The Rope and Other Stories Read online

  Mrs Crackenthorpe was only a little disappointed. ‘Oh, well… So I stayed awake all night, but cool and comfortable. I suppose I saw the dawn from that treetop.’ She sighed. ‘Oh, the dawn was so beautiful…’

  ‘What happened when your mother…?’

  ‘Let's see. Yes, I think they all came rushing out of the house. They shouted and cried and tried to get me to come down. But I was like a cat caught up a tree: I'd gone too high. My dad came up the tree after me, but he was a big, heavy man – it runs in the family. He got scared when he got really high and the branches began to be thin and whippy, as I've said. So he climbed down again.’

  ‘And did no one else try?’

  ‘All the neighbours had come out by then, and were calling up the tree to me. So – let's see… Yes, some young fellow thinner than my dad came climbing up the tree, but even he daren't come right to the top, where I was. All he could do was reach up and tickle the sole of my foot. I shrieked, and everyone shouted to him to leave me alone and come down again. So he did.’

  ‘I like that bit,’ said Sim.

  Mrs Crackenthorpe smiled and bobbed her head in acknowledgement, and went on. ‘Then my mother fetched all the blankets out of the house and made everybody hold the corners of them, drawn taut, all round the tree, close in. In case I fell. And they waited…’

  ‘Did you fall?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then how on earth did you get down?’

  ‘There was a clanging and a rushing up,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe, ‘and they'd sent for the fire-brigade.’

  Sim couldn't help being impressed: ‘I say!’

  ‘The first I knew of it was one of those shiny brass helmets coming up through the leaves at the top of the tree.’

  ‘You hadn't seen the firemen below, on the ground?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe. Then, anxiously: ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, how come you could see the people with the blankets, if you couldn't see the firemen?’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe, taken aback. Then she pulled herself together: ‘I just couldn't. The leaves must have shifted in the breeze, I suppose. Anyway, as I've told you: there was this fireman's helmet coming through the leaves at me. The fireman was on one of those special ladders they have that go straight up into the air. You know.’ Mrs Crackenthorpe waved a hand vaguely.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He called to me, all jolly, as if I were a cat caught up there. “Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!” he called. I let him help me off my branch, and he carried me down the ladder to the bottom.’

  ‘What about the cushion?’

  ‘That fell.’

  ‘You could have carried it down, if you carried it up.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe. ‘I carried it down.'

  There was a long pause.

  ‘That's the end of the story,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe.

  ‘Not a story,’ said Sim. ‘It happened. You said.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

  ‘It was true,’ said Sim.

  ‘It happened,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe.

  ‘But there's no proof,’ said Sim, suddenly discontented.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Crackenthorpe slowly, ‘what about this? Ever after that, people have called me Kitty, as a joke. They still do. Kitty Crackenthorpe.’

  ‘Everybody?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Crackenthorpe calls you Kitty, too?’

  Mrs Crackenthorpe flinched, but, ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Exactly at that moment Sim's mother called from downstairs: ‘Mrs Crackenthorpe, Mr Crackenthorpe's here asking if you're coming home to tea.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes!’ cried Mrs Crackenthorpe, gathering her flesh together, flustered. All Elm Street knew that Mr Crackenthorpe was not a good-tempered man.

  ‘Are you coming, then?’ shouted Mr Crackenthorpe from below.

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes!’ gasped Mrs Crackenthorpe, now up from her chair and waddling towards the bedroom door.

  ‘Elsie, do you hear me?’

  ‘Elsie…’ said Sim reproachfully. ‘But you definitely said –’

  From the doorway Mrs Crackenthorpe spoke hurriedly over her shoulder: ‘Lying in bed, you can think a lot of things. Inside your head. You can make things happen inside your head. Happenings. Real adventures…’ She was gasping for words and for breath.

  From below: ‘ELSIE!’

  Mrs Crackenthorpe's last wheezy whispers reached Sim from just outside his bedroom door: ‘You shut your eyes, Sim Tolland. You try it. Remember: inside your head.’ Then a slow thumping down the stairs and Mrs Crackenthorpe was gone.

  Thoughtfully Sim collected the packet of jelly babies from the sheet where Mrs Crackenthorpe had dropped it. He broke it open and popped a jelly baby into his mouth. But no, he'd lost his taste for jelly babies.

  He spat the baby out on to a saucer by his bedside that already held some grape pips.

  He was still thinking of what Mrs Crackenthorpe had told him. She had climbed a tree. Well, he was pretty sure he could think of an even better, cooler thing to happen. Inside his head.

  He settled himself as comfortably as possible. Then he shut his eyes.