Part 17 (2/2)

Something seemed to stop there ever being another dead rat, but sometimes a spider could be encouraged to let itself down in front of the mirror, whenever Mama's talk became too alarming. He understood that Mama cared very urgently about his future. He knew he was going to have to enter Society with the best people. But the only Society he had heard of was the Aid the Heathen Society that he had to give a penny to every Sunday in church, and he thought Mama meant that.

Christopher made careful inquiries from the nursery maid with the big feet. She told him Heathens were savages who ate people. Missionaries were the best people, and they were the ones Heathens ate.

Christopher saw that he was going to be a missionary when he grew up. He found Mama's talk increasingly alarming. He wished she had chosen another career for him.

He also asked the nursery maid about the kind of ladies who had tails like fish. ”Oh you mean mermaids!”

the girl said, laughing. ”Those aren't real.”

Christopher knew mermaids were not real, because he only met them in dreams. Now he was convinced that he would meet Heathens too, if he went to the wrong Almost Anywhere. For a time, he was so frightened of meeting Heathens that when he came to a new valley from The Place Between, he lay down and looked carefully at the Anywhere it led to, to see what the people were like there before he went on.

But after a while, when n.o.body tried to eat him, he decided that the Heathens probably lived in the Anywhere which stopped you going to it, and gave up worrying until he was older.

When he was a little older, people in the Anywheres sometimes gave him money. Christopher learned to refuse coins. As soon as he touched them, everything just stopped. He landed in bed with a jolt and woke up sweating. Once this happened when a pretty lady who reminded him of Mama tried laughingly to hang an earring in his ear. Christopher would have asked the nursery maid with big feet about it, but she had left long ago. Most of the ones who came after simply said, ”Don't bother me now-I'm busy!”

when he asked them things. Until he learned to read, Christopher thought this was what all nursery maids did: they stayed a month, too busy to talk, and then set their mouths in a nasty line and flounced out. He was amazed to read of Old Retainers, who stayed with families for a whole lifetime and could be persuaded to tell long (and sometimes very boring) stories about the family in the past. In his house, none of the servants stayed more than six months.

The reason seemed to be that Mama and Papa had given up speaking to one another even through the footman. They handed the servants notes to give to one another instead. Since it never occurred to either Mama or Papa to seal the notes, sooner or later someone would bring the note up to the nursery floor and read it aloud to the nursery maid. Christopher learned that Mama was always short and to the point.

”Mr. Chant is requested to smoke cigars only in his own room.” Or, ”Will Mr. Chant please take note that the new laundry maid has complained of holes burned in his s.h.i.+rts.” Or, ”Mr. Chant caused me much embarra.s.sment by leaving in the middle of my Breakfast Party.”

Papa usually let the notes build up and then answered the lot in a kind of rambling rage. ”My dear Miranda, I shall smoke where I please and it is the job of that lazy laundry maid to deal with the results.

But then your extravagance in employing foolish layabouts and rude louts is only for your own selfishcomfort and never for mine. If you wish me to remain at your parties, try to employ a cook who knows bacon from old shoes and refrain from giving that idiotic tinkling laugh all the time.”

Papa's replies usually caused the servants to leave overnight.

Christopher rather enjoyed the insight these notes gave him. Papa seemed more like a person, somehow, even if he was so critical. It was quite a blow to Christopher when he was cut off from them by the arrival of his first Governess.

Mama sent for him. She was in tears. ”Your Papa has overreached himself this time,” she said. ”It's a mother's place to see to the education of her child. I want you to go to a good school, Christopher. It's most important. But I don't want to force you into learning. I want your ambition to flower as well. But your Papa comes cras.h.i.+ng in with his grim notions and goes behind my back by appointing this Governess who, knowing your Papa, is bound to be terrible! Oh my poor child!”

Christopher realized that the Governess was his first step towards becoming a missionary. He felt solemn and alarmed. But when the Governess came, she was simply a drab lady with pink eyes, who was far too discreet to talk to servants. She only stayed a month, to Mama's jubilation.

”Now we can really start your education,” Mama said. ”I shall choose the next Governess myself.”

