Bogwoppit

by Ursula Williams

  It rained for nearly a week. On the seventh day she found a little piece of paper floating on the marsh pools. It might have been there for days. The word on it was nearly washed out. It just said: HELP!

  Samantha’s heart stood still. Her first thought was to run straight up to the Park, and her next was to find Jeff Price and ask him to go with her. But the film company were showing the films they had taken, in the village hall, and Samantha had been on her way to join them when she had digressed by way of the marsh pools, hoping, but hardly expecting, to catch a glimpse of the One-and-Only, who had been invisible for so long that she was very much afraid it had forgotten all about her.

  When she looked in at the village hall door, Jeff Price was sitting in the front row with his mouth open, staring at the screen. In fact everybody was sitting there perfectly absorbed, and nobody noticed Samantha peep in and then turn round and run away.

  She did not wait to fetch her gumboots, but splashed up the muddy drive, soaking herself to her knees, and never stopped until she reached the door of the house. She pushed it open, ran across the hall into the kitchen, and down the cellar steps.

  And here her worst fears were realized. Bitterly now she blamed herself for neglecting to pay her previous daily visits to the Park. The heavy rain had swollen the stream and the gulleys and the culverts. It had flooded the passage, and the cellar was inches deep in water.

  Samantha seized the torch, more feeble now as the battery was wearing out. She wrenched open the door to the long tunnel, up which the water flowed in a sinister flood. Regretting her gumboots she braved the darkness, feeling the cold lapping of the water creeping up her ankles like icy fingers. The way was familiar or she would have been too frightened for such a venture, but she felt she knew every inch as far as the grid, so battled gallantly on, till the light from the cellar stairs had long since faded out behind her, and at long long last the beam of her torch shone on the bars of Mr Price’s gate.

  It was at this moment that she realized that she no longer had the key in her pocket. Where and when she had lost it she did not know but it certainly was not with her now.

  In the moment of shock everything seemed to stand still, even the water lapping at her feet. And then Samantha seized the bars in both hands, dropping the torch in her agony, so that it sank beneath the water and gleamed up at her like the watchful eyes of bogwoppits. Samantha shook and shook the bars, but Mr Price’s grid stood firm.

  ‘Aunt Daisy!’ shouted Samantha. The cry rang along the wet, dark drain ahead, as if miles beyond the bend it was passed along from echo to echo.

  ‘Aunt Daisy!’ she called again, and yet again. The echo carried her cry farther and farther into the darkness, and from far, far away in the remoteness beyond came back an answer.

  Samantha had to strain her ears to hear it, and even then she hardly believed the words that she heard. But they were repeated again and again, and there was such a note of pleading and despair in the voice that she seized the bars and shook them until she was dizzy with the effort.

  ‘SAMANTHA! OH, DO PLEASE COME, SAMANTHA!’

  And before the voice died away a new sound joined the sad duet, a sound of water flopping, flapping, coming nearer and nearer. The next moment a familiar black wing was thrust through the grid.

  Samantha had rescued her torch, and the feeble beam was reflected in the round blue eyes of the One-and-Only, its rubbery beak offering frantic kisses through the bars, its wet, webbed feet trying to reach and embrace her.

  It was such a long time since she had seen it that Samantha’s frantic anxiety turned to joy. She fondled and kissed such damp feathers as she could reach, trying to explain that she was unable to get through the gate and take it into her arms. The bogwoppit grew excited and seemed to be getting impatient with her. When at last it realized that all its efforts were useless, and Samantha was not going to open the gate and cuddle it, it splashed away, giving her one long, last reproachful look over its shoulder. And once again out of the darkness came the cry:

  SAMANTHA! OH, SAMANTHA, DO COME!

  The key! Oh, the key! In vain Samantha searched her pockets. There was no key, and she could not even remember the last time she had handled it. Perhaps there was a file in the kitchen at the Park and she could saw through the bars? But filing was a man’s job rather than a girl’s. If only she had made Jeff come with her – two pairs of hands were better than one. He would have known, for instance, what his father did to open iron bars when a key was lost. And thinking of Mr Price reminded Samantha that of course there was another key! Mr Price had one too, and she must find him and get it from him just as quickly as she possibly could.

