The Mennyms

by Sylvia Waugh

  The Problem

  BROCKLEHURST GROVE WAS built round three sides of a large square. The fourth side was the main road passing through the town. It was ideally situated, just five minutes’ walk from the shops on the High Street, but looking as if it belonged to a country village. The statue of Matthew James Brocklehurst, standing on its tiered pedestal in the centre of the square, looked comfortably provincial.

  The houses were at the upper end of the suburban market, large, detached and with very private, well-hedged gardens. Numbers 1 to 3 were on the left-hand side, numbers 7 to 9 were on the right. At the back, furthest from the main road, were numbers 4 to 6 and, naturally, number 5, where the Mennyms lived, was exactly in the centre.

  The family at number 5 were not well-known. They were not invisible, but they preferred not to be noticed and, on the whole, nobody noticed them. Mr and Mrs Jarman, who had lived for twenty-five years at number 4, were very friendly with the Englands who now lived at number 6. They’d only moved in four years before, but they had struck up a friendship immediately. Some people are like that. Not the Mennyms. No one in the street had ever passed the time of day with any of the residents of number 5.

  The Mennyms, it must be said, had good reason to hold themselves aloof. It was not that they felt superior, having lived there far longer than anybody else. With the exception of Miss Quigley, they would hardly have known what feeling superior or inferior meant. It was simply that they would not dare to mix with outsiders.

  They were not human, you see – at least not in the normal sense of the word. They were not made of flesh and blood. They were just a whole, lovely family of life-size rag dolls. They were living and walking and talking and breathing, but they were made of cloth and kapok. They each had a little voice box, like the sort they put in teddy-bears to make them growl realistically. Their frameworks were strong but pliable. Their respiration kept their bodies supplied with oxygen that was life to the kapok and sound to the voices.

  Their maker was an extremely gifted seamstress called Kate Penshaw. She never knew why she made them. It was just a rather unusual hobby pursued obsessively by a lonely old lady. She never even noticed the life lying dormant in their huge cloth bodies. It was only after she died and was buried that her creations came out of their silence and methodically took over the house.

  Technically the property belonged to a nephew called Chesney Loftus who lived in Australia, but he had never returned to claim it.

  There were no complaints about the house being neglected and unlived in. Vinetta kept the windows clean and washed the net curtains. Joshua and the twins took care of the garden. Poopie, in fact, had proved to be quite skilled in looking after the plants. In a variety of ways, they managed to make enough money to pay the bills, and to buy this and that from time to time.

  Being rag dolls, they did not need any food. They did use heating to keep warm and dry. They found that they could see with their bright button eyes. Their felt ears proved successful at hearing and their mouths learned to open and shape words. Their brains, made of kapok, were no worse, and in some cases much better, than many of the human variety.

  The Mennyms had very soon realised that they would need a policy for survival in an alien world. Their first law was to have as little contact as possible with human beings. No outsider must ever notice that they were not made of flesh and blood. When they went out, they hurried there and back, hidden in clothing and wearing brimmed hats or, if the weather permitted, carrying a large umbrella.

  They learnt how to use the telephone. They managed to open a bank account without actually going into a bank. It was perfectly possible in those days. They even rummaged through Kate’s old desk and discovered an agent to whom they could pay the rent. That had involved some deception, but Appleby Mennym proved very adept at inventing explanations whenever they were required. Chesney Loftus, indirectly, was informed of the names of his aunt’s ‘paying guests’ and of their request to remain on as tenants in the property. This was all done very legally, with both Sir Magnus and his son Joshua signing the tenancy agreement. The agreement was very much in favour of the owner, freeing him from all responsibility for the upkeep of the property and ensuring him a regular income from a monthly rent that could be increased if its real value dropped. The phrase ‘in line with inflation’ was not in use at the time, but that was what was meant. The annual increase was sometimes a little on the high side, but the Mennyms were able to pay and were, in any case, in no position to argue.