Mama said that quite often over the next two years, for Governesses came and went just like nursery maids before them. They were all drab, discreet ladies, and Christopher got their names muddled up. He decided that the chief difference between a Governess and a nursery maid was that a Governess usually burst into tears before she left- and that was the only time a Governess ever said anything interesting about Mama and Papa.

”I'm sorry to do this to you,” the third-or maybe the fourth-Governess wept, ”because you're a nice little boy, even if you are a bit remote, but the atmosphere in this house! Every night he's home-which thank G.o.d is rarely!-I have to sit at the dining table with them in utter silence. And she pa.s.ses me a note to give to him, or he pa.s.ses me one for her. Then they open the notes and look daggers at one another and then at me. I can't stand any more!”

The ninth-or maybe the tenth-Governess was even more indiscreet. ”I know they hate one another,”

she sobbed, ”but she's no call to hate me too! She's one of those who can't abide other women. And she's a sorceress, I think-I can't be sure, because she only does little things-and he's at least as strong as she is. He may even be an enchanter. Between them they make such an atmosphere-it's no wonder they can't keep any servants! Oh Christopher, forgive me for talking like this about your parents!”

All the Governesses asked Christopher to forgive them and he forgave them very readily, for this was the only- time now that he had news of Mama and Papa. It gave him a wistful sort of feeling that perhaps other people had parents who were not like this. He was also sure that there was some sort of crisis brewing. The hushed thunder of it reached as far as the schoolroom, even though the Governesses would not let him gossip with the servants anymore. He remembered the night the crisis broke, because that was the night when he went to an Anywhere where a man under a yellow umbrella gave him a sort of candlestick of little bells. It was so beautiful that Christopher was determined to bring it home. He held it in his teeth as he scrambled across the rocks of The Place Between. To his joy, it was in his bed when he woke up. But there was quite a different feeling to the house. The twelfth Governess packed and left straight after breakfast.

2Christopher was called to Mama's dressing room that afternoon. There was a new Governess sitting on the only hard chair, wearing the usual sort of ugly grayish clothes and a hat that was uglier than usual. Her drab cotton gloves were folded on her dull bag and her head hung down as if she were timid or put-upon, or both. Christopher found her of no interest. All the interest in the room was centered on the man standing behind Mama's chair with his hand on Mama's shoulder.

”Christopher, this is my brother,” Mama said happily. ”Your uncle Ralph.”

Mama p.r.o.nounced it Rafe. It was more than a year before Christopher discovered it was the name he read as Ralph. Uncle Ralph took his fancy completely. To begin with, he was smoking a cigar. The scents of the dressing room were changed and mixed with the rich, incenselike smoke, and Mama was not protesting by even so much as sniffing. That alone was enough to show that Uncle Ralph was in a cla.s.s by himself. Then he was wearing tweeds, strong and tangy and almost fox-colored, which were a little baggy here and there, but blended beautifully with the darker foxiness of Uncle Ralph's hair and the redder foxiness of his mustache. Christopher had seldom seen a man in tweeds or without whiskers. This did even more to a.s.sure him that Uncle Ralph was someone special. As a final touch, Uncle Ralph smiled at him like sunlight on an autumn forest. It was such an engaging smile that Christopher's face broke into a return smile almost of its own accord.

”Hallo old chap,” said Uncle Ralph, rolling out blue smoke above Mama's glossy hair. ”I know this is not the best way for an uncle to recommend himself to a nephew, but I've been sorting the family affairs out, and I'm afraid I've had to do one or two quite shocking things, like bringing you a new Governess and arranging for you to start school in the autumn. Governess over there. Miss Bell. I hope you like one another. Enough to forgive me anyway.”

He smiled at Christopher in a sunny, humorous way which had Christopher rapidly approaching adoration. All the same, Christopher glanced dubiously at Miss Bell. She looked back, and there was an instant when a sort of hidden prettiness in her almost came out into the open. Then she blinked pale eyelashes and murmured, ”Pleased to meet you,” in a voice as uninteresting as her clothes.

