The Ogre Downstairs

“I’ve got eyes,” Johnny said crossly. Then, feeling he was being rather ungracious, he added, “I’m the Great Scientist. I think of everything.”

He tried to make good his boast by fencing off a corner of the room, so that no accidents should happen while the experiments were in progress. For the rest of the evening he sat in this pen, carefully putting the powder, grain by grain, into a test tube of water, and then bathing his big toe with the result.

“What’s the matter with Johnny?” their mother wanted to know, when she came in around bedtime.

Johnny, by this time, was bobbing an inch or so from the floor. He took hold of a chair that was part of his fence to hold himself down, and pretended not to have heard.

“I knocked over one of his experiments this afternoon,” Caspar explained anxiously, “and he doesn’t want anybody to do it again. Be careful of him. He’s very angry.”

Sally gave Johnny a puzzled look. “All right, darling. I won’t interfere. It was you I wanted to talk to anyway, Caspar.”

“About what I said about Jack? I’m sorry,” Caspar said hurriedly, dreading a scene. Scenes with his mother were always painful, not because she scolded, but because she believed in absolute honesty.

Sure enough, she said, “That’s not quite the point, darling. I could see you were hurt and miserable, and it upset me. Can’t you bring yourself to like Jack a little better? He really is very nice, you know.”

“Why should I? He doesn’t like us,” Caspar retorted with equal honesty.

“He tries,” Sally said earnestly. “I can think of at least a hundred occasions when he’s been very forebearing indeed.”

“There are about a thousand when he hasn’t,” Caspar said bitterly.

“That’s partly because you’ve been so awful,” Sally said frankly. “Truly, I’m ashamed of you most of the time – all of you, but particularly you as the eldest.”

Caspar’s face was red and he wanted to mutter again. He looked over at Johnny. Johnny looked sulkily at his big toe and gave it a slight waggle. He was hating the scene as much as Caspar, and he was also mortally afraid that he was going to rise from his pen any minute and float about.

Caspar did his best to send Sally away. “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding so sincere and nice that he made himself feel ill. “I will try.” He was quite unable to keep up this level of piety. He found himself adding, “I do try, only he keeps blaming me so.”

“You must remember,” said Sally, “that he isn’t really used to children. Malcolm and Douglas have been away at school most of the time, and he simply had no idea what it could be like.”

“He’s finding out, isn’t he?” said Caspar.

Sally laughed. “You can say that again! All right. Good night, darlings. And do try a bit harder in future.”

She went out and shut the door. Johnny gave a sigh of relief, let go of the chair and bobbed clear of the floor again.

Before he went to bed, he had risen to three feet. Caspar was rather glad to find that there was no horrible smell this time, as the mixture in the test tube grew stronger. It must have been due to all the other things Johnny had put in. They were discussing it when Malcolm, in his usual manner, knocked and came in despite being told to go away. Johnny was only just in time to pull himself over to the cupboard and pretend to be sitting on top of it.

“My father says you’re to put your light out,” Malcolm said. His eyes wandered critically to Johnny. “What are you sitting up there with one shoe off for?”

“We’ve both got one shoe off,” said Caspar, stretching out his bare foot and wriggling the toes at Malcolm’s face. “It’s the badge of our secret society. Now go away.”

“You don’t think I came in here for pleasure, do you?” Malcolm said, and went away.

Johnny looked anxiously at Caspar. “Do you think he suspected anything?”

“He’s far too flipping dim for that,” said Caspar. “But you’d better be careful. If he did find out, he’d tell the Ogre like a shot.”

“I think I’ll stop now,” said Johnny. “For tonight.” So Caspar washed his big toe for him, and Johnny climbed off the cupboard and went to bed.

The next day, Johnny skipped games and pelted home from school to continue his experiments. When Caspar came in, he found Johnny, again with one shoe off, triumphantly floating just below the ceiling.

“Look at this!” he said. “I could go higher if I put more on, only all the powder’s in the water now and I don’t want to waste it. Can you take the test tube and prop it carefully on that stand down there?”

Caspar stood on the cupboard and took the test tube from Johnny’s reaching hand. Then he climbed down and propped it upright in Johnny’s pen, while Johnny looked on tensely from the ceiling.

“What are you going to do now?” Caspar asked. “Come down?”

