Diana Wynne Jones - The Ogre Downstairs

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The Ogre Downstairs

Diana Wynne Jones

A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0

click for scan notes and proofing history

Contents

|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|

Also by Diana Wynne Jones

Archer’s Goon

Aunt Maria

Believing Is Seeing: Seven Stories

Castle in the Air

Dark Lord of Derkholm

Year of the Griffin

Dogsbody

Eight Days of Luke

Fire and Hemlock

Hexwood

Hidden Turnings:

A Collection of Stories Through Time and Space

The Homeward Bounders

Howl’s Moving Castle

The Ogre Downstairs

Power of Three

Stopping for a Spell

A Tale of Time City

The Time of the Ghost

Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories

The Worlds of Chrestomanci

Book 1: Charmed Life

Book 2: The Lives of Christopher Chant

Book 3: The Magicians of Caprona

Book 4: Witch Week

Mixed Magics (Stories)

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume I (Contains books I

and 2)

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume II (Contains books 3

and 4)

The Dalemark Quartet

Book 1: Cart and Cwidder

Book 2: Drowned Ammet

Book 3: The Spellcoats

Book 4: The Crown of Dalemark

JR Greenwillow Book

HarperTrophy®

An Imprint oj HarperCollinsPublishers

Harper Trophy® is a registered trademark of HarperCollins

Publishers Inc.

reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles

and reviews. Printed in the United States of America. For

information address HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of

HarperCollins Publishers, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York,

NY 10019.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Diana Wynne.

The ogre downstairs.

p. cm.

“Greenwillow Books.”

Summary: When a disagreeable man with two boys marries a

widow with three children, family adjustments are complicated by

two magic chemistry sets which cause strange things to happen

around the house.

ISBN 0-06-029883-9 —ISBN 0-06-447350-3 (pbk.)

[1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.J6840g 1990 89-11741

Typography by Karin Paprocki

First Harper Trophy edition, 2002

Visit us on the World Wide Web!

www.harperchildrens.com

For Richard,

who thought of Indigo Rubber,

and Mickey, who helped with the chemicals

The Ogre Downstairs

Chapter 1

^ »

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

square 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 he, 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 onto 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. “And 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 but news, and required

absolute silence while he did so.

“Stepfathers are always frightful,” Johnny had agreed, with the air of one

who had got through several hundred.

“What do they do?” Gwinny asked nervously.

“Everything. They’re perfect Ogres. They eat you as soon as look at you,”

Johnny had answered. Upon which Gwinny had looked tearful and said she

would run away if Mr. McIntyre was an Ogre. And he was. They all knew it

now.

As Johnny put down his parcel in the clear patch and pushed aside a bank of

other things to make more room, Gwinny came in. “Mummy thought she heard

you,” she said. “Oh, what’s that?”

“A present from the Ogre, for some reason,” Johnny said. “He gave it to me

in the hall just now and said it might keep me out of mischief”

Gwinny had been looking offended, and a trifle puzzled. The Ogre could not

be said to be friendly with any of them, but, of all three, it was Johnny he liked

least. But this explanation relieved her mind. “Oh, that kind of present,” she

said, and even smiled.

Caspar shot a sharp look at her. Gwinny, perhaps from being the youngest

and a girl, sometimes showed a regrettable tendency to like the Ogre. It was

Gwinny who had first met him, in fact. She had tried to go to the library by

herself and had got off the bus at quite the wrong stop. She had wandered for an

hour, miserable and lost, with tears trickling down her face, and people passing

right and left, taking no notice of her condition whatsoever. Then the Ogre had

stopped and asked her what was the matter. And Caspar conceded that Gwinny

had a right to be grateful. The Ogre had taken her to the library, then to a cafe

for ice cream, and finally brought her home in his car when Caspar and Johnny

were out looking for her and only their mother was at home. Caspar often

thought that, if only he or Johnny (preferably both) had been at home when the

Ogre and Gwinny arrived, the worst would never have happened. But that, as

they all knew, had been the sole act of kindness ever performed by the Ogre.

