id="uf10dc090-66d4-5918-82d8-8c27a0423d8d">
First published by Macmillan London Ltd in 1974
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2010 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB
Copyright © Diana Wynne Jones 1974.
Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers 2010 Illustration by David Wyatt © 2010
Diana Wynne Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverseengineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007154692
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2014 ISBN: 9780007500000
Version: 2014–09–10
For Richard, who thought of Indigo Rubber,and Micky, who helped with the chemicals.
CONTENTS
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Also by the Author
Caspar came into the hall one afternoon with a bag of books on one shoulder and a bag of football clothes on the other and saw his brother carrying a large parcel. “What’s that?” he said.
“It’s the Ogre,” Johnny said gloomily. “He’s trying to bribe me now.”
“Bribe you to do what?” said Caspar.
“Be a sweet little boy I expect,” said Johnny with the utmost disgust. “Let’s open it before Malcolm gets in, shall we?”
Caspar, very intrigued, and also quite unreasonably annoyed that Johnny should get a present and not himself, led the way to the sitting-room door and prepared to sling his bag of books across the room into the red armchair. The bag had almost left his hand, when he saw a large pair of feet sticking out from beyond this chair. Above the chair back was an open newspaper and, below the newspaper, Caspar could just see a section of grizzled black hair. The Ogre himself was in possession. Caspar caught the bag at the top of its swing and retreated on tiptoe.
“He’s in there,” he mouthed to Johnny.
“Blast!” said Johnny, none too softly. “I thought he was in his study. Let’s go upstairs.”
They hurried up the stairs, Johnny hugging his parcel, Caspar lugging his two bags. Since Caspar was so laden and Johnny, though smaller, a great deal more hefty and very eager to open his parcel besides, their progress was noisy, and shook the house a little. It was the kind of thing the Ogre could be trusted to notice. His voice roared from beneath.
“Will you boys be quiet!”
They sighed. Johnny said something under his breath. They finished climbing on tiptoe, at half-speed. Both knew, by instinct, that it would be unwise to provoke the Ogre further. So far, he had not hit any of them, but they had a feeling that it was only a matter of time before he did, and that it was an experience to be put off as long as possible.
“He’s allergic to noise,” said Johnny, as they reached their bedroom.
“And boys,” Caspar said bitterly.
The Ogre was their stepfather, and he had been married to their mother for a month now. All three children had found it the most miserable month of their lives. They alternated between wishing themselves dead and wishing the Ogre was.
“I don’t see why she had to marry him. We were quite all right as we were,” Johnny said, as he had said several hundred times before. They halted, according to custom, at the door of their room, for Caspar to hurl his bags one after another on to his bed. Then they set out to wade through comics, books, records, toffee bars and sixteen different construction kits, to the one clear piece of floor.
The two boys had disliked the Ogre on sight, despite their mother’s glowing description of him. He was large and black-browed and not at all interested in children. He was divorced. His first wife had left him years ago and gone to live abroad – and Caspar’s opinion was that he did not blame her, considering what the Ogre and his two sons were like. Their own mother was a widow. Their father had been killed in an air crash six years before. And, as Johnny kept saying, they had all got on very nicely until the Ogre came along. Of course, they had pretended to their mother – not to hurt her feelings – that they did not think too badly of the Ogre. But, after his second visit – when they were still thinking of him as Mr McIntyre – their mother had said she was actually going to marry him. Quite appalled, they had escaped to the kitchen as soon as they could, to hold a council of war about him.
“I think he’s frightful,” Caspar had said frankly. “I bet he listens to commercial pop. He’s bound to, with low eyebrows like that.” Since then, alas, they had discovered that the Ogre listened to nothing