by Mary Norton
“How did you know, Pod,” Homily asked after a while, “that there’d be no one in the house?”
“I told you, didn’t I? That black thing in the hall—”
“What black thing?” Homily did not like the sound of this.
“It’s a black thing they have in the hall. They turn a handle and tell it things. They grind the handle round and round, like, and tell it where they’re going and this and that . . .”
“And who hears them?”
“Well, Spiller does, for one—say he’s about. Spiller knows that house backwards. You’ll see . . .”
Homily was silent for some moments. She could not visualize “that black thing in the hall.” How black? How big? Which hall?
“That black thing—do they tell it the truth?” she asked at last.
Spiller gave his small grunt of a laugh. “Sometimes,” he said.
Homily was silent again: she was not reassured.
Pod rose to his feet. “Well, if you’re rested, we’d better get going again.”
“Just a minute, Pod,” pleaded Homily. “My legs ache something dreadful.”
“So do mine, if it comes to that,” said Pod. “And Arrietty’s, too, I shouldn’t wonder. And you know for why? We’re out of condition—that’s for why. Nigh on six months cooped up in an attic—it stands to reason. Exercise, that’s what we need . . .”
“Well, we’re getting it now,” said Homily wearily as she rose to her feet.
And on they plodded.
There was one place where they had to leave the pond and cross the open grass. Here, they broke the procession, leaving Spiller to tow the soap dish, as they made for the shelter of some small shrubbery. This was a group of overgrown azalea bushes, whose tender twigs were glinting into bud. It seemed like a forest to them. Here they rested again. The crumbly ground was covered with last year’s dead leaves, and the branches above them hung with tattered spiders’ webs.
“I wish we could spend the night here,” said Homily, “camping, like . . .”
“No, girl,” said Pod. “Once we get the soap dish through this lot, we’ll be right up by the house. You’ll see . . .”
It was a struggle to get the soap dish through the low-hung, rootlike branches; but at last it was done, and they found themselves in the open again, at the foot of a grassy bank. To their left, they could see a flight of mossy steps. Only the lower treads were visible, spreading fanlike into what had once been lawn.
“We’re not going up them, Pod,” complained Homily, “are we?” They were shallow steps, but not that shallow; and Pod was walking towards them.
“No, you and Arrietty stay where you are,” he called back quietly. “Spiller and I’ll go up by the coping and pull the soap dish up from above.” He turned round again. “Or you could start climbing the bank . . .”
“Could we!” exclaimed Homily, and she sat down firmly, wet grass or no wet grass. After a moment, Arrietty sat down beside her: she too could do with the rest. “They won’t take long,” she told her mother.
Homily laid her weary head on her clasped knees. “I don’t care if they take forever,” she said.
They did not take forever. It seemed quite a short time before they heard the soft call from above. Arrietty rose slowly to her feet. “Are you there, Arrietty?”
Arrietty said, “Yes . . .”
“Pick up the string and start climbing.”
“Is it long enough?”
“What did you say?”
“I said, is it long enough?’”
“Plenty. We’ll come down to meet you.”
Homily raised her head from her knees and watched as Arrietty, the towline in one hand, picked her way up the bank, occasionally pulling on the grasses. Then the grasses hid her from view. But Homily could hear the sound of subdued voices: “Give it here, girl . . . that’s right . . . that’s splendid . . . Where’s your mother?”
Slowly and stiffly, Homily rose to her feet. She stared at the bank: the climb had not looked too bad, and unlike Arrietty, she would have both hands free. But she did not intend to hurry . . . did them no harm to rest. She could still hear the mumble of their voices.
Finally, she pushed through the last of the grasses and found herself standing on weedy gravel; and there was the great house towering above her.
“Good girl!” said Pod, taking her hand. He turned and looked up at the house. “Well, here it is—we’re home!”
“Home?” echoed Homily wanly, looking across the uneven gravel to the iron-studded front door. Ivy everywhere and other kinds of vines . . . Some of the latticed windows were almost hidden.
