Noah Barleywater Runs Away (7 page)

The moment he said this, Noah heard the sound of heavy footsteps running up the stairs behind him and he held his breath nervously, for he was sure that no one else had been downstairs. He turned round, half afraid of who or what might appear, and then gasped, pressing himself against the handrail as the door through which they had left the ground floor came running past him, puffing and panting, its cheeks red with embarrassment.

‘Apologies, apologies all,’ said the door, pressing itself firmly into the wall in front of him. ‘I got talking to the clock and quite lost track of time. He never stops when he gets going, does he?’

‘That’s quite all right, Henry,’ said the old man, reaching out and twisting his handle. ‘I’m afraid I can’t afford a second door at the moment,’ he added, turning and looking back at Noah with an apologetic smile. ‘So I have to make do with just the
one. It’s terribly embarrassing, but business has been rather slow these past few decades.’

Noah didn’t know what to say to this, and stood on the staircase for rather a long time before shaking himself out of his surprise and staring through Henry into a small kitchen, which was both clean and messy at the same time, if such a thing is possible. Looking down at the floor, however, he was astonished to see that there were only about a third as many floorboards as were needed, great gaps appearing between each one, large enough to swallow an eight-year-old boy, and he peered through them but could see nothing below except a great darkness. This was quite unexpected as there had been nothing untoward about the ceiling on the ground floor.

‘Well, shall we go in?’ asked the old man, stepping back and allowing the boy to enter first, manners being crucial to him.

‘But the floor,’ gasped Noah. ‘If I walk in there, I’ll fall right through.’

‘Ah yes,’ said the old man. ‘I should have explained. I had to use some of the floorboards last year when I temporarily ran out of wood for the fire. They weren’t happy about it, I don’t mind admitting, and it wasn’t my finest moment. But anyway, the rest of them make up for the deficiency. Watch this.’

Noah opened his eyes wide as the old man walked into the kitchen without a care in the world,
and as he did so, the floorboards all jumped into action, popping up and bouncing forward with each step so the gaps kept changing but the old man never fell through, for each floorboard slotted into position beneath his feet just in time for him to tread upon it.

‘How extraordinary,’ said Noah, shaking his head in surprise and deciding to try it for himself. This time, the floorboards did the same thing – jumped out of every place and landed under his feet before he could fall through to the darkness below – but they seemed noisier now, and Noah was sure he could hear the sounds of gasping breath.

‘They’re not used to two people,’ explained the old man. ‘They’ll probably tire more quickly. We should probably go easy on them. Now – food, I think!’

A range of different types of food was laid out on the counter and Noah walked carefully towards them, licking his lips and feeling his mouth begin to salivate already, thinking just how delighted the hungry donkey would have been if he had been invited in to share it with them.

‘Please,’ said the old man, indicating the spread. ‘Help yourself. Just take a plate and fill it with whatever you want. If there’s not enough here, I’m sure I can find some—’

‘No, no,’ said the boy quickly. ‘There’s more than enough. Thank you very much, sir.’ He felt a sudden rush of affection for his host, and a feeling
of gratitude for his kindness. He filled a plate with cold meat, coleslaw, a bread roll, a chunk of Old Amsterdam cheese, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, some sausages, a strip of bacon, a little horseradish, and decided that would probably do for starters. A bunch of very juicy-looking oranges were squeezing themselves into a pitcher at the end of the counter and he waited for them to finish before pouring himself a glass.

‘Well, don’t say thank you, whatever you do,’ snapped one of the oranges, now pressed into an exhausted-looking, squashed rind and lying in a bundle on the counter as it glared at the boy.

‘Thank you,’ said Noah, stepping away nervously. A wooden teddy bear with white hair falling into his eyes was sitting on the window seat, wearing a bright red wooden bow tie, and Noah considered sitting next to him to eat his food, but the bear let loose a low growl as he walked towards him and Noah stopped in his tracks, unsure what he should do next.

‘Take a seat over here, my boy,’ said the old man, indicating one of the two chairs that stood on either side of the kitchen table. He hesitated for a moment before picking up a fresh piece of wood and a thicker chisel with a sharper edge to it than the one he had been using downstairs, and started to chip away, carefully at first and then with growing confidence. ‘Might as well have another go at this,’ he said with a smile.

