The door opened and a girl came into the room. She was about Con’s own age, with long fair hair and gray eyes. She was wearing faded jeans and an old sweater and a haversack hung over one shoulder.
“Is that Ambrose?” she said, still in that loud, high voice, pointing to the bed.
Con nodded, frowning at her to be quiet. Where on earth had he heard a voice like that? And why was her face so familiar?
“Who are you?” he said.
“I’m Aggie. I came as soon as I heard. They’d walled me up in some beastly boarding school in Switzerland and I had to get back.”
She went over to the bed and stood looking down at Ambrose.
“He’s bad, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Con had stopped trying to think where he could have seen the girl before. What did it matter? What did anything matter?
Aggie put down her haversack. Then she bent over Ambrose and, still in that high, clear, governessy voice, said: “And what, pray, do you think you are doing?”
Con glared at her. No one had spoken above a whisper in that room for days. Yet something held him back from interfering.
“Open your eyes at once!” the bossy voice went on. “And your ear lids. You’re supposed to have been brought up as a Farlingham. Let’s see you behave like one.”
To Con’s amazement, a flicker passed over Ambrose’s face. A chink of blue appeared, then a chink of brown. The left ear lid wavered …
“That’s better. And what does one do when a lady comes into the room?”
“Stand … up,” came a thread of a voice from the bed.
“Quite right. So you can sit up for a start.”
And, unbelievably, Ambrose really did begin to move up on the pillow, almost to raise his head.
“I suppose you realize that dying is Very Bad Manners,” the relentless girl went on.
“Is … it?”
“Certainly it is. What are manners for?”
“Making … people … comfortable,” Ambrose managed to bring out.
“Exactly. Well, who’s going to be comfortable if you die?” said Aggie briskly. “Sad, that’s what they’re going to be. What’s that by your bed?”
“It’s … my … milk.”
“Your milk! Standing there gathering dust! I’m surprised at you, Ambrose. Drink it up at once,” said Aggie, sounding more than ever like an old-fashioned governess.
“I … can’t.”
“Can’t, Ambrose? Or do you mean won’t?”
She took the glass and put it in Ambrose’s hands. Then she raised his head from the pillow and put her own hand under it for support. And Con, who had understood at last what it was all about, looked on, blinking back tears, while Ambrose said weakly, “Yes, Lady Agatha. I’m sorry, Lady Agatha,” and drank his milk. Every single drop.
S SOON AS IT WAS CLEAR THAT AMBROSE WAS going to get well again, Aggie went down to Farley Towers to get it ready for the yetis.
Farley Towers belonged to her. Her real name was Lady Agatha Caroline Emma Hope Farlingham, and since her father had died in a sailing accident and her mother had married again, Aggie had inherited the estate. But when Con tried to explain to Ambrose that Aggie was Lady Agatha’s great-great-niece, Ambrose just shook his head. “No, she’s our own Lady Agatha come back again,” he said. “You see, Lady Agatha was awfully tired of her old body, she told us, so she just died and went up to heaven quickly and came down again in a nice new one.”
And the other yetis, looking very splendid in their hospital dressing gowns, nodded their heads and said, “You can see she’s our own Lady Agatha; you can see.”
So Con, who knew that people where the yetis come from think differently about dying, didn’t try to argue anymore.
It was a golden day in late summer when the hospital ambulances, with a special police escort, brought the yetis, with Con and Ellen, to Farley Towers. Aggie was waiting on the steps to greet them, and beside her, getting his front feet tangled in the shoe scraper and bleating like a foghorn, stood Hubert.
The yetis were so happy to see them both that they ran into the house without thinking. But inside the hall they hesitated.
Suppose the THINGS were still on the walls?
But of course they weren’t. Aggie had been in such a temper when she saw them that she and her nice old butler had worked from dawn to dusk, stripping the walls and throwing all the stuffed heads and mounted tusks and stretched skins into the lake.
And now Farley Towers was just as Lady Agatha had described it to the yetis in the valley of Nanvi Dar. There were patchwork covers on the four-poster beds, the smell of wax polish on the cedarwood floors, and bowls of roses on the gate-legged tables. But instead of one sacred relic under a glass case there were now two, because Aggie had found Ambrose’s bedsock and washed it and put it with the other one.
