Wild Robert, Page 2

  And, as the grey edge passed across the teenagers, each of them changed. The boys lost their shirts and jackets and grew brown fur instead of trousers. The girls grew tousled long hair and even more tousled long dresses, with ivy leaves wound round them. The cans they were holding became metal goblets. All of them shouted at once:

  “IO!”

  After that the girls screamed and ran and the boys ran after them on twinkling little hooves. Before Heather had come out of standing sideways, they were chasing madly through the wood, crying out to one another in a strange language.

  As their screams and shouts faded into the distance, Robert Toller turned to Heather with a pleased smile, like a small boy who has got his own way. “There. Now you know I can indeed use the magic art,” he said. “Those will romp until sundown releases them.”

  “Yes, but—” said Heather. She wanted to say all sorts of things, but all she could manage was, “Why did you do that?”

  Robert seemed surprised. “I told you,” he said. “This temple was where my father used to meet in secret with my mother, in the days before they were married. See, I will show you.” He strode across the beautifully mown grass, past the fallen statue, to where the slender white pillars gathered into a shape that was almost like a house. There was a block of stone there, embedded in the turf, which looked as if it had once been part of a roof above the pillars. Maybe it had once had carvings on it. At any rate, Heather could see some sort of pattern on the side of it, worn with age and covered with green mildew.

  “See,” Robert said, and smoothed his hand across the old worn shapes.

  It was as if his hand brought the stone into focus. It became clear and white and new. The carving was a sort of figure-eight shape that looked as if it was intended to be a piece of rope with a capital letter carved on either side of it. The letter on the left was a large plain F. The one on the right was a curlier E.

  “They carved their initials here,” Robert said, “together with a true-love knot. Francis was my father’s name. My mother was called Eglantine.”

  He was looking beyond the stone into the square of green turf enclosed by the white pillars. Heather looked there too and, just for an instant, it seemed to her that there were two people there, walking gladly towards one another as if they had not seen each other for a very long time. The man was taller and burlier than Robert, though his hair was the same colour. The woman was small – tiny – and she seemed all floating: floating hair, floating clothes. Heather only saw them for the length of time it took them each to stretch an arm out to the other. Then she was not sure she had seen them at all. She looked at Robert to ask him, but he had turned away, smiling fiercely, and the stone was blurred and green again.

  “Let us sit on this stone,” he said. “There are savoury smells from that bag you carry that remind me I have not eaten for more than three centuries.”

  “It’s only tuna fish,” said Heather.

  Chapter Three

  Robert Toller seemed so hungry that Heather took one sandwich herself and let him have all the rest. He kept saying it was the best food he had ever eaten – which made Heather feel a bit silly, because it was only tuna fish, after all. While he was wolfing the sandwiches down, Heather kept hearing distant shouts and yells from the teenagers in the wood. She told herself that they had deserved what happened to them, but this did not stop her feeling quite uncomfortable about it. She decided she liked Robert, and she knew she was sorry for him, waking up to find so much time had passed, but she was still uncomfortable.

  To take her mind off it, she said, “People in the village say there was some treasure buried with you.”

  That was an unwise thing to say. Robert gave her a sideways look. “They still say that, do they?” Heather could tell he had gone very cautious. She tried to say that it was just something she had heard, and not important, but he interrupted her with a laugh. It was the hurt laugh again, Heather saw. “And who am I to say what men will call a treasure?” he said. Then he jumped up briskly and said, “Eating fish is dry work. I could do with some fruit.”

  “There are strawberries and redcurrants ripe in the kitchen garden,” Heather said, “but they’re supposed to be for sale. I don’t think Mr McManus will let us have any.”

  “McManus?” Robert said. “That was a name you said when you called me up. What right has he to sell fruit from Castlemaine?”

  “He’s the gardener,” Heather explained. “The money from the fruit helps pay for the house.”

  “I see,” said Robert. He said it very grimly, as if Heather had explained something quite different. Before she could say any more, he was striding to the door in the walled garden.

