voices like singing birds.”
“Does he never come back?”
“Sometimes he jumps down out of the sky with his hands full of wonderful grass and fruits. But sometimes he never comes back.”
“Do you know the word they say to the rope?”
“I’ve heard it, yes.”
“If I were the boy I wouldn’t come back,” said Jenny. “Tell us some more. About the witch woman who fans herself.”
“She fans herself with a peacock-feather fan,” Mr. Ollendod said. “And when she does that she becomes a snake and slips away into the forest. And when she is tired of being a snake and wants to turn into a woman again, she taps her husband’s foot with her cold head till he waves the fan over her.”
“Is the fan just like yours on the wall?”
“Just like it.”
“Oh, may we fan ourselves with it, may we?”
“And turn yourselves into little snakes? What would your mother say?” asked Mr. Ollendod, laughing heartily.
Mrs. Minser had plenty to say as it was. When the children told her a garbled mixture of the snakes and the deer and the live rope and girls with birds’ voices and plums as big as oranges, she pursed her lips together tight.
“A pack of moonshine and rubbish! I’ve a good mind to forbid him to speak to them.”
“Oh, come, Hannah,” her husband said mildly. “He keeps them out of mischief for hours on end. You know you can’t stand it if they come into the kitchen or make a noise in the garden. And he’s only telling them Indian fairy tales.”
“Well anyway ye’re not to believe a word he says,” Mrs. Minser ordered the children. “Not a single word.”
She might as well have spoken to the wind. . . .
Tuffy, the cat, fell ill and lay with faintly heaving sides in the middle of the hallway. Mrs. Minser exclaimed angrily when she found Mr. Ollendod bending over him.
“That dirty old cat! It’s high time he was put away.”
“It is a cold he has, nothing more,” Mr. Ollendod said mildly. “If you will allow me, I shall take him to my room and treat him. I have some Indian gum which is very good for inhaling.”
But Mrs. Minser refused to consider the idea. She rang up the vet, and when the children came home from school, Tuffy was gone.
They found their way up to Mr. Ollendod’s room, speechless with grief.
He looked at them thoughtfully for a while and then said, “Shall I tell you a secret?”
“Yes, what? What?” Martin said, and Jenny cried, “You’ve got Tuffy hidden here, is that it?”
“Not exactly,” said Mr. Ollendod, “but you see that mirror on the wall?”
“The big one covered with a fringy shawl, yes?”
“Once upon a time that mirror belonged to a queen in India. She was very beautiful, so beautiful that it was said sick people could be cured of their illnesses just by looking at her. In course o
f time she grew old and lost her beauty. But the mirror remembered how beautiful she had been and showed her still the lovely face she had lost. And one day she walked right into the mirror and was never seen again. So if you look into it, you do not see things as they are now, but beautiful as they were in their youth.”
“May we look?”
“Just for a short time you may. Climb on the chair,” Mr. Ollendod said, smiling, and they climbed up and peered into the mirror, while he steadied them with a hand on each of their necks.
“Oh!” cried Jenny, “I can see him; I can see Tuffy! He’s a kitten again, chasing grasshoppers!”
“I can see him too!” shouted Martin, jumping up and down. The chair overbalanced and tipped them onto the floor.
“Let us look again, please let us!”
“Not today,” said Mr. Ollendod. “If you look too long into that mirror, you, like the queen, might vanish into it for good. That is why I keep it covered with a shawl.”
The children went away comforted, thiking of Tuffy young and frolicsome once more, chasing butterflies in the sun. Mr. Ollendod gave them a little ivory chess set, to distract them from missing their cat, but Mrs. Minser, saying it was too good for children and that they would only spoil it, sold it and put the money in the post office “for later on.”
It was July now. The weather grew daily warmer and closer. Mrs. Minser told Mr. Ollendod that she was obliged to raise his rent by three guineas “for the summer prices.” She rather hoped this would make him leave, but he paid up.
“I’m old and tired,” he said. “I don’t want to move again, for I may not be here very long. One of these days my heart will carry me off.”
And, in fact, one oppressive, thundery day he had a bad heart attack and had to stay in bed for a week.
“I certainly don’t want him if he’s going to be ill all the time,” Mrs. Minser said to her husband. “I shall tell him that we want his room as soon as he’s better.” In the meantime she put away as many as possible of the Indian things, saying that they were a dust-collecting nuisance in the sickroom. She left the swords and the fan and the mirror, because they hung on the wall, out of harm’s way.
As she had promised, the minute Mr. Ollendod was up and walking around again, she told him his room was wanted and he must go.
“But where?” he said, standing so still, leaning on his stick, that Mrs. Minser had the uneasy notion for a moment that the clock on the wall had stopped ticking to listen for her answer.
“That’s no concern of mine,” she said coldly. “Go where you please, wherever anyone can be found who’ll take you with all this rubbish.”
“I must think this over,” said Mr. Ollendod. He put on his Panama hat and walked slowly down to the beach. The tide was out, revealing a mile of flat, pallid mud studded with baked-bean tins. Jenny and Martin were there, listlessly trying to fly a homemade kite. Not a breath of wind stirred and the kite kept flopping down in the mud, but they knew that if they went home before six their mother would send them out again.
“There’s Mr. Ollendod,” said Jenny.
“Perhaps he could fly the kite,” said Martin.
They ran to him, leaving two black parallel trails in the shining goo.
“Mr. Ollendod, can you fly our kite?”
