The Lives of Christopher Chant

“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 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 gods live,” Christopher said, setting the small silvery bellcups ringing. “He was nice. He said it didn’t matter about money.”

“Very generous,” remarked the Last Governess. “Where was this painted house for gods, Christopher?”

“I told you. It was an Almost Anywhere,” Christopher said.

“And I told you that that is not an answer,” the Last Governess said. She folded up her darning. “Christopher, I insist that you tell me where those bells came from.”

“Why do you want to know?” Christopher asked, wishing she would leave him in peace.

“Because,” the Last Governess said with truly ominous calm, “you are not being frank and open like a nice boy should be. I suspect you stole those bells.”

At this monstrous injustice, Christopher’s face reddened and tears stood in his eyes. “I haven’t!” he cried out. “He gave them to me! People always give me things in the Anywheres, only I drop most of them. Look.” And regardless of her one-toy-at-a-time rule, he rushed to the cupboard, fetched the horse flute, the mermaids’ necklace and the clockwork dragon, and banged them down in her darning basket. “Look! These are from other Anywheres.”

The Last Governess gazed at them with terrible impassiveness. “Am I to believe you have stolen these too?” she said. She put the basket and the toys on the floor and stood up. “Come with me. This must be reported to your mama at once.”

She seized Christopher’s arm and in spite of his yells of “I didn’t, I didn’t!” she marched him inexorably downstairs.

Christopher leant backwards and dragged his feet and implored her not to. He knew he would never be able to explain to Mama. All the notice the Last Governess took was to say, “Stop that disgraceful noise. You’re a big boy now.”

This was something all the governesses agreed on. But Christopher no longer cared about being big. Tears poured disgracefully down his cheeks and he screamed the name of the one person he knew who saved people. “Uncle Ralph! I’ll explain to Uncle Ralph!”

The Last Governess glanced down at him at that. Just for a moment, the hidden prettiness flickered in her face. But to Christopher’s despair, she dragged him to Mama’s dressing-room and knocked on the door.

Mama turned from her mirror in surprise. She looked at Christopher, red-faced and gulping and wet with tears. She looked at the Last Governess. “Whatever is going on? Is he ill?”

“No, Madam,” the Last Governess said in her dullest way. “Something has happened which I think your brother should be informed of at once.”

“Ralph?” said Mama. “You mean I’m to write to Ralph? Or is it more urgent that that?”

“Urgent, Madam, I think,” the Last Governess said drearily. “Christopher said that he is willing to confess to his uncle. I suggest, if I may make so bold, that you summon him now.”

Mama yawned. This governess bored her terribly. “I’ll do my best,” she said, “but I don’t answer for my brother’s temper. He lives a very busy life, you know.” Carelessly, she pulled one of her dark glossy hairs out of the silver backed brush she had been using. Then, much more carefully, she began teasing hairs out of her silver and crystal hair-tidy.

Most of the hairs were Mama’s own dark ones, but Christopher, watching Mama’s beautiful pearly nails delicately pinching and pulling at the hairs, while he sobbed and swallowed and sobbed again, saw that one of the hairs was a much redder colour. This was the one Mama pulled out. She laid it across her own hair from the brush. Then, picking up what seemed to be a hatpin with a glittery knob, she laid that across both hairs and tapped it with one sharp, impatient nail. “Ralph,” she said, “Ralph Weatherby Argent. Miranda wants you.”

One of the mirrors of the dressing-table turned out to be a window, with Uncle Ralph looking through it, rather irritably, while he knotted his tie. “What is it?” he said. “I’m busy today.”

“When aren’t you?” asked Mama. “Listen, that governess is here looking like a wet week as usual. She’s brought Christopher. Something about a confession. Could you come and sort it out? It’s beyond me.”

“Is she?” said Uncle Ralph. He leaned sideways to look through the mirror – or window, or whatever – and when he saw Christopher, he winked and broke into his sunniest smile. “Dear, dear. This does look upsetting. I’ll be along at once.”

Christopher saw him leave the window and walk away to one side. Mama had only time to turn to the Last Governess and say, “There, I’ve done my best!” before the door of her dressing-room opened and Uncle Ralph strode in.

Christopher quite forgot his sobs in the interest of all this. He tried to think what was on the other side of the wall of Mama’s dressing-room. The stairs, as far as he knew. He supposed Uncle Ralph could have a secret room in the wall about one foot wide, but he was much more inclined to think he had been seeing real magic. As he decided this, Uncle Ralph secretly passed him a large white handkerchief and walked cheerfully into the middle of the room to allow Christopher time to wipe his face.

“Now what’s all this about?” he said.

