Astrid continued to smile. And, instead of telling Luke all about her aches and pains, which David very much feared she would, she joked about both their appetites. “Are you sure that number of ice creams will keep you going?” she asked. “It says Banquets Arranged here. How about it? Ten courses is a bit mingy, though, isn’t it? Luke would starve. Should I just go out and get an ice-cream factory?”
“Why not?” said Luke.
“Well, it’s fitting it into the Mini,” said Astrid, and David was amazed at the difference being in a good mood made to her. He only remembered Astrid being this jolly three or four times, some years ago, when he had first come to live with his relations, and that had only been on rare occasions. Yet here she was, her face all pink with laughter, opening her handbag to take out a cigarette and taking a mock-guilty look round the cafe, as if Uncle Bernard might be there disguised as a waitress. Uncle Bernard classed cigarettes below bubble gum.
“Don’t tell on me, David,” she said. “Have you got a match?”
David felt in his pocket for his matchbox, and was about to say that Astrid must not tell on him either; but, before he could fetch the box out, Luke leaned forward and snapped his fingers at the end of Astrid’s cigarette. There was a flame like a match-flame for a split second, and then the cigarette was alight. Astrid’s eyes were wide with amazement beyond it.
“How ever did you do that?” she said through a cloud of smoke.
“A trick I learned ages ago,” Luke said modestly.
“I’ve never seen it done before!” said Astrid. Then, not unnaturally, she became very interested in Luke and asked who were his parents and where he lived. But Luke—to David’s disappointment, because he would have liked to know too—was not telling. “But where do you live?” Astrid said cajolingly.
Luke smiled. “At the very tip of South America.”
“Oh, you!” said Astrid.
Before Astrid could ask more, Luke began cajoling in his turn. In two minutes flat, he had persuaded Astrid to buy David comfortable clothes—a thing David knew he could not have done himself if he had talked for a month. Astrid agreed that the neat and comfortable clothes Luke was wearing would be far better for David than Aunt Dot’s kind. But she stuck on the thought of Aunt Dot.
“Dot’ll kill us both if we come back with those,” she said. She thought about it, while David and Luke exchanged a rather hopeless look. “I tell you what!” Astrid said suddenly. “David, can you keep a secret?”
“Yes,” said David.
“Then I’ll get you some jeans and things if you swear to change into the other clothes for meals,” Astrid said daringly.
David swore to do it. It seemed a small price to pay. Since Trubitt’s was just across the road from the cafe, only half an hour later David was provided with clothes to suit him and clothes to suit Aunt Dot also. He and Luke, almost identically dressed, came galloping happily down the stairs from Trubitt’s top floor, carrying numerous parcels and laughing like conspirators. And Astrid, despite her broken toe, shooting pains and various heads, came galloping after them in high good humor, saying: “Oh, I do love secrets!”
But, alas, the second floor of Trubitt’s had a doorway hung with roses and labeled Miss Ashbury. Astrid paused.
“I say, you two,” she said, “do you mind being angels and waiting just five minutes?”
David could hardly refuse. Luke, of course, said courteously: “Not at all, Mrs. Price.”
They spent the next half hour staring out of one of the long windows at the cafe opposite, while Astrid hurried about with armfuls of dresses behind them, in and out of the changing rooms.
“You know,” David said to Luke, “you got her into too much of a good mood.”
“I did, didn’t I?” Luke agreed, rather mournfully.
“She likes spending money,” David explained, and added, to cheer Luke up: “But I’m awfully grateful.”
“You’ve no need to be grateful,” Luke said, quite seriously for him. “None at all. You set me free, and it’s only right that I should do anything I can for you in return. Honestly.”
“Come off it!” David said, but he said it very uncomfortably, because he was beginning to suspect that it might be true.
Half an hour later still, they had decided that more fat people went into the cafe than thin ones; they had each scored two orange Minis; they had counted the windows in the office-block above the cafe and made them thirty-four each time; and Astrid had still not decided whether to buy six dresses or four dresses and a coat.
