The Lives of Christopher Chant

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_738471f2-7a3c-5e1a-9408-fcfc53c3cf55)

From then on, Uncle Ralph arranged a new experiment every week. He had, Tacroy said, been very pleased because the carriage and the packages had arrived in Tacroy’s garret with no hitch at all. Two wizards and a sorcerer had refined the spell on it until it could stay in another Anywhere for up to a day. The experiments became much more fun. Tacroy and Christopher would tow the carriage to the place where the load was waiting, always carefully wrapped in packages the right size for Christopher to handle. After Christopher had loaded them, he and Tacroy would go exploring.

Tacroy insisted on the exploring. “It’s his perks,” he explained to the people with the packages. “We’ll be back in an hour or so.”

In Series One they went and looked at the amazing ring-trains, where the rings were on pylons high above the ground and miles apart, and the trains went hurtling through them with a noise like the sky tearing, without even touching the rings. In Series Two they wandered a maze of bridges over a tangle of rivers and looked down at giant eels resting their chins on sandbars, while even stranger creatures grunted and stirred in the mud under the bridges. Christopher suspected that Tacroy enjoyed exploring as much as he did. He was always very cheerful during this part.

“It makes a change from sloping ceilings and peeling walls. I don’t get out of London very much,” Tacroy confessed while he was advising Christopher how to build a better sand-castle on the sea-shore in Series Five. Series Five turned out to be the Anywhere where Christopher had met the silly ladies. It was all islands. “This is better than a Bank Holiday at Brighton any day!” Tacroy said, looking out across the bright blue crashing waves. “Almost as good as an afternoon’s cricket. I wish I could afford to get away more.”

“Have you lost all your money then?” Christopher asked sympathetically.

“I never had any money to lose,” Tacroy said. “I was a foundling child.”

Christopher did not ask any more just then, because he was busy hoping that the mermaids would appear the way they used to. But though he looked and waited, not a single mermaid came.

He went back to the subject the following week in Series Seven. As they followed a gypsy-looking man who was guiding them to see the Great Glacier, he asked Tacroy what it meant to be a foundling child.

“It means someone found me,” Tacroy said cheerfully. “The someone in my case was a very agreeable and very devout Sea Captain, who picked me up as a baby on an island somewhere. He said the Lord had sent me. I don’t know who my parents were.”

Christopher was impressed. “Is that why you’re always so cheerful?”

Tacroy laughed. “I’m mostly cheerful,” he said. “But today I feel particularly good because I’ve got rid of the flute-playing girl at last. Your uncle’s found me a nice grandmotherly person who plays the violin quite well. And maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s your influence, but I feel firmer with every step.”

Christopher looked at him, walking ahead along the mountain path. Tacroy looked as hard as the rocks towering on one side and as real as the gypsy-looking man striding ahead of them both. “I think you’re getting better at it,” he said.

“Could be,” said Tacroy. “I think you’ve raised my standards. And yet, do you know, young Christopher, until you came along, I was considered the best spirit traveller in the country?”

Here the gypsy man shouted and waved to them to come and look at the glacier. It sat above them in the rocks in a huge dirty-white V. Christopher did not think much of it. He could see it was mostly just dirty old snow – though it was certainly very big. Its giant icy lip hung over them, almost transparent grey, and water dribbled and poured off it. Series Seven was a strange world, all mountains and snow, but surprisingly hot too. Where the water poured off the glacier, the heat had caused a great growth of strident green ferns and flowing tropical trees. Violent green moss grew scarlet cups as big as hats, all dewed with water. It was like looking at the North Pole and the Equator at once. The three of them seemed tiny beneath it.

“Impressive,” said Tacroy. “I know two people who are like this thing. One of them is your uncle.”

Christopher thought that was a silly thing to say. Uncle Ralph was nothing like the Giant Glacier. He was annoyed with Tacroy all the following week. But he relented when the Last Governess suddenly presented him with a heap of new clothes, all sturdy and practical things. “You’re to wear these when you go on the next experiment,” she said. “Your uncle’s man has been making a fuss. He says you always wear rags and your teeth were chattering in the snow last time. We don’t want you ill, do we?”

