Intermediate Listening Series 4 Lesson 7- The Serial Garden Short Story in English
In this lesson, you listen to The Serial Garden Short Story in English. Joan Aiken’s Serial Garden is part of a collection of old-style children’s stories about the Armitage family, who seem to think it completely normal as impossible events take place around them. In the story, a picture on a cereal packet leads a young boy to a magical garden that has been inhabited for fifty years by a haughty princess pining for her lost lover. The boy almost manages to reunite the couple, but his mother accidentally dashes his plan at the last minute. Fortunately, the princess now has a dog to keep her company for the next fifty years!
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The Serial Garden – Joan Aitken
Cold rice pudding for breakfast?” said Mark, looking at it with disfavor.
“Don’t be fussy,” said his mother. “You’re the only one who’s complaining.” This was unfair, for she and Mark were the only members of the family at table, Harriet having developed measles while staying with a school friend, while Mr. Armitage had somehow managed to lock himself in the larder. Mrs. Armitage never had anything but toast and marmalade for breakfast anyway.
Mark went on scowling at the chilly-looking pudding. It had come straight out of the fridge, which was not in the larder.
“If you don’t like it,” said Mrs. Armitage, “unless you want Daddy to pass you cornflakes through the larder ventilator, flake by flake, you’d better run down to Miss Pride and get a small packet of cereal. She opens at eight; Hickmans doesn’t open till nine. It’s no use waiting until the blacksmith comes to let your father out; I’m sure he won’t be here for hours yet.”
There came a gloomy banging from the direction of the larder, just to remind them that Mr. Armitage was alive and suffering in there.
“You’re all right,” shouted Mark heartlessly as he passed the larder door. “There’s nothing to stop you having cornflakes. Oh, I forgot, the milk’s in the fridge. Well, have cheese and pickles then. Or treacle tart.”
Even through the zinc grating on the door he could hear his father shudder at the thought of treacle tart and pickles for breakfast. Mr. Armitage’s imprisonment was his own fault, though; he had sworn that he was going to find out where the mouse had got into the larder if it took him all night, watching and waiting. He had shut himself in, so that no member of the family should come bursting in and disturb his vigil. The larder door had a spring catch that sometimes jammed; it was bad luck that this turned out to be one of the times.
Mark ran across the fields to Miss Pride’s shop at Sticks Corner and asked if she had any cornflakes.
“Oh, I don’t think I have any left, dear,” Miss Pride said woefully. “I’ll have a look … I think I sold the last packet a week ago Tuesday.”
“What about the one in the window?”
“That’s a dummy, dear.”
Miss Pride’s shop window was full of nasty, dingy old cardboard cartons with nothing inside them, and several empty display stands which had fallen down and never been propped up again. Inside the shop were a few, small, tired-looking tins and jars, which had a worn and scratched appearance as if mice had tried them and given up. Miss Pride herself was small and wan, with yellowish gray hair; she rooted rather hopelessly in a pile of empty boxes. Mark’s mother never bought any groceries from Miss Pride’s if she could help it, since the day when she had found a label inside the foil wrapping of a cream cheese saying, “This cheese should be eaten before May 11, 1899.”
“No cornflakes I’m afraid, dear.”
“Any wheat crispies? Puffed corn? Rice nuts?”
“No, dear. Nothing left, only Brekkfast Brikks.”
“Never heard of them,” Mark said doubtfully.
“Or I have a jar of Ovo here. You spread it on bread. That’s nice for breakfast,” said Miss Pride, with a sudden burst of salesmanship. Mark thought the Ovo looked beastly, like yellow paint, so he took the packet of Brekkfast Brikks. At least it wasn’t very big…. On the front of the box was a picture of a fat, repulsive, fair-haired boy, rather like the chubby Augustus, banging on his plate with his spoon.
“They look like tiny doormats,” said Mrs. Armitage, as Mark shoveled some Brikks into the bowl.
