The Ogre Downstairs

By standing on the bed, Caspar thought he could just reach Gwinny’s feet, if he jumped as he reached. Johnny stood in front of the bed to help catch her. Caspar got on the bed and jumped. His fingers brushed Gwinny’s feet, but he could not get a grip. To his annoyance, the slight push he had given her was enough to send Gwinny bobbing gently out into the middle of the room, quite out of reach.

“Oh dear!” said Gwinny. “Could you lasso me or something?”

Johnny took the cord off Gwinny’s dressing gown to try. But he remembered he had never been able to make a lasso that worked. “I’ll throw it,” he said. “You catch it. Both hands and carefully, mind.” He threw the cord upwards – quite a good shot. It hit Gwinny’s chest and slithered away down her legs. But Gwinny had always been hopeless at catching things. She missed the cord and went bobbing and twirling away towards the window with the movement.

“That’s no good,” said Caspar. “She’ll be all night before she gets hold of it. Gwinny, can you work yourself along the ceiling, back over the bed, and I’ll have another go at catching you.”

“I’ll try,” Gwinny said doubtfully. She put up one hand and pushed at the ceiling. The next moment, to the surprise of all three, she was swooping through the air towards the bed. Caspar raced after her, but, by the time he reached the bed, Gwinny had rebounded from the sloping roof and swooped out into the middle of the ceiling again. “Ooh!” she said, with her spiky head bobbing excitedly against the flex of the light. “That was ever such a nice feeling! I think I’ll do it again.” And, to Caspar’s exasperation, Gwinny began pushing with a hand here, then there, swooping this way and that and laughing. Johnny started to laugh too, because Gwinny looked like a gawky pink chicken with her nightdress and long bony legs.

“We must make her stop being so silly,” Caspar said. “Gwinny,” he said to the soles of Gwinny’s swooping feet, “we’ve got to get you down. Don’t you understand? Suppose the Ogre finds you like that.”

“He wouldn’t be able to catch me,” Gwinny said gaily, shooting from the window to the space above the door.

“Yes he would,” said Caspar. “Think how tall he is.”

“Yes, but Caspar.” said Johnny, “what’ll we do if we do get her down? Won’t she just shoot up again?”

“We could tie her down,” Caspar suggested.

“Oh no you won’t!” Gwinny called. She pushed off from the wall with her feet and floated on her back across the room, to the far corner. And there she lay, with her stomach and toes gently brushing the ceiling and a complacent smile on her face. “Try and catch me now,” she said.

They saw it was no use expecting her to be sensible. “Do you think we could get rid of the chemicals somehow, and get her down that way?” Caspar said.

“It might wash off,” said Johnny.

“Let’s try,” said Caspar.

They raced down two floors to the bathroom. There, Johnny seized the big mop that was used to wash the floor and Caspar seized the backbrush, and they hurried upstairs again. As they passed the door of Malcolm’s and Douglas’s room, they heard Douglas call out something about “herd of blinking elephants!” but they were too fussed to bother.

Gwinny was lying on her back near the middle of the ceiling now. Johnny raised the dripping mop and aimed it for the part of Gwinny’s legs where he thought the chemicals had splashed. But it is not easy to aim a long, top-heavy mop. He hit Gwinny plumb on the backside. She shrieked, “Stop it! It’s cold!” and went floundering and scrambling and bobbing out of reach, like an upside-down pink crab, with a muddy splodge on the back of her nightdress. Caspar got on to the bed and clawed at her legs with the backbrush as soon as they came near.

“Stop it, you beast!” said Gwinny, and scrambled back across the ceiling.

Caspar jumped on to a chair on the other side of the room and tried to reach her there. Johnny lofted the mop and prodded at her as she passed. Gwinny squealed with silly laughter and scrambled out of reach again. They pursued her. Caspar went leaping from chair to bed and back again. Johnny charged this way and that, prodding, and Gwinny scuttled and squealed all over the ceiling. Then Johnny, not looking where he was going, kicked the doll’s house over with a crash, scattering little tables and chairs and doll’s house people all over the room.

Gwinny turned over and drummed her heels on the ceiling, pointing furiously. “How dare you! Look what you’ve done! Pick them all up!”

“You come and do it,” said Johnny cunningly.

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” said Gwinny, drumming away for all she was worth.

