The Ogre Downstairs (10 page)

“Thank heaven Jack can’t hear this,” Sally said, when both record players were going.

“I think it’s because he isn’t here,” Malcolm explained.

“I’m aware of that,” Sally said wryly. “And I’m going shopping. Who’s coming?”

Gwinny and Malcolm both went, and not only did they help Sally and spend their pocket money, but they had coffee with Sally in a snack bar and enjoyed themselves very much. Gwinny found she was liking Malcolm more and more, and she was rather pleased to see that Sally seemed to like him too. In fact, she enjoyed herself so much that she began to feel disloyal to Johnny and Caspar.

After lunch, Caspar and Johnny came into their room to find toffee bars all along the edge of the carpet, nibbling it. They had eaten it quite frayed. Johnny’s relief was boundless.

“It’s the fluffy part they seem to like,” he observed, inspecting the damage. “Can I give them your green sweater?”

“No,” said Caspar, who was fond of that green sweater. “But Gwinny’s probably got some she’s grown out of.”

They went up to Gwinny’s room to ask. To their surprise, Douglas and Malcolm were just coming down from it. Douglas was carrying a bucket of water – the selfsame bucket with which Johnny had drenched Gwinny and Caspar that first fateful night. Maybe it was the associations of that bucket, or something about Douglas’s or Malcolm’s manner, but Johnny instantly suspected dirty work of some kind.

“What have you been doing to Gwinny?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” said Malcolm.

“Go and ask her if you like,” said Douglas.

Johnny and Caspar squeezed past Douglas and hurried up to Gwinny’s room. Gwinny was kneeling in the middle of it, and it was evident that she had been crying. But she stoutly denied that Douglas and Malcolm had harmed her in any way.

“They were very kind,” she said.

“Then why are you crying?” Johnny asked accusingly.

“About something else,” said Gwinny. “I was being silly, and Malcolm made me feel better. I like Malcolm. So there!”

She trembled a little after making this awful admission, and she did not dare go on to say that she had always secretly admired Douglas. To her relief, Caspar took it well. Johnny, of course, was utterly disgusted.

“Flipping girls!” he said. “Give me some old sweaters for the toffee bars and then don’t come near me for a month. You stink!”

Gwinny handed over two sweaters, thankful that she had got off so lightly, and the boys took them away downstairs.

“That bucket,” said Johnny. “You don’t think they were brainwashing her, do you?”

“You don’t brainwash people by dipping their heads in a bucket, you nit!” said Caspar. “Besides, her hair wasn’t wet.”

The toffee bars fell on the sweaters so hungrily that, by Sunday evening, only the ribbing parts were left. The toffee bars, even the lame one, had grown to the size of twelve-inch rulers. Caspar felt a little uneasy about them.
He wished they were like the pipe which, in spite of having eaten nearly half a tin of construction kits, had remained exactly the same size.

The room began to smell rather. By Sunday evening, it was horrible.

“I think it’s their droppings,” said Johnny. “They’re not house-trained really, you see.”

Caspar, knowing the Ogre was due back for supper, hastened downstairs and fetched the vaccuum cleaner. The noise frightened the toffee bars into the back of their box, and the pipe took the long hose of the cleaner for a snake and hid in the cupboard. But at least the smell grew less.

“We’ll have that, after you,” Douglas said, appearing in the doorway.

“Too lazy to bring it up for yourself, are you?” Johnny said.

“None of your cheek,” Douglas replied, and hit him a sharp smack. He took the vacuum cleaner and left Johnny raging.

“You might
say
something, Caspar! He
hit
me! Did you see him?”

“Yes, I saw him,” said Caspar. It was hard to know what to do about it. Douglas was technically the eldest, and no one denied the eldest his right to thump younger ones who cheeked him. And Johnny
had
cheeked Douglas. And Douglas had not hit him hard. And Caspar had no wish to stir Douglas up in case he remembered about the night the Ogre caught him. Besides, he owed it to Douglas that he was not still Malcolm. But, of course, Caspar was really Johnny’s elder brother, not Douglas.
He could think of only one solution. “It should have been me to hit you, I suppose. I will if you like.”

“You’re as bad as Gwinny!” said Johnny.

“Well?” said the Ogre at supper. “Did you all have a good weekend?”

“Oh yes!” they said, all five, with what was, everyone saw at once, quite undue enthusiasm.

“I see,” said the Ogre sourly.

