Mrs. Ffatt had come to tea at her
friend's house, which was the house with the monkey puzzle tree in the
garden. "You can't miss it," people always said, as if this were somehow
the same thing as saying "you can find it". It is not.
In any case, Mrs. Ffatt knew where her friend's house was. She lived only
five doors down the same road, and came to tea every Thursday. She had no
real need to look for the monkey puzzle tree. For all it mattered to her,
the monkey-puzzle tree might just as well have been cut down. It was not.
Mrs. Ffatt was the kind of woman who sailed down the
street with her spinnaker up, a large and much decorated hat pinned into
her hair. She overflowed her friend's armchair. She looked becalmed.
Toby came home from school, and approached Mrs. Ffatt with
a caution proper to small boys in such circumstances.
'Say hello nicely to Mrs. Ffatt,' said Toby's mother, as
if she strongly suspected he might say hello nastily.
Toby made a sort of bow, and said, 'Hello Mrs. Ffatt.'
'My how you've grown,' said Mrs. Ffatt.
Toby wondered how she had been able to tell since last
Thursday, but he said nothing.
'I'm sure you are enjoying school,' said Mrs. Ffatt,
'it's a very fine school, I'm sure.'
Toby was not enjoying school at all but he said nothing.
'And what do you want to be when you grow up?' asked
Mrs. Ffatt. 'I think I'll be a horse,' answered Toby.
Toby's father gave him a spanking as soon as he came home
from his job as a social worker, and sent him to his room without any tea.
Toby locked his bedroom door from the inside ('Sulking, he
is,' Toby's mother always reported when he didn't answer.), opened his
bedroom window, stepped out into the apple tree, climbed down, and went
off up the road. Toby stood respectfully in the open
doorway.
'Hello,' he said nicely. 'Ah,'
welcomed Wizard Prang, waving a retort around in rather a sloppy way.
A dollop of some villainous green stuff split out onto the
tiled floor, turned into something too small to identify, and scurried
away.
'Ah,' the Wizard said again: 'Come on in.'
'Look what I have brought you,' Toby said.
Wizard Prang regarded the rusty pair of bicycle
handlebars.
'Looks like a pair of bicycle handlebars,' he said.
'Rusty.' 'Perny will clean them, she's good at that',
Toby said innocently enough.
He knew nothing about stereotypes yet. People were as
people were, and that was it.
'You remember asking me to find you some handlebars,
don't you?'
Toby was always more puzzled by puzzlement than by the
puzzle itself, and puzzlement was not hidden in the wizard's eyes. But he
recovered himself.
'Certainly, my dear lad,' he said in a voice which
caused Toby's brow to clear. 'It's just ... well, something else. I was
trying to remember where I put a certain little piece of paper.'
Was that all? Toby explained that he had come round by the
back path, and had managed to wrestle the handlebars out of a rusty old
bike lying in the bushes. Wizard Prang carefully
restored the retort to its stand, thanked Toby, and sat down with a sigh.
He had been having trouble seeing what his spell was all about without his
glasses. The little screw was loose again, a lens had come out, and he
could not see well enough to put it back. Why not, he was thinking
wearily. He was supposed to be able to see well enough, wasn't he? Surely
he had some glasses somewhere. Toby walked across to
the shelf where the wine and water stood. He always knew exactly what
proportions would suit the Wizard as soon as he saw him. Wizard Prang
always tasted the mixture appreciatively, and thanked him, but he never
said how impressed he was by Toby's discernment.
'Hang on,' said Toby, puzzled.
A filing card was propped up against the wizard's drinking
chalice. On it was written in large block capitals:
Wizard Prang came over.
'You are fasting,' said Toby: 'when did you start?'
'Can't remember,' the wizard replied.
'It seems a strange length fasting for forty nine
minutes,' Toby said accusingly. 'Why forty nine minutes?'
'Well,' said Wizard Prang, who despised people who
started sentences with 'well'. They were just playing for time, he
always said. 'Well,' he said again. 'Oh, I don't
know: the square root of 49 is the magic number seven, plus or minus
two.'
That seemed to settle it somehow.
Toby looked at his watch. 'Let me pour your chalice
forty nine minutes from now,' he said, 'and then you can be sure.'
'Splendid,' cried the wizard heartily. 'Thank you very
much. What can I do for you?' 'Do you know about
Elijah?' asked Toby.
Wizard Prang jumped a bit and looked guilty. He went to
his big chair and sat down.
'Y-e-s-s,' he said, wondering what was coming next.
'Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal.' Toby spoke with
authority. More lamely, he added: 'We did it at school.'
'Ah,' said Wizard Prang once again this evening. 'The
sacrificial bullock and all that water...' 'Yeah,'
Toby interrupted enthusiastically, 'Elijah went and poured water over
the bullock and the wood underneath. He did it three times.'
'Indeed, he did,' the wizard said reminiscently. 'Four
whole barrels each go.' 'Yeah,' applauded Toby. 'Then
he dug a trench all round, and filled that with water too. And do you
know what happened?' 'You tell me,' the wizard
answered, and his voice was kind. 'Elijah called on
God to burn the lot and it worked!' 'Indeed it did,'
the wizard said quietly. 'Yeah, well, it's obvious
isn't it?' 'It wasn't obvious to the prophets of
Baal,' Wizard Prang chuckled. 'No, I mean how he did
it.' 'He called on God, didn't he? You said so.'
'Yeah, well, that's all very well. No, it's obvious. He
used paraffin kerosene whatever. It'd look like water. P'raps nobody
else discovered the stuff then.' 'Did you advance
this theory in class?' The wizard sounded apprehensive.
'Yeah,' said Toby. 'He gave me a clout.'
'That wasn't a miracle anyway. Somewhat predictable, I
should say.' 'Well, I don't get it,' said Toby. 'Seem
to me if Elijah had something no one else knew about, or if he turned
their water into something that would go on fire, the whole thing was a
miracle just the same.' 'Precisely,' said the wizard.
'Come here.'
Toby went over to the wizard's chair feeling a bit
nervous. Would he be getting another smack? Wizard
Prang put his arm around Toby, and gave him a big hug. Toby was almost
smothered in the wizard's coarse robe.
'Come out in the fields with me for a bit?'
'Right,' said Toby. 'What's the plan?'
'I need to collect some rather special mushrooms. But we
have to be careful, because most of the little fellows out there are
poisonous.'
Toby thought it would be fun to collect these too,
specially for Mrs. Ffatt; then he wished he hadn't thought it.
'Can you unthink a thought once you've thought it?' he
asked. 'No,' answered the wizard. 'But you can negate
its negative effects. Two negatives make a positive, you know. Just make
a mental apology to the large woman.'
Toby was amazed. How had he known? But it was not
difficult really when you think about it. Perhaps that's something else
not to be thought about.
'How do I know which ones we want?'
'Don't think about it. The ones we want will smile in your face provided
you are not thinking.'
Toby did not make a single mistake. But he soon became
extremely tired from the effort of not thinking that is, of thinking not
to think.
'You can think now,' the wizard said when they got back.
'What comes up?' 'I'm thirsty.'
Wizard Prang laughed and poured from the bottle he kept
specially for Toby. Naturally, it had to be transferred to the Toby jug.
Toby looked at his watch. 'Oh good, I can fetch your
wine and water now. It's well over forty nine minutes.'
'Thank you.' The wizard settled in his chair, and sipped
from his chalice. 'What is the time?' he suddenly asked.
Toby told him.
'Oh dear. I shall have to go out soon. We can walk down
the lane together, the wizard said.' 'When you have a
definite date, how do you know when to go?' 'Usually
Perny throws me out. But she isn't in today,' replied the wizard. 'Come
to think of it she left me an old clock. I put it somewhere.'
Toby got up, and started looking in the places where
Wizard Prang would be likely to put an old clock. He found it second go.
'Silly place to put a clock,' grumbled the wizard.
'You must have had a reason at the time,' said Toby.
'Probably. But how did you know where to look, since you
could not have known the reason?' 'Mushrooms,' said
Toby. 'Eh?' said the wizard. 'Just
like you said, 'don't think.' I didn't think, so I didn't have to
unthink the obvious place for you to put it. If I had, I wouldn't have
believed that you would have put it in the oven. We wouldn't have found
it.' 'You sound a bit confused to me,' the wizard
said grandly. 'Heh,' said Toby, 'I hope this clock is
wrong and not my watch, otherwise you are already late.'
'It's all right,' said Wizard Prang, 'I remember now.
Perny told me the clock was wrong, but said not to put it right because
it's old and temperamental. Like me, she had the cheek to say.'
'I see;' Toby did see. 'But it's no good unless she told
you how far out it is.' 'She did. But I can't
remember,' the wizard added miserably. 'I ought to have made a note of
it.' 'Well, we can do that now,' offered Toby, and
made a close check on the clock by his watch.
He looked up.
'It's fast forty nine minutes,' he said.
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