Snakes' Elbows

by Deirdre Madden

  ‘The size of a postcard,’ Jasper said, nibbling thoughtfully on a toast soldier. ‘You don’t get a lot of angel for your money, do you?’

  ‘I saw it once you know, Wilf,’ Barney said. ‘Mrs Haverford-Snuffley loaned it to an exhibition and I saw it there. It was one of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen in my whole life.’ His boiled eggs were going cold in front of him. ‘Just think, if you owned it you could look at it every single day in the year. How marvellous that would be!’

  ‘If you owned it you could close it away, and then nobody would ever be able to see it,’ said Jasper, licking butter off his fingers. ‘Even if it cost lots of money now, you could probably sell it for lots more in the future. And everybody would be dead impressed that you were rich enough to spend all that money on a piddling little painting.’

  And once again Barney and Jasper, without knowing it, suddenly spoke aloud together, saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same moment: ‘I simply have to have it!’

  The whole of Woodford was abuzz and agog when Friday came. A great crowd of people pressed into the sale room at half past twelve and jostled for the best seats. The reporter from the Woodford Trumpet was scampering around talking to people and scribbling furiously in his notebook the whole time. The photographer was there too, taking pictures of everyone as they arrived.

  Plooff! Here was Jasper Jellit looking elegant in a white linen suit, with Cannibal and Bruiser on two stout leather leads.

  Plooff! Here was Mrs Haverford-Snuffley wearing a straw hat with a hole in the crown and a bat hanging from the brim. ‘We’re both terribly excited, aren’t we?’ she said and the bat nodded. ‘I want a new front door and all the bats want central heating.’

  Plooff! Here was Philomena Phelan, the director of the Woodford Art Gallery, with a glum expression on her face. ‘We’d love to buy the painting for the gallery so that everyone in the town could see it whenever they wanted,’ she said, ‘but we have hardly any money so I’m not very hopeful.’

  Plooff! Here was a strange-looking character who crept into the room and didn’t want to have his photograph taken at all. He was wearing dark glasses that may well have hidden a pair of small bright eyes, and although his hair was plastered flat to his head that might only have been because he had put wax on it: usually, it probably stood straight up in mad tufts. The pink nose of a cat poked out from the pocket of his jacket.

  Up at the front of the room was the Haverford-Snuffley Angel, displayed for all to see. Although it really was no bigger than a postcard it was bright as a jewel. The angel had soft brown hair and eyes like a squirrel. Its wings were made of coloured feathers, crimson and green and deep, deep blue. It wore a simple linen gown and in its hands it held a strange musical instrument, like a violin with only one string. The angel looked as if it was alive.

  Small wooden paddles were being given out to the people who were seriously interested in buying the painting. Jasper and Philomena took one each, as did the mysterious stranger. He then took a mobile phone out of his pocket. ‘Hello? That you? It’s me, Wilf,’ he whispered into it. ‘Listen, I’m really nervous. Explain to me again how the whole thing works.’

  ‘Have you got your paddle?’ Barney said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, the man will say a price and if you’re willing to pay that price, you lift your paddle. The auctioneer then says a new, higher price. If someone else is willing to pay that, they hold up their paddle. It goes on like this until the price the auctioneer says is so high that no one wants to pay it. The last person who had their paddle up when the man bangs the desk with his hammer gets to buy the painting,’ said Barney, who was hopeless at explaining difficult things. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Oo-er, I’m not sure that I do,’ Wilf said.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll see how it works once the bidding starts. I’m going to stay on the line, so I’ll help you if I can. Just do your best.’

  Everybody was settling down in their seats now, for the auction was about to begin. At exactly one o’clock, an important-looking man in a dark suit swept into the room. He went up to a desk at the front beside the painting and taking out a small wooden hammer he knocked rat-a-tat three times. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. We only have one item for sale today, but it is a remarkable one: the world-famous Haverford-Snuffley Angel. And so without further ado, let me open the bidding at five thousand.’ Philomena Phelan eagerly lifted her paddle.

  ‘Six thousand.’ Jasper lifted his.

