A Long Trip to Teatime Page 2

‘How do you know?’ Edgar asked.

  ‘It always wins,’ said the little man. ‘Never lost yet. Ah, here comes the money.’ And out of the letter-box came the two coins, followed by the smallest coin that Edgar had ever seen. All three tinkled onto the floor.

  ‘Can’t win much, you see, it stands to reason,’ said Mr Eck. ‘It always comes in first, always has done, always will. Anyway, those two hamadans go back to us, and you can keep the vathek, not worth much but better than nothing.’

  ‘Thing thing thing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Edgar said, pocketing the tiny coin they called a vathek. The little man at the desk said:

  ‘Anything to declare?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Edgar.

  ‘You answer the question. You’re bringing things into the country, and you have to say what they are. And some things you have to pay money on.’

  ‘But you can see,’ Edgar said, ‘I have nothing.’ And he held out his hands as if to show that there was nothing hidden in them.

  ‘You’re a bit of a liar,’ said one of the Mr Ecks. ‘You have that vathek in your pocket.’

  ‘All right, then. I declare that.’

  ‘Not enough,’ said the other Mr Eck. He went over to a corner of the room, brushing the echo out of the way irritably as he did so. There was a load of old rubbish in the corner – bucolics and eclogues and barclays and sylviuses and economics and bagehots and darwins and ector and kays and seneschals, all very dusty. He came out with a big dusty carpet-bag and began stuffing it with hats from the rack. The parrot danced and squawked, and echo squawked too, so that the parrot put his head on one side to listen, but by this time there was nothing to hear. Mr Eck gave the stuffed bag to Edgar and said: ‘Now.’

  ‘Ow ow ow.’

  ‘Anything to declare?’ asked the little man at the desk.

  ‘Just this,’ Edgar said.

  ‘Confiscated. How dare you try to bring all those hats into the country.’ And he began to throw the hats back on to the rack, missing several times to the great glee of the parrot. Very grimly, he said: ‘I suppose you’ve no passport, either.’ He began to rummage crossly in the drawer that the echo had flown out of. ‘No good, no good,’ he kept saying. ‘There’s nothing here that suits. This passport’s for a young girl from the depths of Manchester, by the name of Edda de Maris, and this one’s for an old man by the malory of Snorri Sturlason, from Trinitaria he is, so neither will do.’

  ‘Do do do.’ The echo was now right on top of the desk. The little man shot out his hand, closed it, and cried:

  ‘Got it. In there with you, my lady.’ And he put an invisibility into the drawer, then closed the drawer. ‘So,’ he said gloomily again. ‘It looks as if we’ll have to let you in without a passport.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Edgar said. ‘And how do I get home in time for tea?’

  Messrs Eckermann and Eckhart said together: ‘We know nothing of tea here. It’s cocoa we drink.’ The parrot screamed and screamed at Edgar. ‘Who are you waiting for, boy?’ said the little man behind the desk. ‘We’ve done our duty by you as none can deny, so on your way to wherever you’re going.’

  ‘Sing him your song to cheer him on his way,’ said one of the Mr Ecks.

  ‘Oh, all right then,’ grumbled the little man, and he sang grumpily while the parrot screamed an accompaniment:

  ‘Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

  (1882 to 1944)

  was educated at Owens College, Manchester,

  And Trinity College, Cambridge,

  And was professor of astronomy at Cambridge

  And was a distinguished astronomer,

  Noted for his researches into the

  Stellar system and the internal

  Constitution of stars,

  Also for his contributions

  To the theory of relativity

  And the popularization of

  Modern physical theory.’

  They were mostly quite small, and one little man had two dogs which were much bigger than himself. He kept hitting one of them with a feeble little hand, crying ‘Naughty naughty’, but the great beast, it was clear, did not even feel the blow.

  As that seemed to be the end of the song, Edward said: ‘Thank you very much. That was delightful.’

  ‘Delightful?’ said Mr Eck. ‘Delightful? Stella Cistern was one of the most beautiful girls in the world.’ They all now turned their backs on Edgar, including the parrot, so he left the office and went out into the sea wind. ‘Constitution of Staaaaaars,’ cried the gulls.