Therefore Caspar looked at Gwinny.

“I’m not weakening!” she said indignantly. “I’ve learned the error of my

ways. So there. Oh, look, Caspar!”

Caspar looked, to find that Johnny had taken the paper off the parcel to reveal

an enormous chemistry set, which he was contemplating with a mixture of

exasperation and grudging pleasure. “I’ve got one of these already,” he said.

“But only half that size and almost used up,” Gwinny said consolingly.

“Yes, just think of the smells you can make now,” Caspar added kindly. He

was not at all interested in chemistry himself. The mere sight of the rows of

little tubes and the filter-paper and the spirit-lamp made him want to yawn. And

when Johnny lifted out the whole lot in its white plastic container and

discovered a second layer of packed tubes and chemicals underneath, it was as

much as Caspar could do to show polite interest. “Just like chocolates,” he

said, and threw himself down on his bed. There, by sweeping aside a pile of

books and scattering Johnny’s colored crayons, he was able to reach the switch

that controlled his record player and turn it on. The LP left ready on the

turntable began to revolve. Caspar dropped the needle into the groove and lay

back to listen to his favorite group.

Johnny, squatting over the ranks of chemicals, was now grinning happily. “I

say, there’s everything here,” he said. “I can do things we don’t even do at

school. What do you think this is?” He lifted out a tube labelled Vol. Pulv.

Gwinny had no idea. Caspar shook his head, and shouted above the mounting

wail of a synthesizer and a roll of drums, “I don’t know. Shut up for this

guitar-solo!”

Johnny continued to lift out tubes and bottles full of substances he had never

seen before: Irid. Col, Animal Spirits, Misc. Pulv., Magn. Pulv., Noct. Vest.,

Dens Drac, and many more. There was a pipette, glass rods, a stand for

test-tubes, a china crucible. It really was a magnificent set. He was forced to

admit that the Ogre had done him proud— although Gwinny could not hear him

admit it, because Caspar’s record had reached its loudest track by then.

At that moment, someone thumped on the door. They all looked at one

another. “Wait a minute!” said Caspar. Then he shouted, “Go away!” knowing it

would be useless.

Sure enough, the door opened and Malcolm, the Ogre’s younger son, stood in

the entrance looking righteous. By that time, Johnny had whipped the brown

paper wrapping across the open chemistry set, and he and Gwinny had moved

in front of it.

“My father says you’re to turn that damned thing off,” reported Malcolm. His

eyes wandered disapprovingly round the room as he said it. “At once.”

“Oh, he does, bay jewve, does he?” said Caspar. Malcolm’s posh accent

always set his teeth on edge. “Suppose Ay dewn’t?”

“Then you’ll catch it, won’t you?” Malcolm retorted coolly. He was quite

equal to anything Caspar could say or do, although he was a year younger. They

suspected that his dreadful pallid coolness came from having been at a posh

boarding school until this term. Now, alas, Malcolm went to the same school as

Caspar and Johnny.

Unfortunately, as so often, Malcolm’s remark was true. Well aware that he

would catch it, Caspar grudgingly leaned over and turned the sound down, right

in the middle of the best song.

“He said off,” Malcolm pointed out.

As if to underline his correctness, the Ogre’s voice boomed out from

downstairs. “Right off, I said!”

Caspar obeyed, with black hatred in his heart.

Malcolm, meanwhile, looked coolly to where Johnny and Gwinny were

crouching in front of the chemistry set. “What are you sitting on there,

Melchior?” he said.

Johnny ground his teeth. “None of your business.”

Caspar’s rage grew. If anything, he hated Malcolm calling Johnny Melchior

even more than Johnny did, because he knew it was a dig at his own absurd

name. It was typical of Malcolm to find a convenient way of insulting them both

at once. He had called Gwinny Balthazar—only Gwinny had mistaken what he

said and had gone to her mother in tears because Malcolm said she was going

bald. After that, Malcolm stuck simply to Melchior, and maddening it was, too.

