The Abominables

7 The St Bernards of Feldenberg

The yellow lorry had passed through the beautiful city of Istanbul and was well into Turkey before Con stopped shivering and peering into the driving mirror to see if anyone was following them. Only when Perry went into a café in a little dusty village where they had stopped for petrol, and heard on the wireless that the Sultan of Aslerfan had fled, did the children relax.

Unfortunately, the news that they had saved the people of Aslerfan from their cruel Sultan made the yetis very smug.

“We did good, didn’t we?” said Ambrose, his blue eye beaming. “We’re sort of rescuing yetis now.”

“Well, don’t be rescuing yetis again, please,” said Con, who’d really had a dreadful fright. “Not till you’re safe at Farley Towers.”

That night Perry found a beautiful deserted little bay on the Sea of Marmara with a track down which the lorry could just go. Lucy and Grandma paddled, lifting the long hair on their legs out of the water like Lady Agatha had shown them, and Ambrose tethered Hubert to a fig tree and told him that he was a big yak now and could eat grass perfectly well if he tried. Con made a bonfire and they sat round it while Perry told them just how he thought the Perrington Porker would look when he had bred it: pink and fat but very strong, with a double-jointed tail and droopy ears, because pigs with droopy ears are more peace-loving than the other kind.

“Can we play the Farley Towers game?” begged Ambrose, as they lay down under the stars to sleep. It was a game that Ellen had invented to while away the journey and the yetis loved it.

“What will we do on our first day at Farley Towers?” said Lucy, because that was the way the game began.

“On the first day you’ll have dinner by candlelight with damask napkins,” said Ellen.

“What will we do on the second day?” said Ambrose.

“On the second day you’ll have tea on the lawn with strawberries and cream in crystal bowls,” said Ellen.

“’ird?” said Clarence. “’ird?”

But they never discovered what they would do on their third day at Farley Towers because at that moment Hubert decided he had seen his mother.

Hubert had been seeing his mother ever since they’d left Nanvi Dar. In fact, when he wasn’t swallowing his teat or trying to dig Hubert Holes inside the lorry, seeing his mother was what Hubert did. But up to now his mother, though unlikely, had been possible: a stray goat, a distant, browsing sheep, that sort of thing. Whereas what Hubert was now straining to reach, bleating with delight, seemed to be a rusty heap of scrap metal which somebody had left on the beach.

Sighing, the yetis got up again to look.

“No, dear,” said Grandma sternly, “that’s not your mother. That’s a wheelbarrow.”

And shaking their enormous heads, the yetis returned to their beds and fell asleep.

They travelled steadily north, through Greece with its ruined temples and its olive groves; through the long, flat plain of the Western Balkans with its storks and fields of maize, until they came to the little country of Feldenberg, in the foothills of the Alps.

And now there were pine forests and clear, rushing rivers and the sound of cowbells from the meadows. The air grew cool, the trim, wooden houses had boulders on the roof to weigh them down against the wind, and in the distance, white as icing sugar, were the glaciers of the Alpine peaks.

“Oh, isn’t it beautiful, it’s just like home!” cried the yetis when they were allowed to get out for a moment and have a stretch.

“Can I have some leather pants like that?” begged Ambrose, who had glimpsed, in a distant field, a little boy in lederhosen.

But Grandma had noticed something even more exciting. “What’s that noise?” she said eagerly, and Con explained that it was yodelling, a sort of cross between calling each other and singing, which people did on mountains.

“I can do that!” said Grandma. “I just know I can.” She threw back her head. “Yodel-aaa-eee-ooo,” yodelled Grandma. “Yodel-aaa-eee-ooo!”

“Oh, hush, Grandma,” begged the children, while all around there was the sound of ear lids thudding shut, “suppose someone hears you?”

But it was no use. Yodelling is like a drug once it gets hold of you and it had certainly got hold of Grandma. And it was with Grandma still going strong that they drove up towards the High Alps, and the pass which ran between the towering crags of the Death Peak to the east and the zigzag range of the Emperor Mountains to the west.