  It was the half-term holiday week. All the children were free, but of course Mr Price was working just as usual. Mrs Price, less calm than was her habit due to washing and the wet weather, was thankful for the village hall film show which kept the four wet children from getting under her feet all the morning. She was anything but pleased to see Samantha come flying into the house quite plastered with mud, and apparently soaked to the skin from the ankles upwards.

  ‘The keys!’ she panted. ‘Where does Mr Price keep his keys?’

  Mrs Price stared at her, dustpan and brush in hand. ‘The keys!’ repeated Samantha, speaking more vigorously than she had ever spoken to Mrs Price before.

  When children shouted at her, Mrs Price did not shout back like Aunt Lily did. She merely became remote and distant. This time she went on brushing the hearthrug and said nothing at all to Samantha.

  ‘Where are the keys?’ wailed Samantha, with such agony in her voice that Mrs Price took notice of her at last.

  ‘What keys?’ she asked stiffly.

  ‘The keys of the cellar! Mr Price’s keys!’ wailed Samantha.

  ‘Mr Price’s keys are with Mr Price, where they belong!’ said Mrs Price, brushing smartly.

  ‘Where’s Mr Price? Oh do please tell me where he is!’ pleaded Samantha. Mrs Price had never seen her so excitable and upset. She stopped brushing the hearthrug.

  ‘Now don’t get yourself into such a state!’ she said in some surprise. ‘You can’t go running off after him in all this rain. He’s gone over to the vicarage at Chopley, and he won’t be back till teatime. You go and change yourself out of those wet clothes, Sammy, and we’ll have a cup of tea.’

  But Samantha’s agitation became even greater.

  ‘Please will you lend me your bicycle, Mrs Price? Oh please do,’ she urged, almost clasping Mrs Price in her arms as she pleaded.

  ‘You don’t want to bicycle all that way with the rain coming down like this!’ said Mrs Price in astonishment, but as she did not directly refuse, Samantha took her hesitation as permission, and charged out of the house, snatched Mrs Price’s bicycle from the shed, and pedalled away furiously on the five mile ride to Chopley.

  The rain poured down her face, her neck and shoulders and down her back. It splashed off the road until her legs were just as wet as if she had still been paddling down the drain. Every car that passed her deluged her with water, while a finer spray from oncoming vehicles was just as disagreeable and unpleasant.

  In Chopley she had to ask her way twice to the vicarage, only to find that Mr Price had broken off work for the lunch hour and had taken his sandwiches off to eat at the Green Dragon.

  He was washing them down with a pint of beer in company with some mates when the door opened and in came Samantha. She was dripping from head to foot and spattered all over with mud.

  ‘Mr Price! I want the key of the drain!’ she said without preamble.

  Mr Price stared at her, a bite taken out of his second sandwich and suspended as it were in mid air.

  ‘What drain?’ he asked, to gain time. He was so completely flabbergasted by the sight of Samantha.

  ‘You aren’t allowed in here, you know!’ the barman told Samantha quite severely. ‘Children aren’t allowed in the public bar!’

  Mr Price followed Samantha outside. She was so obviousl
y distressed, but he could not fathom what it was she really wanted.

  She pulled herself together and tried to speak to him coherently.

  ‘Please will you give me the key to the grid you made in my aunt, Lady Clandorris’s, cellar, in the Park?’ she said. ‘The one that unlocks the gate in the great drain? I’ve lost mine and I’ve simply got to open the drain as quickly as possible!’

  ‘And what have you got to open my grid for, young Samantha?’ said Mr Price, slowly and suspiciously. ‘That gate wasn’t made to be opened, only for repairs, and you never had a key that I know of. I gave one to her Ladyship, not to you. I can’t see any reason for you having a key to open the gate in my grid. There isn’t any call for it!’

  ‘But there is! There is!’ cried Samantha in desperation. ‘My Aunt Daisy is down there at the bottom of the drain, and the bogwoppits are holding her for ransom!’

