Snakes' Elbows (6 page)

11 The Next Day

Worn out with all the excitement, Mrs Haverford-Snuffley spent the whole of the following morning in bed, fanned from time to time by the cooling wings of an obliging bat. On the faded wallpaper was a bright rectangle, no bigger than a postcard, where the Haverford-Snuffley Angel had hung for so many years.

Over at The Oaks, Wilf was shattered. He awoke with a groan and looked around the room. To the left, propped against his alarm clock, was the Haverford-Snuffley Angel itself. To the right, standing beside the bed
and holding a silver tray, was Barney. ‘Good morning Wilf.
I've
brought
you
your breakfast this morning!'

On the tray was a clean white linen cloth and a pot of hot chocolate. There were pats of butter, raspberry jam and a china dish of Woodford Creams, one of Wilf's most favourite things. He lifted back the cloth on the bread basket and took out a crisp roll.

‘It's still warm!'

‘They're freshly baked,' Barney said. ‘They were hot from the oven when I bought them and I hurried home.'

‘You went to the bakery?!'

‘I did, yes.'

Wilf could hardly believe his ears. Barney never went shopping: never EVER.

‘I just stood in the queue with everyone else and I did feel shy,' he admitted. ‘I thought everyone was looking at me.'

‘They weren't, you know,' Wilf said. ‘They were looking at the bread and cakes. They didn't
give a hoot about you. They were too busy trying to make up their minds about whether they would have a Danish pastry or an apple turnover.'

‘Perhaps they were,' Barney said and he smiled timidly. ‘When my turn came and the woman behind the counter asked what I wanted, I felt like running away. But I knew that if I did, you wouldn't have any fresh bread for your breakfast. And you probably wanted to run away from the auction yesterday but then I wouldn't have got to buy the painting.'

‘Too right,' said Wilf, turning to look at the Angel again. It was proof that it had all really happened, that it wasn't just some wild dream he had had. ‘We did it though, didn't we?' he said. Turning back, he grinned at Barney as he popped a Woodford Cream in his mouth.

‘We did it!'

And as for Jasper …

‘I've brought you your breakfast, Sir.'

‘Don't want it.'

‘It's rice crispies.'

‘Don't want them.'

‘They're nice and soggy, just the way you like them.'

‘GO AWAY!'

Jasper was in a massive sulk, lying in bed with the blankets pulled up over his head. Even after the maid left the room he stayed like that for quite some time until he ran out of air. Then he poked his head out and stared at the ceiling, trying to remember the last time he'd wanted something and hadn't got it. Eventually he decided it must have been when he was six and had his heart set on a pet crocodile but his mother said no.

What had come over Cannibal and Bruiser yesterday, he wondered, curling up and starting to suck the end of the quilt to comfort himself. It was almost as if they'd had a plan, as if they'd dreamed up together what they would do even before they arrived at the sale room.
It never crossed his mind that it might have had something to do with the chocolate party some weeks earlier.

Suddenly he noticed that the maid had left a copy of the
Woodford Trumpet
on the bedside table. He gave a low moan and slid back under the blankets again. Ten minutes later a hand emerged and picked up the newspaper, taking it back in under the heaped-up bedding.

The
Woodford Trumpet
did not make happy reading for Jasper that morning and the photographs were no consolation. Usually Jasper loved to have his picture in the paper, but not when it showed him cowering under one of his own dogs. ‘MAD MUTTS MAKE MAYHEM AS ANGEL GOES FOR A MILLION!' read the main headline. There were long reports about how there had almost been a RIOT at the auction, how a BAT had FAINTED and how the painting had finally gone to a MYSTERY BUYER. ‘See page 7 for an OPEN LETTER to MR JASPER JELLIT.'

‘Oh snakes' elbows!' said Jasper, but he turned to page seven.

‘MR JELLIT, YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!' thundered the letter. ‘On behalf of the people of Woodford WE MUST TELL YOU that people should not keep DANGEROUS DOGS if they CAN NOT or WILL NOT keep them UNDER CONTROL.'

