Mr Ape, page 5
CHAPTER 10
Ape Hits Rock Bottom
Not until the final rocket was lit – a specially big one that Ape had saved till the end – did anyone notice anything.
As he had done with all the other rockets, Ape aimed it well away from the house. But this last one decided to swerve violently in flight and burst right above Penny Royal, sending out a great shower of golden globes.
As the watchers looked at these floating gently earthwards and vanishing one by one, Joe suddenly noticed smoke coming out of one of the chimney stacks. ‘Look, Mr Ape!’ he called, pointing upwards.
‘Blimey O’Reilly!’ cried Ape. ‘That’s the drawing room chimney! Something’s on fire!’
‘I’ll go and have a look through the French windows,’ said Joe, and he ran round the side of the house, carrying the garden fork, with which he had been stoking the bonfire.
Ape made for the front door.
By the time Joe reached the French windows of the drawing room, the inside of it was well alight, and in the glare of the flames the frantic hens were fluttering up and down inside the glass.
Hurriedly the gypsy tried the handles of the windows but they were locked on the inside. Quickly, with several strong blows of the fork, he smashed them, and the twelve hens scuttled wildly out and stumbled away over the ruined lawns into the darkness.
Fanned now by the wind that blew in through the shattered windows, the flames leapt higher within the drawing room, until the inner door caught fire. From the wall the blazing portrait of Mrs Spring-Russell in her blue ballgown fell crashing to the floor.
Ape, crossing the hall, saw the burning drawing-room door and heard the crackle of the flames. His immediate thoughts were to save his animals and his house, in that order. The creatures in the music room were most at risk, he knew, because if the fire got into the hall, they might be cut off.
Hurriedly he opened a cupboard where coats and hats and walking-sticks were kept – and also, he knew, an old suitcase.
In the music room he caught the spotty doe rabbit and the two guinea-pigs and thrust them into the suitcase. Then he managed to grab the canary from its golf-club swing.
Holding the bird in one large hand and the case in the other, he went back into the hall, only to find that the fire had burst out of the drawing room and that now a wall of flames barred his way to the kitchen. And in the kitchen were shut Speedy and Uncle Bob!
Somehow Ape made his way back to the front door, his only way out now, and stumbled down the steps. So relieved was he to see two figures approaching, Jake with Speedy on a lead and Joe carrying the parrot in his cage, that it took him a moment to remember that, though the animals were rescued, he’d done nothing yet to save the house.
‘The fire brigade!’ he said. ‘We must telephone the fire brigade!’
‘Jake’s done it, Mr Ape,’ said Joe. ‘He dialled 999 while I was getting the animals out.’
‘Good boy!’ said Ape.
‘We were only just out of the kitchen in time,’ said Joe. ‘It’ll be well alight by now. As the whole house will be before long, I’m afraid.’
Which, by the time the fire brigade arrived, it was.
The firemen did their best, running hoses up from the stable-yard and playing them upon the inferno, but they fought a losing battle. Penny Royal, given to Ape’s ancestor by Charles II, burned to the ground on the very day on which, nearly 400 years earlier, Guy Fawkes had tried to kill King Charles’s grandfather, James I.
Meanwhile, by the light of the flames Joe and Jake had managed to find all the dazed hens that were squatting around in shrubberies and flower-beds, and had put them in the kitchen garden with Columbine and Hollyhock. There they would at least be safe for the night – no fox could climb those walls – and in there, too, were put the rabbit and the guinea-pigs.
As for the canary, Joe offered to take it back to the caravan. ‘I’ve still got my father’s old canary-cage,’ he said.
‘All right,’ said Ape wearily.
‘Now, Mr Ape,’ said Joe. ‘You must get some rest. Where will you sleep tonight?’
‘Sleep?’ said Ape. ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said again.
‘Mr Ape,’ said Jake, ‘you could sleep in the Rolls-Royce. On the back seat. It’d be very comfy. There’s that big car-rug to keep you warm.’
Ape managed a smile. ‘Jake,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘Good boy, Jake,’ said Uncle Bob.