Christopher never noticed being cold, but he was grateful to Tacroy. His old clothes had got so much too small that they got in the way when he climbed through The Place Between. He decided he liked Tacroy after all.

“I say,” he said, as he loaded packages in a huge metal shed in Series Four, “can I come and visit you in your garret? We live in London too.”

“You live in quite a different part,” Tacroy said hastily. “You wouldn’t like the area my garret’s in at all.”

Christopher protested that this didn’t matter. He wanted to see Tacroy in the flesh and he was very curious to see the garret. But Tacroy kept making excuses. Christopher kept on asking, at least twice every experiment, until they went to bleak and stony Series Eight again, where Christopher was exceedingly glad of his warm clothes. There, while Christopher stood over the farmhouse fire warming his fingers round a mug of bitter malty tea, gratitude to Tacroy made him say yet again, “Oh, please can’t I visit you in your garret?”

“Oh, do stow it, Christopher,” Tacroy said, sounding rather tired of it all. “I’d invite you like a shot, but your uncle made a condition that you only see me like this while we’re on an experiment. If I told you where I live, I’d lose this job. It’s as simple as that.”

“I could go round all the garrets,” Christopher suggested cunningly, “and shout Tacroy and ask people until I found you.”

“You could not,” said Tacroy. “You’d draw a complete blank if you tried. Tacroy is my spirit name. I have quite a different name in the flesh.”

Christopher had to give in and accept it, though he did not understand in the least.

Meanwhile, the time when he was to go to school was suddenly almost there. Christopher tried carefully not to think of it, but it was hard to forget when he had to spend such a lot of time trying on new clothes. The Last Governess sewed name tapes – C. CHANT – on the clothes and packed them in a shiny black tin trunk – also labelled C. CHANT in bold white letters. This trunk was shortly taken away by a carrier whose thick arms reminded Christopher of the women in Series Eight, and the same carrier took away all Mama’s trunks too, only hers were addressed to Baden Baden while Christopher’s said, ‘Penge School, Surrey’.

The day after that, Mama left for Baden Baden. She came to say goodbye to Christopher, dabbing her eyes with a blue lace handkerchief that matched her travelling suit. “Remember to be good and learn a lot,” she said. “And don’t forget your mama wants to be very proud of you when you grow up.” She put her scented cheek down for Christopher to kiss and said to the Last Governess, “Mind you take him to the dentist now.”

“I won’t forget, Madam,” the Last Governess said in her dreariest way. Somehow her hidden prettiness never seemed to come out in front of Mama.

Christopher did not enjoy the dentist. After banging and scraping round Christopher’s teeth as if he were trying to make them fall out, the dentist made a long speech about how crooked and out of place they were, until Christopher began to think of himself with fangs like Throgmorten’s. He made Christopher wear a big shiny toothbrace, which he was supposed never to take out, even at night. Christopher hated the brace. He hated it so much that it almost took his mind off his fears about school.

The servants covered the furniture with dust sheets and left one by one, until Christopher and the Last Governess were the only people in the house. The Last Governess took him to the station in a cab that afternoon and put him on the train to school.

On the platform, now the time had come, Christopher was suddenly scared stiff. This really was the first step on the road to becoming a missionary and being eaten by Heathens. Terror seemed to drain the life out of him, down from his face, which went stiff, and out through his legs, which went wobbly. It seemed to make his terror worse that he had not the slightest idea what school was like.

He hardly heard the Last Governess say, “Goodbye, Christopher. Your uncle says he’ll give you a month at school to settle down. He’ll expect you to meet his man as usual on October the eighth in Series Six. October the eighth. Have you got that?”

“Yes,” Christopher said, not attending to a word, and got into the carriage like someone going to be executed.

There were two other new boys in the carriage. The small thin one called Fenning was so nervous that he had to keep leaning out of the window to be sick. The other one was called Oneir, and he was restfully ordinary. By the time the train drew into the school station, Christopher was firm friends with them both. They decided to call themselves the Terrible Three, but in fact everyone in the school called them the Three Bears. “Someone’s been sitting in my