by Joan Aiken
“Rosa! Take care!” shouted Mr. Mendelson in alarm. “You had better come back and sit on my head.”
“Coo to you!” giggled Rosa, fluttering up into the oak tree once more.
“Take no notice, she’s just showing off,” sniffed Bertha. “You shouldn’t worry your head about that one, Mr. Mendelson.”
But Mr. Mendelson did worry his head about Rosa all day long. All through the day he followed her nervously about the park, keeping an eye on her as she flew.
“Rosa—you are driving me out of my mind! Will you please not go so high? Will you please sit where I can keep an eye on you?”
“Rosa! That branch is definitely not strong enough to bear your weight!”
“Rosa! Watch out! There’s a big bird in the chestnut tree—I think it might be a hawk. Please come down here directly!”
“Oh, Rosa! You are flying too fast—where do you think you are off to? At that speed you will be outside the park in a minute!”
Not a bit of attention did Rosa pay, to any of Mr. Mendelson’s anxious cries. She cooed her giggling coo, and went her own way regardless. By teatime the old pony was quite exhausted with anxiety and trotting about after the wayward pigeon.
At six, Mr. Mendelson tried to put Rosa out of his mind. He pulled the rope which was passed over a branch of the oak tree and attached to the waterproof cover of his piano. This raised up the cover, and then Mr. Mendelson opened the keyboard lid with his chin. And then the two field mice gave a concert, playing wonderful tunes on the piano—fast tunes, slow tunes, joyful dancing tunes, sad haunting tunes—sometimes both mice played together, sometimes one played on her own while the other took a rest.
Usually Mr. Mendelson listened to their music in rapture, with his chin resting on the end of the keyboard; but today he was too worried about Rosa, who had flown to the top of the oak tree above their heads.
However, halfway through the concert she came flopping down through the branches—flap—crash—flump—scuffle—wallop—and perched on a branch directly above the piano. Then she shut her eyes— taking no notice of the music—and went to sleep.
“Let’s hope that’s all the trouble you’ll be having from her for the day,” grumbled Bertha (watching her sister perform a terrific leap, in order to follow one note very quickly by another which was about twenty inches away on the keyboard—ping!—pong!) “Poor Mr. Mendelson’s quite worn out with the worry. What a thing!—to saddle him with such a responsibility.”
Indeed the poor old pony was so tired that his eyes were closing and his head was nodding by the end of the concert; he stayed awake long enough to pull the cover back over the piano, and then he went straight off to sleep where he stood.
When he woke up next morning the first thing he did was to look for Rosa. And his first sight of her made him give a loud gulp of horror.
“Oy, my stars! Bertha! Gertrude! Come here quickly! Rosa has died in the night! She’s dead! Oh my, oh my, whatever shall I say to little Sam?”
“What? What’s that? What’s the matter, Mr. Mendelson?”
Shaking their whiskers and rubbing their eyes, the two mice came scrambling out of their hole.
“Now what’s up?” grumbled Gertrude, who was not at her best in the morning.
Then they stared, following the direction of Mr. Mendelson’s horrified eyes.
Rosa was hanging upside down from an oak twig, perfectly motionless, like a stuffed bird.
“May I be munched up by an owl!” gasped Bertha.
“Rosa! Rosa! Wake up! What’s with you, hanging upside down like a hank of birdseed?”
“Go and stand underneath her, Mr. Mendelson!” directed Gertrude, practically.
Mr. Mendelson walked over and looked up in horror at the dangling pigeon. But Gertrude, tip-toe on the top of one of Mr. Mendelson’s ears, just below the upside-down Rosa, screamed as loud as she could, in a shrill voice like a factory siren, “WAKE UP, ROSA!”
To everybody’s relief, this worked. Rosa shook herself, croaked a little, fluffed out her feathers, and suddenly swung round like a gymnast. Whizz! And there she was, right way up on her twig, looking down at them all and giggling.
“Vrrrrrro! Vrrrrrro! Ricketty coo! Is it breakfast time?”
Off she flew to the hole in the stable roof, and disappeared through it.
