The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories (21 page)

She blushed furiously.

“That was the trouble!” she burst out. “For such a small errand—just one flower—they wouldn’t allocate enough research staff. I
knew
there were details they had skimped on—”

“But why,” he persisted mildly, “why are you collecting?”

Anjla looked at him sorrowfully. Then she said, “
Well
—as you seem to have spotted us, and it is so very late, in any case, I suppose it won’t matter now if I tell you—”

“Yes, my dear?”

“This planet”—she glanced round at the stable yard—“is due to blow up—oh, very, very soon. Our scientists have calculated it to within the next three chronims—”

“Chronims?”

“Under one hundred of your hours, I think. Naturally, therefore, we were checking the contents of our own Terrestrial Museum—”

“Ah, I see.” He stood thinking for a few minutes, then inquired with the liveliest interest, “And you really do have one of everything? Even—for instance—a rector of the Church of England?”

“I’m afraid so.” Her tone was full of regret. “I
wish
I could take you with me. You have been so kind. But we have a vicar, a dean, a bishop, a canon—we have them all. Even an archbishop.”

“My dear child! You mistake my meaning. I would not, not for one moment, consider leaving. My question was prompted by—by a simple wish to know.”

The low hum was audible again. Anjla glanced at the sky.

“I’m afraid that now I really have to go.”

“Of course you must, my dear. Of course.”

They crossed the yard and found the shaggy Moropus demolishing, with apparent relish, the last of a bunch of carrots that had been laid on the mounting block for Mr. Pentecost’s supper.

Anjla checked and stared, aghast. “
Sphim!
What have you
done?
”

She burst into a torrent of expostulations, couched in a language wholly unlike any earthly tongue; it appeared to have no consonants at all, to consist of pure sound like the breathy note of an ocarina.

The Moropus guiltily hung its head and shuffled its long-clawed feet.

Mr. Pentecost stood looking at the pair in sympathy and perplexity.

The warning hum sounded in the air again.

“Do I understand that your—um—companion has invalidated his chance of departure by the consumption of those carrots?”

“
I don
’t know what
can
have come over him—we were briefed so carefully—told to touch nothing, to take in nothing except—over and over again they told us—”

“Perhaps it was a touch of Method,” suggested Mr. Pentecost. “He was really getting into the skin of his part.” And he added something about Dis and Persephone that the girl received with the blankness of noncomprehension. She had placed her hands on either side of the pony’s hairy cheekbones; she bent forward until her forehead touched the other’s. Thus she stood for a couple of moments in silence. Then she straightened and walked across the yard in the direction of the meadow. Her eyes swam with tears. Following her, interested and touched, Mr. Pentecost murmured,

“I will, of course, be glad to take care of your friend. During what little time remains.”

“I am sure that you will. Thank you. I—I am glad to have met you.”

“You could not—I suppose—show me what you both really look like?” he asked with a touch of wistfulness.

“I’m afraid that would be quite impossible. Your eyes simply aren’t adapted, you see—”

He nodded, accepting this. Just the same, for a single instant he did receive an impression of hugeness, brightness, speed. Then the girl vaulted the fence and, carefully carrying her basket, crossed the meadow to the large oak tree in the center.

“Good-bye,” called Mr. Pentecost. The Moropus lifted up its head and let out a soft groaning sound.

Beside the oak tree, Anjla turned and raised her hand with a grave, formal gesture. Then she stepped among the low-growing branches of the tree, which immediately folded like an umbrella, and, with a swift flash of no-colored brilliance, shot upward, disintegrating into light.

Mr. Pentecost remained for a few moments, leaning with his forearms on the wooden fence, gazing pensively at the star Hesperus, which, now that the tree was gone, could be seen gleaming in radiance above the horizon.

The rector murmured:

“Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away

Change and decay in all around I see;

O Thou, Who changest not, abide with me.”

Then, pulling a juicy tussock of grass from beside one of the fence posts, he carried it back to the disconsolate Moropus.

