LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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