Noah Barleywater Runs Away (17 page)

It made me terribly sad to see how disappointed all my father’s things were in me.

‘Oh my!’ said an elderly rabbit, appearing out of my father’s bedroom and jumping in surprise at the sight of this most unexpected visitor, before relaxing and breaking into a smile. ‘You came! I can hardly believe it! I didn’t recognize you for a moment. You’re so much older.’

‘Hello, Dr Wings,’ I said, stepping forward and stroking the rabbit’s ears. I had always been very fond of the doctor, who had attended many of my childhood illnesses. ‘I got your letter and came as soon as I could.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Dr Wings, looking away for a moment and biting his lip. ‘I wasn’t sure if it would even reach you. You’ve been gone for so long, after all.’

‘Yes, I got sidetracked,’ I told him, unable to look the rabbit in the eye, so ashamed was I of my selfish actions. I had tried to be a good son, but the truth was, events kept getting in the way.

‘Sidetracked?’ asked Dr Wings, frowning. ‘For all these years? When your father was growing older and more infirm? How extraordinary!’

‘I am sorry about it,’ I replied, looking down at the floor. ‘But I’m here now. How is he anyway? Is he any better? I want to stay and take care of him now, really I do.’ I hesitated for a moment, the worst possible thought coming into my head.
‘He’s not … he hasn’t …’

‘Oh my,’ said Dr Wings sadly, shaking his head as he chewed on a carrot stick. ‘If only you’d got here an hour earlier.’

‘I tried to come home!’ I explained, an enormous weight of guilt beginning to spread throughout my body. ‘How did he get so ill anyway? He was fine when I left. Getting older, of course, but he wasn’t in poor health.’

Dr Wings narrowed his eyes and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘How long do you think you’ve been gone?’ he asked.

‘A few months, I suppose,’ I said, my cheeks growing red. ‘I lose track of time so easily. When you’re running all the time, you go through so many different time zones, you never quite know where you are. Or when you are.’

‘My boy, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ said the rabbit, staring at the green roots sprouting from the end of the carrot before popping it into his mouth and swallowing it in one go. ‘The fact of the matter is, you’ve been gone for almost ten years.’

‘No!’ I cried, looking at my watch as if that might confirm things one way or the other.

‘I assure you, it’s quite true.’

‘So I’ve missed ten birthdays?’ I asked.

‘You’ve missed ten of your
father’s
birthdays,’ pointed out the rabbit. ‘And throughout all that time, you were all he ever talked about. He followed
your exploits in the newspapers every week.’

‘I certainly never meant to be away for so long,’ I said. ‘After all, I promised Poppa I would be back after the Olympic Games.’

‘But you never came home,’ repeated Dr Wings.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘No, I never did. How did he get ill?’

Dr Wings smiled kindly at me and shook his head. ‘My boy, he got old, that’s all it is. Your father was a very elderly man. He’d worked hard all his life. Why, he was still working in the toy shop until a few weeks ago. Then he started to suffer some dizzy spells and I came to see about them but there was nothing I could do. A few days later he had a fall, and after that he took to his bed. I’m afraid we’ve been losing him ever since.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not something I thought would ever happen,’ I said.

‘But we all grow old,’ said the rabbit. ‘You’re growing older yourself. That’s what happens. Boys become men. And men become old men. You knew that much, of course.’

I nodded. I knew one thing that never grew old: a puppet.

‘If you’d only arrived an hour earlier,’ said Dr Wings sadly, shaking his head.

‘Just an hour? You mean—?’

‘Yes. He died just before you got home. He’s in there, in bed. You can go in and see him if you want.’

I exhaled and walked slowly towards the
bedroom door, hesitating for only a moment as I looked inside, nervous of what I might see when my eyes adjusted to the gloom. The curtains were closed and the room remained in an evening shade of half-darkness. On my father’s bedside table, a small lamp was snoozing quietly, but it sensed my presence, looked across, and its bulb burst into immediate brightness, so surprised was it by what it saw.

In the bed, Poppa lay looking for all the world as if he was fast asleep. He was older than I remembered him, but he looked at peace and I was glad of that.

‘It’s me, Poppa,’ I whispered, stepping forward. ‘I came home.’

