‘Come on, you stupid cows,’ she yelled. ‘Eat the porridge!’
Overarm, she hurled the final lump. She didn’t mean it to hit a cow smack on the end of its nose … but it did.
In a chorus of moos, they charged.
‘RUN!’ howled Jarvis.
Milk dropped the Tupperware and sprinted. Dried flecks of mud flew off her shoes as she sprinted back towards the fence. She felt sure she could outrun them: after all, cows can’t gallop. Can they?
‘Keep going,’ bellowed Jarvis. ‘You’re nearly there.’
Milk looked behind her. Sure enough, the cows were falling behind. It was going to be OK. She was going to make it …
Just then, her foot splat-landed in an enormous, sloppy cowpat. Milk skidded up into the air, somersaulting twice before slamming onto the grass. Semi-dazed, she raised her head to see eight mad cows rampaging towards her. She tried to get up but her arms and legs had turned to jelly. She could see the whites of the cows’ eyes, saliva slobbering out of their mouths, ears pricked, udders swinging, cowbells clanging.
Then something happened that she never expected to see.
Out of nowhere, Jarvis bounded over Milk, landing between her and the cows. Ripping off his shirt, he slapped his enormous belly and roared, ‘MOOOARRRGGGHHHH!!!’
It was a wild, bullish display. The cows stopped dead in their tracks. For a moment, neither cows nor Jarvis moved, each eyeballing the other. And then, with a sharp jerk of their heads, the cows turned back into the field and continued their grazing as if nothing had happened.
From behind the safety of the fence, Milk and Jarvis waited patiently as the cows circled the lumps of porridge.
‘They’re getting closer,’ said Milk, scraping cowpat off her shoe with a stick.
At last, one of the cows ambled over to a lump of porridge and gave it a sniff.
Milk crossed her fingers for luck. ‘Please, Mr Cow. Eat it.’
‘It’s Mrs Cow,’ corrected Jarvis, trying to squeeze his belly back into his buttonless shirt.
And then a cow – let’s call her Daisy – ate the porridge. She chewed and chewed and chewed, her jaws moving from side to side. Not long after, a second cow found another lump of porridge and gobbled it up. Then a third, and a fourth, until all five lumps had been eaten.
‘How will we know if it’s working?’ asked Jarvis.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Milk, lying down in the grass. ‘We’ll just have to wait.’
She plucked a single blade of grass and put it in her mouth, twizzling it back and forth through a gap in her teeth. Overhead, a solitary cloud drifted through the sky, languidly shape-shifting from a one-legged giraffe into a dog cocking its leg. Milk closed her eyes. In the distance she could hear the Slopp church bells chiming. She used to come up here as a little girl, particularly in winter when it had been snowing. Grandad had built a toboggan entirely out of driftwood he’d found on the beach. Then, for some peculiar reason, he’d covered it completely in tin foil. The effect was remarkable, like a silver chariot fit for a fairy tale. And the best thing was that it was big enough for two.
‘I’m not going to let you have all the fun by yourself,’ puffed Grandad as he hauled the toboggan up the snowy hill. At the top, Grandad sat at the back with Milk tucked in between his outstretched legs. In those days, the slope seemed incredibly steep and Milk would half-cover her eyes with her gloved hands.
‘Ready?’ asked Grandad.
Milk nodded.
‘Are you sure? It’s going to be fast. Our Silver Snow Machine can reach speeds of one hundred miles an hour.’
Milk gulped, but nodded again. With Grandad she felt ready for anything.
‘Well, let’s goooooo!’
And off they went, careering down the hill, screeching like teenagers at a funfair. The silver toboggan picked up speed, scattering surprised squirrels as it skidded effortlessly over the snow. It felt like at any minute they could take off and fly all the way down into Slopp toy town, in time for hot chocolate at Carp’s Café …
‘Milk! Wake up. Look!’ Jarvis was on his feet, pointing towards the cows. ‘Something’s happening.’
Milk opened her eyes and sat up. Of the eight cows, five were shuddering, shaking like leaves.
And then the strangeness began.
One by one, the five cows sat down on their rumps, in a circle, facing each other, with their hind legs sticking out in front of them.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Milk, rubbing her eyes.
