Arabel's Raven Read online

  "Well," said Arabel, "if you don't think we ought, Pa told me there's an Italian grocer's shop in Highgate that has an olive-oil machine."

  "I'm not walking all the way over to Highgate."

  "In that case we'll have to use kerosene," said Arabel. "Mortimer, we are going to turn you upside down and pour a little kerosene into the trumpet so as to loosen you and pull you out. Will you please try not to struggle?"

  Silence.

  Arabel picked up the trumpet and turned it upside down. Chris picked up the kerosene container.

  At this moment the two men who had been following got out of their Citroen car and came quietly up beside them. Both were holding guns.

  "Hold it, sonny," said the one called Sid. "That's a valuable bird you've got in that trumpet. Don't you go pouring kerosene down it or you might spoil him."

  "We know he's valuable," said Arabel. "He's my raven, Mortimer."

  "How are we going to get him out if we don't pour kerosene?" said Chris.

  "Why are you holding guns?" said Arabel. "You look rather silly."

  "That bird's no raven. That bird is a valuable mynah bird, the property of Slick Sim Symington, the Soho property millionaire. That bird was kidnapped last week by a rival gang—by a rival establishment—and it is our intention to get possession of him again. So pass him over."

  "Pass over Mortimer?" said Arabel. "Not likely! Why he's my very own raven, he loves me, and he certainly isn't a miner bird, whatever they are."

  "We'll soon see about that," said Bill. Putting his gun down in the red wagon he grabbed hold of the trumpet with both hands while Sid, putting down his gun, grabbed Mortimer's feet.

  There was a short, sharp struggle during which it was hard to see what was going on. Then the scene cleared, to show Mortimer sitting on Arabel's shoulder. His face towel had come off. The trumpet was on the ground. The two men were both bleeding freely from a number of wounds.

  "Nevermore," said Mortimer.

  "I'll say it's nevermore," said Bill. "That's no mynah bird."

  "What a tartar," said Sid. "Lucky he missed my jugular! You're right, miss, he's a raven, and all I can say is, I wish you joy of the nasty brute."

  "Very sorry you were troubled," said Bill. "Here, come on, Sid, let's get over to Rumbury Central quick, and have us some antitetanus injections before we're rolling around like the exhibits in one of those kinetic shows."

  They jumped into their Citroen car and roared off, just missing the fire engine as they turned into the High Street.

  "Hey," shouted Arabel. "You've left your guns behind."

  But it was too late, they were gone.

  "Oh well," said Arabel, "perhaps they'll call in for the guns tomorrow. Anyway, now, Mortimer, you can sew on some buttons. We've got eighteen fivepenny pieces left."

  So Mortimer, jumping up and down with satisfaction and enthusiasm, put eighteen coins into the slot machine and it sewed seventeen buttons onto the face towel. (One of the coins turned out to be a five-centime piece with a hole in it.) Then they went home and let themselves in with Arabel's key. They tidied up the kitchen and the bathroom cupboard. Chris mopped the floor. Then he made a saucepan full of hot chocolate while Arabel had a bath, and he brought her a mugful in bed, and she drank it. Then she had to get out of bed again to brush her teeth. Then she went to sleep. Mortimer had already gone to sleep in the coal scuttle. He was tired out. Chris put all the cartons of milk except the one they had used for chocolate into the fridge, with the ham sandwich, the meat pie, the gumdrops, the chocolate bars, and the mentholated lozenges; he put the cigarettes, apple, pear, and paperback book on the dresser, and the kerosene outside in the shed. He ate the banana.

  He did not know what to do with the guns, so he left them in Arabel's red wagon.

  Then he put his do-it-yourself record on the record player and sat down to listen.

  "Morning moon, trespassing down over my skylight's shoulder,

  Who asked you in, to doodle across my deep-seated dream?"

  At that moment the front door burst open and in rushed Mr. and Mrs. Jones, police, firemen, and a lot of ladies with blankets and tea.

  "Arabel? Oh, where's my child?" cried Mrs. Jones, when she saw Chris.

  "Where's the gorillas?" asked Mrs. Finney.

  "And the mambas?" asked Mr. Finney.

  "And this here gang of dwarf Arabian hunchbacks?" said Sergeant Pike.

  "Arabel? Why, she's asleep in bed," said Chris, puzzled. "Where else would she be? You're back early, aren't you?"

  Mrs. Jones ran up the stairs.

  Sure enough, there was Arabel, asleep in bed.

  "What about Mortimer?"

  "He's asleep in the coal scuttle."

  There was a long, long silence while everybody gazed about at the tidy kitchen.

  At length Mr. Jones said, "What's that guitar doing up on top of the broom cupboard?"

  "I put it up there to be out of Mortimer's reach," said Chris. "He wanted to look for diamonds inside it."

  "He does do that sometimes," Mr. Jones said, nodding.

  After another long silence Sergeant Pike said, "If you ask me, everybody in this room has been suffering from one of them mass delusions. If you ask me, we'd better all forget about this evening's occurrences and go home to bed."

  Nobody disagreed. They all filed silently out of Mrs. Jones's kitchen and out of the house. Mr. Finney muttered, "Maybe there was an escape of gas and it sort of affected everybody's mind. Or maybe it was food poisoning. Those chips at the Assembly Rooms weren't very fresh."

  Mr. and Mrs. Jones paid Chris his babysitting fee and he went home. Then they went to bed. They were almost as tired as Mortimer.

  Next day, when Mr. Jones had gone off to drive his taxi, Mrs. Jones said to Arabel, "What's all this milk doing in the fridge, and this meat pie and ham sandwich?"

  "We'd used up all the milk so we went and got some more from the automatic machine."

  "Did you go out after your bedtime?"

  "No, it was twenty-five past eight. We got some other things from automatic machines, too. Those cigarettes are a present for Pa, and that book is a present for you."

  Mrs. Jones looked at the paperback called Death in the Desert. It had a picture of a person tied to a railway line.

  "Thank you, dearie. I'll read it sometime when I'm not busy," she said, and put it on a high shelf of the dresser. Then she said, "Where did those toy guns come from?"

  "I don't think they are toys," said Arabel. "They belong to two men, I think they were miners, who thought Mortimer was an escaped miner's bird. But they soon saw he wasn't."

  "Funny," said Mrs. Jones. "But I believe I did hear they used birds in the mines. I didn't know miners had to carry guns, though. Oh well, I daresay they'll come back for them."

  She put the guns on another high shelf.

  For a long time after that, people in Rumbury Town talked about the evening when the deadly black mamba escaped from the gasworks.

  Mrs. Jones was so pleased to have back her pearl-handled knives and forks that she forgave Arabel for the seventeen buttons sewn on and the strip torn off the face towel.

  Mortimer slept in the coal scuttle for thirteen hours solid. Then he woke up and began digging for diamonds. He threw all the coal out onto the kitchen hearthrug, lump by lump.

  But he did not find any diamonds in the coal scuttle.

 

 

  Joan Aiken, Arabel's Raven

 

 

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