It seemed that one of the neighbours had seen Johnny clinging to the side of the house and telephoned the Ogre. Probably it was just as well. Johnny had been precious near letting go by the time the Ogre had tied two ladders together and climbed up them. But in every other way it was unfortunate.
The Ogre made the obvious assumption that they had been playing on the roof and that Johnny had slipped off. He sent Johnny to bed without supper. Then he nailed up first the trap door, then the loft door, and forbade them all three, on pain of death, to touch either. Douglas, who was ordered in to help with the nailing, and who might have provided Caspar at least with an alibi, said nothing at all, to Caspar’s bitter annoyance. He just listened to Caspar being blamed for leading Johnny and Gwinny into danger. And Malcolm – who was supposed to be opening the trap door to let the Ogre and Johnny through – arrived in time to listen too. And he laughed. This so infuriated Gwinny that she bit Malcolm. It was all she could think of on the spur of the moment. So she was in trouble as well. The Ogre called her a little cat and sent her to bed without supper too.
Caspar supposed he was lucky to be allowed supper himself. But it was not a comfortable meal. The Ogre had gone downstairs and expressed himself forcibly to Sally after nailing up the loft, and Caspar could see his mother had been crying. He felt truly wretched. Douglas and Malcolm were, as usual, well-mannered, sober and almost totally silent. Caspar sat quite as silent, wishing the Ogre would not make such a horrible noise eating. Finally, Sally tried to make conversation by asking Douglas when his friends were coming.
Douglas replied, quietly and politely, “About eight o’clock, if that’s all right.”
“Of course,” Sally said cordially. “I’m so glad you’ve managed to make some friends already.”
“Thank you,” Douglas said politely.
“Because it is difficult, when you move to a new school, isn’t it?” Sally said.
“It’s not so bad,” said Douglas. “Thank you.”
Sally gave up. Nobody said anything else. Caspar missed Gwinny and Johnny acutely, because, if they did nothing else, they could be counted on to talk.
At the end of supper, Douglas and Malcolm politely offered to wash up, and Douglas surprised Caspar by turning to him and asking, equally politely, if he wanted to come to the dining room and listen to records too.
“Oh, no thank you,” Caspar said hastily. He had had about enough of Douglas by then.
“That’s rather a blessing,” Sally said to him in the kitchen, a little later, “because I want you to go on a secret mission and take some supper up to Johnny and Gwinny. I know Jack said they were to go without, but I can’t bear to think of them going hungry. But you must do it with the utmost stealth.”
“All right,” said Caspar, and looked meaningly at Malcolm, who was still busily and correctly wiping plates. When Sally did not seem to see what he meant, he tried to make her understand by waggling his eyebrows at her.
“Do stop making faces,” said Sally. “Malcolm won’t tell, will you, Malcolm?”
“Of course not,” Malcolm said coldly.
Caspar did not believe him for a moment, but he nevertheless crept upstairs with loaded trays. His task was made easier by the fact that Gwinny had sneaked down to join Johnny. They were both sitting in Johnny’s bed sharing a toffee bar, looking rosy and excited.
“When are we going flying?” Johnny asked.
Caspar had imagined that, after being stranded on the side of the house, Johnny would have had enough of flying, and he was rather taken aback. “When were you thinking of?” he said.
“Not too late,” said Johnny.
“I want to look down on all the lights in Market Street,” explained Gwinny. “The Christmas lights are up already, did you know?”
“And see the nightlife,” said Johnny. “If we’re lucky, we might see some vice going on. I’ve never seen any.”
“We’ve been thinking it out,” said Gwinny. “It’s awfully cold out, so we’ll have to go in coats, with shoes on, and wear gloves.”
“And put the flying-mixture on our legs,” said Johnny, “under our trousers. Rub on a really good handful, because we don’t want it wearing off in the middle of town.”
“All right,” Caspar said weakly. “About half past ten?”
“And put pillows in our beds,” Johnny called after him as he waded to the door.
Caspar went downstairs again to report his mission accomplished. He was so excited at the thought of going flying that very night that he forgot to refuse when Sally said, “And don’t go away upstairs again, Caspar. Come and join us in the sitting room for a change.”
“If you like,” Caspar said, without thinking, and then realised that he had condemned himself to a whole evening with the Ogre.
Douglas’s friends were arriving when he and Sally reached the hall. Caspar took one look at them and was heartily glad that he had refused Douglas’s invitation at least. They were all as tall as Douglas and, since none of them were in school clothes, they appeared even more grown up than they were. They carried bundles of records. Two of them had guitars. And they laughed and made jokes that Caspar could not understand. Douglas, as he showed them in, laughed too and made the same sort of jokes in reply. Caspar stared rather because he had hardly ever seen Douglas laugh before, and because Douglas had changed his clothes and looked just as grown up as his friends.