“Well I never!” said Mr. Mendelson. “Bless my soul. Did you ever? Did you ever hear of a bird sleeping upside down before, ladies? Do you think she was asleep—or fainted?”
“I think she was asleep,” said Gertrude crossly.
“And I think it’s a very stupid way to sleep. No wonder she’s so addle-witted. I wouldn’t pay any more heed to her, Mr. Mendelson.”
But still Mr. Mendelson, who was very fond of little Sam, and wanted to keep his promise, continued to worry about Rosa, and to follow her about the park, anxiously begging her to come down out of tall trees and warning her against any large birds that chanced to fly past. And Rosa continued to take very little notice of anything that Mr. Mendelson said. But she seemed quite fond of him in her feather-pated way, and spent at least an hour each day sitting on top of his head, cooing and chuckling to herself.
Naturally it was not long before the gypsy, Dan Sligo, noticed Rosa.
Dan Sligo had a hut in the woods outside Midnight Park, and made a living from picking things up cheap and selling them dear; he poached pheasants and snared rabbits and stole horses, which he dyed a different color and sold back to their original masters. He was very interested in pigeons, too; he had one himself, called Cooey, who was a trained thief; Dan had taught her to fly in through open windows, pick up any small valuables that were lying about, and bring them back to him.
The minute Dan laid eyes on Rosa, he wanted to know all about her.
“’Day to ’ee, Mr. Mendelson,” he said, one sunny morning, strolling up to where the old pony stood, watching Rosa take a bath in the pond, and calling anxious advice.
“Excuse me, Rosa, you are going in too deep! Come nearer to the edge, please! Who knows what lives in that pond? There might be a giant pike, that would gobble you up!”
“Rrrrrrrrrkety splash,” replied Rosa, taking no notice whatsoever.
“Got a new friend then, Mr. M?” inquired Dan Sligo, looking with admiration at Rosa’s fat white chest and strawberry-ice-colored eyes.
“Her name is Rosa. She does not belong to me,” said Mr. Mendelson anxiously. “She is little Sam’s, and he has left her in my charge.”
“Very nice too,” said Dan Sligo. “Very pretty turn of flight she has!” And he watched Rosa, who now, to dry herself off, suddenly rose up into the air, spraying pond water in all directions, and then did a whole series of back-somersaults, going so fast that she looked like the tip of a fat white pencil drawing a long row of loops over the bright autumn sky.
“Ought to be in a circus, she did,” Dan Sligo said. “Seems a shame she should just stay here in this ol’ park, where there’s no one to see her.”
“I’m here,” pointed out Mr. Mendelson. “(Rosa! Please take care! You nearly hit the pine tree!)”
“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind—meaning no disrespect,” said Dan Sligo. “My meaning, see, is that a handsome liddle bird like that, so clever an’ all, did oughta be doing her tricks in front o’ crowned heads, not where there’s only an old powny and a pair o’ meddlesome mice as minds everyone’s business but their own.”
Mr. Mendelson did not answer. For one thing, he had no idea what Dan Sligo meant by crowned heads.
“Where does she sleep, then?” asked Dan Sligo idly. “In the loft?”
“Oh, no,” Mr. Mendelson said hastily. “She sleeps out in the park—fresh air’s better—sometimes in one place, sometimes another.”
He did not mention what a heavy sleeper Rosa was.
“’Tis too sharp,
now, nights, for a delicate-reared bird to be a-roosting out in the frizzling-cold air,” said Dan Sligo reprovingly. “She could lodge wi’ me, and welcome; there’s Cooey’s dovecote by my cabin—plenny o’ room for two—she could bide there till young Master Sam do come home from school.”
“No, thank you,” said Mr. Mendelson at once and very politely. “Rosa is not fond of being shut up.”
“Folks bain’t allus fond o’ what’s good for ’em,” said Dan Sligo with a wink. “Suppose ol’ Mars Fox do come along one night and take a fancy to carry ’er off? Then what’d ’ee say to liddle Sam when he come home from school?”
And he walked slowly off, leaving Mr. Mendelson very worried.
“Suppose a fox should catch Rosa?” he said to Gertrude and Bertha next morning, when they were brushing his coat.
