The Borrowers Collection

by Mary Norton

  “Now why did you want to cart that along?” grumbled Pod, glancing sideways at this massive tome as he laid out his own belongings. For the same reason, Arrietty thought to herself as she glanced at Pod’s unpacking, that you brought along your shoemaker’s needle, your hammer made from an electric bell-clapper, and a stout ball of twine: each to his hobby and the tools of the craft he loves (and hers she felt to be literature).

  Besides his shoemaking equipment, Pod had brought the half nail scissor, a thin sliver of razor blade, ditto of child’s fret-saw, an aspirin bottle with screw lid filled with water, a small twist of fuse wire and two steel hat pins, the shorter of which he gave to Homily. “It’ll help you up the hill,” he told her. “We may have a bit of a climb.”

  Homily had brought her knitting needles, the rest of the raveled sock, three pieces of lump sugar, the finger of a lady’s kid glove filled with salt and pepper mixed, tied up at the neck with cotton, some broken pieces of digestive biscuit, a small tin box made for phonograph needles which now contained dry tea, a chip of soap and her hair curlers.

  Pod gazed glumly at the curious collection. “Like as not we brought the wrong things,” he said, “but it can’t be helped now. Better pack ’em up again,” he went on, suiting the action to the word, “and let’s get going. Good idea of yours, Arrietty, the way you fitted together them tin lids. Not sure, though, we couldn’t have done with a couple more . . .”

  “We’ve only got to get to the badger’s set,” Arrietty excused herself. “I mean Aunt Lupy will have most things, won’t she—like cooking utensils and such?”

  “I don’t know anyone as couldn’t do with a few more,” remarked Homily, stuffing in the remains of the sock and lashing up the neck of her bag with a length of blue embroidery silk, “especially when they live in a badger’s set. And who’s to say your Aunt Lupy’s there at all?” she went on. “I thought she got lost or something, crossing them fields out walking.”

  “Well, she may be found again by now,” said Pod. “Over a year ago, wasn’t it, when she set out walking?”

  “And anyway,” Arrietty pointed out, “she wouldn’t go walking with the cooking pots.”

  “I never could see,” said Homily, standing up and trying out the weight of her bag, “no never will, no matter what nobody tells me, what your Uncle Hendreary saw fit to marry in a stuck-up thing like that Lupy.”

  “That’s enough,” said Pod. “We don’t want none of that now.”

  He stood up and slung his borrowing-bag on his steel hat pin, swinging it over his shoulder. “Now,” he asked, looking them up and down, “sure you’re both all right?”

  “Not that, when put to it,” persisted Homily, “she isn’t good-hearted at bottom but it’s the kind of way she does it . . .”

  “What about your boots?” asked Pod. “They quite comfortable?”

  “Yes,” said Homily. “For the moment,” she added.

  “What about you, Arrietty?”

  “I’m all right,” said Arrietty.

  “Because,” said Pod, “it’s going to be a long pull. We’re going to take it steady. No need to rush. But we don’t want no stopping. Nor no grumbling. Understand?”

  “Yes,” said Arrietty.

  “And keep your eyes skinned,” Pod went on as they all moved off along the path. “If you see anything, do as I do—and sharp, mind. We don’t want no running every which way. We don’t want no screaming.”

  “I know,” said Arrietty irritably, adjusting her pack: she moved ahead as though trying to get out of earshot.

  “You think you know,” called Pod after her. “But you don’t know nothing really: you don’t know nothing about cover, nor does your mother: cover’s a trained job, and art—like—”

  “I know,” repeated Arrietty. “You told me.” She glanced sideways into the shadowy depths of the brambles beside the path. She saw a great spider, hanging in space. His web was invisible: he seemed to be staring at her—she saw his eyes. Defiantly, Arrietty stared back.

  “You can’t tell no one in five minutes,” persisted Pod, “things you got to learn from experience. What I told you, my girl, that day I took you out borrowing, wasn’t even the A.B.C. I tried my best, because your mother asked me. And see where it’s got us!”

