The Ogre Downstairs (15 page)

“You mean pest!” said Johnny’s voice.

“Please stop, Johnny,” Caspar said. “Everyone else thinks you’re mad. I know you hate the Ogre, but—”

“You keep stopping me, and he hasn’t even noticed I’m not here!” Johnny said fiercely. “You may not care that he’s got rid of Mum, but I
do
. And I’m going to get him for it – even if you
are
all on his side!”

“We’re
not
on his side,” said Caspar. “You just can’t bash people’s heads with vacuum cleaners.”

“Yes you can,” said Johnny. “I did. If you hadn’t—”

But, in the kitchen, Malcolm had come up with an idea to get the Ogre out of the house. Damp and harassed, the Ogre hurried into the hall. “Caspar,” he said, “Malcolm’s saying Johnny’s run away. Do you know anything about it?”

Caspar mentally took off his hat to Malcolm. “We – er – we think he may have gone before breakfast,” he said, hoping that this tallied with what Malcolm had said.

The Ogre forgot all consideration for Gwinny and thundered, “WHAT?!” at the top of his voice. In the echoing silence that followed, Caspar heard Johnny’s feet flitting upstairs.

“We were hoping you wouldn’t notice,” Caspar said uncomfortably.

The Ogre glared at him, and then at Douglas, Malcolm and Gwinny, who came trooping out of the kitchen to see how the idea was going. “You stupid little idiots!” said the Ogre. “Why didn’t you tell me at once? Where’s he gone? Do you know?”

Under the anxious eyes of the other three, Caspar cast about for somewhere extremely far off. “Scotland,” he
said. “He – we – our great-aunt lives there. And she’s not on the phone,” he added hastily, as the Ogre strode towards the telephone. “She lives in a very remote thingummy – er – glen, I mean.”

“I see,” said the Ogre dourly. “Do you happen to know the way to this remote glen?”

Behind the Ogre, Douglas nodded vigorously, to show Caspar what to say next. “Yes,” said Caspar, and tried to remember where Loch Lomond was on a map – this being the only place in Scotland that came into his head.

“Very well,” said the Ogre. “Get a raincoat, unless you’re wet enough already, and come out to the car. We’d better go there.”

This was not at all what anyone had intended. In considerable dismay, Caspar slowly collected the coat that he had dropped on the dining room floor, very much hoping the Ogre would change his mind. But he did not.

“Hurry up!” he said, getting into his own coat.

Caspar was forced to put on his coat and follow the Ogre to the back door, past the glum line of the other three. He jerked his thumb up as he went, to show them where he thought Johnny now was, and went apprehensively across the wet floor of the kitchen and out into the wetter night. Cold rain drove into his face and pattered on the car when he was inside it. It was not a very good night for going all the way to Scotland in, Caspar had to admit.

He watched the Ogre start the engine and switch on the headlights and wipers. His stomach fluttered. Going to Scotland might be all right, but what to do when they
got there was another matter. Caspar thought he ought to let the Ogre get as far as Perth or Dundee or somewhere, and then remember another great-aunt in Fishguard or Land’s End where Johnny might have gone. Then he could think of another somewhere else, perhaps, and so work the Ogre back home. He saw he was in for a very difficult night.

T
he Ogre backed the car into the road and turned it with a wet smicker of tyres. “Not quite the night I would have chosen for driving to Scotland,” he remarked. Since Caspar thoroughly agreed, he said nothing.

The Ogre joined the nearest northbound road. “I seem to have had no sleep lately,” he said plaintively. “If we crash, blame Johnny, not me.” There seemed no reply Caspar could make to this, either. He sat in silence, inventing great-aunts, until they came to the main road north, full of wet squiggles of light and dim orange rain.

“This is horrible,” said the Ogre. “How far do we go on this wild-goose-chase?”

A nasty collapsing-feeling came into the pit of Caspar’s stomach. “Why is it a wild-goose-chase?” he said.

