The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories (43 page)

He and Professor Wrong now hoisted their reclaimed property up the bank, gave him another dose of ginger cordial, and carried him slowly, and with pauses to take breath, back to the car.

Here Mark and Harriet were amazed to see that Bobbie-Dob, who had just woken from his drug-induced nap, did not fly at the young dragon and tear him to shreds, but treated him with the utmost affection, licked him all over, and then lay down close beside him in the back section of the police car.

"He was a House Father in the dragon sanctuary. So it is often arranged if the dragon's own parent is not at hand. Dragons lay eggs, you know, and leave them buried, like crocodiles.—Now we leave you and return to China."

"But—but aren't you going to go and see Lady Havergal-Nightwood—tell her off—arrest her?"

"What need? She will be her own punishment. That will soon overtake her. Our need was to recover our dragon—help him back to good health. I thank you for your assistance—most timely."

Captain Thing got into the driver's seat, started his engine, and did a neat three-point turn.

"You're going to drive all the way to China? Won't that be a bit much for the dragon?"

"Ah! No! Him we send by plane—we radio for an ambulance plane for dragon and carer-dog.” Captain Thing raised his hand in salute, and the white car departed round a curve in the track.

"Oh dear,” said Harriet. “Now we have to break the news to Lady Havergal-N that she has lost her dragon and dog. And that we know all about her wicked dealings."

"I'll do that,” said Mark, who looked as if he quite relished the prospect. “You had better take the dogs back to their owners—they'll be wondering where on earth you have got to."

"That's true. I'll see you back at home."

As it turned out, Harriet arrived home long before Mark.

"D'you know what,” he said, hungrily applying himself to a late supper when he came in. “Sir James Havergal-Nightwood had been dead for
weeks
, sitting there in that old Morris car. The milkman spotted him in the end. Lady H left him there because of the inheritance quarrel. She wanted to be sure it was he and not the brother who got the house. But the brother turned up from some island in the Indian Ocean and was in a great rage about it."

"Why did she want the house?"

"She wanted a house with a wood to keep the dragon in."

"So she kept the dragon in the wood and her husband in the car. No wonder she didn't want builders about the place."

"Oh dear,” said Mrs. Armitage, “I do hope we get some
nice
people in Nightwood Park Hall next time."

The back doorbell rang and Lady Havergal-Nightwood popped her head round the door.

"Dulling Mrs. Armitage! You were going to teach me the Chinese Dragon patience."

Mrs. Armitage was rather flustered.

"Oh! Dear me! So I was! But I thought you had left the village?"

"I moved into Mrs. Hipkin's Bed and Breakfast. But now do,
do
teach me that game. I do
so
want my heart's desire!"

"And what is that?” asked Mrs. Armitage, leading the way into the sitting-room with a slightly disapproving expression. She took three packs of patience cards from the games cupboard.

"Aha! I mustn't tell you that, dulling, or I shan't git it!"

"Well, I hope she doesn't get it!” whispered Harriet to Mark in the kitchen as they washed up the supper dishes. “She doesn't deserve to. Look at all the trouble she's caused. And her husband dead all that time! What did he die of?"

"Fatigue and heart-failure, the police doctor said. After driving all the way back from China."

"So she just left him in the car. What a pig!—Do call me Piggy!” Harriet giggled, wiping down the draining-board.

In the sitting-room they could hear Mrs. Armitage saying patiently, “No, the seven of spades may not be moved until the covering three cards are taken away...."

At half past nine she called: “Children! Can you kindly make Lady Havergal-Nightwood and me some cocoa?"

At half past ten Mr. Armitage came into the kitchen and hissed furiously: “Isn't that perditioned female ever going to leave?"

At half past eleven he stomped into the kitchen again, carrying a brandy bottle.

"Why aren't you two in bed, may I ask?"

"We were just watching the end of the eleven o'clock news, Dad. A stolen dragon has been returned to a dragon sanctuary in north China. Isn't that good?"

