Aurelius and I Read online

  My own reservations about Aurelius lay in the fact that I felt he was somehow not like other people. Of course, in one sense, this was a statement of the obvious. His dress sense, his upper-class way of speaking, his mannerisms, all differed hugely from those of anybody one was likely to spot on a stroll down the high street. There seemed to me to be something more than this though. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more fundamentally and importantly different about Aurelius-Octavius Jumbleberry-Jones than just his outward demeanour.

  I was musing over what this difference could be, or at least what had caused me to become so convinced of its existence, when I ran into Aurelius for the second time.

  It was late in the evening and while the air was still warm, and the streets still more than adequately lit by the remaining sunlight, the ridiculous heat of the afternoon sun had thankfully subsided. I had been sent out to walk the family dog, Baskerville, who disliked the heat even more than I did, while my parents prepared dinner for us all.

  My father had always wanted a dog. A big dog. My mother, on the other hand, had always hated dogs. All dogs. And so, after years of negotiation, a compromise had been reached; we had adopted a very small dog from a local charity and my father had named him after a very big dog from his favourite book. Baskerville though, could not have been more different from the enormous hound that terrorised the local community in the Sherlock Holmes tale. He was a small, smelly, scruffy little terrier with a coat that was a wiry patchwork of white, black and silver fur. He was also quite the friendliest dog I had ever met in my life, and in the year that had passed since he came to live with us I can honestly say that I had never heard him so much as snarl at a cat, let alone growl or bark at another dog or a human being.

  This incessant friendliness, combined with an undying loyalty that meant he would never stray far from my side, had enabled my father to convince my mother that, at the tender age of eight, I was old enough and responsible enough to walk Baskerville by myself. My mother had reluctantly agreed on two conditions; that I was always sure to be back before dark, and that I promised to never let Baskerville off the lead until and unless we were in the nature reserve.

  Keeping to my word, I unclipped Baskerville’s lead as we walked in through the gate. True to form he barely registered the difference and walked along at my side just as he had when he had had the lead on.

  My father had insisted to my mother that it was important that I was the one who walked Baskerville each day, in order to teach me responsibility. I think it was supposed to have been a chore, a way of showing me that there were bad sides to having a dog as well as good. The truth was that, far from being a chore, walking Baskerville was the good side of having a dog, especially on warm summer evenings. It gave me time alone with my best friend, in the most picturesque of surroundings.

  You see, we were lucky enough to live just a five minute walk from Freshfields Country Park, an enormous nature reserve that encompassed many different streams, ponds, and lakes as well as the immensely vast Hanselwood Forest. All in all it was the perfect escape for dogs and children alike.

  On this particular evening I had decided it was a little late to be venturing into the woods as it would soon be dark, and was instead attempting to catch the crickets that were busy making their evening song while Baskerville sniffed around in the long grass at the forest’s edge. I had just captured a particularly large specimen and was attempting to open my hand enough to examine it without letting it escape when a noise I had never before heard in my life came from behind me, making me jump and allowing the cricket to escape. It was the sound of Baskerville growling.

  “What’s the matter boy?” I said, trying to follow his gaze and find out what could have been so terrible as to have caused such an unprecedented change of mood in my ever-friendly canine. I could see nothing out of the ordinary, yet the growling continued. “What have you seen, Bas?” I asked again as if he might be able to tell me. In truth I was beginning to become quite unnerved by the animal’s unusual behaviour and was contemplating putting him back on his lead. It was then that the dog who never liked to be more than six feet away from me ran as fast as his little legs would carry him into the distance, disappearing into the forest.

  “Baskerville!” I yelled, rooted to the spot by shock. “Bas!”

  But it was no use, he wasn’t coming back. I began to give chase. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I ran at top speed through the trees in pursuit of my four-legged friend. In other circumstances I may have been more concerned, but due to the fact that the forest was still fairly well lit and I could hear exactly which way Baskerville was running, my main emotion was still surprise.

  After a few minutes I came out into a small clearing. I was able to hear Baskerville’s growls much more clearly than before. He was obviously close by, and, judging by the sound he was making, more annoyed than ever. I stopped and scanned the area. I realised we must have ventured further into the forest than I had thought as I knew the outskirts quite well and yet did not recognise this place at all. I was still only able to hear and not see Baskerville and was contemplating leaving the clearing when I heard a familiar voice from within the trees to my left.

  “Kindly disperse vile hound! Go on, away with you, shoo!”

  I negotiated a path through some particularly dense foliage to find Baskerville growling with bared teeth at a tall man who appeared to constitute the source of his upset. A tall man who was only managing to keep his ankles from becoming the little terrier’s next meal through the use of a large red and white striped cane.

  “Shh Baskerville!” I exclaimed breathlessly, putting the dog back on his lead as I did so. “Its okay, you don’t have to be scared. This is my friend, Aurelius.” My reassurances did little to placate the snarling and, in truth, if anybody seemed scared, it was the tall, thin ginger fellow whom Baskerville had had pinned against a tree.

