“I see,” said Mr. Wedding. “That’s no good then. I’ll tell you what to do later.”
“Is it a crow?” asked David. “Will it talk to me?”
“A raven,” said Mr. Wedding. “And I doubt if it will talk to you, but you can try if you like.”
“Er—raven,” said David. “Hallo.” Cautiously he stretched a finger out to the bird’s large shiny back and gently touched its warm, stiff feathers. “Will you talk to me too?”
The raven turned one eye on him. David could not help thinking it looked rather an evil creature. It put him in mind of a vulture. “Yes, I’ll talk to you if you want,” it said, and David could not stop himself grinning with pride. He could see that Mr. Wedding was really surprised. The bird hunched up to scratch the top of its head with its big gray foot, and looked at David from under its leg. “I saw Luke just now,” it remarked. “He was trying to find you.”
“Don’t tell me where he was, then,” David said.
“It won’t matter. He saw me and went away,” said the raven. “We’ve lost him for the moment.”
“Good,” said David.
“Hm,” said Mr. Wedding. “I think that will do. Off you go.”
“Going,” said the bird and took off with its legs trailing, in another great black sweep of feathers. Looking up, David saw it circling with its wing-pinions spread like fingers while it came round into the wind and tucked up its gray feet like an airplane retracting its undercarriage. “I’ll see you,” it called. Then it was away across the lake with large leisurely flaps of its wings.
“Brilliant!” said David, watching it get slowly smaller against the hills.
“They don’t often talk to anyone but me,” Mr. Wedding said. “You were lucky—I suppose lucky is the word for it. May I speak to you seriously, David?”
“Yes,” said David, a little apprehensively. “What?”
“You don’t know much about me, do you?” said Mr. Wedding.
David looked up at him to agree, and to protest a little. And he saw Mr. Wedding had only one eye. David stared. For a moment, he was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. He could not understand it. Up till then, there had been nothing strange about Mr. Wedding’s face at all, and it had been perfectly ordinary. David had not noticed a change. Yet one of Mr. Wedding’s eyes was simply not there. The place where the second eye should have been had an eyelid and eyelashes, so that it looked almost as if Mr. Wedding had shut one eye—but not quite. It did not look at all horrible. There was no reason to be frightened. But David was. Mr. Wedding’s remaining eye had something to do with it. It made up for the other by gazing so piercingly blue, so deep and difficult, that it was as wild and strange in its way as Mr. Chew’s face. As David looked from eye to empty eyelid and back, he had suddenly no doubt that what he was seeing was Mr. Wedding’s true face, and his real nature. The hair on David’s spine stood up, slowly and nastily, as he looked.
“And I suspect you don’t know much about Luke,” Mr. Wedding went on. “He was not shut up without very good reason, you know. Would it surprise you to hear that he did something very terrible indeed?”
David, thankful to think of something beside Mr. Wedding’s one eye, thought of Luke making the fire, and the hair on his back uncomfortably laid itself down again while he did so. “No, it wouldn’t surprise me,” he said. He knew Luke well enough now to see the way he would have done the terrible thing—with a strange, absentminded smile, because whatever it was had been a clever idea and rather difficult to do. “Luke doesn’t work by the usual rules,” he explained. “And I don’t think you do, either,” he said, struck by a strange similarity between Mr. Wedding and Luke which he could not quite pin down.
Mr. Wedding smiled a little. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t. But there are rules for everyone all the same, and Luke broke them. He went on breaking them even when he was shut up. He took a revenge on us from prison which has had serious consequences already and is going to have worse. I’m not asking you simply to hand him over to justice, David. I must ask him about what he did. Now will you help me?”
This seemed a very reasonable appeal. David thought. “What revenge did he take?”
“I can’t tell you that. You’ll just have to take my word that it was serious.”
David thought again, and he thought that he probably did not blame Luke for taking a revenge. If Luke really had been in prison—and now that Mr. Wedding said so, it seemed that it must be true—then David had no doubt that it had been horrible. Remembering Luke’s face when he first saw Mr. Chew was enough. And, after all, David had tried to curse his own relatives at the mere idea of being shut up for the holidays with Mr. Scrum.
