The Abominables

6 Aslerfan

The yellow lorry drove on, day after day, down through the foothills of the Himalayas, across the burning plains of India and Pakistan, across Afghanistan with its stony mountains and wild goats and poplar trees, and through the deserts of Iran where the sand got into the yetis’ nostrils and between their toes and into their food…

It was not an easy journey. The yetis had to be sealed up inside the lorry until night-time, when they found a deserted place to stop and they could come out and stretch their legs and get some air. The lorry was bumpy and every so often Clarence said “’ick, ’ick,” and then Perry would have to quickly try and find a place in which a yeti could be sick without anybody seeing, which was not so easy at all. And, of course, Hubert, who had to be fed from a bottle every four hours, and then turned upside down because he’d swallowed the teat, was just as much of a nuisance as Con had foreseen.

But after a while, the yetis got a taste for travelling. Sitting round the campfire at the end of the day, listening to Perry strum his guitar and pushing Hubert’s hooves out of the butter, they felt that this really was life. But when they had said sorry to the last of their condensed milk tins and lay down under the stars to sleep, Con and Ellen always took it in turns to stay awake so that no one should come on the yetis unexpectedly. Nor would they ever let Perry take his turn, however much he grumbled, because they knew that driving a lorry for great distances is the most exhausting thing in the world and that he needed his sleep.

And in this way they travelled very happily until they came to the city of Aslerfan, the capital of the state of Aslerfan, which is wedged like a slice of melon between Iran and Turkey.

Although the yetis couldn’t see out, they began to feel queer almost as soon as they crossed the border. Grandma said her corns were shooting and she didn’t like the way her liver was carrying on. Lucy kept nervously twisting Queen Victoria and her nine children in her long, blonde fingers; Uncle Otto’s face was set and stern.

“I don’t like this place. It feels funny,” said Ambrose the Abominable.

Con and Ellen, sitting in the cab in front, liked it even less. They were approaching the city now. There were beggars everywhere; the people had grey faces; half-starved mongrel dogs dodged in and out of the traffic. It was dusty and hot and suddenly Ellen drew in her breath because an old man had just crossed the road leading a poor, mangy, limping bear on a chain so tight that he looked as though he must choke.

“It’s a dancing bear,” Perry explained, while Con made sure that the peephole to the back was tightly shut. “On the way to the palace, I expect. They jab them and put hot coals in their mouth and make them dance for money. Aslerfan’s the only place left in the world where you’re allowed to do that.”

And he explained to the children that Aslerfan was ruled by a cruel and greedy sultan, who lived in luxury in his palace with a fleet of cars and aeroplanes and yachts. The Sultan Midul had five hundred embroidered shirts and twelve hundred pairs of trousers and three fat wives covered from top to toe in diamonds, but his people lived in poverty and squalor. Instead of building schools and hospitals, the Sultan had huge feasts in which everybody gorged themselves till they were sick and began again. Instead of looking after the old and the needy, he organized great hunts in which hundreds of beautiful gazelles and antelopes were cruelly slaughtered. Everybody hated him, but nobody dared to protest because they would just have been put in jail or shot.

“All I ever want to do in Aslerfan,” said Perry, “is get through it as quickly as possible.”

But Perry reckoned without the lorry.

Perry’s lorry looked all right from the outside, but its inside was more like that of an ailing old lady than a twenty-tonne truck. Its carburettor got choked up as soon as you breathed on it, its exhaust pipe hung on by willpower and string and the engine sounded like an old hen with the croup. And now, just when they wanted to get through Aslerfan quickly, the wretched lorry began to boil.

“Oh, Lord!” said Perry. “Not the water pump.”

But it was. “We’ll have to spend the night here, I’m afraid, while I get this thing fixed,” said Perry worriedly. “I’ll find as quiet a place to park as I can but for goodness’ sake don’t let the yetis out. You saw that bear…”

So he parked in a quiet street not far from the Sultan’s palace. Beside it was a little park, with a few dusty date palms, a tobacco kiosk and a public lavatory. And at the far side, something else. A zoo.

The yetis had never before had to spend a night in a town, let alone a town like Aslerfan. It meant that they couldn’t get out and say, “Sorry, grass,” and build a campfire and stretch their legs, but had to stay cooped up in the lorry, which was stiflingly hot because Perry had disabled the refrigeration system to get at the water pump. But the yetis understood that it was necessary and they were very good.

