She was almost glad when Father started his Easter holidays and took Stephen over—except that she was also immeasurably indignant. Father was scarcely strict with Stephen at all, and he positively encouraged him to get dirty. He took him to fly a kite and to the zoo and on a cycle ride. None of the girls were taken. Ruth seemed to think it was all right, because Stephen was a boy. Elizabeth thought it was unfair. And so, it seemed, did Stephanie.
“Mother,” Stephanie said, “why is Father nicer to Stephen than to us?”
“Your Father’s always wanted a boy,” said Mother. “His own flesh and blood.” Elizabeth could hardly hear her for the sounds of hammering and sawing in the garage, where Father and Stephen were now making a table together.
“So am I his own flesh and blood,” Stephanie said loudly, above the banging. “And I can cycle and get dirty. And,” she added, as there came a softer thump and a screech from Stephen, “I can knock in nails without hitting my thumb. Why aren’t I allowed to?”
“It’s not suitable for girls—” Mother began.
“Good Lord!” said Stephanie.
“Stephanie! Don’t swear!” said Mother.
“I wasn’t. I only said ‘Good Lord.’ You should hear some of the things the other girls say,” said Stephanie. “Give me one good reason why it’s not suitable.”
Mother got out of that by being hurt. “Stephanie, how could you speak to me like that?” She left the room, still looking hurt.
“Did you ever know anyone so old-fashioned as our parents?” Stephanie asked Elizabeth. “There’s a girl at school calls her father Fishface. Imagine what Father or Mother would say if I called Father that—or even if I called him Dad. What can we do about them?”
“I don’t know,” said Elizabeth. Privately, she thought of Carruthers. She went out of the house and met Stephen as he came out of the garage sucking his finger. “Are you enjoying it with Father?” she asked.
Stephen rolled his eyes up. “Holy fishcake! But,” he added, “you wouldn’t understand.”
Elizabeth knew she did not understand. All she knew was that, now Stephanie had pointed out the kind of people Mother and Father were, she felt shocked—and the fact that she felt shocked made her feel as if she were sitting in a very small cage, with no room to unbend her knees, which, in turn, made her feel angry. She tried to describe her feelings to the stiff, unresponsive Carruthers in the middle of the night. “It’s like being squeezed into the wrong shape,” she said. “Stephanie feels the same. I’m not sure about Ruth, but I don’t think Stephen enjoys it any more than we do. But I think it would all come right if you hit Father. Couldn’t you forgive me now and start hitting him? Once a day, just for a start.”
To her pleasure, Carruthers stirred sleepily. “I’m hungry,” he said, in the old plaintive grunt. “Terribly hungry.”
“Thank goodness for that!” said Elizabeth. “I’ll get some biscuits. What’s been wrong with you?”
“I was sleepy,” said Carruthers.
Elizabeth slipped out of bed and started downstairs, into the queer orange gloom the streetlights cast in the hall. But Carruthers was evidently too hungry to wait. She saw him slither along the bannisters beside her and hop ahead of her into the kitchen. Elizabeth hurried after him. Carruthers was in the larder somewhere by the time she got there. She could hear him clattering on one of the higher shelves.
“There’s nothing but tins up here,” said the plaintive, grunting voice.
“The biscuits are down here,” Elizabeth whispered. “Stop making such a noise.”
There was a scuffling, and a crunch of tinfoil. Carruthers said, “Oh! Chocolate eggs!”
“Those are for Easter!” Elizabeth whispered frantically. “Come down.”
“In a minute,” said Carruthers, munching and rustling.
The light in the larder snapped on. Rows of tins and jams leaped into sight. A very squeaky voice, which Elizabeth just recognized as Stephen’s, said, “Oh. It’s only you. What are you doing?”
“Carruthers was hungry,” Elizabeth explained. Carruthers was still rustling and munching up on the shelf.
“Pull the other leg,” said Stephen. “Sticks can’t eat.” He came into the larder and stared up at the rustling.
