The Borrowers Collection

by Mary Norton

  Carefully, she crept out through the narrow gap by the barely opened stove door, the hinges of which had become so rusted that it was quite immovable. It was a clever place, she realized, in which to take shelter. She let herself down onto the shallow cluttered tiles, still strewn with the ashes she had brushed from the racks above, and took cover between the bricks on which the old stove stood. She stared out cautiously, much as she and Pod had stared out from under the clock at Firbank.

  All looked just as it had the day before: the piled plant pots, the cracked panes of glass, the garden beyond. The tap dripped rhythmically at its long intervals. No, this was different: a slightly thinner sound, more a plink than a plonk. Arrietty leaned forwards, still careful to keep under cover. There seemed to be something blue in the grating under the tap. She narrowed her eyes, straining to see better. Something very blue. Some kind of utensil, something in which the drop, when it fell, went plink instead of plonk.

  Filled with curiosity, she took a careful step forwards. And then she saw what it was—they had had one in their storeroom at Firbank: a glass eyecup. Homily had never used the one they had at Firbank because of its weight and its awkward shape: she hadn’t any patience with it. Well, here must be somebody who did have patience with it, and that somebody (Arrietty realized with beating heart) must be another borrower.

  For one moment she was tempted to turn back and waken her parents. Then she decided against it. No, she would stay here and watch and wait. After a while the eyecup would be filled to the brim, and sooner or later, whoever had put it there would come back and fetch it. Arrietty sat down and, leaning against the brick support, drew up her legs and clasped them in her arms. Chin on knees, she could watch in comfort.

  Her thoughts began to stray a little. She thought of Spiller. Of his kindness and his wildness, of his reserve and independence. Of his deadly bow and arrow. He shot only for the pot. She herself would like to learn to use a bow, but never, never, she realized, could she bring herself to kill anything living: in her case, it would be just for self-defense, as, when in danger, Pod might use his hatpin. And yet, and yet—she remembered uncomfortably—how often, hungrily and gratefully, they had devoured the game that Spiller had procured for them. No questions asked—at least, none that she had been aware of—just a savory dish on their table. Would Spiller come and live in this house with them? she wondered. Helping them to borrow and perhaps taking Pod’s place when Pod got older? Would she herself ever learn to borrow? Not a cautious bit here or there, but fearlessly and well, learning the rules, knowing the tools . . . The answer, she felt, to the first question was no: Spiller, that outdoor creature, would never live in a house, never throw his lot in with theirs. But he would help them, always help them—of that she was sure. The answer to that second question was yes: she knew in her bones that she would learn to borrow, and learn to borrow well. Times had changed: there would be new methods, new techniques. And, as part of the rising generation, some of these she might even invent!

  Suddenly there was a sound. It was quite a small sound and seemed to come from the library next door. Arrietty stood up and, keeping her body covered by the brick support, peeked out.

  All was quiet. She watched and waited. From where she stood, she could see the tap and, to the left of this, the place where the tiles ended and the library floorboards began. She could see a little way into the library, part of the fireplace, and the light from the long windows in the library, but not the windows themselves. As she stood there under the stove, still as the crumbled bricks that supported it, she could feel the quickening pulse of her own heartbeats.

  The next sound was very slight. She had to strain her ears to hear it. It was a faint continuous squeak, as though, she thought, someone was working a machine, or turning some miniature handle. It grew—not louder exactly—but nearer. And then, with a catch of the breath, she saw the tiny figure.

  It was a borrower—no doubt of that—a borrower with a limp, dragging some contraption behind him. Whatever the contraption was, it moved easily—almost magically—not like Spiller’s soapbox, which was rather apt to bump. In this case, it was the borrower that bumped. One of his shoulders went right down with each step taken: he was very lame. And fairly young, Arrietty noticed, as he came on towards the tap. He had a soft mop of tow-colored hair and a pale, pale face. The thing he dragged was on wheels. What a wonderful idea, Arrietty thought: why had not her own family ever owned such a thing? There had been plenty of old toys, she had been told, pushed away in the playroom cupboard at Firbank, and some of them must have had wheels. It was these four wheels, she realized, that produced the fairylike squeaking.

