Snakes' Elbows Read online

  For Brigitte Fabre, with love

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 The Little Town

  2 The Woodford Trumpet

  3 Barney’s First Day Back

  4 Wilf

  5 Jasper’s Party

  6 Dandelion

  7 Jasper’s Job

  8 Barney at Home

  9 The Painting

  10 The Auction

  11 The Next Day

  12 Dandelion in the Garden

  13 Boom!

  14 Picnic

  15 A Shock in the Night

  16 Fudge

  17 Strange Events at Barney’s House

  18 In the Police Station

  19 The Best of Friends

  20 Kidnapped!

  21 Where is Dandelion?

  22 Cannibal and Bruiser to the Rescue!

  23 Into the Police Station Again

  24 At Jasper’s House

  25 A Really Good Idea

  26 Three Cheers for Barney Barrington!

  27 The End of the Story

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  The story I am about to tell you took place in Woodford, a most unremarkable little town – or so it seemed. It had the usual shops and houses and offices, factories and parks and churches. A slow river flowed through the centre, spanned by a series of stout stone bridges and at the edge of the town there was a dark forest. Beyond that again there was a mountain, but it was not particularly high or famous or important or beautiful. Like the town, it was quite unremarkable: it was just a mountain.

  Had you asked any of the citizens of Woodford what was special about it, I doubt if any of them would have been able to answer you straight off. There would have been quite a bit of head-scratching and humming and hawing. ‘Now let me see,’ they’d likely have said. And then they would probably have mentioned the church: not Saint John’s, the modern one, but the other one, which was very old. How old? Your average Woodford man or woman probably didn’t know ‘Oh, ancient,’ they would say if you pressed them. ‘Hundreds and hundreds of years old.’ It had stained-glass windows that didn’t show angels or saints but wild flowers: primroses in one pointed window, violets in another, harebells in another and so on. On a frosty afternoon in February when the light is at its best for looking at such things, they glowed like jewels in the darkness of the church and reminded the people, who were cold and tired at the end of winter, that the Spring would come again soon, bringing real flowers to the fields and to the forest: primroses and violets and harebells.

  Of what else would the citizens have spoken? They might have mentioned that in the middle of the main square was an imposing statue of Albert Hawkes, the little town’s most famous son. ‘Born in Woodford. Died in Glory’ it said on the plinth; and generations of children thought that Glory must be the name of the far-off city in which Albert Hawkes had ended his days. But there was, unfortunately, a slight problem: no one had the foggiest idea who Albert Hawkes was and what he had done to merit such a grand statue. Was he a military man who had won a famous victory? Probably not, because then the statue would have shown him in uniform, waving a sword in the air. Perhaps he was a learned man, a professor or even a poet, but then he would have been holding a bronze book in his bronze hands. An inventor? Then why wasn’t he holding the thing he had invented? Albert Hawkes’ statue gave no clues to who he had been. It showed him as a man of medium height with a frock coat and a splendid moustache, leaning on a broken pillar with his chin propped in his right hand. He was gazing off into the middle distance with a slightly puzzled expression. You could have been forgiven for thinking that even he had forgotten who he was, and was trying his best to remember.

  The people of Woodford didn’t even think of him as Albert Hawkes, and had long since stopped wondering what he had done to be famous. They simply spoke of The Statue and used it as a place to meet before heading along to do something more interesting, such as going to the cinema or to an ice-cream parlour. The Statue was a bus terminus. I hate to have to tell you this, but the odd passing dog used to lift its leg against the plinth and no one thought this an outrage or indeed cared at all. There are many people who spend their lives desperately trying to be famous: they should think about the fate of Albert Hawkes.

  The town did have an art gallery but I doubt if anyone would have mentioned it, because unfortunately the paintings in it were not good. Not good at all. In fact they were completely hopeless. They looked as if when they had been painted, the artists had had a bad headache or tummy ache; or perhaps simply their minds had been elsewhere and they had been wondering what was for tea that night or if the postman would bring something interesting.

