Noah Barleywater Runs Away (18 page)

The old man considered this request for a long time but finally shook his head. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, but they’re a part of a family, you see. They remind me of my life.’

‘But you could carve another, surely?’

‘Oh no,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a curious thing. Whenever I have a block of wood in front of me, whenever I sit down to create a puppet, I’m always trying to carve something else but for some reason it never turns out the way I intended. I start with one idea in mind, but then something entirely different appears out of the wood. Look at this, for example,’ he said, holding up the piece of wood, which had been transformed into a baboon. ‘I wasn’t trying to make a baboon.’

‘Then what were you trying to make?’

The old man looked away for a moment and shrugged his shoulders; it was time for him to tell the truth. ‘Why, me, of course,’ he replied with a smile.

The truth was (said the old man), for many years I had avoided carving puppets. Instead I made trains and boats and letter blocks and pencil holders, and anything else I could think of that could be put together with wood and nails. I kept up the traditions that had begun with Poppa, and in some cases I even managed to improve on them.

And even though I was no longer travelling the world and having great adventures, I kept up my usual routines after his death, running in the mornings and evenings, although usually only doing a few thousand circuits of the village because I knew for certain that if I went any further, then I would only end up in some palace or festival, up the Pyramids or down the Grand Canyon, and I had a business to look after now and I had to put that first.

But then the strangest thing happened. One day, just as I was about to set off on my evening run, I noticed that I was feeling a little tired. I was reaching down to tie my laces, and when I stood up again
I let out an unexpected sigh of exhaustion and my hand moved quickly to the lower portion of my back, which was feeling terribly sore. And even though I went out that night, I came back panting a little more than usual and didn’t even eat my supper before falling into bed. I didn’t think too much about it until a few months later, when I found myself starting to groan every morning when Alexander’s alarm went off and wanting to curl back up under the sheets and not do any running at all.

And as year followed year I realized that I had to cut back on my exercise. My body had become a little less supple, my legs a little less quick to respond to my demands. I was not as quick on my feet as I had once been. Small blue veins in my hands began to grow more pronounced. Once, I even came down with a cold.

And then, one day, while I was tidying one of the displays in the toy shop, I noticed my father, Poppa, standing only three feet away from me, looking as old as he was on the day I had gone to my triumphant Olympic Games all those years before.

‘Poppa!’ I cried, overjoyed to see him again, forgetting for a moment that he had died many years earlier. I ran forward, arms outstretched, just as Poppa ran towards me too, his arms also outstretched.

We collided. I fell over. So did Poppa.

I looked up and realized that this was not my father at all; what I had seen was my own reflection
in the long, wood-framed mirror that had stood for so many years in the corner of the shop.

I’m an old man now
, I thought.

It was at that moment that I realized I had made the wrong decision all those years before when I had been granted my wish to become a real boy. I should have stayed a puppet.

As that idea settled in my head, I felt a curious sensation dissolving into my arms and hands, a feeling that could only be satisfied by taking a hammer and chisel in either fist and sitting down to work. I went downstairs to the basement, where I always kept a big supply of wood, and to my surprise, for the first time in my life, I discovered that I had none left. Of course, I normally purchased all my materials for the toys from a local lumberyard, but it was almost midnight and the yard would be closed until the following morning. But I had to carve a puppet; I had no choice. I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to
breathe
.

I stepped outside the toy shop and looked up and down the empty streets, allowing the night air to pour into my lungs, and wondered for a moment whether anyone would notice if I simply climbed over the wall into the lumberyard and stole enough for my needs. Well, not
stole
it as such, as I would certainly return the next day and pay for whatever I had taken, but as soon as the idea entered my head I realized that such a thing was impossible. My legs, after all, were not the legs they had once been.
I couldn’t jump the wall or even climb over it any more. (Even as a young man I’d only been able to manage silver in the 400-metre hurdles so it was entirely out of the question now that I was old.) The whole thing seemed impossible.

Filled with frustration, I turned my attention to the tree that stood before me and a thick branch caught my eye. Could it be that simple? It was almost as if the branch was calling out to me.
Take me!
it was saying. Come on,
snap me off!

And so I did.

I took a firm hold of the branch and, surprising myself with a sudden discovery of strength, I wrenched it away from the trunk and stood rooted to the path as I stared at the clean, solid lump of wood that I held in my hands. A moment later I stepped back inside the shop, locked the door behind me, went downstairs to the basement and got to work.

I knew exactly the puppet I wanted to create. I could see in my mind the straight, neat legs, jointed at the knees, the second set of feet that Poppa had created after I’d been foolish enough to allow the first set to be burned off while I slept. The smooth cylindrical body was easy to recall, as were the skinny arms and simple hands that stretched out from them. The cheerful, eager face; the troublesome nose that grew and grew whenever I told a lie. It was all there; it was all locked away in my memory. I was sure I could do it; after all, I was a master
craftsman and had never attempted a carving that I had failed to produce.

‘If I do this right …’ I told myself as I chipped and chiselled away. ‘If I make him perfect, then maybe, just maybe …’

And for a long time it looked as if it might just work. The legs
seemed
to be the right legs; the body
seemed
to be the right body; the face
seemed
to be the right face. But when I finished that first puppet and stepped away from it, I was astonished by what I saw. For it had mysteriously transformed into a fox – a fox I knew well, a fox who had persuaded me many years before to bury my five gold coins in the field of miracles, to water them and go away for a few hours so that when I returned they would have turned into five thousand gold coins. The fox who had stolen from me because of my innocence.

