James and the Giant Peach (4 page)

James’s large frightened eyes travelled slowly round the room.

The creatures, some sitting on chairs, others reclining on a sofa, were all watching him intently.

Creatures?

Or were they insects?

An insect is usually something rather small, is it not? A grasshopper, for example, is an insect.

So what would you call it if you saw a grasshopper as large as a dog? As large as a
large
dog. You could hardly call
that
an insect, could you?

There was an Old-Green-Grasshopper as large as a large dog sitting directly across the room from James now.

And next to the Old-Green-Grasshopper, there was an enormous Spider.

And next to the Spider, there was a giant Ladybird with nine black spots on her scarlet shell.

Each of these three was squatting upon a magnificent chair.

On a sofa near by, reclining comfortably in curled-up positions, there were a Centipede and an Earthworm.

On the floor over in the far corner, there was something thick and white that looked as though it might be a Silkworm. But it was sleeping soundly and nobody was paying any attention to it.

Every one of these ‘creatures’ was at least as big as James himself, and in the strange greenish light that shone down from somewhere in the ceiling, they were absolutely terrifying to behold.

‘I‘m hungry!’ the Spider announced suddenly, staring hard at James.

‘
I‘m
famished!’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said.

‘So am
I
!’ the Ladybird cried.

The Centipede sat up a little straighter on the sofa. ‘
Everyone’s
famished!’ he said. ‘We need food!’

Four pairs of round black glassy eyes were all fixed upon James.

The Centipede made a wriggling movement with his body as though he were about to glide off the sofa – but he didn‘t.

There was a long pause – and a long silence.

The Spider (who happened to be a female spider) opened her mouth and ran a long black tongue delicately over her lips. ‘Aren’t
you
hungry?’ she asked suddenly, leaning forward and addressing herself to James.

Poor James was backed up against the far wall, shivering with fright and much too terrified to answer.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper asked. ‘You look positively ill!’

‘He looks as though he’s going to faint any second,’ the Centipede said.

‘Oh, my goodness, the poor thing!’ the Ladybird cried. ‘I do believe he thinks it’s
him
that we are wanting to eat!’

There was a roar of laughter from all sides.

‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ they said. ‘What an awful thought!’

‘You mustn’t be frightened,’ the Ladybird said kindly. ‘We wouldn’t
dream
of hurting you. You are one of
us
now, didn’t you know that? You are one of the crew. We’re all in the same boat.’

‘We‘ve been waiting for you all day long,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said. ‘We thought you were never going to turn up. I‘m glad you made it.’

‘So cheer up, my boy, cheer up!’ the Centipede said. ‘And meanwhile I wish you’d come over here and give me a hand with these boots. It takes me
hours
to get them all off by myself.’

James decided that this was most certainly not a time to be disagreeable, so he crossed the room to where the Centipede was sitting and knelt down beside him.

‘Thank you so much,’ the Centipede said. ‘You are very kind.’

‘You have a lot of boots,’ James murmured.

‘I have a lot of legs,’ the Centipede answered proudly. ‘And a lot of feet. One hundred, to be exact.’

‘
There
he goes again!’ the Earthworm cried, speaking for the first time. ‘He simply cannot stop telling lies about his legs! He doesn’t have anything
like
a hundred of them! He’s only got forty-two! The trouble is that most people don’t bother to count them. They just take his word. And anyway, there is nothing
marvellous
, you know, Centipede, about having a lot of legs.’

‘Poor fellow,’ the Centipede said, whispering in James’s ear. ‘He’s blind. He can’t see how splendid I look.’

‘In my opinion,’ the Earthworm said, ‘the
really
marvellous thing is to have no legs at all and to be able to walk just the same.’

‘You call that
walking!
’ cried the Centipede. ‘You’re a
slitherer
, that’s all you are! You just
slither
along!’

‘I glide,’ said the Earthworm primly.

‘You are a slimy beast,’ answered the Centipede.

‘I am
not
a slimy beast,’ the Earthworm said. ‘I am a useful and much loved creature. Ask any gardener you like. And as for you…’

‘I am a pest!’ the Centipede announced, grinning broadly and looking round the room for approval.

‘He is
so
proud of that,’ the Ladybird said, smiling at James. ‘Though for the life of me I cannot understand why.’

‘I am the only pest in this room!’ cried the Centipede, still grinning away. ‘Unless you count Old-Green-Grasshopper over there. But he is long past it now. He is too old to be a pest any more.’

The Old-Green-Grasshopper turned his huge black eyes upon the Centipede and gave him a withering look. ‘Young fellow,’ he said, speaking in a deep, slow, scornful voice, ‘I have never been a pest in my life. I am a musician.’

‘Hear, hear!’ said the Ladybird.

‘James,’ the Centipede said. ‘Your name
is
James, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, James, have you ever in your life seen such a marvellous colossal Centipede as me?’

‘I certainly haven‘t,’ James answered. ‘How on earth did you get to be like that?’

‘
Very
peculiar,’ the Centipede said. ‘
Very, very
peculiar indeed. Let me tell you what happened. I was messing about in the garden under the old peach tree and suddenly a funny little green thing came wriggling past my nose. Bright green it was, and extraordinarily beautiful, and it looked like some kind of a tiny stone or crystal…’

‘Oh, but I know what that was!’ cried James.

‘It happened to me, too!’ said the Ladybird.

‘And me!’ Miss Spider said. ‘Suddenly there were little green things everywhere! The soil was full of them!’

‘I actually swallowed one!’ the Earthworm declared proudly.

‘So did I!’ the Ladybird said.

‘I swallowed three!’ the Centipede cried. ‘But who’s telling this story anyway? Don’t interrupt!’

‘It’s too late to tell stories now,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper announced. ‘It’s time to go to sleep.’

