by Georgia Byng
But Nockman didn’t reply. He was already out the door.
“To the airport,” he growled at a sleepy taxi driver who was reading the paper.
As the car moved off, Nockman willed the traffic lights not to turn red. Beads of sweat were dribbling down his forehead. Then, as the taxi made good progress out of town, he realized that he could still catch the girl, and he began to cool down.
That book was his destiny. All he had to do was follow it.
Thirteen
The airport was an hour and a half’s drive from Briersville. Molly sat in the back of the minibus, stroking Petula and looking out the window at the countryside shooting by. She drank it all in, not sure when she would be seeing it again. She wasn’t bothered if she never came back. Nor did she care that she didn’t really know where in America she was going. She felt strong, rich, and eager to see the world. And determined to find Rocky.
Miss Adderstone drove fast and furiously to the airport, and she and Edna helped Molly out of the minibus. They seemed almost sweet now as they stood huddled together, Miss Adderstone in her snipped-up suit with her knickers on her head and Edna in a tight-fitting, Italian-looking raincoat. They dabbed their eyes with hankies. Edna’s had a map of Italy sewn on.
“Oh, Molly, we’ll bleedin’ well miss you,” Edna said weepily.
“Best of luck, Molly, dear.” Miss Adderstone sniffed.
“Thank you,” Molly said cheerfully. Petula gave Miss Adderstone a dirty-dog look.
“Send us a postcard.”
“Do keep in touch.”
Molly nodded. Then she decided to give each of them a farewell present. She clapped once and both went into a deep trance. “Now, listen carefully, you two,” Molly said. “I’m going to give you some new interests … so your lives get more … well, more interesting. Miss Adderstone, from now on, you will have a big new passion for”—Molly looked about for inspiration—“for, for airplanes and flying. Yes, that’s it. You are going to learn to fly planes. And Edna, well, you will love Italian cooking and Italy even more. You’ll love Italian fashion, um … Italian cars, oh, and the language, of course, which you’ll learn to speak. And from now on, both of you will be nice to all children.”
Molly felt satisfied that she had been generous to everyone at Hardwick House. She clapped twice and Miss Adderstone and Edna came out of their trances. Miss Adderstone started to sniff again.
“Oh, you are so lucky, Molly, to be going on a plane,” she said with a sob. “I’ve always wanted to fly.”
“Arrivederci, Molly,” sniffled Edna.
Molly helped Petula inside her traveling basket. “Good-bye then,” she said. She turned away, and the sound of Miss Adderstone’s and Edna’s wails faded as she stepped inside the terminal building.
“Boy, oh boy,” Molly said under her breath.
“I’d like a ticket on the next plane to New York, please.”
The airline clerk peered over her desk at the small girl, whose chin was level with the top of the counter. “I’m sorry, but we can only sell tickets to passengers who are sixteen or over.”
Molly took her sunglasses off, and her eyes beamed out irresistibly. “I am sixteen,” Molly said, giving the woman her passport. The clerk suddenly saw a girl who was obviously at least sixteen.
“Madam, of course, I wasn’t thinking properly, I do apologize. But I’m afraid it’s too late to check in for the next flight. It has nearly finished boarding. It leaves in twenty minutes.”
Molly increased her eye voltage.
“I’m so sorry,” the blue-suited woman said bewilderedly. “I don’t know what’s come over me today. For a VIP like you, madam, of course I can arrange everything. That’ll be four hundred fifty pounds. Do you have any baggage?”
“No.”
The woman took Molly’s money and wrote a few details down before handing her a handwritten ticket and a boarding pass.
“Please make your way as fast as you can to gate twenty-five. Have a good trip.”
Molly hurried through the departures gate and up to the X-ray machines. After a good eye flash the security guard let her pass through without checking her dog basket, and Molly padded past duty-free shops and down carpeted corridors.
Just as Molly found gate twenty-five, Professor Nockman arrived, sweating and panting, at the ticket desk.
“Did a young girl just buy a ticket here?” he asked aggressively. “She would have bought it with cash.”
