Snakes' Elbows (4 page)

7 Jasper's Job

There was nothing Jasper liked more than money. He thought about it all the time and no matter how much of it he had, still he wanted more. If you had crept into his bedroom in the middle of the night when he was fast asleep and lifted up his eyelid, you would have seen a little pound sign there, as Jasper dreamt about coins and banknotes and gold.

Nobody knew how he made his money. When people asked him what he did he would look them in the eye and say, ‘Actually, I'm a specialist in the area of material supplies concerning international conflict.'

Of course nobody had the foggiest notion what he meant by this. However, because people don't like to admit not knowing things in case it makes them look foolish, they pretended they did.

‘Are you really?' people would reply. ‘My goodness, how interesting.'

Sometimes Jasper would even say, ‘You do know what I mean by the area of material supplies concerning international conflict, don't you?'

‘Of course! Of course!' they cried.

And by this Jasper knew for sure that they didn't.

The day Dandelion's photograph was in the newspaper was to be a busy one for Jasper. He hated getting up early and so he was in a foul temper at breakfast, even worse than usual. ‘You didn't put my milk on my cornflakes for me!' he shouted at his maid.

‘I thought it best to wait,' she said. ‘I thought they would get all soggy on the way up from the kitchen.'

‘They're nice like that!' Jasper bellowed. ‘I like 'em soggy! Don't you even know that by now?'

But the woman didn't know because she had only been working for him for a week, and there were so many things he did and didn't like that it was impossible to remember them all in such a short time. The toast had to be buttered while it was still hot. The milk had to go into the cup before the tea. All the crusts had to be cut off the bread before it got to the table because he hated crusts. Jasper had a million little whims and when he didn't get exactly what he wanted he went wild. It took about two months to learn all his ways, but by that stage the servants had usually had enough. Some of them gave in their notice, but some of them were so afraid of him they simply climbed out of the window in the night and ran away.

Cannibal and Bruiser did nothing to stop them. ‘Lucky thing,' they thought wistfully as they watched the latest maid or butler or valet
climb over the gates at midnight and race off up the street to freedom. ‘Wish it was us.'

Breakfast over, Jasper hopped out of bed and put on a sharp pinstriped suit, and slapped lashings of
eau de cologne
around his chops. It smelt quite delightfully of lemons and pinecones. Jasper had it specially made, for him alone, at mind-boggling expense. In the car on the way to the factory this morning he remembered that the head groundsman, whose job it was to feed the dogs, had done a bunk the day before and Jasper had forgotten to tell any of the other members of staff to look after the animals. ‘None of them will think of it,' he said to himself. ‘They're all too stupid. Oh well, Cannibal and Bruiser are big lads. I'm sure they can look out for themselves.'

The factory was buried deep in the heart of the dark forest at the edge of the town and was surrounded by a series of high fences, each one topped with coils of razor wire. At each of three different gates Jasper had to give a password
and show a special card with his photograph on it, to prove that he was who he said he was. At last his car rumbled to a halt in front of the dark windowless façade of the factory. Even Jasper had to admit it looked a bit sinister.

A glum-looking man was slumped in a little cabin at the front door. ‘Tell Mr Smith I'm here to see him,' Jasper said briskly.

‘He expecting you?'

‘You know as well as I do Mr Smith sees no one unless they make an appointment.'

‘Trick question,' said the glum-looking man. He made a brief telephone call and in no time at all Jasper was sitting in Mr Smith's office.

Mr Smith was as ordinary-looking and unremarkable as his name suggested (although it was rumoured that Mr Smith wasn't his real name). He wore a grey suit with a neat white shirt and a blue tie. The only unusual thing about him was that he had a little gold tooth that could be seen when he smiled (which he didn't often do). He and Jasper greeted each
other warmly. ‘How's business?' Jasper said.

‘Excellent, oh excellent,' exclaimed Mr Smith. ‘We have some wonderful new products that I'm sure you'll be very excited about. Let's begin shall we?'

From the drawer of his desk he took a little thing no bigger than a hazelnut. It was olive green and he set it in the palm of Jasper's hand so that he could inspect it.

‘This is our latest invention,' he said. ‘It's a hand grenade. A hundred times smaller than a conventional grenade, but every bit as powerful. It means that soldiers can carry more of them into battle.'

‘Gosh, that's clever!' Jasper said. ‘What genius thought that one up?'

‘Me, actually,' said Mr Smith. He blushed modestly and gave one of his rare smiles, showing for a moment his little gold tooth. ‘It was my idea but the boys in the backroom have been working for years now to make it a reality.'

