Книга - The Ogre Downstairs

The Ogre Downstairs
Diana Wynne Jones


Diana Wynne Jones at her finest – family feuds and chaos, magic with hilarious results and some of the most original ideas ever to appear between the covers of a book.Casper, Johnny and Gwinny get a big shock when their mother marries the Ogre. The Ogre is large and stern and not at all interested in children, although this doesn't prevent him from adding his own two awful sons, Douglas and Malcolm, to the family mix. Now the five children and two adults are squashed under the same roof, which can lead to only one thing – war!Then the Ogre brings home the Chemistry Sets – one for Malcolm and one for Johnny. Not that Johnny is impressed by this very obvious bribe. At least, not until they accidentally discover the flying lotion. Then the real fun begins…















COPYRIGHT (#ulink_c10ba9bd-bc14-5c9b-927e-d3c13bc26be2)


First published by Macmillan London Ltd in 1974

This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2010 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1974.

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2010 Illustration by David Wyatt © 2010

Diana Wynne Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverseengineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007154692

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007500000

Version: 2014–09–10




DEDICATION (#ulink_d95943d5-6e4d-54d1-bc6d-b098c251f97d)


For Richard, who thought of Indigo Rubber,and Micky, who helped with the chemicals.




CONTENTS


Cover (#ufab347f5-6740-54ab-9f4e-1e68da6b6487)

Title Page (#u5a5cb7eb-f576-5341-9eeb-0eb1a0f91b83)

Copyright

Dedication (#ulink_2e603df7-1061-5893-8004-3a27663239f0)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b39b45de-5339-5bc1-843c-a8cc083dfbac)


Caspar came into the hall one afternoon with a bag of books on one shoulder and a bag of football clothes on the other and saw his brother carrying a large parcel. “What’s that?” he said.

“It’s the Ogre,” Johnny said gloomily. “He’s trying to bribe me now.”

“Bribe you to do what?” said Caspar.

“Be a sweet little boy I expect,” said Johnny with the utmost disgust. “Let’s open it before Malcolm gets in, shall we?”

Caspar, very intrigued, and also quite unreasonably annoyed that Johnny should get a present and not himself, led the way to the sitting-room door and prepared to sling his bag of books across the room into the red armchair. The bag had almost left his hand, when he saw a large pair of feet sticking out from beyond this chair. Above the chair back was an open newspaper and, below the newspaper, Caspar could just see a section of grizzled black hair. The Ogre himself was in possession. Caspar caught the bag at the top of its swing and retreated on tiptoe.

“He’s in there,” he mouthed to Johnny.

“Blast!” said Johnny, none too softly. “I thought he was in his study. Let’s go upstairs.”

They hurried up the stairs, Johnny hugging his parcel, Caspar lugging his two bags. Since Caspar was so laden and Johnny, though smaller, a great deal more hefty and very eager to open his parcel besides, their progress was noisy, and shook the house a little. It was the kind of thing the Ogre could be trusted to notice. His voice roared from beneath.

“Will you boys be quiet!”

They sighed. Johnny said something under his breath. They finished climbing on tiptoe, at half-speed. Both knew, by instinct, that it would be unwise to provoke the Ogre further. So far, he had not hit any of them, but they had a feeling that it was only a matter of time before he did, and that it was an experience to be put off as long as possible.

“He’s allergic to noise,” said Johnny, as they reached their bedroom.

“And boys,” Caspar said bitterly.

The Ogre was their stepfather, and he had been married to their mother for a month now. All three children had found it the most miserable month of their lives. They alternated between wishing themselves dead and wishing the Ogre was.

“I don’t see why she had to marry him. We were quite all right as we were,” Johnny said, as he had said several hundred times before. They halted, according to custom, at the door of their room, for Caspar to hurl his bags one after another on to his bed. Then they set out to wade through comics, books, records, toffee bars and sixteen different construction kits, to the one clear piece of floor.

The two boys had disliked the Ogre on sight, despite their mother’s glowing description of him. He was large and black-browed and not at all interested in children. He was divorced. His first wife had left him years ago and gone to live abroad – and Caspar’s opinion was that he did not blame her, considering what the Ogre and his two sons were like. Their own mother was a widow. Their father had been killed in an air crash six years before. And, as Johnny kept saying, they had all got on very nicely until the Ogre came along. Of course, they had pretended to their mother – not to hurt her feelings – that they did not think too badly of the Ogre. But, after his second visit – when they were still thinking of him as Mr McIntyre – their mother had said she was actually going to marry him. Quite appalled, they had escaped to the kitchen as soon as they could, to hold a council of war about him.

“I think he’s frightful,” Caspar had said frankly. “I bet he listens to commercial pop. He’s bound to, with low eyebrows like that.” Since then, alas, they had discovered that the Ogre listened to nothing but news, and required absolute silence while he did so.

“Stepfathers are always frightful,” Johnny had agreed, with the air of one who had got through several hundred.

“What do they do?” Gwinny asked nervously.

“Everything. They’re perfect Ogres. They eat you as soon as look at you,” Johnny had answered. Gwinny had looked tearful and said she would run away if Mr McIntyre was an Ogre. And he was. They all knew it now.

As Johnny put down his parcel in the clear patch and pushed aside a bank of other things to make more room, Gwinny came in. “Mummy thought she heard you,” she said. “Oh, what’s that?”

“A present from the Ogre, for some reason,” Johnny said. “He gave it me in the hall just now and said it might keep me out of mischief.”

Gwinny had been looking offended, and a trifle puzzled. The Ogre could not be said to be friendly with any of them, but, of all three, it was Johnny he liked least. But this explanation relieved her mind. “Oh, that kind of present,” she said, and even smiled.

Caspar shot a sharp look at her. Gwinny, perhaps from being the youngest and a girl, sometimes showed a regrettable tendency to like the Ogre. It was Gwinny who had first met him, in fact. She had tried to go to the Library by herself and had got off the bus at quite the wrong stop. She had wandered for an hour, miserable and lost, with tears trickling down her face, and people passing to right and left taking no notice of her condition whatsoever. Then the Ogre had stopped and asked her what was the matter. And Caspar conceded that Gwinny had a right to be grateful. The Ogre had taken her to the Library, then to a café for ice cream, and finally brought her home in his car when Caspar and Johnny were out looking for her and only their mother was at home. Caspar often thought that, if only he or Johnny (preferably both) had been at home when the Ogre and Gwinny arrived, the worst would never have happened. But that, as they all knew, had been the sole act of kindness ever performed by the Ogre. Therefore Caspar looked at Gwinny.

“I’m not weakening!” she said indignantly. “I’ve learnt the error of my ways. So there. Oh look, Caspar!”

Caspar looked, to find that Johnny had taken the paper off the parcel to reveal an enormous chemistry set, which he was contemplating with a mixture of exasperation and grudging pleasure. “I’ve got one of these already,” he said.

“But only half that size and almost used up,” Gwinny said consolingly.

“Yes, just think of the smells you can make now,” Caspar added kindly. He was not at all interested in chemistry himself. The mere sight of the rows of little tubes and the filter paper and the spirit lamp made him want to yawn. And when Johnny lifted out the whole lot in its white plastic container and discovered a second layer of packed tubes and chemicals underneath, it was as much as Caspar could do to show polite interest. “Just like chocolates,” he said, and threw himself down on his bed. There, by sweeping aside a pile of books and scattering Johnny’s coloured crayons, he was able to reach the electric point which controlled his record player and turn it on. The LP left ready on the turntable began to revolve. Caspar dropped the needle into the groove and lay back to listen to his favourite group.

Johnny, squatting over the ranks of chemicals, was now grinning happily. “I say, there’s everything here,” he said. “I can do things we don’t even do at school. What do you think this is?” He lifted out a tube labelled Vol. pulv.

Gwinny had no idea. Caspar shook his head, and shouted above the mounting wail of a synthesiser and a roll of drums: “I don’t know. Shut up for this guitar-solo!”

Johnny continued to lift out tubes and bottles full of substances he had never seen before: Irid. col., Animal Spirits, Misc. pulv., Magn. pulv., Noct. vest., Dens drac. and many more. There was a pipette, glass rods, a stand for test tubes, a china crucible. It really was a magnificent set. He was forced to admit that the Ogre had done him proud – although Gwinny could not hear him admit it, because Caspar’s record had reached its loudest track by then.

