Free Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones Page B

Stock’s particular, privileged walled vegetable garden. It was soorderly and clean and square that it was more like a room that had lost its roof than a garden. Aidan could see Mr Stock’s hatted head moving about inside the greenhouse in one corner. He veered off towards the opposite corner and tiptoed around a bed of broccoli that seemed to be trying to grow into oak trees, hoping not to be seen. He didn’t want to get Andrew punished again. But, my goodness, things grew huge in this garden! There were strawberries the size of pears and a vegetable marrow, reposing in a rich, black bed of its own, that reminded Aidan of a small dinosaur; then he thought, No, what it is, is an ecological zeppelin. Beyond it, runner beans half a metre long trailed from tall, tall peasticks.
    Beyond these, Aidan came upon Shaun busily digging in another rich, black bed, with the cement bags waiting on the path to be buried.
    Oo-er! Aidan thought. Crisis! “Er…” he said. “Shaun…”
    Shaun just grinned at him. “Good place,” he said and went on digging.
    Aidan could think of only one way of stopping Shaun. He ran to find Andrew. When he put his face round the study door, Stashe was alone in there. She gave Aidan one of her hundred-watt smiles. “What’s up?”
    “I need Professor Hope,” Aidan said. “Urgently.”
    “In the living room,” Stashe said. “I overloaded him and he went to play the piano.”
    Aidan tore off there. But by the time he got to the living room, and Andrew had looked up from sorting music out of the piano stool, it was already too late. Mr Stock’s voice crashed like thunder in the distance.
    “My
sparrowgrass!
That hulking, brainless looby of yours is DIGGING UP MY SPARROWGRASS BED!”
    And the voice of Mrs Stock shrieked back, sharp as daggers, “And what if he is? I don’t know what you grow it for! Not
one stalk
of asparagus have you brought into this kitchen
ever
!”
    “It’s for the
Fête
, you stupid cow! GO AND TELL HIM TO STOP!”
    “
You
tell him. It’s
your
asparagus!”
    “Oh dear!” Andrew said. “Is that what you were coming to tell me about?” Aidan nodded. He was thoroughly out of breath. “I think,” Andrew said, “the only thing to do is to keep our heads down. Why—?”
    “You told Shaun to bury those bags of cement,” Aidan panted. “And then
I
told him not in the middle of the lawn.”
    Andrew grinned. “Then it’s too late to do anything but make bets on what our punishment’s going to be.”
    Aidan discovered that he really, really liked Andrew. Upto then, he had been too shy of him to know. He grinned back. “He’s got some broccoli like little oak trees.”
    “No, rhubarb,” Andrew said. “I bet on rhubarb. He’s got some that’s taller than you are.”
    In fact, what they got was asparagus. Only minutes after Mrs Stock had collected Shaun and stormed off in a dudgeon, the asparagus was sitting on the kitchen table in an enormous box half filled with earth.
    “Double punishment,” Andrew said cheerfully. “Mrs Stock didn’t even wait to make cauliflower cheese. Do you like asparagus?”
    “I’ve never had any,” Aidan said. “How do you cook it?”
    “You can steam, roast or boil it,” Andrew said, picking about in the box. “My grandfather used to love it because you’re allowed to dip it in butter and eat it with your fingers. But I’m afraid that Mr Stock has let this lot get too big and woody. Let’s just wash it and put it on the woodshed roof. Someone might like it.”
    Yes, and I can’t wait to see
who!
Aidan thought.
    Andrew took the usual kitchen chair out and stood on it, while Aidan passed him dripping green bundles of asparagus they had washed in the biggest iron pan in the kitchen.
    They had hardly started when Stashe came hurryingaround the corner, staggering a bit in her elegant shoes. “It’s all fixed and I’m just off now,” she was saying, but she stopped and giggled when she saw what they were doing. “Oh,