“Here, my poor friend; if we are to wait for Armageddon together, we may as well do so in comfort. Just excuse me a moment while I fetch a deck chair and a steamer rug from the house. And do, pray, finish those carrots. I will be with you again directly.”

He stepped inside the back door. The Moropus, with a carrot top and a hank of juicy grass dangling from its hairy lips, gazed after him sadly but trustfully.

The Man Who Had Seen the Rope Trick

Miss Drake,” said Mrs. Minser. “When ye’ve finished with the salt and pepper, will ye please put them
together?
”

“Sorry, I’m sorry,”
mumbled Miss Drake.
“I can’t see very well as you know, I can’t see very well.” Her tremulous hands worked out like tendrils across the table and succeeded in knocking the mustard onto its side. An ochre blob defiled the snowy stiffness of the tablecloth. Mrs. Minser let a slight hiss escape her.

“That’s the third tablecloth ye’ve dirtied in a week, Miss Drake. Do ye know I had to get up at four o’clock this morning to do all the washing? I shann’t be able to keep ye if ye go on like this, ye know.”

Without waiting for the whispered apologies she turned towards the dining-room door, pushing the trolley with the meat plates before her. Her straw-grey hair was swept to a knot on the top of her head, her grey eyes were as opaque as bottle tops, her mouth was screwed tight shut against the culpabilities of other people.

“Stoopid business, getting’ up at four in the mornin’,” muttered old Mr. Hill, but he muttered it quietly to himself. “Who cares about a blob of mustard on the tablecloth, anyway? Who cares about a tablecloth, or a separate table, if the food’s good? If she’s got to get up at four, why don’t she make us some decent porridge instead of the slime she gives us?”

He bowed his head prayerfully over his bread plate as Mrs. Minser returned, weaving her way with the neatness of long practice between the white-covered tables, each with its silent, elderly, ruminating diner.

The food was not good. “Rice shape or banana, Mr. Hill?” Mrs. Minser asked, pausing beside him.

“Banana, thank’
ee.
” He repressed a shudder as he looked at the colourless, glutinous pudding. The bananas were unripe, and bad for his indigestion, but at least they were palatable.

“Mr. Wakefield! Ye’ve spotted yer shirt with gravy! That means more washing, and I’ve got a new guest coming tomorrow. I cann’t think how you old people can be so inconsiderate.”

“I’ll wash it, I’ll wash it myself, Mrs. Minser.” The old man put an anxious, protective hand over the spot.

“Ye’ll do no such thing!”

“Who is the new guest, then, Mrs. Minser?” Mr. Hill asked, more to distract her attention from his neighbour’s misfortune than because he wanted to know.

“A Mr. Ollendod. Retired from India. I only hope,” said Mrs. Minser forebodingly, “that he won’t have a great deal of luggage, else where we shall put it all I cann’t imagine.”

“India,” murmured Mr. Hill to himself. “
From India, eh? He
’ll certainly find it different here.” And he looked round the dining room of the Balmoral Guest House. The name Balmoral, and Mrs. Minser’s lowland accent, constituted the only Scottish elements in the guest house, which was otherwise pure Westcliff. The sea, half a mile away, invisible from the house, was implicit in the bracingness of the air and the presence of so many elderly residents pottering out twice a day to listen to the municipal orchestra. Nobody actually swam in the sea, or even looked at it much, but there it was anyway, a guarantee of ozone and fresh fish on the tables of the residential hotels.

Mr. Ollendod arrived punctually next day, and he did have a lot of luggage.

Mrs. Minser’s expression became more and more ominous as trunks and cases—some of them very foreign-looking and made of straw—boxes and rolls and bundles were unloaded.

“Where does he think all that is going?” she said incautiously loudly to her husband, who was helping to carry in the cases.

Mr. Ollendod was an elderly, very brown, shriveled little man, but he evidently had all his faculties intact, for he looked up from paying the cab driver to say, “In my room, I trust, naturally. It is a double room, is it not? Did I not stipulate for a double room?”

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 of 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.”