”She'll be your last Governess, I hope,” said Mama. Because of that, Christopher ever after thought of Miss Bell as the Last Governess. ”She's going to prepare you for school. I wasn't meaning to send you away yet, but your uncle says-- Anyway, a good education is important for your career and, to be blunt with you, Christopher, your papa has made a most vexatious hash of the money-which is mine, not his, as you know-and lost practically all of it. Luckily I had your uncle to turn to and-”

”And once turned to, I don't let people down,” Uncle Ralph said, with a quick flick of a glance at the Governess. Maybe he meant she should not be hearing this. ”Fortunately, there's plenty left to send you to school, and then your mama is going to recoup a bit by living abroad. She'll like that-eh, Miranda?

And Miss Bell is going to be found another post with glowing references. Everyone's going to be fine.”

His smile went to all of them one by one, full of warmth and confidence. Mama laughed and dabbed scent behind her ears. The Last Governess almost smiled, so that the hidden prettiness half emerged again. Christopher tried to grin a strong manly grin at Uncle Ralph, because that seemed to be the only way to express the huge, almost hopeless adoration that was growing in him. Uncle Ralph laughed, a golden brown laugh, and completed the conquest of Christopher by fis.h.i.+ng in a tweed pocket and tipping his nephew a bright new sixpence.

Christopher would have died rather than spend that sixpence. Whenever he changed clothes, he transferred the sixpence to the new pockets. It was another way of expressing his adoration of Uncle Ralph. It was clear that Uncle Ralph had stepped in to save Mama from ruin, and this made him the first good man that Christopher had met. And on top of that, he was the only person outside the Anywhereswho had bothered to speak to Christopher in that friendly man-to-man way.

Christopher tried to treasure the Last Governess too, for Uncle Ralph's sake, but that was not so easy.

She was so very boring. She had a drab, calm way of speaking, and she never raised her voice or showed impatience, even when he was stupid about Mental Arithmetic or Levitation, both of which all the other Governesses had somehow missed out on.

”If a herring and a half cost three-ha'pence, Christopher,” she explained drearily, ”that's a penny and a half for a fish and a half. How much for a whole fish?”

”I don't know,” he said, trying not to yawn.

”Very well,” the Last Governess said calmly. ”We'll think again tomorrow. Now look in this little mirror and see if you can't make it rise in the air just an inch.”

But Christopher could not move the mirror any more than he could understand what a herring cost. The Last Governess put the mirror aside and quietly went on to puzzle him about French. After a few days of this, Christopher tried to make her angry, hoping she would turn more interesting when she shouted. But she just said calmly, ”Christopher, you're getting silly. You may play with your toys now. But remember you only take one out at a time, and you put that back before you get out another. That is our rule.”

Christopher had become rapidly and dismally accustomed to this rule. It reduced the fun a lot. He had also become used to the Last Governess sitting beside him while he played. The other Governesses had seized the chance to rest, but this one sat in a hard chair efficiently mending his clothes, which reduced the fun even more. Nevertheless, he got the candlestick of chiming bells out of the cupboard, because that was fascinating in its way. It was so arranged that it played different tunes, depending on which bell you touched first. When he had finished with it, the Last Governess paused in her darning to say, ”That goes in the middle of the top shelf. Put it back before you take that clockwork dragon.” She waited to listen to the chiming that showed Christopher had done what she said. Then, as she drove the needle into the sock again, she asked in her dullest way, ”Who gave you the bells, Christopher?”

No one had ever asked Christopher about anything he had brought back from the Anywheres before. He was rather at a loss. ”A man under a yellow umbrella,” he answered. ”He said they bring luck on my house.”

”What man where?” the Last Governess wanted to know-except that she did not sound as if she cared if she knew or not.

”An Almost Anywhere,” Christopher said. ”The hot one with the smells and the snake charmers. The man didn't say his name.”

”That's not an answer, Christopher,” the Last Governess said calmly, but she did not say anything more until the next time, two days later, when Christopher got out the chiming bells again. ”Remember where they go when you've finished with them,” she said. ”Have you thought yet where the man with the yellow umbrella was?”

”Outside a painted place where some G.o.ds live,” Christopher said, setting the small silvery bellcups ringing. ”He was nice. He said it didn't matter about money.”

<script>