The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories (46 page)

Elephants can't stand snakes. Milo trumpeted and reared, and seemed likely to panic and bolt into the next county. But Mark had been prepared for trouble. He had a large can of fixative, used for drawing classes at school. He sprayed the fixative over the snakes, who became quite stiff with disgust, and shot back into the pond.

"I'll never go near it again,” shuddered Harriet.

But—alas—today's box was still not the right one; Hesperus shone out, but Milo simply doubled in size, and could only just be dragged out of the booth, levered on each side by garden shovels.

Next evening, in front of the row of phone boxes, they found a dragon. But Harriet knew all about dragons; she ran to the village shop and returned dragging a laundry basket full of eggs. These the dragon was happy to eat, whipping them up one at a time with his long, forked tongue. He took no more notice of Mark, Harriet, or Milo.

They had brought a big flask of vegetable oil, and they poured it all over Milo before pushing him into the box. It made him very slippery.

"It's lucky he's so patient and good,” panted Harriet, wiping oil from her eyes, her arms, her hair, her jacket, her teeth, and her shoes, while the Evening Star came softly into the clear green sky.

That was their only luck. Milo did not change back into their young brother, but merely doubled in size, stretching and bending the phone box into a barrel shape.

"Having the box like this,” panted Mark, hauling on his brother's leg, “at least makes it easier to slide him out."

"I'm afraid the person who bought the boxes isn't going to be pleased. There, there, baby! All better now,” to Milo, who was a bit disgruntled.

On the fourth evening, rain poured down from a thick and soggy sky; Mark and Harriet, having carefully checked Hesperus's coming out time on their watches, were discouraged as they led the whimpering Milo across the green to see that the fourth phone box was all wrapped in cobwebs, and when they came up to it, a fat black spider, as big as a barrel, slid down on a line from the tree above, gnashed its teeth at them, pulled open the phone-box door with its pincers, and nipped inside.

"Oh dear. Now what'll we do? I hate spiders,” said Harriet, and Milo plainly shared her feelings, for he trumpeted dismally.

"But it's simple. There's no rule about which box we try,” said Mark. “The spider's welcome to that one, if he wants it. We'll put Milo in this one."

And he poured oil over his brother and stuffed him (with difficulty) into the fifth phone box.

At that very moment, a black cloud on the horizon drifted away. Hesperus blazed out as if sponged clean, and a whole lot of things happened all together.

Milo changed back from a medium-sized elephant into a small boy in blue-striped pyjamas, clutching a bottle of milk and covered head to toe in salad oil.

The huge spider exploded, shattering the phone box it occupied, as well as the ones on either side, with a tremendous, echoing clap of sound. Something fell heavily on Harriet from above, and she let out a yell, thinking it must be another spider.

But it turned out to be her Uncle Claud, who was in a dazed state.

Soon quite a large crowd of people had gathered on the green, including Mr. Moondew, Mr. and Mrs. Armitage, and the village policeman, Sergeant Frith.

"Milo! Milo! My own, precious, oily boy!” exclaimed Mrs. Armitage, and hugged the slippery Milo, who was wailing with fright at all these happenings.

"A most successful result of your efforts,” Mr. Moondew congratulated Mark and his sister.

"But where in the world did Uncle Claud come from?” wondered Harriet.

"That we shall perhaps know when your uncle recovers,” said Mr. Moondew.

But Uncle Claud was no help. When he recovered his wits, he could remember nothing of his trip to Eridu, nothing he learned there, nothing of what happened after he got home.

When Sergeant Frith went, rather gingerly, to inspect the exploded spider, he found that it seemed to have turned into the man from the Department of Security and Secrets—or, more properly, Logroth, the warlock from the ghost island of Eridu. He had fainted. But while they were waiting for an ambulance, he sat up, pulled off his black beard, flung it on the ground, where it became a Rolls Royce, and he drove away in it at top speed.

He was never seen again—except, presumably, in the ghost island of Eridu.

On the following day, the six battered red telephone boxes were found to have changed overnight into poplar trees, a ring of them, growing in the centre of the village green.

Mr. Armitage said they looked silly.

British Telecom announced that they were not prepared to replace all six phone boxes. A single plain glass one in Station Road would be quite sufficient, they said.

"But what about the secret mathematical message?” said Harriet to Mr. Moondew, who had called in and was playing chess with Uncle Claud. “What about the information, the important secret—whatever it was—that Uncle Claud brought back from the ghost island of Eridu?"

"We'll have to wait for that,” said Mr. Moondew. “That information is locked inside your young brother's head. Sooner or later—when he has learned to speak and knows the use of letters and numbers and decimals and logarithms—he will be able to tell us what it was. Won't you, Milo?"

Milo looked up from the carpet, where he was building a nuclear power station with telephone directories, and grinned.

"Elephant,” he said.

It was his new word.

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Joan Aiken (1924—2004) was born in Rye, Sussex, England, into a literary family: her father was the poet and writer Conrad Aiken and her siblings the novelists Jane Aiken Hodge and John Aiken. After her parents’ divorce, her mother married the popular English writer Martin Armstrong.

Aiken began writing at the age of five and her first collection of stories,
All You've Ever Wanted
(which included the first Armitage family stories), was published when she was eighteen. After her first husband's death, Aiken supported her family by copyediting at
Argosy
and working at an advertising agency before turning full time to writing fiction. She went on to write for
Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Women's Own,
and many other magazines.

She wrote over a hundred books (including
The Way to Write for Children
) and was perhaps best known for the dozen novels in
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
series. She received the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards for fiction and in 1999 she was awarded an MBE for her contributions to children's literature.

Find out more about her at www.joanaiken.com.

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"Yes, but Today Is Tuesday,” “The Frozen Cuckoo,” “Sweet Singeing in The Choir,” “The Ghostly Governess,” “Harriet's Birthday Present,” “Dragon Monday"

All You've Ever Wanted
(1953)

"Armitage, Armitage Fly Away Home,” “Rocket Full of Pie,” “Doll's House to Let, Mod. Con.,” “Tea at Ravensburgh"

More Than You Bargained For
(1957)

"The Land of Trees and Heroes,” “Harriet's Hairloom,” “The Stolen Quince Tree,” “The Apple of Trouble,” “The Serial Garden"

Armitage, Armitage Fly Away Home
(1968)

"Broomsticks and Sardines"

A Small Pinch of Weather
(1969)

"Mrs. Nutti's Fireplace"

A Harp of Fishbones
(1972)

"The Looking-Glass Tree"

The Faithless Lollybird
(1977)

"Miss Hooting's Legacy"

Up the Chimney Down
(1984)

"Milo's New Word"

Moon Cake and Other Stories
(1998)

"Kitty Snickersnee,” “Goblin Music,” “The Chinese Dragon,” “Don't Go Fishing on Witches’ Day"

The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories
(2008)