‘What are you carving now?’ asked Noah. ‘Another rabbit?’

‘I hope not,’ he replied. ‘Although as it never turns out the way I planned, who knows what will appear out of the wood? But no harm in trying again.’ He settled into the other chair and put his hand to the base of his spine as he did so. ‘Bad back,’ he muttered when he saw the boy watching him. ‘One of the drawbacks of growing old. I’ve got no one to blame but myself though. Should have stayed as I was. I suppose you think everybody grows old and I have no right to complain.’

‘No,’ said Noah, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘No, I don’t think that for a moment. Not everyone grows old at all.’

The old man stared at him, thinking about the boy’s words, but didn’t ask any further questions. ‘Eat,’ he said after a moment, pointing at the plate that sat fully loaded in front of the boy. ‘Eat, before it gets hot.’

Noah didn’t wolf down his lunch, despite his hunger, as his mother always said he should have consideration for the other diners and not eat like a pig who hadn’t been fed in a month. Instead he chewed his food quietly and slowly, enjoying every mouthful of the spread, which was as delicious as any food he had ever tasted.

‘I used to have an appetite like yours once,’ said the old man. ‘Not any more though. If I have a dozen or so meals a day now, that’s generally
enough for me.’

‘A dozen or so?’ asked the boy, astonished. ‘At home we only ever have three. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.’

‘Oh dear,’ said the old man. ‘That doesn’t sound right at all. Doesn’t your wife know how to cook then?’

‘My wife?’ asked Noah, bursting out laughing. ‘But I don’t have a wife.’

‘Don’t you? And why is that? You seem like a pleasant enough sort of chap. You’re easy enough on the eye. You don’t smell too bad. Well,’ he added, sniffing the air and considering this, ‘actually, now that I mention it—’

‘But I’m only eight,’ said Noah. ‘You can’t get married at eight! Not that I’d want to anyway.’

‘Really?’ asked the old man. ‘And why ever not, might I ask?’

Noah thought about it. ‘Well, maybe when I’m
very
old I’ll get married,’ he said finally. ‘Like when I’m twenty-five. There’s a girl in my class, Sarah Skinny, who’s my fourth best friend, and I expect we’ll get married one day, but not for a long time yet.’ He looked around and considered how small this kitchen was and how it appeared to be designed for only one. ‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you married?’

‘Oh no,’ said the old man, shaking his head. ‘No, I never met the right girl.’

‘You live here alone then?’

‘
Yes. Although I have plenty of company. Alexander and Henry, for example, whom you met.’

‘The clock and the door?’ asked Noah.

‘Yes. And there are others. Many others. I’ve lost track really. And I have my puppets, of course.’

Noah nodded and continued to eat his lunch. ‘This is very good,’ he said, his mouth filled with food. ‘Sorry,’ he added, giggling a little.

‘It’s all right,’ said the old man, holding the wood away from him now and blowing the dust off it. He examined it, appeared pleased by what he saw, and carried on, his chisel making careful and precise incisions in the wood. ‘There’s nothing quite as satisfying as watching a hungry boy eat,’ he remarked. ‘So if you have no wife, I expect you live alone too?’

Noah shook his head. ‘No, I live with my family,’ he said, his fork stopping in mid-air for a moment as he thought about them. ‘Or rather, I
used
to live with them,’ he said, correcting himself. ‘Before I left, that is.’

‘You don’t live there any more?’

‘No, I left this morning. I’m off to see the world and have adventures.’

‘Ah, there is nothing quite like a good adventure,’ said the old man, smiling. ‘I once went to Holland for the weekend and stayed for a year after getting involved in a plot to overthrow the government.’

‘
I can’t imagine I’d get involved with anything like that,’ said Noah, who wasn’t in the least bit political.

‘And your parents were happy for you to leave home?’

Noah said nothing for a long time and then looked down at his plate, his face clouding over, the food before him suddenly seeming far less appetizing than it had a moment before.

‘You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,’ said the old man. ‘I do know a little of what it’s like to be eight years old, you know. After all, I was eight myself once.’