After Poppa was laid to rest, it didn’t take long for me to decide that I would have to do something to honour his memory. I hung up my running shoes and decided that I would make a go of his business instead. After all, Poppa had devoted so many years to building up the toy shop, it would be a shame to simply let it go just because its creator was no longer among the living. I made peace with everything in the shop that had been disappointed with my failure to return for so many years and we vowed to begin anew together, friends again.

Fortunately for me I had learned so many things in school after our move to the village that I knew exactly what I was doing too.

I rose every morning at four o’clock and ran for five hours before opening the toy shop, just to keep fit. When there were no customers, which was always, I would make new toys; all sorts of toys – trains and cars, footballs and boats, letter puzzles and alphabet blocks, but never puppets, never ever puppets – and then paint them, decide upon a price and place them on the appropriate shelf. When Alexander struck six o’clock in the evening, I would jump into my running clothes once again and set off for some of the more distant villages for a few hours before returning to the shop, locking up for the evening and retiring upstairs to eat my dinner. A little pasta perhaps. Or a garden salad. I was in bed every night by midnight and up again by four, seven days a week.

All in all it was a good life, I told myself. And every day I tried not to think about how much I regretted leaving Poppa alone when he needed me most.

‘I’m sorry your father died,’ said Noah, looking down at the floor. ‘Do you still miss him?’

The old man nodded and looked around the room. ‘I think of him when I come in here every morning,’ he said. ‘When I eat my breakfast, when I’m looking forward to the day ahead. And at night when I’m sitting by the fire, reading a book, I imagine he’s there beside me, watching over me. I feel him close by, and I tell him that I’m sorry I wasn’t there at the end.’

Noah said nothing for a long time. He could hear a lot of conversations taking place in his head, a lot of arguments, some of which he wanted to listen to and some of which he wanted to ignore altogether.

‘Can we go back downstairs?’ he asked, standing up and rubbing his arms. ‘It feels a little cold up here and I should probably be leaving soon anyway.’

‘Of course, my boy,’ said the old man, walking
over towards Henry and opening him up. ‘Please, follow me.’

They walked out onto the staircase, stepping back for a moment to allow the door to go downstairs first, and once he was comfortably settled into the wall below, they turned his handle and went through into the toy shop once again.

‘Doesn’t it ever get lonely living here all alone?’ asked Noah, looking around with the curious sensation that some of the puppets were now in different places from where they had been before.

‘Sometimes,’ admitted the old man. ‘But I’m an old man now and amn’t looking for company.’

‘How old are you exactly?’

The old man considered this and scratched his chin. ‘To be honest, I’ve lost track,’ he said. ‘But I’m no spring chicken, I know that much for sure.’

‘I’m surprised you decided to stay here,’ said Noah. ‘After your father died, I mean. You could have had so many adventures for the rest of your life. You could have travelled the world.’

‘But every day has been an adventure,’ replied the old man, smiling. ‘It doesn’t matter whether I’m here with my puppets or ten thousand miles away. Something interesting always happens, wherever you are. I’m not sure if that makes sense but—’

‘It does,’ said Noah. ‘Don’t you ever sell any of these puppets?’ he asked.

‘Oh no,’ replied the old man. ‘No, they’re not for sale.’

‘Not for sale?’ asked Noah, laughing. ‘But this is a shop, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a place where things are made, certainly. And there’s a front door, of course. Most days. And over there is a cash register, although I’m not sure if it works any more. Is it a shop? Perhaps it is. I don’t know. Does it matter? It’s my home.’

Noah considered this and turned round, looked at his surroundings and took a few steps along the aisles of the shop, staring at the puppets as if they might offer up their secrets, before finally selecting two from the shelves, both traditional puppets of men.

‘Do they have names?’ he asked, holding up his finds.

‘Oh yes,’ said the old man, a great smile crossing his face. ‘The one in your left hand is based on my father, Poppa. It’s quite a good likeness actually. And the one in your right hand … well, he was a neighbour of Poppa’s before I was born, Master Cherry. Pull their strings and you might see something you like.’

Noah looked down and pulled the strings that extended beneath the feet of the two toys. Their arms and legs rose as he expected them to, but – great delight! – the hair lifted off their heads as well.