“Good riddance!” sniffed Bertha.
But Gertrude said, “She can look after herself. She’s big and fat enough, goodness knows!”
“Besides,” pointed out Bertha, “she always hangs from quite a high branch when she’s asleep in that crazy way of hers. No fox could jump up so high.”
Nevertheless, next day, Rosa was missing.
All day long Mr. Mendelson wandered about the park, quite beside himself with worry, calling, “Rosa! Rosa! Where are you? If you are hiding, come out, please, at once! This is quite important!”
But there came no giggling coo from any of the trees he approached, and he saw no fat white fluttering form turning somersaults in the air.
“Do you think a fox did get her?” Mr. Mendelson said miserably to the mice. “Oh, how shall I ever be able to face little Sam?”
“If it had been a fox, there would be feathers,” said the knowledgeable Bertha. “No, I think Dan Sligo came and grabbed her in the night. After all, he has tried to steal your piano—and your watch. We know he is a thief. You should have woken up, Mr. Mendelson!”
“I get so tired, following Rosa all day long,” confessed the old pony. “What do you think we should do, Bertha?”
“We must go on a rescue expedition,” decided the mice. “As soon as it is dark, Mr. Mendelson, we must go to Dan Sligo’s cabin. You have been there, you must show us the way.”
“Oy, my, shall I ever be able to find it in the dark?” he sighed. “It is such a long time since little Sam and I used to go riding through those woods.” That evening, instead of holding their usual six o’clock concert of piano music, the two mice climbed up and found themselves comfortable seats in Mr. Mendelson’s thick mane, and he carried them to the north end of Midnight Park and out through the gateway into a piece of very thick and tangly woodland which was known as Pharaoh’s Forest, because it belonged to nobody in particular and the gypsies had always camped in it.
Here Mr. Mendelson and the mice would soon have been in difficulties, for he really had no notion which way to go, and the trees and bushes were so very close together. But fortunately Bertha and Gertrude were able to ask directions from their cousins the bats, who were busy flying to and fro in the dark scooping up night-flying insects, and the bats guided Mr. Mendelson through the tangly wood until they came to Dan Sligo’s cabin, which was very cunningly hidden in the most tangly part of all, a little sunken dell which had a thicket of yew and hawthorn bushes all round it, growing tight together, and divided by two little narrow paths leading through: one for Dan to go home by, and the second for him to leave by, very fast, if he saw visitors coming whom he did not wish to meet.
However, luckily, at this time of night Dan Sligo was always away from home, setting out paper bags filled with raisins and lined with treacle to catch pheasants, and looking over his rabbit snares. Since the cabin was dark and silent Mr. Mendelson was able to move softly out into the untidy patch of grass which lay between the cabin and the one-legged dovecote where Cooey the pigeon lived.
Standing underneath the dovecote Mr. Mendelson raised his head and called softly, “Rosa? Are you inside there?”
Dead silence from inside the dovecote.
“Oh my stars!” Mr. Mendelson whispered to the mice. “Suppose we were wrong? Suppose she’s not there?”
“Don’t forget what a heavy sleeper she is!” said Gertrude. “Hold your head as high as you can, Mr. Mendelson, and I’ll run up your nose and see if I can jump on to the dovecote.”
The dovecote was not very high. Gertrude managed to do this.
“The door’s tied shut with a piece of string!” she whispered. “I shall have to gnaw through that.”
Then there was a silence, in which they could hear Gertrude’s sharp teeth chewing away at the string, and a couple of owls calling in the distance.
Then—spang!—the string broke, and Gertrude edged open the door.
At this moment the moon drifted out from behind a cloud, and Gertrude, looking through the door into the dovecote, received the shock of her life.
“What’s the matter?” whispered Mr. Mendelson anxiously, seeing her stand open-mouthed.
“What’s up, Gertrude?” called Bertha. “Why are you gaping like a gudgeon? Isn’t Rosa there?”
“Well—” said Gertrude slowly, “there’s two pigeons here, all right—fast asleep—and one of them is Dan Sligo’s Cooey—but I don’t think the other one can be Rosa.”