“I think I ought to practise a bit,” said Johnny. “You hold the door in case Malcolm comes in.”

Caspar stood against the door and watched a little wistfully while Johnny pushed off from the ceiling and swooped this way and that across the room, as Gwinny had done. It looked enormous fun. Johnny was laughing. And now that he knew what a splendid feeling it was to be nearly as light as air, Caspar could hardly wait to get up there and swoop about himself.

“Hadn’t I better shut the window?” he called up at Johnny’s whisking feet.

“It’s all right,” Johnny said happily. “It’s quite easy to control where you go. Like swimming, only not such hard work.”

Caspar watched him doing slow, swooping breaststroke through the air, and yearned to see what a fast overarm would do. “When shall we all try?”

Johnny turned over and trod water, or rather air. “What about going out tonight, after dark, for a fly round town?”

Caspar was about to say that this was the best idea Johnny had had in his life, when there was a thump on the door behind him. He flung himself against it, with his feet braced. “Go away. We’re busy.”

“Buzz off!” Johnny shouted down from the ceiling.

The doorknob began turning. Caspar grabbed it and held it hard. In spite of this, the knob continued to turn and the door moved slightly. Caspar had not thought Malcolm was so strong. “Go away!” he said.

“I only want to borrow Indigo Rubber,” said a much deeper voice than Malcolm’s. “What’s so special that I can’t come in?”

Caspar looked up helplessly at Johnny’s alarmed face. “I thought you didn’t like Indigo Rubber,” he shouted through the door.

“I’ve come round to them,” Douglas called back. “And I’ve got some friends coming tonight who want to hear it.”

“You can’t have it,” called Caspar.

“But I promised them,” said Douglas. “Be a sport.”

“You’d no business to promise them my records!” Caspar said, with real indignation. “You can’t have them. Go away.”

“I knew you’d go and be mean about it,” said Douglas. “It’s typical. I only want to borrow their second LP for an hour this evening. I won’t hurt it, and you can come and listen, if you like. Father’s said we can have it in the dining room.”

“You should have asked me first,” said Caspar. But put like that, Douglas’s request was reasonable, and he did not want to be thought mean.

“Tell him to come back for it in five minutes,” Johnny whispered from the ceiling. “Then get me some water.”

Caspar drew his breath to shout, but Douglas had lost patience. “You are a mean little squirt, aren’t you?” he said. “It’s no good trying to be polite to you. You lend me that record, or watch out!” The doorknob turned sharply under Caspar’s hands and the door began to open.

“Come back in five minutes!” Caspar said desperately, his braced feet sliding.

“And give you time to hide it?” said Douglas. “What kind of a fool do you think I am?” The door opened nearly a foot, and Douglas’s leg and shoulder came through the gap. It was clear that the rest of him was following.

Johnny did the only thing he could think of. With a strong thrust at the ceiling and a desperate kick of his legs, he got himself to the open window and, as the door crashed open and Douglas plunged into the room, he pushed himself out of it. And, whether it was the draught from the door, or the different conditions outside, Johnny promptly soared. The last Caspar saw of him was his bare foot and his shoe vanishing upwards beyond the top of the window.

Luckily, Douglas was looking malevolently at Caspar. “Got any more mean excuses?” he said.

“It’s not mean. You shouldn’t promise things that aren’t yours,” said Caspar. But his heart was not in the argument. All he could think of was Johnny soaring away into the heavens.

“Well, I’d have asked you this morning, only you’d gone by the time I’d persuaded Father to let me have the dining room,” Douglas said. “Are you going to lend it me, or not?”

“You can have them all. They’re down there by my bed. And I’ve got their new one too,” Caspar said hastily.

“Their new one!” Douglas said delightedly. “Really? Brainpan, you mean?” He waded over to Caspar’s bed and went on his knees by the window to sort out the records. Instead of taking the records at once, he knelt there looking disgusted. “I wonder you can hear these,” he said. “They’re coated with dust. Hasn’t anyone ever told you to keep LPs clean? You’re ruining them and your stylus.”

“I know, but I’ve lost my cleaner,” said Caspar, almost beside himself with impatience to get to the window and see what had become of Johnny.