  18. The Rescuing of Lady Clandorris

  In the end Mr Price gave the key to Samantha to quieten her, she was getting so hysterical. Privately he had always thought her a little mad, though he liked her well enough.

  She could not persuade him to leave his job and help her. Her excitement was so intense that he simply did not believe her story. He couldn’t leave the vicarage sink half done, he said stubbornly, and even her tears did not wholly move him. Whatever was wrong up at the Park he would come and have a look at it in the evening, and this was the best that she could get out of him. Thankful that at least she had possession of the key, she pedalled homewards as fast as she could go.

  ‘You take young Jeff with you if you are going down that mucky cellar!’ Mr Price called after her, taking his last sandwich back into the pub.

  ‘Oh I will! I will!’ cried Samantha, but by the time she had pedalled back to the Park with the wind in her face she did not feel inclined to ride another half mile to the village in search of Jeff. She had been such a long time away, and the cry for help had been so despairing.

  Propping Mrs Price’s bicycle against the front door steps she entered the house and squelched noisily down the steps towards the rising water in the cellar.

  Before she went into the drain she discovered and lit a small paraffin hand lamp, so she put the torch into her pocket as a second string, and paddled into the tunnel, trying not to splash too much for fear the glass chimney should crack.

  The water was deeper now, and felt very cold. It took much longer to wade along the flooded passage than to walk down it on dry feet. The flood seemed to drag at her ankles and nibble at the calves of her legs. It swirled at her as if telling her to go home.

  Presently she came to the grid. Everything was quiet now, but she began to realize that once the gate was open she would be at the mercy, not only of the flood, but of the bogwoppits. Would they be gentle and friendly as they had been of late, or rough and boisterous as on the Day of the Hat? She wished she had brought the bag of black beetles from her bedroom in Mrs Price’s house. And she wished she had taken Mr Price’s advice and gone to fetch Jeff first.

  Who would ever find out if something happened to her down here in this dreadful place? Would Aunt Daisy know? And would she care if she did?

  Samantha listened. No sound at all. Had the noise of her splashing made no echo?

  Before putting the key in the lock she called again, gently at first and then much louder:

  ‘Aunt Daisy! Are you there?’

  Far, far away came the piteous reply:

  ‘SAMANTHA! OH, SAMANTHA! HELP!’

  It was enough. With her left hand Samantha put the key in the lock and turned it, holding the lamp aloft in her right. Then carefully opening the barred gate in the grid, she bent her head and scrambled through the entrance. This time she kept the key tightly clasped in her hand until she had deposited it safely inside her pocket. The water came swirling towards her. Samantha splashed through it, round one bend after another, till she came to a fork in the drain. The left-hand tunnel seemed to flow slightly uphill, with the water pumping and gurgling round her legs, but some of it flowed back into the right-hand fork, over a broken and jagged step, as if somewhere, once, there had been a retaining wall, but far ahead along this passage Samantha could see a reflection on the distant walls, as if some way beyond her, round some bend or another, there was a light.

  Towards this light Samantha advanced, the water growing deeper and deeper round her calves as the passage appeared to slope downhill and then suddenly she turned a corner and was in a large round chamber whose only illumination was a small brass handlamp like her own, perched on the top of a pile of boxes that she immediately recognized as stores from Lady Clandorris’s cupboards at the Park. The whole room was lined with boxes, against which the flood water lapped greedily, as if licking its lips at the sight of the labels and their contents.

  In the very middle of the room, on a pile of boxes shaped very much like a throne, dressed in her dressing gown, with a feather boa round her shoulders and several jumpers and dresses underneath, sat her Aunt Daisy, Lady Clandorris, with her toes drawn up tightly to avoid the water, and the One-and-Only-Bogwoppit curled up fast asleep in her lap.

  ‘Aunt Daisy!’ said Samantha faintly. Her throat felt suddenly tight and constricted as if she were going to cry, and she had a surprising urge to rush forward and put her arms around Lady Clandorris’s neck. She had hardly taken in the fact that there were no other bogwoppits to be seen.

  ‘Aunt Daisy!’ she said again in a quavering voice. ‘I’ve come to rescue you!’

