by Joan Aiken
Next morning Denis, pale, feverish, but determined, was visiting a psychiatrist. His uncle was out of the way in Portsbourne; it was a golden opportunity.
“You can’t sleep?” said Dr. Finlay. He spoke as if it was no great matter.
“I haven’t slept for twenty years,” Denis explained. “I get all my best ideas at night.”
“Your best ideas?”
“Advertising gimmicks,” Denis said gloomily. “I’m in charge of the publicity for Cobbleigh’s Cream Stout.”
“Ah yes—‘Drink Cobbleigh’s and you’re squids in.’”
“I’m beginning to be haunted by squids.” Denis glanced at the floor. A small cephalopod rose from the hearth rug where it had been lying and rubbed insinuatingly against the table leg. Dr. Finlay’s eyes followed.
“Do you see it, too?”
“A simple case of hypnotism.” The psychiatrist’s tone brushed this aside. He opened the door, called “Puss! Octopuss!” and gently put the creature outside. “You had better change your occupation.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that. It’s my uncle’s business; I’m the junior partner.”
“Sell out.”
“Impossible. I owe my uncle a debt of gratitude.”
“Why?”
“He saved my life when I was four. He pulled me out of a vat of stout.”
“Do you remember the episode?”
“Only dimly,” said Denis, shuddering. “I remember a desperate struggle in dark depths; I’ve been unable to drink stout since that day.”
“No wonder,” said the psychiatrist with satisfaction. “Very traumatic. We must uncover the whole episode; lay bare its foundations. Come to me every day at ten.”
The receptionist showed Denis out. His octopus was waiting for him on the landing, twining itself affectionately on the banisters.
Meanwhile his uncle, three hundred miles away, was being met by a beautiful girl at Portsbourne station.
“Miss Rosita Jerez? How delightful to see you, my dear,” he said, beaming, giving an enormous tip to the restaurant car attendant.
“Oh yes, you can see me,” Rosita said sullenly. “You can see me, but you can’t talk to me. Mother won’t allow it.” She looked as if she did not much care either way.
She slammed the rear door on Mr Dionysius Cobbleigh and his briefcase, climbed into the driver’s seat, and jerked the big, ugly, shiny car into motion as if she hated it. She herself, Mr Cobbleigh reflected blandly, was not unlike the car: big, angular, expensive, and looked as if she had a fast turn of speed.
“Interesting how these old Spanish customs linger on, even after several generations in England,” he murmured to himself—Rosita was taking no notice of him—and he looked out approvingly at the grandeur of the wild view as they ascended the tree-hung flanks of the gorge.
Far downstream a suspension bridge hung twinkling and spindling in the last gold of the sun. It was a most superior place; a high-class place, Mr Cobbleigh said to himself, suitable for the deal he had come to make.
He smoothed his white hair and leaned back smiling like an evil old saint, silky as an olive-stone, while they entered a pair of high iron gates and drew up before a white Spanish-style house all embowered in trees. Good, very good. A poker-faced majordomo; girl brought up in true Spanish seclusion; the blood of hidalgos; all very good. A long, long way from the dead cats floating in the waters of the Liffey.
“I will escort you to your room,” the majordomo announced. “The Señora will see you in half an hour.” Rosita had disappeared.
Cobbleigh grinned to himself. This deal was very unlike his last, fifty years ago, when with the purchase of two rainwater barrels and a heap of barley he had started Cobbleigh’s Cream Stout on its epoch-making way. Now he was a millionaire several times over, and was on the lookout for tone.
“The Señora is ready for you.”
Mr Cobbleigh followed to a big shadowed room. Venetian blinds and cascades of roses held away the light; all he could see was a black lace mantilla and a pair of very sharp eyes. He prepared himself, with relish, for a hard bit of bargaining.
“So, Mr Cobbleigh,” she said dryly, after the formalities had been observed, “you want to buy my business. You want to buy my Avon Gold.”
“Very fine stuff, ma’am,” said Mr Cobbleigh, turning the delicate glass in his hand. As a matter of fact he did not care for sherry, but it was his business to know quality when he met it. And there was quality here, all right—in this big shady house, in the well-covered girl who had driven him from the station, in the bony, aristocratic face opposite him, in the aromatic drink he held.