“Because I know Johnny’s at home,” said the Ogre. “I distinctly heard his feet on the stairs, and I think I heard his voice in the hall just before that. Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Caspar said. “You made a mistake. He’s not at home, really. He may be in Land’s End, though.”

“With another great-aunt?” said the Ogre.

“Yes,” Caspar said uneasily.

The Ogre braked, with a shriek of wet tyres. Tyres screamed behind them and horns honked. “I’m too tired to drive round the British Isles all night,” he said. “I’m going home.”

“No!” Caspar said frantically. “Please!”

“Why?” said the Ogre. The car stopped by the side of the road, and other cars went by, flashing their lights and honking indignantly.

“Because Johnny might kill you,” said Caspar. “Or get you arrested for killing him.”

“Oh no! Not another!” exclaimed the Ogre. “And
you
brought the carving knife with you, I suppose.”

“Of course not!” said Caspar. “What do you take me for?”

“I don’t know,” said the Ogre. “I gave up trying to understand any of you months ago – and I know that was stupid of me, so don’t tell me. I’ll find a lay-by and you tell me about Johnny.”

He drove slowly on again. Caspar saw the game was up and that he would have to explain in some way. He
wished he knew how. If Malcolm had been there, he might have thought of something. Caspar could only think of the truth and, as he thought it, he realised he dared say nothing unless he made sure Johnny was not in the car too. He was forced to turn round and grope at the back seat to see if it was empty.

“What are you doing?” the Ogre asked suspiciously.

“Making sure Johnny’s not in the car,” Caspar explained.

The Ogre turned into a lay-by and stopped with a jerk. “All right,” he said wearily, turning on the light in the car. “There. If he
is
here, he’s invisible.”

“He
is
invisible,” said Caspar. To be on the safe side, he climbed over into the back and felt all round it. To his relief, it really was as empty as it looked.

The Ogre, who was watching him in the driving mirror, sighed. “This is a very pretty pantomime,” he said. “Perhaps the invisible great-aunts are there too.”

“Oh, shut up!” said Caspar. “You wouldn’t joke about it if you knew how Johnny nearly got you with the vaccuum cleaner just now. If you don’t believe me, take a look at my finger.” He scrambled back and thrust his hand under the Ogre’s nose. “And it does awfully peculiar things to your mind,” he added angrily.

The Ogre gave Caspar’s hand an irritable look, but when he saw that one finger really was shorter than it should be, he seized Caspar’s wrist and looked closer. Then he ran his finger and thumb along Caspar’s finger until they closed on the invisible joint at the end. “Good grief!” he said. “It’s there!”

He was very shaken. Caspar could tell he was, though
the expression on the Ogre’s face was its normal grim one. It occurred to Caspar that the Ogre’s face was not good at showing feelings, just like Malcolm’s. “This process,” said the Ogre, still holding Caspar’s unseen fingertip. “Could it work on other things? Cakes, for example?”

“I expect so,” said Caspar. “It works on filter paper and Johnny’s clothes.”

“Ye gods!” said the Ogre. “And I thought she’d simply had a nightmare!” Instead of explaining what he was talking about, he let go of Caspar’s finger and said, “All right. How did it happen?”

“Well, you know those chemistry sets,” Caspar began. Since it seemed easiest to start at the beginning, he told the Ogre about the flying powder. That of course led to Malcolm shrinking and the way Douglas had gone heavy in the road. Caspar, now he knew how bad the Ogre’s face was at showing feelings, thought the Ogre seemed a little ashamed at the way he had misjudged Douglas, but the Ogre did not interrupt him until Caspar was halfway through explaining
Misc. pulv
. Then Caspar was startled to find the Ogre glaring at him.

“Look here,” said the Ogre. “Were you and Malcolm actually changed over that day I met you in the shop? It’s all right. I’m not going to eat you.”

Caspar let go of the back of the car seat, which he had grabbed for safety. “Yes. We wanted the antidote, but you bought us pink footballs.”

“You must have blessed me for that!” said the Ogre. “How did you get back – or are you really Malcolm now?”

