Magic Parcel

by Frank English

  “I’ll let you in on a secret,” he confided, bending closer to Jimmy as he dropped his voice to a whisper. “A secret I’ve never told anyone else yet.”

  Jimmy’s eyes widened, eager to learn anything about this remarkable man, particularly anything nobody else knew. His mouth opened slightly, and his cheeks grew vaguely pink as he almost stopped breathing in anticipation of what he might hear.

  “You see,” he went on, “I’m at least three hundred and fifty years old, and I’ve been on other worlds different from this one as well.”

  The light grew steadily dimmer in the room and all noise gradually faded away until all Jimmy could hear was the gentle hiss of complete silence. And all he could see was the glowing face of his uncle, not a hand’s width from his own face.

  “I don’t age very quickly,” Reuben added, “so you wouldn’t tell any difference if you were to see me a hundred years from now. Yes, I shall still be here in a hundred years time. You see, I’m ...”

  There was a loud bang at the front door which made Jimmy jump almost onto the mantelpiece. He blinked his eyes, that slow blink as if waking from a long sleep and interesting dream, and found the room flooded with light again; and his uncle no longer there. He waited for a few minutes and, as Reuben didn’t return, he decided to explore the garden to pass the time.

  “Must have been somebody important,” he muttered as he stepped out of the scullery door into the brilliant late morning sunshine. Standing on the top step and surveying the scene before deciding where to go first, he noticed that the garden was an entirely different lay out from that he had seen the week before. Down towards the bottom of the long herbaceous border where there had been a great bank of thick leathery laurel bushes, there was now a wide gap, showing the sturdy fence beyond; and surely that shed ... had become much ... bigger?

  Puzzled, he set off down the stone steps and climbed across the turned stone balustrade at the bottom, to strike out across the well-manicured lawn. Usually he didn’t manage to reach the end of the garden, for interesting objects often caught his eye en route, off to the left or right. This time, however, there was no distraction; no deviation.

  Reaching the end of the lawn, he stepped out onto the wide gravel path which led across the border to the fence. With only two strides crunched along its noisy way, he stopped, realising that the path he now took for granted, should not have been here at all. And the space he had just walked through should have been an enormous weeping willow! The fence, however, seemed to draw him, against his will almost; tall, black, sinister, letting through no chink of light from beyond, it pulled Jimmy ever closer.

  In the gloom, underneath its shadow, he peered as you would through the doorway into a dark room, trying to see more closely. Suddenly, off to his right, he caught sight of something glowing slightly, about halfway up the oak staves. He blinked and strained his eyes again trying to make out what it was.

  “Funny,” he muttered, “that wasn’t there before. What is it?”

  He moved closer, entering the shadow completely.

  “Can’t be!” he whispered to himself, though he didn’t know why. There was no-one thereabouts to overhear him. “It’s a ... a handle!”

  Sure enough, there was the faint, silvery, ghostly outline of a curved, knobbed door handle in the fence, but no door could he find.

  “Who on earth would want to put a door handle in a fence?” he puzzled, half-smiling, half-nervous. “I wonder if ...”

  He reached out to touch the handle, but changed his mind halfway, only to find his hand drawn, involuntarily, towards the object of his attention. The silvery, transparent outline became solid as his fist closed around its metal exterior. He found himself putting his weight against the lever in an effort to open up whatever was beyond.

  The handle was fully depressed when a small door-shaped section of the fence moved slowly inward towards the waiting boy. A grey mist began to form and to creep out from beyond, flowing along the ground towards him, as a profound silence fell over everything.

  “Jim! Jim!” a deep clear voice, like a spring morning after a night of rain, rang out from the house, breaking the spell around him. “Lunch is ready!”

  Jimmy spun around, loosing his grasp on the latch, and caught sight of his Uncle Reuben’s unmistakable form at the bottom of the house steps. He waved, but turned once again to find that the handle was no longer there, the fence was simply a fence. And the whole area was flooded in warm sunlight the like of which he had never felt before.