  When the young borrower reached the drain, he turned his wagon so the rear end faced the eyecup. Then, stooping down, he took a drink of water. Arrietty drew back a little when, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he moved towards the glass door that led to the garden. He stood there for some moments, his back to Arrietty, gazing out through the panes. “He’s watching the birds,” she thought, “or seeing what sort of day it is.” And it was a lovely day. Arrietty could see that for herself. No wind, pale sunlight, and the birds were starting to build. After a while he turned and limped his way back to the eyecup. Stooping, he tried to lift it. But it seemed very heavy and was slippery with water. No wonder Homily had had no patience with such an object: there was nothing you could get a grip on.

  He tried again. Suddenly she longed to help him, but how to announce herself without giving him a fright? She coughed, and he turned quickly, then remained frozen.

  Their eyes met. Arrietty kept quite still. His heart, she realized, must be beating just as hard as hers was. After a moment, she smiled. She tried to think of something to say. “Hello!” might sound too sudden. Perhaps she should say, “Good morning”? Yes, that was it. “Good morning,” she said. Her voice, to her ears, sounded tremulous, even a little husky, so she added quickly on a brighter, clearer note, “It’s a lovely day!”

  He was still staring at her, as though unable to believe his eyes. Arrietty returned his stare and kept quite still. She tried to hold on to her smile. “Isn’t it?” she added.

  Suddenly he gave a half laugh and sat down on the edge of the drain. He ran his hand rather ruefully through the mop of his hair, and laughed again. “You gave me a fright,” he said.

  “I know,” said Arrietty, “I’m sorry . . .”

  “Who are you?”

  “Arrietty Clock.”

  “I haven’t seen you before.”

  “I—we only came last night.”

  “We?”

  “My mother and father. And me . . .”

  “Are you going to stay here?”

  “I don’t know. It depends—”

  “On what?”

  “On whether it’s safe. And nice. And—you know . . .”

  “Oh, it’s nice,” he said. “Considering—”

  “Considering what?”

  “Considering other places. And it used to be safe . . .”

  “Isn’t it now?”

  He gave her a small, half-rueful smile and shrugged his shoulders. “How can one tell?”

  “That’s true,” said Arrietty. “You never know . . .” She liked his voice, she realized: he spoke each word so clearly, in a clipped kind of way, but the general tone was gentle.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  He laughed, and tossed his hair back out of his eyes. “They call me Peagreen,” he said, still smiling, as though she might find it ridiculous.

  “Oh,” said Arrietty.

  “It’s spelled P-E-R-E-G-R-I-N-E.”

  Arrietty thought for a moment. “Peregrine,” she said.

  “That’s it.” He stood up then, as though suddenly aware that all this time he had been sitting. “I’m sorry . . .” he said.

  “What for?”

  “For flopping down like that.”

  “You had a bit of a shock,” said Arrietty.

  “A bit,” he admitted,
and added, “Who taught you to spell?”

  “I—” Arrietty hesitated: suddenly it seemed too long a story. “I just learned,” she said. “My father knew a little—enough to start me off . . .”

  “Can you write?”

  “Yes, very nicely. Can you?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “Very nicely.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. All the Overmantels can read and write. The human children used to have lessons in that library”—he jerked his head towards the double doors. “It goes back generations. You had only to listen, and the books were always left on the table . . .”

  Arrietty moved forwards suddenly from between the bricks, her face alight and interested. “Are you one of the Overmantels?”

  “I was until I fell off the mantelpiece.”

  “How wonderful! I don’t mean falling off the mantelpiece. I mean that you’re an Overmantel! I never thought I’d meet a real Overmantel. I thought they were something in the past—”

  “Well, they are now, I suppose.”

