by Joan Aiken
Very soon, Noel was the cleanest elephant to be seen along the whole of the border. He shone bright as a grey polished pebble from the beach, he smelt clean and wholesome, like a ripe tomato. He was plainly as healthy and happy as an elephant can be.
The ceremony of his daily bath became a popular spectacle among the bored people waiting for forest permits. Hannah, the bicycle girl, had the idea of charging twopence for admission to watch the bathing; she persuaded Miles to build a ring of benches in tiers so that the spectators were able to sit, and the ones who had not paid twopence were unable to see; the seats were made of crumpled Cola cans, stamped down and stuck together with chewing gum. They were not comfortable, but they were firm enough. With the gate money, Miles was able to buy more fodder when the pile in Mr. Moor’s shed had run out.
All this was very fine; there was only one snag. Noel did not shrink from the washing. In fact he grew; the daily baths gave him a grand appetite. People brought him all kinds of delicacies, doughnuts and candy floss and crisps, but Miles was very particular about his diet and forbade most of these.
Meanwhile Miles’s catarrh and hayfever, from which he suffered every summer, became acute, because of all the dust in the shanty town; he sneezed eleven times a minute, he could not breathe, his nose grew red as a radish from the constant blowing.
“Mint tea is good for hayfever, poor old Selim,” said Hannah, and she kindly picked large bundles of mint, which grew wild among the rubbish, and dried it and chopped it and made mint tea. This helped a little. Noel became very addicted to mint tea too, and always sucked up a cupful when Miles had his.
Not a bad life, Hannah used to think peacefully, sitting on a stool made from compressed ice-cream cartons, and sipping her own mint tea. She had developed a hobby, she wove belts and neckties out of words picked up off the ground, know what I mean, ever such a nice person, fun for the whole family, labour-saving devices. She also, sometimes, made jewelry out of smaller words, polished—level, noon, civic, peep. Or she would make a pendant out of a few words strung together into a sentence: Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits. Was it a cat I saw?
Miles could not see the point of these activities. Still, he had to admit that she meant well and her mint tea was drinkable.
“But it’s no good, you know,” she remarked. “Old Leon’s not shrinking.” For some reason, she always referred to Noel by his pet name. Miles could never understand why.
“I’m the one who’s shrinking,” he muttered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Indeed he was thin as a hoe from hard work and scanty meals. “Maybe I’ll give up and turn the job in.”
Hannah gave him an impatient glance, but sighed and swallowed whatever she had been about to say. Instead she asked with seeming irrelevance, “How far does the forest go each way?”
“Didn’t you know?” He stared at her in disapproval. “Why, it goes all the way round. Don’t you know that? Where in the world did you go to school?”
“Why—” She gaped at him. “You taught me, of course. At Concrete College. Didn’t you recognize me? I knew, right away. We used to call you Selim. And I used to blow cake crumbs at you through a pipette.”
Studying her carefully, a thing he had never troubled to do before, Miles began to recognize her. Saucy, she had been called in those days, because her initials were H. P., and she had been quite the worst of all his persecutors, a fat pop-eyed mocking girl; despite being one of the dumbest of his students, didn’t know a dipthong from a doughnut, she always had a sharp answer ready when he bawled at her, something that would make the rest of the class fall about laughing. He had really detested her, she had been one of the reasons why he gave up teaching. Now he saw that she looked much the same, really, only she wasn’t fat now, and her eyes didn’t pop out, though they were still big and grey, like glass marbles, and she wore a sadder, more thoughtful expression.
“Funny you not recognizing me,” she said. “I always thought you knew me. More tea?”
“If there is a cup,” said Miles. “I thought you were a horrible girl.”
“Now I thought you were rather a duck,” said Hannah. “That’s what made it fun to see you get all hot and bothered.”
He had been like an owl, she thought fondly—a moulting, downy owl, blinking in unkind daylight.
“Er—I never asked—why do you want to go into the forest?” he inquired.
