by Mary Norton
“But have you ever seen a borrower?” cried Kate impatiently. “Did you ever see any of these ones down at the big house?”
“Them as they had in the stables?”
“No, the ones who lived under the kitchen.”
“Oh, them,” he said, “smoked out, they were. But it ain’t true—” he went on, raising his face suddenly, and Kate saw that it was a sad face when it was not smiling.
“What isn’t true?”
“What they say: that I set the ferret on ’em. I wouldn’t. Not me. Not once I knew they was borrowers.”
“Oh,” exclaimed Kate, kneeling up on her chair with excitement. “You were the boy with the ferret?”
Old Tom looked back at her—his sideways look. “I were a boy,” he admitted guardedly, “and I did have a ferret.”
“But they did escape, didn’t they?” Kate persisted anxiously. “Mrs. May says they escaped by the grating.”
“That’s right,” said old Tom. “Made off across the gravel and up the bank.”
“But you don’t know for certain,” said Kate, “you didn’t see them go. Or could you see them from the window?”
“I knows for certain, all right,” said old Tom. “True enough I saw ’em from the window, but that ain’t how—” he hesitated, looking at Kate; amused he seemed but still wary.
“Please, tell me. Please—” begged Kate.
The old man glanced upward at the ceiling. “You know what he is?” he said, inclining his head.
“Mr. Beguid? A lawyer.”
The old man nodded. “That’s right. And you don’t want nothing put down in writing.”
“I don’t understand,” said Kate.
The old man sighed and took up his whittling knife. “What I tells you, you tells her, and he puts it all down in writing.”
“Mrs. May wouldn’t tell,” said Kate. “She’s—”
“She’s hand in glove with him, that’s what I maintain. And it’s no good telling me no different. Seemingly now, you can’t die no more where you reckons to die. And you know for why?” he said, glaring at Kate. “Because of what’s put down in writing.” And with a curiously vicious twist he doubled the poor stick. Kate stared at him nonplused. “If I promised not to tell?” she said at last, in a timid voice.
“Promises!” exclaimed the old man; staring at Kate, he jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. “Her-r-r great uncle, old Sir Montague that was, promised me this cottage. ‘It’s for your lifetime, Tom,’ he says. Promises!” he repeated angrily, and he almost spat the word. “Promises is piecrust.”
Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “All right,” she said, “then don’t tell me!”
Tom’s expression changed, almost as violently. “Now don’t ’ee cry, little maid,” he begged, surprised and distressed.
But Kate, to her shame, could not stop; the tears ran down her cheeks and she felt the familiar hot feeling at the tip of her nose as though it was swelling. “I was only wondering,” she gasped, fumbling for a handkerchief, “if they were all right . . . and how they managed . . . and whether they found the badger’s set . . .”
“They found the badger’s set all right,” said old Tom. “Now, don’t ’ee cry, my maiden, not no more.”
“I’ll stop in a minute,” Kate assured him in a stifled voice, blowing her nose.
“Now look ’ee here,” the old man went on—very upset he sounded. “You dry your eyes and stop your weeping and old Tom’ll show you summat.” Awkwardly he got up off his stool and hovered over her, drooping his shoulders like some great protective bird. “Something you’d like. How’s that, eh?”
“It’s all right,” Kate said, giving a final scrub. She stuffed away her handkerchief and smiled up at him. “I’ve stopped.”
Old Tom put his hand in his pocket and then, throwing a cautious glance toward the ceiling, he seemed to change his mind: for a moment it had sounded as though the footsteps had been moving toward the stairs. “It’s all right,” whispered Kate, after listening; and he fumbled again and drew out a battered tin box, the kind in which pipe-smokers keep tobacco, and with his knotted fingers fumbled awkwardly with the lid. At last, it was open, and breathing heavily, he turned it over and slid something out. “There—” he said, and on his calloused palm Kate saw the tiny book.
“Oh—” she breathed, staring incredulously.