  Chapter Two

  “Uncle?” Jimmy’s muffled voice struggled through a large mouthful of his favourite apple pie and ice cream.

  “Yes, old man,” Reuben’s smile spread even further, “what do you want to know?” He knew that whenever the lad used his name in that slow, puzzled, questioning tone, there was some insoluble problem bothering his mind. He never disappointed the boy, always answering every question with equal care.

  “Why was there a handle in the fence at the bottom of the garden?” Jimmy asked, his face lifting upwards towards his uncle.

  “Ah,” was the soft reply, as a new knowing look took over Reuben’s eyes. “You’ve seen it then?” His tone conveyed the feeling that there was an air of inevitability about it - that Jimmy would have found ‘it’ sooner or later.

  “What would have happened if I had opened the door?” Jimmy insisted. “Where did it lead to? There was a bit of mist and a lot of darkness, and ...”

  “Come through into my study,” Reuben suggested, noticing the boy had finished his second helping of pie. “We can talk better there without interruption.”

  “But, there’s no st...”, Jimmy half-protested, somewhat puzzled at the suggestion.

  “There are ‘others’ who may hear,” Reuben whispered, the smile almost disappearing from his face as he crossed his lips with his forefinger.

  Jimmy’s eyes widened and his mouth opened to a small circle as if he was about to suck invisible lemonade up through a transparent straw. Nothing further was said until they reached that most important of places Jimmy never knew existed let alone had seen - Reuben’s study.

  As they walked along the familiar thickly carpeted hallway towards the front door, uncle followed by nephew. Jimmy became even more confused, and was about to ask Reuben why they were going out, when, suddenly, there it was, to their right. That door certainly had not been there before. Jimmy was definite about that. It stood amidst shadow, slightly recessed from the rest of the wall, forming a small, square lobby in which somebody could stand quite comfortably and not be seen.

  A deep and brooding silence had fallen over the house, so that even the ticking of the kitchen clock could be heard quite distinctly. As they approached the door, Jimmy tried to moisten his dry lips by his even drier tongue. The tiny hairs on the top of his back and base of his neck began to prickle with more than a little fear and apprehension, even though Reuben was there.

  As they neared it, the door became much clearer; dark oak staves fitting closely together to form a thick barrier. Where had he seen that before? The fence! Yes, of course! It matched exactly the fence at the bottom of the garden, except that here there was neither handle nor knob, nor any visible means of entering.

  Reuben stepped forward, closed his eyes and began to whistle softly, almost inaudibly, whilst passing both hands lightly over the smooth surface of the door. After a few moments, it began to move inwards; slowly at first, and then suddenly they were in, door fast shut behind them.

  Jimmy simply stood where he was, unable to move for what he saw around him. Eyes wide with surprise, wonder and excitement, he let his gaze amble around the room, flitting from object to object, quite unable to believe what lay before him.

  Large by the standards of his own home, the room was dominated by an enormous, dark, polished oak desk, carved around with intertwining leaves, stems and faces of animals he d
id not recognise. The green leather inset top of the desk was clear except for one object - a large blue and green geographical globe set on a golden stand. The countries traced on that globe, however, bore no resemblance to any Jimmy knew of. In fact, they were not countries which were to be found anywhere in his world.

  The walls were half-covered in the most beautiful red rosewood panelling, which was inset with shelf upon shelf of books of all shapes and sizes; leather-bound, or paper-cased, all were well-thumbed as if in continual use. Many of the titles were in foreign languages he didn’t understand, and the others were in an English, which might as well have been foreign for what sense they made to him.

  Although he wanted to look at everything, he couldn’t keep his gaze from being drawn to the most remarkable feature in the room. The walls above the panelling were hung with great sheets of shiny cloth upon which were printed maps of many different countries, some of which were flattened-out versions of countries on the globe. Others, however, were obviously not of that world either, and on closer examination, he discovered that the details on the maps had been picked out in different coloured embroidery silks and were not in printing ink at all. Between the maps, giving further details of the countries, there were dozens of drawings on stiff card. They were of many items; from places to exotic animals to people dressed in strange clothes, clearly not of this land. He must have spent ten minutes in silent amazement before he realised that Uncle Reuben had been watching him all the time, face wrinkled in that irrepressible grin.