  ‘Seven thousand.’ Philomena lifted hers again.

  ‘Eight thousand.’ Once more Jasper.

  ‘Ouch!’ Wilf suddenly felt a set of sharp claws jab him in the stomach. Looking down, he saw a cross little cat’s face glaring at him from under the flap of his jacket pocket. ‘Gosh, yes, I’d better start bidding too,’ he thought.

  ‘Nine thousand.’ Wilf lifted his paddle and the auctioneer nodded towards him.

  ‘Ten thousand.’ Philomena Phelan again.

  The bidding went on like this for quite some time. It struck Wilf that perhaps they had started with a ridiculously low price so that they would all have a chance to get used to waving their paddles in the air and stop feeling nervous.

  ‘How are we doing?’ said Barney’s voice in the phone that Wilf had kept pressed to his ear all this time.

  ‘I think I’m getting the hang of it,’ Wilf hissed back.

  By now the price had gone up to seventy thousand and Philomena Phelan was beginning to look worried but she lifted her paddle all the same. ‘Eighty thousand.’ Jasper proudly raised his paddle.

  ‘Ninety thousand,’ said the auctioneer. Wilf made his bid.

  Looking sad and disappointed Philomena put her paddle down. She was going to have to stop bidding: the Haverford-Snuffley Angel was too expensive to buy for the people of Woodford.

  Now it was all down to Jasper and Wilf! Which of them would hold his nerve and win the day?

  ‘One hundred thousand.’ Jasper lifted his paddle and smiled at the auctioneer. Afterwards, some people would say that they thought they also saw Cannibal and Bruiser grinning from time to time during the auction. One woman even claimed she saw them wink at each other but she must have imagined it, for such a thing isn’t possible.

  ‘It’s getting very dear,’ Wilf whispered into the phone. ‘It’s up to one hundred thousand.’

  ‘That’s all right, I can manage that,’ Barney replied. But it was a lot of money for a painting, and the people in the room were beginning to be astonished at how high the price was going.

  ‘Two hundred thousand!’ Wilf again.

  ‘Three hundred thousand!’ Jasper waved his paddle.

  ‘Oooohhh!’ said the crowd, as though it were at a circus.

  ‘Four hundred thousand!’

  ‘Aaaaahhh!’

  ‘Five hundred thousand!’

  ‘Goodness me! You bats will get your central heating, that’s for sure,’ cried Mrs Haverford-Snuffley.

  ‘Six hundred thousand!’ The crowd gave a strangled gasp with a kind of giggle somewhere in the middle of it, as Wilf raised his paddle and made his bid.

  ‘This is a world record for a painting of this size,’ said the auctioneer who had gone pink in the face. He was terribly excited but he was trying not to show it.

  ‘Seven hundred thousand!’ Jasper again!

  ‘We’re getting close to my limit, Wilf,’ Barney said. ‘If it gets much more expensive than this, I can’t afford it.’

  ‘Eight hundred thousand!’ Dandelion put her paws over her ears as Wilf lifted his paddle. The suspense was too much; she couldn’t bear to listen.

  ‘Nine hundred thousand!’ Jasper!

  ‘We can go to a million but no higher,’ Barney said.

  ‘One million!’ cried the auctioneer and Wilf waved his paddle in the air.

  ‘One million I am bid! Do I hear one million one hundred thousand?’

  All eyes were on Jasper now, and he knew it. He was
at his limit too, but he wasn’t going to stop. Everyone was holding their breath, waiting to see if he would bid one million one hundred thousand. He twiddled the paddle as if he could hardly be bothered to lift it, as if the whole thing had become a bore to him. But he was within a whisker of getting what he wanted. All he had to do was raise his hand and the Haverford-Snuffley Angel would be his. Pretending to yawn, he moved to lift the paddle and make the final bid for one million one hundred thousand.

  But before he could do it, just at that very moment, to everyone’s amazement something completely unexpected happened. Cannibal jumped up and grabbed Jasper’s wooden paddle, snapping it in two. In exactly the same moment Bruiser leapt and sent Jasper flying, knocking him backwards off his chair and on to the floor. ‘Eeek! Gerroff!’ he cried, for Bruiser was sitting on his chest now, growling and pinning him down.

