‘It’s a helmet!’ screeched Ida.
‘A head lid,’ said Ping. ‘An Oskar lid.’
Oskar put it on. It fitted him perfectly. As his hands passed over it, the raised part on top that he had thought was the pedestal, became obviously the socket for his plumes.
They picked flowering rushes and tied the stalks into a firm base to fit the socket, and there was Oskar looking like King Arthur himself, at least to Ida’s eyes. And because the helmet seemed to demand it of its wearer, Oskar stood up in the canoe all the way home – an art requiring much practice if the canoe was not to be overturned, and leaving all the work to the other two. But it looked magnificent.
*
THEY WERE ALL VERY hungry when they got back to the house, their first morning on the river in retrospect seemed like days. Miss Sybilla was delighted as she looked round the table from plate to plate, even from face to face, and saw large helpings of lovely food going down. But alas, Ping had only eaten half his first plateful when he put his knife and fork tidily down and turning his black almond eyes first to one hostess and then the other said:
‘Excuse me, please. I beg your pardon for my rudeness, but I cannot eat any more. Already it hurts. Excuse me, please.’
‘Nonsense, Ping,’ said Miss Sybilla, ‘I don’t cook just to have it left.’ She piled second helpings on Ida’s and Oskar’s plates, which they received with willingness. ‘Come along, Ping. Don’t disappoint me.’
‘Leave him alone, Sybilla,’ said Dr Biggin looking up from the book she read during meals. ‘Remember he’s an Oriental. They can live on a few grains of rice. Look at his slight bones. You can’t expect him to eat like a Teuton.’
‘Thank you,’ said Ping, holding his stomach with both hands.
For this reason Ping could never be a favourite with Miss Bun. No one in fact could compete with Oskar at table. The two ladies had not asked any questions about the morning’s outing, nor did they throughout the holidays. Perhaps they thought children’s occupations too foolish to interest grown-ups. Not a word was said about the lock key or the helmet. The latter was carefully cleaned by Oskar and hung up beside his father’s picture as an offering.
*
IN THE AFTERNOON the children set off again, this time going upstream. ‘We will make a map of the river,’ Ida proposed, ‘and put in it every island that we have been right round, and all the weirs and locks. It will be in colours, with little pictures of the important things. We will paint it on a roll of white wall-paper, because I expect we shall go a long way up and down. Green Knowe will be in the middle.’ Hardly out of sight of Green Knowe they paddled round a small island only a few yards across in any direction, on which the swan family had their nest. The six cygnets were having an afternoon nap under their mother’s feathers. She sat erect and alert, but the cob was off duty, lazily cruising around. The first island on the children’s map was therefore to be Swan Island. They passed under a wooden railway bridge that was built low over the water, and were lucky enough to get the thundery rumble of a train going over just above their ears. It was a train suitable to deep country, a ridiculous unlikely toy engine with goods trucks, and the only train in the day. Its squawky whistle and the drone of aeroplanes so high up as to look like gnats were the only sounds they heard that were not made by the river, as it were under its breath, or the wild inhabitants of its banks and pools. It seemed as though all the noise was in the sky, and at earth-level nothing but sighs of contentment and midsummer dreaming. They were not a talkative trio. Ida and Oskar were firm friends almost at sight, and they both loved Ping. Ida’s laugh was like a bird’s flutter, Oskar’s more like a puppy’s woof. Ping seldom laughed out loud himself, but his smile was often a reason why the others did. Generally they paddled silently like Indians. They made their way all round a narrow island completely and thickly covered with brambles and nettles and thorny sloes that leaned out over the water. They christened it Tangle Island, and this was the first one about which they felt certain that no human being had set foot on it for as long as they could imagine. There simply wasn’t room for a foot even at the very edge. Beyond this, the river divided into two. Both ways looked promising, so they went a little way up each, far enough to find that both arms divided again. It was a labyrinth of waters waiting to be explored, but it was time to turn home again. The only rule of any kind that was imposed on the children by their hostesses was that they must be in time for meals. To have been late would have caused Miss Bun real distress. Though Oskar had no sense of time whatever and Ida when she was set on one of her ideas could think of nothing else, Ping could not bear the idea of rudeness to a hostess. He felt so strongly about this that Ida and Oskar never challenged it. Miss Bun however gave him no credit for the good manners of all three. Ping was no eater.
