The Borrowers Collection

by Mary Norton

  After they had drunk their hot tea and eaten a good half of sweet, crumbly digestive biscuit, they took off their wet outer clothes and hung them out along the handle of the nail scissor above the candle. Huddled together, with the old woolen sock about their shoulders, they talked a little. “Funny,” Arrietty remarked, “to be wrapped in a sock and inside a boot.” But Pod, watching the candle flame, was worried about wastage and, when the clothes had steamed a little, he doused the flame. Tired out, they lay down at last among the borrowing-bags, cuddled together for warmth. The last sound Arrietty heard as she fell asleep was the steady drumming of the rain on the hollow leather of the boot.

  Chapter Six

  “Such is the tree, such is the fruit.”

  End of great railways strike at Peoria, Ill., 1891

  [Extract from Arrietty’s Diary and Proverb Book, August 26th]

  ARRIETTY was the first to wake. “Where am I?” she wondered. She felt warm—too warm, lying there between her mother and father—and when she turned her head slightly she saw three little golden suns, floating in the darkness. It was a second or two before she realized what they were, and with this knowledge memory flooded back—all that happened yesterday: the escape, the frenzied scramble across the orchard, the weary climb, the rain. The little golden suns, she realized, were the lace-holes of the boot!

  Stealthily Arrietty sat up: a balmy freshness stole in upon her and, framed in the neck of the boot, she saw the bright day: grasses, softly stirring, tenderly sunlit. Some were broken, where yesterday they had pushed through them dragging the borrowing-bags. There was a yellow buttercup—sticky and gleaming, it looked, like wet paint. On a tawny stalk of sorrel, she saw an aphis—of a green so delicate that, against the sunlight, it looked transparent. “Ants milk them,” Arrietty remembered, “perhaps we could.”

  She slid out from between her sleeping parents and just as she was, with bare feet and in her vest and petticoat, she ventured out-of-doors.

  It was a glorious day: sunlit and rain-washed—the earth breathing out its scents. “This,” Arrietty thought, “is what I have longed for; what I have imagined: what I knew existed—what I knew we’d have!”

  She pushed through the grasses and soft drops of water fell on her benignly, warmed by the sun. Downhill a little way she went, toward the hedge, out of the jungle of higher grass, into the shallow ditch where, last night, the rain and darkness had combined to scare her.

  There was warm mud here, between the shorter grass blades, fast-drying now in the sun. A bank rose between her and the hedge—a glorious bank, it was, filled with roots, with grasses, with tiny ferns, with small sandy holes, with violet leaves and with pale scarlet pimpernel, and, here and there, a globe of deeper crimson—wild strawberries!

  She climbed the bank—leisurely and happily, feeling the warm sun through her vest, her bare feet picking their way more delicately than clumsy human feet. She gathered three strawberries, heavy with juice, and ate them luxuriously, lying full-length on a sandy terrace before a mouse-hole. From this bank she could see across the field, but today it looked different—as large, as ever; as oddly tilted; but alight and alive with the early sunshine. Now, all the shadows ran a different way-dewy, they seemed, on the gleaming golden grass. She saw in the distance the lonely group of trees: they still seemed to float on a grassy ocean. She thought of her mother’s fear of open spaces. “But I could cross this field,” she thought. “I could go anywhere . . .” Was this, perhaps, what Eggletina had thought? Eggletina—Uncle Hendreary’s child—who, they said, had been eaten by the cat. Did enterprise, Arrietty wondered, always meet with disaster? Was it really better, as her parents had always taught her, to live in secret darkness underneath the floor?

  The ants were out, she saw, and busy about their business—flurried, eager, weaving their anxious routes among the grass stems. Every now and again, Arrietty noticed, an ant waving its antennae would run up a grass stem and look around. A great contentment filled Arrietty: yes—here they were, for better or worse—there could be no going back!

  Refreshed by the strawberries, she went on up the bank and into the shade of the hedge. Here was sunflecked greenness and a hollowness above her. Up and up as far as she could see—there were layers and stories of green chambers, crossed and recrossed with springing branches. Cathedral-like, the hedge seemed from the inside.

