A lot of doctors came to see Clarence, too, and put electrodes on his brain and tried to make him read things. But when the others explained that Clarence’s brain had been damaged when he was little and that he was very happy as he was and that they all loved him, they very sensibly left him alone.
With everything going so well, with messages coming in that the hunters had been turned out of Farley Towers and the proper owner was coming back, with Mr. Bellamy phoning to say that the children could stay as long as necessary, Con and Ellen should have been as happy as could be. In fact, they were worried sick.
And what they were worried about was Ambrose.
In the hospital, when the yetis first came, they hadn’t taken too much notice of Ambrose. He didn’t have pneumonia like Lucy or a gaping wound like Uncle Otto. He wasn’t old like Grandma and bits of his brain weren’t missing like Clarence’s. A bit of rest and warmth, thought the staff, and Ambrose, who was young and strong, would soon be himself again.
But Ambrose didn’t get well and strong, and Ambrose wasn’t himself again. When Con pointed out to the nurses that he wasn’t eating — wasn’t eating at all—they told him not to worry. “Young people often go off their food, especially after a shock. Just take no notice.”
So the children tried not to make a fuss as Ambrose sent away trayfuls of egg and chips, of castle puddings and banana custard. They tried not to worry when Ambrose lay there with his blue eye dull and sunken and his brown eye glazed and staring at the ceiling. They tried not to worry when Ambrose wouldn’t even look up at the telly, though they were showing a Tom and Jerry cartoon.
“Shall I tell you a story, Ambrose?” Con begged.
But Ambrose just shook his great shaggy head and sighed.
From the first moment she had found him, walleyed and crumpled and desperate to be loved, Lady Agatha had known that Ambrose wasn’t quite like the others. “I really think you could kill Ambrose by thinking unkind thoughts about him,” she had said to Con in the valley of Nanvi Dar. Since then, Ambrose had seen people come over the ice with guns; he had seen his uncle shot; he had known hatred.
And now he turned his face to the wall and prepared to die.
In a week or so the doctors and nurses became worried, too. There was talk of force-feeding and intravenous drips and things that made the children’s blood run cold when they heard of them. And on the news bulletins, now, it was announced that though the other four yetis were improving steadily, there was slight concern about the youngest, Ambrose the Abominable.
After a few more days, the “slight concern” was changed to “serious concern.”
At night, the doctors made Ellen sleep in a spare room because she was so exhausted from the strain. But nothing could shift Con. He sat by Ambrose’s bed murmuring to him, telling him jokes, begging him for Lady Agatha’s sake, for Father’s sake, to make an effort — to eat something, to get well. But Ambrose just said, “People are not my brothers,” and grew steadily weaker and more lifeless and ill. Until a day came when the television newscaster looked out from the screen in a very serious way and said: “It is feared that there is little hope for the youngest of the yetis, Ambrose the Abominable, now seriously ill at Park Square Hospital, London.”
In the silent hospital, Con sat by Ambrose’s bed, trying to believe the unbelievable. There was no hope. It was going to happen. Ambrose the Abominable was going to die.
All day, children had thronged the square outside and stood silently, their faces turned to the hospital windows, waiting for news. Now it was night. Out in the corridor the nurse on duty sat in her glass cubicle guarding the white, disinfected room where Ambrose lay.
Inside the room there was no sound — even the soughing of the ventilator had ceased. Ambrose’s eyes were closed; his breath would not have stirred a feather. It could not be long now.
Suddenly in the corridor outside there was a scuffle. Then a voice — high and sharp and bossy — saying, “Let me go! Let me go at once!”
The door opened and a girl came into the room. She was about Con’s own age, with long fair hair and gray eyes. She was wearing faded jeans and an old sweater and a haversack hung over one shoulder.
“Is that Ambrose?” she said, still in that loud, high voice, pointing to the bed.
Con nodded, frowning at her to be quiet. Where on earth had he heard a voice like that? And why was her face so familiar?
“Who are you?” he said.
“I’m Aggie. I came as soon as I heard. They’d walled me up in some beastly boarding school in Switzerland and I had to get back.”
She went over to the bed and stood looking down at Ambrose.
“He’s bad, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Con had stopped trying to think where he could have seen the girl before. What did it matter? What did anything matter?
Aggie put down her haversack. Then she bent over Ambrose and, still in that high, clear, governessy voice, said: “And what, pray, do you think you are doing?”
Con glared at her. No one had spoken above a whisper in that room for days. Yet something held him back from interfering.
“Open your eyes at once!” the bossy voice went on. “And your ear lids. You’re supposed to have been brought up as a Farlingham. Let’s see you behave like one.”
To Con’s amazement, a flicker passed over Ambrose’s face. A chink of blue appeared, then a chink of brown. The left ear lid wavered …
“That’s better. And what does one do when a lady comes into the room?”
“Stand … up,” came a thread of a voice from the bed.
“Quite right. So you can sit up for a start.”
And, unbelievably, Ambrose really did begin to move up on the pillow, almost to raise his head.
“I suppose you realize that dying is Very Bad Manners,” the relentless girl went on.
“Is … it?”
“Certainly it is. What are manners for?”
“Making … people … comfortable,” Ambrose managed to bring out.
“Exactly. Well, who’s going to be comfortable if you die?” said Aggie briskly. “Sad, that’s what they’re going to be. What’s that by your bed?”
“It’s … my … milk.”
“Your milk! Standing there gathering dust! I’m surprised at you, Ambrose. Drink it up at once,” said Aggie, sounding more than ever like an old-fashioned governess.
“I … can’t.”
“Can’t, Ambrose? Or do you mean won’t?”
She took the glass and put it in Ambrose’s hands. Then she raised his head from the pillow and put her own hand under it for support. And Con, who had understood at last what it was all about, looked on, blinking back tears, while Ambrose said weakly, “Yes, Lady Agatha. I’m sorry, Lady Agatha,” and drank his milk. Every single drop.
Chapter 17
Home
S SOON AS IT WAS CLEAR THAT AMBROSE WAS going to get well again, Aggie went down to Farley Towers to get it ready for the yetis.
Farley Towers belonged to her. Her real name was Lady Agatha Caroline Emma Hope Farlingham, and since her father had died in a sailing accident and her mother had married again, Aggie had inherited the estate. But when Con tried to explain to Ambrose that Aggie was Lady Agatha’s great-great-niece, Ambrose just shook his head. “No, she’s our own Lady Agatha come back again,” he said. “You see, Lady Agatha was awfully tired of her old body, she told us, so she just died and went up to heaven quickly and came down again in a nice new one.”