“Take it up,” said old Tom, “it won’t bite you.” And, as gingerly Kate put out her hand, he added, smiling, “’Tis Arrietty’s diary.”
But Kate knew this, even before she saw the faded gilt lettering, Diary and Proverb Book, and in spite of the fact that it was weather-stained and time-worn, that when she opened it the bulk of its pages slipped out from between the covers, and the ink or pencil or sap—or whatever Arrietty had used to write with—had faded to various shades of brown and sepia and a curious sickly yellow. It had opened at August the 31st, and the proverb, Kate saw, was “Better to suffer ill, than do ill,” and below this the bald statement “Disastrous Earthquake at Charleston, U. S., 1866” and on the page itself, in Arrietty’s scratchy handwriting, were three entries for the three successive years:
Spiders in storeroom.
Mrs. D. dropped pan. Soup—leak in ceiling.
Talked to Spiller.
Who was Spiller, Kate wondered? August 31st? That was after they left the big house. Spiller, she realized, must be part of the new life, the life out-of-doors. At random, she turned back a few pages:
Mother bilious.
Threaded green beads.
Climbed hedge. Eggs bad.
Climbed hedge? Arrietty must have gone bird’s-nesting—and the eggs would be bad in (Kate glanced at the date). . . yes, it was still August, and the motto for that day was “Grasp all, lose all.”
“Where did you get this book?” Kate asked aloud in a stunned voice.
“I found it,” said old Tom.
“But where?” cried Kate.
“Here,” said old Tom, and Kate saw his eyes stray in the direction of the fireplace.
“In this house,” she exclaimed in an unbelieving voice and, staring up at his mysterious old face, Mr. Beguid’s unkind words came back to her suddenly, “the biggest liar in five counties.” But here, in her hand, was the actual book: she stared down at it, trying to sort out her thoughts.
“You want I should show you summat else?” he asked her, suddenly and a little pathetically, as though aware of her secret doubts. “Come you here,” and getting up slowly from her chair, Kate followed like a sleep walker as he went toward the fireplace.
Old Tom stooped down and, panting a little, he tugged at the heavy wood-box. As it shifted a board fell forward with a slight clatter and the old man, alarmed by the clatter, glanced at the ceiling; but Kate, leaning forward, saw the board had covered a sizeable rat-hole gouged out of the skirting and gothic in shape, like an opened church door.
“See?” said old Tom, after listening a moment—a little breathless from tugging he sounded. “Goes right through to the scullery: they’d got fire this side and water t’other. Years, they lived here.”
Kate knelt down, staring into the hole. “Here? In your house?” Her voice became more and more scared and unbelieving. “You mean . . . Pod? And Homily . . . and little Arrietty?”
“Them, too,” said old Tom, “in the end, as it were.”
“But didn’t they live out-of-doors? That’s what Arrietty was longing to do—”
“They lived out-of-doors all right”—he gave a short laugh—“if you can call it living. Or come to that, if you can call it outdoors! But you take a look at this,” he went on softly with a note in his voice of thinly disguised pride, “. . . goes right up inside the wall, stairs they got and all betwixt the lath and the plaster. Proper tenement, they got here—six floors—and water on every floor. See that?” he asked, laying his hand on a rusty pipe. “Comes down from the cistern in the roof, that does, and goes on through to the scullery. Tapped it, they did, in six diff
erent places . . . and never a drop or a leak!”
He was silent a moment, lost in thought, before he propped back the board again and shoved the wood-box back into place. “Years they lived here,” he said affectionately and he sighed a little as he straightened up, dusting his hands together.
“But who lived here?” Kate whispered hurriedly (the footsteps above had crossed the landing and were now heard approaching the head of the stairs). “You don’t mean my ones? You said they found the badger’s set.”
“They found the badger’s set all right,” said old Tom, and gave his short laugh.
“But how do you know? Who told you?” Twittering with anxiety she followed behind him as he limped to his stool.
Old Tom sat down, selected a stick and, with maddening deliberation, tested the edge of his knife. “She told me,” he said at last, and he cut the stick in three lengths.