Much later, long after the gypsies had gone, the fire officer came to Ape. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Spring-Russell,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t much we could do – the fire had taken too strong a hold by the time we got here. Any idea what started it?’
Ape shook his head. ‘We had a bonfire,’ he said, ‘and some fireworks.’
The fireman nodded. ‘November the fifth,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Not one of our favourite nights, I’m afraid. Your family lived here long, sir?’
‘Best part of four hundred years,’ said Ape.
‘You on your own now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Look on the bright side, sir,’ said the fireman. ‘Think what you can do with the insurance money. You could build yourself a nice little bungalow here with all the mod. cons. Ah well, there’s nothing more we can do tonight. We’ve damped it all down. We’ll be back in the morning to have a look round but, to tell the truth, there’s not much left to burn.’
Even when the fire brigade had coiled their hoses and left, Ape still stood before the ruins of the house, his dog at his side, his parrot on his shoulder.
Once the fire had consumed the ground floor, it had raged upwards to the second and third floors and the attics. And the fifteen bedrooms and all the other rooms of the upper part of the house had fallen into the burned-out remains of drawing room and dining room, of music room and sewing room, of flower room and library and billiard room and butler’s pantry, and, of course, upon the gutted kitchen and the glowing ashes of Ape’s four-poster bed.
All that remained were the outer walls, whose stones the fire could not destroy.
At long last Ape turned and shambled away, his long arms hanging low, while behind him, in the coming light of dawn, wisps of smoke still eddied from the gaping blackened window-holes of the great house called Penny Royal.
CHAPTER 11
Ape Buys a House
When Ape woke next morning, he could not think, for a moment, where on earth he was. Instead of the canopy of the big four-poster bed, he was looking up at a low roof not far above his head, the roof, it seemed, of some building.
Then he realized that he was lying, his knees drawn right up, across the back seat of the old Rolls-Royce, the Silver Ghost, in the coach-house of the stable block.
Throwing off the car-rug that covered him, he struggled to sit up and stretch out his cramped legs. From the front he heard the slap of a tail upon the seat cushions and then Speedy’s narrow head appeared over the top of the passenger seat. On top of the steering-wheel perched Uncle Bob.
Sometimes, by sheer luck, the parrot said the correct thing, as now, when he wished Ape a good morning.
‘Good morning, Uncle Bob,’ replied Ape, but to himself he said that it was a terrible morning. His home, which had been the home of his family for so long, was no more. The great house was gone. Wearily, the old man put his head in his hands.
Joe saw him sitting thus when he entered the coach-house, the lurcher Swift at his heels. Poor old fellow, he thought, what’s to become of him? Quietly he went out again and, taking up an empty bucket, let it fall upon the cobbles with a loud clang.
In a few moments Ape appeared, yawning and stretching.
‘Good morning, Mr Ape,’ said the gypsy. ‘You could do with some breakfast, I expect?’
‘Not hungry,’ said Ape.
‘Look,’ said Joe. ‘Why not drive into town and to a café and have a good fry-up? Leave Speedy here with Swift if you like, and the parrot, if you think he’ll stay with me.’
‘I am extremely busy,’ said Uncle Bob.
‘I’ll put him in the kitchen garden till you get back, Mr Ape,’ said Joe. ‘He can’t get out of there and he can have a nice chat with the hens.’
‘Silly old chap,’ said the parrot.
As Ape drove the Rolls out of the coach-house, something felt wrong to him. He glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror and saw what it was. He had no hat. His old brown bowler had, of course, been burned to grey ashes in the hall cupboard, along with all the other hats and coats and walking-sticks.
Then it occurred to him that all his clothes had gone. He owned none except what he now wore – his hairy tweed suit, one shirt, his old school tie, his brown boots.
‘One thing’s certain,’ he said as he drove up to the common. ‘I must buy myself some sort of camp bed. I can’t sleep another night in this car
– I’m as stiff as a board. Oh dear, what’s to become of me?’
But half an hour later, he felt much better. He’d found that he was in fact starving hungry, and he’d had a splendid fry-up – eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms and fried bread.