“They taste like them, too. Gosh,” said Mark, “I must hurry or I’ll be late for school. There’s rather a nice cut-out garden on the back of the packet though; don’t throw it away when it’s empty, Mother. Good-bye, Daddy,” he shouted through the larder door, “hope Mr. Ellis comes soon to let you out.” And he dashed off to catch the school bus.
At breakfast next morning Mark had a huge helping of Brekkfast Brikks and persuaded his father to try them.
“They taste just like esparto grass,” said Mr. Armitage fretfully.
“Yes, I know, but do take some more, Daddy. I want to cut out the model garden, it’s so lovely.”
“Rather pleasant, I must say. It looks like an eighteenth-century German engraving,” his father agreed. “It certainly was a stroke of genius putting it on the packet. No one would ever buy these things to eat for pleasure. Pass me the sugar, please. And the cream. And the strawberries.”
It was the half-term holiday, so after breakfast Mark was able to take the empty packet away to the playroom and get on with the job of cutting out the stone walls, the row of little trees, the fountain, the yew arch, the two green lawns, and the tiny clumps of brilliant flowers. He knew better than to “stick tabs in slots and secure with paste,” as the directions suggested; he had made models from packets before and knew they always fell to pieces unless they were firmly bound together with sticky tape.
It was a long, fiddling, pleasurable job.
Nobody interrupted him. Mrs. Armitage only cleaned the playroom once every six months or so, when she made a ferocious descent on it and tidied up the tape recorders, roller skates, meteorological sets, and dismantled railway engines, and threw away countless old magazines, stringless tennis rackets, abandoned paintings, and unsuccessful models. There were always bitter complaints from Mark and Harriet; then they forgot and things piled up again till next time.
As Mark worked, his eye was caught by a verse on the outside of the packet:
“Brekkfast Brikks to start the day
Make you fit in every way.
Children bang their plates with glee
At Brekkfast Brikks for lunch and tea!
Brekkfast Brikks for supper too
Give peaceful sleep the whole night through.”
“Blimey,” thought Mark, sticking a cedar tree into the middle of the lawn and then bending a stone wall round at the dotted lines A, B, C, and D. “I wouldn’t want anything for breakfast, lunch, tea, and supper, not even Christmas pudding. Certainly not Brekkfast Brikks.”
He propped a clump of gaudy scarlet flowers against the wall and stuck them in place.
The words of the rhyme kept coming into his head as he worked, and presently he found that they went rather well to a tune that was running through his mind, and he began to hum, and then to sing; Mark often did this when he was alone and busy.
“Brekkfast Brikks to sta-art the day,
Ma-ake you fit in every way—
“Blow, where did I put that little bit of sticky tape? Oh, there it is.
“Children bang their pla-ates with glee
At Brekkfast Brikks for lunch and tea
“Slit gate with razor blade, it says, but it’ll have to be a penknife.
“Brekkfast Brikks for supper toohoo
Give peaceful sleep the whole night throughoo….
“Hullo. That’s funny,” said Mark.
It was funny. The openwork iron gate he had just stuck in position now suddenly towered above him. On either side, to right and left, ran the high stone wall, stretching away into foggy distance. Over the top of the wall he could see tall trees, yews and cypresses and others he didn’t know.
“Well, that’s the neatest trick I ever saw,” said Mark. “I wonder if the gate will open?”
He chuckled as he tried it, thinking of the larder door. The gate did open, and he went through into the garden.
One of the things that had already struck him as he cut them out was that the flowers were not at all in the right proportions. But they were all the nicer for that. There were huge velvety violets and pansies the size of saucers; the hollyhocks were as big as dinner plates and the turf was sprinkled with enormous daisies. The roses, on the other hand, were miniature, no bigger than cuff buttons. There were real fish in the fountain, bright pink.
“I made all this,” thought Mark, strolling along the mossy path to the yew arch. “Won’t Harriet be surprised when she sees it. I wish she could see it now. I wonder what made it come alive like that?”