‘Wonderful!' Jasper said. ‘How much are they?'

Mr Smith named his price. ‘I'll take four hundred to begin with.'

‘Knew you'd like 'em.' Mr Smith took an invoice form from his desk and started to fill it in. He offered all kinds of guns and bombs, landmines and rockets and explosives to Jasper, who placed his order, saying that he would take the grenades with him, and that everything else could be delivered at a later date.

‘A pleasure to do business with you, as always,' Mr Smith said, showing his little gold tooth again briefly as he carefully poured the hand grenades into the open maw of Jasper's black leather briefcase.

From the factory, Jasper drove straight to the airport. At the top of the flight of steps leading into his plane a stewardess was standing smiling at the passengers. She stopped smiling when she recognised Jasper. ‘Hello, gorgeous,' he said, smacking her hard on the bum as he passed. ‘Hope you've got loads of nice grub on board today or I'll want to know the
reason why.' He was laughing as he said it but it was a strange, unfunny sort of laugh. The stewardess shivered.

By the time he arrived at his destination he was burping and farting from all the free champagne he had drunk during the flight.

‘Good riddance,' murmured the stewardess as he went down the steps of the plane.

Jasper jumped into a taxi. ‘Take me to The Villa,' he said.

The Villa was a big pink house on the edge of the city, and when he arrived there he found it surrounded by police and security men, trying to hold back a huge crowd of journalists and cameramen and photographers.

Jasper paid them no heed and went round to the back, where he found a hole in the fence. Slipping through, he hurried across the gardens towards The Villa itself, crept up to a window and peeped in.

The room Jasper saw was a grand one, with a high painted ceiling, crystal chandeliers
and many mirrors. Two angry-looking men sat opposite each other at a big shiny table. One of them wore a military uniform with oodles of gold braid on his hat, his shoulders and his chest. The other was a middle-aged man in a grey suit who looked rather like Mr Smith except that he had no gold tooth. Between them sat an anxious-looking woman, wringing her hands. Suddenly, the man in the suit banged the table hard with his fists and jumped up.

‘Our lot are going to kill your lot!' he shouted.

The man in the uniform banged his fists on the table and jumped up too. ‘Just you try it!' he roared. ‘Just you try it!'

The two men were now eyeball to eyeball, glaring at each other.

‘Gentlemen, please, this is getting us nowhere,' said the anxious woman in the middle. She turned to the man in the uniform, ‘General, please calm yourself.' And to the man in the
suit, ‘Mr President, I ask you, please don't shout like that. I think we ought to break now and have a cup of tea and a rest. We can meet again in an hour and by that time I hope your tempers will have cooled.'

Dragging their feet and scowling, The President and The General left the room. Jasper, whom no one had noticed, melted away from the window.

About twenty minutes later, he came upon The General sitting alone on a bench in the garden in a deep sulk. ‘I heard all that,' Jasper said softly, sidling up to him. ‘I heard what he said to you, that other man. I wouldn't put up with it if I were you.'

The General turned to look at him. ‘Who are you?' he asked. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I'm a specialist,' Jasper said, ‘in the area of material supplies concerning international conflict.'

‘Are you?' said The General. ‘Are you indeed?'

And unlike most people Jasper knew, he
clearly understood exactly what was meant by this.

From his pocket Jasper took one of the tiny grenades he had got from Mr Smith and held it out on the palm of his hand. He explained what it was to The General, who was very impressed. ‘How much do they cost?'

Jasper named his price, which was five times what he had paid Mr Smith, adding, ‘I can let you have two hundred of them here and now, and I can get you loads of other stuff too: guns, explosives, anything you want.'

‘Done deal,' said The General, who placed his order, paid Jasper and went off happy with his bag of grenades.

But what would The General have said had he known that five minutes after they parted, Jasper was sitting on a bench elsewhere in the garden with The President, having exactly the same conversation and selling him the other two hundred grenades?

As The General and The President went back
into The Villa to meet again, Jasper slipped out through the hole in the fence and hailed a passing taxi. ‘Take me to the airport.' As he was going up the steps of the plane, already he could hear the first explosions.

Tired after his long day, he slept the whole way home. All the stewardesses were pleased about this, because although he was snoring so loudly you could hear him even over the engines of the plane, it was still better than having him awake and pestering them all the time.

Night had fallen by the time he got back to his own country, and by now he was grumpy. ‘Everything all right?' he asked the butler when he arrived back at the house.

‘Not really, Sir,' the butler said. ‘The butcher came round with a big bill for some steaks Cannibal and Bruiser stole from his shop this afternoon.'

