Eight Days of Luke (12 page)

“What on earth?” said Cousin Ronald, beginning to get up.

Before he could get up properly, or anyone else could move at all, Mr. Chew came flying past outside the French window with his gash of a mouth stretched into an unpleasant grin, and after him came Mrs. Thirsk, purple in the face, aiming blows at Mr. Chew with a rolling pin and shouting.

“You dirty beast! You bandy-legged old sneak!” screamed Mrs. Thirsk, and
thump
went the rolling pin on Mr. Chew's back.

Cousin Ronald stayed just as he was, with his knees bent and one hand on the back of his chair, and stared. Everyone else stared too, while Mr. Chew pelted nimbly up the garden on his crooked legs and Mrs. Thirsk pounded after him. At the top of the garden, Mr. Chew seized a spade which was leaning against the shed and turned at bay with it. Smiling hugely, he seemed to ask Mrs. Thirsk to come on and get him.

Mrs. Thirsk did. She came on like a maddened bull, and they heard the
crack
of the rolling pin on Mr. Chew's head even in the dining room. Mr. Chew, not turning a hair, swung the spade and smacked Mrs. Thirsk on the behind with it. Mrs. Thirsk hopped like a dervish, dropped the rolling pin and seized a garden fork, with which she went for Mr. Chew like a gladiator. David gazed at the battle, enchanted. Never had he seen a more beautiful sight. The raven seemed to share his opinion. He saw it swoop down over the red face and jabbing fork of Mrs. Thirsk, wheeling and fluttering in the greatest excitement, and then beat about Mr. Chew's hat, egging him on to hit harder.

It was too good a chance to miss. Besides, Aunt Dot had pulled herself together and was sailing toward the window to stop the fight. David ran. He ran through the house, down the drive, up the road, and did not stop running until he reached the nearest of the deserted yards he had discovered with Luke. It was full of scrap metal. David swung himself into the cab of a derelict lorry and, without waiting to get his breath back, struck a match. Then, while he got his breath, he turned the match over in his fingers, lovingly preserving the flame, watching the burned end grow and twist.

Before the flame reached his fingers, Luke swung himself up from the other side of the lorry. He was out of breath too, and flung himself into the cab with such a clatter that he startled a great black crow off a nearby roof.

“Thank goodness!” they both said. And both laughed.

“Phew!” said Luke. “It's Wedding now isn't it? I saw one of his ravens this afternoon. What happened?”

David explained what had happened. Luke, as he told him, kept chuckling in a surprised, appreciative way. “He did you proud, didn't he?” he said. “He must have taken a fancy to you. But isn't that just like him to jump you into a contest when you thought it was all over! And I must say I wish you hadn't agreed.”

“So do I now,” said David. “Perhaps the best thing is if I don't strike a match until Monday, and you keep well hidden.”

Luke would not hear of it. Like David, he thought it would make a very poor contest. He propped his feet high on the steering wheel of the lorry, folded his arms on his chest and pooh-poohed the idea. “Nonsense,” he said. “Wedding may be clever and he may have a great many powers, but he always had to rely on me when it came to real cunning. I rather fancy slipping by under their noses. You just distract that bird and get well away from the house and we'll be all right.”

“How do I distract it?” said David. “Arrange for Mrs. Thirsk to beat up old Chew every time I want to go out?”

Luke grinned at him past his own knees, since his feet were propped above his head. “Ravens,” he said, “are very greedy birds. And another thing—he probably only knows you by your clothes and the color of your hair. Try fooling him by looking a bit different.”

David found it very cheering, the way Luke never seemed daunted by any difficulty. He thought nothing, either, of David's worry about Aunt Dot writing to Mr. Fry.

“I can handle your Aunt,” he said. “I expect I can deal with this Mr. Fry of yours too. Not to worry.” Then he became more serious and looked at his uptilted feet rather intently. “What did Wedding say about this revenge I'm supposed to have taken?”