  Arrietty put her foot on a lower branch and swung herself up into the green shadows: quite easy, it was, with branches to her hand on all sides—easier than climbing a ladder. A ladder as high as this would mean a feat of endurance, and a ladder at best was a dull thing, whereas here was variety, a changing of direction, exploration of heights unknown. Some twigs were dry and rigid, shedding curls of dusty bark; others were lissom and alive with sap: on these, she would swing a little (as so often she had dreamed of swinging in that other lifetime under the floor!). “I will come here when it is windy,” she told herself, “when the whole hedge is alive and swaying in the wind . . .”

  Up and up, she went. She found an old bird’s nest; the moss inside was straw-dry. She climbed into it and lay for a while and, leaning over the edge, dropped crumbled pieces of dried moss through the tangled branches below her; to watch them plummet between the boughs gave her, she found, an increased sense of height, a delicious giddiness which, safely in the nest, she enjoyed. But having felt this safety, climbing out and on and up seemed far more dangerous. “Suppose I fell,” thought Arrietty, “as those bits of moss fell, skimming down through the shadowy hollows and banging and bouncing as they go?” But, as her hands closed round the friendly twigs and her toes spread a little to grip the bark, she was suddenly aware of her absolute safety—the ability (which for so long had been hidden deeply inside her) to climb. “It’s heredity,” she told herself. “That’s why borrowers’ hands and feet are longer in proportion than the hands and feet of human beings: that’s how my father can come down by a fold in the tablecloth: how he can climb a curtain by the bobbles; how he can swing on his name-tape from a desk to a chair, from a chair to the floor. Just because I was a girl, and not allowed to go borrowing, it doesn’t say I haven’t got the gift . . .”

  Suddenly, raising her head, she saw the blue sky above her, through the tracery of leaves—leaves which trembled and whispered as, in her haste, she swayed their stems. Placing her foot in a fork and swinging up, she caught her petticoat on a wild rose thorn and heard it rip. She picked the thorn out of the stuff and held it in her hand (it was the size to her of a rhinoceros horn to a human being): it was light in proportion to its bulk, but very sharp and vicious-looking. “We could use this for something,” Arrietty thought. “I must think . . . some kind of weapon . . .” One more pull and her head and shoulders were outside the hedge; the sun fell hot on her hair, and dazzled by the brightness, she screwed her eyes up as she gazed about her.

  Hills and dales, valleys, fields and woods—dreaming in the sunshine. She saw there were cows in the next field but one. Approaching the wood, from a field on the lower side, she saw a man with a gun—very far away, he looked, very harmless. She saw the roof of Aunt Sophy’s house and the kitchen chimney smoking. On the turn of a distant road, as it wound between the hedges, she saw a milk-cart: the sunlight flashed on the metal churn and she heard the faint fairylike tinkle of the harness brasses. What a world—mile upon mile, thing after thing, layer upon layer of un-imagined richness—and she might never have seen it! She might have lived and died, as so many of her relations had done, in dusty twilight—hidden behind a wainscot.

  Coming down, she found a rhythm: a daring swing, a letting go and a light drop into thickly clustered leaves which her instinct told her would act as a safety net, a cage of lissom twigs which sprang to hand and foot—lightly to be caught, lightly to be let go. Such leaves clustered more thickly toward the outside of the hedge, not in the bare hollows within, and her passage amongst them was almost like surf-riding—a controlled and bouncing slither. The last bough dropped he
r lightly on the slope of a grassy bank, springing back into place above her head, as lightly she let it go, with a graceful elastic shiver.

  Arrietty examined her hands: one was slightly grazed. “But they’ll harden up,” she told herself. Her hair stood on end and was filled with bark dust, and there in her white embroidered petticoat she saw a great tear.

  Hurriedly, she picked three more strawberries as a peace offering and, wrapping them in a violet leaf so as not to stain her vest, she scrambled down the bank, across the ditch, and into the clump of long grass.

  Homily, at the entrance to the boot, looked worried as usual.

  “Oh, Arrietty, where ever have you been? Breakfast’s been ready this last twenty minutes. Your father’s out of his mind!”

  “Why?” asked Arrietty, surprised.

  “With worrying about you—with looking for you.”

  “I was quite near,” Arrietty said. “I was only in the hedge. You could have called me.”