“Oh well. I always thought I’d like to make a kind of thing out of words. You know? Like a sort of—well—like a kind of sculpture.”
For a moment Miles had a flash of what she meant—a big, shapely, intricate structure, that would shine and glow and sparkle, and give out dark as well.
Rather sourly he remarked, “I’d be very surprised if they let you in for that reason,” blowing his swollen tender nose for the hundredth time that hour. And missed the glance of sympathy she gave him.
Next day her lizard, which had been getting a highly nourishing diet of all the crisps, nougat, and Danish pastries thought unsuitable for Noel, was found to have grown the necessary ten grammes.
“I suppose you’ll be on your way now,” grunted Miles, shoveling Noel’s mash into the rack. And he added flatly, “Congratulations,” as if his feet hurt him.
“Well,” said Hannah, “I’ve been thinking: how would it be if I swopped my lizard for Noel? You’re in a hurry. I don’t mind waiting. You could take the lizard and go into the forest.”
Miles was utterly astounded. For a moment he thought he must have misheard her. No one in his whole life had ever done such a thing for him.
“You really mean that? You’d give me your lizard in exchange for Noel?” He stared at her with open mouth. “Well—that’s—um—I take that very kindly. It’s—it’s very—acceptable. And it makes sense; you know how to look after Noel, he’s taken quite a fancy to you. But,” Miles added with a twinge of guilt, “are you sure?”
“Oh yes. Yes, I’m sure,” she said quietly.
Miles did not wait another second, or look at her again, in case she changed her mind. He threw a leg over his bike, tucked the lizard in his pocket, and sped off along the dusty road to the nearest forest entrance.
Noel and Hannah, though, stood gazing after Miles as long as he was in sight. And Noel threw up his trunk and let out a long, piercing, echoing wail of grief.
“Pipe down, Leon my duck,” said Hannah. “We’ve just got to make the best of things.”
But she, too, sighed deeply as she went off to buy a pennyworth of water.
When he reached the passport point, Miles found himself behind a woman dressed in black from head to foot. She wept all the way along in queue, sobbing and snuffling. Miles wished that she would stop. It was an unsettling noise.
When the woman showed a tortoise to the guard, he said,
“Here, who are you trying to fool? That tortoise has been dead for days,” and he threw it away disgustedly. Nor would he allow her through, no matter how she cried and beseeched him. “It was for a wreath of words for my baby’s tombstone—she died last week—she was only seven months—”
“Can’t help that, missis. Got to have a live animal, between thirty grammes and twenty kilos. That’s the law.”
As the woman turned to go, Miles saw her face.
“Here,” he mumbled, “you’d better have this lizard. I daresay I’ll be able to get hold of another. Take it. Go on, take it.”
The woman gulped a few inaudible words, took the lizard, showed it to the bored guard, who shrugged and stamped her pass; then she hurried off into the forest, which received her like a dark green book opening and closing.
Miles shambled away from the checkpoint. His mind felt a bit numb. He hardly knew what to do with himself. The only thing of which he was certain was that he could not go back and tell Hannah that he had given away her lizard to
a stranger. And yet that was the only thing he wanted to do. He longed for the cup of mint tea he knew she would have made him, and for Noel’s welcoming bellows of joy.
A river ran into the forest not far away. Miles went and sat on its bank, by the wire barricade that bridged it.
“Can’t use the fish from there!” called the guard from the checkpoint. “Fish ain’t legal tender.”
Miles did not trouble to reply. He squatted, peering into the thick grey-green muddy water, as if he hoped to see his own reflection there.
Several weeks passed by.
Noel missed Miles dreadfully. He moaned, he keened and droned. He pined and lost weight. His ears drooped. He seemed to find less enjoyment from his bath. Hannah began to worry about him. She, too, missed Miles, but at least she was able to cheer herself by imagining him in the forest. And she had developed a new hobby: she picked up trampled words, straightening them or rinsing them in Noel’s bath water, and stitched them together. Attractive, best deal, sought after, monster, hopefuly, impractical . . . her idea was to make a big quilted patchwork blanket for Noel, now that winter was on the way; gale-force winds blew, Noel shivered at night and whimpered in his sleep, drifts of words blew about and piled in corners. “That elephant’s not in good shape,” said a boundary inspector who passed by in a truck. “I may have to send the Prevention Officer to have him painlessly put to sleep. We can’t have elephant sickness along the border.”
