David Blaize and the Blue Door

‘I’ll go higher now,’ he said. ‘I’ll just wander up to the top of the elm trees, and see what’s going on there.’

He had calculated his distance pretty well for a beginner, and a few downward kicks in the air brought him brushing against the topmost boughs of the elm that stood on the far side of the lake beyond the garden. It seemed to be spring-time, for there was a great commotion among the rooks, as he pushed the young green leaves aside and looked in. A pair of them were quarrelling as to which way a particular stick ought to be laid, one wanting it laid crossways, the other straight. They had lived for years before they came here in a cathedral close, and were always known as Canon and Mrs. Rook. But when they saw him, they stopped arguing.

‘Why, bless me, you’ve remembered it at last,’ said Canon Rook. ‘And it doesn’t make you feel giddy, does it?’

‘Not a bit,’ said David. ‘It’s the loveliest thing that ever happened. Why didn’t you tell me before how to do it?’

‘Bless you, we were telling you all day long,’ said Mrs. Rook, ‘but you always pretended to forget.’

Suddenly it struck David that he had known how to fly all his life, but had merely forgotten.’

‘Why, of course, I knew all along,’ he said. ‘And shall I always be able to fly now?’

‘Until the next time that you forget. But boys are forgetful creatures, you know,’ said Mrs. Rook.

‘So are girls,’ said David. ‘But I won’t forget this time. And may I try to pass my flying certificate at once?’

‘Why, certainly,’ said Canon Rook, ‘if we can get a committee together. Birds are a bit busy now that it’s building time, but it’s not every day that a boy comes up for his flying certificate, and I shouldn’t wonder if they came. I’ll go and call them.’

He flew up to the very topmost twig of the elm, and balanced himself there.

‘Urgent call – caw, caw,’ he shouted. ‘A young gentleman has just come up here to try for his flying certificate, if the committee will kindly attend. Urgent – caw, caw, caw,’ he repeated.

Instantly there was a chirping and calling of birds on all sides, from the other elms, and from the fields below, and the bushes and the lake. A pair of brown owls were the first to arrive from the ivy in the church tower, with their spectacles, without which they cannot see by day. Then came a cloud of finches: bull-finches, green-finches, haw-finches, and chaf-finches; and wood pigeons came cooing in, and a couple of jackdaws, who tried to talk to David in his own tongue, and thought they could do it very well indeed, though all they could say was ‘Jack’! Jays came screaming out of the wood, with nice fresh paint on the blue streaks on their wings, and woodpeckers tapped to know if they had come to the right elm, and there were nightingales learning the new tunes for the year, and blackbirds, already getting a little hoarse, singing the February tunes. Herons came clattering up from the lake, and teal and wild duck, and moorhens tried to join them, but they couldn’t fly as high as this, and only flapped about the lake, saying ‘Hear, hear! Hear, hear!’ A pheasant with burnished copper plates on his back, rocketed up, and a woodcock or two, flying ‘flip-flap, flip-flap,’ and swifts and martens cut circles and loops in the air. There was a nightjar who opened his mouth very wide, and made a sort of gargling noise instead of singing, and linnets, and robins which hadn’t finished dressing, and were still buttoning their red waistcoats, and, like a jewel flung through the early morning sunlight, a kingfisher came and perched on David’s shoulder. Larks left the tussocks of grass in the meadow below, and carolled their way upwards, and wild-eyed hawks sat a little apart, for fear they should be too much tempted at the sight of so many plump birds all assembled together. So they sat on another branch, and shut their mouths very tight, as if they were eating caramels, remembering that when a flying-committee is assembled it is considered very bad form to eat your fellow-members. There were freshly varnished starlings, and speckled thrushes, and hundreds of rude noisy sparrows, and, long before all the committee were assembled, half the elms in the rookery were crowded with birds, for the passing of a human candidate was a very unusual event indeed, and nobody wanted to miss it.

David felt rather frightened when the test for the birds’ flying certificate was explained to him, for, of course, that is a much stiffer examination than anything that happens to the young gentlemen in the flying corps. Not only had he got to do all the clumsy man-tricks which they perform with their aeroplanes, in which they don’t really fly, and are only flown with, but some bird-tricks as well, and to get his certificate he had to satisfy every single one of the committee, which now consisted of several thousand people. But Canon Rook, who, as he had summoned the committee, was chairman of it, told him not to be afraid.

‘You can remember all right,’ he said, ‘and besides, each bird who sets a question will show you first what you’ve got to do. Caw! Silence, please.’

But it took a long time to get silence this morning, for nesting was going on, and all the ladies were talking about the different linings for nests, and the best way of stitching and hemming them. Some said ‘mud,’ and some said ‘feathers,’ and some said ‘bits of things,’ and the kingfisher said, ‘Give me fish-bones.’ However, the birds round Canon Rook began calling ‘Silence’ too, and by degrees this spread until the whole committee was calling ‘Silence’ at the tops of their voices, and making far more noise than ever. But this was a step in the right direction, and soon the hubbub died down, and Canon Rook spoke again.

‘The candidate is David Blaize, a boy still quite unfledged, except on the top of his head,’ he said, ‘and his age is six.’

‘Rather old!’ cooed a wood pigeon.

‘Yes, but it’s better late than never,’ said Canon Rook, ‘and I’m sure we’re all very pleased that he has remembered how to fly at last. He’ll probably be a bit stiff from age, and you mustn’t expect too much. He will now please jump off, loop the loop twice, and return to his seat. Caw!’

