Lionboy (28 page)

Next, Elsina. She wasn’t as strong or practiced, but she had the energy of youth, and her aunts and mother were there to catch her.

Then the new creature. The jump was no problem to him. He was so big, he almost could have stepped on, but he gave a short, powerful leap with his strong back legs.

Next, the oldest lion. Charlie was worried about him too—he was old, could he make it?

The oldest lion looked superciliously at the train, calculating the height in his mind, and he took a few delicate paces back. Then he shook his head and seemed to change his mind. Rather than take a running leap, as the lionesses had done, he paced directly to the front of the car and swiftly, elegantly, scrambled up on the maintenance ladder. All six lions were now lying flat, spread-eagled on the roof. Charlie couldn’t see them at all. Just as it should be.

He glanced around him. Nothing. Nobody. His heart was hammering. A few platforms away an engine was starting to chug and rattle.

The young lion was now preparing to leap, and Charlie was thinking that he too might take the maintenance ladder. And just at that moment, he heard voices.

The young lion flashed his yellow eyes at Charlie, blinked, and flew. He was right to, of course, because though there is only very little excuse for a young boy to be wandering alone in the dark on a railway track, there is even less excuse for a lion.

It was the extra engineer and the extra conductor, coming on duty a little late, frankly. The engineer was complaining about having to come out into the dark, on the tracks, to the cab.

Although the bulk of the train was between him and them, Charlie dropped to the ground. He was right by the gap between the cars. Did he dare scurry farther out of view? He really did not want to have to explain himself. Not now. Not after all they’d been through.

It was cold and wet and grubby down on the track. He could smell metal and dead leaves and damp wood. The wheels towered huge above him. He tried to think himself invisible. “I am a pile of rags. I am an old plastic bag,” he said quietly under his breath. “I don’t exist, you can’t see me, you’d never notice me, I’m just some glop left over after the storm . . .” He peered under the heavy, dirty car links, hoping and hoping to see legs walking along on the other side of the train, legs that would belong to people who would walk on by, and get on the train, and never see him, and never know that he existed.

But they did see him.

“What’s that?” said one in French.

“Je ne sais pas,”
said the other.
I don’t know.
They came over and peered. “It’s a person—a child.”

Charlie’s heart sank. He had to think quickly.

What was his priority? To get on the train.

What must not be allowed to happen? Not getting on the train.

When was the train leaving? Any minute.

What would make these men put him on the train?

Think, think, think.

Bingo!

“Mummy! Mummy!” cried Charlie pathetically. “I want my mummy!”

He started crying—just a bit. It was quite easy to fake, because his feelings
were
running high, and actually—now that he was crying it out—it was true, he did want his mum, badly, although that would not be quite how he would have chosen to express himself on the subject.

“He’s lost,” said one of the men. “What are you doing down there? Are you all right? Here, get up.”

Charlie stood, trying to look as small, young, innocent, and pathetic as possible. They had to see him as lost and sad, because otherwise they’d see him as trouble and bad, in which case they’d cart him off to the stationmaster . . . Charlie rubbed his eyes. His face was filthy.

“Where was the platform?” cried Charlie. “I was looking for Mummy and there was no platform . . .” All of which was true, of course. He
was
looking for his mum and there
was
no platform. But the drivers took it to mean—as Charlie had hoped they would—that he had fallen off the train. So now they began to worry about getting into trouble for not having a platform beside the train, and putting small boys in danger. And the nearest car was the first-class car. They didn’t want any fuss from worried mothers and irate fathers with expensive tickets and high standards of travel safety.

The engineer and the conductor looked at each other, perplexed.

Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, thought Charlie. It was 12:28 according to the station clock.

They were in a hurry—in fact, they should have been in the cab ten minutes ago. It was due to leave. They didn’t want trouble.

“Oh no,” said the guard. “There’s Monsieur Blezard.”

A small group of people led by a man in a very sharp uniform was marching determinedly down the platform.

The engineer rolled his eyes.

So they did what Charlie hoped they would do: They picked him up, opened the door of the train, and popped him inside.

“You’re all right now,” said one, looking firmly at him. “You don’t need to mention it.”

Charlie smiled bravely. “I won’t,” he said. “I’ll just find my mum.”

The trainguys rushed on up to the cab, and the head engineer swore at them for being late.

Charlie, knowing that the lions had seen and understood what had happened, looked up and down the elegant wood-paneled corridor in which he found himself, and heaved a massive sigh of something like relief.

He couldn’t quite believe it.

12:29.

The first door on the corridor was open. He slipped in and swiftly locked it after him.

He was in a bathroom. It was fancier than anywhere he’d ever seen before. The sink was porcelain, with a pattern of pink rose-buds scattered across it. The toilet seat was polished dark wood. The little table was glass. The little curtain was crisp lace. The towels were fluffy and white. The walls were wood-paneled, and there was a small painting of a lady in a pink dress, on a swing, surrounded by garlands of pink roses and two fat little cupids. It reminded him of Madame Barbue on her horse, and Pirouette flying through the heavens of the big top on her trapezes. Nothing could be less like slimy canal sides, dangerous ledges, filthy railroad tracks, trash-filled dens. He had to blink.

Gosh, he was tired. This had been a long, long day. He sat down on the polished toilet seat and finally, finally, let himself take a breath. He was here on the train. The lions were too. All had gone more or less according to plan in the end—except for the new creature, of course, with his teeth and his howl. He wasn’t part of the plan. He was—well, what on earth
was
he?

