“So I see.” Andrew pulled his glasses down to look. “The Sword in the Parsnip. It doesn’t sound quite as romantic as the King Arthur story, does it?” As soon as he said it, Andrew was hit with the knowledge that he had just said something highly important. He stood very still, thinking about it.
Aidan laughed, delighted that Andrew understood things the way Gran had.
Andrew continued to think, all through the hour it took them to cut up and tame the parsnip — which turned out to be delicious when they ate it — and went on thinking all through the evening and far into the night. He gave up the idea of asking Aidan any questions yet and he did not even mention Mabel WPC92 to him. Aidan was very occupied anyway, rolling about on the floor with Rolf. Andrew watched them and brooded.
There was something quite special about Aidan. Andrew blamed himself for not finding out what this was. He knew he should have made enquiries straight away. He should, at the very least, have told someone where Aidan was. Mabel WPC92 had made Andrew realise that social workers — real ones — must be looking for Aidan all over London. People worried when a child disappeared. Andrew blamed himself for simply letting Aidan be. He had, he knew, been behaving as if Aidan was one of his students. If one of his students had decided to go to Hong Kong or San Francisco in their free time, Andrew would not have worried at all — provided they came back with an essay written — and Andrew had been vaguely thinking of Aidan in the same way. He knew this would not do. No wonder Mrs Stock went round muttering, “World of his own!”
Long after Aidan had gone off to bed, Andrew reached a decision. He would have to go to London tomorrow and make some cautious enquiries. The question was, should he tell Aidan? Yes, he decided. It was only fair. He went upstairs and put his head round the door of Aidan’s room to find it full of moonlight. Aidan and Rolf were both asleep in Aidan’s bed, back to back with both their heads on the pillow. Rolf had all four legs braced against the wall, in a way that suggested he would have pushed Aidan out on to the floor before morning. Andrew had not the heart to disturb them. He grinned and went downstairs to leave a note on the kitchen table, saying simply that he had gone to London.
In the morning, he drove into Melton and caught the London train.
He bought a newspaper at the station. As the train moved off, he unfolded it to the racing results, thinking, I’m getting as superstitious as Stashe! He smiled at the thought of Stashe and then stared. The winner of yesterday’s first race at distant Catterick was called Confirmation. The horse that came in second was Careful Careful and the third was Ouch. Knowing he was being very silly to believe in this, Andrew still resolved to be very cautious indeed.
In London, he took a taxi to the street where Aidan said he had been boarded with the Arkwrights. As he walked slowly along to the right house, he tried to discount the feeling you got outside the boundary of his field-of-care, of this world being at once very flat and very dangerous. They were such very normal houses, large and semi-detached, each with false beams on its front gables and different well-kept gardens. But the feeling of danger grew. By the time Andrew was passing Number 43, he had such a strong sense of being watched that the hair was lifting at the back of his head. As he passed Number 45, the feeling was so strong that he was tempted to turn round and go away. But he told himself that this was silly, now he had come all this way, and went on to the right house, Number 47. As he lifted the latch on its front gate, it felt as if the invisible watchers said, “Ah!” and concentrated all their attention on him.
I was a fool to come here! Andrew thought. His skin came out in gooseflesh all over, shuddering with it, as he walked up the front path and pressed the bell at the ordinary front door.
The bell went sweetly pongle-pongle inside. A comfortable middle-aged lady, with nicely done grey hair and a floral apron on her comfortable front, opened the door and looked at him enquiringly. She was so completely normal that Andrew told himself he was being a fool for feeling so uneasy.
“Mrs Arkwright?” he asked. She nodded. “Good morning,” Andrew said. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m looking for a boy called Aidan Cain. I’m a distant cousin of his and I understood he might be here. My name’s Hope. Andrew Hope.” He passed her one of his old business cards that still happened to be in his wallet.
Mrs Arkwright took the card and looked at it, evidently dismayed. It said DR A. B. HOPE and gave his address as that of his old University. Mrs Arkwright seemed to find this all too much for her. She turned half round and shouted, “Father! Father! You’d better come here!”