He passed through the yew arch as he said this and discovered that on the other side there was nothing but gray, foggy blankness. This, of course, was where his cardboard garden had ended. He turned back through the archway and gazed with pride at a border of huge scarlet tropical flowers that were perhaps supposed to be geraniums but certainly hadn’t turned out that way. “I know! Of course, it was the rhyme, the rhyme on the packet.”
He recited it. Nothing happened. “Perhaps you have to sing it,” he thought and (feeling a little foolish) he sang it through to the tune that fitted so well. At once, faster than blowing out a match, the garden drew itself together and shrank into its cardboard again, leaving Mark outside.
“What a marvelous hiding place it’ll make when I don’t want people to come bothering,” he thought. He sang the spell once more, just to make sure that it worked, and there was the high mossy wall, the stately iron gate, and the treetops. He stepped in and looked back. No playroom to be seen, only gray blankness.
At that moment he was startled by a tremendous clanging, the sort of sound the Trump of Doom would make if it was a dinner bell. “Blow,” he thought, “I suppose that’s lunch.” He sang the spell for the fourth time; immediately he was in the playroom, and the garden was on the floor beside him, and Agnes was still ringing the dinner bell outside the door.
“All right, I heard,” he shouted. “Just coming.”
He glanced hurriedly over the remains of the packet to see if it bore any mention of the fact that the cut-out garden had magic properties. It did not. He did, however, learn that this was Section Three of the Beautiful Brekkfast Brikk Garden Series, and that Sections One, Two, Four, Five, and Six would be found on other packets. In case of difficulty in obtaining supplies, please write to Fruhstucksgeschirrziegelsteinindustrie (Great Britain), Lily Road, Shepherds Bush.
“Elevenpence a packet,” Mark murmured to himself, going to lunch with unwashed hands. “Five elevens are thirty-five. Thirty-five pennies are—no, that’s wrong. Fifty-five pence are four-and-sevenpence. Father, if I mow the lawn and carry coal every day for a month, can I have four shillings and sevenpence?”
“You don’t want to buy another space gun, do you?” said Mr. Armitage looking at him suspiciously. “Because one is quite enough in this family.”
“No, it’s not for a space gun, I swear.”
“Oh, very well.”
“And can I have the four-and-seven now?”
Mr. Armitage gave it reluctantly. “But that lawn has to be like velvet, mind,” he said. “And if there’s any falling off in the coal supply, I shall demand my money back.”
“No, no, there won’t be,” Mark promised in reply. As soon as lunch was over, he dashed down to Miss Pride’s. Was there a chance that she would have sections One, Two, Four, Five, and Six? He felt certain that no other shop had even heard of Brekkfast Brikks, so she was his only hope, apart from the address in Shepherds Bush.
“Oh, I don’t know, I’m sure,” Miss Pride said, sounding very doubtful—and more than a little surprised. “There might just be a couple on the bottom shelf—yes, here we are.”
They were sections Four and Five, bent and dusty, but intact, Mark saw with relief. “Don’t you suppose you have any more anywhere?” he pleaded.
“I’ll look in the cellar but I can’t promise. I haven’t had deliveries of any of these for a long time. Made by some foreign firm they were; people didn’t seem very keen on them,” Miss Pride said aggrievedly. She opened a door revealing a flight of damp stone stairs. Mark followed her down them like a bloodhound on the trail.
The cellar was a fearful confusion of mildewed, tattered, and toppling cartons, some full, some empty. Mark was nearly knocked cold by a shower of pilchards in tins, which he dislodged on to himself from the top of a heap of boxes. At last Miss Pride, with a cry of triumph, unearthed a little cache of Brekkfast Brikks, three packets which turned out to be the remaining sections, Six, One, and Two.
“There, isn’t that a piece of luck now!” she said, looking quite faint with all the excitement. It was indeed rare for Miss Pride to sell as many as five packets of the same thing at one time.
Mark galloped home with his booty and met his father on the porch. Mr. Armitage let out a groan of dismay.
