The Mennyms

by Sylvia Waugh

  Soobie turned right. He could just visualise Appleby looking in shop windows or sheltering from the rain in some shop doorway. The shops were all closed, it being Sunday. Even the Bingo Hall had put up its shutters at this late hour. At the far end of the street, the landlord of The Black Swan was locking up for the night, his last customers having departed ten minutes before. There were few cars on the wet road and not many pedestrians.

  The first living being Soobie saw at close quarters, huddled in a shop doorway just as he imagined Appleby would be, was a very old woman sitting on a tiled shelf that projected from the shop window. She seemed to be wearing several layers of outer clothing. The hat on her head was tied on with a scarf. She was wearing a pair of men’s boots and very thick stockings. At either side of her was a very large bag, each crammed full of goodness knows what, perhaps all her earthly goods. Soobie peered at her cautiously under the rim of the golf umbrella. His hood was pulled well down. The old woman looked up at the umbrella and grinned, showing a mouthful of broken teeth.

  Soobie moved quickly on. Towards the end of the street, on the opposite side to the public house, he saw a group of teenagers clustered together in an arcade. The careful blue Mennym crossed the road before he could come within range of their interest. He sensed their potential hostility.

  The rain was getting heavier. It came down noisily on his umbrella. It bounced up from the puddles on the pavement and spattered the hem of his coat. Time passed, but Soobie walked on and on, keeping close to the shop windows.

  On the corner of one of the side-streets, he spotted a telephone box. Being sixteen, he knew perfectly well how to use it. Self-analysis would have been unbearably confusing. He had to accept that there were many things he was born knowing. And the habits of forty years had not made it a difficult thing to do. Being naturally provident, he had thought to bring some money out with him.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said when they were connected. “I’m in a phone box just off the High Street. It is two o’clock now. I’m just ringing to let you know not to worry about me. I’ve seen no sign of her yet, but I’m going on looking.”

  “How wet are you?” asked his mother anxiously.

  “Not so bad,” replied Soobie. “My boots are waterproof, you know, and the umbrella takes care of the rest of me.”

  He omitted to mention the trickles of water that managed to run hither and thither about his person, wetting his arms up to the elbow, and the front of his neck where his coat fastened. The hood was not a perfect fit.

  “Try to get some sleep, Mother. I won’t ring again till after four unless I have some definite news.”

  He continued his search, up and down one side street after another, pausing, peering, almost willing his sister to appear. One street looked a real possibility. It was full of specialist boutiques and the clothes in the windows looked very like Appleby’s. But apart from a black kitten mewing in a doorway, the whole street was empty.

  Once he really thought he saw his sister at the very bottom of a street. He hurried down it as fast as he could. Fortunately, the girl was standing still, sheltering under an overhanging shop front. Otherwise Soobie, plump as he was and not very quick on his feet, would never have got near enough to establish that this was just another human teenager. From a distance she looked strikingly like Appleby. Soobie thought that only his runaway sister would be out on the streets at that time in the morning, but after he had seen a few more waifs and strays, he began to appreciate that Appleby was not the only youngster spending the night away from home. The others, thank goodness, were not his worry.

  “Hello, Mother,” he said when he came back to the telephone box again. “It is half past four now. I’ve searched the town centre from one end to the other. I thought for sure she would be around here somewhere, but she’s not.”

  “Come home then,” said Vinetta. “Come straight home now and get dried off. You can’t tell me you’ve managed to stay dry in this weather, no matter how good your umbrella is.”

  “I’m not too wet,” said Soobie, shivering, “just a little bit uncomfortable. If it gets too bad I will come home. But there’s a street leading past the Market Place and down to the river that I’d like to look at. You know how much Appleby likes the Market.”

  The Market Place was bare. Iron rails marked off where the stalls would be set up on market days. Wet rubbish clung round the railings. There were food cartons and old newspapers and plastic carrier bags waiting to be swept up in the early hours of the morning. The whole place looked bleak and sordid. There was no sign of life. No Appleby. Not even a stray cat or dog ventured into the open on a night like this.

