The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories (33 page)

They were putting up the village fair on the green. It was a long job. The thud-thud of hammers banging in the posts for coconut shies echoed all over the village, along with the cheerful stutter of generating motors hoisting the big roundabout into position. The village green was on quite a steep slope, and the big roundabout had to be propped under its lower side on piles of bricks, an arrangement that Mr. Armitage condemned as crazily unsafe. Each year, he earnestly begged his children not to ride on the roundabout. Each year, they pointed out that the fair had been going since 1215 with no particular loss of life. Otherwise, they took no notice of his warnings.

Mr. Armitage sat in his downstairs study, trying to work, but the noise distracted him, which was a pity, as he had the house to himself for once. Mrs. Armitage was out for the day, visiting a sick cousin; Mark and Harriet were down on the green, watching the fair put itself together.

"During the last year, sugar prices have declined rapidly,” wrote Mr. Armitage, trying to ignore the sound of thumping. Then he realized that what he heard was not the distant hammering but somebody banging on his window. He looked up from the report on sugar he was trying to write and found himself staring into the unattractive face of Miss Pursey.

Miss Pursey had bought the small field next to the Armitage garden six months before. Nobody quite knew how this had happened, as old Mr. Fewkes, who previously owned the field, had often said he would never sell it, and if he did so, he would sell it to the Armitages. But then, suddenly, one day, he
had
sold it. “I dunno what came over me,” he said helplessly to Mr. Armitage in the pub, “seemed as ‘ow the young lady ‘ad an uncommon argymentative persuading way o’ going on at me.” And in less than a week after that, a firm of builders unfamiliar to the Armitages had begun slapping up a bungalow, and in a suspiciously short time after
that
, not more than a month, all was completed and Miss Pursey moved into her house.

It seemed almost certain that Miss Pursey was a witch. The bungalow, although made from precast concrete, was constructed so as to resemble a witch's cottage with a roof made from sections of plastic thatch, fake diamond paning in the windows, and Tudor beams painted on the walls.

"She has roses and hollyhocks painted growing up the walls, too,” reported Harriet, who had been over to watch the builders in action. “Even the bees were fooled."

The back of the bungalow, in complete contrast, was painted with a trompe-l'oeil reproduction of a Greek temple, done in such ingenious, deceitful perspective that it was good enough to fool anyone, not only bees, until they were about two feet away; one or two of Mr. Fewkes's sheep who wandered into the field through a gap in the hedge were seen trying to push their way among the painted Doric columns and looking puzzled, as only sheep can look, because they were unable to do so.

But Miss Pursey, when she moved in, soon discouraged the sheep. In no time at all, she had a boring, tidy garden laid out, a lot of square beds neatly dug divided by cinder paths.

"She waters her plants with boiling water,” Harriet reported.

She also watered the sheep with boiling water, until they took the hint and retired to their own side of the hedge.

Miss Pursey was not neighbourly. She had such a very discouraging expression on her face while she dug her beds and marked off her seed drills that the Armitages, without even discussing the matter, left her strictly alone.

Mr. Armitage was therefore surprised and not best pleased to find her banging on his study window at eleven o'clock on a Monday morning.

Miss Pursey was tall, plump, and brisk in her movements. She was not old—in her mid-twenties perhaps—but extremely plain. She wore her straight black hair in a bun at the back and cut in a no-nonsense fringe in the front. She also wore a mini-skirt, which was a mistake, as it left bare most of two large, bulging legs tapering down to small, stubby feet in spike-heeled shoes; the legs looked like two exclamation points: !! supporting a capital O. She had very large black-rimmed glasses—two more O's through which she directed an accusing glare at Mr. Armitage as he reluctantly opened the window. He thought that if she had not so obviously been a witch she might have been a gym instructor or a hockey teacher.

"Your cat—” said Miss Pursey angrily, as soon as he had the catch undone.

"How do you do,” said Mr. Armitage with great politeness, opening the window to its full extent. “I believe we have not formally introduced ourselves yet. I am Everard Gilbert Armitage—delighted to meet you, Miss—er?"

"Pearl Pursey,” she said snappishly. “Your cat, Mr. Armitage, is wrecking my tree."

She turned and pointed.

