Noah Barleywater Runs Away (8 page)

‘Well, I like stories,’ said Noah with a smile as he selected one at random, a rather portly puppet of a woman with a series of chins and a furious expression on her face. ‘What does this one tell?’

‘Ah, that’s Mrs Shields,’ said the old man with a laugh. ‘My first teacher.’

‘You keep a puppet of your teacher?’ asked Noah, raising an eyebrow in surprise. ‘You must have liked school very much then.’

‘Some of it,’ replied the old man. ‘Although it wasn’t my idea to go at all. It was Poppa’s. My father, I should say. But that’s another story. I’m sure you’re not interested in how I got here.’

‘Oh, but I am,’ said Noah quickly.

‘Really?’ asked the old man, his face lighting up. ‘Well, all right then. But I’ll keep it brief. And where should I start? That’s the question. Back in the forest, I suppose.’ He thought about it for a moment and then nodded quickly, as if he was sure that this was a sensible idea. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Back in the forest.’

It was my father, Poppa (said the old man), who decided that we should leave our comfortable cottage at the edge of the forest and move deeper into the woodlands. The trees there were so old, they provided much better material for the toys and puppets he carved every day, and he liked the idea of a new beginning too. That year, life had changed so much for us that when we heard of the village – a little past the first, just further on from the second – we thought it sounded like a perfect place to begin our new life.

I was only eight years old at the time, but I hadn’t lived a conventional life so far. I had a mischievous quality, you see, not unusual in boys my age, and a history of finding myself in the centre of terrible scrapes. I always seemed to end up meeting unusual people who wanted to lead me into harm’s way. I was the type of boy who could be walking down the road to pick up a bottle of milk and find myself transported to a carnival by a cruel kidnapper,
or working as a servant for a man who wished me nothing but ill. Every time I released myself from one of these exploits I would make a promise to Poppa that I would never allow myself to be sidetracked again, but every time I made this promise, sooner or later I would break it. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s who I was and I can’t pretend otherwise.

But when I turned eight I decided that I was going to try to be a good boy, and to mark this change in my fortunes, Poppa thought it a good idea to begin our lives over in a place where no one knew either of us.

‘After everything that’s happened,’ Poppa told me as he explained his plan, ‘I think a change is exactly what we both need. We can start afresh.’

And so one morning, before the sun rose, before the dogs woke, before the dew stopped falling on the fields, we made the journey through the forest, not stopping to talk to anyone along the way, and only came to a halt when we reached this village.

Poppa asked me whether it felt like home, and I didn’t have to think about it for long. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I think it does.’

The first person we met was a young donkey who had been disturbed by our arrival while eating the grass that ran along the village street, and once he had swallowed a few last mouthfuls, he ambled over to say hello.

‘
Thinking of moving here, are you?’ asked the donkey, who looked pleased to see that a boy of around his own age might be living nearby, someone who might take him for the occasional ride across the nearby fields. ‘I can highly recommend it. Hee-haw! I’ve lived here with my herd since I was born. There’s about a dozen of us but I’m the best one if you’re ever looking for a little gallop. I run faster. I’d never let you fall off. And I’m a better conversationalist too. Hee-haw! I don’t suppose you have any sausages on you at all, do you?’

‘It’s very kind of you to suggest it,’ said Poppa before I could answer, pulling me further along the street before proceeding to tap the ground with his walking stick at brief intervals, breathing the air deeply into his lungs, getting down on his hands and knees to touch the grass and the hedges that lined the path, before having a series of brief but informative conversations with the various wildlife that made their way along there on a regular basis, much to the dismay of the donkey, who I could see was hoping that we wouldn’t change our minds.

‘Your father wants to be very sure before deciding, doesn’t he?’ he asked me, ambling over and sniffing my pockets in a curious way, as if he was looking for something.

‘Oh yes,’ I told him. ‘He’s hoping that we can live here for ever.’

‘Well, I do hope he chooses this village,’ said the donkey. ‘You will come and see me often if he does,
won’t you? I’m the best one – did I mention that? And if you come, bring something to eat. You should never start a gallop on an empty stomach.’

It seemed that the village was the right one for us, because when Poppa returned to the spot where the donkey and I were standing, he nodded his head happily and threw his arms around me.

‘This is the spot, my boy,’ he said. ‘This is the place for us. I’m sure of it. We can be happy here.’

‘Hee-haw!’ cried the donkey, delighted by the news. ‘Hee-haw! Hee-haw!’

And so, without wasting any more time, Poppa set about building our new home, putting it together brick by brick with his own two hands, which was not the smartest idea he’d ever had, for however good he was with wood and a chisel, he was not quite so skilled at construction, and as things turned out the house looked a little unusual, with the walls not quite standing at right angles to each other and the windows jutting out in all directions.

‘Never mind,’ I said, once we were settled in above the toy shop, for I didn’t want him to feel disappointed. ‘As long as it stands up, that’s all that matters.’

‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘And now we have to start thinking about your schooling.’

‘We don’t really have to, do we?’ I asked.

‘Of course we do,’ he replied. ‘You’ve missed so much education already – you’ll fall far behind
all the other children and you wouldn’t want that, would you?’

‘Not bothered,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders, and Poppa frowned at me and shook his head.

‘I thought you were going to be a good boy from now on,’ he said, a note of disappointment sounding in his voice.

‘I am, Poppa,’ I agreed, remembering all the promises I had made. ‘I’m sorry. Of course I’ll go to school if you want me to. For a bit anyway.’

And so, before I could change my mind, Poppa visited the local schoolmistress, Mrs Shields, and enquired about a place for me in her classroom.

