‘You won then?’ asked Noah. ‘You beat him?’
‘I did,’ said the old man, smiling. ‘And believe me, I was just as astonished as everyone else. I never imagined I would win, but it turned out that I was a natural athlete, the fastest runner the village had ever known. And to be fair to Toby Lovely, he recognized this and congratulated me afterwards.’
‘I suppose you became great friends after that?’ asked Noah.
‘Oh no,’ said the old man, shaking his head. ‘No, we couldn’t stand each other. The bullying stopped, it’s true, but we never spoke again. His story ends there, I’m afraid. But mine was only just beginning. The world was about to become my oyster.’
‘And that’s why your father carved this?’ asked Noah, holding up the puppet of Mr Wickle. ‘Since he was the man who helped the bullying come to an end?’
‘Sort of,’ said the old man. ‘But Poppa wasn’t entirely fond of him, for he always said that if it wasn’t for Mr Wickle, then I would have stayed at home in the years that followed and not kept running off and leaving him on his own. He missed me greatly, you see, when I was gone. We had moved into the forest in order for me to stop getting into mischief, but it seemed that I just found other sorts. He made this puppet so that he could stare at it and shake it in the air whenever he got angry with me.’
‘How extraordinary,’ said Noah as he put the puppet down on the table before him.
‘You see, Mr Wickle immediately realized that my legs were unusually strong and signed me up for football and rugby, tennis and lacrosse, badminton and hurling, diving and parachuting, rafting and cycling, auto-racing and synchronized swimming, basketball and running, rock-climbing and rowing, sailing and archery, baseball and boxing, and soon I became known as the greatest athlete the village had ever seen. The polo teacher even invited me to sign up for polo classes but I shook my head at that.
‘ “No, I don’t care for polo,” I told him.’
‘I’ve never known anyone who played so many sports,’ said Noah.
‘Yes, but I liked running best,’ said the old man. ‘Every day Mr Wickle would time me as I ran out of the school gates, along the road, into the forest and out again, up the street, across the village, past my friend the donkey and back to the schoolyard again, and he said that I had the most potential of any boy he had ever seen and he’d seen them all.
‘ “Here’s a tip though,” he told me, leaning over and pressing a hand into my shoulder. “If you want to improve your time, run faster.” ’
‘That seems like good advice,’ said Noah, considering it.
‘Oh, it was. And faster I ran. Come the school sports day, I won every race on the card, and by the end of the day the other boys gathered around and put me up on their shoulders to carry me in a victory march through the streets, but thinking that they were planning on beating me up again, I ran away as quickly as I could – which was very quick – and never received the triumph. A few months later, the village’s annual long-distance race, known as “the Long One”, was held, and I won in a time that was fifteen per cent quicker than anyone had ever run it before. I ran it even quicker than the great Dmitri Capaldi, the legendary runner whose statue stood in the centre of the village. And when news of my success started to spread, the county board came calling, and before the year was out I was crowned the fastest runner in a fifty-three-mile radius. Not long after that I was named the fastest runner in the country. And that was when all my resolutions to be a good boy and stay with Poppa started to crumble, just like I had promised they never would.’
‘I wish I had a skill like that,’ said Noah Barleywater. ‘I’m not much of a runner really. Although I’m not bad at chess.’
‘Hmm,’ said the old man, thinking about it. ‘Not really a sport though, is it?’
‘It’s a sport of the mind,’ said Noah, sitting up straight and smiling.
‘It is,’ agreed the old man. ‘But there’ll be no one to play chess with now, I imagine. Now that you’ve run away from home, I mean.’
‘No,’ said Noah, looking down at the table again, concentrating on a knot of wood in the centre, scratching away at it with the nail of his thumb.
‘I suppose it was your family then,’ said the old man, standing up and clearing the lunch things away. ‘They’re the only people left. You must be running away from them. Now, what do you think of this?’ he asked, holding up a puppet of an orangutan, the result of all the carving he had been doing over the last hour.
‘It’s very good,’ said Noah, taking it off him and examining it carefully. ‘It’s so lifelike. The way you’ve chipped the wood to look like monkey hair.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he replied, sounding a little disappointed as he looked at it. ‘It wasn’t actually an orangutan that I was trying to carve, but never mind.’
‘Really?’ asked Noah. ‘What were you trying to carve then?’
The old man shook his head and walked over to a basket that sat in the corner of the room, overflowing with blocks of wood, selected one, examined it carefully, before nodding and sitting down again. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said quietly, ignoring the boy’s question as he picked up the chisel. ‘I’ll just try again. I’ll get it right one of these days. I think there’s a little dessert going if you’d like some?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ said Noah, who was still hungry. ‘And I’m not running away from my family, by the way. It’s just that … well, they’re there and I’m here, that’s all.’
‘But they must be very bad people if you don’t want to be with them,’ said the old man, snapping his fingers for the fridge, who appeared before them in a very sprightly manner considering he was so full of sugar. He opened the door and looked inside. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have much to offer you,’ he said. ‘Just a little trifle, some jelly and ice cream, a chocolate cake, a banana cream pie and some cherry cherry double cherry flan. Will that do?’
‘That will do nicely,’ said Noah, who didn’t like to think that the old man imagined his family were bad people and this was why he had left them behind. After all, they weren’t bad people at all. They were very nice people actually.
‘But if they’re so nice, then why have you run away from them?’ asked the old man, surprising Noah, for he was sure he’d only thought that in his head, not spoken it aloud.
‘It’s just better this way, that’s all,’ he said.
‘Does your father lock you in the coal-shed?’
‘No,’ said Noah, appalled.
‘Does your mother make you eat in the kennel with the dog?’
‘Of course not,’ said Noah. ‘She’d never do anything like that. Besides, we don’t have a dog. If anything, we always have great days out together, the two of us. Or we have over the last few months anyway.’
‘Oh yes?’ asked the old man. ‘That sounds intriguing.’
‘Yes, well, there was the pinball café, for one,’ said Noah, telling him the story of how he had scored the 4,500,000 points and topped the leader board. ‘And then there was the time she saved me from the security guard who accused me of stealing the magic cards. And only a few weeks ago she built our own private beach.’
The old man raised an eyebrow in surprise. ‘A private beach?’ he asked. ‘At the edge of a forest? That sounds unlikely.’
‘You’d be amazed what my mum can do when she sets her mind to it,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘She’s full of surprises.’