They waited. Andrew wondered who to expect. Mrs Arkwright’s old dad? Or priests were often called Father, weren’t they?
A door behind Mrs Arkwright opened and a middle-aged man shuffled out. He was wearing slippers and an old zip-up cardigan. He did not look well. Andrew saw at once that he must be Mrs Arkwright’s husband and neither her parent nor a priest. He and she probably supplemented Mr Arkwright’s sickness benefit by fostering children. The hall behind Mr Arkwright was filling with interested children. They were of several different races and assorted sizes, but they were all, without exception, years younger than Aidan. Poor Aidan! Andrew thought. He must have towered over them.
“What is it, Mother?” Mr Arkwright quavered. Though his voice was weak and wavery, he seemed very much in charge.
“There’s a University doctor here, come about Adrian,” Mrs Arkwright said helplessly.
“Ask him in then, Mother. Ask him in,” quavered Mr Arkwright. He turned to the watching children. “Back you all go,” he told them kindly. “In there and watch the telly again. This is grown-up business, so don’t come in the kitchen till we’ve done. Just keep in the lounge.”
“Please come in Mr — er — Dr Hope,” Mrs Arkwright said. “This way.”
She shut the front door behind Andrew and led him across a front hall smelling of bacon and air-freshener, while the children crowded away in front of them. As Mrs Arkwright led Andrew into the kitchen, he had a glimpse of all the children settling one by one in a row on a long sofa, facing a television on which a silent space battle was taking place. A Chinese boy of about eight grabbed for the remote control. A smaller Indian-looking girl grabbed it too and wrestled him for it for a moment, before giving in. The Chinese boy pressed a button. The room filled with roars, whistles and explosions.
Andrew shuddered. He never could stand television. He was glad when Mr Arkwright firmly shut that door and shuffled after him into the spotless, air-freshened kitchen.
“Please take a seat,” Mrs Arkwright invited, pulling a stool out from under the big plastic-covered table. “Can I get you a coffee?”
“Only if you’re having some too,” Andrew said cautiously. He was particular about his coffee. Mrs Arkwright looked more of a tea person.
“Oh, Father always has one about now,” she assured him cheerfully, and bustled away somewhere behind, where Andrew, perched on his stool, could not see her. He was not sure what she did there, but he feared the worst about that coffee. Mr Arkwright settled into a majestic oak chair, lined with cushions, and stared at Andrew with a polite sort of keenness.
“Now, sir,” he said to Andrew, “perhaps you’d like to explain how you come to be here.”
By lying, Andrew could not help thinking. That business card was really a lie, as well as pretending to be Aidan’s cousin. Shame. These were kind, well meaning people and it went against the grain to lie to them. But after the way he had felt something watching him outside, he was sure he had to avoid at all costs telling them where Aidan actually was. “I live and work in a university,” he began, “and I’m sure you know that universities are ivory towers. So it wasn’t until — uh — yesterday that I learned that my distant cousin, Adela Cain, had died. I —”
“And just how did you learn that?” Mr Arkwright asked.
Fair enough, Andrew thought. Mr Arkwright is no fool. “Oh, a colleague showed me her obituary in the paper,” he said. “She used to be quite
a well-known singer—”
“And fairly famous in her day,” Mr Arkwright agreed. “Not that I hold with crooners and such, but I did hear her name when I was younger. And?”
“Well,” Andrew invented, “I knew of course that Adela’s daughter was dead and Adela had had sole charge of her grandson, and I realised that I must be the child’s only surviving relative. So—”
“And how did you get on to us?” Mr Arkwright asked shrewdly.
Um, Andrew thought. How did I?
Luckily at that moment Mrs Arkwright put down in front of Andrew a mug with THIS IS A HAPPY HOME painted on it. “Milk? Sugar?” she asked cheerfully.
The mug was full of a pale brown liquid that smelt, quite strongly, of old scrubbing brushes. Andrew found himself bending over it incredulously. How could anyone call this coffee? “No thanks,” he said bravely. “I’ll take it just as it is.”