‘Of course we always welcome new additions to our class,’ she said, beaming across at us and allowing her cheeks to grow a little rosy, for Poppa was a handsome man and Mr Shields had run away to join the circus the previous September. ‘And we have a few spare seats. We’d be delighted if your son was to join us. But won’t your wife be coming in to discuss his education too?’ she asked, leaning forward and twirling her hair into curls around her fingers. ‘I do so like to involve all members of the family in such important matters.’

‘I have no wife,’ said Poppa, hesitating before continuing; it was complicated, after all, and he didn’t want to cause any more difficulties for me than were strictly necessary.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ replied Mrs Shields, delighted to discover that there was no rival for her
affections. ‘We cater for all sorts here. We have a girl who lived in a jungle for the first five years of her life and still only speaks in a curious hybrid of English and monkey. Her name is Daphne. I’m sure you’ll get along with her famously.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ I said, unconvinced.

‘And then there’s a boy who used to be an elephant but managed to escape that life just before Christmas,’ continued Mrs Shields. ‘Something to do with a series of wishes, I believe. But he’s still settling in and seems a little troubled, if I’m honest. He keeps trying to eat his lunch through his nose, which is terribly messy.’

‘That’s disgusting,’ I said, and Mrs Shields stared at me, her expression growing a little more chilly.

‘What a spirited lad,’ she remarked.

The next morning, when I entered the classroom for the first time, every student immediately turned round to look at me: every boy, every girl, every desk, every chair. Even the blackboard, which was short-sighted, leaped off its hooks and came over for a good sniff, before running back to the wall, shaking chalk dust off its front as it muttered, ‘No, he’ll never do. He’ll never do at all.’

‘This seat is taken,’ said a rather obnoxious fellow called Toby Lovely, who thought he was better than everyone else in the class. He always sat next to the teacher in an attempt to ingratiate himself with her, and now moved his books over to
the empty desk beside him as I walked on.

‘Terribly sorry,’ said a homely-looking girl called Marjorie Willingham, who had pigtails tied up in a pink ribbon, causing a flurry of giggles from the girls sitting around her, ‘but I’m afraid this seat is taken too. And don’t speak to me, if you please. I don’t care for small talk with strangers.’

I continued along the aisle, growing more and more despondent as boy after girl after boy after girl rejected me, but finally I reached the last row and looked down hopefully at the one remaining seat.

‘You can sit here if you want,’ said the boy sitting next to it, whose name was Jasper Bennett and who had a series of bumps and bruises spreading angrily across his face. He cleared off the desk and pulled over a second seat, and I sat down gratefully, turning to my new desk-mate with an appreciative smile. Jasper looked at me for a moment, blinking, taking me in, with great tears forming in the pools of his eyes. ‘Everyone hates me too,’ he said after a long silence.

‘Jasper!’ screamed Mrs Shields, slamming her duster down on the desk and throwing a piece of chalk at him, which bounced off his ear and fell to the ground before picking itself up and making its way slowly back towards the front desk. ‘I’ve spoken to you before about talking in class, haven’t I? Well, haven’t I?’

‘Yes, miss—’ began Jasper, before Mrs Shields cut him off.

‘Jasper!’ she roared. ‘No talking!’

It took me a long time to form any kind of friendships with the other children in the class, and this was mostly on account of the fact that I had not known them as long as they had known each other.

‘We don’t care for new boys here,’ said Toby Lovely one afternoon, walking towards me and sitting down on the corner of my desk before picking up a wooden pencil box that Poppa had designed for me. ‘Can’t you go to school somewhere else? The class is against you as a whole.’

‘But there isn’t anywhere else,’ I told him, shrugging my shoulders. ‘This is the only school in the village. Unless you want me to go to school with the donkeys.’

‘Well, it’s an option, surely,’ said Toby Lovely.

‘I’ve promised Poppa that I’ll come here every day from now on,’ I insisted.

‘Answer me back, will you?’ he snapped, turning to all his friends, who immediately agreed that this was a tremendous insult, and waited until the lunch break to jump on top of me and bend my arms back and pull my hair on account of it. When I emerged from the pile I was covered in bruises and scrapes, a pitiful sight to anyone who caught sight of me on the road home. Even Jasper Bennett, who was no longer being bullied since the other boys had found a new fellow to kick around, had jumped on me, which just went to prove that you could trust no one in this world, or that one.

‘
This would never have happened if you’d stayed as you were,’ Poppa told me later that evening when he was putting plasters on my wounds and a dab of disinfectant on my scabs to keep the infection out. ‘You have to take more care now. You have to try to make friends with the other boys, not get into fights with them.’

The next day he went in to talk to Mrs Shields about the problem, and she told him that she would try to make sure that no one picked on me but that boys would be boys and there was really very little she could do about it. She said that if I wanted to have a happier time in school then I would have to stand up for myself, because in the end, nobody could help me but myself.

To be honest, Noah Barleywater (said the old man), it wasn’t very helpful advice.

‘So why did your father carve a puppet of Mrs Shields?’ asked Noah, holding up the toy and pulling the string so a piece of chalk flew out from her hand a great distance before reeling itself back into the grip of her gnarly old claws.

‘It was a gift, I think,’ said the old man. ‘He thought that if he was kind to her, then she might help me. But I think she thought it meant something more, which in turn led to a series of romantic misunderstandings – which are, I think, stories for another time. Anyway, she didn’t help me much, that was the crux of it. But as it turned out, she was right. I did have to look out for myself. You probably have to do the same thing.’

‘Me?’ asked Noah, looking up in surprise. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well, aren’t you running away from home because you’re being bullied? It seemed like the most obvious explanation to me.’