At that moment, someone thumped on the door. They all looked at one another. “Wait for it!” said Caspar. Then he shouted, “Go away!” knowing it would be useless.

Sure enough, the door opened and Malcolm, the Ogre’s younger son, stood in the entrance looking righteous. By that time, Johnny had whipped the brown paper wrapping across the open chemistry set, and he and Gwinny had moved in front of it.

“My father says you’re to turn that damned thing off,” reported Malcolm. His eyes wandered disapprovingly round the room as he said it. “At once.”

“Oh he does, bay jewve, does he?” said Caspar. Malcolm’s posh accent always set his teeth on edge. “Suppose Ay dewn’t?”

“Then you’ll catch it, won’t you?” Malcolm retorted coolly. He was quite equal to anything Caspar could say or do, although he was a year younger. They suspected that his dreadful pallid coolness came from having been at a posh boarding school until this term. Now, alas, Malcolm went to the same school as Caspar and Johnny.

Unfortunately, as so often, Malcolm’s remark was true. Well aware that he would catch it, Caspar grudgingly leant over and turned the sound down, right in the middle of the best song.

“He said off,” Malcolm pointed out.

As if to underline his correctness, the Ogre’s voice boomed out from downstairs. “Right off, I said!”

Caspar obeyed, with black hatred in his heart.

Malcolm, meanwhile, looked coolly on to where Johnny and Gwinny were crouching in front of the chemistry set. “What are you sitting on there, Melchior?” he said.

Johnny ground his teeth. “None of your business.”

Caspar’s rage grew. If anything, he hated Malcolm calling Johnny Melchior even more than Johnny did, because he knew it was a dig at his own absurd name. It was typical of Malcolm to find a convenient way of insulting them both at once. He had called Gwinny Balthazar – only Gwinny had mistaken what he said and had gone to her mother in tears because Malcolm said she was going bald. After that, Malcolm stuck simply to Melchior, and maddening it was too.

Malcolm ran his eyes once more over the crowded room and turned to leave. “I must say,” he said, “I kept this room—”

But he had said this too often before. All three of them joined in: “—much taidier when it was maine.”

“Well I did,” said Malcolm. “It’s a perfect pigsty now.”

Caspar lost his temper and threw himself off his bed and across the room, stumbling and crunching among the things on the floor. “Get out, you!” Malcolm prudently dodged out on to the landing, sniggering slightly. The snigger was too much for Caspar. He dived out after Malcolm, roaring insults, and the other two followed hastily to see, as they hoped, justice done.

From below, the Ogre roared once again for silence. No one attended. For, out on the landing, Malcolm was standing defensively above a chemistry set identical with the one the Ogre had given Johnny.

“Look at that!” Gwinny said shrilly.

“If you spoil it,” Malcolm said, shriller still, “I’ll tell my father.”

“As if I wanted to touch it!” said Johnny. “I’ve got one the same. So there!”

“So you’re not the little favourite you thought you were,” added Caspar.

“It isn’t fair!” proclaimed Gwinny, voicing Caspar’s secret thoughts on the subject too. “Why does he give you two a present and not us?”

“Because you’re such little frights,” said Malcolm. “And Douglas hasn’t got anything either.”

“That’s because he’s a big fright,” said Caspar. “Beside Douglas, even your frightfulness pales.”

At this, Malcolm put his head down and tried to charge Caspar in the stomach. Caspar dodged. Malcolm ran on into the bannisters, so that the house shook with the impact. Gwinny and Johnny cheered. The Ogre shouted for quiet. Again no one attended. Caspar saw he now had Malcolm at his mercy and caught his head under one arm. Malcolm yelled and kicked to get free, but Caspar had a whole month of sneers and sniggers to revenge and not even the Ogre would have made him let go just then. Gwinny shouted encouragements. Johnny shrieked advice about where to hit Malcolm next.

The door on the other side of the landing was torn open and Douglas, like a giant aroused, entered the fray. Douglas was almost as tall as the Ogre, and old enough for his voice to have broken, so that the roar with which he charged down on Caspar was shattering. “Leave him alone! He’s younger than you!” He tore Caspar and Malcolm apart. The bannisters reverberated. Caspar protested. Malcolm accused. Johnny and Gwinny yelled at Douglas. Below, the roars of the Ogre became a continuous bull-like bellowing.

“What is going on?”

Caspar looked up under Douglas’s arm. His mother was standing at the head of the stairs, looking hurt and harassed. Since she had married the Ogre, that hurt and harassed look had scarcely ever left her face. It did not help to make them feel kindly towards the Ogre.

Nobody spoke. Douglas shoved Caspar away and backed to the other side of the landing, beside Malcolm. Caspar backed similarly, between Johnny and Gwinny, and both families stood glowering at one another, breathing heavily.

Sally McIntyre looked from one side to the other and sighed. “I wish you’d all try to remember there are five of you now,” she said. “This was the most awful din.”

“Sorry, Sally,” said Malcolm and Douglas at once, in a well-behaved chorus.

“And Caspar,” said Sally, “Jack says you’re welcome to play records any time he’s out.”

“Big deal!” said Caspar, not at all well-behaved. “What am I supposed to do when he’s always in?”

“Do without,” said Douglas. “I could do without Indigo Rubber too, for that matter. They stink.”

“So does your guitar playing,” Johnny retorted, in Caspar’s defence.

“Now, now, Johnny,” said his mother. “Will you three all come in here a minute, please.”

They herded moodily back into the boys’ room and looked mournfully at their mother’s harrowed face.

“Gracious, what a mess!” was the first thing she said. Then, “Listen, all of you, how many times have I got to tell you to be considerate to poor Malcolm and Douglas? It’s very hard on them, because they’ve had to give up having separate rooms and change schools too. They’re having a far more difficult time than you are.” There was a heavy-breathing silence, in which Caspar managed not to point out that Malcolm, in particular, made sure that they had a difficult time too.

“It will be better,” said Sally, “when we can afford a larger house. Just have patience. And, in the meantime, suppose we tidy this room a little.” She stooped to pick up the brown paper at her feet and revealed the chemistry set. “Wherever did you get this?”

“The O—Jack gave it to me just now,” said Johnny.

Sally’s worn face broke into an enchanted smile. “Wasn’t that kind of him!” she exclaimed. She picked up the lid of the box and examined it lovingly. They watched her glumly. Quite the worst part of the whole business was the way the Ogre seemed to have cast a spell on their mother, so that whatever he did she thought he was right. “How lavish!” she said. “Non-toxic, guaranteed non-explosive – Oh, you must be pleased with this, Johnny!”

“He gave one to Malcolm too,” Johnny said.

“That was thoughtful,” said Sally. “Then he won’t feel left out.”

“But we do, Mummy,” said Gwinny. “He didn’t give anything to me and Caspar. Or Douglas,” she added, not wishing the Ogre to outdo her in fairness.

“Oh, I do wish you’d be reasonable, Guinevere,” said Sally unreasonably. “You know we’re hard up just now. Come and set the table and stop complaining. And this room is to be tidy before supper. I’ll ask Jack to make an inspection.”

This threat was enough to cause Johnny and Caspar a little energetic work. By the time the Ogre’s heavy feet were heard on the stairs, Caspar had piled books, papers and records in a sort of heap by the wall, and Johnny had pushed most of the construction kits under his bed and the cupboard, so that, apart from the chemistry set, the floor was almost clear.

The Ogre stood in the doorway, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth and looked round the room with distaste. “You do like to live in squalor, don’t you?” he said. “I suppose all those toffee bars are an essential part of your diet? OK. I’ll report a clear floor. How are you getting on with that chemistry set?”

“I like it,” Johnny said, with a polite smile. “But I’ve been too busy clearing up to use it yet.”

The Ogre’s heavy eyebrows went up and he looked rather pointedly round the room. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said. A thought struck him. “I suppose I ought in fairness to make a surprise inspection over the way,” he said. They watched him turn and walk across the landing. They saw him open the door to Malcolm’s and Douglas’s room. They waited hopefully. It would be wonderful if, for once, it was those two who got into trouble.

Nothing happened, however, except for a surprisingly strong stench, which swept across the landing and made Caspar cough. Malcolm’s voice followed it. “This chemistry set is positively brilliant, Father! Look at this.”

“Having fun, are you?” said the Ogre, and he shut the door rather hastily and went downstairs.

