Noah Barleywater Runs Away (6 page)

‘But I haven’t introduced myself,’ said the old man a moment later, extending his hand and offering the boy his name.

‘Noah Barleywater,’ said Noah in reply.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Noah Barleywater,’ said the old man, smiling a little.

The boy was about to say the same thing and opened his mouth, but then closed it almost immediately, for a wooden fly had been buzzing around his head just waiting for an opportunity to
swoop inside. He remained silent for a few moments, but finally, after staring at the old man for so long he thought he could hear his own hair starting to grow, Noah searched his brain and found his next question hiding away just over his left ear.

‘What are you making?’ he asked, looking at the piece of wood the old man had picked up again and was chiselling away at even as they spoke, small flakes of wood falling at his feet and being gathered up and carried away by a wooden brush and pan that moved across the floor with the grace of a pair of ballroom dancers.

‘It looks like some sort of rabbit, doesn’t it?’ said the old man, holding it up, and sure enough, it did look like a rabbit. With very large ears and a fine set of wooden whiskers. ‘It wasn’t what I was intending to make, but there we are,’ he added with a sigh. ‘It happens every time. I start out with one idea in mind and it ends up as something else entirely.’

‘Why, what were you intending to make?’ asked Noah.

‘Ah,’ said the old man, smiling a little and then whistling a little tune to himself, ‘I’m not sure you’d believe me if I said.’

‘Oh, I probably would,’ said Noah quickly. ‘My mother says I believe everything I’m told and that’s why I get into so much trouble.’

‘Are you sure you want to know?’ asked the old man.

‘Please tell me,’ said Noah, intrigued now.

‘You’re not a gossip, are you?’ he asked. ‘You won’t go around telling people?’

‘No, of course not,’ said Noah. ‘I won’t tell a single person.’

The old man smiled and seemed to consider it. ‘I wonder if I can trust you,’ he said quietly. ‘What do you think? Are you a trustworthy little boy, Noah Barleywater?’

Noah didn’t have an opportunity to tell the old man just how trustworthy he was, for just at that moment a clock that was standing on the counter next to him began to make some very strange sounds indeed. At first it was just a sort of quiet moaning, as if the clock wasn’t feeling very well and wanted to go straight to bed and hide under the blankets until the pain passed. Then silence. Then the moaning transformed itself into a sort of
chugga-chugga-chugga
sound before settling into a series of curious and rather embarrassing rumbles, as if all the internal sprockets and springs were having a tremendous argument with each other and it could end in violence at any moment.

‘Oh dear me,’ said the old man, turning round and glancing at it. ‘How embarrassing! You’ll have to forgive me.’

‘Forgive
you
?’ asked Noah, surprised. ‘But it’s the clock that’s making the noises.’

At that, the clock issued an offended squeak
and Noah started to giggle, putting his hand over his mouth as he did so. The noises reminded him of Charlie Charlton, whose stomach always started to make the strangest sounds when it was coming up to lunch time, and that was the cue for Miss Bright to look at her watch and say, ‘Oh my! Is it that time already? Time for lunch!’

But just as Noah started to laugh, the part of him that had told him he should run away from home made him hesitate and he felt guilty for even smiling. He hadn’t laughed in such a long time, he felt like a hedgehog must feel after he’s emerged from months of hibernation and isn’t entirely sure whether the things that came naturally to him were things that he was supposed to be doing at all. Noah shook his head quickly, throwing the laugh out of his mouth and over into the corner of the toy shop, where it landed on a pile of wooden bricks and wouldn’t be discovered again until late the following winter.

‘That’s a very unusual clock,’ he said, leaning down to inspect it closer. As he did so, the second hand immediately stopped turning, and only when he stepped back and looked away did it start to move again, going faster now so that it could catch up with where it was supposed to be.

‘Best not to stare,’ said the old man, nodding wisely. ‘Alexander doesn’t like it. It puts him off his stride.’