‘They’re wearing wigs!’ he cried, laughing.

‘They always did,’ explained the old man. ‘They got into a terrible fight once and nearly lost those wigs.’

‘What was the fight over?’

‘
A misunderstanding, that’s all.’

‘Oh. And did they become friends again afterwards?’

‘Great friends,’ said the old man in a satisfied tone. ‘And they swore to remain so for the rest of their lives.’

Noah nodded, pleased with the story, and replaced the puppets on the shelves. ‘And these,’ he said, selecting two more and holding them out before him. ‘The fox and the cat.’

‘Terrible creatures,’ said the old man, shaking his head and frowning, his voice growing deeper as he looked at the malevolent animals. ‘Infamous villains, the pair of them. They robbed me of five gold coins and caused me to be sent to jail. Never trust a fox or a cat. There. I’ve said it.’

Noah’s eyebrows danced up and down and he looked back at the shelves for another puppet.

‘This one?’ he asked, pointing at a brightly coloured creature.

‘Ah, the cricket,’ said the old man in delight. ‘A fine fellow whom I mistreated badly.’

‘Really?’ asked Noah. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘I smashed him against the wall with a wooden hammer and killed him.’

Noah’s mouth opened wide in horror. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why would you do such a thing?’

‘He accused me of having a wooden head. I may have’ – the old man glanced around and looked a little ashamed of himself – ‘I may have over-reacted
slightly. But don’t look so aghast, boy,’ he added. ‘The cricket came back in a different form. A sort of ghost. We became firm friends after that.’

Noah shook his head but said nothing, merely pointed at the next puppet along the wall.

‘Now that’s a fellow I called the Fire-Eater. Not a nice man at all. Tried to burn me alive once. And beside him are two assassins who tried to murder me.’

‘What’s that in their hands?’ asked Noah, leaning forward to take a closer look.

‘A knife and a noose. They were torn between stabbing me and hanging me.’

‘You certainly had your share of enemies when you were young,’ said Noah in amazement.

‘I did,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t know why. People just seemed to take against me for some reason.’

‘And you carved all these puppets yourself?’

‘Every one.’

‘How extraordinary!’

‘They stay the same for ever,’ said the old man, smiling a little. ‘A puppet can travel and have adventures and never age a day. A boy … a real boy … he grows old and nothing lies ahead of him but death.’ He stopped talking for a moment. When he looked up again, the boy was staring at him, his face filled with concern. ‘You should never want to be anything other than you are,’ the old man said quietly. ‘Remember that. You should never wish for more than you have been given. It could be the
greatest mistake of your life.’

Noah wasn’t entirely sure what the words meant, but he stored them at the back of his mind, just above his right ear, certain that a part of him might want to dig them out again one day and have a think about them, and when that day came, he wanted them to be near at hand.

‘Can I tell you a secret?’ Noah asked.

‘Of course you can,’ replied the old man.

‘And you won’t tell anyone?’

The old man hesitated. ‘Not a soul,’ he said.

Noah’s eyes opened wide. What was this? Could it possibly be? Was the old man’s nose … 
growing longer?

‘One person! One person!’ cried the old man quickly, pressing the flat of his hand to the tip of his nose in embarrassment. ‘I might tell one person, but only one.’ At these words, his nose seemed to retract back to its regular position, and Noah blinked several times, unsure whether he had really seen what he thought he had seen or whether it had been an illusion of some sort. ‘I have a friend,’ explained the old man, smiling a little. ‘A rather elderly pig who lives on a farm near here whom I visit regularly, and we share our secrets with each other. Would you mind if I told the pig? He’s very discreet.’

Noah considered this for a few moments and finally nodded. ‘I think that would be fine,’ he said. ‘But
just
the pig.’

‘Just the pig,’ agreed the old man.

‘All right then,’ said Noah. ‘It’s just that I think I might have made a mistake. Running away, I mean. I don’t think I really thought about what it would mean.’ He sighed and looked around, shaking his head suddenly as if he was trying to throw all these thoughts away, and staring at the puppets again instead. ‘I think I should go home now. Can I have one, do you think?’ he asked. ‘To take with me?’