Eight Days of Luke (13 page)

“Who is it?” Astrid said peevishly.

“David,” said David, and held his breath. Astrid sounded in the kind of mood when she would tell him to go away. In which case he would have to manage with the joint of mutton alone.

“Oh, come in if you must,” said Astrid. And when David went in, she asked unpromisingly: “And to what do I owe the honor?” She was sitting at the dressing table putting in her contact lenses. There were dresses strewn everywhere, as if she had been trying them on, but she did not look as if she had been enjoying herself. Her face was white and pinched and discontented.

“I want to ask you a favor,” David said daringly.

“I thought as much,” said Astrid. “You only look friendly when you want something. You're just like the rest of them.”

“I don't think I am,” said David. He felt very uncomfortable. It was quite true that the only times he had ever thought of being nice to Astrid were when he wanted something—as he did now. He told himself that Astrid had never been nice to him either, but that did not prevent him feeling so uncomfortable that he thought he would go away without asking.

“Oh, don't look so sheepish,” said Astrid. “I'm in a bad temper, that's all. What do you want? The moon, or only half of it?”

David smiled. “A quarter of it'll do.” Now he was not grateful to her, he was beginning to see that Astrid was not so bad really. Perhaps that was why he had thought of asking her to help. “It's about Luke,” he said. “I was supposed to meet him at the recreation ground at ten, and it's gone ten now. I wondered if you could drive me there.”

“I'm surprised Your Majesty doesn't take a taxi,” said Astrid. “O.K., if it's Luke I'll do it. Anything's better than sitting about here. You'll have to wait, though, while I change to a handbag that goes with this dress. I'll be down in five minutes.”

“That's very kind of you,” David said gratefully.

“It is, isn't it?” said Astrid, and she got up and shook about seventy useless objects out of a blue handbag into the middle of one of the beds. David reckoned that five minutes might see them all collected again, but you never knew with Astrid.

He went slowly downstairs. There were sounds from the dining room as if the quarrel might be ending. David hoped devoutly that they would not all be out and looking for the mutton before Astrid had collected her things. He sat on the stairs and waited three minutes. The quarrel still grumbled on. David got up and went to the drawing room, where he unburied the mutton from the cushions and carried it over to the window. The raven was now sitting on the gatepost.

“Hey!” David said cautiously. “I've got something better than biscuits this time. Here.” He threw the mutton toward the gate. It landed on the drive with a sticky thump.

“Meat?” said the raven.

“Yes,” said David. He stayed to watch the raven glide down beside the joint and then hurried out into the hall again, just as Astrid came downstairs, carrying a white handbag and jingling her car keys.

“Ready?” she said.

“You back out,” said David. “I'll only be a second.”

Astrid went out of the side door to the garage. When he heard the garage door go up, David darted out also, to carry out the third cunning stage of his plan. The second raven looked up as he came running up the lawn, and flew away from him into a rosebush.

“It's all right,” David said to it. “I was only coming to tell you that the other raven has a joint of meat on the front drive.”

This raven did not speak to David. It was in too much of a hurry. It went up out of the rosebush with a clap and a scramble. David watched it wheel between the chimneys and plunge out of sight over the roof with an angry squawk. He laughed. Those ravens were not going to think of following Astrid's Mini for some time. He ran back down the garden and got into the car.

Astrid backed past the house and the front garden. To David's delight, the ravens were quarreling fiercely, tugging the mutton this way and that along the drive. Several passersby were looking over the gate, for joints of mutton do not lie on people's drives every day.

“What huge birds!” said Astrid. “What have they got?”

“It looks like a lump of meat,” said David.

“I wonder where it came from,” said Astrid, but she did not stop to investigate. She put the Mini into forward gear and drove up the road.

“It is kind of you to drive me,” David said thankfully.

“Don't mench,” said Astrid. “What else have I to do? You should ask me oftener, David. To tell you the truth, I feel so sick of everything that I'd go anywhere, do anything, like the adverts say. I suppose it was my own fault for getting so set on going to Scarborough.”

“That was kind of you too—not to go,” David said awkwardly.

“Not my decision,” Astrid said, turning into the main road. “Your Uncle Bernard didn't want to go, and what he wants he gets. Mind you, I never saw why you shouldn't have come too, but no one ever listens to a word I say, so that was that. Honestly, David, sometimes when they all start I don't know whether to scream or just walk out into the sunset.”

It had never occurred to David before that Astrid found his relations as unbearable as he did. He asked with great interest, rather experimentally: “Why don't you do both? Walk into the sunset screaming?”

“Why?” said Astrid. “Because I'm a coward, David. I've no money, or I'd have gone years ago.”

“I'd go,” said David, “if I was old enough, whether I had any money or not.”

“I've guessed that all right,” said Astrid. “Bottom of the pecking order, that's you. I'm next one up. We ought to get together and stop it, really, but I bet you think I'm as bad as the rest. You see, I get so mad I have to get at someone.”

“I get at Mrs. Thirsk,” said David.

“More fool you. And she makes things pretty unpleasant for you, doesn't she?” said Astrid. “Oh, wasn't it marvelous when the Abominable Chew hit her with the spade? I nearly raised a cheer!”

“And me,” said David. By this time, he was feeling so friendly toward Astrid that he said: “You know, you ought not to play so fair in the illness contest. Uncle Bernard's always getting bonus points for pretending to be sorry for you.”

Astrid burst out laughing. “Well I never! The things you notice!” She laughed so much that she did not see the Wednesday Hill traffic lights turn green and David had to tell her. “So what do you advise me to say?” she said when they were moving again. “Mind you, I do get awful headaches,” she added, in case David should think it was only a game.

