Arabel and Mortimer (6 page)

Mortimer was never there.

To add to the confusion, Isabella the parrot, not wanting to be left out of any excitement, had managed to escape from Lady Dunnage's cabin and was flying gaily about the ship; several times she was grabbed by people who thought she was a raven and that they would be rewarded for capturing her, but Isabella had a very neat left-beak uppercut combined with a right-claw hook which ensured that no one ever held her for long. Her activities added most unfairly to Mortimer's general unpopularity.

At last Arabel, worn out, was obliged to go to bed without having found him.

"Poor Mortimer," she said sadly. "I do hope he's got somewhere comfortable to spend the night."

About an hour after she had gone to bed, Arabel was roused by screams from the cabin next door.

Miss Brandy Brown had been woken by a sound, and had switched on her bedside light just in time to see Mortimer walk slowly through into her kitchenette, open the fridge, and peer gloomily inside. She was so paralyzed with astonishment that she did nothing until he had turned and was halfway across the room again. Then she jumped out of bed yelling: "Help! Murder! Thieves! Jackdaws! Magpies!"

By the time she had reached the door, Mortimer, as usual, had vanished from view.

She banged on Arabel's door.

"Have you got that bird in there with you?"

"No," said Arabel, anxiously opening up. "I only wish I had."

"Well, he was here just now. And I warn you," said Miss Brandy Brown ominously, "if he pesters me anymore, I shall take whatever steps seem proper."

"I don't see how taking steps will help," Arabel said, looking at the steps up to Mortimer's bunk. "Anyway, Mortimer's usually the one who takes them."

But Miss Brown had flounced back to her own room.

It was a night of terror on board the
Queen of Bethnal Green.
People burst screaming from their cabins, they rushed in a panic out of lifts and got jammed in staircases; rumors flew about the ship far, far faster than Mortimer could have, even if he had had the speed of a vampire jet: "There's a mad raven on board—a bloodsucking vulture—a giant bat—it attacks any green article—beware!"

***

By next morning, luckily, the ship had got through the Bay of Biscay, the weather had turned sunny and hot, and the coast of Spain came into view.

Mortimer was nowhere to be seen, so everybody could relax except Arabel, who was more and more worried, terribly afraid that he might have fallen overboard, though she hoped, of course, that he had simply found some green thing that would do instead of his tie, and had curled up with it in a quiet corner for a good long nap.

Another person who wasn't happy was Mike the steward. Miss Brandy Brown had sent for him and given him a terrible telling off; she accused him of letting the raven into her cabin when he went in to turn down the bed. "For how else could he have got the door open?" she said. "He must have been lurking in my cabin for hours."

It was no use Mike's protesting he had done no such thing. She wouldn't listen, and he felt very ill used.

After lunch the
Queen of Bethnal Green
anchored off the coast of Spain. Boats came out from the land; anybody who liked could go ashore in them. Lots of passengers went, including Miss Brandy Brown and Mr. and Mrs. Jones. But Arabel said she would prefer to stay on board.

"Don't you want to see Spain, dearie?" said Mrs. Jones, who in secret thought it sadly probable that Mortimer had been lost overboard.

"No," said Arabel. "I shall go on hunting. And they're going to take the cover off the swimming pool and Henry's father is going to teach Henry and me to swim."

With light hearts, feeling that their child could hardly be in better hands, Mr. and Mrs. Jones went off to look at Spain.

Henry and Arabel watched the cover taken off the pool. At one side of the deck there was a small crane which was used for hoisting heavy objects on board, and now, with one of the crew winding its handle, the crane leaned forward and tweaked the big lid off the pool.

Arabel had a secret hope that perhaps Mortimer would be underneath, but he wasn't.

However, they had a very enjoyable swim with Henry's father. But presently the water in the pool began to tip and slop about a good deal, and the sky turned gray, and Captain Mainbrace, glancing up at it, said: "Looks like dirty weather coming. It's a good thing that the shore boats are due back."

He hurried off to check his instruments and listen to the weather forecast.

Henry and Arabel got dressed and then watched the entertainment staff, who were making ready for an open-air concert to be held on deck that evening.

