The Abominables

Chapter 5 The Bridal Suite

OR CON THE JOURNEY ACROSS THE HIGH PEAKS was a dreadful one. As darkness fell, they came across the western shoulder of Nanvi Dar, and though Con rode on Uncle Otto’s shoulders, the thin air and biting wind were almost more than he could bear. For the yetis, of course, it was not much worse than an evening stroll, even though they were at times wading through waist-high snow, leaping over crevasses, or scrambling down hair-raising icefalls. Con burrowed as deep as he could into Uncle Otto’s thick coat and gritted his teeth.

Ambrose, on the other hand, had recovered from his sorrow about Hubert and was in high spirits.

“Will there be proper beds, like in ‘The Princess and the Pea’? What’s a suite? Is it sweet like fruit, or sweet like baby squirrels?”

Con was too stiff and frozen to answer.

But at last they were below the snow line and walking down a broad river valley, sheltered from the wind. Scrub and grassland gave way to majestic cedars and pines, and the lights of the hotel appeared, shining through the trees.

“Oh, oh, oh,” said Ambrose, “it’s like in a story!”

Otto lifted Con from his shoulders and placed him carefully on the ground.

“We will have to be very quiet,” said Con. “You must wait outside and stay out of sight until I have been in and talked to my sister.” Then he went on alone.

Ellen wasn’t really asleep. She had been a bit worried the night before, in spite of Con’s note. Now it was the middle of the second night, and she knew that in the morning she must raise the alarm and start expecting the worst.

So when her door opened silently and Con crept in, she was up in an instant.

“Thank goodness you’re back. I was getting really scared.”

“I’m fine. Just be quiet and listen to me.”

Con explained.

Some people, if they were told in the middle of the night that there were five Abominable Snowmen outside who needed to be smuggled into the bridal suite of a luxury hotel, might have asked a lot of questions or made a fuss. But Ellen was not some people.

“I’ll get the keys and wait for you up there,” said Ellen. “Are yetis very big?”

Con said yes, he could honestly say that they were on the large side.

“Then they’ll have to come up one by one. It’s going to take a while. I’ll wait for you up there.” And Ellen pulled on a dressing gown and went to get the keys. Con went back outside.

Yetis are absolute experts at being quiet. In the moonlight, five great shadows flitted across the perfectly mown lawn toward the hotel. The only sound was an almost inaudible “Sorry” from Lucy, who was feeling peckish after her walk and happened to pass a bed of Himalayan poppies.

“Right,” whispered Con. “Grandma can come first.” And while the others made themselves as small as possible, crouching against the wall, he led the way into the hotel.

The entrance to the private lift was in the lobby. In a little room behind the reception desk, the receptionist snored softly. Otherwise, the lobby was deserted. Grandma followed Con to the lift, but when she saw it, she stopped dead.

The lift was the old-fashioned kind, with a folding metal grate that you pulled shut across the entrance.

“That’s a cage. I’m not going into a cage, you horrid boy.” She was still whispering, but at any moment her whisper would turn into a screech.

“Please, Grandma,” whispered Con. “I’ll come with you.”

Reluctantly, Grandma went in, and Con squeezed in beside her.

Things went better with Ambrose and Uncle Otto and Clarence. Ambrose was nervous, but he trusted Con completely. Uncle Otto was brave, and Clarence really enjoyed it, saying, “’Igher, ’igher” happily until Con shushed him. One by one the yetis were delivered safely to the top floor and introduced to Ellen, shaking hands with her very carefully as they had been taught to do, so as not to break her arm.

At last it was Lucy’s turn. But it was horribly difficult to get her into the lift. She really didn’t fit. Con pushed and heaved. Finally he got her wedged in sideways, because she was slightly less fat that way than front-to-back, while Con had to crawl in after her and sit on the floor under her stomach. The lift moaned and clanked and squeaked, and Con was sure that they would wake the whole hotel. But they made it to the top, and Ambrose and Clarence heaved her out with their brute strength. Then they all walked quietly along the corridor and gathered at the doors of the bridal suite. Con unlocked them and threw them open.

The yetis gasped. There, on the floor in front of them, was an enormous bear-skin rug! It was a very bad moment. The yetis’ ear lids turned pale, and Lucy stumbled, almost as if she might faint.

“Bears are our brothers, you see,” explained Ambrose.

Con and Ellen felt dreadful. After all, how would they have felt if they’d been shown into a room and found a child-skin lying on the floor? But when they had apologized and rolled up the rug and put it in a cupboard, the yetis really began to enjoy themselves.

The rooms were splendid; they were very big rooms, which was a good thing, because five yetis take up a lot of space. And all the furniture — the beds, the bath, the sofas and divans — was king-size.