Malcolm ran his eyes once more over the crowded room and turned to leave.

“I must say,” he said, “I kept this room—”

But he had said this too often before. All three of them joined in. “—much

taidier when it was maine.”

“Well, I did,” said Malcolm. “It’s a perfect pigsty now.”

Caspar lost his temper and threw himself off his bed and across the room,

stumbling and crunching among the things on the floor. “Get out, you!” Malcolm

prudently dodged out onto the landing, sniggering slightly. The snigger was too

much for Caspar. He dived out after Malcolm, roaring insults, and the other two

followed hastily to see, as they hoped, justice done.

From below, the Ogre roared once again for silence. No one attended. For,

out on the landing, Malcolm was standing defensively above a chemistry set

identical to the one the Ogre had given Johnny.

“Look at that!” Gwinny said shrilly.

“If you spoil it,” Malcolm said, shriller still, “I’ll tell my father.”

“As if I wanted to touch it!” said Johnny. “I’ve got one the same. So there!”

“So you’re not the little favorite you thought you were,” added Caspar.

“It isn’t fair!” proclaimed Gwinny, voicing Caspar’s secret thoughts on the

subject too. “Why does he give you two a present and not us?”

“Because you’re such little frights,” said Malcolm. “And Douglas hasn’t got

anything, either.”

“That’s because he’s a big fright,” said Caspar. “Beside Douglas, even your

frightfulness pales.”

At this, Malcolm put his head down and tried to charge Caspar in the

stomach. Caspar dodged. Malcolm ran on into the banister, so that the house

shook with the impact. Gwinny and Johnny cheered. The Ogre shouted for quiet.

Again no one attended. Caspar saw he now had Malcolm at his mercy and

caught his head under one arm. Malcolm yelled and kicked to get free, but

Caspar had a whole month of sneers and sniggers to revenge and not even the

Ogre would have made him let go just then. Gwinny shouted encouragements.

Johnny shrieked advice about where to hit Malcolm next.

The door on the other side of the landing was torn open, and Douglas, like a

giant aroused, entered the fray. Douglas was almost as tall as the Ogre, and old

enough for his voice to have broken, so that the roar with which he charged

down on Caspar was shattering. “Leave him alone! He’s younger than you!”

He tore Caspar and Malcolm apart. The banister reverberated. Caspar

protested. Malcolm accused. Johnny and Gwinny yelled at Douglas. Below, the

roars of the Ogre became a continuous bull-like bellowing.

“What is going on?”

Caspar looked up under Douglas’s arm. His mother was standing at the head

of the stairs, looking hurt and harassed. Since she had married the Ogre, that

hurt and harassed look had scarcely ever left her face. It did not help to make

them feel kindly toward the Ogre.

Nobody spoke. Douglas shoved Caspar away and backed to the other side of

the landing, beside Malcolm. Caspar backed similarly, between Johnny and

Gwinny, and both families stood glowering at one another, breathing heavily.

Sally McIntyre looked from one side to the other, and sighed. “I wish you’d

all try to remember there are five of you now,” she said. “This was the most

awful din.”

“Sorry, Sally,” said Malcolm and Douglas at once, in a well-behaved

chorus.

“And Caspar,” said Sally, “Jack says you’re welcome to play records any

time he’s out.”

“Big deal!” said Caspar, not at all well-behaved. “What am I supposed to do

when he’s always in?”

“Do without,” said Douglas. “I could do without Indigo Rubber, too, for that

matter. They stink.”

“So does your guitar-playing,” Johnny retorted, in Caspar’s defense.

“Now, now, Johnny,” said his mother. “Will you three all come in here a

minute, please.”

They herded moodily back into the boys’ room and looked mournfully at their

mother’s harrowed face.