“Sir, we have hundreds of people buying tickets here every day,” said the ticket clerk crisply.
“Yeah, yeah,” Professor Nockman said rudely, “but a girl, a girl of ten or so … she …”
“Sir, we don’t sell tickets to children. And, besides, we don’t divulge information like that.” The telephone behind the desk rang and the woman turned to answer it. The professor leaned forward and scanned the piece of paper in front of her, reading it upside down.
There was a note of a cash payment for a ticket to New York for an M. Moon.
“Gimme a ticket to New York. I wanna catch the two thousand flight,” demanded the professor.
The woman looked down at her list and crossly covered it with her hand. “I’m afraid it’s too late to board that plane. The gates have closed.”
Indeed they had. Molly had stepped onto the plane, the last passenger.
Molly showed the flight attendant her economy ticket and flashed her eyes. “First class, I think,” she suggested, and was escorted to the first-class compartment at the front of the plane. She put Petula, hidden in the basket, on the empty seat beside her.
As Professor Nockman stamped and raged, Molly was buckling her belt. As a security guard put his hand on the professor’s shoulder, a flight attendant brought Molly an orange juice. Professor Nockman had to make do with a ticket on the next plane to New York, five hours later.
The plane roared down the runway and took off into the darkening sky. Molly looked out the window. It was her first time on a plane, and she found the idea of being in a huge chunk of flying metal scary. Her hands began to get sticky. But then she noticed how calm all the flight attendants were and she felt better. She looked out the window again and watched the twinkling lights of the airport falling away as the plane climbed higher and higher. She looked to the west, in the direction of Hardwick House. It was somewhere there, miles and miles away. Molly breathed a sigh of relief. It was good to be leaving. Hardwick House had nothing to offer her now, and somehow, she was sure, she’d see Rocky again. Then everything would be hunky-dory. Maybe she could hypnotize his family to adopt her, too. Or they could run away together and live out of suitcases. Molly’s mind boggled as she thought about America. She’d seen it so often on television programs. Soon she’d be living the happy life that she’d been longing for. She wouldn’t have to watch ads and pretend anymore. Molly began to investigate the small television screen attached to her armrest.
From the viewing gallery on the airport roof, Professor Nockman fumed as he saw the plane taking off. “M. Moon,” he muttered, “I’m on to you, M. Moon….” He twiddled the golden scorpion medallion that hung round his neck. “So you’ve got the book, an’ you’ve learned a few tricks. Well, ain’t you a smart aleck. But not so smart that you covered your tracks. You better watch it, kiddy—I’m hot on your heels. And when I hook you, whoa! You’re really gonna wish you’d never laid eyes on that book at all.”
Fourteen
The flight to New York was eight hours long, but Molly was very comfortable in her massive reclining chair. She watched two films and smelled lovely from all the free skin creams that came in a special bag. Petula behaved herself all the way, sucking on a stone that she’d picked up in the Briersville Hotel drive. She whined only once—when the chicken casserole arrived—but the flight attendant thought it was Molly making the noise. Molly ordered a second helping, which she put in Petula’s basket.
As the plane wheeled down through low-hanging clouds to John F. Kennedy Airport,
Molly pondered her next move. She had £1,910 left of her prize money. She’d spent £5 on Petula’s collar, £15 on her travel basket, £20 on the sunglasses, £50 on the afternoon in the hotel, £550 on the pendant, and £450 on the airline ticket. Over a thousand pounds. She was amazed how quickly it had gone. The first thing to do was to change her money into dollars. Then she’d have to get a train or a cab to … where in New York Molly wasn’t sure yet. Some hotel. From there, safe and private, she’d be able to plan what to do next.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please put your watches back five hours,” announced the pilot. “The time in New York is eleven o’clock at night. We hope you have enjoyed your flight and look forward to traveling with you again.”
Molly was so nervous and excited that she didn’t feel at all tired. She put on her sunglasses, picked up her knapsack and Petula’s basket, and twenty minutes later was out by a taxi stand, with dollars in her pocket—$2,998, to be precise. There, while Petula was having a pee in the gutter, a cab-stand attendant with a thick Brooklyn accent asked Molly, “Where to?”