  “Wow!” was the only sound he could utter at first, when the trance had worn off. “Where are these places? We do a lot of geography at school, but I never saw these places in any of our geography books. Mind you, they’re pretty old. Can’t afford any more, Mr Bolam says, and ...”

  “They are not on this world,” Reuben interrupted slowly, quite deliberately waiting to see Jimmy’s reaction.

  As if half-expecting that answer, Jimmy’s voice continued to ramble on but gradually it slowed and tailed away to a complete silence, rather like one of those old gramophone machines running down. He stood for a moment or two, hands by his sides, looking into those deep, wise eyes of his Uncle Reuben, whose face had not changed one bit. Reuben took hold of Jimmy’s hand in one of his own, which, compared with the rest of his body, was incongruously large. With a slight nod of the head, he led him towards the largest map of all, directly behind the desk. As they approached, the great flag-like map began to descend until it was the right height for a small boy to see. The roundness of his eyes betrayed the wonder he experienced as he examined the country more closely.

  Bordered with the same intertwining leaves and flower stems as the great desk, there were hundreds of little pictures illustrating the different areas of the land - from mountain to river; from castle to village; from wild craggy sea’s edge to soft flowing countryside, meadow and wood. All were so real, and the detail so finely picked out, the figures might have been ready to jump out into the room.

  As Jimmy was watching the story of the land play before him, he was at first unaware of the almost imperceptible and melodic drone of his uncle’s voice as it told of the land unfurling before his eyes. Consciously unaware he might have been, but subconsciously his mind took in every detail, every word, every description.

  “Omni is the land you see before you,” Reuben started. “It is the country which is everywhere, and nowhere. Like many others, and yet different, it is wherever you want it to be. The people you see are the same as those in your own world but you may not recognise them as such. All the worlds you see on these walls are the same but set in different times and surroundings and ...”

  Jimmy thought he understood what Reuben was talking about but for the most part he just stood and watched as the stories Reuben told brought to life the pictures before him. The stories went on and on, and took him further into different worlds. If it hadn’t been for the panelling in front of him and desk’s edge pressing into his back, he would have been there amongst the trees and animals, feeling the wind on his skin, and swallowing in great gulps the salty tang of the seaward breeze.

  Lunchtime had turned into mid-afternoon before Jimmy realised that the uplifting voice of his uncle had stopped, letting him down gently from its pinnacles of excitement to the carpet of the lounge. The study had somehow slid away leaving him wondering if...

  His uncle, by this time, was standing next to him, hand around his shoulder, and with a small brown-paper parcel under the other arm.

  “Time’s getting on, old man,” Reuben started, eyes dancing like the sparkle of light on a flowing river; “and I had clean forgotten that this parcel must be posted today. Post Office shuts in half an hour, and I was wondering...?”

  “I’ll take it uncle,” Jimmy butted in eagerly.

  “I rather hoped you would,” his uncle replied with a broadening smile. “The stamps are on, so here’s some money to call in at Mrs Timberley’s shop to get yourself some of those caramel toffees you like.”

  “Great! Thanks uncle,” Jimmy grinned as he skipped down the front steps, parcel tucked underneath his arm.

  “Have fun, and don’t forget to be back for tea!” Reuben’s voice bounced down the path after him as Jimmy skipped through the gate and onto the pavement. He almost knocked over an old man, muffled in a grey overcoat and scarf even though it wasn’t particularly cold; but he had no hat on to protect his shiny, bald, grey-rimmed head from the breeze.

  “Hang on, boy!” he exclaimed in a curiously thin, reedy voice, rather like someone blowing across the edge of a taut blade of grass. “Careful now! Eh? It’s young Scoggins, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Jimmy replied, apologising as he picked up the old man’s umbrella from the gutter he had knocked it into. “Sorry, Mr Grainger, I didn’t see you.”