“You’ll see,” said Pod. “Wait till I take you inside.”
“How do we get in?” asked Homily.
“Come on. I’ll show you.” He turned to the right, away from the direction of the front door. The soap dish, dragged by Spiller, made a scraping noise on the stones. Homily glanced fearfully at the dark latticed windows: might there be other eyes looking out from within? But all seemed peaceful: the house had an empty feeling. Perhaps that black thing in the hall had been told the truth for once . . .
The sunlight fell slantingly on the front of the house, but when they turned the corner, they suddenly felt its rich warmth: this side of the house must face directly south. And the windows here were different, as though added at a later date—tall, great windows with low sills, and square panes, dimmed a little by time and weather. Homily’s homemaking instincts rose to the surface: if somebody cleaned them, she told herself, those panes would look lovely.
They passed by three of these long windows, the soap dish scraping behind them, until the wall of the house ended in a built-out erection of glass. Homily peered in through the dingy panes, some of which were cracked. “It’s the conservatory,” Pod told her, “where they used to grow the flowers in winter. Come on.”
Spiller led them on to the corner, where they turned again at right angles. Glass panes again, peeling white paint, and a shabby glass door, cracked and rotten at the base where the wood met the weedy gravel. Here they halted.
“This is where we get in,” Pod told them, “and you don’t want to disturb them weeds: they hide the entrance, like.”
Very carefully, he parted a clump of ragwort and dead-looking grass stems. “Careful of the nettles,” he said. “Spiller keeps them down much as he can, but they spring up again fast as he cuts them . . .”
“I thought you said this Witless was a gardener,” remarked Homily as, gingerly, she followed Pod through the gap.
“He only keeps up the kitchen garden. The main garden’s gone too far. And he keeps up the churchyard as well.”
Arrietty, preparing to follow, glanced about her. What she had taken to be trees she saw were box hedges run up to a great tangled height. Cover! Cover everywhere. What a place, she thought, what a wonderful place!
Stooping a little, she followed Pod and Homily through a jagged hole under the door. When she touched the wet wood to steady herself, a piece came away in her hand. “Careful,” said Pod, “we don’t want this hole any bigger.”
Inside, the place felt gloriously warm, with the sun pouring down through the sloping glass roof. There was a smell of dead geranium leaves and a cindery smell like coal dust. Old cracked plant pots stood about, some in piles. There were several bits of sacking and one or two rusty stands that must have once held plants. The floor was tiled in a pattern of dull reds and browns, but many of the tiles were broken.
Pod had gone back through the hole to help Spiller with the soap dish, and Homily, standing still just inside the door, gazed about her in a kind of dazed bewilderment. Every few seconds they heard a soft plop. It came from a tap in the corner. Below the tap, set in the tiles, Arrietty saw there was a grating. By the sound of the drip, Arrietty guessed that there was water below the grating. In the opposite corner stood a curious brick stove whose pipe went up through the roof. It had a door like an oven door, which stood half-open, stuck fast on it
s rusty hinges.
“What a place!” said Homily.
“I think it’s lovely,” said Arrietty. “Water and everything. You could cook on that stove . . .”
“No, you couldn’t,” said Homily, looking at it with distaste. “Someone ’ud see the smoke.” And she sat down suddenly on a piece of prized-up tile. “Oh, my legs . . .” she said.
On the far wall, opposite the shabby door under which they had entered, there were double glass doors built in the style of French windows. These once, Arrietty realized (perhaps before the conservatory had been added), must have led straight into the garden, like those drawing-room doors she remembered at Firbank. They stood slightly ajar. One door, Arrietty noticed, was handleless. She tiptoed towards it and pushed it gently. With a faint creak of rusted hinges, it slid open a few more inches. Arrietty peered inside.