A tin of plums promptly fell heavily on his bare foot. Stephen hopped about, yelling. Another tin fell on him, and another. Elizabeth could glimpse Carruthers’s hooked face peering down from the shelf, taking aim. Stephen put his arms over his head and ran out of the larder. He ran straight into Father, coming the other way.
“What is going on?” Father roared.
Carruthers prudently pushed himself off the shelf with the last tin and clattered to the floor like an ordinary walking stick. Unfortunately, he brought a torn Easter egg wrapping down with him.
“I thought it was a burglar, Uncle Stephen,” Stephen said.
“So did I,” Elizabeth said unconvincingly.
Father naturally came to the conclusion that Elizabeth had been using Carruthers to hook down Easter eggs. The trouble was terrible. Elizabeth spent Easter in disgrace and without an Easter egg.
“Why did you hit Stephen and not Father?” she asked Carruthers.
“Stephen called me a stick,” Carruthers said sulkily.
After that, Elizabeth could not get another word out of him. Most of the time, there was no way of knowing he was anything other than a real stick. Yet night after night, for the whole of the next month, the larder was raided. Biscuits, cakes, and puddings went. Father blamed Elizabeth every time. Stephen found it very funny. “Carruthers hungry again?” he asked every morning.
Elizabeth wondered why she had ever liked Stephen. If she could have thought of a way of stopping being his girlfriend, she would have stopped it that moment. But it did no good to tell Stephen she did not want to be his girlfriend. He would say, “All right,” as if he agreed, and then, half an hour later, he would be saying, “Elizabeth, just come along and switch my points for me,” or, “Elizabeth, I need you to hold my coat in the wood.” It was as if she had never said anything at all.
What with this, and with getting up every morning to be blamed for what Carruthers ate in the night, Elizabeth began to feel as if the cage she had imagined was getting smaller and smaller, until she could hardly breathe. She was quite sure that, if only Carruthers could be made to hit Father, everything would be all right again. “It’s like that story of the old woman and the pig,” she explained to Carruthers—who may or may not have been listening. “Fire fire, burn stick; stick stick, beat pig—and then they all went home. You just hit Father to show him who’s master, and Father will turn on Stephen, and Mother will tell Father he’s a tyrant, and we’ll all be able to get dirty and climb trees and so on.”
Carruthers gave no sign of hearing, but his appetite was unabated. Elizabeth began training herself to wake in the night and catch Carruthers in the larder again. She was fairly sure that if she could only catch him red-handed, she would be able to bully him into hitting Father at last. But most nights she just slept. Some nights she woke up, only to find Carruthers hooked on to the end of her bed, apparently as good as gold—except that more food was gone in the morning.
Then, one night, she was suddenly wide awake. She heard Carruthers unhook himself from her bed and go softly thumping downstairs.
Here’s where I catch you, my lad! Elizabeth thought. She flung back her bedclothes and crept after Carruthers, into the dim orange light from the streetlights. On the stairs, she listened hard. There was a faint chink and rattle from the living room, as if Carruthers had gone after the nuts and olives Mother kept to offer visitors. But, while Elizabeth was turning that way, she heard a furtive crunkling and rustling from the kitchen too. Surely Carruthers could not be in two places at once?
By that time her eyes had grown used to the orange light. She saw Carruthers lying stretched out on the hall carpet. The middle of him seemed to be bulging.
Elizabeth forgot about the noises. She
fell on her knees beside him. “Carruthers! What’s the matter?” she whispered. “Are you ill?”
Carruthers did not answer. He was bulging from the silver collar below his hook to the ferrule at his tail, heaving, and swelling to two or three times his normal width. Though Elizabeth was sure it was only the result of greed, tears ran down her face. She wondered what sort of doctor you took a sick stick to.
The noises from the living room became more definite. There were quiet footsteps, and the sound of things being moved. Elizabeth shot the swelling, heaving Carruthers a helpless look and crawled over to the living room door.
It was a real burglar. A wide-shouldered, strong-looking young man was packing Father’s tape recorder into a suitcase. He already had the radio. He was taking down the silver golf trophies when Elizabeth backed away and turned to Carruthers again. Just as she turned, Carruthers stopped swelling and burst, with a sharp crack. The noise from the living room stopped. So did the noises from the kitchen. Elizabeth knelt in the hall, between what were certainly two burglars, and stared at Carruthers.