  Anything else? Yes, Woodford Creams! They would certainly have told you about Woodford Creams, which are chocolates with a rose-scented cream-filled centre that are every bit as delicious as they sound, and horribly expensive. They were sold from a shop the size of a large suitcase, by the shy, dreamy woman whose mother had invented the chocolates and who had given her daughter the secret recipe. The people of Woodford bought them as gifts or as treats for themselves. At Christmas time there was always a queue out the door of the shop, down the street, around the corner, sometimes even as far as The Statue. (And if you knew Woodford you would realise that that is a very long way indeed.)

  And so already you can see that even though it was a most unremarkable little town, there were things in it that were interesting and delicious and delightful. This is true of every town no matter how dull it may at first appear to be. Of course if you have absolutely no curiosity or imagination whatsoever, even the most exciting city in the world will seem boring to you. But if you do open your eyes wide and look at what is there under your very nose, you will find wonders and marvels even in a completely ordinary place like Woodford.

  But wait! How could I possibly have forgotten Jasper? Jasper Jellit was an extravagant and flamboyant millionaire who lived in a flashy great mansion at the edge of town. He threw wild parties and the people of Woodford were completely and utterly fascinated by him. ‘Not every town has someone like Jasper living in it,’ they’d have said, although the wiser folk would perhaps have pointed out that this was something of a mixed blessing. On the day this story begins, however, it wasn’t Jasper they were thinking about. At the church and in the chocolate shop, in the art gallery and among the groups of people standing around The Statue, waiting to meet their friends or to catch a bus, there was tremendous excitement. ‘Have you heard?’ they said to each other. ‘Have you heard the news?’ There was one topic of conversation that day and only one, which was this:

  Barney Barrington was coming back to live in Woodford.

  The people knew this because they had read about it in the Woodford Trumpet, a small, loud newspaper with lots of photographs and great big headlines. It also had a rather odd habit of putting some words in BLOCK CAPITALS, so that it looked like THIS. Perhaps they thought their READERS were too BUSY to read the paper SLOWLY, and in glancing over the main WORDS they would get the general IDEA. Perhaps they thought their EYESIGHT was BAD. Perhaps they even thought that their READERS were a bit DIM.

  Whatever the reason, the headline that morning read: ‘MUSICAL MILLIONAIRE COMES HOME TO WOODFORD!’ And then in smaller print it said, ‘See pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7.’ This didn’t leave much room for any other news, which was a pity, because lots of important if rather unexciting things were happening at that time.

  ‘After YEARS away,’ the paper said on its front page, ‘Pianist BARNEY BARRINGTON is coming back to LIVE in WOODFORD. (I’ll drop the capitals from here on out if you don’t mind.
You’re probably not BUSY and I’m certain you’re not DIM and even if your EYESIGHT is BAD (mine is terrible) I doubt if CAPITALS will HELP.)

  ‘Millionaire Barney, who is even richer than Jasper Jellit, has bought The Oaks and is expected to move in any day now. Child genius Barney left Woodford when he was only five. The piano-playing sprog went on to stun the world with his skill on the ivories. Now, more than sixty years later, he is coming back to live here again. And who can blame him, eh? Good on yer, Barney! Welcome Home!’

  Above this there were two large photographs. One showed a frail, rather anxious little child with soft fair hair standing beside an immense black grand piano. ‘Nimble-fingered nipper: Barney at six,’ the caption read. The other photo showed a frail, rather anxious looking elderly man with soft grey hair, standing beside an immense black grand piano. ‘Still packing ’em in,’ it said below. ‘Barney wowing New York last week.’

  The rest of the paper was full of pictures and stories about Barney. The Trumpet said that he had never had a home since leaving Woodford, but had spent all his life travelling the world, staying in hotels and giving concerts. They told about the zillions and squillions of records he had sold and of how sometimes there had been punch-ups at the box office when there weren’t enough concert tickets to go round. They said how quiet and shy he had been as a child and how he had never changed. There were photos of him in London and Tokyo and Sydney and Paris.