“And the figure you were suggesting . . . ?”
He suggested it again. The hard black eyes held a touch of derision.
“It’s a failing market, ma’am,” said Mr Cobbleigh, who let neither Irish blarney nor Spanish pride stand in his way when coming down to brass tacks. “And you’re—pardon me—getting on. Who inherits when you—?”
“That, Mr Cobbleigh,” said the Señora, “was why I wanted to see you personally. You have a junior partner, I believe?”
“My nephew.”
“A brilliant young man. Your successor, yes?”
“Oh, the boy’s a genius after his fashion,” Mr Cobbleigh said airily. “He’s by way of being a poet.” His Irishness came out strong on this word, which he pronounced, with some scorn, as phoo-ut.
The Señora nodded, satisfied. “You met my daughter, yes?” Mr Cobbleigh’s eyes gleamed. He began to see whither they were tending.
“A handsome girl. An heiress. No expense spared over her education. Private tuition in hockey and polo, to fit her for an English husband. Now she lives in strict seclusion, as befits a young Spanish lady of high family. Nevertheless we have been beset by fortune hunters. I have had my hands too full with keeping them at bay to manage the business properly. I wish her to be suitably settled.”
Mr Cobbleigh nodded.
“Now, your nephew, Mr Cobbleigh—I might see my way to accepting your perfunctory figure for the ancient and noble house of Jerez’s Avon Gold if your nephew—”
Mr Cobbleigh rose. He bowed. “Say no more, ma’am. The takeover’s as good as completed. We might try mixing ’em—Cobbleigh’s Cobbler, eh?”
The Señora winced.
“Dinner will be at nine,” she said, with the graciousness of a tigress to a visiting crocodile. “Everything in my poor house is at your disposal, señor.” Her eyes warned him how seriously he would be permitted to take this as she rose in dismissal.
“My daughter,” she said in passing, “could play a considerable part in your advertising schemes; like ‘Miss Rheingold,’ for example.”
Mr Cobbleigh stayed in Portsbourne for a week, settling details of the merger. Meanwhile, in London, Denis was going regularly to Dr. Finlay. Step by careful step the doctor was taking his patient back, through school, through kindergarten, through early ecstasies and disappointments, towards that fatal plunge into the vat of stout.
Midweek, Denis was startled by a telegram from his uncle—Cobbleigh never wrote letters—saying:
“What the devil’s Rhein-gold? Research, please.”
Denis took out The Ring of the Nibelung from the library and dutifully ploughed through it. Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, the silvery Rhinemaidens, began to float and dart through his imagination along with the more sober and slow-moving octopi. Dr. Finlay took this development calmly.
“Don’t discourage them,” he said. “You have to get worse before you can get better. They may bring on a climax.”
That night, as Denis lay on his sultry and haunted couch, his waking dream was cleft by a faraway call:
“Weia! Waga! Woge, du Welle, walle zur Wiege . . .”
An octopus, which had lately taken to sleeping curled up at his feet, skittered away, disturbed, and Denis, turning in wonderment, saw beside him a nixie, a sylph with a body as firm, green, and cool as an iced avocado, with upw
ard-floating tresses which wavered as though adrift in an invisible current, with enchanting slanting eyes.
“Woglinde,” she sang, laughing into his astonished face, “Woglinde and her sisters come to bid you share our frolic. Come! Look!”
She caught his fevered hand in her cool one and drew him to the edge of the bed. Below, in place of Axminster carpet, he saw illimitable depths of green and glimmering dark, shot with luminosity. Two more maidens, laughing and treading water, waited to welcome him.
Denis hesitated no longer. With a clean, curving dive he shot smoothly downwards into the waiting arms of Flosshilde and Wellgunde.
Mr Cobbleigh was in a baddish mood when he returned to London.
True, the takeover was complete, but the Señora Jerez was no mean businesswoman, and she had bested him on a number of minor points. By the end of the week he had had more than enough of her haughty Spanish ways. A crime to mix her aristocratic sherry with his plebeian stout, was it? He’d soon see about that!