  “Now, Pod,” panted Homily (they were walking too fast for her), “no need to bring up the past.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Pod, “the past is experience: that’s all you got to learn from. You see, when it comes to borrowing—”

  “But you had a lifetime of it, Pod: you was in training—Arrietty’d only been out that once—”

  “That’s what I mean,” cried Pod and, in stubborn desperation, he stopped in his tracks for Homily to catch up, “about cover. If only she’d known the A.B.C.—”

  “Look out!” sang Arrietty shrilly, now some way ahead.

  There was a rushing clatter, a dropped shadow and a hoarse, harsh cry: and, suddenly, there was Pod—alone on the path—face to face with a large black crow.

  The bird stared wickedly, but a little distrustfully, his cramped toes turned in slightly, his great beak just open. Frozen to stillness Pod stared back: something growing in the path—that’s what he looked like, a rather peculiar kind of chunky toadstool. The great bird, very curious, turned his head sideways and tried Pod with his other eye. Pod, motionless, stared back. The crow made a murmur in its throat—a tiny bleat and, puzzled, it moved forward. Pod let it come, a couple of sideways steps, and then—out of a still face—he spoke: “Get back to where you was,” he said evenly, almost conversationally, and the bird seemed to hesitate. “We don’t want no nonsense from you,” Pod went on steadily. “Pigeon-toed, that’s what you are! Crows is pigeon-toed; first time it struck me. Staring away like that, with one eye, and your head turned sideways . . . think it pretty, no doubt . . .” Pod spoke quite pleasantly “. . . but it ain’t, not with that kind of beak . . .”

  The bird became still, its expression no longer curious: there was stark amazement in every line of its rigid body and, in its eye, a kind of ghastly disbelief. “Go on! Get off with you!” shouted Pod suddenly, moving toward it. “Shoo . . . !” And, with a distraught glance and panic-stricken croak, the great bird flapped away. Pod wiped his brow with his sleeve as Homily, white-faced and still trembling, crawled out from under a fox-glove leaf. “Oh, Pod,” she gasped, “you were brave—you were wonderful!”

  “It’s nothing,” said Pod. “It’s a question of keeping your nerve.”

  “But the size of it!” said Homily. “You’d never think seeing them flying they was that size!”

  “Size is nothing,” said Pod. “It’s the talk that gets them.” He watched Arrietty climb out from a hollow stump and begin to brush herself down. When she looked up, he looked away. “Well,” he said, after a moment, “we’d better keep moving . . .”

  Arrietty smiled. She hesitated a moment, then ran across to him.

  “What’s that for?” asked Pod weakly as she flung her arms round his neck. “Oh,” cried Arrietty, hugging him. “You deserve a medal—the way you faced up to it, I mean.”

  “No, lass,” said Pod, “you don’t mean that: the way I was caught out, that’s what you mean—caught out, good and proper, talking of cover.” He patted her hand. “And, what’s more, you’re right: we’ll face up to that one, too. You and your mother was trigger-quick and I’m proud of you.” He let go her hand and swung his pack up onto his shoulders. “But another time, remember,” he added, turning suddenly, “—not stumps. Hollow they may be but not always empty, see what I mean, and you’re out of the frying pan into the fire. . . .”

  On and on they went, following the path which the workmen had made when they dug out the trench for the gas pipe: it led them through two fields of pasture-land, on a gradually rising slope alongside the hedge; they could walk with perfect ease under the lowest rung of any five-barred gate, picking a careful way across the clusters of sun-dried cattle tracks; these
were crater-like but crumbling and Homily, staggering a little beneath her load, slipped once and grazed her knee.

  On the third field, the gas pipe branched away obliquely to the left and Pod, looking ahead to where against the skyline he could just make out a stile, decided that they could safely now forsake the gas pipe and stick to the path beside the hedge. “Won’t be so long now,” he explained comfortingly when Homily begged to rest, “but we got to keep going. See that stile? That’s what we’re aiming for and we got to make it afore sunset.”

  So on they plodded and, to Homily, this last lap seemed the worst: her tired legs moved mechanically like scissors; stooping under her load, she was amazed each time she saw a foot come forward—it no longer seemed to be her foot; she would wonder vaguely how it got there.

  Arrietty wished they could not see the stile: their tiny steps seemed to bring it no nearer; it worked better she found to keep her eyes on the ground and then every now and again if she looked up she could see they had made progress.

