The Dipsy Dream House
and
The Fleeting Fame of Benjamin Sprockett
by Linda Talbot
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Illustrations by Linda Talbot
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Copyright Linda Talbot 2014
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Table of Contents
The Dipsy Dream House
Illustrations:
Bobette, Scrotty and Blimp with The Dipsy Dream House
Farzi with Abdul the Camel
Ming with Xuan the phoenix
The Fleeting Fame of Benjamin Sprockett
Illustration:
Benjie accidentally joins the circus
Chapters:
Benjie Tries on a Pair of Blue Shoes
Benjie Becomes a Boy Again
Thank you
Author’s Note
The Dipsy Dream House
Bobette is looking for a house that, like her, can think, feel and keep itself clean. A house whose paint is always shiny, whose roof never loosens in a high wind and whose walls waltz with reflections.
She has drawn many dream houses, designing rooms of every shape and size, with chairs and tables that at a flick of a switch were intended to rearrange themselves, and whirling, sucking machines that should have cleaned the carpets. But the chairs and tables collided and sometimes fell apart and the cleaners sucked the carpets into hillocks while scattering dust and crumbs.
Her own house was built many years ago - of bricks and wood, that now ooze water and are riddled with wood worm. The floorboards sag and creak and the roof leaks, so Bobette has to spread her mackintosh on her bed when it rains. She cannot ask anyone to tea. Her kettle does not work because the wires carrying the electricity are worn out.
“I shall visit the estate agent!” she says, as a black spider squeezes from a crack in the wall and watches her warily.
She is about to go out when she hears the doorbell playing its catchy tune off key. Cautiously she opens the front door, which groans in protest.
“Oh, hello, Scrotty!” Her nine year old nephew and Blimp, his ginger cat with one grey leg, are standing on the doorstep. “I hope you haven’t come to tea. The kettle isn’t working.”
“No. I’ve come because mum and dad have gone to Australia. They took the car and the boat dad made from those beer barrels. They said they were fed up with my practical jokes and that I should come to live with you.”
Bobette’s face falls.
“But my house isn’t fit to live in!” she protests. “I was just going to the estate agent. Come with me.!”
“O.K.!” says Scrotty, pulling up his floppy socks.
Bobette tells Scrotty about the house she wants; one that can think for itself and will take care of them, as a house should, instead of demanding to be painted and cleaned.
Bobette, Scrotty and Blimp with The Dipsy Dream House
“When people lived in caves, they didn’t have these problems!” she grumbles. Scrotty sniffs, thinking that in a cave you cannot pull chairs from under visitors so they fall on the floor, you cannot leave taps running so they flood the bathroom and open windows off the latch, so they bang in the wind. He wonders what he can do in a house that looks after itself.
The estate agent’s shop is shaped like a house with a sloping red roof. But inside it is stacked with computers showing pictures of houses; sprawling, squat, scowling or seeming to smile. Like people, each has a personality.
“Can I help you?” A man with slick black hair and blue-rimmed glasses looks up from his screen.
“Yes. I need a house that looks after itself - and after us!” says Bobette, drawing Scrotty close. Blimp pounces on a cable coiled under the table.
“Mmm. We would like one like that too. It wouldn’t be long on the market,” says the estate agent. “I’ll show you our selection in virtual reality - that way you’ll feel you’re already living in the house.”
He leads them over the snaking cables to a room at the back. A great doorway flashes WELCOME in neon.
“Push!” says the estate agent. Bobette pushes and the door swings silently open. Followed by Scrotty and Blimp, she steps inside. Darkness. Silence. Then, slowly, as though breathed into life by a magically hovering hand, a building appears; tall, tower-like with a narrow door, a square window and a smaller, flower-covered window jutting from one side. An eye with thick lashes - as though the house is watching for visitors - flickers in the window. Blimp moves closer and as a shadow slides towards him, the disembodied head of a black-haired woman in a yashmak hovers before Scrotty and Bobette. She stares hard at them, then vanishes.
“Where on earth are we?” asks Scrotty.
“I should say a long way east of Sidcup!” says Bobette, already thinking fondly of her old house in the dull suburb.
“Let’s go in,” suggests Scrotty. They reach two steps leading up to the door that has a golden frame and small flowers painted in bright colours in a panel at the top. Before they push, it softly opens.
“Can this be a house that looks after itself?” muses Bobette, “It looks more like a throwback to the Arabian Nights. And who was that woman in the garden?”
