But Pedro the Passionate nearly exploded with rage. He was being turned into a laughingstock. 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.
ULLS WHO HAVE NOT BEEN KILLED IN THE RING are never used again for fights. So the next day, El Magnifico was sent back by special train to the ranch from which he had come: a beautiful place with fresh green grass, chestnut groves, and cool breezes from the mountains of Navarre. And with him traveled his adopted son, an animal that had become famous throughout Spain—the yak called Hubert.
It was this ranch, in the hills above Pamplona, to which, on a moonlit night a couple of days later, the yellow lorry traveled. Perry had found out where the bull had been taken and they had broken their journey to the coast to say good-bye.
When the yetis had woken up to find Hubert gone, their distress had been terrible.
“I didn’t look after him properly,” Ambrose had wailed over and over again. “I didn’t deserve to have a yak of my own.”
“Do you remember his little hooves?” Lucy sobbed. “Just like mother-of-pearl, they were.”
“And the clatter of his knees knocking together. I can hear it now,” Grandma had moaned.
But now they were trying to be brave.
“After all, every growing person needs a father,” said sensible Uncle Otto.
“Look how we miss ours,” said Lucy, choking back a burst of tears.
“That El Magnifico animal will be the making of him, I daresay,” said Grandma.
But Ambrose didn’t say anything. Being brave was beyond him as he faced a yakless world.
About a mile from the ranch, Perry parked the lorry and while Con went ahead to see that the coast was clear, the yetis crept silently across the fields toward the paddock that housed El Magnifico and his new son.
There had been clouds over the moon, but as they came up to the railings, the clouds rolled past and in a shaft of silver light they saw their yak, lying like a shaggy mop-head against the vast flanks of the sleeping bull.
“Hubert!” said Ambrose in a deep and tragic voice. “Are you happy, Hubert? Is this what you wanted?”
Hubert scrambled to his feet and ran to the railings. His boot face quivered with excitement; his knock-knees clattered together like castanets. Here was Ambrose the Abominable! Here were his old friends! He began to butt the railings, making little slivers of sawdust with his crumpled horn.
El Magnifico didn’t move. He just lifted his great head, with the wide and curving horns, and waited.
It was a terrible moment. The yetis could have picked Hubert up with one hand and lifted him over the fence and that would have been that. But Lady Agatha had brought them up well. They knew that people—even very young ones like Hubert—have to make their own choices.
So they waited, while Hubert ran backward and forward, now butting El Magnifico in the stomach, now rushing back to the railings to stick his nose into Ambrose’s outstretched hand.
For a moment it looked as though old loyalties would be the strongest. Hubert even put his head down and started tunneling a path under the railings. Then, with a last bleat of confusion, he stopped, turned, and collapsed against the great bull’s side.
It was over. Fatherhood had won.
After that, no one tried to be brave anymore. Though Con and Ellen traveled in the back to try to console the yetis, there was little they could do. Lucy sat clutching Hubert’s rubber teat while her blond stomach turned dark under a rain of tears. Grandma said they needn’t expect her to get over a grief like that at her age, and Clarence, managing a whole word for once, said, “Gone,” over and over again in a deep and desperate voice. As for Ambrose the Abominable, he lay like a felled log on his bunk, his walleyes fixed blankly on the ceiling, brokenly murmuring Hubert’s name.
After a few miles, Perry stopped the lorry. He needed a short nap before the last leg of the drive, which would take them to the ferry. So he switched off the engine, bent down to pick up his pipe, and settled back in his seat. Dawn was just breaking, a pale streak of light on the horizon.
Perry took a puff at his pipe. Then suddenly he leaned forward and peered into the rearview mirror.
After that he used Bad Language. Then he looked into the mirror again to make sure that he had seen what he thought he had seen.
He had.
For a moment, Perry was tempted. It would have been so easy to start the engine, release the handbrake, let out the clutch, and take off at full speed down the road. Then he sighed, got down, and opened the back of the lorry.
So then they all saw what Perry had seen in the mirror.
Footsore, knock-kneed, tripping over the tufts of hair that hung from his chest, and bleating a frantic “wait for me” bleat—came Hubert.
The yetis being sad had been hard to bear, but the yetis being happy was almost as exhausting. By the time the lorry drove into the bowels of the big white ship that was to take them across to Britain, Con and Ellen were quite worn out.
“I do hope they’ll be quiet during the crossing,” said Con. “I hate to lock them in—it seems so rude—but with the ship so full, I think we’ll have to.”
But Con needn’t have worried. He could have left the door wide open and none of the yetis would have stirred an inch. And the reason for this was simple—they were seasick.
There is always a rough patch of water round the Bay of Biscay, and as the boat began to heave and toss, the yetis, unused as they were to the sea, became hideously, horribly, vilely ill. Grandma lay in her bunk groaning and saying that since the ship was going to sink anyway she hoped it would sink quickly. Lucy swore that she would never again say sorry to so much as a peanut if only her stomach would come down out of her throat and back to where it belonged, and Ambrose, his head in a plastic bucket, was trying to decide who should have his bedsock when he was dead.
