The Abominables

10 Farley Towers

Bulls who have not been killed in the ring are never used again for fights. So the next day, El Magnifico was sent back by special train to the ranch from which he had come: a beautiful place with fresh, green grass, chestnut groves and cool breezes from the mountains of Navarre. And with him travelled his adopted son, an animal that had become famous throughout Spain — the yak called Hubert.

It was this ranch, in the hills above Pamplona, to which, on a moonlit night a couple of days later, the yellow lorry travelled. Perry had found out where the bull had been taken and they had broken their journey to the coast to say goodbye.

When the yetis had woken up to find Hubert gone, their distress had been terrible.

“I didn’t look after him properly,” Ambrose had wailed over and over again. “I didn’t deserve to have a yak of my own.”

“Do you remember his little hooves?” Lucy sobbed. “Just like mother-of-pearl, they were.”

“And the clatter of his knees knocking together. I can hear it now,” Grandma had moaned.

But now they were trying to be brave.

“After all, every growing person needs a father,” said sensible Uncle Otto.

“Look how we miss ours,” said Lucy, choking back a burst of tears.

“That El Magnifico animal will be the making of him, I daresay,” said Grandma.

But Ambrose didn’t say anything. Being brave was beyond him as he faced a yak-less world.

About a mile from the ranch, Perry parked the lorry and while Con went ahead to see that the coast was clear, the yetis crept silently across the fields towards the paddock which housed El Magnifico and his new son.

There had been clouds over the moon, but as they came up to the railings they rolled past and in a shaft of silver light they saw their yak, lying like a shaggy mop-head against the vast flanks of the sleeping bull.

“Hubert!” said Ambrose in a deep and tragic voice. “Are you happy, Hubert? Is this what you wanted?”

Hubert scrambled to his feet and ran forward to the railings. His boot face quivered with excitement, his knock knees clattered together like castanets. Here was Ambrose the Abominable, here were his old friends! He began to butt the railings, making little slivers of sawdust with his crumpled horn.

El Magnifico didn’t move. He just lifted his great head, with the wide and curving horns, and waited.

It was a terrible moment. The yetis could have picked Hubert up with one hand and lifted him over the fence and that would have been that. But Lady Agatha had brought them up well. They knew that people — even very young ones like Hubert — have to make their own choices.

So they waited, while Hubert ran backwards and forwards, now butting El Magnifico in the stomach, now rushing back to the railings to stick his nose into Ambrose’s outstretched hand.

For a moment it looked as though old loyalties would be the strongest. Hubert even put his head down and started tunnelling a path under the railings. Then with a last bleat of confusion, he stopped, turned and collapsed against the great bull’s side.

It was over. Fatherhood had won.

After that, no one tried to be brave any more. Though Con and Ellen travelled in the back to try and console the yetis, there was little they could do. Lucy sat clutching Hubert’s rubber teat while her blonde stomach turned dark under a rain of tears. Grandma said they needn’t expect her to get over a grief like that at her age and Clarence, managing a whole word for once, said, “Gone,” over and over again in a deep and desperate voice. As for Ambrose the Abominable, he lay like a felled log on his bunk, his wall eyes fixed blankly on the ceiling, brokenly murmuring Hubert’s name.

After a few miles, Perry stopped the lorry. He needed a short sleep before the last lap which would take them to the vehicle ferry. So he switched off the engine, bent down to pick up his pipe and settled back in his seat. Dawn was just breaking, a pale streak of light on the horizon.

Perry took a puff at his pipe. Then suddenly he leaned forward and peered into the driving mirror. After that he used Bad Language. Then he looked into the mirror again to make sure that he had seen what he thought he had seen.

He had.

For a moment, Perry was tempted. It would have been so easy to start the engine, release the handbrake, let out the clutch and take off at full speed down the road. Then he sighed, got down and opened the back of the lorry.

So then they all saw what Perry had seen in the driving mirror.

Footsore, knock-kneed, tripping over the tufts of hair that hung from his chest and bleating a frantic, “wait-for-me” bleat — came Hubert.

The yetis being sad had been hard to bear but the yetis being happy was almost as exhausting. By the time the lorry drove into the bowels of the big, white ship that was to take them across to Britain, Con and Ellen were quite worn out.

“I do hope they’ll be quiet during the crossing,” said Con. “I hate to lock them in — it seems so rude — but with the ship so full, I think we’ll have to.”

But Con needn’t have worried. He could have left the door wide open and none of the yetis would have stirred a centimetre. And the reason for this was simple — they were seasick.

There is always a rough patch of water round the Bay of Biscay and as the boat began to heave and toss, the yetis, unused as they were to the sea, became hideously, horribly, vilely ill. Grandma lay in her bunk groaning and saying that since the ship was going to sink anyway she hoped it would sink quickly. Lucy swore that she would never again say “sorry” to so much as a peanut if only her stomach would come out of the back of her throat and go back to where it belonged, and Ambrose, his head in a plastic bucket, was trying to decide who should have his bedsock when he was dead.

There is little you can do for people who are seasick except leave them alone. So while Perry sat in the bar drinking all the beer he hadn’t been able to drink while he was driving, Con and Ellen, who were good sailors, stayed up on deck watching the white spray and the diving gulls and the green wake of their ship in the water. And gradually, as they approached the shores of England, a weight seemed to fall off Con’s back, because it looked as though he had really done what he had promised Lady Agatha, and brought the yetis safely to her home.

