Eight Days of Luke (6 page)

There was nothing for David to do but unpack his trunk, which arrived soon after breakfast. His cricket bat, when he came to it, did not seem as large as he remembered, and all the clothes were rather small.

“That means new everything,” Astrid said, sighing. “We'll be all afternoon. My head will be splitting in this heat, but I know you won't care
how
I feel.”

“Yes I will,” David said truthfully. When Astrid had a headache, she was always more than usually spiteful, so it was natural to hope that her head would not split.

“Thanks for nothing,” Astrid retorted and climbed into her Mini, jangling bracelets and flouncing her handbag. “Don't rush to get in, will you?”

“You have to unlock the door first,” David said patiently, wondering how he was to get through this shopping expedition without being rude to Astrid.

It was very difficult. Astrid could find nowhere to park her Mini. She drove from place to place, grumbling, while the inside of the car became hotter and hotter. Astrid announced that she felt faint and said she would drive home again. She did not do this, however, because she was almost as much afraid of Aunt Dot as David was. Instead, she drove to a very distant car-park, and they set out to walk back to the shops. Astrid's feet hurt her.

“There are shooting pains in my insteps,” she said. “Do you think I've dislocated my toe?”

“No. It's because you wear such silly shoes,” David explained.

“I've had about enough of your cheek!” Astrid said, and marched on very fast and upright to prove David wrong.

David trotted after her, sweating in the heat and dodging among the crowds on the pavement. He longed to be elsewhere—preferably by the compost heap, meeting Luke. Then he began to wonder if it was really true that he only had to strike a match to bring Luke. He knew it was only Luke's nonsense really. He could prove it, if he wanted, by striking a match here, in the middle of Ashbury, where Luke could not possibly turn up. David did not want to. He wanted to pretend that Luke was the one extraordinary thing that had happened in this exceptionally miserable holiday. But, by the time Astrid had told him twice not to dawdle and three times more about her feet, David had reached the stage where he wanted to prove that everything was flat and ordinary and horrible, just because everything so obviously was.

While they were waiting to cross a street, David turned aside, fetched out the box, struck a match, and then had to throw it flaring in the gutter, because Astrid told him sharply not to dawdle and he had to walk on across the street.

“Hallo,” said Luke, strolling across beside him with his hands in his pockets. “Why are you looking so hot and bothered?”

David beamed at him. Life was suddenly quite different. “I just hate shopping,” he said. “And she keeps on telling me to walk quicker.”

“Which cat's mother's she?” said Luke.

“Astrid,” David said, giggling.

Astrid turned round when she heard her name. “What are you at
now
?”

“I've met a friend,” David said gaily. “Can Luke come with us, Astrid?”

“Well, really!” said Astrid, and she looked Luke over in a most unfriendly way. This, David thought, was unfair, because Luke looked remarkably clean and spruce today. His red hair was tidy, his freckled face was clean, and the burn on his cheek hardly showed at all.

Luke, however, held out his hand to Astrid, smiling most politely. “How do you do, Astrid?” he said, and contrived to sound well-brought-up and dependable saying it.

“Mrs. Price to you,” Astrid said haughtily. But she shook hands with Luke and did not look as haughty as she sounded. “Well, come along if you're coming,” she said.

When they reached the first shop, Luke stood, looking rather wondering, among the lines of coats and stacks of shirts, while David tried things on. David and Astrid disagreed, as David had known they would, about what to buy. David's idea of good clothes was loose comfortable things that looked best grubby. He cast longing looks at a rack of jeans, and at cotton sweaters in interesting colors. Astrid's idea was something Aunt Dot would not disapprove of. She made David try on a suit with tight prickly trousers and asked the assistant for distasteful white shirts, with buttons.

“I don't like this suit,” David said sadly. “It pricks. And I don't like those shirts either.”

Astrid took hold of his elbow fiercely and led him out of the assistant's hearing. “I warn you David,” she told him in a passionate whisper, “I shall do something dreadful if nothing's going to satisfy Your Majesty except red robes and ermine!”

“I'd be satisfied with jeans,” David said hopefully.

“You ungrateful little—!” Astrid began, but stopped when she realized that Luke was standing just beside David. “I give up!” she said to them both.

“Quite right,” Luke agreed cheerfully. “I don't think much of that suit either.”

“What's wrong with it?” Astrid asked angrily.

“He looks like a penguin,” Luke said.

Astrid looked at David, ready to deny it. But, in fact, the tightness and prickliness of the suit did make David stand in an awkward, stiff way, with his arms slightly out, very much like a penguin. “
Doh!
” said Astrid, and marched back to the assistant. David heard her say that they would leave the suit and just take the shirts, and could hardly believe his luck. He looked at Luke, and Luke gave him a smile of pure mischief.

This episode did not improve Astrid's temper. After the assistant had packed up the disagreeable shirts and they were leaving the shop, she said: “Now we shall have to go all the way to Trubitt's and I want no more nonsense. I've got one of my heads coming on already.”

As David and Luke followed her, Luke said, out of the corner of his mouth: “How many heads has she got?” David doubled up with laughter. He could not help it. He staggered sideways across the pavement, howling and coughing, with packets of shirt sliding out of his arms in all directions.

Astrid, naturally, turned back, demanding to know what had got into him this time.

“I don't know,” Luke said artlessly. Then, very artfully, he added: “You know, Mrs. Price, you look to me as if you've got a headache.”

“I do?” said Astrid, forgetting David. “Well, as a matter of fact I have, Luke. Right over my left eye.”

“Terrible,” Luke said sympathetically. “How would it be if we were to go somewhere where you could sit down and rest for a while?”