*
THE NEXT MORNING they strolled up the village street to buy a roll of white lining paper and some drawing pins. (Ida had brought poster paint and brushes with her for wet days.) They pinned the middle of the roll to the middle of their bedroom floor, so that, with Green Knowe as the centre, they could unroll as much as they wanted both for up stream and down. They pencilled in as much as they could remember of what they had explored already, just to make a start. Then they set off again. Each day they took a different arm of the stream, and always the best part was out of reach. Then, overnight, the holiday season began in earnest. The river was crowded with boating parties, some of whom had never been in a boat before. They shouted instructions in voices of hysteria, they went bungling from bank to bank, lost their tempers when the boat rocked under their staggers and fell over-board amid jeers. Dogs stood in the bows and barked incessantly, outboard motors drummed and snorted past, bearing ladies who spoke shrilly to be heard above the noise. Bathers leapt from the banks dog-wise, and the impact of their bodies on the water sent waves that rocked every boat and added to the din. It was no longer the mysterious river on which the children had been so entranced. True it was winding, sparkling and cool, the water lip-lapped under the ribs of the canoe and the clouds had all the sky from horizon to horizon to move across. But the river had become ordinary, a playground for humans. Every creature whose real home it was had gone into hiding. It had no more private life than a swimming bath or fun fair.
Ida as usual made a decision.
‘All these people spoil everything. Our river is different. If we want to see it again we shall have to come out at dawn. We’ll get up every day when it is just getting light, then we can do our exploring before breakfast and spend the daytime sleeping in the sun. We’ll tell Aunt Sybilla we are going out before breakfast – we needn’t tell her how early – and ask her for a thermos and some biscuits. She’ll be awfully pleased when she sees how much breakfast we eat when the time comes. And if we get up really early we’ll have time to go twice as far.’
*
VERY EARLY NEXT MORNING, creeping down through a curtained house, they came out into a world that Ida hardly recognized. It felt tilted, with the moon in the unexpected side of the sky, because it was setting, and the growing light of dawn was farther east than she had ever seen it before, as if the points of the compass had been displaced. The bullocks were asleep, so were the swans. No smoke came from any cottage chimney, no birds moved. A vivid red fox cantered across the field with a moorhen in his mouth. Only the water was loud. The fall at the watergates shouted carelessly to the dawn as if certain no one was listening.
The children loosed the canoe and set off, paddling expertly and swiftly because they were half afraid of such an empty world. They operated the lock for the first time, rather anxiously, with their own lock key. Both boys were eager to turn it while Ida sat in the canoe and hoped they would not do it too suddenly so that she would be sucked down and under. She need not have feared, for it took both of them to turn it at all. They puffed and panted and stopped several times to rest. When they were all in the canoe again, they launched out across the mill pool and were caught up and whirled alon
g in the mill race. The current pounded on the bottom of the canoe like hammers so that it bucked and tossed. The children sat helpless and apprehensive under the unfamiliar setting moon, but were carried safely into the lower reaches.
It was a dawn without sun or wind. The sky was not crowded with cloud shapes, it was just pale, the water like tarnished quicksilver and the leafy distances like something forgotten. The canoe moved in a close circle of silence so that everything that was near enough to come within the magic circle was singled out for the imagination to play with. Such were the twisted pollard willows striking attitudes along the bank, many of them old and bent like old men, or more correctly like old men’s coats, for they gaped open and were quite hollow inside, looking, as Ping remarked, ready for demons, who could step in and wear the tree like a coat at night. Ping was a great believer in demons but the thought of them did not seem to disturb him. They were just what he would expect.
