The Lives of Christopher Chant

They were the only ladies he had seen without clothes on. Their skins were greenish and so was their hair. He was fascinated by the way the ends of them were big silvery tails that could curl and flip almost like a fish, and send powerful sprays of water over him from their big finned feet. He never could persuade them that he was not a strange animal called a clistoffer.

Every time he went to that Anywhere, the latest nursery maid complained about all the sand in his bed. He had learnt very early on that they complained even louder when they found his pyjamas muddy, wet and torn from climbing through The Place Between. He took a set of clothes out on to the rocky path and left them there to change into. He had to put new clothes there every year or so, when he grew out of the latest torn and muddy suit, but the nursery maids changed so often that none of them noticed. Nor did they notice the strange toys he brought back over the years. There was a clockwork dragon, a horse that was really a flute, and the necklace from the silly ladies which, when you looked closely, was a string of tiny pearl skulls.

Christopher thought about the silly ladies. He looked at his latest nursemaid’s feet, and he thought that her shoes were about big enough to hide flippers. But you could never see any more of any lady because of her skirts. He kept wondering how Mama and the nursery maid walked about on nothing but a big limber tail instead of legs.

His chance to find out came one afternoon when the nursery maid put him into an unpleasant sailor-suit and led him downstairs to the drawing room. Mama and some other ladies were there with someone called Lady Badgett, who was a kind of cousin of Papa’s. She had asked to see Christopher. Christopher stared at her long nose and her wrinkles. “Is she a witch, Mama?” he asked loudly.

Everyone except Lady Badgett – who went more wrinkled than ever – said, “Hush, dear!” After that, Christopher was glad to find they seemed to have forgotten him. He quietly lay down on his back on the carpet, and rolled from lady to lady. When they caught him, he was under the sofa gazing up Lady Badgett’s petticoats. He was dragged out of the room in disgrace, very disappointed to discover that all the ladies had big thick legs, except Lady Badgett: her legs were thin and yellow like a chicken’s.

Mama sent for him in her dressing-room later that day. “Oh, Christopher, how could you!” she said. “I’d just got Lady Badgett to the point of calling on me, and she’ll never come again. You’ve undone the work of years!”

It was very hard work, Christopher realised, being a Beauty. Mama was very busy in front of her mirror with all sorts of little cut glass bottles and jars. Behind her, a maid was even busier, far busier than the nursery maids ever were, working on Mama’s glossy curls. Christopher was so ashamed to have wasted all this work that he picked up a glass jar to hide his confusion.

Mama told him sharply to put it down. “Money isn’t everything, you see, Christopher,” she explained. “A good place in Society is worth far more. Lady Badgett could have helped us both. Why do you think I married your papa?”

Since Christopher had simply no idea what could have brought Mama and Papa together, he put out his hand to pick up the jar again. But he remembered in time that he was not supposed to touch it, and picked up a big pad of false hair instead. He turned it round in his hands while Mama talked.

“You are going to grow up with Papa’s good family and my money,” she said. “I want you to promise me now that you will take your place in Society alongside the very best people. Mama intends you to be a great man – Christopher, are you listening?”

Christopher had given up trying to understand Mama. He held the false hair out instead. “What’s this for?”

“Bulking out my hair,” Mama said. “Please attend, Christopher. It’s very important you begin now preparing yourself for the future. Put that hair down.”

Christopher put the pad of hair back. “I thought it might be a dead rat,” he said. And somehow Mama must have made a mistake because, to Christopher’s great interest, the thing really was a dead rat. Mama and her maid both screamed. Christopher was hustled away while a footman came running with a shovel.

After that, Mama called Christopher to her dressing-room and talked to him quite often. He stood trying to remember not to fiddle with the jars, staring at his reflection in her mirror, wondering why his curls were black and Mama’s rich brown, and why his eyes were so much more like coal than Mama’s. Something seemed to stop there ever being another dead rat, but sometimes a spider could be encouraged to let itself down in front of the mirror, whenever Mama’s talk became too alarming.

He understood that Mama cared very urgently about his future. He knew he was going to have to enter Society with the best people. But the only Society he had heard of was the Aid the Heathen Society that he had to give a penny to every Sunday in church, and he thought Mama meant that.

Christopher made careful enquiries from the nursery maid with the big feet. She told him Heathens were savages who ate people. Missionaries were the best people, and they were the ones Heathens ate. Christopher saw that he was going to be a missionary when he grew up. He found Mama’s talk increasingly alarming. He wished she had chosen another career for him.

He also asked the nursery maid about the kind of ladies who had tails like fish. “Oh, you mean mermaids!” the girl said, laughing. “Those aren’t real.”