“Oh, I'd give anything if I could!” said Astrid. “But we haven't time. I promised David's Aunt I'd buy him some clothes and—”

“You'll do it all the quicker for having a rest,” Luke told her, kindly and firmly. “There's plenty of time. You take my arm and tell me where you'd like to go.”

“You are a nice, considerate boy!” Astrid exclaimed. “But I'm not sure we ought.”

Luke, with a soothing smile, held out his arm to her and winked at David—one small flicker of a wink that Astrid did not see. Astrid hooked her arm through Luke's and set off for the nearest cafe so quickly and thankfully that David got left behind. When he caught up with them at the door of the cafe, Luke was saying: “I quite thought you were David's sister. You look so young.”

Astrid beamed at him, and continued to smile while they found a table and sat down. David sat down with them, rather thoughtfully. He was not sure that Luke was behaving quite honestly. Luke knew perfectly well that Astrid was not David's sister, because David had told him all about her yesterday. He was simply buttering Astrid up. David would have been annoyed, if he had not been pretty certain that Luke was only doing it to give David a more pleasant afternoon than he would have had otherwise.

Whatever his motives, Luke thoroughly enjoyed himself in that cafe. So did David. And, David suspected, so did Astrid too. The odd thing about Astrid was that, when Cousin Ronald was not there to stop her, she loved spending money. She spent lavishly in that cafe. Luke's appetite was even larger than David's. He had five milk shakes to David's three, and four ice creams to David's two. Astrid ate one out of a plate of cakes, and then Luke and David finished them. David felt pleasantly full for the first time that holiday. Luke must have been nearly bursting.

Astrid continued to smile. And, instead of telling Luke all about her aches and pains, which David very much feared she would, she joked about both their appetites. “Are you sure that number of ice creams will keep you going?” she asked. “It says
Banquets Arranged
here. How about it? Ten courses is a bit mingy, though, isn't it? Luke would starve. Should I just go out and get an ice-cream factory?”

“Why not?” said Luke.

“Well, it's fitting it into the Mini,” said Astrid, and David was amazed at the difference being in a good mood made to her. He only remembered Astrid being this jolly three or four times, some years ago, when he had first come to live with his relations, and that had only been on rare occasions. Yet here she was, her face all pink with laughter, opening her handbag to take out a cigarette and taking a mock-guilty look round the cafe, as if Uncle Bernard might be there disguised as a waitress. Uncle Bernard classed cigarettes below bubble gum.

“Don't tell on me, David,” she said. “Have you got a match?”

David felt in his pocket for his matchbox, and was about to say that Astrid must not tell on him either; but, before he could fetch the box out, Luke leaned forward and snapped his fingers at the end of Astrid's cigarette. There was a flame like a match-flame for a split second, and then the cigarette was alight. Astrid's eyes were wide with amazement beyond it.

“How ever did you do that?” she said through a cloud of smoke.

“A trick I learned ages ago,” Luke said modestly.

“I've never seen it done before!” said Astrid. Then, not unnaturally, she became very interested in Luke and asked who were his parents and where he lived. But Luke—to David's disappointment, because he would have liked to know too—was not telling. “But where
do
you live?” Astrid said cajolingly.

Luke smiled. “At the very tip of South America.”

“Oh, you!” said Astrid.

Before Astrid could ask more, Luke began cajoling in his turn. In two minutes flat, he had persuaded Astrid to buy David comfortable clothes—a thing David knew he could not have done himself if he had talked for a month. Astrid agreed that the neat and comfortable clothes Luke was wearing would be far better for David than Aunt Dot's kind. But she stuck on the thought of Aunt Dot.

“Dot'll kill us both if we come back with those,” she said. She thought about it, while David and Luke exchanged a rather hopeless look. “I tell you what!” Astrid said suddenly. “David, can you keep a secret?”

“Yes,” said David.

“Then I'll get you some jeans and things if you swear to change into the other clothes for meals,” Astrid said daringly.

David swore to do it. It seemed a small price to pay. Since Trubitt's was just across the road from the cafe, only half an hour later David was provided with clothes to suit him and clothes to suit Aunt Dot also. He and Luke, almost identically dressed, came galloping happily down the stairs from Trubitt's top floor, carrying numerous parcels and laughing like conspirators. And Astrid, despite her broken toe, shooting pains and various heads, came galloping after them in high good humor, saying: “Oh, I do love secrets!”

But, alas, the second floor of Trubitt's had a doorway hung with roses and labeled
Miss Ashbury
. Astrid paused.

“I say, you two,” she said, “do you mind being angels and waiting just five minutes?”

David could hardly refuse. Luke, of course, said courteously: “Not at all, Mrs. Price.”

They spent the next half hour staring out of one of the long windows at the cafe opposite, while Astrid hurried about with armfuls of dresses behind them, in and out of the changing rooms.

“You know,” David said to Luke, “you got her into too much of a good mood.”

“I did, didn't I?” Luke agreed, rather mournfully.

“She likes spending money,” David explained, and added, to cheer Luke up: “But I'm awfully grateful.”

“You've no need to be grateful,” Luke said, quite seriously for him. “None at all. You set me free, and it's only right that I should do anything I can for you in return. Honestly.”

“Come off it!” David said, but he said it very uncomfortably, because he was beginning to suspect that it might be true.

Half an hour later still, they had decided that more fat people went into the cafe than thin ones; they had each scored two orange Minis; they had counted the windows in the office-block above the cafe and made them thirty-four each time; and Astrid had still not decided whether to buy six dresses or four dresses and a coat.

“I'm sick of this,” said David. “I wish something interesting would happen.”

“Such as?” said Luke.

“A robbery or a fire or something,” said David. “Anything we could look at. All that happens is people and cars.”