  CHAPTER II

  Eden

  EDGAR WALKED towards the land. The pier led to a long street which stretched left and right as far as the eye could see, and it was full of pleasant-looking houses painted very richly – red and orange and yellow and even purple – and people were seated outside their front doors in little gardens, sunning themselves. They waved quite amicably to Edgar as he stood, his back to the sea, wondering which way to go. They were mostly quite small, and one little man had two dogs which were much bigger than himself. He kept hitting one of them with a feeble little hand, crying ‘Naughty naughty’, but the great beast, it was clear, did not even feel the blow. Looking up, Edgar saw a signpost which said: TO EDEN. There was no signpost giving other instructions, so it was to Eden he decided to go. As he started off, turning right to do so, a little old woman, fanning herself with a newspaper on a chair in her garden, called:

  ‘Going to Eden, is that it, young man?’

  ‘How far is it?’ asked Edgar.

  ‘It gets further every day,’ she said. ‘It’s a question of the Expanding Universe, you know. But you should be there by nightfall if you don’t dawdle.’

  Edgar thanked her and began to walk. As the view of the sea on his right was rather monotonous, he crossed over, coming, as he walked on, to a number of little shops which sold canned gavestons, toy woolly lambs, strawberry isabellas, and other interesting objects. And then he came to a baker’s shop where a fat old woman was crying with pain because, as she told the whole world (though the whole world was not there to hear her, only a very thin man with a goatee, chewing and chewing) she had burned her hand in putting some loaves into the oven. The man said to her:

  ‘It’s not possible, right? There’s no such thing as pain. It’s all imagination, right?’

  ‘But the pain’s horrible, Mr Quimby. Look how red it’s become. Oh, oh, the pain’s terrible.’ Edgar stood, listening, fascinated, and they took absolutely no notice of him.

  ‘See now, ma’am,’ said Mr Quimby, ‘and listen, right? There are two things in the world, right? One of them’s matter – like that bread and that cat sitting by the oven and this hat I was wearing when I came in right? That’s matter. Pigs and dust and newspapers and pens and knives and pimples and boils and carbuncles and burns on the hand. Matter, right, right? And the other thing is mind, that is to say the thought I’m thinking now and the thought you’re thinking, right? Well, matter doesn’t really exist, did you know that? Well, you know it now, ma’am. When I see a pig or a pen-knife it’s only a thought. It’s something I think, right? There’s nothing out there, that’s true of that cat and that oven it’s sitting by, it’s all in here here here, inside the mind. Right, right?’

  ‘I suppose you’re going to say that this pain is inside too?’ cried the baking-woman. ‘That this burnt hand is inside the mind?’

  ‘And it is too, ma’am,’ said Mr Quimby. ‘You think it’s hurt and red and swollen. All you have to do now is to think it’s not hurt and red and swollen. Right? Do that, ma’am.’ He looked at a huge turnip watch he took out of his waistcoast pocket and said: ‘Starting now.’

  ‘But that’s nonsense,’ Edgar couldn’t resist saying. ‘I mean, if it was a toothache the tooth would have to come out, wouldn’t it? It would still be a bad tooth even if you said it’s only in the mind? Right?’

  To his amazement, the baking-woman, whose hand really looked terribly red and painful, cried out: �
��Spirit is immortal truth and matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal and matter is the unreal and temporal.’

  ‘That’s right, ma’am,’ said Mr Quimby. ‘You sure are learning fast.’

  ‘Learning?’ she said indignantly. ‘What do you mean – learning? I’ve always known it. It’s me who am the teacher and you who are the learner. And you’re going to learn fast. Now.’ And she picked up a long bread-knife from the table and lunged at him with it. ‘Right?’ she said.

  ‘Ow,’ cried Mr Quimby as he ran round the table, the knife after him ‘ow, ow, that got me in the elbow, ma’am, ow ow ow ow, you’ve ripped the cloth from the back of my portland jacket, ow, that was right in the main artery, ma’am.’

  ‘All in the mind,’ she cried.

  Edgar got away very quickly, as he did not like either the big bread-knife or the look in the baker-woman’s eye. So, hearing the cries of Mr Quimby and the shouts of ‘All in the mind, right, right?’ he walked on and on, and soon began to feel very thirsty. The sun was hot and he had nothing to drink since lunchtime. A seagull flew up to him and, hovering in front of his eyes, scrawked: ‘All in the mind, eh, sonny? Hahahaha.’ Then it flew off.