‘Snakes' elbows and armpits,' said Jasper, who didn't care if he annoyed people. He was beginning to feel hungry now and was sorry he had sent his breakfast away. He turned again to the front of the paper and carefully studied the picture of the Mystery Buyer with his flattened-down hair and his dark glasses. It had been taken at the very end of the auction and the man was bellowing into his mobile phone. There was a small black and white cat perched on his head.

‘I'm sure I've seen that cat somewhere before,' Jasper said to himself. ‘I don't know where, but it looks familiar.'

Suddenly a light bulb went off in Jasper's head, as he realised that if he knew who owned the cat, then he would know who had bought the Haverford-Snuffley Angel.

And if he knew that …

12 Dandelion in the Garden

While Jasper, Wilf and Mrs Haverford-Snuffley were recovering from the auction, Dandelion spent a pleasant morning all alone in the garden of Barney's house. For a while she lay asleep with the hot sun warming her fur. When she awoke she chased some birds but in a half-hearted fashion because she was not a very good hunter. All the birds that came to Barney's garden knew this and they teased her, the robin and the chaffinch and the blackbird. They let her stalk them as though she were a tiger or a leopard but then when she was within a whisker of pouncing, they would fly
away up into the branches of the great copper beech tree.

When she became tired of this, Dandelion settled down near the gates of the back garden and started to wash herself. If you had seen her there that morning you would have thought what a tidy-looking cat she was. Dandelion was black with a white bib and socks and a white splodge over her nose. The strange thing is that there are thousands and thousands of cats that fit this description, and yet they are all different. Certainly Barney would have been able to pick Dandelion out of a field full of black cats with white bibs and socks and splodges, because he knew her and loved her. She washed herself with her eyes closed, licking her paw and wiping it over her face, paying special attention to her ears. But when she opened her eyes again, Dandelion got the shock of her life!

There, on the other side of the gate, so near to her, were the two big dogs who had been at
the auction. All at once they started barking madly. Leaping to her feet, Dandelion arched her back and spat and hissed. She looked angry but she was really terrified. All around Barney's garden was a high stone wall and in a single bound, hop! Dandelion was on top of it, staring down at the two dogs. They were still barking at the tops of their voices and she hissed at them again, but she felt safe now that she knew they couldn't reach her. As she sat gazing down coldly something very odd indeed happened.

A thought formed in her mind, but it wasn't Dandelion's thought.

‘Please don't be angry.'

‘How strange!'

Immediately she could see the difference between them, between the ‘How strange!' which was definitely her own, and the ‘Please don't be angry,' which most certainly wasn't.

‘We don't want to hurt you.' This wasn't hers either. The two dogs had stopped barking now
and were sitting staring up at her with soft, pleading eyes. How extraordinary! Could it really be possible …?

Dandelion decided to try a little experiment. ‘Hello, my name is Dandelion,' she thought, feeling foolish as she did so, because of course she knew her own name. All of a sudden, two more thoughts popped into her head.

‘Hello, Dandelion.'

‘What a beautiful name.'

Goodness – it was possible! The dogs started barking again but she realised now that they were excited rather than angry. Dandelion was very excited too. ‘Thank you,' she thought. ‘What are your names?'

‘I'm Cannibal and this is Bruiser.'

‘Hello, Cannibal. Hello, Bruiser.' The cat made a huge effort not to think about what terrible names these were because she didn't want to hurt their feelings, so instead she thought, ‘I saw you both at the auction yesterday.'

With that her head was full of delighted laughter, so much of it, flooding out everything else like a great river breaking its banks.

‘Oooh, that was good fun!' came the thought at last as the merriment ebbed away.

‘The look on his face when you smashed his paddle!'

‘Serves him right!'

‘It isn't his real name, you know'

‘What is it then?' thought Dandelion.

‘Jimmy. Jimmy Jellit. He thinks it isn't posh enough so he calls himself Jasper.'

‘Wish I could change my name. I'm not really a Bruiser.'

‘And I'm not a Cannibal.'

‘If it comes to that, I'm not a Dandelion,' thought the cat to comfort them and again her head was filled with laughter.

‘If you had the choice, what would you like to be called?'