“I could help you,” he said, “but only if you swear not to shut Luke up again.” Mr. Wedding drew in a breath, and David added hurriedly: “Or punish him any other way.”
Mr. Wedding let his breath out again in a sigh. “No,” he said. “That I can’t promise.”
“Then I can’t help you,” said David.
“Then I’ll tell you something,” said Mr. Wedding, with his one blue eye most piercingly on David. “I don’t think you’ve noticed that this place where we are now is somewhere where nobody could ever find you.” David took a puzzled look at the inn and round at the lake and the mountains. “Yes, it’s Wallsey all right,” said Mr. Wedding, “but that’s not where you think it is. If it came to it, I could keep you here and make things very unpleasant for you until you tell me how to find Luke. Remember I don’t work by the usual rules either. Now what do you say?”
David took hold of the table rather hard and the hair on his spine pricked up again. He had no doubt that Mr. Wedding could make things very unpleasant indeed. On the other hand, so could Uncle Bernard and Aunt Dot, and it would make a change from them. “No, I can’t tell you,” he said.
“Doesn’t the idea frighten you at all?” Mr. Wedding asked, seeming rather interested.
“Yes it does,” David admitted. “But I don’t want to tell you about Luke.”
Mr. Wedding sat back, rather thoughtfully. “I see why Chew got nowhere,” he said. “All right, forget that. Suppose I were to give you something you very much want for telling me?”
“Such as?” asked David. He had a moment when he thought wistfully of a dog.
“Such as arranging for you not to live with those guardians of yours anymore,” said Mr. Wedding.
“Oh, could you do that?” David said eagerly.
“Very easily,” said Mr. Wedding.
This was temptation indeed. Golden thoughts of living entirely alone—except for a dog—came into David’s head. Beautiful peace without Aunt Dot or Uncle Bernard or—but David knew this was nothing but a daydream. Mr. Wedding himself had said that children had to live with someone, and, as Cousin Ronald had several times pointed out, if his relations had not taken David in, he would have been sent to live in an orphanage. And, whatever an orphanage was like, you were not alone in it. “No,” David said sadly. “Sorry, Mr. Wedding.”
“Please don’t apologize,” Mr. Wedding said courteously. “After all, there’s no apology possible for such extreme rudeness.” David thought he was joking at first and looked up, ready to laugh. But Mr. Wedding was obviously displeased and had gone most unfriendly. “I suppose you don’t understand,” he said, rather disgustedly, “and the laws of hospitality mean nothing to you. I’ve given you some advice which you might have gone through all your life without learning anywhere else, and I’ve given you a good meal. In return, you treat me as an enemy. You don’t appear to understand that the least you can do is to help me find Luke.”
“Oh no I needn’t,” said David.
“How do you make that out?” Mr. Wedding asked scornfully.
“I haven’t lived with Uncle Bernard all these years without knowing when someone isn’t playing fair,” said David. “I’ve had a marvelous time and a brilliant lunch—and thank you—and the advice was better still. But you can’t
tell me that the earth’s not grateful to a stone for being dropped on and then say I owe you for lunch. You did it all for a reason and that’s not fair.”
To David’s great relief, Mr. Wedding burst out laughing. “Well done!” he said. “My own weapons turned against me. All right, you win, David.” Still laughing, he pushed back his chair and stood up. At once, as if he had given a signal, the big white car came gliding round the corner and stopped in front of them, ready to take David home.
The pretty lady got out and held the rear door open for David. Although David was extremely glad that he seemed to have come through without giving Luke away, he could not help looking regretfully up at the green hill above the inn and down at the misty, rippling lake. The weather was quite hot enough for swimming. But David knew he could hardly ask Mr. Wedding to let him stay. He sighed and went to the car.
9
THE RAVEN
“Oh, just a moment!” said Mr. Wedding. David turned round. “Your relations,” said Mr. Wedding. “They’ll probably want to know what I said to you, and I don’t think they’ll understand a word of the truth. Shall we say that I’m one of your teachers?”
David chuckled. “All right.”
