David Blaize and the Blue Door

The train seemed to be running very slowly round and round a field. Occasionally it stopped dead, and began to whistle, but usually it splashed quietly along, into puddles and out of puddles, without any lines in front of it. Sometimes they curved a little to avoid a tree, but they crushed their way through an ordinary hedge, and birds flew out scolding them and saying, ‘I wish you would look where you are going.’ Then a voice from the engine said, ‘Sorry you have been troubled,’ just like a young lady in the telephone exchange.

But the country seemed familiar to David, and presently he saw that the train was in a field just beyond the High Street of the village he had left at 11.29. It was slowly going back to it again, to a spot some fifty yards away from the place they had started from. Then it began to make a very sharp curve, in order to avoid a horse that was lying down in the field, and the engine came just opposite his window.

‘A rare good run, David,’ shouted the engine-driver. ‘We shall stop at the hairdresser’s in a minute now, if you want to have anything done.’

David had not had his hair cut lately, so this seemed rather a good opportunity.

‘How long do we stop there?’ he shouted.

‘Two or three weeks. You’ll just have time.’

In spite of the slowness with which they were moving, there was a tremendous rattle of wheels somewhere, and the noise seemed to come from overhead. Then looking up, he saw that there were hundreds of wheels all turning round. There were long bands hanging from them, and just then the engine began whistling to show it had stopped. Clouds of steam poured in through the carriage window and, as that cleared away, David saw that he was standing in the hairdresser’s shop, and that underneath the wheels was sitting a row of old gentlemen having their heads brushed with circular brushes. Others were being shampooed, others were apparently having their heads painted, others were having breakfast, but they were all, without exception, absolutely bald.

There was a looking-glass in front of each of them, and David saw the face of a kind old gentleman in it. The looking-glasses were of the sort that stood on his mother’s dressing-table, which showed your left-hand side where the bruise was, which came when you fell out of a tree, and your right-hand side, where a tooth had been taken out, and full face where both these things happened. And in each looking-glass was the reflection of a bald old gentleman, nodding and smiling at him.

After his solitary night in the train, David longed for a little conversation again, and he went to the nearest old gentleman, who was eating eggs and bacon, while the hairdresser scrubbed his head with the circular brush.

‘Good morning, David,’ said he. ‘Have you had a good journey? The hard brush, please,’ he added to the hairdresser. ‘That doesn’t do me any good. Aha, aha, that’s better. And now I’ll have a shampoo.’

David thought this rather an odd way of doing things, since you usually had your shampoo first, and your brushing afterwards, but the hairdresser didn’t seem to mind. The old gentleman bent over the basin, with his eggs and bacon on his knee, and continued breakfasting.

‘Boiling or freezing, sir?’ asked the hairdresser.

‘Boiling first and then freezing,’ said the old gentleman, with his mouth full. ‘No, freezing first and boiling afterwards. And where did you come from?’ he asked David.

‘From the house next the Bank, I think,’ said David. ‘I came by the 11.29.’

‘A fine train,’ said he, ‘a very fine train. There’s nothing slower anywhere.’

The hairdresser wrapped a towel round his head, and began drying it.

‘And what will you have on, sir?’ he asked.

The old gentleman considered a little.

‘I think a map of south-west London would be best,’ he said. ‘I’m going up there next week, and I don’t know my way about. It would be very tiresome to get lost. But if you give me a nice map of south-west London, with 25 Brompton Square marked in red, why, all I shall have to do, if I get lost, is to ring the nearest bell of the nearest house, and ask for a couple of looking-glasses.’

‘What for?’ asked David.

‘Why, I shall sit in front of one, and reflect the top of my head in the other. Then I shall see where I am, and where I want to go to. Send the geographer and the painter at once.’

This old gentleman got so interested in his map that he did not talk to David any more, and so he strolled on to the next one, who, so he learned, was going to Egypt, and was having a spider’s web painted on his head to keep the flies off. He, too, seemed to know David, which made it very pleasant.

