Noah Barleywater Runs Away (15 page)

To everyone’s astonishment I became the first person to take gold in the 100 metres, 200 metres, 400 metres, 800 metres, 1,500 metres, 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres in the same Olympic Games. I even took a silver in the 400-metre hurdles, but was so disappointed by that relative failure that I chose
never to refer to it again, until now, and it was quickly removed from my official biography. And I became the only Olympian ever to win the 4 x 400-metre relay solo, by passing myself the baton in a complicated manoeuvre that quickly passed into legend.

No one could run faster than me; that was the simple fact of it.

As soon as the Games were over I remembered my promise to Poppa and thought it was probably high time I returned home, but that was when the exciting offers started to come in.

In Japan, the Emperor requested to see the boy who had deprived Japan’s star athlete, Hachiro Tottori-Gifu, of so many medals at the recent Games, and I ran all the way across Europe, into Russia, down through Kazakhstan, across China and over to Tokyo to do a few circuits of the Imperial City for the Heavenly Ruler Above the Clouds. His own son, the Crown Prince, challenged me to a race, and although he was soundly beaten I was generous enough not to win by too large a margin. The Japanese, after all, were covering both my accommodation and all my expenses.

‘Thanks very much,’ I said afterwards to the cheering crowds. ‘Now I’d better go home because I made a promise.’

But instead I went to South America, where a group of freedom fighters invited me to take part in their twice yearly Lay-Down-Your-Arms Day, a
celebration where all those on opposing sides of a particular political dispute came together for twenty-four hours and put on a sort of talent show. They made a point of inviting an international guest every year, and that year it was my turn. ‘You think you very fast, don’t you?’ asked a general, puffing on a cigar after he had seen me run through the forests in record time. ‘You think you big clever fellow.’ He seemed a little offended by me, even though he had been the one to invite me.

‘I do, sir, yes,’ I told him, trying one of the General’s cigars and promptly throwing up on my boots. ‘But now I’d really better go home because I made a promise.’

But on the way home I found myself in Italy, where the Pope challenged me to run around St Peter’s Square a thousand times in one afternoon. As the crowds gathered to watch and cheer me on, I found that I rather enjoyed the attention and didn’t want it to end.

‘Come into my private quarters,’ said the Pope afterwards, putting an arm around my shoulders. ‘Have a little tiramisu with me.’

‘No can do, Your Holiness,’ I told him, shaking my head. ‘I really have to get home. I made a promise.’

And on the way, I found myself in Spain, racing with the bulls in Pamplona, then running north to Barcelona for La Diada de Sant Jordi, where I manned every book- and flower-stall in the city by
chasing between them every time a customer appeared, and the entire city came to a standstill as I sped through the streets.

Closer to home, I found myself a little tired for once and decided to rest for a few days in West Cork, stopping off to be one of the judges in the Skibbereen Maid of the Isles Competition, an annual festival where every Irish man, woman and child descended on the town for twenty-four hours to run races, sing rebel songs and talk about the recession. I was invited to address the people, but I said I’d much rather show them how fast I was, and at that point a young woman in the crowd threw a set of keys at the stage.

‘I think I might have left a tap running,’ she said, giving me an address in Donegal, some three hundred miles away. ‘Would you ever go up there and check it out for me, lad?’

‘You didn’t,’ I replied a few moments later, throwing the keys back at her, along with a heavy red woollen jacket, ‘but I thought you might need this coat later. It looks like rain on the horizon.’

‘You’re a credit to your mother and father,’ the woman shouted back, and the crowd cheered again.

‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘But I’ve no mother. Only a father. And I’d better be getting back to him quick smart. I made a promise.’

From there, I took a boat across to London, stopping for a couple of days at a literary festival, where I ran in and out of the authors’ readings at
such a speed that the wind I generated turned the pages of their books for them, leaving both their hands free for drinking and finger-pointing. And try as I might, no matter how hard I tried to get back to the village, it seemed impossible. There was always another crowd that wanted to see me, always another invitation to accept. Another festival to attend. Another race to run. Thoughts of Poppa were never far from my mind, though, and I tried to forget my promise to go home, even as I knew that the years were passing, my schooldays were already far behind me, and my father could not be getting any younger.

It wasn’t until I had been sidetracked to St Petersburg and was running like a hamster in a giant wheel for the entertainment of the Tsar and his wife, the Empress of Russia, without ever taking a break or growing tired, that matters came to a head. A letter arrived for me, and I stopped running and stepped out of the hamster wheel. I read the words over and over, and felt the tears begin to spring from behind my eyes. I asked a young imperial bodyguard about the times of the trains from St Petersburg and was told that they were terribly slow, terribly rare and terribly cold.

‘But I have to get home,’ I said. ‘My father is dying.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the young guard, shrugging his shoulders and looking genuinely regretful that he could not be more helpful. ‘But there are no trains.’

‘Then I’d better run,’ I told him. ‘And I promise that this time no one will get in my way.’

And that, at least, was a promise I kept.

‘You were lucky to have a father like Poppa,’ said Noah. ‘If I wanted to do something like that, I’m sure my parents would never allow it.’

‘You don’t know that,’ said the old man. ‘Have you ever asked them?’

‘Well, no,’ admitted Noah. ‘But then no one’s ever come knocking on our door asking me to join the Olympics team. I’m only eight, after all.’

‘And you only won the bronze medal in the five hundred metres at school.’

‘Third place is good!’ insisted Noah. ‘Why do you keep saying that?’

‘Anyway, I wasn’t much older than you are when Mr Quaker came calling,’ said the old man with a shrug. ‘Still, different times, I suppose.’

