Washy and the Crocodile (7 page)

“Hello, Mr Camel,” she said. She thought it best to be polite. “What are you doing here?”

“I was sent,” said the camel, in the deepest voice that Evie had ever heard, and nudged his huge head through the door and looked around. The camel was as curious as Evie and had no inhibitions about being polite. It seemed clear that he had never seen inside an English cottage before. Come to that, he had probably never looked inside any cottage before, whether in England or anywhere else, and—

“I'm sorry,” said Evie, who wasn't, “but you said you were sent. Who sent you?” She thought that just this once she would be extra polite. Especially to visiting camels who hadn't even telephoned beforehand to say they might be dropping by, and might not like to have this mentioned. And what did it mean by ‘sent?' Was it a camel with a divine mission? That was unlikely. Camels, as far as she knew, were not prone to going on divine missions. Eating thistles, yes; following divine missions, no.

Uncle Otto, she remembered, had said that camels were touchy and could bite ferociously and that their breath smelled appalling. Camels, it seemed, were awkward, unpredictable, dangerous creatures, and only their Afghan camel-drivers really knew how to control them, although Uncle Otto had done his best, and those same Afghan camel drivers had all left and had gone back to Afghanistan, probably because of the White Australia policy that Mrs Waldegrave had referred to in school, only she had been so quick to condemn it that none of her pupils really understood what it was, and—

“
He
did,” said the camel, still searching the cottage with his huge brown eyes, and lifting up an even huger foot to scratch himself behind his astonishingly huge ear—an action that appeared to afford him intense delight. “Washy.”

“Oh, Washy,” said the little girl, as if her uncle's friend Washy were in the habit of posting camels to their back door every week. “Why?”

“He was worried,” replied the camel, who had ceased to scratch and was looking around for something to eat. He didn't have a big appetite — for a camel — but he did get awfully peckish in the evening.

“About me?” Wondered the little girl.

The camel stared at her as if she had lost her senses.

“You?” He said in his strange, dark, gravelly voice, which sounded as if it had been marinated in vinegar and then baked for several hours in a primitive oven — far beyond the time it needed to become a proper voice. “Why would he be worried about you? About your friend Samantha.”

Evie was even more bemused. This was making no sense at all! Was Samantha's fire-fighting plan too ambitious? How could Washy possibly know that? And in any case, why did it call for a rescue mission by a camel? Surely a letter would have done just as well!

She looked across at her uncle Otto, who was still sound asleep on the sofa by the fire. Should she—

“Better not,” said the camel firmly, as if he could read her thoughts — which as it happened he could. “Don't wake him up suddenly. It could be very bad for him. So the older camels believe, anyway.” He paused, dismissed this ancestral myth from his mind, and remembered the social niceties. “My name is Jim,” he announced portentously, and as if that made everything clear.

“Oh,” said Evie. “I'm very pleased to meet you... Jim.”

“My friends—” the camel paused, and waved his hoof grandly as if to take in the whole of the known world, and a little way beyond—”My friends call me
Gentleman
Jim.”

“That's nice,” replied Evie faintly. She was feeling a little overwhelmed. To meet a camel on a cold, dark night at her very own back door was one thing, but for him to have a
title
as well—

“I was christened Horatio,” added the camel, a little doubtfully. “But they - that is, we - didn't think it would do.”

“I see,” said Evie. She was beginning to enjoy this. “And the reason for your visit is”—she paused. She was being a little pressing; and she didn't want an upset camel on her hands. After all, Uncle Otto had said that they could be a little... volatile. And Gentleman Jim was a very sizeable... gentleman.

Jim looked down kindly at his new friend. She was worried and not sure what to do. It was time he took action, and in any case he wasn't very good with words. He took the loose material of her jumper very gently in the corner of his mouth, and lifted her effortlessly over the edge of the lower part of the stable door that stood between them, and deposited her softly on the grass just outside. It was a cold, clear evening, with just a touch of frost in the air and just a touch of something else.

“Smell,” said the camel; and she did. It was a curious, acrid smell. A worrying smell. A smell as if something were on fire when it shouldn't be. Like a house, thought Evie in alarm.

“Precisely,” said Gentleman Jim, who appeared to be reading her thoughts (which he was.) “Get on.” He knelt down and she scrambled onto his big, hairy back behind his hump as if she had been doing so since early childhood, and he began to canter down the lane and she forgot all about everything else in the enjoyment this new sensation. It was extraordinary! If only Sam were there to see her! On a Bactrian camel!
So
much more comfortable than a Dromedary, where you had to squeeze between two humps!

“Where are we going?” She gasped excitedly, and at the same time wished that everyone was outside to see her bump by. After all, what was the point of having an adventure, if you didn't have an admiring audience?

“You'll see,” grunted the camel, who was, it seemed, a gentleman of many friends but few words. The smell of smoke and burning was becoming steadily stronger. Gentleman Jim had reached a slow gallop around the harbour-side, and Evie didn't know what was going on, except that she was enjoying herself more than she had ever done before—and then they reached Samantha's house, and she saw the fire.

Samantha's house was on fire. From top to bottom and from side to side, it was a mass of flames. Golly! said Evie to herself. How exciting! If she hadn't been securely wedged on the camel's back, she would have tumbled to the ground in sheer surprise.

Samantha's parents had bought the old building a year ago, because her father had said it would be a good investment.

Sam's parents were called Mike and Betty; and they were very keen on good investments.

The neighbourhood was bound to go up; they said, and it was: in flames.

Evie drew in her breath in shock. Where was her best friend? Was she - Oh, no! Evie couldn't bear to think about it. It was too horrible. She had read about fires, and they had practised fire escape drills at school, when Samantha had been bossily efficient: but the real thing was quite different.

