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 Chapter 1: The Wrong Door
This is a story about something that happened
long ago when your grandfather was a child. It
is a very important story because it shows how all the
comings and goings between our own world and the
land of Narnia first began.
In those days Mr Sherlock Holmes was still living
in Baker Street and the Bastables were looking for
treasure in the Lewisham Road. In those days, if you
were a boy you had to wear a stiff Eton collar every
day, and schools were usually nastier than now.
But meals were nicer; and as for sweets, I won't tell
you how cheap and good they were, because it
would only make your mouth water in vain. And in
those days there lived in London a girl called
Polly Plummer.
She lived in one of a long row of houses which
were all joined together. One morning she was out in
the back garden when a boy scrambled up from the
garden next door and put his face over the wall. Polly
was very surprised because up till now there had
never been any children in that house, but only Mr
Ketterley and Miss Ketterley, a brother and sister, old
bachelor and old maid, living together. So she looked
up, full of curiosity. The face of the strange boy was
very grubby. It could hardly have been grubbier if he
had first rubbed his hands in the earth, and then had
a good cry, and then dried his face with his hands. As
a matter of fact, this was very nearly what he had
been doing.
"Hullo," said Polly.
"Hullo," said the boy. "What's your name?"
"Polly," said Polly. "What's yours?"
"Digory," said the boy.
"I say, what a funny name!" said Polly.
"It isn't half so funny as Polly," said Digory.
"Yes, it is," said Polly.
"No, it isn't," said Digory.
"At any rate I do wash my face," said Polly.
"Which is what you need to do; especially after-"
and then she stopped. She had been going to say
"After you've been blubbing," but she thought that
wouldn't be polite.
"All right, I have then," said Digory in a much
louder voice, like a boy who was so miserable that he
didn't care who knew he had been crying. "And so
would you," he went on, "if you'd lived all your life
in the country and had a pony, and a river at the
bottom of the garden, and then been brought to live
in a beastly Hole like this."
"London isn't a Hole," said Polly indignantly. But
the boy was too wound up to take any notice of her,
and he went on
"And if your father was away in India and you
had to come and live with an Aunt and an Uncle
who's mad (who would like that?) and if the reason
was that they were looking after your Mother and
if your Mother was ill and was going to going to
die." Then his face went the wrong sort of shape as
it does if you're trying to keep back your tears.
"I didn't know. I'm sorry," said Polly humbly. And
then, because she hardly knew what to say, and also
to turn Digory's mind to cheerful subjects, she asked:
"Is Mr Ketterley really mad?"
"Well, either he's mad," said Digory, "or there's
some other mystery. He has a study on the top floor
and Aunt Letty says I must never go up there. Well,
that looks fishy to begin with. And then there's
another thing. Whenever he tries to say anything to
me at meal times he never even tries to talk to her
she always shuts him up. She says, 'Don't worry the
boy, Andrew', or, 'I'm sure Digory doesn't want to
hear about that', or else, 'Now, Digory, wouldn't you
like to go out and play in the garden?'"
"What sort of things does he try to say?"
"I don't know. He never gets far enough. But
there's more than that. One night it was last night
in fact as I was going past the foot of the attic stairs
on my way to bed (and I don't much care for going
past them either) I'm sure I heard a yell."
"Perhaps he keeps a mad wife shut up there."
"Yes, I've thought of that."
"Or perhaps he's a coiner."
"Or he might have been a pirate, like the man at
the beginning of Treasure Island, and be always
hiding from his old shipmates."
"How exciting!" said Polly, "I never knew your
house was so interesting."
"You may think it interesting," said Digory. "But
you wouldn't like it if you had to sleep there. How
would you like to lie awake listening for Uncle
Andrew's step to come creeping along the passage to
your room? And he has such awful eyes."
That was how Polly and Digory got to know one
another: and as it was just the beginning of the
summer holidays and neither of them was going to
the sea that year, they met nearly every day.
Their adventures began chiefly because it was one
of the wettest and coldest summers there had been
for years. That drove them to do indoor things: you
might say, indoor exploration. It is wonderful how
much exploring you can do with a stump of candle
in a big house, or in a row of houses. Polly had
discovered long ago that if you opened a certain little
door in the box-room attic of her house you would
find the cistern and a dark place behind it which you
could get into by a little careful climbing. The dark
place was like a long tunnel with brick wall on one
side and sloping roof on the other. In the roof there
were little chunks of light between the slates. There
was no floor in this tunnel: you had to step from
rafter to rafter, and between them there was only
plaster. If you stepped on this you would find yourself
falling through the ceiling of the room below. Polly
had used the bit of the tunnel just beside the cistern
as a smugglers' cave. She had brought up bits of
old packing cases and the seats of broken kitchen
chairs, and things of that sort, and spread them across
from rafter to rafter so as to make a bit of floor.
Here she kept a cash-box containing various
treasures, and a story she was writing and usually a
few apples. She had often drunk a quiet bottle of
ginger-beer in there: the old bottles made it look
more like a smugglers' cave.
Digory quite liked the cave (she wouldn't let
him see the story) but he was more interested
in exploring.
"Look here," he said. "How long does this
tunnel go on for? I mean, does it stop where your
house ends?"
"No," said Polly. "The walls don't go out to the
roof. It goes on. I don't know how far."
"Then we could get the length of the whole row
of houses."
"So we could," said Polly. "And oh, I say!"
"What?"
"We could get into the other houses."
"Yes, and get taken up for burglars! No thanks."
"Don't be so jolly clever. I was thinking of the
house beyond yours."
"What about it?"
"Why, it's the empty one. Daddy says it's always
been empty since we came here."
"I suppose we ought to have a look at it then,"
said Digory. He was a good deal more excited than
you'd have thought from the way he spoke. For of
course he was thinking, just as you would have been,
of all the reasons why the house might have been
empty so long. So was Polly. Neither of them said the
word "haunted". And both felt that once the thing
had been suggested, it would be feeble not to do it.
"Shall we go and try it now?" said Digory.
"All right," said Polly.
"Don't if you'd rather not," said Digory.
"I'm game if you are," said she.
"How are we to know we're in the next house
but one?"
They decided they would have to go out into the
box-room and walk across it taking steps as long as
the steps from one rafter to the next. That would give
them an idea of how many rafters went to a room.
Then they would allow about four more for the
passage between the two attics in Polly's house, and
then the same number for the maid's bedroom as for
the box-room. That would give them the length of
the house. When they had done that distance twice
they would be at the end of Digory's house; any door
they came to after that would let them into an attic
of the empty house.
"But I don't expect it's really empty at all,"
said Digory.
"What do you expect?"
"I expect someone lives there in secret, only
coming in and out at night, with a dark lantern.
We shall probably discover a gang of desperate
criminals and get a reward. It's all rot to say a house
would be empty all those years unless there was
some mystery."
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