The boy sighed and placed the puppet of Mr Quaker on the table next to those of the Prince, Mr Wickle and Mrs Shields. They lay there, staring up at him, not looking at all comfortable in such close proximity to each other. Noah thought they had
been sitting in that box together for so long that they might welcome a little freedom but they didn’t look happy about it.

Without warning, a cuckoo flew in the open window, stopped in mid-air between Noah and the old man, glanced at them both for a moment or two, sounded a quick
cheep-cheep
, then flew right back out again and disappeared into a cloud.

‘Oh dear me,’ said the old man, consulting his watch. ‘It can’t be that time already, surely?’

‘The cuckoo,’ said Noah, jumping up and poking his head out of the window to see where the bird had flown off to. ‘Does he do that every hour? Announce the time, I mean.’

‘Of course,’ said the old man, staring at Noah as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘He’s a cuckoo clock. You have those where you come from, surely?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Noah. ‘We have one on our living-room wall at home, right next to the picture of Auntie Joan, but it’s nothing like that. I didn’t know they did that in real life.’

‘Oh yes, if they’re trained correctly. He’s actually the second cuckoo clock I’ve had,’ said the old man, looking a little regretful. ‘His father used to do the job for many years but he met with a rather unfortunate accident one day when I forgot to leave the window open.’ He hesitated for a moment, then raised the palms of his hands wide. ‘Splat!’ he said, shaking his head in dismay. ‘I was
very sorry about it and thought it was the end of matters between me and that family, but fortunately his youngest son realized that it was an accident on my part and forgave me. He’s been coming here ever since.’

‘And does he wake you up in the mornings?’

‘Well, he tries to,’ said the old man. ‘Although I’m usually awake before he gets here. We have a little breakfast together sometimes, but he can be very cranky at that time of the morning. I always have to judge whether it’s safe to talk to him or not. I rise quite early, you see. I always have. When I was a boy, I used to go running early every morning. I can’t do that now, of course. My legs wouldn’t stand for it. No one to blame for that but myself, I suppose.’

‘It’s hardly your fault,’ said Noah. ‘You can’t help getting older.’

‘I can’t now, that’s true,’ said the old man, nodding his head. ‘But I didn’t have to get older. That was a decision I made myself.’

‘How could you have—?’ began Noah, but it was the old man’s turn to look out of the window now.

‘The sun will be going down soon,’ he said. ‘I remember once I saw the sun go down over Watson’s Bay in Sydney, and later that day I ran all the way to the tip of southern Spain to watch it come up again.’

‘You must have been very tired,’ said Noah in astonishment.

‘
Well, yes, I’m only human,’ said the old man, smiling.

‘I’ve only ever seen one sunrise,’ Noah said quietly. ‘At my own house, of course.’

‘Ah, then you’re an early riser too?’

‘Not usually,’ he admitted. ‘Sometimes my dad says he’s going to throw a bucket of water on me if I don’t get up. It’s strange – I always complain when it’s time to go to bed, and then I complain even more when it’s time to get up. It doesn’t make much sense, does it?’

‘That,’ said the old man, tapping a finger on the wooden table, ‘is one of the great paradoxes of life. Was your sunrise very memorable then?’

Noah swallowed and looked away. He waited a long time before answering, and when he did his voice came out very quiet.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.’

In the weeks that followed Noah’s visit to the fair, his mother continued to feel very ill, and one night, when his father came home from a drive to the city that they’d taken together, she wasn’t even with him.

‘Your mum will be back tomorrow,’ said Noah’s father, who seemed very tired and appeared to be thinking about the answers he was going to give to Noah’s questions rather than simply telling him the truth.

‘Tomorrow?’ asked Noah in surprise. ‘But why? Where will she stay tonight?’

‘In the city,’ said Dad. ‘With some friends.’

‘But she doesn’t have any friends in the city,’ said Noah, who had heard his mother say many times that she wished they knew more people there so they’d have a reason to go in on a Saturday for lunch.

‘Well, not friends exactly,’ said Noah’s dad. ‘Look, it’s difficult to explain. The important thing
is, she’ll be home tomorrow, and tonight it’s just the two of us. We can play football if you like.’

Noah shook his head and went to his room. He didn’t want to play football. He wanted to be told the truth.

The next day she still wasn’t home. It was the morning of the day when Noah had planned on starting to read his fifteenth book. He took it down off the shelf and opened it to the first page but couldn’t concentrate on what was happening. There was somebody called Squire Trelawney and another man called Dr Livesey and an inn called the Admiral Benbow, and they all started to melt into one, not because it wasn’t a good book but because Noah was finding it impossible to concentrate. He put it to one side and went downstairs to ask his father why his mum wasn’t home yet.

‘You said she’d be back today,’ he said, and his father looked at him, and opened and closed his mouth for a few moments like a guppy fish.

‘I said she’d be back tomorrow,’ said his father.

‘Yes, but that was yesterday. So today is tomorrow.’

‘Now you’re just being silly, Noah,’ said Dad. ‘How could today be tomorrow?’

Noah felt a great rage build up inside him. He had never felt anything like this before. It was like a hurricane of anger, starting in the pit of his stomach, twisting and turning, collecting bits of fury and pieces of temper as it whirled around,
swept up through the centre of his body and finally came storming out of his mouth in a rush of indignation.

‘I’m eight!’ he cried, bursting into unexpected tears. ‘I’m not five or six or seven any more. I want to know what’s going on!’

But he didn’t wait for a response, charging up to his room instead, locking the door behind him and throwing himself on the bed, refusing to open the door a few minutes later when his father knocked and said he wasn’t to worry, his mother would be home soon. In fact, he didn’t even go down for his dinner that night, listening through his bedroom door when he heard his father talking on the phone later.

‘All right, I’ll wait,’ he was saying to whoever was on the other end of the line. ‘Hopefully he’ll get some sleep and we can talk to him tomorrow.’