“It’s going to be quite a pull with this load on,” said Perry. “Cold at the top, too. I think we’ll stop off for a proper meal.”

So he parked the lorry by a deserted mill on the edge of a pretty village with an onion-domed church, a cobbled square and an inn with carved wooden shutters and a white horse painted on a sign above the door. And when he explained to the yetis that the children ought to have something hot before the next part of the journey, they all promised to be as quiet as mice and keep the peephole tightly shut.

The inn had red-checked tablecloths, wooden benches and nice, old-fashioned paintings on the walls showing brave St Bernard dogs with barrels round their necks saving people from the snow. And while Con and Ellen waded through their huge helpings of liver soup with dumplings, and pickled cabbage with ham, and nut cake with whipped cream, Perry, who spoke a little German, got talking to the innkeeper and his guests.

And what they were all talking about — very angrily — was a mad Englishman called Harry Letts.

Mr Letts was a very rich and very important television tycoon who had come to spend his holiday in the village with his little son, a boy of nine, called Leo. Everybody liked Leo, who was a friendly, quiet, rather dreamy child, but nobody liked Mr Letts, who had gone round telling anyone who would listen that his son was a spoilt, namby-pamby boy ruined by his mother and that he, Harold Letts, was going to make a man of him or else.

So that very morning he had set out with the little boy to climb the Death Peak. And the Death Peak, which towered above the village, was the highest, most dangerous mountain in Feldenberg.

“He is a criminal, a lunatic,” said the innkeeper angrily, wiping his counter clean. “Even an experienced person would not risk the Peak today, with a storm coming up.”

“A storm?” said the children, surprised, when Perry told them what had been said. The sun shone; the icing sugar peaks stood out against a pale blue sky.

But the yetis, when they got back to them, nodded their huge heads wisely. “Oh, yes, a storm’s coming. A bad one,” they said. “We can always tell because the hair on the back of our knees goes tingly.”

And sure enough, as the lorry ground its way slowly up the winding road, gradually leaving behind the lush meadows and fruit-hung orchards, the sun vanished behind clouds, the peaks turned mouse-coloured and sinister, the wind freshened…

“Poor Leo,” thought Con, looking up at the crags of the Death Peak where the rain that was now lashing their windscreen would, he knew, be falling as drifting, blinding snow. And he thought with a pang of homesickness of his own father, who might sometimes throw bags of flour, but who never came up with idiot ideas like making a man of his son.

About three hundred feet below the top of the pass, Perry gave up. The lorry had started its chicken-with-the-croup noises, and though the windscreen wipers were working at the double it was impossible to keep the windows clear of sleet. To try and make the descent down one of the most dangerous and winding roads in Europe in weather like that would have been madness, even with an empty lorry. As it was…

So he turned off into a deserted quarry, which ran off the curve of the road and provided some shelter. “We’ll have to spend the night here, I’m afraid,” he said.

The yetis, of course, loved the idea. “Isn’t it fresh, isn’t it bracing?” they said, and for an awful moment it looked as though Grandma would begin to yodel again.

But after a while, Con and Perry began to get worried about Ellen. It was bitterly cold at that height, and though they kept the windows tightly closed, the chill seeped right through their clothes and the thin army blanket which was all they had for covering. Ellen never complained, but she was a frail, slight child and now she had no way of hiding the whiteness of her face or the shivering fits which shook her.

“Listen,” said Perry to Con, “do you see that building up there, on the Death Peak? On that rocky ledge?”

Con nodded.

“It’s a monastery. The monks that run it are great people — they’re always helping travellers in trouble. They train St Bernards too — those mountain rescue dogs. You can reach it in half an hour and the path’s perfectly safe.”

“You mean I should take Ellen up there and ask if we can spend the night?”

“That’s right. But go now, quickly. You’ve only another hour till dark.”

“But what about the yetis?” said Con.

“I’ll look after them. They’ll be all right, I promise.”

Con threw another glance at Ellen, huddled in the corner of the cab and trying to stop her teeth from chattering. “All right,” he said.