Leaving the café, Ape bought a local newspaper and sat in the Rolls to look at it. His eye was immediately caught by an item in red print at the foot of the front page.
Ape gave a deep sigh. Then he said, ‘No use crying over spilt milk,’ and opened the paper. By chance he opened it at the advertisement section, at a column headed CARAVANS.
Ape stared at the word unseeingly, his mind still filled with yesterday’s drama, his bones still aching from his less than comfortable night’s sleep in the car. ‘Much as I love you, old girl,’ he said to the Silver Ghost, ‘you are not the most relaxing place to sleep,’ and then he focused properly on that word CARAVANS, and suddenly he knew exactly what he was going to do.
‘Golly whiskers!’ he cried. ‘I’ll buy one! I’ll buy myself a caravan! Today. Now. This very minute,’ and he began to read the column carefully. The biggest local suppliers, it seemed, were Comfihome Caravans.
Ape started the car and drove off.
He parked the Rolls on the forecourt of the caravan centre and went in.
A number of different types of caravan were parked in rows, and a smooth-looking young salesman came forward.
Funny-looking old customer, this, he thought as Ape shambled towards him, long arms hanging. He noted the suit, the shirt, the tie, all crumpled and dirty from the smoke and filth of the fire, and the brown boots badly in need of polish. Tramp, is he? he said to himself? Looks as though he’s slept in his clothes. Which, of course, Ape had.
Managing to stop himself saying, ‘What do you want?’ the salesman said instead, ‘Can I help you?’ It did not occur to him to say ‘sir’.
‘Yes,’ said Ape. ‘You can sell me a caravan. I shall want it delivered today, I’ve no towbar on the old girl,’ and he pointed to the Silver Ghost and produced a gold credit card from his pocket.
‘Yes, sir, yes, sir, certainly, sir,’ said the salesman. ‘What type had you in mind?’
‘Smallest possible,’ said Ape. ‘It’s just for me.’
‘Even our smallest range accommodates two, sir,’ said the salesman.
‘Well actually, we’re three altogether,’ said Ape. ‘Me and my puppy and my parrot. Just show me the smallest one you’ve got. All I need is a bed, a table, and something to cook on.’
‘Oh, it will have all those and much more,’ said the salesman. ‘Including a chemical toilet.’
‘A what?’ said Ape. ‘Oh yes, I see what you mean.’
So that afternoon a Land Rover from Comfihome Caravans towed into the stable-yard at Penny Royal a Bijou Roadmaster de Luxe, and that night Ape and Speedy settled happily down in it, Ape in a comfortable sofa-bed, just long enough for him, Speedy on a rug on the floor, while, from the parrot cage hanging above, Uncle Bob’s final sleepy words were ‘Home, Sweet Home.’
CHAPTER 12
Ape Makes a Decision
It must have been that little item in the local newspaper that did it: ‘… a family of gypsies at present camping on the common … the only witnesses …’
Tongues began to wag.
The fire at Penny Royal was a topic of much interest in the town, and the probable cause of it was plain, in the minds of certain spiteful people. Wherever two or three were gathered together, the same comments could be heard:
‘What was a family of gypsies doing up there anyway?’
‘You can’t trust gyppos. Sly lot, they are.’
‘Dirty diddicoys.’
‘Shouldn’t be surprised if they started the fire.’
‘Cooking hedgehogs, I dare say. They do, you know.’
‘Sooner they’re off the common the better.’
It was not long before some people had convinced themselves, and others, that it was indeed the gypsies who had, for dark reasons of their own, deliberately burned down Penny Royal. Soon Joe became aware that the locals were looking at him differently. Before, they had simply disregarded him, giving him a nod at best and never speaking to him, but now there was staring and pointing and the passing of remarks.
Waiting to collect his son from school, the gypsy overheard two mothers talking:
‘Weather’s got a lot colder,’ said one in a loud voice.
‘Yes,’ said the other. ‘You need a nice fire in the house.’
‘Not too big a fire,’ said the first. ‘You don’t want to burn the house down.’