Clarence started turning the electric light on and off, off and on, with a blissful smile on his face. Grandma tried the beds, bouncing up and down, her fur flying. As yetis go, she was a lightweight, only about three hundred pounds, but it was touch and go whether the beds would survive. Luckily, they were built to take the weight of rajahs and billionaires, who often eat too much and get too little exercise.

Lucy stared in amazement at the dressing-table mirror and said, “Oh, look, everybody! It’s me! It’s me so clear and beautiful!”

Ambrose, meanwhile, had found the bathroom. “Ooh! What’s that? Isn’t it white! Is it made of snow? Is it for washing your feet in? I can get both feet into it! Ow! Something hot hit me. What’s a shower? Uncle Otto, I’m going to have a shower!”

But Otto did not reply. He stood gazing in wonder at a shelf beside the ornate fireplace. “Books,” he whispered. “Those are books.” It is true that the Bible is a wonderful and interesting book, but if you have had nothing else to read for a hundred years or so, then even the exciting bits, like Daniel in the Lion’s Den or the Witch of Endor, can get a little bit too familiar. Now, before his very eyes, were Flora and Fauna of the Hindu Kush, Excitements at the Chalet School, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The Compleat Angler, Nicholas Nickleby, The Tatler (1925–37), Finn Family Moomintroll, and many, many more. Otto’s vast, hairy hand wandered lovingly across their spines and, after hesitating for a moment over The Jungle Book, settled firmly on Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Otto sank onto the largest divan and was lost to the world.

Con and Ellen thought they’d never get the yetis to settle for the night — or what was left of it. After Ambrose had had his shower, the bathroom looked like a disaster area and had to be mopped from top to bottom. Then Lucy wanted Ellen to comb the hair on her stomach into a center part and make a braid on either side.

“Like yours,” she said.

“But, Lucy, people don’t wear braids on their stomach,” said Ellen.

“People don’t. But yetis might,” said Lucy. “It’s for Queen Victoria and her children, so they can see out better.”

But even when Ellen had made two fat braids, one on either side of Lucy’s stomach, and tied them with the ribbons from her own hair, and they had all found somewhere to sleep — Lucy and Grandma in the two double beds, Ambrose on the sofa, Uncle Otto and Clarence on the Persian carpet — there was still the bedtime story.

“Tell about the Man Bat,” begged Ambrose.

“You mean Batman, Ambrose,” said Ellen.

Batman and his faithful friend Robin had not been invented when Lady Agatha came to the valley, and the yetis couldn’t get enough of him. But even when the children had told them no less than three Batman adventures, they weren’t through, because Clarence started yelling, “’Im, ’im,” and the others explained that he was saying “hymn,” because Lady Agatha had taught the yetis always to end the day with a beautiful song to God. So they all got up again and sang “We Plough the Fields and Scatter,” which didn’t fit particularly well but was their favorite.

“Do you know what I thought I heard?” said Ambrose drowsily, when he was back on the sofa. “As we came down the mountain?”

“No,” said Con. “What?”

“Footsteps,” said Ambrose, smiling. He was half-asleep. “Following us.”

“What sort of footsteps, Ambrose?” asked Ellen.

“Lovely … ones,” murmured Ambrose. “Hoof steps … and bleating.”

Con gazed at him in horror. Not Hubert! It couldn’t be! He walked over to the window and drew aside the curtains. In the moonlight, the grass round the hotel was empty, the woods silent and dark.

“There’s nothing there,” said Con, sighing with relief. And then at last the children tiptoed out, locking the door in case Lucy should walk in her sleep, and went to bed, feeling as tired as they’d ever felt in their lives.

The following morning, Ellen brought the yetis their breakfast and they all said grace. While she explained to Lucy that usually one ate just the cornflakes and not the box, and told Uncle Otto about marmalade, which was not mentioned in the Bible, and rubbed toothpaste into his bald patch and tied Ambrose’s bedsock on again, Con was down in the kitchens explaining things to his father.

Mr. Bellamy, the children’s father, was a very great chef. His salmon in aspic had been served at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, his peaches in marzipan had been photographed for the cover of a glossy magazine, and society ladies fell over each other begging him to bake their daughters’ wedding cakes.

But like so many great artists, Mr. Bellamy was a little bit excitable. When his son (after playing truant) told him that he had hidden five yetis in the bridal suite and was going to go with them to England, Mr. Bellamy reacted rather strongly. But the egg whisk that he threw whizzed past Con’s left ear, the bag of flour exploded in midair, and as for the wooden spoon — well, Con had had so many wooden spoons thrown at him in his short life that it might have been a raindrop for all he noticed it. And when he had got his father to agree that the yetis couldn’t stay in the bridal suite and that they might as well go to England as anywhere else, he went off to the garage to wait for the lorry.

