Jasper and the Green Marvel (7 page)
Read Jasper and the Green Marvel Online
Authors: Deirdre Madden
Meanwhile, back at the house, Jasper had managed to talk his way out of trouble yet again. After making all kinds of excuses to Mrs Haverford-Snuffley about why he had flicked her on the nose and knocked her off her chair, he suddenly cried, ‘Ooh, I feel dizzy! The whole garden’s going round and round. That must be what happened earlier, that’s why I fell over. Oooh, everything’s spinning!’
‘If you feel unwell, Professor Orchid, then you can’t be blamed for what happened. You should look after yourself. Perhaps you’ve been working too hard. I think you should go back
to bed. Take the rest of today off work.’
‘Madam, you are kind; you are too kind,’ he said. But in his heart he was thinking,
Missus, you are such a dozy old bat even a toddler would be smarter than you.
‘Thank you! Thank you!’ he cried. ‘Oh, it’s starting again. There goes the greenhouse, flying past my head. Goodness me, I’m so dizzy, it’s horrible.’
‘You poor man. Off you go to your bed and I’ll get Mrs Knuttmegg to send you up something nice to eat.’
Fat chance of that, Jasper thought, as he went into the house and up the stairs, holding on to the walls and pretending to stagger. And sure enough, as he was putting on his pyjamas to go back to bed, he could hear shouting the whole way from the kitchen. ‘DIZZY? TREATS? I’LL GIVE HIM TREATS!’
I bet you will, Jasper thought, as he pulled back the covers and got into bed. When the dumb-waiter comes up, I’m not even going to bother to open it. Who knows what horrors
she’ll have put into it. A plate of cold cabbage, perhaps. Yuk! Or a pile of tongue sandwiches. Double yuk! Still, he thought as he snuggled down under the blankets, it was great not to have to work.
He slept soundly for a few hours, and had sweet dreams: sweet to Jasper, that is, for to anyone else they would have seemed strange and unpleasant. He dreamt about being nasty and mean, of bossing people about and of everyone being afraid of him.
He awoke feeling relaxed and refreshed, he was cheerful and full of plans. But as he finished getting dressed again, he happened to glance out of the window. ‘Oh no!’ There were Rags and Bags, on their way home from the folly, stuffing themselves with soft fruit in the kitchen garden.
‘Those wretched creatures! Why can’t they behave themselves? Why won’t they be good?’ he moaned, which, I’m sure you will agree, was a bit much coming from the likes of Jasper.
As soon as he was ready, he crept downstairs, hoping not to be seen. He had decided that he was going to search for the Green Marvel, and he was going to begin in the library. This might seem like an odd place to start, but Jasper had his reasons. When he had had his own big house, he had also had a library – not that he cared anything for books or reading. In fact, books meant so little to him that he used to cut out the bits with all the words, leaving just the surrounding frame of paper, so that it still looked like a book when it was shut, but actually had a big hole in the middle where he could hide things. The thought occurred to him that perhaps someone in
Haverford-Snuffley
Hall had had the same idea, and that that was where the Green Marvel was hidden. (And I can tell you now that it wasn’t.)
In any case, Jasper spent the rest of the afternoon down in the library, simply taking books off the shelves, opening them and then putting them back. It took a long time because
there were hundreds of them. He was so absorbed in what he was doing that he didn’t notice when the library door quietly opened, and Mrs Knuttmegg stood there, looking in. To begin with, her eyes grew round with amazement as she watched Jasper engaged in his strange task, but gradually they changed again, and grew narrow with suspicion. Still Jasper leafed through the books and still she watched him, and when at last she did slip away again, he didn’t see her leave.
‘You might have mentioned the bridge.’
‘The bridge!’ Nelly said. ‘Gosh, I completely forgot to tell you about that.’ It was night-time, and they had all gathered together again in Georgiana’s room. ‘If we’d known about the bridge, we wouldn’t have had to swim there,’ Bags said.
‘It was cold,’ Rags added. ‘It was horrible. We almost drowned.’
‘You poor things,’ Georgiana said soothingly. ‘You were both so brave.’ She was sitting on the sofa in her flouncy dress, surrounded in the same soft, pearly glow of light that they had
noticed on the first evening. She leaned down and stared at them with her wondrous green eyes, and then she patted them both quickly on the heads. ‘Good boys!’
Rags and Bags were thrilled by this unexpected kindness. No one was
ever
nice to them. People used to scream and run away when they saw them, or even threw things at them, so they were dazzled by this attention.