“I’m sick of this,” said David. “I wish something interesting would happen.”
“Such as?” said Luke.
“A robbery or a fire or something,” said David. “Anything we could look at. All that happens is people and cars.”
“I could manage a fire for you,” said Luke. “Would you like it if that block with thirty-four windows were to catch fire?”
“That would be brilliant,” David said, laughing. “I just wish you could manage it.”
“All right,” Luke said quietly.
David was still laughing, when it struck him that the air outside was oddly misty. The office-block was dim and he could hardly see the traffic. He looked up to see where the fog was coming from, but the sky was blue and clear. The fog was rising up against it, thin and black and hot-looking above the office-block.
“Hey!” he exclaimed. “I think that building really is on fire!”
“Yes,” said Luke. “It caught nicely.”
David looked at him unbelievingly. Luke was staring intently at the building, with a gentle, coaxing smile on his mouth. His red-brown eyes were smiling in a different, vivid way, and moving up, slowly, over the building. “Luke!” David said sharply. As he said it, Luke’s mouth opened in a little sigh of satisfaction.
“Ah!” said Luke.
A big cloud of black smoke rolled from the open windows above the cafe and, whirling round, like part of the smoke, were fierce orange flames. A bell began to ring in the building, loudly and continuously, and it brought people hurrying out of the cafe and the shops on either side. They turned to look up at the building, pointed and exclaimed and jostled. Then more people came out of the glass doors that led to the offices. These came pouring out, far more frantic and many more of them, treading on one another, pushing, spilling out on to the road, shouting, waving their arms and getting in the way of cars. One man’s coat was smouldering and two people were beating it out for him. A lady stumbled and sat down in the gutter. In a matter of minutes, the road was in chaos, with people running all over it, cars stopped in zigzags, a crowd gathering, and a policeman and two traffic wardens trying to move everyone off and not succeeding.
David looked at Luke. He was smiling, smiling, watching the building as if he were entranced. “Luke,” David said.
Luke did not answer. Long flames were beating out of all the open windows. Where the windows were shut, David could see fire behind the glass, orange and whirling, like a sunset reflected back to front.
“Luke,” said David, “I didn’t mean—”
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Luke said raptly.
With a merry double blaring, a fire engine swept down the street and stopped outside the building. Then another came roaring and blaring from the opposite direction. While the firemen jumped down and unreeled hoses, police cars arrived, blaring too, with blue lights flashing on top.
By this time, everyone else in the shop had realized there was a fire. Assistants and ladies shopping came crowding round David and Luke in great excitement.
“Just look at those flames! The size of them!”
“There’s another fire engine on its way. Look.”
“We were in that very building only half an hour ago!” Astrid told people inaccurately.
“Just think of the cost of all that damage!” someone said.
“Oh,” said someone else. “This has made my day!”
It certainly was exciting. David ad
mitted that. But he was struggling with that sick, uncertain, itchy feeling you have when you know you have done something wrong. Flames were lashing from all but the top windows now, and those were smoking. Three hoses were going, in solid arches of water, but they only made the windows steam and splutter and had no effect on the flames. Luke was laughing gently, living in those flames, basking in their heat, and, David was sure, somehow whipping them up to greater power in spite of all the firemen could do. David had no doubt at all that Luke was a very strange person indeed and that Luke had made the fire to please him. That was why he felt so itchy and guilty.
The trouble was that David, particularly in the holidays, was so used to feeling guilty that he had come to ignore it whenever he could. He found himself pretending that the fire was nothing to do with him; that it was probably nothing to do with Luke either; and that, anyway, he had no influence over Luke. He had almost stopped at least the sick part of the feeling, when he looked up, because flames burst out of one of the top windows and across the roof, and flared into the sky against rolls of thick smoke. And he saw two office girls on the roof, scrambling toward a chimney and looking quite terrified. He caught one in the act of throwing away her silly, Astrid-type shoes in order to climb better, and he knew he must do something.