The split in Carruthers grew wider. Something that seemed to be a gauzy green color bulged from the split and might have been struggling to get out. A second later, the struggling was definite. The filmy green something heaved, shoved, and finally pushed the dead halves of the stick apart and climbed out on the carpet. Elizabeth gasped. Whatever it was, it was impossibly beautiful. It had long curled antennae. Its back legs were long and thin—a little like a grasshopper’s—and it seemed to have long thin arms too. It had a small piquant face, with little slanting eyes which caught the orange light and glowed blue-green beneath the antennae. Its body was draped and covered in beautiful shimmering diaphanous green, which might have been multitudes of long wings—or might have been something quite different. The creature rested, quivering, for a second or so. Then it rose on its long green legs and performed a slow, airy arabesque. Elizabeth smiled. It was Carruthers all right.
The living room burglar still had not moved, but she could hear him breathing. It occurred to Elizabeth that, if he knew she was in the hall, he might run away and leave her in peace with Carruthers. So she said out loud:
“You were a chrysalis!”
There was no sound from either burglar, but the new gauzy Carruthers turned its little face and long, nodding antennae toward her. For one miserable minute, Elizabeth thought it could not speak. But it must have been just finding out how. “That’s right,” it said. The new voice was a good deal more silvery than the old one. “I think I’ve been a chrysalis for the last month.”
“Then how did you rob the larder then?” asked Elizabeth.
“For the Easter egg, you mean?” asked the creature.
“No,” said Elizabeth. “All the other times.”
“I don’t think I did,” said Carruthers. “Being a chrysalis is like being asleep. But don’t I look beautiful now I’m hatched?” It twirled slowly and elegantly along by the foot of the stairs. The gauzy draperies fluttered. Elizabeth could not but agree that it was the most exquisite being. “I think,” said Carruthers, meditatively sinking into a curtsey, “that I need to go away now and find a mate. I have to lay some eggs. Good-bye.”
“No!” said Elizabeth. At least she had an excuse to keep Carruthers close at hand—two of them. “Don’t go yet. There’s a burglar in the living room and a burglar in the kitchen.” There were startled rustles from both places. “You’ve got to stay and help me catch them.”
Carruthers gave a little fluttering jump. “Oh, I couldn’t! Besides, I must be quite the most valuable thing in the house. Just phone the police.”
Elizabeth crawled over to the phone, reflecting that Carruthers was probably quite right about his—her, that is—value. It was rather stupid of him—her, that is—to let the burglars know. The silence behind the living room door sounded like a distinctly interested one.
Elizabeth picked up the phone. Even before she dialed 999, she knew it was dead. The burglars had been thorough. She was almost frightened for the first time. Carruthers was now fluttering slowly across the hall. Some of the gauzy drapery was beginning to act like wings. Elizabeth took hold of him—her, that is—by a transparent flowing edge. “Ow!” said Carruthers.
Elizabeth let go and whispered: “Keep talking, as if you were both of us. I’ll fetch Father.”
“You don’t still want me to hit him, do you?” Carruthers asked loudly.
Elizabeth shook her head frantically at him—her—and crawled for the stairs. Carruthers took the point and said, “You dance exquisitely,” and danced exquisitely. “Yes, I do, don’t I?” she replied. “You fly wonderfully. Indeed I do, but, wouldn’t you say, my antennae are perhaps a trifle too long?” she asked. “Not at all,” she answered. “Oh, thank you,” she replied. “You must keep telling me things like that. I’m a poor ignorant weak thing, only just hatched. But,” she told herself, “beautiful. Yes, indeed,” she answered, losing her place in the conversation a little, “a beautiful unearthly being, fragile and lovely … ”
The silvery voice faded out of Elizabeth’s hearing as she burst open her parents’ bedroom door. “Father! There are two burglars downstairs. One’s got the radio and the golf cups and cut off the telephone!”
“Eh?” Father sat up in bed, and seemed to understand at once. “Be down directly. Go and call Stephen and then stay safely in your bedroom.”