Christopher knew mermaids were not real, because he only met them in dreams. Now he was convinced that he would meet Heathens too, if he went to the wrong Almost Anywhere. For a time, he was so frightened of meeting Heathens that when he came to a new valley from The Place Between, he lay down and looked carefully at the Anywhere it led to, to see what the people were like there before he went on. But after a while, when nobody tried to eat him, he decided that the Heathens probably lived in the Anywhere which stopped you going to it, and gave up worrying until he was older.

When he was a little older, people in the Anywheres sometimes gave him money. Christopher learnt to refuse coins. As soon as he touched them, everything just stopped. He landed in bed with a jolt and woke up sweating. Once this happened when a pretty lady, who reminded him of Mama, tried laughingly to hang an earring in his ear. Christopher would have asked the nursery maid with big feet about it, but she had left long ago. Most of the ones who came after simply said, “Don’t bother me now – I’m busy!” when he asked them things.

Until he learnt to read, Christopher thought this was what all nursery maids did: they stayed a month, too busy to talk, and then set their mouths in a nasty line and flounced out. He was amazed to read of Old Retainers, who stayed with families for a whole lifetime and could be persuaded to tell long (and sometimes very boring) stories about the family in the past. In his house, none of the servants stayed more than six months.

The reason seemed to be that Mama and Papa had given up speaking to one another even through the footman. They handed the servants notes to give to one another instead. Since it never occurred to either Mama or Papa to seal the notes, sooner or later someone would bring the note up to the nursery floor and read it aloud to the nursery maid. Christopher learnt that Mama was always short and to the point.

“Mr Chant is requested to smoke cigars only in his own room.” Or, “Will Mr Chant please take note that the new laundry maid has complained of holes burnt in his shirts.” Or, “Mr Chant caused me much embarrassment by leaving in the middle of my Breakfast Party.”

Papa usually let the notes build up and then answered the lot in a kind of rambling rage.

My dear Miranda,

I shall smoke where I please and it is the job of that lazy laundry maid to deal with the results. But then your extravagance in employing foolish layabouts and rude louts is only for your own selfish comfort and never for mine. If you wish me to remain at your parties, try to employ a cook who knows bacon from old shoes and refrain from giving that idiotic tinkling laugh all the time.

Papa’s replies usually caused the servants to leave overnight.

Christopher rather enjoyed the insight these notes gave him. Papa seemed more like a person, somehow, even if he was so critical. It was quite a blow to Christopher when he was cut off from them by the arrival of his first governess.

Mama sent for him. She was in tears. “Your papa has overreached himself this time,” she said. “It’s a mother’s place to see to the education of her child. I want you to go to a good school, Christopher. It’s most important. But I don’t want to force you into learning. I want your ambition to flower as well. But your papa comes crashing in with his grim notions and goes behind my back by appointing this governess who, knowing your papa, is bound to be terrible! Oh my poor child!”

Christopher realised that the governess was his first step towards becoming a missionary. He felt solemn and alarmed. But when the governess came, she was simply a drab lady with pink eyes, who was far too discreet to talk to servants. She only stayed a month, to Mama’s jubilation.

“Now we can really start your education,” Mama said. “I shall choose the next governess myself.”

Mama said that quite often over the next two years, for governesses came and went just like nursery maids before them. They were all drab, discreet ladies, and Christopher got their names muddled up. He decided that the chief difference between a governess and a nursery maid was that a governess usually burst into tears before she left – and that was the only time a governess ever said anything interesting about Mama and Papa.

“I’m sorry to do this to you,” the third – or maybe the fourth – governess wept, “because you’re a nice little boy, even if you are a bit remote, but the atmosphere in this house! Every night he’s home – which thank God is rarely! – I have to sit at the dining-table with them in utter silence. And she passes me a note to give to him, and he passes me one for her. Then they open the notes and look daggers at one another and then at me. I can’t stand any more!”

The ninth – or maybe the tenth – governess was even more indiscreet. “I know they hate one another,” she sobbed, “but she’s no call to hate me too! She’s one of those who can’t abide other women. And she’s a sorceress, I think – I can’t be sure, because she only does little things – and he’s at least as strong as she is. He may even be an enchanter. Between them they make such an atmosphere – it’s no wonder they can’t keep any servants! Oh, Christopher, forgive me for talking like this about your parents!”

All the governesses asked Christopher to forgive them and he forgave them very readily, for this was the only time now that he had news of Mama and Papa. It gave him a wistful sort of feeling that perhaps other people had parents who were not like his. He was also sure that there was some sort of crisis brewing. The hushed thunder of it reached as far as the schoolroom, even though the governesses would not let him gossip with the servants any more.

