Arabel's Raven Read online

  They all trailed off to the parking garage. Aunt Brenda's car was up on the fourth level.

  "Not worth waiting for the lift," Brenda said.

  They had to climb a lot of steps. Arabel's legs ached worse and worse. But Mortimer was even more interested by the parking garage than he had been by the rink. Arabel was carrying him, with her skates. Mortimer gazed around with astonishment, at the huge concrete slopes, and the huge level stretches, covered with cars. His black eyes sparkled like gumdrops.

  Arabel's arms ached almost as much as her legs. While Auntie Brenda was finding her car key at the bottom of her bag and unlocking the car, Arabel put her skates down on the ground.

  With a quick wriggle, Mortimer flopped out of Arabel's grasp and climbed onto one of her skates. Then he half spread his wings and gave himself a mighty shove off. The roller skate, with Mortimer sitting on it, went whizzing along the flat concrete runway, between two rows of cars.

  "Oh, stop him, stop him!" Arabel said. "He'll go down the ramp!"

  She meant to shout, but the words came out in a whisper.

  Lindy, Mindy, and Cindy rushed after Mortimer. But they were too late to catch him. He shot down the ramp onto the third level.

  "Nevermore, nevermore, nevermore," he shouted joyfully, and gave himself another shove with his wings, which sent him up the ramp on the opposite side, and back onto the fourth level.

  "There he goes, there!" cried Auntie Brenda. "After him, girls!" But Lindy, Mindy, and Cindy were now out of earshot, down on the third level.

  "Oh goodness gracious me, did you ever see anything so provoking in all your born days," said Mrs. Jones. "I never did, not even when I worked at the invisible menders'. Don't you go running after that wretched feathered monster, Arabel, you stay right here."

  But Arabel had followed Mortimer up onto the fifth level.

  "Mortimer! Please come back!" she called in her voice that would not rise any louder than a whisper. "Please come back. I don't feel well. I'll bring you here again another day."

  Mortimer didn't hear her. Up on the fifth level the wind was icy cold and whistled like a saw blade. Arabel began to shiver and couldn't stop. Mortimer was having a wonderful time, shooting up and down ramps, in and out between cars, rowing himself along with his wings at a tremendous rate. Other car owners began running after him.

  "Stop that bird!" shouted Auntie Brenda. Lots of people tried. But Mortimer was going so fast that it was easy for him to dodge them; he had discovered the knack of steering the roller skate with his tail, and he spun around corners and in between people's legs as if he were entered for the All-Europe Raven Bobsleigh Finals.

  After ten minutes there must have been at least fifty people chasing from one ramp to another, all over the parking garage.

  Finally Mortimer was caught quite by chance when a stout lady, who had just come in from an outside entrance, stuck out her umbrella to twirl the rain off it before closing it; Mortimer, swinging around a Ford Capri on one wheel, ran full tilt into the umbrella and got caught among the spokes. By the time he was disentangled, Auntie Brenda, very cross, had come up and seized him by the scruff of his neck.

  "Now perhaps we can get going," she snapped, and carried him back to her car. "I'll put him in your shopper, Martha," she said grimly, "then he won't be able to get loose again. I really don't know why you wanted to come roller-skating with a raven."

  Mrs. Jones was too worried about Arabel to answer.

  Presently Lindy, Cindy, and Mindy came panting and straggling back, and Arabel walked slowly up from the third level. She couldn't stop shivering.

  "Where's Mortimer?" she whispered.

  "He's in the trunk and there he'll stay till you get home," said Auntie Brenda. "That bird's a disgrace."

  Arabel started to say, "He didn't know he was doing anything wrong. He thought the parking garage was a skating rink for ravens," but the words stuck inside, as if her throat was full of grit.

  By the time they arrived at the Joneses' house, Number Six, Rainwater Crescent, Arabel was crying as well as shivering.

  She couldn't seem to stop doing either of those things.

  Mrs. Jones jumped out of the car and almost carried Arabel into the house.

  "Your shopper!" Auntie Brenda shouted after them, getting the tartan bag out of the trunk.

  "Stick it in the front hall, Brenda."