Johnny swore it was in revenge that the Ogre suddenly appeared in the doorway of their room that evening. Johnny himself was quite legally engaged in puzzling out which of the remaining chemicals belonged to the bottom layer of the chemistry set. The toffee bars were huddled in the box sleeping off Gwinny’s sweaters, and the lids were firmly on the biscuit tins. But Gwinny was there when she should have been in bed. She and Caspar were trying to teach the pipe to do tricks. It would have been hard to say whether Gwinny or the pipe was more frightened when the Ogre came in. The pipe instantly dropped on its side and shammed dead, and Gwinny wished she could too.

“You’ve had some sort of revolution here, haven’t you?” said the Ogre, seeing the unusually bare room. Then he looked at Gwinny and Gwinny quailed. But, at that moment, the Ogre saw the pipe. “I’ve been hunting high and low for that,” he said, and to their horror he came and picked it up. The pipe shammed dead for all it was worth. “How did it get here?” asked the Ogre.

“It – it came to light after we’d tidied up,” said Caspar.

“Did it indeed?” said the Ogre. “Better late than never, I suppose.” And, to their further horror, he fetched out his
tobacco and began filling the pipe. “I came up to ask you something,” he said, packing tobacco into the stiff terrified creature. “I wondered—Oh, are you here too? Good.”

Douglas and Malcolm were standing in the doorway. “We came to borrow a record,” Douglas said, and Caspar thought it sounded remarkably like an excuse.

“Well, I wanted to talk to all of you,” the Ogre said, pressing tobacco home. “You know Sally and I are giving this party on Wednesday. A lot of people have been very kind to us, and we wanted to pay them back in style. And we wondered—” Here he struck a match and brought it towards the pipe.

This was too much for the poor pipe. It gave a frantic twist and tried to break loose from the Ogre’s hand. The Ogre looked at it rotating and squirming in front of his face as if he thought he had gone mad. Caspar, Johnny and Gwinny did not know what to do or say. They could only hope that, as the Ogre’s back was half-turned towards the door, Malcolm had not noticed what was going on. Douglas could not have seen, because he had fortunately been overcome with a sudden attack of coughing.

The Ogre, plainly thinking he was imagining the whole thing, put the pipe firmly back in his mouth and applied the match to it. The pipe stopped squirming and went stiff again. “We thought that two of you children could act as waiters,” the Ogre said, between puffs. “Pass round olives and sandwiches and so on.” They hardly heard him. They were all trying to see how the pipe was faring among the clouds of smoke. “Best behaviour and suits,” said the Ogre, applying another match.

“I’d like that,” said Johnny, without the least idea what he was saying. Douglas’s cough came on again.

“Would you?” said the Ogre, striking a third match. “Frankly, Johnny, you’re the last one I’d choose, left to myself. But Sally said I was to leave it to you.”

Johnny found himself forced to defend his mistake. “You can eat an awful lot of crisps and things while you’re passing them,” he said.

“Precisely,” said the Ogre. The pipe was well alight now, and it had given no further sign of life. “Gwinny’s too young to stay up, but—”

Gwinny would have made a hearty protest at any other time. Now, all she could think of was that the pipe seemed to be dead. “Oh, I hope it didn’t suffer much!” she said. Douglas seemed to have got something badly stuck in his throat. He was coughing fit to burst.

The Ogre looked at Gwinny in some surprise. “So that leaves you boys,” he said. “Which of you’s going to join Johnny as waiter?”

Douglas looked up, rather wet-eyed, and said firmly, “I’ve got an awful lot of homework these days.”

While Caspar was trying to tear his mind from the terrible end of the pipe and to think of a likely excuse, Malcolm said, “Football. I’ve got a football match.”

“Yes, we’ve both probably got a football match on Wednesday,” said Caspar.

“Very convenient,” said the Ogre, puffing blue smoke. The pipe was suddenly making an extraordinary noise. It was plainly not dead yet, and that made them very unhappy. The noise was a kind of rumbling and a rasping. Caspar thought it must be the poor thing’s death rattle,
but it went on and on and sounded almost too placid for that.

Gwinny realised what it was. “The pipe!” she said. “It’s purring!” It was, almost as loudly as Douglas was coughing. Johnny and Caspar were too relieved for words.

“Not really,” said the Ogre. “They make this noise when they need cleaning. Then, since you three so plainly can’t decide, I suggest you toss for it.”

Douglas recovered. “I want two volunteers: you and you,” he said hoarsely. The Ogre looked at him unpleasantly over the purring pipe. “Well, it is a bit like that, isn’t it?” said Douglas.

The Ogre, without answering, took out a coin and spun it. “Heads or tails, Caspar?”

