by Joan Aiken
When Mark came out of St. Malpus’ jail, therefore, he strolled across the moors with no particular goal in mind. The whole world was misty and frosty as a dream, and tendrils of smoke from the chimneys of Rune were uncurling among the early stars as he came down Market Street. Far and near the soft tidings of the bands soared up into the dusk so that shoppers buying celery at the greengrocer’s were reminded of “The First Nowell,” and moved on round the corner to “Good King Wenceslas” at the butcher’s, while the lending library was filled with “The Holly and The Ivy.”
Mark went to the Dolphin. It was not opening time yet but Bill Pettigrew, the landlord, who was a friend and had been looking after his barge while he was in prison, gave him a cup of tea in the kitchen and told him the gossip.
“He’s certainly buttered his paws,” said Bill (they were talking of Mr Snawl). Managing director of the paper mills he is now, and running for Parliament at the next election. Though why run? He’d get in just as fast by standing.”
Bill laughed his round, barrel-like laugh, and after a while Mark laughed, too.
“So, what did you do in prison?” Bill asked presently, bringing out a pair of little crystal glasses, for tea without sloe gin is like a canoe without a paddle.
“Learnt to read,” said Mark bitterly. “Think of it! Me! A Pentecost! What I don’t know about boats and pigs they could tie up in a daisy leaf and hide in a mouse’s ear, and they have to teach me to read! Every day I had to write out: ‘I must not sell the mayor poached salmon on Good Friday, I must not box with the mayor’s son on Easter Saturday, and I must definitely not kiss the mayor’s daughter on Easter Sunday.’”
“Handsome!” said Bill with admiration. “They’m grand places, these reform schools. Fed and clothed for three years, and education into the bargain. And back in time for the crowning of the Paper Queen.”
“Paper Queen?” said Mark. “My barge?” He was out of touch with local doings.
“No, no. ’Tis the old ancient custom, the mayor’s been reviving, with a crowning and a paper fight and procession through the streets of Rune. Proper fine queen she’ll make, too.”
“Who?”
“Why, she. Helen. The Mayor’s daughter.”
Mark was digesting this when he noticed that old Mr Santo, Bill Pettigrew’s father-in-law, who had been sitting the other side of the hearth all this time, was crying quietly into his teacup, the tears streaming silently down his whiskery old face.
“What’s the matter, Dad?” he asked, putting down his own cup and getting up to pat the old man’s shoulder. “Tea too hot?”
“It’s not that.” Bill, shaking his head, answered for Mr Santo. “Mayor’s moving into his new house today.”
“Well?”
“Taken over Hearken House, he has.”
“But it’s falling to bits.”
“He’s mended it all to rights, and he’m moving in this evening, time for Christmas.”
Mark stared at him with a troubled expression. Hearken House or the Monks’ house, as some called it, was an aged gothic building just across the road from the church. No one had lived in it for many years, and it was pretty well derelict. One of its rooms was open to the public. A flight of outside stairs led up to this room, and at the foot of them was a notice that said: “Room available for meditation, prayer, and hearkening.” Hence the name of the house. No one bothered to go and hearken in the room except old Mr Santo, and it had been his Christmas Eve habit for many years now to go up and hearken for the voice of dead Mrs Santo. He had never heard it yet, but this in no way detracted from the importance of the ritual.
“Won’t he let you hearken?” Mark asked hotly. Old Mr Santo sobbed into his tea, and Bill laced it generously with sloe gin. The old man took a gulp and made some reply, which was drowned in the muted chords of “Hark the Herald,” as the station band softly played themselves by, on their way to open the level-crossing gates for the Paddington express.
Bill shook his head sadly. “Couldn’t pluck up the courage to ask,” he said.
“There’s too many things wrong round here,” exclaimed Mark, jumping to his feet. “This town’s going to rack and ruin, I can see with all these fal-lals and meddling. It’s time someone began to put things to rights.”
“Where are you off to?”