“Coffee and so on set out on the kitchen table, Douglas,” said Sally.
“Thanks,” Douglas replied, obviously too busy showing his friends into the dining room to hear what Sally had said.
The Ogre was standing in the doorway of the sitting room with the grim look that he usually reserved for Johnny or Caspar. “I’m beginning to regret this already,” he said. “Where did Douglas get those awful clothes?”
“I got them for him,” said Sally, a trifle guiltily. “He seemed to have grown out of everything else.”
“Are they fashionable or something?” asked the Ogre.
“Very,” said Sally.
“I feared as much,” said the Ogre, and went and turned the television on.
Since the Ogre was clearly in his stormiest mood, Caspar dared not do anything but sit quietly over a map of South America, trying to decide on a Geography project. The Ogre gave him several irritated looks, but he said nothing. The television produced the Ogre’s favourite kind of programme for him – the kind in which Officials and Ministers explained that the country was in a considerable state of crisis, but that they were doing this, that and the other thing to cure it. Caspar bit back several yawns of boredom and wondered how his mother could stand it. She was calmly checking over some long lists that had to do with her work tomorrow. If Caspar himself had not been in such a pleasant flutter about going flying, he thought he would never have endured it at all.
Then Indigo Rubber made themselves heard, rather loudly, in the middle of their best song. Caspar raised his head and almost regretted not being in the dining room. Either Douglas’s equipment was ten times better than his, or the records had needed cleaning more than he realised. Indigo Rubber sounded superb – though Caspar did wish that one of Douglas’s friends had not chosen to pick out the song haltingly on his guitar at the same time.
“This is intolerable!” said the Ogre, and turned the sound on the television right up. The result was a truly awful noise, with a Minister booming away about Trade, and Indigo Rubber gamely competing for all they were worth. “I shall go mad!” said the Ogre, with his face twisted into a snarl.
“No you won’t,” said Sally, laughing. “Do turn the sound down. I want to make a list of the people we’re having to this party.”
The Ogre, typically, refused to turn the sound down. So he and Sally were forced, for the next half hour or so, to bawl names at one another above the noise. Caspar’s head began to ache. His mother began to look a little worn also. Luckily, after that, Douglas and his friends took to playing Indigo Rubber songs on their guitars, which, though penetrating, were not quite so loud.
“Shall I send them home?” the Ogre asked several times, but Sally would not hear of it.
“I want to get these invitations out,” she said.
“You must be made of iron,” said the Ogre eventually. Then he noticed Caspar and told him to go to bed. Caspar was collecting his maps and papers, only too ready to go, when there were voices in the hall and Douglas burst gaily into the sitting room.
“I say—” he said.
“I’m not going to have you and your noise in here as well,” said the Ogre.
Douglas froze into crestfallen politeness. “Sorry, Father. I was only going to ask… You see, my friends are going down town to the Discotheque. Is it all right for me to go too?”
“No,” said the Ogre.
Douglas swallowed, and then said, very patiently and politely, “I shouldn’t be more than an hour or so. I promise I’ll be back before eleven.”
“Which is a good hour past your bedtime,” said the Ogre. “No.”
“Couldn’t he go?” said Sally.
“I’ve already given you my opinion of your indulgence,” the Ogre said unpleasantly. “That blasted place is the haunt of half the vice in town.”
Caspar felt his stomach twisting and fluttering. It sounded as if Johnny might be going to see some vice after all.
“But all sorts of people go there,” Douglas said pleadingly. “My friends often do.”
“Then I think the worse of your friends,” said the Ogre.
“But they—” began Douglas.
“Absolutely NOT!” said the Ogre.
Douglas went out and shut the door quietly behind him. When Caspar went upstairs, he was showing his friends out.
Gwinny and Johnny were asleep, packed into Johnny’s bed. Caspar, at the sight, felt rather sleepy himself, but he sat down on his own bed to wait. He heard Douglas come upstairs, and smelt the whiff of chemicals as Douglas opened the door across the landing. After that was a long, long silence. Caspar was all but asleep himself, when Johnny suddenly sat bolt upright.
“What’s the time?”
Caspar found the clock, which had got buried under a pile of comics. “Ten fifteen.”
“Oh good,” said Johnny. “I banged my head ten times on the pillow.” And he fell to shaking Gwinny. “Come on. Time to go.”
They bustled quietly about, getting into warm clothes and putting pillows in their beds. Ten minutes later, they were standing beside the open window, feeling very excited indeed and a little inclined to giggle. Johnny carefully fetched out the almost full tube of chemical and solemnly passed it to Gwinny. Gwinny rolled up the leg of Johnny’s old trousers, which she was wearing for warmth, poured the liquid carefully on to her palm and rubbed it hard on her shin.
“Ooh! It’s cold!” she said.
