Part 22 (2/2)

It was a silly setup anyway-a live girl pretending to be a G.o.ddess, who was nothing but a worm-eaten wooden statue. He had nothing against the G.o.ddess herself. He admired her quick thinking, and he would have liked to learn both the very stupid expression and how you did that vanis.h.i.+ng trick with the books. But it was not worth the danger.

8.

For the rest of the Spring term, Christopher went regularly to the Anywheres with Tacroy, but he did not try to go to one on his own. By now Uncle Ralph seemed to have a whole round of experiments set up.

Christopher met Tacroy in Series One, Three, Five, Seven and Nine, and then in Eight, Six, Four and Two, always in that order, but not always in the same place or outside the same valley. In each Anywhere people would be waiting with a pile of packages which, by the weight and feel, had different things inside each time. The parcels in Series One were always k.n.o.bby and heavy, and in Four they were smooth boxes. In Series Two and Five, they were squashy and smelled of fish, which made sense since both those Anywheres had so much water in them. In Series Eight, the women always breathed garlic and those parcels had the same strong odor every time. Beyond that, there seemed no rule. Christopher got to know most of the people who supplied the packages, and he laughed and joked with them as he loaded the horseless carriage. And as the experiments went on, Uncle Ralph's wizards gradually perfected the carriage. By the end of the term, it moved under its own power and Tacroy and Christopher no longer had to drag it up the valleys to The Place Between.

In fact, the experiments had become so routine that they were not much of a change from school.

Christopher thought of other things while he worked, just as he did in magic lessons and English and Chapel at school.

”Why don't we ever go to Series Eleven?” he asked Tacroy as they walked up one of the valleys fromSeries One with another heavy k.n.o.bby load gliding behind on the carriage.

”n.o.body goes to Eleven,” Tacroy said shortly. Christopher could see he wanted to change the subject.

He asked why. ”Because,” said Tacroy, ”because they're peculiar, unfriendly people there, I suppose-if you can call them people. n.o.body knows much about them because they make d.a.m.n sure n.o.body sees them. And that's all I know, except that Eleven's not a Series. There's only one world.” Tacroy refused to say more than that, which was annoying, because Christopher had a strong feeling that Tacroy did know more. But Tacroy was in a bad mood that week. His grandmotherly lady had gone down with flu and Tacroy was making do with the stern flute-playing young lady. ”Somewhere in our world,” he said, sighing, ”there is a young lady who plays the harp and doesn't mind if I turn transparent, but there are too many difficulties in the way between us.”

Probably because Tacroy kept saying things like this, Christopher now had a very romantic image of him starving in his garret and crossed in love. ”Why won't Uncle Ralph let me come and see you in London?”

he asked.

”I told you to stow it, Christopher,” Tacroy said, and he stopped further talk by stepping out into the mists of The Place Between with the carriage billowing behind him.

Tacroy's romantic background nagged at Christopher all that term, particularly when a casual word he dropped in the dormitory made it clear that none of the other boys had ever met a foundling child. ”I wish I was one,” Oneir said. ”I wouldn't have to go into my father's business then.” After that, Christopher felt he would not even mind meeting the flute-playing young lady.

But this was driven out of his mind when there proved to be a muddle over the arrangements for the Easter holidays. Mama wrote and said he was to come to her in Genoa, but at the last moment she turned out to be going to Weimar instead, where there was no room for Christopher. He had to spend nearly a week at school on his own after everyone had gone home, while the school wrote to Uncle Charles, and Uncle Charles arranged for Papa's other brother, Uncle Conrad, to have him in four days'

time. Meanwhile, since the school was closing, Christopher was sent to stay with Uncle Ralph in London.

Uncle Ralph was away, to Christopher's disappointment. Most of his house was shut up, with locked doors everywhere, and the only person there was the housekeeper. Christopher spent the few days wandering around London by himself.

It was almost as good as exploring an Anywhere. There were parks and monuments and street musicians, and every road, however narrow, was choked with high-wheeled carts and carriages. On the second day Christopher found himself at Covent Garden market, among piles of fruit and vegetables, and he stayed there till the evening, fascinated by the porters. Each of them could carry at least six loaded baskets in a tall pile on his head, without even wobbling. At last, he turned to come away and saw a familiar st.u.r.dy figure in a green worsted suit walking down the narrow street ahead of him.

”Tacroy!” Christopher screamed and went racing after him.

Tacroy did not appear to hear. He went walking on, with his curly head bent in a rather dejected way, and turned the corner into the next narrow street before Christopher had caught up. When Christopher skidded around the corner, there was no sign of him. But he knew it had been, unmistakably, Tacroy.

The garret must be somewhere quite near. He spent the rest of his stay in London hanging around Covent Garden, hoping for another glimpse of Tacroy, but it did no good. Tacroy did not appear again.

After that, Christopher went to stay at Uncle Conrad's house in Wilts.h.i.+re, where the main drawback proved to be his cousin Francis. Cousin Francis was the same age as Christopher, and he was the kindof boy Fenning called ”a stuck-up pratterel.” Christopher despised Francis on this account, and Francis despised Christopher for having been brought up in town and never having ridden to hounds. In fact, there was another reason too, which emerged when Christopher fell heavily off the quietest pony in the stables for the seventh time.

”Can't do magic, can you?” Francis said, looking smugly down at Christopher from the great height of his trim bay gelding. ”I'm not surprised. It's your father's fault for marrying that awful Argent woman. No one in my family has anything to do with your father now.”