Noah thought about it for a moment. The man was so old, he was surprised he could even remember what it was like to be his age.

‘Did you ever run away from home when you were eight?’ he asked, looking up and swallowing hard, for there was something he didn’t want to think about because if he did, he would only become upset. He had been trying not to think about it ever since he woke up that morning, but it had a terrible habit of reappearing in his toes and running all the way along his ankles and up his legs and into his back and racing up into his brain and then sending pictures to his eyes that he didn’t want to see.

‘I did a lot of things when I was a boy,’ said the old man. ‘And not all of them were very sensible.’

Noah quite liked the idea of doing things that
weren’t very sensible and was going to ask the old man about them, but before he could he noticed a large wooden box sitting on the floor next to his feet. He was a little surprised he hadn’t seen it when he had first sat down, for it was very ornate and looked like the sort of antique his mother always picked up and examined in shops and wished she could buy for their house. It had a carving of a puppet on the top, one that was quite unlike the puppets on the walls downstairs, and Noah bent down to examine it closer.

‘Did you make this?’ he asked, looking up for a moment, and the old man shook his head.

‘Oh no,’ he replied. ‘No, not me. I’m not quite as good a craftsman as that. The detailing, as you can see, is quite superb.’

‘It’s wonderful,’ said the boy, reaching a hand down and tracing the lines of the carving with his fingers. The puppet on the top of the box seemed like a very cheerful fellow. He had a long, cylindrical body and a pointed cap on his head. His legs were remarkably skinny and he didn’t look as if he could stand on them for very long without collapsing entirely.

‘You’d be surprised,’ said the old man, as if he could read the boy’s mind. ‘If you use a very old tree to carve the puppets, then the wood is so strong it can last for an eternity if it’s treated right. That puppet could probably run to the ends of the earth and back and it would only need a fresh coat of
varnish at the end of it.’

‘If you didn’t make the box,’ asked Noah, ‘then who did?’

‘My father,’ replied the old man. ‘A long time ago now. I haven’t looked inside it for many years. There are a lot of memories in there, and sometimes it can be quite difficult to face the mementoes of the past. Even to glance at them can make you very sad. Or regretful.’

All this only served to make Noah even more intrigued by the contents of the box and he looked down at it, biting his lip, then looked up again, desperate to know what was inside.

‘Can I open it?’ he asked after a moment, deciding that the simplest thing was to ask the question straight out. ‘Can I see what’s inside?’

The old man opened his mouth to reply but then looked away, his expression confused, as if he wasn’t sure whether he wanted his box of memories to be released to the world. Not wanting to disturb his host while he was deciding, Noah didn’t say a word until the old man looked back and smiled, nodding his head a little as he did so.

‘If you like,’ he said quietly. ‘Only take a care with what you find in there. Those things are very precious to me.’

Noah nodded enthusiastically and reached down to lift the box onto the table before him. He noticed now that the sides displayed carvings of the same puppet that was depicted on the top,
surrounded by foreign-looking buildings that he was sure he had seen in his geography books at school. One of them looked a bit like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, another like the Colosseum in Rome. He placed both hands at the sides of the lid and raised it carefully, holding his breath as he did so, convinced he was going to find something extraordinary inside.

But to his great disappointment, all it contained was more puppets.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ asked the old man. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Well, I thought there might be photographs perhaps,’ said Noah. ‘I quite like photographs. Or old letters. But it’s just more puppets. Like the ones downstairs. They’re very nice, of course,’ he added, not wanting to sound rude as he picked one out and examined it carefully. ‘Only I thought there might be something different in here, that’s all.’

‘Ah, but these are very different,’ replied the old man, smiling at him. ‘The puppets downstairs, well, they were all carved by me. But these are the last remaining puppets that my father carved. They’re very precious to me. Like the great tree outside, they put me in mind of him. They’re all I have left of him.’

‘Well, they
are
very interesting, I suppose,’ said Noah, growing a little more intrigued now. ‘But
don’t you want to put them downstairs with all the other ones?’

‘No, I couldn’t do that,’ said the old man. ‘My father wouldn’t have wanted it. Each one tells a story, you see. A very particular story. So they have to be kept together.’