The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories (4 page)

After which Mr. Moor clapped Miles on the back and Noel on the trunk, hopped on a moped which he wheeled from the shadows of the elephant shed, and disappeared down the dusty lane at a surprising turn of speed for one so bent and wizened.

Miles Pots was left alone with his new belonging.

However Mr. Moor appeared again, having gone round the block, and shouted, “You could try feeding ’im on gin. They say that’
s reducing.
” Then he left for good.

Noel the elephant was battleship-grey in colour, dusty and hairy; his big ears hung down like shapeless curtains, his little eyes twinkled and short tusks, which turned out at quarter-angles, like a ballerina’s feet, gave him a carefree expression.

“Where can I get hot water in this wildnerness?” Miles peevishly shouted after Mr. Moor, who was long out of earshot.

“You can buy water at the pump on the corner of Polythene Place and Melanine Mews,” suggested a girl who had ridden past on a bicycle during Miles’s conversation with Mr. Moor and, evidently becoming interested, had dismounted and stood listening.

“But how in the world shall I heat it up?” objected Miles helplessly.

“Light a fire, of course.”

“What with? I can’t go into the forest for sticks.” He wished the wretched girl would go on her way, instead of hanging about making useless suggestions.

“There’s plenty of rubbish,” pointed out the girl rather impatiently, and kicked a few crumbled words from under the wheels of her bike.

“Burn
those?
”

“Why not? They’re no use to anyone, nor ever will be.”

To Miles, burning words seemed like burning pearls and rubies. He stared at the girl with dislike. She was thin, with an unkempt tangle of black hair down her back, her dress was faded, and her stockings were in holes. Miles had a faint idea that he had seen her somewhere before.

Having no better idea of his own, he at last followed her suggestion. He bought a pail of water for a penny from a pump outside the rest center, a cardboard shack where bandages and insect-bite powder were also to be had. Then he raked up a heap of words,
sparkling, tops, pits, fantastic, best, worst, magic, mystery, holocaust, whizz kid, unbeatable value,
and set fire to them. They burned briskly, he was able to heat the water, and to shampoo Noel, scrubbing him with handfuls of more scrumpled words. The bicycle girl gave Miles a hand; she said she didn’t mind, it helped pass the time while she waited for her baby lizard to grow another few grammes.

Noel absolutely adored his hot bath. Even Miles was affected by his rapture. And so the bath became a daily event. As the steaming pail was borne towards him, Noel would stand trumpeting with ecstasy; he sounded like a fanfare for tubas, trombones, bombardons, and fugelhorns. When the pail was set down he would delicately suck a little hot water up his trunk, then squirt it over himself, while Miles and the thin girl (her name was Hannah Palindrome) rubbed and massaged him with handfuls of tender fresh gripping classic and flattering words. Then Noel would kneel on all fours while the whole pailful was sloshed over him, running down his ears, tail, and toenails.

Very soon, Noel was the cleanest elephant to be seen along the whole of the border. He shone bright as a grey polished pebble from the beach, he smelt clean and wholesome, like a ripe tomato. He was plainly as healthy and happy as an elephant can be.

The ceremony of his daily bath became a popular spectacle among the bored people waiting for forest permits. Hannah, the bicycle girl, had the idea of charging twopence for admission to watch the bathing; she persuaded Miles to build a ring of benches in tiers so that the spectators were able to sit, and the ones who had not paid twopence were unable to see; the seats were made of crumpled Cola cans, stamped down and stuck together with chewing gum. They were not comfortable, but they were firm enough. With the gate money, Miles was able to buy more fodder when the pile in Mr. Moor’s shed had run out.

All this was very fine; there was only one snag. Noel did not shrink from the washing. In fact he grew; the daily baths gave him a grand appetite. People brought him all kinds of delicacies, doughnuts and candy floss and crisps, but Miles was very particular about his diet and forbade most of these.

Meanwhile Miles’s catarrh and hayfever, from which he suffered every summer, became acute, because of all the dust in the shanty town; he sneezed eleven times a minute, he could not breathe, his nose grew red as a radish from the constant blowing.

“Mint tea is good for hayfever, poor old Selim,” said Hannah, and she kindly picked large bundles of mint, which grew wild among the rubbish, and dried it and chopped it and made mint tea. This helped a little. Noel became very addicted to mint tea too, and always sucked up a cupful when Miles had his.