Soon the yetis were settled in so happily at Farley Towers that it was hard to believe that they had not spent all their lives in an English stately home. Grandma took over the housework, vanishing with the Hoover and a packet of sandwiches in the morning, and the sound of her singing “Oh, Happy Band of Pilgrims” would grow fainter and fainter as she hoovered herself away through the Gold Drawing Room and the Blue Salon, reappearing in the evening through the armory, the banquet hall, and the Spanish Dining Room.
Lucy tended the flower gardens, and after Aggie had told her which flowers were which, Lucy was most helpful, saying, “Sorry, thistle; sorry, dandelion; sorry, goose-grass,” but never—well, hardly ever—saying, “Sorry, dahlia,” or “Sorry, lily,” or “Sorry, delphinium,” so that soon the flower borders looked almost as tidy as in the old days when there had been no less than five gardeners at Farley Towers.
Clarence made himself useful on the farm. All animals like yetis, but simpleminded yetis they really love, and Clarence only had to look at the chickens and they would start laying eggs. As for Uncle Otto, he shut himself into the library and started putting things to rights. The books at Farley had been allowed to get into an awful muddle: Astrology next to Zoology, Mineralogy muddled up with Entomology, and Geology absolutely all over the place. Sorting all that out was going to keep Uncle Otto busy and happy for years.
But it was Ambrose who really saved the fortunes of Farley Towers, and he did this by being open to the public. All the yetis had become very famous: people wrote books about them, there was a story about them on the telly, and the Queen still sent them hampers of good things from her country homes. But because he had so nearly died, or perhaps because he was the youngest, and walleyed into the bargain, Ambrose was, perhaps, the most famous yeti of them all.
And when they realized that it was not having any money that forced Aggie’s trustees to rent her house to the beastly hunters, they had had the brilliant idea of opening the house to the public once a week and letting Ambrose receive the visitors.
So every Saturday the gates of Farley Towers were thrown open and people came in cars, or on foot, or in tour buses, and paid their money to look round the house where the yetis lived and shake Ambrose’s hand and get his autograph. And when Uncle Otto and Con, who were the best at sums, added up the money at the end of the day, they found that even when they’d paid for food and fuel there was still something left over to make Farley Towers lovelier, like putting new windows in the orangery or buying some peacocks for the terrace.
There was only one person at Farley Towers who did not seem to be completely happy, and that was Hubert. Mothers were tame stuff to Hubert now—he had outgrown them. As for fathers, how could he ever hope to find one to compare with El Magnifico? As he dug Hubert Holes all over the velvet lawns, he sometimes had the look of a yak who wonders what life is for. And then, not long before Con and Ellen were due to fly back to their father in Bukhim, something happened to change all that.
They were having elevenses on the terrace when a red delivery van swept up the drive and drew to a halt on the gravel. Then two men got out and set a big crate down on the ground.
“’Esent!” said Clarence excitedly, as they all clustered round. “’Esent. ’Esent!”
And it was a present. Shaken out of its layers of straw, it turned out to be—an animal. But an animal unlike anything they’d ever seen.
Its back end was pink and plump and had a corkscrew tail. Its front end was white with black spots, and it had droopy ears that brushed the ground. In the middle, where the two ends joined, was a curvy, buff-colored stomach and a forest of tufty hairs.
It was Con who guessed. “It’s the Perrington Porker!” he cried. “Perry’s done it! It’s the Perrington Porker without a doubt.”
And of course it was.
The yetis were enchanted. “It’s a lovely pet for us,” said Ambrose, his blue eye shining.
“Let’s call him Alfred. A nice, sensible name is Alfred,” said Grandma.
But the little pig didn’t seem to care what he was called. He had eyes for only one person. The yak, Hubert.
Leaving skid marks on the gravel in his eagerness, the Porker slithered to Hubert’s side. Then, squealing with pleasure, he began to butt the disheveled yak in his tattered stomach, to nuzzle him with his pink Hoover of a nose, to stand up on his flea-sized trotters and try to climb up Hubert’s tail …
For a moment, Hubert seemed to be completely stunned. Then suddenly it hit him. And as he began to lick the little pig, he seemed to grow taller, his boot face took on a look of dignity and pride, and his knock-knees straightened.