‘Alexander?’ asked Noah, looking around and
expecting to see someone else in the shop whom he hadn’t noticed before. ‘Who’s Alexander?’

‘Alexander is my clock,’ said the old man. ‘And he’s quite self-conscious – which is a little surprising really, for I have found that clocks tend to be a bunch of show-offs for the most part, always on the move, always ticking away as if their lives depended on it. But not Alexander. He’d rather we didn’t take any notice of him at all, to be honest. He has quite a temper. He’s Russian, you see, and they’re a funny lot. I picked him up in St Petersburg, at the Winter Palace of the Russian Tsar. Quite a few years ago now, of course, but he still works a treat, especially if you talk politics or religion with him, because that keeps him very tightly wound.’

‘Well, I didn’t mean to offend him,’ said Noah, who didn’t know what to think about this. ‘But he was making some funny noises, that’s all.’

‘Ah, but that’s because it’s lunch time,’ said the old man, clapping his hands together in delight. ‘He reminds me by pretending that his stomach is rumbling. It’s his little joke. The Russians are quite hilarious, don’t you find?’

‘But clocks don’t have stomachs,’ said Noah, sounding puzzled now.

‘They don’t?’

‘No. They have pendulums or balance wheels. And something called an oscillator, which vibrates and keeps the whole thing running correctly. My Uncle Teddy gave me a present for my last birthday,
a box set called “Make Your Own Clock in Twenty-Four Hours”. I spent two weeks trying to put it together.’

‘Oh, really? And how did that turn out?’

‘Not well. It’s only right twice a day, and sometimes not even that often.’

‘I see,’ said the old man. ‘But still, you seem to know a lot about them.’

‘Yes, I like scientific things,’ explained Noah. ‘I might be an astronomer one day. It’s one of the professions I’m considering.’

‘Well, I’ll have to take your word for it,’ said the old man. ‘I always assumed it was his stomach but perhaps I was wrong. Anyway, whatever the truth of the matter, it’s time for lunch.’

‘I thought you’d already had your lunch,’ said Noah, whose heart was lifting a little at the idea of food. It had been so long since he had eaten, he was worried he might pass out altogether.

‘I had a little snack, that was all,’ said the old man. ‘Some leftover chicken. And a garden salad. And a few sausages that might have gone off if I hadn’t eaten them today. And a cheese sandwich. And a slice of cake afterwards for a sugar kick. But nothing that you could call a substantial meal. Anyway, I expect you’re hungry, aren’t you? You left home very early, after all.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Noah in surprise.

‘Why, by the condition of your shoes, of course,’ he replied.

‘My shoes?’ said Noah, looking down at his feet and seeing nothing unusual there. ‘How on earth can you tell what time I left home by my shoes?’

‘Look at the soles,’ said the old man. ‘They’re still a little wet and there are small blades of grass stuck to them, although they’re beginning to dry now and are flaking off all over my floor. It means you must have been walking through grass not long after the dew had fallen.’

‘Oh,’ said Noah, considering this. ‘Of course. I’d never have thought of that.’

‘When you’ve gone through as many pairs of shoes as I have, you tend to take an interest in other people’s footwear,’ said the old man. ‘It’s a little quirk of mine, that’s all. A harmless one, I hope. Anyway, that being the case, perhaps you’d like to eat something? I don’t have much in but—’

‘I’d love to,’ said Noah quickly, his face lighting up. ‘I haven’t had anything to eat all day.’

‘Really? Don’t they feed you at your house then?’

‘They do,’ he replied after a slight hesitation. ‘Only, the thing is, I left home before breakfast.’

‘And why would you do that?’

‘Well, there was nothing in the house,’ said Noah, lying.

The old man stared at Noah as if he didn’t believe a word of it, and the boy felt his face begin to grow red. He looked away and caught the eye of one of the puppets on the wall, who immediately
turned his own head away, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of a boy who told lies before lunch.