David had often seen the airmen doing that, and he jumped off the bough and made two very neat loops without any difficulty, and returned again, brushing the hair out of his eyes.

‘Right, O!’ screamed the whole of the committee.

‘Spinning nose-dive!’ said Canon Rook.

David remembered that too. You had to put your head down, and spin like a dead leaf on a windless day. It made him a little giddy, but the committee were pleased with him, and only the owl said that his conscience would not allow him to pass that, since he did not call it flying at all, but falling. So all the rest chattered and screamed and sang at him till his spectacles fell off, which made his conscience get quite confused and forget what it wouldn’t allow him to do. Then followed the tail-slip, in which David stretched out his legs in front of him and held his toes in his fingers, so that he sat down in the air and slid backwards, just as if there wasn’t a chair there when he had expected one.

That finished the first part, and then all the committee began talking at once in order to settle what bird-tricks he should have to do. They were inclined to let him off rather easily, because it was considered a sporting thing for a boy to attempt the bird-test at all, and they made up their three thousand minds that, if he did one bird-trick perfectly, that would be enough. Then, when all the birds had shouted ‘Silence’ until they were quite hoarse, Canon Rook cleared his throat and spoke.

‘The bird-test is as follows – caw,’ he said. ‘The candidate will attempt to do the lark-trick, starting from the ground and returning to it again. Show him what he’s got to do, one of you larks.’

A lark dropped from the tree and crouched in a tussock of grass. Then it jumped off the ground and began mounting in a perpendicular line, rising very slowly and singing as it went.

When it had got to the top of its flight it hovered there, and slowly descended, still singing. About ten feet from the ground it stopped singing, and dropped plump into the tussock from which it had risen.

‘Candidate, please,’ said Canon Rook.

‘Must I sing too?’ asked David.

‘Of course that’s part of it,’ said the lark, still rather breathless. ‘Any one could do it without singing.’

‘Strictly speaking, it’s not a singing competition,’ said Canon Rook. ‘Can you sing?’ he asked David.

David remembered how Noah had offered him a post to sing in opera in the ark, evenings and matinées, and, though no doubt birds were a more musical audience, he felt that it would be untrue, after that, to say he couldn’t sing.

‘Yes, I can sing,’ he said. ‘At least Noah thought so.’

‘I think he’d better have a try first,’ said the nightingale. ‘It would be awful if he sang very badly all the time, and we had to bear it till he got down again, as the committee mayn’t interrupt a candidate in the middle of a test.’

‘Sing a few bars, David,’ said Canon Rook.

It had been the tune of ‘Rule Britannia’ sung to the words,

‘Never do, never do,
Never, never, never do,’

that had pleased Noah so much, and David began to sing them again. But he had hardly sung the first line before the nightingale and the blackbirds and the thrushes and the other professional musicians all turned quite pale and swooned. They were gradually restored by being fanned with their friends’ wings, but they still trembled, and were floppity. Other birds were merely in shrieks of laughter, and David felt very much confused, till a corncrake perched on his knee and said:

‘You sang excellently, quite excellently: don’t mind them.’

But it was unanimously decided that David should not sing while he did the lark-flight, and he jumped off the bough, and stood in a privet-bush, which was to do duty for a tussock of grass, as he was too big for a tussock. In order to make his performance more life-like, it was settled that all the larks should sing together as he mounted and descended, stopping when he was three feet from the ground, for he was too heavy to drop from ten feet.

‘One, two, caw, three, off,’ said Canon Rook.

David gave a little spring in the air as he had seen the lark do, and began treading air with his feet, and beating gently downwards with his outspread fingers, and as he took flight it sounded in that still bright air as if all the larks in the world had begun to sing. He found he mounted rather too quickly at first, and so ceased treading air, using his hands alone. Slowly he mounted and the music of the larks entered his heart and made him feel happier than he had known it was possible to be. He gasped with pleasure as he rose, like when you sit in your bath on a cold evening, and pour the first spongeful of hot water down your back, only now it was spring and singing and flying that tingled all over him. He hung high above the tree-tops in the blue, and the earth was like one flower beneath him. Long he hovered there, and then with a sigh began slowly to descend. There was dead silence in the tree-tops where the committee sat, except for the singing of the larks, but he knew that hundreds of bright eyes were watching him, to see if he was really flying as larks fly.

At length the topmost twigs of the privet-tree hit his foot, and he folded his hands across his chest and dropped.

Instantly the most tremendous hubbub of bird voices broke out, and the clapping of thousands of wings.

‘That’ll do,’ they all shouted. ‘It’s silly to have any more examination, especially since we’re all so busy. He’s a real lark, and as a lark’s a bird, he’s a bird-boy, and he can fly just as larks fly, so give him his certificate. Well done, David,’ and a whole cloud of birds began settling all over him.

‘Lift him up,’ they all chirped. ‘Don’t fly, David; we’re going to carry you. Keep your legs and arms still, or we’ll peck you. Carry him up. One, two, three – away we go. Lord, what a weight a boy is!’

Some took hold of his hair with their beaks, others grasped his clothes in their claws, others took hold of his bootlaces, and with David lying back, laughing partly from joy, and partly because they tickled, they hoisted him up into the top bough of the elm again.

Canon Rook had already got out the flying certificate, and was signing his name to it, and when he had signed it he flapped his wings over it till the ink was dry.

‘David Blaize,’ he said. ‘I have the pleasure of presenting you with a first-class bird-flying certificate. The meeting is adjourned.’