“I’m not surprised,” said Douglas, looking round the crowded room. “You can borrow mine, if you’re careful with it. I’ve got one of those attachments now. Thanks, anyway. I’d better go and give these a clean.” And to Caspar’s relief, Douglas got up and waded to the door.

Caspar sped to the window and craned out of it. Johnny was not far off. He was clinging like a monkey to the corner of the house, about four feet above the window. “You can come back now,” Caspar told him. “He’s gone.”

“I can’t!” Johnny said tensely.

“Why not?”

“It’s worn off. I’m stuck. I can’t hold on much longer, either.”

Caspar felt rather sick. He looked down and realised that the ground was a very long distance away. Worse still, the Ogre’s car was now parked on the gravel at the side of the garden. For two very good reasons, Johnny had better not go down. He looked up. The roof and the gutter, which came lower at the back of the house, were only three feet or so above Johnny’s head.

“Can you climb up and grab the roof?” he said.

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” snapped Johnny. “It’s all I can do to stay in one place.”

“Then hang on. I’ll go out of the trap door in the loft,” said Caspar, “and see if I can pull you up. Hold on.”

“What do you expect me to do? Let go?” said Johnny.

Caspar sped to the door and up the stairs that led to Gwinny’s room. The loft was behind a low door opposite Gwinny’s. Gwinny came out to see what was going on as Caspar was frenziedly rattling at it.

“You don’t pull, you push,” she said. “Is there something the matter?”

“Yes,” said Caspar. “Johnny’s stranded halfway up the house and I’ve got to pull him up from here. Where’s the Ogre?”

“In the study, I think. I’ll fetch my dressing gown cord,” said Gwinny.

Caspar crashed the door open inwards and hurried into the loft. There was no proper floor, and he had to jump from joist to joist, which was not easy in the dim light. He was struggling to open the trap door to the roof, when Gwinny came crawling after him with the dressing gown cord in her mouth so that she could use both hands for crawling.

“Th’Ogre,” she said indistinctly.

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” Gwinny said, removing the cord. “But I could hear him shouting at someone. He sounded awfully angry.”

“I hope it’s Malcolm. And I hope it keeps them both busy,” said Caspar. “Help me with this bolt.”

It was no easy matter to open the trap. The bolts were rusty, and the Ogre had packed putty round the door itself to keep the rain out after he had fetched the muddy sweater in off the chimney. To Caspar’s frantic imagination, it took them an hour to unpack it again. Rust, dust, putty and cobwebs spattered down on them, and Caspar, unwisely bracing his foot between two joists, managed to put his knee through the plaster floor. But they got the door open in the end. Caspar hastily raised it and stood up into a cold sunset to lower it on to the tiles of the roof. Gwinny stood up beside him.

“Shall I climb out? I’m the lightest,” she said.

“No. You’re to stay there,” said Caspar. “It’s dangerous.”

He had one leg out over the edge of the trap, when, to his amazement, Johnny, looking white and shaken, appeared over the edge of the roof and started to crawl up it towards him.

“How did you climb up?” said Caspar. Johnny, for some reason, fiercely shook his head at him. “You must have done,” said Caspar. “You—”

The head and shoulders of the Ogre appeared behind Johnny. Even for the Ogre, they looked grim. All Caspar could do was to make haste to get himself back inside the loft again.

CHAPTER FOUR

It seemed that one of the neighbours had seen Johnny clinging to the side of the house and telephoned the Ogre. Probably it was just as well. Johnny had been precious near letting go by the time the Ogre had tied two ladders together and climbed up them. But in every other way it was unfortunate.

The Ogre made the obvious assumption that they had been playing on the roof and that Johnny had slipped off. He sent Johnny to bed without supper. Then he nailed up first the trap door, then the loft door, and forbade them all three, on pain of death, to touch either. Douglas, who was ordered in to help with the nailing, and who might have provided Caspar at least with an alibi, said nothing at all, to Caspar’s bitter annoyance. He just listened to Caspar being blamed for leading Johnny and Gwinny into danger. And Malcolm – who was supposed to be opening the trap door to let the Ogre and Johnny through – arrived in time to listen too. And he laughed. This so infuriated Gwinny that she bit Malcolm. It was all she could think of on the spur of the moment. So she was in trouble as well. The Ogre called her a little cat and sent her to bed without supper too.