“Nothing,” said David. “He wouldn't say what it was.”

“And I wish I knew what it was,” said Luke. “I really long to know. Because I didn't do anything that I know of. I wanted to, like—well, you can imagine the way you'd want to do something really horrible and get your own back. I kept thinking of things. But what can you do when you're tied up and need both your hands to stop the snakes dripping poison on you?”

“Nothing,” David said, feeling a little sick. He looked at Luke's pale freckled profile and hoped he would not want to say any more about his prison.

“Somebody did something, and they blamed it on me,” Luke said bitterly. “They always blame it on me.”

“Just like they blame me,” David said. “I say, Luke,” he said, because he had suddenly thought of Mr. Wedding's advice again. “You don't need to be grateful to me for letting you out, you know. I did it quite by accident.”

“So you did,” said Luke cheerfully. “And you happened accidentally to stand up for me to Chew and then quite by mistake to Wedding. Come off it, David. If I'm not grateful now, I never will be. What shall we do for the rest of the evening?”

T
he next morning, as David expected, Mr. Chew was digging at the back of the house and the raven was hopping among the geraniums at the front, looking for worms.

David went back to his room and thought. Then, for the first time in his life, he dressed by choice in his neat clothes, to establish his image with the raven. It made him later than usual for breakfast. All his relations were there. Uncle Bernard took his watch out and glanced meaningly from it to David, but to David's relief he did not say anything.

Mrs. Thirsk, after her battle with Mr. Chew, was looking decidedly stormy. She thumped down David's sausages and, as her habit was, glared at him to suggest that it was all his fault. David supposed she was right. If he had not let Luke out, none of the rest would have happened.

Uncle Bernard for once had a real disease. He told Astrid hoarsely that she had better not come near him or his sore throat would be the death of her—scoring one and one bonus point, both unfair, because the time for the contest was supper, not breakfast. Astrid was taken by surprise and for a moment could not think of a disease at all.

“One of your heads,” David suggested, in a purely sporting spirit.

Astrid glared at him. And David discovered a surprising thing. Mr. Wedding's advice seemed to have been working slowly on him overnight. Now he knew he need not be grateful to her, Astrid could glare at him all she pleased and he did not mind. He simply ate his sausages and even knew that underneath, Astrid did not care what he had said. She was really quite glad he had saved her having to answer Uncle Bernard's sore throat.

Mrs. Thirsk meanwhile stood stormily by the door. “I've thought it over,” she announced. “And my notice stays given unless that Chew leaves.”

“Then I think, Ronald—” said Aunt Dot.

“Now come, Mother!” said Cousin Ronald. “I can't sack the best gardener I ever had.”

“Either he goes or I go,” said Mrs. Thirsk.

“In that case—” Aunt Dot got up and went majestically to the French window. “Come here, my good man,” she called. Mr. Chew shuffled down the lawn and stood inquiringly at the window. “Now, Ronald,” said Aunt Dot. “Tell him.”

“I shall do nothing of the sort!” said Cousin Ronald.

“Then I go,” said Mrs. Thirsk.

“And good riddance!” said Cousin Ronald.

“Ronald!” exclaimed Aunt Dot.

“I am really too ill for all this shouting,” complained Uncle Bernard. “Dot, I must ask you to send Mrs. Thirsk away or I shall be prostrated.”

“Quite right, Father,” said Cousin Ronald. “She started it.”

“I did not!” said Mrs. Thirsk.

“And him too,” said Uncle Bernard, pointing fretfully at Mr. Chew. “Sack them both.”

Cousin Ronald thumped the table. “Now you're being absurd!”

Mr. Chew stood with his little eyes flickering from person to person. David could have sworn he was enjoying setting them all quarreling.

“Ronald, do be quiet,” Astrid said. “My head's coming on with this noise.”

“Oh, everything brings your head on!” Cousin Ronald shouted, turning on Astrid. “Go away if you can't stand it.”

“I'm going,” said Astrid, and she got up and went out.