The river grew steadily wider, flowing handsomely over a clean weedless bottom. Large trees crowded down a low hill to the edge of the water, their branches hung with hop and wild clematis. Here and there an overloaded trunk leant out over the water at such an angle that it seemed impossible the roots could take the strain any longer. At the top of one such tree a bright yellow cat lay along the trunk, not too high above the canoe to have leapt on someone’s shoulder as they passed underneath. It looked down on them with the defiant glare of hostile cats, and the tip of its tail twitched.
‘It might have been a tiger,’ said Ping, with that gleam of pleasure in his slit eyes that thoughts of danger seemed to bring.
The light broadened, the orange East turned to unbearable dazzle, and the water flicked off little reflections of fire. The children’s eyes were screwed up against the fearful inquisitiveness of the rising sun at eye-level. Ahead of them on the river’s edge stood a derelict building. The walls rose up out of the water, their stones green and yellow with slime. In its welcome shadow the water too was green and yellow, but each paddle as it dipped was surrounded by a sky-coloured ring. The place had so long been abandoned that it was impossible to tell for what purpose it had been built, whether house, barn or warehouse. It had the remains of a balcony from which iron steps led down to the water, but the ivy, which once perhaps was planted to take off the newness, had for generations been allowed to grow as it pleased. Nobody cared any more if the walls were wrapped around in a vast embrace, the windows covered, the gutters blocked, the slates lifted by prying ivy fingers. So unhampered and vigorous was the ivy that having covered the house its stringy growth, waving in the wind and feeling for support like caterpillars at the top of a stalk, had caught on neighbouring trees and wrapped them round too in its cocoon, as if the building had towers. Two windows still showed above the balcony. The sashes fell sideways, some panes were missing and the rest heavily curtained with layer upon layer of grey cobweb. As a last humiliation for the house, there was an ash sapling growing out of the chimney.
The children took hold of the iron rails of the steps and tied up the canoe.
‘This must be where Ping’s demons hide in the daytime,’ said Ida.
‘Displaced demons,’ said Oskar dreamily.
‘Let us visit them,’ said Ping.
One by one they climbed out, their rubber shoes silent on the iron, and mounted to the balcony. Having got there, it was impossible not to turn and lean out over the river to admire the view. The wide perennial pastures had the serenity of land that is never tended except by the refreshing floods. This expanse was the true river bed, once a marsh extending all the way to the sea. The far side was wooded along the skyline. It was easy to imagine forest coming to the edge of the marsh.
‘I don’t wonder they built a house here,’ Ida said. ‘But whatever possessed them to leave it? It seems mean, to the house.’
There were double doors on to the balcony now barred with ivy stems as thick as men’s arms and much hairier. Ping and Oskar were peering between them and fumbling for a door-knob. Oskar found it, but when he turned it and pushed, the whole lock-box came away from the rotten socket and his wrist went through with it. The three children pushed on the door where they could reach it. It hung askew on its hinges and the bottom edge bound on the floor so that they were only able to force it open a little way.
‘Ping and I can get in,’ said Ida inserting herself between the ivy arms and wiggling through the door. ‘Oskar’s too big. Ooh, it’s a tight squeeze. Perhaps we can open a window for you, Oskar, when we are inside.’
But it was wonderful what Oskar could do. The only part of him that gave trouble was his head that was too wide from ear to ear. And the head can’t be drawn in like the stomach.
‘Of course I can do it,’ he said sharply to Ida who was still talking about windows. And do it he did, his profile streamlined along his shoulder as in Egyptian pictures, while Ping watched the impossible with approving eyes.
They found themselves in what had once been a fine room. There were high windows on three sides, letting in a bottle green light through the ivy blinds. The handsome plaster ceiling was still further decorated by small patches of twinkling watered silk where the river managed to play its flashing mirrors through gaps in the leaves. Opposite the balcony had been another pair of double doors, now missing, as were the fireplaces and all the doors in the house, so that on going through to the wide stair-well and its banistered landings, one had the impression of a continuous but much alcoved room from ground floor to roof. Cobwebs hung everywhere as if the owners had left muslin curtains to moulder away through the years. Dead leaves and straws littered the floors, shiny snail tracks climbed the walls. The children crept around apprehensively, greatly oppressed by that feeling in empty houses that if you think nobody lives there you are wrong. Dust and silence, and boards that creaked, not when you trod on them, but minutes afterwards behind you. Ida’s heart began to feel tight. She was looking across the stairs into an open doorway where a shadow was moving on the wall, when she felt a sharp rap on the back of her hand, as if someone had thrown a pebble. Something thudded on the floor. Ida clutched Oskar and they bent down to look.