Caspar supposed he was lucky to be allowed supper himself. But it was not a comfortable meal. The Ogre had gone downstairs and expressed himself forcibly to Sally after nailing up the loft, and Caspar could see his mother had been crying. He felt truly wretched. Douglas and Malcolm were, as usual, well-mannered, sober and almost totally silent. Caspar sat quite as silent, wishing the Ogre would not make such a horrible noise eating. Finally, Sally tried to make conversation by asking Douglas when his friends were coming.

Douglas replied, quietly and politely, “About eight o’clock, if that’s all right.”

“Of course,” Sally said cordially. “I’m so glad you’ve managed to make some friends already.”

“Thank you,” Douglas said politely.

“Because it is difficult, when you move to a new school, isn’t it?” Sally said.

“It’s not so bad,” said Douglas. “Thank you.”

Sally gave up. Nobody said anything else. Caspar missed Gwinny and Johnny acutely, because, if they did nothing else, they could be counted on to talk.

At the end of supper, Douglas and Malcolm politely offered to wash up, and Douglas surprised Caspar by turning to him and asking, equally politely, if he wanted to come to the dining room and listen to records too.

“Oh, no thank you,” Caspar said hastily. He had had about enough of Douglas by then.

“That’s rather a blessing,” Sally said to him in the kitchen, a little later, “because I want you to go on a secret mission and take some supper up to Johnny and Gwinny. I know Jack said they were to go without, but I can’t bear to think of them going hungry. But you must do it with the utmost stealth.”

“All right,” said Caspar, and looked meaningly at Malcolm, who was still busily and correctly wiping plates. When Sally did not seem to see what he meant, he tried to make her understand by waggling his eyebrows at her.

“Do stop making faces,” said Sally. “Malcolm won’t tell, will you, Malcolm?”

“Of course not,” Malcolm said coldly.

Caspar did not believe him for a moment, but he nevertheless crept upstairs with loaded trays. His task was made easier by the fact that Gwinny had sneaked down to join Johnny. They were both sitting in Johnny’s bed sharing a toffee bar, looking rosy and excited.

“When are we going flying?” Johnny asked.

Caspar had imagined that, after being stranded on the side of the house, Johnny would have had enough of flying, and he was rather taken aback. “When were you thinking of?” he said.

“Not too late,” said Johnny.

“I want to look down on all the lights in Market Street,” explained Gwinny. “The Christmas lights are up already, did you know?”

“And see the nightlife,” said Johnny. “If we’re lucky, we might see some vice going on. I’ve never seen any.”

“We’ve been thinking it out,” said Gwinny. “It’s awfully cold out, so we’ll have to go in coats, with shoes on, and wear gloves.”

“And put the flying-mixture on our legs,” said Johnny, “under our trousers. Rub on a really good handful, because we don’t want it wearing off in the middle of town.”

“All right,” Caspar said weakly. “About half past ten?”

“And put pillows in our beds,” Johnny called after him as he waded to the door.

Caspar went downstairs again to report his mission accomplished. He was so excited at the thought of going flying that very night that he forgot to refuse when Sally said, “And don’t go away upstairs again, Caspar. Come and join us in the sitting room for a change.”

“If you like,” Caspar said, without thinking, and then realised that he had condemned himself to a whole evening with the Ogre.

Douglas’s friends were arriving when he and Sally reached the hall. Caspar took one look at them and was heartily glad that he had refused Douglas’s invitation at least. They were all as tall as Douglas and, since none of them were in school clothes, they appeared even more grown up than they were. They carried bundles of records. Two of them had guitars. And they laughed and made jokes that Caspar could not understand. Douglas, as he showed them in, laughed too and made the same sort of jokes in reply. Caspar stared rather because he had hardly ever seen Douglas laugh before, and because Douglas had changed his clothes and looked just as grown up as his friends.

“Coffee and so on set out on the kitchen table, Douglas,” said Sally.

“Thanks,” Douglas replied, obviously too busy showing his friends into the dining room to hear what Sally had said.

The Ogre was standing in the doorway of the sitting room with the grim look that he usually reserved for Johnny or Caspar. “I’m beginning to regret this already,” he said. “Where did Douglas get those awful clothes?”

“I got them for him,” said Sally, a trifle guiltily. “He seemed to have grown out of everything else.”