“Spooky!” says Scrotty, pushing at a vase big enough to hide in. They stand in a dusty room filled with patterned pots, plates, exotic carpets and cushions. Blimp rolls one across a carpet, then pulls at the fine satin threads with his claws. Bored, he pushes over a vase and crawls inside.
Now singing drifts eerily from beyond the room. Blimp backs out of the vase and following the sound, joins Bobette and Scrotty at the entrance to a shadowy passage. A girl’s voice rises and falls - notes more discordant than Bobette’s door bell with words in an unknown language.
As the songs drifts, the voice slows, singing more sadly, then falters and stops. The girl is sobbing. A dim light is thrown by a lantern at the end of the passage and beneath it, in another dusty room, sits the pretty girl with black hair, wearing a loose garment whose flowers lilt as she moves as though tossed by wind.
“Oh, my dear - what’s wrong?” asks Bobette, reaching a hand towards her. It rests in thin air. Scrotty blinks, thinking the girl very lovely but, like her house, spooky. Fearfully, Blimp hisses.
“Are you real?” Bobette hears herself asking, thinking that perhaps she is a ghost.
Alarmed, the girl looks up. She stops crying and in a thin voice that shakes as though she has not spoken for a long time, says, “I think I was left here when my parents died in the war. I think I must have died too.”
“Dear me! Then you ARE a ghost,” says Bobette.
“Don’t you eat or drink?” asks Scrotty.
“No, nor sleep - ever!” replies the girl.
“What’s your name?” asks Bobette.
“Farzi.”
“And which war are you talking about?”
“I think it was between us and the people from the plain.”
“So where are we?”
The girl looks blank. She cannot remember.
“Well, as I said before, it’s a long way east of
Sidcup,” declares Bobette. “How could the estate agent have sent us here? It does not appear YOUR house looks after itself!” And, incidentally, who is the woman in a yashmak in your front garden?”
“Oh, that must be mother. Her ghost often haunts the house, but she never speaks. I have to look after myself. I sing to try to keep cheerful but it doesn’t work. As to the house looking after itself - of course it doesn’t. Once we had servants. Now everyone has gone. Except Abdul.”
“Who’s he?” Scrotty asks, hoping he is her brother.
“My camel.”
Farzi with Abdul the camel
Blimp scowls and arches his back. Two wide nostrils and blue eyes with long lashes peer curiously round the door at the other end of the room. Abdul.
He plods with feet like dishes into the room, knocking over pots and crumpling the carpet, until he reaches Farzi and wrinkles his nose in the palm of her hand.
“He must make a lot of extra work!” sighs Bobette, whose dream house seems more distant than ever.
“Is HE real?” asks Scrotty, as Farzi wavers. His question is answered as Abdul breathes foul breath down his neck.
“Do you want to come with us to find our new house? I really don’t think yours will do Farzi. But - being a ghost - are you able to leave?”
“Oh yes. I drift here and there. I’d love to come,” says Farzi. “I’ll leave mother to haunt the house. She may even do a little dusting now and then.”
They leave - Blimp dodging Abdul as he crashes through the pots in the front room.
Outside, the great eye in the upstairs window slowly blinks, as though saying goodbye, and Farzi’s mother drifts sadly, draped in black veils across the lawn.
“Goodbye!” whispers Farzi.
They follow a path glittering with stones that runs between hedges of green and gold leaves and fluttering flowers. Abruptly it stops and they step into a hot valley of cypress trees, their long green spears shivering against a cloudless sky.
In the middle of the valley sprawls a great white house with thick red pillars and shapes like bulls’ horns in rows on the roof.
“Could this be a house that looks after itself?” muses Bobette.
“I don’t think so. I’ve seen houses like this in a history book. They were very old,” says Scrotty.
Abdul tugs at a cypress tree. Blimp sits in the shade, wistfully dreaming of wet gardens. Scrotty longs to play a practical joke, but cannot see how. Bobette feels fed up. Farzi hovers restlessly.
They move towards the house that shimmers in the sun and walk up a wide staircase past great columns supporting an upper storey. They enter a large room with a design of blue and gold rosettes round high doors, a ceiling decorated with spirals and paintings of dolphins, bluebirds, lilies and a wild dancing woman on the walls. Tall storage pots stand by the doors.