  Soobie, losing all hope, still persevered down the steep, cobbled street that led to the riverside. Tall grey buildings either side were mostly in darkness. Street lamps of an old-fashioned style had very half-hearted pools of light surrounding them so that between one lamp and the next there were areas of blackness.

  For the first time, Soobie felt fear. It was not a fear of anything external or rational. It was a fear bedded in the spirit, the great inner being that Mennyms, who knows how, shared in common with humankind.

  I am nobody, he thought, going nowhere. Appleby might no longer exist. The rest of the Mennyms might have ceased to be and I might even now be all alone in the world.

  It was not a pretend; it was a grasping after some awful reality. Soobie kept on walking towards the riverside. He came within sight of the great cantilever bridge that spanned it and he stood still in the middle of a mean, dead street to think.

  At that moment a fog-horn sounded, solemn and mournful.

  But to Soobie it was like the fingers of a hypnotist snapping to waken him out of a trance. Very deliberately, he folded up his fear and tucked it away in the back of his mind.

  “I am going to find Appleby,” he said out loud, “no matter how hard it is, or how long it takes.”

  He was suddenly aware that the night would soon be ending. A daylight search would be impossible for a Mennym with a blue face, even if he hid as well as he could within his ill-fitting hood. And what is more, the umbrella would soon look extremely conspicuous, for the rain was stopping again.

  “I’m coming home now, Mother,” said Soobie when he reached the telephone box again. “It will soon be too light for me to be out. If she doesn’t come back today, I’ll try again as soon as it is dark.”

  When Soobie reached home, Tulip and Vinetta were waiting at the door for him. They fussed over him as if he too had been among the missing. The umbrella was taken from him and put into the cloakroom sink to dry. He automatically wiped his feet on the doormat but then he was led into the lounge before he could remove his coat.

  Vinetta undid the buttons and Tulip tugged off one sleeve at a time, as if he were no older than Poopie. His grandmother felt the coat between her fingers and said, “It’s very damp. We knew it would be. I’ll put it to dry.”

  Vinetta made him sit down in his usual chair and she pulled off his blue wellingtons. The gas fire was on full.

  “Stay there till you’re properly dried out,” she ordered, “and then go to your room and have a lie down. You shouldn’t have stayed out so long.”

  Half an hour later, Joshua came home. He took off his damp coat in the hall, put his umbrella beside Soobie’s in the wash basin, and changed out of his rain boots into his indoor shoes. Nobody helped him. But then, he had only been to work. He hadn’t spent the night searching for his daughter.

  “Any word yet?” he asked Soobie as he sat himself down at the fire in the lounge.

  Soobie did not answer. He had fallen fast asleep.

  29

  * * *

  Monday Afternoon

  GRANNY TULIP WAS in the breakfast room trying to work out a rather complicated knitting pattern. She had made up her mind that if she worked hard at this problem, Appleby would be home before she had finished. It was pure self-comforting superstition, like not stepping on the cracks in the pavement. But it w
as a way of diverting the mind from an unbearable sorrow.

  At midday, Vinetta looked in. She was wearing her dark green coat with the velvet collar turned up. Her brown fur hat and blue-tinted spectacles completed her cover-up against the outside world.

  “I’m going out, Mother,” she said. “I’ll be back by five o’clock. Could you keep an eye on the twins? Don’t let them disturb Soobie or Joshua. They’re both lying down.”

  Tulip put her knitting pattern to one side and looked at Vinetta shrewdly.

  “It’ll be like looking for a needle in a haystack,” she said. “You are wasting time and energy.”

  “I have shopping to do,” said Vinetta defensively. “I want to buy Soobie some new gloves.”

  “And since when does shopping take you five hours? Come on, Vinetta, admit it. You are going to search the town for Appleby. I don’t blame you, but I think it is labour in vain. She’ll come back herself when she is good and ready.”

