CHAPTER 24

82

He could feel the air clear about him now, breezing around him quite cheerfully, untroubled by his being there, and slowly, very, very slowly, as from a deep and distant sleep, he opened his eyes. He had flown before, of course, flown many times on Krikkit until all the birdtalk had driven him scatty, but this was different. Here he was on his own world, quietly, and without fuss, beyond a slight trembling which could have been attributable to a number of things, being in the air.

Ten or fifteen feet below him was the hard tarmac and a few yards off to the right the yellow street lights of Upper Street. Luckily the alleyway was dark since the light which was supposed to see it through the night was on an ingenious timeswitch which meant it came on just before lunchtime and went off again as the evening was beginning to draw in. He was, therefore, safely shrouded in a blanket of dark obscurity. He slowly, very, very slowly, lifted his head to Fenchurch, who was standing in silent breathless amazement, silhouetted in her upstairs doorway. Her face was inches from his.

“I was about to ask you,” she said in a low trembly voice, “what you were doing. But then I realized that I could see what you were doing. You were flying. So it seemed,” she went on after a slight wondering pause, “like a bit of a silly question.”

Arthur said, “Can you do it?”

“No.”

“Would you like to try?”

She bit her lip and shook her head, not so much to say no, but just in sheer bewilderment. She was shaking like a leaf.

“It’s quite easy,” urged Arthur, “if you don’t know how. That’s the important bit. Be not at all sure how you’re doing it.”

Just to demonstrate how easy it was he floated away down the alley, fell upwards quite dramatically and bobbed back down to her like a banknote on a breath of wind.

“Ask me how I did that.”

“How. . . did you do that?”

“No idea. Not a clue.”

She shrugged in bewilderment. “So how can I. . . ?”

Arthur bobbed down a little lower and held out his hand.

“I want you to try,” he said, “to step on my hand. Just one foot.”

“What?”

“Try it.”

Nervously, hesitantly, almost, she told herself, as if she was trying to step on the hand of someone who was floating in front of her in midair, she stepped on to his hand.

“Now the other.”

“What?”

82