  ‘Snakes’ elbows! Richer than me?’ Jasper Jellit was sitting up in bed in his ruby silk pyjamas reading the paper and eating a soft-boiled egg with toast soldiers, his Tuesday morning breakfast. He was a picky eater and had a different breakfast brought to him, cooked just so, every day in the week. ‘RICHER THAN ME??!!!’

  He shouted so loud that he woke up his two Alsatian dogs, Cannibal and Bruiser, who were snoozing in their basket at the foot of the bed.

  ‘Oh what is it this time?’ they thought crossly. ‘There’s no need to make such a racket.’

  Jasper leafed wildly through the paper looking for news about himself. There was always something. The morning after one of his incredible parties there would be pages and pages of photographs in all of which Jasper appeared, and reports in which the guests said how it was the best party they had ever been to in their entire lives and how Jasper was the most wonderful person they had ever met. Often he would pull some stunt just to get attention. One day, for example, he went out and bought up every single Woodford Cream in the shop. It was the most anyone had ever bought at one go and it was all over the Woodford Trumpet the next day. There were far too many for him to eat himself and he fed some of them to Cannibal and Bruiser, even though he knew you should never give chocolate to dogs. He was curious to know how sick it would make them: it made them very sick indeed.

  But there was nothing about him in the paper today, nothing at all. Everything was about Barney Barrington.

  ‘What’s wrong with him now?’ Cannibal wondered.

  ‘He’s gone the same colour as his pyjamas,’ thought Bruiser.

  Jasper threw his paper aside and jumped out of bed, sending the toast soldiers flying. He picked up the phone and rang his butler.

  ‘Come here,’ he said. Jasper rarely bothered with details such as saying ‘Please’ or ‘Thank you’ or even ‘Hello’.

  ‘Come here IMMEDIATELY. You’re going to help me to plan the biggest and best, the most incredible and amazing party that Woodford has ever seen.’

  Cannibal and Bruiser looked at each other in dismay. ‘Oh no!’ they thought. ‘Oh no. Here we go again.’

  Meanwhile, over at The Oaks, Barney Barrington was quietly moving into his new home.

  Woodford was not as Barney remembered it. He hadn’t been back since he was five. It wasn’t so much that things had changed, it was just that they looked different now that he was older. Take the river that flowed through the middle of the town. When Barney was small it had seemed to him like a raging torrent. If you fell into it, he thought, you would be carried away in moments and never seen again. He had been too little to see over the bridges and his mother used to lift him up and set him on the parapet so that he could look down into the waters as they swept past below. It had been frightening in a way because of the strong current and the depth; but nice too, because his mother had always held on to him tightly and he knew he wouldn’t fall in. He clung to her arms and watched the river race past.

  Now that he was grown up, he could easily look over the side of the bridges without help as he walked through the town for the first time in over sixty years. He was amazed to see how narrow the river seemed, how small and slow and shallow. This was partly because when he was a child it was the only river he had ever known, but during his life he had found out just how big a river can be. Barney had seen the Seine in Paris and the Thames in London. He had seen immense rivers: the Mississippi when he was in the United States, the Nile in Egypt and the Ganges in India. When he was in Brazil he had even seen the Amazon, which was so wide that when you stood on one bank you couldn’t see the other side.

  But the river in Woodford also looked small now simply because Barney himself was bigger. The statue of Albert Hawkes was also not as big as he had thought it. Neither the mountain at the edge of the town nor the spire of the church, the one with the pretty windows, was as high as he remembered. He felt a little as if he were looking at everything in the town through the wrong end of a telescope. And although he understood why this should be, it made him feel slightly sad.