  She caught up when Robert stopped, right in the middle, staring round at the rose arches, and the rose bushes, and the roses trained up the walls. “What is this?” he said. “Not a herb in sight! It is all roses!”

  Heather understood how strange things must be to him. She said kindly, “Dad told me they made this into a rose garden about a hundred years ago. The kitchen garden’s through that door in the wall over there.”

  “Then it has changed about,” Robert said. “The roses used to be through there.” He strode towards the door. On the way to it he passed several pairs of the usual elderly people. Heather was afraid he was going to ask them what they were doing there, but he walked straight past them, giving each pair a cool nod, as if in his day you expected to see people about. The elderly people stared a bit, but they nodded back politely. All the same, Heather was relieved when they reached the kitchen garden and went through the door marked NO ADMITTANCE TO THE PUBLIC.

  “Ah!” said Robert Toller.

  The strawberry beds stretched right across the garden, with lines of currant bushes on either side. They were neatly spread with straw. Giant red berries gleamed on the straw, under the leaves and crowns of white flowers. Robert crunched out into the straw and began picking strawberries as fast as he could go. “I do not remember strawberries so big!” he remarked to Heather over his shoulder. And when Heather had, rather timidly, crunched out to join him, he added with his mouth full, “Time was when I thought I would never taste one again.”

  Mr McManus had an instinct about people picking fruit. Heather had just picked her first strawberry when Mr McManus crashed out from the left-hand line of currant bushes with a roar. “Get out of that! You leave those berries alone, you, or I’ll have you arrested for stealing!”

  Robert calmly picked another strawberry and stood up with it, raising his eyebrows. “Stealing?” he said. “I have a right to pick my own berries, surely? And if we are to talk of stealing, I have known other gardeners before you who took Castlemaine fruit and sold it as their own.”

  Heather tried to crawl away backwards into the currant bushes. This was awful! Robert had misunderstood. But she stopped when she saw that Mr McManus’s mottled brown face had turned a sort of mottled soap-colour. That was interesting. It looked as if Mr McManus really had been taking fruit. But of course this made Mr McManus angrier than ever. He plodded towards Robert with his teeth showing.

  “You’ll prove nothing!” he said, grunting with fury. “Get out of here or I’ll tear your smooth face off! I don’t care who you are!”

  Robert popped the strawberry into his mouth and spread his hand out in front of him again. This time he tipped only ever so slightly. Mr McManus still tried to plod towards him, but now he was plodding on the spot, rather like a tortoise that doesn’t know it has come to the end of the string tied to its shell.

  “But you should care who I am,” Robert said, when he had swallowed the strawberry. “My brother had that other gardener whipped from our gates. Castlemaine is mine now, and I should do worse to you, for your snarls and threats. But for now I shall leave you as you are. Come, Heather. Help yourself to my fine fruit.”

  Robert bent down and started picking strawberries again. After a little while, Heather came out of the bushes and picked strawberries too. This was the
only time she had ever been able to do this. But she wished she was enjoying it more. The plod-plod-plodding figure of Mr McManus made her feel like a thief, or worse. Every time one of them crawled near him, he shouted, “I’ll get you for this! You won’t get away with it!” Heather grabbed strawberries with both hands every time he shouted. She knew she would never be given another chance to eat as many as she wanted.

  At last, when Mr McManus’s tramping boots had worn quite a hole in the earth, Robert Toller stood up and dusted straw from his black silk knees. “I have had my fill,” he said. “Come and show me my house and castle now.”

  Heather thought of Castlemaine full of tourists and the coaches parked at the side. She knew it would be a terrible shock to him. “Why don’t you wait until this evening?” she said. “It’ll be much more peaceful.”

  Robert gave her a strange sad look, almost as if he was sorry for her. “Sweetheart, I know those tricks,” he said. “And by then, all will be straight and tidy because you are bound to warn your father I am here. No, my time to see the place is now.”