Then Hannah had a better idea. But she knew that she would have to act speedily. She spun words into a line, made a net from it, and packed up Noel’s fodder. Taking a sandwich and flask of mint tea for herself, she climbed on to Noel’s back and rode to the edge of the forest. Here, as she had hoped, she was able to pick up branches blown down in gales, just a few of them sufficiently long and straight and sappy for her purpose. When she had found five or six of these, with the suspicious frontier guards training their guns on her, she retreated out of danger. Then, while Noel watched, she made a kite, splicing her word-patchwork across the frame she had constructed, and fastening it tight. The kite, when completed, was big and handsome, like a great multicoloured star.
“Looks all right, Leon my boy,” she said to the watching elephant. “But the thing is, will it fly?”
At first it would not; until she had made a tail from a series of words linked together, new appeal fashion trendy custom-made love tender true. Then it shot up into the sky like a live thing, wheeling about in the last light of the sun, which was sinking into a nest of storm clouds, while the wind sang and thrummed past the long line of linked sentences. Noel, with cocked head and outspread ears, threw up his trunk joyfully and followed the flight of the word-bird as it swooped and danced overhead.
“The next thing is, Leon,” said Hannah, “will it carry us? That’s what we shan’t know till we try. And we can’t try till after dark, or those fellows on their lookout will fill us so full of bullets that we shall look like Eccles cakes.”
While twilight fell, she played her kite in the black and green curdled sky, as a fisherman plays a fish, letting it out as far as the line would take it, then reeling in again till the kite bucked and shied and flounced just above their heads. The wind blew stronger and stronger, towards the forest; they could, even from where they were, hear the trees groan and shriek and thrash their branches.
“There’ll be some shelter down below, I expect, Leon my duck,” said Hannah. “And somewhere under those trees we’ll meet Selim again. You’ll be glad to see him, eh?”
Noel crooned with pleasure at the name.
“You missed your bath today, boy,” Hannah said. “Better have a splash in the river before we take off.”
So while she ate her sandwich, Noel rinsed himself enjoyably in the water which looked dark as tar in the fading light. All the time the night grew darker and the wind blew harder; then Hannah hooked the kite line on to a strap made from word-webbing which she had buckled round Noel’s midriff. She passed the line under a similar belt around herself, and waited for a really strong gust. When that came, she pulled in hard on the line, and felt the force of the wind lift both Noel and herself clean off the ground. Noel hooted with alarm and startled delight as he found himself suddenly swaying three metres above ground level at the rope’s end.
“Just keep calm, Leon my lad,” said Hannah, clutching a fold of his ear with one hand while she paid out line with the other. “The way this wind is setting, it will lift us nicely over the wire.”
They were following the course of the river. Below them, they could see its dim gleam as they skimmed along, three or four metres above the surface.
“Just a little higher, to lift us over the wire,” muttered Hannah, hauling in on the line. Up above them in the sky, which was now almost totally dark, the kite could be seen giving out a faint glow, like a luminous light-switch, as it raced ahead of them.
Then suddenly Noel let out a strange cry—like that of a dog who sees his master being carried past him on a train.
“What is it, Leon, old love?” said Hannah. “Don’t be nervous. The ride won’t last much longer.”
But Noel was pointing with his trunk at a huddled figure on the river bank who sat and gazed into the soupy depths—Noel was pointing and crying and tooting all at the same time with the same trunk.
“Good gracious, that’s never Selim?” gasped Hannah. “Selim! Selim! Is that you? What the blazes are you doing there? Why aren’t you in the forest?”
And then, as they swept over him, she called, “Here, quick! Grab this!” and dropped the end of the kite line.