  Brenda did. But she and Martha had exactly similar bags on wheels. They had bought them together at a grand clearance sale in Rumbury Bargain Basement Bazaar. Brenda put the wrong bag in the front hall. She left in her trunk the one that still contained Mortimer. As well as Mortimer, it held two pounds of ripe bananas; Mortimer, who loved bananas, was too busy eating them just then to complain about being shut inside the bag.

  "We'd better get home quick," Auntie Brenda said. "We won't hang about in case Arabel's got something catching."

  She had to make three stops on the way home, however, for Cindy wanted a Dairy Isobar, Lindy wanted a Hokey-Coke, and Mindy wanted a bag of Chewy Gooeys. All these had to be bought at different shops. By the time they reached their house Mortimer had finished the bananas and was ready to be unzipped from the shopping bag.

  When Auntie Brenda undid the zip, expecting to see two boxes of raspberry ice cream, half a dozen electric lightbulbs, and a head of celery, out shot Mortimer, leaving behind him an utter tangle of empty rinds and squashed banana pulp.

  "Oh my dear cats alive," said Auntie Brenda. Mortimer was so smothered in banana pulp that for a moment she did not even recognize him. Then she cried, "Girls! It's that bird! Catch the horrible brute. He needs teaching a lesson, that bird does."

  Lindy grabbed a walking stick, Cindy got a tennis racket, and Mindy found a shrimping net left over from last summer at Prittlewell on Sea. They started chasing Mortimer about their house. Mortimer never flew if he could help it; he preferred walking at a dignified pace; but just now it seemed best to fly. Getting his wings to open was difficult at first, because of all the mashed banana, but he managed it. He flew to the drawing-room mantelpiece. Mindy took a swipe at him with her shrimping net and knocked off the clock under its glass dome. Mortimer moved himself to the hanging light in the middle of the room and dangled from it upside down, shaking off lumps of banana. Cindy whirled her racket and knocked the light through the window. Mortimer flew to the top of the bookshelf. Lindy tried to hook him with her walking stick and broke the glass front of the bookcase.

  "Use your hands, nincompoops," shouted Auntie Brenda. "You're breaking the place up."

  So they dropped their sticks and rackets and nets and went after Mortimer with their hands. Mortimer never, never pecked Arabel. But then she never tried to pull his tail, or grab him by the leg, or snatch hold of his wing; fairly soon Cindy, Lindy, and Mindy were covered with peck marks and bleeding here and there.

  Aunt Brenda tried throwing a tablecloth over Mortimer. That didn't work. She knocked over a table lamp and a jar of chrysanthemums. But after a long chase she managed to get him cornered in the fireplace. The fire was not lighted.

  Mortimer went up the chimney.

  "Now we've got him," said Auntie Brenda.

  "He'll fly out of the top," said Lindy.

  "He can't, there's a cowl on it," said Cindy.

  They could hear Mortimer, scrabbling in the chimney and muttering, "Nevermore," to himself.

  Auntie Brenda telephoned the chimney sweep, whose name was Ephraim Suckett, and asked him to come around at once.

  In ten minutes he arrived, with his long flexible rods, and his brushes, and his huge vacuum cleaner.

  "Been having a party?" he asked, as he looked around the drawing room. "Wonderful larks these teenagers get up to nowadays."

  "We've got a bird in the chimney," Aunt Brenda said grimly. "I want you to get him out."

  "A bird, eh?" said Mr. Suckett cautiously, looking at the damage. "He wouldn't be one o' them ana-condors with a wingspread of twenty foot? If so I want to make sure I
'm covered under my Industrial Injuries Policy."

  "He's an ordinary, common raven," snapped Auntie Brenda, "and I'd like you to get him out of that chimney as quickly as you can. I want to light the fire."

  So Mr. Suckett poked one of his rods up the chimney as far as it would go, and then screwed another one onto it and poked that up, and then screwed another one onto that. A lot of soot fell into the hearth.

  "When did you last have this chimney swept?" Mr. Suckett asked. "Coronation year?"

  Mortimer retired farther up the chimney.

  Meanwhile, what had happened to Arabel?

  She had gone to the hospital.

  Mrs. Jones called the doctor as soon as she was indoors. The doctor came quickly and said that Arabel had a bad case of flu and would be better off in Rumbury Central, so Mr. Jones, who had just arrived home for his tea, drove her there at once in the family taxi, wrapped up in three pink blankets, with her feet on a hot-water bottle.