For a moment the cows just sat there, as if they were about to discuss important cow business (udder hygiene, cowpat disposal, etc.) – until, following Daisy’s lead, they began twitching their heads, just enough to ring the cowbells tied around their necks.
Straight away, Jarvis realised what the cows were doing. ‘They’re copying the church bells!’ he said excitedly. ‘They must hear them all the time. Listen.’
He was right. The cows were ringing their cowbells perfectly in time with the sound of the Slopp church bells.
‘It’s the porridge,’ squealed Milk, clapping her hands together. ‘It must be! It’s working!’
But that wasn’t the last of it. As the day drifted by, Jarvis and Milk watched, enthralled, as the cows performed a series of remarkable feats. They played hoofball, kicking the Tupperware container up and down the field, using freshly made cowpats as goalposts. They dabbled in acrobatics, including a most impressive five-cow pyramid, and to top it all, they drew caveman-style mud paintings on the side of their water trough, using their tails as paintbrushes.
And then it was over. With a tiny shudder, they became normal, everyday drooling cows once again. The effect of the porridge had worn off.
Flushed with success (and the late-evening sun), Milk and Jarvis headed home.
CHAPTER 14
JITTERBUGS
Milk was the first to notice them: unwelcome shadows flickering inside Carp’s Café.
‘There’s someone in there,’ she said, in a nervous whisper.
‘Maybe it’s the ants,’ suggested Jarvis.
‘It doesn’t look like it. That’s something much bigger.’
They moved a little closer towards the café. It was getting dark but the street lights along the promenade had yet to come on.
Jarvis’s imagination shifted up a gear. ‘What if the ants have grown and changed into super-ants?’
The giant shadows twirled and twisted, pulsating against the walls of the café.
‘Weapons,’ declared Milk suddenly. ‘We need weapons.’
They looked around them, but a seaside promenade makes for a disappointing armoury. All they could find were ice-lolly sticks and half a saveloy; hardly the type of weapons to strike fear into giant ants.
Milk threw the half-saveloy back into the gutter. ‘Wait there a minute,’ she said and hurried across the road. She ducked through a hole in the wire fence and disappeared into the darkness of the abandoned, weed-filled public tennis court. Moments later she reappeared clutching two terrifying weapons: a broken tennis racket missing all its strings and a handful of tall stinging nettles that she clutched in the sleeve of her jacket.
‘You take the racket,’ she said, handing it to him, ‘and I’ll sting them.’
Suitably armed, they tiptoed towards the café. Fog had steamed up the windows. They couldn’t see in.
‘I can hear music,’ squeaked Jarvis in the tiniest of voices. ‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’ Milk put her hand up against the café door, preparing to charge. ‘Are you ready?’
Jarvis nodded.
‘On three. One, two …’
‘Wait, wait, wait,’ whispered Jarvis. ‘Who’s going in first?’
‘Well, who’s got the best weapon?’
They quickly agreed that being stung by nettles was worse than a whack over the head with a tennis racket.
Milk stepped in front of Jarvis. ‘Ready, steady, GO!’ And with
a bloodcurdling yell she flung open the door.
There wasn’t a giant ant in sight. On every available surface were dozens of candles gently flickering out a soft, warm light. All the tables and chairs had been moved to the sides and there, in the middle, were Alfred and Irene, jitterbugging to an old tune blaring out from the café radio.
‘There you are!’ beamed Alfred, swinging Irene through his legs and back out again. ‘We wondered where you got to.’
‘Hope you don’t mind, we moved the furniture,’ squealed Irene, flapping her skirt from side to side.
‘We tried dancing between the tables, but there simply wasn’t enough room. We’ll put it all back later, won’t we, sweetheart?’ And he pulled Irene towards him and planted a giant smacker on her lips.
Milk and Jarvis were rooted to the spot. Not in their wildest dreams had they ever expected to see Alfred and Irene – the argumentative, semi-crippled geriatrics – dancing riotously by candlelight in the café. This was far stranger than giant ants.
‘Have you been playing tennis?’ asked Irene, jiving past Jarvis’s upheld racket.
Jarvis shook his head. He was speechless.
‘We should play some time. I love tennis!’ And she snatched the racket out of his hand and began strumming it like a guitar.