  Homily put her finger on her lips and glanced in a fearful way from one side to another: “You can’t call,” she said, dropping her voice to an angry whisper. “We’re not to make any noise at all, your father says. No calling or shouting—nothing to draw attention. Danger, that’s what he said there is—danger on all sides . . .”

  “I don’t mean you have to whisper,” Pod said, appearing suddenly from behind the boot, carrying the half nail scissor (he had been cutting a small trail through the thickest grass). “But don’t you go off, Arrietty, never again without you say just where you’re going and what for and for how long. Understand?”

  “No,” said Arrietty uncertainly. “I don’t quite—I mean I don’t always know what I’m going for—” (for what, for instance, had she climbed to the top of the hedge?) “Where is all this danger? I didn’t see any. Excepting three cows two fields away.”

  Pod looked thoughtfully to where a sparrow-hawk hung motionless in the clear sky.

  “It’s everywhere,” he said, after a moment. “Before and Behind, Above and Below.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Puff not against the Wind.”

  Oxford and Harvard Boat Race, 1869

  [Extract from Arrietty’s Diary and Proverb Book, August 27th]

  WHILE HOMILY and Arrietty were finishing breakfast, Pod got busy. He walked thoughtfully around the boot, surveying it from different angles. He would touch the leather with a practiced hand, peer at it closely and then stand back, half-closing his eyes. He removed the borrowing-bags, one by one, carefully stacking them on the grass outside and then he crawled inside. They could hear him grunting and panting a little as he knelt and stooped and measured—he was, they gathered, making a carefully calculated examination of seams, joins, floor space and quality of stitching.

  After a while, he joined them as they sat there on the grass. “Going to be a hot day,” he said thoughtfully, as he sat down, “a real scorcher.” He removed his necktie and heaved a sigh.

  “What was you looking at, Pod?” asked Homily, after a moment.

  “You saw,” said Pod. “That boot.” He was silent a moment and then: “That’s no tramp’s boot,” he said, “nor that boot weren’t made for no working-man neither: that boot,” went on Pod, staring at Homily, “is a gentleman’s boot.”

  “Oh,” breathed Homily in a relieved voice, half-closing her eyes and fanning her face with a limp hand. “Thank goodness for that!”

  “Why, Mother?” asked Arrietty, irritated. “What’s wrong with a working-man’s boot? Papa’s a working-man, isn’t he?”

  Homily smiled and shook her head in a pitying way. “It’s a question,” she said, “of quality.”

  “Your mother’s right, there,” said Pod. “Hand-sewn, that boot is, and as fine a bit of leather as ever I’ve laid me hand on.” He leaned toward Arrietty. “And you see, lass, a gentleman’s boot is well-cared for, well greased and dubbined—years and years of it. If it hadn’t been, don’t you see, it would never have stood up—as this boot has stood up—to wind and rain and sun and frost. They pays dear for their boots, gentlemen do, but they sees they gets good value.”

  “That’s right,” agreed Homily, nodding her head and looking at Arrietty.

  “Now, that hole in the toe,” Pod went on. “I can patch that up with a bit of leather from the tongue. I can patch that up good and proper.”

  “It’s not worth the time nor the thread,” exclaimed Homily. “I mean to say, just for a couple o’ nights or a day or two. It’s not as though we were going to live in a boot,” she pointed out, with an amused laugh.

  Pod was silent a moment and then he said slowly, “I bin thinking.”

  “I mean to say,” Homily went on, “we do know we got relations in this field and—though I wouldn’t call a badger’s set much of a home, mind—at least it’s somewhere.”

  Pod raised solemn eyes. “Maybe,” he said, in the same grave voice. “But all the same, I bin thinking. I’ve bin thinking,” he went on, “relations or no relations, they’re still borrowers, ain’t they? And among human beings, for instance, who ever sees a borrower?” He gazed round challengingly.

  “Well, that boy did—” began Arrietty, “and—”

  “Ah,” said Pod, “because you, Arrietty, who wasn’t no borrower—who hadn’t even learned to borrow—went up and talked to him: sought him out, shameless—knowing no better. And I told you just what would happen, hunted out, I said we’d be, by cats and rat-catchers—by policemen and all. Now was I right or wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, you were right,” said Arrietty, “but—”

  “There ain’t no buts,” said Pod. “I was right. And if I was right then, I’m right now. See? I bin thinking and what I’ve bin thinking is right—and, this time, there ain’t going to be no nonsense from you. Nor from your mother, neither.”