There were footsteps, and the shattering voice of Douglas bawled from the stairs, “Stop that din, can’t you! Some of us are trying to do homework.”

Gwinny’s heels stopped. Caspar and Johnny exchanged alarmed looks. Without a word, they got down and began collecting the chairs, tables and dolls. But the damage was done. Behind the feet of Douglas retreating, they heard a much more distant door slam. They waited. Heavy footsteps started upstairs. They galvanised Caspar. He leapt up, seized the mop and pointed it at Gwinny.

“Quick! Catch hold of that, Gwinny, and don’t let go.”

Gwinny was only too ready to do as he told her. She hung on to the wet end while Caspar heaved on the stick. It was extraordinarily hard work. Gwinny seemed a good deal heavier upwards, as it were, than she ever was on the ground. Johnny flung the last table into the doll’s house and helped Caspar heave. Slowly Gwinny was dragged down. Slowly and remorselessly the Ogre’s feet climbed the stairs. Once she was within reach, Gwinny was so terrified of rising again that she seized Johnny’s hair to hold herself down with.

“What do we do now?” said Johnny, through a grin of agony.

“Bed. The covers might hold her down,” gasped Caspar.

They towed the floating Gwinny over to her bed and attempted to put her into it. Gwinny did her best to help, but nothing seemed to stop her floating away upwards every time they tried to put her legs between the sheets.

The Ogre’s feet crossed the landing and began on the last flight.

Gwinny flung her arms round Johnny in terror. While she was anchored that much, Caspar let go, picked up all the bedcovers, flung them over her floating legs and flung himself after them. As the Ogre’s feet came up the last stairs, Johnny jumped on to Gwinny too and sat on her stomach.

When the Ogre tore open the door and stood glowering, he saw Gwinny in bed, Caspar sitting on one end of it, Johnny in the middle, and all their faces turned to him in not-quite-innocent alarm. The only thing out of place was the wet mop Gwinny seemed to be nursing and a muddy splotch on the pillow.

“What the dickens are you all doing here?” said the Ogre.

“Telling her a bedtime story,” said Caspar breathlessly.

“Why does it need two of you and all this din?” demanded the Ogre.

Caspar and Johnny could not think. Gwinny said brightly, “They were doing it with funny voices to make me laugh.”

“Were they!” said the Ogre, “Well they can just stop!”

“Oh no,” said Johnny. “We were just near the end. Can’t we just finish?”

“No you just can’t,” said the Ogre. “Your mother and I are entitled to some peace.”

“Please!” they chorused desperately.

“Oh, very well,” said the Ogre irritably. “Five minutes. And if I hear another sound there’ll be trouble. What are you doing with that filthy mop?”

Again neither Caspar nor Johnny could think. “It’s a broomstick,” said Gwinny. “The story’s about a witch.”

“Then you can either do without or change the story,” said the Ogre. “I’m taking that back where it came from.” He strode over to the bed and tried to wrench the mop out of Gwinny’s hands. Gwinny lost her presence of mind and hung on to the mop with all her strength. The force with which the Ogre tore it free raised her a full foot off the bed and Johnny with her. Luckily, Johnny’s weight and Caspar’s were enough to bring her down again fairly quickly, and the Ogre did not notice their sudden elevation because his foot chanced, at that moment, to kick against the backbrush. He picked it up and looked at it meditatively. “I can think of a very good use for this,” he said. “Don’t tempt me too far.” Then he went away, taking the mop and the brush with him.

They listened tensely to his retreating footsteps. When he had reached the bathroom, Caspar said, “Now what shall we do? We can’t sit here all night.”

“But I’ll be cold on the ceiling,” Gwinny whimpered.

“You could take a blanket up with you,” Caspar suggested.

“If you could hold her down,” said Johnny, “I think I can fix her.”

“All right,” said Caspar. “But don’t be too long.”

So Johnny departed downstairs with heavy-footed stealth and Caspar tried to keep Gwinny in place. He found it next to impossible on his own. In a matter of seconds, she was floating clear of the bed, bedclothes and all.

“Oh, what shall we do?” she wailed.

“Shut up for a start,” said Caspar.

The bedclothes slid away and Caspar was hanging on to Gwinny’s nightdress. There was a slow tearing sound. Gwinny whimpered and began to rise again, gently but surely. Caspar was forced to let go of her nightdress and catch hold of her ankles. There he hung on desperately. He found, in the end, that if he leant back, with his head nearly touching the floor and all his weight swinging on Gwinny, he could keep her floating upright about three feet from the floor. They had reached this point when Johnny came swiftly upstairs and entered the room with a bucket of water, looking very businesslike.