“Pooh!” said Caspar.

“I just like that!” said Johnny. “If it had been us making a smell like that, we wouldn’t half have got it! All right then. Watch me after supper. I’ll make the worst stink you ever smelt, and if he says anything, I’ll say, what about Malcolm?”

Johnny was as good as his word. After supper, he set to work in the middle of the carpet, mixing all the strongest and likeliest-looking things from the various tubes and phials and heating them with the spirit lamp to see what happened. When he found a good smell, he poured it carefully into a toothmug and mixed another. The savour of the room went through rotten cabbage, elderly egg, mouldy melon, gasworks and bad breath; blue smoke hung about in it. Caspar, who was lying on his bed doing history homework, coughed considerably, but he bore it in a good cause.

When Gwinny came in instead of going to bed, she was exquisitely disgusted. She sat beside Johnny in her pink nightdress, wriggling her bare toes and pretending to smoke one of the Ogre’s pipes that she had stolen. “Eeugh!” she said, and peered at Johnny’s flushed face through the gathering smoke. “We look like a witches’ convent. Caspar looks like a devil looming through the smoke.”

“Coven,” said Caspar. “Devil yourself.”

Giggling, Gwinny stuck her spiky hair out round her head and carefully tapped some of the ash out of the pipe into the toothmug. The mixture fizzed a little. “Do you think it’ll explode now?” she asked hopefully.

“Shouldn’t think so,” said Johnny. “Move, or you’ll get burnt.”

“Is it smelly enough?” asked Gwinny.

“I still haven’t found the one Malcolm got,” admitted Johnny.

“Try a dead fish or so. That should do it,” Caspar suggested. Gwinny squealed with laughter.

“Gwinny!” boomed the voice of the Ogre. “Are you in bed?”

Gwinny dropped the pipe, jumped up and fled. In her hurry, she knocked the toothmug flying and Johnny was too late to save it. Half the mixture spilt on the carpet. The rest splashed muddily on Gwinny’s legs and nightdress. Gwinny squealed again as she raced for the door. “It’s cold!” But she dared not stop to apologise. She continued racing, up the next stairs and into her little room on the top floor. She left behind her the most appalling smell. It was worlds worse than the one Malcolm had produced. It was so horrible that it awed them. They were staring at one another in silence, when Gwinny began to scream.

“Caspar! Johnny! Caspar! Oh, come quickly!”




CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9355c78f-24c1-5ebb-b2af-67d039dc0a8d)


Caspar and Johnny pelted up to Gwinny’s room regardless of noise. Johnny thought she was on fire, Caspar that she was being eaten away by acids. They burst into the room and stood staring. Gwinny did not seem to be there. Her lamp was lit, her bed was empty, her window shut, and her doll’s house and all her other things arranged around as usual, but they could not see Gwinny.

“She’s gone,” said Caspar helplessly.

“No I haven’t,” said Gwinny, her voice quivering rather. “I’m up here.” Both their heads turned upwards. Gwinny appeared to be hanging from the ceiling. Her shoulders were lodged in the corner where the roof stopped sloping and turned into flat ceiling, her bony legs were dangling straight down beneath her, and her hands were nervously clasped in front of her. She looked a bit like a puppet. “And I can’t come down,” she added.

“However did you get up?” demanded Johnny.

“I sort of floated,” said Gwinny. “I went all light after that stuff splashed on me, and while I was getting into bed I got so light that I just went straight up and stayed here.”

“Lordy!” said Johnny. “Suppose the window had been open!” It was a nasty thought. Both boys had visions of a light, leaf-like Gwinny floating out into the night and then up and up, unable to stop, like a hydrogen balloon.

“Let’s get her down,” said Caspar. “Come on.”

By standing on the bed, Caspar thought he could just reach Gwinny’s feet, if he jumped as he reached. Johnny stood in front of the bed to help catch her. Caspar got on the bed and jumped. His fingers brushed Gwinny’s feet, but he could not get a grip. To his annoyance, the slight push he had given her was enough to send Gwinny bobbing gently out into the middle of the room, quite out of reach.

“Oh dear!” said Gwinny. “Could you lasso me or something?”

Johnny took the cord off Gwinny’s dressing gown to try. But he remembered he had never been able to make a lasso that worked. “I’ll throw it,” he said. “You catch it. Both hands and carefully, mind.” He threw the cord upwards – quite a good shot. It hit Gwinny’s chest and slithered away down her legs. But Gwinny had always been hopeless at catching things. She missed the cord and went bobbing and twirling away towards the window with the movement.

“That’s no good,” said Caspar. “She’ll be all night before she gets hold of it. Gwinny, can you work yourself along the ceiling, back over the bed, and I’ll have another go at catching you.”

“I’ll try,” Gwinny said doubtfully. She put up one hand and pushed at the ceiling. The next moment, to the surprise of all three, she was swooping through the air towards the bed. Caspar raced after her, but, by the time he reached the bed, Gwinny had rebounded from the sloping roof and swooped out into the middle of the ceiling again. “Ooh!” she said, with her spiky head bobbing excitedly against the flex of the light. “That was ever such a nice feeling! I think I’ll do it again.” And, to Caspar’s exasperation, Gwinny began pushing with a hand here, then there, swooping this way and that and laughing. Johnny started to laugh too, because Gwinny looked like a gawky pink chicken with her nightdress and long bony legs.

“We must make her stop being so silly,” Caspar said. “Gwinny,” he said to the soles of Gwinny’s swooping feet, “we’ve got to get you down. Don’t you understand? Suppose the Ogre finds you like that.”

“He wouldn’t be able to catch me,” Gwinny said gaily, shooting from the window to the space above the door.

“Yes he would,” said Caspar. “Think how tall he is.”

“Yes, but Caspar.” said Johnny, “what’ll we do if we do get her down? Won’t she just shoot up again?”

“We could tie her down,” Caspar suggested.

“Oh no you won’t!” Gwinny called. She pushed off from the wall with her feet and floated on her back across the room, to the far corner. And there she lay, with her stomach and toes gently brushing the ceiling and a complacent smile on her face. “Try and catch me now,” she said.

They saw it was no use expecting her to be sensible. “Do you think we could get rid of the chemicals somehow, and get her down that way?” Caspar said.

“It might wash off,” said Johnny.

“Let’s try,” said Caspar.

They raced down two floors to the bathroom. There, Johnny seized the big mop that was used to wash the floor and Caspar seized the backbrush, and they hurried upstairs again. As they passed the door of Malcolm’s and Douglas’s room, they heard Douglas call out something about “herd of blinking elephants!” but they were too fussed to bother.

Gwinny was lying on her back near the middle of the ceiling now. Johnny raised the dripping mop and aimed it for the part of Gwinny’s legs where he thought the chemicals had splashed. But it is not easy to aim a long, top-heavy mop. He hit Gwinny plumb on the backside. She shrieked, “Stop it! It’s cold!” and went floundering and scrambling and bobbing out of reach, like an upside-down pink crab, with a muddy splodge on the back of her nightdress. Caspar got on to the bed and clawed at her legs with the backbrush as soon as they came near.

“Stop it, you beast!” said Gwinny, and scrambled back across the ceiling.

Caspar jumped on to a chair on the other side of the room and tried to reach her there. Johnny lofted the mop and prodded at her as she passed. Gwinny squealed with silly laughter and scrambled out of reach again. They pursued her. Caspar went leaping from chair to bed and back again. Johnny charged this way and that, prodding, and Gwinny scuttled and squealed all over the ceiling. Then Johnny, not looking where he was going, kicked the doll’s house over with a crash, scattering little tables and chairs and doll’s house people all over the room.

Gwinny turned over and drummed her heels on the ceiling, pointing furiously. “How dare you! Look what you’ve done! Pick them all up!”

“You come and do it,” said Johnny cunningly.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” said Gwinny, drumming away for all she was worth.

There were footsteps, and the shattering voice of Douglas bawled from the stairs, “Stop that din, can’t you! Some of us are trying to do homework.”

Gwinny’s heels stopped. Caspar and Johnny exchanged alarmed looks. Without a word, they got down and began collecting the chairs, tables and dolls. But the damage was done. Behind the feet of Douglas retreating, they heard a much more distant door slam. They waited. Heavy footsteps started upstairs. They galvanised Caspar. He leapt up, seized the mop and pointed it at Gwinny.