  He crunched across the straw, past Mr McManus. “You won’t get away with this!” Mr McManus snarled. “I’ll have the law—”

  “Oh, be quiet, you cur, you growling dog!” Robert said. He spread his hand out again, and this time he tipped it sharply. Heather saw the line of the world slant past her eyes like the top of the water when someone ducks you in the swimming pool. She felt rather as if she had been ducked, too. While she was gasping for air, Mr McManus fell on his hands and knees and shrank. His mottled face grew into the long muzzle of a large spotted dog. His legs bunched up and became the hind legs of a dog. His hands grew into paws and he sprouted a long spotted tail. He growled nastily at Robert.

  “Leave this place, you mongrel!” Robert said. “Go home and see if your wife knows you.”

  The ugly spotted dog tucked its tail between its mottled back legs and raced away into the bushes, howling. Heather had never seen a dog look so frightened. She led the way to the house, not quite as amused or as pleased as she expected to be. True, Mr McManus deserved it, but Heather kept finding herself wondering if Mrs McManus would know who the dog was.

  Chapter Four

  The formal gardens were crowded with people by this time. For a while, Robert Toller hardly seemed to notice. He was staring at the house. Heather thought his stare had a lost sort of look to it, but when Robert noticed her watching him, he made his face look proud and amused.

  “By horn and hoof!” he said. “What a splendid pile of a building this has become! It seems I inherit a house with a hundred windows or more! How did this come about?”

  “The Franceys and the Tollers kept adding bits to make it grander,” Heather explained. “I think Dad said they only stopped when one of them betted all the money that Napoleon would win Waterloo.” She saw that Robert did not understand this, so she added comfortingly, “But the older bits are still there, really.”

  Robert nodded. “I see the shape of my father’s house sketched along one side,” he said. “And our old stables are there still, beyond the kitchens. But I only see one tower out of all the castle where I used to scramble with my brothers.”

  “There’s more of it than that,” Heather said, “but it’s sort of built into the inside now.”

  “I must see,” Robert said.

  Heather could tell he had enjoyed climbing about the castle with his brothers. She envied him rather. She had often thought that she would have enjoyed living in Castlemaine more with a brother or sister or so to keep her company. But then it came to her that Robert’s brothers must have been dead now for three hundred years. And the house was quite changed since his day. She found she did not envy Robert any longer.

  While she was thinking this, Robert had begun to walk faster and faster towards the house. Heather spotted his strangely bright figure some way ahead. As the crowds were thickest nearer the house, she could see him bumping into people and bouncing off others. She could hear cries of, “Steady on!” and, “Who do you think you’re shoving?” That seemed to make Robert notice what he was doing. He stopped and waited for Heather. When she caught up at last, she found he was looking very haughty.

  “Your father keeps a mighty big court here,” he said. “Who gave him permission to have so many followers?”

  “They’re not followers. They’re tourists,” Heather said. She took Robert on a walk through the box hedges while she did her best to explain how Castlemaine now belonged to the British Trust, which meant that anyone in the country could pay to see round the grounds.

  Robert walked beside her, nodding and frowning and narrowing his eyes. Heather could see he was doing his best to look businesslike, but she had a strong feeling that he had never done anything businesslike in his life. “I do not see how a house can stand without an owner,” he said.

  As luck would have it, a crowd of schoolchildren stampeded in among the box hedges just then, shouting and eating ice lollies. Heather could tell they were a party from a school that had not broken up yet. They all wore blue uniform blazers and they were followed by a teacher who was shouting even louder than they were.

  “You are to walk, not run, Two X!” the teacher screamed.

  She was the kind of teacher nobody listens to. The children went on shouting and ran round and round the pond in the middle, forcing Heather and Robert to back away into the tall hedge at the end.

  “Silence!” shrieked the teacher. And when that made no difference at all, she howled, “You are all to come and put your ice-cream wrappers in this litter bin this instant!”