“I’d almost rather you’d bought a space gun,” he said. Mark chanted in reply:
“Brekkfast Brikks for supper too
Give peaceful sleep the whole night through.”
“I don’t want peaceful sleep,” Mr. Armitage said. “I intend to spend tonight mouse-watching again. I’m tired of finding footprints in the Stilton.”
During the next few days Mark’s parents watched anxiously to see, Mr. Armitage said, whether Mark would start to sprout esparto grass instead of hair. For he doggedly ate Brekkfast Brikks for lunch, with soup, or sprinkled over his pudding; for tea, with jam, and for supper lightly fried in dripping, not to mention, of course, the immense helpings he had for breakfast with sugar and milk. Mr. Armitage for his part soon gave out; he said he wouldn’t taste another Brekkfast Brikk even if it were wrapped in an inch-thick layer of pâté de foie gras. Mark regretted that Harriet, who was a handy and uncritical eater, was still away, convalescing from her measles with an aunt.
In two days, the second packet was finished (sundial, paved garden, and espaliers). Mark cut it out, fastened it together, and joined it onto Section Three with trembling hands. Would the spell work for this section, too? He sang the rhyme in rather a quavering voice, but luckily the playroom door was shut and there was no one to hear him. Yes! The gate grew again above him, and when he opened it and ran across the lawn through the yew arch, he found himself in a flagged garden full of flowers like huge blue cabbages.
Mark stood hugging himself with satisfaction, and then began to wander about smelling the flowers, which had a spicy perfume most unlike any flower he could think of. Suddenly he pricked up his ears. Had he caught a sound? There! It was like somebody crying and seemed to come from the other side of the hedge. He ran to the next opening and looked through. Nothing: only gray mist and emptiness. But, unless he had imagined it, just before he got there, he thought his eye had caught the flash of white-and-gold draperies swishing past the gateway.
“Do you think Mark’s all right?” Mrs. Armitage said to her husband next day. “He seems to be in such a dream all the time.”
“Boy’s gone clean off his rocker if you ask me,” grumbled Mr. Armitage. “It’s all these doormats he’s eating. Can’t be good to stuff your insides with moldy jute. Still I’m bound to say he’s cut the lawn very decently and seems to be remembering the coal. I’d better take a day off from the office and drive you over to the shore for a picnic; sea air will do him good.”
Mrs. Armitage suggested to Mark that he should slack off on the Brekkfast Brikks, but he was so horrified that she had to abandon the idea. But, she said, he was to run four times round the garden every morning before breakfast. Mark almost said, “Which garden?” but stopped just in time. He had cut out and completed another large lawn, with a lake and weeping willows, and on the far side of the lake had a tantalizing glimpse of a figure dressed in white and gold who moved away and was lost before he could get there.
After munching his way through the fourth packet, he was able to add on a broad grass walk bordered by curiously clipped trees. At the end of the walk he could see the white-and-gold person, but when he ran to the spot, no one was there—the walk ended in the usual gray mist.
When he had finished and had cut out the fifth packet (an orchard), a terrible thing happened to him. For two days he could not remember the tune that worked the spell. He tried other tunes, but they were no use. He sat in the playroom singing till he was hoarse or silent with despair. Suppose he never remembered it again?
His mother shook her head at him that evening and said he looked as if he needed a dose. “It’s lucky we’re going to Shinglemud Bay for the day tomorrow,” she said. “That ought to do you good.”
“Oh, blow. I’d forgotten about that,” Mark said. “Need I go?”
His mother stared at him in utter astonishment.
But in the middle of the night he remembered the right tune, leaped out of bed in a tremendous hurry, and ran down to the playroom without even waiting to put on his dressing gown and slippers.
The orchard was most wonderful, for instead of mere apples its trees bore oranges, lemons, limes, and all sorts of tropical fruits whose names he did not know, and there were melons and pineapples growing and plantains and avocados. Better still, he saw the lady in her white and gold waiting at the end of an alley and was able to draw near enough to speak to her.