“Quick! Catch hold of that, Gwinny, and don’t let go.”

Gwinny was only too ready to do as he told her. She hung on to the wet end while Caspar heaved on the stick. It was extraordinarily hard work. Gwinny seemed a good deal heavier upwards, as it were, than she ever was on the ground. Johnny flung the last table into the doll’s house and helped Caspar heave. Slowly Gwinny was dragged down. Slowly and remorselessly the Ogre’s feet climbed the stairs. Once she was within reach, Gwinny was so terrified of rising again that she seized Johnny’s hair to hold herself down with.

“What do we do now?” said Johnny, through a grin of agony.

“Bed. The covers might hold her down,” gasped Caspar.

They towed the floating Gwinny over to her bed and attempted to put her into it. Gwinny did her best to help, but nothing seemed to stop her floating away upwards every time they tried to put her legs between the sheets.

The Ogre’s feet crossed the landing and began on the last flight.

Gwinny flung her arms round Johnny in terror. While she was anchored that much, Caspar let go, picked up all the bedcovers, flung them over her floating legs and flung himself after them. As the Ogre’s feet came up the last stairs, Johnny jumped on to Gwinny too and sat on her stomach.

When the Ogre tore open the door and stood glowering, he saw Gwinny in bed, Caspar sitting on one end of it, Johnny in the middle, and all their faces turned to him in not-quite-innocent alarm. The only thing out of place was the wet mop Gwinny seemed to be nursing and a muddy splotch on the pillow.

“What the dickens are you all doing here?” said the Ogre.

“Telling her a bedtime story,” said Caspar breathlessly.

“Why does it need two of you and all this din?” demanded the Ogre.

Caspar and Johnny could not think. Gwinny said brightly, “They were doing it with funny voices to make me laugh.”

“Were they!” said the Ogre, “Well they can just stop!”

“Oh no,” said Johnny. “We were just near the end. Can’t we just finish?”

“No you just can’t,” said the Ogre. “Your mother and I are entitled to some peace.”

“Please!” they chorused desperately.

“Oh, very well,” said the Ogre irritably. “Five minutes. And if I hear another sound there’ll be trouble. What are you doing with that filthy mop?”

Again neither Caspar nor Johnny could think. “It’s a broomstick,” said Gwinny. “The story’s about a witch.”

“Then you can either do without or change the story,” said the Ogre. “I’m taking that back where it came from.” He strode over to the bed and tried to wrench the mop out of Gwinny’s hands. Gwinny lost her presence of mind and hung on to the mop with all her strength. The force with which the Ogre tore it free raised her a full foot off the bed and Johnny with her. Luckily, Johnny’s weight and Caspar’s were enough to bring her down again fairly quickly, and the Ogre did not notice their sudden elevation because his foot chanced, at that moment, to kick against the backbrush. He picked it up and looked at it meditatively. “I can think of a very good use for this,” he said. “Don’t tempt me too far.” Then he went away, taking the mop and the brush with him.

They listened tensely to his retreating footsteps. When he had reached the bathroom, Caspar said, “Now what shall we do? We can’t sit here all night.”

“But I’ll be cold on the ceiling,” Gwinny whimpered.

“You could take a blanket up with you,” Caspar suggested.

“If you could hold her down,” said Johnny, “I think I can fix her.”

“All right,” said Caspar. “But don’t be too long.”

So Johnny departed downstairs with heavy-footed stealth and Caspar tried to keep Gwinny in place. He found it next to impossible on his own. In a matter of seconds, she was floating clear of the bed, bedclothes and all.

“Oh, what shall we do?” she wailed.

“Shut up for a start,” said Caspar.

The bedclothes slid away and Caspar was hanging on to Gwinny’s nightdress. There was a slow tearing sound. Gwinny whimpered and began to rise again, gently but surely. Caspar was forced to let go of her nightdress and catch hold of her ankles. There he hung on desperately. He found, in the end, that if he leant back, with his head nearly touching the floor and all his weight swinging on Gwinny, he could keep her floating upright about three feet from the floor. They had reached this point when Johnny came swiftly upstairs and entered the room with a bucket of water, looking very businesslike.

“Oh good,” he said, when he saw the position Gwinny was in, and he threw the water over the pair of them.

He had not thought to bring warm water. Gwinny squealed. Caspar gasped and nearly let go. He was about to say some very unkind things to Johnny, when he realised that Gwinny was now much easier to hold down.

“It’s working,” he said. “Go and get some more.”

Johnny turned, beaming with relief, and went galloping away downstairs, bucket clattering. Somewhat to Caspar’s annoyance, he did not stop at the bathroom, but went on galloping, right downstairs to the kitchen, because the water ran more quickly from the taps downstairs. Caspar shook his soaking hair out of his eyes and hung on grimly. Gwinny’s teeth chattered.

“I’m freezing,” she complained. “My nightie’s soaking.”

“I know,” said Caspar. “It’s dripping all over me, and I’m sitting in a puddle, if that’s any comfort.”

After what seemed half an hour, they heard Johnny pounding upstairs again. Caspar was too relieved to worry about the noise he was making. He just listened to Johnny pounding closer and closer and prayed for him to hurry. As Johnny’s feet crossed the landing below, a confused noise broke out on the same level. Johnny had started on the last flight of stairs, when Douglas erupted into another shattering roar.

“What the blazes are you doing? There’s water pouring through our ceiling!”

Johnny did not answer. They heard his feet climbing faster. Then came the feet of Douglas, pounding behind. Behind that again were other feet. Caspar and Gwinny could only wait helplessly, until the door at last crashed open and Johnny staggered in, red-faced and almost too breathless to move, with water slopping over his shoes out of the bucket.

“Throw it,” Caspar said urgently.

Johnny croaked for breath, heaved up the bucket and poured the water over Gwinny, drenching Caspar again in the process. It did the trick. Gwinny dropped like a stone and landed on Caspar. There was a short time when Caspar could not see much and was almost as breathless as Johnny. When he recovered sufficiently to sit up, Douglas was standing behind Johnny, looking as if he had frozen in the middle of shouting something, and behind him were the Ogre and their mother.

“Johnny!” said Sally. “Whatever possessed you?”

“Take him downstairs, Douglas,” said the Ogre, “and make him clear it up. These two can clear up here.”

“Come on,” Douglas said coldly. Johnny departed without a word. There really was nothing to say.

An hour later, when Gwinny had been put to bed in a clean nightdress and everywhere wet mopped dry, Caspar and Johnny went rather timidly into their room expecting to see the carpet, where the rest of the chemicals had gone, floating against the ceiling – or at least ballooning up in the middle. But the only sign of the spill was a large purple stain and a considerable remnant of bad smell. Much relieved, Caspar opened the window.

“It must only work on people,” Johnny said thoughtfully.

“We’d better clear it up,” said Caspar.

Johnny sighed, but he obediently trudged off to the bathroom for soap and water. He returned, still thoughtful, and remained so all the time he was rubbing the carpet with the Ogre’s face flannel. The stain came off fairly easily and dyed the flannel deep mauve.

“Couldn’t you have used yours or mine?” said Caspar.

“I did. Douglas made me use them on their room,” said Johnny. “Listen. Gwinny got an awful lot of that stuff on her, didn’t she? Suppose you use less, so you weren’t quite so light, wouldn’t you be like flying?”

“Hey!” said Caspar, sitting up in bed. Since he had had to change all his clothes, it had seemed the simplest place to be. “That’s an idea! What did you put in it?”

“I can’t remember,” said Johnny. “But I’m darned well going to find out.”




CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ad5d5492-5b7e-578e-8bba-336873f6364d)


In the days that followed, Johnny experimented. He made black mixtures, green mixtures and red ones. He made little smells, big smells, and smells grandiose and appalling. These met with the smells coming from Malcolm’s efforts and mingled with them, until Sally said that their landing seemed like a plague spot to her. But whatever smell or colour Johnny made, he was no nearer finding the right mixture. He went on doggedly. He remembered that Gwinny had put pipe ash in the mixture, so he always made that one of the ingredients.

“Who is it keeps taking my pipes?” demanded the Ogre, and received no answer. And in spite of running this constant risk, Johnny’s efforts were not rewarded. Nevertheless, he persevered. It was his nature to be dogged, and Caspar and Gwinny were thankful for it; for, as Gwinny said, the idea of being really able to fly made it easier to bear the awfulness of everything else.