Mr. Wedding took hold of the car door and nodded to the lady, who went back to the driving seat. Then he nodded to David and David started to get into the car. “By the way,” said Mr. Wedding. David took his head out of the car again. “I ought not to let you go away with those shells and stones in your pocket, really,” Mr. Wedding said. “But, as you’ve done so well, you can keep them.”
“Thanks,” said David. “Aren’t you coming then?”
“Not just now,” said Mr. Wedding. “But I’ll see you again. In you get.” David got in and sat down. Mr. Wedding had almost closed the door, when he thought of something else. He opened the door and leaned in. “David,” he said, “what do you say to a contest over Luke?”
“What sort of contest?” David said cautiously.
“A battle of wits, if you like,” said Mr. Wedding. “I can see yours are pretty sharp. Suppose we agree that I can do all in my power to find Luke, and you can use every way in your power to stop me. What do you say?”
David saw two things wrong with this at once. “You don’t work on my rules,” he pointed out.
Mr. Wedding drummed his fingers on the car roof and thought. “Yes, but you haven’t mobilized half your resources yet, have you? You can do anything you like to stop me.”
“All right,” said David. All sorts of cunning plans came jostling into his head, and he smiled happily. But he did not forget his second objection. “You have to have a time limit. You have to say that if I can keep Luke safe till the end of the holidays, then you’ll stop looking for him and won’t punish him or hurt him if you find him after that.”
“Agreed,” said Mr. Wedding. “But let’s not make it so long. Let’s say that if you can keep Luke safe until next Sunday, then he’s safe for good. All right?”
This shook David a little. Mr. Wedding must be very sure of winning to set such a short limit. But he felt he had agreed to too much already to refuse a detail like that. “All right,” he said.
“Splendid,” said Mr. Wedding, and he shut the car door and stood back.
The journey back seemed much shorter. Hardly had they rumbled over the iron bridge than they were in the outskirts of Ashbury, and thence it was no more than five minutes before they were in Lockend and turning into the road, past Mr. Fry’s house. The car stopped outside Uncle Bernard’s house, and the lady got out and opened the door before David could get to it. As David passed her, she held out her right hand.
“Shake,” she said. David shook hands, rather shyly. “Good luck,” she said. “But you won’t do it, you know.”
“Want to bet?” said David.
The lady laughed and shook her head. “No. It wouldn’t be fair.”
If anything more was needed to make David determined that Mr. Wedding should not win, this was it. He ground his teeth together as he went up the drive, and swore to keep Luke safe if it killed him.
Indoors, everyone was having tea in the drawing room. David knew they had been waiting for him, because as he shut the front door, Uncle Bernard called out: “Come in here, boy.”
As David went reluctantly into the room, he looked at them all in the light of Mr. Wedding’s advice. They all seemed exactly the same. Uncle Bernard was yellow and withered and propped on six silk cushions, claiming to have lumbago. Aunt Dot was pouring tea like a good-mannered robot made of some very hard gray metal, and Cousin Ronald was eating cakes with his usual gusto. Astrid was propped on two silk cushions and seemed discontented, just as usual.
“Well?” said Uncle Bernard. “There’s no need to confess that you forgot to say thank you. I know you did.”
“I didn’t forget,” said David. “I—”
Cousin Ronald interrupted, eagerly and nervously. “What did he say to you? What did you talk about?”
“School for a lot of the time,” David said. “He’s one of the masters, you know. The-er-the-General Studies.”
Cousin Ronald’s face went bright shiny pink. “Thank Heaven for that! I thought he was—”
“I’m sure David does not want to know what you thought,” said Aunt Dot. “David, I think it would be a very nice idea if you were to go and ask your friend Luke to come and have tea with us.”
“Thanks,” said David. “Now?” He could not help smiling, because one of his cunning ideas had been to get Aunt Dot to be a kind of guard on Luke. No one, in David’s experience, ever got the better of Aunt Dot.
“Now, of course,” said Aunt Dot.
David scudded from the room. A glance out of the hall window showed him Mr. Chew, digging sullenly near the garden shed. That meant the front garden was free. David slipped out of the front door and down the drive. At the front gate, he stopped and felt among his pocketful of stones and shells for the matches. He had almost taken the box out when his eyes met the one round eye of the raven. It was sitting on the gatepost, very large and smooth and greeny-black. David dropped the box into his pocket and took his hand out empty.