“Who are you?” she asked. She seemed very much astonished at the sight of him.
“My name’s Mark Armitage,” he said politely. “Is this your garden?”
Close to, he saw that she was really very grand indeed. Her dress was white satin embroidered with pearls, and swept the ground; she had a gold scarf and her hair, dressed high and powdered, was confined in a small gold-and-pearl tiara. Her face was rather plain, pink with a long nose, but she had a kind expression and beautiful gray eyes.
“Indeed it is,” she announced with hauteur. “I am Princess Sophia Maria Louisa of Saxe-Hoffenpoffen-und-Hamster. What are you doing here, pray?”
“Well,” Mark explained cautiously, “it seemed to come about through singing a tune.”
“Indeed. That is very interesting. Did the tune, perhaps, go like this?”
The princess hummed a few bars.
“That’s it! How did you know?”
“Why, you foolish boy, it was I who put that spell on the garden, to make it come alive when the tune is played or sung.”
“I say!” Mark was full of admiration. “Can you do spells as well as being a princess?”
She drew herself up. “Naturally! At the court of Saxe-Hoffenpoffen, where I was educated, all princesses were taught a little magic, not so much as to be vulgar, just enough to get out of social difficulties.”
“Jolly useful,” Mark said. “How did you work the spell for the garden, then?”
“Why, you see” (the princess was obviously delighted to have somebody to talk to; she sat on a stone seat and patted it, inviting Mark to do likewise), “I had the misfortune to fall in love with Herr Rudolf, the Court Kapellmeister, who taught me music. Oh, he was so kind and handsome! And he was most talented, but my father, of course, would not hear of my marrying him because he was only a common person.”
“So what did you do?”
“I arranged to vanish, of course. Rudi had given me a beautiful book with many pictures of gardens. My father kept strict watch to see I did not run away, so I used to slip between the pages of the book when I wanted to be alone. Then, when we decided to marry, I asked my maid to take the book to Rudi. And I sent him a note telling him to play the tune when he received the book. But I believe that spiteful Gertrud must have played me false and never taken the book, for more than fifty years have now passed and I have been here all alone, waiting in the garden, and Rudi has never come. Oh, Rudi, Rudi,” she exclaimed, wringing her hands and crying a little, “where can you be? It is so long—so long!”
“Fifty years,” Mark said kindly, reckoning that must make her nearly seventy. “I must say you don’t look it.”
“Of course I do not, dumbhead. For me, I make it that time does not touch me. But tell me, how did you know the tune that works the spell? It was taught me by my dear Rudi.”
“I’m not sure where I picked it up,” Mark confessed. “For all I know it may be one of the Top Ten. I’ll have to ask my music teacher, he’s sure to know. Perhaps he’ll have heard of your Rudolf, too.”
Privately Mark feared that Rudolf might very well have died by now, but he did not like to depress Princess Sophia Maria by such a suggestion, so he bade her a polite good night, promising to come back as soon as he could with another section of the garden and any news he could pick up.
He planned to go and see Mr. Johansen, his music teacher, next morning, but he had forgotten the family trip to the beach. There was just time to scribble a hasty post card to the British office of Fruhstucksgeschirrziegelsteinindustrie, asking if they could inform him from what source they had obtained the pictures used on the packets of Brekkfast Brikks. Then Mr. Armitage drove his wife and son to Shinglemud Bay, gloomily prophesying wet weather.
In fact, the weather turned out fine, and Mark found it quite restful to swim and play beach cricket and eat ham sandwiches and lie in the sun. For he had been struck by a horrid thought: suppose he should forget the tune again while he was inside the garden—would he be stuck there, like Father in the larder? It was a lovely place to go and wander at will, but somehow he didn’t fancy spending the next fifty years there with Princess Sophia Maria. Would she oblige him by singing the spell if he forgot it, or would she be too keen on company to let him go? He was not inclined to take any chances.