“Oh good,” he said, when he saw the position Gwinny was in, and he threw the water over the pair of them.

He had not thought to bring warm water. Gwinny squealed. Caspar gasped and nearly let go. He was about to say some very unkind things to Johnny, when he realised that Gwinny was now much easier to hold down.

“It’s working,” he said. “Go and get some more.”

Johnny turned, beaming with relief, and went galloping away downstairs, bucket clattering. Somewhat to Caspar’s annoyance, he did not stop at the bathroom, but went on galloping, right downstairs to the kitchen, because the water ran more quickly from the taps downstairs. Caspar shook his soaking hair out of his eyes and hung on grimly. Gwinny’s teeth chattered.

“I’m freezing,” she complained. “My nightie’s soaking.”

“I know,” said Caspar. “It’s dripping all over me, and I’m sitting in a puddle, if that’s any comfort.”

After what seemed half an hour, they heard Johnny pounding upstairs again. Caspar was too relieved to worry about the noise he was making. He just listened to Johnny pounding closer and closer and prayed for him to hurry. As Johnny’s feet crossed the landing below, a confused noise broke out on the same level. Johnny had started on the last flight of stairs, when Douglas erupted into another shattering roar.

“What the blazes are you doing? There’s water pouring through our ceiling!”

Johnny did not answer. They heard his feet climbing faster. Then came the feet of Douglas, pounding behind. Behind that again were other feet. Caspar and Gwinny could only wait helplessly, until the door at last crashed open and Johnny staggered in, red-faced and almost too breathless to move, with water slopping over his shoes out of the bucket.

“Throw it,” Caspar said urgently.

Johnny croaked for breath, heaved up the bucket and poured the water over Gwinny, drenching Caspar again in the process. It did the trick. Gwinny dropped like a stone and landed on Caspar. There was a short time when Caspar could not see much and was almost as breathless as Johnny. When he recovered sufficiently to sit up, Douglas was standing behind Johnny, looking as if he had frozen in the middle of shouting something, and behind him were the Ogre and their mother.

“Johnny!” said Sally. “Whatever possessed you?”

“Take him downstairs, Douglas,” said the Ogre, “and make him clear it up. These two can clear up here.”

“Come on,” Douglas said coldly. Johnny departed without a word. There really was nothing to say.

An hour later, when Gwinny had been put to bed in a clean nightdress and everywhere wet mopped dry, Caspar and Johnny went rather timidly into their room expecting to see the carpet, where the rest of the chemicals had gone, floating against the ceiling – or at least ballooning up in the middle. But the only sign of the spill was a large purple stain and a considerable remnant of bad smell. Much relieved, Caspar opened the window.

“It must only work on people,” Johnny said thoughtfully.

“We’d better clear it up,” said Caspar.

Johnny sighed, but he obediently trudged off to the bathroom for soap and water. He returned, still thoughtful, and remained so all the time he was rubbing the carpet with the Ogre’s face flannel. The stain came off fairly easily and dyed the flannel deep mauve.

“Couldn’t you have used yours or mine?” said Caspar.

“I did. Douglas made me use them on their room,” said Johnny. “Listen. Gwinny got an awful lot of that stuff on her, didn’t she? Suppose you use less, so you weren’t quite so light, wouldn’t you be like flying?”

“Hey!” said Caspar, sitting up in bed. Since he had had to change all his clothes, it had seemed the simplest place to be. “That’s an idea! What did you put in it?”

“I can’t remember,” said Johnny. “But I’m darned well going to find out.”

CHAPTER THREE

In the days that followed, Johnny experimented. He made black mixtures, green mixtures and red ones. He made little smells, big smells, and smells grandiose and appalling. These met with the smells coming from Malcolm’s efforts and mingled with them, until Sally said that their landing seemed like a plague spot to her. But whatever smell or colour Johnny made, he was no nearer finding the right mixture. He went on doggedly. He remembered that Gwinny had put pipe ash in the mixture, so he always made that one of the ingredients.