In thirty seconds the train would leave.

Please God, please everybody, keep Rafi away for thirty seconds.

It smelled wonderful in here—like Christmas and honey and oranges. For the moment, the lions would just have to look after themselves. The new creature would just have to look after himself. Charlie was in a warm, dry place, about to leave for Venice, and he was exhausted. He pulled a fluffy white towel toward him: The moment the train started to move he would
sleeeeeeep . . .

The distant sound of a dog barking was almost part of his dream . . .

But it wasn’t. It was here. Right outside the crisp white curtain. Loud, insistent, and accompanied by shouting, in English and French. Charlie jerked his head up.

“You must stop the train! You must stop the train!
Il faut arreter le train! Il y a des—des animaux à bord! Il faut arreter le train! Il y a des
—”

Charlie stared at the curtain. Very, very slowly, he lifted the corner.

“Listen, man, you must stop it! They’re criminals, they’re runaways . . .”

It was Rafi. He looked appalling. Wet, furious, shouting, with green scum smearing his leather coat, and blood down his face, his lips gray, his arm hanging limp, and his big ugly dog slobbering at his feet, jumping and barking, as if desperate to get at the car and tear it up piece by piece.

A guard was shouting at Rafi—telling him to control his dog.

Someone shouted
“Fou!”
—madman!

The train was beginning to creak and crunch. Doors were slamming, guards shouting to one another.

Charlie couldn’t see whom Rafi was yelling at. He couldn’t see what was happening.

“Stop the train, man!” Rafi yelled. He looked like a lunatic.

Charlie pressed his face to the cool glass of the window.

Rafi turned. His little beard was matted with blood. His eyes were livid.

He saw Charlie.

Charlie saw him.

The whistle blew. The train lurched. In slow jerks, Rafi’s furious face disappeared from view.

CHAPTER 19

C
harlie was asleep, his head on a fluffy white towel folded up on the edge of the sink.

He was not disturbed by the footsteps of the seven lions on the roof of the train as they cautiously prowled around, looking for a place to lie safely through the night, snug in a pile, as far out of the wind as possible. He slept through the rattle and hum of the train speeding up as it left Paris, heading south. He slept through the polite, gentle French voice of the conductor inquiring whether everything was just so, and was anything else required, and through a smooth English voice replying “Yes, yes, thank you so much,” in a way that clearly meant “Now just go away and don’t bother us.”

Even the shock of Rafi’s wild, riverswept face at the car window, caked with blood and fury and demanding that the train be stopped—even that could not keep Charlie awake. He had been working, and planning, and running, and fearing, and in this moment, in this clean warm place, with the train rushing him away from everything he feared, not a thing in the world could keep him awake. Sheer relief had knocked him out.

Charlie was dreaming that he and his mother and father were all at home around the kitchen table eating fish sticks and playing a game of Scrabble. Charlie was extremely happy in this dream, and had no plans to leave it. Mum was being particularly clever, making words Charlie didn’t know, like “spasmodiacal” and “leaven-some.” Actually, perhaps they weren’t real words. Dad was laughing. Their hands were squabbling over the board: hers pale and strong, his big and black and silky-skinned. Charlie was putting his hand out, in the dream as he had so often in life, to see his brown-ness next to them, when he was awakened by a sharp rat-a-tat-tat on the door.

Charlie bolted awake in a state of shock. Where was he? What was happening?

“What?” he cried.

A gruff foreign voice was saying, “All right, you can come out now.”

Charlie shook his head, trying to clear it. He had been very deeply asleep, very deep in his dream of home.

“Open the door,” said the voice. “You must be very tired, it’s late for a youngster. Come on out and Edward will make up a bed for you.”

Charlie was so amazed that like a sleepwalker he stood up, opened the door, and stared out at the person who had called him. It was a fat, dark man in a gorgeous purple dressing gown.

“Dear oh dear,” said the fat man. “Edward—pajamas for my young friend. Washing can wait till morning. Are you hungry?”

Groggily, Charlie admitted that yes, he was.

Ten minutes later he was sitting up under tartan blankets in a small, tight, incredibly clean train bed, with a chicken sandwich on a heavy white plate with a gold crown on it, and a large glass of milk—or rather, a goblet of milk. Really, he thought, this glass could only be called a goblet, with its leg, and the weight of it. It’s so—gobletty.

Gobletty. That’s not a word.

Should be, though. Nice word.

Two minutes after that, he was fast asleep again.

 

Eight hours later he was awakened by the smell of bacon. He’d become used to his ropelocker bedroom on board the
Circe.
He had sort of considered it home. But this tiny bunk was really very comfortable, and so deliciously clean. He yawned, and tried to roll over, but it was difficult. He was tucked in very tight—rolled in like a caterpillar in a chrysalis, because it was so small.

Had he perhaps died, and gone to heaven?

He was in a tiny compartment, with a little window outside of which a cold, bright, clear morning was racing past. Inside, all was as snug and luxurious as could be imagined.

How very warm it was. And dry. And comfortable.

And then there was the smell of toast. The smell of golden butter melting on toast. The smell, he almost persuaded himself, of beautiful, ruby-red strawberry jam melting into the golden puddles of melted butter . . . It gave him a sharp memory of home.

He pushed back the tartan blankets and got out of bed. He was starving. But then—on the other side of the door, a strange man with a grand dressing gown, who had extracted him from the bathroom the night before, would almost certainly be waiting, wanting an explanation. Charlie hesitated—but not for long. There was nothing else he could do, so he pushed the door open.