Not a bad life, Hannah used to think peacefully, sitting on a stool made from compressed ice-cream cartons, and sipping her own mint tea. She had developed a hobby, she wove belts and neckties out of words picked up off the ground,
know what I mean, ever such a nice person, fun for the whole family, labour-saving devices
. She also, sometimes, made jewelry out of smaller words, polished—
level, noon, civic, peep
. Or she would make a pendant out of a few words strung together into a sentence:
Stiff, O Dairyman, in a myriad of fits. Was it a cat I saw?

Miles could not see the point of these activities. Still, he had to admit that she meant well and her mint tea was drinkable.

“But it’s no good, you know,” she remarked. “Old Leon’s not shrinking.” For some reason, she always referred to Noel by his pet name. Miles could never understand why.

“I’m the one who’s shrinking,” he muttered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Indeed he was thin as a hoe from hard work and scanty meals. “Maybe I’ll give up and turn the job in.”

Hannah gave him an impatient glance, but sighed and swallowed whatever she had been about to say. Instead she asked with seeming irrelevance, “How far does the forest go each way?”

“Didn’t you know?” He stared at her in disapproval. “Why, it goes all the way round. Don’t you know that? Where in the world did you go to school?”

“Why—” She gaped at him. “
You
taught me, of course. At Concrete College. Didn’t you recognize me?
I
knew, right away. We used to call you Selim. And I used to blow cake crumbs at you through a pipette.”

Studying her carefully, a thing he had never troubled to do before, Miles began to recognize her. Saucy, she had been called in those days, because her initials were H. P., and she had been quite the worst of all his persecutors, a fat pop-eyed mocking girl; despite being one of the dumbest of his students, didn’t know a dipthong from a doughnut, she always had a sharp answer ready when he bawled at her, something that would make the rest of the class fall about laughing. He had really detested her, she had been one of the reasons why he gave up teaching. Now he saw that she looked much the same, really, only she wasn’t fat now, and her eyes didn’t pop out, though they were still big and grey, like glass marbles, and she wore a sadder, more thoughtful expression.

“Funny you not recognizing me,” she said. “I always thought you knew me. More tea?”

“If there is a cup,” said Miles. “I thought you were a horrible girl.”

“Now
I
thought you were rather a duck,” said Hannah. “That’s what made it fun to see you get all hot and bothered.”

He had been like an owl, she thought fondly—a moulting, downy owl, blinking in unkind daylight.

“Er—I never asked—why do you want to go into the forest?” he inquired.

“Oh well. I always thought I’d like to make a kind of thing out of words. You know? Like a sort of—well—like a kind of sculpture.”

For a moment Miles had a flash of what she meant—a big, shapely, intricate structure, that would shine and glow and sparkle, and give out dark as well.

Rather sourly he remarked, “I’d be
very
surprised if they let you in for
that
reason,” blowing his swollen tender nose for the hundredth time that hour. And missed the glance of sympathy she gave him.

Next day her lizard, which had been getting a highly nourishing diet of all the crisps, nougat, and Danish pastries thought unsuitable for Noel, was found to have grown the necessary ten grammes.

“I suppose you’ll be on your way now,” grunted Miles, shoveling Noel’s mash into the rack. And he added flatly, “Congratulations,” as if his feet hurt him.

“
Well,
” said Hannah, “I’ve been thinking: how would it be if I swopped my lizard for Noel? You’re in a hurry. I don’t mind waiting. You could take the lizard and go into the forest.”

Miles was utterly astounded. For a moment he thought he must have misheard her. No one in his whole life had ever done such a thing for him.

“You really mean that? You’d give me your lizard in exchange for Noel?” He stared at her with open mouth. “
Well
—that’s—um—I take that very kindly. It’s—it’s very—acceptable. And it makes sense; you know how to look after Noel, he’s taken quite a fancy to you. But,” Miles added with a twinge of guilt, “are you sure?”

“Oh yes. Yes, I’
m sure,
” she said quietly.

Miles did not wait another second, or look at her again, in case she changed her mind. He threw a leg over his bike, tucked the lizard in his pocket, and sped off along the dusty road to the nearest forest entrance.

Noel and Hannah, though, stood gazing after Miles as long as he was in sight. And Noel threw up his trunk and let out a long, piercing, echoing wail of grief.