Since Christopher was fairly sure that Francis had used magic to bring him off the pony, there was not much he could do but clench his teeth and feel that Papa was well shot of this particular branch of the Chants. It was a relief to go back to school again.

It was more than a relief. It was the cricket season. Christopher became obsessed with cricket almost overnight. So did Oneir. ”It's the King of Games,” Oneir said devoutly, and went and bought every book on the subject that he could afford. He and Christopher decided they were going to be professional cricketers when they grew up. ”And my father's business can just go hang!” Oneir said.

Christopher quite agreed, only in his case it was Mama's plans for Society. I've made up my mind for myself! he thought. It was like being released from a vow. He was quite surprised to find how determined and ambitious he was. He and Oneir practiced all day, and Fenning, who was no good really, was persuaded to run after the b.a.l.l.s. In between they talked cricket, and at night Christopher had normal ordinary dreams, all about cricket.

It seemed quite an interruption on the first Thursday, when he had to give up dreams of cricket and meet Tacroy in Series Five.

”I saw you in London,” Christopher said to him. ”Your garret's near Covent Garden, isn't it?”

”Covent Garden?” Tacroy said blankly. ”It's nowhere near there. You must have seen someone else.”

And he stuck to that, even when Christopher described in great detail which street it was and what Tacroy had looked like. ”No,” he said. ”You must have been running after a complete stranger.”

Christopher knew it had been Tacroy. He was puzzled. But there seemed no point in going on arguing.

He began loading the carriage with fishy-smelling bundles and went back to thinking about cricket.

Naturally, not thinking what he was doing, he let go of a bundle in the wrong place. It fell half through Tacroy and slapped to the ground, where it lay leaking an even fis.h.i.+er smell than before. ”Pooh!” said Christopher. ”What is this stuff?”

”No idea,” said Tacroy. ”I'm only your uncle's errand boy. What's the matter? Is your mind somewhere else tonight?”

”Sorry,” Christopher said, collecting the bundle. ”I was thinking of cricket.”

Tacroy's face lit up. ”Are you bowler or batsman?”

”Batsman,” said Christopher. ”I want to be a professional.”

”I'm a bowler myself,” said Tacroy. ”Slow leg-spin, and though I say it myself, I'm not half bad. I play quite a lot for-well, it's a village team really, but we usually win. I usually end up taking seven wickets-and I can bat a bit too. What are you, an opener?”

”No, I fancy myself as a stroke player,” Christopher said. They talked cricket all the time Christopher was loading the carriage. After that they walked on the beach with the blue surf cras.h.i.+ng beside them and went on talking cricket. Tacroy several times tried to demonstrate his skill by picking up a pebble, but he could not get firm enough to hold it. So Christopher found a piece of driftwood to act as a bat and Tacroy gave him advice on how to hit.

After that, Tacroy gave Christopher a coaching session in whatever Anywhere they happened to be, and both of them talked cricket nonstop. Tacroy was a good coach. Christopher learned far more from him than he did from the Sports master at school. He had more and more splendid ambitions of playing professionally for Surrey or somewhere, cracking the ball firmly to the boundary all around the ground. In fact, Tacroy taught him so well, that he began to have quite real, everyday ambitions of getting into the school team.

They were reading Oneir's cricket books aloud in the dormitory now. Matron had discovered The Arabian Nights and taken it away, but n.o.body minded. Every boy in the dormitory, even Fenning, was cricket mad. And Christopher was most obsessed of all.

Then disaster struck. It began with Tacroy saying, ”By the way, there's a change of plan. Can you meet me in Series Ten next Thursday? Someone seems to be trying to spoil your uncle's experiments, so we have to change the routine.”

Christopher was distracted from cricket by slight guilt at that. He knew he ought to make a further payment for Throgmorten, and he was afraid that the G.o.ddess might have supernatural means of knowing he had been to Series Ten without bringing her any more books. He went rather warily to the valley.

Tacroy was not there. It took Christopher a good hour of climbing and scrambling to locate him at the mouth of quite a different valley. By this time Tacroy had become distinctly misty and unfirm.

”Dunderhead,” Tacroy said while Christopher hastily firmed him up. ”I was going to lose this trance any second. You know there's more than one place in a series. What got into you?”

”I was probably thinking of cricket,” Christopher said.

The place beyond the new valley was nothing like as primitive and Heathen-seeming as the place where the G.o.ddess lived. It was a vast dockside with tremendous cranes towering overhead. Some of the biggest s.h.i.+ps Christopher had ever seen, enormous rusty iron s.h.i.+ps, very strangely shaped, were tied up to cables so big that he had to step over them as if they were logs. But he knew it was still Series Ten when the man waiting with an iron cart full of little kegs said, ”Praise Asheth! I thought you were never coming!”

”Yes, make haste,” Tacroy said. ”This place is safer than that Heathen city, but there may be enemies around all the same. Besides, the sooner you finish, the sooner we can get to work on your forward defensive play.”

Christopher hurried to roll the little kegs from the iron cart to the carriage. When all the kegs were in, he hurried to fasten the straps that held the loads on it. And, of course, because he was hurrying, one of the straps slithered out of his hand and fell back on the other side of the carriage. He had to lean right over the load to get it. He could hear iron clanking in the distance and a few shouts, but he thought nothing of it, until Tacroy suddenly sprang into sight beside him.

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