Malcolm won the toss, and looked very dejected about it.

“I advise you to look a little less happy,” said the Ogre. “Our guests can be counted on to eat you.” Then he went away downstairs, in a cloud of smoke, with the pipe still purring happily in his mouth.

“Oh bother!” said Malcolm.

“Flipping
pest
!” said Johnny.

“Hard luck,” Douglas said cheerfully. “Sorry we barged in like that, but our room’s in rather a mess at the moment and we didn’t want him going in there.”

“I think they’ve made a new discovery,” Johnny said, as he and Caspar were getting into bed. “I wonder what. I know what I’m going to try for next.”

“What?” said Caspar.

“Invisibility,” said Johnny. “They can’t make me be a waiter if I’m invisible, can they?”

O
n Monday morning, the toffee bars had finished Gwinny’s sweaters and were bigger than ever. They had to give them Caspar’s green sweater after all while they went to school. And, when Johnny came galloping up to their room that afternoon, eager to begin on his search for invisibility, to his great dismay, he met a toffee bar half under the door, coming out. He collected it – with difficulty, for it was now more like a long, heavy belt than anything else – and took it back to its box.

He told Caspar, and Caspar felt this was ominous. The green sweater was nearly all gone too. They blocked the space under the door by doubling up comics and nailing them to the bottom of the door. While the Ogre was
demanding from downstairs what that noise was, and they were trying to hammer the nails as quietly as possible, a peculiar and awful smell came to their nostrils. It was rather like the smell an electric fire makes when it has gone wrong, only ten times stronger.

They tracked it to the biscuit tins and Johnny took one of the lids off. “I think they’re dead,” he said, sadly surveying the motionless plastics.

Caspar knew they were. The smell proved it. Johnny might be sad, but Caspar could not help feeling relieved. It looked as if a number of the creatures had been growing wings before they died. Caspar thought of them all buzzing round the house and was thankful they had not had the chance. “You watch the toffee bars,” he said. “I’ll go and bury these in the garden.”

He staggered down with the pile of smelly tins and took them to the very furthest corner of the garden to bury. He was digging the hole, when he looked round to see the Ogre’s pipe. It was watching him perkily from under a bush. It looked wonderfully healthy, glossy and happy. Evidently being smoked agreed with it. Caspar made a fuss of it and offered it a dead pink brick. It refused to eat it, but when Caspar’s spade turned up a worm, the pipe pounced on that and ate it greedily.

“Then it’s quite happy,” Gwinny said, when Caspar told her. “Do you think the toffee bars might be happy being eaten? That’s what
they’re
for, after all.”

Somehow, neither Caspar nor Johnny felt like trying. So the toffee bars continued to grow and thrive. On Tuesday morning they had to find all the cast-off trousers they could spare to make that day’s food for them. After
that, they supposed they would have to think of an excuse to ask Malcolm and Douglas for clothes.

Caspar came back that afternoon to find Johnny on the stairs, frantically struggling to hold back a huge, whipping toffee bar. “Help!” said Johnny.

Caspar cast down his schoolbags and came to Johnny’s aid. They managed between them to catch the bar and hauled it, flailing and resisting, back to their room. The comics had been torn aside from the door, all the trousers eaten, and some more carpet nibbled. Nine of the toffee bars had draped themselves over the radiator above the box. Luckily, it was only lukewarm. Caspar and Johnny peeled them off it, despite their struggles. Caspar stood the box on its bottom and they thrust the toffee bars into it. But they were now big enough to climb straight out again. They could only keep them in by covering the box with a Monopoly-board and weighting that down with books.

“How many have we got?” Johnny said anxiously.

Caspar by now heartily hated the toffee bars and he did not care. “Hundreds.”

“No. I think we’ve only got ten,” said Johnny. “That means there are nine somewhere downstairs.”

“Oh, my heavens!” said Caspar.

They found the toffee bars in the Ogre’s and Sally’s bedroom. They must have gone there for warmth. The radiator there was the hottest in the house. Every one of those nine bars had draped itself over the radiator and melted on it. They were no longer creatures. Each was simply a strip of melted golden-brown toffee plastered flat to the radiator and oozing and trickling
sluggishly on to the carpet. Johnny was near tears at the sight.

“Don’t be an idiot!” Caspar snapped. “Start trying to get it off. I’ll go and get a bucket of water and a scrubbing brush.”

Johnny mournfully knelt down in front of the radiator and began rather hopelessly picking at the toffee. Caspar dashed off down to the kitchen to get the fateful bucket and hurried upstairs again to the bathroom with the scrubbing brush clattering about in the bottom of the bucket. He put the bucket in the bath and was just about to turn on the hot water, when he heard the Ogre coming upstairs.

