‘Who is he anyway?’ they were whispering.
‘A stranger.’
‘We don’t like strangers.’
‘Kind of funny-looking too, isn’t he?’
‘Short for his age.’
‘Mightn’t have had his growth spurt yet.’
‘Nice hair though.’
The voices grew more and more numerous, although they never rose above a whisper, and soon he couldn’t make out any of the words at all, as they were all speaking at the same time and jumbling them up together into a language he didn’t understand. They were closing in on him now, and he held his hands up in fright, closed his eyes, spun round and counted to three, thinking that none of this could possibly be happening and that when he took his hands away and opened his eyes again, he better just scream as loudly as he could and then surely someone would come and rescue him.
One,
Two,
Three—
‘Hello,’ said a man’s voice then, the only voice to be heard now, for the chorus of puppets had become immediately silent. ‘And who might you be?’
Chapter Five
The Old Man
Noah opened his eyes. It no longer felt as if all the puppets were crowding in on him, preparing to bury him beneath the weight of their bodies. The muttering had gone. The whispers had vanished. Instead they all seemed to have returned to their rightful places on the shelves, and he realized how ridiculous it was even to have thought they were watching him or talking about him. They weren’t real, after all; they were only puppets. But what was real was the elderly man who had spoken to him and who was now standing only a few feet away, smiling a little, as if he had been expecting this visit for a very long time and was pleased that it had finally come to pass. He was holding a small block of wood in his hands and was chipping away at it with a small chisel as he stood there. Noah swallowed quickly out of nervousness and, without meaning to, let out a sudden cry of surprise.
‘Oh dear,’ said the man, looking up from his work. ‘There’s no need for that, surely.’
‘But there was no one here a moment ago,’ said Noah, looking around in astonishment. The door through which he had entered the shop was still nowhere to be seen, so where this man had appeared from was a mystery to him. ‘And I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ said the man, who was very old, even older than Noah’s grandfather, with a mop of yellow hair that looked like porridge mixed with maize. He had very bright eyes that Noah found himself staring into, but the skin on his face was as wrinkled as any the boy had ever seen. ‘I was downstairs, working, that’s all. And then I heard footsteps. So I thought I’d better come up and see whether a customer needed my attention.’
‘I heard footsteps too,’ said Noah. ‘But I’m sure they were your footsteps, climbing the stairs.’
‘Oh dear me, no,’ said the old man, shaking his head. ‘I could hardly have heard my own footsteps, then come up to investigate, could I? They must have been your footsteps.’
‘But you were downstairs. You said as much.’
‘Did I?’ asked the old man, frowning and stroking his chin as he thought about it. ‘I don’t remember. It’s all so long ago now, isn’t it? And I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it once was. Perhaps I heard the bell over the door ring.’
‘But there was no bell,’ said Noah, and at that precise moment, as if it had just remembered its job, a cheerful ping sounded from above the door, which had now reappeared a few feet behind him.
‘It’s old too,’ explained the old man with an apologetic shrug. ‘You wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t the only thing it had to do all day, but it forgets sometimes. That might not even have been you it was ringing for. It could be for a customer from last year.’
Noah turned round, open-mouthed, and stared at the bell in surprise before turning back and swallowing loudly, unsure what he could possibly say to make sense of what had just taken place.
‘Anyway, I’m sorry I kept you waiting for so long,’ said the old man, ‘but I’m afraid I move like a snail these days. It’s not like it was when I was a young man. You wouldn’t have seen me for dust back then. Dmitri Capaldi had nothing on me!’
‘It’s all right,’ said Noah, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I haven’t been here for very long at all. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock when I came inside and— Oh!’ He glanced at his watch, which told him that it was almost noon. ‘But it can’t be!’
‘I’m sure it can,’ said the old man. ‘You just lost track of time, that’s all.’
‘A whole hour?’
‘It happens. I lost track of a year once, if you can believe that. I put it down here somewhere, and when I went looking for it later, it was nowhere to be found. I always feel it will show up one of these days though, just when I least expect it.’
Noah frowned, not sure he’d heard this correctly. ‘How does someone lose track of a year?’ he asked.
‘Oh, it’s easier than you might think,’ said the old man, putting down the block of wood he’d been holding in his left hand and the chisel he’d been holding in his right as he took his glasses off and wiped the lenses with a rainbow-coloured handkerchief. ‘Although perhaps it wasn’t a year at all; perhaps it was an ear.’ He pressed both hands to the side of his head and tugged on his earlobes. ‘No, all in place there,’ he said, sounding satisfied. ‘It was definitely a year. Not to worry.’
Noah stared at the old man and tried to understand what he was talking about. None of it made any sense to him and he suspected that asking questions would only make matters even more confusing.
‘It must have been all the toys,’ said Noah, pointing at the walls around him. ‘I was looking at them for a long time, I suppose. And all the puppets. There are so many of them, they distracted me.’
‘That’s right,’ said the old man with a sigh. ‘Blame the puppets! People always do.’
‘I’m not blaming them,’ said Noah. ‘I just mean that I got caught up looking at them, that’s all. They’re so lifelike. And time ran away with itself.’
‘The important thing is that you’re here now,’ said the old man, a great smile spreading across his face. ‘Do you know, it’s been so long since I had a customer, I’m not even sure I know what to do with one. I’m afraid we have no official greeter any more.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Noah, who always felt sorry for people who had to stand outside shops saying, Welcome to … Welcome to … Welcome to … It seemed like such a miserable way to pass the time.
‘Of course, if I’d made it upstairs quicker, then I could have invited you to lunch, but it’s too late for that now.’
Noah’s face fell. His stomach was rumbling audibly and he had to cough to cover the embarrassing sounds it was making. Then he changed his mind, thinking that if the old man heard it rumbling, he might change his mind and feed him after all.
‘Anyway, now that you are here,’ continued the old man, ‘I’m sure there must be a reason for your visit. Did you want to buy something?’