Noah Barleywater Runs Away (14 page)

‘Noah,’ she said, sitting up immediately and trying to smile, but not making a very good job of
either. Her face was very pale, almost grey, and there was a nasty smell inside the tent. It reminded him of how his own bedroom had smelled the night Charlie Charlton stayed over and ate too much chocolate and drank too many fizzy drinks and was sick all over the floor during the night. ‘Sorry about this,’ she said in a tired voice. ‘But honestly, there’s nothing to worry about. I just had a bit of a funny turn, that’s all. It must have been all that candyfloss.’

‘But you didn’t have any candyfloss,’ said Noah, staring at her, keeping a certain distance between them now.

They didn’t take the train back home that evening, which was a shame as Noah quite liked trains. Instead they stayed in the tent for another three hours until Noah’s dad arrived with the car and took them home again.

They were very quiet in the car during that journey, Noah most of all.

‘So, if she hadn’t eaten the candyfloss,’ said the old man, setting the puppet he had been carving on the table half finished, then picking up the empty dessert plates and walking slowly across to the sink, where he turned the taps on, threw a couple of dishcloths in and let them get on with their work, ‘why was she feeling ill?’

Noah looked down at the table and started running his finger across a dent in the wood that had been made, he assumed, by an out-of-control chisel. He didn’t say anything, didn’t look up, and hoped the old man wouldn’t ask him any more questions of this sort.

‘You don’t want to answer me?’ asked the old man eventually in a quiet voice, and Noah looked across at him and swallowed hard before shaking his head.

‘I don’t want to be rude,’ he said, and as he spoke he found that his voice was coming out much more forcefully than he had intended, ‘but now I’ve
run away from home, I think it’s best if I don’t think about my mum and dad at all. Or talk about them.’

‘Well, now, that’s a very strange thing to say,’ said the old man, turning round and staring at him in surprise. ‘First your mother stands up for you against a security guard who has wrongly accused you, then she makes a beach out of a swimming pool, and then she takes you out of school to go to a fair. And you don’t want to talk about her? Why, if I’d had a mother like that … well, I never had a mother, of course, I only had Poppa,’ he said sadly. ‘But still, I don’t understand why you don’t want to be with her.’

Noah thought about this for a long time before answering. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to be with her,’ he said, growing more frustrated now. ‘Oh, it’s so difficult to explain! The thing is, she made me a promise, you see. And I think she’s going to break it. And I don’t want to be there when that happens.’

‘You
think
she’s going to break it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what promise did she make?’

Noah shook his head, making it clear that he didn’t want to say.

‘Well, I’m very sorry to hear it,’ said the old man with a sigh. ‘Although I suppose we all make promises we can’t keep from time to time.’

‘I bet you’ve never done it,’ said Noah.

‘Oh, if you thought that, you’d be very wrong. You should have heard the promises I made when I
was a boy. Do you know, everything my father ever did in his whole life was for my wellbeing, but time and again I let him down. Running off and having adventures, getting into all sorts of trouble. And if you want to talk about promises, well, I’ve had to live with a broken promise my entire life. Now, would you care for some tea? A cup of coffee perhaps?’

‘I don’t drink tea or coffee,’ said Noah, making a face that suggested he’d just eaten a barrel of rotten apples. ‘But I’ll take a glass of milk if you have one.’

The old man opened the fridge and buried himself inside it for a moment, finally emerging with a frosted pitcher of cold milk, from which he poured a tall glass for Noah and set it on the table before him. He picked up his wood and chisel and started chipping away again.

Noah took a drink from the glass and then reached into the box again, selecting another puppet, and this one made him smile. He had a very thin body and a very square head; he looked like he had been based on a man who was composed of a set of geometric shapes rather than one with arms, legs and a torso.

‘Ah, Mr Quaker,’ said the old man when he saw it, laughing a little as he shook his head. ‘I’m rather surprised that my father carved a puppet of him. Because if Mr Wickle was the man who got me interested in running, then it was Mr Quaker who
made me realize how many different ways I could use my gift. You talk about promises, Noah, but it was because of Mr Quaker that I broke one to my own father.’

Soon after my visit to meet the King and Queen (said the old man), I returned home from school one day to be greeted by a most unusual sight: a customer standing in the toy shop talking to Poppa. I couldn’t remember the last time this had happened – the donkey and the dachshund were generally the only visitors the shop ever received – and it was only when the bell over the door realized I was standing there and sounded a half-hearted ring that the man turned round and clapped his hands together in delight.

‘And this must be your son,’ he said in a loud and extravagant voice.

‘This is him,’ replied Poppa quietly.

‘He’s not as tall as I expected him to be.’

‘Well, he is still quite young,’ said Poppa. ‘He hasn’t finished growing yet. In fact, he’s barely begun.’

‘Hmm, I expect so,’ said the man, marching forward and grabbing me by the hand before shaking
it violently. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Quaker. Bartholomew Quaker. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?’

‘No, sir,’ I admitted.

‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Quaker, his forehead disappearing into a series of frowns. ‘That’s a great disappointment. And a considerable blow to my pride. But never mind. I’m the official selector of the village team for this year’s Olympic Games. You have heard of
them
, I imagine?’ he added, turning round to Poppa and laughing heartily as if he had made a tremendous joke.

‘No, sir,’ I said again, shrugging my shoulders.