  Mr Grainger was a strange old man who lived across the road from his uncle. He had a tiny little wife who hardly ever spoke, and a small wire-haired terrier, which seemed to have two of its feet in the grave. His house had a neat little garden, complete with pond and fishing gnomes at the front, and miniature flowers and things at the back. He was often to be seen and heard shouting at the local lads for kicking their footballs over his rather small wall and fence. He had, on more than one occasion, threatened to call the police, but of course he never did. Grumblin’ Grainger the boys called him, not to his face of course, but they pulled faces behind his back, which wasn’t very polite. He had a large stock of confiscated footballs of all shapes and sizes, which he swore he would return one day. But the trouble was, he had had some of those balls for fifteen years or more, and their owners wouldn’t necessarily want them returned - if he could remember whose they were!

  He had a shed - a very nice potting shed - at the bottom of his garden where he spent most of his time, pottering about in the summer and spring, and snoozing in the colder months. He had a huge cast iron stove in that shed, which took up about a quarter of the available space inside. It had an enormous black pipe poking out of the shed’s roof, belching out thick yellow smoke from its top. Everybody in the neighbourhood complained and tried to get him to take it down because it spoiled the look of the area (not to mention the smoke!), but he kept it and carried on in his own cantankerous way. His wife didn’t seem to have much sway over his activities either, choosing to let him go his own sweet way to save arguments (anything for a quiet life, she always said).

  “Now then, young Scoggins,” Mr Grainger went on, “are you behaving yourself?”

  ‘Oh my God, here he goes again’, Jimmy thought groaning inwardly; ‘same old questions, same old conversation’. “Yes, Mr Grainger,” he replied politely, when in fact he wanted to say ‘mind your own business’. This was an exact replay of every occasion in the past when he had been confronted by Grumblin’ Grainger, who didn’t seem to know how to talk to people other than to complain.

  “‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello,” came a
deep rumble from just behind them, rescuing Jimmy from a long, drawn-out history of how good children were in Mr Grainger’s day. It was PC Jamieson, an amiable and rather large policeman from the local station.

  “Hello, PC Jamieson,” Jimmy said, smiling broadly and heaving a huge sigh of relief. The policeman recognised Jimmy’s relief and, winking, offered to walk along with them.

  He was a well-liked man, was PC Jamieson, particularly by the children of all ages in the neighbourhood. He was the sort who would tell you off after a complaint from an adult but not before giving you a private behind-the-back wink and afterwards a don’t-worry-too-much grin. Not that PC Jamieson didn’t tell people off in earnest - he did, but only when he considered you had done something really wrong or worth telling you off for. Consequently he stood no nonsense, and everyone respected him for it.

  “Well, Jim,” the policeman went on, a big grin spreading half way across his face, “holiday again next week, eh? Tell you what, if you want to come to visit your uncle in the week, I’ll take you up to have a look around the station. How’s that?”

  “Would you really?” Jimmy said, a look of excitement crossing his face at the prospect. “That would be excellent.”

  “Make it Wednesday,” the PC went on, tossing his head back as if ready to let out one of his great guffaws of pleasure, “and I’ll pick you up here. Can’t stop now, so I’ll see you then. Bye for now, and mind how you go.”

  He turned away from Jimmy and Mr Grainger, who through all of that had been strangely silent, and took his enormous frame down the next side road where he had parked his bike. The last Jimmy saw of him was his great body, black cape flying out behind in the breeze, on top of that black regulation police bicycle, rounding the next corner down.

  As soon as the PC was out of sight, Grumblin’ Grainger started up again exactly where he had left off, into the same long history of childhood behaviour he had given out, on many occasions before. Jimmy groaned inwardly again, and his head began to shrink into his anorak hood, which he had put on to escape the incessant drone of his earnest companion. He clutched his uncle’s parcel even more tightly under his arm, as they headed, at Mr Grainger’s snail pace, towards the post office.