“I’ve no idea,” said Mama. “She’ll explain, no doubt.”

Uncle Ralph cocked a ginger eyebrow at the Last Governess.

“I found Christopher playing with an artefact,” the Governess said tediously, “of a kind I have never seen before, made of metal that is totally unknown to me. He then revealed he had three more artefacts, each one different from the other, but he was unable to explain how he had come by them.”

Uncle Ralph looked at Christopher, who hid the handkerchief behind him and looked nervously back. “Enough to get anyone into hot water, old chap,” Uncle Ralph said. “Suppose you take me to look at these things and explain where they do come from?”

Christopher heaved a great happy sigh. He had known he could count on Uncle Ralph to save him. “Yes, please,” he said.

They went back upstairs with the Last Governess processing ahead and Christopher hanging gratefully on to Uncle Ralph’s large warm hand. When they got there, the Governess sat quietly down to her sewing again as if she felt she had done her bit. Uncle Ralph picked up the bells and jingled them. “By Jove!” he said. “These sound like nothing else in the universe!”

He took them to the window and carefully examined each bell. “Bullseye!” he said. “You clever woman! They are like nothing else in the universe. Some kind of strange alloy, I think, different for each bell. Handmade by the look of them.” He pointed genially to the tuffet by the fire. “Sit there, old chap, and oblige me by explaining what you did to get these bells here.”

Christopher sat down, full of willing eagerness. “I had to hold them in my mouth while I climbed through The Place Between,” he explained.

“No, no,” said Uncle Ralph. “That sounds like near the end. Start with what you did in the beginning before you got the bells.”

“I went down the valley to the snake-charming town,” Christopher said.

“No, before that, old chap,” said Uncle Ralph. “When you set off from here. What time of day was it, for instance? After breakfast? Before lunch?”

“No, in the night,” Christopher explained. “It was one of the dreams.”

In this way, by going carefully back every time Christopher missed out a step, Uncle Ralph got Christopher to tell him in detail about the dreams, and The Place Between, and the Almost Anywheres he came to down the valleys. Since Uncle Ralph, far from being angry, seemed steadily more delighted, Christopher told him everything he could think of.

“What did I tell you!” he said, possibly to the Governess. “I can always trust my hunches. Something had to come out of a heredity like this! By Jove, Christopher old chap, you must be the only person in the world who can bring back solid objects from a spirit trip! I doubt if even old de Witt can do that!”

Christopher glowed to find Uncle Ralph so pleased with him, but he could not help feeling resentful about the Last Governess. “She said I stole them.”

“Take no notice of her. Women are always jumping to the wrong conclusions,” Uncle Ralph said, lighting a cigar. At this, the Last Governess shrugged her shoulders up and smiled a little. The hidden prettiness came out stronger than Christopher had ever seen it, almost as if she was human and sharing a joke.

Uncle Ralph blew a roll of blue smoke over them both, beaming like the sun coming through the clouds. “Now the next thing, old chap,” he said, “is to do a few experiments to test this gift of yours. Can you control these dreams of yours? Can you say when you’re about to go off to your Almost Anywheres – or can’t you?”

Christopher thought about it. “I go when I want to,” he said.

“Then have you any objection to doing me a test run, say tomorrow night?” Uncle Ralph asked.

“I could go tonight,” Christopher offered.

“No, tomorrow,” said Uncle Ralph. “It’ll take me a day to get things set up. And when you go, this is what I want you to do.”

He leant forward and pointed his cigar at Christopher, to let him know he was serious. “You set out as usual when you’re ready and try to do two experiments for me. First, I’m going to arrange to have a man waiting for you in your Place Between. I want you to see if you can find him. You may have to shout to find him – I don’t know: I’m not a spirit traveller myself – but anyway, you climb about and see if you can make contact with him. If you do, then you do the second experiment. The man will tell you what that is. And if they both work, then we can experiment some more. Do you think you can do that? You’d like to help, wouldn’t you, old chap?”

“Yes!” said Christopher.

Uncle Ralph stood up and patted his shoulder. “Good lad. Don’t let anyone deceive you, old chap. You have a very exciting and important gift here. It’s so important that I advise you not to talk about it to anyone but me and Miss Bell over there. Don’t tell anyone, not even your mama. Right?”

“Right,” said Christopher. It was wonderful that Uncle Ralph thought him important. He was so glad and delighted that he would have done far more for Uncle Ralph than just not tell anyone. That was easy. There was no one to tell.

“So it’s our secret,” said Uncle Ralph, going to the door. “Just the three of us – and the man I’m going to send, of course. Don’t forget you may have to look quite hard to find him, will you?”