  “There won’t be no nonsense from me, Pod,” said Homily in a pious voice.

  “Now,” said Pod, “this is how it strikes me. Human beings stand high and move fast; when you stand higher you can see farther—do you get me? What I mean to say is—if, with them advantages, a human being can’t never find a borrower . . . even goes as far as to say they don’t believe borrowers exist—why should we borrowers, who stand lower and move slower compared to them like, hope to do much better? Living in a house, say, with several families—well, of course, we know each other . . . stands to reason: we been brought up together. But come afield, to a strange place like this and—this is how it seems to me—borrowers is hid from borrowers.”

  “Oh, my,” said Homily unhappily.

  “We don’t move ‘slow’ exactly,” said Arrietty.

  “Compared to them, I said. Our legs move fast enough—but theirs is longer. Look at the ground they cover!” He turned to Homily. “Now don’t upset yourself. I don’t say we won’t find the Hendrearies— Maybe, we will . . . quite soon. Or anyway before the winter—”

  “The winter . . .” breathed Homily in a stricken voice.

  “But we got to plan,” went on Pod, “and act, as though there weren’t no badger’s set. Do you see what I mean?”

  “Yes, Pod,” said Homily huskily.

  “I bin thinking it out,” he repeated. “Here we are, the three of us, with what we got in the bags, two hat pins and an old boot: we got to face up to it and, what’s more—” he added solemnly, “we got to live different.”

  “How different?” asked Homily.

  “Cold food, for instance. No more hot tea. No coffee. We got to keep the candle and the matches in hand for winter. We got to look about us and see what there is.”

  “Not caterpillars, Pod,” pleaded Homily. “You promised! I couldn’t never eat a caterpillar . . .”

  “Nor you shall,” said Pod, “not if I can help it. There’s other things this time o’ year, plenty. Now, I want you to get up, the two of you, and see how this boot drags—”

  “How do you mean?” asked Homily, mystified, but obediently they both stood up.

  �
�See these laces?” said Pod. “Good and strong—been oiled, that’s why . . . or tarred. Now, you each take a lace over your shoulder and pull. Turn your back to the boot . . . that’s right . . . and just walk forward.”

  Homily and Arrietty leaned on the traces and the boot came on with a bump and a slither so fast across the slippery grass that they stumbled and fell—they had not expected it would be so light.

  “Steady on!” cried Pod, running up beside them. “Take it steady, can’t you . . . Up you get . . . That’s the way . . . Steady, steady . . . That’s fine. You see,” he said when they paused for breath, having dragged the boot to the edge of the long grass, “how it goes—like a bird!” Homily and Arrietty rubbed their shoulders and said nothing: they even smiled slightly, a pale reflection of Pod’s pride and delight. “Now, sit down, both of you. You was fine. Now, you’ll see, this is going to be good—”

  He stood, beaming down at them as, meekly, they sat on the grass. “It’s like this—” he explained. “I talked just now of danger—to you, Arrietty, and that’s because, though brave we must be (and there’s none braver than your mother when she’s put to it) we can’t never be foolhardy. We got to make our plans and we got to keep our heads. We can’t afford to waste no energy—climbing hedges just for fun, and suchlike—and we can’t afford to take no risks. We got to make our plan and we got to stick to it. Understand?”

  “Yes,” said Arrietty, and Homily nodded her head. “Your father’s right,” she said.

  “You got to have a main object,” went on Pod, “and ours is there, ready-made—we got to find the badger’s set. Now how are we going to set about it? It’s a big field—take us the best part of a day to get along one side of it, let alone have time to look down holes; and we’d be wore out, that’s what we’d be. Say I went off looking by myself—well, your mother would never know a moment’s peace all day long, till she had me safe back again. There’s nothing bad enough for what she’d be imagining. And going on at you, Arrietty. Now, that’s all wear and tear, and we can’t afford too much of it. Folk get silly when they’re fussed, if you see what I mean, and that’s when accidents happen.