  His first day in Woodford did not go well. He went into the art gallery because apart from playing the piano, Barney loved looking at paintings more than anything else in the world. But the Woodford pictures were so disappointing. There was one where the sheep were bigger than the shepherd, and a portrait of a lady who was rather beautiful except that she had her eyes crossed. Barney guessed correctly that this wasn’t deliberate, but that the painter, although extremely good at hands and hair, was not very skilful when it came to eyes. ‘Oh well,’ Barney thought, ‘at least I have paintings of my own to look at.’

  From the gallery, he went to the supermarket to buy some food. The kitchen of the house into which he had moved was completely empty and so he needed everything. He would have to carry home all the boring things like salt and tea before he could even begin to think of treats like jam tarts and chocolate cake. Because he had spent all his life in hotels he had never had to shop for groceries before and he found it bewildering, all the aisles stuffed with packets and tins of every kind of food you could imagine. Just as he was putting a sliced loaf in his basket he heard someone saying, ‘It’s him! Barney Barrington! The pianist!’ Embarrassed, Barney slipped into the next aisle and went on with his shopping.

  ‘Look, Ma!’ a little boy said. ‘That man with the can of soup and the milk! It’s the man who was in the paper this morning, the millionaire who’s come back to live here.’

  Everyone who was standing around with yoghurts and eggs and pieces of cheese in their hands stopped what they were doing and turned to stare at Barney, as though he were one of the paintings in Woodford’s art gallery.

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ said an old man. ‘It is him.’

  Barney felt his face go hot and red. Even though he didn’t have everything he needed or wanted he hurried to the check-out.

  ‘Oh look,’ said the young woman behind the till, ‘it’s you! It’s him,’ she said to the man behind Barney as she rang up the groceries.

  ‘Who?’ said the man.

  ‘Him,’ said the young woman. ‘You know, whassisname. Thingie. The fellow in the paper. Plays the piano. Pots of money. It is you, isn’t it?’ she said, turning to Barney again.

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ Barney confessed helplessly.

  ‘Told you so,’ the young woman said triumphantly to the man in the queue.

  Barney paid for his shopping and fled.

  *

  By the time he got home he was ready for lunch. He made beans on toast, bu
t he could see that it wasn’t going to be very nice because he had forgotten to get any butter for the bread. He decided to eat up in his room and was crossing the hall with his meal on a tray when suddenly the doorbell rang. Who could it possibly be? He didn’t know anyone in Woodford. He set his lunch on the hall table and cautiously opened the front door.

  Plooff! Immediately a flashgun went off, blinding Barney for a moment with its white light.

  ‘Who are you?’ he exclaimed to the two men who were standing on his front step.

  ‘Woodford Trumpet,’ said one, as Plooff! The second man took another photograph.

  ‘I don’t want my picture taken,’ Barney said, and as he moved to close the door the man who had spoken shoved his foot in to block it open. The foot was wearing a splendid shiny black shoe of the finest leather. This was odd because otherwise the man was extremely scruffy.

  ‘Woodford Trumpet,’ he said again. ‘Come on, open up.’

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Barney.

  ‘Tell us all about your fabulous life. Show us round your lovely home, you know. All that.’

  ‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,’ Barney said.

  ‘Well, I do mind, as a matter of fact,’ the man replied, becoming shirty. ‘I haven’t got all day to waste, I’m due over at Jasper Jellit’s place in an hour’s time to see the preparations for his party. Come on, hurry up and let us in.’

  By now Barney felt quite frightened. ‘I really don’t want to,’ he said again.

  The man was still pushing at the door with his foot and peering through the gap to see whatever he could of the house. Suddenly he spotted the tray sitting on the hall table. ‘That your lunch?’ he demanded incredulously. ‘Beans on toast? That’s all you’re having? No smoked salmon? No champagne?’

  ‘I don’t like smoked salmon,’ Barney said. ‘I like beans on toast.’

  Plooff! The man with the camera had stuck a long lens through the gap in the door and taken another photo. The blinding light startled his companion who made the mistake of moving his foot.