  “I will go all around the town,” said Vinetta stubbornly, “not in the hope that I will find her, but that she might see me passing by wherever she is hiding, and that might give her the chance to come out without seeming to climb down. I am trying to meet her halfway, wherever halfway may be.”

  Tulip picked up the knitting pattern.

  “Go on then,” she said. “I’ll work in the lounge till you come back. But, for goodness’ sake, don’t pin your hopes on finding her. If she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be.”

  And she didn’t, and she wasn’t. At five o’clock precisely Vinetta arrived home again, weary and defeated. Poopie and Wimpey met her on the doorstep.

  “We’ve been very good,” said Wimpey. “Granny played cards with us and then when it got to half past four we all sat looking out of the window to see you coming.”

  “I saw you first,” claimed Poopie.

  “No, you didn’t,” said Wimpey. “We all saw you at the same time.”

  Tulip looked at the stricken face of her daughter-in-law and said sharply to the children, “Stop arguing. Can’t you see your mother’s worn out?”

  Vinetta took off her outdoor things and went to sit by the fire in the lounge. Tulip retired gratefully to the breakfast room. Keeping the twins quiet was no easy task! Vinetta by now was too tired to try; so it was fortunate that Poopie and Wimpey decided to go their separate ways – they were definitely best apart.

  Poopie went to his own room and started making an assault course for his Action Man, complete with scaling tower, jungle path and log bridge. He had accumulated a quantity of genuine equipment given as presents, but he was also very good at improvising with cardboard boxes, coathangers and scatter cushions. Once he had decided on turning his whole room into an area for manoeuvres, the problem of entertaining him was mercifully solved for a week or more.

  Wimpey did not stay long in her room. She looked out of the window but there was nothing to see. It was nearly dark and the window in any case faced out onto the back garden. It occurred to her that Appleby might be hiding in the shed, but she was too timid to go out at this hour to find out. Then she wondered if anyone had thought of checking the empty rooms in the house.

  On the ground floor there were no unused rooms. The kitchen, the little conservatory, the breakfast room, the playroom, the day nursery, the lounge, the dining room and the cloakroom were all liable to be looked into at any time by any member of the family. They were not good hiding places.

  On the first floor, there were four bedrooms, a bathroom and a large airing cupboard. Poopie and Wimpey had rooms facing each other. Their parents’ room, with its adjoining night nursery, was next to Poopie’s. The bathroom was next to Wimpey’s room, and on her other side was a ‘guest’ room, used only once in forty years by Miss Quigley on a disastrous weekend visit.

  Tiptoeing past the room where Joshua was sleeping, and past Poopie’s door that was not quite shut, Wimpey went to check the guest room.

  In the gloom, she made out the neatness of a bed that had not been slept in and chairs that were still in their mathematically correct positions. The mirror on the small dressing-table by the window reflected the light from the landing. Wimpey did not need to go any further to find that there was no one there. She briefly checked the bathroom and the big airing cupboard. Then, having resolved to make a thorough search, she headed up the staircase to the floor above.

  There were four bedrooms, a bathroom and another large airing cupboard on this floor too. In the airing cupboard below, where the hot water tank was, Vinetta kept all the sheets and blankets. In this airing cupboard there was a cluster of hot and cold water pipes going from top to bottom, and two slatted shelves. It was nearly always empty and tended to collect cobwebs. Wimpey looked in cautiously and then, satisfied, quickly shut the door again.

  This bathroom and airing cupboard were at the top of the stairs at the end of the landing, facing Soobie’s room. Wimpey crept past just as Soobie was beginning to wake up. Next came the big front bedroom occupied by Granpa Mennym. Off it led the little dressing room where Granny kept a truckle bed for her own use. This small room had, of course, no door onto the landing. Across the landing from Granpa’s room was Appleby’s. Next to that was another guest room, slightly smaller than the one downstairs, but pleasanter. Wimpey headed hopefully for this second guest room but it too was neat and tidy and totally unoccupied.