“Who is it keeps taking my pipes?” demanded the Ogre, and received no answer. And in spite of running this constant risk, Johnny’s efforts were not rewarded. Nevertheless, he persevered. It was his nature to be dogged, and Caspar and Gwinny were thankful for it; for, as Gwinny said, the idea of being really able to fly made it easier to bear the awfulness of everything else.

Each day seemed to bring fresh trials. First there was the trouble over the purple face flannel, and then the affair of the muddy sweater on the roof, mysteriously found wrapped round the chimney. The Ogre, as a matter of course, blamed Caspar, and when Caspar protested his innocence, he blamed Johnny. And twice Caspar forgot that the Ogre was at home and played Indigo Rubber – the third time, the noise came from Douglas, but Douglas said nothing and let Caspar take the blame.

Then the weather turned cold. The house had very old central heating, which seemed too weak to heat all four floors properly. The bathroom, and the bedroom shared by Sally and the Ogre, were warm enough, but upwards from there it grew steadily colder. Gwinny’s room got so cold that she took to sneaking down to her mother’s room and curling up on the big soft bed to read. Unfortunately, she left a toffee bar on the Ogre’s pillow one evening, and the boys were blamed again. It took all Gwinny’s courage to own up, and the Ogre was in no way impressed by her heroism. However, he did find her an old electric heater, which he installed in her room with instructions not to waste electricity.

“We don’t need to be pampered,” Malcolm said odiously. “You should see what it’s like at a boarding school before you complain here.”

“Quait,” said Caspar. “Full of frosty little snobs like you. Why don’t you go back there where you belong?”

“I wish I could,” Malcolm retorted, with real feeling. “Anything would be better than having to share this pigsty with you.”

Nearly a week passed. One afternoon, Caspar was as usual hurrying home in order not to have to walk back with Malcolm, when he discovered himself to be in a silly kind of mood. He knew he was going to have to act the goat somehow. He decided to do it in the Ogre’s study, if possible, because it was the warmest room in the house and also possessed a nice glossy parquet floor, ideal for sliding on. As soon as he got home, he hurried to the study and cautiously opened its door.

The Ogre was not there, but Johnny was. He was rather gloomily turning ash out of the Ogre’s pipes into a tin for further experiments.

“How’s it going?” Caspar asked, slinging his bag into the Ogre’s chair and sitting on the Ogre’s desk to take his shoes off.

Johnny jumped. The Ogre’s inkwell fell over, and Johnny watched the ink spreading with even deeper gloom. “He’ll know it’s me,” he said. “He always thinks it’s me anyway.”

“Unless he thinks it’s me,” said Caspar, casting his shoes to the floor. “Wipe it up, you fool. But is the Great Caspar daunted by the Ogre? Yes, he is rather. And the ink is running off the desk into his shoes.”

Johnny, knowing he would get no sense out of Caspar in this mood, picked up the Ogre’s blotting paper and put it in the pool of ink. The blotting paper at once became bright blue and sodden, but there seemed just as much ink as before.

Gwinny came in, hearing their voices. “There’s ink running off on to the floor,” she said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Johnny, wondering how one small inkwell always contained such floods of ink.

“I’ll do the floor,” said Gwinny. “Can’t you help, Caspar?”

“No,” said Caspar, gliding smoothly in his socks across the floor. He did not see why he should be deprived of his pleasure because of Johnny’s clumsiness.

“Well, we think you’re mean,” said Gwinny, fetching a newspaper from the rack and laying it under the streams of ink.

“The Great Caspar,” said Caspar, “is extremely generous.”

“Take no notice,” said Johnny. “And pass me a newspaper.”

Caspar continued to slide. “The Great Caspar,” he said kindly, “will slide for your entertainment while you work, lady and gentleman. He has slid before all the crowned heads of Europe, and will now perform, solely for your benefit, the famous hexagonal turn. Not only has it taken him years to perfect but—”

“Oh shut up!” said Johnny, desperately wiping.

“—it is also very hazardous,” said Caspar. “Behold, the hazardous hexagon!” Upon this, Caspar spun himself round and attempted to jump while he did it. While he was in the air, he saw the Ogre in the doorway, lost his balance and ended sitting in a pool of ink. From this position, he looked up into the dour face of the Ogre. His own face was vivid red, and he hoped most earnestly that the Ogre had not heard his boastful fooling.

The Ogre had heard. “The Great Caspar,” the Ogre said, “appears to have some difficulty with the hexagonal turn. Get up! AND GET OUT!”