“Are they fashionable or something?” asked the Ogre.

“Very,” said Sally.

“I feared as much,” said the Ogre, and went and turned the television on.

Since the Ogre was clearly in his stormiest mood, Caspar dared not do anything but sit quietly over a map of South America, trying to decide on a Geography project. The Ogre gave him several irritated looks, but he said nothing. The television produced the Ogre’s favourite kind of programme for him – the kind in which Officials and Ministers explained that the country was in a considerable state of crisis, but that they were doing this, that and the other thing to cure it. Caspar bit back several yawns of boredom and wondered how his mother could stand it. She was calmly checking over some long lists that had to do with her work tomorrow. If Caspar himself had not been in such a pleasant flutter about going flying, he thought he would never have endured it at all.

Then Indigo Rubber made themselves heard, rather loudly, in the middle of their best song. Caspar raised his head and almost regretted not being in the dining room. Either Douglas’s equipment was ten times better than his, or the records had needed cleaning more than he realised. Indigo Rubber sounded superb – though Caspar did wish that one of Douglas’s friends had not chosen to pick out the song haltingly on his guitar at the same time.

“This is intolerable!” said the Ogre, and turned the sound on the television right up. The result was a truly awful noise, with a Minister booming away about Trade, and Indigo Rubber gamely competing for all they were worth. “I shall go mad!” said the Ogre, with his face twisted into a snarl.

“No you won’t,” said Sally, laughing. “Do turn the sound down. I want to make a list of the people we’re having to this party.”

The Ogre, typically, refused to turn the sound down. So he and Sally were forced, for the next half hour or so, to bawl names at one another above the noise. Caspar’s head began to ache. His mother began to look a little worn also. Luckily, after that, Douglas and his friends took to playing Indigo Rubber songs on their guitars, which, though penetrating, were not quite so loud.

“Shall I send them home?” the Ogre asked several times, but Sally would not hear of it.

“I want to get these invitations out,” she said.

“You must be made of iron,” said the Ogre eventually. Then he noticed Caspar and told him to go to bed. Caspar was collecting his maps and papers, only too ready to go, when there were voices in the hall and Douglas burst gaily into the sitting room.

“I say—” he said.

“I’m not going to have you and your noise in here as well,” said the Ogre.

Douglas froze into crestfallen politeness. “Sorry, Father. I was only going to ask… You see, my friends are going down town to the Discotheque. Is it all right for me to go too?”

“No,” said the Ogre.

Douglas swallowed, and then said, very patiently and politely, “I shouldn’t be more than an hour or so. I promise I’ll be back before eleven.”

“Which is a good hour past your bedtime,” said the Ogre. “No.”

“Couldn’t he go?” said Sally.

“I’ve already given you my opinion of your indulgence,” the Ogre said unpleasantly. “That blasted place is the haunt of half the vice in town.”

Caspar felt his stomach twisting and fluttering. It sounded as if Johnny might be going to see some vice after all.

“But all sorts of people go there,” Douglas said pleadingly. “My friends often do.”

“Then I think the worse of your friends,” said the Ogre.

“But they—” began Douglas.

“Absolutely NOT!” said the Ogre.

Douglas went out and shut the door quietly behind him. When Caspar went upstairs, he was showing his friends out.

Gwinny and Johnny were asleep, packed into Johnny’s bed. Caspar, at the sight, felt rather sleepy himself, but he sat down on his own bed to wait. He heard Douglas come upstairs, and smelt the whiff of chemicals as Douglas opened the door across the landing. After that was a long, long silence. Caspar was all but asleep himself, when Johnny suddenly sat bolt upright.

“What’s the time?”

Caspar found the clock, which had got buried under a pile of comics. “Ten fifteen.”

“Oh good,” said Johnny. “I banged my head ten times on the pillow.” And he fell to shaking Gwinny. “Come on. Time to go.”

They bustled quietly about, getting into warm clothes and putting pillows in their beds. Ten minutes later, they were standing beside the open window, feeling very excited indeed and a little inclined to giggle. Johnny carefully fetched out the almost full tube of chemical and solemnly passed it to Gwinny. Gwinny rolled up the leg of Johnny’s old trousers, which she was wearing for warmth, poured the liquid carefully on to her palm and rubbed it hard on her shin.