  "Where's Mortimer? Is he all right?" Arabel asked faintly in the taxi. "What about his tea?"

  "Father'll give him his tea when he gets home," said Mrs. Jones. She had forgotten that, so far as she knew, Mortimer was still in the tartan shopping bag.

  Mr. Jones left his wife and daughter at the hospital. Mrs. Jones was going to stay there with Arabel. He drove home. In the front hall he found a tartan shopping bag containing two boxes of raspberry ice cream, some electric lightbulbs, and a head of celery. He put these things away. "Wonder why Martha got all those lightbulbs?" he thought. "She must know there are plenty in the tool cupboard."

  He made himself a pot of tea and a large dish of spaghetti, which was the only thing he knew how to cook. Then it struck him that the house was very quiet. Usually when Mortimer was awake there would be a scrunching, or a scraping, or a tapping, or a tinkling, as the raven carefully took something to pieces, or knocked something over, or pushed one thing under another thing.

  "Mortimer!" called Mr. Jones. "Where are you? Come out! What are you doing?"

  There was no answer. Nobody said, "Nevermore." The house remained quite silent.

  Mr. Jones began to feel anxious. In a quiet way, he was fond of Mortimer. Also he wanted to be sure the raven was not eating the back wall of the house, or unraveling the bath towels (Mortimer could take a whole bath towel to pieces in three and a half minutes flat), or munching up the Home Handyman's Encyclopedia in ten volumes. Or anything else.

  Mr. Jones hunted all over the house for Mortimer and couldn't find him anywhere.

  "Oh my goodness," he thought. "The bird must have wandered out while we were getting Arabel into the taxi. She will be upset. However will we be able to break it to her? She thinks the world of Mortimer."

  Just at that moment the telephone rang.

  When Mr. Jones picked the phone up, words came out of it in a solid shriek.

  "What's that?" said Mr. Jones, listening. "Who is it? This is Jones's Taxi Service here. Is that you, Brenda? Is something the matter?"

  The shriek went on. All Mr. Jones could distinguish was something about chrysanthemums, and something about soot, and something about a clock.

  "Soot in the clock," he thought. "That's unusual. Maybe they've got an oil-fired clock, I daresay such things do exist, and Brenda's always been dead keen on the latest gadgets." "I can't help you, Brenda, I'm afraid," he said into the telephone. "I don't know much about oil-fired clocks, nothing at all, really. You'll have to wait till Arthur gets home. We're all at sixes and sevens here because Arabel's gone to the hospital." And he hung up; he had more things to worry about than soot in his sister-in-law's clock.

  Meanwhile, what had been happening to Mortimer?

  Mr. Suckett, the sweep, had fastened more and more rods together and poked them farther and farther up Brenda's chimney. Mortimer had retired right up to the very top, but he couldn't get out because of the cowl, though he could look out through the slits. He had a good view and found it very interesting, for Brenda's house was right on top of Rumbury Hill and he could see for miles.

  The sweep had got his big vacuum cleaner switched on, and with its nozzle he was sucking up the bales and bales of soot that kept tumbling down the chimney as Mortimer climbed higher and higher.

  At last, finding that he could not dislodge Mortimer with his rods, Mr. Suckett began pulling them down again and unscrewing them one by one.

  "What'll you do now?" asked Lindy.

  "Will you have to take the top of the chimney off?" said Mindy.

  "Shall we light a fire and toast him?" said Cindy.

  "Just get rid of him somehow and be quick about it," said Auntie Brenda.

  "We'll have to suck him out," said the sweep.

  He withdrew the last of his rods and wheeled the vacuum cleaner close to the fireplace.

  This cleaner was like an ordinary household one, but about eight times larger. It had a big canvas drum on wheels, the size of a tar barrel, into which all the soot was sucked. Then, when he had finished a job, the sweep took it away and sold the soot to people at twenty-five pence a pound to put on their slugs. Better than orange peel, he said it was.

  By now the canvas drum was packed to bursting with all the soot that had been in Auntie Brenda's chimney, piling up since Coronation year.

  Mr. Suckett shoved the nozzle up the chimney and switched on the motor.