To complete Caspar’s humiliation, Malcolm appeared in the doorway, snorting with laughter. “What is a hexagonal turn?” he said.

The Ogre’s roar had fetched Sally too. “Oh just look at this mess!” she cried. “Those trousers are ruined, Caspar. Don’t any of you have the slightest consideration? Ink all over poor Jack’s study!”

It was the last straw, being blamed for falling in the ink. Caspar, with difficulty, climbed to his feet. “Poor Jack!” he said, with his voice shaking with rage, and fear at his own daring. “It’s always poor flipping Jack! What about poor us for a change?”

The hurt, harrowed look on Sally’s face deepened. The Ogre’s face became savage and he moved towards Caspar with haste and purpose. Caspar did not wait to discover what the purpose was. With all the speed his slippery socks would allow, he dodged the Ogre, dived between Malcolm and Sally and fled upstairs.

There he changed into jeans, muttering. His face was red, his eyes stung with misery and he could not stop himself making shamed, angry noises. “I wish I was dead!” he said, and surged towards the window, wondering whether he dared throw himself out. His progress scattered construction kits and hurled paper about. He knocked against a corner of the chemistry box. It shunted into its lid, which Johnny had left lying beside it, and a tube of some white chemical lying on the lid rolled across it and spilt a little white powder on Caspar’s sock as he passed.

Caspar found himself reaching the window in two graceful slow-motion bounds, rather like a ballet dancer’s, except that his socks barely met the floor as he passed. And when he was by the window, instead of stopping in the usual way, his feet again left the floor in a long, slow, drifting bounce. Hardly had he realised what was happening, than he was down again, quite in the usual way, with a heavy bump, on top of what felt like a drawing pin.

He was so excited that he hardly noticed it. He simply pulled off his sock, and the drawing pin with it, and waded back with one bare foot to the chemistry set. The little tube of chemical was trembling on the edge of the lid and white powder was filtering down from it on to the carpet. Caspar’s hands shook rather as he picked it up. He planted its stopper firmly in, and then turned it over to read the label. It read Vol. pulv., which left Caspar none the wiser. But the really annoying thing was that the little tube was barely half full. Either most of it had gone the night Gwinny took to the ceiling, or Johnny had unwittingly used it up since in other mixtures that destroyed its potency. Wondering just how potent the powder was, Caspar carefully put his bare foot on the place where the tube had spilt. When nothing happened, he trod harder and screwed his foot around.

He was rewarded with a delicious feeling of lightness. A moment later, his feet left the ground and he was hanging in the air about eighteen inches above the littered floor. He was not very light. He gave a scrambling sort of jump to see if he could go any higher, and all that happened was that he bounced sluggishly over towards the window. It was such a splendid feeling that he bounced himself again and went jogging slowly towards Johnny’s bed.

“Yippee!” he said, and began to laugh.

He invented a kind of dance then, by jumping with both feet together first to one side and then to the other. Bounce and… Bounce and… His head swung, his hair flew, and he brandished the tube in his hand. Bounce and… Bounce and… “Yippee!”

Johnny and Gwinny came soberly and mournfully into the room while he was doing it. For a moment they could not believe their eyes. Then Johnny hastily slammed the door shut.

“I’ve found it!” said Caspar, bouncing away and waving the tube at them. “I’ve found it! It’s called Vol. pulv. and it works by itself. Yippee!” He suddenly felt himself becoming heavy again and was just in time to bounce himself over to his bed before the powder stopped working and he came down with a flop that made the bedsprings jangle. He sat there laughing and waving the tube at the others.

“How marvellous!” said Gwinny. “You are clever, Caspar.”

Johnny came slowly over to the bed. He took the tube and looked at it. “I was going to try this one today,” he said.

Caspar looked up at his gloomy face and understood that Johnny, not unreasonably, was feeling how unfair it was that Caspar should discover the secret, when Johnny had worked so hard over it and had just been in dire trouble about the ink as well. “You still need to do a lot of work on it,” Caspar said tactfully. “I used it dry, and it ought to be mixed with water. You’ll have to work out the right proportions.”

Johnny’s face brightened. “Yes,” he said. “And experiment to find out how much you need, not to go soaring right out of the atmosphere. I’ll have to do tests on myself, bit by bit.”

“That’s right,” agreed Caspar. “But for goodness sake don’t use too much while you do it. The tube’s less than half full already.”