“Look up,” said Gentleman Jim, and Evie looked up.

Samantha was leaning out of her bedroom window. She was on the third floor and there was no fire escape. She seemed very calm.

“I told them,” she called down.

“Told them what?” Shouted Evie.

“That we should have a fire escape,” answered her friend calmly, her words somehow clear above the roar of the flames. What a wonderful fire-fighter Sam would have made, thought Evie, with a voice like that! And she was so calm!

“It's in all the manuals,” added Samantha. “It's the law. You must have a fire escape. But Daddy didn't want to put one in - he said the council was being petty, but actually I think he couldn't afford it. And now I'm trapped and I shall die here and he'll be very sorry, won't he?”

“No, he won't,” shouted her best friend from the ground.

“Why not?” Asked Samantha. “He does care about me: I know he does!” All of a sudden, her voice sounded a little doubtful: but then, she was trapped by a raging fire.

“You're not going to die at all,” called her best friend with a display of confidence that she did not wholly feel. “We've come to rescue you.”

“Not a chance,” answered Samantha promptly. “I know about all this - remember? The only cherry-picker is 30 miles away, and this building won't last long enough for them to reach us, and the local fire brigade hasn't trained for this, and-” she stopped suddenly. “What do you mean,
we
? Who's your new friend?”

A touch of jealousy, faint but palpable, hung in the air between them.

“This is Jim,” called Evie, and patted his hump. “Gentleman Jim.” He grunted approvingly. “He told me about the fire. Otherwise you'd be in real trouble.”

“That was very nice of him... I suppose,” called her friend, a little grudgingly, and almost, thought her best friend disloyally, as if she had been rather enjoying the crisis all by herself.

“What's he going to do?” Asked Samantha, pulling her head back from a particularly virulent burst of flame that sizzled all around the window-sill. “This building isn't going to last for ever!”

“Hang in there!” Shrieked Evie. “Jim'll think of something!” She paused, and added reassuringly: “He's had a lot of experience, you know!”

“Of what?” Shouted Sam; and Evie, not having an answer to that, waved her hand encouragingly. “Don't worry!” She called. “We'll soon have you down!”

“Time to go for it,” grunted the camel. “What the French call action directe, I gather.” Evie could feel his muscles shifting and tensing as he prepared himself. “Off you get.”

“I didn't know you spoke French,” she said as she slid gently to the ground.

“Just le mot juste,” replied Jim with a certain modesty. “We camels don't go in for that sort of thing. But Mrs Wombat likes to keep her hand in.” He spoke approvingly - camels might not have a lot of time for conversation classes, but he approved of Mrs Wombat's interest - and at the same time lowered his head and charged right into the building in front of him.

The impact was truly shattering. The door gave way, and the casement, wall, and most of the ceiling. He had forced his way right into the front wall of the building. Gentleman Jim shook the stones and dust from his head and shoulders, drew back ten yards, and charged again.

Part of the ground floor of the little cottage collapsed into the street, and Samantha was suddenly closer to the ground.

“What's your new friend doing?” She shouted, not quite so calmly.

“Checking the foundations.”

Gentleman Jim charged a third time. No picturesque but ramshackle dwelling (with or without a council-approved fire escape) could withstand the repeated charges of a determined camel, and Samantha's little cottage was no exception. Bricks shed their mortar, lintels disintegrated, walls, floors and ceilings came tumbling down, rather as if they had been in the battle of Jericho... and Samantha stumbled from the wreckage, dazed, scorched, choked by smoke... and alive.

***

“I knew it would come down easily, and there would be no need to worry about anyone being trapped,” said Sam's father, taking a cup of tea from a helpful neighbour, and failing to offer any to his wife. Mr and Mrs Stimson had returned from their evening class to find their home and possessions a smoking ruin and their only daughter homeless on the pavement, and he seemed remarkably cool about the whole thing.

“It was a shaky old building at the best of times,” he went on, wiping his moustache from the tea, and wondering how much he could claim on his insurance. “Don't know why we bought it in the first place. Do you, darling?” He turned to his wife, adding the term of endearment somewhat perfunctorily. “It was your idea, wasn't it? You were always much more fond of the old place than I was. And I always said there was no need for a fire escape!”

Mr Stimson seemed, like his daughter, to be able to remain amazingly calm under trying circumstances. Betty, meanwhile, was inspecting the wreckage, and saying to herself: “I always wondered where that scarf had got to,” as if oblivious to the fact that her daughter's life had just been saved.

Samantha was explaining to a group of admiring firemen how she had kept her head during the crisis, because that was the right thing to do, and what her ambitions were, and how she really preferred to be called Sam; and she had caught the eye of a nice-looking young reporter, and was looking forward to being interviewed by him and putting across her own version of events.

Everyone, in fact, seemed astonishingly happy.

Everyone, that is, except Evie, who was desperate to tell the world what had
really
happened. No one was paying her any attention, and even her best friend Samantha was ignoring her; but surely even Samantha would have to admit the truth when confronted with a gigantic camel!

She turned around - and found herself staring at an empty pavement. There was no camel there. There was no camel anywhere in sight. Gentleman Jim had disappeared into the night as if he had never existed: leaving only the shattered remains of the cottage strewn all over the road.

***

“I'm so glad you had a nice, quiet evening at home, darlings,” said Mummy, after she had come in and taken off her coat, and made Jack wipe his shoes again, and checked the fire-guard was properly in place, and kissed everyone at least twice. “Did anything happen? Or did you all fall asleep?” She smiled indulgently. It was a cold night, after all; and the cottage was so nice and warm and cosy!