Arthur Crumb had been taught to live a very quiet
life. Even when he was a grown-up man
of considerable years he never had a single adventure. He lived on his own in a grey little apartment,
in a grey block of flats, on the edge of a large smoky city. He tried his best not to upset people, and
liked it most of all when nobody even noticed he was there. He liked to eat sensible, healthy food that
didn’t have too much flavour and didn’t make too much noise, but he would eat
sprouts on Sunday as a special treat as long as they weren’t too crunchy. Every morning Arthur would get into his quiet
little car and drive to work slowly and carefully. He always parked in the same place and he was never late. He worked in a grey little corner of a big grey
office, filling in forms all day long.
The office was a busy place but Arthur had no friends there, and he
hardly ever spoke to anybody. Whenever an adventure happened nearby him Arthur
would find a way to carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. On the day that meteors fell from the sky he
walked all the way to the shops looking only at the ground. He didn’t seem to notice a thing. On the day of the earthquake great cracks opened
in the ground and old ladies fell in, never to be seen again. Arthur looked only at the sky and walked
along, whistling a quiet tune to himself. When bandits ran through the office, stealing
everybody’s packed lunches, he was to be found quietly sitting on the loo,
completely unaware. That was how he
liked it. When the giant hedgehog ran through the streets,
scaring cats and squashing people, he was reading his newspaper and didn’t even
look up. Every evening he passed the time watching the
news on the TV, and on Thursdays he would watch a documentary about sprouts he
had recorded with his video recorder. He always drank a mug of cocoa and went to bed at
exactly the same time, every single night.
As he snuggled up in bed he always felt glad that it had been a nice,
quiet, ordinary day, with no adventures and no strange or mysterious
happenings. But when he was asleep… Arthur always had the same dream. He would dream that he was climbing the
stairs of the big grey block of flats, all the way up, until he was standing on
the roof. There, he would see the moon shining in the night
sky. Below him would be the clouds, and
through the clouds he would see the big grey city stretching away into the
distance, silvery and strange. Then, slowly, and quietly, Arthur would stretch
his arms out at his sides, and he would float up into the sky. He would fly. Over the rooftops and into the night he went,
ducking and swooping gracefully, slowly and quietly, surprising the night owls
and smiling a quiet, happy smile. And
he wouldn’t come home until morning. The End ©Ian
Moore 1999