She saw a long room (vast, it seemed to her) paneled with bookshelves in faded oak, and there, too, on her left, she saw the three long windows, through which the great squares of sunlight streamed across the floor. Opposite the middle window in the right-hand wall, she made out a fireplace, rather a small one: to Arrietty’s eyes it looked more modern than the rest of the room. Each of the three windows had deep window seats of oak, faded now by years of glass-warmed sunlight.
So entranced was she that she did not hear Pod come up beside her, and she started slightly when she felt his hand on her shoulder. “Yes,” said Pod, “this was the library.” Arrietty looked up at the bookshelves: there indeed were a few old dilapidated books, some untidy piles of tattered magazines, and one or two other objects of the kind no longer needed or cared for by a previous owner: old tin boxes, a broken riding whip, a cracked flower vase or two, a noseless bust of some Roman emperor, a dusty pile of dried-up pampas grass.
“Doesn’t look to me as though anybody ever comes in here,” said Homily, who had crept up behind them.
“That’s just the idea,” said Pod. “It’s perfect. Perfect!” he repeated happily.
Arrietty thought so, too, and turned back reluctantly to help Spiller with the unlashing of the soapbox. Pod and Homily turned back as well, and Homily, still looking exhausted, sank down limply on her piece of prized-up tiling. “Perfect it may be,” she said, “but where are we going to sleep tonight?”
“In the stove,” said Pod.
“What—in all that ash!”
“There’s not much ash on the racks,” said Pod. “It’s all underneath.”
“Well,” said Homily, “I never thought I’d be asked to sleep in a stove . . .”
“You slept under one at Firbank.”
“Oh, Firbank—” moaned Homily. “Why did we ever have to leave?”
“You know quite well why we had to leave,” said Pod. “Now, Arrietty,” he went on, “get a bit of something—a strip of old sacking will do—and clean a bit of dust off them bars.” He moved towards the door. “And I’ll get a few green leaves—”
“Where’s Spiller?” asked Homily, looking about her. He had been there a moment before.
“Slipped round to the larder to get us a bite to eat, I shouldn’t wonder.”
There was a sudden whirring sound, and they all looked up as (very close it seemed now) the church clock began to strike. Pod raised his hand: he seemed to be counting. Homily and Arrietty watched Pod’s trancelike expression: they seemed to be counting, too. “Eleven,” said Homily as the last chime died away.
“Twelve,” said Pod. “What did you get, Arrietty?”
“I got twelve, too.”
“That’s right. Your mother missed a stroke. Well,” he went on, with an odd little smile, “now we know: takes a good three hours to cross that lawn on foot.”
“Seemed more like three years to me,” said Homily. “Hope we don’t have to do it often.”
“There are ways and means,” said Pod darkly, as he made his way towards the entrance hole.
“Ways and means!” repeated Homily, as he disappeared from view. “What can he mean? Ways and means . . . he’ll be teaching us to fly next!”
Arrietty wondered, too, as she tore off a piece of loose sacking. Soon Pod was back with a bundle of leaves—box, they were, dark green and springy. Soon the soap dish was empty and the beds made up.
“Could be worse,” said Homily, dusting her hands together. It really looked quite cozy: the blankets and quilts spread out on the springy leaves. “Wish we could close the door . . .”
“Well, you couldn’t call it open,” said Pod. “Just room to get in and out.”
“I think I’ll get in,” said Homily, moving back to the stove.
“No,” said Pod.
“What do you mean no?”
“Well, don’t you want to see round the house?”
Homily hesitated. “Well, after I’ve had a bit of a lie-down. We’ve been going all morning, Pod.”
“I know that. We’re all a bit weary like. But,” he went on, “we may never get another chance like this. I mean, they’re all out, aren’t they? The human beans? And won’t be back for hours . . .”
Still Homily hesitated. A bell shrilled. They all turned, like figures moved by clockwork, and stared at the double doors. The bell became silent.
“Whatever was it?” breathed Homily, moving backwards towards the stove, nervous hands feeling for the door.
“Wait!” said Pod sharply.
They waited, still as statues, and the bell shrilled out again. Three times it rang, and still they did not move. “Well, that’s all right,” said Pod, after a moment. “Proves what I say.” He was smiling.