Mr. Armitage, unwillingly stepping out through the window (which was a French one), followed her to the wicket gate in the boundary hedge that separated the Armitage garden from Miss Pursey's field.

Just beyond the hedge, a small tree was growing. And in the branches of the tree, looking very unsuitable—for he was about half its size—but very pleased with himself, was the Armitages’ enormously large black cat, Walrus, so called because he wore his top front teeth outside his chin, like a walrus's tusks. The teeth were sticking out now even more than usual as he dangled self-consciously over two branches of the tiny tree, making it sway like a fishing rod with a polar bear balanced on top of it.

Mr. Armitage immediately thought of two things.

He remembered that the tree had been growing there before Miss Pursey arrived, so that in a way it could not be said to be her tree; she certainly had not planted it.

He also remembered that the strip of land immediately beyond the Armitage boundary hedge was in fact a footpath; a right-of-way leading across the fields to the next village. Nobody used it anymore, because it was more comfortable to go around by road, which was why the little tree had had a chance to grow up. But actually neither the tree nor the land it grew on belonged to Miss Pursey; they were public property.

However, Mr. Armitage didn't believe in crossing his bridges before they were built, preferred peace and quiet, and wanted to get on with his report about sugar. He did not mention any of these things, but merely remarked, “A cat, ma'am, in law, is counted as a member of the class
ferae naturae
, for whose actions the owners cannot be held responsible."

"I don't care a twopenny fig for your idiotic law,” snapped Miss Pursey. “I want that cat removed before it does irreparable damage to my tree.” And she glared at Walrus, who swayed serenely about in the branches of the tiny tree, with his tail stuck out sideways to avoid getting it entangled in a twig.

Mr. Armitage said, “Here, puss, puss!” wondering as he did so why Miss Pursey did not herself remove the cat. He was well within reach, for the tree was only four feet high.

Walrus took no notice of Mr. Armitage.

"I'll have to go back to the house and bang on his plate,” Mr. Armitage said, and did so. Walrus ate his meals off a tin plate, the sound of which, when banged with a spoon, always fetched him with a gallop, no matter where he was. It was the only time he did gallop. As soon as he heard the banging now, he dropped from the tree like a sack of coal, leaving it wildly swaying, and shot off to the kitchen, where Mr. Armitage had to open a can of sardines, because there seemed to be no cat food. “And don't go up that tree anymore,” he admonished Walrus, who took no notice. He was busy flicking sardine oil about with his whiskers.

Miss Pursey did not thank Mr. Armitage. She was to be seen in the distance angrily inspecting the little tree for damage.

Mr. Armitage shut his study window and went back to work. But at lunch, a cold one assembled by the children from ingredients assembled by Mrs. Armitage, there came a furious rapping at the door.

"Your cat,” said Miss Pursey to Harriet, who opened the door, “is up my tree
again
. Please come and remove it at once."

Harriet went through the gate in the hedge and lifted Walrus out of the tree. He allowed himself to be lifted, but he looked martyred about it and let his back legs dangle down, always a sign that he was not pleased. “You see, he remembers that there used to be a chaffinch's nest in the hedge just beside that tree,” Harriet explained.

"I don't care what kind of a nest there was or what he remembers,” Miss Pursey said. “Don't let this happen again, or I shall be obliged to take drastic action."

"My goodness!” Harriet said, returning to the lunch table. “Miss Pursey's got some really awful-looking plaster gnomes in her garden, wheeling little barrows full of skulls. They're enough to give anyone nightmares."

"And did you notice the plastic toadstools?” said her father.

"The red-and-white-spotted ones?” said Harriet. “Those aren't plastic. I had a good look at them. They're real. She must have been sowing quick-grow toadstool spores. I've read about those red-and-white ones. On the steppes of Siberia, they are regarded as a great delicacy, and may be sold for three or four reindeer apiece."

"Well, we are not in Siberia now,” said her father, “and have no reindeer, thank heaven. Don't eat any of those toadstools; they give you hallucinations."

"I suppose the Siberians like hallucinations,” Mark said thoughtfully.