  Kate, maybe accidentally, had left them well-provided for. In her huge work-box, which looked more like a wicker trunk, she had left a cache of money which was sufficient to provide for the Mennyms in the difficult period of transition between her death and their life.

  All that was very long ago. The Mennyms, over the years, had become a successful family unit, able to cope with almost anything.

  They played at living and developed talents. Sir Magnus lay on his bed and, for two hours every day, including Sundays, he wrote interesting articles which he sold, by post, to various newspapers and periodicals. Appleby used to go to the Post Office, in disguises that matched the time of year, and buy stamps or hand over the letters without ever raising her head.

  Joshua made a small but steady income in the various jobs he managed to do without being observed. It was quite difficult for him since he was nowhere near as clever as his father. Vinetta had learnt how to sew, at first using Kate’s old treadle sewing machine. Over the years she had progressed to more modern machines, but she still used the old one from time to time, especially if she was worried about anything.

  As for the children, they had lessons from Tulip and Vinetta on a regular basis and were occasionally tutored by Sir Magnus. Appleby was his favourite pupil. She flattered him quite blatantly and pretended to be interested in everything. He would smile at her indulgently and enquire about her pocket money which she would reluctantly admit was never plentiful enough to buy all the things she needed. Then a helpful hand would reach under the pillow and draw out a leather pouch from which he would take a few coins to hand over slily.

  “Say nothing to the others,” he would whisper. “You’re a good lass. You deserve a little extra.”

  Soobie, the blue Mennym, had read every book in the house at least twice. No one could teach him anything and he was not willing to play at lessons as the others were. He would sometimes ask his grandfather searching questions to which the old man, clever though he was, did not always know the answers.

  Poopie was more like Joshua, good at practical things. As for Wimpey, she was a wide-eyed dreamer with long golden ringlets. She believed in fairy tales and was always waiting for something magical to happen. Little Googles gurgled in her cot or her pram and was regularly, though unnecessarily, ‘changed and fed’.

  Miss Quigley led the narrowest life, dull and undeveloped, but that was because she was just a visitor and spent most of her time in the hall cupboard.

  They lived cheaply, of course. They did not eat or drink except as a glorious pretend. And they never went on holiday, though they liked to read the brochures.

  Naturally, they never grew any older. Googles had been a baby for forty years. Sir Magnus was seventy when he was first made and was still seventy when the letter from Australia fell through the letter-box.

  All that enchanted world was now in peril.

  For forty years they had come and gone surreptitiously in the neighbourhood, even managing to shop without being noticed. But, as Sir Magnus proclaimed when next they consulted him, you cannot sit in the same room as a man without observing that he is flesh and blood. He, in turn, would look across the table at a cloth face with button eyes and would be horrified.

  “Not horrified!” exclaimed Vinetta as she sat by her father-in-law’s bed. “We may be strange. I know we are strange. But surely we are not horrific? At a distance we look just like anybody else.”

  “To him we would be horrific,” insisted Sir Magnus, his mous
tache twitching knowingly. “At least at first we would be. If he proved to be unscrupulous, he could come round to seeing us as valuable curiosities, and that would be worse.”

  “We are not valuable! Even my wedding ring is made of brass!” Vinetta looked down at her plain cotton skirt, neatly patched in places.

  “Any curiosity can have its value,” declared Sir Magnus pompously. He propped himself up higher against the mound of pillows and placed his hand over Vinetta’s. “I don’t think you realise how unique we are. But you have watched television. You must have realised that man-sized, talking, rational rag dolls do not exist anywhere else in the world.”

  Vinetta thought briefly of the Muppets, but appreciated the difference even as she thought.

  “What is unique and curious must be very valuable,” pronounced Sir Magnus. He then sank down into his pillows, a gesture of dismissal. Vinetta rose and, carrying away the dreadful letter, left Granpa to his thoughts.

  4

  * * *

  The Rat

  THE MENNYMS HAD problems enough already that day without the dire news from across the world. There was Joshua’s foot, for a start, and all the complications that involved.