“Luke,” he said, “I think those girls are stuck.”
“Stuck?” Luke said vaguely. “Yes, I expect so. The stairs and the lift have gone. The roof’s going in a minute.”
The women round David saw the girls too, and began asking one another why somebody didn’t do something. David took hold of Luke’s elbow and shook him.
“Luke, could you stop this fire if you wanted?”
“Of course,” said Luke, but his eyes were fixed on the heart of the building and he was not really attending.
“Then could you stop it now?” David said. “Those girls are going to be burned.”
Luke smiled absentmindedly. “Little twits,” he said. “They went to comb their hair first, then they panicked.”
No doubt he was right. David thought they looked just that kind of girl. But it made no difference to the fact that they were hanging on to a chimney in a desperately narrow space between the flames and yelling for help. The firemen had put a ladder up against the next building, but there was clearly no chance of them reaching the girls.
“Luke,” David said. “You can’t bring the dead to life. Remember?”
Somehow, that seemed to be the right thing to say. Luke sighed, and the entranced look on his face altered, so that David could see he was attending.
“Luke,” he said, “I want the fire out now.”
Luke seemed surprised and rather hurt. “Don’t you like it?” he said.
“I love it. It’s brilliant,” David said. “It’s just those silly girls that have messed it up. Do put it out now. Please.”
Luke smiled at him—a real, friendly smile, and not that strange, entranced one. “All right,” he said. “Have it your own way.” Regretfully, he looked across at the building again.
The fire began to die down at once. The flames shrank away from the roof, leaving a wide black trail. At the upper windows they seemed to stoop and cower. Then they were gone, leaving blank black windows, though there were sparks still, round the frames. Then the same happened at the next row of windows. By this time, a fireman was climbing across the roof toward the girls, and the women round David and Luke, who had hardly believed it at first, began to clamor.
“There, what did I tell you? They’ve got it under control!”
“I knew those girls would be all right!”
But, as the fire died down stage by stage, Luke’s face grew sadder. David took his arm again and gave it a squeeze.
“Cheer up. It was a brilliant fire.”
“Yes, it was, wasn’t it?” said Luke.
6
MR. CHEW
That evening, for the first time since he came home, David was not sent to bed early. Astrid was still in a good humor, and so busy telling Aunt Dot about the fire that she let Uncle Bernard score twenty-two points in the illness-contest without scoring one herself. That put Uncle Bernard in a good mood too. And Aunt Dot was pleased because David had come into supper looking as Aunt Dot thought boys should look. David could not resist giving Astrid a tiny flicker of a wink, like Luke’s.
The only discontented one was Cousin Ronald. He was cross because it looked as if England was going to lose to Australia, and because his new gardener had not turned up. “Rang up this afternoon, if you please, and said he’d got a better job at Thunderly Hill,” Cousin Ronald told them. “Of course I got on to the other chap straightaway, but he can’t come till tomorrow. At this rate the garden will be a wilderness by Wednesday.”
He told them this several times. Nobody took any notice. So Cousin Ronald, peevish at being ignored, tried to pick a quarrel with David by making the incredible statement that they could say what they liked, but he knew Gleeson had been breaking the rules after tea.
The reason why David did not contradict him and end up by being sent to bed was that he was too busy thinking about Luke. He thought of Luke working his dishonest miracle on Astrid, and he thought about the fire, and he came to two conclusions. One was that Luke did not operate by the same rules as other people. The other was that, if so, Luke was something of a responsibility. He was great fun, but David was going to have to be careful what he said to him in future. As for Luke’s story about prison and being grateful, David still thought that might be a joke. But he was not at all sure now.
Whatever the truth was, David and Luke spent a splendid evening together. David went into the front garden after supper. He struck a match. And Luke came cheerfully in through the front gate. After that, they rambled round the neighborhood. Luke was one of those who could not pass a yard, an old gate, or an empty house without seeing if they could get in. They found a dozen splendid places like this and returned tired, grubby and happy at David’s bedtime. David went in through the front door. Luke swung himself up the creepers to David’s window. David fell asleep watching Luke’s doodles go, in a procession of dragons, across his bedroom wall.