‘You’ve never heard of the Olympic Games?’ asked Mr Quaker in astonishment, leaning forward now and removing his spectacles in order to get a better look at me. ‘You can’t be serious!’

‘We live a very quiet life here in the toy shop, Mr Quaker,’ I told him. ‘I’m afraid I don’t get to see much of the outside world. Although recently I visited the King and Queen and—’

‘But, my boy,’ said Mr Quaker, interrupting me, ‘the Olympics is the greatest sporting extravaganza the world has ever known. It exists to promote a sense of fellowship between nations and to celebrate extraordinary sporting achievement. Some athletes spend their whole lives training for the Games, and to win a medal is the pinnacle of their careers.’

‘Well, it sounds like great fun,’ I said, doing a
little running up and down on the spot to keep my blood circulating. ‘I suppose you want me to take part in it, do you?’

‘But of course!’ said Mr Quaker, nodding his head. ‘The news of your success as a runner has travelled far and wide. And it shames me to say that the village hasn’t won a single medal since the days of the great Dmitri Capaldi. We’re hoping that perhaps you’ll be able to change all that for us. It’s a great weight of expectation on the shoulders of one so young, but from what I hear, yours are quite strong enough to support it. What do you think? You won’t disappoint us, will you?’

‘If Poppa says I can go,’ I replied, looking at my father for agreement, ‘then I’d love to.’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Poppa quietly, the pain of impending loss already appearing on his face. ‘They’re held so very far away. And there’s your schooling to think of. Wouldn’t you rather stay here with me? I know it’s not the most exciting life but—’

‘We’ll have him back before you even know he’s gone,’ said Mr Quaker, interrupting him, not wanting me to be discouraged. ‘But tell me,’ he added, turning back to me. ‘You’ve only started running quite recently, I’m told.’

‘That’s right,’ I said, nodding my head. ‘Yes, I couldn’t really run that fast before. My legs weren’t up to it. But since I turned eight … well, things changed quite a bit for me.’

‘
Can I ask in what way?’

‘My son doesn’t like to talk about the past,’ said Poppa, stepping out from behind the counter now and putting his arm around me protectively. ‘Suffice it to say that before we moved to the village, my son was a very different fellow altogether. But when he decided to become a boy – a
good
boy, I mean; the boy he’d always wanted to be – well, since then he’s realized that he has certain … gifts. The ability to run very fast being one of them.’

‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about that, sir.’ Mr Quaker beamed. ‘In my job, you meet all sorts and I never judge. I never make a judgement, sir,’ he repeated as if he wanted to be very clear on this point. ‘Do you know, I once worked with a boy who’d spent the first five years of his life trapped inside a pane of glass? He had extraordinary skills on the pommel horse and the parallel bars but sadly finished last in the qualifying heats, so that was a great disappointment. He was absolutely shattered afterwards. And in the last Olympics but one, another boy who had been expected to win gold in the chariot racing left his sense of humour behind on the train to the finals and was completely unable to concentrate during the event. He never came back, of course. He’s still out there, trying to track it down, but he’ll never find it. And I dare say you heard about Edward Bunson, from the next village along?’

‘No, sir,’ I said, my eyes opening wide.

‘
He was their great hope in the fencing competition,’ recalled Mr Quaker with a sigh. ‘But on the day of the event he got a terrible case of the shakes because he was so overwhelmed by the size of the crowd who had come to see him, and he couldn’t go on. Those fields remained unfenced for years afterwards. It was a tremendous shame.’

‘There are worse things in life than failing to win medals,’ said Poppa. ‘Youth is a prize in itself. Why, I’m an old man now and my legs don’t work as they should. I have arthritis in my back. I’m blind in one ear and deaf in one eye.’

‘You have that the wrong way round, Poppa,’ I said, shaking my head.

‘But I don’t,’ insisted Poppa. ‘I don’t, my boy! And that’s what makes it even worse.’

‘This is all terribly interesting,’ said Mr Quaker, glancing at his watch, ‘but I’m afraid I have a train to catch and can’t stand around all day making idle chit-chat. I hope I can go back and tell my committee that you’ve agreed to take part? We’d consider it a great honour.’

‘I really would like to,’ I told him, breaking into a wide smile.

‘But school,’ cried Poppa in despair. ‘Your education!’

‘Oh, you need have no worries on that score, sir,’ said Mr Quaker, tapping his stick on the ground three times in rapid succession in such a way that I stared at it, wondering whether he was about to
perform a magic trick. ‘We make it a policy that for every one hundred minors on our team, we have a fully-qualified tutor on hand to give lessons. We take the education of our young athletes very seriously.’

‘And how many boys will be travelling to these Games?’ asked Poppa sceptically. ‘Will there be others of his own age there?’

‘Just your son,’ said Mr Quaker proudly. ‘Which means that we will have no need of a tutor and therefore save the expense, thus not wasting a penny of your hard-earned taxes, sir.’ He leaned forward and banged a fist on the counter top. ‘We are all winners in this scenario, sir, are we not?’

Poppa sighed and looked away, shaking his head in exhaustion. ‘You really want to go?’ he asked me a few moments later, staring at me as I performed a rousing set of calisthenics.

‘Yes, of course!’ I said.

‘And you promise you’ll come back?’

‘I came back last time, didn’t I?’

‘You promise?’ insisted Poppa.

‘I promise.’

‘Then, if it is your heart’s deepest desire, I won’t stand in your way. You must go.’