  But at last they reached the crest of the hill: toward the right, on the far side of the cornfield beyond the hazel hedge, lay the woods, and ahead of them, after a slight dip, rose a vast sloping field, crossed with shadow from where the sun was setting behind the trees.

  On the edge of this field, they stood and stared, awed by its vastness, its tilted angle against the rosy sky: on this endless sea of lengthening shadows and dreaming grassland, floated an island of trees dimmed already by its long thrown trail of dusk.

  “This is it,” said Pod, after a long moment. “Perkin’s Beck.” They stood, all three of them, underneath the stile, loath to lose its shelter.

  “Perkin’s what?” asked Homily uneasily.

  “Perkin’s Beck. You know—the name of the field. This is where they live, the Hendrearies.”

  “You mean,” said Homily, after a pause, “where the badger’s set is?”

  “That’s right,” said Pod, staring ahead.

  Homily’s tired face looked yellow in the golden light; her jaw hung loose. “But where?” she asked.

  Pod waved his arm. “Somewhere: it’s in this field anyway.”

  “In this field . . .” repeated Homily dully, her eyes fixed on the dim boundaries, the distant group of shadowy trees.

  “Well, we got to look,” explained Pod uneasily. “You didn’t think we’d go straight to it, did you?”

  “I thought you knew where it was,” said Homily. Her voice sounded husky. Arrietty, between them, stood strangely silent.

  “Well, I brought you this far. Haven’t I?” said Pod. “If the worst comes to the worst, we can camp for the night and look round in the morning.”

  “Where’s the stream?” asked Arrietty. “There’s supposed to be a stream.”

  “Well, there is,” said Pod. “It flows down there, along that far hedge and then comes in like—do you see?—across that far corner. That thicker green there—can’t you see? Them’s rushes.”

  Arrietty screwed up her eyes. “Yes,” she said uncertainly and added, “I’m thirsty.”

  “And so am I,” said Homily. She sat down suddenly as though deflated. “All the way up that hill, step after step, hour after hour, I bin saying to meself, ‘Never mind the first thing we’ll do as soon as we get to that badger’s set is sit down and have a nice cup o’ tea’—it kept me going.”

  “Well, we will have one,” said Pod. “Arrietty’s got the candle.”

  “And I’ll tell you another thing,” went on Homily, staring ahead. “I couldn’t walk across that there field, not if you offered me a monkey in a cage. We’ll have to go round by the edges.”

  “Well, that’s just what we’re going to do,” said Pod. “You don’t find no badgers’ sets in the middle of a field. We’ll work round, systematic-like, bit by bit, starting out in the morning. But we got to sleep rough tonight, that’s one thing certain. No good poking about tonight: it’ll be dark soon: the sun’s near off that hill already.”

  “And there are clouds coming up,” said Arrietty, gazing at the sunset, “and moving fast.”

  “Rain?” cried Homily, in a stricken voice.

  “Well, we’ll move fast,” said Pod, slinging his pack up. “Here, give me yours, Homily, you’ll travel lighter . . .”

  “Which way are we going?” asked Arrietty.

  “We’ll keep along by this lower hedge,” said Pod, setting off. “And make toward the water. If we can’t make it before the rain comes, we’ll just take any shelter.”

  “What sort of shelter?” asked Homily, stumbling after him through the tussocky grass. “Look out, Pod, them’s nettles!”

  “I can see them,” said Pod (they were walking in a shallow ditch). “A hole or something,” he went on. “There’s a hole there, for instance. See? Under that root.”

  Homily peered at it as she came abreast. “Oh, I couldn’t go in there,” she said. “There might be something in it.”

  “Or we could go right into the hedge,” Pod called back.

  “There’s not much shelter in the hedge,” said Arrietty. She walked alone, on the higher ground where the grass was shorter. “I can see from here: it’s all stems and branches.” She shivered a little in a sudden light wind which set the leaves of the hedge plants suddenly atremble, clashing the drying teazles as they swung and locked together. “It’s clouding right over,” she called.

  “Yes, it’ll be dark soon,” said Pod. “You’d better come down here with us: you don’t want to get lost.”

  “I won’t get lost. I can see better from here. Look!” she called out suddenly. “There’s an old boot. Wouldn’t that do?”