  “Peregrine Overmantel,” breathed Arrietty. “What a lovely name . . . Peregrine Overmantel! We’re just Clocks—Pod, Homily, and Arrietty Clock. It doesn’t sound very grand, does it?”

  “It depends on the clock,” said Peagreen.

  “It was a grandfather clock.”

  “Old?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” She thought a moment. “Yes, it was very old.”

  “Well, then!” said Peagreen, laughing.

  “But we mostly lived under the kitchen.”

  Peagreen laughed again. “Aha,” he said, and there was mischief in his face. Arrietty looked puzzled: had she made some sort of joke? Peagreen seemed to think so.

  “Where do you—” she began, and then put her hand to her mouth. She remembered suddenly that it was not done to ask strange borrowers where they lived: their homes, of necessity, must be hidden and secret—unless, of course, they happened to be one’s relations.

  But Peagreen did not seem to mind. “I don’t live anywhere just at present,” he said lightly, answering her half-asked question.

  “But you must sleep somewhere.”

  “I’m moving house. As a matter of fact, you could say I’ve moved. But I haven’t slept there yet.”

  “I see,” said Arrietty. Somehow suddenly the day seemed less bright and the future more uncertain. “Are you going far?”

  He looked at her speculatively. “It depends on what you call far . . .” He turned back to the eyecup and laid his hands on the rim. “It’s a bit too full,” he said.

  Arrietty was silent for a moment, then she said, “Why don’t you tip a bit out?”

  “That’s just what I was going to do.”

  “I’ll help you,” she said.

  Together they tilted the eyecup. It had a lip on either side. As the water gurgled down the drain, they set it back on its base. Then Peagreen moved to his cart to push it nearer. Arrietty came beside him. “My father would like this wagon,” she said, running a finger along the curved front: the rear was open like a truck without a tailgate. “What’s it made of?”

  “It’s the bottom half of a date box. I have the top, too. But that hasn’t got wheels. It was useful, though, when they had carpets.”

  “When who had carpets?”

  “The human beings who lived here. The ones who took down the overmantel. That’s when I fell off the mantelpiece.” He went back to the eyecup. “If you could take one lip, I’ll take the other . . .”

  Arrietty could and did, but her mind was reeling with what she had just heard: the overmantel gone, a whole life style destroyed! When did it happen, and why? Where were Peagreen’s parents now? And their friends and, perhaps, other children . . . ? She kept silent until they had set the eyecup down on the wagon. Then she said casually, “How old were you when you fell off the mantelpiece?”

  “I was quite young, five or six. I broke my leg.”

  “Did somebody come down and rescue you?”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t think they noticed.”

  “Didn’t notice that a little child had fallen off the mantelpiece!”

  “They were packing up, you see. There was a kind of panic. It was night, and they knew they had to get out before daylight. Perhaps they missed me afterwards . . .”

  “You mean they went without you!”

  “Well, I couldn’t walk, you see.”

  “But what did you do?”

  “Some other borrowers took me in. Ground-floor borrowers. They were going too, but they kept me until my leg got better. And when they went, they left me the house, and some food and that. They left me quite a few things. I could manage.”

  “But your poor leg!”

  “Oh, I can climb all right. But I’m not too good at running, so I don’t go out of doors much: things can happen out of doors, when you have to run. It was all right, and I had the books . . .”

  “You mean the books in the library? But how did you get up to the shelves?”

  “Oh, it’s easy: all those shelves are adjustable. There are notches cut out in the uprights; it’s like climbing a rather steep staircase. You just prize out the book you want and let it drop. But you can’t put it back. My house got full of books.”

  Arrietty was silent, thinking all this over. After a while she said, “What were they like, those human beings—the ones who pulled down the overmantel?”