  The only difference this made was that each child promptly threw away his or her wrapper wherever he or she happened to be. Wrappers snowed across the paths, draped themselves over hedges and strewed on the flower-beds behind the hedges. The pond in the middle was thick with floating papers, showing lime-green or raspberry-red or chocolate-brown faces labelled Mr Lolly.

  “Pick up these papers at once!” the teacher yelled.

  No one seemed to hear her.

  Robert stared. “Is this a school for the deaf?” he asked Heather.

  “No, it’s just a feeble teacher,” Heather said.

  “You mean, she does not take the whip to them often enough?” Robert said. Before Heather could explain that teachers did not generally whip people these days, Robert said, “Then I must teach her a lesson along with her pupils.” He stretched out his hand. He tipped it. Heather seemed to feel the edge of the world rustle as it peeled past her ears – a soggy sort of rustle, like wet paper. She swallowed, because it made her ears pop.

  In the pond, a lime-green ice lolly wrapper began to grow. It spread swiftly, somehow eating up all the other wrappers it came to, bigger and bigger, like a giant water lily leaf. Before anyone could blink, it was too big for the pond and lay across it, curling and uncurling its edges. The monstrous lime-green face on it glared. It opened a giant chocolate-coloured mouth to show raspberry-red teeth. A huge voice from it roared, “SILENCE! PICK UP THOSE WRAPPINGS!”

  The teacher screamed and ran away. The children all stood where they were, staring uncertainly. “It’s just a TV stunt,” one of them said. “Take no notice.”

  Robert grinned. His little finger and his thumb tipped, ever so slightly.

  “IS THAT SO?” roared the lime-green Mr Lolly. And it rose out of the pond, huger than ever, dripping water, and grabbed for the nearest children with torn, wet, green paper hands. Most of them backed away. Most of them looked quite frightened, but there were one or two who began laughing scornfully.

  “Kick it in the teeth,” a boy said. “It’s only paper.”

  Robert’s face bunched up and his lower lip came out. His thumb twitched sharply, twice. All the rest of the paper strewn over the paths and the hedges and the flower-beds flew into the air and gathered into two large rustling clots. Next second, a raspberry-coloured Mr Lolly and a chocolate-coloured one were stalking across the hedges towards the boy. The expr
essions on their vast faces were of pure hatred. Heather was not surprised when the boy turned and ran. And once he was running, all the other children panicked as well and ran after him, crashing through the little hedges, trampling on the flower-beds and pushing one another to get away from the three gigantic figures stalking after them.

  Robert lowered his hand and watched the pink and the green and the brown figures march out of sight beyond the bushes. “There,” he said. “They will chase them to the edge of my estate. And woe betide the child they catch.”

  Heather had often wished something like this would happen to all the children who dropped wrappers at Castlemaine. Yet she could not help saying, “Don’t let any of them get caught – please!”

  Robert laughed. “What a tender heart you have!” he said. “Very well. They shall be pursued but never quite caught, to show them that I will not suffer rubbish to be thrown upon my gardens. Castlemaine is not a fairground or a market-place. It is my home.”

  Heather saw he still did not understand. She explained again, as well as she could, how the last of the Franceys had left Castlemaine, in a very ruined state, to the British Trust in his will. And how the Trust had repaired it all and put it on show, with Heather’s dad to look after it.

  Robert turned and led the way into the rest of the gardens. “Yes, I follow that your father is by way of being seneschal or steward to my family,” he said, “but I think he must find another way to fill his purse. It is not seemly to have all this prying into our grounds and our rooms.”

  “It’s not Dad’s purse, it’s for the upkeep!” Heather said, quite exasperated by now. She had the feeling she was explaining things to a very small child, who was being deliberately stupid. “Don’t you understand that Castlemaine needs thousands of pounds every year for repairs, and stopping the roof leaking and so on? I’ve heard Mum and Dad doing the accounts. They get the money from the people who come to see the house. They need them.”