There is little you can do for people who are seasick except leave them alone. So while Perry sat in the bar drinking all the beer he hadn’t been able to drink while he was driving, Con and Ellen, who were good sailors, stayed up on deck watching the white spray and the diving gulls and the green wake of their ship in the water. And gradually, as they approached the shores of England, a weight seemed to fall off Con’s shoulders, because it looked as though he had really done what he had promised Lady Agatha, and brought the yetis safely to her home.
They landed at Southampton two days later and while the exhausted yetis dozed in the back, Perry set course for the village of Farlingham, now only a couple of hours’ drive away.
It was a gentle, misty morning and as they drove past quiet fields and bird-busy hedges, past little copses and peaceful villages, they thought—as people do when they come back to the place where they were born—that there was nowhere quite like it in the world.
“Have you ever thought,” said Perry, when they stopped at a transport café for some fish and chips, “that Farley Towers may not be there anymore? That it’s been pulled down to make a motorway or some such thing? Or that the people who own it have sold it to a hotel or a school or something?”
“I’ve thought of it often,” said Con. “But I don’t see what to do except hope for the best.”
All the same, when Perry turned off by a signpost that said FARLINGHAM, 2 MILES, Con could have cried with relief. For there, at the end of a most beautiful avenue of l
inden trees, was the house Lady Agatha had described to him, weeks and weeks ago, in the secret valley of Nanvi Dar.
Lady Agatha had not been exaggerating. It really was one of the loveliest houses he had ever seen. Bathed in sunlight, its mellow brick glowed softly. There were wide inviting terraces that fell away to the rolling meadows of the deer park with its ancient elms. Yellow water lilies studded the lake, and on the wrought-iron gates the Farlingham crest shone proudly.
“All the same, I’ll just check at the village shop,” said Con, “make sure the Farlinghams are still there.”
So he went into the village shop, which was the old-fashioned kind with sweets in glass jars, and licorice and bootlaces and apples all jumbled up on the counter. Con bought a small bag of Black Bullets and then, trying to keep his voice casual, asked who the big house belonged to.
“Oh, that’s the Farlinghams’ place,” said the woman behind the till. “Been in the family since way back.”
“Are they nice people?” said Con.
“None nicer,” said the shop lady. “I reckon there’s no one would have a bad word to say for the Farlinghams. Which is more than you can say for some of these old families.”
“Well, I guess we’re home and dry then,” said Perry when Con came back. “If they don’t clap me in jail, that is, for turning in an empty lorry. It’s the Perrington Porker for me and back to Bukhim for the two of you, I guess.”
Con nodded. “I’d like just to see them safely into Farley Towers, though.”
“Of course,” said Perry. “Tell you what, I’ll book a room for tonight in the pub here. The Farlinghams will probably want you and Ellen to stay with them, but I’d rather be independent. Then tomorrow I can get up to town and see the Cold Carcasses people and book your flight home. OK?”
“OK,” said Con, and he went to tell the yetis that they had arrived.
When he opened the door of the lorry, he had quite a surprise. Ellen, who had been traveling in the back with them, had worked really hard. Their fur shone, Queen Victoria glistened with polish between the shining braids on Lucy’s stomach, and the bedsock was arranged across Ambrose’s burnished chest like the Order of the Garter.
“Aren’t we smart!” said Ambrose the Abominable. “They’ll like us like this, won’t they, at Farley Towers?”
“They’d better,” said Con in a gruff voice. He’d just begun to understand what it would be like to go back to Bukhim and not see the yetis anymore.
And seeing the yetis look so smart made the children suddenly realize how crumpled and disheveled they themselves were looking after the long journey. You can brush fur, but you can’t do much about missing buttons and torn sweaters and socks with holes in them.
“Look, now that we know the Farlinghams are still there, I think you should go ahead,” said Con to the yetis. “After all, you’re sort of family from having been brought up by Lady Agatha, and you’ve got the bedsock to show who you are. We’ll find a field to put Hubert in and then we’ll go with Perry to his pub and clean ourselves up and then we’ll join you. All right?”
The yetis nodded. “But you’ll come soon, won’t you?” said Ambrose, managing to keep his voice wobble free, but only just.
“Very soon,” promised Con.
But when the yetis set off up the avenue of linden trees that led, wide and straight and welcoming, from the main gateway of Farley Towers to the house, they couldn’t feel shy and nervous anymore. It was so lovely to walk upright and unashamed without being afraid to be seen. Not that there was anyone about in the deserted park, but if there had been, it wouldn’t have mattered because they were safe now; they belonged.
“’Ice!” said Clarence in a pleased voice, looking about him.
“Yes, isn’t it nice?” said Lucy. “It’s just like walking into the Farley Towers game. Look, there’s the lake where we’re going to row and have picnics with lemonade.”
“And there’s the summer house where Lady Agatha used to read Beautiful Poetry,” said Grandma.
“If only she could be with us now. And Father, too!” sighed Uncle Otto.
They walked on steadily up the long, curiously empty drive between the linden trees, which made an arch above their heads, and came out on the wide sweep of gravel in front of the great iron-studded door.