‘If he thinks I'm going to pay he can think again. He should look after his meat, not leave
it lying around where the dogs can get at it.'

By the time the maid brought his cocoa up to his room, Jasper was already in his blue and white striped pyjamas and tucked up in bed. It was the same maid who had brought him his cornflakes that morning and she was exhausted because she had been working hard all day. While Jasper was sitting in the plane drinking champagne she had been beating carpets and scrubbing floors.

‘And what,' he said, pointing to three biscuits beside his cup, ‘are those things?'

‘Biscuits, Sir. Chocolate fingers.'

‘I can see that,' Jasper thundered. ‘I'm not stupid, woman. But don't you know that I only ever have chocolate fingers with my afternoon tea? I have to have malted milk biscuits with my cocoa every night, pink wafers with my elevenses and jammy dodgers after my lunch except for Saturdays, when I have Jaffa cakes. Have you got that?'

‘I think so.'

‘HAVE YOU GOT THAT?!!!'

‘Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.' The woman was trying hard not to cry. ‘I suppose,' she thought to herself, ‘I could simply climb out of the window in the middle of the night and run away.'

After she had left the room Jasper drank his cocoa and ate his biscuits, even if they
were
chocolate fingers. Then he turned on the radio. ‘Good evening. Here is the news. Reports are coming in that a horrible war has broken out between…'

‘Oh snakes' elbows! Who cares!' Jasper said crossly, and he turned the radio off again. He switched the light out and curled up in his bed.

And within five minutes Jasper was fast asleep, dreaming about money, about coins and banknotes and gold.

8 Barney at Home

Even though his house was enormous, Barney lived in only one room, on the top floor at the extreme right of the building. ‘Why did you buy such a big place?' Wilf asked him.

‘The man in the estate agent's told me it was all they had left.'

‘They saw you coming,' said Wilf, shaking his head. He now lived in a room beside the kitchen on the ground floor, at the extreme left of the building. The first time he saw Barney's room he had thought it very odd, the strangest place he had ever seen in his whole life. And in truth, it was an unusual room.

Just under the window was Barney's little bed. Beside it was the wicker basket in which Dandelion slept (although it was not unknown for her to climb out of this in the middle of the night and snuggle in beside Barney until morning came). There was the table and chair at which Barney ate his meals (although it was not unknown for Wilf to eat with him and so there was an extra chair). There was the cosy sofa on which he sat to listen to music or to read, for there was also a bookcase crammed with good books. On the wall was the painting of the lady with a yellow butterfly balanced on the tip of her finger. There was a miniature tree growing in a shallow pot. But what made the room remarkable was that slap bang in the middle of it, taking up all the spare space, was a huge black grand piano with its lid propped open. Even though he no longer gave concerts, Barney still spent hours and hours every day playing the piano. It was his greatest happiness in life.

Every afternoon now at half past four, Barney and Wilf had milk and cherry buns together and talked about things.

‘Why don't you put the piano in another room?' Wilf asked one day as he poured the milk.

‘I like to be near it all the time,' Barney said. If he woke in the night, it comforted him to see the piano looming there in the darkness.

‘And the little tree: where did you get that?'

‘A lady in Japan gave it to me.'

He told Wilf that the lady's name was O-Haru. She wrote poems using a brush and ink rather than a pen. She grew miniature trees, Barney said, she had a whole perfect forest of them. In the autumn their leaves turned gold and yellow and red. In the springtime tiny buds appeared, then tiny leaves and blossoms. O-Haru lived in a house with paper walls and had a garden in which there were no flowers, only stones and fine raked sand.

Wilf, who had never been out of Woodford in his life, listened to all of this with astonishment. Some of the things Barney spoke of were so extraordinary that at first Wilf wondered if he was making it all up, just to tease him. But then as he got to know him better he realised that Barney would never do such a thing.

‘Were you always as shy as you are now?' Wilf asked. ‘Were you one of those little boys who wouldn't sing a song at a party unless you were hiding behind the door so that no one would know it was you, even if they did know because they saw you going behind the door in the first place?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then how did you manage to give all those concerts in front of hundreds and thousands of people?'

‘Oh it was awful, Wilf!' Barney exclaimed. ‘I can't tell you how terrible it was, at least to begin with.'

He went on to describe how scared he used
to be when he was little, standing in the wings in his best suit waiting to go on. He could sense the audience out there on the far side of the footlights, snuffling and whispering like a thousand-headed monster. Barney knew that as soon as he put his toes on the stage everyone would start to clap their hands and he hated that too. The noise frightened him. Out there in the middle of the stage in a pool of bright light he could see his beloved piano. He knew that if only he could get to it and start to play, then everything would be all right. He would be happy and feel safe. But getting from the wings to the piano was like walking along the edge of a high cliff, with an angry sea crashing on the rocks below and thinking that at any moment you might fall in.

