Eva Ibbotson - The Abominables

“Thank you all for coming. I shall now present our request to Her Majesty the Queen.” Con was an intelligent boy and he knew that the Queen was no freer than anyone else to do what she liked, but was surrounded by officials and red tape and things that it was all right to do and things that it wasn’t.

He climbed down, took the scroll of paper that Ellen handed him, and began to walk toward the main entrance of the palace. By the huge gates he stopped, not quite knowing what to do. If he walked past the guards, he would be challenged and turned back. Boys did not walk casually into the palace, he knew that.

While he stood there hesitating, a gray-haired man in a dark suit came out of a door further on and came toward him, past the guards. He looked pale and stern but he spoke politely to Con.

“What exactly is going on here?”

Con explained clearly and carefully about the plight of the yetis. “It’s all in that bit of paper. The place they’ve been taken to, the latitude and longitude. The people who did it. And the time when”—he faltered for a moment—“the time when they’re going to be shot.”

The man took the scroll, which had taken many hours to prepare. “I will see that it goes through the usual channels,” he said.

Con didn’t know what the usual channels were, but he didn’t like the sound of them.

“No,” he said. “It’s for the Queen.”

“You must know,” said the man impatiently, “that the Queen cannot possibly attend personally to everything that comes her way.”

“Not everything,” said Con. “But this.”

“The Queen is not—”

“I don’t know what the Queen is not ,” said Con desperately. “But what she is, surely, is someone people can turn to when there’s trouble.”

“I have no further comment,” sniffed the man. “You must disperse this crowd immediately, or I shall be obliged to have you arrested for unlawful assembly, disturbing the peace, and,” he added, as the little dog lifted his leg against one of the stone gateposts, “fouling royal property.” Then he turned away and went back into the palace.

“We’re staying till something is done,” shouted Con to his departing back. But the man showed no sign of having heard.

Half an hour, an hour, and still the crowd stood there, their faces lifted to the great façade of the palace. Newlands Progressive struck up a rousing chorus of “We shall not, we shall not be moved.” And then a wave of whispering passed through them.

“Did you see her?”

“It was her, I’m sure.”

“A face. There by the window.”

“It’s the Queen. She’s going to come out, I know she is.”

But the woman whose face they had glimpsed at the huge first-floor window did not come out onto the balcony.

“She’s gone.”

“She’s not coming!”

“It wasn’t her. It was the housekeeper.”

“Or a lady-in-waiting.”

Suddenly, disappointment swept the crowd. They realized how tired they were, how hungry.

For Con it was worse. It wasn’t going to work. The great yeti demonstration was over, and just as Perry had warned, nothing had changed. All this time he had been telling himself that if he worked hard enough, cared enough, he could save the day like some hero in a story. For him it wasn’t only about saving a threatened species, about stopping blood sports and meaningless killing. For Con, to fail was to fail his friends: to fail Lucy, Uncle Otto, Clarence, Grandma, and Ambrose. They were innocent, and kind, and they had trusted him. He had brought them halfway across the world to certain death. It was unbearable.

Con felt rage rising inside him. He thought he would choke. He ran to the statue, clambered up, and began to shout.

“We’ve failed. It’s useless. Go home. Nobody listens to children and tramps and old ladies, and nobody ever will. Go home. You’ve heard all that stuff—‘Might is right,’ ‘Money talks.’ Well, it’s true. It’s all true. The killing and the hating will never stop. If you say you don’t like it, they’ll call you a wimp or wet or a dreamer. If you say there is another, kinder, more thoughtful way, they’ll call you a lunatic. If you go on saying it, they’ll probably shoot you. Go home.” Con paused for breath. Ellen was crying and telling him to stop, but he was just getting warmed up. He had plenty more to say. “And as for the Queen,” shouted Con, but nobody ever knew what he was going to say about her, because his voice was drowned out by the rumbling growl of a big diesel engine being revved — an engine with a dodgy, clattering water pump. All heads turned, and sure enough, straight up the wide Mall toward Buckingham Palace came a canary yellow articulated lorry with COLD CARCASSES, INC. in large letters on its side. After it, in a long line, came more lorries. There was a low-loader, a giant removal van, a huge-wheeled quarry truck, and a spanking new Scania heavy-haulage vehicle lit up like a Christmas tree.

The yellow lorry drove up to the palace, and as the crowd parted and cheered wildly, it parked right across the front of the main gates, blocking them completely.

Perry jumped out of the cab, looking pleased with himself.

“Oh, Perry, you came back!” Ellen rushed over to him and hugged him. “But it’s no good. They’re going to arrest us.”

“Are they, now?” said Perry. “Just give me a few moments to get my mates organized, and we’ll have a little chat.”

Quickly, he directed the massive vehicles to park across every entrance to the palace. The three big gates at the front were blocked. The other lorries drove round and out of sight, to block the rear entrances.

“Right,” said Perry. “That should do it. She won’t be taking delivery of any groceries for a while.”

When they were ensconced in the familiar cab and Perry was enjoying a well-earned cuppa, Con said, “You’re going to get into awful trouble. You can’t just lock the Queen into her own palace.”

“I haven’t locked her in,” said Perry. “I’ve locked everybody else out. It’s a picket. Legitimate industrial action. I had a word with some mates about it, and we agreed it was worth a try. I’m not saying it’ll work, mind you,” he said, directing his words to Con, “but I’ve learned one thing after all the scrapes I’ve been in, and that is never give up. And trust your friends,” he added.

Ellen blushed. “We thought you’d just gone away …”

“What happens now?” said Con hastily.

“Now,” said Perry, “we wait.”

They didn’t have to wait long. The police hadn’t been particularly worried by a peaceful demonstration of children and unimportant people outside Buckingham Palace, but now the wail of sirens was heard and flashing blue lights converged on the scene from all directions. A whole fleet of police cars drew up, and uniformed men started pouring out of them. Perry and the other drivers had formed a line in front of Perry’s lorry, with arms folded. They weren’t all big and beefy — though the man from the removal van looked pretty fearsome — but they didn’t look as though they were going to budge in the face of the massed officers of the law. The policemen stopped at a safe distance from the drivers, and the man in charge produced a bullhorn. His voice echoed over the heads of the crowd.

“You are breaking the law. You must cease this action immediately and remove your vehicles.”