When he found out that Denis had been going to a psychiatrist his annoyance was quadrupled. Denis had never seen him other than benevolent before, and was horrified. His uncle went small and evil with rage, like a venomous toad.
“How dare ye! How dare ye sneak off as soon’s my back’s turned?”
“But Uncle Dion, the sleeplessness was driving me mad!”
“And isn’t that just the way I want ye? Isn’t it in those waking nightmares of yours ye come up with hell’s own wonderful notions for advertising campaigns? Let’s have no more of it.”
Denis, enchanted with the company of his new nightly playmates and determined at all costs not to lose them, had been almost ready to leave Dr. Finlay of his own accord, but this command put his back up; he continued his visits secretly.
———
Uncle Dion had another shock in store for him. “Ye’re going to be married, my boy—don’t scowl at me like that!—to the heiress of Avon Gold. The date of the wedding’s set for November, so ye’d best go down and get to know the lovely Rosita. Also she’s to be Miss Stout 1960, in a dress by Sacque of Longchamps, so there’s work to be done, work to be done. Here’s her photograph.”
Denis was appalled. “You can’t make me marry her!”
“Can’t I just? What’s wrong with her, anyway?”
“I can’t endure that big black-eyed, sulky type.” Small and fair, sang his mind, small and fair and green-limbed in the hither-and-thithering waters swim those I love.
“Nonsense! She’s a grand handful.”
“Anyway, you can’t call the girl Miss Stout.”
“Now, Denis, me broth of a boy,” coaxed Uncle Dion, “ye mustn’t throw a temperament on me at this delicate time. I’ll strike a bargain with ye—a grand, wonderful advertising campaign from you to celebrate the takeover, and then ye can leave off the pills, take whatever treatment it is ye hanker for, and sleep all ye like. Make up for all the sleep ye’ve ever lost!”
“Leave off the pills? Are they what’s been keeping me awake?”
Uncle Dion’s eyes slid sideways. He was abashed. He had not meant to let loose that piece of information.
“Of all the heartless, sadistic—”
“Now, now, come, come, Denis, me boy. What’s a little trick like that in the family? After all, don’t forget what you owe me. I did pull you out of the vat of stout when you were four.”
“I wish you’d left me to drown in it!” cried Denis with feeling.
The dry, brown summer crept towards its close. The campaign with Rosita as Miss Stout 1960 moved jerkily under way. Rosita flung herself into it enthusiastically. She was a girl with unbounded energy. The more Denis saw of her—and there was plenty to see—the more he disliked her.
She maintained an attitude both lofty and proprietorial towards him. He had hoped that she might be put off by his attendant octopi, but she seemed unable to see them.
“You won’t mind the fact that I am completely unable to sleep?” he suggested.
“It gives us all the more time, doesn’t it?” she countered, sending him a glance like a sizzling backhand.
Woglinde, Wellgunde, Flosshilde, come to my aid! Denis called inwardly, despairingly. But the Rhine sisters had retreated as Dr. Finlay’s course of treatment inched onward towards its end; only sometimes at night an echo of their silvery laughter recalled his lost delights. Desperate, he turned to his uncle’s pills again, but all they gave was a turbid series of images: porcupine, platypus, and armadillo.
He was due for his final session with the doctor on the afternoon before going down to Portsbourne for the official engagement party. Relaxed under hypnosis he had come at last to his fourth birthday, to the trip over the Liffey to his uncle’s brewery, to the very lip of the vat of stout.
“I am standing with my mother, holding my sailor hat with its fluttering ribbons. Uncle Dion, who is as drunk as a trout, is dancing on the edge and singing the Spanish Lady. He slips and falls in. I jump in to rescue him; I have already learnt to swim in the Liffey, unknown to my mother. My hat falls in, too. Its wet ribbons get in my eyes and scare me for a moment; I think they are an octopus. I pull Uncle Dion to the side. I climb out . . .”
His voice faded away, lost in amazement. “I rescued him! He didn’t pull me out! I pulled Uncle Dion out!”
With a shout of joy he kicked a small octopus under Dr. Finlay’s desk and ran from the room.