‘I refuse to sleep in my boots!’ the Centipede cried. ‘How many more are there to come off, James?’

‘I think I‘ve done about twenty so far,’ James told him.

‘Then that leaves eighty to go,’ the Centipede said.

‘
Twenty-two
, not
eighty!
’ shrieked the Earthworm. ‘He’s lying again.’

The Centipede roared with laughter.

‘Stop pulling the Earthworm’s leg,’ the Ladybird said.

This sent the Centipede into hysterics. ‘Pulling his
leg!
’ he cried, wriggling with glee and pointing at the Earthworm. ‘Which leg am I pulling? You tell me that!’

James decided that he rather liked the Centipede. He was obviously a rascal, but what a change it was to hear somebody laughing once in a while. He had never heard Aunt Sponge or Aunt Spiker
laughing aloud in all the time he had been with them.

‘We really
must
get some sleep,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said. ‘We‘ve got a tough day ahead of us tomorrow. So would you be kind enough, Miss Spider, to make the beds?’

A few-minutes later, Miss Spider had made the first bed. It was hanging from the ceiling, suspended by a rope of threads at either end so that actually it looked more like a hammock than a bed. But it was a magnificent affair, and the stuff that it was made of shimmered like silk in the pale light.

‘I do hope you’ll find it comfortable,’ Miss Spider said to the Old-Green-Grasshopper. ‘I made it as soft and silky as I possibly could. I spun it with gossamer. That’s a much better quality thread than the one I use for my own web.’

‘Thank you so much, my dear lady,’ the Old-Green-Grasshopper said, climbing into the hammock. ‘Ah, this is just what I needed. Good night, everybody. Good night.’

Then Miss Spider spun the next hammock, and the Ladybird got in.

After that, she spun a long one for the Centipede, and an even longer one for the Earthworm.

‘And how do you like
your
bed?’ she said to
James when it came to his turn. ‘Hard or soft?’

‘I like it soft, thank you very much,’ James answered.

‘For goodness’ sake stop staring round the room and get on with my boots!’ the Centipede said. ‘You and I are never going to get any sleep at this rate! And kindly line them up neatly in pairs as you take them off. Don’t just throw them over your shoulder.’

James worked away frantically on the Centipede’s boots. Each one had laces that had to be untied and loosened before it could be pulled off, and to make matters worse, all the laces were tied up in the most terrible complicated knots that had to be unpicked with fingernails. It was just awful. It took about two hours. And by the time James had pulled off the last boot of all and had lined them up in a row on the floor – twenty-one pairs altogether – the Centipede was fast asleep.

‘Wake up, Centipede,’ whispered James, giving him a gentle dig in the stomach. ‘It’s time for bed.’

‘Thank you, my dear child,’ the Centipede said, opening his eyes. Then he got down off the sofa and ambled across the room and crawled into his hammock. James got into his own hammock – and oh, how soft and comfortable it was compared with the hard bare boards that his aunts had always made him sleep upon at home.

‘Lights out,’ said the Centipede drowsily.

Nothing happened.

‘Turn out the light!’ he called, raising his voice.

James glanced round the room, wondering which
of the others he might be talking to, but they were all asleep. The Old-Green-Grasshopper was snoring loudly through his nose. The Ladybird was making whistling noises as she breathed, and the Earthworm was coiled up like a spring at one end of his hammock, wheezing and blowing through his open mouth. As for Miss Spider, she had made a lovely web for herself across one corner of the room, and James could see her crouching right in the very centre of it, mumbling softly in her dreams.

‘I said turn out the light!’ shouted the Centipede angrily.

‘Are you talking to me?’ James asked him.

‘Of course I‘m not talking to you, you ass!’ the Centipede answered. ‘That crazy Glow-worm has gone to sleep with her light on!’

For the first time since entering the room, James glanced up at the ceiling – and there he saw a most extraordinary sight. Something that looked like a gigantic fly without wings (it was at least three feet long) was standing upside down upon its six legs in the middle of the ceiling, and the tail end of this creature seemed to be literally on fire. A brilliant greenish light as bright as the brightest electric bulb was shining out of its tail and lighting up the whole room.

‘Is
that
a Glow-worm?’ asked James, staring at the light. ‘It doesn’t look like a worm of any sort to me.’

‘Of course it’s a Glow-worm,’ the Centipede answered. ‘At least that’s what
she
calls herself. Although actually you are quite right. She isn’t
really a worm at all. Glow-worms are never worms. They are simply lady fireflies without wings. Wake up, you lazy beast!’

But the Glow-worm didn’t stir, so the Centipede reached out of his hammock and picked up one of his boots from the floor. ‘Put out that wretched light!’ he shouted, hurling the boot up at the ceiling.

The Glow-worm slowly opened one eye and stared at the Centipede. ‘There is no need to be rude,’ she said coldly. ‘All in good time.’

‘Come on, come on, come on!’ shouted the Centipede. ‘Or I’ll put it out for you!’

‘Oh, hello, James!’ the Glow-worm said, looking down and giving James a little wave and a smile. ‘I didn’t see you come in. Welcome, my dear boy, welcome – and good night!’

Then
click
– and out went the light.

James Henry Trotter lay there in the darkness with his eyes wide open, listening to the strange sleeping noises that the ‘creatures’ were making all around him, and wondering what on earth was going to happen to him in the morning. Already, he was beginning to like his new friends very much. They were not nearly as terrible as they looked. In fact they weren’t really terrible at all. They seemed extremely kind and helpful in spite of all the shouting and arguing that went on between them.

‘Good night, Old-Green-Grasshopper,’ he whispered. ‘Good night, Ladybird – Good night, Miss Spider –’ But before he could go through them all, he had fallen fast asleep.