‘I see myself as a Rex rather than a Cannibal.'

But the other dog stared at the ground and
it was some moments before a small faint thought finally drifted into Dandelion's mind. ‘I know this must sound foolish but I'd like to be called … I think my name was always supposed to be … Snuggles.'

‘Gosh! You don't look too snuggly!' The thought was out before Dandelion could stop herself.

‘I could try,' thought Bruiser, lifting her head and staring with her gentle brown eyes at the cat. ‘If someone loved me and snuggled me and cuddled me, I'm sure I'd become one of the snuggliest dogs in the whole world.'

‘Will you be my friends?' thought Dandelion.

With that the dogs jumped up and started to bark loudly. ‘Oh yes please! We would love that!'

Dandelion was delighted too. Although she was extremely happy living with Barney and Wilf, sometimes it was a bit lonely, because Barney was so shy and no one ever came to the house. ‘Will you come and visit me?'

‘We'll try. Jasper doesn't let us out much on our own. We were only able to sneak away this morning because he's in bed in a great big huff.'

‘Oh I'm so happy that you're going to be our friend!'

At that very moment the back door of the house opened and Barney came out. He had heard the dogs barking and there they were, jumping up and down outside the gates, with Dandelion sitting on the wall high above them.

‘Bad dogs! Shoo! Shoo! Go home!' By standing on his tiptoes, Barney could just about reach the cat, and he scooped her up.

‘No, leave me, please! I want to stay here, I'm with my friends,' she thought. But it didn't work with humans, only with other animals. As she wriggled and mewed in Barney's arms he didn't understand what the matter was; he thought she was afraid.

‘There there, poor little Dandelion cat,' and he turned again to Cannibal and Bruiser who
had stuck their snouts through the railings of the gate. ‘Bad dogs!' he said again. ‘Go home! Shoo!'

They watched as he walked up the garden path holding Dandelion and thought how nice it must be to have an owner who cared for you like that, even if he didn't always understand what you wanted. They waited until the back door of the house was closed and then sat there looking at it for some moments before finally drifting away.

13 Boom!

On Sunday afternoon Jasper went creeping around Woodford looking for the black and white cat that had been sitting on the Mystery Buyer's head. Almost immediately he found it. To his astonishment it was sitting in the front window of his old teacher Mr Kelly's house. Good Gobstoppers! Was it possible that
he
was the Haverford-Snuffley Angel's new owner? Old Jelly-Belly-Kelly? He sneaked up to the window to have a closer look at the cat. Yes, there was no doubt about it: it was black with a white bib and socks and a splodge over its nose. This was definitely the cat he had seen at the auction!

Just at that moment, he heard someone coming out of the front door of the house. His old teacher had never quite forgiven Jasper for putting a toad in his desk and mice in his coat pockets and for a thousand other mean tricks. To this day old Jelly-Belly used to chase Jasper down the street when he saw him, waving a cane and shouting, ‘Hi you boy! Come here!' And so as soon as he heard the door opening, Jasper nipped smartly around the corner of the house and ran off up the road.

He stopped to get his breath back outside the chocolate shop. But no! It was impossible! There, sitting on the step, was ANOTHER cat and it was also black with a white bib and socks and a splodge over its nose! It looked exactly like both the cat at the auction and the cat in Mr Kelly's house. Jasper picked it up to have a closer look. One of its socks was longer than the other one. Did the auction cat have two socks the same length? Jasper couldn't remember. Its bib went the whole way down to its tummy.
Perhaps the other cat had a shorter bib? Jasper wasn't sure. He was eyeball to eyeball with the cat now, who stared coldly at him.

‘Has an angel come to live in your house?' Jasper whispered.

In reply the cat lashed out, dragged its claws down his cheek.

‘Ow! That hurt, you little monster!' He let the creature fall to the ground and it slunk off.

As Jasper turned away a third cat darted across the road and jumped up on to a wall. It was also black with a white bib and socks and a splodge over its nose and as soon as he saw it he burst into tears. This cat on the wall really was Dandelion but there was no way Jasper could know this. They all looked so alike, he thought; there was absolutely no way of telling them apart. He wondered if they were doing it deliberately. Jasper had never liked cats. Dragging his feet with misery, he gave up and went home.