While Perry went to find a garage and Con went shopping for some fruit, Ellen slipped into the little park to buy some lemonade for the yetis from a kiosk. When she came back, she was very quiet and pale.

“Are you sad?” said Ambrose, and his brown eye got ready in case there was any crying to be done.

But Ellen just shook her head and said it was nothing, or perhaps the heat. And then Con returned and they had a picnic in the back and they were just getting ready for the bedtime story when the noises began.

They were bad noises: howls of misery; roars of loneliness; whimpers of pain.

Even by the light of his torch, Con could see the yetis’ ear lids turn pale and Lucy, who had just taken her seventh banana, put it down untouched.

“That was a poor lion who’s got no meat to say ‘sorry’ to,” she said, as an ear-splitting roar filled the night.

“That elephant has got a pain in his trunk,” said Uncle Otto worriedly.

“And listen to those poor seals coughing their lungs out,” said Grandma.

Con was amazed. “How do you know which animals are which and what they’re saying?” he asked. “You’ve never seen lions or seals or elephants, have you?”

Ambrose turned his wall eyes reproachfully on Con. “But they’re our brothers,” he said.

Con sighed. He’d asked for that one. “Look, it’s just a zoo. All animals make noises at night in a zoo—”

But Ellen, usually so quiet and gentle, interrupted him. “No, Con, it’s an awful place, this. I saw it when I was getting the lemonade. The cages are filthy and far too small; there are flies everywhere; the monkeys are full of sores and the antelopes have got foot rot… And there’s a ghastly sort of dungeon place where they throw the dancing bears that are too old to work.”

It was true. The Aslerfan Zoo was a disgrace. But it was the Sultan’s private zoo and when people in the city complained, he just laughed. As for the head keeper, a man called Mr Bullaby, he took the money he was paid for the animals and used it for himself. So the animals were sick and cramped and underfed, and hundreds died every year from loneliness or bad feeding or disease.

Con bit his lip, frowning. Cruelty to animals always made him feel completely sick and hollow. But he’d given his word that he’d get the yetis to Farley Towers and that meant keeping them cheerful and keeping them safe. So he began to tell them “Rumpelstiltskin”, making up such funny names for the Queen to guess that Ambrose nearly fell off his bunk laughing, and after they had whispered, “Lead, Kindly Light” (because there were still strollers about in the streets who might have thought it odd if a load of Cold Carcasses had started singing hymns) the children slipped to the front and curled up in the cab and fell asleep.

But the yetis couldn’t sleep. Even when they shut their ear lids they could still feel the noises from that dreadful zoo.

And presently Ambrose leaned down from his bunk and said “Grandma?”

“What is it?” said Grandma, opening her ear lids.

“I was thinking… Ellen was sad about that zoo, wasn’t she?”

Grandma nodded. “And no wonder.”

“Con was sad too,” said Lucy. “He didn’t say anything but his face was all screwed up and tight.”

“So we could give them a surprise,” said Ambrose. “Con and Ellen, I mean. Because they’ve been so good to us.”

“’urprise,” said Clarence happily, nodding.

“What sort of a surprise, Ambrose?” asked Lucy.

“A lovely one,” said Ambrose, his blue eye beaming. “We could let all the animals out of their cages. Now, while it’s dark. And in the morning they’d all be happy and free.”

There was a pause while the yetis considered this.

“Do As You Would Be Done By,” said Grandma presently, “that’s what Lady Agatha said. Only God said it first. How would we like to be shut up in filthy cages?”

And then they all turned their enormous heads towards Uncle Otto, who was really the head of the family now that Father was no longer with them.

Uncle Otto hesitated. He understood perhaps better than the others how important it was for the yetis to keep out of people’s way. But just then there came a sound more terrible than any they had heard yet: the wings of the thirst-maddened birds of prey beating against the wire of their appalling cages.

Uncle Otto made up his mind. And a few moments later, leaving Hubert tied to one of the bunks, the yetis had pushed aside the iron bar which closed the back of the lorry and were climbing over the high barbed wire which surrounded the zoo.