He remembered the night the crisis broke, because that was the night when he went to an Anywhere where a man under a yellow umbrella gave him a sort of candlestick of little bells. It was so beautiful that Christopher was determined to bring it home. He held it in his teeth as he scrambled across the rocks of The Place Between. To his joy, it was in his bed when he woke up. But there was quite a different feeling to the house. The twelfth governess packed and left straight after breakfast.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d068623d-eead-5b68-822d-9829a06c4f1f)

Christopher was called to Mama’s dressing-room that afternoon. There was a new governess sitting on the only hard chair, wearing the usual sort of ugly greyish clothes and a hat that was uglier than usual. Her drab cotton gloves were folded on her dull bag and her head hung down as if she were timid or put-upon, or both. Christopher found her of no interest. All the interest in the room was centred on the man standing behind Mama’s chair with his hand on Mama’s shoulder.

“Christopher, this is my brother,” Mama said happily. “Your Uncle Ralph.”

Mama pronounced it Rafe. It was more than a year before Christopher discovered it was the name he read as Ralph.

Uncle Ralph took his fancy completely. To begin with, he was smoking a cigar. The scents of the dressing-room were changed and mixed with the rich incense-like smoke, and Mama was not protesting by even so much as sniffing. That alone was enough to show that Uncle Ralph was in a class by himself. Then he was wearing tweeds, strong and tangy and almost fox-coloured, which were a little baggy here and there, but blended beautifully with the darker foxiness of Uncle Ralph’s hair and the redder foxiness of his moustache. Christopher had seldom seen a man in tweeds or without whiskers. This did even more to assure him that Uncle Ralph was someone special. As a final touch, Uncle Ralph smiled at him like sunlight on an autumn forest. It was such an engaging smile that Christopher’s face broke into a return smile almost of its own accord.

“Hallo, old chap,” said Uncle Ralph, rolling out blue smoke above Mama’s glossy hair. “I know this is not the best way for an uncle to recommend himself to a nephew, but I’ve been sorting the family affairs out, and I’m afraid I’ve had to do one or two quite shocking things, like bringing you a new governess and arranging for you to start school in autumn. Governess over there. Miss Bell. I hope you like one another. Enough to forgive me anyway.”

He smiled at Christopher in a sunny, humorous way which had Christopher rapidly approaching adoration. All the same, Christopher glanced dubiously at Miss Bell. She looked back, and there was an instant when a sort of hidden prettiness in her almost came out into the open. Then she blinked pale eyelashes and murmured, “Pleased to meet you,” in a voice as uninteresting as her clothes.

“She’ll be your last governess, I hope,” said Mama. Because of that, Christopher ever after thought of Miss Bell as the Last Governess. “She’s going to prepare you for school. I wasn’t meaning to send you away yet, but your uncle says—Anyway, a good education is important for your career and, to be blunt with you, Christopher, your papa has made a most vexatious hash of the money – which is mine, not his, as you know – and lost practically all of it. Luckily I had your uncle to turn to and—”

“And once turned to, I don’t let people down,” Uncle Ralph said, with a quick flick of a glance at the governess. Maybe he meant she should not be hearing this. “Fortunately, there’s plenty left to send you to school, and then your mama is going to recoup a bit by living abroad. She’ll like that – eh, Miranda? And Miss Bell is going to be found another post with glowing references. Everyone’s going to be fine.”

His smile went to all of them one by one, full of warmth and confidence. Mama laughed and dabbed scent behind her ears. The Last Governess almost smiled, so that the hidden prettiness half-emerged again. Christopher tried to grin a strong manly grin at Uncle Ralph, because that seemed to be the only way to express the huge, almost hopeless adoration that was growing in him. Uncle Ralph laughed, a golden brown laugh, and completed the conquest of Christopher by fishing in a tweed pocket and tipping his nephew a bright new sixpence.

Christopher would have died rather than spend that sixpence. Whenever he changed clothes, he transferred the sixpence to the new pockets. It was another way of expressing his adoration of Uncle Ralph. It was clear that Uncle Ralph had stepped in to save Mama from ruin, and this made him the first good man that Christopher had met. And on top of that, he was the only person outside the Anywheres who had bothered to speak to Christopher in that friendly man-to-man way.

Christopher tried to treasure the Last Governess too, for Uncle Ralph’s sake, but that was not so easy. She was so very boring. She had a drab, calm way of speaking, and she never raised her voice or showed impatience, even when he was stupid about Mental Arithmetic or Levitation, both of which all the other governesses had somehow missed out on.

“If a herring and a half cost three-ha’pence, Christopher,” she explained drearily, “that’s a penny and a half for a fish and a half. How much for a whole fish?”

“I don’t know,” he said, trying not to yawn.

“Very well,” the Last Governess said calmly. “We’ll think again tomorrow. Now look in this mirror and see if you can’t make it rise in the air just an inch.”