  It was tremendously powerful. It could suck a Saint Bernard dog right off its feet and up a ten-foot ramp at an angle of thirty degrees. It sucked Mortimer down the chimney like one of his own feathers.

  He shot down the chimney, along the canvas tube, and ended up inside the canvas drum, stuffed in with a hundredweight of soot.

  Mortimer had quite enjoyed being in the chimney where, if dark, it was interesting; besides, there was the view from the top.

  But he did not enjoy being sucked down so fast—upside down as it happened—and even less did he like being packed into a bag full of stifling black powder.

  He began to kick and flap and peck and shout, "Nevermore"; in less time than it takes to tell he had torn and clawed a huge hole in the side of the canvas drum; he burst out through this hole like a black bombshell and a hundredweight of soot followed him.

  Auntie Brenda had opened all the windows when Mr. Suckett began poking his rods up the chimney, to get rid of the smell of soot. Mortimer went out through a window with the speed of a Boeing 707; he had had enough of Auntie Brenda's house.

  He left a scene of such blackness and muddle behind him that I do not really think it would be worth trying to describe it.

  As soon as Mortimer was a short distance away from the house he planed down onto the ground and started to walk home. He really disapproved of flying. He had not the least idea where Auntie Brenda's house was, nor where the Joneses' house was, but he did not worry about that. Since Auntie Brenda's house was on the top of a hill he walked downhill, and he looked at each door as he passed it in hopes it would seem familiar. None did, so he went on, not very fast.

  Mr. Jones was at home, unhappily eating spaghetti, and wondering if he should call up the hospital and ask how Arabel was getting on, when the telephone rang.

  It was Mrs. Jones.

  "Is that you, Ben?" she said. "Oh dear, Ben, poor Arabel's ever so ill, tossing and turning and deliriated, and she keeps asking for Mortimer, and the doctor said you'd better bring him."

  Mr. Jones's heart fell into his sheepskin slippers.

  "Mortimer's not here," he said.

  "Not there? Whatever do you mean, Ben, he must be there." Then for the first time Mrs. Jones remembered and let out a guilty gulp. "Oh bless my soul, whatever will I forget next? I quite forgot that poor bird, though goodness knows the bother he caused a couple of hours shut up in a bag will just about serve him right for all his troublesomeness, but you'd better let him out right away, poor thing."

  "Let him out of where?"

  "My tartan shopping bag. He's inside it."

  "No, he's not, Martha," said Mr. Jone
s. "There was a head of celery, two family-size boxes of raspberry ice cream, and a dozen hundred-watt bulbs. What did you want to get all those for? We had some already."

  Mrs. Jones let out another squawk. "Oh my goodness, then he must be at Brenda's. She must have taken the wrong bag by mistake. You'd better go around there and collect him, Ben, and bring him to the hospital. And when you come, bring two more of Arabel's nighties, and some tea bags, and my digestive mints."

  "Around at Brenda's, is he," said Mr. Jones slowly. A lot of things began to make sense: the soot and the clock and the chrysanthemums. "All right, Martha, I'll go and get him and bring him as fast as I can."

  He did not tell Martha about the clock and the chrysanthemums. He hung up and then dialed Brenda's number.

  There was no reply. In fact, her line seemed to be out of order; he could hear a kind of muffled sound at the other end, but that was all.

  It was not hard to guess that if there had been some kind of trouble at Brenda's house, then Mortimer the raven was somehow connected with that trouble.

  Mr. Jones scratched his head. Then he took off his slippers and put on his shoes and overcoat. Sighing, he drove his taxi out of its shed and slowly up to where Rainwater Crescent meets Rumbury High Street. There are four traffic lights at this junction, or should be; this evening they did not seem to be working.

  The traffic was in a horrible tangle; two policemen were trying to sort it out, and a third was inspecting, with the help of a torch, the chewed stumps that were all that was left of the traffic lights.

  "Evening, Sid," said Mr. Jones, putting his head out of the cab window. "What's going on?"

  "Oh, hallo, Ben, is that you? Well, you'll think I'm barmy, but someone seems to have eaten the traffic lights."

  Mr. Jones reflected. He backed his cab fifty yards down the Crescent again, and got out.