“Going to find the mayor,” Mark shouted, half outside the door already. But in the street he met an obstruction, for a procession was winding its way from Cromwell’s steps to the Memorial Hall, and the only thing he could do was fall in with it. Paper streamers flew and snapped, paper snakes flipped in and out, paper whistles were blown, paper hats were worn. It was the coronation procession of the Paper Queen. And there she sat, enthroned in the midst, wearing a dress of white silk stiff and reverent as parchment, her yellow hair the pallor of a Christmas rose, Helen, the mayor’s daughter. Mark followed like one in a dream.
In the Memorial Hall the coronation ceremony took place. Various directors of the mills gave Helen this and that scroll, seal, papier-mache sceptre and laminated orb; then her father, grave and dignified down every inch of his four foot ten, placed the crown on her head and proclaimed her Paper Queen of Rune, River, and Polchippery. Everybody cheered.
“Now,” said the mayor, when that was done, “every queen has a right to choose her consort, and the Paper Queen has a particular right. Look round the hall, my dear, and pick the man of all men you’d most like to receive a letter from.”
Long she looked, and the young men blushed and fidgeted as her cool eye took them in and passed on.
She met Mark’s tortured eyes and for a heartbeat-space longer than the whole of the nineteenth century their gaze clung and grappled. Then she turned to an elderly alderman beside her and gave him the ceremonial quill.
“Mr Mutton!” she said. “I’d love to have a letter from you, Mr Mutton.” Amid thunderous applause and laughter Mr Mutton climbed onto the second throne and the dancing began.
Mark fought his way round the walls till he reached Mr Snawl. The mayor, laughing with some cronies, had his back to Mark and didn’t see him.
“So I’ve wired an extension speaker into the Hearkening Room,” he was saying, “and if old Mr Santo doesn’t have a reward for his patience this Christmas, my name’s not Porteous Snawl. And that reminds me, Sam, my boy,” he added to his son, who was standing nearby, “just run up to the Dolphin, will you, and tell old Santo it’s all right for him to come and hearken this evening. He never asked me about it. And don’t you stay drinking at the Dolphin,” he shouted after Sam, “young Pentecost comes out today, and I don’t want you both drunk and disorderly at midnight.”
Mark had heard enough. He turned and dived through the crowd in pursuit of Sam, but it was a slow business, and by the time he caught up with the boy he had come out of the Dolphin, his message delivered.
“It’s an outrage,” Mark said, taking him by the lapel.
“Hey there, Mark! Glad to be out? What’s an outrage?”
“Putting an extension speaker in the Hearkening Room. Fooling old Mr Santo.”
Sam shrugged. “Father didn’t mean any harm. He thinks it’s a kindness to the poor old boy, listening away Christmas after Christmas like he does, all for nothing.”
“I’m going to stop it.” Mark turned back into the Dolphin. People were trickling away from the Crowning and going into the bar. He ran unmolested up the dark stairs, which smelt of dry-rot, down a passage, and into one of the bedrooms.
Sam was hard on his heels. “Anything for a lark,” he said, grinning.
Mark flung open a dormer window and hung out, sniffing air like iced champagne—and looking at the vista of silvery roofs. He climbed onto the sill, clutched the roof above him, his fingers digging into the frosty tiles, and kneed himself round into the angle of the dormer. In a moment he was astride the window ridge; in another he was toe-and-fingering his way up the slope of the roof. A tile behind him slipped out and tinkled merrily down to the pavemen
t below. When he was astride the rooftree he turned to see young Sam coming doggedly after him.
“For heaven’s sake! You’ll be killed.”
“No more than you,” Sam said, blowing on his numb fingers. “Go on. We can’t go back.”
Faint and sad the noise of “Once in Royal David’s City” came floating up from a strolling band. Another tile, dislodged by Sam, skittered into its midst, and a trombone played a wrong note. Mark set off along the roof ridge.
Hearken House was twelve along from the Dolphin, and many an awkward climb and even more awkward drop faced them as they struggled from one aged, irregular house to another.
“Attic window,” said Sam at last, puffing a little.
It was locked, of course. Mark took his shoes from round his neck and broke the window with a heel. They dropped inside and made their way softly down a ladder in the velvet dark. In this house the smell of dry rot had been replaced by that of turps, sawdust, and emulsion paint.