They landed at Southampton two days later and while the exhausted yetis dozed in the back, Perry set course for the village of Farlingham, now only a couple of hours’ drive away.

It was a gentle, misty morning and as they drove past quiet fields and bird-busy hedges, past little copses and peaceful villages, they thought — as people do when they come back to the place where they were born — that there was nowhere quite like it in the world.

“Have you ever thought,” said Perry, when they stopped at a transport café for some fish and chips, “that Farley Towers may not be there any more? That it’s been pulled down to make a motorway or some such thing? Or that the people who own it have sold it to a hotel or a school or something?”

“I’ve thought of it often,” said Con. “But I don’t see what to do except hope for the best.”

All the same, when Perry turned off by a signpost saying “Farlingham 2 miles”, Con could have cried with relief. For there, at the end of a most beautiful avenue of lime trees was the house which Lady Agatha had described to him, weeks and weeks ago, in the secret valley of Nanvi Dar.

Lady Agatha had not been exaggerating. It really was one of the loveliest houses he had ever seen. Bathed in sunlight, its mellow brick glowed softly. There were wide inviting terraces which fell away to the rolling meadows of the deer park with its ancient elms. Yellow water lilies studded the lake, and on the wrought-iron gates the Farlingham crest shone proudly.

“All the same, I’ll just check at the village shop,” said Con. “Make sure the Farlinghams are still there.”

So he went into the village shop, which was the old-fashioned kind with sweets in glass jars, and liquorice and bootlaces and apples all jumbled up on the counter. Con bought a quarter of Black Bullets and then, trying to keep his voice casual, he asked who the big house belonged to.

“Oh, that’s the Farlinghams’ place,” said the woman behind the till. “Been in the family since way back.”

“Are they nice people?” said Con.

“None nicer,” said the shop lady. “I reckon there’s no one would have a bad word to say for the Farlinghams. Which is more than you can say for some of these old families.”

“Well, I guess we’re home and dry then,” said Perry when Con came back. “If they don’t clap me in jail, that is, for turning in an empty lorry. It’s the Perrington Porker for me and back to Bukhim for the two of you, I guess.”

Con nodded. “I’d like just to see them safely into Farley Towers, though.”

“Of course,” said Perry. “Tell you what, I’ll book a room for tonight in the pub here. The Farlinghams will probably want you and Ellen to stay with them, but I’d rather be independent. Then tomorrow I can get up to town and see the Cold Carcass people and book your flight home. OK?”

“OK,” said Con, and he went to tell the yetis that they had arrived.

When he opened the door of the lorry, he had quite a surprise. Ellen, who had been travelling in the back with them, had worked really hard. Their fur shone, Queen Victoria glistened with polish between the shining plaits on Lucy’s stomach and the bedsock was arranged across Ambrose’s burnished chest like the Order of the Garter.

“Aren’t we smart!” said Ambrose the Abominable. “They’ll like us like this, won’t they, at Farley Towers?”

“They’d better,” said Con in a gruff voice. He’d just begun to understand what it would be like to go back to Bukhim and not see the yetis any more.

And seeing the yetis look so smart made the children suddenly realize how crumpled and dishevelled they themselves were looking after the long journey. You can brush fur, but you can’t do much about missing buttons and torn jumpers and socks with holes in them.

“Look, now we know the Farlinghams are still there, I think you should go ahead,” said Con to the yetis. “After all, you’re sort of family from having been brought up by Lady Agatha, and you’ve got the bedsock to show who you are. We’ll find a field to put Hubert in and then we’ll go with Perry to his pub and clean ourselves up and then we’ll join you. All right?”

The yetis nodded. “But you’ll come soon, won’t you?” said Ambrose, managing to keep his voice wobble free, but only just.

“Very soon,” promised Con.

But when the yetis set off up the avenue of lime trees that led, wide and straight and welcoming, from the main gateway of Farley Towers to the house, they couldn’t feel shy and nervous any more. It was so lovely to walk upright and unashamed without being afraid to be seen. Not that there was anyone about in the deserted park, but if there had been it wouldn’t have mattered because they were safe now, they belonged.

“’ice!” said Clarence in a pleased voice, looking about him.

“Yes, isn’t it nice?” said Lucy. “It’s just like walking into the Farley Towers game. Look, there’s the lake where we’re going to row and have picnics with lemonade.”

“And there’s the summer house where Lady Agatha used to read Beautiful Poetry,” said Grandma.

“If only she could be with us now. And Father too!” sighed Uncle Otto.

They walked on steadily up the long, curiously empty drive between the lime trees, which made an arch above their heads, and came out on the wide sweep of gravel in front of the great, iron-studded door.

“They will be our friends and tell us stories?” said Ambrose, suddenly feeling rather wobbly and scared.

“Of course they will,” said Grandma. “Now come on, ring the bell.”

And bravely, Ambrose the Abominable took off his bedsock and, holding it carefully in his right hand, he pulled the big brass handle of the bell. They could hear it peal in the back of the huge house — a deep, long peal. There were footsteps, a creak as of a metal bar being pulled back — and then the great front door swung open and the yetis went inside.

The long journey was over. They were home.