As soon as they dropped down inside the enclosure, the noises stopped. It was as though the animals knew that their time of torture was over. The lions stopped their restless pacing and stood silent and golden-eyed, waiting. The giraffes hung their poor, stiff necks over the bars of their pen and blew softly and hopefully through their velvet lips. The weary old bears got up on their hind legs and danced of their own free will.

“Right,” said Uncle Otto. He had left his woolly hat in the lorry and in the moonlight his bald patch shone like the shield of St George. “Let us begin.”

The next two hours were the busiest of the yetis’ lives. When Lady Agatha had warned Con about the yetis’ strength, she hadn’t been exaggerating. They bent iron bars like plasticine, broke locks with a couple of fingers, uprooted railings as if they were dandelions…

Uncle Otto freed the big cats: the lions and tigers and panthers and jaguars, and they rubbed themselves, soft as kittens, against his legs before loping off joyfully into the night. Clarence helped out the poor, rheumaticky old hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses, who had almost forgotten how to walk, and led the elephants, with their sore trunks and runny eyes, into a clump of palm trees where they could feed. Lucy let out the little things that had huddled sadly on the concrete floors of their smelly runs for years: opossums like old handbags, scruffy little moonrats and dik-diks and bushbabies, which she shook out and sat gently on their feet before they scampered gratefully away.

Grandma, meanwhile, had got hold of a hose and was washing down the sea lions and walruses and alligators, who were covered in green slime from their disgusting, sludgy ponds. “Now off you go, and get down to the river quickly,” she scolded a crocodile who was lying on his back, letting the hose play over his stomach and showing his poor, broken teeth in the first real smile he’d smiled since the cruel Sultan’s men had caught him in their nets. And it was marvellous to see how every animal, even the most stupid like the anteaters, or the fiercest like the cougars, or the shyest like the gazelles, found time to thank the yetis with a grateful nibble, a friendly lick or a thankful hiss, before they crawled or slithered or hopped off to freedom.

The dancing bears were the last to go. It was as if they could hardly tear themselves away from the yetis and even when they had shuffled off into the darkness they came back again and again to rub themselves once more against their rescuers.

But at last the zoo was empty and the yetis were just turning to go back to the lorry when Lucy said: “Where’s Ambrose? And what’s that splash?”

What that splash was, was Mr Bullaby, the head keeper, whom Ambrose the Abominable had just thrown into the crocodile pond.

“I found him in his house, hiding under the bed,” said Ambrose, when the others ran up to him, “and I thought he ought to be punished. Lady Agatha always punished us when we were naughty and this zoo is more than naughty, isn’t it?”

The yetis stood round solemnly in the moonlight, watching Mr Bullaby in his yellow silk pyjamas, floundering and spluttering in the filthy pool.

“Was I wrong to do it?” asked Ambrose, suddenly growing anxious.

But the others, remembering the pitiful things they had seen that night, said no, he hadn’t been.

“If the crocodiles had still been there, you shouldn’t have done it,” said Lucy, “because it wouldn’t have been fair on the crocodiles. But they weren’t. So you should’ve.”

And then they all padded quietly out of the zoo and climbed back into the lorry and fell asleep.

Con, curled up in the cab in front, was having a most peculiar dream. He dreamed that a large and rather loopy-looking gnu was looking in at the lorry window.

Making an effort, he opened his eyes, stretched…

A large and loopy-looking gnu was looking in at the lorry window.

“Goodness!” said Con. But before he could explore further, Perry came back from the all-night garage carrying the mended pump. “The place’s gone mad,” he said. “There’s a tree sloth hanging from the lamp post, a couple of kangaroos are window shopping in the square and—” He broke off. “Good Lord! Look at the zoo!”

In silence, Perry and the children stared across the little park at the broken fences, the shattered buildings…

“Is it an earthquake, do you think?” asked Ellen, who’d only just woken up and was still rather muddled.

“Or a terrorist letting off bombs?” suggested Con.

But before they could decide how the zoo had got into the state it was in, there was an agitated scrabbling from the container and when Con cautiously opened the door, all five yetis stood looking out at him, beaming with pride and joy.

“We did it! It’s a surprise for you! We let out all the animals, every single one!” said Ambrose the Abominable.

There was a moment of total silence while Con took this in. “Oh no! You didn’t! Say you didn’t!” he begged.