Each day seemed to bring fresh trials. First there was the trouble over the purple face flannel, and then the affair of the muddy sweater on the roof, mysteriously found wrapped round the chimney. The Ogre, as a matter of course, blamed Caspar, and when Caspar protested his innocence, he blamed Johnny. And twice Caspar forgot that the Ogre was at home and played Indigo Rubber – the third time, the noise came from Douglas, but Douglas said nothing and let Caspar take the blame.

Then the weather turned cold. The house had very old central heating, which seemed too weak to heat all four floors properly. The bathroom, and the bedroom shared by Sally and the Ogre, were warm enough, but upwards from there it grew steadily colder. Gwinny’s room got so cold that she took to sneaking down to her mother’s room and curling up on the big soft bed to read. Unfortunately, she left a toffee bar on the Ogre’s pillow one evening, and the boys were blamed again. It took all Gwinny’s courage to own up, and the Ogre was in no way impressed by her heroism. However, he did find her an old electric heater, which he installed in her room with instructions not to waste electricity.

“We don’t need to be pampered,” Malcolm said odiously. “You should see what it’s like at a boarding school before you complain here.”

“Quait,” said Caspar. “Full of frosty little snobs like you. Why don’t you go back there where you belong?”

“I wish I could,” Malcolm retorted, with real feeling. “Anything would be better than having to share this pigsty with you.”

Nearly a week passed. One afternoon, Caspar was as usual hurrying home in order not to have to walk back with Malcolm, when he discovered himself to be in a silly kind of mood. He knew he was going to have to act the goat somehow. He decided to do it in the Ogre’s study, if possible, because it was the warmest room in the house and also possessed a nice glossy parquet floor, ideal for sliding on. As soon as he got home, he hurried to the study and cautiously opened its door.

The Ogre was not there, but Johnny was. He was rather gloomily turning ash out of the Ogre’s pipes into a tin for further experiments.

“How’s it going?” Caspar asked, slinging his bag into the Ogre’s chair and sitting on the Ogre’s desk to take his shoes off.

Johnny jumped. The Ogre’s inkwell fell over, and Johnny watched the ink spreading with even deeper gloom. “He’ll know it’s me,” he said. “He always thinks it’s me anyway.”

“Unless he thinks it’s me,” said Caspar, casting his shoes to the floor. “Wipe it up, you fool. But is the Great Caspar daunted by the Ogre? Yes, he is rather. And the ink is running off the desk into his shoes.”

Johnny, knowing he would get no sense out of Caspar in this mood, picked up the Ogre’s blotting paper and put it in the pool of ink. The blotting paper at once became bright blue and sodden, but there seemed just as much ink as before.

Gwinny came in, hearing their voices. “There’s ink running off on to the floor,” she said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Johnny, wondering how one small inkwell always contained such floods of ink.

“I’ll do the floor,” said Gwinny. “Can’t you help, Caspar?”

“No,” said Caspar, gliding smoothly in his socks across the floor. He did not see why he should be deprived of his pleasure because of Johnny’s clumsiness.

“Well, we think you’re mean,” said Gwinny, fetching a newspaper from the rack and laying it under the streams of ink.

“The Great Caspar,” said Caspar, “is extremely generous.”

“Take no notice,” said Johnny. “And pass me a newspaper.”

Caspar continued to slide. “The Great Caspar,” he said kindly, “will slide for your entertainment while you work, lady and gentleman. He has slid before all the crowned heads of Europe, and will now perform, solely for your benefit, the famous hexagonal turn. Not only has it taken him years to perfect but—”

“Oh shut up!” said Johnny, desperately wiping.

“—it is also very hazardous,” said Caspar. “Behold, the hazardous hexagon!” Upon this, Caspar spun himself round and attempted to jump while he did it. While he was in the air, he saw the Ogre in the doorway, lost his balance and ended sitting in a pool of ink. From this position, he looked up into the dour face of the Ogre. His own face was vivid red, and he hoped most earnestly that the Ogre had not heard his boastful fooling.

The Ogre had heard. “The Great Caspar,” the Ogre said, “appears to have some difficulty with the hexagonal turn. Get up! AND GET OUT!”

To complete Caspar’s humiliation, Malcolm appeared in the doorway, snorting with laughter. “What is a hexagonal turn?” he said.

The Ogre’s roar had fetched Sally too. “Oh just look at this mess!” she cried. “Those trousers are ruined, Caspar. Don’t any of you have the slightest consideration? Ink all over poor Jack’s study!”

It was the last straw, being blamed for falling in the ink. Caspar, with difficulty, climbed to his feet. “Poor Jack!” he said, with his voice shaking with rage, and fear at his own daring. “It’s always poor flipping Jack! What about poor us for a change?”

The hurt, harrowed look on Sally’s face deepened. The Ogre’s face became savage and he moved towards Caspar with haste and purpose. Caspar did not wait to discover what the purpose was. With all the speed his slippery socks would allow, he dodged the Ogre, dived between Malcolm and Sally and fled upstairs.

There he changed into jeans, muttering. His face was red, his eyes stung with misery and he could not stop himself making shamed, angry noises. “I wish I was dead!” he said, and surged towards the window, wondering whether he dared throw himself out. His progress scattered construction kits and hurled paper about. He knocked against a corner of the chemistry box. It shunted into its lid, which Johnny had left lying beside it, and a tube of some white chemical lying on the lid rolled across it and spilt a little white powder on Caspar’s sock as he passed.

Caspar found himself reaching the window in two graceful slow-motion bounds, rather like a ballet dancer’s, except that his socks barely met the floor as he passed. And when he was by the window, instead of stopping in the usual way, his feet again left the floor in a long, slow, drifting bounce. Hardly had he realised what was happening, than he was down again, quite in the usual way, with a heavy bump, on top of what felt like a drawing pin.

He was so excited that he hardly noticed it. He simply pulled off his sock, and the drawing pin with it, and waded back with one bare foot to the chemistry set. The little tube of chemical was trembling on the edge of the lid and white powder was filtering down from it on to the carpet. Caspar’s hands shook rather as he picked it up. He planted its stopper firmly in, and then turned it over to read the label. It read Vol. pulv., which left Caspar none the wiser. But the really annoying thing was that the little tube was barely half full. Either most of it had gone the night Gwinny took to the ceiling, or Johnny had unwittingly used it up since in other mixtures that destroyed its potency. Wondering just how potent the powder was, Caspar carefully put his bare foot on the place where the tube had spilt. When nothing happened, he trod harder and screwed his foot around.

He was rewarded with a delicious feeling of lightness. A moment later, his feet left the ground and he was hanging in the air about eighteen inches above the littered floor. He was not very light. He gave a scrambling sort of jump to see if he could go any higher, and all that happened was that he bounced sluggishly over towards the window. It was such a splendid feeling that he bounced himself again and went jogging slowly towards Johnny’s bed.

“Yippee!” he said, and began to laugh.

He invented a kind of dance then, by jumping with both feet together first to one side and then to the other. Bounce and… Bounce and… His head swung, his hair flew, and he brandished the tube in his hand. Bounce and… Bounce and… “Yippee!”

Johnny and Gwinny came soberly and mournfully into the room while he was doing it. For a moment they could not believe their eyes. Then Johnny hastily slammed the door shut.

“I’ve found it!” said Caspar, bouncing away and waving the tube at them. “I’ve found it! It’s called Vol. pulv. and it works by itself. Yippee!” He suddenly felt himself becoming heavy again and was just in time to bounce himself over to his bed before the powder stopped working and he came down with a flop that made the bedsprings jangle. He sat there laughing and waving the tube at the others.

“How marvellous!” said Gwinny. “You are clever, Caspar.”

Johnny came slowly over to the bed. He took the tube and looked at it. “I was going to try this one today,” he said.

Caspar looked up at his gloomy face and understood that Johnny, not unreasonably, was feeling how unfair it was that Caspar should discover the secret, when Johnny had worked so hard over it and had just been in dire trouble about the ink as well. “You still need to do a lot of work on it,” Caspar said tactfully. “I used it dry, and it ought to be mixed with water. You’ll have to work out the right proportions.”

Johnny’s face brightened. “Yes,” he said. “And experiment to find out how much you need, not to go soaring right out of the atmosphere. I’ll have to do tests on myself, bit by bit.”

