Читаем The Ribbajack полностью

A single glance at the boy in question would confirm the fears of even a stranger. Archibald Smifft was indeed the raw material from which nightmares were made. From the top of his scrofulous bullet-shaped head, with its jug-handle ears and ski-jump nose, the beady eyes (which had often been compared to those of an ill-tempered cobra) glaring out from the spotted moon crater of a face, right down from his rounded shoulders, pot belly and wart-scarred knees, to the fallen arches of his flat feet, the Smifft boy was the very portrait of villainy, viciousness and malicious intent.

He had been abandoned as a baby on the school driveway, sitting smugly in an outrageously expensive bassinet. In one hand the child clutched a chamois bag containing a king’s ransom in uncut rubies; in the other, a recently dead frog. Attached to his satin pillow was a note: “Deer sur. Pleez giv Archibald a gud ejercayshun an bring him up propper. Maw roobeez to folloh. Singed, X Smifft. Pee yess. He lykes byting thingz.”

The headmaster, a gentle, trusting man named Aubrey Plother, I.O.U.E. (Institute of Unskilled Educators), and the matron, Mrs. Twogg, were the two who found the infant. Trying hard to avoid Archibald’s malevolent smirk, Mr. Plother’s heart softened. He snatched the bag of rubies, declaring charitably, “Mrs. Twogg, marm, I feel we would be neglecting our Christian duty were we not to adopt and care for this unfortunate waif. I have decided he shall receive the benefits of a thorough education here at my establishment!”

The matron, who had left her glasses indoors and would never admit she had dreadful eyesight, swept the babe up in her huge pink arms. She tickled its bottom lip fondly. “Oh, bless you for the kindly soul you are, Headmaster. Poor little mite, shame on the one who abandoned you. Coochy-cooch, my little cherub!”

The infant left off chewing his frog long enough to inflict a bite on Mrs. Twogg’s index finger that a tiger shark would have envied. The matron wore her glasses at all times after that afternoon so that she would be able to immediately decipher further communications left on the pillows of abandoned children. That is how Archibald Smifft came to be inflicted on his present school.

For my more gentle and nervous readers, I will draw a veil over the intervening eleven years. Except to mention, in passing, four teachers’ resignations (diagnosed as mentally traumatised), an explosion in the pupils’ chemistry laboratory, the disappearance of four cats belonging to the gardener’s wife, several major floods in the washrooms, a fire which destroyed the sports pavilion and a school mastiff that vanished without trace. These, and a host of other indignities, atrocities and miscellaneous mishaps—students absconding to foreign territories, etc.—were all in one way or another attributable to said Archibald Smifft. However, the headmaster’s kind heart, plus the prompt arrival each term of a bag containing rubies by special delivery to Aubrey Plother, I.O.U.E., insured the boy’s continuance at Crostacious the Inviolate Boarding School for young gentlemen. Granted, there were frequent staff walkouts, but the headmaster furthered his name as a good man by rewarding injured, faithful and long-serving staff members by giving them a ruby apiece as an annual incentive.

Archibald’s dormitory was a long, draughty room. It contained only two boys besides himself. Wilton Minor and Peterkin Soames were far too frightened to cut and run like the others—they lived in constant terror of their small but vengeful roommate. Together each night, the wretched pair huddled on their beds at the room’s far end, constantly casting fearful glances at Archibald’s den. This was a high screen of assorted rubbish which he had coerced them into building at the other end of the dormitory. Wilton and Soames both had families posted overseas in the military and colonial services. As a result, they were permanent boarders, spending all holidays, vacations and non-term times on the school premises, with Archibald Smifft for company. He delighted in terrorising the hapless duo, each day bringing fresh horrors for Wilton and Soames. Wilton Minor, the more delicate of the two, had found grey hairs whilst parting his hair on his eleventh birthday! Both boys had a wan-faced, hunted look about them.

One day close to the summer term break, all the pupils were taken on an educational trip to a local dairy farm. Everybody, even Archibald, was required to go. This provided the headmaster and matron with a golden opportunity to inspect the Smifft dormitory. They were forced into this task frequently. The area occupied by Archibald was a place where any intruder had to tread with extreme caution. It was a task which Mr. Plother and Mrs. Twogg did not relish. However, if the dormitory where the Smifft boy laid his scheming little head to rest each night went unchecked, the possible consequences could prove both horrendous and dire.