The Abominables

9 El Magnifico

For two days after they had rescued Leo from the mountain, the yetis stayed quietly hidden in a thick fir wood on the borders of Feldenberg and Switzerland.

The reason for this was Grandma’s tonsils. After her last great yodel outside the gates of the monastery, Grandma’s tonsils had snapped. At least she said they had snapped and Grandma wasn’t the sort of person you argued with. Certainly her voice was very croaky; yodelling was out of the question and she seemed frail and tired. So Perry took the lorry down a long, deserted track leading into the forest and parked it by a disused timber mill and they shut up the lorry and took to the woods.

It was beautiful amongst the firs. The grass was soft and mossy; there were red and white toadstools, and bilberries which tasted delicious and made their teeth a rich, dark blue. There was a stream to paddle in and fir cones for Clarence to play with and squirrels to be Ambrose’s friends. Grandma rested and Ellen had a Great Combing of all the yetis so that their fur shone again and their silky hair blew in the wind. She polished Queen Victoria and washed Ambrose’s bedsock and she rubbed Uncle Otto’s bald patch with resin from the pine trees so that it became the most sweetly scented bald patch in the world. Perry stopped worrying about the insides of the wretched lorry and just lay under the trees smoking his pipe and thinking of his Porker. Even Con forgot to be anxious and when he climbed trees it was more for fun than to see if anyone was coming.

It is always when you are having a lovely and carefree time that the most unfortunate things happen. On the afternoon of their second day in the woods, they were sitting peacefully by the banks of the stream. Clarence was pretending to catch fish; Perry was strumming his guitar. Even Hubert had sensibly decided that a sawn-off tree stump was not, after all, his mother and was making quite a good job of cropping the grass.

“What will we do on the sixth day?” said Ambrose, rubbing his head against Ellen’s arm.

“On the sixth day you will waltz in the great ballroom beneath crystal chandeliers,” said poor Ellen, who sometimes wished she’d never invented the Farley Towers game.

“What will we do on the seventh—”

“AAAAEEEE!”

The terrified scream rang through the forest, sending Hubert head first into a blackberry bush, scattering the birds…

They all scrambled to their feet. Staring at them from the other side of the brook was a fat, apple-cheeked girl in a dirndl, carrying a basket of bilberries. Two flaxen plaits stuck out from her head, her mouth was open and her pale blue eyes were wide with terror.

“Mutter! Mutter! Mutter!” yelled the girl and, dropping her basket, she turned and fled screeching through the forest.

“I don’t call that a mutter,” said Ambrose, who was rather hurt at the way she was carrying on. “I call that a scream.”

But Perry, his face serious, said Mutter was the German for mother. The girl was looking for her parents. And when she had found them…

“Back to the lorry at once, at once!” said Con, all his old worries flooding back. “Oh, quickly, quickly.”

And gathering Hubert up as they fled, the yetis followed him.

Even Perry was disturbed by what had happened. “If the kid saw the lorry and connected it with the yetis… and if her parents believe her and don’t just think the yetis were wild bears… It could be awkward.”

“Awkward! It could be a disaster,” said Con, sitting pale as death beside Perry and blaming himself again and again for not having kept a better lookout in the woods.

“They could make me open up the lorry,” Perry went on. “And even if they don’t harm the yetis there’s all that business about quarantine. No animal’s supposed to come into the country without at least six months in quarantine. If they are animals. On the other hand, if they’re people they’re illegal immigrants, so at best they’d be sent straight back.”

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” said Con frantically.

“Well…” said Perry, his forehead furrowed up. “If they spotted that the lorry is British they’ll be expecting us to go north, straight through Germany or France and on to one of the Channel ports. Suppose we turn west instead, and go out through Spain? There’s a new ferry boat service from San Vigo which takes heavy lorries. It’s a heck of a long way round, but I reckon we’d have a better chance of getting through without any questions being asked.”

So the yellow lorry turned westwards towards Spain. Spain is a beautiful country with famous castles, carved balconies, vineyards and chestnut groves.

But there was one thing about Spain that they had forgotten…

They reached the little town of Santa Maria in the late afternoon. Flags were flying, a band was playing in the park and the streets were packed with gaily dressed people buying doughnuts and nougat and fizzy lemonade from market stalls.

“Oh, heck,” said Perry, “we’ve hit a bullfight day. It’s going to take us ages to get through this traffic.”

“A bullfight?” said Grandma, when Con repeated this to the yetis in the back. “But bulls shouldn’t be allowed to fight. Why doesn’t someone throw a bucket of cold water over them?”

Con bit his lip. “It isn’t the bulls fighting each other. It’s… people fighting the bulls.”

“But that’s surely very dangerous? And very foolish?” said Uncle Otto. “Bulls are stronger, and have horns.”

So Con tried to explain. “It’s a sort of sport. They choose a very strong, fierce bull and lead him into the bullring, which is a huge place a bit like a football stadium. And there are these people called picadors, who ride horses and have spears to jab into the bull and make him angry. And then some other people called banderilleros come and stick arrows into the bull’s neck and then when he’s very tired, the top bloke, who’s called a matador, makes him charge and kills him with his sword.”

There was a long silence while the yetis looked at him.

“People do that?” said Ambrose at last. “Proper human people?”

Con nodded miserably.

The yetis didn’t say anything. But one by one they went up to their bunks and shut their ear lids and turned their faces to the wall. They wanted to have nothing to do with Santa Maria, not even to see a place where things like that were done.

After crawling along for another few hundred metres, Perry gave up. People had come in from all the surrounding countryside to see the fight and had just parked their cars and motorbikes and farm carts anywhere they could find, jamming up the roads completely.

“We’ll have to wait till it’s over,” he said, “and people move their stuff.”