It was late when they arrived home, too late, Mark thought, to disturb Mr. Johansen, who was elderly and kept early hours. Mark ate a huge helping of Brekkfast Brikks for supper—he was dying to finish Section Six—but did not visit the garden that night.
Next morning’s breakfast (Brikks with hot milk, for a change) finished the last packet—and just as well, for the larder mouse, which Mr. Armitage still had not caught, was discovered to have nibbled the bottom left-hand corner of the packet, slightly damaging an ornamental grotto in a grove of lime trees. Rather worried about this, Mark decided to make up the last section straightaway, in case the magic had been affected. By now he was becoming very skilled at the tiny fiddling task of cutting out the little tabs and slipping them into the little slots; the job did not take long to finish. Mark attached Section Six to Section Five and then, drawing a deep breath, sang the incantation once more. With immense relief he watched the mossy wall and rusty gate grow out of the playroom floor; all was well.
He raced across the lawn, round the lake, along the avenue, through the orchard, and into the lime grove. The scent of the lime flowers was sweeter than a cake baking.
Princess Sophia Maria came towards him from the grotto, looking slightly put out.
“Good morning!” she greeted Mark. “Do you bring me any news?”
“I haven’t been to see my music teacher yet,” Mark confessed. “I was a bit anxious because there was a hole—”
“Ach, yes, a hole in the grotto! I have just been looking. Some wild beast must have made its way in, and I am afraid it may come again. See, it has made tracks like those of a big bear.” She showed him some enormous footprints in the soft sand of the grotto floor. Mark stopped up the hole with prickly branches and promised to bring a dog when he next came, though he felt fairly sure the mouse would not return.
“I can borrow a dog from my teacher—he has plenty. I’ll be back in an hour or so—see you then,” he said.
“Auf Wiedersehen, my dear young friend.”
Mark ran along the village street to Mr. Johansen’s house, Houndshaven Cottage. He knew better than to knock at the door, because Mr. Johansen would be either practicing his violin or out in the barn at the back, and in any case the sound of barking was generally loud enough to drown any noise short of gunfire.
Besides giving music lessons at Mark’s school, Mr. Johansen kept a guest house for dogs whose owners were abroad or on holiday. He was extremely kind to the guests and did his best to make them feel at home in every way, finding out from their owners what were their favorite foods, and letting them sleep on his own bed, turn about. He spent all his spare time with them, talking to them and playing either his violin or long-playing records of domestic sounds likely to appeal to the canine fancy—such as knives being sharpened, cars starting up, and children playing ball games.
Mark could hear Mr. Johansen playing Brahm’s lullaby in the barn, so he went out there; the music was making some of the more susceptible inmates feel homesick: howls, sympathetic moans, and long, shuddering sighs came from the numerous comfortably carpeted cubicles all the way down the barn.
Mr. Johansen reached the end of the piece as Mark entered. He put down his fiddle and smiled welcomingly.
“Ach, how gut! It is the young Mark.”
“Hullo, sir.”
“You know,” confided Mr. Johansen, “I play to many audiences in my life all over the world, but never anywhere do I get such a response as from zese dear doggies—it is really remarkable. But come in, come into ze house and have some coffee cake.”
Mr. Johansen was a gentle, white-haired elderly man; he walked slowly with a slight stoop and had a kindly, sad face with large dark eyes. He looked rather like some sort of dog himself, Mark always thought, perhaps a collie or a long-haired dachshund.
“Sir,” Mark said, “if I whistle a tune to you, can you write it down for me?”
“Why, yes, I shall be most happy,” Mr. Johansen said, pouring coffee for both of them.
So Mark whistled his tune once more; as he came to the end, he was surprised to see the music master’s eyes fill with tears, which slowly began to trickle down his thin cheeks.
“It recalls my youth, zat piece,” he explained, wiping the tears away and rapidly scribbling crotchets and minims on a piece of music paper. “Many times I am whistling it myself—it is wissout doubt from me you learn it—but always it is reminding me of how happy I was long ago when I wrote it.”
