Eva Ibbotson - The Abominables

“Oh, Lord!” said Perry. “Not the water pump.”

But it was. “We’ll have to spend the night here, I’m afraid, while I get this thing fixed,” said Perry worriedly. “I’ll find as quiet a place to park as I can, but for goodness’ sake, don’t let the yetis out. You saw that bear …”

So he parked on a quiet street not far from the Sultan’s palace. Beside it was a little park with a few dusty date palms, a tobacco kiosk, and a public lavatory. And at the far side, something else. A zoo.

The yetis had never before had to spend the night in a town, let alone a town like Aslerfan. It meant that they couldn’t get out and say, “Sorry, grass,” and build a campfire and stretch their legs, but had to stay cooped up in the lorry, which was stiflingly hot because Perry had disabled the refrigeration system to get at the water pump. But the yetis understood that it was necessary, and they were very good.

While Perry went to find a garage and Con went shopping for some fruit, Ellen slipped into the little park to buy some lemonade for the yetis from a kiosk. When she came back, she was very quiet and pale.

“Are you sad?” said Ambrose, and his brown eye got ready in case there was any crying to be done.

But Ellen just shook her head and said it was nothing, or perhaps the heat. And then Con returned and they had a picnic in the back, and they were just getting ready for the bedtime story when the noises began.

They were bad noises: howls of misery, roars of loneliness, whimpers of pain.

Even by the light of his torch, Con could see the yetis’ ear lids turn pale, and Lucy, who had just taken her seventh banana, put it down untouched.

“That was a poor lion who’s got no meat to say sorry to,” she said, as an earsplitting roar filled the night.

“That elephant has got a pain in his trunk,” said Uncle Otto worriedly.

“And listen to those poor seals coughing their lungs out,” said Grandma.

Con was amazed. “How do you know which animals are which and what they’re saying?” he asked. “You’ve never seen lions or seals or elephants, have you?”

Ambrose turned his walleyes reproachfully on Con. “But they’re our brothers ,” he said.

Con sighed. He’d asked for that one. “Look, it’s just a zoo. All animals make noises at night in a zoo—”

But Ellen, usually so quiet and gentle, interrupted him. “No, Con, it’s an awful place, this. I saw it when I was getting the lemonade. The cages are filthy and far too small; there are flies everywhere; the monkeys are full of sores; and the antelopes have got foot rot … And there’s a ghastly sort of dungeon place where they throw the dancing bears that are too old to work.”

It was true. The Aslerfan Zoo was a disgrace. But it was the Sultan’s private zoo and when people in the city complained, he just laughed. As for the head keeper, a man called Mr. Bullaby, he took the money he was paid for the animals and used it for himself. So the animals were sick and cramped and underfed, and hundreds died every year from loneliness or bad feeding or disease.

Con bit his lip, frowning. Cruelty to animals always made him feel completely sick and hollow. But he’d given his word that he’d get the yetis to Farley Towers, and that meant keeping them cheerful and keeping them safe. So he began to tell them “Rumpelstiltskin,” making up such funny names for the Queen to guess that Ambrose nearly fell off his bunk laughing, and after they had whispered “Lead, Kindly Light” (because there were still people about in the streets who might have thought it odd if a load of Cold Carcasses had started singing hymns), the children slipped to the front and curled up in the cab and fell asleep.

But the yetis couldn’t sleep. Even when they shut their ear lids they could still feel the noises from that dreadful zoo.

And presently Ambrose leaned down from his bunk and said, “Grandma?”

“What is it?” said Grandma, opening her ear lids.

“I was thinking … Ellen was sad about that zoo, wasn’t she?”

Grandma nodded. “And no wonder.”

“Con was sad, too,” said Lucy. “He didn’t say anything, but his face was all screwed up and tight.”

“So we could give them a surprise,” said Ambrose. “Con and Ellen, I mean. Because they’ve been so good to us.”

“’Urprise,” said Clarence happily, nodding.

“What sort of a surprise, Ambrose?” asked Lucy.

“A lovely one,” said Ambrose, his blue eye beaming. “We could let all the animals out of their cages. Now, while it’s dark. And in the morning they’d all be happy and free.”

There was a pause while the yetis considered this.

“Do as You Would Be Done By,” said Grandma presently. “That’s what Lady Agatha said. Only God said it first. How would we like to be shut up in filthy cages?”

And then they all turned their enormous heads toward Uncle Otto, who was really the head of the family now that Father was no longer with them.

Uncle Otto hesitated. He understood perhaps better than the others how important it was for the yetis to keep out of people’s way. But just then there came a sound more terrible than any they had heard yet: the wings of the thirst-maddened birds of prey beating against the wire of their appalling cages.

Uncle Otto made up his mind. And a few moments later, leaving Hubert tied to one of the bunks, the yetis had pushed aside the iron bar that closed the back of the lorry and were climbing over the high barbed wire that surrounded the zoo.

As soon as they dropped down inside the enclosure, the noises stopped. It was as though the animals knew that their time of torture was over. The lions stopped their restless pacing and stood silent and golden-eyed, waiting. The giraffes hung their poor stiff necks over the bars of their pen and blew softly and hopefully through their velvet lips. The weary old bears got up on their hind legs and danced of their own free will.

“Right,” said Uncle Otto. He had left his woolly hat in the lorry, and in the moonlight his bald patch shone like the shield of St. George. “Let us begin.”

The next two hours were the busiest of the yetis’ lives. When Lady Agatha had warned Con about the yetis’ strength, she hadn’t been exaggerating. They bent iron bars like plasticine, broke locks with a couple of fingers, uprooted railings as if they were dandelions …

Uncle Otto freed the big cats — the lions and tigers and panthers and jaguars — and they rubbed themselves, soft as kittens, against his legs before loping off joyfully into the night. Clarence helped out the poor rheumatic old hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses, who had almost forgotten how to walk, and led the elephants, with their sore trunks and runny eyes, into a clump of palm trees where they could feed. Lucy let out the little things that had huddled sadly on the concrete floors of their smelly runs for years: opossums like old handbags, scruffy little moonrats, and dik-diks and bush babies, which she shook out and set gently on their feet before they scampered gratefully away.

Grandma, meanwhile, had got hold of a hose and was washing down the sea lions and walruses and alligators, who were covered in green slime from their disgusting, sludgy ponds. “Now off you go, and get down to the river quickly,” she scolded a crocodile who was lying on his back, letting the hose play over his stomach and showing his poor broken teeth in the first real smile he’d smiled since the cruel Sultan’s men had caught him in their nets. And it was marvelous to see how every animal, even the most stupid like the anteaters, or the fiercest like the cougars, or the shyest like the gazelles, found time to thank the yetis with a grateful nibble, a friendly lick, or a thankful hiss, before they crawled or slithered or hopped off to freedom.