Luke had said he was going, but he was asleep on the end of David’s bed when David woke up the next morning. He had wrapped himself in the carpet and looked very comfortable.
David sat up gently, not to disturb him, and spent some while looking at Luke’s sleeping face, wondering who and what Luke really was. He was very freckly. The burn on his face had quite gone now, which David thought was odd. He had an idea that burns usually took longer to heal. Another odd thing was that, now Luke was asleep, it was quite impossible to tell how old or how young he was. He might have been older than Cousin Ronald or younger than David. David thought first one age, then another, as he looked, until he remembered that, if he was certain of anything, it was that the usual rules did not apply to Luke. He wished Luke would wake up.
But Luke slept peacefully on, while David got up and put on his jeans. David had to leave him there when he went downstairs, because, in order not to have put on smart, prickly clothes, he had to have breakfast before Aunt Dot came down. He listened for the moment when Mrs. Thirsk went along to the dining room with the toast and dashed downstairs then. He meant to take toast back to his room and share it with Luke. But luck was against him. Cousin Ronald was in the dining room, waiting for his porridge.
“If this new man doesn’t turn up this morning,” he told David, for lack of anyone better to tell, “I shall write to the papers. Sit down, can’t you, boy.”
David had to sit down, and to eat six slices of toast, while Cousin Ronald told him about England’s position in the Test and all about how hard it was to get gardeners. Then, just as David was hoping to be able to go at last, Cousin Ronald picked up the newspaper.
“Typists trapped on roof,” he read. “Oh, here’s your fire, David!” David felt his face go red. For it was his fire, exactly. “Thirty thousand pounds of damage!” Cousin Ro
nald read severely. David shifted on his chair. “Cause of fire still a mystery, I see,” said Cousin Ronald.
At that moment, David heard Mrs. Thirsk going heavily upstairs, and he knew she was on her way to tidy his room. He wriggled all over his chair. Surely Luke would have the sense to climb out of the window or hide in the bathroom? What Mrs. Thirsk would say to Aunt Dot and Aunt Dot would say to David about boys whose friends slept on the ends of their bed wrapped in good carpets did not bear thinking of.
Luckily, Cousin Ronald happened to glance out of the window. He jumped up irritably. “There’s that blessed man at work on the dahlias already!” he said. “Why couldn’t he come to the door as instructed?”
“Excuse me,” David said thankfully and bolted, out of the room and upstairs two at a time.
His worst fears were realized. He heard Mrs. Thirsk’s voice from his room, and then Luke’s. David set his teeth ready to take trouble and pushed open the door. Both of them turned to him. Luke looked harassed, almost frightened, but Mrs. Thirsk did not seem as angry as she ought to have been.
“David,” she said, “here’s your friend fell asleep waiting for you, you greedy boy. You ought to be ashamed. Now just you take poor Luke downstairs and give him a nice bowl of porridge and some toast.”
“Yes,” said David. “Yes, of course.” He realized that Luke had worked another miracle, this time on Mrs. Thirsk. She was eating out of his hand—or rather, Luke was eating out of hers. But he could see she had given Luke a scare or he would not be looking so upset. “Was she furious?” he asked anxiously, as he and Luke went downstairs.
“No, not really,” said Luke. “It’s—look, David, can you help me get out of the house? And if you want to summon me, can you do it well away from here until he’s gone?”
“Yes,” said David, mystified. “But what’s happened?”
Luke took hold of his wrist and pulled him cautiously over to the landing window. He pointed, but, David saw, he kept well away to the side of the window himself. David looked out, expecting—well, he hardly knew what he expected, except that it was something alarming. All he saw was the broad back of Cousin Ronald’s new gardener, who was slowly weeding a flowerbed.
Eight Days of Luke Page 5