by Joan Aiken
“Who wants to eat flies?” she said. “Pushing past people in mid-air in that vulgar way, too! If you ask me, their parents never taught them manners!”
“But they are so quick and neat,” said Mr. Mendelson enviously. “I love to watch the tricks they play in the air. Oh, if only I could fly!”
“Mr. Mendelson! Are you out of your mind? A horse, flying? Please! Next you’ll be asking for fish on legs and mice in the sea. Things are in their proper places, and they should stay there.”
Mr. Mendelson said no more to Bertha on the subject of flying, but he continued to watch the swallows with envy.
And he made up a little poem which he said to himself sometimes. It went:
“I
Wish that I could fly.”
He did not say it aloud, for he feared the mice might laugh at him.
“It must be so cool, up there, shooting through the air as fast as that,” he thought.
In Midnight Park it was hot. Spring had turned to a dusty dry summer. The sheep in the park had nibbled the grass down until it was as smooth as a tablecloth. Not a whisper of breeze disturbed the leaves; even in the shade under Mr. Mendelson’s big oak tree the air was as warm and thick as rice pudding. Mr. Mendelson stood flicking away the flies with his tail and wishing for a cool wind—or a nice shower of rain—even a little hail or snow would make a pleasant change, he thought.
Then little Sam came home from school. That made a pleasant change, because Sam came and talked to Mr. Mendelson under the oak, and brushed off the flies with a leafy bough, and he brought Mr. Mendelson bits of carrot and juicy apples.
“Somebody ought to invent a fly-swatting machine,” he said to Mr. Mendelson, fanning away. “I will when I’m grown up.”
Then young Sam made friends with young Tim Lee, who was the son of old Tim Lee, the blacksmith.
Both boys had roller skates, and they used to practice skating in the park. Old Mr. Mendelson enjoyed watching them almost as much as he enjoyed watching the swallows. At first they skated up and down the smooth track that had once led to the big house (now burned down). Then, as they grew more expert, and the grass grew shorter and dryer, they skated on the grass.
By this time Mr. Mendelson thought they were quite as clever as the swallows; they could glide in a long curve, shoot forward fast, turn round sharply, dart off again, almost as if they were flying, and almost as fast.
He watched them all day long.
One very sultry afternoon the boys had skated until they were too hot to go on, and then they had taken off their skates and flung themselves down beside Mr. Mendelson under the oak tree.
Mr. Mendelson drooped down his big head and sniffed at the roller skates (which had been made by Tim’s father) lying on the grass.
“Would you like a pair, old feller?” asked Sam, waving away the flies with his oak bough. “If you could only skate you needn’t mind the flies—you’d be going so fast you’d leave them behind!”
“Well, why shouldn’t he try?” said Tim.
“You mean—skate? Well—why shouldn’t he? Hey! That’s a good idea. He could wear your skates on his front feet and mine on his hind feet. Would you like that, Mr. Mendelson?”
Mr. Mendelson’s eyes shone at the thought of speeding along as fast as the swallows.
“Of course he wants to try!” said Tim. “Here, lift up your hind hoof, Mr. Mendelson, while I tie on this skate!”
In a few moments, all four skates were securely tied on his feet, and Mr. Mendelson suddenly found that he was in a different world, where the ground kept sliding away from under him. He moved one of his forefeet—and it suddenly shot off, on a track of its own, as if it were not part of him; he started to go after it, but his hind feet had intentions of their own; one of them went backwards and the other went sideways. All of a sudden Mr. Mendelson was flat on his barrel-stomach, with his legs each pointing a different way.
“Easy does it, old feller!” said little Sam. “Now—slowly!”— When they had raised Mr. Mendelson from the ground. “Push with your hind feet—ah—not so hard!”—as Mr. Mendelson struck out with both rear hoofs and almost catapulted himself into the trunk of a great chestnut tree. “Gently—just one small push at a time.”
With a boy walking on each side and guiding him, Mr. Mendelson started across the wide expanse of short grass. All the sheep stopped their nibbling and stared, not rudely, but with that look of stupid and rather superior astonishment that sheep wear when they see any new thing.