  “Charlie, my boy, what a pleasure to see you,” he said, visibly calmer now that Baskerville was on a lead. “And this must be your little friend?”

  “I’m really sorry about him,” I replied sheepishly. “He’s normally very friendly, I don’t know what’s gotten into him today.”

  “Not to worry, dear boy. I probably have quite a funny smell about me, living out here in the woods. You know how dogs are with scent. In any case, he appears to be quieting down a little now.”

  “Yes, I suppose he... sorry,” I said interrupting myself as I comprehended what had just been said. “Did you say that you live in the woods?”

  “Why yes, in fact my humble abode is only a couple of minutes walk from here, would you like to see it?”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” I replied. In truth I was unsure as to whether accepting a visit to the home of a near stranger without anybody knowing where I was going was such a good idea. Not wanting to offend my new friend however, I sort to come up with a more polite excuse for evasion. “I have to get home for my tea,” I protested weakly.

  “Of course you do, a strapping young man like yourself needs his nutriment,” he smiled. “Which way are you going?”

  I pointed vaguely in the direction from which I had just come.

  “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “My house is on the way, I shall be able to show it to you without making you late.”

  “Oh, okay then,” I agreed, although I was again left with that feeling that I had just been conned without understanding how.

  The three of us made our way back through the undergrowth and into the clearing from which I had just come.

  “Here it is,” said Aurelius.

  There, partially hidden in the trees on the far side of the clearing was a tiny little house. It was not the log cabin I had been expecting however, but a completely circular, white cottage, with a red tiled roof. It was quaintly beautiful and very out of place with its surroundings
. I had no idea how I had failed to notice it before.

  “Would you care to come in for a Milkshake?” asked Aurelius. “I have coconut syrup.”

  This offer was very tempting – coconut milkshakes were my absolute favourite, and nobody I visited ever had them, except my grandmother of course. She was the one who had introduced me to them; they were her favourite as well. However, I didn’t really think my parents would approve of me entering Aurelius’s house, and I really was worried about getting back home for dinner.

  “I really should be getting back,” I protested. “My parents will worry if I’m not home by seven.”

  “Of course they will, how silly of me, clearly no time for milkshakes. Still, there are still twenty-seven minutes until seven o’clock, do you think you might spare five of them to grant me that favour you owe me?”

  Unable to think of a legitimate yet polite reason for avoiding entering the cottage any longer, and buoyed by a curiosity as to what might lay inside, I found myself bending to pass through the tiny red front door of a strangely dressed man whom I barely knew with only a small dog for protection. I would advise you, dear reader, never to do anything similar. Ever. Even with a dog.

  Two things struck me as strange upon entering Aurelius’s cottage; firstly; it seemed to be a lot bigger inside than it had appeared from the outside. And secondly; it wasn’t round.

  Although larger than I had initially imagined, the single-roomed home in which I found myself standing was far from being of a size that one could describe as anything other than pokey. Despite this though, it contained all the clutter of a much larger house. As a result, every surface was entirely covered with various obscure paraphernalia, much of which I could not begin to identify. The tiny dining table, for instance, had its surface almost entirely obscured by, among other things, a small harp, a large vase of unpleasant-looking green liquid and an unfinished game of chess. In the kitchen area, the worktops on either side of the large, old-fashioned cooker were filled with enormous numbers of pots and pans of immensely varying size – some comfortably large enough to boil Baskerville, others no wider than a fifty-pence piece. Perhaps most strangely, there was no television. And no radio either as far as I was able to see. The only form of entertainment the cottage housed stood in its far corner in the form of an enormous, double-stacked bookshelf which had-long since been rendered inadequate in its task and was now surrounded by further piles of texts for which it no longer had any room. A brief perusal of the titles revealed nothing I recognised, indeed many appeared to be written in another language, and some even in another alphabet.

  “Welcome to my home, Charlie,” said Aurelius, spreading his arms before him in an unnecessary illustration of his statement. “Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink?”

  “No thank you,” I replied. “I really can’t stay long, I’m afraid.”

  “Of course you can’t, a busy young fellow like yourself must have a great many things to do, how silly of me. What do you say we get straight down to business then?” he asked, with an apologetic smile which caused me to feel guilty for the constraints I had placed on out time together. “Now, Charlie, let me ask you something; do you like animals?”

  “Oh yes sir, very much so,” I said. “I’d like to be a vet when I grow up, if I’m clever enough.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt that you will be,” Aurelius replied, a smile of encouragement upon his lips. “I’m glad you like animals Charlie, because, you see, not everybody does. I’m afraid some people like to hurt animals, Charlie, and that’s why I need your help today.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It’s probably best if I show you,” Aurelius replied walking around the small green sofa to a desk I had barely registered on my initial perusal the cottage.

  The desk was large and wooden, and was filled with all sorts of test tubes of varying sizes, each filled with liquids of widely varying colours. Against the wall was a row of jars of murky, green water with indiscernible items floating around in them. They reminded me of the pickled eggs at the fish and chip shop. At the forefront of the desk, hidden under a tea towel, stood a small cage, which Aurelius gingerly began to open.