‘No,’ said the second. ‘Not like some people.’
Jake had made quite a few friends, but some of the other schoolchildren began to treat him differently. Nobody actually called him a dirty gyppo, because they remembered what had happened to the bully boy. But there was whispering and giggling and talk behind his back. Jake was made to feel unlike the other children, whose clothes were smarter, who had expensive toys to play with and proper houses to live in, and all this began to make him unhappy.
In his caravan Ape was happy, as he was when training his dog Speedy or taking his donkey Hollyhock for a walk, or feeding his rabbit or his guinea-pigs, which now lived in a loose-box. The hens were a bit of a disappointment now, for the shock of the fire had completely put them off laying, and Ape was having to buy his eggs.
But all the time the grim ruins of the house stood in the background, constantly catching his eye and casting a shadow over his other pleasures.
By now Ape had had the Rolls fitted with a towbar, and was having fun pulling the new caravan up and down the drive, and practising reversing. One day when he had towed the caravan, with Speedy and Uncle Bob aboard it, down to the end of the drive, the thought of escape suddenly occurred to him.
‘Suppose I just kept on driving,’ he said. ‘Driving anywhere, any direction, any distance, towing my nice new home behind me. I’d never have to look at those terrible accusing fire-blackened walls again. I couldn’t do it today, of course, there’s too much to fix up first – there’s the land to be sold, and the stable block – just right for conversion, that would be, make a nice house for someone, though not for me. But what fun it would be to make a completely fresh start, a new life in some other part of the country, and then to be free to move on again whenever I felt like it, as the gypsies do.’
Even as he spoke these last words, he realized that this plan was only pie in the sky. ‘But then if I did that, I’d lose my friends Joe and Jake.’
He turned and drove back to the stable block.
One evening in early December Ape was at the calor-gas stove in his caravan, cooking his supper (tinned mushroom soup with cocktail sausages and baked beans in it), when there was a knock at the door.
‘Kindly go away!’ said Uncle Bob in Ape’s voice. ‘I am extremely busy!’
‘Who is it?’ said Ape.
‘It’s me, Mr Ape – Joe.’
‘Come in, Joe, come in!’ called Ape. ‘Sit down, do. What’s the matter? Nothing wrong with any of the animals, is there?’
‘No,’ said Joe. ‘But there is something wrong.’
‘What?’ said Ape.
‘Persecution, I suppose you could call it,’ said Joe, and he told Ape all about the rumours that had circulated after the fire, and about the dislike – hatred indeed – of him and Jake that this talk had inspired among many of the local people.
‘Folk cross the road to avoid meeting me now,’ he said, ‘and Jake’s unhappy at school. It’s the old story, Mr Ape, that all Romanies know. Every man’s hand is against the gypsies. Except yours, sir. You have always been good to us.’
‘This is terrible, Joe,’ exclaimed Ape. ‘That people should spread such lies. Why, you and Jake risked your lives to save the puppy and the parrot. If anyone burned the house down, I did. I should never have built that bonfire so close.’
Speedy whined softly at the sadness in his master’s voice, and Uncle Bob, sitting as usual on Ape’s shoulder, gently nibbled at the lobe of his ear.
‘I’ve come to tell you that I’ve made my mind up, Mr Ape,’ said Joe. ‘I’m sorry, truly sorry, but it’s for Jake’s sake, now that folk have turned against us so.’
‘Made up your mind to do what?’ said Ape. ‘To leave. To move on once more, away from here. To take to the open road.’
Ape thrust out a hand and Joe took it.
‘I wish with all my heart,’ Joe said, ‘that we did not have to part.’
‘We don’t,’ said Ape. ‘I’m coming too.’
Chapter 13
Ape Hits the Trail
His mind made up, Ape could hardly wait to go. But of course there was much to be done first.
On one thing Ape was determined. If Joe and Jake were leaving soon, he wasn’t going to hang about here by himself to settle up all his affairs. His house might have gone, but his money hadn’t. He was still a rich man, and when the fire insurance claim was paid and the land and the stable block sold, he would be that much richer.