‘Where are your walking sticks?’ asked Milk.
‘Whaddaya need walking sticks for when you’re dancing?!’ yelped Alfred.
‘And you’re not arguing,’ Jarvis said. ‘You always argue.’
Just then, with a blast of bass saxophone, the song finished. Alfred and Irene collapsed on the floor in a fit of giggles.
Grinning, Irene looked up at Jarvis. ‘The door was open,’ she puffed, catching her breath. ‘We helped ourselves to tea and flapjacks. They were delicious, by the way. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘What flapjacks? I haven’t made flapjacks,’ said Jarvis.
‘The ones on the counter. In the Tupperware.’
The penny dropped. Jarvis and Milk looked down at the happy couple frolicking on the floor.
‘They’ve had the porridge!’ whispered Jarvis.
‘I know,’ Milk whispered back.
‘But I thought it was meant to make you clever. Not … crazy.’
‘Me too. It must work in different ways.’
Alfred got to his feet, pulling up Irene after him. ‘Come on, darling. We’ve got work to do.’
Alfred and Irene began lifting tables and chairs, putting everything back in its right place. Milk and Jarvis tried to help, but the old couple wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Tut tut. This is our mess. You two sit yourselves down. You must be tired after your tennis.’
And so Milk and Jarvis sat down and watched incredulously as they tidied everything up.
‘Time for us old folk to go home,’ said Irene, tucking their four walking sticks under her arm.
Alfred thrust a £20 note into Jarvis’s hand. With a twinkle in his eye, he said, ‘Keep the change. We’ve got to make sure a fine café like this never closes. You won’t find us at that rotten Café Smoooth.’
And with that, he offered his arm to Irene and together they skipped out of the door like a pair of spring rabbits.
For a long time Jarvis and Milk sat on their chairs without saying a word. They could hardly believe what they had just witnessed.
‘It’s been quite a day,’ said Milk eventually, picking up the large plastic tomato in front of her and squeezing a tiny dollop of ketchup onto the back of her hand.
Jarvis got up and poked his head through the beaded curtains. ‘The ants have all gone.’
Milk licked the ketchup off her hand. Then she said what they were both thinking. ‘We’ve got to try the porridge.’
‘We must,’ agreed Jarvis.
‘When?’
‘How about tomorrow? It’s Sunday. The café’s closed and you’ve got no school.’
‘Tomorrow then,’ said Milk, with a smile.
‘Tomorrow,’ repeated Jarvis.
CHAPTER 15
PORRIDGE ON THE BRAIN
Sleep was out of the question.
Every time Milk closed her eyes she saw cows scaling the Eiffel Tower or ants jitterbugging or Alfred and Irene playing tennis wearing cowbells. It was all too much. She had porridge on the brain.
Outside, the rain clattered against her bedroom window. At least that’s normal, she thought. As long as it’s raining, not everything is topsy-turvy. She remembered when she was little and couldn’t sleep, Grandma would sit at the end of her bed and sing to her, over and over …
‘You can set your clock
By the rain in Slopp.
Tick tock, tick tock
By the rain in Slopp.’
And if that didn’t work and Milk still couldn’t sleep then Grandad would come upstairs and tell her the story of how she came to live with them.
He always began the same way. ‘Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman who lived by the sea … ’
And with those familiar words Milk would close her eyes and let the first flush of sleep wash over her.
‘And one day, a baby came into their lives. She had two teeny-weeny arms and two teeny-weeny legs and nine teeny-weeny toes …’
‘Ten toes,’ giggled Milk groggily. ‘I’ve got ten toes.’
‘And the little baby was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen and the old man and the old woman were the happiest people in the whole wide world …’
And the sound of the rain mingled with Grandad’s mellifluous voice until Milk sank into a deep, deep sleep.
Now she was ten, she was, of course, far too old for such things, though some small part of her still ached for Grandad to tell her the story one more time.
Milk switched on the light and checked the clock. It was only two thirty-three; ages before daylight. On the floor she saw her copy of Advanced Maths for Really Clever People poking out of the top of her schoolbag. The test was tomorrow and she hadn’t done a thing about it. She imagined explaining to Ms Cerise why she hadn’t done her reading, telling her the truth about the porridge and the ants and the cows. Of course, Ms Cerise wouldn’t believe her. Who would? She’d be better off telling Ms Cerise that evil mushrooms from outer space had abducted her and cruelly experimented with her brain. Somehow, that would be more believable.