“How do you mean?”
“That black thing in the hall: when that bell goes, the human beans always come running.”
And then Arrietty remembered. Something the boy had told her . . . What was it called now? A telegraph? No that was something else. What had he called it? The word seemed on the tip of her tongue. Ah, yes . . .
“I think it’s a telephone,” she said uncertainly. She spoke rather shyly: sometimes it embarrassed her to know more about the great human world than either of her parents. “Miss Menzies had one,” she added as though to excuse her startling knowledge.
It took a lot of explaining—wires, poles, speaking from house to house . . .
“Whatever will they think of next!” exclaimed Homily at last.
Pod remained silent for a moment, and then he said, “Difficult to get the hang of it. At least, the way you explain it, Arrietty. But there’s one thing I’m certain of—”
“What’s that?” asked Homily sharply.
“That thing out in the hall—we’re going to thank our stars for it!”
“How do you mean, Pod?”
“For what it tells us,” said Pod.
Homily looked bewildered. “I never heard it say a word—”
“That the house is empty. That’s what it told us, plain as plain. You mark my words, Homily, that black thing in the hall is going to be a . . .” (in his happy excitement, he seemed at a loss for the word) “a . . .”
“Godsend?” ventured Arrietty.
“Safeguard,” said Pod.
But, in the end, they did not explore the house that day. Homily seemed uneasy at the thought of being left on her own, and Spiller arrived with a tempting feast of tidbits garnered from the larder. So they all sat down on bits of broken tile and ate a delicious luncheon. There were goodies they had not seen or tasted for what seemed like years: smoked ham, pink and tender; anchovy butter; small scraps of flaky pastry; grapes to be carefully peeled; something wrapped in a lettuce leaf, which Homily hailed as pigeon pie; a whole slice of homemade bread; and a small, uneven chunk of rich plum cake.
After this meal, as sometimes happens, they all began to feel sleepy. Even Pod seemed aware of a sudden tiredness. Homily gathered up the leftovers and wondered where to put them (leftovers—they had forgotten there could be such things!). “I’ll get you a dock leaf,” said Pod, moving towards the door. But he moved rather slowly, an
d Spiller forestalled him and was soon back with a selection of rather rusty-looking leaves. Spiller, Arrietty noticed, had not eaten anything: he had never been one for eating in company.
But where to put the food where no stray eye might discover it? Even the broken tiles, Pod had explained, must be put back exactly as they had found them: there must be nothing to arouse attention or suspicion.
“We could put it outside among those weeds,” suggested Homily.
“No,” said Pod, “it ’ud only attract the rats. And that we don’t want.”
At length, Homily decided to take the leftovers to bed with her. “They’ll make a nice breakfast,” she told them, as she climbed up into the nest of eiderdown quilts.
Arrietty helped her father replace the bits of tiling (Spiller, in his sudden way, had silently disappeared). After this, there seemed nothing more to do, so, feeling tired, she decided to join her mother in their comfortable, makeshift bed. Before she fell asleep, she heard the church clock strike four. Only four o’clock in the afternoon! But all the same, it had seemed a long, long day.
Chapter Nine
Arrietty was the first to wake in the morning. It was almost too warm under such a mound of quilts when all three had gone to bed fully dressed. She had awakened once in the night, disturbed by a strange noise—a banging, a tapping, a shuddering sort of noise followed by a silence and then by a series of gurgles. Pod and Homily were awakened, too. No one had spoken.
“What is it?” asked Arrietty after a moment.
Pod had given a short grunt and had turned back on his side. “It’s the pipes,” he had muttered, “the hot-water pipes. Keep quiet, now, there’s a good girl: we were up a bit late, me and Spiller . . .” and he pulled the bedclothes over his ears.
“Oh, yes,” Arrietty had said, remembering those radiators—“A bit old-fashioned,” Pod had told them, but she supposed any caretaker must keep the house dry; that was what caretakers were for.