“No,” said Caspar. “Douglas did it.” As he said it, he found himself comparing the Ogre with Douglas. They were really remarkably alike. And the thing about Douglas, Caspar now knew, was that though he seemed ferocious and loved ordering people about, he did it because he could not help it, and there was no harm in him really. Perhaps the Ogre was the same. Certainly, he was not being nearly as angry at the tale of crimes Caspar had to tell as Caspar had expected. Caspar went on to explain the
Animal Spirits
with a growing guilty suspicion that he had been misjudging the Ogre horribly.

He hoped the Ogre was believing him, but the Ogre’s face remained sombre and grim, and Caspar could not tell. Yet, as Caspar pointed out, the Ogre had tried to light a living pipe, had twice seen the toffee bars on the radiator, and had met the dustballs in the hall that very evening. But the Ogre gave no sign of what he thought, even when Caspar told him about Johnny’s bed, and the vaccuum cleaner, and Plan C.

“So we had to get you out of the house while we rounded him up,” he said. “You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Ogre. “You’re the worst liar I know. That’s why I brought you along. You think being invisible has gone to Johnny’s head, do you?”

Caspar made an effort to explain. “A bit. But I think mostly he doesn’t feel like
him
any more – he’s a sort of angry ghost.”

The Ogre thought. “I see. And what is he most angry about? Sally leaving?”

“Yes,” said Caspar. “But about boarding school too, and now us getting together to stop him getting you.”

“Does he think I murdered Sally?” asked the Ogre.

It had not occurred to Caspar up to then that Johnny could think anything so silly, but now the Ogre mentioned it, it did seem possible. “I – I think he might,” he said awkwardly. “He’s young enough to think stupid things.”

The Ogre was acutely depressed. Even his face showed it, “What an ogre you must think I am!” he said.

“Oh no!” Caspar said hastily, in the greatest embarrassment. “It’s just us – not trying to understand you.”

“The same goes for me,” said the Ogre ruefully. “Well, all I can think of is that we do what Douglas did, and go and ask the old man for the antidote. Failing that, we get Malcolm to experiment, at the risk of turning himself into a teaspoon or something.” He put out his hand to start the car again.

“No don’t!” said Caspar. “It isn’t safe to go back. Honestly.”

“Listen, Caspar,” said the Ogre, “this is very kind of you, but I don’t like what you’ve told me about the effects of invisibility at all. It sounds as if Johnny has become all thoughts, and nothing else. And they were angry thoughts to begin with. I think he might harm himself even more than he can harm me. And another thing – I’m pretty sure he’s been invisible now for nearly twenty-four hours, and if we leave him much longer he may be warped for life. Now do you see?”

“Yes,” said Caspar soberly.

The Ogre started the car and made a U-turn out of the lay-by, in front of another row of indignant, hooting,
flashing motorists, and drove back much faster than they had come. “Do you think,” he asked, peering between the swatting wipers and the driving rain, “that it might help bring Johnny to reason if I promised not to send him to boarding school?”

“Yes, it would,” said Caspar. He sighed rather, and thought it was just his luck that he should be the only one being sent.

“There’s no need to sound so dismal,” the Ogre said, as they reached the outskirts of town. “If Johnny’s to be at home, I shall have to keep you too as a Johnny-tamer. And, anyway, I can ill spare the money.”

Caspar grinned with relief all the way to Market Street. “I say,” he said then. “Don’t let on to Malcolm I told you about
Irid. col
. and the other things, will you? He’d be awfully upset.”

The Ogre promised not to say a word and drove into the little dark yard. “Wait here,” he said, and hurried away to the shop. Caspar sat in the car, waiting, worrying rather about Johnny, but mostly thinking how stupid he had been to be so much afraid of the Ogre all this time. Then he saw the Ogre coming back and eagerly wound down the window.

At the sight of the Ogre’s face, however, he had to grip the edge of the window hard and remind himself that the Ogre was like Douglas and not as fierce as he seemed.

But the Ogre was not angry with Caspar. “What a very unpleasant old fellow that is!” he said. “He laughed his head off at our misfortunes.”