“You wrote that tune?” Mark said, much excited.
“Why, yes. What is so strange in zat? Many, many tunes haf I written.”
“Well—” Mark said, “I won’t tell you just yet in case I’m mistaken—I’ll have to see somebody else first. Do you mind if I dash off right away? Oh, and might I borrow a dog—preferably a good ratter?”
“In zat case, better have my dear Lotta—alzough she is so old, she is ze best of zem all,” Mr. Johansen said proudly. Lotta was his own dog, an enormous shaggy lumbering animal with a tail like a palm tree and feet the size of electric polishers; she was reputed to be of incalculable age; Mr. Johansen called her his strudel-hound. She knew Mark well and came along with him quite biddably, though it was rather like leading a mammoth.
Luckily his mother, refreshed by her day at the sea, was heavily engaged with Agnes the maid in spring cleaning. Furniture was being shoved about, and everyone was too busy to notice Mark and Lotta slip into the playroom.
A letter addressed to Mark lay among the clutter on the table; he opened and read it while Lotta foraged happily among the piles of magazines and tennis nets and cricket bats and rusting electronic equipment, managing to upset several things and increase the general state of huggermugger in the room.
Dear Sir, (the letter said—it was from Messrs. Digit, Digit & Rule, a firm of chartered accountants)—We are in receipt of your inquiry as to the source of pictures on packets of Brekkfast Brikks. We are pleased to inform you that these were reproduced from the illustrations of a little-known 18th-century German work, Steinbergen’s Gartenbuch. Unfortunately the only known remaining copy of this book was burnt in the disastrous fire which destroyed the factory and premises of Messrs. Fruhstucksgeschirrziegelsteinindustrie two months ago. The firm has now gone into liquidation and we are winding up their effects. Yours faithfully, P. J. Zero, Gen. Sec.
“Steinbergen’s Gartenbuch,” Mark thought. “That must have been the book that Princess Sophia Maria used for the spell—probably the same copy. Oh, well, since it’s burned, it’s lucky the pictures were reproduced on the Brekkfast Brikks packets. Come on, Lotta, let’s go and find a nice princess then. Good girl! Rats! Chase ‘em!”
He sang the spell and Lotta, all enthusiasm, followed him into the garden.
They did not have to go far before they saw the princess—she was sitting sunning herself on the rim of the fountain. But what happened then was unexpected. Lotta let out the most extraordinary cry—whine, bark, and howl all in one—and hurled herself towards the princess like a rocket.
“Hey! Look out! Lotta! Heel!” Mark shouted in alarm. But Lotta, with her great paws on the princess’ shoulders, had about a yard of salmon-pink tongue out, and was washing the princess’ face all over with frantic affection.
The princess was just as excited. “Lotta. Lotta! She knows me, it’s dear Lotta, it must be! Where did you get her?” she cried to Mark, hugging the enormous dog, whose tail was going round faster than a turbo prop.
“Why, she belongs to my music master, Mr. Johansen, and it’s he who made up the tune,” Mark said.
The princess turned quite white and had to sit down on the fountain’s rim again.
“Johansen? Rudolf Johansen? My Rudi! At last! After all these years! Oh, run, run, and fetch him immediately, please! Immediately!”
Mark hesitated just a moment.
“Please make haste!” she besought him. “Why do you wait?”
“It’s only—well, you won’t be surprised if he’s quite old, will you? Remember he hasn’t been in a garden keeping young like you.”
“All that will change,” the princess said confidently. “He has only to eat the fruit of the garden. Why, look at Lotta—when she was a puppy, for a joke I gave her a fig from this tree, and you can see she is a puppy still, though she must be older than any other dog in the world! Oh, please hurry to bring Rudi here.”
“Why don’t you come with me to his house?”
“That would not be correct etiquette,” she said with dignity. “After all, I am royal.”