“Yes, but you should say they're infectious and Uncle Bernard shouldn't come near you,” said David. “And that sort of thing.”

“All right,” said Astrid. “You watch me this evening. And tell me what you make the score afterward.”

They were very pleased with one another when Astrid turned the Mini into the gates of the recreation ground and bumped across to the parking space. “There,” she said, putting on the handbrake. “Where's Luke?”

The nearest thing was a boys' game of cricket, with Alan batting. Beyond that, there were people just mucking about, or playing football in spite of the heat, and beyond that again was official cricket, in whites. Luke, of course, was not there.

“I'll wait,” said Astrid. “If he doesn't turn up, I can drive you back.” She opened her handbag and took out her cigarettes. David grinned. “Bother!” she said, scrabbling about among the seventy useless objects. “Where are my matches?”

“I've got one,” said David, nearly laughing. “Here.” He struck one of his matches and held it toward Astrid's cigarette.

“Thanks,” she said, puffing out a cloud of smoke. “Oh, here's Luke.”

Luke was sauntering toward the Mini, smiling. David put his matches in his pocket and flung open the car door. He had one foot on the grass, when Luke stopped smiling and began to back away. Before David was properly through the door, Luke turned and ran, and a tall man with red-fair hair came from behind the Mini and ran after Luke in great strides.

David got out of the car and watched helplessly. Luke scampered for his life, but the tall man overhauled him steadily and easily, stride by stride. Luke might have had a start of twenty-five yards. Before he had scurried ten yards, the tall man had halved the distance between them. In another five, he had halved it again. Well before they came to Alan's game of cricket, he reached out and caught Luke's arm, and swung Luke nearly off his feet. Luke stumbled round to face him, rather defiantly, and the tall man laughed. To David's surprise, so did Luke.

“Who's that?” Astrid asked.

“I don't know,” David said. His first thought, that the man was another of Mr. Wedding's resources, dwindled to mere bewilderment when Luke laughed. Now the tall man was talking to Luke in a way that showed he liked him, and Luke was answering as if he were pleased to see him. Yet David saw Luke make two attempts to get away. The tall man stopped him each time by grabbing his arm again, and each time it happened he laughed. And Luke laughed too, as if it were a game. Another puzzling thing was that David was fairly sure this man had been one of the people looking over the gate at the ravens. That ginger-blond hair was hard to mistake. If so, David thought he must be a very fast runner indeed to cover three miles almost as quickly as Astrid's Mini.

“Go and find out,” Astrid suggested.

David set out toward the two at an uncertain trot. They seemed to be arguing now. Luke was protesting about something and seemed very much less amused.

As David came within earshot, he heard Luke say: “I tell you I've no idea where it is. I never even knew you'd lost it.” Seeing David coming, he said: “David, I told you last night that I didn't do anything, didn't I?”

“Yes, you did,” David said.

The tall man let go of Luke's arm and turned to David. “Hallo,” he said. David saw why Luke had seemed so pleased to see him. He had seldom seen a more generous, friendly face, or a nicer smile. “It was a good idea, that meat,” the man said, laughing. “You thought you'd got clean away, didn't you? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I had to talk to Luke.”

“What are you going to do with him?” David said.

“Nothing,” said the man. “He's all yours for today. You've earned it.” Then he turned to Luke. “Off you go then,” he said. “I'll take your word for it and think again, but I doubt if the rest of them will. Watch out after today, won't you?”

“Thanks,” said Luke. “I will.”

He and David strolled back to the car, and David was more puzzled than ever.

“What was all that about?” Astrid wanted to know. “Who was he?”

“One of my relations,” said Luke. “He's lost something and he thought I knew where it was.” To David, he added: “And I see why Wedding's so set on finding me now. It's rather a mess.”

“He looked nice, your relative,” said Astrid. “Is he Swedish or something?”

“Not specially Swedish,” said Luke.

“That hair of his made me think he was,” said Astrid. “I envy him that red-gold. It's a much nicer color than mine.”

“Impossible!” Luke said promptly.

“You!” said Astrid. “What are you two going to do? Do you want me to drive you somewhere?”

“Yes, please,” said David. “Somewhere near the river,” he suggested, thinking of the green river at Wallsey.

“Hop in then,” Astrid said cheerfully.

David began to wonder how he had managed to misjudge Astrid so for all these years. He supposed it must be because she had to live with his relations too, and he had been lumping her in with the rest without thinking. She drove them to the river, where it was wide and brown and overhung with willows. When they began to be hungry, which happened rather soon with Luke, she telephoned Aunt Dot to say she was taking David and Luke out to lunch. They lunched off fish and chips out of paper bags in a way which would have horrified Aunt Dot had she known, and then returned to the river for the long, hot afternoon. Astrid sprawled on the bank in the sun, while David and Luke waded over to a reedy island and hunted for mussels.

They had a stack of blue mussels—which were getting a little smelly—when David happened to glance across at Astrid. The tall man with ginger hair was sitting on the bank beside her, talking and laughing.

David nudged Luke. “Look. Is he really all right?”

“Oh,
he's
all right.” Luke stood under a cloud of flies up to his knees in water, looking across the river. He spoke cheerfully, but he was thoughtful somehow. After a while he said: “He probably came to make sure no one else did. He said today was safe, and when
he
says a thing he means it. But I don't like it. Wedding would never have agreed if he wasn't pretty sure he could find me when he wanted.”

David rubbed his face with a mussel-scented hand and knew for certain that he would not be able to elude Mr. Chew and two ravens twice in a row. “Luke,” he said, “don't you think you'd better go while he's here and you're safe? And I won't strike a match till Monday. Wouldn't that be best?”