‘Did you like the folly?’ Georgiana asked. ‘Isn’t it the most wonderful place?’
‘I couldn’t quite see the point of it myself,’ Rags admitted, and Bags nodded his head in agreement.
‘I used to think it was a very good place to meet people,’ Georgiana said. ‘It’s quiet and far away from the house, so if you wanted to sneak off, and see somebody you weren’t supposed to be with, you could do it and no one would ever know.’ There was a strange expression on her face as she said this, wistful and a little bit sad, and the rats thought it made her look even
lovelier than she usually did.
‘Never mind all that,’ said Nelly, who was beginning to get impatient. ‘What about the Green Marvel? Did you find the jewel?’
‘No,’ Rags replied, ‘but we did find this.’
Bags produced the note they had found under the stone. Nelly moved to take it, but Bags reached past her and gave it to Georgiana.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ the ghost said, as she unfolded it. ‘Another clue. Now let me see.’ She looked at the page and then she said, ‘Maybe I don’t need to read this one aloud.’
‘Of course you do,’ Nelly insisted. ‘Go on, what is it?’ Still Georgiana hesitated, but then she read from the page in her hand in a voice that wasn’t quite steady:
‘“Seek where your heart’s love lies.”’
‘Gosh, that’s a tricky one, isn’t it?’ Nelly said. ‘I suppose everybody’s got a different heart’s love, and so they would all seek in different places.’
‘Well, I wrote the note, so I know the answer
to this one,’ Georgiana replied briskly. ‘Now listen carefully, please,’ she said to the rats, who noticed that she had gone quite pink. ‘Do you know that old ivy-covered wall, around the kitchen garden?’ Rags and Bags nodded. ‘And the wooden door in it that opens into the garden? Just to the right of that, there’s a little letterbox, sunk in the wall. It’s not very easy to see because of all the ivy, but according to this note, that’s where the next clue must be hidden. Will you go and find it? You
are
good boys!’ she said, as the rats nodded again.
‘So your heart’s love …’ the bat began, but Georgiana quickly interrupted her, saying rather sharply, ‘That’s quite enough for now, Nelly, thank you very much.’
‘We’ll go tomorrow,’ Rags said, ‘we promise.’
‘And we’ll bring whatever we find to you tomorrow night,’ Bags added.
‘Thank you so much, my dears. I’ll see you then, same place, same time. Goodnight!’
And it was only when she stood up, walked
straight through the wall and disappeared, that the rats realised that they had completely forgotten to tell her about the young man they had seen in the garden, who had the same strange and rather alarming habit.
‘So what are you going to do now?’ Rags asked the bat.
‘Go home, I suppose.’
‘What do you mean? Aren’t you already there? Isn’t Haverford-Snuffley Hall your home?’
‘Yes,’ said Nelly, ‘but I mean
really
home. You know, home-home.’
The rats didn’t know. As I have already told you, Rags and Bags had been born and grown up in a prison, and they’d got out of it as soon as they’d had the chance, even though it meant being stuck with a scoundrel like Jasper.
This meant that they found it hard to know what home was, let alone what the bat called a home-home. And then Nelly said, quite unexpectedly, ‘Do you want to come with me?’
‘That might be nice. But is it far from here?’
‘Not at all. And now’s a good time to go, because we’ll be just in time for dinner.’
And that, of course, settled the matter.
Off they went, with the two rats scampering up the stairs and the bat flying ahead of them, to perch on a picture frame or a chair until such time as they caught up, and then leading the way again. Up and up they went, taking particular care to be quiet when they came to the door of Jasper’s room, where they were relieved to hear him snoring. They kept on going until the stairs were narrow and the ceilings low and they were right up in the attics of Haverford-Snuffley Hall. I suppose it wasn’t really a great distance from Georgiana’s room, but scampering can be tiring, and the rats had already covered a lot of ground that day. They
had even been swimming for the first time. They were worn out and hungry now, and it was a great relief when they came to a door and Nelly finally said, ‘Here we are.’ And then she called, ‘Yoo-hoo! Hello! It’s only me! Me and two friends.’
The door swung open and … what a sight met their eyes!
Bats! More bats than you could ever imagine gathered together in the one place. Old bats and baby bats. Plump bats and skinny bats. Cheerful bats, dozy bats, smart bats and silly bats. Bats! Bats! Bats! Dozens and dozens of them hanging in rows from racks on the ceiling.