“Stand still Frosso. I want to curl your hair!” pipes a small voice from behind a pillar. On one side there appears a strange beast with a beak that opens and shuts, lanky red hair, a coiled tail and sweeping white wings. He wears a lead of coloured beads. On the other side of the pillar, a boy appears, trying to draw the creature close. In one hand he holds a big comb. He trips over a bowl of water and some large pins lying on the floor.
Abdul sniffs disdainfully at the bad tempered beast. The boy stops pulling and, alarmed, sees the strange group of people and animals.
“Who are you?” he demands, his small voice echoing round the large room.
Bobette explains and that they are looking for a house that looks after itself.
Then she asks, “What’s your name?” And notices that, like Farzi, the boy flickers slightly.
“Talos. I know I’m small but I’m named after the giant that used to carry our king’s laws round our island and throw stones at invaders.”
“Goodness. And are YOU real?” asks Bobette. She moves towards him and touches his brown body. He wears only a short kilt. He too is thin air.
“Oh, no, another ghost!” she complains. Scrotty sighs. Farzi smiles, no longer lonely. Blimp scowls. Abdul sniffs.
“Are you an orphan too?” asks Scrotty.
“Yes. My parents died in an earthquake while they were on their way to the mainland,” says Talos.
“What’s that?” asks Scrotty indicating the strange beast that now blinks at them with wide eyes.
“A griffin, of course. Don’t you know ANYTHING?” says Talos impatiently. “If he wasn’t here he would be building a nest in the mountains and lining it with gold.”
The children stare, wide-eyed.
“Why do you want to curl his hair?” asks Farzi.
“Because he is sacred and has to look good before the gods.”
“Oh dear. We have gone a long way back in time,” says Bobette, “I wonder if we will ever find our way back to the estate agent’s.”
Talos looks bewildered. Everyone else sighs.
“Does your house by any chance look after itself?” asks Bobette dismally.
Talos frowns. “This is a palace!” he points out. “All our servants have left because they thought we might have an earthquake here too. I think I died of boredom!”
“Would you like to come with us and look for a house that takes care of itself and of us?” asks Bobette, wondering how far they are now from Sidcup.
“All right. There’s no one here to talk to except Frosso and he thinks he is so holy, I am not worth a conversation. So I usually talk to myself.”
They leave the palace of enormous horns and walk through the dense cypresses which gradually thin until a range of strange black mountains rears beyond a wide river. Snow lingers on some summits and their slopes are dotted with dark pines.
A building with an elegantly upturned roof, bumpy tiles and lattices supported on tall pillars, appears on the marshy land beside the river.
Bobette stops and blinks at it. “Mmm. I don’t think this one will be any better at looking after itself than the others!” she predicts dismally. It looks too proud!”
“Where do you think we are?” asks Scrotty.
“Looks like China to me, although I can’t imagine how on earth we got here!” says Bobette. “Anyway, come on - let’s go inside.”
Marble dragons crouch along the white path which leads to a great sliding door. Unprompted, it slowly opens and the travellers step cautiously inside.
Carved furniture and elaborate pots stand in a large room with hangings that dance with butterflies, birds and bats. Gently they flap in the spring breeze. Then, from behind one, drifts a girl, her face emerging from brooding black shadow. She wears a headdress of flowers and a silk gown flowing with more flowers like a wind-ruffled field.
She gives a sharp cry when she sees the strange company of people and animals barging through the beautiful room.
“It’s all right. We won’t hurt you. We’re only seeking a house that will look after itself,” says Bobette. “I don’t think yours does, does it?”
The girl stares at her with terrified eyes.
“Oh, sorry - we should have asked your name!” adds Bobette.
“Ming!” breathes the frightened girl, looking in horror at Abdul who is chewing a silk cushion and Frosso who is pecking haughtily at the gold rim of a large vase poised on a thick carpet. It topples.
Ming gasps and raises delicate hands in despair. Talos tugs at Frosso’s lead and the griffin steps back in disdain.
“Stop it, Abdul!” orders Farzi. The camel, as haughty as the griffin, lifts and shakes the cushion at her. Blimp sharpens his claws on a rosewood table.
Then everyone is startled by a loud squawk. From behind a hanging steps a magnificent bird, with wings that sweep the thick carpet and long feathers flashing colours in the gloom. He places sharp claws carefully on the floor and blinks big brown eyes.
