A Present From Aunt Agatha

  Chapter 6. Table Manners

  The next morning Ryan’s father insisted he mow the lawns.

  ‘If you leave the front yard too much longer it will be a hay paddock,’ he frowned.

  Ryan’s suggestion, that his father could do it himself if it worried him, did not meet with a good response. Ryan muttered to himself in annoyance as he wasted an hour of a perfectly fine day pushing the motor mower around the yard. Andy arrived and gave him a sympathetic wave then sat in Ryan’s tree hut reading comics, a move that did not improve Ryan’s temper. At last the mower spluttered to a stop and was thankfully pushed into the garden shed. Andy was engrossed in Superman so Ryan called out, ‘I’ll get the pen,’ as he raced inside.

  Ryan ran into the bedroom but his shorts, that he had left on the floor beside the bed, were nowhere to be seen. With a wail of dismay Ryan hurried to the laundry to see the washing machine on the final spin cycle. Hopping up and down he waited impatiently until the machine ground to a halt then hurriedly pulled all the wet clothes out and threw them in the washing basket. Triumphantly pulling out his shorts he put his hand in the pockets to find they were empty. Ryan looked in the machine. No pen. He searched through the wet clothes in the basket. No pen there either.

  ‘Mum!’ he yelled as he burst into the living room.

  ‘Your mother’s not here. She’s gone shopping,’ said his father calmly.

  ‘Have you seen my pen? It’s the one Aunt Agatha gave me for my birthday.’

  ‘Your mother used a pen to write her shopping list. Could have been that one.’

  ‘Where is it?’ Ryan asked impatiently.

  ‘She took it with her, I think,’ said his father, and subsided into the Sunday paper.

  ‘Mothers!’ Ryan was disgusted. ‘She’s used it for her shopping list,’ he told Andy. ‘Can you believe it? Who knows what it will have done?’

  ‘It might not have done anything,’ said Andy, ‘but I guess we’ll find out soon enough when she comes home. Hey I’ve been reading this comic. What do you reckon we write we’ve got superpowers, you know, able to fly, jump tall buildings, see through walls and everything?’

  ‘That’s a great idea.’ Ryan was impressed. ‘We’d still look ordinary, too, so no one would know. We could use our powers whenever we wanted to. We’ll have to be careful not to write we are like Superman. I don’t fancy rushing into telephone booths then flying out in my underwear.’ The boys sniggered at the thought.

  Ryan’s mother was very pleased when she arrived back to find the boys keen to help her carry the bags of groceries inside.

  ‘Where’s my pen, Mum?’ asked Ryan.

  ‘Your pen? Oh, that pen. It’s in my bag. Perhaps you can set the table for me while I get the lunch things ready. Are you staying to lunch Andy?’

  ‘Yes please, Mrs Hughes,’ muttered Andy.

  He helped Ryan put the plates on the table, then added the bread, butter and various bowls and jars that Mrs Hughes handed him from the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll just quickly grate this cheese and heat the spaghetti,’ said Mrs Hughes, ‘then we’ll eat. Give Tracey a yell, will you Ryan?’

  She walked over to the stove. Andy looked at Ryan who was standing by the table with his mouth open, rooted to the spot.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Look,’ moaned Ryan. ‘Look at the olives.’

  Andy looked at the jar of olives

  ‘What about them?’ he inquired.

  ‘Look!’

  Ryan took a step and the olives swivelled around to follow him, looking like a jar full of bulging eyeballs.

  ‘Erk,’ said Andy taking a step away from the table. The olives promptly turned to stare in his direction.

  Andy swallowed.

  ‘ She must have written olives on her list with the pen,’ he stuttered. The olives were now gazing evilly at him. ‘What else did she get?’

  ‘I don’t know. Gherkins, they look okay.’