“New York.”
“Yeah, little lady, but which part of New York?”
“The center,” Molly said, as confidently as possible.
The woman wrote Manhattan on a piece of paper, gave it to a driver of a rusty old yellow cab, and helped Molly and Petula inside. The door slammed, and Molly slid back into the seat. A tinny recorded voice from under the seat shouted, “Hey you … this is a former mayor of New York. Buckle up … I don’t want to see you in the hospital!”
As Molly did up her seatbelt, another, deeper voice inquired, “Okay, so where to in Manhattan?”
Molly looked up at the solid partition between her and the driver, with a tiny sliding door for money to be passed through. She could see only the back of the driver’s bald head. He glanced at her in his rearview mirror and said, “You’re small to be traveling by yourself this time of night. You know you oughta be careful—this is an unfriendly city if you go to the wrong part of it.”
“I’m older than I look,” Molly replied. “And I’m used to being on my own. And you know what? Nowhere could be more unfriendly than the place I’ve just come from. Now—I want to go to … oh … no … oh, it’s been such a long flight that I’ve forgotten the name of the hotel.” Molly made a convincing act of searching her pockets for a piece of paper.
“I know all the hotels in Manhattan,” boasted the driver. “What’s it like?”
“It’s the grandest, largest hotel—you know the one…. It’s got flags everywhere and gold—dead posh.”
“Oh, you mean the Waldorf?”
“Yeah … that’s the one,” Molly said happily. “The Waldorf.”
“Okay, little lady. Well, hold on tight.”
The cab pulled into traffic. It was the bounciest car Molly had ever been in. She and Petula bobbed up and down as the rusty old vehicle turned onto the highway and headed to the island of Manhattan.
Molly stared out in wonder. Everything was so big. Huge juggernauts thundered down the six-lane road like glaring monsters with scores of lights on their massive fronts. To the left and right suburban houses stretched away into the distance. It was a dark, moonless night, but the highway was a solid river of white headlights and red taillights.
After rolling and bouncing along for half an hour, the driver announced, “Here she comes.” They rounded a corner and suddenly, there, out of the window, was a view of the tallest, brightest, most colossal, space-age city that Molly had ever seen. The buildings were mammoth, like buildings from another planet, and they all stood on an island. Petula put her front paws on the window to look out, and Molly’s hands started to sweat as she saw that the way onto the island of Manhattan was over an enormous, glittering bridge. Her mouth dropped open as they drove toward it, and as they began to cross the water, Molly saw how truly big these buildings were. Some had dozens of floors and thousands of windows with lights still on.
“So many people are still awake!” Molly exclaimed.
“Yeah, din’t ya know?” The driver laughed. “This is the city that never sleeps.”
On the other side of the bridge, the cab drove onto a street that was lined with tall buildings.
“The streets in Manhattan are real simple to follow,” the cab driver explained as he honked at a truck. “They were designed on a grid system, ya know, so it’s easy to navigate. Like Fifty-ninth Street, Sixtieth Street, and so on. Some streets are east of the Park, some are west. The Park’s in the middle. We’re on the east side of the island. Around the East Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties is the nice part where you get all the rich people. Mind you, these days rich people live downtown, too. Yeah, yeah, Manhattan’s real expensive, but the roads are still fulla holes.” The driver swerved suddenly to avoid a big pothole. Finally he pulled up in front of a grand old building.
“This is your stop, lady, and you owe me thirty-five bucks.”
A doorman wearing a brown-and-gold uniform stepped up and opened Molly’s door. Molly paid and thanked the cabdriver, and the yellow car rattled away into the night. She and Petula entered the building and walked uncertainly up a flight of wide marble steps into the hotel lobby, where they stood and stared.
A heavy glistening chandelier hung high above their heads. The floor underneath their feet was done in beautiful mosaic patterns of beige, pink, and green. Small sitting circles of chairs, patterned couches, and coffee tables were dotted about, and behind them was a beautiful grand piano. As Molly walked past a bank of elevators toward a second lobby, she saw her reflection in a mirror and thought how very scruffy she looked in her old clothes. This was the most luxurious, perfumed place she had ever been in.