The two field mice, Bertha and Gertrude, came yawning out from their after-lunch nap in time to see Mr. Mendelson glide carefully past. Sam had hold of his forelock, and Tim of his mane; which was just as well; for Mr. Mendelson’s feet were shooting out in all directions like billiard balls. But just at this moment he was managing to stay upright and keep moving in one direction; although he looked nervous, he also looked very excited and proud of himself.
Not every Orkney pony, after all, learns to skate after the age of twenty.
“Mr. Mendelson!” exclaimed Bertha, quite scandalized. “What do you think you are doing?”
“I’m learning to fly—I mean, skate,” he panted, as he shot past her. Both boys were having to trot quite fast, now, to keep up with him. And his speed was increasing.
“Are you crazy?” Gertrude shouted after him. “You will have a terrible accident. You’ll probably break your neck—you’ll run into a tree! Will you look at that old idiot,” she said to her sister, “careering along as if he had entered for the Derby! Mr. Mendelson! Come back! You’ll be killed—sure as eggs is eggs!”
These shouts of warning went unheard by Mr. Mendelson, who was now a long way down the park, going faster and faster. It was not that he was skating better—simply that he had to go very fast in order to keep up with his legs. And his legs were quite out of control, they seemed like the legs of some other pony.
“Stop him! Stop him!” shouted Tim and Sam, who had now been obliged to drop behind, for they could no longer keep up with Mr. Mendelson’s headlong pace.
They were shouting to the sheep, hoping the flock would bunch itself in front of Mr. Mendelson and block his way—but instead, the sheep all scattered out of his way with loud cries of alarm.
“Baa-aaa-aaa! Miii-iii-ind ou-ou-ou-ou-out!”
The only person who took any notice of the boys’ warning shouts was the gypsy, Dan Sligo, who always kept an ear open for any excitement in the park. He had heard the commotion, and now came to see what was going on.
Even he was startled at the sight of Mr. Mendelson, streaking across the grass in his direction like a small black furry rocket.
“What the dickens have got into the old powny, then?” he exclaimed in wonder. “I never did see ’im goo so faaaarst before, not in all my live-a-long days! Did he get bitten by one o’ they garble-flies?” Then he saw the roller skates on Mr. Mendelson’s hoofs, and began to understand the situation.
“Pity there bain’t a haystack in’s way—that’d act as a buffer and stop the owd feller,” Dan Sligo said thoughtfully.
But there was not a haystack. The hay had all been cut and carted into a barn; the men had been at work two days before with hay-bogies, which are flat platforms on wheels. One of the bogies was still standing out on the grass, and Dan, observing it, was struck with an idea. Mr. Mendelson was coming in his direction. Dan pushed the bogie rapidly so that it stood in Mr. Mendelson’s way, and then he turned it and tilted it, so that its front edge rested on the ground, sloping down towards Mr. Mendelson. Hay-bogies are made to tilt in this way, so that large haycocks can be hauled straight on to them off the ground, all in one pile.
Now, in tilting the hay-bogie down towards the oncoming Mr. Mendelson, Dan Sligo thought he would be able to stop the old pony. He thought that either Mr. Mendelson would start up the slope, and lose speed, and slide back down again; or, possibly, that he wo
uld skate right up to the top of the slope, and drop off and come to a stop on the ground the other side.
But what actually happened was that Mr. Mendelson shot up the slope of the bogie, and then catapulted straight on into the air, travelling onwards and upwards in the same line.
“Oy, mercy, I’m flying!” exclaimed Mr. Mendelson.
He had been silent with wonder and excitement all the time he had been speeding along the ground, but this was a bit more than he had bargained for.
“Saints save us!” muttered Dan Sligo the gypsy.
“’Tis the very first time I ever did see a flying powny, and I’m rale sorry my old grandma bain’t here to see the sight too.”
“Oh, Mr. Mendelson!” cried little Sam racing up, quite out of breath, “Please take care!”