An hour later, safe from the storm, the children were sitting over steaming bowls of soup and hunks of fresh-baked bread in the monastery dining hall.

It was a beautiful room. Candles burnt on the long wooden table; there were heavy, carved oak settles and a blazing fire of pine logs in which the resin bubbled and sang.

But what Con and Ellen couldn’t take their eyes off, was what was lying in a huge, warm huddle of feet and melting eyes and thumping tails across the hearth. Five dogs. Five of the most beautiful dogs they had ever seen: white and brown; gold and liver-coloured; fawn and mahogany, with wrinkled foreheads and slobbery jowls. The famous St Bernards of Feldenberg.

And while the children ate their soup, the friendly monks, clustering round, told them — in a jumble of languages — the story of the dogs.

For a long time, they explained, people had stopped using dogs for mountain rescue work because they were so expensive to train and modern devices like helicopters and radar seemed to make them unnecessary. But a very rich and kind American, an oil millionaire from Texas, who had come to Feldenberg for a holiday, had been so upset to think that those wonderful dogs were no longer bred and trained, that he had sent the monks a litter of five of the most highly bred St Bernards in America — and given the monastery a huge sum of money to be used each year for the feeding and training of the dogs.

“How marvellous!” said Con, scratching the ear of an enormous white-and-liver-coloured brute who had fallen asleep across his feet. “And have they rescued anyone yet?”

The monks looked at each other and said, no. Fortunately, the Death Peak was a very dangerous mountain which people treated with respect, so nobody had needed rescuing. A silence fell. And then, suddenly, perhaps because Con and Ellen had very listening faces, it all came out.

The dogs, said Brother Peter (and all the others nodded to show that they agreed with him) were the most charming, gentle animals that anyone could wish for. The monks adored them; they couldn’t bear to think of life without them. There was only one snag. They were absolutely useless at rescuing anyone from anything.

The children found this almost impossible to believe.

“But I thought… all St Bernards…” stammered Con.

The monks shook their heads and sighed. Most, perhaps, but not all. Certainly not Baker or Brutus or Biscuit and quite definitely not Bouncer or Beelzebub.

And one by one, kind Brother Peter, who was in charge of the kennels, introduced the dogs and explained their little troubles.

Baker, it seemed, suffered from chilblains — nasty big pink lumps which came up as soon as he set foot in the snow. Brutus, on the other hand, couldn’t stand heights. They had lifted Brutus on to a table once to have his toenails cut and he had very nearly fainted. Biscuit was terrified of the dark and had to have a night light in his kennel. Bouncer, a real bruiser of a dog whose muscles beneath his brindled fur rippled like steel, cried like a baby when he had to wet his feet.

“But that one?” said Ellen. “That huge dark one over there?”

The monks blushed. What was wrong with Beelzebub seemed to be a little different. Then, very shyly, Brother Peter leaned forward and whispered: “He drinks.”

And he explained that every St Bernard was sent off with a keg of brandy round his neck so that when the lost traveller was found he could have a healing sip. Beelzebub, however, was driven so mad by the smell of brandy that he simply shattered the keg against the first rock he could find, lapped up the contents — and had to be carried home and put to bed.

And because the monks were good and honest men they had decided that it wasn’t fair to go on deceiving the people of Feldenberg and taking the American’s money, so they had decided to send the dogs away the very next day. “But it will be like giving away our children,” said Brother Peter, and all the monks looked so sad, that for a moment, Con and Ellen, used as they were to yetis, expected them all to burst into tears.

“But if no one ever needs rescuing,” said Ellen, who couldn’t bear anyone to be unhappy, “what does it matter?”

What happened next was just like a play or a film. There was a violent pounding on the door and a man stumbled forward into the room. He was dressed in climbing clothes, his face was badly cut and bruised and his leg dragged as he came forward.

“Help! I must have help quickly! It’s my son, my little Leo. He’s lost on the Death Peak. Send out the dogs to save him! Please… quickly… send out… the dogs,” said Mr Letts — and Brother Peter was just in time to catch him as he fell.