  “An old what?” asked Homily incredulously.

  “Might do,” said Pod, looking about him. “Where is it?”

  “To your left. There. In the long grass . . .”

  “An old boot!” cried Homily, as she saw him set down the borrowing-bags. “What’s the matter with you, Pod—have you gone out of your mind?” Even as she spoke, it began to rain—great summer drops which bounced among the grasses.

  “Take the borrowing-bags and get under that dock-leaf—both of you—while I look.”

  “An old boot—” repeated Homily incredulously, as she and Arrietty crouched under the dock-leaf: she had to raise her voice—the rain, on the swaying leaf, seemed to clatter rather than patter. “Hark at it!” complained Homily. “Come in closer, Arrietty, you’ll catch your death. Oh, my goodness me—it’s running down my back!”

  “Look—he’s calling to us,” said Arrietty. “Come on!”

  Homily bent her neck and peered out from under the swaying leaf. There stood Pod, some yards away, barely visible among the steaming grasses, dimmed by the curtain of rain. “A tropical scene,” Arrietty thought, remembering her Gazetteer of the World. She thought of man against the elements, jungle swamps, steaming forests and Mr. Livingstone she presumed . . .“What’s he want?” she heard her mother complaining. “We can’t go out in this—look at it!”

  “It’s coming in underfoot now,” Arrietty told her, “can’t you see? This is a ditch. Come on, we must run for it; he’s calling . . .”

  They ran, half-crouching, stunned by the pounding water. Pod pulled them up into the longer grass, snatching Arrietty’s borrowing-bag, gasping instructions, as they slid and slithered after him through what Arrietty thought of as “the bush.”

  “Here it is,” said Pod. “Get in here.”

  The boot lay on its side: they had to crouch to enter. “Oh, my goodness,” Homily kept saying. “Oh, my goodness me . . .” and would glance fearfully about the darkness inside. “I wonder who ever wore it.”

  “Go on,” said Pod, “get further down. It’s all right.”

  “No, no,” said Homily. “I’m not going in no further: there might be something in the toe.”

  “It’s all right,” said Pod. “I’ve looked: there’s nothing but a hole in the toe.” He stacked the borrowing-bags against the inner side. “Something to le
an against,” he said.

  “I wish I knew who’d wore this boot,” Homily went on, peering about uncomfortably, wiping her wet face on her wetter apron.

  “What good would that do you?” Pod said, untying the strings of the largest bag.

  “Whether he was clean or dirty or what,” said Homily, “and what he died of. Suppose he died of something infectious?”

  “Why suppose he died?” said Pod. “Why shouldn’t he be hale and hearty, and just had a nice wash and be sitting down to a good tea this very minute.”

  “Tea?” said Homily, her face brightening. “Where’s the candle, Pod?”

  “It’s here,” said Pod. “Give me a match, Arrietty, and a medium-sized aspirin lid. We got to go careful with the tea, you know: we got to go careful with everything.”

  Homily put out a finger and touched the worn leather. “I’ll give this boot a good clean-out in the morning,” she said.

  “It’s not bad,” said Pod, taking out the half nail scissor. “If you ask me, we been lucky to find a boot like this. There ain’t nothing to worry about: it’s disinfected, all right—what with the sun and the wind and the rain year after year of it.” He stuck the blade of the nail scissor through an eyelet hole and lashed it firm with a bit of old bootlace.

  “What are you doing that for, Papa?” asked Arrietty.

  “To stand the lid on, of course,” said Pod. “A kind of bracket over the candle: we haven’t got no tripod. Now you go and fill it with water, there’s a good girl—there’s plenty outside . . .”

  There was plenty outside: it was coming down in torrents; but the mouth of the boot faced out of the wind and there was a little dry patch before it. Arrietty filled the tin lid quite easily by tipping a large pointed fox-glove leaf toward it so the rain ran off and down the point. All about her was the steady sound of rain and the lighted candle within the boot made the dusk seem darker. There was a smell of wildness, of space, of leaves and grasses and, as she turned away with the filled tin lid, another smell—wine-y, fragrant, spicy. Arrietty took note of it to remember it for morning—it was the smell of wild strawberries.