“But we did. All the animals were sad so—”

Con’s face had turned ashen. He had begun to tremble. “Don’t you see, it’s a crime. Breaking up people’s property, smashing things… As soon as the Sultan gets to hear of it, he’ll send his soldiers with machine guns. You’ll be mown down, you’ll be—”

But Perry now came to the rescue. “We’re only a hundred miles from the border,” he said, “and the Sultan can’t touch us once we’re across. The pump’s mended; no one’s about yet — we’ve a good chance of making a getaway.”

And a few seconds later the door had shut on the bewildered yetis and the yellow lorry was roaring out of the city.

A hundred miles in a slow and overloaded lorry can seem like a desperately long way. Every motor horn, every train whistle made the children jump as they imagined the Sultan’s men come to round up the yetis or torture them or simply shoot them out of hand.

But the Sultan did not come that day, or any other day. And that was because, by evening, the city of Aslerfan no longer had a sultan.

What happened was this. On the morning that the yellow lorry left Aslerfan, the cruel and greedy little Sultan woke up in his huge gold and turquoise bed as he did each day, stretched his fat little arms as he did each day, and thought of all the nice things he was going to do, like watching a public execution, having some journalists flogged because they’d dared to criticize him in their newspapers and arranging a hunt in which a herd of exquisite fallow deer would be gunned down from his private fleet of helicopters.

Then, as he did every day, he rang for his servants. But after that, things happened differently. Because what came into the room was not his barber to shave him, or his valet to dress him, or his footman carrying the six fried eggs he always ate for breakfast.

It was a hippopotamus.

“Help!” screamed the Sultan. “Help! Help!” He reached for the bell rope and pulled it again. Only it was not the bell rope, it was the tail of an enormous boa constrictor, which now fell in a hissing and annoyed heap on to the Sultan’s embroidered counterpane.

“Aaeee!” yelled the Sultan. He leaped out of bed and rushed for the nearest door, which led into his lapis lazuli and marble bathroom.

Sitting quietly in the middle of the bath was a huge, whiskery and very wrinkled walrus.

“It’s a plague! It’s a plague of animals! The gods have decided to punish me!” yelled the Sultan, who had read about the great plagues of Egypt, when Jehovah had sent locusts and frogs and flies to punish a wicked ruler who had been cruel to his people.

As the terrified Sultan ran through the corridors of his palace, he saw more and more signs that the gods were out to get him. An orang-utan was crouching on the imperial throne, dreamily cracking fleas between his teeth; a proud ostrich had just laid an egg on the grand piano in the music room, and three armadillos were bulldozing their way across the table in the state dining hall…

Still in his pyjamas, the fat little man reached the main courtyard. There was no sign of his servants or his soldiers, who had all fled when the animals invaded the palace. But standing by the fountain, looking at him through golden, serious eyes, were two very stripy tigers.

The Sultan waited no longer. With a scream of terror he turned and ran, on and on, through his terraced gardens, and private parks and pleasure pavilions, on and on, till he came to the brown bare hills that surrounded the city. And there he fell on his knees and beat his head against the earth and asked the gods to forgive him his sins. And the next day he put on a sacking robe and went to live in a cave where he spent the rest of his life gabbling prayers and fasting so that he would get to heaven in the end.

And so the hated Sultan was seen no more, and in the city of Aslerfan there was feasting and rejoicing and dancing in the streets. People hugged each other and let off fireworks and threw open the doors of their cafés so that everyone could eat and drink their fill. The prisoners were let out of their dungeons and the sick were taken off the streets and cared for. But because it was the animals who had brought freedom to the people, the new government made it a law that all the animals that had escaped were to be guests of the city and not to be harmed. So, for many months, while they built a new, model zoo for those animals that preferred to live in town, you could see giraffes dozing in the middle of the road while cars edged carefully around them, barbers politely shaving wildebeests who had wandered into their shops, or old ladies giving lifts to porcupines in their shopping baskets.

Nor did anyone ever find out who had freed the animals. True, Mr Bullaby had gabbled something about furry giants with bedsocks round their necks and Queen Victoria on their stomachs. But when people talk like that there is only one thing to do: take them to some nice, quiet hospital and shut them up till they are better. And that is exactly what the people of Aslerfan did.