  “Dreadful. Always pulling things down and putting things up. You never knew where you were from one day to another. It was a nightmare. They blocked up the old open fireplace and put a small grate there instead—”

  “Yes, I saw it,” said Arrietty. Even she had thought it had spoiled the look of the room, with its glazed tile surround painted with writhing tulips—very snakelike, those tulips.

  “Art Nouveau,” Peagreen told her, but she did not know what that meant. “They said the old one was drafty, and it was, rather: if you stood inside, you could look up and see the sky. And sometimes the rain came down. But not often. In the old days, they burned great logs in it—logs as big as trees, the grownups used to tell us . . .”

  “What sort of other things did they do? I mean, those human beings?”

  “Before they went, they put in the telephone. And the central heating. And the electric light. Very newfangled, they were: everything to be modern.” He laughed. “They even put a generator into the church.”

  “What’s a generator?”

  “A thing that makes electric light. All the lights in the church can go on at one go. Not like lighting the gas jets one by one. But all the same . . .”

  “All the same what?”

  “They went, too. Said the place was creepy. In this house, you never know what you’re going to get in the way of human beings. But there’s just one thing you can be sure of—”

  “What’s that?” asked Arrietty.

  “They may come, but they always go!”

  “Why’s that? I wonder.”

  “It’s because of the ghosts. For some silly reason, human beings can’t abide them.”

  Arrietty swallowed. She put out a hand as though to steady herself on the rim of the date box. “Are there . . . are there many ghosts?” she faltered.

  “Only three that I know of,” said Peagreen carelessly. “And one of those you can’t see: it’s only footsteps. Footsteps never hurt anybody.”

  “And the others?”

  “Oh, you’ll see for yourself in time.” He smiled at her and picked up the cord attached to his wagon. “Well, I’d better be getting along: those Whitlaces will be up by seven.”

  Arrietty tightened her grip on the edge of the wagon, as though to detain him. “Can you speak to ghosts?” she asked him hurriedly.

  “Well, you could. But I doubt if they’d answer you.”

  “I wish you weren’t going,” said Arrietty as she removed her hand from the wagon. “I’d like you to meet my father and mother: there’s so much you cou
ld tell them!”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They’re asleep in that stove. We were all very tired.”

  “In the stove?” He sounded surprised.

  “They’ve got bedclothes and everything.”

  “Better let them sleep,” he said. “I’ll come back later.”

  “When?”

  “When the Whitlaces have gone out.” He thought for a moment. “About two o’clock, say? She goes down to the church, and he’ll be up in the kitchen garden by then.”

  “That would be wonderful,” and she stood there watching as he pulled his wagon towards the double doors and into the library beyond. The fairylike squeaking became fainter and fainter until she could hear it no longer.

  Chapter Ten

  “Arrietty!”

  It was a hoarse whisper. Arrietty broke out of her dream and turned quickly towards the stove. Yes, of course it was her mother: Homily stood peering out of the stove, her hair tousled and her face drawn and worried. Arrietty ran towards her. “Oh, Mother, what is it?”

  Homily leaned a little farther forwards, still speaking in the same tense whisper: “You were talking to somebody!” Her frightened eyes flicked round the sunlit conservatory as though, thought Arrietty, some monster might appear.

  “Yes, Mother, I know.”

  “But, Arrietty, you promised—” Homily seemed to be trembling.

  “Oh, Mother, it wasn’t a human bean! I was talking to a borrower!”

  “A borrower!” Homily was still trembling. “What sort of borrower?”

  “An Overmantel, to be exact.”

  “An Overmantel!” Homily’s voice now became shrill with incredulity. “But how—I don’t see . . . An Overmantel!” Her eyes flicked about again. “Besides,” she went on, her voice becoming firmer, “I never heard, not in my whole life, of an Overmantel bothering to talk to the likes of us.”

  Arrietty remembered only too well her mother’s dislike of Overmantels. A stupid, stuck-up lot, she had called them, who only lived for pleasure and were careless of their children. Pod had pointed out that somehow they always managed to get their children educated. “Only to show off!” Homily had retorted.