‘Now, how did that happen?’ I asked myself, shaking my head in surprise and determining that the next night I would concentrate more carefully on my work and then I would surely produce the perfect puppet.

From that evening on, night after night, I set about trying to create a wooden version of my former self, but every time I finished and looked at what I had produced, the puppet had become something entirely different. A puppet of a station master perhaps. Or a grieving widow. A woman sitting at a desk composing a sonnet to a lover lost at sea. A feather floating in the breeze. A piano in
need of tuning. The statue of Zeus at Olympia. Charles Lindbergh, setting off in the
Spirit of St Louis
. It didn’t matter how the puppet began or how intensely I worked at my creation, it always turned into something entirely different and completely unexpected.

And every night I broke another branch off the tree and began again. And a few mornings after that, the branch had grown back.

This has been going on for years now. I have decorated the shop with the puppets that my hands have carved out of Poppa’s tree, and all the time I’ve been growing older and older until finally I realize that my quest was hopeless.

I made my choice. I became a real boy and I can never be a puppet again.

And as Dr Wings pointed out, a real boy became a real man, and a real man became a real old man, and after that—

‘I know what comes after that,’ said Noah, looking away, feeling his heart start to beat a little faster inside his chest.

‘Yes, I expect you do,’ said the old man, sitting down and smiling at the boy, his kindly eyes making Noah feel warm and safe. ‘Don’t you think it’s time to go home now? To be with your mother while you still can?’

Noah stood up. He was feeling tired and confused. It had been a day filled with surprises and adventures and all sorts of unexpected people and incidents, and the truth was, he wanted nothing more than to tell someone about all the things that had happened to him. To tell someone he loved.

‘I wish I could run a toy shop,’ he said after a few minutes, looking up with an excited expression on his face. ‘I think it must be wonderful to work in a place like this.’

‘I thought you wanted to be an astronomer,’ said the old man.

‘
That was just one of the professions I’m considering,’ said Noah, correcting him. ‘It might not be the right one for me. The thing is, I like toys very much. And I’m very good at woodwork. So perhaps I could have a job like yours someday?’

‘It’s possible,’ said the old man, turning round to glance at Alexander the clock. ‘My, is that the time already?’ he said. ‘It’s getting late. It’ll be dinner time soon.’

‘But we’ve only just had lunch,’ said Noah, knowing that he couldn’t possibly eat another thing so soon or he would, quite simply, explode.

‘And the sun is going down,’ said the old man, looking out of the window at the sky, which was deepening into a dark blue with a few black clouds lingering on the horizon. ‘I suppose I shall have to go for my exercise soon.’

‘Do you still go running then?’ asked Noah in surprise, for looking at the old man it was hard to imagine that he could possibly pick up any kind of speed; he was a little hunched over, for one thing, and even going up and down the staircase he had moved at a very slow pace.

‘Oh no,’ said the old man, shaking his head. ‘No, I couldn’t manage that any more. But I like to go for a walk every evening. Just around the village, that’s all. To get a little fresh air in my lungs and to keep the blood circulating. Perhaps you’d like to join me this evening?’

Noah looked at his watch. He hadn’t thought
very much further than leaving home and finding a village he liked, but now that he had found one, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do next. ‘Yes, all right,’ he said, taking his jacket from the coat stand that came running towards him at just the right moment. ‘I suppose a walk would be good for me too after all that food, but then I really need to be getting along.’

‘Of course,’ said the old man, taking his own coat and scarf off the stand too. ‘Thank you, William,’ he said to the stand, who tipped his head where the hats rested and ran back to the corner of the toy shop. ‘A boy who has left home must keep on the move. He can never stop anywhere in case he’s found. Why, he might run the risk of making friends if he stayed in the same place for too long.’

‘I’m sure I could stop
somewhere
,’ said Noah quickly. ‘They’ll give up looking for me eventually.’

‘Oh, my dear boy,’ replied the old man, laughing a little. ‘If you think that, then you don’t know your parents at all. They’ll never stop looking for you. They’ll always want you back. Now, do you have everything you came with?’

Noah took one last look around the shop and nodded. He didn’t really want to go but knew that he couldn’t stay there alone either. The toy shop was a strange and confusing place but he felt safe inside it.

‘Good,’ said the old man. ‘Then we’ll be on our way.’

They stepped out into the evening air, which was a little brisk. The street was quiet, though, and there was no sign of the helpful dachshund, the hungry donkey or the crowd that had gathered outside earlier.

‘Aren’t you going to lock the door,’ asked Noah, ‘in case someone breaks in?’

‘The simplest way to prevent a break-in is to leave the door unlocked,’ explained the old man, turning to his right. ‘It’s the most obvious thing in the world but no one ever thinks of it. Now, come along, let’s go this way.’

They walked past Poppa’s tree and Noah looked at it once more. It did seem like a perfectly normal sort of tree really, although there was no question that the wood gave off a greater shine and lustre than the trees that were in the forest near his own house.

‘I wish I could try carving something from the wood of that tree,’ said Noah.

‘Oh, that wouldn’t be possible, I’m afraid,’ said the old man, shaking his head. ‘That tree is strictly the property of the toy shop. And you can’t really sit down to carve toys or puppets unless you have practised it for many years and learned your trade,’ he continued. ‘You have to work very hard at it. And you need access to a lot of good wood too.’