“He’ll be killed! He’s sure to be killed!” lamented the mice, who had come scampering over the short grass, absolutely distracted with alarm.
“He must be ma-aaa-aaa-aaad!” remarked the sheep, all standing with their heads up and their eyes popping.
The Old Lord had come rolling out of the stable, where he lived, in his wheelchair, at the sound of all the uproar. He arrived just in time to see Mr. Mendelson take off.
“What is that pony doing up there?” he inquired, very disapprovingly indeed, as Mr. Mendelson reached the highest point of his flight. For a moment it looked as if the old pony would shoot right out of the park; but he was caught in the top of an ancient, thick, yew-and-holly hedge, which formed the boundary of the park on that side. There Mr. Mendelson came to a stop; nothing could be seen of him but his head, sticking out of the top of the hedge, and his hind feet, sticking out of the side.
“Is this your doing, Dan Sligo?” said the Old Lord, looking up at the hind feet.
“As heaven’s my witness, your honor, would I be doing a thing like that to the poor old powny?” said Dan virtuously.
“Very likely! You nearly always do seem to have a hand in such disgraceful occurrences!”
“Cross me heart, your worship, I had no part in it at all, only to wheel the bogie in the way—” Dan Sligo was beginning, when Tim and Sam rushed up, and Sam said,
“It was us, grandfather—we tied the roller skates on his feet—and I’m as sorry as can be—”
“Well, if it was you, you can get him down, and be quick about it!” said the Old Lord indignantly. “What do you think he can be feeling, stuck up there in a holly tree?”
Dan Sligo good naturedly helped the boys fetch ladders and ropes, and tie a strap round Mr. Mendelson’s middle, and carefully lower him to the ground. It was a long and awkward job.
Dan took the precaution of removing the roller skates from the old pony’s hoofs before they began rescuing him—and it was not until next day that the boys realized they had not got their skates back. Dan Sligo had gone off with them.
Next time they met Dan he said, “Well, I declare! If I haven’t been and forgotten your skates again. There they lays at home. I’ll be bringing ’em along, s’ arternoon, or tomorrow morning at latest—” But somehow he always forgot to bring them, and the boys never saw those skates again.
As for Mr. Mendelson, he was quite stiff for some days, and rather silent. The mice had a long job getting all the holly prickles out of his thick black fur coat, and they scolded him all the time they were doing it.
“Careering about on roller skates! Flying up into the air! What do you think you are? A horse of your age! Perching in a hedge! As if you were a bird! What next?”
Mr. Mendelson listened to their scoldings in patient silence. He had enjoyed the flight while it lasted—he was glad he had done it—but he did not want to do it again. The aftereffects were not very enjoyable. He made up another little poem, and said it to himself as the mice brushed and combed and tut-tutted:
“Flying
Is rather trying.”
A Biography of Joan Aiken
Joan Aiken had a very happy childhood, and her memories centered around her two much-loved homes: a haunted house in the historic town where she was born, and a tiny old cottage in a country village where she grew up. These magical places became the settings for many of her stories, as you will be able to easily imagine if you read on …
The house where Joan was born in 1924, nearly a hundred years ago, was in the small medieval town of Rye, in the county of Sussex, England—a place of cobbled streets and red-brick houses jostled tightly together on a high little hill rising out of the flat green plain of Romney Marsh. The English Channel was two miles away. Some of Rye’s castle walls and fortified gates still remained from when the village served as a stronghold against French invaders. Jeake’s House, where Joan was born, stood halfway up the steep, cobbled Mermaid Street. It was built in 1689 and was owned by several members of the Jeake family. One of them, Samuel Jeake, was an astrologer and mathematician; a huge leather-bound book written by him once belonged to the Aikens. Samuel Jeake had invented a flying machine, and, trying it out, he boldly leapt off the high wall of the town. Sadly, it did not work, and he crashed down into the tidal mud of the river Rother, which ran around Rye. Joan certainly included that in one of her stories!