  It was not long before Edgar came to a lane to his left, full of shady trees, and, as he walked under them, grateful for the coolness, he saw a kind of arch woven out of what seemed to be paper leaves and flowers and the sign EDEN in electric lights that were, surprisingly, since it was a bright summer afternoon, flashing feebly in and out like an advertisement for car-tyres or chewing gum. Some bulbs did not, however seem to be working. He walked under the arch and there saw a cheerful little man picking himself up out of a huge pool of mud. The road ahead was all full of such pools, as if there had been very heavy rain quite recently, though there had been no such signs on the esplanade from which Edgar had just turned off. The little man, desperately covered in mud, spoke in a friendly and cheerful manner, shaking mud out of his ears, pouring out of a battered top hat which he then put back jauntily on his head not only mud but also frogs that croaked cheerfully.

  ‘It’s all in the mind,’ said the man. ‘Cheerful within means cheerful without, and don’t’ – laughing heartily – ‘ask me without what.’

  ‘Eden,’ said Edgar. ‘Eden’s another name for paradise, isn’t it?’

  ‘All in the mind,’ said the man. Coming towards Edgar he suddenly slipped and went down into another mud-bath, from which he emerged as cheerful as before, if not more so. ‘You’ll get to like it if you keep cheerful. And there’s no charge to go in. You don’t have to give me not a penny, not a hiddekel (or tigris, if that’s the name you prefer) not a euphrates or a pison or a gihon. In you go, and remember it’s all, ha ha ha ha, in the mind.’ Edgar thanked him and walked on, hearing the little man fall into yet another pool and chuckling heartily, but not, since he was now behind him, seeing him.

  Edgar had never in his whole life seen so miserable a place. The sun was not shining; the sky was covered with rain-clouds, and there was a horrible smell of glue-factories. The houses he saw were black with soot and out of the chimneys of the big black buildings came black smoke that made him cough. There was a big banner stretching across the street, and it said: EDEN MEANS DELIGHT, AND DON’T FORGET IT. There were a lot of big black flies buzzing fretfully around, and Edgar said to himself: ‘Whether it’s all in the mind or not, I’ll be glad when I can find someone to tell me where I have to go in order to get back to school and then home to tea.’ There now appeared a very strange-looking lady, riding a white horse, wearing clothes of an earlier age, including a huge hat with a muslin veil (to keep off the flies, Edgar thought), and she carried a whip. With this whip she kept beating at a small Indian in a turban but not much else. He was running ahead of her, and, though he cried repeatedly: ‘Oh, you stop that now, missi-sahib, oh my goodness, that is very provoking, indeed, on my word, yes, missi-sahib, you stop it now, please,’ he did not seem to be hurt. Indeed, the whip never seemed to reach him. But the lady kept calling: ‘Jildi, hitheroa, I’ll tan your hide, by the Lord Harry, I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life,’ and she lifted up her whip, that whistled through the air, again. The turbaned Indian, catching sight of Edgar, ran behind him for protection, saying: ‘She becoming very angry, oh my goodness, yes, but you are my father and mother, sahib, and you will keep off her anger from me, oh on my word, yes.’ The lady said:

  ‘Who are you, boy? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m trying to get back home for tea.’

  ‘Tea,’ she said musingly, ‘tea. Never touch it myself, bad for the liver, much prefer a whisky pawnee, a chota peg, do you understand? If you really like tea, and there are some who do, do you understand, you’ll have to go up country for it, ah yes.’

  ‘You speak true, missi-sahib’, said the Indian from behind Edgar. ‘Up country very good tea.’

  ‘Well, he should know,’ she said. ‘Born here, drinks it himself. why was I beating the blue living daylights out of him? Can’t think why for the moment. Must be a reason, though, do you understand?’

  ‘Very good exercise for you, missi-sahib, ha ha. And for me too, goodness gracious, yes.’

  ‘You see up there,’ said the lady, pointing with her whip. ‘That semi-detached house on the hill. Dreadful place, of course – only fit for a semi-attached couple – what, what?’ She roared with laughter, the Indian joined in, going:

  ‘Oh, very funny, missi-sahib, you very funny lady, oh my goodness yes. Ha ha ha.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said the lady, ‘you go up there, boy, and ask. And now’, she said to the Indian, ‘as for you, you lump of lazarooshian leather you, I’m going to curry you and flay you, do you understand?’