By pure good luck, Miles caught it, and, by pure good luck, the only athletic sport he had ever fancied was rope-climbing. Hand over hand he hauled himself up the dangling line, so that when they passed the barbed wire barricade, he was just a hair’s breadth above it and out of danger.
Then they were bumping and thrashing through the forest branches. The line broke with a shrill twang and the kite, set free, flew off and vanished in the night sky. Its passengers tumbled down, among bushes and boughs, scratched and bruised, but not seriously hurt. They huddled in a dark group, feeling and hugging one another.
“Just listen to the words,” said Hannah. “Just smell them!”
Sure enough, a wonderful fresh, aromatic, rainy, spicy smell floated all around them in the forest darkness, and a soft continuous murmuring rustling, chirping twittering nutritious warbling came from all directions; so that, weak, amazed, sore and battered as they were, still they seemed to be understanding more, in the space of a couple of minutes, than they had ever done before in the whole of their lives.
“What does—?” began Miles, but Hannah laid a finger on his lips, and a hand on Noel’s trunk.
“Hush! Just listen!”
Probably they are listening still.
A Room Full of Leaves
Once there was a poor little boy who lived with a lot of his relatives in an enormous house called Troy. The relatives were rich, but they were so nasty that they might just as well have been poor, for all of the good their money did them. The worst of them all was Aunt Agatha, who was thin and sharp, and the next worst was Uncle Umbert, who was stout and prosperous. We shall return to them later. There was also a fierce old nurse called Squab, and a tutor, Mr. Buckle, who helped to make the little boy’s life a burden. His name was Wilfred, which was a family name, but he was so tired of hearing them all say: “You must live up to your name, child,” that in his own mind he called himself Wil. It had to be in his mind, for he had no playmates—other children were declared to be common, and probably dangerous and infectious too.
One rainy Saturday afternoon Wil sat in his schoolroom finishing some Latin parsing for Mr. Buckle before being taken for his walk, which was always in one of two directions. If Squabb took him they went downtown “to look at the shops” in a suburb of Lo
ndon which was sprawling out its claws towards the big house; but the shops were never the ones Wil would have chosen to look at. If he went with Mr. Buckle they crossed the Common diagonally (avoiding the pond where rude little boys sailed their boats) and came back along the white-railed bridle path while Mr. Buckle talked about plant life.
So Wil was not looking forward with great enthusiasm to his walk, and when Squabb came in and told him that it was too wet to go out and he must amuse himself quietly with his jigsaw puzzles, he was delighted. He sat gazing dreamily at the jigsaw puzzles for a while, not getting on with them, while Squabb did some ironing. It was nearly dark, although the time was only three. Squabb switched on the light and picked a fresh heap of ironing off the fender.
All of a sudden there was a blue flash and a report from the iron; a strong smell of burnt rubber filled the room and the lights went out.
“Now I suppose the perishing thing’s blown the fuse for this whole floor,” exclaimed Squabb and she hurried out of the room, muttering something under her breath about newfangled gadgets.
Wil did not waste a second. Before the door had closed after her he was tiptoeing across the room and out of the other door. In the darkness and confusion no one would miss him for quite a considerable time, and he would have a rare opportunity to be on his own for a bit.
The house in which he lived was very huge. Nobody knew exactly how many rooms there were—but there was one for each day of the year and plenty left over. Innumerable little courtyards, each with its own patch of green velvet grass, had passages leading away in all directions to different blocks and wings. Towards the back of the house there were fewer courtyards; it drew itself together into a solid mass which touched the forest behind. The most important rooms were open to the public on four days a week; Mr. Buckle and a skinny lady from the town showed visitors around, and all the relics and heirlooms were carefully locked up inside glass cases where they could be gazed at—the silver washbasin used by James II, a dirty old exercise book belonging to the poet Pope, the little pot of neat’s foot ointment left by Henry VIII, and all the other tiny bits of history. Even in those days visitors were careless about leaving things behind.