Stopping for a Spell (4 page)

The doorbell began ringing. A lot of respectable elderly ladies arrived, and one or two respectable elderly men, and then the Vicar. They each took one of the twenty seats and chatted politely while Simon and Marcia went around with cakes and cookies and Mum handed out coffee. When everyone had a cup and a plate of something, the Vicar cleared his throat—a bit like Chair Person but nothing like so loudly.

“Er, hm,” he said. “I think we should start.”

The door opened just then, and Dad ushered in Chair Person.

“Oh,
no
!” said Mum, looking daggers at Dad.

Chair Person stood, pawing at the air, and looked around at the respectable people in a very satisfied way. He had found Dad's best shiny brown shoes to wear and Simon's football socks, which looked decidedly odd with his striped suit. The respectable people stared, at the shoes, the socks, the hairy legs above that, at the stain on his striped stomach, and then at the smashed-hedgehog beard. Even Auntie Christa stopped talking and looked a little dazed.

“Er, hn hm,” brayed Chair Person twice as loudly as the Vicar. “I am—hn snuffle—Chair Person. How kind of you all to come and—hn hm—meet me. These good people”—he nodded and waved arms at Dad and Mum—“have been honored to put up with me, but they are only small stupid people who do not matter.”

The slightly smug smile on Dad's face vanished at this.

“I shall—hn hm—talk to people who matter,” said Chair Person. He lumbered across the room, bumping into everything he passed. Ladies hastily got coffee cups out of his way. He stopped in front of the Vicar and breathed heavily. “Could I trouble you to move?” he said.

“Eh?” said the Vicar. “Er—”

“Er, hn hm, you appear to be sitting in my seat,” said Chair Person. “I am Chair Person. I am the one who shall talk to—hn hm—the government. I shall be running this meeting.”

The Vicar got out of the chair as if it had scalded him and backed away. Chair Person sat himself down and looked solemnly around.

“Coffee,” he said. “Er, hn hm, cakes. While the rest of the world starves.”

Everyone shifted and looked uncomfortably at their cups.

In the silence Chair Person looked at Mum. “Hn hm,” he said. “Maybe you have not noticed that you've not given me—hn hm—coffee or cakes.”

“Is
that
what you meant?” said Mum. “I thought after all the breakfast you ate—”

“I meant—hn hm—that we are here to feast and prove that we at least have enough to eat,” said Chair Person. While Mum was angrily pouring coffee into the cracked cup that was the last one in the cupboard, he turned to the nearest lady. “I decided to grow a beard,” he said, “to show I am—hn hm—important to the ecology. It makes my face look snuffle grand.”

The lady stared at him. Auntie Christa said loudly, “We are here to talk about Africa, Mr. Chair Person.”

“Er, hn hm,” said Chair Person. “I happen to know a lot about Africa. The government should act to make sure that the African—hn hm—elephant does not die out.”

“We were not going to talk about elephants,” the Vicar said faintly.

“The snuffle gorilla is an endangered animal, too,” said Chair Person. “And the herds of—hn hm—wildebeest are not what they were in the days of Dr. Livingstone, I presume. Drought afflicts many animals—I appear to have drunk all my coffee—and famine is poised to strike.” And he went on talking, mixing up about six different television programs as he talked. The Vicar soon gave up trying to interrupt, but Auntie Christa kept trying to talk, too. Every time she began, Chair Person went “ER, HN HM!” so loudly that he drowned her out, and took no notice of anything she said. Marcia could not help thinking that Chair Person must have stood in the living room picking up hints from Auntie Christa for years. Now he was better at not letting other people talk than Auntie Christa was.

In the meantime Chair Person kept eating cakes and asking for more coffee. The respectable people, in a dazed sort of way, tried to keep up with Chair Person, which meant that Simon and Marcia were kept very busy carrying cups and plates. In the kitchen Mum was baking and boiling the kettle nonstop, while Dad grimly undid packets and mixed cake mix after cake mix.

By this time Simon was finding it hard to be sorry for Chair Person at all. “I didn't know you thought you were so important,” he said as he brought Chair Person another plate of steaming buns.

“This must be—hn hm—reported to Downing Street,” Chair Person told the meeting, and he interrupted himself to say to Simon, “That is because I—er, hn hm—always take care to be polite to people like you who don't snuffle count… I shall make you feel good by praising these cakes. They are snuffle country soft and almost as mother used to make.” And turning back to the dazed meeting, he said, “Ever since the days of the pharaohs—hn hm—Egypt has been a place of snuffle mystery and romance.”

There seemed nothing that would ever stop him. Then the doorbell rang. Unfortunately Dad, Mum, Marcia, and Simon were all in the kitchen when it rang, pouring the last of the cake mix into paper cases. By the time Marcia and Dad got to the front door, Chair Person had got there first and opened it.

Two men were standing outside holding a new armchair. It was a nice armchair, a nice plain blue, with a pleasant look on the cushion at the back where Chair Person's face had come from. Marcia thought Mum and Dad had chosen well.

“I—er, hn hm—I said take that thing away,” Chair Person told the men. “This house is not big enough for snuffle both of us. The post is—hn hm—filled. There has been a mistake.”

“Are you sure? This is the right address,” one of the men said.

Dad pushed Chair Person angrily aside. “Mind your own business!” he said. “No, there's no mistake. Bring that chair inside.”

Chair Person folded his waving arms. “Er, hn hm. My rival enters this house over my dead body,” he said. “This thing is bigger than snuffle both of us.”