  A few feet further on was the narrow, uncarpeted staircase that led to the dreaded attic. Braving herself to make a journey she had never made before, Wimpey started to climb the creaky stairs.

  Suddenly the attic door swung open. Wimpey, who had been looking without really expecting to find, was so startled she fell backwards onto the carpet at the foot of the stairs.

  “I’ve found her,” she yelled. “Come quickly, Mum. She’s up in the attic.”

  30

  * * *

  Wimpey Meets Pilbeam

  THE ATTIC DOOR had swung inwards and the light from the bulb on the rafters shone out onto the landing. Just as Wimpey fell and shouted, Pilbeam came out onto the top of the stairs, her stairs. She was little more than a silhouette with the light behind her, but not Appleby’s silhouette, taller and sleeker with long straight hair that looked decidedly black. Wimpey, gazing upwards, saw immediately that this was a stranger.

  “It’s not Appleby,” she screamed, and promptly fainted.

  From Granpa’s room came the sound of a stick being vigorously thumped on the floor. He had no intention of leaving his bed again unless there was a fire. Once was more than enough! Someone would have to come and tell him what was happening.

  Soobie, almost ready for his evening search, came out of his room to investigate the commotion. Seeing Wimpey lying still at the bottom of the attic stairs he dashed forward just as Pilbeam was making her way down to see what she could do for the child she had just scared half to death. Pilbeam, reaching her first, stooped and took her in her arms.

  “Get Mother,” she said urgently to Soobie. “I’ll look after Wimpey till you come back.”

  Pilbeam had recognised Wimpey immediately. No one else in the house could so exactly have answered the description Vinetta had given of her.

  Soobie, after no more than a second’s doubt, raced off to find his mother. Sir Magnus was still thumping on the floor with his stick. Soobie put his head round the door and said sharply, “It’s all right, Granpa. Just the twins again.” A plausible explanation.

  As Soobie passed his parents’ bedroom on the floor below, Joshua, almost ready for work, looked out to see what the fuss was about.

  “Has she come back?” he asked Soobie.

  “No,” said Soobie. “Where’s Mother?”

  “Downstairs, I suppose,” answered Joshua and he went back into his room and shut the door. He was well used to the noise of his boisterous family and, once satisfied that Appleby was not the source of it, he lost interest.

  Poopie did not even hear the noise. His assault course was getting along famously
and he was unaware of anything else that was happening.

  In the lounge, Vinetta was sitting with Googles on her knee, singing a bit chokily, “Hush a bye, baby, on the tree top, when the wind blows the cradle will rock . . .”

  Googles was not settling down comfortably. One little hand was tugging at the beads around Vinetta’s neck. The little legs were stretched out rigid in an effort to reach the floor. Vinetta stopped singing and sighed.

  “Poor little Googles. I have been neglecting you. All this worry about Appleby is upsetting our routines.”

  Just then, Soobie came rushing in. “Put Googles back in her cot, Mum. Wimpey has found Pilbeam and she’s in a state of shock. You’ll have to come.”

  Googles was placed in the carrycot and immediately she began to cry loudly and vigorously. Fortunately, Tulip, who had been working in the breakfast room, came out to see what the row was about.

  “Take care of Googles, Mother,” said Vinetta hastily. “She is very fractious today. I have never known her to be so naughty. And I really must go and see to Wimpey.”

  “What’s wrong with Wimpey?” asked Granny Tulip anxiously, but she still picked Googles up from the cot and began to shush her.

  “She’s had a fall,” said Soobie, “but don’t worry. It’s nothing serious. She’s just looking for attention. She’ll be all right.”

  Soobie and Vinetta dashed up the two flights of stairs to the upper landing. When they got there, they found Pilbeam sitting on the bottom step of the attic stairs nursing Wimpey who was just coming round and still looked dazed.