The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories

by Joan Aiken

  After three weeks, Mrs. Armitage said, “Look, I don't want to seem mean, and I must admit your Furry does look better now that he isn't so bony and goose-pimply, but—thirty-six bowls of bread-and-milk a day!"

  "Yes, it is a lot,” agreed Harriet sadly.

  "Maybe Mr. Johansen could contribute towards his support?"

  "Oh, no, he's awfully hard up,” Mark said. “I'll pay for the bread and Harriet can pay for the milk. I've some money saved from apple-picking."

  "That still leaves the sugar and raisins."

  Harriet decided that she would have to dispose of her dolls’ furniture.

  Unfortunately, that was the day when Furry, tired of his newspaper nest, looked round for somewhere new to roost, and noticed the wicker hamper in which Harriet stored her finished products. He flapped his little wings, jumped up on top, turned round two or three times, digging his claws into the wicker, until he was comfortable, stuck his head under his wing (where it now fitted better; his wings were growing fast), and went to sleep. Slowly the hamper sagged beneath his weight; by the time Harriet found him it was completely flattened, like a wafer-ice that has been left in the sun.

  "Oh, Furry! Look what you've done!"

  "Gleep,” replied the baby griffin mournfully, stretching out first one hind leg and then the other.

  He was hungry again.

  "It's no use blaming him,” Harriet said, inspecting her ruined work. “He just doesn't know his own weight."

  The next night was a chilly one, and in the middle of it, Furry, becoming fretful and shivery and lonesome, clambered onto Harriet's bed for warmth and company. Harriet, fast asleep, began to have strange dreams of avalanches and earthquakes; by the morning, three legs of her bed had buckled under Furry's weight; Furry and Harriet were huddled in a heap down at the southwest corner.

  "It's queer,” said Mark, “considering how fast he's putting on weight, that he doesn't grow very much bigger."

  "He's more condensed than we are,” Harriet said.

  "Condensed!” said Mrs. Armitage. “From now on, that creature has got to live out of doors. Any day now, he'll go right through the floorboards. And your father says the same."

  "Oh, Mother!"

  "It's no use looking at me like that. Look at the playroom floor! It's sagging, and dented all over with claw marks. It looks like Southend Beach."

  "I suppose he'll have to roost in the wood shed,” Harriet said sadly.

  They fetched a load of hay and made him a snug nest. While he was investigating it, and burying himself up to his beak, they crept indoors and went to bed, feeling like the parents of Hansel and Gretel.

  Next morning Furry was up on the woodshed roof, gleeping anxiously. The woodshed had tilted over at a forty-five degree angle.

  "Oh, Furry! How did you ever get up there?"

  "He must have flown,” said Mark.

  "But he can't fly!"

  "He was bound to start soon; his wings are nearly full grown. And proper feathers are sprouting all over them, and on his head, too."

  If Furry had flown up to the roof of the shed, however, he showed no signs of remembering how to set about flying down again. He teetered about on the sloping roof, gleeping more and more desperately. At last, just in time, he managed to fly a few hasty, panic-stricken flaps, and coasted to earth as the shed collapsed behind him.

  "You clever baby,” said Harriet, giving him a hug to show that nobody blamed him.

  "Thrackle, thrackle. Gleep, cooroocooroo, gleep.” Furry leaned lovingly against Harriet. She managed to leap aside just before he flattened her; he now weighed as much as a well-nourished grizzly.

  Harriet and Mark were extremely busy. In order to earn Furry's keep, they had taken jobs, delivering papers, selling petrol at the garage, and washing up at the Two-Door Café, but they were in a constant state of anxiety all the time as to what he might be doing while they were away from home.

  "Do you think we ought to mention to Mr. Johansen that it's rather difficult with Furry?” Harriet suggested one day. “It isn't that I'm not fond of him—"

  "It's rather difficult to get him to pay attention these days; Mr. Johansen, I mean."

  Indeed, the music master seemed to be in a dream most of the time.

  "Never haf I played such an instrument, never!” he declared. When he was not playing Mrs. Nutti's organ, he was leaning out of the spare-room window, gazing at the view, listening to the music across the square, rapt in a kind of trance. Mark was a little worried about him.