“This way,” Sam said.
A huge oblong of moonlight lay like a tablecloth on the bare boards of the Hearkening Room. It was utterly silent: not so much as a farthing’s worth of mouse stirring.
“I’m going to cut the wire,” whispered Mark. “Where’s the speaker?”
Sam began to point, but they were too late. They heard shuffling footsteps, and Sam urgently tugged Mark into the shadow of a cupboard. In came old Mr Santo by the outside door, and Mr Snawl with him, full of solicitude.
“You sit there, Mr Santo; you prefer it dark, don’t you? Now I’ll leave you. Please make yourself at home and stay just as long as you like. There’ll be cake and cider downstairs whenever you want to come down and join us; my daughter is just back from the Crowning. She’ll be delighted to see you.” He titupped out, and as he passed the door Mark heard a click. Then there was a silence again, deep and thick as a tub of tar, while Mark counted a hundred. What should he do? He started moving, but Sam tugged his hand.
A gentle voice began to sing.
One of the bands was passing by outside, and “O Come All Ye Faithful” for a moment softly filled the room, then faded again, and the voice took over.
“O the holly bears a blossom as white as the silk” it sang, and they heard old Mr Santo gasp and catch his breath.
“And the first tree in the greenwood it is the holly . . .”
The old man stood up in the moonlight, looking bewildered, and Mark was angry—angrier than he had ever been. Then, suddenly, as he was about to shake off Sam’s restraining hand and stride forth, there was another click, the singing stopped, and all the street lamps went out.
“Power failure,” breathed Sam at Mark’s elbow. “That settles it.”
A great flood of relief poured into Mark’s mind. All was well. Mr Santo was not going to be fooled. And he himself could go back to the Dolphin and sleep off the great weariness that had overtaken him.
Mr Santo was creaking towards the door when a voice directly overhead made him pause.
“Arthur,” it said, acidly.
“Yes, Maria?”
“You go right home this minute. The idea of it! A man your age out at this time on a winter’s night! And change your vest when you get home.”
“Yes, Maria.”
“And go straight to bed. Of all the awkward, troublesome, good-for-nothing husbands, you are the very worst! If I didn’t keep after you all the time I don’t know what would happen.”
“No, Maria.”
“And don’t go eating any of that nasty, heavy pudding tomorrow.”
“No, Maria.”
“Happy Christmas!” the voice added as a parting shot.
“Happy Christmas, Maria,” old Mr Santo said happily, and he felt his way to the door. The two young men followed him after a moment or two.
Downstairs the mayor’s house-warming party was in full swing, lit by candles on account of the power failure.
Mr Santo was in the midst of a long, excited recital to Porteous Snawl, who had a puzzled look.
“You heard a voice? But didn’t it stop short in the middle?”
“Oh, no,” Mr Santo said blissfully. “First there was a bit of singing, angels maybe, and then she came on herself, her very own voice. I’d know Maria anywhere, though I haven’t heard her for thirty years. I must go home and tell Bill and Mary. Oh, thank you, thank you, Mr Snawl, I don’t know how to thank you.”
Scratching his head, quite at a loss, Mr Snawl turned and saw Mark.
“Oh, you’re there,” he said affably. “Have a nice time in jail?”
Mark looked at him, in a bitter silence, and began making his way to the door in the wake of old Santo. Just by the entrance he came face-to-face with Helen.
“You!” he said harshly. “Where’s your bit of mutton fat?”
“Oh, Mark! Don’t be so mean! What was the use of picking you as the man I’d like to get a letter from when I know perfectly well you can’t write?”
Mark looked at her, and as this simple explanation dawned on him an expression of great wonder and joy lit up his face. But all he said was, “That’s all you know.” And pulling from his pocket a bit of paper and stub of pencil he laboriously printed on it, “Mark Pentecost loves Helen Snawl.”
“Helen Pentecost is a much nicer name,” said Helen dreamily.