“This is Xuan, my phoenix.” Ming introduces him. “I found him in a sacred grove. He only feeds on air and when he is a thousand years old he will fly across the world to Phoenicia
where he will build a pile of wood on top of the tallest palm tree and set himself on fire. Nine days later, a new phoenix will rise from his ashes!”
Ming with Xuan the phoenix
“How very foolish!” comments Abdul, dropping the cushion on the floor. Xuan sniffs. “At least I will live nine hundred and ninety years. I’m only ten years old. How old are you?” asks Xuan.
“Now, now - no quarrelling,” urges Bobette, “Ming, my dear, tell me - are you a ghost?”
“Of course! I died of fever shortly after my parents - I can’t remember how long ago.”
“Oh dear! We keep slipping back in time, only to find it haunted!” says Bobette, “Well, would YOU like to join us? We are looking for a house that looks after itself.”
Ming, who never dusts because her ghostly fingers would slip through the duster, says, “Yes, I’ll come, if I can bring Xuan.”
Bobette agrees and everyone leaves, to walk back across the marshy land.
At first, Farzi, Talos and Ming look warily at each other, but as Scrotty chats cheerfully about this and that, they begin to talk. The girls giggle and Talos asks Scrotty about life in the twenty first century. The years slip away and the ghostly children listen, open-mouthed, as Scrotty describes space shuttles, satellites, computers and the virtual reality at the estate agent’s through which they found each other.
“But something must have gone wrong. We were meant to find a house that looks after itself - that never needs cleaning or repairing!” he explains, “Aunt Bobette’s house is very old and wants to quietly crumble away.”
The sky darkens. Distant voices, discussing house prices, drift across the brooding land. Suddenly, everyone is in the jumbled back room of the estate agent. Cables wind round Abdul’s feet. Frosso pecks peevishly at thin air. Xuan swishes his great tail like a rush of cold wind. Blimp senses Sidcup nearby.
The children blink as they emerge into the bright lights of the estate agent’s shop where houses of every shape and size flash on the computer screens.
The man with slick black hair and blue-rimmed glasses, leaps up and staggers in astonishment as the people and animals crowd round him.
“Where is our house that looks after itself?” demands Bobette. “You sent us on a wild goose chase goodness knows where and to what time in the past. What’s the idea?”
The slick-haired man stumbles and his glasses fall off.
“I-I’m so sorry!” he exclaims as Abdul sticks out his smelly tongue to lick him. Xuan’s tail knocks a pile of papers from a desk onto the floor and the young man’s assistants jump out of their chairs and run, without their coats, into the rain outside.
“I sent you through the wrong door,” explains the young man, “That was our selection of exotic homes throughout the world. But where did these children and animals come from?”
“You tell US!” snaps Bobette.
Noticing the children are wearing their countries’ traditional clothes, the young man admits, “There must have been a time lapse. Now how could that have happened?”
“Computers never do as they are told!” comments Scrotty, who uses one at school.
“So where is our house that looks after itself?” demands Bobette.
“It does not exist,” admits the young man, picking up his blue-rimmed glasses which are bent and sit sideways on his nose.
“Then we’ll just have to go back to that dipsy house of mine and see what we can do!” says Bobette briskly, “Come on, everyone!” Scrotty, the ghost children and the animals follow her from the shop and plod drearily through the rain up the Sidcup street until they reach Bobette’s waterlogged house. One side is sinking into the wet garden. Tiles are slipping from the roof and ivy clambers over the front door.
Farzi reaches to touch the wet bricks. “I can feel them!” she declares. Everyone then reaches to touch her, to find she is now firm flesh and shivering in the rain.
Talos touches a drooping hollyhock and feels its silky sadness. Ming strokes Blimp who is happily rolling in the rain and feels his soggy fur.
“We’re alive!” cry the children. Their animals, who had never understood how they had been able to walk right through the ghostly shadows of the children, murmur approval.
“Well I never! The house will be like an orphanage!” says Bobette.
“And people can pay to see the zoo in the garden!” adds Scrotty.
“We’ll see about that! I don’t want the flowerbeds flattened!” says Bobette, “And the people of Sidcup would not know what to make of it. But I suppose the animals can live in the garden shed. It’s very big and in better condition than the house!
“And I was fed up living alone. Now we shall all have to work very hard. We’ll put the old house right - it will be as good as new. I know now that no house looks after itself.”
The house heaves a deep sigh - who knows if it is with relief or anticipation of the commotion to come?
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