  ‘One million one hundred thousand! No takers?’ shouted the auctioneer over the racket, for the place was in uproar. Mrs Haverford-Snuffley fainted and the bat fluttered wildly around the room. The reporter from the Woodford Trumpet couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with everything that was happening, and the photographer was taking pictures non-stop. Plooff! Plooff!

  Cannibal was smashing the paddle into matchsticks and Bruiser was still sitting on top of Jasper growling. People shrieked and Dandelion popped out of Wilf’s pocket and climbed onto his head, the better to see what was happening.

  ‘Do I hear any advance on one million?’ It was still Wilf’s bid!

  ‘Miaow!’

  ‘Stoppit! Down boy!’

  ‘Going for one million!’

  ‘Aaargh!’

  Plooff!

  ‘Gggrrrrhh!’

  ‘Help!’

  ‘Going!’ shouted the auctioneer at the top of his voice over all the hullabaloo. ‘Going, going …’ and he banged on the desk with his hammer … ‘GONE!

  ‘Gone for one million to the little fat man with a mobile phone and a cat on his head!’

  Worn out with all the excitement, Mrs Haverford-Snuffley spent the whole of the following morning in bed, fanned from time to time by the cooling wings of an obliging bat. On the faded wallpaper was a bright rectangle, no bigger than a postcard, where the Haverford-Snuffley Angel had hung for so many years.

  Over at The Oaks, Wilf was shattered. He awoke with a groan and looked around the room. To the left, propped against his alarm clock, was the Haverford-Snuffley Angel itself. To the right, standing beside the bed and holding a silver tray, was Barney. ‘Good morning Wilf. I’ve brought you your breakfast this morning!’

  On the tray was a clean white linen cloth and a pot of hot chocolate. There were pats of butter, raspberry jam and a china dish of Woodford Creams, one of Wilf’s most favourite things. He lifted back the cloth on the bread basket and took out a crisp roll.

  ‘It’s still warm!’

  ‘They’re freshly baked,’ Barney said. ‘They were hot from the oven when I bought them and I hurried home.’

  ‘You went to the bakery?!’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  Wilf could hardly believe his ears. Barney never went shopping: never EVER.

  ‘I just stood in the queue with everyone else and I did feel shy,’ he admitted. ‘I thought everyone was looking at me.’

  ‘They weren’t, you know,’ Wilf said. ‘They were looking at the bread and cakes. They didn’t give a hoot about you. They were too busy trying to make up their minds about whether they would have a Danish pastry or an apple turnover.’

  ‘Perhaps they were,’ Barney said and he smiled timidly. ‘When my turn came and the woman behind the counter asked what I wanted, I felt like running away. But I knew that if I did, you wouldn’t have any fresh bread for your breakfast. And you probably wanted to run away from the auction yesterday but then I wouldn’t have got to buy the painting.’

  ‘Too right,’ said Wilf, turning to look at the Angel again. It was proof that it had all really happened, that it wasn’t just some wild dream he had had. ‘We did it though, didn’t we?’ he said. Turning back, he grinned at Barney as he popped a Woodford Cream in his mouth.

  ‘We did it!’

  *

  And as for Jasper …

  ‘I’ve brought you your breakfast, Sir.’

  ‘Don’t want it.’

  ‘It’s rice crispies.’

  ‘Don’t want them.’

  ‘They’re nice and soggy, just the way you like them.’

  ‘GO AWAY!’

  Jasper was in a massive sulk, lying in bed with the blankets pulled up over his head. Even after the maid left the room he stayed like that for quite some time until he ran out of air. Then he poked his head out and stared at the ceiling, trying to remember the last time he’d wanted something and hadn’t got it. Eventually he decided it must have been when he was six and had his heart set on a pet crocodile but his mother said no.

  What had come over Cannibal and Bruiser yesterday, he wondered, curling up and starting to suck the end of the quilt to comfort himself. It was almost as if they’d had a plan, as if they’d dreamed up together what they would do even before they arrived at the sale room. It never crossed his mind that it might have had something to do with the chocolate party some weeks earlier.