“That’s right,” agreed Caspar. “But for goodness sake don’t use too much while you do it. The tube’s less than half full already.”

“I’ve got eyes,” Johnny said crossly. Then, feeling he was being rather ungracious, he added, “I’m the Great Scientist. I think of everything.”

He tried to make good his boast by fencing off a corner of the room, so that no accidents should happen while the experiments were in progress. For the rest of the evening he sat in this pen, carefully putting the powder, grain by grain, into a test tube of water, and then bathing his big toe with the result.

“What’s the matter with Johnny?” their mother wanted to know, when she came in around bedtime.

Johnny, by this time, was bobbing an inch or so from the floor. He took hold of a chair that was part of his fence to hold himself down, and pretended not to have heard.

“I knocked over one of his experiments this afternoon,” Caspar explained anxiously, “and he doesn’t want anybody to do it again. Be careful of him. He’s very angry.”

Sally gave Johnny a puzzled look. “All right, darling. I won’t interfere. It was you I wanted to talk to anyway, Caspar.”

“About what I said about Jack? I’m sorry,” Caspar said hurriedly, dreading a scene. Scenes with his mother were always painful, not because she scolded, but because she believed in absolute honesty.

Sure enough, she said, “That’s not quite the point, darling. I could see you were hurt and miserable, and it upset me. Can’t you bring yourself to like Jack a little better? He really is very nice, you know.”

“Why should I? He doesn’t like us,” Caspar retorted with equal honesty.

“He tries,” Sally said earnestly. “I can think of at least a hundred occasions when he’s been very forebearing indeed.”

“There are about a thousand when he hasn’t,” Caspar said bitterly.

“That’s partly because you’ve been so awful,” Sally said frankly. “Truly, I’m ashamed of you most of the time – all of you, but particularly you as the eldest.”

Caspar’s face was red and he wanted to mutter again. He looked over at Johnny. Johnny looked sulkily at his big toe and gave it a slight waggle. He was hating the scene as much as Caspar, and he was also mortally afraid that he was going to rise from his pen any minute and float about.

Caspar did his best to send Sally away. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding so sincere and nice that he made himself feel ill. “I will try.” He was quite unable to keep up this level of piety. He found himself adding, “I do try, only he keeps blaming me so.”

“You must remember,” said Sally, “that he isn’t really used to children. Malcolm and Douglas have been away at school most of the time, and he simply had no idea what it could be like.”

“He’s finding out, isn’t he?” said Caspar.

Sally laughed. “You can say that again! All right. Good night, darlings. And do try a bit harder in future.”

She went out and shut the door. Johnny gave a sigh of relief, let go of the chair and bobbed clear of the floor again.

Before he went to bed, he had risen to three feet. Caspar was rather glad to find that there was no horrible smell this time, as the mixture in the test tube grew stronger. It must have been due to all the other things Johnny had put in. They were discussing it when Malcolm, in his usual manner, knocked and came in despite being told to go away. Johnny was only just in time to pull himself over to the cupboard and pretend to be sitting on top of it.

“My father says you’re to put your light out,” Malcolm said. His eyes wandered critically to Johnny. “What are you sitting up there with one shoe off for?”

“We’ve both got one shoe off,” said Caspar, stretching out his bare foot and wriggling the toes at Malcolm’s face. “It’s the badge of our secret society. Now go away.”

“You don’t think I came in here for pleasure, do you?” Malcolm said, and went away.

Johnny looked anxiously at Caspar. “Do you think he suspected anything?”

“He’s far too flipping dim for that,” said Caspar. “But you’d better be careful. If he did find out, he’d tell the Ogre like a shot.”

“I think I’ll stop now,” said Johnny. “For tonight.” So Caspar washed his big toe for him, and Johnny climbed off the cupboard and went to bed.

The next day, Johnny skipped games and pelted home from school to continue his experiments. When Caspar came in, he found Johnny, again with one shoe off, triumphantly floating just below the ceiling.

“Look at this!” he said. “I could go higher if I put more on, only all the powder’s in the water now and I don’t want to waste it. Can you take the test tube and prop it carefully on that stand down there?”

Caspar stood on the cupboard and took the test tube from Johnny’s reaching hand. Then he climbed down and propped it upright in Johnny’s pen, while Johnny looked on tensely from the ceiling.

“What are you going to do now?” Caspar asked. “Come down?”

“I think I ought to practise a bit,” said Johnny. “You hold the door in case Malcolm comes in.”

Caspar stood against the door and watched a little wistfully while Johnny pushed off from the ceiling and swooped this way and that across the room, as Gwinny had done. It looked enormous fun. Johnny was laughing. And now that he knew what a splendid feeling it was to be nearly as light as air, Caspar could hardly wait to get up there and swoop about himself.

“Hadn’t I better shut the window?” he called up at Johnny’s whisking feet.

“It’s all right,” Johnny said happily. “It’s quite easy to control where you go. Like swimming, only not such hard work.”

Caspar watched him doing slow, swooping breaststroke through the air, and yearned to see what a fast overarm would do. “When shall we all try?”

Johnny turned over and trod water, or rather air. “What about going out tonight, after dark, for a fly round town?”

Caspar was about to say that this was the best idea Johnny had had in his life, when there was a thump on the door behind him. He flung himself against it, with his feet braced. “Go away. We’re busy.”

“Buzz off!” Johnny shouted down from the ceiling.

The doorknob began turning. Caspar grabbed it and held it hard. In spite of this, the knob continued to turn and the door moved slightly. Caspar had not thought Malcolm was so strong. “Go away!” he said.

“I only want to borrow Indigo Rubber,” said a much deeper voice than Malcolm’s. “What’s so special that I can’t come in?”

Caspar looked up helplessly at Johnny’s alarmed face. “I thought you didn’t like Indigo Rubber,” he shouted through the door.

“I’ve come round to them,” Douglas called back. “And I’ve got some friends coming tonight who want to hear it.”

“You can’t have it,” called Caspar.

“But I promised them,” said Douglas. “Be a sport.”

“You’d no business to promise them my records!” Caspar said, with real indignation. “You can’t have them. Go away.”

“I knew you’d go and be mean about it,” said Douglas. “It’s typical. I only want to borrow their second LP for an hour this evening. I won’t hurt it, and you can come and listen, if you like. Father’s said we can have it in the dining room.”

“You should have asked me first,” said Caspar. But put like that, Douglas’s request was reasonable, and he did not want to be thought mean.

“Tell him to come back for it in five minutes,” Johnny whispered from the ceiling. “Then get me some water.”

Caspar drew his breath to shout, but Douglas had lost patience. “You are a mean little squirt, aren’t you?” he said. “It’s no good trying to be polite to you. You lend me that record, or watch out!” The doorknob turned sharply under Caspar’s hands and the door began to open.

“Come back in five minutes!” Caspar said desperately, his braced feet sliding.

“And give you time to hide it?” said Douglas. “What kind of a fool do you think I am?” The door opened nearly a foot, and Douglas’s leg and shoulder came through the gap. It was clear that the rest of him was following.

Johnny did the only thing he could think of. With a strong thrust at the ceiling and a desperate kick of his legs, he got himself to the open window and, as the door crashed open and Douglas plunged into the room, he pushed himself out of it. And, whether it was the draught from the door, or the different conditions outside, Johnny promptly soared. The last Caspar saw of him was his bare foot and his shoe vanishing upwards beyond the top of the window.

Luckily, Douglas was looking malevolently at Caspar. “Got any more mean excuses?” he said.

“It’s not mean. You shouldn’t promise things that aren’t yours,” said Caspar. But his heart was not in the argument. All he could think of was Johnny soaring away into the heavens.

“Well, I’d have asked you this morning, only you’d gone by the time I’d persuaded Father to let me have the dining room,” Douglas said. “Are you going to lend it me, or not?”

“You can have them all. They’re down there by my bed. And I’ve got their new one too,” Caspar said hastily.

“Their new one!” Douglas said delightedly. “Really? Brainpan, you mean?” He waded over to Caspar’s bed and went on his knees by the window to sort out the records. Instead of taking the records at once, he knelt there looking disgusted. “I wonder you can hear these,” he said. “They’re coated with dust. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to keep LPs clean? You’re ruining them and your stylus.”