There was a very ghostly feeling about Jeake’s House, which Joan described as follows: “[Its smell was] a delicious blend of aged black timbers, escaping gas, damp plaster, and mildew; I can remember the exact feel of the brass front-door knob turning gently in one’s hand, the shape of the square black banister post, and the look of the leaded windows with their small panes.”
Just as clearly, Joan remembered the stories she first heard at the house, which were read aloud by her mother and her older brother and sister, John and Jane: “First there was Peter Rabbit, and then The Just-So Stories, fairly milk-and-honey stuff; then Pinocchio, rustling with assassins, evil plots, death, moonlight, and irony; then Uncle Remus, told in a mysterious dialect, full of wild characters, with the wicked Br’er Fox.” No wonder this house haunted her memories!
When Joan was five, her father, the American poet Conrad Aiken, returned to the United States, and her mother, Jessie, married an English poet. Along with her mother and new stepfather, Joan went to live near the rolling green hills of Sussex Downs, five miles away from the closest town. John and Jane were sent away to boarding school, but for the next six years, until the age of twelve, Joan was homeschooled by her mother.
This new home was a different kind of paradise for Joan. Now she could roam the wild garden, climb trees, and explore the little village of Sutton, which had no “sidewalks”—as her Canadian mother called them—just one road with grass banks and little scuffed paths along the top where children had made tracks of their own. Sutton had one tiny store, which sold everything from bread to postage stamps. A four-minute walk from the shop was a forge, where the blacksmith, Mr. Budd, worked at his roaring bellows or clanged shoes onto the great, fringed feet of farm horses. In those days, a carter would go into the town once a week with his pony and trap and bring back goods for the village families. Joan’s household did not have a radio or a car—or even electricity! Water was pumped by hand from a well, and at night they lit oil lamps and candles. Much of their food came from the garden’s vegetable patch and fruit bushes; milk and cream or meat came from farms nearby. Even the poorer families in the area had help in their houses, and a village girl called Lily came to Joan’s to scrub and wash dishes. When she had finished her work, she sometimes took Joan to climb the slopes of the Downs, half a mile away, or pick cowslips and kingcups in the marshy meadow behind Lily’s mother’s cottage. Sometimes, Joan and Lily would walk two miles in the summer heat to a shallow pond where they could bathe.
Jessie quickly taught Joan how to read, and gave her lessons in French, Latin, English, history, arithmetic, geography, and even Spanish and German. With no school friends to play with, books became Joan’s friends—she read everything in the house! First, she we
nt through the novels from Jessie’s Canadian childhood: Little Women and the Katy series. Then, she read all of the fairy tales, The Jungle Book with its stories about Mowgli, and the books her older brother and sister left behind. When these ran out, she moved on to ghost stories or books about history, such as stories about the Three Musketeers and the Princes in the Tower. Joan’s mother would read longer works aloud before they had radio or television; this was their main entertainment. Every night at bedtime, or when the family went on picnics, or as they sat stringing beans for supper, Joan would be listening to stories, so it was not surprising that she soon started writing some of her own. She saved up her pocket money and bought herself a notebook at the village shop, then set to work writing exciting tales with titles like “The Haunted Cupboard” or “Her Husband Was a Demon.” She was so proud of them that she kept those pages for the rest of her life.
It wasn’t until several years later that Joan had the company of a baby brother, David, and as soon as he was old enough, it was Joan who took him exploring on the Downs, and told him stories to cheer him along as he began to tire on the way home. Some of these short tales were published in her very first book many years later, such as “The Parrot Pirate Princess,” which she gave to David as a birthday present. Joan used to say that it was only by racking her brain to answer her little brother’s constant question of “What happened next?” that she learned how to write the exciting fiction she is known for today.
I was lucky enough as Joan’s daughter to have many more of those stories told to me as she was writing them quite a number of years later. Then I was the one asking “And what happened next?” When the tales were finished, she would type them out and send them away to her publishers, and I would enjoy the excitement of seeing them come back as printed books with pictures, just as you are able to see these stories today on your own screens—wouldn’t it have amazed Joan to imagine that all those years ago?