While they argued, Auntie Christa was leading the coffee morning people in a rush to escape through the kitchen and out of the back door. “I do think,” the Vicar said kindly to Mum as he scampered past, “that your eccentric uncle would be far happier in a Home, you know.”

Mum waited until the last person had hurried through the back door. Then she burst into tears. Simon did not know what to do. He stood staring at her. “A Home!” Mum wept. “I'm the one who'll be in a Home if someone doesn't
do
something!”

5

Junk Shop

Chair Person got his way over the new chair, more or less. The men carried it to the garden shed and shoved it inside. Then they left, looking almost as bewildered and angry as Dad.

Marcia, watching and listening, was quite sure now that Chair Person had been learning from Auntie Christa all these years. He knew just how to make people do what he wanted. But Auntie Christa did not live in the house. You could escape from her sometimes. Chair Person seemed to be here to stay.

“We'll have to get him turned back into a chair somehow,” she said to Simon. “He's not getting better. He's getting worse and worse.”

Simon found he agreed. He was not sorry for Chair Person at all now. “Yes, but
how
do we turn him back?” he said.

“We could ask old Mr. Pennyfeather,” Marcia suggested. “The conjuring set came from his shop.”

So that afternoon they left Mum lying on her bed upstairs and Dad moodily picking up frostbitten apples from the grass. Chair Person was still eating lunch in the kitchen.

“Where does he put it all?” Marcia wondered as they hurried down the road.

“He's a chair. He's got lots of room for stuffing,” Simon pointed out.

Then they both said, “Oh,
no
!”

Chair Person was blundering up the road after them, panting and snuffling and waving his arms. “Er, hn hm, wait for me!” he called out. “You appear to have snuffle left me behind.”

He tramped beside them, looking pleased with himself. When they got to the shops where all the people were, shoppers turned to stare as Chair Person clumped past in Dad's shoes. Their eyes went from the shoes, to the football socks, and then to the short, striped suit, and then on up to stare wonderingly at the smashed-hedgehog beard. More heads turned every time Chair Person's voice brayed out, and of course, he talked a lot. There was something in every shop to set him going.

At the bread shop he said, “Er, hn hm, those are Sam Browne's lusty loaves. I happen to know snuffle they are nutrition for the nation.”

Outside the supermarket he said, “Cheese to please, you can snuffle freeze it, squeeze it and—er, hn hm—there is Tackley's tea, which I happen to know has over a thousand holes to every bag. Flavor to snuffle savor.”

Outside the wine shop his voice went up to a high roar. “I—hn hm—see Sampa's Superb sherry here, which is for ladies who like everything silken snuffle smooth. And I happen to know that in the black bottle there is—hn hm—a taste of Olde England. There is a stagecoach on the—hn hm—label to prove it. And look, there is Bogans—hn hm—beer, which is, of course, for Men Only.”

By now it seemed to Simon and Marcia that everyone in the street was staring. “You don't want to believe everything the ads say,” Simon said uncomfortably.

“Er, hn hm, I appear to be making you feel embarrassed,” Chair Person brayed, louder than ever. “Just tell me snuffle if I am in your way and I will snuffle go home.”

“Yes, do,” they both said.

“I—er, hn hm—wouldn't dream of pushing in where I am snuffle not wanted,” Chair Person said. “I would—hn hm—count it a favor if you tell me snuffle truthfully every time you've had enough of me. I—er, hn hm—know I must bore you quite often.”

By the time he had finished saying this they had arrived at old Mr. Pennyfeather's junk shop. Chair Person stared at it.

“We—er, hn hm—don't need to go in there,” he said. “Everything in it is old.”

“You can stay outside then,” said Marcia.

But Chair Person went into another long speech about not wanting to be—hn hm—a trouble to them and followed them into the shop. “I—er, hn hm—might get lost,” he said, “and then what would you do?”

He bumped into a cupboard.

Its doors opened with a
clap
, and a stream of horse brasses poured out: clatter,
clatter
,
CLATTER
!

Chair Person lurched sideways from the horse brasses and walked into an umbrella stand made out of an elephant's foot,

which fell over—
crash
CLATTER
—

against a coffee table with a big jug on it,

which tipped and slid the jug off—
CRASH
, splinter, splinter—

and then fell against a rickety bookcase,

which collapsed sideways, spilling books—thump, thump, thump-thump-thump—

and hit another table loaded with old magazines and music,

which all poured down around Chair Person.

It was like dominoes going down.

The bell at the shop door had not stopped ringing before Chair Person was surrounded in knocked-over furniture and knee-deep in old papers. He stood in the midst of them, waving his arms and looking injured.

By then Mr. Pennyfeather was on his way from the back of the shop, shouting, “Steady, steady, steady!”

“Er, hn hm—er, hn hm,” said Chair Person, “I appear to have knocked one or two things over.”

Mr. Pennyfeather stopped and looked at him, in a knowing, measuring kind of way. Then he looked at Simon and Marcia. “He yours?” he said. They nodded. Mr. Pennyfeather nodded, too. “Don't move,” he said to Chair Person. “Stay just where you are.”

Chair Person's arms waved as if he were conducting a very large orchestra, several massed choirs, and probably a brass band or so as well. “I—er, hn hm, er, hn hm—I—er, hn hm—” he began.

Mr. Pennyfeather shouted at him, “
Stand still! Don't move, or I'll have the springs out of you and straighten them for toasting forks
! It's the only language they understand,” he said to Simon and Marcia. “
STAND STILL! YOU HEARD ME!
” he shouted at Chair Person.