  For the past five years or more, Joshua had been nightwatchman at Sydenham’s Electrical Warehouse on the other side of town. He always walked there, quickly, well-muffled, with his head down and his whole body bent forcefully forward.

  The interview for this job had taken place on a freezing cold Friday afternoon in a badly-lit and unheated gatehouse. His employer had barely looked at him. Joshua remembered the bald patch in the middle of the man’s head as he bent over the desk where a little pool of light shone on the letter of application Appleby had written. Joshua’s cap had been well down over his brows. The collar of his thick overcoat had been turned up round his ears. He needn’t have worried, though. Clarence Sydenham had just mumbled on about the duties and the wages and then thrust a paper at him for his signature. Joshua had gripped the pen in his gloved hand and scribbled his name as quickly as he could. Clarence had switched off the table-lamp and hurried out to make his getaway in his Ford Transit.

  At the time, Joshua had been delighted. Interviews were always a gamble. There had been times when he had seen that the risk was too great and he had turned away from premises much more inviting to mortal men but far too public for rag dolls.

  The job was not well-paid, but it was adequate and it had many compensations in Joshua’s eyes. He would sit all night in the little office, taking a walk round the aisles of shelves once an hour or so. Then he would be ready at seven sharp, head down in the hood of his duffle coat, to mutter good morning to Charlie, who always arrived first, and to hand over the keys to him.

  “Quiet night?” Charlie would enquire in a routine way, as he went to hang his coat on the coat stand in the corner of the office.

  “Very quiet,” Joshua would reply to the back of Charlie’s head. Then he would hurry out as if to catch a bus. But he didn’t. He hastened, head-down but watchful, along three miles of streets to his home. Public transport was too well-lit and too confined for him to dare to use it.

  All was well till the Thursday before Albert Pond’s letter arrived. On that Thursday night Joshua had been at work as usual. He had done several “prowls” to make sure that there were no intruders. (There never were. His movements round the building and the lights he switched on and off at irregular intervals must have been a sufficient deterrent.) An automatic alarm system had recently been installed but Joshua always turned it off as soon as he came in. Newfangled, unnecessary thing!

  He had read the evening paper. He had even clasped his hands round a mug of cocoa and made believe he was drinking it. Not that there was anyone there to see him, but he liked the pretend. It relieved the monotony.

  Then he settled back in his chair for a little snooze. It was a nice old office, very functional; a couple of metal filing cabinets, a strong desk, a dim ceiling light with a white enamel shade, a thin carpet not quite covering all the floorboards, and with a that-could-trip-anybody-up frayed patch in front of the gas fire. Not a bad job, all considered.

  Then suddenly, as Joshua slept, disaster struck.

  Through the part-open glass door from the warehouse floor came a large and hungry rat. The metal boxes on the warehouse shelves had offered no sustenance. The rat sniffed round cautiously. Then he came under the old kneehole desk to Joshua’s boot. Placidly but industriously, he began to gnaw at it. Then, finding the leather none too juicy but feeling confident that no human being was about to attack him, the rat crawled further up Joshua’s leg and ate right through his trousers till bits of kapok began to flutter to the floor.

  Joshua awoke from his catnap and hearing scuffling around his knee looked down and was horrified. As soon as he jumped up, the rat dived out into the darkness.

  But it was too late. The damage had been done.

  Rag dolls feel no pain. The wound, if you could call it that, did not hurt him. But he was, after all, a living being. Pain is of the flesh, but fear is of the mind. Joshua looked at his tattered knee and was terrified.

  The clock on the wall said twenty to six. Joshua had just an hour and twenty minutes to get ready. It was not going to be easy, not one little bit. He looked hard at the knee with the stuffing falling out and at the gnawed boot below it. Easy? It might not even be possible. Ten of his precious minutes were spent in paralysed fright. He had sat down heavily as soon as the rat fled. Now he didn’t know whether he would be able to rise again, let alone walk.