“Hhh, hmm,” the haughty receptionist coughed, looking down at Molly over two large nostrils. “Can I be of assistance?”
Molly turned and stepped toward the small, smartly dressed man who was standing behind a black glass desk.
“Yes, please. I’d like a room.”
“I’m afraid you’re a little young. And we don’t allow pets.”
Molly was tired, so it took more effort to crank her eyes up to “zapping mode.” But after a moment the receptionist was as impressionable as a piece of squashy dough. He looked at his books. “I’m afraid, madam, all our rooms are full.”
“Full?” Molly said incredulously. “But you must have loads of rooms here.”
“Yes, and all 1,427 are occupied.”
“There isn’t even one available?”
“We have the Royal suite, madam.”
“I’ll take that. How much is it?”
“It’s nine hundred dollars a night, madam.”
“Wha …? And do I pay before?”
“No, madam. You pay your bill when you leave.”
Molly had only $2,963 left. The Royal suite was more than she wanted to spend, but she was too tired to set out on a hotel hunt.
“Oh. Well, I’ll take it. And my dog will stay with me.”
The man gestured for a porter. “Follow me,” the porter said.
They took the elevator to the forty-second floor and followed a plushly carpeted passage to an elegant-looking door. The porter unlocked the door and led Molly and Petula in.
Molly felt as if she had walked into a dream.
The room was spectacular. In fact, because it was a suite, it had four huge rooms: a bedroom with cream-colored silk curtains and a giant four-poster bed, a large sitting room with sofas and a low table in it, a kitchen, and a dining room.
“Every room, including the bathroom, has a television and a music system,” explained the porter, opening cupboards and revealing hidden TVs and stereo equipment. “Here is the minibar, and also here is a list of services we provide, from limousine hire to hair-dressing. The Jacuzzi is easy to operate, and there is a fitness center downstairs on the nineteenth floor. Room service is available around the clock, so if you require anything, please don’t hesitate to call. Thank you, ma’am.” The porter b
owed and went.
Molly kicked her shoes off and jumped onto the bed. “Yeee haaa!” she shouted, feeling suddenly very wideawake. Petula scrambled up too. “Isn’t this great, Petula? I mean look at us. Can you believe it? Yesterday in gross Hardwick House, and today in the most luxurious hotel room in New York!” Petula barked happily in reply, and Molly jumped off the bed and opened the minibar. After giving Petula a bowl of ice-cold mineral water, she opened the window. Noise blasted into the room. Taxicab horns, horns from delivery vans, the grinding of garbage trucks, sirens from police cars, voices shouting and whistling. The whole city was buzzing with life. Molly had never been anywhere as loud and busy as this. With Petula tucked under her arm, she looked out over the city.
It was midnight but the streets were full of traffic. The city towered about her, a jungle of skyscrapers with insectlike cars and yellow cabs crawling about on its forest floor. Molly wondered how many people lived here. And for a second she wondered whether, maybe, somewhere out there, among the millions of New Yorkers, maybe there was someone related to her. Rocky must be out there somewhere—but where? She hugged Petula. “Where are your family, Petula?” Petula licked Molly’s hand. “Yup, Petula. I guess you and me are family. We’re all we’ve got at the moment.”
Molly gazed down at the bristling city. She supposed that New Yorkers would be as easy to hypnotize as any other people. Her eye trick had worked on the receptionist. With this room costing $900 a night, it was vital that her hypnotic powers work. Of course, she could move to a cheaper hotel, but Molly liked the richness of this place and she wanted to stay here.
Molly shut the window and went to have a bath. She squirted all the mini bottles of bubble bath into it to make it extra bubbly, and when the bubbles were foaming high, she sank into the sweet-smelling water. She clicked on the wall-mounted TV with a remote control. How far this was from the drafty bathroom at Hardwick House, where only recently she had been punished for having a bath more than ten centimeters deep! She laughed out loud.