Caspar’s first impulse was to bolt the bathroom door and lie low. But he had left Johnny kneeling in front of the incriminating radiator. He knew he would have to go out on to the landing instead and distract the Ogre somehow. Caspar sighed. He went out on to the landing, perhaps not as swiftly as he might have done. And he was just in time to see the Ogre’s back as he marched into the bedroom.

There was a silence. Caspar waited, nervously clutching the scrubbing brush. The bedroom door was flung open. The Ogre, with his face distorted, shot out through it. He saw Caspar guiltily holding the brush, gave a snarl of fury, and grabbed at him. Caspar turned and raced upstairs for his bedroom. The Ogre pounded after him, much faster than Caspar had believed possible. Caspar climbed madly, and felt as if he was moving in slow motion. The Ogre climbed the stairs three at a time and seized Caspar’s arm as he was rounding the bend.
Caspar was so frightened that he used the judo-thing that should have brought him twisting out from under the Ogre’s arm. But the Ogre proved unexpectedly resistant to judo. He lost his balance, but he hung on grimly. The result was that they both came heavily backwards downstairs, in a sort of stumbling rush, just as Johnny, hoping to get clear while the Ogre was chasing Caspar, dodged out of the bedroom door with everyone’s face flannels held to his chest in a wet bundle.

The Ogre, now thoroughly enraged, grabbed Johnny without letting go of Caspar and brought them together with a smash. Then he ran them into the bedroom, much as Douglas had run Caspar and Malcolm.

“Clean it,” he said, putting them in front of the radiator. “Get rid of this mess before supper or you go without. And you’re not going to be a waiter tomorrow, Johnny, not even over my dead body!” He went straight upstairs and told Douglas he could be a waiter instead. Douglas was not pleased. He came down and stood behind them as they laboured.

“Can’t you little squits keep out of trouble for one day?” he demanded. They did not answer. “Well, don’t forget I owe you for this too,” said Douglas.

After that, Caspar tried to make Johnny get rid of the other ten toffee bars. Sally’s hurt and harrowed face when the Ogre showed her the mess made him hate them more than ever. It upset Johnny too, but he would not part with the toffee bars for all that.

“Then for heaven’s sake make sure they can’t get out,” Caspar said, on Wednesday morning.

Johnny saw reason in this. They piled every book they
had on top of the Monopoly board over the box and left for school feeling they had done everything they could to keep the toffee bars inside it.

They came home from school to the not quite unexpected sight of six enormous toffee bars undulating down the stairs towards them.

Caspar and Johnny, without a word, each seized three and wondered where the others were. Malcolm was just behind them on the stairs and wanted to know what was going on.

“Nothing to do with you,” panted Johnny.

“Because if—” Malcolm began.

But Sally came up behind Malcolm at that moment, saying, “Please can I ask all of you to be very careful and quiet today, particularly this evening.”

“Of course,” called Caspar. He and Johnny mounted the stairs as hard as they were able, with the toffee bars beating like cart ropes in their arms. Malcolm had seen them by this time, and his eyes were wide. The only fortunate thing was that Malcolm was in Sally’s way.

“What
are
you doing?” Sally said.

“Cleaning the stairs,” gasped Johnny.

They opened the door of their room, threw the toffee bars inside and shut the door firmly on them.

“Well, don’t make that kind of noise any more,” said Sally, arriving on the landing behind Malcolm. “Remember we’re trying to give a grown up party this evening. Malcolm, I think I’ll need to press your suit. Can I get it?”

She and Malcolm went to the other room. Caspar and
Johnny opened the door of theirs just in time to stop two of the toffee bars coming out underneath it again. The books were scattered all over the room, and there was now a hole in one of Caspar’s blankets. The four missing toffee bars had draped themselves over the lukewarm radiator again. Caspar and Johnny once more peeled them off it and packed them into the box with the other six. Then they piled not only books, but cricket bats, train sets, roller skates and any other heavy thing they could lay hands on onto the Monopoly-board, until the heap stretched halfway up the wall. The box still heaved and bulged beneath it.

“Oh, this is
hopeless
, Johnny!” Caspar said, adding his pink football to the heap. “Please get rid of them.”

By this time, Johnny was feeling much the same. But he wanted to be the one to suggest it. “I’ll think about it,” he said, and busied himself with the chemistry set.

Then Gwinny came in and looked at the heap and the heaving box in undisguised alarm. “Johnny, you
must
get rid of them,” she said.

