Lulu and the Hamster in the Night (6 page)

For as long as Lulu and Mellie could remember, Nan had lived alone in her little bright house. But once there had been a big, quiet Granddad living there too. He had liked making things and he had owned a shed full of tools. It was still there, right at the end of the garden, beyond the orange and lemon tree.

Mellie took the flashlight and visited Granddad's shed, and she came back with a very big hammer indeed.

“Perfect!” said Lulu, and she seized it from Mellie, swung it mightily back into the air, and walloped the air brick with the most tremendous crash.

“Careful!” cried Mellie, forgetting to be quiet.

“I am being careful!” said Lulu and did it again. She was about to swing it a third time when Nan appeared.

“Lulu! Mellie!” exclaimed Nan. “
It's one o'clock in the morning!
”

That surprised them.

“Wow! One o'clock!” said Mellie, and Lulu said brightly, “Happy birthday, Nan!”

“Yes, yes! Happy birthday, Nan!” agreed Mellie.

“Happy birthday!” said Nan indignantly. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Never mind ‘Happy birthday'! What in the world are you doing?”

Lulu looked at Mellie.

Mellie looked at Lulu.

“We've lost something in the wall,” said Lulu at last.

“Something?” repeated Nan.

“Yes,” said Mellie, “and we didn't want to call the fire department, not on your birthday.”

“The fire department?”

“To knock down your house!”

“Really only the back half,” put in Lulu soothingly.

“So,” continued Mellie, “we thought we would just bang a hole in this holey brick …”

“That one at the bottom with gaps in it,” said Lulu.

“… and let it out,” said Mellie.

“
Get
it out!” corrected Lulu. “Not let, get! If it's still there.”

She lay down again with the flashlight to check. “Poor little thing!” said Lulu.

“Oh!” said Nan.

“Ah!” said Nan.

“I see!” said Nan, and she looked down at Lulu and nodded.

Lulu didn't notice. She was down on her stomach again, shining the flashlight. At first there was nothing, but then ginger fur appeared. An inquisitive dark eye glinted silver in the flashlight.

“Is he still there?” asked Mellie, getting down to join her.

“Still there,” said Lulu, sighing with relief. “I think perhaps he goes away when we bang and then comes back when the flashlight is shining.”

Then they both rolled over and looked guiltily at Nan.

There was a small silence while Nan looked back at them.

“Well,” she said at last. “We'd better take turns with the hammer!”

Chapter Five

Ratty in the Morning

Deep in the night, in Nan's little garden, Lulu and Mellie and Nan took turns, sharing the hammer and the swimming goggles. Every now and then they would pause their banging and Lulu would lie down with the flashlight to check that the lost thing was still there.

Once, when Mellie was hammering, Lulu thought she heard something. Then she thought she hadn't, because who would ever telephone in the middle of the night.

Nan was having her turn when the police cars arrived.

Two of them, blue lights flashing.

As well as four large policemen with flashlights so bright they put out the stars.

Lulu and Mellie ran one each side of Nan, and they held her tight.

“Don't you worry!” Lulu told her. “We'll look after you! We'll tell them it's your birthday!”

That didn't need to be done. They were very nice policemen, not at all as scary as they looked.

They were very polite too. They said, “Would you mind telling us what is going on?”

Lulu looked at Mellie.

They both looked at Nan.

Then they looked at the waiting policemen and Mellie asked, “Can we whisper?”

“Can they whisper?” the largest policeman asked Nan, and Nan nodded yes.

So Lulu and Mellie took the largest policeman down to the orange and lemon tree and they explained everything that had happened. They began with Emma Pond and they ended with the hammer. And while they were doing it, Nan made everyone cups of tea.

The policemen took their cups of tea under the orange and lemon tree and they stood in a circle around the paddling pool and Lulu and Mellie's policeman told the others all that he had discovered. He was very careful to whisper.

Then all the policemen came back smiling and told Nan and Lulu and Mellie how pleased they were to find that they didn't have to rescue a poor old lady from desperate burglars. That was what they had expected, when Nan's neighbor had called them to say that his next-door neighbor would not answer her telephone and the bangs were terrible and peering from his window he could see three shadowy criminals knocking down the walls.

Then three of the policemen went away in case they were needed for any other emergencies that night.

But the largest policeman stayed. He whispered to Lulu and Mellie that he had three children at home and three hamsters to match, and he knew what to do when hamsters became lost things.

First, with bangs ten times louder than any that Lulu or Mellie or Nan had made, he knocked out the air brick.

Next, using a bucket, two clothes pegs, a long dangling scarf, something soft to land on, and Mellie's carrot, sliced up, he made a lost-thing catcher. He fixed the scarf to the bucket with the clothes pegs at one end. He dangled the other end in the air-brick hole.

“That makes a ladder to the top of the bucket,” he said.

Next he put a trail of carrot slices all the way up the scarf-ladder. He put more carrot inside the bucket, on top of a folded kitchen towel. Then he explained:

“Whatever you have lost will smell the carrot, climb the scarf, tumble in the bucket, land safely on the towel and there you go!” he told them. “All you have to do is wait. Trust me! I'm a policeman!”

Then he went away too.

“Well,” said Nan, “this is the most exciting birthday I've had for years! And now we'd better make ourselves comfortable while we wait!”

Lulu and Mellie fetched rugs and cushions for themselves, but they did not fetch rugs and cushions for Nan. They fetched her crown and her throne, because it was her birthday.

When Nan saw her crown and throne she said Lulu and Mellie were, as she had always supposed, the very best girls in the world. Whatever they had lost in the walls.

And then she settled down on her throne in the garden, and Lulu and Mellie curled up on their cushions.

And, although they did not mean to, one by one they fell asleep.

But Ratty did not.

Ratty stayed awake.

Ratty was cleverer than the policeman's children's hamsters.

He was cleverer than the policeman too.

He found his carrot slices.

One by one he picked them up, carried them down the scarf, through the hole in the air brick, up the walls, across the roof, down the rose trellis and into his cage, where he put them away under his bed.

He was very careful not to fall in the bucket.

When he had collected all his carrot slices he went to bed.

On the roof.

Lulu found him the next morning, still fast asleep. The cats showed her where he was. The cats always knew.

Lulu picked him up, cage as well, and carried him downstairs. Mellie was awake now, but Nan was not.

Snore!
went Nan, very gently and quietly, her crown tipping sideways, asleep on her throne.

“Look!” whispered Lulu, and Mellie said, “Wow!”

Later that day the parents arrived and they exploded at once into questions.

“What
have
you been up to?”

“What's that hole in the wall?”

“Why are you yawning?”

“And
have
you been good?”

“They've been as good as gold,” said Nan, overhearing. “All of them perfect! All three!”

“Three?” asked Mellie, and she looked up at the roof, where once again the hamster was sleeping, safe in his cage with the door tight shut. “How did you know about Ra …”

“La la la!” sang Nan with her fingers in her ears.

“We camped!” said Lulu. “In the garden all night! Mellie and I had cushions to sleep on. Nan had her crown and she sat on her throne.”

“On her throne?
In the garden? But
WHY?”

Lulu took a deep breath. Then she bravely began.

“Well, you know Emma Pond …”

But Nan interrupted.

“Because it's my birthday!” she said.