Johnny was just in time to take the test tube out of her hand as she floated up past him. While he was rubbing the liquid on his leg, Gwinny drummed the ceiling gently with her heels. “I’d forgotten what a lovely feeling it was,” she said.
Caspar was looking up at her when Johnny soared away to join her. He missed his chance of taking the tube and had to climb on the cupboard to take it from Johnny’s hand. It all seemed so silly and exciting that they both began laughing.
“Are you boys in bed?” called Sally from below.
“Yes. Just going to sleep,” they lied at the tops of their voices. Caspar, still crouching on top of the cupboard, rolled up his trouser-leg. He was quaking so with laughter that he poured far more liquid on to his palm than he intended. He splashed the whole ice-cold handful on his leg and, when the delicious lightness spread through him and he too floated up to the ceiling, he found he was holding a nearly empty test tube, with about a quarter of an inch of liquid left in the bottom.
“What shall I do with this?” he said.
“Balance it on the lightshade,” suggested Gwinny.
“We ought to put out the light too,” said Johnny.
Caspar, intoxicated with the splendid new feeling of being light as air, swam himself over to the middle of the room and balanced the test tube on the lampshade. It was better than swimming. One kick took him yards, with no effort at all. The difficulty came when he tried to reach the light switch. Like Gwinny before, he seemed far heavier upwards than he ever was downwards. He tried jumping off the ceiling in a sort of dive towards the switch, but, no matter how hard he pushed off with his feet, his hand never came within a foot of the switch.
“Why not take the bulb out?” said Johnny, impatient to be off.
So Caspar swam back, put his gloves on, and very carefully took the bulb out without disturbing the test tube. But as soon as the room went dark, he had no idea where it was any more. He felt his glove brush the shade and the shade tip. Then there was a bump and a slight bursting noise from the floor.
“The tube’s fallen off,” he said.
“Well, we’d used most of it anyway,” said Gwinny. “Do come on.”
Caspar put the light bulb in his pocket and swam towards the window. The dark shape of Gwinny first, then Johnny, blotted out the window and soared away upwards, as Johnny had done before. There was quite a brisk wind. When Caspar swooped deliciously up past the wall, the gutter and the glistening roof, he found himself being carried over the roof of the next house towards the centre of town. Johnny was floating against the orange glare of the city lights about ten yards ahead, and Gwinny ten yards beyond that and a few feet higher up because she was lighter. The sight gave Caspar a strange, frosty, excited feeling, as if splendid things were about to happen. Being a good swimmer, he caught the other two up easily.
“How lovely to look down on roofs!” Gwinny said. And indeed it was. The streetlights and a good round moon made it all very easy to see. Roofs had all sorts of queer shapes that they would not have expected from the ground. They could look through skylights and see people moving about inside, and television aerials looked surprisingly big when you were beside them.
Another surprising thing was the way bent streets looked straight, and streets they had thought were straight had unexpected little twiddles or long curves to them. They swam themselves merrily over the neighbourhood, above wires, roads, gardens, houses and a park, until they all found that they had no idea where they were.
“Why does it all look so different?” Johnny said crossly.
“The wind’s blown us off course,” said Caspar. “We’d better find a road we know and follow that, or we’ll get lost.”
The brightest orange glare seemed now to be away to the right. They swam in that direction, across the wind. It was much harder going. Before long, Gwinny was complaining loudly of being tired.
“Do shut up,” Caspar called up at her. “Suppose someone hears you and tells the police.” He was fairly tired himself by this time. The feeling of frosty excitement he had first had seemed entirely to have gone. He was hot and worried. The only thing that stopped him suggesting that they go home was that it seemed so tame. But the fact was that one empty dark street is much like another, and merely flying across them stops being fun after a while.
“Let’s rest,” said Johnny.
They anchored themselves to a convenient television aerial and floated, panting. Beneath them, on a corner, was a pub with people noisily coming out of it.
“There’s some vice for you, Johnny,” said Caspar, as a very fat man rolled to the edge of the pavement and stood there singing. Gwinny laughed, because he was so fat she could not see his feet. Johnny watched him dubiously. The fat man stopped singing and began to shout rude remarks at imaginary people across the road.
“That’s not vice,” said Johnny. “He’s drunk.”
“Do you know,” said Gwinny, “this is the pub on the corner near where we used to live! I know that fat man. He’s the greengrocer who gave me the wrong change. We can’t be far off Market Street. Yes, look.” She pointed a glove towards a big block of buildings towering against the orange glare. “That’s the Ogre’s office. I met him quite near there, so I know if we go past it, Market Street is only over some roofs.”
“So it is!” said Johnny, and Caspar felt foolish at not having recognised it long before.