So he drew up under a poster which announced that this very afternoon, Pedro the Passionate, the most famous matador in Spain, was going to fight El Magnifico, the fiercest bull ever to be bred on the ranches of Pamplona. And when he had convinced Con that the Mutter-shouting girl was not likely to turn up with her parents six hundred miles from where they’d left her, he took him and Ellen to a pavement café and they had ice cream and watched the streets empty as everyone was drawn, as if by a gigantic magnet, towards the bullring in the central square.

Meanwhile, back in the lorry, Hubert was feeling lonely and neglected. The yetis were still lying on their bunks with their faces to the wall. Nobody loved him. Nobody cared.

His boot face began to crumple. He threw back his head, ready to bleat.

And then he stopped. He had heard a voice. An incredible voice, deep and thrilling and purple. Not a moo. Something stronger than a moo. More of a roar.

Could it be…?

But no, it didn’t sound quite like his mother.

The noise came again. A low, throbbing sort of bellow. And suddenly Hubert knew what it was. Something even more exciting than his mother. Something he’d had long ago and forgotten all about.

The thing that was making that noise — was Hubert’s father!

It took Hubert some time to push up the iron bar which closed the back of the lorry, but butting steadily with his little crumpled horn, he did it. The yetis had dozed off with their ear lids closed. No one noticed Hubert jump down, trot across the deserted square and reach the edge of the bullring.

It was made of wooden palings, high and solid and unclimbable. But Hubert didn’t mean to climb. Puffing with excitement, he trotted round it looking for a soft place in the ground.

From inside, the bellow came again, filling the whole square with its power.

Hubert hesitated no longer. There was a small gap in the wooden railing patched with canvas, and beside it a pile of rubble where a new water pipe went underground. A perfect Hubert Hole. And putting down his battered head, the little yak began to dig.

The bull they called El Magnifico stood alone in the centre of the ring. Sweat gleamed on the huge hump of muscle which ran down his back; his eyes were wide with terror; blood streamed from a wound in his flank.

A few days ago he had roamed free on the range, feeling the wind between his horns, the good grass beneath his feet. Then men had come and carted him away and kept him for two days in a darkened pen. And now he’d been pushed, half blinded, into this place where men rushed at him on horses and others leaped at him with arrows, and everywhere there were flickering red cloths, and the screams of the crowd, and pain and fear.

But El Magnifico was a great bull. He did not understand why these things were being done to him but he would fight to the end. And he lowered his head and pawed the ground and when the prancing men came with their arrows, he charged.

“Olé!” yelled the crowd. And “Aah!” as a banderillero vaulted to safety over the barrier.

But the bull was growing tired. One of the banderillero’s arrows had pierced the muscles of his throat. Soon Pedro the Passionate would provoke him to the charge that would be his last.

“Kill!” roared the crowd to Pedro the Passionate. “Kill the bull! Kill! Kill! Kill!”

Wretched, exhausted, scenting his own death, the great bull lifted his head in a last bellow of misery and pain.

The bellow was answered. Not by an answering roar exactly. By a small but very happy bleat. And then the yak called Hubert tottered on his spindly legs into the ring.

He was covered in sawdust and rubble, his left horn looked like a toy corkscrew and a piece of water pipe, dislodged by his tunnelling, had caught in his tail.

Ignoring the murmurs of the crowd, not even seeing the picadors on their skinny horses or the prancing banderilleros with their arrows or Pedro the Passionate standing open-mouthed, his cape in his hand, Hubert tottered forward. Only one thing existed for him: El Magnifico the bull.

“Father!” said Hubert in yak language. “Daddy! It’s your son. It’s me!”

El Magnifico was completely taken by surprise. He stopped bellowing and pawing and charging and bent his head to look at whatever it was that was blissfully butting him from underneath. He didn’t think he had a calf like that. His calves, as far as he remembered, were larger and smoother and had a different smell. But with fifty wives one could never be sure. And slowly El Magnifico put out his huge, rough tongue and carefully, painstakingly, began to lick Hubert into shape.

Hubert had never been so happy. No one had licked him since he’d left Nanvi Dar. He trembled with joy, he squeaked with pleasure, he rolled over on his back…

“Aah! The sweet little one,” sighed the women in the crowd.

Pedro the Passionate was furious. There are rules about bullfighting like there are rules about boxing. You can’t just go up to the back end of a bull and stick him in the behind. To earn his money, Pedro had to make him charge.

So he flicked his fingers and the picadors on their poor, skinny horses tried to ride up to El Magnifico again and jab him with their spears and make him fight.

But they had reckoned without the horses. A pawing, stamping bull was their enemy — but a father licking his son was a different matter. They, too, had had foals in distant and happy days before they were sold off to be ripped to pieces in the ring. At first they just wouldn’t budge however much the picadors jabbed them with their spears. And then, to show they meant business — the horses sat down.

After that the audience went mad. The men rolled about in their seats laughing. The women took out their handkerchiefs and began to sob, because it was all so touching and beautiful.

But Pedro the Passionate nearly exploded with rage. He was being turned into a laughing stock. He had to kill the bull. He had to show them.

So angry was he that he felt no fear, but pranced right up to the bull and flicked him with his cape. Anything to make him charge.

El Magnifico didn’t even notice. He was working on a particularly difficult place behind Hubert’s right ear. But Hubert had seen the cape: a nasty, swirling thing it was, and it made him nervous. With a worried bleat he rushed forward — right between Pedro the Passionate’s velvet trouser legs.

And the last bullfight of the season ended with the mightiest matador in Spain lying flat on his back in the sawdust, a pram-sized yak nibbling the bobbles of his embroidered waistcoat — and the fiercest bull ever bred in Pamplona licking them both.