“I won’t forget,” Christopher promised eagerly.

“Good lad,” said Uncle Ralph, and went out of the door in a waft of cigar smoke.

CHAPTER THREE

Christopher thought he would never live through the time until tomorrow night. He burned to show Uncle Ralph what he could do. If it had not been for the Last Governess, he would have made himself ill with excitement, but she managed to be so boring that she somehow made everything else boring too. By the time Christopher went to bed that next night, he was almost wondering if it was worth dreaming.

But he did dream, because Uncle Ralph had asked him to, and got out of bed as usual and walked round the fireplace to the valley, where his clothes were lying on the rocky path as usual. By now this lot of clothes were torn, covered with mud and assorted filth from a hundred Almost Anywheres, and at least two sizes too small. Christopher put them on quickly, without bothering to do up buttons that would not meet. He never wore shoes because they got in the way as he climbed the rocks. He pattered round the crag in his bare feet into The Place Between.

It was formless and unfinished as ever, all slides and jumbles of rocks rearing in every direction and high overhead. The mist billowed as formlessly as the rocks. It was one of the times when rain slanted in it, driven this way and that by the hither-thither winds that blew in The Place Between. Christopher hoped he would not have to spend too long here hunting for Uncle Ralph’s man. It made him feel so small, besides being cold and wet. He dutifully braced himself on a slide of rubbly sand and shouted.

“Hallo!”

The Place Between made his voice sound no louder than a bird cheeping. The windy fog seemed to snatch the sound away and bury it in a flurry of rain. Christopher listened for a reply, but for minutes on end the only noise was the hissing hum of the wind.

He was wondering whether to shout again, when he heard a little cheeping thread of sound, wailing its thin way back to him across the rocks. “Hallooo!” It was his own shout. Christopher was sure of it. Right from the start of his dreams, he had known that The Place Between liked to have everything that did not belong back to the place it came from. That was why he always climbed back to bed faster than he did when he climbed out to a new valley. The Place pushed him back.

Christopher thought about this. It probably did no good to shout. If Uncle Ralph’s man was out there in the mist, he would not be able to stand and wait for very long, without getting pushed back to the valley he came from. So the man would have to wait in the mouth of a valley and hope that Christopher found him.

Christopher sighed. There were such thousands and thousands of valleys, high up, low down, turning off at every angle you could think of, and some valleys turned off other valleys – and that was only if you crawled round the side of the Place that was nearest. If you went the other way, towards the Anywhere that did not want people, there were probably many thousands more. On the other hand, Uncle Ralph would not want to make it too difficult. The man must be quite near.

Determined to make Uncle Ralph’s experiment a success if he could, Christopher set off, climbing, sliding, inching across wet rock with his face close to the cold hard smell of it. The first valley he came to was empty. “Hallo?” he called into it. But the river rushed down green empty space and he could see no one was there. He backed out and climbed up and sideways to the next. And there, before he reached the opening, he could see someone through the mist, dark and shiny with rain, crouching on a rock and scrabbling for a handhold overhead.

“Hallo?” Christopher asked.

“Well, I’ll be – is that Christopher?” the person asked. It was a strong young man’s voice. “Come on out where we can see one another.”

With a certain amount of heaving and slipping, both of them scrambled round a bulge of rock and dropped down into another valley, where the air was calm and warm. The grass here was lit pink by a sunset in the distance.

“Well, well,” said Uncle Ralph’s man. “You’re about half the size I expected. Pleased to meet you, Christopher. I’m Tacroy.”

He grinned down at Christopher. Tacroy was as strong and young as his voice, rather squarely and sturdily built, with a roundish brown face and merry-looking hazel eyes.

Christopher liked him at once – partly because Tacroy was the first grown man he had met who had curly hair like his own. It was not quite like. Where Christopher’s hair made loose black rounds, Tacroy’s hair coiled tight, like a mass of little pale brown springs. Christopher thought Tacroy’s hair must hurt when a governess or someone made him comb it. This made him notice that Tacroy’s curls were quite dry. Nor was there any trace of the shiny wetness that had been on his clothes a moment before. Tacroy was wearing a greenish worsted suit, rather shabby, but it was not even damp.

“How did you get dry so quickly?” Christopher asked him.

Tacroy laughed. “I’m not here quite as bodily as you seem to be. And you’re soaked through. How was that?”

“The rain in The Place Between,” Christopher said. “You were wet there too.”

“Was I?” said Tacroy. “I don’t visualise at all on the Passage – it’s more like night with a few stars to guide by. I find it quite hard to visualise even here on the World Edge – though I can see you quite well, of course, since we’re both willing it.”