Another mug was put down in front of Mr Arkwright, who was waiting patiently for Andrew’s answer. Mrs Arkwright sat cosily on another stool. “Coffee does things to my poor stomach,” she explained.
I’m not surprised! Andrew thought. By this time some distant, inventive part of his brain had come up with an answer for Mr Arkwright. “I went on the internet,” Andrew told him. “Then of course I checked with the police,” he added, in case the first answer sounded too improbable.
To his relief, both the Arkwrights seemed to accept this. They nodded and looked at one another unhappily. Mr Arkwright said gravely, “Your information is a little out of date, I’m afraid. Adrian’s not here any longer. We had to ask the social workers to take him somewhere else. We had a little trouble with him, you see.”
“How do you mean?” Andrew asked.
Mrs Arkwright looked at Mr Arkwright. Both of them seemed quite uncomfortable now. During the silence this caused, Andrew distinctly heard a slight shuffling outside the kitchen door. It sounded as if not all the children were obediently watching the space war.
“Well, it wasn’t as if Adrian wasn’t a good boy,” Mrs Arkwright said.
“Aidan,” Andrew corrected her.
“Adrian,” Mrs Arkwright agreed, as if that was what Andrew had said. “But he was a bit strange. Know what I mean? You’d think someone whose granny had just passed on would be glad of a little cuddle. I kept asking him for a cuddle, but he always said no. Said no and went away. I was quite hurt, to be honest. And then … Shall I tell the rest, Father? Or do you want to?”
“I will.” Mr Arkwright looked straight and seriously at Andrew and pronounced weightily, “Poltergeist activity.”
“I beg your pardon!” Andrew said.
“Yes,” said Mr Arkwright. “What I said. Poltergeist activity. You being a university man might know all about it, but I had to read up on it. That’s what it was. Teenagers in a distressed state of mind, the book said, can cause strange energies to be released. Things fly through the air, strange noises are heard. They can cause a lot of damage. They don’t know they’re doing it of course.”
“Did things fly through the air?” Andrew asked.
“No, that would have come next,” Mr Arkwright told him. “We didn’t wait for that. What we got was bad enough — strange noises all round the house outside, yelling and caterwauling and such, the garden gate banging, over and over. And the children kept saying they saw strange flitting shapes. We couldn’t have that.”
“We had to get rid of him. He was frightening the children,” Mrs Arkwright explained. “So we asked for him to be taken away.”
“So,” Andrew was beginning to wonder what was going on here, “when did Aidan actually leave?”
“Last Monday, nearly a week ago, wasn’t it, Mother?” Mr Arkwright said.
“And where is he now?” Andrew asked.
Both Arkwrights looked puzzled. Mrs Arkwright suggested, doubtfully, “You could ask at the police station. We didn’t need to know, you see.”
“But you saw him leave?” Andrew said.
They looked even more puzzled. “I suppose we did,” Mr Arkwright said. “But kids come and kids go, here. You know how it is. I don’t exactly recall, to tell the truth.”
Something very odd was going on here. Andrew took one brave swig from his mug. The so-called coffee tasted like it smelt. He put the mug down and stood up. “Thank you very much for your help,” he said heartily. “It was good of you to spare me the time. I have to be going now.”
Going where? he asked himself as he let himself out of the Arkwrights’ front gate. The only thing that was clear was that something peculiar had happened here, to someone who might have been called Adrian. Andrew wondered whether to go and ask the police. He supposed he had better, or he would have told a lot of lies for nothing—
The feeling of being watched came back, intensely, as soon as he was outside in the street.
I shall go home, Andrew decided, with the back of his neck pricking. And this time he would ask Aidan a lot more questions. He strode towards the main road, where there was more chance of finding a taxi.
A shrill voice behind him cried out, “Hey! Mister!”