“Pipe down, Leon my duck,” said Hannah. “We’ve just got to make the best of things.”

But she, too, sighed deeply as she went off to buy a pennyworth of water.

When he reached the passport point, Miles found himself behind a woman dressed in black from head to foot. She wept all the way along in queue, sobbing and snuffling. Miles wished that she would stop. It was an unsettling noise.

When the woman showed a tortoise to the guard, he said,

“Here, who are you trying to fool? That tortoise has been dead for days,” and he threw it away disgustedly. Nor would he allow her through, no matter how she cried and beseeched him. “It was for a wreath of words for my baby’
s tombstone
—
she died last week
—she was only seven months—”

“Can’t help that, missis. Got to have a live animal, between thirty grammes and twenty kilos. That’s the law.”

As the woman turned to go, Miles saw her face.

“Here,” he mumbled, “you’d better have this lizard. I daresay I’ll be able to get hold of another. Take it. Go on, take it.”

The woman gulped a few inaudible words, took the lizard, showed it to the bored guard, who shrugged and stamped her pass; then she hurried off into the forest, which received her like a dark green book opening and closing.

Miles shambled away from the checkpoint. His mind felt a bit numb. He hardly knew what to do with himself. The only thing of which he was certain was that he could not go back and tell Hannah that he had given away her lizard to a stranger. And yet that was the only thing he wanted to do. He longed for the cup of mint tea he knew she would have made him, and for Noel’s welcoming bellows of joy.

A river ran into the forest not far away. Miles went and sat on its bank, by the wire barricade that bridged it.

“Can’t use the fish from there!” called the guard from the checkpoint. “Fish ain’t legal tender.”

Miles did not trouble to reply. He squatted, peering into the thick grey-green muddy water, as if he hoped to see his own reflection there.

Several weeks passed by.

Noel missed Miles dreadfully. He moaned, he keened and droned. He pined and lost weight. His ears drooped. He seemed to find less enjoyment from his bath. Hannah began to worry about him. She, too, missed Miles, but at least she was able to cheer herself by imagining him in the forest. And she had developed a new hobby: she picked up trampled words, straightening them or rinsing them in Noel’s bath water, and stitched them together.
Attractive, best deal, sought after, monster, hopefuly, impractical
. . . her idea was to make a big quilted patchwork blanket for Noel, now that winter was on the way; gale-force winds blew, Noel shivered at night and whimpered in his sleep, drifts of words blew about and piled in corners. “That elephant’s not in good shape,” said a boundary inspector who passed by in a truck. “I may have to send the Prevention Officer to have him painlessly put to sleep. We can’t have elephant sickness along the border.”

Then Hannah had a better idea. But she knew that she would have to act speedily. She spun words into a line, made a net from it, and packed up Noel’s fodder. Taking a sandwich and flask of mint tea for herself, she climbed on to Noel’s back and rode to the edge of the forest. Here, as she had hoped, she was able to pick up branches blown down in gales, just a few of them sufficiently long and straight and sappy for her purpose. When she had found five or six of these, with the suspicious frontier guards training their guns on her, she retreated out of danger. Then, while Noel watched, she made a kite, splicing her word-patchwork across the frame she had constructed, and fastening it tight. The kite, when completed, was big and handsome, like a great multicoloured star.

“
Looks
all right, Leon my boy,” she said to the watching elephant. “But the thing is, will it fly?”

At first it would not; until she had made a tail from a series of words linked together,
new appeal fashion trendy custom-made love tender true.
Then it shot up into the sky like a live thing, wheeling about in the last light of the sun, which was sinking into a nest of storm clouds, while the wind sang and thrummed past the long line of linked sentences. Noel, with cocked head and outspread ears, threw up his trunk joyfully and followed the flight of the word-bird as it swooped and danced overhead.

“The next thing is, Leon,” said Hannah, “will it carry us? That’s what we shan’t know till we try. And we can’t try till after dark, or those fellows on their lookout will fill us so full of bullets that we shall look like Eccles cakes.”

While twilight fell, she played her kite in the black and green curdled sky, as a fisherman plays a fish, letting it out as far as the line would take it, then reeling in again till the kite bucked and shied and flounced just above their heads. The wind blew stronger and stronger, towards the forest; they could, even from where they were, hear the trees groan and shriek and thrash their branches.