This was the real thing. Not looking for a father. Being one!
Not long after, a Queen’s Messenger arrived at Farley Towers in a black Rolls-Royce to arrange for Con and Ellen’s journey back to Nanvi Dar in a week’s time. It was the tired man in the dark suit who had taken Con’s petition into the palace, and it was from him they learned that Parliament had passed a law turning yetis into Very Important Creatures, or VICs, and that harming them was now a crime that carried the worst punishment in the land.
As for the hunters, they were still in prison. The police had been forced to let them go at first, because at the time of the kidnapping there had been no law against shooting yetis, because no one knew that yetis existed. But when the hunters had been freed for a few days, they came and hammered on the prison gates and asked to be taken back inside. This was because the people of Britain were so angry at what they had done to the yetis that boys threw stones at them, and old ladies bonked them on the head with shopping baskets, and men coming out of pubs threatened to beat them up.
Mr. Prink, however, wasn’t in prison. Often he wished he was, because he was somewhere even worse—back with Mrs. Prink, who made him gargle with carbolic soap and clean out the budgerigar’s cage and eat the gristle in his mutton fat.
And now the dreaded day came when Con and Ellen were due to leave Farley Towers. They had put it off as long as possible, but though Mr. Bellamy had written brave and cheerful letters, he had not been able to hide how much he missed them.
Although the helicopter that was to take them to the airport was not expected till midday, the yetis had already put in several hours’ hard crying time by breakfast.
“It’s not good for people to lose their friends,” wailed Ambrose. “It makes them all lumpy in the stomach.”
“We’ll be back, Ambrose,” said Ellen. “You know we will.” But she soaked three whole handkerchiefs herself before the drone of the helicopter was heard above the roofs of Farley Towers.
The helicopter landed neatly on the lawns. The pilot opened the door of the cockpit and jumped out. Then he walked round to open the other door. And the yetis stared in disbelief as a tall, strong, marvelously furry figure stepped majestically down onto the grass.
“Father!” they cried, surging forward. “It’s Father come back to us! It’s our very own Father.”
The joy of having him back was so great that they could hardly speak. Uncle Otto had been marvelous, but Father—well, Father was Father, and they knew now that they need never be afraid again.
Father’s first words, however, were grave and sad.
“From the fact that I am here,” he said solemnly, “you will know that our beloved Lady Agatha has died. Her end was peaceful and she lies where she wished to lie in the cool earth of our—”
“No, she doesn’t,” squeaked Ambrose, while Father frowned at him reprovingly. “She doesn’t lie, she …”
But Father had stopped taking any notice of Ambrose. He was staring at the steps of the terrace that led down to the lawn.
Aggie had been inside the house when the helicopter arrived, preparing the yetis’ lunch. Now she came down the steps slowly, carrying a tray of drinks. Her long white cooking apron came to her ankles, her fair hair blew in the breeze, her gray eyes were intent on the brimming mugs.
Father had taken a few steps and then stopped. There was amazement in his wise old eyes, and a deep and shining joy.
“That’s how she looked when I carried her away from her tent,” he said. “Exactly like that!”
Almost unbearably moved, the dignified old yeti walked over to Aggie.
“You’ve come back to us, Lady Agatha,” he said, and bent his head and took the tray from her hands.
And Con and Ellen saw that the story that had begun a hundred years ago in the mountains of Tibet had ended, and that their work was done, and they got into the helicopter and flew away.
VA IBBOTSON was an Austrian-born British novelist whose work has received great admiration and acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Her novels include The Secret of Platform 13, Which Witch?, The Great Ghost Rescue, Island of the Aunts, Dial-a-Ghost, and Journey to the River Sea, which won the Smarties Prize, was runner-up for the Guardian Prize, and appeared on the Carnegie, Whitbread, and Blue Peter shortlists. She died in 2010, in her home in Newcastle, England.
IONA ROBINSON is the author-illustrator of The 3-2-3 Detective Agency, The Useful Moose, Whale Shines, and What Animals Really Like, which received the 2012 Irma Black Award and was named by Bank Street as one of 2012’s Best Children’s Books of the Year. Her work has been honored by the Royal Academy of Arts and has been featured in many gallery shows. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Eva Ibbotson, The Abominables
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