‘Well, if you’re starving,’ said the old man finally, ‘I suppose I’d better feed you. Why don’t you follow me upstairs? I’m sure I can find something up there that you’ll enjoy.’

He walked towards one of the corners of the shop, extending his right hand before him, and the moment he did so, a handle appeared in the wall and he twisted it, opening a door which led immediately to the foot of an ascending staircase. Noah’s mouth fell open in surprise – he was sure that door hadn’t been there a moment before – and he looked from it to the old man, and back to it, and back to the old man, and back to it again. In fact, this could have gone on for much longer if the old man hadn’t put a stop to the madness.

‘Well?’ he asked, turning round. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

Noah hesitated for only a moment. From as far back as he could remember he had been told that it was a foolish boy who went into strange corridors with people he didn’t know, especially when no one knew that he was there in the first place. His father had always told him that the world was a dangerous place, although his mother said he shouldn’t frighten the boy and he just had to remember that not everyone who appeared to be nice really was.

‘You seem hesitant,’ said the old man quietly, as if he was reading the boy’s mind. ‘You’re right to
be. But I assure you, there’s nothing to worry about here. Not even my cooking. I passed through Paris many times when I was a younger man and learned a few tips from one of the greatest chefs of his day, and if I say so myself, I can scramble an egg with the best of them.’

Noah wasn’t entirely sure whether he was doing the right thing or not, but the rumblings of his own stomach echoed those of the clock, which was now staring at him with murderous intent, tapping a foot impatiently on the counter. Overwhelmed by hunger, he nodded quickly and ran forward, following the old man through the open door.

Inside, he found himself standing at the foot of a very narrow staircase and, like the puppets in the shop, the steps and the walls were all made of wood. There was a series of intricate carvings along the handrail and he touched them with his fingers, enjoying the sensation of the grooves against his skin. They were very even, as if they had been cut carefully into the wood and then smoothed down with a plane to prevent any accidental splinters. To Noah’s surprise, the staircase did not go directly up, as it did in his own house, but around in circles, so he could barely see the old man as he turned in front of him, for they were only within sight of each other for a couple of steps at a time.

They climbed and climbed, going round and round and round, until Noah began to wonder just how high they could possibly go. From the outside,
it hadn’t looked as if there was more than one storey on top of the shop itself, but it seemed to be going on and on interminably.

‘There’s an awful lot of stairs to climb,’ said Noah, his voice wavering a little as he tried to catch his breath. ‘Don’t you get tired walking up and down them every day?’

‘More tired than I used to, certainly,’ admitted the old man. ‘Of course, when I was younger I could run up and down these stairs a thousand times a day and never worry about it. But things are different now. It takes me a lot longer to do everything. There are two hundred and ninety-six steps, actually. Or two hundred and ninety-four. The exact same number as there are in the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I don’t know if you’ve been counting.’

‘I haven’t,’ said Noah. ‘But which is it, two hundred and ninety-six or two hundred and ninety-four?’

‘Well, both actually,’ said the old man. ‘There are two fewer steps on the north-facing staircase than there are on the south-facing, so it really depends on how you make your approach. You’ve been to Italy, I presume?’

‘Oh no,’ said Noah, shaking his head. ‘No, I’ve never been anywhere. In fact, this is the furthest I’ve ever been away from home.’

‘I spent some very happy times in Italy,’ replied the old man wistfully. ‘I actually lived quite near Pisa for a time, and every morning I would race to the
tower and run up and down the steps to keep fit. Happy memories!’

‘You seem to have been to a lot of places,’ remarked Noah.

‘Yes, well, I enjoyed travelling very much when I was young. I couldn’t keep my legs still. It’s all different now, of course.’ He turned round and looked at the boy. ‘But I think you’re getting tired of climbing, aren’t you?’

‘A little,’ admitted Noah.

‘Well, then,’ said the old man, ‘maybe we should stop here.’