There were one or two very tough characters who brought the lorries, and no wonder. It was a punishing journey, and toward the end the roads were unspeakable. But when the lorry came at last, a gigantic, articulated truck with eighteen wheels, the driver who stepped out, blinking with exhaustion, was one Con had never seen before. A big, burly man with a big ginger beard — the kind you could have stuck a pencil in and it would have stayed there. But what struck Con most was the tattoo on the man’s freckled forearm. Not an anchor or a sailing ship or a heart with “I Love Daisy” in it but … a pig.

Somehow as soon as Con saw that, he knew that he could trust him. A man with a sensible thing like a pig tattooed on his arm had to be all right.

“Excuse me,” Con said, getting off the pile of tarpaulins on which he’d been sitting, “I know you’re tired but could I talk to you? It’s important.”

“Sure,” said the ginger-haired man, whose name was Perry, short for Perrington, which his mother had believed to be a Christian name. “Let’s hear it.”

“Actually,” said Con, “I think you’d better see it. Only it’s a secret and I mean that.” And he led Perry up to the bridal suite and knocked in the way that he and Ellen had arranged.

“They’re making themselves beautiful for the journey,” whispered Ellen as she opened the door.

They certainly were. Grandma had found some scissors and was cutting her sixteen enormous toenails, bits of which were shooting across the room like shrapnel. Lucy had vanished under a pink cloud of talcum powder and, in the bathroom, Uncle Otto, who was a very hygienic yeti, was gargling.

“We had a lovely sleep,” said Ambrose, bounding up to Con. “Is this another friend for us? Does he know about that bear called Winnie?”

Perry did not go through the business of pinching himself to see if he was awake. He just wasn’t a person who dreamed about yetis with blue bedsocks round their necks wanting to know about Winnie the Pooh. Perry’s dreams were quite ordinary ones, about missing trains or having to play the piano to a huge audience wearing only his underpants.

“All right,” he said to Con. “Describe. Explain. Tell.”

So Con told him about the secret valley of Nanvi Dar and about Lady Agatha and how he had promised to get the yetis safely to Farley Towers.

“And I want you to take them back in your lorry, instead of whatever you were going to take. It’ll be all sealed up: they’ll hibernate. No one’ll see them.”

“Oh, yes? And when I’ve dropped them off and get back to my bosses with an empty lorry, what then?”

Con fished in his pocket and handed Perry the little bag that Lady Agatha had made out of the hem of her nightgown.

“Wow!” said Perry when he had opened it. “The real stuff. You mean I can give them the price of the goods. The lorry, too, if it comes to that. And there’d still be money left over.”

“For you,” said Con. “A reward for taking us.”

“Us?” said Perry. “Are you coming, too?”

“I promised I’d deliver them. And I’d like Ellen to come, too, if I can square it with my father. I really can’t go making braids on people’s stomachs.”

Perry nodded. “There’s room in the cab, just about.”

He stood looking down into the little flannel bag. Perry had done a lot of things since the day he’d said “Open wide” to a lady called Gladys Girtlestone and decided he wasn’t cut out to be a dentist. He’d been a dishwasher, a road mender, and a lumberjack, and now he was driving lorries.

But not forever. Perry had a dream, and it was a dream to do with pigs.

Perry loved pigs. He loved their fatness and their slowness and their little suspicious eyes and their disgusting habits. He loved Gloucester Old Spots, which look as though someone has spilled paint on them, and he loved Large Whites, which aren’t white but the pink of apple blossoms in the spring. He loved Tamworths, which fatten like a dream, and he loved Saddlebacks and Windsors and those black, square, hairy pigs that come from Suffolk.

And what Perry wanted more than anything was to have a pig farm and to breed a completely new pig, the Perrington Porker, which would be a pig to end all pigs, the best pig in the world.

Only, of course, to start a pig farm you need money …

“I’d have taken those crazy animals of yours anyway,” said Perry, “because I like them. But if there’s a reward, I’ll have it. Now I’m going to sleep for twenty-four hours. Then I’ll go down to Jalpaigun and pick up the load I was supposed to take back. It’s mostly dry goods — spices and such-like, and cloth. I’ll drop it at the nunnery — they’ll make sure it gets handed out to the poor. Then I’ll fix the customs forms and the paperwork one needs to get across the borders and change some of the gold into cash for the journey. So … let’s see … I ought to be ready to leave again by Thursday night. Can you have the yetis in the hotel garage just after midnight? There shouldn’t be anyone around then.”

Con nodded. “Thanks,” he said, holding out his hand. He’d have liked to say more, but just then Lucy said, “Sorry!” and began to choke horribly on the talcum powder. You could say a lot about looking after yetis, thought Con, as Ellen climbed onto a chair to thump Lucy on the back, but not that it was easy.