“Why not?”
“She’s pink.”
“Rubbish!” said Bertha. “You can’t tell if she’s pink in this light.”
“Yes I can,” said Gertrude.
“Well,” said Bertha, “is she hanging upside down?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Then it’s Rosa. No other pigeon in the whole world sleeps in that totty-headed manner. Wake her up!”
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Gertrude.
“Of course I’m right! Do me a favor! Just get her out of there, before Dan Sligo comes back.”
So Gertrude climbed up inside the dovecote to the perch, and nipped the leg of the pink pigeon, who woke with a slow and sleepy crooning coo—
“Crrrrrroooo-ah!” that was halfway between a coo and a yawn.
“Come along out of there!” hissed Gertrude. “We are rescuing you!”
“Hrrrrescuoooo—coo?”
“Oh, come on, Rosa!” shouted Bertha impatiently from the tip of Mr. Mendelson’s nose. “Hurry up! We can’t wait about here all night.”
At last Rosa came yawning out into the moonlight (Cooey, who was an even heavier sleeper, never woke at all). Gertrude pushed the dovecote door to again, Mr. Mendelson reached up his nose once more, and Gertrude jumped and Rosa flopped down on to the crown of his head.
Just in time: for a bat whirled past at that moment shrilling out in a tiny voice.
“Pssst! Dan Sligo’s coming back through the wood carrying two pheasants and a hare!”
Mr. Mendelson slipped away as silently as he could along Dan Sligo’s emergency escape-way, and the bats guided them back through Pharaoh’s Forest as far as the entrance to Midnight Park. Here, out of the trees and into clear moonlight, they were able to see that Rosa was indeed a bright rose-color.
“What happened to you?” said Mr. Mendelson, aghast.
“Dan Sligo put me in a bath,” giggled Rosa.
“A bath?” said Gertrude. “It must have been a bath of pink paint.”
They were all quite tired, and fell asleep the moment they reached Mr. Mendelson’s oak, where the mice retired to their burrows.
Next morning, though, the mice came out early, to look at Rosa—who was a bright, bright pink—as pink as peonies, pink as sweet peas, even pinker than raspberry icing. There she hung, pink all over, from the branch above their heads.
Mr. Mendelson was very upset.
“I’m sure Sam won’t want a pink pigeon! What ever is he going to say?”
“What’s more to the point,” said Bertha, “what will Dan S
ligo do?”
Dan Sligo soon came hurrying across the park. He thought Rosa must somehow have opened the door herself and escaped.
“That’s my Samoan tooth-billed pink pigeon you’ve got there!” he said.
“Oh, no it isn’t!” said Bertha. “It’s our Rosa. Anybody knows that she’s the only pigeon in England who sleeps upside down.”
“Besides,” added Gertrude,” she’s wearing her leg-band—dyed pink—and it says ROSA—anybody can see that too.”
Dan Sligo was very annoyed that he had forgotten the leg-band.
“We had her colored pink,” said Bertha sweetly.
“We thought little Sam would enjoy the color.”
Rosa enjoyed it too. When she woke, she turned about a hundred back-somersaults, looking like a pink poppy that had gone mad in mid-air. Dan Sligo stamped off, very angry indeed.
“I wouldn’t try coloring Mr. Mendelson pink!” shouted the mice after him. “You’d need a bath as big as a pond!”
Mr. Mendelson was still worried as to what little Sam would say when he came home. But luckily the color faded very fast; rain and sun bleached it to pale pink—much to Rosa’s disgust; soon the dye had all washed off her feathers and by the time of Sam’s return she was her fat white self again.
Mr. Mendelson Learns to Fly
SPRING HAD COME BACK TO Midnight Park. The hawthorn bushes were covered so thickly with white blossom that they looked like huge pale sea urchins dotted about over the grass. The swallows were swooping and screaming, and old Mr. Mendelson the Orkney pony was watching them wistfully.
“Wouldn’t you like to be able to do that?” he said to Bertha the field mouse, who was combing out his forelock with a thistle head. “Do me a favor!”
A swallow shot by them, faster than a rifle bullet, and Bertha looked after it indignantly.