  Ryan picked up the gherkin jar and opened the lid. The gherkins looked fine. He took his fork and lowered it into the jar. The gherkins immediately panicked and swam around in their liquid trying to get away from the fork. Andy was fascinated.

  ‘They’re alive as well.’

  He took a turn with his fork and the gherkins swam madly around bumping into each other and diving to the bottom of the jar.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Tracey, appearing beside them. ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Nothing, its nothing,’ said Ryan hastily, and the boys put the gherkins down and sat down at the table. Tracey gave them a withering look and went off to wash her hands. Andy reached out for a round of pita bread then hastily pulled his hand back

  ‘Look at them,’ he breathed. The pita breads were moving in and out very slowly. ‘It look like they’re breathing,’ said Ryan.

  As the boys reached out towards the plate, the pita breads opened and snapped at their fingers.

  ‘Ooh!’ Ryan was wondering what they were going to eat for lunch.

  Mr Hughes and Tracey sat down at the table just as Mrs Hughes arrived carrying a dish of spaghetti covered in grated cheese.

  ‘Help yourselves,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I thought you boys would have already started.’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ muttered Ryan.

  ‘Not hungry?’ Tracey was amazed.’ Get that in writing,’ she said. ‘This is a first. He’s not hungry.’

  ‘Probably been stuffing himself on biscuits,’ said Mr Hughes with a frown. ‘Well, this all looks lovely dear.’

  To the boys horror he proceeded to take a pita bread and fill it with spaghetti. He calmly fished out a gherkin, which lay quietly in the jar, but decided against the olives. As Ryan watched in fascination he took a large mouthful.

  ‘Perhaps it’s worn off,’ he whispered to Andy.

  ‘Have some spaghetti,’ said Mrs Hughes, and ladled a large spoonful onto the boys’ plates.

  Ryan and Andy picked up their forks but Ryan took one look at his plate and was almost sick. The spaghetti looked like a pile of sluggishly moving worms while the strands of grated cheese oozed around them like maggots.

  ‘Mum, I’m really not hungry,’ he croaked.

  ‘Neither am I,’ added Andy hastily, trying not to retch.

  The boys beat a hasty retreat to Ryan’s bedroom.

  ‘I'm starving,’ moaned Andy,’ but I can’t eat that stuff. How can they do it? Can’t they see it’s alive?’

  ‘Well I sure can,’ said Ryan with a shudder. ‘I might have some chocolate left over from the party. I’ll have a look.’

  One rather grubby toffee was the only food the boys could find and Ryan raided his moneybox of its last four dollars so they could go out and buy a pie each at the corner shop.

  ‘Right,’ said Ryan licking the last scrap of mince from his fingers, ‘let’s go and get that pen.’

  They arrived back to a lecture on eating between meals and were forced to wash the lunch dishes.

  Fortunately most the food had been eaten and Ryan surreptitiously emptied anything that moved into the cat’s bowl. The cat spent the next half hour carefully wounding all the olives and gherkins before chasing them around the back yard, much to Andy’s delight.

  Finally, pen in hand, they escaped to the tree hut.

  ‘It won’t work,’ said Ryan in exasperation a few minutes later. He and Andy had both tried writing that they had super powers but nothing had happened. In desperation Andy had even written, ‘It started raining,’ but the weather continued sunny and warm.

  ‘Let’s think about this logically,’ said Andy patiently. ‘What day did you write about the snakes?’

  ‘Thursday night,’ said Ryan promptly, ‘and it hasn’t worked for me since then.’

  ‘Mr Mayerhoffer drew the notes at orchestra practise,’ said Andy thoughtfully, ‘and yesterday I made us invisible. Today, your mum made those things come alive on her shopping list. That must means it only works f
or a different person each time.’

  ‘Great,’ said Ryan bitterly. ‘Wonderful. That means I will never get to write and make anything decent happen.’

  Andy thought for a moment.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Give me the pen. I’ll give it to my little sister and tell her what to write. I can get her to do anything we want.’