And as if this wasn’t a weird enough sight in itself, every single one of them was wearing some kind of hat. There was an old grey bat in a cloth cap, a very small bat in a knitted bonnet, a natty-looking bat in a top hat and another smart creature in a straw boater. And yes, Rags and Bags realised with dismay, there was an enormous, scary-looking bat with a
woolly bobble hat pulled tightly over its head.
‘Well, well,’ said the bat, as Rags’s and Bags’s knees began to knock. ‘Look what the wind blew in.’
‘Oh, don’t be a tease, Benny,’ Nelly said. ‘These are my friends.’
‘Behaving themselves, are they?’
‘Oh we are, we are!’ the rats cried. ‘We’re really good these days. We’re no trouble at all.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Benny replied. ‘Any friend of Nelly’s is a friend of ours. We were just about to have dinner. Would you like to join us?’
‘Of course they would,’ Nelly said, replying for the rats. ‘Ooh yum-yum, I’m so hungry. What’s on the menu tonight?’
‘We’ll soon see.’ And with that, Benny flew off to the far side of the room, with a single flap of his great wings.
Rags and Bags now realised that there was a dumb-waiter in this room too, as
PING!
Benny pressed a button and the metal doors
slid open. Delicious smells of meat and of hot tomatoes and cheese filled the attic. ‘We’ll soon get this served up,’ Benny said. ‘Jim, come here and help me, there’s a good lad.’ A bat in a beret made of red felt swooped over and got right into the dumb-waiter. ‘Ready? When I say three. One … two … three!’
Imagine a string of fairy lights, or a Christmas garland. And now try to imagine that, instead of light bulbs, or gold and silver stars, at intervals along the cord there are pizzas. Yes, pizzas. Tiny ones, crispy and scrumptious. And now imagine another garland, hung with little sausages; then another with chunks of cheese, another with green and red grapes, and finally, a garland of cakes, each one no bigger than a postage stamp, but each one iced and decorated. Benny and Jim took each of these marvels in turn out of the dumb-waiter and hung them from hooks, festooning the room until the whole place really did look as though it was decorated for Christmas, but with the
strangest (and most delicious) baubles you ever saw.
‘Tuck in, everybody! Enjoy your meal.’
But how were Rags and Bags to manage? All the food was hanging high above their heads, and they couldn’t fly. They needn’t have worried. All the bats took it in turn to throw things down to them.
‘Here’s a sausage! Catch!’
‘Want some grapes? Red or green?’ Pizzas whizzed down like edible Frisbees, fairy cakes dropped neatly into their waiting paws.
‘I had no idea that that is the kind of food bats eat,’ Rags said.
‘It isn’t really,’ Nelly admitted. ‘It’s rather unusual. I suppose Mrs Haverford-Snuffley does spoil us a bit, and then Mrs Knuttmegg is such a good cook.’
‘She’s a star, our Mrs Haverford-Snuffley,’ Benny said. ‘She came into some money a few years ago and the very first thing she did was to fix up our attic, even before she got her own
rooms sorted out. Put in central heating for us, got these racks installed for us to hang from, and worked out a system for the food, with hooks to hang it from. Thought of everything, she did.’
‘You should have seen the state of the place before that,’ Jim added. ‘Holes in the roof, rain coming in, and talk about chilly. Awful, it was.’
‘Nelly’s too small to remember it, aren’t you, Princess?’ Benny said. ‘All you’ve ever known is the lap of luxury, eh? That’s my Princess!’ Nelly smiled with pleasure at this, showing her sharp, pointed teeth. ‘If ever we get the chance to pay Mrs Haverford-Snuffley back for all her kindness, we won’t need to be asked twice, I can tell you that.’
‘I suppose we should be going now,’ Rags said, not wanting to overstay the welcome.
‘Thank you for everything,’ Bags added. ‘It’s been the most lovely evening, and the dinner was delicious.’
‘How polite!’ said a bat in a blue felt hat with
a green ribbon on it. ‘What nicely mannered and well behaved rats! Who’d have expected such a thing?’
Getting home was no trouble at all. Rags and Bags climbed into the empty dumb-waiter, and waved goodbye to all their new friends.
‘Thank you so much.’
‘Our pleasure. Come again soon.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘See you tomorrow!’ Nelly cried.
‘Goodbye, goodbye.’
And with that,
PING!
the metal doors of the dumb-waiter slid closed, and the rats began their descent to Jasper’s room.