Without getting out of bed, Milk stretched to the floor and picked up Advanced Maths for Really Clever People, opening it at chapter one.
Numbers and symbols and fiendish equations lurked on every page and however hard she tried, none of it seemed to make any sense whatsoever. For example:
Farmer x has 243 chickens. Farmer y has 24% fewer chickens than Farmer x. Each chicken lays 4 eggs a day. Using the equation x + y = scrambled eggs, work out which farmer has the longest beard.
What?! It was too difficult. All she could see was a hotchpotch of numbers, jumbling about on the page. Her eyes went fuzzy. A disobedient ‘4’ began sliding down the page in looping spirals. She blinked. Concentrate, Milk, you can do this. Farmer x has 243 chickens … But it was no good. The disobedient ‘4’ began skating arm in arm with the ‘x’ and the ‘%’ pirouetted down the side of the page. Milk gave up. Let them dance, she thought and with blank, staring eyes she watched the numbers swirl across the page in a curious mathematical waltz.
Eventually, Milk tossed the book back onto the floor and re-checked the clock. Two forty-one. Only eight minutes had passed. Why was it that time moved so slowly in the middle of the night? She looked around, searching for something to do. There were old comics and magazines piled up in the corner of the room, and on the shelf was her collection of beach-pebbles-that-resembled-film-stars. Clothes were strewn all over the floor and on the table there were three half-eaten apple cores all turning various shades of brown. It was fair to say she was not a tidy girl. It crossed her mind to tidy up, but even the thought of it made her brain ache.
There was nothing else for it. She decided to go for a walk.
She didn’t care that it was still raining; the night air might clear her head.
She dressed and went downstairs, almost treading on Grandad. He was sleeping on the rug at the bottom of the stairs. The cat stretched out along one of his legs, like some great furry sock.
As Milk crept past him, Grandad opened one eye. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Nowhere,’ replied Milk. ‘I’m going for a walk. I can’t sleep.’
One-eyed Grandad looked at her for the longest time, as if he was trying to remember something. Eventually he smiled and said, ‘Once upon a time there was an old man and an old woman who lived by the sea …’ before closing his eye and drifting back to sleep.
Milk wrapped the rug around him, found her umbrella, the see-through one with frogs on, and went outside.
It was chucking it down – bucketing! – rat-rat-rattling rain beating against her umbrella like marbles in a tin can. At the bottom of the hill, Milk crossed the road onto the promenade. She looked out to the sea, which churned and groaned and spat out great waves onto the pebbled beach. Curiously for this time of night, there were lights coming from the direction of the pier. Milk stopped at her telescope, found her 20p stuck with old chewing gum and put the coin in the slot. It was hard to see anything through the rain. She could just make out the shape of a vehicle reversing onto the pier before the telescope clicked shut. Probably just a late delivery for Café Smoooth, she told herself. She pulled her froggy umbrella right down to her shoulders and marched on through the driving rain.
Sleep was out of the question.
Every time Jarvis closed his eyes he saw cows sliding down the pyramids of Giza or ants ringing church bells or Alfred and Irene play-fighting with pink mashed potato. He, too, had porridge on the brain.
Jarvis switched on the light and checked the clock. It was only two thirty-three; ages before daylight. He sat up in his bed and looked around the room, searching for something to do. It was the same room he had slept in all his life. Very little had changed since he was a boy. The toys he used to play with were still in the trunk under the window, and apart from a few new cookery books the shelves were full of the same adventure stories that he used to read over and over. Hovering above his bed were three model birds, suspended from the ceiling with fishing wire: a blackbird, a seagull and a pigeon, all made with real feathers glued onto tightly scrunched-up balls of toilet paper. At the time, nine-year-old Jarvis was extremely proud of his creations, but now, thirty-three years later, he had to admit they were looking very ropey; the blackbird’s marble eyes had fallen out and the seagull had lost so many feathers it looked like a shrivelled sausage with wings.
The Porridge of Knowledge Page 6