  ‘Well you might have come sooner!’ snapped Lady Clandorris. ‘All my pillows are wet! The water is still rising! I want you to go and tell that plumber man to come straight up here and cement up the wall between here and the main drain so the water can’t get in.’

  ‘But then you can’t get out!’ said Samantha in amazement.

  ‘Out! I don’t want to get out!’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘And nobody can get in either. All those other little monsters can stay out too. They think of nothing these days but having their photographs taken and fooling about in the marsh pools.’

  ‘Do you know about the photographers?’ asked Samantha, astonished.

  ‘Well what do you think?’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘One can’t live in the company of bogwoppits day in, day out all these weeks without learning something of their language. Besides, Boggy tells me everything, don’t you, Boggy?’

  The One-and-Only woke up and gave a tremendous yawn. It stretched out a foot and shrieked as its toe touched the water. One would have thought it had never met cold water in the whole of its life before.

  Then it saw Samantha, gave an outsize leap that nearly dashed the handlamp from her hand, landed on her shoulder, embraced her, licked her face all over, rubbed its beak and wet feathers all over her neck and chin, and returned like a feathered torpedo to Lady Clandorris’s lap.

  ‘It seems to like you!’ said Lady Clandorris with some displeasure. ‘I can’t think why!’ Samantha was silent.

  ‘Well – say something!’ said her aunt impatiently. ‘I suppose you are hungry and want some dinner. I’ve had mine. You will have to help yourself. The can opener is down there somewhere in the water.’

  ‘You called me!’ said Samantha accusingly.

  ‘Yes, of course I did! I was afraid of being drowned,’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘And I wanted you to fetch the plumber.’

  ‘I’ve come to rescue you!’ said Samantha. All the conditions of rescue she had been going to present seeped away. There was something about her Aunt Daisy that precluded bargaining. ‘If you come now you’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve unlocked the gate.’

  ‘Then lock it up again, you stupid child!’ shrieked Lady Clandorris. ‘All those little nasties will be swimming up into the Park! I want the plumber to build up the wall just as it used to be, and then they’ll have to stay in the marsh pools and Boggy and I will be all dry and comfortable in here. Won’t we, Boggy?’

  The One-and-Only twisted on to its back lik
e a cat and stretched its wings. Samantha felt a sharp stab of jealousy.

  ‘You don’t really want to stay here, Aunt Daisy?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘Why not? I like it. I didn’t at first when those little pests captured me and were so rough and wild. But they’re different now. They are fond of me, only there are far too many of them. And Boggy loves me, don’t you, Boggy?’

  The One-and-Only burrowed its beak into her neck. Then it turned towards Samantha and blinked its pale blue eyes fondly at her. She thought it was trying to say: ‘I love you too!’

  ‘Nobody loves me up there!’ said Lady Clandorris, suddenly plaintive. ‘Only my sister Gertie and she never did anything for me and gave all our mother’s jewellery to Lily, when I ought to have had it, being the eldest. Your Uncle Ernest, he didn’t love me either, he went off to South America all by himself and left me in that dreary old Park.’

  ‘I love the Park!’ said Samantha.

  ‘You can have it!’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘I’ll make it over to you lock, stock and barrel, and you needn’t worry – I shan’t ask for it back. I’ve had enough of being asked to have garden fêtes and Boy Scout camps and Rolls Royce rallies and all that paraphernalia in my private home and garden. No peace anywhere, except down here. I like it.’

  ‘I can’t live up in the Park while you are living down here in the drain!’ said Samantha, appalled at the prospect.

  ‘Why not? You can ask your Mr and Mrs Price to come and caretake the place and open it to the National Trust on Sundays. You can rent out the grounds to all those film people and the campers and the Preservation Trusts, and that will pay for the upkeep. You can charge them to come and look at the bogwoppits. Make it a safari park, or a bogwoppitry, call it anything you like as long as I don’t have to look at it. Forget me!’

  ‘I can’t forget you!’ said Samantha slowly.

  The glass shade of the lamp in her hand was blackening in the smoke of the flame, and she could see it was because her hand was trembling.