  “Now, stand back a bit there, Charlie, if you don’t mind. Just while we get him out. I’m afraid he’s a little wary of people right now.”

  I did as I was told and took a step back to watch a small, grey squirrel drag itself from inside the cage. As soon as it had fully emerged it became clear that one of its back legs was broken.

  “Say hello to Winston,” said Aurelius.

  “What happened to him?” I asked, trying to be brave and not cry at the sight of an animal in pain, just as my father had said I would have to learn to do if I really wanted to become a vet.

  “I found him hanging upside down from a tree, his leg caught in a trap.”

  “Who would do something like that?” I asked in disbelief.

  “I don’t know, Charlie, I really don’t. I guess some people just don’t care about animals the way we do.”

  “You can fix it though, right?”

  “I’m afraid not, Heaven knows I’ve tried, but it’s just too badly broken.”

  “So shouldn’t we take him to the vet?” I almost yelled, angry with desperation.

  “I’m afraid they won’t be able to do anything either.”

  “So he’s just going to die?” I asked, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat and let the tears which had formed in my eyes roll down my cheeks.

  “Well, that’s up to you, Charlie.”

  “Me?” I repeated incredulously, the question catching me so by surprise that my upset was temporarily forgotten. “What can I do?”

  “I think you know what you can do, Charlie. I think you’ve done it before.”

  For a moment I simply stared at Aurelius blankly, genuinely unaware of what he was talking about, concern for the oddly-dressed stranger’s sanity once again entering my mind. And then, just as I was beginning to wonder if Baskerville and I shouldn’t make a run for it, it came to me...

  Two years before, just after my sixth birthday, my mother had taken me shopping to spend the last of my birthday money. It had been a very enjoyable afternoon for the both of us and I had managed to eek out my money so successfully that I was returning home with a model aeroplane, two jigsaw puzzles, and three colouring books, and had even had enough money left over to treat us both to an ice cream. We were almost home, and had been rushing to finish our cornets before our return so that my father would not complain at his missing out, when we had seen a cat carrying a small sparrow in its mouth. Dropping my ice cream instantly, I chased the cat into a narrow gap between some garages where, after much yelling, it dropped the bird. I picked up the tiny animal and took it to my mother. It had been quite badly injured, with blood covering its wing and chest, and although my mother agreed to drive me to the vet with it, she made it clear that the little bird was unlikely to survive its injuries and that I shouldn’t expect any miracles. She told me that it was unlikely that the vet would be able to do any more than put it out of its misery.

  I held the sparrow (who I had named Matilda, after a character in a book I had been reading) tightly in my hands the whole way to the vet’s, desperately hoping that it would live, while knowing it may well not. But then, on our arrival at the vetinary surgery, the strangest thing happened. I was walking across the car park, still holding Matilda, and willing her to be okay in my mind when I felt a sudden shock in my fingers. It is hard to describe how it felt. It was almost like the shock of static electricity, mixed with a pins-and-needles type feeling, mixed with an itch. It caused me to feel momentarily as if I were detached from my own fingers. The feeling was so unexpected that I let go of Matilda with the shock, instantly looking to the floor expecting to see her hit the ground and hurt herself further, but, to my surprise, she hadn’t fallen. Instead she had fl
own off across the car park and into a nearby tree where she proceeded to sing her little heart out.

  “It’s a miracle,” I said to my mother.

  “There’s no such thing as miracles, Charlie” she insisted. “She must not have been as badly hurt as we thought, that’s all.”

  “But, mum,” I protested. “You saw her, her wing was broken. How could...”

  “I don’t know, Charlie,” my mother interrupted crossly. “Now, let’s just be glad she’s okay and get ourselves home. This dinner won’t cook itself you know.”

  “But...”

  “I don’t want to speak about this again, Charlie,” she snapped, her eyes filled with a mixture of anger and fear. And we never did. In time I simply forgot all about it, the memory lying dormant somewhere at the back of my mind ready to be awoken by a strange man and an injured squirrel.

  But that couldn’t be what he was talking about, could it? How could Aurelius, who until seven days before had been a total stranger to me, possibly have known about that? I had never told anybody about what had happened. And yet, at the same time, I could think of nothing else to which he could be referring.

  Without either one of us saying a word, I took a step toward the wounded squirrel. Cautiouslyly, with fingers trembling from the fear of being bitten, I reached out and touched the wounded leg.

  “It’s okay,” I whispered soothingly, as much to calm myself as the injured rodent. “It’s all going to be ok.”

  And then I just thought. Hard. I tried to just will the leg to fix itself. For a long time nothing happened. The squirrel began to grow restless and wriggle around. I was becoming angry. At one moment, angry with myself that I was doing something wrong, the next with Aurelius for making me believe that I had the ability to do anything at all. I remember thinking why won’t you just work damn it? Matilda got better, why won’t you?