  "Honestly, sir, don't you think you ought to get out for a bit of fresh air sometimes?"

  "But you see, I have ze feeling zat from zis window I might someday see my lost Sophie."

  "But even if you did, we still don't know how to get into the town."

  Their experiment with rope had proved a failure. The rope had simply disappeared, as fast as they paid it out the window. Nor was it possible to attract the attention of the people down below and persuade them to fetch a ladder (which had been another of Harriet's suggestions). Neither shouts nor waves had the slightest effect. And Mr. Johansen had vetoed any notion of either Mark or Harriet climbing out.

  "For you might disappear like ze rope, and zen what should I tell your dear muzzer?"

  "So even if you did see your lost Sophie from the window, it wouldn't do you much good; it would be more of a worry than anything else,” Mark said with ruthless practicality.

  "Ach—who knows—who knows?” sighed Mr. Johansen.

  Several more weeks passed. Furry, measured by Mark, was now nearly as big as the marble griffin under the mantelpiece.

  Then, one evening, when Mark was in the midst of his piano lesson, Harriet burst in.

  "Oh—Mr. Johansen—I'm terribly sorry to interrupt—but it's Furry! He's flown up on top of the water-tower, and he's dreadfully scared, and gleeping away like mad, and I'm so afraid he might damage the tower! Do come, Mark, and see if you can talk him down, you're the one he trusts most. I've brought a pail of bread-and-milk."

  They ran outside, Mr. Johansen following. It was the first time he had been out for days.

  The village water-tower stood a couple of fields away from the music master's bungalow. It was a large metal cylinder supported on four metal legs, which looked slender to support the weight of who knows how many thousand gallons of water, but were apparently equal to the job. It did not, however, seem likely that they were equal to supporting a full-grown griffin as well, particularly since he was running back and forth on top of the cylinder, gleeping distractedly, opening and shutting his wings, leaning to look over the edge, and then jumping back with a tremendous clatter and scrape of toenails on galvanized iron.

  "Furry!” shouted Mark. “Keep calm! Keep calm!"

  "Gleep! Thrackle, thrackle, thrackle."

  "Shut your wings and stand still,” ordered Mark.

  With his eyes starting out as he looked at the awful drop below him, the griffin obeyed.

  "Now, Harriet, swing the bucket of bread and-milk round a bit, so the smell rises up."

  Harriet did so. Some bread-and-milk slopped out on the grass. The sweet and haunting fragrance steamed up through the evening air.

  "Gleeeeeep!” A famished wail came from the top of the water-tower.

  "You're very silly!” Harriet shouted scoldingly. “If you hadn't gotten yourself up there, you could be eating this nice bread-and-milk now."

  "Furry,” called Mark, “watch me. Are you watching?"

  Silence from up above. Then a faint thrackle.

  "Right! Now, open your wings."

  Mark had his arms by his sides; he now raised them to shoulder height.

  Furry, after a moment or two, hesitantly did the same.

  "Now lower them again. Do as I do. Just keep raising and lowering."

  Following Mark's example, Furry did this half a dozen times. The tower shook a bit.

  "Right, faster and faster. Faster still! Now—jump! KEEP FLAPPING!"

 
Furry jumped, and forgot to flap; he started falling like a stone.

  "Gleep!"

  "Flap, you fool!"

  The onlookers leapt away; just in time, Furry began flapping again, and, when he was within eight feet of the ground, suddenly soared upwards once more.

  "Don't land on the tower again. Flap with both wings—not just one. You're going ROUND AND ROUND,” Mark shouted, cupping hands about his mouth. “That's better. Don't flap so fast. Slower! Like this!"

  He demonstrated.

  Furry hurtled past, eyes tight shut, claws clenched, wings nothing but a blur. Then back again. It was like the progress of a balloon with the string taken off.

  "Make your strokes slower."

  "It's as bad as learning to swim,” Harriet said. “People get quick and frantic in just the same way. Still, he is doing better now. Just so long as he doesn't hit the tower. Or Mr. Johansen's roof."

  Several times Furry had only just cleared the bungalow. At last, more or less in control, he flapped himself down to Mr. Johansen's front garden, shaving off all the front hedge on his way, and flattening a bed of Canterbury bells.