“Ah, that’s right,” exclaimed her father, coming up and seeing what was afoot. “I’ve a job for you, Mark, in the Works and Planning Department, now you can read and write. I knew the only way to make you learn was to get you jailed for three years. You’ll leave that leaky old barge, my boy, and you and I will do big things together: you’re the only citizen in this town that has an appreciation of what ought to be done. We’ll get the sewers seen to; no more floods; and the roads mended and the bridge widened. I’ll see you about it all on Boxing Day.”
He nodded graciously to the young couple and bustled off on his mayoral and hostly duties. Mark and Helen went out and strolled dreamily in and out of the decaying, moonlit streets while the current of legend flowed, leaving its silt on the doorsteps and pavements of Rune. Somewhere, not far off, a silver band was playing:
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie;
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by . . .
Octopi in the Sky
Hot night. The stars in the velvet sky burnt like sparks on a railway embankment; any moment, it seemed, the whole firmament would be ablaze. The young man, Denis Cobbleigh, lay wretched and sleepless on his luxurious bed; he had flung off the sheets, but the humid dark wrapped him like a cocoon; he had turned off the lights, but the red sky of London glared remorselessly at him through the window.
From where he lay in his Mayfair room, he could see, high over Piccadilly Circus at the top of a builders’ construction tower, one of the creations of his fancy, an electric octopus that spun in a never-ending glittering cartwheel, throwing off cascades of light. Each tentacle held a brimming, foam-topped glass of stout.
And underneath, in fiery pink italics, the legend ran (but from where he lay this at least the young man could not see):
For a fast lap—drink Cobbleigh’s Cream Stout
Although he shut his eyes he could see it in imagination. He could see, too, its predecessors—the giant squid in the foam-girt saucer announcing “Every Octopuss prefers Cobbleigh’s Cream,” or the eightsome reel of octopi holding sixty-four bottles aloft and declaring “One over the eight? Never, when it’s Cobbleigh’s Cream.”
Denis shuddered. He knew that these nightmare visions of his, translated into posters, into twenty-times-larger-than-life papier-mache figures, were abroad all over London. This was the reason why he stayed in and kept his eyes shut.
But that was not the worst of it. He knew, as well, that if he opened his eyes and looked steadily into the corner of the room he would see an enormous glass of Cobbleigh’s Cream Stout, darker than treacle, its beaded, crusted froth brown as an ear of barley. By the wind
ow would be a man-high tankard of ale, and regarding him mournfully over the top a pair of huge cephalopod eyes, sadder than a spaniel’s, begging for a drink.
If he dropped his hand by the side of the bed, like as not he would feel an ingratiating molluscular back rising to rub it . . .
I love little Octo, his coat is so tough
His taste’s so discerning, he knows the right stuff
I’ll give him eight glasses of Cobbleigh’s Cream Stout
And Pussy will love me . . .
“No!” said Denis. And opened his eyes. Above the tankard, above the beaker, the mournful eyes regarded him.
Give us a drink. Please give us a drink! they begged.
“It’s no use!” Denis cried despairingly. “If I could, do you think I wouldn’t myself?” He dropped his hand. It missed the bedside table, and a smooth curved back rose and rubbed hopefully against it. Angrily Denis snatched up Uncle Dion’s bottle of sleeping tablets.
“If you can’t sleep, dear boy, take one of these,” his uncle had said, months ago. Every night he took one, but they never put him to sleep. He turned and buried his head in the pillow, to shut out the reproachful luminous eyes, and tried to compose a sonnet.
Greet your green love upon the candled shore . . .
But he could go no further than the first line. Try as he would, his thoughts turned to his uncle, to his uncle’s mission the next day in Portsbourne, and without volition his mind began to run in another direction, and to form lines:
Drinking “Tio Pepe,”
Thinking about Rose,
That’s the way the evening
Generally goes:
Seven, put the cat out,
Eight, make the tea,
Nine, do the crossword
Or peer at ITV . . .
Irritably he rolled over, kicking the vestigial bedclothes onto the floor. “You won’t like sherry!” he threw at the attendant octopi. “It’ll make you liverish.” And he buried his head again.