‘And so you’ve come by the 11.29,’ he said. ‘A dangerous trip, because you go so slow that it’s almost impossible to stop in case of an accident. I leave for Egypt by the same train. I wonder if it would be wiser to have some fly papers as well. Or a picture of a mummy or two, to give me local colour.’

‘Whatever you please, sir,’ said the hairdresser.

‘Well, we can’t go wrong with a mummy. I think a mummy and a spider’s web, and leave out the fly-papers.’

The next old gentleman was having his own face painted in oils on the back of his head, and he put his finger on his lip, and beckoned with the other hand to David.

‘Is it like me?’ he whispered. ‘Give me your candid opinion. Don’t mind the artist.’

He nodded his head up and down, so that David should see his real face and his painted face.

‘Very like indeed,’ said David. ‘But what’s it for?’

He assumed an air of great secrecy.

‘You mustn’t tell anybody,’ he said. ‘Do you promise?’

‘Yes,’ said David.

‘Well, if I have my own face at the back of my head, it will be such a puzzle. People in the street will see me looking at them, as if I was coming towards them, and all the time I shall be going away. What do you think of that?’

‘It’s – it’s certainly very puzzling,’ said David.

‘Isn’t it? And then when I’m tired of going that way, I shall begin to walk backwards, and all the people the other side of me will think the same thing. In quite a short time nobody will know where I am. I shall always be going away when they think I’m coming, and when they think I’m coming I shall always be going away!’

‘But that’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ asked David.

He took no notice of this, and called out to the painter, who had R.A. embroidered on his collar.

‘Mind you put a cigarette in my mouth. And then this side will smoke a pipe. That’ll puzzle them worse than ever. It will, it will – won’t it?’ he said to David triumphantly.

David could not understand what it was all about, but at that moment the door opened, and the cow looked in.

‘Passengers by the Bald Express to take their seats,’ she called. ‘All others to remain standing.’

Instantly there was a scene of the utmost confusion, and all the old gentlemen began running into each other. The worst of them was the one who had had his face painted on the back of his head, because nobody could possibly guess which way he was coming. But by degrees the room cleared, as the whistling of the engine, which had gone on all the time, grew fainter, and finally, when it stopped, David found himself quite alone. The sound of wheels going round overhead ceased, and its place was taken by a rumble that gradually got less. He ran out on to the platform, and there was the empty-speed express crawling out of the station, carrying the kind old gentlemen to Egypt and London S.W., and wherever the backward-forward one meant to puzzle people. He felt that it must be quite easy to catch it up, but the faster he ran the farther he got away from it. At last, perfectly breathless, he stopped, not quite certain whether he really wanted to catch it or not. He longed to know if the spider’s web would keep off the flies, or the map of London S.W. show the other old gentleman where he was, but, after all, there were so many different things to explore.

He began to run again, after he had got his breath, not after the train any more, but Anywhere. He felt that with every step he took he was getting lighter, and in a minute he was running on the very tips of his toes. Then his left foot didn’t touch the ground at all, and then his right foot. He simply found himself running in the air.

CHAPTER VI

David gave a great kick with his left foot to make sure it wasn’t touching anything. Certainly it touched nothing, but he felt the air stream swiftly by him. Then he kicked with his right foot, and the same thing happened.

‘I do believe I’m flying,’ said he aloud. ‘Now there’s a hedge coming. If I am really remembering how to fly, and if I kick downwards, I shall get over it.’

He made a sort of spring in the air, and bounded high over the hedge without even touching its topmost twigs.

‘It’s all quite easy,’ he shouted. ‘I must remember carefully how it’s done. You run, and then you get on the tips of your toes, and then you run a little more, and then you’re up. If you want to get higher you kick downwards. And I suppose if you want to go downwards, you just take a sort of little header.’

This answered perfectly. He had been learning to swim lately, and made a bob with his head, and spread his arms in front of him. Next moment he was within a foot or two of the ground, and kicked downwards again to bring himself up.

‘Now I’ll float,’ he said, ‘and see what happens.’

He spread his arms and legs out like a starfish, drew a long breath, and looked at the sky, as his father had taught him to do. This, too, succeeded, and he found himself motionless in the air, perhaps drifting a little in the morning wind.