At ten minutes to midnight Mrs. Armitage called her husband excitedly. “Gilbert, Gilbert! I believe it's going to come out!"

Rather skeptically, Mr. Armitage and his two children left the warm kitchen and went into the sitting-room, where the large sewing-table was completely covered with cards in a complicated and curving pattern. The atmosphere in the room was tense, fraught, and breathless.

Mr. Armitage looked over his wife's shoulder, said, “Gad! There! I see how you can do it—take that nine across onto the eight—then that frees the Queen of Spades—"

"So it does! Cliver Mr. Armitage!” Lady Havergal-Nightwood gave him a beaming smile and adjusted a couple of cards.

"That's it! You did it!"

"I have! I have! I have done it! Now I shall get my—"

A strange, puzzled expression came over Lady Havergal-Nightwood's face. Her hands, which had been up in the air, dropped to her sides. Her mouth fell open. Her eyes grew fixed. Then her knees buckled and she folded “like a concertina,” as Mark said afterwards, and fell to the floor.

"Oh dear, she has fainted from the excitement,” said Mrs. Armitage. “I'll fetch the smelling-salts—if I can ever find them."

She started for the door. But her husband, stooping over the unwelcome guest, said, “Don't bother, salts won't help. Better phone the doctor. She's dead."

"Oh goodness gracious
me
! Now she'll never have her heart's desire."

And serves her richly right, thought Mark.—Something whizzed past his head.

"Oh,
no
!” cried his mother. “Here's that dratted robin got in again! Where can it have come from? Open the window, Harriet, and shoo it out. We don't want the doctor to think we live in a madhouse—"

Harriet captured the robin in a rush fishbasket, opened a window, and cast it out.

"And don't come back!” she told it. “If you are who I think you are!"

"Where did it come from?” said Mark. “All the windows are shut."

Harriet said: “—I've changed my mind. I don't want a Himalayan bear. Better it should stay on Mount Everest.—Oh
bother
it!"

"Now what?"

"That wretched woman never gave Mother and me our wishes!"

[Back to Table of Contents]

Mark whistled as he cycled along the narrow country road through the cool early morning air. The tune he whistled was well known in his village—"Don't go a-fishing on witches’ day, on witches’ day, on witches’ day, Don't you go fishing on witches’ day unless you take me along, too...."

"But when is Witches’ Day?” Mark wondered. “Hallowe'en? St. Wenceslas? St. Swithin's? Midsummer? And who was the “me” in the song?"

"Harriet would be sure to know,” he thought. His sister Harriet was into all that kind of stuff. She did courses in curses, in philtre-making, potion-brewing, astrology, incantation, and hoodoo; her ambition was to graduate into witchcraft like some old great-aunt on Dad's side of the family. Harriet would have come along with him this morning had it not been for a radio programme on BBC 13 about blessings and curses and ever-filled purses that she specially wanted to catch; the witchcraft programmes on BBC 13 were always at five o'clock in the morning. Mark was not normally up this early but he wanted to get to Herringbloom Ponds and cast an eye—and a fishing-line—over them before his father went and bid for them at an auction which was due to start at nine o'clock.

"Three beautifully situated carp ponds with adjacent ruined mansion,” said the Estate Agents’ brochure, under a picture of a blue stretch of water reflecting the branches of green arching willow trees.

"Bless my soul!” Mr. Armitage had exclaimed at breakfast the day before. “Bless my soul, my dear, see here in the local paper, Herringbloom Ponds come up for sale at last. Great-aunt Marianna's curse must have run out at last. Or lifted, or whatever curses do when they die down."

His family, munching toast, looked at him with interest.

"Great-aunt Marianna? Who was she?"

"My father's aunt. Lived with her cousin Victoria in Herringbloom Lane, beyond Froxfield. And there was some quarrel with Marianna's brother Wilfred—he was younger, but he claimed he should have inherited the ponds."