He saw that Christopher was staring at him, not understanding more than a word of this, and screwed his eyes up thoughtfully. This made little laughing wrinkles all round Tacroy’s eyes. Christopher liked him better than ever. “Tell me,” Tacroy said, waving a brown hand towards the rest of the valley, “what do you see here?”

“A valley,” Christopher said, wondering what Tacroy saw, “with green grass. The sun’s setting and it’s making the stream down the middle look pink.”

“Is it now?” said Tacroy. “Then I expect it would surprise you very much to know that all I can see is a slightly pink fog.”

“Why?” said Christopher.

“Because I’m only here in spirit, while you seem to be actually here in the flesh,” Tacroy said. “Back in London, my valuable body is lying on a sofa in a deep trance, tucked up in blankets and warmed by stone hot-water bottles, while a beautiful and agreeable young lady plays tunes to me on her harp. I insisted on the young lady as part of my pay. Do you think you’re tucked up in bed somewhere too?”

When Tacroy saw that this question made Christopher both puzzled and impatient, his eyes screwed up again. “Let’s get going,” he said. “The next part of the experiment is to see if you can bring a prepared package back. I’ve made my mark. Make yours, and we’ll get down into this world.”

“Mark?” said Christopher.

“Mark,” said Tacroy. “If you don’t make a mark, how do you think you will find your way in and out of this world, or know which one it is when you come to it?”

“Valleys are quite easy to find,” Christopher protested. “And I can tell that I’ve been to this Anywhere before. It’s got the smallest stream of all of them.”

Tacroy shrugged with his eyes screwed right up. “My boy, you’re giving me the creeps. Be kind and please me and scratch the number nine on a rock or something. I don’t want to be the one who loses you.”

Christopher obligingly picked up a pointed flint and dug away at the mud of the path until he had made a large wobbly 9 there.

He looked up to find Tacroy staring as if he was a ghost. “What’s the matter?”

Tacroy gave a short wild-sounding laugh. “Oh nothing much. I can see it, that’s all. That’s only unheard of, that’s all. Can you see my mark?”

Christopher looked everywhere he could think of, including up at the sunset sky, and had to confess that he could see nothing like a mark.

“Thank Heaven!” said Tacroy. “At least that’s normal! But I’m still seriously wondering what you are. I begin to understand why your uncle got so excited.”

They sauntered together down the valley. Tacroy had his hands in his pockets and he seemed quite casual, but Christopher got the feeling, all the same, that Tacroy usually went into an Anywhere in some way that was quicker and quite different. He caught Tacroy glancing at him several times, as if Tacroy was not sure of the way to go and was waiting to see what Christopher did. He seemed very relieved when they came to the end of the valley and found themselves on the rutty road among huge jungle trees. The sun was almost down. There were lights at the windows of the tumbledown old inn in front of them.

This was one of the first Anywheres Christopher had been to. He remembered it hotter and wetter. The big trees had been bright green and dripping. Now they seemed brown and a bit wilted, as far as he could tell in the pink light. When he followed Tacroy on to the crazily-built wooden verandah of the inn, he saw that the blobs of coloured fungus that had fascinated him last time had all turned dry and white. He wondered if the landlord would remember him.

“Landlord!” Tacroy shouted. When nothing happened, he said to Christopher, “Can you bang on the table? I can’t.”

Christopher noticed that the bent boards of the verandah creaked under his own feet, but not under Tacroy’s. It did seem as if Tacroy was not really there in some way. He picked up a wooden bowl and rapped hard on the twisted table with it. It was another thing that made Tacroy’s eyes screw up.

When the landlord shuffled out, he was wrapped in at least three knitted shawls and too unhappy to notice Christopher, let alone remember him.

“Ralph’s messenger,” Tacroy said. “I believe you have a package for me.”

“Ah yes,” shivered the landlord. “Won’t you come inside out of this exceptionally bitter weather, sir? This is the hardest winter anyone has known for years.”

Tacroy’s eyebrows went up and he looked at Christopher. “I’m quite warm,” Christopher said.

“Then we’ll stay outside,” Tacroy said. “The package?”

“Directly, sir,” shivered the landlord. “But won’t you take something hot to warm you up? On the house, sir.”

“Yes, please,” Christopher said quickly. Last time he was here he had been given something chocolatish which was not cocoa but much nicer. The landlord nodded and smiled and shuffled shivering back indoors. Christopher sat at the table. Even though it was almost dark now, he felt deliciously warm. His clothes were drying nicely. Crowds of fleshy moth-things were flopping at the lighted windows, but enough light came between them for him to see Tacroy sit down in the air and then slide himself sideways on to the chair on the other side of the table.