“Okay,” Mark said. “I’ll fetch him. Hope he doesn’t think I’m crackers.”
“Give him this.” The princess took off a locket on a gold chain. It had a miniature of a romantically handsome young man with dark curling hair. “My Rudi,” she explained fondly. Mark could just trace a faint resemblance to Mr. Johansen.
He took the locket and hurried away. At the gate something made him look back: the princess and Lotta were sitting at the edge of the fountain, side by side. The princess had an arm round Lotta’s neck; with the other hand she waved to him, just a little.
“Hurry!” she called again.
* * * * *
Mark made his way out of the house, through the spring-cleaning chaos, and flew down the village to Houndshaven Cottage. Mr. Johansen was in the house this time, boiling up a noisome mass of meat and bones for the dogs’ dinner. Mark said nothing at all, just handed him the locket. He took one look at it and staggered, putting his hand to his heart; anxiously, Mark led him to a chair.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes, yes! It was only ze shock. Where did you get ziss, my boy?”
So Mark told him.
Surprisingly, Mr. Johansen did not find anything odd about the story; he nodded his head several times as Mark related the various points.
“Yes, yes, her letter, I have it still”—he pulled out a worn little scrap of paper—”but ze Gartenbuch it reached me never. Zat wicked Gertrud must haf sold it to some bookseller who sold it to Fruhstucksgeschirrziegelsteinindustrie. And so she has been waiting all ziss time! My poor little Sophie!”
“Are you strong enough to come to her now?” Mark asked.
“Naturlich! But first we must give ze dogs zeir dinner; zey must not go hungry.”
So they fed the dogs, which was a long job as there were at least sixty and each had a different diet, including some very odd preferences like Swiss roll spread with Marmite and yeast pills wrapped in slices of caramel. Privately, Mark thought the dogs were a bit spoiled, but Mr. Johansen was very careful to see that each visitor had just what it fancied.
“After all, zey are not mine! Must I not take good care of zem?”
At least two hours had gone by before the last willow-pattern plate was licked clean, and they were free to go. Mark made rings around Mr. Johansen all the way up the village; the music master limped quietly along, smiling a little; from time to time he said, “Gently, my friend. We do not run a race. Remember I am an old man.”
That was just what Mark did remember. He longed to see Mr. Johansen young and happy once more.
The chaos in the Armitage house had changed its location: the front hall was now clean, tidy, and damp; the rumpus of vacuuming had shifted to the playroom. With a black hollow of apprehension in his middle, Mark ran through the open door and stopped, aghast. All the toys, tools, weapons, boxes, magazines, and bits of machinery had been rammed into the cupboards; the floor where his garden had been laid out was bare. Mrs. Armitage was in the playroom taking down the curtains.
“Mother! Where’s my Brekkfast Brikks garden?”
“Oh, darling, you didn’t want it, did you? It was all dusty, I thought you’d finished it. I’m afraid I’ve burned it in the furnace. Really, you must try not to let this room get into such a clutter, it’s perfectly disgraceful. Why, hullo, Mr. Johansen, I’m afraid you’ve called at the worst possible moment. But I’m sure you’ll understand how it is at spring-cleaning time.”
She rolled up her bundle of curtains, glancing worriedly at Mr. Johansen; he looked rather odd, she thought. But he gave her his tired, gentle smile, and said,
“Why, yes, Mrs. Armitage, I understand, I understand very well. Come, Mark. We have no business here, you can see.”
Speechlessly, Mark followed him. What was there to say?
“Never mind,” Mrs. Armitage called after Mark. “The Rice Nuts pack has a helicopter on it.”
* * * * *
Every week in The Times newspaper you will see this advertisement:
BREKKFAST BRIKKS PACKETS. 100 pounds offered for any in good condition, whether empty or full.
So if you have any, you know where to send them.
But Mark is growing anxious; none have come in yet, and every day Mr. Johansen seems a little thinner and more elderly. Besides, what will the princess be thinking?
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