It was midnight on the following Thursday. It had taken the yetis a long time to leave the bridal suite because they had to say good-bye to everything—“Good-bye, bathroom,” “Good-bye, toothpaste,” “Good-bye, electric light”—and that of course had made them sad and so they’d cried. But now they stood in the hotel garage, staring at the huge eighteen-wheeled, canary yellow truck that was to take them to Britain. On the trailer was an enormous metal container almost as big as a railway carriage. It, too, was painted yellow and on it, in big black letters, were the words COLD CARCASSES, INC.

“What’s a carcass?” said Grandma suspiciously.

Con and Ellen exchanged glances in the light of the lorry’s headlights.

“Well, er, it’s sort of … a cow after it’s been … you know … ready for eating.”

“I thought as much,” said Grandma grimly. “Well, if anyone thinks I’m traveling halfway round the world labeled a cold carcass — let alone a cold carcass with ink on it — then they can think again.”

“Cows are our brothers, you see,” explained Ambrose, and the children sighed because they had a feeling that everybody was going to be the yetis’ brother, and though they approved of this and knew it was right, it did seem to make things rather complicated. But fortunately at that point Clarence, who hadn’t understood about the carcasses, said, “’Ox,” which turned out to be “Box,” and started climbing into the back of the lorry. After that, the other yetis got in, too. There was a big, wide rack for each of them, a bit like a ship’s bunk, and a passage down the middle, and a tiny peephole at the end through which they could see into the cab of the lorry and the people in the cab of the lorry could see them. Lucy oozed over the edge of her rack a bit, but on the whole they admitted that it was very snug and comfortable.

“When we wake up, shall we really be at Farley Towers?” asked Ambrose.

“Really,” said Con. “All you have to do is hibernate and leave it to us.”

“Only of course we can’t hibernate just like that,” said Ambrose craftily, putting his head on one side and gazing at Ellen. “You’ll have to tell us a cold story. The coldest story ever.”

So while Con turned the freezer to “maximum,” Ellen told them about the Snow Queen in her palace of glittering ice, and about little Kay, whom she carried away in her sledge and kept a prisoner, and the yetis thought it was very beautiful and very sad and just about as cold as you could expect a story to be.

And the yetis were just getting very limp and drowsy, and Ellen had just kissed them all good night, when from the patch of darkness outside the garage door there came a trembly, bleating sound — a sound that turned Con’s heart to stone.

“What is it, Con?” asked Ellen.

But there was no need for anybody to tell her. Tottering into the headlights of the lorry, his idiot head waving from side to side, his left horn even more crumpled than it had been in Nanvi Dar, came Hubert.

In a second, Ambrose, his drowsiness forgotten, tumbled from the rack and leaped out of the lorry.

“It’s my yak! It’s my pet! It’s Hubert! It was him I heard on the mountain. Oh, Hubert, you’ll be able to come to England with us!”

“No!” The words burst from Con. “I can’t do it! You’ve got to tell him to go home.”

The other yetis had followed Ambrose out of the lorry. Now they looked rather pityingly at Con. “We could say ‘Go home,’” explained Uncle Otto. “We could say ‘Go home’ three or four hundred times. But you may perhaps have noticed that Hubert is not a very clever yak.”

Con said bitterly that it had crossed his mind. “But we can’t take him. Ellen, you’ll have to get the maids to look after him.”

Ellen gave him a worried look. “Con, it’s going to take them three days to get the bridal suite cleaned up. And you know what a state Dad’s in about us going. I just don’t think he’ll wear a yak.”

“Oh, please, please, can’t he come? He loves us so much,” said Ambrose, and his brown eye started up again.

“Don’t you see?” said Con. “Yaks don’t hibernate. At the other end you’d find him frozen solid. Dead.”

There was a pause while the yetis took this in, and Hubert tried two steps, skidded on a patch of oil, and fell flat on his face.

“Couldn’t we stay awake? Not be refrigerated?” asked Ambrose.

“Actually, I’ve a fancy to see a bit of the countryside myself,” said Grandma. “Seems a shame to go all that way asleep.”

Con bit his lip, thinking hard. Yetis peacefully hibernating were one thing. Yetis awake, needing food, needing exercise, were quite another. There was real danger there.

Hubert gave another plaintive bleat and tottered forward.

“Oh, all right, get the wretched animal in,” said Con, making up his mind.

And while Ellen ran back for some powdered milk and a feeding bottle, Con turned off the freezer and slammed the door. Then Perry came from the hotel kitchens carrying a crate of beer and his guitar, and, with a last hug for Mr. Bellamy, they got into the cab of the lorry, and the long, long journey to Farley Towers began.