“Didn’t he tell you the antidote?” Caspar asked, wondering what on earth they would do.

“Yes, when I threatened to wring his neck,” said the Ogre. “Plain water is the answer. When did you last wash your hands, Caspar?”

Caspar was not sure. The last time he clearly remembered was when Sally had insisted on it, just before the party. But surely he could not have mopped the blood off Johnny’s wall and then weltered in the washing without getting his hands wet! He put his hand out of the window into the rain to see. Sure enough, as soon as his hand was thoroughly covered in raindrops, a pink fuzz appeared at the end of his shortened finger, and in no time at all it was fully visible. His familiar fingernail glistened under the streetlights and Caspar was very glad to see it again.

“Not since last night, evidently,” said the Ogre, getting into the car. “Now let’s go and get out that fateful bucket.”

But they did not need to. When the car approached the house, they saw Malcolm on the other side of the road, soaking wet and waving the mop. Gwinny was in the middle of the road with the broom, and Douglas was posted in the gateway, making menacing passes with a rake. They could all be clearly seen in the drizzle drifting under the streetlights. And, in the space into which the broom, the mop and the rake were pointing, was the misty, speckled shape of Johnny, slowly being washed visible again by the rain.

The Ogre stopped the car with a squealing jerk. He leapt out of it, seized the fuzzy shape by its collar and took it away into the house. The other three, panting rather, gathered round the car.

“I had to tell him everything,” Caspar said apologetically out of the window.

“I was afraid you would,” said Douglas. “Can’t be helped.” In fact, he and Gwinny and Malcolm were too pleased at the way they had rounded Johnny up and restored him to think of much else. They all told Caspar at once how Malcolm had seen the soles of Johnny’s shoes when Johnny fled from the stream of washing. That had given them their clue, but it had taken a deal of hard work and cunning to drive Johnny out into the rain. They had only just got him there before the Ogre came back.

“I think we ought to make sure the Ogre doesn’t hurt Johnny too much,” said Gwinny, at length.

They went indoors. But the Ogre and Johnny were in the study. Since no sounds of violence were coming through the door, no one quite liked to interrupt. It seemed as if they were simply talking. They never found out what was said in there, but when Johnny came out about half an hour later, he did not seem at all unhappy. He looked a little sober, perhaps, but in a sort of way he looked rather smug too. The Ogre, on the other hand, looked tired to death. Caspar looked from one to the other and guessed that Johnny had extorted a number of promises from the Ogre. Johnny was rather good at turning things to his own advantage. Caspar sighed, and foresaw that in future it would be his duty to defend the Ogre from Johnny – if he could.

“We’re awfully hungry,” said Gwinny.

“Baked beans?” suggested the Ogre.

Everyone shuddered, and half of them groaned.

“Oh, very well,” said the Ogre. He felt in his pockets and produced a five pound note. “Can someone find a fish and chip shop open then?”

Five hands snatched at the note. Douglas naturally won and held it high above his head. “Then mind you get me sausages,” said Malcolm.

“I like fish cakes,” said Gwinny.

“And at least a mountain of chips,” said Johnny.

Douglas duly returned with a bulging carrier bag, which they dismembered on the kitchen table. The smell was so delicious that the Ogre’s pipe struggled out of his pocket and showed an active interest in the sausages. The Ogre watched it nervously.

“I shall never bring myself to smoke that again,” he said.

“But you
must
! It
likes
it!” Caspar protested.

So, when the vast meal was over, the Ogre dubiously picked the pipe up and put some tobacco in it. The pipe at once went stiff and began purring. Encouraged by this, the Ogre packed it properly and lit it. And shortly, he had almost forgotten it was alive.

“Go and get me these chemistry sets,” he said. “Now. As the car’s still out, I’m going to take them back to that unpleasant old man, before anything else happens.”

Grudgingly, Johnny and Malcolm obeyed. Reluctantly, they brought the sets to the kitchen and wistfully handed them over. And the Ogre got up from the littered table and took them back to the shop there and then. Everyone felt rather flat without them.