“You mean you talked to Arrietty!”
He made a warning sign at her raised voice, lifting his eyebrows and jerking his head. The footsteps, Kate heard, were clumping now down the wooden treads of the stairs. “You don’t talk to that one,” he whispered, “not while she’s got a tongue to wag.”
Kate went on staring: if he had hit her on the head with a log from the log box, she could not have appeared more stunned. “Then she must have told you everything!” she gasped.
“Hush!” said the old man, his eye on the door. Mrs. May and Mr. Beguid, it seemed, had reached the bottom of the stairs, and from the sound of their voices had turned again into the scullery for a last look round. “Two fitted basins, at least,” Mrs. May was heard saying, in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Pretty nigh on everything, I reckon,” whispered old Tom. “She’d creep out most evenings, pretty regular.” He smiled as he spoke, glancing toward the hearth. And Kate, watching his face, suddenly saw the picture: the firelit cottage, the lonely boy at his whittling and, almost invisible in the shadows this tiny creature, seated maybe on a matchbox: the flute-y, monotonous voice going on and on and on . . . after a while, Kate thought, he would hardly have heard it: it would merge and become part of the room’s living stillness, like the simmer of the kettle or the ticking of the clock. Night after night; week after week; month after month; year, perhaps, after year . . . Yes, Kate realized (staring in the same stunned way even though, at this minute, Mrs. May and Mr. Beguid came back to the room still talking loudly of wash-basins), Arrietty must indeed have told Tom everything!
Chapter Four
“No tale loses in the telling.”
Longfellow, American Poet, died 1882; also Walt Whitman, 1892
[Extract from Arrietty’s Diary and Proverb Book, March 26th]
AND ALL that was needed now, she thought (as she lay that night in bed, listening to the constant gurgle in the pipes of the constant H and C), was for old Tom to tell her everything in as full detail—as Arrietty must have told it to him. And, having already said so much, he might—she felt—go this much farther, in spite of his fear of things put down in writing. And she wouldn’t tell either, she resolved staunchly—at any rate, not during his lifetime, although why he should mind so much she couldn’t understand, seeing that he was known already as “the biggest liar in five counties.” But what seemed still more hopeful was that, having shown her the little book, he had not even asked for it back. She had it now in bed with her, stuffed beneath her pillow and it was full of “things in writing.” Not that she could understand them quite: the entries were too short, little headings, they seemed like, jotted down by Arrietty to remind herself of dates. But some of them sounded extraordinarily weird and mysterious . . . Yes, she decided, suddenly inspired, that was the way to work it: she would ask old Tom to explain the headings: what could Arrietty have meant (she would ask) by “Black men—mother saved.”?
And this was, more or less, what did happen: while Mrs. May talked business each day with Messrs. Jobson, Thring, Beguid and Beguid, or argued with builders and plumbers and plumber’s mates, Kate would wander off alone across the fields and find her own way to the cottage, seeking out old Tom.
On some days (as Kate, in later years, would explain to her children) he would seem a bit “cagey” and disinterested, but on other days a particular heading in the diary would seem to inspire him and his imagination would take wings and sail away on such swirls and eddies of vivid memory that Kate, spellbound, could hardly believe that he had not at some time (in some other life, perhaps) been a borrower himself. Mrs. May, Kate remembered, had said just this of her younger brother: this brother who, although three years his junior, must have known old Tom (Had not old Tom himself admitted this much?). Had they been friends—great friends, perhaps? They certainly seemed birds of a feather—one famous for telling tall stories because “he was such a tease”; the other, more simply described as “the biggest liar in five counties.” And it was this thought which, long after she was grown up, decided Kate to tell the world what was said to have happened to Pod and Homily and little Arrietty after that dreadful day when, smoked out of their house under the kitchen, they sought for refuge in the wild outdoors.
Here is her story—all “put down in writing.” Let us sift the evidence ourselves.