“It needs someone to run with it very fast.”
He smiled at them kindly. Even the slowest stroll now made his heart begin to race and stumble.
“Let’s see,” he said. He held the string for a moment in his hands and was silent; then he said, “I can’t run with it, but perhaps I can persuade it to go up of its own accord.”
The children watched, silent and attentive, while he murmured something to the rope in a low voice that they could not quite catch.
“Look, it’s moving,” whispered Martin.
The kite, which had been hanging limp, suddenly twitched and jerked like a fish at the end of a line, then, by slow degrees, drew itself up and, as if invisibly pulled from above, began to climb higher and higher into the warm grey sky. Mr. Ollendod kept his eyes fixed on it; Jenny noticed that his hands were clenched and the sweat was rolling off his forehead.
“It’s like the story!” exclaimed Martin. “The man with the rope and the magic word and the boy who climbs it—may we climb it? We’ve learnt how to at school.”
Mr. Ollendod couldn’t speak, but they took his silence as consent. They flung themselves at the rope and swarmed up it. Mr. Ollendod still holding onto the end of the rope, gradually lowered himself to the ground and sat with his head bowed over his knees; then with a slow subsiding motion he fell over onto his side. His hands relaxed on the rope, which swung softly upwards and disappeared; after a while the tide came in and washed away three sets of footprints.
“Those children are very late,” said Mrs. Minser at six o’clock. “Are they up in Mr. Ollendod’s room?”
She went up to see. The room was empty.
“I shall let it to a couple, next time,” reflected Mrs. Minser, picking up the peacock-feather fan and fanning herself, for the heat was oppressive. “A couple will pay twice the rent and they are more likely to eat meals out. I wonder where those children can have got to? . . .”
An hour later old Mr. Hill, on his way down to supper, looked through Mr. Ollendod’s open door and saw a snake wriggling about on the carpet. He called out excitedly. By the time Mr. Minser had come up, the snake had slid under the bed and Mrs. Pursey was screaming vigorously. Mr. Minser rattled a stick and the snake shot out towards his foot, but he was ready with a sharp scimitar snatched from the wall, and cut off its head. The old people, clustering in a dithering group outside the door, applauded his quickness.
“Fancy Mr. Ollendod keeping a pet snake all this time and we never knew!” shuddered Mrs. Pursey. “I hope he hasn’t anything else of the kind in here.” Inquisitively she ventured in. “Why, what a beautiful mirror!” she cried. The others followed, pushing and chattering, looking about greedily.
Mr. Minser brushed through the group irritably and went downstairs with the decapitated snake. “I shall sound the gong for supper in five minutes,” he called. “Hannah, Hannah! Where are you? Nothing’s going on as it should in this house today.”
But Hannah, needless to say, did not reply, and when he banged the gong in five minutes, nobody came down but blind old Miss Drake, who said rather peevishly that all the others had slipped away and left her behind in Mr. Ollendod’s room.
“Slipped away! And left me! Amongst all his horrid things! Without saying a word, so inconsiderate! Anything might have happened to me.”
And she started quickly eating up Mrs. Pursey’s buttered toast.
The Mysterious Barricades
The main thing about the mountains was their height. They were so high that they really did seem to join on to the sky; if you looked at them you had to tip your head back and back until your neck ached; then you were obliged to lie down so that your eyes might go travelling up to the final snow-crowned summits which were like needles among the clouds.
The people in the village never looked up at them. They had had enough gazing at mountains when they were babies and lay on their backs in prams. As soon as they could walk they turned away from white peaks and dark forests and staggered off in the other direction, towards the plains. If they had to walk towards the mountains they kept their eyes on their boots.
One day a man on a bicycle came to the village. He was a stranger, and consequently everyone stopped work and looked at him, but furtively. The blacksmith put down his hammer, but picked up a piece of string and pretended to be untying it, with his eyes fixed on the traveller. The postman stood gazing at a letter that he had been about to slip into a box as if he had suddenly forgotten how to read. The innkeeper came out on to his balcony and began busily polishing and repolishing a
glass, though everyone knew that half the time he didn’t trouble to wash them at all.
The traveller pedaled slowly along, glancing from side to side. He saw that every house had someone standing in its doorway or leaning from its window. Only one house seemed to take no interest in him; it was a small bungalow with the name ‘Mountain View’ painted on its gate. All its windows were lace-curtained and the door was tight shut. He put on his brakes and came to a stop outside it. All the heads craned out a little further to see what he was doing. He leaned his bicycle against the garden wall, unlatched the gate, walked up the path, and rapped at the door.
After a few moments it was opened, and a voice snapped:
“Well, come in, come in. Don’t keep me waiting in the cold.”
He hurriedly stepped into the dark interior. He could see hardly anything at first, except the glow of a fire. Both windows had ranks of dark, spreading pot-plants across them, as well as the lace curtains, and bird cages hung in front of the plants. It was very quiet inside; he could hear the clock tick, and the fire rustle, and the birds clearing their throats.
“Well,” said the old woman who had let him in. “What have you come bothering me for? Aren’t there enough busybodies in the village but you have to come and trouble someone who keeps herself to herself?”
“I thought I was more likely to hear the truth from someone who keeps herself to herself,” said the traveller. “When was the last stranger seen in this village?”
“Ten years ago last Tuesday.”
“And where did he go?”
“He went up the mountains.”
“Did he have a canary and a roll of music with him?”