“I know, but I’ve lost my cleaner,” said Caspar, almost beside himself with impatience to get to the window and see what had become of Johnny.

“I’m not surprised,” said Douglas, looking round the crowded room. “You can borrow mine, if you’re careful with it. I’ve got one of those attachments now. Thanks, anyway. I’d better go and give these a clean.” And to Caspar’s relief, Douglas got up and waded to the door.

Caspar sped to the window and craned out of it. Johnny was not far off. He was clinging like a monkey to the corner of the house, about four feet above the window. “You can come back now,” Caspar told him. “He’s gone.”

“I can’t!” Johnny said tensely.

“Why not?”

“It’s worn off. I’m stuck. I can’t hold on much longer, either.”

Caspar felt rather sick. He looked down and realised that the ground was a very long distance away. Worse still, the Ogre’s car was now parked on the gravel at the side of the garden. For two very good reasons, Johnny had better not go down. He looked up. The roof and the gutter, which came lower at the back of the house, were only three feet or so above Johnny’s head.

“Can you climb up and grab the roof?” he said.

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” snapped Johnny. “It’s all I can do to stay in one place.”

“Then hang on. I’ll go out of the trap door in the loft,” said Caspar, “and see if I can pull you up. Hold on.”

“What do you expect me to do? Let go?” said Johnny.

Caspar sped to the door and up the stairs that led to Gwinny’s room. The loft was behind a low door opposite Gwinny’s. Gwinny came out to see what was going on as Caspar was frenziedly rattling at it.

“You don’t pull, you push,” she said. “Is there something the matter?”

“Yes,” said Caspar. “Johnny’s stranded halfway up the house and I’ve got to pull him up from here. Where’s the Ogre?”

“In the study, I think. I’ll fetch my dressing gown cord,” said Gwinny.

Caspar crashed the door open inwards and hurried into the loft. There was no proper floor, and he had to jump from joist to joist, which was not easy in the dim light. He was struggling to open the trap door to the roof, when Gwinny came crawling after him with the dressing gown cord in her mouth so that she could use both hands for crawling.

“Th’Ogre,” she said indistinctly.

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” Gwinny said, removing the cord. “But I could hear him shouting at someone. He sounded awfully angry.”

“I hope it’s Malcolm. And I hope it keeps them both busy,” said Caspar. “Help me with this bolt.”

It was no easy matter to open the trap. The bolts were rusty, and the Ogre had packed putty round the door itself to keep the rain out after he had fetched the muddy sweater in off the chimney. To Caspar’s frantic imagination, it took them an hour to unpack it again. Rust, dust, putty and cobwebs spattered down on them, and Caspar, unwisely bracing his foot between two joists, managed to put his knee through the plaster floor. But they got the door open in the end. Caspar hastily raised it and stood up into a cold sunset to lower it on to the tiles of the roof. Gwinny stood up beside him.

“Shall I climb out? I’m the lightest,” she said.

“No. You’re to stay there,” said Caspar. “It’s dangerous.”

He had one leg out over the edge of the trap, when, to his amazement, Johnny, looking white and shaken, appeared over the edge of the roof and started to crawl up it towards him.

“How did you climb up?” said Caspar. Johnny, for some reason, fiercely shook his head at him. “You must have done,” said Caspar. “You—”

The head and shoulders of the Ogre appeared behind Johnny. Even for the Ogre, they looked grim. All Caspar could do was to make haste to get himself back inside the loft again.




CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_58afa712-511f-5814-a975-07834d8549e6)


It seemed that one of the neighbours had seen Johnny clinging to the side of the house and telephoned the Ogre. Probably it was just as well. Johnny had been precious near letting go by the time the Ogre had tied two ladders together and climbed up them. But in every other way it was unfortunate.

The Ogre made the obvious assumption that they had been playing on the roof and that Johnny had slipped off. He sent Johnny to bed without supper. Then he nailed up first the trap door, then the loft door, and forbade them all three, on pain of death, to touch either. Douglas, who was ordered in to help with the nailing, and who might have provided Caspar at least with an alibi, said nothing at all, to Caspar’s bitter annoyance. He just listened to Caspar being blamed for leading Johnny and Gwinny into danger. And Malcolm – who was supposed to be opening the trap door to let the Ogre and Johnny through – arrived in time to listen too. And he laughed. This so infuriated Gwinny that she bit Malcolm. It was all she could think of on the spur of the moment. So she was in trouble as well. The Ogre called her a little cat and sent her to bed without supper too.

Caspar supposed he was lucky to be allowed supper himself. But it was not a comfortable meal. The Ogre had gone downstairs and expressed himself forcibly to Sally after nailing up the loft, and Caspar could see his mother had been crying. He felt truly wretched. Douglas and Malcolm were, as usual, well-mannered, sober and almost totally silent. Caspar sat quite as silent, wishing the Ogre would not make such a horrible noise eating. Finally, Sally tried to make conversation by asking Douglas when his friends were coming.

Douglas replied, quietly and politely, “About eight o’clock, if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” Sally said cordially. “I’m so glad you’ve managed to make some friends already.”

“Thank you,” Douglas said politely.

“Because it is difficult, when you move to a new school, isn’t it?” Sally said.

“It’s not so bad,” said Douglas. “Thank you.”

Sally gave up. Nobody said anything else. Caspar missed Gwinny and Johnny acutely, because, if they did nothing else, they could be counted on to talk.

At the end of supper, Douglas and Malcolm politely offered to wash up, and Douglas surprised Caspar by turning to him and asking, equally politely, if he wanted to come to the dining room and listen to records too.

“Oh, no thank you,” Caspar said hastily. He had had about enough of Douglas by then.

“That’s rather a blessing,” Sally said to him in the kitchen, a little later, “because I want you to go on a secret mission and take some supper up to Johnny and Gwinny. I know Jack said they were to go without, but I can’t bear to think of them going hungry. But you must do it with the utmost stealth.”

“All right,” said Caspar, and looked meaningly at Malcolm, who was still busily and correctly wiping plates. When Sally did not seem to see what he meant, he tried to make her understand by waggling his eyebrows at her.

“Do stop making faces,” said Sally. “Malcolm won’t tell, will you, Malcolm?”

“Of course not,” Malcolm said coldly.

Caspar did not believe him for a moment, but he nevertheless crept upstairs with loaded trays. His task was made easier by the fact that Gwinny had sneaked down to join Johnny. They were both sitting in Johnny’s bed sharing a toffee bar, looking rosy and excited.

“When are we going flying?” Johnny asked.

Caspar had imagined that, after being stranded on the side of the house, Johnny would have had enough of flying, and he was rather taken aback. “When were you thinking of?” he said.

“Not too late,” said Johnny.

“I want to look down on all the lights in Market Street,” explained Gwinny. “The Christmas lights are up already, did you know?”

“And see the nightlife,” said Johnny. “If we’re lucky, we might see some vice going on. I’ve never seen any.”

“We’ve been thinking it out,” said Gwinny. “It’s awfully cold out, so we’ll have to go in coats, with shoes on, and wear gloves.”

“And put the flying-mixture on our legs,” said Johnny, “under our trousers. Rub on a really good handful, because we don’t want it wearing off in the middle of town.”

“All right,” Caspar said weakly. “About half past ten?”

“And put pillows in our beds,” Johnny called after him as he waded to the door.

Caspar went downstairs again to report his mission accomplished. He was so excited at the thought of going flying that very night that he forgot to refuse when Sally said, “And don’t go away upstairs again, Caspar. Come and join us in the sitting room for a change.”

“If you like,” Caspar said, without thinking, and then realised that he had condemned himself to a whole evening with the Ogre.

Douglas’s friends were arriving when he and Sally reached the hall. Caspar took one look at them and was heartily glad that he had refused Douglas’s invitation at least. They were all as tall as Douglas and, since none of them were in school clothes, they appeared even more grown up than they were. They carried bundles of records. Two of them had guitars. And they laughed and made jokes that Caspar could not understand. Douglas, as he showed them in, laughed too and made the same sort of jokes in reply. Caspar stared rather because he had hardly ever seen Douglas laugh before, and because Douglas had changed his clothes and looked just as grown up as his friends.

“Coffee and so on set out on the kitchen table, Douglas,” said Sally.

“Thanks,” Douglas replied, obviously too busy showing his friends into the dining room to hear what Sally had said.