  Mark and Harriet arrived at top speed, with the half-full bucket slopping between them, and set it down on the path. Furry, gleeping between mouthfuls, began frantically gobbling.

  At this rather distracted moment, Mrs. Nutti arrived.

  "What's this, then, what's this?” she snapped angrily, taking in the scene at a glance. “Who let him out? Should be upstairs, in room, not in garden. Burglars, burglars might come, might see him."

  "Out?” said Harriet. “He's too heavy to keep indoors these days."

  "All wrong—very bad,” said Mrs. Nutti furiously. “Why did I take room in country? To keep him out of way of griffin collectors. Town full of them. Come along, you!” she bawled at Furry. Before Mark or Harriet could protest, she had snapped a collar on his neck and dragged him indoors up Mr. Johansen's staircase.

  They ran after her.

  "Hey, stop!” shouted Mark. “What are you doing with him?"

  Arriving in the spare room, they found Mrs. Nutti struggling to push Furry into the ragged hole under the mantelpiece.

  "You don't mean,” gasped Harriet, outraged, “that you intend him to spend the rest of his life there, holding up that shelf?"

  "Why else leave egg here to hatch?” panted Mrs. Nutti angrily, dragging on the collar.

  But Furry, reared on freedom and bread-and-milk, was too strong for Mrs. Nutti.

  With a loud snap, the collar parted as he strained away from her, and he shot across the room, breaking one of the bedposts like a stick of celery. The window splintered as he struck it, and then he was out and away, flapping strongly up into the blue, blue star-sprinkled sky over the foreign city.

  One gleep came back to them, then a joyful burst of the full, glorious song of an adult griffin.

  Then he dwindled to a speck and was gone.

  "There!” said Harriet. “That just serves you right, Mrs. Nutti. Why, you haven't looked after him and you expected him to hold up your fireplace!"

  She was almost crying with indignation.

  Mrs. Nutti spoke to no one. With her lips angrily compressed, she snatched up the carpet-bag, cast a furious look round the room, and marched out, pulling the room together behind her as one might drag a counterpane.

  By the time they heard the front door slam, they were back in Mr. Johansen's attic, with its brass bedstead and patchwork quilt.

  Mr. Johansen walked slowly to the window and looked out, at the trampled garden and the empty bread-and-milk bucket, which still lay on the path.

  "I suppose we'll never see Furry again,” Mark said, clearing his throat.

  "Or I, my Sophie,” sighed Mr. Johansen.

  "Oh, I don't know,” Harriet said. “I wouldn't be surprised if Furry found his way back sometime. He's awfully fond of us. And I'm sure you will find your Sophie someday, Mr. Johansen. I really am sure you will."

  "We'll start looking for another room in town for you right away!” Mark called back as they walked out through the battered gate.

  "It really is lucky Furry didn't hit the water-tower,” Harriet said. “I should think it would have taken years of pocket-money to pay for that damage. Now—as soon as we've fixed up the airing-cupboard door—"

  "—And the fruit-ladder—"

  "And the woodshed, and the legs of my bed, and Mr. Johansen's front gate—I can start saving up for a Himalayan bear."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  The Looking-Glass Tree

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  * * * *

  They were putting up the village fair on the green. It was a long job. The thud-thud of hammers banging in the posts for coconut shies echoed all over the village, along with the cheerful stutter of generating motors hoisting the big roundabout into position. The village green was on quite a steep slope, and the big roundabout had to be propped under its lower side on piles of bricks, an arrangement that Mr. Armitage condemned as crazily unsafe. Each year, he earnestly begged his children not to ride on the roundabout. Each year, they pointed out that the fair had been going since 1215 with no particular loss of life. Otherwise, they took no notice of his warnings.

  Mr. Armitage sat in his downstairs study, trying to work, but the noise distracted him, which was a pity, as he had the house to himself for once. Mrs. Armitage was out for the day, visiting a sick cousin; Mark and Harriet were down on the green, watching the fair put itself together.

  "During the last year, sugar prices have declined rapidly,” wrote Mr. Armitage, trying to ignore the sound of thumping. Then he realized that what he heard was not the distant hammering but somebody banging on his window. He looked up from the report on sugar he was trying to write and found himself staring into the unattractive face of Miss Pursey.