  “I’ll have to do something,” he said to himself at last. The first thing was to stop any more stuffing from falling out and to push back as much as he could. Opening the desk drawer he found, to his relief, a roll of sticky tape. Another drawer obligingly supplied a pair of scissors. So, with as much skill as he could muster, he began to carry out an emergency repair. He wished Vinetta were there. She was much better at that sort of thing.

  After a great struggle, the leg had at least stopped shedding any more stuffing. It looked abnormal and ugly with the trouser leg hanging raggedly round it. But all that could be hidden by his duffle coat. The problem now was to find out if the leg could still manage to support his weight and to walk in a reasonable manner.

  Joshua stood up. That was all right. He held the desk with both hands and gingerly moved his good foot one step back. Then he tried to do the same with his bad foot. But instead of obediently joining its partner the silly thing went off to one side. Joshua looked down at it unbelievingly. He knew where he had told the foot to go and it hadn’t gone there. With regard to standing, it made little difference. He still had both hands on the desk and his feet, instead of being together, were spread astride.

  He looked sternly at his disobedient left limb and willed it to work its way towards its partner. That worked. He gave a half-hearted sigh of relief.

  Taking his hands from the desk, he stood upright and made a determined effort to reach the coat stand. The result was what can only be described as a “funny-walk” in classic funny-walk style. The right foot trod firmly. The left one shot out in front before crashing down on a place on the floor about six inches ahead of where it should have been. This set the right foot slightly off balance but, being a clever and orderly right foot, it soon learned to correct its mate’s eccentricity.

  I suppose I’ll manage, thought Joshua bleakly, but it’ll be a slow job.

  He looked at the clock and saw that it was twenty-five to seven. Quickly he put his coat on and went and stood in the doorway to wait for Charlie.

  It was a cold morning. So it didn’t look too odd that Joshua was muffled up in his hood and that one of Tulip’s scarves was wrapped right round his chin.

  “You’re in a hurry this morning, old man,” chaffed Charlie as Joshua hastily handed over the keys before the newcomer had even crossed the doorstep.

  “Full of cold,” sniffed Joshua. “Be glad to get home to bed.”

  Charlie we
nt in to hang his coat up and Joshua took that opportunity to get his funny-walk round the corner out of sight. Charlie turned round to make some other friendly remark and shrugged when he saw that the nightwatchman was already gone.

  “Odd bloke,” he said to himself. “Seen him five mornings a week for years. Yet I don’t really know anything about him, or, for that matter, even what he looks like under all that clobber.”

  Meantime, Joshua was off with his funny-walk down the quiet back lanes and side streets on a journey that took him twice as long as usual and got more and more difficult as he drew near his home. People looked askance at him. The walk was by no means unobtrusive. Fortunately, the bulky figure in the big duffle coat did not look approachable. And equally fortunately, it was still a little too early for the children to be going to school. A paperboy did shout after him, “You’ll never get to play for Accrington Stanley, mister.” Apart from that he was unmolested.

  When he got to Brocklehurst Grove, he became more worried. It must have been about eight-thirty. He saw from the corner a car gliding out of the drive at number 1. After it passed, he walked cautiously by the high hedge, brushing the twigs with his shoulder, trying desperately hard to be invisible.

  At number 2 all of the curtains were still closed and the door looked firmly shut.

  Number 3 was the worst. Four snooty children in assorted school uniforms were scrambling noisily into the family car.

  “At least I’ve done my homework,” shrieked one of them in a voice that carried to the street. “I’m not a lazy beggar like you.”

  “Get in,” said their father, “and shut up.”

  Car doors slammed.

  Joshua froze. Any minute the car with its menagerie would swing out into the street. It would pass close to him. Those awful children would see his funny-walk and jeer. And he couldn’t just stand still. That would look suspicious.

  In an agony of suspense, he gingerly bent his good leg and spent what seemed like forever unfastening and then carefully refastening his boot lace.