  Suddenly he noticed that the maid had left a copy of the Woodford Trumpet on the bedside table. He gave a low moan and slid back under the blankets again. Ten minutes later a hand emerged and picked up the newspaper, taking it back in under the heaped-up bedding.

  The Woodford Trumpet did not make happy reading for Jasper that morning and the photographs were no consolation. Usually Jasper loved to have his picture in the paper, but not when it showed him cowering under one of his own dogs. ‘MAD MUTTS MAKE MAYHEM AS ANGEL GOES FOR A MILLION!’ read the main headline. There were long reports about how there had almost been a RIOT at the auction, how a BAT had FAINTED and how the painting had finally gone to a MYSTERY BUYER. ‘See page 7 for an OPEN LETTER to MR JASPER JELLIT.’

  ‘Oh snakes’ elbows!’ said Jasper, but he turned to page seven.

  ‘MR JELLIT, YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!’ thundered the letter. ‘On behalf of the people of Woodford WE MUST TELL YOU that people should not keep DANGEROUS DOGS if they CAN NOT or WILL NOT keep them UNDER CONTROL.’

  ‘Snakes’ elbows and armpits,’ said Jasper, who didn’t care if he annoyed people. He was beginning to feel hungry now and was sorry he had sent his breakfast away. He turned again to the front of the paper and carefully studied the picture of the Mystery Buyer with his flattened-down hair and his dark glasses. It had been taken at the very end of the auction and the man was bellowing into his mobile phone. There was a small black and white cat perched on his head.

  ‘I’m sure I’ve seen that cat somewhere before,’ Jasper said to himself. ‘I don’t know where, but it looks familiar.’

  Suddenly a light bulb went off in Jasper’s head, as he realised that if he knew who owned the cat, then he would know who had bought the Haverford-Snuffley Angel.

  And if he knew that …

  While Jasper, Wilf and Mrs Haverford-Snuffley were recovering from the auction, Dandelion spent a pleasant morning all alone in the garden of Barney’s house. For a while she lay asleep with the hot sun warming her fur. When she awoke she chased some birds but in a half-hearted fashion because she was not a very good hunter. All the birds that came to Barney’s garden knew this and they teased her, the robin and the chaffinch and the blackbird. They let her stalk them as though she were a tiger or a leopard but then when she was within a whisker of pouncing, they would fly away up into the branches of the great copper beech tree.

  When she became tired of this, Dandelion settled down near the gates of the back garden and started to wash herself. If you had seen her there that morning you would have thought what a tidy-looking cat she was. Dandelion was black with a white bib and socks and a white splodge over her nose. The strange thing is that there are thousands and thousands of cats that
fit this description, and yet they are all different. Certainly Barney would have been able to pick Dandelion out of a field full of black cats with white bibs and socks and splodges, because he knew her and loved her. She washed herself with her eyes closed, licking her paw and wiping it over her face, paying special attention to her ears. But when she opened her eyes again, Dandelion got the shock of her life!

  There, on the other side of the gate, so near to her, were the two big dogs who had been at the auction. All at once they started barking madly. Leaping to her feet, Dandelion arched her back and spat and hissed. She looked angry but she was really terrified. All around Barney’s garden was a high stone wall and in a single bound, hop! Dandelion was on top of it, staring down at the two dogs. They were still barking at the tops of their voices and she hissed at them again, but she felt safe now that she knew they couldn’t reach her. As she sat gazing down coldly something very odd indeed happened.

  A thought formed in her mind, but it wasn’t Dandelion’s thought.

  ‘Please don’t be angry.’

  ‘How strange!’

  Immediately she could see the difference between them, between the ‘How strange!’ which was definitely her own, and the ‘Please don’t be angry,’ which most certainly wasn’t.

  ‘We don’t want to hurt you.’ This wasn’t hers either. The two dogs had stopped barking now and were sitting staring up at her with soft, pleading eyes. How extraordinary! Could it really be possible …?