“They will be our friends and tell us stories, won’t they?” wondered Ambrose, suddenly feeling rather wobbly and scared.
“Of course they will,” said Grandma. “Now come on, ring the bell.”
And bravely, Ambrose the Abominable took off his bedsock and, holding it carefully in his right hand, he pulled the big brass handle of the bell. They could hear it peal in the back of the huge house—a deep, long peal. There were footsteps, a creak as of a metal bar being pulled back—and then the great front door swung open and the yetis went inside.
The long journey was over. They were home.
HILE THE YETIS WERE WALKING UP THE long drive to Farley Towers, a meeting was being held inside the house, in the Gold Drawing Room, which faced the rose gardens and the terrace at the back.
The Gold Drawing Room looked much as it had looked in Lady Agatha’s day. The beautiful Chinese vases were still there, and the embroidered screen and the harpsichord. The sacred relic was there, too: the other bedsock, the one that the Earl had brought back from Nanvi Dar and slept with under his pillow until he died.
But there were other things now, hung on the walls or resting on the furniture: things that would never have been allowed in the house when Lady Agatha was a girl. Heads they were, mostly. The stuffed heads of friendly hippopotamuses and gentle giraffes and thoughtful buffaloes, looking down on the room with sad and glassy eyes. There were skins, too—the skins of slaughtered tigers and zebras and leopards lying on top of the lovely flower-patterned carpet. Sawn-off tusks and antlers were piled above the mantelpiece, and in a glass case the bodies of poor dead fishes hung stiffly.
The meeting was a big one. There were about thirty people sitting round a huge satinwood table, all of them men. And not one of them was a Farlingham.
The lady in the shop had not been lying when she said that Farley Towers still belonged to the Farlinghams. It did. But like many old families, the Farlinghams had become poor. They couldn’t afford any longer to keep the acres of roof mended, or pay gardeners to tend the grounds or servants to care for the ninety-seven rooms. So they had decided to rent the house to a school or a club or a hospital that would be able to look after it. And their agent had rented it to a club. A club that wanted to move from its headquarters in London to a place in the country because it needed more room.
The Hunter’s Club, it was called …
The members of the Hunter’s Club came from all over the world. There were oil sheiks from Iran, film stars from Hollywood, German industrialists, Spanish noblemen—anyone who thought that killing defenseless animals turned you into a “real” man. It cost twenty thousand pounds just to join the club, and the funds were used to buy airplanes and motorboats and snowmobiles so that members could go and kill even the rarest animals in the most distant places without anyone being able to stop them.
In this way the hunters had gunned down polar bears on the icebergs of Alaska, practically exterminated the Javan rhinoceroses, and massacred the gentle, dreamy orangutans of Borneo. Sometimes they went off on pigsticking parties in Spain, running wild boars through with spears as they quietly snuffled under the chestnut trees, or they would fly to some African lake and mow down hundreds of gorgeous flamingos from the comfort of their jeeps.
“Now then, gentlemen,” said the club president, a man called Colonel Bagwackerly, who had a boiled-looking face, pop eyes, and a sticky mustache that clung like a slice of ginger pudding to his face. “As you know, we are here to discuss a very important matter.”
“A very important matter!” yelled the hunters, banging their glasses on the table. They were already rather drunk.
“As you know,” Bagwackerly went on, “n
ext week our great club is going to be one hundred years old.”
“One hundred years old!” repeated the hunters, hiccuping and slapping each other on the back.
“And we are here to decide what kind of hunt we should have for our anniversary celebrations.”
“A big hunt! The biggest hunt ever!” cried the drunken hunters.
“Quite so,” said Bagwackerly. “The only question is, what shall we hunt? And where?”
“How about polishing off the rest of the blue whales?” said a black-bearded Scotsman who called himself the MacDermot-Duff of Huist and Carra and went around in a bloodred kilt and a sporran hung with a dozen dangling badgers’ claws.
But the others shook their heads. Not enough sport, they said, and it was true. So many of these rare and marvelous animals had already been destroyed by greedy whale hunters that you could travel a thousand miles across the ice-blue waters of the Antarctic and not sight one.
“Vat if ve go schtickpigging?” said a German member, Herr Blutenstein from Hamburg. But the others shook their heads again. For a big centenary hunt they wanted something bigger than pigsticking: something with guns in it, and explosions, and blood.
One member suggested a kangaroo shoot in Australia, but so many of the kangaroos had already been turned into steaks that that wasn’t any good. Someone else suggested the wild camels in the Andes, but a revolution was going on somewhere in South America and the hunters liked shooting things, not getting shot.
And then a small man with gold-rimmed spectacles and a pinched, pale nose got to his feet.
“I know!” he squeaked. “I know! I’ve got a great idea!”
“What is it, Prink?” said Colonel Bagwackerly in a weary voice.
They had let Mr. Prink belong to the club because he was a very rich saucepan manufacturer and they needed him to buy helicopters and things like that. But everyone despised him: he was weedy and twittery and had a huge wife, called Myrtle Prink, of whom he was dreadfully afraid.