  ‘Aha, you very funny, missi-sahib.’ And then: ‘Ow, ow, you not do that, oh my goodness, please not,’ as he ran ahead, though the whip always kept missing him.

  Edgar obeyed her instruction, and climbed up a little hill at the top of which were two houses attached to each other – which raised the question of which door to knock at. Edgar chose the first one he came to at the top of the winding path up the hill. At once, to his terror, a very large snake opened it, apparently using its tail to manage the door handle. ‘Yes?’ it hissed. It wore an old-fashioned lady’s bonnet. Edgar, trembling, wondered if this was the mother of the Blatant Beast, or perhaps the Blatant Beast itself. ‘Yes? Yessssss?’ it hissed again. ‘Don’t wassssste time, boy. Have you never sssseen a sssssnake before?’

  He went to the house next door and banged there, and this time a rather pleasant-looking old gentleman opened up, dressed rather in the style of Shakespeare . . .

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ trembled Edgar. ‘I was told that if I came here I would be told the way back to school and then home to tea, so I was told anyway.’

  ‘All those tolds,’ said the snake crossly. ‘I know nothing about schools, boy. I never went to school. I didn’t need to. I knew everything when I was born. And now I know more than everything, being older now than I was then.’

  ‘Is it possible to know more than everything, ma’am?’ Edgar asked boldly but politely.

  ‘If it’s possible to know less than nothing,’ said the snake, frowning. ‘And I should imagine you know less than nothing about, let me see, let me see, ah yes, about the gentleman who lives next door.’

  ‘That’s true, ma’am,’ Edgar said, ‘if nothing means the same as less than nothing.’

  ‘No, it does not mean the ssssssame,’ and the snake hissed angrily. ‘Because, if you’ve been to school at all (and why aren’t you at school now is what I could ask but won’t), you’d know that minus one is less than nothing. And now, since we’re on to numbers, give me the biggest number there is, because that would be about the same as everything.’

  ‘It would take too long,’ Edgar said. ‘When I was a very little boy I took a big exercise book to bed with me on a summer’s evening, and I tried to write the last number of all. But I couldn’t do it.’

&n
bsp; ‘Of course you couldn’t,’ snapped the snake. ‘Because even if you filled a mlllion billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion septillion octillion nonillion exercise books, you’d still be able to go on adding another digit. And I,’ said the snake, ‘I I I would be able to add one more. And one more. And one more. So, you see, I know more than everything. Good afternoon.’ And she slammed the door shut with her head.

  Edgar was not convinced by her argument, but he did not feel like banging on the door again to reopen it (the argument, that was, but it would also, of course, have meant the door as well), since he did not like the bad-tempered hissing and was a little put out by the idea of a big snake wearing a lady’s bonnet and living in a house. What did it, or she, live on? He shuddered to think. He went to the house next door and banged there, and this time a rather pleasant-looking old gentleman opened up, dressed rather in the style of Shakespeare – doublet and hose and ruff – who said, smiling:

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was told to come here, sir,’ Edgar said, ‘to ask you how I can find my way home.’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ cried the old man, and he led the way along a dusty corridor full of maps and globes. ‘I know all about getting to places.’ Edgar followed him into a big room, just as dusty as the corridor, which, like the corridor, was full of maps and globes. ‘It is my mission, so to speak, in life, so to say, and I’ll soon, so to put it, put you right. I suppose,’ he said, ‘you’ve been next door?’ He laughed loudly. ‘They all go next door first, so to speak, and quite a shock it must be to meet Miss Lilith, as she calls herself. Eden Bower she calls her little house, a pretty name. I, for my part, so to express it, am called Richard Eden.’

  ‘Is everything and everybody called Eden, then?’ Edgar asked. ‘Oh, my name is Edgar.’

  ‘Edgar Edgar Edgar,’ said the old man. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘so to say, everything is a bit edenified round here. Hence the name, you know, so to speak.’ Then he began to fuss about among his ancient dusty maps, all of which looked to Edgar far too old to be of any use today, since they were all full of blank spaces called TERRA INCOGNITA, meaning unknown land, and this was true of a map of England even, which was all blank just north of London. There was a map of America on which it said HERE BE DRAGONS in the populous state of New Jersey.