The crane dropped the lid back over the swimming pool, and then the Rumpus Lounge piano was rolled as far as the doorway leading to the open deck. There, a rope was tied round it, and then the crane hooked its hook into the rope and picked up the piano as easily as if it had been a basket of potatoes (although it was a concert grand almost as large as Mr. Jones's taxi) and gently dropped it down right on top of the swimming pool lid.

While this was happening, some members of the entertainment staff were setting out potted palms and orange trees and blooming roses in tubs, and others were painting a huge piece of hardboard with a beautiful sunset scene. This was to go behind the piano so that it would look as if Miss Brown and the Stepney Stepalives were performing in the middle of a Persian garden.

Arabel and Henry watched for a while and then they went off to hunt for Mortimer in all the places they hadn't tried yet. It was a great pity that they went away when they did, for not five minutes after they had gone below Mortimer himself came wandering out through the door from the games room, where he had been dozing behind a pile of deck chairs.

Just at that moment nobody was around. The scene painters had gone off to have their tea, and so had the piano shifters.

Mortimer meandered slowly along. A pot of lavender-colored paint had been knocked over, and he walked through a puddle of the stuff, leaving a trail of lavender footprints behind him. He was still fast asleep due to the powerful action of the green pill Mike had given him. He walked with his wings stretched out in front of him, as if he were feeling his way. When he came to the piano stool he climbed on it, and so on to the piano, and then, as if he had expected all along that it would be there waiting for him, got inside the open lid.

Then he lay down on the strings and went on sleeping.

It was just at this moment that Mike the steward came up on deck; he had finished his tea and wanted a breath of fresh air. The first thing he noticed was the trail of lavender footprints leading to the piano. Mike tiptoed up to the piano and looked inside. There was Mortimer, lying on his back on the strings, fast asleep, breathing peacefully, with his feet covered in lavender paint.

Quick as a flash, but very quietly, Mike shut the piano lid and locked it.

His first intention had been to find Arabel and tell her that her companion was safe. In fact, he did start off to look for her. But he did not find her at once (she was in the sauna room, right down at the bottom of the ship). In the meantime, as he hunted for Arabel, Mike couldn't help thinking to himself: "Wouldn't it be a lark to leave Mortimer inside the piano till Miss Brandy Brown starts to play in the concert this evening! I bet he'd kick up a rumpus! Maybe that would teach snooty Miss B not to make such a fuss over things people didn't even do."

Mike was still feeling very ruffled and sore at the things Miss Brown had said to him.

The shore boats were coming back, and only just in time, for the sky was covered with fat black clouds and the wind was getting up, and so were the waves, and there was also a low rumble of thunder every now and then. And big drops of rain had begun to fall.

Captain Mainbrace sent a message to Miss Brandy Brown that her outdoor concert had better be altered to an indoor one, since he was going to hoist up anchor and take the
Queen of Bethnal Green
out to sea until the storm had blown over, to avoid the danger of being washed against the rocky coast.

So Miss Brown, in her turn, sent a message to the scene shifters, asking them if they would move the things back into the Rumpus Lounge; and, wiping the tea from their mouths and stubbing out their cigarettes, they came back on deck. Once more the crane was swung out, the hook was lowered, and the rope was knotted around the grand piano. The hook was tucked into the rope, and the piano was hoisted up into the air.

But just at that moment several things happened simultaneously. The siren let out a blast—
woooooooooooop
—the
Queen of Bethnal Green
started turning round, moving toward the open sea—and a huge wave, piled up by a giant gust of wind, which had been rolling along toward the liner, met her head-on and caused her to bounce from end to end like a floating sponge when somebody jumps into the bath.

What happened? The grand piano, at the end of its rope, swung violently sideways, like a conker on a string—there it was, a piano in midair, everybody staring at it; next minute the rope broke,
kertwang!
and there was the piano flying off as if it had been catapulted.

Mike the steward happened to look out through the Rumpus Lounge window and see the piano land in the water—otherwise this story might have ended differently.

"Ohmygawd! What's that piano doing out there in the sea?" he gasped, and rushed out on deck, where, in the pouring rain, the crane operator was apologizing to Miss Brandy Brown and she was saying that playing on that piano was the next thing to playing on an old sardine can and she, for one, didn't care if it floated off to the Canary Islands; anyway, there must be another piano somewhere about the ship.