Andrew whirled round in time to see the small Chinese boy leap down from the Arkwrights’ wall and chase after him. He was followed by the smaller Indian-looking girl. After her came a small black girl. Both girls had their hair done up in bright red ribbons that streamed and flapped as they pelted after the boy. “Mister! Mister, wait a moment!” they screamed.
All three came panting up to Andrew and stared at him urgently. “What is it?” he asked.
“They told you a lot of crap,” the boy panted, “about Aidan. There were real things round the house in the night. Three lots of them.”
“After Aidan,” said the Asian girl. “They kept shouting out ‘Adrian!’ Everyone gets his name wrong, but it was Aidan they wanted.”
“They were aliens,” added the black girl. “One lot had, like, aerials on their heads. Two long bits poking up that wobbled.”
“And they didn’t like each other,” said the Asian girl. “They fought.”
“Thank you,” Andrew said gratefully. “Thank you for telling me.” All three children were beautifully clean and well cared for. Mrs Arkwright obviously did a splendid job when it came to physical needs. “Were you very frightened? Mrs Arkwright said you were.”
“Sort of,” said the boy. “It was more exciting than anything. Mrs Arkwright was the one that was really scared.”
“Mai Chou was scared,” the black girl said scornfully.
“But she’s little. And stupid,” said the other girl.
“But,” said the Chinese boy, firmly sticking to the point, “they told you wrong about Aidan going too. They didn’t send him away. He ran off.”
Both girls nodded, ribbons fluttering. “He told us he was going,” said the Asian girl. “He said not to worry and if he went, the aliens would leave the house alone. And they did.”
“Aidan was scared,” said the black girl. “His mouth was shaking.”
“Well it was him they wanted to kill,” the boy said. “And the police thought it was only cats fighting!”
“Did Aidan tell you where he was go—” Andrew began.
He stopped. A strange tall figure was standing in front of them, out of nowhere it seemed. It was nearly eight feet tall and clearly not human. Its slender body was covered in what looked like golden armour, with — possibly — a gauzy purple cloak hanging from its shoulders. Or could the cloak actually be wings? Andrew found himself wondering. He stared at the being’s tall, oddly-shaped head, topped with golden curlicues and with golden sidepieces curling up on to its narrow cheeks, and wondered if this was a helmet or the creature’s natural head. Odder still, the face staring out from the curly gold was exactly like Mr Stock’s, thin and wry and bad-tempered. Another counterpart? Andrew wondered, thoroughly shaken. Here? In London?
All three children had hurled themselves behind Andrew. He could feel them hanging on to the back of his jacket, while Andrew him
self looked frantically around for help. There was no one walking on the pavements. Cars were going up and down the road, but none of the people in them glanced his way.
Nothing to do then but tough it out, Andrew thought. He took his glasses off. The creature looked weirder still to his naked eyes. It was like a golden skeleton surrounded in a silvery nimbus, although he still could not decide if the cloak was wings or not. “Now what do you want?” he asked severely.
The creature leaned towards him. It spoke, in a deep voice with an echo behind it. “Tell,” it said. “Tell us where Adrian is.”
Andrew felt a truly intense pressure to tell this being that Aidan was in Melstone. In fact, if the creature had said “Aidan” and not “Adrian”, he was fairly sure he would have told it at once.
“That’s one of them,” the boy said from behind Andrew, as if the pressure had forced him to speak. “Those lot stood by the wall and laughed.”
“So you were fighting in the Arkwrights’ garden, were you?” Andrew said. The pressure did seem to force you to say something.
The creature stood up to its full, tall height. “Not I,” it echoed out scornfully. “I do not fight such as those. I am a King’s man.”
“What King would that be?” Andrew asked.
“Oberon of course,” the creature answered haughtily.
Weirder and weirder, Andrew thought. Stunningly weird. An alien being stood in a London street and calmly announced itself a follower of the Fairy King. “This is mad,” he said. “Why would that make you want to kill — uh — Adrian?”
“For being the only living son of my King,” the creature answered, as if this was the most natural of reasons. “The King will not abide to be forced from his throne.”