"Why?” asked Harriet.

"Because he was a male. And because he said they were witches, not eligible to own aquatic properties. There was a great family feud about it. But Wilfred mysteriously vanished. And, after that, the old ladies’ house burned down."

"What happened to Marianna and Victoria?"

"Died in the fire. But Marianna was heard to say with her expiring breath that, because of Wilfred's unbrotherly behaviour, no man should ever cast a fly over the ponds without incurring doom and dole—or some such tarradiddle—she laid a curse on the water and foretold that anybody who fished in it should something-or-other—"

"Would what?"

"I really forget. Fish in peril of his life, perhaps."

"And did the curse work?” asked Harriet eagerly.

"Well, I don't believe the ponds have changed hands more than a couple of times in the last fifty years,” Mr. Armitage said. “Old Miss Shelmerdene bought them from the estate, but she did nothing with them—I'm sure she never went fishing—she never lived in the house, it became more and more of a ruin—and then Sir Robert Pope-Nottingham bought the land—come to think,
he
hasn't been around for the last fifteen years—"

"So perhaps the curse is still working?” Harriet looked hopeful. “Where exactly are Herringbloom Ponds, Father?"

"About fifteen miles from here, other side of Froxfield Green. I've a good mind to make an offer for them myself. The sale's tomorrow."

"Oh, do.
Do
!” Harriet's eyes sparkled at the possibilities which opened before her.

Mark had not taken much part in this conversation, but he had listened hard. Mark was not particularly interested in curses, but just now he had a great passion for fishing, and he was keenly attracted by the thought of Herringbloom Ponds. If no one had fished them for fifty years, what treasures might those waters not hold? There was a local prize for the most uncommon catch brought in before St. Swithin's Day, and Mark thought that Herringbloom Ponds might produce just what he needed to win it. But, on the point of urging his father to buy the ponds, he remembered that Mr. Armitage was also a keen angler, so kept quiet.

And now here he was, out on Midsummer Morning when all the woods and fields were bathed in clear daylight at 4 a.m. and the sun was just readying itself to rise.

"In a minute,” thought Mark, as he pedalled along the road to Froxfield Green, “all the trees will have long shadows stretching westwards.” The road was bordered by some young copper-beech trees, planted by Sir Robert Pope-Nottingham, owner of Froxfield Manor, before he failed to come home one evening and was never seen again.

Next minute the sun did rise, over Badger's Hill, and the shadows of the young beeches, and Mark on his bike, all cast themselves forward along the road. And, on either side of his own shadow, Mark noticed two others, tall gaunt skinny shadows, keeping pace with him on his bike.

He stopped pedalling, put a foot on the ground, and looked sharply behind him.

Nobody was there. And the shadows had disappeared. But as soon as he got back into the saddle and rode off, the shadows reappeared, keeping pace with him.

Harriet, meanwhile, was in her bedroom listening to BBC Radio 13. A paragraph of instructions in the
Radio Times
had said, “Listeners will benefit by supplying themselves beforehand with three different recordings of J. S. Bach's
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue
, BWV 903. These should be played at intervals of five minutes, overlapping, while the programme is going on."

Fortunately Harriet's bedroom was an attic at the top of the house, for the noise made by three different recordings of Bach's
Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue
, all started at different times, was very complicated indeed. But Harriet had grown accustomed to it.

"Time is progress,” said the radio voice. “A leaf grows, then withers. A flower opens, then fades. But the music that you are hearing now is not affected by time. It can be played at different speeds, on different instruments. It remains itself. Similarly, other activities can be undertaken without regard to time. Step outside the frame of time and you acquire power—power to move mountains, to plunge deep into the matter of existence, to cross immense divides of space, to go forward, backward, sideways."

Harriet listened with great concentration. She was taping the talk so that she could play it again. “Maybe I should make three different recordings of the talk and play them again at different speeds,” she thought.