Chapter Five
“Step by step climbs The Hill.”
Victoria Tubular Bridge, Montreal, opened 1866
[Extract from Arrietty’s Diary and Proverb Book, August 25th]
WELL, AT FIRST, it seems they just ran, but they ran in the right direction—up the azalea bank, where (so many months ago now) Arrietty had first met the boy and through the long grass at the top. How they got through that, Homily used to say afterwards, she never knew—nothing but stalks, close set. And insects: Homily had never dreamed there could be so many different kinds of insects—slow ones, hanging on things; fast, scuttling ones, and ones (these were the worst) which stared at you and did not move at once and then backed slowly, still staring (it was as though, Homily said, they had made up their mind to bite you and then, still malicious, changed it out of caution). “Wicked,” she said, “that’s what they were; oh, wicked, wicked, wicked . . .”
As they shoved their way through the long grass, they were choked with pollen loosened in clouds from above; there were sharp-edged leaves, deceptively sappy and swaying, which cut their hands, gliding across the skin like the soft-drawn bow of a violin but leaving blood behind: there were straw-dry, knotted stems, which caught them round the shins and ankles and which made them stumble and trip forward; often they would land on that cushiony plant with silvery, hairlike spines—spines which pricked and stung. Long grass . . . long grass . . . for ever afterwards it was Homily’s nightmare.
Then, to get to the orchard, came a scramble through the privet hedge: dead leaves, below the blackened boughs of privet . . . dead leaves and rotting, dried-up berries which rose waist-high as they swam their way through them, and, below the leaves, a rustling dampness. And here again were insects: things which turned over on their backs, or hopped suddenly, or slyly slid away.
Across the orchard—easier going this, because the hens had fed there achieving their usual “blasted heath” effect—a flattened surface of lava-colored earth: the visibility was excellent. But, if they could see, they could also be seen: the fruit trees were widely spaced, giving little cover: anyone glancing from a first-floor window in the house might well exclaim curiously, “What’s that, do you think, moving across the orchard? There by the second tree on the right—like leaves blowing. But there isn’t a wind. More like something being drawn along on a thread—too steady to be birds . . .” This was the thought in Pod’s mind as he urged Homily onwards. “Oh, I can’t,” she would cry. “I must sit down. Just a moment, Pod—please!”
But he was adamant. “You can sit down,” he’d say, gripping her below the elbow and spinning her forward across the rubble, “once we get to the spinney. You take her other arm, Arrietty, but keep her moving!”
Once within the wood, they sank down
on the side of the well-worn path, too exhausted to seek further cover. “Oh, dear . . . oh, dear . . . oh, dear . . .” Homily kept saying (mechanically, because she always said it) but behind her bright dark eyes in her smudged face, they could see her brain was busy: and she was not hysterical, they could see that too; they could see, in other words, that Homily was “trying.” “There’s no call for all this running,” she said after a moment, when she could get her breath. “Nobody didn’t see us go: fer all they know we’re still there, trapped-like—under the floor.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Arrietty. “There was a face at the kitchen window. I saw it as we were going up the bank. A boy it looked like, with a cat or something.”
“If anyone’d seen us,” remarked Homily, “they’d have been after us, that’s what I say.”
“That’s a fact,” said Pod.
“Well, which way do we go from here?” asked Homily, gazing about among the tree trunks. There was a long scratch across her cheek and her hair hung down in wisps.
“Well, we better be getting these loads sorted out first,” said Pod. “Let’s see what we’ve brought. What have you got in that borrowing-bag, Arrietty?”
Arrietty opened the bag she had packed so hurriedly two days before against just this emergency. She laid out the contents on the hardened mud of the path and they looked an odd collection. There were three tin lids off varying sizes of pill bottles which fitted neatly one inside the other; a sizeable piece of candle and seven wax-matches; a change of underclothes and an extra jersey knitted by Homily on blunted darning needles from a much-washed, unraveled sock, and last (but most treasured) her pencil from a dance program and her Diary and Proverb Book.