So they set off towards the building, across the wind again, using television aerials to push off from. Each aerial bent and twanged as they used it, until the streets behind them hummed. Then they pushed off in a long swoop across a little dark space like a chasm and were able to pull themselves hand over hand along the towering side of the office block. All its lights were on. They handed themselves across a window that could well have belonged to the Ogre’s office. Inside were typewriters with covers on them, and not very comfortable-looking desks and chairs.
“It’s a bit like school,” said Gwinny. “I shan’t work in an office when I grow up.”
“I can’t think how the Ogre can bear to,” said Johnny. “I suppose it’s because he’s not human.”
They dived off from the office block across some tall steep roofs, which were almost too high for them to get over, and there they were at last, at the end of Market Street. And that was splendid from the air. Coloured street-signs flashed on and off, people hurried, shops shone, and cars went in lines down the middle, so close together that, as Johnny said, they looked from above like a train someone had chopped into bits. A nice rowdy noise came up, and petrol fumes made Caspar sneeze. The Christmas lights were the only disappointing part. From the air, they seemed to be all scaffolding and wires, with a bit of a glitter below, almost out of sight.
“They’re made to be seen from the ground,” said Caspar.
They worked their way down the street, almost in the teeth of the wind. It was very slow going, even using parapets and dormer windows to push off from, and Caspar could not help being a little nervous of all the electric wires strung across the street. They passed the Discotheque on the other side of the road. Caspar recognised it from the big red lighted disc outside and the sound of muffled music.
“Douglas wanted to go there with his friends tonight, but the Ogre wouldn’t let him,” he told the others.
They were not surprised. After that, they stopped and roosted on the arch over the Town Hall, where a number of pigeons, frightened and offended, flapped away from their floating feet. Here Johnny thought he saw some vice. There was a group of youths just below, laughing and shouting and twanging guitars.
“No, those are only Douglas’s friends,” said Caspar. “I suppose they’re going home from the Discotheque.”
“I almost think the Ogre was right for once,” Gwinny said severely. “Those friends look loud and rough.”
“They’re just old,” said Caspar.
“And I bet the Ogre was just being his own mean Ogrish self,” said Johnny. “Wasn’t he, Caspar?”
“Let’s go home,” said Caspar. He suddenly thought what the Ogre might say and do to them, if he discovered they had been to Market Street, and the idea made him notice that he was cold and very tired. Johnny and Gwinny felt much the same. They set off again down Market Street.
They had almost reached the roundabout at the end, when Gwinny squawked, clapped her hand over her mouth and pointed across the street. The boys looked. And they were so astonished at what they saw that they stopped swimming and stared, and the wind carried all three of them back up the street again.
On the other side of Market Street, about ten feet lower down than they were, swam a sort of aerial frogman. He was whipping along, face downwards, past lighted windows and over people’s heads, with his hands by his sides and the great black flippers on his feet wagging away steadily.
“Oh-oh, they’ve landed!” said Johnny. It was the first thought in all their minds. But, as the figure came abreast of a streetlight, they saw it was Douglas, with the hood of his anorak up and wearing flippers. They all secretly thought the flippers were a very good idea, and wished they had thought of them too. “They’ve found the flying powder too,” said Johnny.
“And he’s using it to go to the Discotheque,” said Caspar, rather awed at Douglas’s daring. “He’s late. He’s missed the others.”
“Let’s follow him,” said Gwinny. “Then we can drop dark hints about where he went.”
“And get him scared silly we’ll tell the Ogre,” said Johnny. “Ahah! Little does he know we have him in our power!”
Chuckling at this extremely pleasant thought, they all set off up Market Street again as hard as they could go. The wind behind them helped, but Douglas, also with the wind behind him and the flippers in addition, drew steadily ahead. No matter how hard they shunted themselves from windows and balconies, they were nowhere near him when he reached the Discotheque. But, to their great surprise, Douglas shot straight past, over the big red disc and off up the street.
“I suppose he’ll have to wait for it to wear off and land somewhere secret,” Caspar suggested as a possible explanation.
Even so, it was odd that the now distant figure of Douglas should then cross, flippering steadily, over the traffic and continue up Market Street on the same side as they were. They hastened after him, but by the time they reached the Market Cross Hotel, they had lost him completely.
“He’s probably down by now,” Johnny said crossly.
Gwinny anchored herself to the scaffolding above the K of the big blue hotel sign and refused to go on. “I’m tired,” she said, floating out from the bar as she might in a swimming bath.
“Don’t touch that!” said Caspar. “You’ll get an electric shock.”
“And probably put out all the streetlights too,” said Johnny.
“I don’t care,” said Gwinny. “I’m so tired I could die.”
Johnny suddenly clutched at the scaffolding too, just above the E.
“Johnny!” said Caspar.
“I’m going heavy!” said Johnny.
“Oh, so am I!” gasped Gwinny. “Caspar, what shall we do?”