There were no coins or banknotes or gold in Jasper's dreams that night, only cats: thousands and thousands of black and white cats. Each one was different from the others in only the smallest detail and it was impossible for him to know which was the one cat he needed to find. They swirled through Jasper's mind, chasing their tails or washing themselves, snoozing or purring. Suddenly one of them spoke directly to him.

‘Do you really want to know which one of us you saw at the auction? Well then, we shall tell you.' With one voice, every last cat of all the thousands and thousands shouted, ‘IT WAS ME!' Helpless with laughter, they fell around the place, and with a loud scream, Jasper woke up.

Because he had slept so badly he was still tired on the Monday morning, and even more grumpy than usual. To make matters worse he had to go to work that day. As his car moved through the forest towards the factory he was once more in a deep sulk.

Mr Smith greeted Jasper at the door of his office. ‘Let's get straight down to business, shall we?'

Together they went through an order form. ‘Hand guns, how many of those do you want?'

‘Dunno.'

‘I can let you have four hundred.'

‘All right.'

‘And what about stun guns, the same number?'

‘I suppose so.' Jasper wasn't really paying attention as he sat there with his lower lip stuck out. Eventually Mr Smith put his pen down.

‘Couldn't believe what happened at that auction the other day,' he said. ‘I mean,
Mystery Buyer,
my granny. Everyone knows it has to be that piano man.'

Jasper almost fell off his chair. ‘Barney Barrington?'

‘Yes, him,' said Mr Smith, staring hard at Jasper. ‘He's got a black and white cat. He sent that little fat fellow that works for him
to do the business. Wilf Somethingorother. Criminal type. Violent, from what it says in the papers. Ooh yes, a nasty piece of work, he is,' and Mr Smith shuddered at the thought. ‘And above all, Barney Barrington's the only person in Woodford who's got enough money to buy himself a stupid little thing like that, just because it takes his fancy. Apart from yourself, of course.' And he smiled at Jasper, briefly showing his gold tooth. ‘You'd have to be thick not to work it out. I mean it's obvious, isn't it?'

‘Obvious,' said Jasper, who had gone very pale.

‘It should have been yours,' Mr Smith said softly. ‘You was robbed, Jasper. Robbed.' They sat in silence for a few moments and then Mr Smith picked up his pen again. ‘Anyway, where were we? Machine guns.'

They continued to fill in the order form but Jasper found it impossible to concentrate. After some time Mr Smith put his pen down again. ‘Silly me,' he said. ‘Here I am nattering
on about boring old assault rifles and hand grenades and forgetting to show you our newest and most exciting product.' From the drawer of his desk he took a bright red object the size of a pea. He held it out so that Jasper could inspect it, and then he stood up. The two men crossed to the door of the room.

Like all the doors in the factory it was stout and strong with a heavy lock. Mr Smith turned the key and then invited Jasper to try the handle, like a magician asking a member of the audience to make quite sure that the top hat was empty before he went on to produce a rabbit from it. The door was tightly locked.

‘Now watch this carefully.' Mr Smith removed the key and pushed the red object into the keyhole. ‘Stand well back please. Five, four, three, two, one …'

BOOM!
In the air between Mr Smith and Jasper the word appeared in large red letters. The door flew open wide – and as all of this happened, there was complete silence in
the room. The word looked as though it were made of coloured light. It hovered there for a moment and then slowly started to fade and dissolve, like the moment when a firework dies against a black sky. ‘Good, isn't it? We've discovered the way to turn things you can hear into things you can see.'

At Jasper's feet was a little pile of red dust. He was too astonished to say anything. Mr Smith put his face up close and spoke softly, urgently.

‘Take it!' he said. ‘If somebody has something you want and you can't have it, just take it! There's no other way.' His voice was hoarse now and even Jasper found it frightening to have Mr Smith's cold face so close to his. ‘Even if you have to use force it doesn't matter. If you want something Jasper, there's only one way to get it:

‘Just take it!'