Elizabeth sped to her own old room. It was empty. Stephen must have heard the burglars and gone down already. There was no sign of Father coming. But downstairs Carruthers was suddenly making a great deal of noise. Elizabeth pelted for the stairs. The door of the room she shared opened.
“What is it?” Ruth hissed.
“Burglars,” said Elizabeth.
“I thought so,” Stephanie said from behind Ruth. “Who’s shouting?”
“Carruthers,” gasped Elizabeth, and galloped downstairs.
The burglar from the living room was out in the hall. She recognized him by his wide shoulders. He had heard what Carruthers said about her value. In the dim light, his gloved hands were snatching at the green filmy draperies, while Carruthers, to Elizabeth’s admiration, was circling and swooping and fluttering, just out of reach, like an enormous moth. “You can’t catch me!” Carruthers shouted. “You can’t catch me!”
“Silly thing,” said Elizabeth. “You’ll get hurt.” She snatched up what was left of the walking stick, but was not sure what to do after that.
“Whoopee!” screamed Carruthers, swooping across the hall. “Beautiful me!”
The burglar dived after her. Elizabeth stuck her foot out. The burglar tripped over it and fell on his face—the oddest part of the whole thing, Elizabeth thought afterward, was that she never saw his face at all. Carruthers wheeled briskly and planed down to land on the burglar’s neck. After that, it seemed to be all over.
“Hands up!” Ruth said.
“Is he dead?” asked Stephanie. They were both on the stairs with Stephen’s toy guns. They seemed disappointed to have missed killing the burglar themselves.
Elizabeth cautiously poked at the burglar with her toe. He did not move.
“He’s just unconscious,” Carruthers said, standing up on the burglar’s back and settling her fluttering gauzeries. “I seem,” she said modestly, “to have a sting in my—er—tail. I expect it’s to paralyze my prey. Unless,” she added thoughtfully, “it’s my mate I should paralyze. No doubt I shall find out.”
“That’s never Carruthers!” said Stephanie.
“I take it back,” Ruth said handsomely, “about him being only a stick.”
“Yes, aren’t I beautiful?” Carruthers said, with feeling.
“Give me a gun,” said Elizabeth. “There’s another burglar in the kitchen.”
“No, there isn’t,” Stephen said, rather wobbly and cautious. They all turned to the kitchen door. Stephen switched the hall light on and stood sheepishly in his pajamas. He had a slice of cake—most of
a cake, in fact—in one hand, and one cheek bulged. “Burglar under control?” he asked airily.
Elizabeth looked at him with the deepest contempt. Not only had he kept hidden in the kitchen rather than face the burglar, but, for a whole month, he had let her take the blame for robbing the larder. “You’re not my boyfriend any longer,” she said. She knew she would only have to say it that once.
Father came hurrying downstairs, fully dressed and knotting his tie. “I told you girls to stay in safety,” he said.
Elizabeth looked up at him and found she felt differently about Father too. It was not Stephen’s kind of cowardice which had made Father arrive just too late: it was because he could not face even a burglar without proper clothes on. Father lived by rules—narrow rules. Elizabeth did not feel afraid of him anymore. Nor did she want Carruthers to hit Father. It did not matter enough. And she said to herself, with the most enormous feeling of relief, “Thank goodness! I needn’t do ballet anymore!”
Typically, Father ignored the toy guns Ruth and Stephanie were holding and looked at Stephen, and then at the prone burglar. “Nice work, Stephen,” he said.
Before Stephen could swallow enough cake to look brave but modest, Ruth and Stephanie said in chorus, “It wasn’t him. It was Elizabeth.”
Elizabeth avoided Father’s astonished eye and looked around for Carruthers. She wanted Father to know it was really Carruthers. But the hall was bright and empty. She’s flown away, Elizabeth though miserably.
Then a filmy shadow glided in front of the hall light. A gauzy something flittered at Elizabeth’s cheek. Elizabeth realized that it had been a trick of the orange streetlights which had made Carruthers look green. In the bright electric light she was all but invisible.
Unexpected Magic Page 13