David bolted his last half sausage, for now, if any time, was his chance, while Mr. Chew was occupied in grinning beadily at his quarreling relations. “Can I go too?”

“Don't interrupt, David. Yes, if you wish,” said Aunt Dot.

David shot from the dining room and through the hall. Quietly, he opened the front door and stepped out. The raven stopped searching for worms and watched him from behind a geranium.

“Do you like worms?” David asked it.

“Yes, if there's nothing else going,” it answered.

“What do you like to eat best?” said David.

The raven looked at him with unmistakable interest, evidently wondering what kind of food David was good for. “My favorite food,” it said, “is a nice fresh carcass. But those are hard to come by these days.”

“How about biscuits?” suggested David.

“I eat most things,” the raven said hopefully.

“Here you are then,” said David, and he held out a crumbly half biscuit left over from the packet Astrid had given him.

“Thank you,” said the raven. With great dignity, it climbed from the flowers and marched across the drive to David. It took the biscuit with something of a peck and a snap, which made David take his hand away quickly. “Much obliged,” it said indistinctly, and after that the biscuit was gone. The raven looked up hopefully, but David had only two biscuits left and his plan meant using them later. He went back into the house, and, very pleased with himself, galloped up to his room to change. In the dining room, Cousin Ronald and Aunt Dot were loudly abusing Uncle Bernard. He could hear them right upstairs.

When he was changed, David carefully put the matches in one pocket of his jeans and the last two biscuits in the other. If he strewed them down the drive, four half biscuits should surely keep the raven occupied until he had got clear away. He went downstairs and through the front door again. The raven was rather busy hauling a mighty worm from the left-hand bed.

David, with great cunning, asked it: “Do you like biscuits?”

The bird's eye came round to look at him. “You asked me that before,” it said. “I do, but I prefer worms. I'll be with you in a minute.”

Sadly, David watched it drag the worm clear and finish it off in two swallows. So much for his clever plan. The raven was obviously going to know him whatever he looked like. All the same, he waited until the bird came stepping gravely toward him over the drive. He could not cheat it of its biscuits, for it had treated him very fairly after all. He laid the biscuits in a small pile in front of it and went back into the house.

The quarrel was still going on in the dining room. David could hear Mrs. Thirsk saying she was not going to put up with such treatment any longer. And he heard Mr. Chew's voice too. He went out of the side door and into the garden. Given a bit of luck, he might get over the wall without being seen from the dining room.

But the raven was now in the middle of the lawn, dragging out an even bigger worm.

David said a bad word under his breath and hurried to the front door.

In the middle of the drive, the raven was just finishing the last biscuit crumb and looked up at him hopefully as he came out. “Any more?” it said.

“No, sorry,” said David. “I say, are there two of you?”

“Yes,” said the bird. “There are always two of us.”

“Thank you,” said David, and went indoors again. By this time, he was full of deep, surly anger against Mr. Wedding. No wonder he had set such a short time limit. He couldn't lose. Or could he? David stopped short at the foot of the stairs. Mr. Wedding had said David had not mustered all his resources yet, and that was true.

Slowly, thoughtfully, David turned and went along the passage to the kitchen. He was forbidden to go there, but it was a resource all the same. It was a dismal, blank room with white machines humming away round the walls and full of the dismal smell of Mrs. Thirsk's cooking.

David went to the clean white refrigerator and looked inside. He thought, as he looked, that it was a pity that Aunt Dot would never be brought to understand the difference between bad things you just did and bad things you simply had to do. Aunt Dot would call this bad, impartially. The nearest thing he could find to a nice fresh carcass was a joint of mutton, waiting to be turned into bad food. David took it out and, with a gasp, because it was cold and clammy, pushed it up the front of his shirt and fled with it to the drawing room. There he buried it carefully behind the silk sofa cushions to wait. Then, feeling very grim and daring, he went upstairs and knocked on the door of Cousin Ronald's and Astrid's bedroom.