The Ogre was standing in the doorway of the sitting room with the grim look that he usually reserved for Johnny or Caspar. “I’m beginning to regret this already,” he said. “Where did Douglas get those awful clothes?”

“I got them for him,” said Sally, a trifle guiltily. “He seemed to have grown out of everything else.”

“Are they fashionable or something?” asked the Ogre.

“Very,” said Sally.

“I feared as much,” said the Ogre, and went and turned the television on.

Since the Ogre was clearly in his stormiest mood, Caspar dared not do anything but sit quietly over a map of South America, trying to decide on a Geography project. The Ogre gave him several irritated looks, but he said nothing. The television produced the Ogre’s favourite kind of programme for him – the kind in which Officials and Ministers explained that the country was in a considerable state of crisis, but that they were doing this, that and the other thing to cure it. Caspar bit back several yawns of boredom and wondered how his mother could stand it. She was calmly checking over some long lists that had to do with her work tomorrow. If Caspar himself had not been in such a pleasant flutter about going flying, he thought he would never have endured it at all.

Then Indigo Rubber made themselves heard, rather loudly, in the middle of their best song. Caspar raised his head and almost regretted not being in the dining room. Either Douglas’s equipment was ten times better than his, or the records had needed cleaning more than he realised. Indigo Rubber sounded superb – though Caspar did wish that one of Douglas’s friends had not chosen to pick out the song haltingly on his guitar at the same time.

“This is intolerable!” said the Ogre, and turned the sound on the television right up. The result was a truly awful noise, with a Minister booming away about Trade, and Indigo Rubber gamely competing for all they were worth. “I shall go mad!” said the Ogre, with his face twisted into a snarl.

“No you won’t,” said Sally, laughing. “Do turn the sound down. I want to make a list of the people we’re having to this party.”

The Ogre, typically, refused to turn the sound down. So he and Sally were forced, for the next half hour or so, to bawl names at one another above the noise. Caspar’s head began to ache. His mother began to look a little worn also. Luckily, after that, Douglas and his friends took to playing Indigo Rubber songs on their guitars, which, though penetrating, were not quite so loud.

“Shall I send them home?” the Ogre asked several times, but Sally would not hear of it.

“I want to get these invitations out,” she said.

“You must be made of iron,” said the Ogre eventually. Then he noticed Caspar and told him to go to bed. Caspar was collecting his maps and papers, only too ready to go, when there were voices in the hall and Douglas burst gaily into the sitting room.

“I say—” he said.

“I’m not going to have you and your noise in here as well,” said the Ogre.

Douglas froze into crestfallen politeness. “Sorry, Father. I was only going to ask… You see, my friends are going down town to the Discotheque. Is it all right for me to go too?”

“No,” said the Ogre.

Douglas swallowed, and then said, very patiently and politely, “I shouldn’t be more than an hour or so. I promise I’ll be back before eleven.”

“Which is a good hour past your bedtime,” said the Ogre. “No.”

“Couldn’t he go?” said Sally.

“I’ve already given you my opinion of your indulgence,” the Ogre said unpleasantly. “That blasted place is the haunt of half the vice in town.”

Caspar felt his stomach twisting and fluttering. It sounded as if Johnny might be going to see some vice after all.

“But all sorts of people go there,” Douglas said pleadingly. “My friends often do.”

“Then I think the worse of your friends,” said the Ogre.

“But they—” began Douglas.

“Absolutely NOT!” said the Ogre.

Douglas went out and shut the door quietly behind him. When Caspar went upstairs, he was showing his friends out.

Gwinny and Johnny were asleep, packed into Johnny’s bed. Caspar, at the sight, felt rather sleepy himself, but he sat down on his own bed to wait. He heard Douglas come upstairs, and smelt the whiff of chemicals as Douglas opened the door across the landing. After that was a long, long silence. Caspar was all but asleep himself, when Johnny suddenly sat bolt upright.

“What’s the time?”

Caspar found the clock, which had got buried under a pile of comics. “Ten fifteen.”

“Oh good,” said Johnny. “I banged my head ten times on the pillow.” And he fell to shaking Gwinny. “Come on. Time to go.”

They bustled quietly about, getting into warm clothes and putting pillows in their beds. Ten minutes later, they were standing beside the open window, feeling very excited indeed and a little inclined to giggle. Johnny carefully fetched out the almost full tube of chemical and solemnly passed it to Gwinny. Gwinny rolled up the leg of Johnny’s old trousers, which she was wearing for warmth, poured the liquid carefully on to her palm and rubbed it hard on her shin.

“Ooh! It’s cold!” she said.

Johnny was just in time to take the test tube out of her hand as she floated up past him. While he was rubbing the liquid on his leg, Gwinny drummed the ceiling gently with her heels. “I’d forgotten what a lovely feeling it was,” she said.

Caspar was looking up at her when Johnny soared away to join her. He missed his chance of taking the tube and had to climb on the cupboard to take it from Johnny’s hand. It all seemed so silly and exciting that they both began laughing.

“Are you boys in bed?” called Sally from below.

“Yes. Just going to sleep,” they lied at the tops of their voices. Caspar, still crouching on top of the cupboard, rolled up his trouser-leg. He was quaking so with laughter that he poured far more liquid on to his palm than he intended. He splashed the whole ice-cold handful on his leg and, when the delicious lightness spread through him and he too floated up to the ceiling, he found he was holding a nearly empty test tube, with about a quarter of an inch of liquid left in the bottom.

“What shall I do with this?” he said.

“Balance it on the lightshade,” suggested Gwinny.

“We ought to put out the light too,” said Johnny.

Caspar, intoxicated with the splendid new feeling of being light as air, swam himself over to the middle of the room and balanced the test tube on the lampshade. It was better than swimming. One kick took him yards, with no effort at all. The difficulty came when he tried to reach the light switch. Like Gwinny before, he seemed far heavier upwards than he ever was downwards. He tried jumping off the ceiling in a sort of dive towards the switch, but, no matter how hard he pushed off with his feet, his hand never came within a foot of the switch.

“Why not take the bulb out?” said Johnny, impatient to be off.

So Caspar swam back, put his gloves on, and very carefully took the bulb out without disturbing the test tube. But as soon as the room went dark, he had no idea where it was any more. He felt his glove brush the shade and the shade tip. Then there was a bump and a slight bursting noise from the floor.

“The tube’s fallen off,” he said.

“Well, we’d used most of it anyway,” said Gwinny. “Do come on.”

Caspar put the light bulb in his pocket and swam towards the window. The dark shape of Gwinny first, then Johnny, blotted out the window and soared away upwards, as Johnny had done before. There was quite a brisk wind. When Caspar swooped deliciously up past the wall, the gutter and the glistening roof, he found himself being carried over the roof of the next house towards the centre of town. Johnny was floating against the orange glare of the city lights about ten yards ahead, and Gwinny ten yards beyond that and a few feet higher up because she was lighter. The sight gave Caspar a strange, frosty, excited feeling, as if splendid things were about to happen. Being a good swimmer, he caught the other two up easily.

“How lovely to look down on roofs!” Gwinny said. And indeed it was. The streetlights and a good round moon made it all very easy to see. Roofs had all sorts of queer shapes that they would not have expected from the ground. They could look through skylights and see people moving about inside, and television aerials looked surprisingly big when you were beside them.

Another surprising thing was the way bent streets looked straight, and streets they had thought were straight had unexpected little twiddles or long curves to them. They swam themselves merrily over the neighbourhood, above wires, roads, gardens, houses and a park, until they all found that they had no idea where they were.

“Why does it all look so different?” Johnny said crossly.

“The wind’s blown us off course,” said Caspar. “We’d better find a road we know and follow that, or we’ll get lost.”

The brightest orange glare seemed now to be away to the right. They swam in that direction, across the wind. It was much harder going. Before long, Gwinny was complaining loudly of being tired.

“Do shut up,” Caspar called up at her. “Suppose someone hears you and tells the police.” He was fairly tired himself by this time. The feeling of frosty excitement he had first had seemed entirely to have gone. He was hot and worried. The only thing that stopped him suggesting that they go home was that it seemed so tame. But the fact was that one empty dark street is much like another, and merely flying across them stops being fun after a while.

“Let’s rest,” said Johnny.

They anchored themselves to a convenient television aerial and floated, panting. Beneath them, on a corner, was a pub with people noisily coming out of it.





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