“Oh—hallo,” he said awkwardly.
“Hallo,” said the bird. “I’d better warn you that I’m supposed to follow you wherever you go.”
“Thanks,” David said bitterly. “Nice of you to tell me.”
“It’s only fair to tell you,” said the bird. “You don’t know all the facts.”
“No. But I’m finding out, aren’t I?” said David. “Thanks anyway.”
“You must ask me anything else you want to know,” replied the bird, and it took off, tucking up its gray feet as it rose, and settled on the gable over the best spare room.
David looked up at it miserably. Mr. Wedding had mobilized his resources all right—and the one thing he wanted to know he could not ask the raven: how to fetch Luke without its knowing. He was stuck for the moment. There was nothing he could do but loiter beside the gate for about the length of time it took to get to Mr. Fry’s house and back, and then go indoors again. David loitered, and began to see that the only safe thing he could do—safe for Luke, anyway—was simply not to strike a match until next Monday. But he felt that was a last resort. That made it no battle of wits at all, and, for all David knew, Mr. Wedding might have other ways of finding Luke. What he needed to do was to consult Luke, to tell him that Mr. Wedding was after him, ask him just what Mr. Wedding’s resources were, and arrange some kind of plan. Besides, he wanted to see Luke anyway, just as a friend.
“Luke can’t come out just now,” he told Aunt Dot. “There’s another person that wants to see him.”
Aunt Dot was displeased. “I shall write to Mr. Fry myself,” she said. David wondered what would happen when she did. Disaster seemed to be threatening from every quarter. He saw that he would have to talk to Luke soon.
No opportunity offered. Supper was plain pink meat and plain pink blancmange and David did not feel very
hungry. As soon as he could, he asked to get down. Aunt Dot had just given him permission, when there was a sudden hullabaloo from the kitchen. Mrs. Thirsk was shouting. It sounded as if chairs and saucepans were falling about too.
“What on earth?” said Cousin Ronald, beginning to get up.
Before he could get up properly, or anyone else could move at all, Mr. Chew came flying past outside the French window with his gash of a mouth stretched into an unpleasant grin, and after him came Mrs. Thirsk, purple in the face, aiming blows at Mr. Chew with a rolling pin and shouting.
“You dirty beast! You bandy-legged old sneak!” screamed Mrs. Thirsk, and thump went the rolling pin on Mr. Chew’s back.
Cousin Ronald stayed just as he was, with his knees bent and one hand on the back of his chair, and stared. Everyone else stared too, while Mr. Chew pelted nimbly up the garden on his crooked legs and Mrs. Thirsk pounded after him. At the top of the garden, Mr. Chew seized a spade which was leaning against the shed and turned at bay with it. Smiling hugely, he seemed to ask Mrs. Thirsk to come on and get him.
Mrs. Thirsk did. She came on like a maddened bull, and they heard the crack of the rolling pin on Mr. Chew’s head even in the dining room. Mr. Chew, not turning a hair, swung the spade and smacked Mrs. Thirsk on the behind with it. Mrs. Thirsk hopped like a dervish, dropped the rolling pin and seized a garden fork, with which she went for Mr. Chew like a gladiator. David gazed at the battle, enchanted. Never had he seen a more beautiful sight. The raven seemed to share his opinion. He saw it swoop down over the red face and jabbing fork of Mrs. Thirsk, wheeling and fluttering in the greatest excitement, and then beat about Mr. Chew’s hat, egging him on to hit harder.
It was too good a chance to miss. Besides, Aunt Dot had pulled herself together and was sailing toward the window to stop the fight. David ran. He ran through the house, down the drive, up the road, and did not stop running until he reached the nearest of the deserted yards he had discovered with Luke. It was full of scrap metal. David swung himself into the cab of a derelict lorry and, without waiting to get his breath back, struck a match. Then, while he got his breath, he turned the match over in his fingers, lovingly preserving the flame, watching the burned end grow and twist.
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