‘It’s an owl pellet,’ said Oskar laughing. ‘There must be an owl here and he spat at us.’
High above them on a cornice that surrounded the base of a lantern window a kingly white owl sat, making himself in his indignation as tall and thin as a spectre. When he saw them looking up at him, in a swooping and tyrannical gesture he dropped his head beyond his feet, and in that position glared at them, afterwards turning his face upside down on his neck to glare at them the other way up.
Not having frightened them away by that trick, he resumed his normal position, swaying his head from side to side and rocking on his feet.
‘I believe it’s his house, his very own, all of it, and he didn’t invite us,’ said Ping. ‘I feel rude.’
The owl in a movement more soundless and flowing than wind or water, opened its wings and was upon them, zooming at the last moment of its dive with savage claws turned up and spread like fingers. It seemed nearly as big as Ida, its eyes far bigger than hers. It swept at them again and again, its approach absolutely unhearable and its curving flight unpredictable. They ran for the door. Ping and Ida went through like cats. Oskar had to do his conjuring trick again, Egyptian-wise, so that when his body was half-way through and helpless, his eyes and nose were still inside turned to the owl. In this vulnerable position he saw it fly a triumphant, slow patrol over its premises and return to rest.
The children crossed over to the opposite bank and sat there considering the Owl’s Palace, as Ida called it.
‘The ivy should be full of thousands of sparrows, but I expect the owl has eaten them all. And all the mice too.’
‘Oskar,’ said Ping. ‘Can you make your face long and thin by thinking it?’ Ida and Ping stared at Oskar in hopeful and co-operative silence while he tried.
‘Did it?’ he asked after a while.
‘No,’ said
Ida truthfully. Oskar felt ashamed.
Ida in sympathy changed the conversation.
‘Let’s see if the house is on an island. If it is we can put Owl Palace Island on our map.’
‘If it’s an island it must have a bridge.’
They paddled on. Sure enough there was a shallow stream, silted up and overgrown, that led round the back. There was a bridge too, rickety and rotten, barred with a tangle of barbed wire. As they went along, the channel, though fairly wide, became more and more clogged with weeds till the canoe could hardly move forward. The paddles dug into floating greenstuff that had to be pushed along like yards of sodden flannel. Obviously no boats came this way for picnics though the big trees and the slope of the hill behind them made it a sheltered and enticing spot. With determination the children toiled at the paddles until the thought of fighting their way back again was unbearable – there was no alternative but to go on. At last the way was blocked by a submerged tree-trunk, leafless, black and slimy. It was this that broke the flow of the water and concentrated the weeds into a stagnant mass. On its far side the water was nearly clear. The children scrambled on to the bank, and using the trunk as a roller – the thick slime was nearly as good as grease – they shoved and tugged the canoe over it. In the process Ida slipped in on the weedy side and came out as green as a mermaid, and Oskar from the other side came out wearing tights of black mud. Ping remained clean and golden. It was warm enough and nobody minded being wet. The obstacle had been surmounted, and now they paddled swiftly and quietly through a tunnel of overarching elms, delighted to be back in real lip-lapping water.
Suddenly Ping, sitting as usual in the prow, made a startled sign to the others as he caught hold of a branch to bring the canoe to a standstill. Ahead of them sitting on the bank, his bare feet dangling in the water, was a strange figure. He had a brown mane over his shoulders and all that could be seen of his face uncovered by beard or hair was the fine bridge of his nose with curving nostrils and bright eyes in skull-like sockets. He was naked except for a piece of sacking round his hips, and was as lean as a greyhound.
The Children of Green Knowe Collection Page 14