  Miss Pursey had bought the small field next to the Armitage garden six months before. Nobody quite knew how this had happened, as old Mr. Fewkes, who previously owned the field, had often said he would never sell it, and if he did so, he would sell it to the Armitages. But then, suddenly, one day, he had sold it. “I dunno what came over me,” he said helplessly to Mr. Armitage in the pub, “seemed as ‘ow the young lady ‘ad an uncommon argymentative persuading way o’ going on at me.” And in less than a week after that, a firm of builders unfamiliar to the Armitages had begun slapping up a bungalow, and in a suspiciously short time after that, not more than a month, all was completed and Miss Pursey moved into her house.

  It seemed almost certain that Miss Pursey was a witch. The bungalow, although made from precast concrete, was constructed so as to resemble a witch's cottage with a roof made from sections of plastic thatch, fake diamond paning in the windows, and Tudor beams painted on the walls.

  "She has roses and hollyhocks painted growing up the walls, too,” reported Harriet, who had been over to watch the builders in action. “Even the bees were fooled."

  The back of the bungalow, in complete contrast, was painted with a trompe-l'oeil reproduction of a Greek temple, done in such ingenious, deceitful perspective that it was good enough to fool anyone, not only bees, until they were about two feet away; one or two of Mr. Fewkes's sheep who wandered into the field through a gap in the hedge were seen trying to push their way among the painted Doric columns and looking puzzled, as only sheep can look, because they were unable to do so.

  But Miss Pursey, when she moved in, soon discouraged the sheep. In no time at all, she had a boring, tidy garden laid out, a lot of square beds neatly dug divided by cinder paths.

  "She waters her plants with boiling water,” Harriet reported.

  She also watered the sheep with boiling water, until they took the hint and retired to their own side of the hedge.

  Miss Pursey was not neighbourly. She had such a very discouraging expression on her face while she dug her beds and marked off her seed drills that the Armitages, without even discussing the matter, left her strictly alone.

  Mr. Armitage was
therefore surprised and not best pleased to find her banging on his study window at eleven o'clock on a Monday morning.

  Miss Pursey was tall, plump, and brisk in her movements. She was not old—in her mid-twenties perhaps—but extremely plain. She wore her straight black hair in a bun at the back and cut in a no-nonsense fringe in the front. She also wore a mini-skirt, which was a mistake, as it left bare most of two large, bulging legs tapering down to small, stubby feet in spike-heeled shoes; the legs looked like two exclamation points: !! supporting a capital O. She had very large black-rimmed glasses—two more O's through which she directed an accusing glare at Mr. Armitage as he reluctantly opened the window. He thought that if she had not so obviously been a witch she might have been a gym instructor or a hockey teacher.

  "Your cat—” said Miss Pursey angrily, as soon as he had the catch undone.

  "How do you do,” said Mr. Armitage with great politeness, opening the window to its full extent. “I believe we have not formally introduced ourselves yet. I am Everard Gilbert Armitage—delighted to meet you, Miss—er?"

  "Pearl Pursey,” she said snappishly. “Your cat, Mr. Armitage, is wrecking my tree."

  She turned and pointed.

  Mr. Armitage, unwillingly stepping out through the window (which was a French one), followed her to the wicket gate in the boundary hedge that separated the Armitage garden from Miss Pursey's field.

  Just beyond the hedge, a small tree was growing. And in the branches of the tree, looking very unsuitable—for he was about half its size—but very pleased with himself, was the Armitages’ enormously large black cat, Walrus, so called because he wore his top front teeth outside his chin, like a walrus's tusks. The teeth were sticking out now even more than usual as he dangled self-consciously over two branches of the tiny tree, making it sway like a fishing rod with a polar bear balanced on top of it.

  Mr. Armitage immediately thought of two things.

  He remembered that the tree had been growing there before Miss Pursey arrived, so that in a way it could not be said to be her tree; she certainly had not planted it.

  He also remembered that the strip of land immediately beyond the Armitage boundary hedge was in fact a footpath; a right-of-way leading across the fields to the next village. Nobody used it anymore, because it was more comfortable to go around by road, which was why the little tree had had a chance to grow up. But actually neither the tree nor the land it grew on belonged to Miss Pursey; they were public property.