In the next few days, a great many more toadstools and other fungi sprouted in Miss Pursey's garden, including
Amanita phalloides
, the death cup, which gives anybody who eats it three or four days of increasingly unpleasant sensations ending in death. Miss Pursey had a full bed of death-cups. She had also stinkhorns, false blushers, sickeners, devil's boletus, and lurid boletus. As well as her fungi, she had several handsome bushes of deadly nightshade, covered with large glossy black berries—enough, as Mr. Armitage said, regarding them apprehensively, to poison the whole village. He strongly recommended his children to keep well away from Miss Pursey's garden.

"But we have to keep going in to get Walrus out of the tree,” objected Mark.

Walrus, not an intelligent cat, seemed obsessed by memories of the chaffinch's nest. He spent as much of his time as possible in the little tree, which was developing a permanent list towards the hedge. Mark and Harriet had to make constant rescue dashes, and Harriet worried about the situation. They could not keep guard over Walrus for twenty-four hours a day—after all, they had to go to school, and it seemed likely that any drastic action taken by Miss Pursey would be very drastic indeed.

"I wonder why she doesn't take Walrus out of the tree herself?” said Mark.

"I expect it's because cats are witch animals,” suggested Harriet. “Probably you aren't allowed to touch somebody else's familiar."

"But Walrus isn't anyone's familiar."

"I know, but
she
doesn't know that."

"She could do something at long distance—lasso him or shoot him."

"Don't!” shuddered Harriet.

Familiar or unfamiliar, one evening Walrus did not arrive at his usual headlong speed when Harriet banged the tin-plate supper gong.

There followed a long, worried wait.

"Oh goodness,” said Harriet with quivering lip, “I do hope Miss Pursey hasn't done something awful. Do you think we should go round and ask—"

"Half a mo',” said Mark. “Something's trying to get through the cat flap."

Something was having a hard struggle.

"Oh!” cried Harriet. “If that fiend has hurt Walrus—"

She rushed to the door and opened it. At once it was plain why the creature outside had been unable to get in through the cat flap. A full-grown timber wolf bounded past Harriet into the kitchen. He stood about three foot high, weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds, and was covered in a shaggy, grayish-white coat with a splendid ruff about his neck.

Mark and Harriet were disconcerted, but the wolf seemed quite accustomed to his surroundings; he made straight for Walrus's tin plate, and sucked up the small portion of chopped rock salmon that lay upon it with one scoop of his long, supple tongue. Then he looked around for more.

"Oh gosh,” said Harriet, “has she changed Walrus to this?"

"Looks like it,” said Mark. He approached the wolf with caution and felt under the silvery sweep of ruff. “Yes! Here's Walrus's flea collar—lucky for him it was the stretch kind."

"It must be stretched pretty far. Do you think it's too tight for him!"

"Seems okay. We'd better leave it on; I daresay wolves have fleas, too."

Wolf-Walrus thought quite plainly one small portion of fish quite insufficient and demanded more with one long, lugubrious howl.

"All right—here—” said Harriet, hastily dumping out the rest of the panful. “I'm afraid he's going to be expensive to feed. Almost as bad as darling Furry."

Furry had been a griffin who lodged briefly with the Armitages and required at least forty bowls of bread-and-milk a day, with raisins.

"Very handsome, though,” said Mark, admiringly stroking the muscular shoulders with their tremendous coat of fur as Wolf snuffled down the rest of the fish. “I quite like the idea of having a wolf."

Mrs. Armitage did not like it when she came into the kitchen to make supper.

"Children! What
have
you got there?"

Wolf, stretched in front of the stove, took up the entire hearthrug.

"Miss Pursey has turned Walrus into a wolf. We'll have to enlarge the cat flap quite a lot,” Harriet said. “But don't worry—Mark can do it with his fret saw. I don't know if Wolf will be able to squeeze through the bathroom window."

Wolf had a try. It was plain that he had not yet grown accustomed to the change in his size. At two in the morning, the Armitages woke to a rending crash, and soon after, Mark was almost suffocated by Wolf's two hundred and fifty pounds spread out across the eiderdown. Next day, it was discovered that the bathroom window frame had been stove in.

And the carpets and table legs soon began to suffer severely.

"I really don't think we can keep him,” Mrs. Armitage said. “Besides, he's much more short-tempered than he used to be. Walrus was always such a placid cat. Perhaps some zoo—"