‘But then,' he went on, ‘my mother found a magic curtain. Every night before a concert she hung it up at the edge of the stage. It was invisible, but I knew it was there. It meant that I could see the audience, but they couldn't
see me. I felt that I was completely on my own and so walking over to my piano wasn't a problem.'

‘Do you still have the curtain?' Wilf asked, and Barney gave a strange little smile.

‘No,' he said. ‘I grew up and then I grew old and my mother wasn't there any more. But by then I understood how the magic curtain worked. I didn't need it any longer. I was able to walk across the stage alone. But I always loved the end of a concert.'

‘Because it was over?'

‘Because I knew I'd made the people happy,' Barney said. ‘When I heard the applause at the end, I knew that I'd given them something special, something wonderful that they would remember for the rest of their lives. And that made me very happy.'

‘You're still very shy,' Wilf remarked.

‘Yes,' said Barney, ‘I suppose I am. But O-Haru is even shyer.'

Wilf imagined them sitting side by side,
silent and blushing but completely happy in a forest of miniature trees, or in a garden in which there were no flowers, only stones and fine raked sand.

Later the same day, as darkness fell, it began to rain. A man on his way home from work stood under a chestnut tree opposite Barney's house to take shelter. As he waited there, he noticed that in all of the great house only two lights were lit, one on the top floor at the extreme right of the building and one on the ground floor at the extreme left.

Just at that moment a young woman appeared beside him. ‘Has it started yet?' she asked, peering anxiously at the house from under her dripping umbrella.

‘Has what started?'

‘The lights,' she said. ‘The switching on of the lights. Look, look, it's beginning now!'

As she spoke, the window to the left of the one at the top right of the house also lit up
and then the window to the left again, and then the one beside that. Slowly the yellow light seemed to flow along the whole of the top floor of the building in a steady wave from right to left, until all the windows were lit. ‘It happens at this time every night,' the woman said breathlessly. ‘I always try to get here in time to see it because it's such a beautiful thing.'

The man agreed. There was something mysterious and fascinating in what was happening. By now a window had been lit up on the extreme left of the floor below the one that was already completely illuminated, and now the yellow light was again flowing steadily, only this time left to right.

‘They say he's weird, and I read in the
Woodford Trumpet
that he's very mean.'

The young woman shrugged. ‘You can't believe everything it says in the papers.'

Now the light was flowing along a third floor. They stood watching in silence until finally it reached the last window in the house,
on the extreme left on the ground floor, the window that had been lit up all along. The whole huge house was now ablaze with light against the darkening sky. ‘It is beautiful,' the man admitted.

‘It's magnificent.'

‘It looks like an ocean liner,' he said, ‘out at sea in the middle of the night.'

But the woman said that it reminded her of that moment at a party when all the lights have been put out and the birthday cake is carried into the blackness of the room. ‘And all the small soft flames flicker on the candles and then everyone begins to sing.'

The house remained lit up for some ten or fifteen minutes and the woman and man stood there in the shadow of the great tree, simply looking at it. And then all of a sudden, the light in the extreme bottom left-hand window went out. Then the light in the window beside that was also extinguished, and then the window beside that. Now it was darkness rather than
light that was flowing along from one window to the next, and as it did the house seemed to disappear from the bottom up.

‘How strange it is,' the woman said softly. ‘How strange and how lovely.'

Only the top floor of the house was lit now and gradually darkness overcame that too, in a wave from left to right. Eventually a light was burning in only one window of the great house: the window on the extreme right of the top floor of the building. It remained lit for some five or ten minutes and when all of a sudden it went out, the whole building disappeared.

‘And you say this happens every night?' the man asked the woman.

‘Every night,' she replied. ‘Sometimes, like tonight, it happens very smoothly. Then on other occasions the light might suddenly stop flowing for ten minutes or more before beginning again.'

‘Why?'

The woman shook her head. ‘I have no idea,'
she said, ‘absolutely no idea whatsoever. It's all a complete mystery.'

Suddenly the man and woman realised that they were standing there in the darkness together under the woman's umbrella.

‘I suppose I'd best be off,' said the man.

‘Me too.'

‘Goodnight then.'

‘Goodnight.'

Even though they didn't know each other it had been wonderful to watch the strange light show in each other's company. They felt shy and they blushed but they were completely happy too, like Barney and O-Haru in the miniature forest or the garden where there were no flowers, only stones and fine raked sand.