The Ogre Downstairs (18 page)

“Just metal?” asked the Ogre, with a strange expression on his face.

“That’s right,” said Gwinny.

“Fetch Peter Fillus here and let me see it,” said the Ogre, handing back the hairgrip.

While the others brought in the boxes, the dustbin, the mop and the broom, Gwinny sped upstairs and clattered down again breathless, holding a test tube half full of small stones.

“That’s all there is now,” she explained.

“I expect it will do,” said the Ogre and, still with the strange expression on his face, he carefully took out one small chip of stone and rubbed it along the handle of the dustbin lid.

The place where the stone had touched immediately became a long golden streak.

“That’s never gold?” said Douglas.

“I think it may be,” said the Ogre. “My guess is that Peter Fillus is the Philosopher’s Stone – and that’s supposed to turn base metal into gold.”

“Then we’re rich,” said Johnny. “Shall I get some money?”

The Ogre laughed. “No. Money won’t do, because we’d never get away with it. But any other metal thing that we don’t want – things which people might think were valuable—”

“Really horrible things, you mean?” asked Caspar.

“The more horrible the better,” said the Ogre.

There was a rush for metal, which rapidly became a
competition to find the ugliest thing in the house. Gwinny proudly brought out a bloated silver teapot. Caspar fetched a set of spoons with handles like ships in full sail that were designed to hurt your hand, no matter how you held them. Malcolm produced a huge twiddly toast rack someone had given the Ogre and Sally for a wedding present, and Johnny capped that with some fire irons on a stand disguised as three dolphins. They found a brass corkscrew with a simpering swan for a handle, a tormented iron cage for putting plants in and a copper vase shaped like a rabbit. The Ogre found an ashtray, that everyone agreed looked like a man-eating fungus, and a gilded model of a horse frantically trying to get loose from a clock grafted on to its hind legs. But it was Douglas who produced the cream of the collection. After a long and patient search, he came into the kitchen carrying a pair of stainless steel candlesticks shaped like hen’s legs. Each had a clawed foot, and under that a ball on a pedestal. Above the claw was a long scaly leg, and above that metal feathers. The feathers just stopped at the top, and there was a hole for the candle there.

“Eughk!” said Gwinny, and the others looked at them with deep respect.

“First prize to Douglas,” said the Ogre. “But there isn’t much of this Peter Fillus. A careful selection, please. Those spoons say EPNS, so they’re out for a start. And I know that teapot has a silvermark, more’s the pity. Those fire irons—Yes, I know, Johnny, but whoever heard of a golden poker? We’ll have to choose things a jeweller would want to give us money for. Let’s take the hen’s legs, the horrified horse, that toast rack, the copper
bunny and… What’s this?” He picked out of the heap a hollow aluminium cow with a hole in its back.

“It’s a jug,” explained Caspar, who knew it well. “You hold it by its tail and it sort of sicks milk through its mouth.”

“Ah!” said the Ogre, profoundly pleased. “This too, then.”

“I say,” said Douglas, surveying the selected horrors, “is there any chance these would make enough money to buy us a bigger house?”

“That was my idea,” admitted the Ogre.

This was enough to inspire everyone. They took the chosen horrors through to the dining room, with pork pies to sustain them, and set to work with the tiny chips of stone. Caspar and Douglas took a hen’s leg apiece. Gwinny worked on the copper rabbit and Johnny on the hollow cow. These were all quite simple things, soon finished and gleaming. So Johnny and Gwinny went to lean over the Ogre and point out to him the parts of the agonised horse he had missed. Malcolm rubbed diligently away at his toast rack. After a while, Caspar and Douglas tore themselves away from admiring their candlesticks and helped Malcolm. By this time, the stones were worn away to slivers and powder. They collected the grains on the ends of their fingers – rather inconvenienced by the Ogre’s pipe, which was wandering hopefully in between, hunting up crumbs of pork pie – and Malcolm used an accidentally gold-tipped knitting-needle to work Peter Fillus into the twiddles of the toast rack.

The Ogre finished the horse. There were still a few grains of Peter Fillus left, so, as a joke, he fetched the
fateful bucket and gave it a golden rim. “A reminder of the bad old days,” he was saying, when Sally came in from the kitchen.

She was looking ten years younger for her short holiday. When she saw the bucket, the pipe, and the table laden with golden horrors, she stopped short in amazement. “Good heavens!” she said. “What
are
you doing?”

They rushed at her, clamouring explanations and welcome. She laughed. Half an hour later, when everything was explained, she was still laughing, but she seemed a little discontented too. “Well, I feel a bit left out,” she said, when the Ogre asked her what was the matter. “And I wish you’d waited with the Peter Fillus. I’ve got something worse than any of those.”

“What?” said the Ogre.

“Aunt Violet’s bequest,” said Sally. “I’ll show you.”

She went to the cupboard and brought out from the very back something that was like quantities of metal ice-cream cornets on springs, with an extra large cornet in the middle. It was very big and very ugly, and they had not the least idea what it could be.

“It’s called an epergne,” said Sally. “Now don’t you wish you’d waited for me?”

They had to admit that it beat even the hen’s legs.

Much later, when it was growing dark, Gwinny remembered her people, left out in the garden in their doll’s house. She hurried out to bring them in. To her dismay, the doll’s house was empty. Her people had gone. They had taken their gold candlesticks and their wax fruit, and a number of other things besides, and it looked
as if they did not mean to come back. Nevertheless, Gwinny hopefully left the doll’s house in the garden for a week. But her people never came back. It seemed they must have set off in search of somewhere better to live. Gwinny was very hurt.

“They might at least have left me a note!” she said.

“You wouldn’t have been able to read their language,” Malcolm pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter. It would have been polite,” Gwinny said. But the fact was, her people had never been at all polite. In a way, she was relieved that they had gone.

The Ogre took the golden horrors to be valued the next Monday. After some delay, they were all sent to London to be auctioned, where they fetched prices that staggered the children. The hen’s legs and the anguished clock proved to be worth more than they had thought, even in their wildest dreams. They were considered curiosities. But it was the hollow cow that fetched the most. It was bought by a Collector, who called it a Cow Creamer, and who paid through the nose for it – much, as the Ogre said, as the cow poured milk – a price that amazed even the Ogre.

“Just think how much he might have paid for Aunt Violet’s epergne,” Sally said wistfully. “I wish you’d
waited
.”

They were able to move into a larger house almost at once, where, they all admitted, they were much happier. Everyone had a room to himself. Caspar and Douglas could play Indigo Rubber to their hearts’ content. The Ogre was still often forced to bellow for silence, but now everyone knew that his bark was so much worse than his
bite, nobody let his roars trouble them. And the Ogre said he was growing hardened to living in a bear garden.

Malcolm took his pencils with him to the new house. For some months, they hopped round his room at night. But, like the stick-insects they rather resembled, they did not live very long. Soon, only the Ogre’s pipe was left to remind them of the chemistry sets. And as time went on, even that began to seem less like an animal and more like a pipe again. It spent longer and longer propped stiffly in the pipe rack, and seldom purred when the Ogre smoked it. They thought the
Animal Spirits
must be gradually wearing off it.

After his pencils died, Malcolm began to suggest going back to the old man’s shop to see what else he had to sell. So, in the end, Caspar went there with him. He went very much afraid they would get sold something worse than pink footballs or the chemistry sets. But the shop was gone. Where the dark court had been, they found a wide hole full of mechanical excavators. Next time they saw it, the space was filled with an office block even taller than the Ogre’s. That seemed to be the last of
Magicraft
.