“Gracious, what a mess!” was the first thing she said. Then, “Listen, all of

you, how many times have I got to tell you to be considerate to poor Malcolm

and Douglas? It’s very hard on them, because they’ve had to give up having

separate rooms and change schools, too. They’re having a far more difficult

time than you are.” There was a heavy-breathing silence, in which Caspar

managed not to point out that Malcolm, in particular, made sure that they had a

difficult time, too. “It will be better,” said Sally, “when we can afford a larger

house. Just have patience. And, in the meantime, suppose we tidy this room a

little.” She stooped to pick up the brown paper at her feet and revealed the

chemistry set. “Wherever did you get this?”

“The O—Jack gave it me just now,” said Johnny.

Sally’s worn face broke into an enchanted smile. “Wasn’t that kind of him!”

she exclaimed. She picked up the lid of the box and examined it lovingly. They

watched her glumly. Quite the worst part of the whole business was the way the

Ogre seemed to have cast a spell on their mother, so that whatever he did she

thought he was right. “How lavish!” she said. “Nontoxic, guaranteed

nonexplosive— Oh, you must be pleased with this, Johnny!”

“He gave one to Malcolm, too,” Johnny said.

“That was thoughtful,” said Sally. “Then he won’t feel left out.”

“But we do, Mummy,” said Gwinny. “He didn’t give anything to me and

Caspar. Or Douglas,” she added, not wishing the Ogre to outdo her in fairness.

“Oh, I do wish you’d be reasonable, Guinevere,” said Sally unreasonably.

“You know we’re hard up just now. Come and set the table and stop

complaining. And this room is to be tidy before supper. I’ll ask Jack to make an

inspection.”

This threat was enough to cause Johnny and Caspar a little energetic work.

By the time the Ogre’s heavy feet were heard on the stairs, Caspar had piled

books, papers, and records in a sort of heap by the wall, and Johnny had pushed

most of the loose construction kits under his bed and the cupboard, so that, apart

from the chemistry set, the floor was almost clear.

The Ogre stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in

his mouth and looked round the room with distaste. “You do like to live in

squalor, don’t you?” he said. “I suppose all those toffee-bars are an essential

part of your diet? OK, I’ll report a clear floor. How are you getting on with that

chemistry set?”

“I like it,” Johnny said, with a polite smile. “But I’ve been too busy clearing

up to use it yet.”

The Ogre’s heavy eyebrows went up, and he looked rather pointedly round

the room. “I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said. A thought struck him. “I suppose I

ought in fairness to make a surprise inspection over the way,” he said. They

watched him turn and walk across the landing. They saw him open the door to

Malcolm’s and Douglas’s room. They waited hopefully. It would be wonderful

if, for once, it was those two who got into trouble.

Nothing happened, however, except for a surprisingly strong stench, which

swept across the landing and made Caspar cough. Malcolm’s voice followed it.

“This chemistry set is positively brilliant, Father! Look at this.”

“Having fun, are you?” said the Ogre, and he shut the door rather hastily and

went downstairs.

“Pooh!” said Caspar.

“I just like that!” said Johnny. “If it had been us making a smell like that, we

wouldn’t half have got it! All right, then. Watch me after supper. I’ll make the

worst stink you ever smelled, and if he says anything, I’ll say, what about

Malcolm?”

Johnny was as good as his word. After supper, he set to work in the middle

of the carpet, mixing all the strongest and likeliest-looking things from the

various tubes and vials and heating them with the spirit-lamp to see what

happened. When he found a good smell, he poured it carefully into a tooth-mug

and mixed another. The savor of the room went through rotten cabbage, elderly

egg, moldy melon, gasworks, and bad breath; blue smoke hung about in it.

Caspar, who was lying on his bed doing history homework, coughed

considerably, but he bore it in a good cause.

When Gwinny came in instead of going to bed, she was exquisitely disgusted.

She sat beside Johnny in her pink nightdress, wriggling her bare toes and

pretending to smoke one of the Ogre’s pipes that she had stolen. “Eeugh!” she

said, and peered at Johnny’s flushed face through the gathering smoke. “We

look like a witches’ convent. Caspar looks like a devil looming through the

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