But this only made Johnny obstinate. “They’re only cold, poor things,” he said. “They can’t help it.” And, after nearly an hour of arguing, he had managed to convince himself that he was sorry for the toffee bars and had never wanted to get rid of them at all. “And they’d freeze in the garden,” he said.

At that moment, Douglas thumped at the door and called out crossly. Caspar hurried to open it in case Douglas came in and asked about the heap of things on the box. But Douglas did not attempt to come in. He simply stood on the landing looking worried and
annoyed. “One of you’s going to have to be a waiter after all,” he said. “Malcolm can’t.”

“Why not?” said Caspar.

Douglas hesitated. “Oh, come and look at him,” he said at length. “Serve him right if you all laugh your heads off!”

They all trooped across the landing after Douglas, feeling very interested. Douglas flung open the door of the room and bowed to them as they went in.

“Lady and gentlemen,” he said. “My brother, the—Hey, Malcolm! You were orange when I went out!”

“You didn’t have to show everyone,” Malcolm said uncomfortably.

He was a beautiful bright green all over, even his hair and his fingernails. His mouth and his eyes were a slightly darker green. He looked very peculiar indeed. But, while they were staring at him, quite confounded, he became more peculiar still. Another colour seemed to be emerging through the green. At first they could not tell what colour it was going to be. Then it spread slowly, stronger and stronger, like rings in water, or even more like the coloured circles you see when you press your eyes, and turned out to be deep crimson.

“The green was quite pretty,” Gwinny said, in some disappointment.

“How did you get like that?” said Caspar – and had a feeling he had said something like this before.

“Doing an experiment,” the now crimson Malcolm admitted. He looked as if he had some dire disease.

“Stupid little ass!” said Douglas. “I’d warned you.”

“You didn’t do it on purpose, I suppose?” Johnny said suspiciously. “So as not to be a waiter.”

Malcolm looked indignant and began, at the same time, to flush slowly indigo. “Of course not! It was something I was doing.” He waved towards the table. Gwinny kept her eyes carefully on the experiment set up there, because Malcolm now looked as if he were turning into dark stone and it worried her. “I was just pouring in
Irid. col
.,” Malcolm explained, “and it splashed in my eye and I went blue.”

“What were you doing?” said Johnny.

“Something complicated,” said Malcolm. “Looking for invisibility, if you must know.”

“Oh, so am I!” Johnny said in surprise. To Gwinny’s relief, Malcolm began to turn yellow. She felt he looked more natural like that, even if it was a bright daffodil yellow. “Bet I find it first,” said Johnny.

“Who cares?” said Douglas. “Which of you’s going to be a waiter?”

“It’ll have to be me, I suppose,” Caspar said reluctantly.

“Then go down and tell the Ogre,” said Douglas. “I’ll fix Sally.”

“How?” said Caspar. “If she sees Malcolm like that, she’ll have a fit. Hey! You called him the Ogre too!”

“Well, he is, isn’t he?” said Douglas. “And I’m going to tell Sally Malcolm’s shamming ill in order not to be a waiter.” Malcolm gave a cry of indignation and went lavender-coloured. “Serve you right,” Douglas said unfeelingly. “If you can think of any other way of stopping her coming to look at you, tell me.”

Malcolm obviously could not. “Cheer up, Malcolm,” Gwinny said, seeing how dejected he looked. “That’s a
really pretty colour.” Malcolm sighed. He was beginning to be a deep chestnut brown when Caspar left the room to find the Ogre.

The Ogre, with his pipe contentedly purring in his mouth, was in the dining room, moving the table. When Caspar came in, he said, “Take the other end and lift it over to the wall. Then go away.”

While they were carrying the table, Caspar explained – rather haltingly – that Malcolm seemed to be ill. “So I think I’ll have to be a waiter instead,” he said.

The Ogre put the table down with a thump. “No,” he said. Caspar was intensely relieved. “You’re bound to do something unspeakable,” said the Ogre.

“I swear I won’t,” Caspar said unconvincingly.

“
No
,” said the Ogre. “If you’re there, all I’ll be able to think of is what horrible thing you’re going to do next. I’ll make do with Douglas, thank you.”

Caspar should have gone away at once after that. But he wanted to be able to assure Douglas that the Ogre refused whatever he said. So he said, “But if I promise—”

“Then you’ll break that promise,” said the Ogre, “as surely as you’ll break all the wine glasses.”

Thankfully Caspar turned to leave. But he had to stop rather suddenly as Sally hurried in with a tray of wine glasses.