Uncle Dion was in Portsbourne already. Denis caught the next train down. His heart was as light as the foam on a glass of pale ale. He was free! He was under no crushing obligation of gratitude! His uncle had been fooling him all these years. What matter a few residual octopi (one was sitting beside him on the seat)? He would soon get rid of them.
Now he could leave the business, he could write poetry instead of advertising doggerel, he could sleep all he wanted, and best of all he need not marry Rosita! He was free!
To prove his liberation from old fetters he went along to the restaurant car, ordered a sherry and a glass of Cobbleigh’s Cream, mixed them under the fascinated eyes of the barman, and swigged them down.
“Everybody will be doing it soon,” he said. “You may as well get used to it. Cobbleigh’s Cobbler. It’s a fine drink, too. Makes you won-der-ful-ly drowsy . . .”
By the time Denis left his taxi at El Hacienda he was sleepwalking. He glided like a cloud into the Señora’s highly superior party, kissed her hand with a finished grace, and bowed to his uncle, who stood beside her like a wicked silver-haired gnome.
“I’m asleep,” he announced. “I doubt if I shall ever wake again. I am not going to marry Rosita; instead I have made over to her my share in the firm. Good-bye, my dear uncle. I hope octopi haunt you till you die.”
Before any of the startled guests could intercept him, he was out of the house again.
“Stop him!” shouted Uncle Dion furiously. “He’s asleep! He’ll do himself a mischief!”
They streamed out into the windy autumn night. A copper-coloured moon flung their shadows down the hillside. Far below, the little figure of Denis ran kicking its heels and laughing for joy.
“He’ll go out on the bridge—he’s going! Stop him!”
They raced after him, but his start was far too great. In the centre of the large sweep he turned, bowed again, and flung off his coat. He poised, and dived. A cold sigh of terrified anticipation went up from the watching guests. But nothing, no height, no fall, can hurt a sleepwalker. Down he soared like a falling leaf, and three pairs of green arms rose from the river to receive him.
Whether Denis ever woke again remained a matter for speculation, as he was never seen again.
Uncle Dion perished soon after from a surfeit of octopi; he saw them everywhere, in his bath, in his golf bag, even in his porridge.
The Señora and Rosita carried on the joint businesses successfully for several years, until Rosita ran off and married a matador.
The Magnesia Tree
Like large plums fal
len soggily to earth, the mayor and corporation of Ryme stood in the garden of Nathaniel Bond’s house and looked at the Magnesia Tree.
The house itself was not remarkable—a long brown facade set back from the street across a cobbled courtyard; shuttered windows, a weathercock stuck perpetually at northeast. There were more beautiful sights in the town, which itself rose proudly out of the sea marshes, symmetrical as a volcano. But the mayor and aldermen felt, perhaps rightly, that there was a greater spiritual value in the house of a master of letters than in thirteenth-century tapestries or early fonts. Nathaniel Bond had been dead only a few weeks, and his house was to become a museum, left exactly as it had been when he was alive.
They were discussing it now.
Mr Bond had not been one of the ivory tower school. He had belonged to the monde and had entertained in his house celebrities and distinguished personages from all nations. In particular he numbered among his acquaintances many elegant elderly ladies who would arrive, stepping with a swish of skirt and ostrich plume from the London train into Mr Bond’s brougham, in time for afternoon tea, that delectable meal, always taken, in summer, on the cobbled terrace underneath the Magnesia Tree.
There, by the hour, Mr Bond and his lady guest would gossip and chat—but what informed gossip, what scintillating chat—in full view, but out of earshot, of the passersby along Seagull Street, who thereby felt that they were being admitted to a view of one of the rites of literature.
Presently the lady would rise, bidding Nathaniel farewell, and be swept away, almost visibly, into the whirlpool of fashionable London society; into which Mr Bond himself took not infrequent plunges.
Here, though, was the corporation of Ryme and the mayor herself, Councillor Mrs Tunn, looking solemnly at the tree, standing in a ring round it as if, the august owner safely out of the way, they were meditating some game of elephantine Ring o’ Roses. Their expressions were not playful, however; the tree was in fault; and they had been obliged to call in an expert at municipal expense to advise them on its condition. In fact their newly acquired property, which should have been a pure source of income and an attraction for tourists, was already proving a liability.